“Let’s just call Officer James right now,” Donovan urged, “and give him the Cliff’s Notes version. We don’t need to tell him about Amy Lynn yet, but I don’t see any reason to protect that slimeball Ronny. We can just explain that we found out about the pipe bombs in Crescent Cove when we went up there to get more fireworks. He’ll believe that, since he caught us launching some this month. And then we can say we figured out from there that, somehow, Hal was hired to take a bunch of pipe bombs by truck to Albuquerque. Hell, maybe the officer even knows some of this already and—”
“But, see, that bothers me. Why, if Gideon felt that cop was so trustworthy, didn’t my brother work out all of this himself with Officer James? If Gideon got the police reports from the officer and he shared what he knew about what happened in Crescent Cove, why didn’t the police follow through? Why wasn’t this case solved by August or September 1976 when these newspaper clippings first came out so our brothers could’ve felt safe coming home long ago?”
Donovan shrugged. “Aurora, I say this respectfully, okay? I don’t want you to get mad at me, but think about it from my side. I know you love your brother, but he’s a big game player. All these codes and hidden messages and crap… I realize he’s a brilliant guy, and I always liked him, but I didn’t have to deal with this side of him before. Maybe he’s got a real good reason for doing every one of the things he did, but I don’t think he needed to act like James Bond about it. He likes creating puzzles for you to solve as much as you like solving them.”
He paused for a long moment, stroking his sideburns and looking mystified. “That’s something your family is into, I guess, but mine isn’t. This whole game has been wearing me out. I’m ready to be straight with the police about it all. To say what we need to say and then go home.”
I acknowledged his words. He’d spoken them without a hint of harshness, but he was both firm and honest about his feelings. There was no way I’d get him to back down from that decision and, in trying to see things from his viewpoint, I could understand his frustration. He’d played along with Gideon’s road-trip scavenger hunt for a long time already—a game that even I didn’t know the rules to. A game we’d been struggling to learn as we went along.
Donovan had trusted me enough to decipher the codes in the journal and he’d cared about me enough to stay by my side no matter where those clues led, but I could see he’d reached the end of this particular highway, especially at a point where he felt we had a good reason to stop.
“All right,” I said on a sigh, trying to exhale my paranoia along with all the air in my lungs. “Call him now. The sooner we can give him the info, the sooner he can start catching the bad guys, right?”
My instincts had always been excellent, but I knew I wasn’t infallible. Maybe I’d misread some signals back home. Maybe I’d let my fear and anger over my brother’s disappearance color my perceptions too much. Maybe, just maybe, we could trust Officer James after all.
Donovan’s hand was already on the phone. “Thanks,” he said to me a second before connecting with the operator and, in moments, getting the home phone number of Officer William James of the Chameleon Lake Police Department.
The phone rang three or four times before our hometown cop with the quick grin and the auburn hair picked up.
“Officer James,” Donovan began, identifying himself immediately and, then, launching into a surprisingly eloquent explanation of where we were and much of what we’d discovered. I could tell that, though he was nervous, he’d also been rehearsing some version of this conversation since the first night I showed him the journal. He knew what he wanted to say.
Also, even though I wasn’t sharing the phone with Donovan this time, I could hear the stunned silence through the line as the Minnesota cop tried to process what Donovan had just told him.
“You and Aurora Gray are all the way down in Oklahoma City, right this very second?” he asked, incredulous. “With documents that her brother—a guy we’d all thought was dead—gave to a friend of his to give to you?”
“Yes, sir,” Donovan answered.
“And you think what you found shows a connection between the manufacturing of pipe bombs in a little Wisconsin town, some possible Chicago mob-related activity and a truck explosion in Amarillo, Texas?”
“Yes.”
“Do your parents know your whereabouts?” the cop asked. “Does anybody up here?”
“No, sir,” Donovan said. “We didn’t think it was safe to tell anyone about this except you. But we’re planning to start driving back tonight. It’ll probably take us about sixteen hours but we—”
“No, son, don’t do that,” Officer James interrupted. “Don’t drive back yet. Carrying around information like that is too dangerous. I think we can come up with a safer alternative.”
There was a long pause while the cop thought about this and asked Donovan a series of new questions—lines from the police reports that the officer wanted him to read over the phone and details he wanted Donovan to share about what we’d seen in Crescent Cove.
Donovan was very forthcoming with the information we’d uncovered ourselves, but I was thankful he did as he’d promised and left out our visit to Amy Lynn’s apartment. He also minimized any hints that Gideon had, in some way, been orchestrating our discoveries. Probably because the officer wouldn’t have believed us anyway.
I heard the cop ask for the second time, “You didn’t actually see Gideon Gray, did you? Or your own brother Jeremy?”
“Unfortunately, no, sir,” Donovan replied.
Though I couldn’t see his expression, I could almost feel the officer’s relief that we weren’t admitting to consorting with ghosts in Oklahoma. But I would’ve given a lot at that moment for just one five-second glance at the cop’s face and hands. Being sightless like this, there was so much information about the conversation that was unknown to me.
“Well, now, if this is all what you say it is, and if we can locate those explosives in Crescent Cove, we might just have a major bust on our hands,” the cop said. “You and Aurora will be heroes when you return, but I don’t want you to leave there just yet. And I don’t want you to talk to anybody else about this until we’re sure we can nail the bad guys.”
We heard the sounds of shuffling pages in the background, as if Officer James was flipping through something thick, like a phonebook. It must have been a road atlas, though, because he added, “Looks like you’re only about two hundred and fifty miles from Amarillo, Texas, and I have a trusted fellow officer who lives out that way. I won’t tell him anything yet, but it’ll be helpful to have a good man on our side. I want you to drive to Amarillo and stay at the Cactus Flower Inn on the outskirts of town. Should take you about four and a half hours. You’re in your red Trans Am, Donovan, right?”
“Yes. We took my car.”
“Good. It’s a fast one. But drive the speed limit.” He laughed. To me, it sounded a little forced, but I appreciated that he was trying to keep things light.
“Here’s what I’ll do,” he added. “I’m going to go to Wisconsin right now, check out the situation in Crescent Cove and then I’ll give you a call late tonight or sometime tomorrow morning. When we’ve got the evidence in hand, we’ll take the next step. I can set up a meeting for you with my friend. Someone who will not only be able to protect you while you’re there but who has access to all the records on file and can reexamine the crime scene, if needed, until I can get down to Texas myself.”
“What about our families?” Donovan asked. “They’re expecting us home this weekend.”
“Well, if town gossip is correct, everyone in Chameleon Lake thinks you two are out scouting colleges in Illinois and Iowa—” the officer said.
Donovan winked at me. Did we know how to start an effective rumor, or what?
“—which was what I thought, too, until this afternoon.” Officer James let out a long breath. “So, why don’t you just give your folks a quick call and say you need a few extra days.
That the admissions department of a campus you’re visiting won’t be open until Monday, and that’s why you have to stay a little longer than you’d expected. Okay?”
“Okay, sir.”
“And, remember, this is very sensitive information you two have. You need to be very careful and not discuss this with anybody else. Not even family yet.”
“We won’t,” Donovan promised. Then, when he hung up, he said to me, “So...it looks like we’re gonna get to go a little farther on Route 66 than I thought.”
5:13 p.m.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Pasadena, California ~ Saturday, August 16, 2014
My husband called me as I was en route to the police station.
“Do you want me to fly home right now, Aurora?” he asked, his voice conveying in that short sentence all the same worry I was feeling.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I’m scared.”
I explained the call from Gloria yesterday and all of my attempts at trying to locate our son ever since.
“Maybe it’s nothing,” I said. “I’m praying it’s nothing and that I’m totally overreacting...but why didn’t he show up for that meeting at work yesterday? And why don’t any of us—not his family, not his friends, not his colleagues—know where he is?”
We lobbed possibilities back and forth. Scenarios for where Charlie might be. Options for when my husband should come home. His scheduled flight was tomorrow morning at nine o’clock New York time and it was already after eight p.m. there. So, unless there was an unexpected delay, he’d be back in California before Sunday noon as it was. For him to try to get a flight much earlier than that would be difficult last minute and, at most, it would only shave off a few hours.
“Still, I’ll get to JFK early in the morning and see if they can switch me to a flight that leaves sooner. I’m going to grab my things from the gala dinner and cut out of there in a few minutes. Call me after you file the police report. I’ll be here,” he said before clicking off.
Disappearances needed to be reported to the police department of the missing person’s city of residence. When I arrived at the Glendale station, I was greeted immediately by Officer Barrett Rogers, who had a posture of confidence and competence, clear blue intelligent eyes and a sympathetic smile. And who, to his credit, listened carefully to everything I said about my son and why I was so concerned about him.
He pulled out the paperwork, asked me questions about Charlie. How was his mental and physical health? Did he have any known medical conditions? Where was he last seen and could anyone give a description of what he was wearing? Did I bring along a recent photograph? Had I already checked his apartment or with his friends? How about the local hospitals? Any social media clues?
I’d anticipated most of these, and the good cop kindly praised me for that. For how familiar I was with the correct procedure. For how much initiative I’d already taken. I didn’t want to explain to him why I knew so damned much about all of this.
“Don’t worry, ma’am. We’ll do everything we can to find him,” Officer Rogers assured me with the utmost courtesy and professionalism.
I thanked him, and I strongly sensed he was telling me the truth. But in these cases—especially for me, given all I knew—trust was a mighty leap of faith.
“In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with the bitterest of agony, because it takes them unawares.”
~Abraham Lincoln
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Amarillo, Texas ~ Saturday, June 24, 1978
We made the calls home to our parents and, also, to our bosses about our delay, and we assured everyone that all was well.
Dale was furious with me, of course, but he was at the store with customers when I called him, so he was limited by how much of a jackass he was willing to be in public. Through gritted teeth, he threatened me with “a talk” when I got back and no more vacation time for the rest of the year.
I just sighed and said, “Sure.” It wasn’t worth the high long-distance rates to argue with him.
The conversation with my parents was trickier, though. Mom and Dad were genuinely concerned about us, but I’d gotten so good at lying to them about how “fine” and “safe” we were that I’d begun to believe my own fabrications. Never a good idea.
It was 8:40 p.m. when we spotted the Cactus Flower Inn. There were exactly two other cars in the parking lot and the “us” in “Cactus” kept flickering in neon green. I’d expected someplace louder, bigger, flashier—or at least more centrally located. But it was a very quiet Saturday night at the edge of Amarillo and the silence taunted me with its artificiality. It was almost defiant.
Donovan shrugged when he got out of the car. “Well, we’re here.”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t we check in and then…I don’t know, go for a drive or something? Maybe see the town. I think most of it is over there.” He pointed westward, where a hint of the setting sun still colored the horizon with a thin streak of orange. “Officer James said he wouldn’t call us until late tonight or tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said again, agreeing to the drive.
Not sure what I thought yet about the cop’s plan to talk to us again by phone, though. He still had to get himself to Crescent Cove and find Ronny Lee Wolf’s storage facility. We didn’t tell him how we knew to look for it—just that he should—but Donovan and I were both aware that it’d been two years since Ben Rainwater filmed the insides of the place. Maybe it was on tribal lands and not accessible. Maybe the contents changed. It might even all be gone by now. We’d have to wait and see.
As for our evening, it turned out Amarillo was, in fact, bigger and more active than we’d been led to believe by our sleepy introduction to it. The lady at the front desk handed us a stack of “attractions” brochures along with our room key when we checked in.
“Y’all might wanna catch a bite at The Big Texan Steak Ranch, if you’re hungry and you like meat,” she said with a smile. “And on the other side of the city, right along Route 66, there’s the Cadillac Ranch. It’s a pretty famous landmark.”
I thought of my brother’s second postcard to Amy Lynn and nodded.
We thanked her, dropped our overnight bags in the room and headed into the heart of Amarillo.
With darkness having fallen over the city and the lights all around, I was finally beginning to see it as the largest Texas town in the north of the state. After driving through the Interstate-40 business district, I had to admit I wasn’t sure why Officer James had specifically told us to stay at the Cactus Flower Inn and not a motel nearer the city center.
“He really has us on the fringes,” I said to Donovan.
“Yeah, it’s an odd choice, but he probably knows what he’s doing,” Donovan said, giving the cop his vote of confidence yet again. “Maybe it’s a place he’s stayed at before and he liked it. I just hope—” He hesitated.
“You hope what?”
“That us going through all of this won’t be for nothing. That it’ll make the world safe for our brothers.” He exhaled. “I just haven’t wanted to let myself believe…you know, that Jeremy might still be out there. Alive. Unharmed. That I might get to actually see my kid brother again.”
“I know.” I’d believed Gideon and his friend might be alive for much longer than Donovan had, but I, too, wondered what it might be like to simply see and chat with my brother once more. Wondered about it all the time, in fact.
“Hey, there’s that place.” He nodded toward a bright yellow building with blue trim that said The Big Texan on the side. “Hungry?”
I pulled out the large advertising card the motel lady gave us about the steakhouse and read a bit about it. “Not hungry enough for The Texas King,” I told him.
“What’s that?”
“Their famous 72-ounce sirloin steak, served with salad, shrimp cocktail, baked potato and a dinner roll. It’s free if you can eat the whole thing by yourself in an hour. Otherwise, you pa
y for it.”
“I’ve got an appetite, but I don’t think I could finish all that tonight,” he admitted. “Maybe just a steak sandwich or a burger?”
“Sounds good.”
Inside, it was more like a three-ring circus than a typical restaurant. So many people, so many sizzling steaks hissing on the grill. In the center of the main dining room there were a couple of lumberjack-like men going for The Texas King challenge. One of them looked red and overheated from the colossal meal, and he seemed to be slowing down. The other was munching steadily, like he’d polish off everything on his plate but the silverware and lick the dish clean, too.
We were seated at a table for two near a wall that had the stuffed head of a heavily antlered beast above us. Just a buck, but it looked scary hovering over our heads that way. Like it might attack at any moment.
I glanced uneasily at it as we ordered our sandwiches—or, rather, “steakwiches”—and glasses of iced tea. Donovan opted for mashed potatoes and I got a side salad just to be contrary. Not that lettuce made that big of a statement, but it at least made me feel better that I wasn’t just blindly following along with everything he did.
I could tell he was still riding high on his victory, being right, in his opinion, about trusting Officer James and handing over our findings to an authority figure. Just because I wasn’t openly arguing with him, though, it didn’t mean I was convinced that was the best move.
He glanced around the large room, his gaze resting on a picture that showed the outline of Texas. “Didn’t think we’d get this far south and west,” he said. “We’re a long way from central Minnesota.”
“That we are,” I had to agree, sidestepping any commentary on the first part of his statement because, of course, I did think we’d get this far away from home. I’d begun imagining myself trekking along the same route as Gideon ever since I saw all of the locations listed in his journal.
Road and Beyond: The Expanded Book-Club Edition of The Road to You Page 24