“No. Please. I’ll go with you to, um, check on your family. Just come quickly.”
This was strange. Very strange. His every interaction with Renkin had been odd lately, including at the ER earlier in the day, but this was baffling. And then he had a terrible thought. What if Renkin had been here? What if the blood was his doing, and he already had Susanne and the kids?
“Do you have my family, Renkin?”
“What? No!”
Patrick didn’t believe him. “I’m not comfortable with this situation, Judge. I’m afraid I’m going to have to hang up and call the sheriff now.”
“No!” the judge shouted. “You can’t hang up. She’s got your wife and daughter.”
And Patrick knew the mountain lion had been right.
Chapter Forty-one: Resist
Buffalo, Wyoming
Tuesday, March 15, 1977, 5:45 p.m.
Trish
The inside of her dad’s truck usually smelled like leather, horses, and sweat. Those were scents Trish mostly liked, especially together. But in Coach Lamkin’s truck, full-blast defrost recycled the stink of vomit, blood, and fear right into her face. It wasn’t just the stench. She couldn’t see anything outside either. Visibility was bad. The eastern side of the mountains always got dark early, because of the sun setting behind the range. With the storm added to that, all she saw was snow coming down through the headlights in a slant, which, in a weird kind of way, made it seem like the truck was being pushed toward the drop-off on the edge of the road. The coach was driving too fast, even faster than Ben had earlier. The stink, the dark, the snow, and the speed—combined with being scared and heartsick that Brandon had cheated on her with her own teacher—was making her disoriented and more carsick by the second. The fact that she was being kidnapped by her coach was almost not as bad as the fact that the coach was friends with Ms. Coker. She had known about Ms. Coker and Brandon. Been part of the sick secret.
Brandon. Why had she ever begged him to take her back after they broke up at Christmas? It was humiliating to remember how she’d groveled when he’d told her he was sick and tired of her bossing him around and embarrassing him in front of his friends. She’d promised things would be different. And they had been.
It hadn’t been enough. She hadn’t been enough.
But hadn’t that been what she’d just heard Coach Lamkin doing on the phone? Begging and making promises to get some guy back? The coach had lectured Trish on boyfriends, but it sounded like she didn’t know any more than Trish did.
Anger pushed Trish’s emotions to a tipping point, and words flew out of her mouth like flushed quail. “Hey, Coach. If you have to beg him and trick him to make him come back to you, he’s never going to love you.” Her tone sounded like a taunt. A little disrespectful. Just like she’d intended. She stared straight ahead.
The coach’s head whipped around in surprise, then back to face the road. “Listen to you, little Miss Know-It-All.”
Her mom elbowed her. Trish turned toward her with a “what?” look on her face.
“Don’t make her mad,” her mom mouthed.
“Sorry,” Trish mumbled.
Susanne raised her voice. “Is it because of the baby, Barb?”
Trish’s mouth fell open. What baby?
Coach Lamkin’s laugh was like machine gun fire. “He wanted me to get rid of it. He lectured me.” She lowered her voice. “’Public figures can’t have pregnant girlfriends, Barbara.’ Like I got this way all by myself. Can you believe that? He literally told me an abortion was safe and legal after Roe v. Wade, and that he’d pay for it. He wouldn’t drive me to Cheyenne, mind you, but he’d throw in a little extra so I could spend the night in a hotel.”
Trish’s head was about to explode. Her coach was pregnant, and the father wanted her to have an abortion? It was too much to comprehend.
“That’s horrible. I’m sorry,” her mom said. Her voice sounded soft and gentle, like it did whenever Trish’s dad had a bad day. “He should have married you.”
“That’s what I thought, but he refused to leave his little woman. Even after she died. He said we’d have to wait a year to marry, so I’d still need to end the pregnancy. To kill my baby. He might not want it, but I do. The bastard.”
Susanne’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t know Max was still married.”
“Max? Max Alexandrov?” Coach Lamkin snorted. “Who said anything about him? I’ve had lunch with him once, but he’s not my baby’s father.”
Trish’s head was whipping back and forth between her mom and her coach now, like she was standing too close to the court watching a tennis match. It wasn’t doing her carsickness any good, and she didn’t know where she’d throw up, with her hands taped to the handle on the dash. All over her lap, probably. She swallowed and tried to look straight ahead.
Her mom said, “At the gas station you told him about us being star witnesses for him at the trial.”
Trish sucked in a breath, anxious to hear Coach Lamkin’s answer, but it was Perry who spoke.
“Mom, it wasn’t him on the phone. Coach Lamkin shot Jeannie Renkin so Judge Renkin could marry her. She was talking to the judge.”
Coach Lamkin made a gun with her finger and shot it at Perry, leaning away from him toward her door as she did. “Bullseye, kid. And now I’m going to make him pay for rejecting me and trying to make me kill my baby. You guys are the bait at his cabin on Clear Creek.”
Trish had heard the coach make three more calls when they were still at the gas station. She’d listened closely, but they hadn’t made sense. They were starting to now. Her voice caught in her throat as she said, “The other people you called . . .”
Lamkin’s smile was the scariest thing Trish had seen since the night she watched Billy Kemecke slit his cousin’s throat. “If I’m going to get away with this, I need help. Luckily, Harold Renkin has lots of people who want him dead. I’ll set the stage at the cabin and scat. Then the Johnson County sheriff’s department will arrive about the time Peters and Stamey get there to take the blame for me. By this time tomorrow, I’ll be on a beach in Mexico, sipping a pina colada through a straw.”
“Who are Peters and Stamey?”
Perry said, “Peters is the guy blackmailing the judge. I heard the judge say his name when Dad and I were at the courthouse.”
Lamkin nodded, looking impressed. “Yes. And Harold made the tragic mistake of telling me about him. You’re one smart kid, Perry Flint. Forget the skiing. You’re going to be a rocket scientist.”
Trish realized she’d heard the other name. “Stamey. He’s Donna Lewis’s boyfriend.”
“And the patsy she’s using to go after the judges to keep delaying her brother’s trial until the fifth of never. Which I know about because Donna used to date Harold. When I told her he’d dumped me, she made me her best friend forever.”
“What about us?” To Trish’s surprise, Perry’s voice didn’t waver or even crack. “Are you going to kill us?”
The coach turned to him again. “I thought you were smart, but I take it back. Of course I am, Perry. You can identify me, and you were going to tell your family about me. You’re the only thing tying me to Jeannie Renkin. I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal.”
Just then, while Coach Lamkin’s eyes were still on Perry, a mountain lion jumped in the road right in front of the truck. It was enormous in the dusky gloom of the headlights. Trish screamed. Coach Lamkin’s head whipped forward. She reacted, her arms jerking to the right. The truck lurched toward the rock face towering above them and one of the signs that said the rocks were old as dirt. She wrenched the wheel away from the rock. The truck smashed into the cougar with a sickening thud, skittered to the left, and kept going. Trish’s head snapped forward and she braced herself against the dashboard. Beside her, Perry wasn’t as lucky. His body slammed into the gear shift and dashboard. The weight of his body ripped the rearview mirror off the windshield.
For a moment, Trish thought everything was going
to be okay, until Coach Lamkin’s overcorrection sent the truck careening off the side of the road and into the nothingness over Clear Creek.
Chapter Forty-two: Ally
Buffalo, Wyoming
Tuesday, March 15, 1977, 5:45 p.m.
Patrick
Judge Renkin jumped into the passenger seat of the Suburban before Patrick could even take it out of drive. He didn’t meet Patrick’s eyes.
“Who took my family?” Patrick hissed, accelerating away from the judge’s house. He gripped the steering wheel so tight that his hands hurt. “Where are they?”
“They’re just up the mountain. At my cabin. With her.”
Up the mountain. “Off 16?”
“Yes.”
Patrick spun the steering wheel of the Suburban. They careened out of the judge’s driveway and turned onto the dirt road. Three of the wheels spun, and the back end slid sideways. Then the big vehicle found traction and plowed through a section of unpacked snow. “Her who?”
“Barbara Lamkin.” The judge looked out the window then back ahead at the road. “I guess she’s obsessed with me and thought taking my trial witnesses would lure me to her.” The judge rubbed his forehead, like he was scrubbing off a scarlet letter.
Patrick recognized his own gesture and vowed never to do it again. “But she knows about your cabin.”
“Yes. For a short time, we had a relationship. It was a big mistake and I ended it. I loved my wife. I’d never cheated on her before. I couldn’t live with the guilt.”
Patrick bit his tongue. He had an urge to give the judge a piece of what was on his mind. That he and Susanne had heard about the judge’s infidelities. That after hearing the judge on the phone with a blackmailer he had no faith in his morals or truthfulness, anyway. But he didn’t want to sidetrack them from the more important topic of where his family was.
He headed west on 16 and accelerated hard and steady. “Go on.”
“A few weeks ago, she told me she was pregnant. It’s not mine of course, but she had this fantasy that I would leave Jeannie, marry her, and be a father to her bastard child. I told her no, so she went to my home and told Jeannie.”
“Told her about the baby?”
“And her fantasy that I would be divorcing Jeannie and marrying Barbara. Jeannie was . . . distraught. She was threatening to divorce me for infidelity. I tried to convince her it was all lies, but I hadn’t succeeded yet. It was the worst possible timing for a divorce, with my senate campaign about to kick off.” The judge gripped his armrest. “Could you slow down? You’re going to go off the road.”
Patrick knew he was going too fast and that he was nearly blind to his surroundings, but he wasn’t about to let up on the gas. Everything the judge was saying sickened him. Had he and Susanne been right? Had Judge Renkin hired someone to kill his wife and lent them his own snowmobile for the task, to save his campaign? He spat out the accusation. “You killed Jeannie.”
The judge wheeled on him. “What? No!”
“Then who did?”
“I believe it was Barbara.”
“Not Donna Lewis? Or your blackmailer?”
“What are you . . .” the judge started to say, then he let his face fall into his hands. A few seconds later, he lifted his head. “No. I think it was Barbara.”
“Why?”
“Because I believe she used my rifle to do it.”
“What would make you think that?”
“Because when I came home from the hospital after Jeannie died, it was on the coffee table. It was loaded. I don’t leave it loaded, and I hadn’t left it out.”
“Did you give it to the police?”
“No. I, um, got rid of it. Someone had left the gun there to incriminate me. I couldn’t have her murder tied to me. That wouldn’t bring her back.”
Patrick wanted to throttle him. An officer of the court, and he was obstructing justice in his own wife’s murder? Despicable. But saying that wouldn’t get Patrick the information he needed. “And you just assumed it was Barb?”
“Not then. But about a week later, I found a lipstick under the seat of my snowmobile. Barbara had never been on it with me. No woman had. I’d seen her use one that looked like it. I think she left it there on purpose, so I’d know.”
It made sense, in a twisted way. That meant it was Barb Lamkin that Perry had seen on the judge’s snowmobile, after she shot Jeannie. But it didn’t take Judge Renkin off the hook. This man and his choices, before and after Jeannie’s murder, had put Patrick’s family at risk. His whole family. His whole world. He pictured their beloved faces. Susanne. Trish. Perry.
Perry—Renkin said Barb had Susanne and Trish. He frowned. “Is Perry with her now, too?”
“Perry? I don’t know. All she said was to meet her at our place and come alone. That my witnesses would stay alive if I ‘made her happy.’”
“And you believe her?”
“Absolutely not. That’s why I called you. I think she plans to kill them and me, no matter what.”
Patrick hated the judge. Hated him with every fiber of his being. But right then, he was the enemy of Patrick’s enemy: the woman who had his family. And that made them, if not friends, then uneasy allies, at least for now. He would have to come to very quick terms with that.
He rounded a curve, his brain spinning in a maelstrom of thoughts and emotions. A hulking mass in the road blocked his path and jerked his mind back to reality. He pumped the brakes as gently as he could and braced himself with all his strength on the steering wheel, as momentum threatened to propel him up and over the dash.
The Suburban shuddered to a stop a few feet short of a dead mountain lion. But it wasn’t the mountain lion that nearly sent Patrick into cardiac arrest. It was the skid marks heading away from it and over the edge of the canyon.
Chapter Forty-three: Rise
Buffalo, Wyoming
Tuesday, March 15, 1977, 6:00 p.m.
Perry
When the truck made impact with the rocky mountainside, it jarred Perry’s teeth, and they hurt worse than anything else. Then the truck rolled, and his gut, his butt, his face, and the back of his head started giving his teeth stiff competition. For a few blurry seconds, the view out of the windows was a tumbling snow globe of a forest scene at nightfall. Glass shattered and rained in on him. Metal shrieked. Then there was a sickening skid and crunch. The truck jerked to a stop, driver’s side down, front end slanted forward. Perry landed in a sprawl across Coach Lamkin and the steering wheel, with Trish’s and his mom’s legs dangling in his face.
He tried to draw in a breath, but he couldn’t. He tried again, and again. His lungs wouldn’t work. It felt like there was a horrible weight on his chest, but when he tried to push whatever it was off of him, there was nothing there.
He was going to die.
Then, with a violent gasp, his lungs started working again. After a few quick pants, he probed around on all of the parts that were hurting, which is when he realized his hands were free of each other and the rearview mirror. The mirror was still taped to one of his wrists. He jerked it and the tape off. Pine needles stuck to his gloves and fell on his jeans. He ripped off his gloves—he needed to be able to use his hands. He shuffled his legs. They were loose, too.
His mind went to his mom and sister. “Trish. Mom. Are you okay?” His voice was hoarse, and something in his throat rattled.
Neither of them answered. Bile burned his mouth. Are they dead? “Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no . . .” The words tumbled from his mouth like an echo. Then he got control of himself. He had to figure out what was going on. He couldn’t flip out. Not now. “Coach Lamkin?” She didn’t answer either. Good. He hoped she was dead.
He became aware of blood. His blood, running down his face and arms. And big, soft snowflakes melting on his skin. The windows are all broken, so the outside is inside, he thought. Then he noticed the smells. Pine trees. Something coppery. Gasoline. Gas could catch on fire. He had to get his mom and Trish out of the truck.
Even if they were dead. He couldn’t leave them here to burn up.
He readjusted his body, squashing Coach Lamkin in the process and fighting through the tangle of his mom’s and sister’s bodies, until he was able to wedge his feet onto the steering wheel and column. Standing on it, he leaned down. His mom and sister were virtually standing on Coach Lamkin now, side by side. Space was tight with their bodies and his vertical in the overturned truck. He reached for his mom first, touching her face.
She groaned.
Tears sprang into his eyes. She’s alive. “Mom! Mom, can you hear me?”
Again, though, he got no answer. In the last dim light of dusk, he could see her arms, still taped to Trish’s and the handhold on the dash. He wiped his tears and started pulling frantically at the tape, but it was taut with the weight of their bodies. His efforts jostled Trish, who cried out, but didn’t wake. She’s alive, too. A strange energy fired him, like he was supercharged. He would save them. He had to.
He worked his fingers around the tape, looking for the end, trying to get an edge, but he found nothing. Maybe he could cut them loose. But with what? He’d lost his pocketknife. Trish and his mom didn’t carry knives, even though he and his dad thought they should. He tried to pry the glove box open, to see if the coach kept one in there, but his mom’s and Trish’s arms were blocking it. The coach’s purse. He scrambled around, jostling bodies, searching, almost standing on his own hands, until he found it.
It was empty.
He pawed the glassy ground and what remained of the truck door under the coach’s body. He found the gear shift, her wallet, and a hairbrush, but no knife. When he lifted his hand, though, he saw he’d cut it on a piece of glass hanging from the sideview mirror. He jerked his hand to his mouth, sucking at the cut.
Duh. He didn’t need a knife. He had mirror glass. Probing gently so he wouldn’t cut himself again, he pulled out the biggest piece he could find, stuck it in his pocket, and reversed direction. He wrestled his way back onto the steering assembly until he got a good angle on the tape. He started sawing between their wrists. Nothing happened at first. The tape was thick and rubbery. He kept going, because it had to work. It had to. Long seconds passed. Then minutes. He began to mutter and sob. Come on, come on, come on. Sweat rolled down his face. He used his shoulder to wipe it off. Still he didn’t give up. He blocked everything else out of his mind except the tape, and he sawed harder.
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