by Alex Grecian
That first night he drove south to Hays and cruised slowly through the slush that had formed along the streets out by the highway. The trip wasn’t as productive as he’d hoped, but he learned the lay of the land. On his next trip, he spotted a young man holding a cardboard sign and standing in the grass beside the on-ramp to I-70.
Rudy pulled onto the shoulder and turned on his hazards. He let a Camaro pass him, and when the ramp was empty, Rudy leaned across and cranked the passenger window down. He turned on the dome light so the boy could see him.
“Hey,” he said, “where you headed?”
The boy stuck the sign under his arm and hoisted a backpack over his shoulder. He ran to Rudy’s car and leaned in the window. His breath was visible, drifting away to the west.
“Thanks, man! I’m on my way to Chicago, but I got people in KC, if you’re going that far.”
Under the yellow light of the dome Rudy could see that the boy was pale and fair-haired. Hidden by the shadows on the side of the road, he had looked darker, swarthier. Rudy frowned.
“What’s your name, son?”
“Jonas, sir. Jonas Miller. Oh my gosh, ain’t you the Rev? From up in Paradise Flats? I know you. My aunt goes to your church, man. How you doin’?”
Rudy smiled and nodded, leaning farther forward so he could read the boy’s lips. “Jonas, yes. You were in Bible camp two summers ago, am I right?”
“Damn.” Jonas shook his head. “Sorry. I mean, dang, Rev. You got a good memory.”
“Indeed I do. I’m sorry, Jonas, I just remembered I’ve forgotten something back at the church. I’m afraid I can’t give you a ride tonight.” He fished his wallet from his back pocket and pulled out two ten-dollar bills, which he passed out the window to the boy. “Here, it’s getting dark out. You’d better find a motel room for the night. And get yourself something to eat.”
“You sure, Rev? I don’t wanna take money from you.”
“Think of it as help from the church. Next time you’re up my way, you can pay us back by taking some meals to our elderly parishioners.”
“You bet I will. Thanks, Rev!”
“Be careful out here, Jonas. You never know what kind of people are out and about at night.”
“I can take care of myself, sir. Don’t you worry about me.”
Jonas Miller adjusted his pack and backed away from the Skylark. He trotted a few feet down the shoulder and turned and waved. Rudy waved back and rolled up the window. He turned off the dome light and pulled a U-turn, going the wrong way down the ramp until he got back to the main thoroughfare. He headed north, back toward the church, back home. He would have to try again another night. Jonas might remember seeing him in Hays, might wonder why Reverend Rudy was going east in the middle of the week.
Rudy pounded his fist against the steering wheel and cursed his luck.
He noticed the blinking hazard warning on the dash and belatedly flicked the lights off.
The Skylark continued quietly along the road at exactly the posted speed limit and did not stop again until Rudy was home.
Part Two
* * *
THE LORD OF LIGHTNING
Chapter Six
1
They released Travis that afternoon. Ekwensi Griffith opened the cell door and handed him his jacket, belt, keys, phone, and wallet. Travis checked the wallet and nothing seemed to be missing. His phone was password-protected in his favorite obscure language, and he felt confident no one had tampered with it. There were three missed calls from his mother. He asked if his rented Jeep had been impounded and was told it was still at the lake, but nobody offered to drive him back to it. He did not ask about Bear.
If Sheriff Goodman was in his office, he didn’t bother to come out and wish Travis well.
He walked to his motel. The sky was the color of his peacoat, and his loafers sank into the new snow with every step he took. By the time he reached the Cottonwood Inn, his socks were soaked through and his feet hurt. The motel room seemed cavernous and cold without the comforting presence of Bear.
He took a long hot shower, then selected a slate suit with a subtle pinstripe, a light gray shirt, and a black tie. He changed his wet peacoat for a silvery-gray waterproof jacket. After a moment’s thought, he retrieved a flat leather pouch from his suitcase and slipped it into his breast pocket. At last, tired but refreshed, he dropped the old suit off at the front desk to be cleaned and used an app on his phone to call a car.
Thankfully the young man who drove him out to the wildlife refuge kept to himself, humming quietly along with a Townes Van Zandt album. Travis was able to tune out the music and think about his next moves.
The body of Margaret Weber had not been weighted down. Someone had been in a hurry to get rid of her or had expected her to wash ashore. The killer was either a careful planner or a clumsy amateur, so there would be a great deal of forensic evidence on the corpse or there would be none at all. Unless there was a third scenario he hadn’t thought of. There was always a third option, and Travis had long ago learned to keep an open mind. But until that option presented itself, he would have to proceed with what he knew.
He didn’t think Sheriff Goodman’s office would be sharing any lab results with him and he didn’t want to bet his freedom on the idea that the killer was a clumsy amateur. So he would act as if he were up against the careful planner, unless and until he found out otherwise.
But why would someone want Margaret Weber’s body to be found? Had the killer purposefully set Travis up to discover her corpse? He didn’t think so. His visit to the wildlife refuge had not been scheduled and he hadn’t told anyone he was going there. It had been a random whim, a convenient nearby place to let Bear run free for a few minutes.
And yet the sheriff had arrived at the lake almost immediately after Travis called in his gruesome discovery. Goodman had already been nearby. Was that a coincidence or had he been alerted even before the body was found?
As the car approached the Kirwin Refuge’s visitor center, Travis looked around them in every direction. He saw nothing except a gray sky pressing down on leftover brown stalks of corn, a bare scrubby tree, and a narrow two-lane road that rose toward the clouds in front of them and disappeared in the blank silver haze of snow far behind them.
The song “Home on the Range” popped into his head, and he smiled sadly at the thought that there must be a season when Kansas skies were not cloudy all day. He had seen the sun exactly twice since landing at the Kansas City airport.
His driver plowed through a snowbank and stopped in the middle of the parking lot. Travis found a five-dollar bill in his jacket pocket and tipped the kid, then stepped out and squinted at the silent landscape. The car backed up and turned around and bulldozed back through the snowbank, turned left, and chugged off down the road. Travis spun in a circle, looking at everything through fresh eyes now that he knew it was a crime scene. The lookout and its rusted telescope, the skeletal trees, and the water iced over in places. His Jeep was still parked in the same spot, and its windows were intact.
Travis had no trouble finding the path he and Bear had made through the tall grass. It had been widened by the boots of deputies and paramedics and by the wheels of a gurney, the grass trampled, the snow melted and dirty. He walked down to the lake and stood at the water’s edge.
Margaret Weber’s body was gone, but she had left an impression. He bowed his head and murmured a few words for her, then scanned the shore in both directions. He saw no fresh dog tracks in the snow.
“Bear!”
He listened, but there was no movement beyond the fluttering of a few startled wings in the brush.
“Bear, sekura! Venu ĉi tien, Bear!”
Nothing. No answer. He hoped that was a good sign. He did not want to have to speak any prayers at this lake on behalf of his closest friend.
He turned and trudged back up to the parking lot and over to his rental. He walked around the Jeep looking for footprints and signs of tampering, surprised
to find none. He had assumed the sheriff would jimmy his way in. Travis keyed it open and slid in behind the wheel. It was dark inside. The windshield was already blacked over with snow and ice crystals. He switched on the dome light and checked the glove box. His gun was still there. He took it out and popped the magazine, checked the chamber. As far as he could tell, no one had touched it.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” he said.
He slipped the gun in his pocket and started the vehicle. It turned over easily, and within seconds the vents began producing warm air. He grabbed his driving gloves from the box, slid back out onto the ice and gravel, and left the Jeep to warm up.
If someone had seen him at the lake and warned Goodman, there was exactly one comfortable place that person might have hidden without being seen. Travis walked across the lot to the glass doors of the visitor center, stepping high and watching carefully for the best places to put his feet. The hems of his trousers were already wet, and he was mildly concerned about his leather boots. He stamped up and down on the welcome mat under the concrete awning and cupped his hands around his eyes. There was no movement in the vestibule, and so he opened the door and stepped inside. As soon as the doors swung shut behind him he felt a few degrees warmer. He rubbed his hands together and blew into them while he looked around at the bulletin board on the wall, the racks of pamphlets and brochures. Nothing had changed since morning, but now he was paying closer attention, looking for something. He wasn’t sure what, but he thought he’d know it if he saw it.
A staggering variety of community notices and advertisements were tacked to the board with colorful pushpins: a haunted corn maze; an auction of the estate of Dorothy Franklin; three Christian rock bands giving concerts on different dates, two of which had already passed; a food program; a flu shot clinic; a pancake feed at the firehouse. There was a poster asking for information about a woman who had disappeared from the area, and he counted four xeroxed flyers with photos of missing children. Travis studied their faces in the grainy pictures, but wasn’t sure what he expected to see. If he had been born in a place as colorless as Burden County, he might have run away as a child. He moved on to look at the business cards for housepainters, personal health-care providers, DJs, day cares, house cleaners, craftsmen, and lawn services. Travis took a few of the cards and put them in his pocket. He tore the phone numbers from some of the notices.
The rack held magazines with titles that reflected the neighboring area codes and wildlife. There were flyers enticing visitors to look at salt mines and giant hay bales and local history museums. One leaflet proclaimed that the word of God was Purity and that this purity could only be achieved by rejecting “others”—and yet people new to the area were welcomed at services every Sunday morning. The contradiction amused Travis and he took one of the leaflets, folded it in half, and stuck it in his pocket with the business cards and phone numbers.
But nothing struck him as significant.
He turned to the vestibule’s inner doors and pulled the handles. They were locked, which didn’t come as a surprise. He considered a moment, then retrieved the flat leather pouch from his hip pocket and withdrew his snap gun and a torsion wrench. A moment later he opened the door and stepped inside the center’s main room. He put his tools away in the pouch and returned it to his pocket, grateful that his motel room had not been searched while he was in his cell. Many of Travis’s tools and weapons were illegal to carry in the state of Kansas.
All the windows had blinds, shut tight against the pearly sky, so he turned on the overhead lights. The visitor center was one big room with a high ceiling and two offices at the back, their doors standing open. A sign on the back wall outlined the various interactive displays throughout the room. Travis turned three hundred sixty degrees, looking carefully at the fish tank, the reptile habitat, the board covered with fur and feathers and scales for children to touch and compare. He squatted and looked at the floor, angling himself so that the overhead lights shone across the linoleum. He saw scuff marks and dirt and a few small puddles that he had caused by tracking snow inside. He stood and walked to the back, inspecting each of the two offices in turn. He lifted the blinds in the first office and saw the straggly tree that bordered the two-lane highway. The second office shared an outside wall with its mate, which meant that neither office gave a view of the lake or the outlook post. If someone had been waiting in the center, they would have had a clear view of anyone coming or leaving, but nothing else.
He went back to the first office. As he lowered the blinds back into place, something shiny caught his eye, a smudge of red on the white sill. He squinted at it, moved his head this way and that, watching it reflect the light, then took out his leather pouch again and selected a flat pick. He scraped the red dot off the windowsill and smiled when he saw that it flaked away, rather than coming off in one piece. The tiny bits left behind sparkled in the overhead fluorescent lights. He deposited the flakes in a tissue from a box on the desk behind him and folded it up inside the pouch.
He made one last circuit of the visitor center without seeing anything else unusual. He turned off the lights, locked the door behind him, and trekked back out to his Jeep. The windows were fogged, but it was warm inside. He pulled off his gray leather gloves and called his mother at the Foundation. After reassuring her that he was all right and filling her in on his arrest, he asked for a quick bit of research from her, then hung up and found Skottie Foster’s cell number in his recent calls log. He turned on the Jeep’s defroster and listened as the phone automatically dialed.
2
Maddy was in the kitchen. Skottie could hear her in there, banging cupboard doors, opening and closing drawers. Bear padded through the living room, past Skottie, and on into the kitchen as if he belonged there. Her phone rang and she glanced at it, saw it was Travis Roan. She was mildly surprised that Goodman hadn’t held him longer and was curious to hear details, but decided to call him back later. She started to follow Bear, but Emmaline caught her arm.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine, Mama.”
“You’re gonna let Maddy go with him?”
“He’s her father.”
“You should take his keys. Make him leave something here so you’ll know he’s not gonna leave. Disappear with Maddy, you never see him again.”
“Mom, please.”
“I don’t trust him. I told that man he could not come in my house.” Emmaline’s voice cracked and rose as she grew angry all over again at the memory. Skottie saw that her mother’s fine dark hair had all been replaced by silver wire. There were deep grooves beside her mouth, and crooked little lines circled her eyes. Skottie wondered when all these changes had occurred. How had they crept in so quietly?
“I told him,” Emmaline said, “and he went and sat on my porch anyway. That porch is part of my house. Told him I was gonna call the police, he didn’t move.”
“Brandon is the police, Mom. That’s not gonna worry him.”
Emmaline blinked at her.
“And, Jesus, you don’t have to call anybody anyway. I’m the police.”
“Who I would’ve called is policemen.” Emmaline emphasized the last part of the word, making it clear that her daughter could not possibly be an effective officer. It was an old insult, but it still stung.
But Skottie shrugged. “Too late now, I guess.” She meant that Brandon had gone, that there was no longer a reason to call for help. And she meant that she was already a police officer. She had taken that decision out of her mother’s hands long ago.
“Well,” Emmaline said, “I don’t want that man here again. You see him, you tell him that. He comes back here, I’m gonna dial the operator then and there.”
“You shouldn’t call the operator anymore, Mom. Call 911 if you need help.”
“I know that—”
“And don’t worry. I’ll deal with Brandon myself from now on.”
She walked away, proud of herself for not taking the bait, not rehashing the
ancient argument about what she did for a living. But she was angry, too. She and Maddy had needed a place to stay, and she had been grateful to Emmaline for taking them in. But it meant she couldn’t be herself, couldn’t risk offending her mother, and she wasn’t sure whether she had refrained from fighting because she was taking the high ground or because she was afraid Emmaline might kick them out.
She felt like she was losing on every front.
In the kitchen, Maddy was standing on the counter, straddling the sink. She had moved the drainer with last night’s dishes to the small Formica-topped table in the corner and had dragged over a chair to help her climb. She was holding the handle of an open cupboard door for balance. Bear sat in the middle of the floor watching her, and when Skottie entered the room, the big dog stood and turned his sad brown eyes to her. He looked worried.
“Get down from there,” Skottie said. “This instant.”
“I can’t find any bowls big enough. I don’t know where anything is here.”
“I said get down.”
“Bear’s thirsty, Mom.” She looked like she wanted to stamp her foot. “At home we have that big silver bowl, but there’s nothing here.”
Skottie brushed past the dog and lifted her daughter off the counter and set her on the floor with a thud that shook the cabinet door shut. She hadn’t meant to be rough, but Maddy was getting heavier. Everybody around me is changing, she thought, and I haven’t been paying attention. Maddy spun around and surprised Skottie by wrapping her arms around her and burying her face in Skottie’s stomach, cutting off the lecture Skottie had ready about the dangers of climbing on the kitchen counter. Skottie hesitated for a moment, then hugged her daughter back. Maddy’s shoe had left a smudge on the chrome faucet, but she decided not to mention it. She would clean it later, hopefully before Emmaline noticed.