Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

by C. J. Box

  I agreed. I was grateful he was drunk enough—or self-absorbed enough, or both—to not pick up on my anger a moment before.

  “You know”—he laughed—“you Americans seem to think your government is taking away your civil liberties, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. There aren’t bureaucrats looking over your shoulder as you live your life, telling you how to speak and think and whom to associate with—taking your freedom away. My friends in Colorado say that compared to what I’m used to, I’ll be bulletproof! That’s the term they use, bulletproof. I love that.”

  “Really? Who says that?” I asked.

  “Oh no,” he said coyly, “I won’t reveal my sources.”

  Suddenly, he was silent. He studied his empty and greasy plate. I didn’t realize until that moment how drunk he was, and how he’d apparently ventured into territory he now wished he hadn’t.

  The restaurant was emptying out, which was good. I didn’t want Harris—or me—to engage with anyone in any way, especially in the belligerent mood he was in. I called for the bill, always a frustratingly long experience. Fritz delivered it (finally) in person, and Harris raved about how good the food was, and I agreed.

  Fritz leaned down conspiratorially, said to Harris, “Do you need to check your e-mail again?”

  Harris laughed, squeezed Fritz on his arm, said, “I’ve seen enough for to night.”

  Which I thought an odd choice of words at the time.

  MY HEAD WAS SPINNING when I sat down on my bed. I had four messages. I fumbled through the codes and prompts, cursing the phone, the hotel, the German language, and Malcolm Harris for the condition I was in.

  The first message was from Melissa.

  “Oh Jack, I’m sorry I missed you. I’m so sorry. You won’t believe who I met today—Kellie Moreland! Call me right away!”

  The second and third messages were the same.

  By the fourth, she was angry.

  “Jack, are you even there? Are you checking your messages? I know it’s two in the morning, so don’t even call.” She paused, then: “My God, I need to talk to you right away. I met Kellie Moreland today—Brian arranged it. And guess what? Are you sitting down? She doesn’t know anything about Angelina!”

  In the Air / Denver / Wyoming

  Friday, November 16

  Nine Days to Go

  TWELVE

  JET LAG WORKS BOTH ways.

  On the flight home, in the cocoon of the 737-400 with the lights dimmed, I couldn’t sleep. I was preoccupied that Melissa—with help from Brian—had “run into” Kellie Moreland at a society fund-raiser at a local library and posed the question about Angelina only to be met with a blank stare.

  “Angelina who?” Kellie had asked.

  Which meant a lot of things. Either Kellie was stupid— Melissa swore she wasn’t—or Judge Moreland was making a play with his son on their own for reasons that were unknown to us. When Melissa asked Kellie about Garrett, she said Kellie shrank back as if slapped, as if the mere mention of her stepson’s name filled her with horror. As Melissa followed her, trying to engage her, Kellie walked away faster through the crowd until she was running. Melissa ran, too, until Kellie called for security, and my wife was stopped by two men who asked what her problem was.

  “What my problem was,” Melissa said, over and over that night on the telephone. “How could I explain what my problem was?”

  Brian was back in Denver and fully engaged in our problem. And according to Melissa, he was waiting for the photos he’d referred to earlier.

  “Once we have them,” Melissa said, “Brian says the whole thing blows up. According to Brian, we’ll have Judge Moreland and Garrett by the balls.” She growled that last bit, and I’d never heard her do that before. The day at the fund-raiser and the encounter with Kellie had charged her up, given her hope again. If Kellie had no idea her husband and son where trying to gain custody of a baby, then something was seriously wrong with this picture, Melissa said. The judge was hiding something from his wife. And if he was hiding something, he couldn’t be as cocksure about his position and his leverage as he’d led us to believe.

  WHEN I LANDED AT DIA, I could barely wait for my luggage. On the other side of the frosted glass would be my wife and daughter and either Cody or Brian or both. The marble floors were gleaming and new. Despite the late hour, there was space, light, no cigarette smoke. So American. So not Berlin. My world.

  Brian was with her, looking sharp. But the downcast of his eyes clued me in immediately that something was wrong. Melissa’s face was puffy and red, her mouth downturned. Angelina saw me from her stroller and started clapping, though, oblivious to what was affecting Brian and Melissa.

  “Harry,” Melissa said, as I hugged her. She whispered in my ear. “Harry’s dead.”

  The news made me go cold. “Harry?”

  “Harry!” Angelina said, mimicking me and clapping her pudgy hands. “Harry dog!”

  Brian tugged at my arm so we could distance ourselves from Melissa and Angelina in her stroller.

  “The cops said someone threw raw hamburger into your backyard laced with rat poison and fishhooks,” Brian said. “We found Harry coughing up blood on the back deck, but by the time we got him to the vet it was too late. The vet said there were a dozen hooks imbedded in his throat.”

  “When did this happen?” I asked, numb.

  Brian looked at his wristwatch. “Five hours ago, I guess. We left the vet an hour ago to meet you, but it was over long before then. Melissa gave the okay to put him down because it was only a matter of time before he died.”

  “So,” I said, “I was somewhere over Michigan when my dog died.”

  “I guess so.”

  Hot tears filled my eyes. I angrily wiped them away. I’m not a crier and was surprised by my reaction, but the news had hit me like a hammerblow.

  “We know who did it,” Brian said. “Remember how Garrett reacted to your dog?”

  “Harry never hurt anyone,” I said. “He wasn’t capable of hurting anyone.”

  “Garrett got you back,” Brian said. “And I don’t think he’s done with you.”

  “Jesus,” I said, “this is so… depraved.” I wiped at my face, not wanting Angelina to see me—or Melissa. I couldn’t believe I was crying, especially because I hadn’t cried after all of the things that had happened to us. But Harry? What had Harry done to anyone?

  “I know how tough this is,” Brian said, putting his arm around my shoulder. “But when we get home, Cody is ready to drive to Montana. I know you’re tired, but are you up for that?”

  “All of us?” I asked.

  Brian said, “All but me. I can’t afford to risk being out of town if my source calls with the photos. He could call anytime,” he said, brandishing his cell phone. “Besides, Jeter Hoyt and I never really got along.”

  He whispered when he said the name Jeter Hoyt.

  I said, “Are you going to tell me what these photos are? I’d like to know.”

  Brian shook his head. “I’m not positive myself—I’m leery of asking too many questions. My contact is jittery as it is. All I know is that he swears these photos will bring down the judge, or at least dissuade him from going forward with this thing with your daughter.”

  “And you’re sure he’s right?”

  Brian said, “How can one ever be sure of anything? But I’ve told him I won’t pay unless I’ve seen the photos and he’s right. And believe me, brother, we’re talking big bucks. So I don’t want to be in the middle of nowhere when he calls.”

  I nodded.

  “So, are you ready to go?” Brian asked.

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “Let’s hit the road.”

  “Do you want to pay your respects to Harry so you have some closure?”

  That hit me wrong. I guess it was the unreasonable but fashionable sensitivity of the question.

  “I hate that word, ‘closure,’ ” I snapped, shrugging off
Brian’s arm. “Like it’s just a procedure, then we’re all right. It’s midnight. Do we break in to the vet clinic so I can cry, or what? Will that give me closure?”

  Brian shrugged. “Sorry, Jack. Just trying to help.”

  “I know you are,” I said. “I don’t mean to take it out on you.”

  I paused for Melissa to catch up. She looked at me for some kind of guidance I didn’t feel capable of providing. “I guess we’re going to Montana,” I said. “Are you up for that?”

  She said, “I’ve been packing our stuff all day. Before this thing happened with Harry, I was getting us ready. Everything is in your Jeep. I guess we might as well go.”

  I turned her toward me and hugged her. I could tell by the way she went limp on my shoulder that she was exhausted. I buried my face in her hair. I loved the smell of her.

  “God, I missed you,” I said.

  I squatted down and kissed Angelina. “You, too,” I said.

  As we walked out of the airport I thought about Harry. I wanted vengeance. I wanted blood.

  WE PULSED NORTH through Wyoming in my Jeep in the dark, passing through Casper at four in the morning. Cody drove and I sat in the passenger seat. Melissa was in the backseat with Angelina in her car seat. There were no city lights, no southbound traffic. I slipped in and out of consciousness. When I slept, I slept hard and awoke groggy. It comforted me that Cody seemed alert, serious, and sober. I was very pleased to be taking action.

  DAWN CAME SPLASHING across the Bighorn Mountains north of Sheridan, Wyoming, near the Montana border, the morning sunlight so intense Melissa pulled a blanket up over Angelina’s sleeping face. We’d stopped for gas and coffee in Ranchester, and the smell of coffee filled the Jeep. The morning was cold and crisp. Spiderwebs of creeping frost headquartered in each corner of the windshield.

  “Maybe we can get breakfast in Billings,” Cody said.

  “He speaks,” Melissa said from the backseat.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Cody said.

  “He thinks,” I said, chiding him.

  Cody didn’t smile. Instead, he reached down and turned the defroster fan up a notch. The frost retreated.

  He said, “We’ve got, what, nine days now before Judge Moreland’s deadline? Before he said he’d come and take the baby away?”

  “Yes,” Melissa said.

  “Not much time,” Cody said, shaking his head.

  “But that means nothing anymore,” Melissa said. “We’ve got the photos coming anytime now. And this …” She indicated us, the Jeep, our purpose.

  Cody cleared his throat and spoke softly so as not to awake Angelina. “I just want to be clear, so we’re all on the same page. Every mile we drive takes us farther across the line. And the farther we get, the less likely you’ll be able to use any legal options, like getting the baby awarded to your custody in court if it comes to that. That’s because you’re now tainted. We’ve left the land of the innocent and willingly entered the underworld. You understand that, right?”

  I exchanged looks with Melissa, expecting at least some fear in her eyes. There was none.

  “We understand that,” I said, for both of us.

  “Okay, then. So what we’re trying to do here is hit the judge through his son. We want to scare Garrett into signing away custody.”

  After a few beats, I said, “Yes.”

  Cody nodded. “And you realize that whenever you choose to scare someone into doing something, there can be unintended consequences.” He paused, then said, “It’s not an exact science, being a criminal.”

  “Cody!” Melissa said from the backseat.

  “I just want to make sure we all understand each other,” Cody said. “It’s better to use plain language.”

  “We’re not the criminals,” Melissa said. “We’re not the people trying to take babies away from their parents!”

  “The law is on his side,” Cody said patiently. “I don’t agree with it. There’s a lot about the law I don’t agree with. We’ve got Aubrey Coates out on the street, for one thing. But the law is on Judge Moreland’s side.”

  Melissa said, “But his wife doesn’t even know about Angelina, so something really weird is going on. And his son, Garrett, killed our dog, not to mention what he and his friend did to Jack and in our house!”

  Cody talked to her via the rearview mirror. “Melissa, his wife not knowing is not a crime. It’s strange, yes. But it’s not a crime. And we think we know who killed Harry, but we haven’t proved it.”

  “What about Luis?” I said.

  Cody smiled bitterly. “I’m the one who kicked the shit out of Luis. For what? For cruising through your neighborhood. Who is the criminal in this instance?”

  “Garrett dumped him. That’s a crime.”

  “And how do we know that?” Cody asked. “How do we know Luis didn’t dump himself? I mean, Garrett could claim Luis wanted out of the car, that he didn’t know how badly Luis was injured, that Luis just didn’t want to go to the hospital. So Luis wanders off by himself in the dark and stumbles into the South Platte. How is Garrett liable for that?”

  I said nothing.

  “Why are you doing this?” Melissa asked, tears in her eyes.

  “I want to make sure we all realize what we’re doing,” Cody said. “That’s all.”

  “We realize,” I said.

  “Do you?” Cody asked.

  “When Brian gets his hands on those photos, it might all go away,” Melissa said. “Maybe this is as far as we need to go.”

  “You trust Brian and his photos?” Cody asked into the rearview. There was a pinch of sarcasm in the question and a dollop of pity. “Think about it. What are these photos supposed to show? Judge Moreland in bed with a girl? With a boy? What if they’re doctored? What if the judge sees them as what they could be—amateur blackmail? Then where are you? And where is Brian when this happens? I’d guess he’d be long gone on one of his business trips.

  “I’m just saying,” Cody said. “Speculating, because that’s what us cops do.”

  Melissa said, “I don’t like your attitude about Brian.”

  Cody shrugged. “Jesus, this is why I should be suspended from the Denver PD, I guess: I can’t keep my mouth shut.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Melissa asked again. I reached back for her hand, but she’d withdrawn, crossing her arms across her breasts.

  “Because,” Cody said, “once we unleash Jeter Hoyt, we don’t know what the hell will happen.”

  I asked Cody to pull over, which he did, and I climbed into the backseat with Melissa. She was stiff at first, but finally let me hold her.

  “We’re doing the right thing,” I whispered into her hair. “It’ll be all right.”

  “I’ve got one more question for you,” Cody said. He took our silence as assent. “If you had it all to do over again, would you still adopt?”

  “Yes,” we said simultaneously.

  “Good,” Cody said. “Good for you.” His voice started trailing away. “Children need to be wanted…”

  I noticed that as I’d held her, she’d slipped one of her hands out from beneath the blanket and she was holding the edge of Angelina’s car seat in a white-knuckled death grip.

  Montana

  Saturday, November 17

  Eight Days to Go

  THIRTEEN

  LINCOLN, MONTANA, POPULATION ELEVEN hundred, was a hamlet in the Helena National Forest on the bank of the Blackfoot River. The little community made the news in the 1990s when Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, was arrested there in his hovel of a cabin, which was later shipped whole over Stemple Pass to the capital city of Helena fifty-nine miles to the southeast. It was a tough and sloppy little town that looked as if it had been dropped into the trees from a helicopter, and some of the buildings didn’t land well.

  It was also the home of Jeter Hoyt.

  We arrived at 3:00 P.M. on Saturday. Fourteen hours. It was like driving across most of Western Europe, and all we’
d done was cross one state and enter another.

  Cody parked at a bar. Apparently, his cell-phone charge was depleted because it had spent seven or eight hours searching vainly for a signal to grab on to, so he’d need to use the phone inside. I got out with him, said, “You were a little rough back there.”

  He lit a cigarette. “I get like that when I’m not smoking or drinking,” he said. “When all I’ve got is reality staring me in the fucking face.”

  “Thanks for driving, though,” I said.

  “My plea sure.”

  “What if your uncle isn’t around?”

  “Always a possibility,” Cody said. “It’s the tail end of hunting season. Remember hunting season?” he asked, his expression wistful.

  “I do. But you talked to him a while ago, right?”

  Cody nodded. “I told him we might be coming up. He didn’t say he’d be here or not. He just grunted at me.”

  While Cody went inside, I leaned against the Cherokee with my hands in my pockets. There was snow on the tops of the peaks to the south and the Scapegoat Wilderness Area to the north. I could see a skiff of snow in the shadows of the pines behind the bar. Little mountain towns like this were especially unattractive during two periods of the year: now, when there was just enough early snow to muddy the ground but not enough to freeze and cover it, and again in the spring, when the snow melted and revealed all the garbage that had been tossed aside. But as if to offset the appearance, this is when a town like Lincoln smelled best, a heady mix of pine trees, the forest floor, woodsmoke. As I breathed it in, it reminded me of home, wherever that was.

  I turned to see that Angelina was awake and grinning at me through the window. Melissa held her tightly. That smile filled me with such unabashed joy that I knew I was doing the right thing. I rapped at the window so she’d open it.

  “Smell that,” I said.

  “It smells, um, woody,” she said.