“Actually, there might be a way you can help.” My hand trembling, I released my grip on the doorknob and went over to the counter that separated the receptionist from the waiting area.
She looked at me expectantly.
“A year ago, I was in here with my brother.” My heart pounded from the shock of the idea I’d just had.
“Yes, I remember. I’m terribly sorry about what happened to your wife and son.”
“It’s been a difficult time.” I fought to keep my voice steady, to hold my emotions in check. “The thing is, I was wondering …” I held my breath. “Do you know if any X rays were taken of my brother’s teeth?”
3
“There!” I told Gader. “This’ll prove it!”
The somber man frowned at what I’d set on his desk. “Prove what?”
“That my brother and Lester Dant are the same man!”
“Are you still trying to—”
“My brother had dental X rays taken a couple of days before he kidnapped my wife and son. When I was a child, my parents made sure that Petey and I went to a dentist for regular checkups. Show these X rays to our family dentist back in Ohio. He can compare them to his records. He’ll prove that the teeth belong to the same person.”
“But a nine—year—old’s teeth wouldn’t be the same as those of a man in his thirties,” Gader objected.
“Because he wouldn’t have had all his permanent teeth by the time he disappeared? No. My dentist says that my brother would have had a few permanent teeth, and even if they changed over the years because of work done on them, the roots would have kept the same structure. What would it hurt you to look into it?”
Gader set down a thick file he’d been reading. “All right,” he said impatiently. “To settle this once and for all. In Ohio, what was the name of your family dentist?”
“I … don’t remember.”
He looked more impatient.
“But Woodford wasn’t a big town,” I said. “There weren’t many dentists. It shouldn’t be hard to track down the one we went to.”
“Assuming he’s still in business. Assuming he kept records this long.” Gader’s phone rang. As he reached for it, he told me, “I’ll get back to you.”
“When?”
“Next week.”
“But that isn’t soon enough.”
He didn’t hear me. He was already speaking into the phone.
4
Saturday morning, I rose from Petey’s bed, put camping gear in the Expedition, and packed sandwiches in a cooler. As much as possible, I did everything the same as a year earlier, and at nine, exactly when we’d set out the last time, I took Interstate 70 into the mountains. The peaks were still snowcapped, the same as they had been the previous June. Ignoring their beauty, as Petey would have, I worked to recall our conversation. I squirmed as I sensed a pattern: Almost every time Jason had said “Dad” and asked me something, Petey had answered first. He’d been practicing to take my place, getting used to being called “Dad.”
When I headed north into the Arapaho National Forest, I imagined him hiding his anticipation. I reached the lake and stopped where the three of us had stopped the previous year. I looked at where Petey, Jason, and I had pitched our tent. I hiked around the lake to the stream that fed it, climbing the wooded slope to the gorge from which the stream thundered. All the while, I thought of him looking around for a spot to get rid of me and make it seem like an accident.
I climbed loose stones to the ridge above the gorge. I felt Petey’s excitement when Jason went around the boulder to urinate. Now! Brad’s back was exposed.
“Dad!”
No, the kid was returning too soon!
Unable to stop, I hurtled my goddamned brother into the gorge, then spun toward the kid, whose face was frozen in terror.
My mental image of Jason’s fright shocked me into the present. Snapping from Petey’s mind—set, I was nauseated from the darkness of pretending to be him. Despite a chill breeze, sweat soaked me. Working down the loose stones to the trail at the bottom of the ridge, I couldn’t help wondering how Petey would have climbed down without falling, given that he had a frightened, struggling boy to contend with. Then I realized that there was only one way he could have done it. The answer made me sick as I imagined what it had been like to carry an unconscious boy through the trees and back to the Expedition.
Since the vehicle didn’t have a trunk, Petey would have had to tie and gag Jason, putting him on the back floor, covering him with the tent. As Petey, I drove carefully home through the mountain passes, never exceeding the speed limit, lest a state trooper stop me and wonder about the squirming sounds beneath the tent in the back.
Arriving home, I drove into the garage and pressed the remote control. With a rumble, the door came down. As I got out of the car, I envisioned Kate coming into the garage from the kitchen. She’d have just gotten back from the all—day seminar she’d been conducting. The trim gray business suit she’d been wearing when we’d left that morning made her long blond hair more bright.
“How come you’re back so soon?” She frowned. “Where are Brad and Jason?”
“We had an accident.”
“An accident?”
He’d overpowered her, bound and gagged her, gone into the house, found her car keys, then put her and Jason in the Volvo’s trunk. The car had a backseat that could be flipped down so the trunk could hold long objects, such as skis. He’d probably opened the seat partway to allow air to circulate into the trunk, using the numerous objects he’d looted from the house to keep the seat from opening completely and allowing Kate and Jason a way to escape. He’d hurriedly packed suitcases, making sure to take some of my clothes. After all, as long as he was replacing me, he might as well look like me.
Around 6:00 P.M., just as Petey had, I got in the Volvo, which the police had returned to me, and drove from the house. At 6:21, exactly when Petey had, keeping my head low from the camera as Petey had, I got money from the same ATM that he’d used. But as I headed north from Denver, following Interstate 25, I realized that, with all the objects Petey had stolen from me, the Volvo would have looked as if he were running an appliance store out of the car. Worried that a policeman might get suspicious, Petey would never have left Denver with all that stuff. He would have sold it as quickly as possible. But he was new in town. When would he have had time to find a fence? Rethinking the previous days, I suddenly remembered that, after the dentist, Petey had wanted some time alone in a park “to get my mind straight.” The son of a bitch had used the afternoon to arrange to sell what he’d planned to steal from me.
I drove to a rough section of town and imitated the transaction, filling the few minutes that it would have taken. Then I returned to the interstate, and this time, I felt invisible, one of countless vehicles on the road, nothing to make me conspicuous.
5
A road sign informed me that Casper, Wyoming, was 250 miles ahead. I set the Volvo’s cruise control to make sure I stayed under the speed limit. When sunset approached and I put on my headlights, I felt even more inconspicuous, blending with thousands of other lights. I passed Cheyenne, Wyoming, able to distinguish little, except that its buildings seemed low and sprawling. Then, four hours after having left Denver, I approached the glow of Casper. For most of the drive, I’d sensed only flat land in the uninhabited darkness around me. Now the shadow of a mountain hulked on my left, blocking stars.
A few miles north of town, I saw a sign for the rest area. Traffic was sparse, most of the vehicles having driven into Casper. An arrow pointed toward a barely visible exit ramp. Following it off the interstate, I approached two squat brick buildings whose floodlights silhouetted three pickup trucks and a minivan.
But Petey would have needed more seclusion, so I took a gravel road that veered to the right from the pavement that led to the rest area. The floodlights at the buildings reached far enough to show picnic tables and stunted trees in back. Satisfying myself that no one had em
erged from the rest rooms and seen what might have seemed unusual behavior, I reduced my headlights to parking lights and got just enough illumination to see a redwood—fenced area, behind which the tip of a Dumpster showed.
I parked behind the Dumpster, shut off my parking lights, and walked in front of the fence, verifying that no one, a state trooper, for example, had seen what I’d done and was coming to investigate. Confident that I was hidden, I unlocked the trunk.
What I imagined pushed me back. Kate and Jason on their sides. Squirming. Terrified. Duct tape pressed tightly across their mouths. Hands tied behind their backs. Ankles bound. Eyes so wide with fright that their whites were huge. Moans that were half apprehension, half pleas. The stench of bodily excretions, of carbon dioxide, of sweat and fear.
Petey would have taken off their gags and allowed them to catch their breath while he’d warned them not to scream. They’d have been too fear—weakened and groggy from the foul air in the trunk to manage much of an outburst. He’d have needed to lift them one at a time from the trunk, loosening their clothes so they could relieve themselves. That unpleasant intimacy would have tested his commitment to his new family. But his obligations were just beginning. For example, they’d have been terribly thirsty. Had he planned ahead and stopped at a fast—food place in Casper to get soft drinks, possibly french fries and hamburgers also? As he regagged them and put them back in the trunk, would he have said any reassuring words?
“I love you.”
I shut the trunk. From the darkness behind the Dump—ster, I stared toward the vehicles in front of the rest rooms. I walked in that direction, my footsteps crunching on pebbles. The floodlights at the two buildings made me feel naked the closer I came. By then, most of the vehicles had departed, leaving only a midsize sedan. I went into the men’s room and found it empty. I stepped outside. Insects swarmed in the overhead light.
A woman left the other building, pulled keys from her purse, and approached the sedan. She didn’t look in my direction. I imagined Petey starting to rush her, then pausing as headlights flashed past on the interstate, not a lot, but enough that there was never a gap, never a moment when somebody driving by wouldn’t have seen a man attack a woman.
So Petey had waited for another opportunity, gone into the women’s room, and subdued his victim there. He’d watched the interstate until there were just enough gaps between headlights that no one would see him in the few seconds that it took him to carry the unconscious woman around to the darkness. Behind the Dumpster, he’d tied and gagged her. Then he’d returned to the rest area, used the woman’s key to start her car (a Caprice, the police had told me). He’d kept the headlights off and driven back to the darkness behind the fence, where he would have had to use a knife to make ventilation holes through the backseats into the Caprice’s trunk before he transferred Kate and Jason into it.
But when he’d put the driver in the trunk with them, hadn’t it worried him that there might not have been enough air for three people? Why had he risked suffocating Kate and Jason by putting the woman in the trunk with them? As it was, the woman had died. Why hadn’t he killed her and hidden her body in the Dumpster? No one would have found her for quite a while, if ever. Again I felt Kate and Jason’s horror as the asthmatic woman fought to breathe with the duct tape pressed over her mouth, her frenzied movements, her gagging sounds, her gradual stillness, the release of her bladder, probably her bowels. As the Caprice sped along the interstate, Kate and Jason would have been seized by the out—of—control fear that, if it had happened to the woman, it could happen to them.
The question kept nagging at me: Why hadn’t Petey just killed her and hidden her body in the Dumpster? The only answer that made sense to me was that, no matter how indifferent Petey had felt toward the woman, he hadn’t intended for her to die. Killing me was one thing. As far as Petey was concerned, I deserved to die for ruining his life. But this woman had merely happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the first indication of humanity that I’d detected in him. It gave me hope for Kate and Jason.
He could have left the Volvo behind the Dumpster, where it might not have been discovered for days. Instead, he’d gone to the trouble of moving the Volvo to the front of the rest rooms, where it would be in plain sight. Because he wanted it to be found soon. He wanted it to point the way north, just as abandoning the Caprice outside Billings, Montana, made it seem that he was heading toward Butte. He’d been thinking with frightening control.
6
I drove back to the interstate. A road sign indicated that Billings, Montana, was 250 miles away. My eyelids felt heavy. But I had to keep moving. I had to complete Petey’s escape.
Had he slept along the way? Doing that certainly tempted me. But I was afraid that if I steered off the interstate and found a secluded spot—a camping area, for example—where I could get a few hours’ sleep, I wouldn’t waken until daylight. In Petey’s case, the Caprice might have been reported by then. He had to get to Billings. Imitating him, I kept driving.
I played the radio loud. In the middle of the night, it was hard to find a station. The ones I did find broadcast mostly evangelists riddled with static.
A mountain range stretched from north to south on my left. Moonlight glowed off the snowy peaks. My eyelids weakened. To stay awake, I bit my lips. I dug my fingernails into my palms. Interstate 25 became 90. I passed Sheridan, Wyoming, and entered Montana. The signs changed character: Lodge Grass; Custer Battlefield National Monument; Crow Agency… . At Hardin, the interstate veered west. Meanwhile, as the miles accumulated, I imagined that Petey would have worried that his captives weren’t getting enough air. He’d have stopped periodically on deserted roads to check on them. It pained me to think of Kate’s and Jason’s frightened eyes peering desperately up at him. They flinched when he reached in to touch their brows to calm them. As for the Caprice’s driver, he barely looked at her.
When I finally read a sign for Billings, I was troubled that the distance between Casper and Billings should have taken me only four hours, but with frequent stops, pretending to check on my captives, I’d taken ninety minutes longer than I should have.
Even so, it was still dark when I came to the rest stop on the other side of Billings. A sign called it a scenic vista, but with the moon having set, I had only a vague sense of mountains to the north and south. Two vehicles were parked at the rest rooms: a pickup truck and a sedan. Here, too, a service road led behind the buildings. I parked in the darkness. Adrenaline overcame my exhaustion as I got out of the car. The air was surprisingly cold. Two men in cowboy hats came out of one of the concrete—block buildings. I waited while they got in the pickup truck and drove away. At this predawn hour, there was almost no traffic on the interstate. I walked quickly toward the rest rooms and listened for activity in either one. If I heard voices, if there was more than one person, I’d wait for a better opportunity. But if there was only one set of footsteps …
At that hour, few women felt safe to drive alone. I assumed that the victim would have been male. Use a tire iron to knock him unconscious in the men’s room. Drag him into the darkness. Take his car to the back. Put Kate, Jason, and the driver into its trunk.
Would it have been at this point that Petey had discovered that the owner of the Caprice had choked to death from the duct tape over her mouth? He wouldn’t have been overwhelmed with sorrow. He’d given her a chance. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t his fault. The penalty for kidnapping was the same as for murder, so with nothing to lose, instead of trying to hide her body, he’d left it with the Caprice. Then he’d gotten into its replacement and driven onto the interstate. But instead of continuing toward Butte, where he wanted the police to think he was going, he’d taken the next exit ramp, crossed the overpass, and reaccessed the interstate, reversing direction, heading back toward Billings.
I kept after him. By then, it was dawn. I saw mountains, ranches, and oil refineries. Crossing the Yellowstone River, I no longer had th
e police report to guide me. Petey had been as tired as I was. Where the hell had he gone next?
7
The interstate forked. I had to choose—take 94 northeast through Montana, way up into North Dakota, or else retrace 90 south into Wyoming. I chose the latter. I didn’t fool myself that intuitively I was doing what Petey had. My decision was totally arbitrary.
But as tired as I was, if I didn’t soon find a place to sleep, I knew I’d have an accident. Petey must have felt the same. Even charged with adrenaline, he couldn’t have kept going much longer. For certain, he wouldn’t have dared risk an accident. He didn’t have a driver’s license, and the car wasn’t registered to him. A state trooper questioning him would eventually have gotten suspicious enough to look in the trunk. Meanwhile, as the sun got higher, warming the car’s interior, I imagined how hot the trunk would have gotten. No matter how many ventilation holes Petey had made, Kate, Jason, and the car’s owner would have roasted in that confined space, the sun’s heat turning the trunk into an oven, the air getting thicker, smothering. If Petey was going to keep them alive in the trunk, he had to rest by day and drive by night.
Because the Denver detectives had said that duct tape had covered the dead woman’s mouth, I presumed that Petey had done the same to Kate, Jason, and the man whose car he’d stolen. I took my right hand off the steering wheel and pressed it over my mouth, forcing myself to breathe only through my nose. Spring allergies had caused mucus to partially block my nostrils. My chest heaved. I couldn’t seem to get enough air. I had to concentrate to control my heartbeat, to inhale and exhale slowly. I couldn’t bear the thought of breathing selfconsciously, of taking in a minimum of air for what felt like forever in a hot, closed space.
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