The Edge of Normal

by Carla Norton

  “Oh, thank you, but I’ve had more than enough.” She takes a last bite of cornbread and surreptitiously checks Dr. Lerner’s text message, holding her cell phone under the table:

  Flying back now. See you tonight.

  The message seemed terse the first time she read it; it seems more so now. Not a word about how things went with Terrance Moody. Not a hint of optimism, which is very unlike Dr. Lerner.

  Tilly leans away from her brother and whispers into Reeve’s ear, “Come to my room when you’re finished, okay? I have something really important to tell you.”

  Reeve says okay and sips from her glass of milk. The warm food is making her drowsy. Remembering her manners, she excuses herself from the table and thanks Mrs. Cavanaugh for the delicious meal. “My mother used to make cornbread like that,” she says, and suffers a sudden image of her mother crying in the kitchen, after the cancer had spread to her bones and she could no longer cook.

  “You’ve been such a great help with Tilly,” Mrs. Cavanaugh says. “I wish we could bring you to Fresno with us. Promise you’ll fly down with Dr. Lerner?”

  She drapes an arm over Reeve’s shoulders to give her a brief hug, and Reeve allows this, giving a quick nod before breaking away to rinse her dishes and load them in the dishwasher.

  A minute later, Reeve finds Tilly in her room, busily folding clothes and placing them in a suitcase. “There’s not much to pack,” Tilly says, gesturing. “Nothing fits anymore. And I hate going out to shop.”

  “I noticed.”

  “After we move, maybe it’ll be better.”

  “Yeah, I think so. Plus, you’ll be getting nice, new clothes for Christmas, too. Lots of them.”

  Tilly flashes a rare, impish smile. “Yeah, and guess what!”

  “What?”

  “I have big news,” Tilly says teasingly.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll never guess,” she says, going over to her dresser and opening a drawer. “It finally happened.” With a squeak of excitement, she spins around, holding up a package of sanitary napkins.

  Reeve pastes on a smile. She says all the right things, all the kind, sisterly things that she imagines one should say. But images are spinning through her head, ideas clicking, and she can hardly wait to excuse herself and call Nick Hudson.

  * * *

  The sky opens up and it starts to rain as Reeve heads out of town. She fumbles with the windshield wipers, accidentally veering left so that the Jeep’s tires hit the warning bumps of the median. She swerves back into her lane as a big semi draws alongside, sending up clouds of spray, forcing her to slow down. She grips the wheel hard, driving white-knuckled. The interstate descends and straightens briefly at the bridge crossing Jefferson Lake, but the swooping turns resume as the freeway climbs in elevation. Afraid she’ll miss her exit, she stays in the slow lane, caught between two big eighteen-wheelers as northbound traffic carries her deeper into the wilderness. The asphalt becomes a slick blur. Road signs flash past. Feeling lost, she vows to take the next opportunity to exit, and suddenly she’s off the freeway, down an off-ramp, onto Old Cedar Road.

  Relieved, she pulls into the weed-choked parking lot of the abandoned gas station and tries to get her bearings. She checks the map on her phone against the map she snatched from Emily Ewing’s office.

  Keenly aware that Hudson still hasn’t returned her call, she equivocates for a long moment. The engine idles, the windshield wipers beat. She starts keying in a text message:

  Nick: Sorry, but I’m going back to find that place where I was shot at. Don’t worry and don’t be mad. I’ll just find the address and take a picture.

  Holding her breath, she hits “send.”

  The instant Tilly had so proudly shown her that bright package of Kotex, an image of blowing trash had flashed through her mind. She was sure—or almost, anyway—that mixed in with all the paper and rubbish blowing around that cabin, she’d glimpsed the distinctive plastic wrappers from sanitary pads.

  Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe the man with the rifle had a wife or girlfriend. But why had he shot at her?

  The image of the gun makes her shudder. I have a right to protect my property!

  Rain spatters on the windshield and she sits gripping her phone, willing Nick to call her back, wondering if she can manage to retrace her route. She closes her eyes, trying to recall every detail about that cabin. It had an unusually solid-looking foundation—concrete all the way around, it appeared—with mesh-covered vents. And wasn’t it creepy that the house on Tevis Ranch Road and that old cabin in the woods both appeared to be surrounded by the same type of new chain-link fence?

  She clicks on the dome light and studies the map again. When she thinks she has her bearings, she shifts the Jeep into gear and eases onto the road, but as she accelerates, she notices the yellow glow of the icon warning that she’s low on gas.

  At that moment, her phone rings. She answers the phone without thinking to look at the display, keeping her eyes on the road, assuming it will be Nick Hudson calling in response to her text message.

  Instead, she hears the familiar rasp of a voice from her past: “Hello, my little cricket.”

  Her bowels twist.

  “You’ve been in the news, Regina. Tell me, how are my puffies?”

  Her mouth goes dry.

  “I see you’re in Jefferson,” Daryl Wayne Flint continues. “Nice hair.”

  She inhales sharply. “How did you get my number?”

  She waits, but there is no response. Her phone beeps, and when she checks the display she sees the yellow words: No service.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Al Krasny makes sure he’s the first to enter the room. He needs to set up his computer and arrange his thoughts. Some of his methods might seem old-fashioned, but he can still whip together a pretty fair PowerPoint presentation on short notice. He’s not out of the game yet. Never mind that this tip came from that smug little hottie, Kim Benioff. He took her info and ran with it. He did the cross-referencing and found the real stuff. He rushed it to the DA, who persuaded the judge, who issued the warrant. He’s the lead investigator on this case, and he damn well deserves to get the credit.

  While he plugs in cables and tinkers with setup, young people begin entering the room and taking seats at the conference table. They barely acknowledge him, no surprise. Lose a little hair, put on a few pounds, and you become invisible. Especially to females.

  Krasny finishes his setup and takes a seat at the head of the table. With each new arrival, the buzz of expectation rises. He listens to their excited exchanges, but ignores the rising tension, assuming a posture of authority.

  “Listen up, people!” Lieutenant Stephens bursts through the door, followed by a tall, athletic woman carrying files and a bulldog of a man that Krasny recognizes as Federal Agent Barry Coulter. “This is what we’ve been waiting for. We’ve got an ID and we’ve got an address.”

  The room falls silent. Fingers stop drumming, knees stop jiggling.

  Stephens addresses those around the table: “You are the elite force, and we’re here to brief you and set you loose. Special Agents Barry Coulter and Yolanda Martin will be taking the lead tonight,” he says, gesturing at the two FBI agents who are standing off to the side. “But first, Krasny, are you up?”

  “Yep, I’ve got it,” he responds, clicking keys.

  “Good. This is Al Krasny, everyone, a top investigator with the DA’s office. He has a few things to show you.”

  Krasny stifles an urge to correct the lieutenant—Not a top investigator; the top investigator—as he stands to face the room.

  Before he can begin, Lieutenant Stephens says, “You all know that our searches of convicted child molesters and sex predators didn’t get us to Vanderholt. So one of our team, Kim Benioff…” he looks up and scans the room “… who’s not here, of course, because she’s not tactical, came up with some information that Krasny refined. Isn’t that right, Al?”

  Krasny sucks in h
is stomach and inflates his chest. “I took what she provided and went with another approach. I cross-referenced the names and keyed into a timeline, looking at the release dates of certain parolees with related priors, and then—”

  “Krasny,” Stephens interrupts, “we don’t need all these details, we need you to get to the point.”

  “Right, okay. So I kept drilling down, checking gun registrations and weapons violations.”

  “Looking for our shooter,” Coulter observes. “Smart.”

  Krasny beams.

  “Okay,” Stephens prompts, “so tell us what we’ve got.”

  “I’ve located one individual that fits all parameters.”

  “Only one?” someone asks.

  “That’s right, and here he is.” Krasny clicks his remote control and steps aside as a mugshot appears on the screen at the front of the room: a pale, lumpy face with a bulbous nose and bulging, startled eyes.

  Everyone leans forward, scrutinizing the man’s image.

  “Our suspect is J.J. Orr,” Krasny continues. “Forty-one, six feet, two-fifty. This guy isn’t a registered sex offender, but he’s an ex-con, like Vanderholt. Served five years on multiple counts of fraud and embezzlement.”

  “An accountant,” someone snickers.

  Stephens shoots the offender a look. “Might seem like a load of vanilla, but that means he’s smart enough to hide what he does.”

  “You thought Vanderholt was just a carjacker,” Krasny snaps. “Remember that.”

  “Tell them the rest,” Stephens prods.

  “Orr owned multiple weapons, including high-precision rifles, prior to his arrest. And he’s not just your average Joe with a gun. He was sharpshooting champ at a gun club in Yuba County four years running.”

  Agent Coulter whistles.

  “And there’s more. Uh, deeper background found that Orr was arrested for rape ten years ago.”

  “But you just told us he’s not a registered sex offender,” Agent Martin points out.

  “He’s not. The charges were dropped, but that shows tendencies, which is what we were looking for.” This was part of Benioff’s contribution, but Krasny has no intention of mentioning that. “There’s a peeping Tom charge, too.”

  “Early indicator,” a woman in back grumbles.

  With a click of the remote, Krasny replaces the mugshot with a map. “This is the place J.J. Orr was paroled to,” he says, and the eyes of the team members follow as Krasny plays the beam of a laser pointer across the map, stopping at a spot circled in red.

  Lieutenant Stephens says, “This is a solid lead, people.” Nodding at Agent Coulter, he adds, “Barry, you’ll take it from here?”

  Stephens moves to one side to make room for Coulter, who steps to the front of the room and takes the laser pointer from Krasny, who stiffly resumes his seat.

  “Okay, team, we’ve got our plan ready, so listen up,” Coulter says. “Our target is approximately thirty miles northwest of town. This location is not far from where Tilly Cavanaugh was found locked in Vanderholt’s basement.” The beam hovers over another spot, circled in black, then dances back. “Rural operation. Looks like old-growth pine forests, right? But keep sharp. This whole terrain is pocked with abandoned mines.”

  “Jesus, you think those girls are stashed in a mine shaft?” someone asks.

  “Could be. So keep your eyes open.” Coulter nods at Krasny, and with a click the map is replaced by a satellite image. “We’ve got two adjacent structures, a residence and barn,” he says, circling with the beam. “We’ll use a two-team approach, and Agent Martin will be heading up the search.”

  Coulter nods at her, and Yolanda Martin sets two stacks of color-coded folders on the table in front of a man with the physique of a basketball player, who checks the names and starts passing them out. “We’re split into red and blue teams,” she says. “Blue for the soft approach to the front; Red geared up and deployed early to cover the sides and back.”

  Coulter continues in his gravelly voice, “Consider this boy armed, got it? Red Team, keep to the trees and approach from the north, where there are fewer windows.” Indicating paths with his laser pointer, he adds, “And be stealthy.”

  “The weather works to our advantage,” Martin says. “But odds are, this guy’s our shooter, so keep that sniper rifle in mind and keep your heads down.”

  “What’s our transport?” a man asks, frowning down at his open file. “A horse trailer? Seriously?”

  “It’s not as weird as it sounds,” Coulter says. “The smaller structure’s a horse barn. So figure two in the truck, ten in back. Best we can do.”

  “Perfect for all you studs,” a woman quips.

  “Load of manure, more like,” the man mutters back.

  “Okay now, both teams,” Coulter continues, “we’ve got warrants ready, but you get any heat, we’re authorized for smash-and-bangs. Subdue the target and any accomplices with necessary force. Go with flash grenades and hard rescue tactics. Find those girls, or any remains, and secure the scene. Got it?”

  Agent Martin checks her watch. “Time to get moving.”

  “Okay, go for best case and stay smart.” Coulter surveys the room. “Your team leaders have the schematics and they’ll bring you up to speed while you roll. Let’s gear up!”

  He claps his hands and the Hostage Rescue Team stampedes out the door, leaving Al Krasny alone in a room where tension lingers like smoke.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  It’s raining harder now and Reeve turns the windshield wipers up to full speed. Dusk deepens as the sun fades behind the mountaintops. She keeps her eyes on the road, searching the shadows for anything she recognizes.

  A sick knot tightens in her stomach every time she lets her mind drift to the phone call. She swallows and resolves not to obsess about Daryl Wayne Flint. He has already consumed too much of her life. She will change her phone number as soon as she can. Dr. Lerner will contact the authorities in Washington, and that will be the end of it. Simple. No problem.

  Now she must focus on what lies ahead. Because fear is paralysis, fear is the enemy.

  The road starts to climb as darkness falls. The way seems familiar, and Reeve begins to sense that she’s following the right trail. She grips the steering wheel and begins to sweat, recognizing the switchbacks, the steep, slow curves up the hill, even the jarring bumps and potholes.

  She forces herself to scan the roadside and watch for the confirmation of the dead raccoon. After a time, she begins to doubt herself, but then there it is, caught in her headlights, still lying swollen on a patch of dirty snow.

  She knows she’s getting close and unconsciously speeds up. Anticipating what she must do, she shuts one eye, so that it can start adapting to the coming darkness. At the moment she spots the top of the rise, where the road turns and abruptly flattens, she takes her foot off the accelerator and kills her headlights. The night closes in around her.

  Her light-adapted eye helps her distinguish the textures of gray foliage and blue-black road. The tires shush on slick asphalt as she tops the rise and turns toward the cabin. She eases off the gas, hoping the Jeep’s engine noise won’t attract attention, hoping she can find somewhere to park.

  As she approaches, she hears something odd. Music.

  The Jeep creeps forward and the music intensifies, pounding rockabilly. Through the rain and the trees, she sees a bright swath of light and strains to see, easing the Jeep forward, less afraid now of its noise. The driveway is up ahead. The music grows louder and the light grows brighter. She sees the rusty mailbox with the scrawled name Orr. And at the moment she rolls past the long driveway, she gapes at a strange tableau: The battered van is parked at the end, angled so that its headlights are illuminating a man in a yellow slicker, working in the rain, stacking firewood.

  FIFTY-NINE

  Music blasts out of the van in the driveway as Reeve’s Jeep rolls past the house, unlit and, she hopes, unnoticed. The road dips a few yards beyond, and the Jeep’s sp
eed increases, but she resists the urge to put her foot on the brake, afraid of flashing telltale lights. She lifts her eyes to the rearview mirror, sees the last of Orr’s house diminishing behind her, and steers around a downhill curve to the left.

  When she checks again, there are no lights anywhere, so she risks clicking on her low beams, searching for a place to pull over. The windshield wipers beat back and forth. A yellow “No Trespassing” sign flashes up ahead, where a dilapidated gate straddles an overgrown driveway. The Jeep’s wheels splash through a ditch as it edges off the asphalt and stops.

  She clicks off her beams, turns off the ignition, and the music behind her trickles into the silence. She drops the key onto the passenger seat and looks around, wondering what to bring with her. Her plan of taking photographs with her cell phone camera now seems ludicrous. She can’t risk the flash, or even the glow of the screen.

  Reeve rubs her empty palms together, thinking, then rummages in the glove box, where she hopes for a pocketknife, but finds only a small flashlight and a four-inch screwdriver. Not much, but she slips them into her pockets, one on each side, so they don’t knock together. She zips her jacket tight, turns up her collar, and eases out of the Jeep until her boots meet the ground.

  Just one quick look around, she thinks, shutting the door gently. Then she turns, splashes through a puddle, and starts jogging up the road.

  The glare up ahead cuts a weird green-blue wedge through the night as she crests the hill. The house looms in dark counterpoint to the bright music. She stops to scan its windows, watching for movement, wondering where the man keeps his rifle.

  The rain dribbles down her neck. She shudders, steps off the road, and moves closer.

  Keeping an eye on the van, trying to see past it into the backyard, she slips through the gate, and begins creeping up the driveway. Closer, closer … she glimpses a yellow smear of movement and stops, thankful for her dark clothes.

  The wind whips the trees and their limbs wave a spooky dance in the glare of the headlights, but the van blocks her view of whatever the man in the yellow slicker is doing. She crouches low, slowly moves forward, and gravel crunches underfoot at the same instant the music stops.