‘Got your gun?’ Sam asked her.
She held up the Beretta, tucked it into the back of her sweatpants. The elastic was loose; she had been losing weight. It was going to fall down the back of her pants if she wasn’t careful.
She did not share this with Sam. ‘Go,’ she told him.
He looked at her over his shoulder. ‘Just remember, Sonora. There is nothing more dangerous than a coward in a corner.’
‘I’m not afraid of this guy.’
He grinned. ‘Me either. But you just remember what you told me. Fear makes him kill. This is the man that buried a fifteen-year-old girl alive in a manure pile.’
‘Then lets go nail his sorry ass.’
‘I’m gone.’
She watched him go to the right of the fence line, sticking close to the trees. She counted to a hundred, a full hundred. Sam had made her promise, but she counted very fast.
She took a short cut through the barn. Delaney’s office was unlocked, empty, motes of dust thick in the streaks of daylight. The barn was dark and cool. She did not turn on any lights, but went through the washrack to-the outside, made her way around the small round paddock and over the rusty white gate.
The trailer seemed so very quiet. The bicycles were still in front of the mobile home. The Weed Eater was gone. Sooner or later she would get her hands on that Weed Eater.
Please God let them be there.
Sonora knocked on the door. Waited. Heard absolutely nothing. Logically, the children were home from school, and Dixon Chauncey was working his shift at Procter and Gamble.
Logically.
She thought about knocking again. Decided against it. Quietly tried the lock. It was the kind in the door handle; it did not amount to much. She put her ear to the door, listening. Heard a toilet flush.
She should knock again, announce her presence. ‘Knock knock,’ she whispered. ‘Anyone home?’ She paused. ‘Guess not.’
Sonora took a breath and kicked in the door.
It was easier than she imagined, or she had enough adrenalin in her system to make it seem that way. She went in with her gun drawn – no point giving it a chance to fall down the back of her pants – crouched, saw Dixon Chauncey in the hallway, coming out of the bathroom, khakis, no shirt, using a powder-blue hand towel to dry his hair. Sonora hesitated. She almost didn’t recognize him as a blond.
He froze, eyes huge, turned and ran. Hot pursuit.
She fired a shot over his head and ran him down in the bedroom, Joelle’s bedroom, where he bounded up on the bed and tried to unlatch the window. She caught him around the middle and pulled him down. Momentum took them off the bed and on to the floor. And all the while a small part of her mind registered how quiet the house was, and she prayed that the children were staying after school.
‘Down, down, stay down.’
‘Please, let me go, I haven’t done anything.’
She kept screaming at him to get down, and it confused him, as it was supposed to, so that he took the path of least resistance and stayed down, as he was supposed to.
She rolled him to his stomach, knee in his back. Grabbed his arms and had him cuffed in a matter of seconds. Really, her best time so far.
‘Dixon Chauncey, you have the right to remain silent.’ She stopped, took a breath, heard the pounding of feet on the front porch. ‘If you give up this right—’
He began to cry. ‘Please, will you just tell me, what did I do?’
Chapter Sixty-One
Chauncey was at the kitchen table, head bowed, hands cuffed behind his back. His eyes were red and the tears flowed freely.
‘Please. It’s cold in here.’ His voice had an intense, throbbing quality. King of the Drama. ‘If you won’t give me my shirt, can I please just have a handkerchief or a Kleenex to wipe my nose?’
Sonora, watching him, thought that she would like for him to wipe his nose, but that there was no way in hell she would do it for him, and she’d have to let him out of the cuffs if he was going to do it for himself.
The rest of the team, except her, Sam and McCarty, were taking the mobile home apart. There was no sign of Mary Claire or Kippie. Chauncey’s clothes were packed, but not the girls’. He was leaving without them. Sonora had a very bad feeling in her heart.
‘Where were you going, Dixon?’ she asked.
‘Nowhere.’
‘Why’d you dye your hair?’ Sam asked.
No answer.
‘Why’d you pack your bags?’ from McCarty.
Dixon shrugged.
Sonora folded her arms. ‘Come on, Dixon, why’d you pack those bags?’
‘We were going away after the funeral. The three of us. After Joelle, I just didn’t want to stay here any more. I was getting my things packed today, and I was going to do the girls’ things tomorrow.’
‘Where are they? Where are the girls?’
‘I told you. In school.’
Sonora shook her head. ‘I called the school and school’s out. I called them on the way, Dixon. They said they weren’t there all day. The principal told me. Are you saying the principal was lying?’ She was making it up, but he bought it. She could see it in his eyes. ‘Why weren’t they in school, Dixon?’
‘I don’t know. That’s where I thought they were.’
‘Did they catch the bus? The bus driver didn’t see either one of them. You think I’d come out here and not check this out?’ She was shouting. He lowered his head.
‘I drove them.’
‘You drove them?’
‘I drove them.’
‘Why?’
‘We got up late. We got up late so I drove them.’
Sonora took Sam into the hallway. ‘You came in from the back. Did you see his car?’
Sam frowned. ‘I don’t think so. No, I didn’t.’
‘Me either.’ She started back into the kitchen. Crick came in from the back bedrooms. ‘Anything?’ she asked.
‘He’s packed, the kids aren’t. Somebody’s been wrapping presents.’
‘Presents?’
He held up a snippet of Muppet Baby wrapping paper. A receipt from Toys ’R’ Us. ‘He bought a lot of stuff.’
‘What the hell,’ Sonora said. ‘His car is missing.’
‘He said anything?’
‘Bullshit and lies and more bullshit and lies.’ She started back into the kitchen, and Sam grabbed her arm.
‘Sonora, have you noticed that he only cries when the rest of us ask him something, but he’s giving you answers?’
She looked at him.
‘You told me yourself, you thought you could get a confession.’ Sam turned his attention to Crick. ‘He likes strong women, he wants to be – sorry, Sonora – I think he wants to be dominated.’
‘That is so disgusting.’
‘I think the rest of us should leave the kitchen, leave the mobile home. We’ll be outside. And I think you should go in there and … you know, whatever.’
‘Dominatrix,’ McCarty said.
Sonora glared at him.
He smiled. ‘Should have brought a dog-collar and a leash.’
Crick put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Get in his face like you did in my office. Find me those two little girls.’
Sonora was pissed when she went back in the kitchen. She did not want to do this, and she let it work for her. She kicked the table, and Chauncey jumped, head up, eyes wide and, God help her, excited.
‘Are you mad at me?’ he asked.
Mad at him? Was she mad at him?
‘No, I’m mad at them. They’re all leaving and I have to baby-sit you till the uniforms come.’
She turned her back on him. Let him listen to the footsteps as everybody left the mobile home. The thundering herd.
‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. Softly.
She turned around. It was those eyes that got her, those fever blue eyes that watched her till she had to look away.
‘Quit looking at me. You hear me, Dixon? Quit looking at me.’
&
nbsp; He obeyed instantly. Head down. Taking a peek out of the corner of one eye.
‘I said quit looking at me.’
She was in his face, and his head jerked and sank deep into his shoulders.
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’
‘You shut up. Just shut the hell up, Dixon, and don’t you say one word, not one fucking word, till I tell you to.’
He nodded, quivering.
Listen to yourself, she thought. You’re the mother of two lovely children and you make a heck of a meat loaf and listen to yourself.
Cop first. She wished Gillane was here. He’d understand. He would think it was funny. He would tell her to see the light side and he would feed her Twinkies.
‘They’re not your kids, are they, Dixon?’
Nothing.
She smacked the back of his neck. ‘You answer me when I’m talking to you. They’re not your kids, are they, Dixon?’
He bowed his head. ‘No.’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘You going to start crying again, Dixon? Go on, Dixon, cry. Cry.’
The waterworks came. Along with choking sobs. She did not like this. She wanted to do anything but this.
‘You didn’t drive them to school, did you?’
‘No. No, ma’am.’
‘Where’d you drive them?’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can. You can, Dixon, you can and you will.’
‘No, no, I can’t, it’s too late, I can’t tell you.’
Too late, too late. It echoed in her head. She had to know, she had to move quickly.
She grabbed the back of his chair and wrenched it sideways, and he howled and went down on the floor. She stood with a foot in his ribcage, hunched over to scream in his face.
‘Where’d you take the girls?’
His sobs made the words unintelligible, and she was on her knees so close she could smell his breath. He dared a look and she slapped him.
‘I told you not to look at me, and I meant it.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
‘Where are the girls?’
‘At the storage facility.’
‘Which storage facility?’
‘It’s on … I can’t remember the name of it. A side street.’ He did not look at her and his voice was small. ‘I’ll show you. Put me in the car and I’ll show you.’
‘You better be straight on this, Dixon. You take me to the right place, or I’ll wash my hands of you and turn you over to the guys.’
‘I’ll do the right thing. I’ll show you. In your car.’
‘In my car?’
‘In your car. Can you take off the handcuffs? They’re hurting.’
‘I’d just as soon break your neck.’
He nodded. Accepting. As always.
Chapter Sixty-Two
Sam drove, with McCarty up front, and Sonora sat in the back with Dixon.
She did not have to tell him to keep his head down. She did not have to tell him not to look. It was like a secret, their sly secret.
The tears slid down his cheeks, and his nose ran, and he hiccupped at irregular intervals. The siren screamed and people stared. Dixon liked that part. Sonora could tell.
‘It’s too late,’ he whispered.
‘Drive faster,’ Sonora told Sam.
The storage units were new, beige metal, no more than eight minutes away. The land was scraped raw, some of the units still under construction. Sonora saw Sam looking at her from the rearview mirror. She knew what he was thinking. Homicide cops dreaded the calls to storage units. These things were never very pretty, and were often very ripe.
‘Too late,’ Dixon said again.
McCarty jerked around and looked at him. ‘Don’t say that again. Not one more time.’
Sam stopped the car. ‘Get out of the back seat, Sonora, and let me have some time with him.’
Sonora shook her head. Looked at Dixon. ‘Where?’
McCarty leaned over the seat and touched her knee. ‘Get out of the car. I’ll talk to him. I don’t like you back there with him.’
‘Dixon,’ Sonora said.
He wet his lips, eyes bright and hard, and she looked straight at him and did not turn away. Something about the way he looked at her made her queasy, but she did not turn away. He held the gaze a long time, as if he would look into her eyes for ever.
‘Where?’ she said.
Dixon inclined his head. ‘Over there.’
‘The number?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Show me, then.’
His head came up, eyes wide. ‘I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to see them.’
McCarty, clearly, had had enough. He was out and had Dixon’s back door open in a heartbeat, picked him up by the scruff of the neck.
‘If you don’t want to see them, you better close your eyes, ’cause you’re leading the way, you sonofabitch.’
Sonora took a breath, followed, glad it was out of her hands.
Chauncey led them around the back and down a long row to the garages on the left, third from the last.
‘Give me the key,’ McCarty said.
Chauncey said something, too soft to make out.
‘I said—’
‘Forget it.’ Sam rounded the corner with the crowbar from the back of the trunk. He wedged it under the thin metal door. McCarty went to help, and Sonora kept an eye on Dixon.
She heard sirens, saw Gruber and Sanders drive up, Crick coming alone. The garage door gave way to the crowbar just as Sonora became aware of a movement out of the corner of one eye. She was never sure whether she was so in tune that she sensed the move before he made it, but Chauncey was taking off.
A moment’s inattention, her fault, underestimating the prisoner, her fault again. She ran like a sonofabitch, cussing herself, cussing Chauncey, and he headed over a hill, behind the last row of storage units. She heard shouts, knew the garage door was going up on Mary Claire and Kippie, wondered if anyone was backing her up.
Chauncey was moving incredibly fast; either that or she was out of shape. She pulled her gun out of the back of her sweatpants, fired into the air. Yelled halt after she fired, glad no one was there to notice seriously out-of-sequence police action.
‘Stop! Don’t make me shoot you.’
He knew where he was going. She reminded herself that he knew the area and she didn’t. He disappeared around a rise in the land, and Sonora saw a chain-link fence and a down-at-heel car lot. The name of the lot was familiar, featuring regularly in reports from Vice.
She felt a catch in her side. My God, the man could move. There were children unaccounted for; she had to bring him back. Alive, if possible, which was not going to be easy. She was a terrible shot, she could easily kill him.
Sam’s words of caution flicked through her mind as she felt the body-slam that sent her flying off her feet, gun spinning out of her hand. He had been waiting for her.
He could have run then, but he wasn’t through with her. She squirmed and looked for the gun, saw him doing the same, spotted it eight feet to her left.
She never knew if he didn’t see the gun or was in too much of a hurry. The first kick caught her square on the temple, bringing a rush of darkness and light speckles, and an ungodly ache. She was aware that he was kicking her again, and she tried to curl away from him, but could not seem to move. She did not see the kick that caught her in the left side, but she felt her ribs being crushed, felt the incredible jolt of disbelief and shock, and gasped, trying to fill her lungs.
She heard, rather than saw, his feet on the chain-link fence. Climbing in handcuffs. He was getting away.
She crawled toward her gun. Please God, just give her the breath and the aim to shoot him down dead.
A cacophony of noise brought her head up, and she opened her eyes, blood dripping down the side of her face. Heard him scream, heard the growl of dogs, Rottweilers, a pair, and the clang as Chauncey tried to scra
mble back up the fence.
The gun felt solid in her hands. Chauncey screamed, a noise she thought she would remember for the rest of her life, and then she heard shouts, and Sam’s voice, and guns going off. Someone was shooting the dogs.
And then McCarty or Sam, she wasn’t sure which, tried to pick her up, which brought a wave of agony, but she did not care, because she was safe, and Chauncey wasn’t.
McCarty described it for her later, sitting beside her in the hospital, holding her hand.
It had been dark in the storage unit, much too quiet, the smell of exhaust thick in the air. The car’s interior lights were on, the two little girls slumped in the back seat.
The car doors were locked and Sam had gone after them with the crowbar. Sonora had watched McCarty’s face as he described it. Two little girls, so quiet and so still. Mary Claire still wearing her little round spectacles, John Lennon granny glasses, and Kippie slumped beside her, head in her sister’s lap. Their lips were cherry red. They were clean, hair combed neatly, both wearing brand-new dresses, lacy socks and black patent-leather shoes. Placed, just like Joelle, by a loving father.
They had been surrounded by torn wrapping paper, ribbons. McCarty remembered each one. The death toys, he called them – a Tickle-Me Elmo, a Wedding Bells Barbie, a Slinky, Rug Rats coloring books, and a new box of crayons. Two juice boxes had fallen to the floor – apple juice, one hundred per cent fruit concentrate, from Motts.
Sam made it in first, handed Kippie, still warm, to McCarty, and Mary Claire to Gruber. The girls had not seemed to be breathing.
Crick had seen that help was on the way, and there were sirens, and a red fire department truck was at the top of the hill, coming down, and McCarty had heard gunfire, looked up, and seen that Sonora and Chauncey were gone.
Sonora stopped him then, mid-story, and thanked him for the back-up. He took her hand, and kissed her, and she always wondered what would have happened if Sam and Gillane had not rounded the corner bringing flowers and Twinkies.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Sonora walked up the hillside, turned her back on the drained, muddy pond at Halcyon Farm, stood about one hundred yards from where they had found Joelle Chauncey’s body. It felt good to walk without having to stop and catch her breath every three steps.
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