In Harm's Way

by Ridley Pearson

  “Go home,” she said.

  “Are you always this bossy?”

  “Only when I’m afraid of losing something.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  He placed down the cold teacup, crossed to kiss her on the cheek, but she offered him her lips and they kissed until the cat climbed off her lap in disgust.

  11

  Walt received Wynn’s handgun the following afternoon and spent thirty minutes with the man’s attorney arranging the terms for a Boldt interview. He impounded the handgun, pending Wynn’s voluntary completion of a one-day weapons course the following week.

  He reached Boldt by Skype that night, explaining he’d heard back from NFL owner Marty Boatwright, and that both interviews were now arranged. Boldt said he’d make travel plans and get back to him.

  He watched the Disney Channel with his daughters, read with them at bedtime, and caught up with e-mails while Beatrice licked herself at his feet. It was the first normal evening he’d had in a while and he promised himself to make more of them. He’d quickly come to see that Fiona was right about his intolerance of silence, though dared not test it. He kept himself busy with simple tasks until utterly fatigued and fell asleep in a bed he’d once shared with Gail. Beatrice snored before he did. He slept without any recollection of dreaming.

  The following day, a Tuesday in July, Terry Hogue was announced from the front desk. He complimented Walt on the decorated 1867 rolling block Remington rifle hung in a glass box on the wall. They discussed firearms for ten minutes, Walt feeling no need to push the attorney.

  Finally, Hogue withdrew a sealed plastic bag and pushed it across Walt’s desk. Inside was a pair of black lace underwear.

  “They belong to Dionne Fancelli.”

  “Not exactly what I’d expected,” Walt said.

  Hogue slid a signed and notarized document to Walt. “His statement as to how this undergarment came into his possession and that it was passed directly to you.”

  Walt read the letter carefully. “A love souvenir.”

  “Their second, and last time,” Hogue said. “I questioned the boy repeatedly, Walt. They’ve had sexual intercourse twice. Other stuff along the way, sure. But only twice, the last time eight months ago. He’s willing to cooperate fully. It’s not him. I happen to believe him, in case you care.”

  “I care.”

  “I thought you might.”

  “What I told you before-that was straight. I’m not after him.”

  Hogue produced a second plastic bag. This one contained a cotton swab.

  “So that completes our end of the deal,” Hogue said. “I guess I should wish you good luck. My client would welcome the dismissal of him as a person of interest.”

  “Has she said anything to him about problems at home?”

  “He knew there were problems,” Hogue said. “The two times they attempted sexual intercourse failed miserably. And it wasn’t him, it was her. She became so overwhelmed emotionally that he withdrew, despite protection.”

  “And they didn’t try after that.”

  “No. And they didn’t talk about it. He brought it up only once. She blew up at him. They didn’t speak for days. He doesn’t know enough to have spotted the warning signs. He just thought she was too young and that he was stupid for having tried.”

  “He was right.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Okay,” Walt said, accepting a second letter pertaining to the swab.

  “If we can help you get the bastard, Walt…”

  “Thank you. My guess is, you already have.”

  Walt had the two bags packaged and shipped to the Meridian lab, knowing it would be several weeks, if he was lucky, before getting the reports.

  The prenatal sample from the mother would have to be done in the next few weeks-between the tenth and thirteenth week-and would be more problematic. Past the fourteenth week an amniocentesis was the only option, a procedure that would put the fetus at some degree of risk and one he therefore wouldn’t push for. He had to work quickly with the courts.

  He attended a Rotary Club lunch, met with his two investigating deputies to review cases, and answered a dozen e-mails before heading home to Lisa and the girls.

  He was in the Cherokee when he overheard a radio call from his dispatcher. A prowler had been reported at the Roger Hillabrand residence. Hillabrand, a defense contractor, continued to hold an interest in Fiona, and had for a time been a suspect in another of Walt’s cases. More important, he lived within a mile-as the crow flies-of the Engleton ranch; less than a mile from the wilderness campground Guillermo Menquez was keeping an eye on.

  Deputy Chalmers responded to the dispatcher’s call, and a moment later, Walt announced that he would oversee the complaint. Chalmers would respond ASAP, bypassing the gate to keep it closed and climbing the two-mile driveway on foot, alert for the intruder. If she reached the house before Walt, she was to inform Hillabrand Walt was en route.

  He called Lisa and let her know he was going to be late. Nikki took the phone.

  “Why do our faces look backwards in the mirror?” she asked.

  “It’s bedtime, sweetheart. I can try to explain it in the morning.”

  “But how come?”

  “It has to do with the way light reflects.”

  “Like when the doctor hits your knee?”

  “No, that’s ‘reflex.’ ”

  “But that’s what you said.”

  “Spelled different. Different word.”

  “Sounds the same.”

  “Yes, it does. Like hear and here-one’s listening, one’s a place.”

  “Reflects is a place?”

  “I’ll explain tomorrow.”

  “Promise?”

  There it was, that word that had impacted his life more than any other. Bobby. Gail. His badge. His father. He heard his own breathing through the phone’s earpiece. He said good night, a lump forming in his throat for reasons unknown. Was this the silence about which Fiona had warned? From which he ran? Was he supposed to call her?

  Ten minutes later he reached the reinforced entry gate at the base of the Hillabrand estate-two hundred acres of private property contiguous with the Cold Springs run of the Sun Valley ski mountain. Perched atop an 8,000-foot-high mountaintop, two miles up a gravel road, stood Hillabrand’s 10,000-square-foot log “cabin,” a monument to a bachelor with too much money and just enough sense to hire a tasteful architect.

  “It’s my fault,” Hillabrand said. He wore a crisply pressed, sky-blue polo shirt, creased blue jeans, and forest green Keens. With his leathery tan, blue eyes, and wry smile, he had to fight off comparisons to Robert Redford. “I got absorbed with work. I’d left all the lights off, so the place was dark as a graveyard-an open invitation, I’m afraid. I heard something… and had a look…” He led Walt down a confusing set of hallways and reached a hotel-sized kitchen. He pulled back a curtain on the kitchen’s Dutch split door.

  “He’d been working on this door. Tried to jimmy it.” He opened the door and showed Walt where a crude tool had been used in an attempt to open the door. “I switched on the outside light. Got a quick look. Six feet, broad shoulders. No face. Only his back. Jeans. Dark sweatshirt. He was gone in a flash. Very fast.”

  “Hair color?” Walt was taking notes.

  “No. Ball cap, I guess.”

  “You must have a weapon in this place,” Walt said. Hillabrand was a former army general who’d retired into an NGO. He employed a security detail of service vets fiercely loyal to him.

  “Of course. Did I pursue him into the woods? Come on, Sheriff. Give me some credit.”

  “You called your own people first, I take it?”

  “You really take a dim view of me, don’t you?” He leaned back.

  “No. I called nine-one-one and reported the intruder. I don’t keep a posse around me, you know? Is that what you think? I have staff. Of course I do. But they keep regular hours.”

  “Deputy Chalmers will remain
with you, preferably in a windowless room-a second-story room will do.”

  “You have to be kidding me,” Hillabrand said.

  “A man of your… position, sir… our first job is your protection.” Walt contrasted this with his response to the similar situation at Vince Wynn’s residence. He’d assumed any gunshots had driven the intruder away in Wynn’s case, but he realized he’d made it personal as well, and that was a bad development.

  “You think this was… nonsense. I thought… the Berkholder thing…”

  “And that may be all it is, but this is the way we’re going to do it.”

  Chalmers stood at the ready. Hillabrand motioned for her to follow him, and they left. Walt went out the kitchen door, his flashlight on, trained onto the dewy grass.

  Tracking wasn’t a hobby for him, and it wasn’t a professional requirement. It was a study, a science, a passion. He held the Maglite’s bluish halogen bulb close to the lawn and watched as a million pearls of dew lit up and sparkled. In their midst, like a string of lakes, were lightless oval shapes, each a footprint of the intruder. He stayed to the side, following them down the curve of the lawn to the edge of the forest and from there into the ever darker woods, alert for displaced leaves, freshly broken twigs, and the bent shafts of plants and wildflowers. Lower and lower down the hill he went, hunched and attentive, excited by the puzzle solving. There were stretches where he lost all signs of the man, wishing he’d brought Beatrice along with him, instead of leaving her in the Cherokee. Tempted to go back and get her, he doubted she’d pick up a scent from the ground alone, and couldn’t trouble himself to return.

  Five minutes stretched to twenty. It was a steady descent, the intruder avoiding and crossing the occasional game trail. It felt as if he knew where he was going, that this was scouted terrain. And as the invisible path that Walt followed stopped descending and began to traverse the north-facing hill, finally swinging higher and beginning to climb now, he was aimed for the ridge that dropped down into the drainage where the Berkholders and Engletons lived. The drainage where, on the opposing north-facing slope, the campground had been discovered.

  A jolt of deepening concern rattled him. Fiona lived over there. As he crested the ridge and briefly glimpsed the lights below, the Engleton ranch called out as a destination. Due to terrain, and without going down to the highway, it was impossible to get from where Walt stood to the other side of the drainage without crossing the Engleton property.

  Halfway between Hillabrand’s house and the Engletons’, he debated his options, favoring returning to the Cherokee, where he had a shotgun and an emergency backpack with a bigger flashlight, batteries, the satellite phone, and warm clothing. It might take him an extra five to ten minutes, because of the climb and then the drive off Hillabrand’s mountain, but it seemed worth it.

  His legs, aching from the descent and climb, carried him well. He charged back up the mountain, zigzagging in order to set a sustainable pace, and picking up the first game trail he encountered. Wild animals, for the most part, made sensible, if sometimes meandering, routes through forest and across wilderness. Walt followed this trail for two hundred yards and then cut back through the trees, quickly gaining elevation. Minutes later, he reached Hillabrand’s out of breath. He radioed Chalmers and told her to allow Hillabrand to move around his house but to stay with him for the time being.

  “I picked up his trail and believe he may be heading into the next drainage. I’m headed for the Engleton place.”

  He called for backup on the way. His closest patrol was nearly twenty minutes away. He directed them to approach without siren or lights, expecting to have completed the first part of his rounds by the time they arrived.

  Beatrice knew when Walt was excited. She shot between the seats, her paws on the center console, and licked Walt below the ear.

  “Back off!” Walt shouted.

  The dog whimpered and backed up, but the thumping of her tail against the backseat, in concert with the pounding of Walt’s heartbeat in his ears, gave away her enthusiasm.

  Hillabrand’s two-mile driveway was crushed stone and steep with a half-dozen hairpin switchbacks. As fast as Walt drove, it wasn’t fast enough. He one-handed his phone to dial Fiona’s number from his contact list, wondering why he hadn’t programmed a speed dial number for her. It made perfect sense that he should have her number set as a speed dial, and yet it seemed too personal at the same time, and he wondered if he was afraid to be seen dialing her via the shortcut, and if so what caused such fear in him. His sense of Fiona and him, of Gail and Brandon, could get so tangled up that it seemed impossible to unknot. He couldn’t risk exposing himself to another person the way he had with Gail. It had left him raw and vulnerable in a way he hadn’t felt since adolescence, and that was too many years behind him to offer any guidance. As a teen he had stumbled and crashed his way through his early relationships, not understanding himself enough to have much to offer. By adulthood, in his twenties, his focus had been on building a career for himself, with little time or energy to devote to the otherworldly nature of getting inside Gail’s skin. They’d made love, they’d had laughs, they ate meals together and attended parties, but never with too much talking, never fully explaining themselves to the other the way he expected relationships were supposed to function. That his only fully invested relationship had collapsed, unexpectedly on his part, left him with the sinking feeling it could happen again far too easily.

  The phone rang in his ear. He urged her to pick up. Then the click of the voice mail and his cursing into the car, and Beatrice whimpering again. He skidded to a stop before Hillabrand’s reinforced gate and waited for its electronic eye to detect the Cherokee’s motion and open. The steel bar climbed and Walt threw a rooster tail behind as he sped out and into a dirt-spewing fishtail turn and down the canyon road, his thumb finding the green button on his cell phone, and redialing her number.

  He’d never figured out how a few minutes could stretch into hours, but that was how it felt. The short drive took too long. The Cherokee climbed up the Engleton driveway and Walt jammed the brakes. He hesitated, then shut the engine off and climbed out, running for Fiona’s front door.

  He pulled up just short of the door, his chest tight despite the fact that there were no signs of any problems here.

  He knocked lightly, and when she failed to answer, knocked louder.

  No answer.

  He called out. “Fiona! It’s me!”

  A ringing in his ears. The chorus of a summer evening: insects and frogs.

  How far to press this?

  He stepped around to the side of the cottage as a light breeze stirred the trees. The wood-slat Venetian blinds were pulled, but he pressed an eye to the edge.

  It was the sitting area. He flashed back to the two of them on the floor, her legs hooked in his, the back of her head pressed against the leg of the coffee table and thumping softly-that chortle of hers, both satisfied and amused as she arched her back, her nails digging into him. For a moment he didn’t breathe. Given the angle, he could barely make out the couch but he thought he saw her curled up on it.

  He rapped softly on the window. She’d invited him back anytime. He wanted to see her. He wanted the door opened.

  She didn’t move. Maybe it was nothing but a blanket and pillows, he thought. He went to the next window, but couldn’t get a decent angle there either. His knuckle hovered next to the glass. He withdrew it and returned to the front door and knocked lightly one last time.

  No answer.

  He faced a choice of kicking in the door or checking the area and leaving. The temptation to bust it down was overwhelming-but was it to satisfy his need or hers? Why the hell wouldn’t she answer him? Had she reconsidered? Was that even her on the couch?

  He stepped away and walked the perimeter of the cottage, then circled the main house, also dark. He knocked on the front door and the back, but was not answered. From the back patio he looked down over the small pond, its surface gentl
y stirred by the light breeze.

  He looked up the hill to the general area where he’d been standing only twenty minutes earlier. Hillabrand’s intruder would have passed through the property without going out of his way to circle well around.

  He studied the steep incline of the mountain, recalling the campsite. It seemed a plausible destination.

  He called dispatch on his radio. “Find Gilly Menquez for me. Fast.” He provided a radio channel number for Menquez to use to reach him and then switched his handheld to that channel.

  He returned to the Cherokee, not quite able to put the vehicle in gear and leave the Engleton property. He called Fiona’s cell phone for a third time. Voice mail.

  Again he fought the temptation to kick in her door. She took her privacy seriously, ardently savored her downtime. If she was staying on the couch and not coming to the door, then all his shouting in the world wouldn’t make her admit him. To violate that might create an insurmountable wall between them. Along with this came the realization his decision was not professional, but personal. He disliked himself for it. He was supposed to know better.

  He cranked the engine, put the Cherokee in gear, and backed up. His headlights suddenly illuminated a young woman-Kira Tulivich-hiding behind a tree just beyond the cottage, a baseball bat firmly in hand. She stood within striking distance of where Walt had had his face pressed to the cottage window. He felt a shiver. What the hell? He slammed on the brakes.

  But a voice called out over the police band radio. “Sheriff, we’ve been unable to raise Ranger Menquez. I called his home. His wife hasn’t heard from him. He’s late and she’s worried.”

  When Walt looked up again, Kira was gone. He accelerated and arrived at the end of the Engleton driveway. Instead of turning right toward the highway, he swung the wheel left, pointing the Cherokee up the hill in the general direction of the abandoned campsite.

  “Tell backup they’ll find my Cherokee up the old mining road across from Red Top and to catch up to me on the trail. Channel six,” he said.