“Julie,” he said quickly, “can you put me through to Lawson.”
“He’s on a conference call. Could I take a –”
“Julie, trust me. Put me through.”
"But –”
“Now.” Clay’s voice hardened so drastically that Johnny raised an inquiring eyebrow.
Ten seconds later, Lawson came on the line. “What is it?” he asked. “Taylor? News on Taylor?”
Clay made a note of mental gratitude that Lawson had not wasted time by sputtering about the interruption. This, the Lawson who had a reputation for counting billing time down to the final second. Clay felt a surge of warmth for his brother-in-law.
"No news,” Clay said, “and I appreciate your offer to take the plane up as soon as the weather breaks.”
Clay stopped to get strength. "Lawson, I think Kelsie’s been kidnapped too.”
“Hang on.”
Ten seconds.
"I’m out of the other call. You’ve got my full. attention. What in Sam –”
Clay explained as well as he could. On Clay’s end, Johnny listened impassively.
“Any of it make sense to you, Lawson?” Clay finished. “The one from before. Others killed.”
“No,” Lawson said slowly. “It doesn’t make sense to me at all. Not unless it’s a client. But even that doesn’t make sense. You know as well as I do that she didn’t do criminal law.”
“This is important,” Clay said. “And at this point, I don’t care much about ethics, legalities, or the firm’s reputation. Can you pull me a complete list of her clients? I’ll be by within the hour.” Before Lawson could answer, Clay said, “Better yet, could you pull the list and go through it first? Underline anybody you think might be off balance. And I mean anybody. We’ve got to start somewhere.”
“Yes.” Lawson’s voice was crisp. “You’ll get my list of clients too.”
Again, Clay felt warmth for his brother-in-law. It was a generous offer.
“I'm calling the sheriff next,” Clay said, then paused. The next question would hurt, especially if Lawson had the answer. “Lawson, Kelsie moved into town. But she didn’t give me her address. I’m wondering if she passed it on to you.”
There was a long pause.
“I need the sheriff to send someone over to her new place,” Clay said. “With Taylor gone, I can’t afford to believe this is anything but a kidnapping.”
“Twelve-forty McDonald Drive,” Lawson said.
Clay closed his eyes against the pain. She could tell Lawson but not him.
“Thanks,” Clay said. He felt like a punching bag with the sand draining from a hole in the bottom. “I’ll keep you up to date.”
He hung up on Lawson, not wanting to hear any pity.
“Not good,” Johnny said.
That I don’t even know where my own wife has moved? Or that she’s gone?
“Not good,” Clay said.
He dialed the sheriff’s office. It was small consolation that this might be enough to convince Brody it was time to bring in the FBI.
9:43 a.m.
The darkness continued for Taylor. Sometime after he woke, he became aware of the discomfort of his pants. His diaper was damp and cold. Usually his dad changed it.
“Me, cowboy!” Taylor shouted again and again into the darkness. That always brought his father, usually with a smile on his face. If he was nearby, he would have turned on the lights and helped Taylor with his diapers;
There was no one.
Taylor moved away from the man beneath the blanket. He pulled his pants down, which took much concentration, especially in the dark. It took him another equally long stretch of time to finally remove the diaper. He dropped it on the floor, then slowly, awkwardly pulled his pants up.
He felt his music-maker, the harmonica, in one pocket and pulled it out. He brought the harmonica to his mouth. Then he stopped. Taylor felt a knot in his stomach. He had long since eaten the other chocolate bar. Since then, no one had come by to give him something to eat.
“Me, cowboy!” he shouted. “Me, hungry!”
No one answered.
“Me, cowboy! Me, hungry!”
Taylor waited. He was beginning to feel cold.
He found the blankets again, sat down, and pulled them over his legs.
He put the harmonica to his mouth and began to blow sounds. Taylor couldn’t put his feelings into words, but he could use his heart to put it into sounds. He was sad.
9:58 a.m.
“They found Rooster’s truck near the condo?” James echoed the information.
Clay nodded. They were sitting at the kitchen table. Clay had driven down the road to speak to James in person. Where he needed to take the conversation was not something he wanted to do over the telephone.
“Sheriff said it was found a couple blocks away. His registration, Murray Paul Evans, was in it.” Clay hadn’t pressed the sheriff for more information. He knew too well how rigidly many law-enforcement men protected their territory. A retired Bureau man with a personal stake in the situation would definitely be a threat. At the Evans ranch, they’d treated him as a bystander, not someone who could help.
“Rooster? Kidnapping Kelsie?” James was asking himself the questions. “I’ve known him since grasshoppers could wrestle him to the ground. He doesn’t seem the type. On the other hand, he’s always been sweet on Kelsie. Long-suffering and sweet.”
“Well,” Clay said, “he could be the type: no mother; raised in relative isolation; time to brood and become obsessive.”
“You don’t sound a hundred percent convinced.”
“James, if he kidnapped Kelsie, he’s either stupid or doesn’t care we know he did it. Leaving his truck nearby is about as plain as writing a letter saying he did it.”
“Maybe he planned on coming back to get the truck.”
“I’ve thought about that,” Clay said. “Maybe he took her in her car because he didn’t want to risk any witnesses. Maybe he did expect to come back and get the truck before anyone knew she was gone. Maybe something happened, and he couldn’t get back in time. Or maybe someone left his truck there and wanted it to look like Rooster’s the one.”
“Then who?” James asked.
Clay stared out the window. “That’s why I’m here. There’s not much I can do myself on this, at least in terms of a physical search. The sheriff and his entire department have those kind of resources. Difficult as it is to do, I’ve got to leave it in their hands. All I can do is ask questions.”
He looked directly at James. “I’d like to know about the men in her past.”
“There was plenty she wanted to leave behind and forget.”
“I know this won’t be easy,” Clay said. “She’s your daughter. My wife. I’ll be asking you questions I never asked her. But we both want to find her, and time is precious.”
Or time doesn’t matter, Clay thought. She could already be dead.
James nodded. He looked older, grayer than he had the week before.
Clay read from his notepad. It gave them both the chance to focus on a third-party object.
“I returned to the valley in ’89.” Clay said. “Kelsie was thirty-three years old then. We married a year later.”
“A fine wedding,” James said. “You made a fine couple.”
“She was thirty-four then,” Clay wasn’t going to let this become a conversation. “I wasn’t her first boyfriend. Yet, in six years of marriage, she never once told me about any of the previous men in her life. It wasn’t my business, so I never asked. And now I’m asking.”
“I’ll do my best,” James said. It looked like it was taking the old man effort to breathe. “I know she had some difficult years.”
“Was she ever serious with anyone?”
“In college she met a fellow. Down in Great Falls. She brought him home a few weekends. I believe they meant to get engaged. He seemed like a nice enough boy.”
“And?”
“Turned out he wasn’t
as nice as it seemed. Had a drug habit.”
“So she dropped him.”
“No.” James shook his head for emphasis. “No, she definitely didn’t drop him. Fact is, when he died, it broke her heart. She quit school for a year. Doctors called it clinical depression, and they had to prescribe some fancy medication. She came back to live with me. Sometimes weeks would go by, and she wouldn’t leave the house.”
“Died,” Clay said. Watch he doesn’t kill you. Like the others before.
“From what I gathered, it was a drug overdose. The one time I tried to discuss it with her, Kelsie nearly went crazy. I had to call the doc, and he sedated her. You can see why it wasn’t something any of us talked about.”
“His name?”
"Couldn’t remember if you gave me a hundred years.”
“Would Lawson remember?” Clay asked.
James wrinkled his eyebrows in thought. “Let’s see. Kelsie was probably twenty then, which means it was seventy-seven.”
The old man did more arithmetic silently.
“No,” James concluded. “I doubt Lawson would remember. Or even knew about it. He was back east at Harvard Law School. Determined to do it on his own. He wrote me plenty wouldn’t accept help. He kept a job there, went about making a name for himself without relying on me. He was so determined to do it on his own, I can’t recall him even coming back for a visit for six or seven years, not until Michael’s funeral.”
James shook his head. “Let me tell you, that was difficult on Lawson. You probably know that he and Michael had a falling-out.”
“A little of it,” Clay said. “Kelsie hasn’t talked much about those years.”
“No one knows why they fought,” James said. “But it was an all-out fistfight outside a bar in Kalispell a few months before Lawson headed east. They simply stopped speaking to each other. I could almost see it going through Lawson’s head at Michael’s funeral, that Michael had died and they’d never resolved whatever it was that tore up their friendship.”
James grimaced. “Sorry. Old history. You’re asking me about Kelsie, and I drifted...”
“Did Kelsie have any other serious boyfriends?” Clay asked.
“I guess it depends how you define serious,” James answered. “Seems to me it was a couple years later – don’t hold me to it exactly – she did spend some time visiting a fellow in Whitefish. It was winter, and Kelsie skied Big Mountain three or four times a week, when before she skied maybe once a month. Rumors reached me about a handsome instructor. I didn’t mind, of course, because her old smile had returned. The only time I mentioned it, though, she made a big to-do about denying it.”
“You never met him?”
“Never even knew his name.”
“It ended that winter?” Clay didn’t like this, digging into his wife’s past.
“Before the end of the winter. She just stopped skiing altogether.”
It was Clay’s turn to do math. “She would have been twenty-three? Twenty-four?”
“Something like that. Whatever went wrong with the ski instructor, it put her off men. She didn’t even date for the longest time.”
James paused.
“Until...” Clay prompted.
“A rodeo cowboy. Fellow by the name of Tommy Bell. They took to each other like glue on paper. Reminded me of me and Maggie, how hot they were.” James stopped himself. “My apologies, Clay.”
“What’s past is past, James. She married me, and I’m glad for it.
Go on.”
James rubbed his face. It took several moments before he said, “Tommy died too. He died with Michael in the whitewater rafting accident. They’d become good friends. They found Tommy’s body. Michael’s” – James looked away – “Well, Kelsie probably told you. They figured he got wedged in some of the underwater boulders.”
Kelsie hadn’t told him the details of Michael’s death. Early in their courtship, Clay had once asked her about Michael. She visibly tensed and asked Clay not to mention the subject. They had ended the evening early, and a week had passed before she returned Clay’s call.
Watch he doesn’t kill you. Like the others before.
“She was in her late twenties,” Clay said, wanting confirmation.
“Around that. Out of law school by then. She really threw herself into work.”
“Any other boyfriends after Tommy?”
“Not until you returned.”
“Did her choice surprise you?”
“She needed someone rock steady, Clay. I was glad for her. And for you. Things seemed pretty good.”
Things had been good, Clay remembered, until Taylor was born with an extra chromosome. Then she gradually hardened. The office began to take more of her time and home less. Passion eroded to obligation. It became Clay and his little cowboy – his missing little cowboy – with her on the outside.
“You know she moved out,” Clay said. “Last Sunday.”
“She told me yesterday morning when you called about Taylor. She wanted to talk to me about Emerald Canyon. You know anything about that?”
“No,” Clay said. “You think it has anything to do with her kidnapping?”
“I doubt it.” James hesitated, as if he was going to say something else. He shut his mouth, opened it again. “When you find her, you going to stay with my daughter?”
Clay thought of the nights Kelsie had been gone, of the evasive answers she had given him. In her desperate message, she hadn’t said anything about loving him.
“Yes,” Clay finally said. “If she agrees, I’ll go the distance. She’s my wife.”
“Love?” the old rancher asked. “Or Christian duty?”
“How do you separate one from the other?” Clay said. Not that, at this point, he could answer the question himself.
Their silence became uncomfortable.
“Well,” Clay finally said, standing, “I’ve got to keep moving.”
James nodded, not asking Clay about his plans.
Clay did not want to explain, for then he would have to explain his suspicions about Kelsie, suspicions that meant he was going to have to go through the contents of Kelsie’s office. The sheriff might have already been there, but Clay doubted it. The sheriff had no reason to suspect Kelsie had been hiding something. The sheriff had no reason to suspect Kelsie had another man in her life, one who might be involved in the kidnapping and at the very least might have some answers.
Clay, however, wondered if Kelsie was having an affair. He wasn’t sure he wanted to find proof of it in her once or anywhere else.
11:59 a.m.
“Julie, I hope you don’t mind.” Clay stood in the reception area of the law firm. He held a file folder in his hand, one she had handed him. “I need to spend time in Kelsie’s office.”
“No, no, no,” Julie said quickly. “I don’t mind at all.”
Julie was short, brown-haired, and happily pregnant. She was also regarding Clay with the sort of expression saved for recent widowers. That, along with the nervous pity in her voice, meant Lawson must have told her some of why Clay had needed the file.
She busied herself by shuffling the papers on her desk as he walked past her. Clay’s only relief was the fact that Lawson was engaged in another conference call. Grateful as Clay was for Lawson’s help, he didn’t want to talk to anyone at this point.
Down the hallway, he turned into Kelsie’s office. He shut the door behind him, locked it, and surveyed the room.
Her desk – large, gleaming walnut – was bare, except for a stack of file folders of what Clay assumed contained ongoing legal work. Her telephone and computer monitor rested on an attached side desk. Clay knew Kelsie’s work habits. She liked the sense of control given by having only one file open and spread out on her desk at any given time. At the end of the day, she would neatly return all the paperwork to an unfinished file, with careful notes attached to break down her billing time to that point. She had not returned to the office that morning; no files had been opene
d on the polished desktop.
The rest of the office was like any other law office in the country, with bookshelves, diplomas, and two chairs opposite Kelsie’s desk for clients. Unlike any other law office, this one, though, held an eight-by-ten framed photo of Kelsie, Taylor, and Clay taken after church one afternoon in sunshine on the front yard of James McNeill’s house. A much happier day than this one, Clay thought. Alongside that photo was one other, showing a much younger James McNeill, along with Lawson, Michael, and Rooster Evans, grinning proudly in front of an airplane they purchased together, their youth emphasized by bell-bottom blue jeans and long hair.
Despite the legitimacy of his visit, Clay felt vaguely guilty to be stepping uninvited into Kelsie’s domain. He would need to go through her diary and her desk, looking for any clues that might explain recent events. Clay could not shake his nagging doubts about their relationship; given the opportunity, a jealous husband would be doing exactly this, checking on his wife for any signs of an affair.
To prove to himself he was not a suspicious husband, he stayed away from her Daytimer, although it would have been his first step as an investigating official. The Daytimer would give him a list of strangers and friends she had seen, a list of people to call with questions.
He should be going through her desk, too, looking for anything unusual. Was he afraid of what he might find? Or who he might find in her life?
Clay stared sightlessly at the bookshelf against the far wall. Suddenly an object came into focus: an antique music box on the top shelf, with a lid that opened to store jewelry in the velvet lining inside. Kelsie had inherited the music box from her mother. Once, during an afternoon when Clay had helped Kelsie rearrange the furniture in the office, she'd wound it. After opening and closing the lid, the tiny ballerina on top turned on a spindle to the tune of “Waltz of the Flowers” from The Nutcracker.
The music box seemed out of place. Aside from the family portrait – and Clay wondered if it was displayed for clients’ benefit – the music box was the only sentimental object in the office. Clay believed he understood why. Kelsie had had a very special relationship with her mother. One afternoon, she had played her dancer again and again, telling Clay childhood stories he’d never heard from her before. Staring at the music box, it occurred to Clay that he could not recall that Kelsie possessed any other object from her life before they had met and married.
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