The Loner

by Geralyn Dawson

Ellen wrinkled her nose. "Well, I don't like it. He might have a right to be a bit peeved, but honestly, Caroline. Your motives were pure. And that tornado... How frightened you must have been."

  "Ellen...I had relations with him."

  Ellen nearly dropped the cup she was holding. After a moment of shocked silence, she whispered, "Before or after the truth came out?"

  "Before."

  "Oh, Caroline."

  "I didn't mean for it to happen. It just.. .did."

  "You're still in love with him."

  "No!"

  "I know you, Caroline. You wouldn't have done that with him if you didn't have feelings for him."

  "You're right." Caroline's shoulders slumped and she grimaced. "It's all a mess. Honestly, I can't put a word on what's in my heart right now. The tornado changed everything. I was scared, Ellen, but Logan was so protective. I trusted him. I knew in my heart that he'd keep me safe."

  "What does your heart tell you about Will? Do you think he'll find him?"

  "I'll find him." Logan strode into the room carrying a ball glove. "Is this what he headed home to get? It was sitting on a shelf in his bedroom."

  "Yes."

  "So he never made it home," Caroline observed, her gaze locked on the worn and tattered baseball mitt. The memory of the visit to the General Store with Logan floated through her mind and her heart twisted.

  "It's hard to tell. I see no obvious signs of struggle or intrusion, but this isn't my house. You'll need to take a look around and see if you notice anything different or out of place."

  Well. Apparently he was speaking to her again. At least to give her orders. Caroline smothered the urge to stick out her tongue at him, reminding herself that she needed him and his expertise more than ever.

  "Mrs. Glazier, was your husband at your house when the boys decided to play catch?"

  "No, he was still at work."

  "Then I'd like to go ahead and get started. Would you please describe the events as they happened, providing as much detail as you can recall?"

  Ellen nodded and took a sip of her tea, collecting her thoughts. "Storms blew through three afternoons straight. While rain is always a blessing in this part of the world, it does tend to make the children stir-crazy. When the boys came home from school, they were raring to go. They intended to take the horses out onto the prairie for a run, when another boy from school came by the house with word that their friends were gathering at the school yard to play baseball. Our boys decided to go."

  "What time of the day was this?" Logan asked.

  "Between four and four-thirty."

  "Will and your son left the house together?"

  "They did. Danny said they walked together as far as the Baptist Church before splitting up."

  "I'll ask your Danny to describe what happened after that," Logan said. Glancing at Caroline, he asked, "Do you have a street map of town?"

  "No, but I can draw one."

  He nodded, then addressed Ellen once again. "At what point did you learn that Will had gone missing?"

  "Well, not until Danny came home looking for Will a couple hours later. He'd never showed up at the school yard and they played the game without him. At that point, Danny, his father and I started looking for Will around town. We figured he had met up with another friend and decided to do something else. That sort of thing has happened before. No one grew particularly worried until he failed to come home at dark. When he wasn't home by ten, we called out the sheriff."

  Ellen reached for Caroline's hand. "I'm so sorry we didn't realize sooner that he had disappeared. I feel so awful, Caroline. He was my responsibility."

  "Please stop, Ellen. I would have done the exact thing you did. I've never thought twice about allowing Will the freedom to roam. Artesia is—or has been, anyway— a safe place for our children. How many times have our boys gone off on an after-school adventure and lost track of time? You had no reason to think this was anything different."

  Ellen blinked back tears and squeezed Caroline's hand, a silent thank-you. Logan continued his questioning, asking details about the search. Ellen was describing the search grids when Dan and Danny arrived.

  The boy took one look at Logan and fainted dead away.

  He knows something.

  Logan sat back and waited while Caroline and the Glaziers fussed over the boy. For the first time since arriving in town, he harbored a measure of hope. The boy knew something, and once he pried the information out of him, Logan would have a place to start looking. Will was still alive; he knew it in his bones.

  Ellen Glazier gave her son a glass of water as his father helped him into a chair. "Have you eaten today, son?" Dan asked after Danny had gulped down half a glass of water.

  "No, sir. I'm just not hungry."

  "Ellen, fix Danny a sandwich." As his wife bustled to make their son a sandwich, Dan Glazier continued, "Son, I know you are worried about Will, but making yourself sick over it isn't going to help. I know you want to help."

  "Yessir."

  "Then you need to eat."

  "Yessir."

  Dan nodded, then said, "Now, introduce yourself to Will's father, Mr. Grey."

  Danny set down his glass and rose to his feet. He wiped his hand on his shirt leaving a smudge of dirt behind, then held it out to Logan. "Pleased to meet you, sir. I'm Danny."

  Logan shook his hand and wondered if anyone else noted that the boy didn't meet his eyes. "Hello, Danny. I understand you are my son's best friend."

  "Yessir."

  Ellen Glazier set a ham sandwich in front of her son, and Logan gave him time to eat. For a kid who wasn't hungry, Danny chowed down on his food, disposing of half the sandwich in three big bites. When his mother set a glass of milk in front of him, he drained it in a single gulp.

  Logan grinned at Danny's father. "What is he like when he is hungry?"

  The adults all smiled, and when Logan judged the boy to have boosted his constitution adequately, he said, "I'd like you to tell me what happened when you and Will left your house to play baseball that afternoon."

  Danny stopped chewing midbite. Then he swallowed hard. "Sure thing, Mr. Grey. We was going to play ball."

  "We were going to play," his mother corrected.

  "Will hadn't brought his mitt along to my house, so he wanted to go home to get it. I went on to the school and we started playing without him." He set down his sandwich and added, "I was mad at him for being so late. I thought he ditched me for something more fun."

  "I understand," Logan responded. He did not, however, believe the boy.

  Caroline asked, "Did he seem upset about anything, Danny?"

  "No, ma'am." He darted a look at Logan. "He was looking forward to meeting his pa."

  "Was he really?" Logan resisted the urge to glare at Caroline. She'd be expecting it, and he found he preferred to keep her guessing.

  He was rather curious about how she had intended to pull off that feat when she'd first instigated her plan. At some point she would have had to tell him she'd sent him looking for Ben Whitaker rather than his son.

  That was a question for another time, however. Now he needed to deal with young Danny, so he addressed the boy's father. "I'd like to walk the route between here, the schoolhouse and your home, and I'd like your son to act as my guide. Is that all right with you?"

  "Sure. Anything we can do to help." Dan slapped his son on the shoulder. "Right, Danny?"

  "Right," the boy replied, though his smile looked a shade sickly to Logan.

  "Caroline, while I'm gone I need you to search this house from top to bottom looking for anything at all that is missing or out of place. Check everything from Will's dirty clothes hamper to the number of pickle jars in the pantry. See if he might have taken anything with him."

  "All right."

  "Is there anything you'd like us to do?" Ellen Glazier asked.

  Logan nodded. "I need to speak with your sheriff and any other official who was involved with the search. Perhaps you could arra
nge a meeting with them for me? Say in about an hour?

  "Be glad to handle it," Dan replied.

  "Thanks. Danny, you ready?"

  He nodded and stood and shuffled out the door. The minute they stepped outside, Danny shoved his hands in his pockets. He scuffed his shoes with every step. Logan might not be an expert on kids, but he knew how a guilty teenage boy acted. He could all but hear Nana Nellie's voice in his mind. What has your dauber down, Lucky? Pick your feet up and stand up straight.

  "So, you like baseball?" he began as they turned north onto the street. "What position do you play?"

  "Catcher."

  Logan pursed his lips and nodded sagely. "Important position, catcher. You must have an arm."

  "I can throw," the boy replied, shrugging.

  "What sort of arm does Will have?"

  "He's all right, but he's real good with a bat. Will is strong. He can hit a ball like nobody's business."

  Strength is good. The boy might need it.

  At the first intersection, Danny paused. "Do you want to see the school or my house first?"

  "The school yard, I believe. Unless..." Logan stuffed his hands in his pockets, too, and adopted a casual tone. "You know, when I was about your age, my best friends and I had a special place. A secret hideout. I don't suppose you and Will have a spot like that?"

  Danny Glazier blinked. "We have a fort, but he's not there, Mr. Grey."

  "You checked it?"

  "Um...yeah."

  Another lie. "I'd still like to see it. I might pick up a clue or two. I'm a range detective, and I'm excellent at tracking people. Did you know that?"

  He nodded. "Will has newspaper clippings about you. Did you really track the Burrows gang all the way to Wyoming?"

  Logan thought of the scrapbook he'd found in Will's room. That he'd shared the stories with his friend gave Logan a warm feeling inside. "I did. I'm smart, Danny, and I'm very good at what I do. I could track a minnow through a swamp. On top of that, I'm the luckiest man in Texas. I will find my son. You can count on it. Show me your fort, Danny. I'll keep your secret."

  The boy frowned and tugged at his earlobe. Logan pressed the point by adding, "You can trust me."

  After a long moment, the boy sighed heavily. "It's down along the creek that runs behind Will's house. It's not really a fort...more just a shack we've built from scraps. We go down there and gig frogs and catch crawdads. If my ma finds out about it, she'll tan my hide. She worries about snakes."

  "Women tend to do that." Logan held the rest of his comments and questions as he followed the boy across a stretch of vacant lots toward a tree-lined creek bank. At the first sight of the shack, he grinned. The structure looked eerily similar to something he, Cade and Holt had built years ago.

  Danny fished a key from his pocket and slipped it into the padlock on the shack's door. "I don't know why we keep it locked. We don't have nothin' that's worth anything inside."

  "My friends and I kept our hideout locked to keep the girls out." He gave the boy a wink, then added, "Later on, we invited them in."

  Danny's face flushed, the tips of his ears turning beet-red as he busied himself opening the shack's door.

  Logan ducked inside. A quick glance around revealed a couple of bedrolls, a lamp, cane fishing poles and a bag of marbles. Marbles. Perfect. Except, he needed more room.

  He scooped up the bag of marbles and carried them outside, where he hunkered down beside the creek. "How about a game of square ring?"

  Danny hesitated. "Don't you need to look around and search for clues?"

  "I have time." Logan knelt on one knee and drew a square in the dirt. He spilled the marbles onto the ground outside the circle and gestured for Danny to make his choice. Taking turns, they divided up the marbles. Logan chose a gold-banded aggie as his shooter, then placed a marble in each corner of the square and one in the middle.

  Danny chose a jade-green sphere for his shooter, then placed marbles beside Logan's inside the square. "You want to lag for who goes first?"

  "Sure."

  Danny drew a line some ten feet away. On his hands and knees, Logan took aim and flicked his shooter out of his fist with his thumb. It stopped six inches from the line. Danny's shot halted within an inch.

  "You're up," Logan told the boy.

  He waited as Danny made his first shot, sending one marble out of the northeast corner and leaving his shooter inside the square. The second shot cleared the southwest corner, but the shooter stopped outside the square making it Logan's turn to shoot. As he eyed his shot, he casually asked, "What really happened that afternoon, Danny?"

  "'Scuse me?"

  Logan knocked two marbles out of the box. His shooter stayed inside. "You know why I have the nickname Lucky? It's because I have a sixth sense that warns me when something isn't right. My sixth sense started talking to me the minute you walked into my wife's kitchen."

  The boy neither spoke nor lifted his gaze from the marble game.

  Logan took another shot and a blue aggie rolled out of the square. "You and Will didn't split up and go your separate ways, did you, son?"

  The boy's tone betrayed a slight note of panic as he said, "Yes, we did. It happened just like I said."

  Logan rolled back on his heels and pinned Danny Glazier with a piercing stare. "Why would you lie about your best friend, I wonder? Put him in danger?"

  "I'm not lying!"

  "I suspect you have powerful motives, and I reckon those would go two ways. Either you made a promise you don't want to break or you're being threatened in some way."

  Danny tossed down his marbles and scrambled to his feet. "You're crazy. I'm not going to talk to you."

  "Sit down, Dan," Logan ordered in a tone that brooked no argument.

  "You can't make me. You're not my father!"

  "That's right." Logan rose and braced his hands on his hips. "I'm not your father. I'm Will's father and I'll do any thing... anything... to bring him home. Now, I didn't want to threaten you, son, but you need to understand that I mean business."

  At the word threaten the boy's eyes went round and fearful. His breaths came as shallow pants. "You have it all wrong."

  "Then make me understand."

  "You don't know what you're doing. Can't you just leave it alone!"

  "He's my son."

  "And he's going to be all right! If we just leave things alone, Will is gonna be just fine. He swore it."

  "Will swore it?"

  "No. The man who—" Danny broke off abruptly when he realized what he'd just said. "Oh, no. No." He dropped his chin to his chest and linked his hands behind his head. "Dear Jesus God."

  "He isn't here to save you right at the moment, so I suggest you start talkin'."

  But Danny Glazier had another round of resistance in him. "The man from the Wild West Show. He came through town looking to hire marksmen for the show. Once he saw Will shoot, he hired him on the spot."

  Logan stared at the boy for a few beats, then grinned. "I like you, Dan. Damned if I don't. You've given it a good effort. However, it's time to let it go. Tell me about the man."

  When the tears pooled, then overflowed, Logan knew the boy had broken. Considering the circumstances, the words Danny finally spilled didn't shock him or even surprise him. They did, however, make Logan go grim.

  "He said he'd kill my ma if I told. He told me how he'd do it. It was.. .awful. I gotta protect her, Mr. Grey."

  The mother.. .of course. The one thing the kid would protect at all costs. "No one is going to hurt your mother, Dan. You have my word on that. Who was he?"

  "I don't know his name. He isn't from around here, Mr. Grey. But, I don't know about my mom. I think he could get her. He said he killed Mrs. Whitaker, that he pushed her down the stairs and that no one is the wiser and if I didn't keep my trap shut he'd see to it that my ma got the same treatment as her!"

  "Tell me exactly what happened."

  Dan swiped the back of his hand across his cheeks, wiping away t
he tears. "My ma..."

  "He'll never get close to her, Dan. Look at me." Logan waited until the boy had met his gaze. "He's a dead man. The moment he laid a hand on my boy, he forfeited his life. You hear me?"

  Danny stood frozen for a long moment, then as Logan's vow seeped in, his tension drained like beer from a brand-new tap. "You won't let him near my ma?"

  "That's right."

  "Nothing against my pa, but he's a lawyer. He'd want to arrest him and put him on trial and send him to jail. Mr. Grey, I looked that man in the eyes. The only time he won't be a danger to my family is when he's in the grave."

  "I respect the law, Dan. One of my best friends is a Texas Ranger. But a big chunk of Texas is still as wild and uncivilized as a peach-orchard boar. Out there, men like myself sometimes have to take a shortcut to justice."

  "Sometimes range detectives put men in jail."

  As much as Logan wanted to push him, he could tell the boy needed the extra reassurance. He swallowed his impatience and said, "Not this time. He confessed to murder and he's guilty of kidnapping. He's earned a death sentence and I aim to carry it out."

  Danny gave his eyes another wipe, then began his story. "I didn't go on to the school yard like I said. That was a lie. I went home with Will and we walked inside and there was a man sitting at the dining room table drinking a glass of Mr. Ben's best whiskey. He looked at Will and then at me and said, 'Which one of you is Ben Whitaker's grandson, Will?'"

  The boy closed his eyes and shook his head. "I've been thinking ever since that I should have said it was me. Maybe we could have confused him and distracted him and somehow got away. But for a minute there, we thought maybe Ben had come home. We thought maybe he was a friend of Ben's. After all, he was in his house and making free with his whiskey."

  "That's understandable," Logan said in an effort to encourage.

  "Will stepped forward and said, 'I'm Will,' and then—" Danny blew out a heavy sigh "—the man stepped forward like he was going to shake Will's hand but instead he drew his gun and put the barrel right up against Will's head."

  Bastard is dead, Logan silently repeated. Stone-cold dead.

  Danny continued, "That's when he looked at me and asked me my name. Again, I did the stupid thing and told the truth. He said, 'Here's the deal, Danny Glazier. I need Ben Whitaker's help with something and he's not cooperating. Will is gonna come along with me and help the old man to listen to reason.'"