The gurgling whimper.
“Okay. You do what I say, maybe I’ll let you go later. Drop you off in the woods some place.”
Liar. You’re going to kill me.
He took something from his pocket, a roll of duct tape. Tore off a piece with his teeth and stretched it tight across her mouth.
Why don’t you just get it over with? Why torture me like this?
Another piece of tape torn from the roll, larger than the first. This one, he stuck down over her eyes.
Blind, now. Mute and blind.
Another slap, not as hard, and he slid back off her.
Sounds: Him dropping out of the camper. The hinged door slamming shut. The pit bull barking again. The cab door opening, banging shut. The engine revving up, gears meshing.
And they were moving, jolting over uneven ground. Then stopping again. Then moving. Then stopping. Then moving, winding left and right over a smoother surface. The constant shifting motion bounced her up and down, but the tight-packed space held her where she lay.
Gray-wrapped, living mummy trapped in a moving sarcophagus driven by a madman.
Hot, hotter than the shed. Exhaust fumes choking the air, making breathing difficult through congested nostrils. Dulled hurt in her head, all through her body every time the wheels passed over a bump.
Bill, she thought once. And imagined his face, his hand reaching out to her. Then he was gone, swallowed by darkness.
Body and spirit seemed to separate again. The spirit once more withering, losing awareness, until she drifted into the floating limbo state-deep into it, to a place where there was no pain, no fear, only mercy.
24
It took us a while to track down Ned Verriker. The first place we went was to the sheriff’s substation, but Broxmeyer was out somewhere, and the deputy manning the desk didn’t know or wouldn’t tell us where to find Verriker.
The man Runyon had talked to in the Buckhorn Tavern last night, Ernie Stivic, seemed to be the next best bet. We hunted up a public phone booth at one of the gas stations and looked him up in the directory. Listed, but there was no answer when Runyon tried his number.
Third stop: the Green Valley Cafe again. The plump blond waitress we’d talked to earlier knew where Verriker was, but wouldn’t give out the information no matter how much we pleaded with her. “I know you’re real worried,” she said to me, “and I feel for you, but how could Ned know anything about your wife? The man’s grieving bad, just wants to be left alone.” But we did get one thing out of her, the name and address of the place where Ernie Stivic was employed-a restaurant called Burgers and More, near the high school at the north end of town. He worked there as a fry cook.
Burgers and More turned out to be a cafeteria-style restaurant, small, with a lattice-covered patio area along one side. There were no customers when we walked in, just a young tattooed guy getting the patio tables ready for the lunch trade. A second man was visible through an open kitchen window behind the service counter. Stivic. Runyon called out to him, and he came out wiping his hands on a clean apron.
Sure, he remembered Jake from the Buckhorn. Even before I opened my mouth, he knew who I was, gave me a nod of what appeared to be genuine sympathy. He was willing enough to talk until we asked him for Ned Verriker’s whereabouts, then he closed up. “I don’t know,” he said. “Ned’s in pretty bad shape. He don’t want to be bothered right now.”
“It’s important we talk to him,” I said.
“Why? He was at work all day Monday, he can’t help you find your wife.”
“We think maybe he can. Answers to a few questions is all we want from him.”
“What kind of questions?”
“The private kind. Please, Mr. Stivic. There’s a lot more at stake here than you realize.”
“Like what?”
He’d already tried what was left of my patience. Before I started snapping at him, Runyon stepped in. “Like a criminal act, maybe more than one,” he said. “That’s all we can say at this point, except that Ned Verriker hasn’t done anything wrong and we mean him no harm. All we want from him is information.”
Stivic chewed his underlip, thinking it over. “Criminal acts, huh?” he said at length.
“That’s right. You wouldn’t want to impede our investigation?”
“No, hell no. Okay. Joe Ramsey’s letting Ned stay at his cabin up at Eagle Rock Lake.”
Eagle Rock Lake was the one in the mountains south of Six Pines that Kerry and I had driven around on Sunday, a lifetime ago. A mile or so in circumference, ringed by pine forest and roughly kidney-shaped like a giant’s swimming pool. Cabins and cottages, half hidden among the trees, dotted its shoreline at widely spaced intervals.
The Ramsey cabin, Stivic had told us, was on the southeastern shore. We found it all right from his directions and description-small, plain, built of pine logs and redwood siding more than a generation past judging from the weathered look of the place, with a distinctive front door painted a rust red. A newish, dirt-streaked Ford van was parked in a cleared area in front, visible from the road, the same van that had barreled up to the scene of the conflagration on Monday afternoon and disgorged Ned Verriker. Runyon parked next to it, and we got out into blistering heat. Temperature must already be pushing ninety.
Nobody answered my raps on the door. There was a discernable path along one side; we followed that to the rear. A short dock jutted out into the glistening water, and near the end of it, a man in T-shirt and Levi’s sat in a canvas sling chair staring out at the lake. Back straight, knees and feet together, hands resting palms up on his thighs-the rigid posture of a condemned prisoner about to be executed. Runyon and I made a little noise walking out onto the spongy wooden dock, but the man didn’t seem to notice until we looped around to stand in front of him and block his view. Then he blinked and focused on us. Otherwise, he didn’t move.
He was about forty, well built, lantern-jawed, with sparse ginger-colored hair cut close to his scalp. The face that had stared out at me from the bathroom mirror this morning had been haggard enough, but Verriker’s was worse: gray and ravaged, lifeless red-rimmed eyes half buried in sacks of puckered flesh. The difference between fear of terrible loss and certain knowledge of it.
“Mr. Verriker?”
“Yeah. Who’re you? What you want?” By-rote questions, without spirit or curiosity. I answered both, but I could have told him we were space invaders from another galaxy and gotten the same lack of reaction. His obvious grief was too great to permit concern for someone else’s troubles.
“I don’t want to talk to anybody,” he said. “I lost my wife, my house, everything a couple days ago.”
“We know, and we’re sorry for your loss. But I may lose my wife, too, if we don’t find her soon. You know, if anybody does, how desperate I am.”
“I can’t do nothing for you.”
“You can answer a few questions about Pete Balfour.”
Nothing for a few seconds. Then, “What about Balfour?” in the same dull, cracked voice.
“Does he own any other property besides his place on Crooked Creek Road? Hunting camp, cabin, anything like that?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
“Know of any place he goes regularly to hunt, fish, camp?”
“No.”
“He have any relatives in the area?”
“Only relatives he’s got live under rocks.”
Runyon said, “We understand you’ve had some trouble with him.”
“I’m not the only one. He’s an asshole.”
“So we’ve heard. The Mayor of Asshole Valley.”
“Yeah.” Verriker’s mouth twitched. “I nailed him good with that.”
“And he didn’t like it.”
“Not anymore than I liked what he done to me one time.”
“What was that?”
“Tried to cheat me on some repair work.”
“Where? At your
home?”
“My home. Yeah.”
“And you confronted him,” I said. “Then what happened?”
“Come skulking around one night, slashed all the tires on my van.”
“How do you know it was Balfour?”
“Just his kind of mean trick, but I couldn’t prove it. Lied through his teeth when I called him on it.”
“Come to blows with him then, or any other time?”
“No. He won’t fight a man, always backs down.”
“But he’ll beat up on a woman.”
“His ex-wife, yeah. Goddamn coward.”
“He ever hurt another woman that you know about?”
“Never had another woman. Too ugly, too mean.”
“Violent. A violent coward.”
“Cut your throat if he thought he could get away with it.” Verriker stirred, showed a little animation for the first time. “Why you asking about Balfour? What’s he got to do with your wife being missing?”
“We don’t know that he has anything to do with it.”
“But you think he might, or you wouldn’t be here. Why?”
“He lied to us about his whereabouts the afternoon it happened. Told us he was working at the fairgrounds, but he wasn’t.”
“Where you think he was?”
“There’s an old logging road in the east hills a few miles up-valley. My wife was walking there Monday afternoon-the house we’re renting isn’t far away.”
“That’s where she disappeared?”
“Yes.”
“I know that road,” Verriker said. “Nobody uses it much anymore. Balfour wouldn’t have any reason to be up there.”
“We don’t know for sure that he was.”
Silence for a stretch of seconds. Then Verriker blinked, blinked again, and said, “Wait a minute. Monday afternoon. That’s when my house blew up, late Monday afternoon.”
I didn’t say anything. Neither did Runyon.
Verriker’s gray face was mobile now, the dead eyes alive again. He gripped the wooden arms of his chair, lifted himself to his feet. “Accident, that’s what everybody said, but I couldn’t figure how it happened. We never had any gas leaks. I checked the lines and fittings regular.”
Nothing for a few seconds, while he went on connecting the dots. Then, “That logging road runs near the south edge of my property. Be easy to slip down through the trees from the road. Easy to get inside the house, too. Nobody home during the day, nobody around.” Blood-rush had darkened Verriker’s face. He made a fist of one hand, slammed it into the palm of the other. “Balfour. He did it, didn’t he. That son of a bitch made a death trap out of my house.”
“It’s possible,” Runyon said, “but there’s no proof-”
“The hell with proof. He killed my Alice, he tried to kill me-that’s how you figure it, and how I figure it now, too. I’ll fix him, I’ll tear his fucking head off!”
Verriker pivoted away from us. Runyon and I hustled after him, got in his way as he came off the dock. I said, “No, let us handle this.”
“He murdered my wife!”
“And my wife is still missing. Balfour may be responsible for that, too, but if he is, we don’t have any idea where he might be holding her.”
“She could be dead like Alice-”
“She’s not dead. She’s alive and we’re going to find her, but it has to be done our way. I feel for you, I share your rage, but if you try to go after Balfour on your own, we’ll have to stop you.”
The words got through to him. He looked at me, at Runyon, saw that we were dead serious. Battle of wills for a few seconds, then the aggressive anger melted and he said, “All right. But I ain’t gonna sit around here doing nothing.”
“You won’t have to. You can help us.”
“How?”
“We’re going back to the fairgrounds for another talk with Balfour. You come along. We’ll put him in a three-way vise and squeeze him, hard. If he’s guilty and as much of a coward as you say he is, we’ll break him.”
Verriker thought that over, nodded. “What if he doesn’t break?”
“Then Jake will keep an eye on him and you and I’ll take our suspicions to the county law.”
“Broxmeyer? He wouldn’t listen.”
“We’re wasting time. Are you coming or not?”
“… Okay. I’ll follow you in my van-”
“No. I’ll ride with you and we’ll follow Jake.” I didn’t want him changing his mind on the way in, veering off half-cocked on his own.
He went into the cabin for his keys and we got moving. Verriker and I didn’t exchange a word on the drive into town. There was nothing more to say. From the grim set of his face, I knew the kind of thoughts that were tumbling around inside his head-they wouldn’t be much different from the ones I was having.
It was a long fifteen minutes until we trailed Runyon through the open fairground gates. When we neared the construction site, my fingers dug tight into the palms of my hands. The same two cars parked in the same spots as earlier, that was all. No sign of Balfour’s pickup.
The gray-haired Latino, Eladio Perez, and the red-haired kid were eating an early lunch in the shade under one of the trees. Runyon drove up near them, got out in a hurry. Verriker and I followed suit. I heard Jake asking where Balfour was, and Perez’s answer as I ran up.
“He leave right after you talk to him, don’t say where he goes.”
“And he hasn’t been back?”
“No. He don’t come back.”
Verriker said, “Shit!” a half-second before the same word jumped out of my mouth.
25
Balfour’s front gate was still closed and padlocked. But he’d been there. I could tell that as soon as Runyon pulled into the driveway, confirmed it when I crossed the bridge to the gate and squinted through the chain links. The doors to the workshop had been shut when we’d stopped by earlier; now they stood wide open. And there was no sign of any vehicle on the property other than the stake-bed truck. Come and gone.
Jake hurried up. He’d taken his. 357 Magnum out of the locked glove box, was stuffing it inside his belt; sunlight shone on its polymer frame. Just the two of us again-we’d sent Verriker to the sheriff’s substation, to see if Broxmeyer was back from his north valley call and if he was, to try to convince him we were right about Balfour. We didn’t tell Verriker where we were going; if the time had come to start breaking the law-and it had-it was our business.
Runyon said, “What do you think?”
“Balfour knows we’re on to him. He wouldn’t have come here if he didn’t.”
“After money, maybe, if he’s panicked enough to run.”
“And Kerry.”
“If this is where he’s been holding her.”
“Where the hell else?”
“He didn’t have to’ve taken her with him. She could still be here.”
“Pray to God he’s that scared and that stupid.”
The gate and fence were eight-feet high, but not topped by anything like barbed wire that would’ve made for a difficult climb-over. Runyon gave me a boost up; I clawed my way astride the top bar, managed to slide down the other side without doing myself any damage. I was already running toward the workshop by the time he scrambled over.
Now that we were inside, I could see that a long length of staked-down cable had been strung in the grass between the workshop and the house. Dog-run line. Runyon spotted it, too, pulled the Magnum and held it down along his leg as we ran-defense against the guard dog if it attacked us. The animal was making a hell of a racket from behind the house, but it didn’t come charging into sight. We were near the open workshop doors before I saw it: a big black-and-brown pit bull dancing around and half strangling itself in savage lunges at the end of long lead looped over the ground cable. Some sort of stake-hold in the line kept it from coming any closer than the house’s rear corner.
The workshop’s interior was cavernous, choked with the smells of heat and sawdust. The mi
ddle was open all the way to the rear, a space large enough for a couple of small trucks to park end to end. We split up to search among the rows of power tools, piles of lumber, construction business odds and ends. No sign that anyone other than Balfour had ever been in there. Both door halves standing open said that he’d driven inside today, but there was nothing I saw that told me why.
We made tracks for the house. The pit bull’s leash let it come about halfway around one side, not far enough to keep us from going up onto the porch. The animal was in a frenzy now, yowling and snarling. The collar around its neck was one of those thick spiked jobs, the lead appeared to be more of the same type of cable, and the stake-hold must have been driven deep into the ground. If the dog had any chance of tearing loose, it would’ve happened by now.
The front door was unlocked; Runyon went in first. Half a dozen rooms plus one bathroom, all of them empty, all of them cluttered and unclean. My gorge rose when I stepped into what had to have been Balfour’s bedroom, but not because of the smelly pile of unwashed clothing in one corner. The bed was a mess, blanket and sheets all twisted together. I made myself untangle them so I could examine the sheets. Gray, dirty, but without the kind of stains I dreaded finding.
Runyon was at the rear window in the other bedroom when I went in there, pulling the curtains back so he could see out. I took a look at the bed even though I knew he’d already checked it. Unmade, the bare mattress free of both stains and body marks. When I pushed down on it, a little cloud of dust puffed up. If anybody had ever lain on that mattress, it had been months, even years, ago.
Jake said my name, motioned me over to the dirt-streaked window.
I peered out. Another outbuilding sat across the rear yard to the right, small, squat, with a sheet-metal roof that threw off daggers of sunlight. Some kind of shed. A door in the facing wall stood open, but the distance and the angle of the sun kept me from seeing inside. The pit bull was back there now, racing frantically back and forth along a section of the ground cable that stretched to within a few yards of the shed; its lead was long enough to let it roam up close along the front wall.
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