“We’ll get it out of him,” I said grimly, “one way or another.”
The distant sound of a car engine cut through the stillness. We stayed put with the torches switched off as headlights flickered through the trees and the vehicle rattled past heading south. Passenger car of some kind, not a sheriff’s cruiser. We waited another few seconds after its taillights disappeared before we hurried out along the road.
In the frigging perverse way of things, that car and those couple of waiting minutes cost us dearly. Because we’d just reached the driveway when the muffled popping noise came from inside the cabin.
Once you’ve heard a gun go off in a closed space, you never mistake the sound for something else. It had the surge effect on us of a track starter’s pistol firing: we both broke immediately into a run, Runyon dragging the Magnum free from his belt. He was a couple of paces ahead of me when we pounded up to the door. Closed, the way we’d left it; he twisted the knob, shoved it wide, and went in in a shooter’s crouch with me crowding up behind.
Sweet Christ!
Balfour was on the floor, one side of his neck a gushing red ruin, the pole lamp toppled into a slant across his body. A few feet away, Verriker stood staring down at him with a long-barreled target pistol in one hand.
Runyon shouted, “Put it down, Verriker! Now!”
Verriker must have obeyed, but I didn’t see him do it. I was past Runyon by then and down on one knee next to Balfour. Still alive, but the way the blood was pumping out of the wound, he wouldn’t be for long; the bullet must have clipped his carotid artery. There wasn’t anything I could do, anybody could do.
He clawed at his neck, the whites of his eyes showing, bubbling sounds coming out of him that made the blood froth on his mouth. But not just sounds-a disconnected jumble of words. I could make out some of them when I leaned forward.
“… bastards… payback… asshole valley…”
A strangled noise then, that might have been laughter. Another word that sounded like “hellbox.” Then his body convulsed, jacknifed upward, fell back. And the wound quit spurting.
Our luck had just run out.
I scrambled back away from the body, staggered upright, sidestepped the spreading blood pool, and went after Verriker. Not thinking, goaded into action by a raging stew of emotions. Runyon had stripped Verriker of the target pistol, had it in his left hand, the Magnum still clenched in his right… two-gun Jake. He saw me coming, tried to stand in my way, but I dodged around him. Verriker was backpedaling, but he didn’t have any place to go; I got my hands on him, drove him up hard against the fieldstone fireplace.
“No, listen, he tried to jump me, I had to protect myself-”
I hit him. Looping right, not quite flush on the temple. His head whacked into the stones, bringing a grunt out of him and buckling his knees; his sagging weight broke my grip. I let him fall, stood over him with my fists clenched.
He wasn’t badly hurt. He shook himself, then crawled away until he was sitting with his back against a low burl table. “Self-defense,” he said heavily, “it was self-defense. He didn’t give me any choice.”
Runyon had come up beside me, the guns put away and his hands free. “Balfour?”
“Dead.”
He said to Verriker, “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from him?”
“He started calling me names, yelling crazy stuff.” Talking to the floor, his chin down on his chest. “I wanted to shut him up, that’s all, but I got too close and he jumped up and swung the lamp at me. I had to defend myself, didn’t I?”
“Where’d the gun come from?”
“It’s mine, I keep it in my van. Figured I might need some protection tonight-”
“Protection, hell,” I said. “You snuck it in here hoping you’d have a chance to use it.”
“No, I told you, it was self-defense…”
He’d probably get away with that claim, true or not, with no witness to dispute it. I didn’t care about that, it just didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was Balfour lying over there dead.
Verriker lifted his head, looked up at me with dull eyes. “I’m not gonna say I’m sorry. He killed my wife.”
“Yeah, and you may have just killed mine.”
28
JAKE RUNYON
Morning.
After a long, bad night. Two and a half more hours at Eagle Rock Lake with Verriker, Deputy Broxmeyer, and a crew of other sheriff’s department people. Another hour at the Six Pines substation with a departmental investigator from the county seat named Sadler. Questions and more questions, a lot of finger-pointing and milling and scrambling around that didn’t lead anywhere because nobody knew what the hell to do about Kerry. The FBI? Sadler hemmed and hawed on finally calling them in. They still weren’t completely convinced Balfour had abducted her. And even if they had been, there was the usual jurisdictional bullshit: county law, especially small county law, always balked at relinquishing control to the feds because they usually got trampled when the FBI took over. Sadler did say he’d notified the ATF of the illegal weapons stash in Balfour’s camper, but the ATF wasn’t in a position to do Kerry a damn bit of good.
To make matters worse, the local law was miffed at the way Bill and Runyon had handled things, berating them for not reporting immediately after they’d caught Balfour. But there was as much embarrassment and frustration at the department’s own bungling mixed in, at least on Broxmeyer’s part, and enough concern for Kerry and how the media would react to the whole sorry business, to keep the browbeating to a minimum.
Verriker had been arrested, mandatory in a fatal shooting without eyewitnesses. But as far as the law was aware, he and Balfour were the only ones who’d broken any laws. There was no real cause to hold Runyon and Bill, so they’d finally been released. With nowhere to go at three A.M. except back to the rented house.
By then, Bill seemed to have settled into a zombielike melancholy, staring glassily into space and not tracking well, his voice flat and lifeless when he spoke at all. Plain enough that he blamed himself for leaving Verriker alone with Balfour, just as he blamed himself for not searching Balfour’s property sooner; Runyon bore the same guilty weight. But at the same time, he knew they’d handled the situation as best they could under the circumstances, with their focus on finding Kerry and their emotions in turmoil. There just hadn’t been any warning signs that Verriker might’ve smuggled in a gun or that he’d wanted revenge on Balfour as much as Balfour wanted it on him.
Bill had almost literally collapsed into bed when they got back to the house. Exhausted. Sick, too, maybe. His color wasn’t good, his breathing heavy and labored.
As tired as Runyon was, he couldn’t sleep except in fitful dozes. Once he got up to make sure Bill was all right. The rest of the time he lay staring into the darkness, listening to the throbbing night rhythms of crickets and tree frogs and sorting through the fragments of information they had on Balfour.
The dark gray, sticky stuff on Balfour’s fingers and the pickup’s steering wheel. Nobody had been able to identify it. It wasn’t mud, and there were no clay deposits in the area. Broxmeyer: “It looks like modeling clay.” Being sent out for analysis ASAP, but with the holiday weekend, that meant sometime next week at the soonest.
The sawdust on Balfour’s pant leg. He’d worked construction and lived and traveled within hundreds of square miles of timberland. He could have picked it up kneeling anywhere.
His dying words. “Bastards. Payback. Asshole valley. Hellbox.” Bill was sure of all the words but the last. And fairly sure that Balfour had laughed with his final breath. None of it seemed to make much sense. Bastards… Runyon and Bill and Verriker? What kind of payback? Did “asshole valley” refer to the mayor tag Verriker had hung on him, or to Green Valley? Assume Bill had heard correctly and “hellbox” was the last word Balfour had uttered. A hellbox was a receptacle where old-fashioned cast-metal type was tossed after printing, but an uneducated carpenter and handyman wasn’t likely
to have known that. What else was a hellbox? That sheet metal-roofed shed where he’d kept Kerry was a hellbox in the middle of a hot summer, but even if that was how Balfour had thought of it, why would he say the word? And why would he laugh with his last breath?
Runyon sifted through what else they knew about the man. Dishonest loner at odds with most of those who knew him, wife abuser, coward. Paranoid psychotic driven by hatred and revenge. Devious schemer: the blowing up of the Verrikers’ home, the attempt on Verriker’s life, the camper full of survival gear and weaponry… and the probable secret he’d been harboring that had kept him from breaking under pressure at the cabin. Kidnapper, but not by design-he’d grabbed Kerry because she’d seen him coming back from rigging the gas leak, an act of panic.
Why had he held her captive for four days? The obvious answer was rape, torture, only that didn’t fit the revenge-obsessed profile. The fact that Balfour had beaten his ex-wife didn’t necessarily make him a sexual sadist. If anything, according to those who knew him, he seemed to have shunned relationships with women. Kept Kerry as some kind of sick trophy? That didn’t fit his profile, either. Unsure of what to do with her or her body? Squeamish about murdering a stranger in cold blood?
Pretty obvious why he’d taken her out of the shed yesterday morning: hadn’t wanted her found there, alive or dead. All right, but why the decision to run in the first place? There was no proof that he’d booby-trapped the Verriker house, and if Verriker had been alone at the lake cabin and Balfour had succeeded in killing him, no proof that Balfour was the guilty party. Another panic reaction, maybe. Except that his actions yesterday and last night had been too calculated. The decision had to be connected to, or motivated by, whatever he’d been up to during the ten to twelve hours he’d been missing yesterday.
He’d kept Kerry in the camper for most of that time-the odor wouldn’t have permeated everything inside the cramped space if she’d only been in there a short time. As a hostage, as they’d surmised? Or for some other reason that was also connected to that secret plan of his? Wherever he’d left her, it couldn’t have been very long before he showed up at the cabin or very far from Eagle Rock Lake…
Runyon had had enough of the lumpy bed. His watch told him it was a little after seven-time to be up and moving. The plumbing in the adjacent bathroom made loud grumbling noises; when he was done in there, he went again for a quick check on Bill. Still asleep in the same facedown sprawl, his breathing heavy, congestive. He needed to see a doctor pretty soon, before he suffered a complete breakdown.
In the kitchen, Runyon slaked his thirst with a glass of cold water from the fridge. He knew he should eat, but he would have choked on anything solid he tried to swallow. He went back through the living room, out onto the front deck.
Still early-morning cool, but the clouds were gone, and already there was a whitish dazzle in the blue overhead. You could feel the heat gathering. Another sweltering day coming up, probably hotter than yesterday.
But he didn’t want to think about that. He sat at the table, his hands flat on the cold glass top, and stared out over the valley without seeing any of it. Going over the Balfour fragments yet again, trying to shape them into a pattern that had some meaning.
Psychotic driven by hate and hunger for vengeance. Rigged the explosion that killed Verriker’s wife. Tried to kill Verriker before heading for the backwoods with an arsenal of weapons.
Drove around with Kerry in that camper of his for half of another day before leaving her somewhere. Had to be a purpose in that. Nothing else he’d done had been aimless, unplanned.
Sticky gray substance that wasn’t clay or mud. And couldn’t have been on his hands or the steering wheel very long.
Sawdust.
Payback. Asshole valley.
Hellbox.
The pieces were like parts in a disassembled template that wouldn’t connect. He strained to get a mental grip on them, manipulate and force them together. They kept glancing off each other, as if the pieces were antimagnetized.
Payback. Asshole Valley.
Dark gray stuff that looked and felt like modeling clay.
Sawdust.
Hellbox.
Last breath, last laugh From somewhere down on the road below, a sudden series of popping noises disturbed the morning stillness. Runyon tensed until he identified the sounds: a string of firecrackers going off. Undisciplined kids getting an early start on the Fourth. He’d almost forgotten the holiday, the big celebration coming up in Six Pines. Parade, picnic, speeches, fireworks Fireworks.
Explosions.
Explosive devices.
He went rigid. And the pieces came flying together like digital images interlocking, until they formed the template of Balfour’s last planned act of vengeance. Insane, monstrous, but the pieces fit too well, explained too many things, for it not to be right.
Runyon stood so suddenly that the chair went skidding backward, toppled over. He ran inside, back to the master bedroom. Caught Bill’s shoulder and shook him, lightly at first, then harder.
“Wake up, Bill. Wake up.”
Bill’s eyes flicked open, blinking up half focused and groggy. But the grogginess lasted only a few seconds; he threw it off as if it were a heavy blanket, sat up scraping a hand over his face. “What is it? You’ve heard something?”
“No,” Runyon said, “but I think I may have figured out what Balfour was up to last night.”
“My God, Jake… you mean what he did with Kerry?”
“If I’m right, yes. He was crazier than any of us realized. It wasn’t just Verriker he hated and wanted revenge against, it was everybody in Green Valley. Asshole Valley to him. Pay back Asshole Valley for all the ridicule heaped on him… that’s what his dying words meant.”
“But how-?”
“That stuff on his hands… malleable plastic explosive, probably some crude homemade version of C-4 or Semtex. Got it from whoever supplied him with the illegal weapons. Rigged another explosive death trap last night, only this one in a place where it’d take out a whole bunch of people.”
Bill saw it, too, now. He was off the bed, scrambling into his pants. “The fairgrounds. Somewhere under the grandstand…”
“No. Too open, too much chance of it being spotted.”
“Then… Christ! That storage unit on the construction site.”
“Has to be. The repair work was finished last night, there wouldn’t’ve been time to have the unit hauled away. That’s where the sawdust came from, that’s what Balfour meant by hellbox.”
“And where he left Kerry. Holy Mother, inside a hellbox packed with explosives!”
29
I was wild to get out of there, get to Six Pines. I tried to push past Runyon, but he blocked the doorway with his big body.
“Stay calm,” he said. “Call the law before we do anything else, get a bomb squad out to the fairgrounds-”
“No. Broxmeyer won’t be at the substation and Sadler’s back in the county seat by now-we’d have to track them down, try to convince them. Closest bomb squad is probably Sacramento. All of that could take hours.”
“We can’t just go bulling in there on our own.”
“The hell we can’t. We’ve got to get her out of that death trap now.”
“Fairgrounds won’t be open yet. It’s barely seven-thirty.”
“Climb the goddamn fence-”
“There’ll be people around, getting ready for the parade. And we’d need a key to the unit. Broxmeyer has Balfour’s keys, or Sadler does-”
“Somebody else has keys. His helper, Perez.”
I shook off Runyon’s hand, shouldered past him, and ran into the kitchen. There was a phone book on the counter; I grabbed it up. Two years old. But if Perez was listed, the number might still be good.
There was a listing, with an address in Six Pines. I fumbled in my pockets, didn’t find my cell-couldn’t remember what the hell I’d done with it. But I didn’t need it; Runyon, grim-faced, had his out and flipp
ed open. I read off the number, and he punched it in. While he waited for an answer, I stuck my head under the sink faucet and flipped on the cold-water tap. The chill shock cleared the last of the fuzz out of my head.
I grabbed a dishtowel to dry off, took the phone from Jake just as the line clicked open. A woman’s voice chattered at me in Spanish, grumbling shrewishly about being woken up at such an early hour.
My command of the language is pretty fair, if rusty from disuse. I dredged up phrases, said them in loud and imperative tones. “Eladio Perez, por favor. Es muy importante. Una cuestion de vida o muerte.”
That got through to her. She shut up for a couple of seconds. Then, “?Quien esta llamando?”
“Digale el detective cuya esposa falta.”
“Ah, si, si. Momentito.”
Five, ten, fifteen seconds. Then Eladio Perez’s voice said, “Yes, senor, I remember you. What is it you want?”
I told him. Yes, he had keys to the main gate and another to a gate on the west side. Yes, he also had one to the storage unit. Que pasa? He hadn’t heard about Balfour yet and there was no time to enlighten him. Instead, I did some fast talking, stressing urgency without telling him too much, and finally convinced him to meet us with the keys.
“Ten minutes, Eladio. Gracias.” I broke the connection, tossed Runyon’s cell back to him, and headed for the door. If he hesitated in following, it was for no more than a couple of seconds.
In the car, rolling, he said, “I don’t like this, Bill.”
“You don’t have to like it. My decision.”
“I know that. But it’s a hell of a big risk. What if Balfour booby-trapped the shed door so it’ll detonate when it’s opened?”
As strung out as I was, the possibility hadn’t occurred to me before. I thought about it as we cut down toward the valley road. “I don’t see it, Jake. He wouldn’t have expected anybody to open the storage unit today, a holiday-the construction work’s finished, Perez wouldn’t have any reason to use his key. And Balfour wasn’t an explosives expert. Anybody can rig a gas-leak explosion-anybody can slap up a bunch of plastic explosive and wire detonators to a timer. That has to be what he did, all he did.”
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