“All I can tell you is I’ll try. I’ll do my best.”
She reached out and stroked the back of his neck gently. “Okay,” she said. “That’ll do for now.” She paused. “Because I want us to be together, Jack. I want to be there for you, too. I noticed you didn’t ask.”
“Ask what?”
“If I was going to be there for you, too. Did you just assume it or are you afraid to ask?”
He shrugged. “I’m sort of taking this one day at a time.”
“That’s not an answer, Jack.”
“Like I said, it’s not something I have a lot of experience in.”
“You mean trusting people,” she said. “Is it because of what happened to you in the army?” she asked. “Or because your mom walked out on you?”
“Jacky.” His grandmother’s voice came from the kitchen. “Come eat something.”
“I’m okay,” Keller said, even though hunger was gnawing at his gut. “Mom said she was going to take me to McDonald’s.”
“You ought not eat all that greasy food,” his grandmother said. The advice was delivered reflexively, without heat. Keller ignored it. The phone rang. He heard his grandmother pick up the receiver. Keller looked back toward the kitchen, then back out to the driveway. He heard his grandmother pick up the phone.
“Hello?” her voice took on a sharper tone. “Where are you? Well, why not?”
Keller leaned his forehead against the window and closed his eyes. There was a lump in his throat that made it hard for him to swallow.
“We’ve been waiting for two hours, Sheila,” his grandmother said. “I don’t care if you…I just think you should care more about your son…Don’t you talk to me like that…”
There was a silence, then the sound of the receiver being hung up. Keller heard the sound of footsteps as his grandmother came into the room. He didn’t open his eyes.
“Come on, Jackson,” he heard his grandmother say. He felt her hand, bony and delicate, on his shoulder. “Let’s go to Mickey D ‘s. You and me.”
Keller choked back the lump in his throat. He knew if he let it go, it would burst out and let loose a flood of tears that would drown him, carry him away. “I’m not hungry,” was all he said.
His grandmother’s hand stayed on his shoulder for a moment. Then she patted him once, twice, weakly, and she walked away.
Keller shook his head to clear it of the memory. “It wasn’t the walking out,” he said. “It was the walking back in at random intervals.”
“I’m not her, Jack,” she said. “I want to be with you. I want you to want to be with me. And Ben. I want—” She hesitated. “I want us to be a family.”
And there it is, Keller thought. The hope he’d given up long ago. And with the hope, the bone-deep fear that it was another illusion, that it would fall through again. A part of him was screaming to back away, to turn his back, to go back to the way he had been for so long. But then he remembered what that had been like. The walking dead, a friend had called it. He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I want that, too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
She leaned over and kissed him on the ear. “Good,” she said. Keller lived a few blocks from the ocean in a low-slung, flat-roofed cinderblock house in Carolina Beach. The house was undistinguished except for the huge live oak tree in the front yard. As Keller pulled up next to it, an SUV roared by on the beach road, rap music pounding from inside. A white teenaged boy leaned half out of the window and whooped drunkenly at them. Keller and Marie looked at each other and smiled, a little sadly. Young and dumb and full of come, Keller thought.
Marie spoke up as if completing his thought. “Must be nice,” she said.
They were just inside the door when Keller turned and took her in his arms. She responded eagerly, her lips soft and yielding at first, then more demanding. She pulled his shirt out of his waistband, then her hands were everywhere on his back and torso, tracing the muscles with her fingertips, then pulling him harder against her. She broke the kiss and looked into his eyes as she slid one hand down to the front of his blue jeans. He groaned out loud as she began stroking him through the rough fabric. She smiled at that and began pulling his zipper down.
“Make love to me, Jack,” she whispered hoarsely as she slid to her knees. He closed his eyes and savored the sensation of her lips moving on him for a few moments, then pulled her to her feet and kissed her. “Bedroom,” was all he could say.
They began slowly, their hands exploring each other’s bodies, each of them searching for the places that would make the other groan out loud, smiling when they found them. Then, suddenly, their lovemaking took on a desperate urgency. They clung to each other as if they were trying to save each other from drowning. Marie had cried out twice in orgasm before Keller felt his own climax approaching. “Please,” Marie gasped. “With me…please…”
Keller felt as if the edges of himself were blurring, that he was expanding, dissipating, and then he was shouting, she was screaming, and he lost all sense of himself as they exploded together.
Afterwards they lay together for a long time, sweaty limbs tangled. They moved languidly, their hands still exploring each other, but gently, without haste. Finally, Marie raised her head and kissed him.
“Wow,” she said, her voice rough.
“Wow,” he said.
“It keeps getting better,” she said.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Think of how good it’s going to be ten years from now.” She smiled. “Or twenty.” She slapped him lightly on the hip. “Let me up,” she said, “I’ve gotta pee.”
He rolled away and she slid out of bed. He stared at the ceiling. Ten years, he thought, twenty years…Christ, I never expected to live that long. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He rubbed his face with his hands. He got up, found his jeans, and pulled them on. He found his belt. His cell phone lay nearby where it had fallen from the belt clip. He stared at it for a moment, then flipped it open and hit the speed dial. The phone rang several times before Oscar Sanchez answered. “H & H Bail Bonds,” he said.
“Oscar,” Keller said. “It’s Jack Keller. Have you found out anything on this Randle guy?”
“I found an address for him,” Sanchez said. “And the fact that this man Randle has changed his name. He was bom Roy Dean Clement, in Warsaw. Not the one in Poland, the one in North Carolina. He filed a legal name change in 1983.”
“Anything else on the girl?”
“No,” Sanchez said. “There was a juvenile court counselor who remembered the name. Also a Social Service lady at the courthouse…”
“But the records are sealed and they couldn’t tell you anything.”
“Correct.”
“Okay, thanks, Oscar.”
“When are you going there?”
Keller heard running water in the bathroom. “Maybe tonight.”
There was confusion evident in Sanchez’s voice. “But you are in Fayetteville…with Marie…”
“I’ll call you,” he said.
“I have the night shift,” Oscar replied. “I will be here.”
Keller closed the phone as Marie came out of the bathroom. She had found one of Keller’s T-shirts and pulled it on. It barely covered the tops of her legs.
“Oh, good,” she said. “You’re more dressed than I am. Will you get my suitcase out of your trunk?”
“Sure,” Keller said. He walked outside and fetched the case from the trunk. The night air was turning cool. It was getting late but the traffic on the beach road was still heavy. He looked out into the night. There was a jumper out there, waiting for the takedown. The knowledge nagged at him like an itch he couldn’t scratch. He sighed and took the bag back inside.
Marie was seated on the couch. The TV was on and she was flipping through the channels. “Don’t feel like sleeping,” she said.
Keller dropped the bag by the couch and sat down next to her. “What’s on
?” he said.
“Nothing,” she replied. She sounded morose.
“What’s wrong?”
She looked startled for a minute, then smiled. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m still pissed off over this work thing.”
Keller thought for a moment. An idea occurred to him. “I’ve got a jumper I need to go after,” he said. “The sooner the better—maybe tonight. You want to come with me?”
Her lips quirked slightly. “It’d be better for me than brooding, is that what you’re thinking?”
“Pretty much.”
She sighed, then smiled. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
“We’ll need to go by the office first. Oscar has the info we need. You bring your weapon?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s in my bag. With my badge.”
“It’s not your jurisdiction,” Keller said.
“Yeah,” she said, “but your jumper won’t know that.”
“I’ve got a shoulder rig you can use that’ll fit the Beretta,” Keller said. “And a Kevlar vest. It’ll be a little big on you…what?”
Marie was chuckling. “I was just thinking,” she said. “I could write a magazine article. Dating experiences you’ll never read about in Cosmo.”
He laughed. “I can wait, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to do this.”
“No,” she said, “You’re right. It’s better than stewing over things. It helps to keep busy.”
“That’s the way I always handled it.”
She looked at him with a wry expression. “And that worked, did it?”
“Not always,” he said, “but it helps pass the time ‘til you get better.”
There was a large steel cabinet shoved back against one wall of the house’s spare bedroom. Keller opened it with a key and took a stubby shotgun out. The next item was a leather shoulder holster.
Marie walked into the room. She had put on a pair of black jeans and a burgundy T-shirt. He handed the holster to Marie. As she began strapping it on, he took out a black vest. He walked over and handed it to her. The words BAIL ENFORCEMENT were stenciled in yellow lettering across the back.
She handed it back. “You take it. You’re going in first. I’m just along for backup.”
“I’ve only got the one,” he said. “I usually work alone.”
“You used to,” she said. “But you’re getting better about that.”
He slung the vest over one shoulder, the shotgun by its strap over the other. “Let’s go.”
They drove up the coast road, back into the city. Long rolling stretches of inland dunes gave way to a strip of car lots and cheap restaurants near the Port of Wilmington, then to shabby housing projects, then to tree-lined residential streets overhung with Spanish moss. When they got to the downtown area near the courthouse, the restaurants and clubs were in full swing, the illumination from neon signs glowing through the windows from the dimness inside. Clumps of people roamed the sidewalks.
The storefront that housed H & H Bail Bonds was lit, the sign in the window advertising 24 HOUR SERVICE. Oscar Sanchez sat inside behind the desk. He looked surprised when he saw Marie, but quickly recovered his composure. They embraced warmly. There was a clatter of footsteps on the back stairs as Angela came down from her small apartment above the office. She also looked surprised when she saw Marie. “She’s going with you?” she asked Keller.
“What can I say?” Marie grinned ruefully. “He knows how to show a girl a good time.”
“What have you got, Oscar?” Keller asked.
Sanchez took a file and spread it out on a nearby desktop. “The address the Marks girl gave us was false,” he said. “She has not lived there in some time.”
“Right,” Keller said.
“So I searched for property in the name of this man Randle. I searched property and tax records in both New Hanover and Brunswick counties.”
“And?” Keller said.
“Randle owns a three-acre lot in a subdivision called Riverwoody.”
Marie looked at the printout on top of the stack of papers. “I think that’s Riverwood, Oscar,” she said. “Sometimes these developers stick on that extra ‘e’ to make it seem, I don’t know, more English.”
Sanchez looked confused. “But this is in English.”
“Skip it,” Keller said. “How do we find this place?”
Sanchez pulled out another sheet of paper. “I ran the directions on the MapQuest Web site,” he said, “but here is the first strange thing. The address on the deed and the tax records is 100 River Lane. But there is no such street listed.”
Keller took the sheet from Sanchez and looked it over. “You said the first strange thing. What else?”
Sanchez took another sheaf of papers from the file. “There are many judgments and lawsuits concerning the property.”
“Ah,” Keller said. “Probably the developer went belly-up, ran out of money, and they never officially opened the street.”
“I see,” Sanchez said. “That explains much. Many of the lawsuits are for bills not paid. But one was from the United States government. The Environmental Protection Agency.”
“The EPA?” Angela said. “What’s that about?”
Sanchez looked apologetic. “I do not know,” he admitted. “Much of the language was not familiar to me.”
“Don’t worry, Oscar,” Keller said. “If it’s a lawsuit, it’s not in any form of English either of us would understand.”
“In any case,” Angela said. “It looks like this guy Randle is the only one who has any property out there.”
Nice little hideaway,” Keller said.
“Isolated,” Marie agreed.
“Glad you brought backup, huh?”
“Yeah,” Keller said. “Let’s go.”
Grace Tranh pushed herself away from her desk in the newsroom and rubbed her face in her hands. She had been working for three hours and she still didn’t have her piece finished for the eleven o’clock newscast. The problem was, there was only so much you could say about a county commissioner accused of misusing county funds to buy himself a bass boat.
Her eyes flickered at the clock on her desk. 9:40. Shit. Her producer was going to start screaming for copy soon. She wished she was doing a stand-up report somewhere, anywhere. She knew the promotion to anchor of the Eleven was a huge boost to her career. But it was hard to work up any enthusiasm for composing narration to run behind shots of the errant commissioner waddling from his house to his car, shaking his fist at the cameraman.
She decided she needed a cup of coffee. First, though, she needed to check e-mail. The station had thought it would be a good idea to give each anchor and correspondent a “public” e-mail address which was shown beneath their name on the screen as they appeared on camera. The e-mail address was made purposely easy to remember: the correspondent’s name and the station call letters. The idea was that it made them seem more accessible to the public. Besides, the station manager had said, beaming at them during the meeting in which he had announced the new policy, maybe they’d get some anonymous tips to big stories. So far, all Grace had gotten was a steady stream of proposals, some of them obscene; a fair number of poorly spelled racist diatribes directed at her Vietnamese heritage; and at least a dozen ads a day for penis enlargement.
She sighed as the number of messages mounted on the screen. Rapidly, she scrolled through the list. Delete. Delete. Delete. Then a message header caught her eye:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
RE: BIG STORY
There was a tiny icon of a paper clip next to the message header, indicating that the message contained an attachment, such as a document or picture file. She pulled down a menu on the screen. There were four attachments, all pictures: IMGOOI.JPG, IMG002.JPG, and so on. Grace sighed. Somebody probably thought their church ice-cream social should make the eleven o’clock. Still, she couldn’t just blow them off. Someone might complain. She clicked on the icon.
<
br /> The picture came up slowly, scanning line by line from the top. It looked grainy, like it had been taken with a cheap camera. She saw the cross, saw the altar, and shook her head. She’d been right. Then the bottom half of the picture came into view.
“Holy shit,” Grace said.
CHAPTER SIX
“Huh,” Keller said. The headlights of the Crown Vic shone off the steel cable blocking the road.
“What now?” Marie asked.
“Guess we walk,” Keller replied. He turned off the engine and killed the lights. They got out and stood by the car for a few moments. Gradually, the blackness began to resolve into shadows, then to actual shapes as their eyes became accustomed to seeing by starlight. Keller opened the back of the car and took out the shotgun and Kevlar vest.
“That’s not going to stop a knife,” Marie warned him as he slipped the vest on. Keller had filled her in on Laurel Marks’s history of violence as they were driving. While a bulletproof vest would stop a blunt high-speed entry such as a handgun round, the more focused blow of the sharp tip of a knife had been known to penetrate Kevlar.
“I know,” Keller said. “But she or this Randle guy might have a gun. And if she has a knife… well, that’s where you come in.”
“Great,” Marie said. Keller took out a long black flashlight and handed it to her.
They walked down the road side by side. Darkness surrounded them. There were no other houses on either side of the dirt track. Cicadas buzzed in the trees around them and every now and then the groaning bellow of a bullfrog announced that they were close to water. The road suddenly widened and they stepped into the clearing. They could see moonlight shimmering on the river. The trailer loomed to one side. There was no light through any of the windows.
“Looks like no one’s home,” Marie said.
“Maybe,” Keller said. “Or they heard us from up the road.” He unslung the shotgun and advanced slowly. Marie drew her Beretta and walked behind and slightly to one side. When they reached the door of the trailer, Keller took up a position on one side. Marie crouched on the other. “Hand me the light,” he whispered. She did. He reached up and tapped firmly on the door. Nothing. He tapped again. Still no response. “Laurel?” he called out. Nothing. Keller relaxed and Marie straightened up. He put a finger to his lips, then pointed to his eyes, finishing with a circular motion of his index finger pointed skyward. Look around.
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