Below Zero

by C. J. Box

Robert said, “Are you kidding? This isn’t my problem you’re trying to solve.”

  Stenko sighed, “Of course not.”

  “Think of what you’re doing as a gift to me and the younger generation,” Robert said. “After a lifetime of committing environmental crimes, you’re sacrificing yourself for us. For me. It would make me happy, Dad. It’s the one thing you can do for me to make up for everything else. You can go out a martyr for Mother Earth.”

  Stenko’s eyes flooded with tears. They were tears from the pure physical pain that laced his guts, but also because of April and her innocence and how she was gone. But most of all the tears were because of Robert and what he’d turned into.

  “Are you really this broken?” Stenko asked. Oh, how it hurt to talk.

  Robert glanced over. His eyes were cold. “What are you babbling about, old man?”

  “You’re not very sentimental, are you?”

  “I learned from the best about selfishness, Dad.”

  Robert looked up at the rearview mirror and made a face. “There’s that damned single headlight behind us again. What’s up with that?”

  Rapid City

  Sheridan rolled over and yawned and remembered she was in a hospital and why she was there. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, then looked over at Lucy, who was still sleeping, and her mother, who’d finally dozed off.

  There had been a sound that had jarred her awake. She looked down the hall, assuming it was a nurse or staffer who’d passed by, but she couldn’t see anyone. She stood and looked out the window at the night and the still parking lot below.

  Then she heard it again: the rapping of knuckles on glass.

  She turned and saw him, a cop in a khaki uniform on the landing of the emergency exit that went to the stairs. He gestured at her and pointed at the handle of the door. She thought he looked vaguely familiar, and when she opened the door she recognized him from earlier that day. He’d been one of the deputies who’d arrived at the scene of April/Janie Doe’s crash.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said, stepping into the hallway. His hat was clamped under his arm and he carried a plastic grocery sack. “They shut the elevator down to visitors at night, I just found out. Anyway, the sheriff sent me over here to talk to Agent Portenson and Agent Coon, but I don’t see them anywhere.”

  “They’re gone,” Sheridan’s mom said from her chair. “Is there anything we can do?”

  The deputy shrugged. “Is Joe Pickett here?”

  “He’s with them,” her mom said.

  The deputy’s face fell. He clearly didn’t know what he should do next. He said, “We found some personal items in the wreckage of that car. The sheriff bagged them up and asked me to deliver them to the FBI, thinking they might help somehow. Now I’m not sure who to give them to.”

  “What kind of personal items?” her mom asked cautiously.

  The agent flushed. “Just some feminine things, you know. Underwear, tampons, that kind of thing.” When he said the words, he looked away from Sheridan. “Plus, a pocketbook thing. Do either of you know a girl named Vicki?”

  Sheridan felt the skin of her scalp pull back. “No,” she said, “but I think I know where she is.”

  Her mom asked, “What’s her full name?”

  “Damn, I forgot. Let me look it up,” the deputy said, digging into the plastic bag and pulling out a small leather purse with a metal clasp. He opened the clasp and drew out a small stack of papers, photos, and cards. “This here is a library card from Chicago, Illinois. It says it belongs to Vicki Burgess.”

  Her mom covered her open mouth with her hand.

  Even though it seemed like alarm bells were going off inside her head, Sheridan said to the deputy, “Can we look at what else is in the purse?”

  Thinking: Who is Vicki Burgess?

  How did she get my name and number?

  The deputy straightened the stack of papers to put them back into the purse when he said, “Oh, there’s a photo. Two girls in it. I bet one of them is this Vicki Burgess . . .”

  Rangeland

  Nate leaned forward on the handlebars of the dirt bike and opened it up. Joe bent with him. The electric steel-mesh gate Stenko and Robert had just passed through was closing. Joe squinted over Nate’s shoulder as the bike sped up, trying to gauge whether they could really get through the opening in time. He didn’t think so.

  He hollered, “Stop—we won’t make it!” then barely had time to duck his head into Nate’s back as they shot through the gap, the edges of the gate and steel receiver frame less than an inch each from the widest part of the handlebars.

  Incredulous, Joe looked over his shoulder to see the gate lock shut behind them. He hadn’t imagined what had just happened after all.

  “How did you do that?” Joe asked Nate, but it sounded more like an accusation than a question.

  “Don’t know,” Nate yelled back. “I just opened up all the way and closed my eyes.”

  “You closed your eyes?”

  The taillights they’d been following were less than 200 yards ahead of them now. The vehicle had slowed and was swinging into a parking lot outside the front vestibule door of the power plant.

  “Here,” Nate said, handing back his .454 to Joe. “You might need this to start blasting as we go. I think Robert might have seen us, and you know how he is.”

  “Remember,” Joe said. “We need Stenko alive.”

  And it was if someone had flipped on a switch for the sun. Joe, Nate, and the bike were bathed in brilliant white light. They hadn’t heard the helicopter coming because of the whine of the dirt bike engine.

  “Not us, you idiots!” Joe yelled, looking back into the blinding lights and pointing ahead of them with the muzzle of Nate’s .454. “Put the light on Stenko and Robert! They’re up ahead of us!”

  And thinking what a bad idea it was to be waving a handgun in the air at an FBI chopper that had already gunned down a man just that morning who did the same exact thing . . .

  ROBERT SAID, “Shit. They’re all over us.”

  Although the spotlight had yet to find them in the parking lot, it was bright enough behind them to illuminate the few rows of cars and trucks that belonged to the midnight shift. Instead of parking the car, Robert killed his lights and roared forward across a small lawn toward the front doors.

  He said to Stenko, “That helicopter is going to find us any second, Dad, and I see flashing lights out on the road coming from town! Get out, get out, get out . . . get inside.”

  But Stenko wouldn’t move. He slumped against the passenger window, his cheek pressed to the glass. His eyes were wide open, but without expression. Robert saw the open empty morphine bottles on the floor of the car, said, “Stupid old man,” and shoved Stenko in the arm hard, trying to wake him. Stenko’s head lolled back, his mouth open, a string of saliva like a slug trail connecting his upper and lower lips. The front doors of the vestibule were right outside his window now, and Robert braked.

  “Ten steps, Dad,” Robert pleaded, his voice cracking. “Get out. Ten steps and you’re in.”

  But Stenko refused to move, and he disappointed Robert once again.

  Robert cursed and ripped the lanyard out of his father’s fist. He’d do it himself. Get inside, take the elevator to the top, and open the hatch to the hanging boilers. But he wouldn’t jump in. Opening the hatch would do enough damage. Robert had his life and his mission still ahead of him. What good would it do anyone to become a martyr for the cause? He wasn’t like his old man, after all.

  He threw open the door and bounded up the front steps, rejoicing that the spotlight on the helicopter hadn’t found him yet. As he approached the vestibule, he looked over his shoulder and saw the beam flashing over the cars in the parking lot like the vengeful eye of a Cyclops.

  He swiped the key card, and a red light on the box switched to green. But the door didn’t give when he yanked on it. That’s when he saw the dial pad on the side of the lock box and the LED display that flashed
ENTER THREE-DIGIT CODE. Damn that Lucy, he thought. She hadn’t mentioned a code.

  He said to no one in particular, “Fucked again! Stenko fucked me again!” and tried combination after combination on the box with one hand while digging for the pistol in the back of his belt with the other. He tried the most obvious codes first. After all, how complicated would they make it for a bunch of power plant workers? He tried “1-2-3” and “3-2-1” and “1-1-1” and “2-2-2.”

  The night was suddenly incredibly loud and obtrusive. There was the thumping of the blades from the helicopter that still hadn’t located him, the sirens of every cop car in Rangeland bearing down on the power plant, and a high whine getting higher by the second.

  When he keyed “6-6-6” he heard the lock click open.

  As he reached for the handle he looked over his shoulder and saw the bike coming straight at him from the parking lot. The driver wore a war helmet and had blond hair streaming behind. Instead of slowing down for the three concrete steps to the vestibule landing, the bike veered to the right toward a handicap ramp incline and then sped up. Someone dropped off the back of the machine and rolled away. And before he could untangle his pistol from his shirttail, his vision was suddenly filled with an extreme close-up of a muddy, knobbed tire . . .

  JOE ROLLED TO HIS BELLY and looked up as Nate shot up the stairs and jumped the bike full speed into Robert standing in front of the glass doors as if pausing before he entered. The impact made a fat hollow sound followed immediately by broken glass as Robert’s body was hurled through the vestibule into the reception area inside. Both Nate and the bike lay in heaps on the landing. The alarm system in the power plant whooped, and emergency lights on the walls flashed.

  Getting his legs under him, Joe stood up uneasily in the grass. He brushed gravel and dust off his shirt and spit a pebble out of his mouth. Nate’s gun was near his feet, and he picked it up and cocked it.

  Inside the building, he could see the soles of Robert’s splayed shoes on the floor. Robert was flat on his back and not moving. As Joe approached, he saw the blood—rivers of it running across the marble floor from gaping, pulsing holes in Robert’s throat, neck, and groin where he’d been slashed by the broken glass. The distinct impression of a motorcycle tire could be seen on Robert’s face, which was dented in. His pistol had been thrown to the far side of the room and was under a chair, well out of his reach.

  “Is he dead?” Nate asked, scrambling to his feet and standing shoulder to shoulder with Joe on the landing.

  “If he isn’t, he soon will be. We need to get him to the Rangeland ER.”

  “Bullshit,” Nate said, taking his revolver back from Joe. “He sure as hell didn’t get April to the ER when she was bleeding to death. And he planted all those damned eucalyptus trees . . .” With one swift movement he straightened his arm and fired, blowing the top of Robert’s head across the marble tiles.

  “Oh, man . . .” Joe moaned.

  “Go find Stenko,” Nate said, holstering his gun and ignoring Joe’s pained expression. “I gotta get out of here before Portenson finds me.”

  Nate righted the dirt bike, kicked it twice to start it, grinned when the motor fired up, and roared away.

  THE CHOPPER WAS TOUCHING DOWN on the far side of the parking lot and the Rangeland cops and county sheriff’s convoy was pulsing through the front gate when Joe found Stenko’s dead body slumped over in the front seat of the stolen car.

  Joe threw open the door and reached in and grasped Stenko’s neck and shook the body anyway, saying, “Who is she, damn you? Where did you find her?”

  Stenko’s head flopped from side to side, and his eyes were cold and dead. His body seemed light and unsubstantial—the shell of the man who’d once worn tuxedos to Chicago charity events and who once bore a resemblance to a virile Ernest Hemingway.

  Joe let him drop to the seat cushion.

  “Damn you,” he said again.

  Rapid City

  Sheridan handed the battered photograph to her mother. The image of the two girls had been cut with scissors or a knife from a larger photo. Because of the clothes they were wearing and their formal smiles and the sliced-off heads, arms, and dresses of others who had been standing close to them, she thought the original might have been a family portrait of some kind.

  There were two of them in the photo, two blond girls. They looked like sisters, but they weren’t.

  The deputy said, “Do you recognize either of these two girls to be Vicki Burgess?”

  Sheridan’s mouth was so dry she had trouble saying, “Yes. The one on the right.”

  But it wasn’t Vicki Burgess’s likeness that had shocked her.

  Her mother took the photo and her eyes widened. She whispered, “Oh, my God.”

  Lucy reached up and took it from her mother. Her eyes moved from one figure in the photograph to the other.

  She said, “That’s April,” and tapped her finger on the girl on Vicki’s left. “She’s alive,” Lucy said.

  Her mom walked away, digging her cell phone out of her purse to call her dad.

  Rangeland

  Joe sat in the open doorway of the silent helicopter with his head in his hands. The parking lot and vestibule area were whooping with red and blue wigwag lights from the dozen PD and sheriff’s department vehicles that surrounded the death scene. Portenson was ecstatic, running from place to place, firing off orders, alerting the brass in Washington, D.C., what had happened, physically moving local law enforcement away from where they were gawking at the body of Robert in the reception area. Men and women from the midnight shift inside the plant had wandered down to the front as well and were being herded back toward the elevators before they could track blood across the floor.

  Coon walked over and leaned against the aircraft next to Joe.

  “I’ve got one happy boss right now,” he said. “Do you know what he screamed at me when we saw it was Robert inside the building? He said, ‘Hello, D.C.! Here I come!’ ”

  Joe grunted. “Can’t say I’ll miss him.”

  “Me either.”

  A minute passed by. Bruises Joe didn’t know he had from falling off the dirt bike began to ache on his legs, ribs, and butt.

  Coon said, “Should I even ask who it was driving the bike?”

  “Nope.”

  “Didn’t think so. Any idea which way he headed?”

  Joe shrugged. Hole in the Wall, he thought.

  Coon said, “You’ve never seen a guy more scared than that bread truck driver when we landed the helicopter in front of him on the highway. I think the bureau will need to pay for some dry cleaning.”

  Joe didn’t respond.

  “That was a pretty good trick,” Coon said. “You want your phone back?”

  As Joe reached for it, the phone lit up and burred.

  Marybeth.

  31

  Chicago

  TWO DAYS LATER, JOE, MARYBETH, AND LUCY OCCUPIED THE middle seat of a black GMC Suburban with U.S. government plates as it cruised slowly down a residential street in an old South Side neighborhood. Sheridan was in the seat behind them. The street was narrow, the sidewalks cracked. Homes that looked fifty or sixty years old lined up one after the other on both sides of the road. Most had enclosed porches and neat, close-cropped lawns. Parked cars had Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks bumper stickers. Towering leafy hardwood trees blocked out the sky. The morning was cold and dark, and the wind that had cut through Joe earlier while he opened the car door to let his family in reminded him that no matter how cold it got in the mountain west, it was colder and damper in the Midwest. Maybe, he thought, it was why they were so damned tough.

  The Suburban was full of people. Coon sat in the front seat next to the Chicago-based FBI agent driver and the Chicago Police Department liaison. In the third seat with Sheridan were two senior representatives from the Illinois Child Welfare Agency. They’d introduced themselves at the airport as Leslie Doran and Jane Dickenson.

  Joe was a red ball of ra
w nerves. He found it hard to let go of Marybeth’s hand in the car. He needed her; she was stronger about this. He wore a jacket and tie with his Wranglers and Stetson as well as a light raincoat he’d owned for fifteen years. Sheridan and Lucy wore dresses and tights, and Marybeth wore a dark business suit. Joe reached up and worked a finger between his neck and collar and tried to loosen it.

  “This is exciting,” Lucy said. “It feels like we’re going to church.”

  “Yes it kind of does, honey,” Marybeth said.

  “That’s ridiculous,” Sheridan said to Lucy under her breath from the back. “You should just stop talking.”

  “Oooh,” Lucy purred. “Someone is very prickly today.”

  “Girls,” Marybeth said.

  The liaison, a beefy square-jawed man with gray-flecked red hair named Matt Donnell, winked at Joe and Marybeth with empathy that said, Been there, then told Coon, “We’ve got four cruisers in the neighborhood within a minute of the Voricek home ready to move in on my call. I doubt we’ll need them, but they’ll be ready.”

  Coon nodded, said, “Good. Do we know who’s in the house right now?”

  “Ed’s there. He’s a piece of work. From what we understand he’s between jobs again, so he’s home. His wife, Mary Ann, is always home. And we’re lucky today because it’s an in-service training day for the school district.” He raised his eyebrows.

  Coon said, “Which means she’s there.”

  “Should be.”

  “Have your guys actually seen her?”

  “There’s a girl who matches the description. We checked her description against the school yearbook. She’s there, all right. Goes by April Voricek. Problem is, there is no known birth certificate for April Voricek, and no legal record of a name change from Keeley. It’s her,” Donnell said.

  Joe felt Marybeth’s eyes on him and felt her squeeze his hand.

  Lucy said, “I thought Chicago would be, you know, big buildings. Skyscrapers and stuff like that.”