by C. J. Box
“Arcadia, California,” Jason said as he keyed Villatoro’s license number and address into the computer. “Never heard of it.”
“It’s a small town,” Villatoro said. “About fifty thousand people.”
“Is it near L.A.?”
Villatoro smiled bitterly. “It was swallowed by L.A. like a snack.”
The boy didn’t know how to answer that, and Villatoro wished he hadn’t said it. Too much information.
Jason said, “You wouldn’t believe how many folks from L.A. we rent to.”
“Really?” Villatoro said.
“A ton of them have moved up here,” Jason said, pushing the button to print out the contract. “Have you ever been here before?”
“Spokane?” Villatoro said.
Jason corrected his pronunciation, “It’s ‘Spoke-Ann,’ Mr. Villatoro, not ‘Spoke-Cain.’ ”
“And it’s ‘Vee-Ah-Toro,’ not ‘VILLA-toro,’” Villatoro said back, smiling.
WITH HIS KEYS and an agreement for a red Ford Focus in his hand, Villatoro started to pull his bags through the door to the rental lot but stopped until Jason looked over.
“May I please get a map to Kootenai Bay?”
“I’m sorry,” Jason said, tearing one off a pad and using a highlighter pen to mark the route. “It’s easy. You just take a right out of the airport and follow the signs to I-90 East.”
“Thank you,” Villatoro said.
Jason handed him the map and a thick, four-color real estate booklet. “I assume you’re looking for property.”
“No,” Villatoro said, taking the booklet anyway, “I’m here on business.”
“Really? What do you do? I thought you said you were retired?”
“I am,” Villatoro said, not really lying, just not telling the entire story. The boy was more forward than he thought proper.
“Oh,” Jason said, puzzled.
As he walked out onto the sun-baked lot, Villatoro thought he’d said half-again too much, and chastised himself.
VILLATORO POINTED his little red Ford Focus toward the mountains to the east and eased onto the interstate through tree-shrouded on-ramps. He passed a large sign and fountain that read:
WELCOME TO THE INLAND NORTHWEST
Spokane itself seemed surprisingly old and industrial, the downtown buildings rising out of the trees with a sense of purpose that had likely been forgotten, Villatoro thought. He saw an exit for Gonzaga University—he had heard of it, something about basketball—and another that said Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was only fourteen miles away.
As he drove he pushed the scan button on the AM radio in the car. As it swept the stations, he heard snippets of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlesinger, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Mark Fuhrman, famous from the O. J. Simpson trial, who obviously had a local talk show. That discovery astonished him.
Acres of outlet malls marked his entrance into Idaho, as well as strip malls that looked just like the strip malls in L.A., with the same fast-food places and convenience stores. He had replaced palm trees with pine trees, but this was all familiar. In a way, he was relieved.
But when he turned north at Coeur d’Alene, the strip malls thinned, and the forest seemed to shoulder its way back toward the road, as if to intimidate the drivers, he thought. It certainly worked with him. Forty miles later, the trees broke, and he was on a long bridge crossing a huge lake, the sun streaming through the windshield with an intensity he wasn’t used to. On the other side of the lake, twinkling through a pine forest, was the town of Kootenai Bay, and beyond that, thirty-five miles north, was Canada.
THE DOWNTOWN was small, the vestige of another era, when it was more of a railroad outpost than what it had become. The primary route into Kootenai Bay stretched three tree-covered blocks, then ended with a sharp turn to the left. Old brick buildings—none above two levels—sported signs for snowboards, espresso, bicycling, fishing, real estate. He turned right, away from downtown, dipped under a railroad trestle, and emerged on the lakefront near the Best Western where he had a reservation.
Pulling under a slumping veranda, he uncoiled from the small car and stretched, heard his spine pop with a sound like shuffling cards. The boy at the car rental counter had been right, he thought. A larger car would have been better for his back. As he entered the small lobby, he instinctively hit the remote control lock button on his key ring.
Three people were waiting to check in before him, two large men with crew cuts and a short, heavy woman with big hair and lime green shorts. All three held sixteen-ounce cans of Budweiser and spoke loudly, and he gathered they were in town for some kind of reunion. While he waited, Villatoro looked over the rack of real estate brochures near the door, and took several because they contained maps of the area. When the guests got their keys and left to find their rooms, Villatoro stepped up to the counter.
The check-in clerk was flustered from the three conventioneers, and she blew back a strand of graying hair away from her face and sighed loudly. “You’d think they’d put another person on the desk at check-in time, wouldn’t you?” she said. “Especially when there’s a Navy ship crew reunion in town.”
He shrugged, and smiled. Checking in four guests didn’t seem to be an exhausting task.
She nodded at the brochures he had picked up. She was in her late forties, he guessed, and had lived a hard life. Blooms of small threadlike veins mapped her cheeks. Alcohol. Nevertheless, she had an attractive, open face and smile.
She said, “A girlfriend of mine sold her house for $189,000 last week, and the guy who bought it resold it the next day, the next day, for $250,000.”
“Goodness,” Villatoro said.
“Damn right,” she said, finding his reservation card. “Makes me wonder what my place is worth. I bought it for forty grand twenty-five years ago.”
These people, he thought, talk to you like they’ve known you all their lives.
“Probably a lot,” he said, thinking how familiar it sounded. His own community was filled with tales like that, as longtime homeowners sold their homes to new residents for three or four times what they had originally paid.
“Business or pleasure?” she asked, looking up at him. He felt her eyes sweep over his wrinkled brown suit, his cream-colored shirt, his olive skin.
“Business,” he said.
“What kind of business?” she asked pleasantly.
“Unfinished business,” he said, a little amused at how it sounded.
“Sounds interesting and mysterious.” She laughed. “Come on, fess up.”
He felt his face flush. “I’m retired,” he said. He was still having trouble actually saying it without being self-conscious. It reminded him of the weeks after his wedding thirty-two years ago, when he stumbled as he introduced Donna as “my wife.” It just didn’t sound natural at the time, just as retirement didn’t sound natural now.
“How long?”
He flushed. “Two days. I was a police detective in Arcadia, California. ” As soon as he said it he didn’t know why he had volunteered the information.
“You have a badge and a gun?” she asked, making conversation.
“Not anymore.” He was very conscious of not having either. Like he was walking around without pants. Not that he’d ever drawn his gun, except at the range.
She scribbled something on the reservation card. “You held this with a credit card,” she said. “You want to keep it on that card?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you have a real estate agent yet? I can recommend a couple of good ones.”
“Excuse me?”
She looked at him. “I assume you’re looking for a house or land up here. You don’t need to sneak around. Half of the guests who stay here are looking to buy and retire. And believe me, not all of the real estate agents are trustworthy. There are some real crooks, and they don’t care if you’re a cop. Or an ex-cop. They’re used to ex-cops, believe you me.”
“I’m not interested in retiring here,” Villatoro said, somew
hat defensively.
“Hmmm.” She clearly wasn’t sure she believed him. “Mr. Mysterious, you are.”
“No one ever said that before.”
“You seem like a nice guy. How about I cut you a deal, then,” she said, almost whispering. “I’ll give you the AAA rate instead of the rack rate. Saves you $20 a night.”
He wanted to refuse. But $20 a night for six nights would be helpful. “Thank you,” he said.
“You bet, Mr. Villatoro.”
She pronounced it “VILLA-torro.”
IN HIS ROOM, which was on the lower of two floors, Villatoro opened his curtains and looked out. While the hotel itself was tired and dowdy, the view was magnificent. Through a sliding glass door was a lawn that led to a beach, and a marina half-filled with boats. The lake was smooth as a tabletop all the way to the mountains on the other side that were white with snow. The afternoon rain clouds opened up, and columns of sun lined up across the horizon. He expected an orchestra to swell at the sight.
He dug in his pocket for his cell phone and powered it up. He had forgotten to turn it back on after the airplane landed, to check for messages. Maybe something from his wife, he hoped.
There was no signal. He had not even considered this possibility. He tossed the phone on the dresser.
He turned and looked around his room. Nothing special. A television, two double beds with worn bedspreads, a telephone on the desk with a phone book no bigger than a quality paperback beside it. Faded prints of elk, deer, and geese were on the walls.
Sitting on the too-soft bed, he opened his briefcase. After placing the hinged photos of his wife and daughter on the bed stand, he pulled out a manila file and laid it near the pillow. The file was two inches thick, the edges worn, the tab stained by his own fingerprints. The writing on the tab was smeared, but he remembered sitting at his desk, eight years before, and inscribing:
SANTA ANITA RACETRACK
Case File: 90813A
This is what had brought him to Kootenai Bay. This was the unfinished business. This is what had imposed such a strain on his marriage and family and the last few years in the department. The file contained the black cloud that loomed over him, blocking sunshine, preventing him from truly retiring and starting his new life.
Eduardo Villatoro got up and went to the sliding glass door and looked out on the lake and across it to the mountains. What a different world it was than the one he had left that morning. He could not imagine fitting into this world, or wanting to. He wished he still had his badge and gun.
Friday, 5:30 P.M.
THEY SHOULD BE home by now,” Monica Taylor said to Tom, who had just come into the kitchen from the living room where he was furtively watching an NBA game with playoff implications. He was wearing his brown UPS uniform shirt untucked over dark shorts. He had muscular legs that were already tan, she noticed. She wished, though, that he didn’t shave them. But he had explained that it was what bodybuilders had to do before a competition: shave, wax, and oil.
Tom stopped on his way to the refrigerator and looked at the digital clock on the stove. It said 5:30. He shrugged, opened the refrigerator door. The look of absolute alarm on his face mirrored her own, but for a different reason, and he said, “What, no beer? Do I have to go get some?”
“It’s going to be dark in two hours,” she said, wiping her hands on a paper towel. “I wonder if I should call somebody.”
Three place settings were on the table. Lasagna—Annie’s favorite—was baking in the oven. The kitchen smelled of garlic, oregano, tomato sauce, and cheese. Tom had pointed out that she needed another plate. “No,” she said, “I don’t.”
Against her better judgment, she’d let him in the house when he showed up after work and said he was there to apologize for not leaving early that morning. He said when he got up he didn’t want to leave. He was trying to flatter her.
He was good at flattering her. That was part of the problem—she liked being flattered, even when she knew better. She’d first heard about Tom when she started work as the manager of her store. The three women who worked the registers out front tittered like schoolgirls when they described the UPS man. His arrival at three-thirty was the highlight of their afternoon, they said. Monica learned why. He was tall, well built, charming, chatty, and single. As he carried the shipments in through the back door, he made a point of flirting with each of the women in turn, complimenting them on their clothes and hair, telling them it looked like they’d lost weight. Monica was on to his act instantly, but she admired his endless good cheer, undeniable charm, and transparent élan, which he soon turned full force on her. Although she tried to deny to herself what she was doing, she found herself checking her hair and lipstick to make sure both were in order before three-thirty. She didn’t object when he lingered after his delivery, engaging her in small talk, offering to help stack boxes, move displays, or shovel snow from the sidewalk. Once, he caught a bat that had somehow gotten into the storeroom and impressed her by releasing it outside, unharmed. When the employees on the registers started gossiping about the amount of time Tom was spending in the store, Monica asked him to stick to business. He would, he told her, if he just wasn’t so darned attracted to her. When she said she had kids at home, he said he liked kids, and would love to meet them, and hey, how about dinner sometime? That was four months and a dozen dinners ago. Her eyes were open the whole time, until last night, when she deliberately closed them, looked away, and allowed herself a soft moan.
Tom shut the refrigerator door and turned toward her with his arms crossed. His forearms were massive. “I wouldn’t worry so much,” he said. “When I was growing up here people didn’t worry so much. I remember staying out after school fishing, shooting hoops, generally fucking around, until all hours. I’d get home when I got home. If I missed dinner, well, that was my fault. Now, it’s a damned federal case if kids just get out of sight for a minute.”
“Are you talking about me?” she asked.
He started to say yes, she could tell. But he caught himself. “No, not necessarily. I just mean people in general. Everyone’s so goddamned paranoid. We live in such a nanny state now. If a kid is late getting home from school, they put out an Amber Alert. It didn’t used to be like this around here. We trusted each other, you know? It pisses me off, is all. She’s probably just staying away to make a point,” Tom said. “She’s a prickly little number.”
“Tom,” Monica said, measuring her words, “Annie and William had early release today. They should have been home at two if they couldn’t go fishing with you.”
Something washed over him, the look of a guilty man.
“What?” she asked. “You showed up at the school, didn’t you? I assumed they weren’t there.”
Tom took a deep breath, closed his eyes. “We had two guys out sick today, so they gave me extra routes. I was busier than hell. I guess I forgot.”
Monica’s face tightened.
“I said ‘maybe,’” he pleaded. “I didn’t promise anything.”
“William thought you did.”
He shrugged. “Things happen, Monica.”
Monica had spent the day at work in a kind of stupor. All day, her throat felt constricted, and she excused herself to go to the back room and cry. She’d thought about calling the school, asking for Annie. She would explain what happened with Tom, but how could she possibly put it?
Your mom screwed up.
Your mom broke her word.
Your mom drank too much wine with Tom after you and William went to bed and invited him up to her bedroom. He swore he’d get up early and be out of the house by the time you and Willie got up. He promised!
But she could hear Annie reply that Monica had sworn she’d never let a man—a stranger—into the family unless it meant they’d really have a father. Annie didn’t ask for the vow; Monica had volunteered it. Now she’d betrayed her own children with this man. How could she let herself do it? How could she ever fix things?
Annie
was tough and smart beyond her years. The girl was grounded in bedrock and would forgive her eventually. But she wouldn’t forget. Willie, though, poor Willie. This was the kind of thing that could scar a child, send him down the wrong path. A breach of trust was a serious thing. Dashed expectations were just as crippling. She’d give anything if only she could somehow erase Willie’s memory of the morning when Tom joined them at the breakfast table.
And Tom’s way of dealing with it was to say, “Things happen, Monica.”
He was an idiot, and it would be easy to blame him for what had happened. But she was the one who’d brought him into their home.
“I need to be alone and wait for my children,” she said. “They are probably the only thing I’ve ever done right.”
He responded by visibly softening, and approached her, wrapping his arms around her. She remained stiff, refusing to give in to his physicality. With his grip on the back of her head, he pushed her onto his hard shoulder.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said, cooing into her hair. “They’re your kids, so they’re important to me, too. Of course you’re worried about them.”
“I’m sorry, too, Tom,” she said. Sorry she’d ever met him.
As he hugged her she opened her eyes and saw her reflection in the glass door of the microwave oven. She was still slim, blond, with oversized eyes and a wide mouth, and an overbite most men liked. She knew she didn’t deserve her looks; she had done nothing to earn them. It was the fault of genetics that she looked ten years younger than she was. She wanted to push away and run somewhere. How could he not read her in the slightest?
Tom was talking, saying, “I’d like to think you consider me one of the things you’ve done right.”
She didn’t respond, hoped he wouldn’t press her for an answer. He didn’t.
“It’s not often we’re alone without your kids here, honey,” he said. “We could, you know, use this time just for us.”
Of course, she knew what he meant, but she couldn’t believe he’d said it. She could feel him getting hard against her. He had moved his hips so his erection rubbed her abdomen.