by C. J. Box
He felt Laura’s cool hand on his bare stomach. “Jim, what’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“In a minute …” he said, gasping.
He breathed deeply, tried to will his heart to slow down. He’d tried not to dwell on the Taylors, Jess, and Villatoro. After the reception, he’d kept himself busy, mindlessly chain-sawing dead limbs from the orchard, stacking them in a pile higher than his head, burning them as the sun faded. Being physically tired had been good, because he was ready to go straight to bed after two more quick cocktails.
But in the night it had all come back.
Should he just call Villatoro? Come clean? Risk his career?
Or should he call Singer and tell him, if nothing else, to close his accounts and move his business to another bank? Try to wash his hands of everything now?
The timing would be poor, he conceded. Singer was suddenly a local hero, leading the inept sheriff’s office in the search to find the Taylor children. Singer could make trouble for him, too, if he chose to. And what did that matter, if Singer did move his accounts? The board of directors would note the loss and ask questions. And moving them wouldn’t negate the fact that he’d established them in the first place, which was the problem, wasn’t it?
What did I set in motion?
DAY THREE
sunday
Sunday, 2:18 A.M.
IF ANYTHING, the second night was even harder than the first for Monica Taylor. The sedatives helped, reducing the peaks of her emotions, smoothing things out a little, but beneath the blanket the pills pulled over her there was still the relentless fact that her children were missing.
She lay fully clothed on the bed in her darkened bedroom, trying not to roll her head over and look at the time on the digital clock radio. She needed sleep. Her muscles and joints ached for it. But it was more soothing to stare into the darkness with her eyes open than to close them and enter drug-induced, horrific nightmares involving Annie and William and every possible scenario of what could have happened to them.
How many hours now? She couldn’t count, for some reason. Nearly forty, she knew that much. She remembered reading a story in the newspaper about a three-year-old boy who had disappeared from a campsite near Missoula the year before. He was found three days later shivering but healthy on a logging trail. He had survived by eating rose hips and drinking creek water. Three nights was a long time, but the boy had made it. Annie and William were smart. The second night wasn’t even over yet. They would figure out rose hips, if they had to, whatever they were. Or they’d find a cabin, or they’d build a shelter.
She knew, somehow, that they were still alive. She just knew it.
She replayed the last argument with Tom, the slamming door now sounding like a gunshot. She still couldn’t believe he had anything to do with the disappearance of her children, but the sheriff seemed to. How could she have not seen that in him if it was true? How could he have been capable of such evil? And if he didn’t have anything to do with it, where in the hell was he?
She sat up, wide-awake. She needed desperately to talk to someone.
Monica padded through the living room past Swann, who was sleeping under a light blanket on the couch. The phone was on the stand next to him, and she plucked it out of the cradle as quietly as she could and took it back into the bedroom and dialed.
As she expected, it was picked up on the first ring. Her mother would have just gotten home from the bar she worked at near the airport.
“Mom, it’s Monica.”
Hesitation. A long breathy draw on a cigarette. “I’m not surprised you’re calling at this hour.”
Monica pictured her mother in her apartment bedroom, lying on top of her bed in a housecoat with a Scotch and water on the rocks on the nightstand and the television at the foot of the bed flashing washed-out colors on the close walls. She would be watching TV through the V of her naked, misshapen feet, swelled from standing all night behind the bar.
Monica asked, “Are you alone?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“I just wanted to be able to talk freely.”
Her mother laughed a bitter laugh, and Monica could hear the years of smoke and liquor and disappointment in the sound. “I say whatever I want whenever I want. I don’t care anymore if somebody hears me or what they think about it. I’m beyond all that. It’s one of the perks you get when you get old, Monica. I may not have my looks or a pension, but I feel it’s my perfect right to be rude if I want to. I’ve been around the block so many times my tires are bald. I deserve it. And yes, to answer your question. I’m alone as always.”
“Not always,” Monica said, remembering all of the men.
“Now, girlie.”
“Mom, Annie and William are missing.”
“I heard. It’s all over the news. I seen their pictures all over on the TV in the bar. It’s a damn shame. I didn’t even recognize them at first.”
“Mom …”
Monica talked softly, hoping not to wake Swann in the next room. She pressed the receiver close to her ear, though, because her mother had a loud voice that carried through a room. Over the years, her voice had become a grating bray, without inflection or subtlety. Monica wished she knew how to turn down the volume on her phone.
“That reporter who bought me drinks asked me if I was related to you, since my name is Taylor. I told him ‘She used to be my daughter, but she ain’t no more.’ ”
Monica closed her eyes. “You didn’t talk to a reporter, did you?”
The long suck of the cigarette. Then: “Not at first, anyhow.”
“Oh, no. What did you say?”
“Honey, I told him I lost track of you years ago, or more precisely that you shut me out. That I hadn’t seen my grandbabies in four years.”
Monica remembered the last time her mother showed up to see her “grandbabies.” She was drunk and had been driven to Kootenai Bay by a seedy barfly in a porkpie hat who stood in the living room waiting for an invitation to sit down that he never received. Her mother asked Monica right in front of Annie and William for a loan to get her through the month. The barfly leered at eight-year-old Annie, and Monica threw them both out.
Her mother said, “I told him things like this don’t just happen in a vacuum. They might seem like they do, but they don’t.”
“What are you talking about?” “You probably brought it on somehow with your damned attitude, that sense of entitlement you always have. What kind of man are you with now, anyway?”
Monica was speechless.
“Your daddy always thought you were a little queenie. He’d bring you presents and pile them high in your room. But what did he bring me? Nothing, is what. He brought me nothing but a bucketful of trouble,” she said, her voice rising, getting harder.
“This has nothing to do with him, Mom. This has nothing to do with anyone. This is about William and Annie. They’re innocent. They did nothing wrong.”
“Not what I heard on the news.”
“They did nothing wrong,” Monica said through clenched teeth.
“Someone is at fault, and it ain’t me.”
“Please don’t,” Monica said. “I feel so alone, and you aren’t helping. This isn’t about you.”
“You called me. So it’s about me.”
“Not this time. I need support to get me through this.”
“You shoulda’ thought of that before.”
“Mom …”
“It’s time you quit trying to pretend you’re something you’re not. Who do you think you’re fooling? I know you’re wild. I seen it, remember? I was there. Now you act like it never happened, like you’re Miss Priss. I know you better. So do you. Anybody with eyes could see this coming.”
“Please, not now.”
“It all has to do with him. Your daddy. You’re just too worshipful to see it.”
“I wish you hadn’t talked to a reporter,” Monica said in a whisper.
“I got bills, girlie.”
<
br /> “He paid you?”
“That and the drinks.”
Monica lowered the phone to her lap and shook her head. She could hear her mother say, “I’m tired. I can’t talk no more. I got to work tomorrow.”
“Mom,” Monica said, raising the phone, “this is about my children.” Her mother blew out a long stream of smoke and for a second, Monica thought she could smell it through the phone. “I don’t even know ’em,” her mother said.
“This should have happened to you, not me.”
“But it didn’t, did it?”
Monica pushed the OFF button.
AS MONICA sat on her bed with the phone in her hand, she replayed the conversation with her mother over in her mind, hoping it had been a bad dream, knowing it wasn’t. Hot tears streamed down her face, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.
Suddenly, she wanted Swann out of the house. She wanted to be alone. It wasn’t anything he had said or done in particular, but she was becoming more and more uncomfortable around him. Maybe it was the way he looked at her with what she thought was a mixture of malevolence and predation. Where there should be pity, there was, she thought, overfamiliarity. As if he knew how things were going to end, and he was there as another actor in her drama. As if he knew more than he let on.
She had asked him earlier why he looked at her in that way, and he’d played dumb, gotten defensive, reminding her how he was volunteering his time, how he didn’t have to get involved at all. She’d let it drop.
But who kept calling him on his cell phone? Why did he immediately leave the room after seeing who was calling on the phone display? Why were his conversations so monosyllabic? And why, when she asked him who had called, were his explanations so lame?
And, she realized with a sudden shudder that broke through the Valium blanket, why was he standing in the doorway to her bedroom, right now?
“What are you doing?” she croaked, her voice thick with exhaustion.
He cleared his throat, spoke quietly. “I thought I heard something. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I was talking to my mother.”
“I wondered where the phone went. Here, give it to me in case somebody calls.”
Meekly, she handed it to him. But he didn’t leave her bedroom. “Is that all you wanted?” she asked.
He paused.
“Get out of my room.”
Swann didn’t respond, but simply withdrew, as if he had never really been there at all. She heard his footsteps in the hallway.
Groggy, she climbed out of bed and closed her door. She remembered closing it tight earlier, she thought, but maybe she hadn’t.
This time, she locked it.
Sunday, 3:15 A.M.
THE PREGNANT COW stood with her legs braced in the stall, her muscles quivering, her eyes wide, her breath heavy and rhythmic. It took effort for her to turn her head and look back at Jess, who sat on an upturned bucket just out of kicking range.
“Just relax, sweetie,” Jess said, hoping the calf wasn’t breech. “It’ll be all right.”
The only sound in the barn, besides the labored breathing, was the grumble-mumble sound of grass hay being chewed. There were two more pregnant cows in the barn, and Jess noticed they would look over at the laboring cow with impassive eyes, stare for a moment, then go back to eating.
The sliding door squeaked as it opened a few inches. Jess slitted his eyes at the sound. He saw a shock of blond hair, and Annie’s face peering in.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What are you doing? You should be sleeping.”
Annie pushed the door open a few more inches and stepped in. She wore oversized pants and a hooded sweatshirt that was several sizes too big. The clothes were familiar to Jess; seeing them tripped something in him.
“I woke up and couldn’t find you,” she said. “I was afraid you’d left us. Then I looked out and saw the light out here.”
“Why do you think I’d leave?”
She shrugged. He noticed her feet were bare.
“Couldn’t you find any shoes?”
“I’m all right.”
Jess noted that the cow in labor had now swung her head around the other way, so she could see Annie.
“I’ve got a cow here about to calve any minute,” Jess said.
“What time is it?”
He looked at his wristwatch. “It’s after three in the morning,” he said.
She shivered. Jess stood up and found another empty bucket and an old Army blanket in the tack room. “Come on over here, if you want. Have a sit, Annie. You can wrap your feet in this blanket.”
Annie nodded and joined him. Despite the oversized clothing, he was again amazed at how small she was. He watched her wrap the blanket around her bare feet.
“Have you ever seen a calf being born?”
“No.”
“Have you ever seen anything like that?”
“A boy down the street had a dog who had puppies,” she said. “I saw them before they had their eyes open. I thought they looked like a bunch of mice.”
“This can get pretty, um, basic,” Jess said. “You’ll have to decide how long you want to stay.”
She paused for a long time. He could see how exhausted she was. Her eyelids were at half-mast. “I’ll stay for a while.”
“It’s nice to have some company,” he said.
“You told Mr. Swann something about a fence. I didn’t understand. Was my mother there when you called?”
“We covered that. I assume she was there, but I don’t know for sure. In fact, I’m not sure I did the right thing at all.”
“What are you going to do now?”
He looked at her. “I’m going to help this cow.”
“No, I mean tomorrow. What are you going to do?”
He rubbed the gray stubble on his chin. “I guess I’ll drive into town, see if I can find out what’s going on without showing my hand.”
She was obviously confused.
“I mean, I won’t tell anyone you’re here until I can determine that it’s safe to tell someone. If the sheriff is open to it, without those ex-cops around, I could give him the word. But I’ll need to do a little groundwork first.”
“Groundwork? You talk funny,” she said.
“I’ll do some investigating,” he said patiently. “I’ll find out if it’s okay to tell the sheriff and your mother you’re here. I’m still a little confused why nobody has said anything about a man who got shot. There’s something wrong with that whole deal.”
“We saw him.”
“I know you think you did.”
“No,” she said, leaning forward on the bucket. “We saw it. I could take you there, to the exact place it happened. I could draw you a picture of the men who did it.”
“You could?”
“I can draw.”
“Then tomorrow, after breakfast, I’d like you to do just that.”
“Okay.”
After a few minutes of silence, she asked, “Do you have to do this every night?”
“I do this time of year. It’s calving season. The rest of the year I can pretty much sleep like a normal person. Unless the cows knock down a fence, or one of ’em gets sick or injured, or something like that. Ranching can be a twenty-four-hour job, Annie.”
“My mom has a job,” she said. “She works at a store. Sometimes she has to work at night, but she doesn’t have to work at four in the morning.”
Another long silence. Jess watched the cow. She was starting to dilate. A wet stream ran down one of her legs.
“Won’t be long now,” he said.
“Where is your wife?” Annie asked.
Jess snorted. “That’s to the point.”
“So where is she?”
Annie asked her questions in a matter-of-fact way. When he answered, she didn’t cluck, didn’t hang her head, didn’t feign concern. She just wanted to know what was what, why he was alone.
“S
he left me.” It just hung there, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like saying the words, either. In fact, it was the first time he had ever said them. “I guess she figured there wasn’t much of a future on this place, and she was probably right,” he said. “She is an ambitious woman, and when our son was gone, she didn’t have much to do. I could have changed a little more, I guess. I thought I was too old to change, and that I was still the man she married. I guess I thought wrong.”
“Where’s your son?”
“Jess Junior? He’s around,” Jess said. “He’s sick, though. Spent some time in rehab, spent some time in jail. Got mixed up with drugs, bad ones. He’s not all there anymore, is what I’m trying to say. It’s not a good story.”
Jeez, he thought. Why am I telling all of this to a little girl?
“Why didn’t you have more kids?”
“I wanted more,” Jess said. “A couple more, at least. Maybe a little girl or two. I asked her about having more, and she said she didn’t want to bring another child into this world. But she meant the ranch, I know now. She meant me.”
He realized he had said too much and turned his head away.
“You do all of this ranch stuff by yourself?”
“I do now,” Jess said. “I had to let my foreman go a couple of days ago.”
“What if you get sick or something?”
“Then things don’t get done.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s plenty fair,” he said. “Why wouldn’t it be? Folks aren’t entitled to a living.”
“It just doesn’t sound right,” she said, a little more unsure of herself.
“I’m not saying it’s right. I said it was fair.”
She paused, something else on her mind. “I’m pretty sure Billy wasn’t my father. He’s William’s father, not mine. Someday, I want to find out where I come from. I know I come from somewhere.” She looked up at him.
Jess had no clue how to respond to that.
Her probing eyes finally slipped from his face and back to the cow.
“What’s that?”
“That’s the first sign of a little one trying to get out, and mama is trying to ease it out so she can meet it.”