Blue Heaven

by C. J. Box

  “This is driving me crazy,” William said, pointing the remote at the set and the box and pushing button after button. “How can that old guy live like this? Without good TV? I can’t even get Nickelodeon.”

  “Keep trying,” Annie said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “I wonder if all of the wires are connected from that dish out there? Maybe something is busted?”

  “Stay inside,” she said. “You heard what he said before he left. Keep the curtains closed and the lights off. We’re not supposed to go outside.”

  William made a face. “If I can’t get this TV to work, I’m going out there.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “No you’re not,” he mocked.

  She took the remote from him and looked at it. There was a button marked SAT, and she pushed it. The snow cleared on the screen to reveal a Spanish soap opera.

  “What did you do?” William cried. “Give me that!”

  She handed it over as he scrolled through the channels. “He’s not as big a hick as I thought he was,” William said.

  Annie got up off the couch and went into the kitchen. Before he left, the rancher had locked the doors and windows and told them not to open them unless they were sure it was him. Annie was surprised to hear him say that it was the first time he had ever locked the front door. The rancher had to spray the lock with some kind of lubricant to get the bolt to work.

  She looked through the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator. Crackers, spices, oatmeal, tea, and coffee in the cabinets, frozen packages of ground beef and steaks in the freezer. She’d never seen so many tins of chili powder in her life. Mr. Rawlins had said he would bring groceries back to the ranch when he returned from town, and he had asked what Annie and William liked to eat. Annie had scribbled a list and given it to him, and he had read it, smiled, and put it in the pocket of his long-sleeved, snap-buttoned shirt.

  “When will you be back?” she had asked.

  “Early afternoon, I reckon,” he said. “And remember, keep the doors locked and everything shut off.”

  “You told me that three times already.”

  Jess had looked at her. “Well, I hope one of ’em took.”

  WILLIAM YELLED, “Annie, come look at this!”

  He had found the Fox News channel, and on the screen was a photo. She hardly recognized him, he looked so bad.

  “Why is Tom on TV?” William asked, trying to find the volume button to turn it up.

  “Why are our pictures on TV?” he asked, as Annie’s and William’s school photos filled the screen over a scrolling graphic that read AMBER ALERT.

  MORE THAN once, Annie had considered calling her mother. She had gone as far as lifting the receiver and hearing the dial tone before talking herself out of it. With their pictures on television, Annie considered it again now.

  What would it hurt to call? To say, “We’re all right, and we love you, Mom.” To hear her mother’s voice? But Mr. Rawlins had said Swann was there, in their home, and she couldn’t bear to think of him answering the telephone.

  She hoped that when Mr. Rawlins returned he would have a plan of some kind to get them home where they belonged. He seemed to be on their side, but with his own doubts. Would he turn on them, like Mr. Swann had? It was possible, but she didn’t think so. He seemed to believe them, in his slow way. And he seemed to like her. Annie had caught him looking at her with a soft, sad expression, as if he were seeing her but thinking of someone else. She felt Mr. Rawlins was someone she and William could trust. Besides, they had no other place to run.

  “Hey, Annie, come look at this!” William called again from the living room.

  “What now?” she said as she found him poised in front of an opened dark wood cabinet.

  “This is awesome,” he said, stepping aside so she could look inside.

  Rifles and shotguns, seven of them altogether, stood in a rack. Boxes of bullets and shells were stacked near their butts. William reached for one of the rifles, and Annie stopped him.

  “Leave them alone,” she said, pushing his hand down.

  “But they’re cool,” he said. “I wonder why he has so many?”

  “He’s a rancher. Ranchers have lots of guns.”

  “Yeah, for bears and stuff,” he said, his eyes wide. “I wonder if he’ll show me how they work?”

  She shrugged. “I guess you can ask him.” She wished Mr. Rawlins had a lock of some kind on the guns. It was obvious William was fascinated with them, and she didn’t trust her brother not to take them out and play with them if he thought he could get away with it.

  “I could help protect us,” William said soberly. “So if he needs to go to town again, we’ll be safe.”

  She reached across him to shut the cabinet door.

  “No,” he said, stopping her. “Look at this one.”

  Before she could intervene, he reached in and snatched a rifle with a lever action. The rifle was obviously old, with the barrel rubbed silver and scratches in the wood of the stock.

  “This looks like something a cowboy would use,” he said, pulling it out. “It’s heavier than I thought.” There was writing on the barrel. “What does it say?”

  Annie read the stamping. “Manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. New Haven, Conn.”

  “Con?”

  “Connecticut. Patented August 21, 1884. Nickel Steel Barrel. Twenty-five-35 WCF. I don’t know what that means.”

  “Wow, I wonder if it’s too old to shoot.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Put it away.”

  “Annie …”

  “Put it away, now.”

  He did, taking his time to fit it into the rack. “You have to admit it’s a cool old gun,” he said.

  She closed the gun cabinet.

  “There’s something else,” William said, walking across the living room to an old rolltop desk. “Wait until you see this.”

  “You shouldn’t be snooping,” she said as she followed.

  “Oh, like you didn’t snoop at Mr. Swann’s, right?”

  He pulled open one of the drawers of the desk. In it was a framed photo of a much younger Mr. Rawlins, very much younger, wearing an Army uniform and a peaked cap. Mr. Rawlins stared right through the camera, as if he wanted to show how serious he was. Inside the drawer were hinged boxes containing war medals.

  William opened them. “He was an Army sharpshooter,” he said, showing her the medal. “He also got this silver star thing here. There are a couple of other ones, but I don’t know what they mean.”

  She touched the silver star medal with her fingertips.

  “Maybe he’s cooler than we thought,” William said.

  “I wonder where he got these?”

  “We need to ask him,” William said. “I bet he’s got some stories.”

  When they heard the sound of a motor, they looked at each other, then furiously shut the hinged boxes, returned the medals, and shut the drawer.

  William went to the window and inched the curtain aside before she could tell him not to.

  “Someone’s coming down the road,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s Mr. Rawlins.”

  THEY HID under the desk with their arms wrapped around their shins, looking out.

  “I wonder who it is,” William whispered.

  “Could you see anything?”

  “Just a black truck.”

  “How many people were in it?”

  “I couldn’t tell.”

  “I wish you hadn’t pulled the curtain back like that.”

  “They couldn’t see me.”

  “How do you know that? Next time, just look through the slit between the curtains, okay?”

  William started to argue, then stopped himself. “Okay,” he said.

  The motor grew louder, then stopped. A car door slammed shut.

  “They’re right outside,” Annie said. Then she realized: “The TV! You left it on!”

  William scrambled out from beneath the desk an
d found the remote on the coffee table. He pointed it at the screen and started pushing buttons. Before he found the power button, he inadvertently hit the volume, and the sound of a cartoon roared through the empty house, then went silent. Annie sucked in her breath as she watched William drop the remote and rapidly crawl on his hands and knees to rejoin her.

  “Sorry,” he whispered.

  She glared at him.

  They heard a heavy knock on the front door that rattled dishes in the kitchen.

  “Hello, hello!”

  They looked at each other. A man with a deep voice.

  “Hellooooo. Open up. It’s the Kootenai Bay police.”

  What should we do? William asked with his eyes.

  Annie put a finger to her lips.

  “Hey, I heard the TV. Please open up. I need to ask you some questions.”

  She recognized the slight Mexican accent as belonging to the man who had spoken to Mr. Swann while they cowered on the floor of his truck.

  William dropped his face into his hands. Annie patted his back to reassure him.

  “Helloooo in there.” The pounding on the door was brutal.

  Next, she heard the doorknob rattle. He was trying to get in. Then silence.

  She felt William trying to burrow backward farther into the shadows beneath the desk. She heard him sniff; he was holding back tears.

  A form passed by one of the curtained windows in the living room, and she could see his silhouette clearly. It was him. She recognized him as one of the killers, the dark one. He was a stocky man, with a big head and mustache. She didn’t want to tell William.

  The man passed by a second window, then came back, filling it. Through the curtain, the points of his elbows stuck out like wings. He had pressed his face against the glass and was trying to look into the house through the slit in the curtain, using his hands to frame his eyes. Since she couldn’t see him, she assumed he couldn’t see her. But it took a few seconds of terror to realize it.

  At last, he moved on. His heavy shoes clumped on the porch, then went silent. A few seconds later gravel crunched on the side of the house.

  He was going to try the back door.

  She tried to remember if it was locked. Mr. Rawlins had said something about locking the doors, but she hadn’t seen him go to the back of the house.

  “William,” she whispered. “Get ready to run.”

  The back door rattled but didn’t open. It was locked after all. Then, again, a heavy pounding. “Wake up in there,” the man shouted. “It’s the police!”

  She wondered how easy it would be for the man to break down the door. Pretty easy, she thought. He was a big man, and the door didn’t seem to be very thick.

  Then he was gone. There was no sound.

  Had he left?

  No, she thought. She hadn’t heard the engine start up.

  His shadow again filled the window. There was a squeak, a cracking of paint. He was trying to open it.

  After a few moments of pushing he gave up. He sighed heavily, and moved to the next window.

  “I’m going to get a gun,” William said through tears.

  “No,” she whispered back. “You don’t even know how to load it.”

  “I’ve seen it on TV.”

  She thought of all the boxes of cartridges they had seen in the gun cabinet. How would he know which bullets fit into which guns? He wouldn’t.

  The man couldn’t open the second window, either. Thank God Mr. Rawlins had locked them.

  She saw the man turn, and pat his jacket. Then, the chirp of a phone.

  “Newkirk,” the man said, “where the fuck are you?”

  Sunday, 1:04 P.M.

  FOR TWENTY MINUTES, clutching the shopping list Annie had made, Jess pushed his cart down grocery aisles he had never been down before. Everything looked unfamiliar. Twice, he had to ask a stocker where to find items on the list. Frosted Flakes, juice boxes, frozen pizza rolls, string cheese, bagels. Things he had never seen, eaten, or purchased.

  As he shopped, he was still reeling from the revelations of the morning, his chance encounters with Karen and J.J. If he thought he was unmoored from his foundation while he drove into town that morning, it was nothing like he felt now in a grocery store he thought he knew but that now seemed strange and foreign to him. The only thing in his cart he recognized was the can of Copenhagen chewing tobacco. That was for him.

  He rolled his cart into the checkout line. There had never been so many colorful boxes in his cart before. He found himself looking forward to seeing the children again, cooking for them. He had always wanted grandchildren, and he had once looked forward to it. This was kind of like that, he thought. There was no reason, after all they’d gone through, that he couldn’t spoil them a little. Tonight, he’d read the packages and figure out how to cook frozen pizza rolls—whatever they were—if that’s what they wanted.

  Then he’d need to figure out just what in the hell he was going to do about them.

  Someone bumped him gently in the back with a cart, and he looked over his shoulder to see a beaming Fiona Pritzle. “Hey, good-lookin’,” she said in her little-girl voice.

  He nodded a greeting as his heart sank.

  “Did you see the newspaper today, Jess? They interviewed me about the Taylor kids. There’s a picture, too.”

  He looked in her cart and saw a dozen copies of the paper along with frozen pizzas, a case of Diet Coke, and little boxes of cosmetics.

  “Would you like one of these?” she asked, handing him a copy of the paper.

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “What do you think of the picture? I think they could have shot me with better lighting, myself. I’ve got shadows on my face.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, wishing the woman in front of him would quit fishing in her purse and find her checkbook. Why was it that some women were always unprepared to actually pay for their purchases at the register, as if it had never occurred to them before?

  “It’s a pretty good story, though,” she said. “Amazingly accurate. I asked to see it before they put it in the paper, but they said they didn’t do that.

  “I’ve got an interview scheduled tomorrow with CNN, and a request from Fox News. They’re fighting over me. They’re both on their way and should be here tonight some time. This is really turning into a big deal since they issued the Amber Alert,” she said, tossing her hair as if this information gave her validation as an insider. “I’m also expecting to hear from the Spokane television station. They’ve been covering this story pretty good, and I’m sure they want to talk to the last person who saw the kids alive. I need to get home and check my messages, although I did give them my cell phone number. My luck would be they will call me tomorrow, when I’m on television or on my route.”

  As she spoke, she fished her phone out of her purse and looked at it. “No messages as of now,” she said.

  Jess was thinking about how she said the last person who saw the kids alive.

  “So you don’t think the Taylor kids will be found?” he asked. The woman ahead of him had finally located her checkbook but was arguing about the price of a head of lettuce.

  Fiona’s eyes got huge, and she shook her head in an exaggerated way. Then she shinnied around her cart so she could whisper into Jess’s ear.

  “I don’t want to say too much because, you know, I’m now considered sort of an expert in this case,” she said, peering around the store as if looking for spies, “but I think a sexual predator has them. Or had them. I think it’s just a matter of time before the bodies show up. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they find out those kids have been … violated.”

  Jess leaned away from her as she talked, and squinted at her. “A sexual predator?”

  “Don’t talk so loudly,” she said, wiggling a stubby finger in his face. “Somebody will overhear us.”

  “Sir?”

  Jess turned. The checkout clerk was ready for him, and he gratefully pushed his cart forward.
<
br />   As he unloaded it onto the belt, he could feel Fiona Pritzle studying him.

  “String cheese? Juice boxes? What are you doing with those?”

  Jess felt his face flush. He couldn’t think of a way to explain it.

  He looked up at her. “Wanted to try some new things,” he said. “I’m in a rut.” He was also a poor liar.

  She stared back at him, her eyes narrow.

  “I had a bunch of coupons,” he said. That one crashed, too.

  He paid in cash and left her standing there. As he pushed his cart toward the door, blood rushing in his ears, his face hot, he heard her ask the checkout clerk if she had seen the newspaper today.

  AS HE DROVE out of Kootenai Bay, Jess surveyed the northwestern sky and saw the blunt shapes of thunderheads nosing over the mountains. It had been clear and warm all day, but rain was coming again. The barometric pressure would change, and it was likely at least two of the cows would calve tonight. He still had a fence line to check. These thoughts were hardwired into him, the result of routine and experience. The fence could wait, but there was nothing he could do to postpone the calves. He hoped he could get some sleep before they came, though.

  And he prayed the children would be at his house, where they should be, and that everything was okay. He pushed aside a mild panic at the thought of them being gone or harmed.

  He stopped at his gate as he always did before realizing that someone had left it open. He quickly got back in his truck, drove over the cattle guard, and shut the gate behind him. Who had come onto his ranch? His immediate thought was that the trespasser wasn’t local. Locals closed gates. When he topped the hill and cleared the trees, he could see his home below and he felt a rush of anxiety and ice-cold fear. A vehicle he didn’t recognize, a black pickup, was parked at a rakish angle on the circular drive. A dark man he had never seen before stood on his porch with his hand to his face—talking on a cell phone?—with his other arm gesturing in the air. Jess recognized him from the drawing Annie had made. It was the big one, with the mustache.