Stillhouse Lake, Page 25

  I imagine all it will do is lead them to a place where a car once sat, or a truck, or a van. If parked at the right angles, I think, the van that Javier tried to sell me would be perfect for the purpose . . . angled in toward the front of the house, a sliding side door behind the passenger seat. Perfect cover to carry unconscious young bodies from the house out to the van, load them in, lock them down.

  The dogs wouldn't take us to them. They'd only take us to where they'd been last, maybe to the road.

  I hadn't noticed it until the car ride, but the heavy, humid air has finally turned dark overhead, clouds wisping and clumping and layering, and as I wait in the interrogation room, I hear the faint drumming of the beginning of rainfall. Rain, to wash away the scent tracks.

  Rain, to wash away tracks and evidence and wipe it all clean, until the bodies of my children float slowly to the surface, breaking like pallid bubbles of flesh.

  I put my face in my hands and try not to scream. At least I muffle it, but someone outside the door opens it and looks in, frowning, then closes it when they see I'm not bleeding or unconscious. I don't know how they'd have treated the parent of two other missing children, but Gina Royal? Gina Royal is a suspect first, last, always.

  Prester takes his good time getting to me. When he finally does, the rain has intensified into a hissing storm on the roof, and although there are no windows, I can hear the distant booms of thunder rolling through the hills. It's distinctly cooler in here. Damp.

  He's been out in the storm, that much is clear, because he's using a hand towel that has probably last been on a rack in their break room to wipe his face and hair, and dab the worst of the rain off his suit jacket. It patters down to make dark stars on the floor, and I think of the drops, the smears in Connor's room. Brown smears, brown drops now, surely. It no longer looks like what people expect when they think of blood.

  Connor's blood is hours old, and I am sitting in this room, cold and shivering and desperate, and Prester is telling me that he hasn't found them yet. "We haven't found Javier Esparza, either," he tells me. "Sophie up at the range tells me he took a fishing trip."

  "That's convenient."

  "Not a crime, not up here. About ten percent of Norton's out camping, fishing, or hunting any given week. But we're looking hard. Got Fish and Game on it, checking campsites; we've asked Knoxville for a helicopter. Have to wait a bit for it to get free, but it's coming." He walks me through a map of the area around Stillhouse Lake, of the search parties, roadblocks, checks of every Stillhouse resident. I tell him about the Johansens in their shiny SUV, looking the other way while offering us up for a beating, or worse. My fists clench hard and press down, and I realize that where the edge of the wood is chipped, the hardened top surface is a little curled up, a little sharp. With work, someone could cut a wrist here.

  "Can I leave?" I ask him quietly. He studies me over the top of the reading glasses he's put on to look at the map. He looks like a dry college professor, like the horrific abduction of my kids is some kind of academic puzzle. "I want to look for my children. Please."

  "Rough conditions out there," he tells me. "Mud. Rain's coming down in buckets, makes it hard to see in those trees. Easy for someone to get turned around and lost, fall and break something, you name it. Right now it's best left to experts. Tomorrow maybe it'll be better. Easier going, and we'll have the chopper to help."

  I can't honestly tell if he thinks he's being kind to me, or if he's just intent on holding me here as long as possible, in case any evidence comes back. I'm sitting now in different clothes; Kezia has retrieved a pair of jeans from my closet and a shirt, and with uncanny precision has chosen my least favorite things to wear. My other clothes--the hoodie, the shirt, the sweatpants, the running shoes and socks--all have been sent off to the lab for testing for, presumably, the blood of my children.

  I want to scream again, but I don't think Prester would understand. And it won't do any good. If anything, it will let him keep me here even longer.

  I just stare back, wanting to blink and somehow managing not to, and Prester finally sighs and sits back. He removes his glasses, dropping them on top of the map, and rubs his eyes. They're tired. He looks wrecked, his skin loose and drooping, as if the last few days have taken pounds and years off him. I'd feel sorry for him if I didn't feel worse.

  "You can go," he tells me. "I can't keep you here. There's no evidence of anything except you being the victim of not one but two crimes today. I'm sorry, Ms. Proctor. I know that isn't much, but I really am. Don't know what I'd do if my girls were gone like this." I'm already out of my chair. "Wait a second. Wait."

  I don't want to. I stand there, vibrating, ready to leave, but Prester heaves himself up and leaves the room. He locks the door; I hear it engage. Son of a bitch! I'm ready to batter it down, but he isn't gone long. He comes back carrying . . . my backpack. And the evidence bag with my phone in it.

  "Here," he says. "We already checked your gun and test-fired it. Sophie confirmed your timeline, and Officer Claremont's statement clears you as well. We cloned your phone."

  He shouldn't have given me these things, I think; police don't release evidence, not so easily as all that. But I can see in his tired eyes that he's worried about my kids, and about me. He has good reason for both.

  I take the backpack and sling it over my shoulder, then slip my phone out of the evidence bag and turn it on. I've still got decent battery on it, which is lucky, because I can't go back home for my charger. I slip it into the side pocket of the backpack.

  "Thank you," I tell him, twisting the door handle. It opens without resistance, and though there's a police officer passing, he just gives me a look and moves on. Nobody steps in to block my path.

  I turn and look back at Prester. He looks defeated. Frustrated.

  "Get them to sand down that edge on the table," I tell him. "Somebody could open a vein with that thing."

  He looks where I point and reaches over to run a finger across it.

  Before he can say anything, if he intends to, I'm heading out through the bullpen. I grab the first detective I see--the young one who was holding Prester's coffee this morning--and ask where Sam Cade is. He tells me that Cade's out with one of the search teams, and I tell him I need a ride to join them. I can see by the look on his face that he's not here to be my taxi service.

  "I'll take her," says a voice from behind me, and I turn to see Lancel Graham. He's not in his uniform; he's in a light flannel shirt, worn old jeans, hiking boots. He has at least a day's growth of heavy, blond beard. He looks like a Nordic travel poster. "I'm headed out there to join them. Gwen, sorry. I'd taken my boys out camping up on the mountain. Came back as soon as I heard about your kids. You okay?"

  I swallow and nod, suddenly feeling wrecked by his sympathy, the steady way he's looking at me. Kindness is hard. The detective, who's not looking at me at all, as if I might infect him with Serial Killer Relative disease, seems relieved. "Yeah," he says to Graham. "You do that." They, I sense, are neither friends nor friendly. Graham doesn't spare the other man a glance, though. He leads the way out through the doors under the awning, and the sudden chill in the air surprises me. My breath puffs faintly white.

  Rain falls in a shimmering silver curtain, kept at bay only by the roof above us that extends out in a blunt square. I can see red and green stoplights in the distance, and the glow of streetlights over the parking lot, but the details are watercolored. "Wait here," Graham says. He takes off into the rain at a jog. In about a minute he's back at the helm of a massive SUV, one that's seen rough road that even the current monsoon can't completely wash off. A dark gray or black. The orange-tinted streetlights make it difficult to judge.

  He pops the front passenger door and I scramble in fast--not fast enough to avoid a torrent of cold water that slicks my hair and runs chilly fingers down my neck and back. My backpack slips to the floor and blends in with the darkness in the foot well. He's got the heater on, and I warm my hands in front of it, gra
teful for the consideration. "Where are we going?" I ask him. He puts the SUV in gear and as he does, the automatic feature pops the locks down with a harsh snap. I put my seat belt on. This vehicle rides far higher up than my Jeep; I feel like I'm on a double-decker bus. But I admit that the ride's smooth as he pulls out of the parking lot, into the rain-clogged, nearly deserted streets of Norton.

  "You wanted to find Sam Cade, right?" Graham says. "I gave him a ride into the back country, up the hill from my house. Rough out there, though. He was joining up with a party that was going to work their way up. Might not be easy to catch up to him now; you sure you want to do that?"

  I don't have anywhere else to go, and I certainly can't go back to that house, disfigured, broken, empty of those I love. I'm not dressed for the outdoors, especially not with the rain and cold, but I'm not going home. I think about calling Sam, but if he's out on the search, he might not hear his phone in this mess.

  My backpack vibrates against my foot, and for a second I can't think why, until I remember I put the phone in there for protection against the rain. I lean forward and slip it out. The number's blocked, but I can't take the chance, so I answer. It's another troll. This one's masturbating while he tells me he's going to tear my skin off. I hang up on him. As I do, I see that I have two texts. Both from blocked numbers.

  "Anything useful?" Graham asks me.

  "No. That was a pervert getting off on tormenting me," I tell him. "That's what it's like, being the ex-wife of Melvin Royal. I'm not a person. I'm just a target."

  "Rough," he says. "I've got to admit, you've got a lot of guts, the way you kept your family together and tried to move on. Couldn't have been easy."

  "No," I tell him. My family isn't together. The ache of that hurts so badly it's hard to take the next breath against it. "Not easy."

  "I'm a little surprised Prester let you keep that phone," Graham says. "Usually they want to keep it, monitor the calls at the station. Must have some kind of trace on it, I suppose."

  "He said they cloned it. Maybe they can catch the assholes calling me."

  While I'm saying that, I check the first text. It's from Absalom, because it has his peculiar little symbol at the end of it. It says U have a cop living close. I checked. Good resource.

  That is a shock. Absalom's standard advice is never trust a badge.

  I delete it. I was hoping desperately he had good intel on my kids, but instead, it's nothing I don't already know. It feels like he's checking out of our problems.

  "This weather's too hard to be out there tonight," Graham tells me. "I'm going to turn around and go back to my house. You can stay on the couch tonight, join the search at first light. How's that?"

  "No, I need--I need to be looking, if the search party's still out there. I'll manage."

  Graham eyes me with a trace of a frown. "Not wearing that you won't. Those boots are all right, but you'll get hypothermic up there in an hour with what you have on, wet as it is. There's a coat behind your seat. You can wear that."

  I put the phone down. I feel behind me on the floorboards and come across the silky fabric of a down jacket, one with a fur-edged hood. I pull it toward me, and as I do, the back of my hand skims over something smeared on the leather surface of the seat behind me--low, near the bottom. It feels tacky and slightly damp. I pull the coat free and dump it in my lap, and as I do, I see that my knuckles are smudged with what looks like grease. I reach for a tissue from the holder that sits in between us and wipe it off, and as I do, I think, This doesn't feel like grease.

  As my hand comes closer, I catch a dark copper scent that is utterly unmistakable. That smear on the back of my hand is not grease at all.

  We're out of Norton now, and Graham has his foot firmly on the gas, speeding faster than we should on these wet roads. The incline up to Stillhouse Lake is just a black screen with the lights firing raindrops and a gray, indistinct wash of road.

  There is blood on the back of my hand.

  The realization wipes me clear inside, light and clear and empty, and I think for a second or two that I might pass out from the enormity of it. Lancel Graham has blood in his SUV. And everything, everything, begins to make sense. I don't dare let that show.

  I finish wiping my hand and ball up the tissue and stick it in my jeans pocket as I say, "You sure Kyle won't mind my taking this for a while?" It probably is his son's jacket. It has that peculiar adolescent boy smell. "I think he spilled something back there, by the way."

  "Yeah, meant to clean that up; we hit a deer and I loaded the carcass. Dumped it off at my house on the way to the station. Sorry," Graham says. "Listen, Kyle won't care about the coat. Keep it as long as you need it. He's got plenty."

  He has such a nice voice. Layered, nuanced, friendly. He's got a ready explanation for the blood, but I don't feel anything either way now. I'm numb inside. I'm not really here anymore. I'm just a mind, putting together puzzle pieces, all the emotion blocked the way a blood vessel will clamp down to slow the blood loss. That's shock, I realize. I'm in shock. Fine. I can use it.

  I remember him visiting the house, what seems an age ago, to return my son's phone . . . or a phone that looked just like it. Another burner could have been programmed with everything my son's phone contained--easy enough, since all he had in it were phone numbers and texts. It could have been cloned, just as Prester had demonstrated. The history copied over. Even the number replicated.

  And what came back into our house could have been a different phone. A phone that could listen to us. A camera that could see us when left out. I thought about that phone sitting next to Connor's bed, learning about our habits, our patterns, what time Connor got up and went to bed. It might have been able to record the tones and figure out our passcode.

  Though maybe that one had been the easiest of all. Maybe Officer Graham had simply watched me enter it that night when he first came over.

  Something cracks inside me, just a little. I feel the first, violent pulse of panic as the shock begins to let go, as the bleeding starts. I close my eyes and try to keep thinking, because this?

  This is the most important moment of my life.

  The silence is heavy in the SUV; the excellent noise canceling dims the roar of the rain to a dull, monotonous hiss, like the screaming of distant stars. There are no other cars behind us on the road, no friendly, glaring headlights approaching. We might be the only two people alive in the world.

  My phone buzzes again. I position the coat so it covers my phone, and read the second text. We are at NPD where r u.

  It's from Sam Cade. He's not on the mountain, searching. This whole trip has been a lie.

  My phone is on silent, so it makes no noise as I carefully, slowly, type my reply. Graham has me.

  I am hitting "Send" when the truck lurches wildly sideways, and next thing I know, I'm being knocked hard against the passenger door. My phone goes flying, and from the last glimpse I have, I can't tell if the text sent or not. I grab for it.

  Graham reaches for it at the same time, and as he does, he deliberately--I think--smashes it hard against one of the metal struts under the seat. The glass stars, obscuring the screen. The power sputters out.

  "Shit!" he says, holding it up. Shakes it, as if he can magically reset it. It's excellent theater. He even looks concerned, and if I wasn't so terrified now, so angry, I'd have believed that, too. I try to slow the pounding of adrenaline into my bloodstream, because I don't need it now; I need to think. I need to plan before I can act. Let him think he's got me.

  I have to kill this man. But first, I have to find out where he's taken my kids. So slowly, very slowly, I pull the weight of my backpack up. The hiss of the rain and road noise may disguise the sound of the zipper pulling. My hands are shaking badly from the terror and the rapid-fire pulse of my heart. I feel around inside the opening and touch fingers to the pebbled plastic of the gun case.

  It's turned the wrong way. I need to move it to get access to the lock.

  Lancel Gr
aham is looking mournfully at the broken phone. "Goddamn it, I'm sorry about that. Look, they probably are getting copies of the calls at the station. Want me to check?" He doesn't wait for a response. He takes out his own cell phone and seems to make a call; the screen lights up. It looks legitimate, but for all I know, he's talking to a recording. "Hey, Kez--I just fucked up Ms. Proctor's cell phone. Yeah, I know. Dropped it like an idiot, it's busted all to hell. Listen, are her calls being intercepted? Recorded?" He glances at me and smiles in what looks like real relief. "Good. That's good. Thanks, Kez." He thumbs it off. "No worries. They're monitoring the calls. Kez will call me if there's any news about your kids, okay?"

  It's all pure theater. He damn sure hasn't called the police station.

  The gun case is heavy inside the backpack. If I make too obvious a move, he'll punch me, and one solid hit from a man this size in close quarters might put me down. I have to control my fear. I have to.

  I work to inch the case up and turn it sideways. It seems to take forever. I'm praying that Graham can't tell what I'm doing; the gloom's heavy in the car, and we're on a very dark road. But I can see him glancing over.

  I've managed to turn the case, but this side is the hinges. I need two more turns to get to the lock, and I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to take the backpack and slam it into the side of his head, but there's no advantage to this, not now. Not here, on this deserted road, on this rainy night. I'm sure he's armed.

  I'm sure his gun is far easier to reach than mine. If I don't keep control, if I react with pure emotion, I will lose.

  I have to be better at this than a psychopath.

  We make the turn for Stillhouse Lake. There are no boats out tonight; lights blaze in almost every house to keep away the dark, the monsters, as we pass. At the turnoff that leads to the Johansens' house, he takes a left up the hill. We pass their driveway, and I see the couple standing in their kitchen, glasses of red wine in their hands, talking as they carry plates to a dinner table. The cozy life of total strangers. That eerie postcard of normality is gone in the next instant.