Heaven's keep

SIXTEEN

Day Six, Missing 128 Hours

The ranch house was a green rambler with three towering cottonwoods in the front yard. A drainage ditch and a white rail fence separated the yard from the road. In back of the house stood a large barn with a connected corral and a couple of other outbuildings. Half a dozen horses browsed in a nearby pasture. A hundred yards to the west was an aluminum hangar and a landing strip. Hills rose above the southern side of the valley, chalk white with snow and barren as desert dunes. The sky above them was the faded blue of thrift-store jeans. Cork pulled up beside Rude’s pickup, which was parked in the yard in front of the barn. When he got out, the smell of hay and fresh manure filled his nostrils.

The door of the barn swung open, and Rude strode out. He was wearing an old jean jacket, a cowboy hat, scarred boots, and pigskin work gloves with the palms worn to a shine. He tugged off his gloves as he came and greeted Cork and Stephen with “Howdy!”

“Jon, your place is even prettier from the ground than it was from five hundred feet up,” Cork said.

“Come on in. Diane’s got dinner under way.”

They entered through the mudroom in back, where Rude removed his boots, which were caked with the residue from the barn floor. They went from there into the kitchen and the aroma of Italian spices. The room was large and bright, and at its center was an island, where a fine-looking woman stood with a long, sharp knife in her hand.

“Sweetheart, this is Cork O’Connor and his son, Stephen,” Rude said.

She put the knife down and smiled. Her hair was light brown and hung to her shoulders. She had a long, lovely face. She wore a pale blue sweater and jeans. She wiped her hands on a dish towel draped over one shoulder and greeted them with a cordial clasp. “I’m Diane,” she said. “Glad you finally let Jon talk you into dinner.”

The sound of small feet across floorboards preceded the entrance of a child. She ran to her mother, grasped Diane’s waist, and peered at the guests with shy interest.

“Anna, these are our friends. This is Cork and this is Stephen.”

“Hi,” Anna said. “I can dance.”

“Tell you what, sweetheart,” Rude said. “Let’s all go into the living room and you can show our guests a little ballet, but only a little, all right?”

“All right,” she agreed easily, turned, and danced her way out of the kitchen.

They ate a fine dinner, washed down with a good Chianti. Diane talked about her classes at the college in Lander and about her desire to teach. Cork told them a little about Aurora. The search for the missing plane was carefully skirted. Anna took a shine to Stephen and sat beside him and told him all about her stuffties. Stuffties, she explained, were her stuffed animal friends. After dinner she brought Stephen her favorites-a giraffe named Horace, a floppy-eared dog named Bop, and a unicorn named Uni. Rude asked Cork if he’d join him outside for a smoke, and the two men went through the mudroom, shrugged on their coats, and strolled out into the yard.

The moon was up, nearly full and flooding the valley with silver light that made everything look covered in frost. Yard lights from other spreads flickered up the valley. Rude walked to the fence that bounded the pasture. He brought out a pack of Marlboros and offered Cork a cigarette.

“Gave them up a few years back,” Cork said.

“Wish I could.” Rude lit up and shot out a cloud of silver smoke.

The horses in the pasture began to drift toward them.

“Fine place you’ve got here, Jon. Fine family,” Cork said.

“I’m a blessed man and I know it, Cork.” Rude studied the tip of his cigarette a moment. “Almost lost it all, though.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“Gambling. Never had a clue I’d be addicted. Then the Blue Sky Casino came along, and for a while I was spending all my time there. All my money, too. And finally money I didn’t have. The casino”-he shook his head-“it’s been okay for the Arapaho, I guess, but it’s done a lot of individual damage around here.”

“Still gamble?”

“Naw. Diane gave me an ultimatum. Told me to get help or she was leaving me and taking Anna with her.”

“Worked, huh?”

“I belong to Gamblers Anonymous. I haven’t set foot in that casino in over a year. Funny the things that can do a man in that he never saw coming.” He laughed and held up his Marlboro. “I know all the heartache these things promise, and I’ll stop one of these days. At the moment, I’m just real happy I was able to quit the gambling.”

One of the horses whinnied and was answered somewhere in the distance, far beyond Rude’s pasture. The sound made Cork sad, though he couldn’t say exactly why. The truth was there wasn’t much in the last few days that didn’t affect him in this way.

“I wish I knew what to hope for you, Cork. We get our hands on a magnetometer and find the plane tomorrow in Sleeping Baby Lake, well, you understand what that’ll mean.”

“I know.” Cork turned and looked back at the house, where the lights from inside shined warmly into the night. “I’ll take one of those cigarettes.”

Rude held out the Marlboros, and Cork pulled one from the pack. Rude snapped open his lighter and thumbed a flame. Cork bent and lit his cigarette. He drew the smoke into his lungs and closed his eyes. Whenever he smoked with Henry Meloux, it had nothing to do with the pleasure of the act itself. This was different. This was like running into a long-lost and very wicked friend.

“Feel like I’ve seduced you back to the dark side,” Rude said.

“Not your fault. It’s the circumstances.”

For a while they smoked and didn’t talk, then Diane called from the house. Inside, Anna had brought out a whole family of stuffties and was introducing Stephen to them all.

“This one is Jasper,” she said, holding up a donkey. “He’s kind of a joker. He makes the other stuffties laugh. If you want to keep him for a while, you can. Maybe he can make you laugh because you’re probably pretty sad.”

“Do I look sad?” Stephen asked.

“Yes. You’re sad in your eyes. Here, take Jasper. He’ll help. And you can give him back to me whenever you want to.”

“Thanks.” Stephen took the stuffed toy from Anna, though it appeared to trouble him.

They sat at the table again, and Diane served them cheesecake. As they were finishing, the telephone rang. Rude got up and went to the kitchen to answer. When he came back, he said, “That was Dewey Quinn. He’s found a magnetometer.”

In their room at the hotel, Stephen got ready for bed while Cork called home and gave an update. When Stephen had finished brushing his teeth, he turned on the television and tuned in CNN. The stuffed donkey Anna Rude had given him he put at the end of his bed, and then he crawled under the covers. He stared at the ceiling, but when the news turned to coverage of the standoff in Kansas his eyes were glued to the screen. The situation had continued to worsen. Hargrove seemed to be raving like a madman, threatening to detonate the explosives and kill everyone in the rural compound even though the authorities had so far refrained from any aggressive action.

“Do you think he’d really do that, Dad?” Stephen asked.

“People who see themselves in desperate situations sometimes do desperate, incomprehensible things,” Cork said.

“Is everyone with him like that?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine that if you have children you’d be thinking that way.”

“Maybe he’ll let the children leave,” Stephen said.

“Maybe.” Though, in truth, Cork thought not. He wondered at Stephen’s deep concern over these people-these children-he didn’t know. Maybe Stephen saw them as being a little like himself, caught up in something unthinkably horrific and over which they had no control. Maybe he thought that if the impossible situation on the plains of Kansas could somehow be resolved it would mean there was hope for the impossible in those rugged Wyoming mountains.

Cork went into the bathroom. By the time he came out, Stephen had fallen asleep.

It was just as well. He missed the breaking news from Prestman, Kansas. Gunther Hargrove had blown himself and his followers to kingdom come.