Blue Heaven

Saturday, 8:45 A.M.

AFTER PULLING two calves during the night, feeding his cattle at 5:00 A.M., and a big breakfast of steak, eggs, and coffee, Jess Rawlins showered and put on a jacket and tie and his best gray Stetson Rancher and went out to start his pickup. The sky was clear of clouds, although mist from the rain the night before hugged the grass and sharpened the smell of alfalfa and cow manure from the hayfield. The clouds would move in again in the afternoon, he guessed. He carried a boot box full of documents and put it on the passenger seat.

JIM HEARNE was waiting for him in the lobby wearing a sport jacket, tie, slacks, and boots. Jess still wasn’t used to the new bank building even though it had been there for five years. The new building was impressive, with its big windows and modern furniture, but he preferred the old one, the elegant, cramped, two-story redbrick structure on Main, with its dark interior, muted lights, and hardwood floors. It had once been called the North Idaho Stockman’s Bank. That was three name changes ago, before it became First Interstate and was now open on Saturdays. The Rawlins family had banked there since their initial homestead in 1933.

“Jim.”

“Jess.”

Jim Hearne was in his late forties, stocky, broad-faced, with thinning brown hair and sincere blue eyes. He had once been the exclusive agriculture loan officer, but his duties and titles had multiplied. A bareback rider who had qualified twice for the national finals, he still had a bow-legged hitch in his walk as he led Jess toward his office and shut the door behind them. The Rawlins Ranch had been his college rodeo sponsor.

Jess sat in one of the two chairs facing Hearne’s desk and put his boot box of documents in the other. He removed his hat and placed it crown down on the floor next to him. On Hearne’s desk was a thick file bound by clips with a tab that read RAWLINS.

“Plenty of moisture lately,” Hearne said, sitting down. “That’s got to help.” Despite the fact that he was now president of the bank, Hearne still handled his old customers personally, and lapsed easily into the old banter. Jess had known him for thirty years, had watched him grow up to become a community leader.

Jess nodded. They both knew why he was here and that Jess wasn’t good at small talk.

“Jess, I’m just not sure where to start,” Hearne said.

Jess owned and operated a three thousand-acre ranch, one thousand eight hundred acres of it outright and the other one thousand two hundred acres deeded from the forest service, state, and federal Bureau of Land Management. He ran 350 Herefords in a cow/calf operation and sometimes, when the grass was good like this year, took in fifty to one hundred feeder cattle on a lease. It was the second-largest private holding remaining in the county. Hearne knew the herd size, deed arrangements, and layout of the ranch from memory, and didn’t need to open his file.

Jess nodded. “There’s not much to say. I can’t make my payments, and I don’t see how that’s going to change, Jim. I’m broke. I laid off Herbert Cooper yesterday.”

Hearne looked at Jess impassively, but Jess thought he noticed a softening in Hearne’s eyes as he spoke.

“Calving is going as well as it ever has,” Jess said. “The alfalfa’s doing great with this moisture. I’ve got several calls from folks wanting to pasture their cows on my open meadows. But even with that…”

Hearne pursed his lips. Silence hung in the air.

“Everywhere you look,” Hearne said, “people are eating beef. Everyone I know, practically, is on that low-carb meat diet. You’d think the prices would rise. That mad cow stuff out of Canada is a red herring.”

Jess agreed. This was a never-ending conversation, one they had had before. Meat-processing conglomerates controlled prices and had long-term options on supply. Jess had agreed to those prices years in advance, before the increase in meat consumption, before costs skyrocketed.

“No one held a gun to my head to make me sign those futures contracts,” Jess said. “I’m not here to whine.”

“I know you’re not.”

“I’m not here to tell you everything’s going to get better, either,” Jess said. “It probably won’t. But I do know I run a good outfit, and I don’t waste your money or mine.”

This was as close as Jess would come to asking for a favor, and it made him uncomfortable. He wouldn’t have even made the statement if he wasn’t still thinking of Herbert Cooper’s packing up. He had made Hearne uncomfortable, too, Jess could tell.

“No one ever said that,” Hearne said. “I sure as hell didn’t.”

Jess nodded.

“It’s just that the day of the pure cattle outfit in northern Idaho may have passed us by,” Hearne said, his face still flushing as he did so.

“I know.”

“You’re land-rich and cash-poor,” Hearne said. “You’ve probably been following the price of real estate the last couple of years.”

“Yup.”

“Your place is worth millions, if developed properly,” Hearne said morosely, delivering news neither one of them really wanted to hear but had to. “There are ways to get out from under this debt, Jess.”

Jess sighed. His back was ramrod straight, but he felt like he was slumping. “I’m no developer.”

“You don’t have to be,” Hearne said. “There are probably a half dozen developers right now who would work with you. I’ve gotten some calls on it, in fact.”

It hurt Jess to know that others knew he was in trouble, that he was a soft target. “I’ve gotten some calls, too, and offers in the mail. I used to just throw ’em out without even opening them. But the Realtors are getting wise to it and sending ’em in unmarked envelopes. Karen even came out yesterday with her new husband.”

“You could diversify,” Hearne said. “Look at the Browns.” The Brown Ranch was the other remaining family ranch in the area. “One son runs cattle and a meatpacking facility. The other son runs a gravel operation. The daughter operates a guest ranch on the property.”

Jess snorted. “I had plans like that once,” he said. “You know what happened.”

Hearne sat back and sighed. He knew.

The silence groaned.

Hearne said, “None of us who grew up here wants to see you lose that ranch. I sure as hell don’t. I think if all of the old ranches are replaced by those five-acre ranchettes, like we’re seeing now, the county just won’t be the same. But I can’t let sentiment run my bank. Those newcomers built this building, and they’re sending my kids to college.”

Jess wondered why Hearne felt it necessary to tell him that.

“Jess, is there any way you would consider selling some of it? Maybe half? That would buy you some time to figure out the rest and maybe save some of it.”

Jess bristled. The thought of being the one to dissolve the operation was a bitter pill. He thought of his grandfather, his father, his mother. They had left him a legacy, and he had screwed it up. The ranch was all he had that defined him, or the Rawlins name. How could he get rid of half of it?

“I’m a rancher,” Jess said. “I don’t know anything else.”

Hearne rubbed his face with his hands. Jess noticed that Hearne’s hands were soft. They didn’t used to be. He looked down at his own hands. They were brown, gnarled, and weathered.

“We’ve got to figure something out,” Hearne said. “We can’t extend any of the loans anymore. I’ve got directors and auditors who want to know what the hell I’m doing with these bad loans.”

“I’m sorry, Jim.”

“Don’t say that,” Hearne said. “I can’t stand for you to say that.”

The intercom chirped, and Hearne leaned forward and picked up the headset. “I’m in a meeting, Joan.”

Jess could hear Joan’s muffled voice. Whatever she said had enough import to keep Hearne on the line.

“Oh, I hate to hear that,” Hearne said. “Of course they can put it up. Of course they can.”

Hearne continued to listen, then glanced over Jess’s shoulder into the lobby. “Yeah, I see him. He’ll have to wait,” and cradled the handset.

“Sorry,” Hearne said, his face drained of color.

“No problem. What’s the matter?”

“Do you know the Taylor family? Monica Taylor?”

“I’ve heard the name,” Jess said, trying to think of the context.

“She’s got two kids, a girl and a boy. Apparently, they’re missing.”

“Oh, no.”

“Been gone since yesterday,” Hearne said. “Some other women want to put a poster up of the missing kids in the lobby.”

Jess shook his head. “They’ll probably turn up.”

“Things like this never used to happen,” Hearne said. Then, remembering why they were there, the banker said, “Jess, give me a couple of weeks to come up with some options for you. You don’t have to take any of them, of course. But we both know you’re in default. If I can come up with something to get us out of this mess we’re in, I will.”

Jess sat back, overwhelmed. “You don’t have to do that, Jim.”

“I know I don’t,” Hearne said, deflecting the emotion. “But we’ve known each other for a long time. I don’t want to see your ranch turned into more starter castles for California transplants, either. I want there to be a couple of ranches in this county, too.”

Jess stood, clamped on his hat, and extended his hand to Hearne across the desk. “Jim, I…”

“Don’t say it,” Hearne interrupted. “It’s good for business, is all. We’ll give a lot more loans out to people to live in a place that has ranches, that isn’t completely overdeveloped, is all.”

Jess said nothing but wanted to embrace the banker who was lying to him.

AS HE OPENED the office door, Jess recognized Fiona Pritzle as one of the women putting up the posters in the lobby. Before he could slink away, she saw him and came rushing over.

“Jess,” she said, trapping both of his hands in hers, standing too close, looking up into his eyes, “did you hear about the Taylor children?”

“Just did. It’s terrible.” Her hands were as dry as parchment.

“I was the one who gave them a ride along Sand Creek yesterday,” she said, her eyes shining. “They were going fishing, and I dropped them off. But they didn’t come home last night.”

“They’ll probably show today,” he said.

“Oh, with that rushing creek, they could have been swept away and drowned!”

Jess would have had more sympathy for Fiona, but she seemed to be reveling in the fact that she was a major character in the drama and was playing it to the hilt.

“And who knows who could have taken them,” she whispered. “There are a lot of people here now we don’t know anything about. Who knows how many sexual predators have moved up here?”

Jess winced. “Is there a search team?”

“Thank God, yes,” she said. “The sheriff has his deputies out, and people are lining up to volunteer to look for them.”

“That’s good to hear,” he said, gently breaking loose from her grip, at the same time wishing he had more confidence in the new sheriff, who seemed to Jess to be more of a public relations/chamber of commerce type than a lawman. As he thought this, Jess realized he had trapped Hearne in his office because Fiona had blocked him in the doorway.

“It is good,” Fiona said. “I heard that a bunch of those retired police officers have volunteered to help the sheriff head up the investigation. They showed up this morning. Isn’t that great?”

Jess nodded. “I suspect the new sheriff will welcome their help.”

“It shows you that a lot of these newcomers have good hearts,” she said. “And they have experience in these kinds of horrible crimes. It’s the kind of thing they did all the time in L.A.”

“Excuse me,” Hearne said, sliding past Jess.

Jess watched as Hearne strode across the lobby and greeted a man sitting in a lounge chair. The man was portly, Hispanic, and well dressed in a light brown suit, Jess noticed.

“Well,” Jess said, extricating himself and nodding at the poster Fiona had mounted on the wall, “that’s a good thing you’re doing. I’ll keep an eye out myself since I’m upstream of Sand Creek.”

Hearne and the well-dressed man went into Hearne’s office, and before the door shut, the banker said, “Take it easy, Jess. I’ll call you.”

“Thank you, Jim.”

Fiona watched the exchange, and Jess could see the wheels spinning in her head.

“Does that mean you get to keep your ranch?” she asked eagerly.

ON HIS WAY out of the lobby doors, Jess paused to look at the poster. MISSING, it said, ANNIE AND WILLIAM TAYLOR. LAST SEEN AT 2:30 P.M. FRIDAY NEAR RILEY CREEK CAMPGROUND ON SAND CREEK. It said Annie was last seen wearing a yellow sweatshirt, jeans, and black sneakers and William was dressed in a short-sleeved black T-shirt, jeans, and red tennis shoes; one of them might be wearing an adult’s fly-fishing vest.

The school photos of the children tugged at his heart. Jess thought about how you could see the future personalities of adults in the photos they took when they were children if you cared to look hard. Even now, when he stared at the photos of his son in his home, he could see what he would become. Not that he’d known it at the time, though. But the clues were there, the blueprint. If only he had known.

William smiled broadly, his hair a comma over his forehead, his chin cocked slightly to the side. He looked happy-go-lucky and tragic at the same time. It was Annie who most affected him, and he found himself staring at her likeness, mesmerized by it. She was blond, open-faced, clear-eyed, and looked to be challenging the photographer. But there was something in her eyes and the set of her chin. He immediately liked her and felt an affinity he couldn’t explain. Had he met her before? He searched his memory and came up with nothing.

Maybe it wasn’t that he’d seen or met her before, but what she represented to him. Maybe her photo made him realize how much he had wanted grandchildren. The thought embarrassed him. It wasn’t something he thought about or pined over. In fact, this was the first time it had occurred to him with such force. He wished he could start over somehow, maybe do things differently this time, maybe do things right. So instead of an empty house and failing ranch, he would have kids around like these to spend his time with, impart some of his knowledge, tell them they could be… exceptional.

He stood back and shook his head at the thought but continued looking at the poster.

Phone numbers for the sheriff’s department were written underneath the photos.

As he walked outside, Jess glanced over his shoulder and could see the well-dressed man opening a briefcase and spreading the contents out over Jim Hearne’s desk.

Saturday, 9:14 A.M.

MONICA TAYLOR was beside herself. Annie and William had been missing for over twenty hours. She hadn’t slept, eaten, showered, or changed clothes since Tom had walked out of her home the evening before. It had been a long night, made worse when smoke rolled out of the oven-she had forgotten about the lasagna-and set off the alarms. She stood on her front lawn, weeping uncontrollably, being comforted by a volunteer fireman, while the rest of the crew charged through her front door with extinguishers and hoses, tracking mud across the carpet and linoleum, to emerge a few minutes later with a black, smoking, unrecognizable pan of black goo. The neighbors who had been outside in their bathrobes or sweats went back inside their houses.

Before the lasagna burned, sheriff’s deputies had been there twice, once to hear her initial concerns and again near midnight to obtain photos of the children and descriptions of what they’d been wearing when she saw them last. The difference in their attitudes from the first visit, when one of the deputies had actually tried to pick her up, to the second, when even the flirting deputy averted his eyes and spoke somberly, brought home the growing seriousness of the disappearance.

The sheriff eventually tired of her hourly calls throughout the night, and sent over a doctor, who prescribed Valium. The Valium took the edge off her pain but didn’t make it go away. All she had to do was look at the school photos of Annie and William, the frames now clouded with a film of sticky smoke residue, to bring it all back.

She had developed a routine, of sorts, that consisted of walking through the house and out the back door into the yard, circling the house to the left, and reentering through the front door, all the while clutching the cordless phone as if to squeeze it into juice. As she passed the hallway she glanced at herself in the mirror, seeing someone who was almost unrecognizable. The woman who looked back had redrimmed eyes, sunken cheeks, matted, ratty hair. She seemed to be folding over on herself when she walked. Monica now knew what she would look like when she was old.

When the telephone rang, and it rang often, she would gasp, ask God that it please be one of her children, and punch the TALK button. It was never Annie or William, but the sheriff’s office, a concerned neighbor, the local newspaper, or a rural mail carrier named Fiona Pritzle, who told Monica that she, Fiona, was “the last person on earth to see those kids alive.” The phrase had nearly buckled Monica’s knees, and made her reach out for the wall to steady herself.

Over and over, Monica replayed the morning before, each time revising the situation so Tom left the house before breakfast or, better yet, that he’d never come at all. She hated herself for what happened, and she asked God, over and over, for a second chance to make it right. She thought God, like the sheriff, was likely getting tired of hearing from her lately, especially after all these years when He never even entered her mind. But there would be no more Tom, she vowed. No more Toms, period.

Monica had never been blessed with a road map. Her own parents had not provided one, certainly not for a situation like this. She always envied those who seemed to have a map, a plan, a destination, something inside that provided a framework. In times of confusion and despair, she had little to fall back on and no one to call on for advice or support. Certainly not her mother. And who knew where her father was?

It was tough raising two children alone. The men she met were either divorced themselves and loaded with baggage or quirks, married and looking for a fling or an easy out, or immature like Tom. None of them had the potential or desire to be a good father to her children, which was what she yearned for. Annie needed a man in her life, but William needed one even more. Sure, the men she met were interested in Monica. But not Monica and her children. She couldn’t really blame them, but she did. There had been too many years wasted hoping, too many years of listlessness and paralysis, treading water, hoping some man would throw a lifeline. Monica was well aware of the fact that she was not the only single mother in the world. Her own mother had the same experience, after her father-who called Monica his princess, his angel, his button-had left without saying good-bye. But that’s where the similarity ended, because Monica loved her children deeply.

But she’d been weak. The desire she’d had for Tom now seemed to have happened in another life. It had been so pointless, so shallow, so selfish. Sure, she’d wanted him in her bed. Once, there had been many. But she wasn’t an animal. She’d learned to control herself, not to give in to her basest instinct anymore. There’d been other men-better men-who’d wanted to stay over. The most recent was Oscar Swann. But she’d refused him, and them, explained that her children-their family-came first. Her children needed a father but not simply a male, and certainly not a series of them. Monica knew what that did to children because it had happened to her.

The phone rang in her hand, startling her like it did every time. As she raised it to her mouth, the receiver chirped and the phone went dead. She had forgotten to charge it.

She slammed the telephone into the charging cradle, trying to will it to ring again. It didn’t.

For the first time she could remember, her life was absolutely focused: She needed her children back.

SHE WAS at her kitchen table, staring again at the digital time display on the microwave, when Sheriff Ed Carey rapped on the screen door of the mudroom.

“May I come in, Miz Taylor?”

She looked up at him and nodded, not having the energy to speak.

As he entered, she searched his face for some kind of indication of why he was there. She swore that if he wouldn’t meet her eyes, if the news he brought was bad news, she would die right there, on the spot. But Carey’s face was blank, and maybe a little facetious, as if he were playacting at being concerned but wasn’t very good at it.

Sheriff Carey was tall and wore his uniform well, but there wasn’t much he could do to disguise the potbelly that stuck straight out from his trunk and strained the buttons on his short-sleeved khaki shirt. When he was inside, he removed his straw cowboy hat and adjusted his belt up, which slipped back down under his gut with his first step.

“I tried to call you earlier,” he said, nodding at the phone, the question why she didn’t answer hanging in the air.

“The phone was dead,” she said, her voice a croak, as if she was using it for the first time. “So that was you.”

He nodded and gestured toward a chair.

“Do you have anything to tell me?”

He sat down and looked around for a place that was not dirtied with soot to put his hat down. Finally, he perched it on his knee.

“I need to ask you a few questions,” Carey said, and this time he let his eyes slip away from hers.

“Oh, no…”

“No, it’s not that,” he said quickly, realizing what she had leaped to.

“You haven’t found them?”

He shook his head. “I wish I had better news, but I don’t. What I can tell you is that one of my deputies found some things up by Sand Creek. A fly rod and a shoe stuck in the mud. I was hoping you could identify them.”

Her mind raced. Of course she could identify a shoe if it was Annie’s or William’s. But what was the brand of the fly rod Tom said was missing?

“I could do that,” she said. “But I might have to call someone to identify the rod.”

“That would be Tom Boyd, I presume?”

“Yes.”

Carey nodded, and reached for his breast pocket. “You don’t mind if I take a few notes, do you?”

“No, why should I?”

Carey shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He was the new sheriff, barely elected just a few months ago in a close contest. His background was in real estate. She wondered how much he really knew about his job. Forty-nine percent of the county wondered the same thing.

“My deputies think this may be more than, you know, the kids getting lost.”

Monica felt as if something were rising in her from a reserve she didn’t know she had. She wished the Valium would wear off so she could concentrate better.

“What are you saying to me?”

“Well, Miz Taylor, we’ve decided to treat this matter as a criminal investigation, not a missing persons case. The rod was found hung up in some brush a hundred yards from the river. The shoe was found in a mudhole farther up the path, and it was easy to see and find. That leads my deputies to believe that whoever lost the shoe-and we think it might have been Annie-could have easily turned around and pulled it out. But she didn’t. That indicates that she might have been in a hurry. You know, like she was running from something or somebody.”

Monica felt her eyes widen. Her breath came in short bursts.

Carey produced a quart-sized Ziploc bag and held it up to the light. Inside was a muddy shoe. The sight of it seared Monica, welded her to her chair.

“It’s Annie’s” she said, scarcely raising her voice. “Who were they running from?”

Carey put the shoe on the table and turned his hands, palms up. “That, we don’t know. My men have found some prints in the mud up there, but they’re bad ones. The rain last night fouled up anything definitive. We’re still looking, and my guys are combing the area on a grid, inch by inch.”

The world had suddenly made a hard turn and darkened. Throughout the sleepless night, she had envisioned her children lost somewhere in the forest, huddled together in the rain. She had hoped they’d found shelter of some kind and were smart enough to stay put. She had even thought of the creek, thought of them falling into it and being swept away. It was awful, that thought. But she hadn’t considered what the sheriff was now telling her. That her children were prey to someone.

“Oh, no…”

She stared at the shoe, the smears of mud on the inside of the plastic, the laces broken. As if violence had been packaged in a neat container.

Carey narrowed his eyes and looked at her, studying her. “Miz Taylor, are you going to be okay?”

She shook her head slightly. “No, I’m not. You’re telling me that someone was after my children.”

“We don’t know that yet,” he said. “It’s speculation based on very little evidence. But we can’t rule it out, and we need to cover everything. It could be they’ll turn up any minute. Maybe they stayed at a friend’s, who knows?”

She continued to shake her head. Her throat constricted. It was difficult to get air. She had given a deputy the names and numbers of all of Annie’s and William’s friends, and had called their parents herself. None of them had seen her children.

“Miz Taylor, I need to ask you if you know of anyone who may have something against you, or your kids.”

“What?”

“Has anyone threatened you? Stalked you? Do you know if your children had any trouble with anyone who might try to scare them or hurt them? They each have a different father, right?”

“Right,” she said, wincing at how it sounded. “But neither is around, as you know.”

William’s father, Billy, had been killed in a prison riot at the Idaho State Correctional Institution in Boise. She had divorced him three years before, while he was on trial for owning and operating four methamphetamine labs, which apparently generated a lot more income for Billy than his struggling construction business. The marriage had been dead by eighteen months after the ceremony but went on for two more years. Billy had been proud of the fact that he fathered a son, but didn’t particularly like William and, like Tom, called him a mama’s boy. William barely knew or remembered his father, but sometimes talked about him as a mythical being, a stoic and legendary Western outlaw. Monica didn’t encourage William’s projections but didn’t disparage Billy in front of her son because she didn’t think it would serve any good purpose. Annie knew Billy for what he was, and rolled her eyes when her brother talked about his father the outlaw. But Billy’d never threatened his son, or Monica, because by the end he simply didn’t care about either of them.

Up until a year ago, Annie had assumed Billy was her father, too. Then she did the math. That had been a bad day for Monica, when Annie asked. When she did, Monica simply said, “He’s watching over you.” Annie didn’t really accept the answer. It was obvious it didn’t satisfy her. Monica knew there would be more questions as time went by, and she had dreaded them. Now, Monica hoped Annie would be back so she could answer them.

“Is he dead?” the sheriff asked.

“Something like that. He’s incarcerated as well.”

The sheriff eyed her closely, withholding judgment. Yes, Monica thought, I’m used to those looks, I know…

“We need to explore every possibility so we can rule things out,” Carey said, interrupting Monica’s thoughts. “First, and pardon me for being rude, but I assume that your family is fairly low-income. Correct?”

She nodded. It was obvious.

“Anyone you can think of at your place of work? Disgruntled employees?”

“No. Nothing unusual.”

He glanced at his notes. “You’re the manager of women’s casual apparel at the outlet store, correct?”

She nodded. “It provides a steady income and decent health benefits for the kids. It’s a meaningless job.”

“Any problem with the neighbors?”

She shook her head. She kept her distance from her neighbors except for inevitable pleasantries about the weather or school-related topics. The only thing she could think of was when a single retired bachelor down the block complained about William and Annie cutting across his yard as they walked to school, and she told the sheriff about it. The sheriff made a note.

“What about your extended family? Is there money there? Would a kidnapper have a reason to hold your children for ransom?”

“My mother cleans houses and tends bar in Spokane,” Monica said evenly. “My father has been gone for years. We have nothing.”

“Any others?”

She thought of her cousin Sandy in Coeur d’Alene, the only cousin she knew. Sandy was married to a city councilman and had four bright kids. She’d invited Monica to picnics and family functions for a while, and used to call to invite her to church. Sandy had even said maybe she could help Monica “meet a nice man.” Sandy knew about what happened to Billy, as everyone did. They were decent gestures from a decent woman, but Monica couldn’t bring herself to accept. She didn’t want to be Sandy’s project, or the object of her effort at good works. Monica had been too stubbornly proud to accept help. Sandy rarely called anymore.

So many people-Sandy, the banker Jim Hearne, her neighbor down the street who was always inviting her to church and bingo night-had tried to help her since the divorce, but she never saw it as help at the time. Hearne especially had watched out for her, and had always been there to help in his quiet way. She often saw the attempts as interference, or as pity. That had been a mistake, Monica realized now. Maybe if she’d opened up more, there would have been someone to take William fishing.

The sheriff raised his hand. “Like I said, I need to rule out every possibility. This is bound to be uncomfortable for you.”

She nodded again. “Not as uncomfortable as having my children missing.”

The sheriff smiled sympathetically, then his eyes hardened. “This Tom Boyd. A neighbor reported that she saw him leaving your house last night. She said he was visibly angry, and she heard him yell and slam your door shut. She said she heard you yelling, too. Was there some kind of disagreement?”

No, she thought. The sheriff can’t be going in this direction. “We had an argument.”

“What about?”

She swallowed. “Tom found out his fishing rod and vest were missing. He thought Annie had taken them. He didn’t get along with Annie very well, and I told him to leave.”

She knew how that sounded. So: “But I’m sure Tom had nothing to do with it. The kids were gone for a long time already when it happened.”

The sheriff asked her for the time of the argument.

“It was around six,” she said. “I waited two more hours before I called you.”

She could see Carey calculating it in his head. Tom would have had enough time, and enough light, to track down Annie and William.

“Tom called me last night,” Monica said. “It was after ten. Maybe ten-thirty. He asked whether my kids had come home.”

“How did he sound?”

Monica swallowed. “He was drunk. He was at some bar.”

Carey nodded, as if she’d confirmed something. “He was seen last night at the Sand Creek Bar. The bartender said he was inebriated. Still in his uniform, very distraught and upset. They refused to give him more drinks, and he got angry and left around eleven.”

Monica seized on the words inebriated and distraught.

“Someone who knows Tom Boyd says he can have a violent temper,” the sheriff said. “He’s a bodybuilder, right? Maybe some steroid use? Would you say he has a violent temper, Miz Taylor?”

SHERIFF CAREY asked questions for another half hour. She answered them honestly, and could see how the sheriff was building a case against Tom. No, she didn’t know he’d been arrested twice for assault. No, she didn’t know Tom’s ex-wife had accused him of beating one of his children. How could she not know that, she asked herself. She felt stupid, duped. Again.

“I don’t think it was Tom,” she said, finally, after the sheriff stood up and slipped his notebook in his pocket. “If it was him, wouldn’t he have taken his fly rod back? Isn’t that the reason you’ve come up with why he would even try to find my children?”

“I thought of that, too,” Carey said, clamping on his hat. “But it could be your kids lost it before he got there. Or he just couldn’t find it in the dark. We’ll have to ask him about that,” he said ominously.

“I just can’t believe it,” she said.

Carey stood there, silent, as if he had more to say before he left. She looked up.

“Tom didn’t show up for work this morning,” Carey said. “His supervisor said he didn’t call in, either. Tom’s not at his house, and no one saw him come home last night. His truck is still missing. He was supposed to turn it in last night, but he didn’t.”

“His UPS truck?” she said incredulously.

For the first time, the sheriff almost smiled. “You’d think we’d find a vehicle that distinctive easy enough, wouldn’t you?”

“I just can’t…” She didn’t finish, knowing she had said it before.

“I think we’ll get this thing wrapped up pretty quickly,” the sheriff said. “I hope and pray it will be for the best, but we just don’t know. We hope like hell we can find him and bring your kids back, unharmed.”

She watched him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I wish I had more men to work this, Miz Taylor. I’ve only got four deputies for the whole county. Three of ’em are up there on Sand Creek right now, searching it with a state crime-scene team that arrived this morning. I’m starting to get calls from all over. Newspaper reporters, even some producer from Fox News in Spokane. Missing kids are big news, you know. If we can tie Tom Boyd to your kids, we can issue an Amber Alert, but it doesn’t meet that standard yet. I looked it up. The first criterion is that law enforcement must confirm that an abduction has taken place. We don’t know it to be true. We can’t just go panicking everyone this early.”

“This early?” she said, astonished.

“Miz Taylor, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours. We don’t even consider a person missing until then. Not that the newspeople care. I’m stalling them for now, but they’re keeping me busy. Luckily, though, I have an ace in the hole.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

Now, he grinned outright. “Four experienced, seasoned investigators have volunteered to help us. They showed up this morning and asked what they could do. After I talked with ’em, I gave them the authority to run with it, and already things are happening. We’re lucky as hell.”

She was confused. “Who are they?”

“LAPD’s finest,” he said. “Retired cops who’ve worked dozens of situations like this. They told me they want to serve their new community and keep it safe. Within a couple of hours they helped me establish a command center, and they’re the ones who figured out Tom Boyd. We’re damned glad to have them here, Miz Taylor.”

She nodded. For the first time, she felt a lift of encouragement.

“I know you want to stay by the phone,” he said, looking around the kitchen. “I think you should, too. But you need some help around here. Some support. Is there anyone we can call to stay with you?”

She had no relatives nearby, and few friends. Sandy was on a cruise with her husband and family. She thought of Jim Hearne, the banker who had always been kind to her, but knew how improper that would seem.

“That woman, Fiona Pritzle, keeps offering to come stay with me,” Monica said. “But I don’t think I want her help.”

Carey agreed. “I’ll ask one of the volunteer investigators to come over, if you don’t mind. We want to cover all the bases. If someone contacts you with a report on your kids, we want to know right away. We want to screen the call. And, if someone has your kids…”

“I don’t mind.”

“His name is Swann. Ex-Sergeant Swann.”

“I know him,” Monica said dully.

“Yes, he told me that. He wanted me to ask you if you minded if it was he.”

She thought of Swann’s kind face and manner, his sonorous voice. He had been obscure, though, and so set in his ways. She felt he was always watching her as a cop watched a subject, not the way a man watched a woman.

“It’s okay,” she said. “He’s a clean freak. Very organized. He’ll probably help me out with all of this.”

The sheriff snorted and reached out his hand.

“We’ll do our best to find your kids, Miz Taylor. I’ll ask Mr. Swann to bring you something to eat. I’ll call the doctor to come by again as well.”

Saturday, 10:14 A.M.

SORRY TO KEEP you waiting,” Jim Hearne said to Eduardo Villatoro as he slipped back behind his desk. “That was a local rancher. A friend of mine. A good man.”

Villatoro settled into the chair the rancher had just used, his briefcase on his knees. He watched as Hearne gathered up a thick file with the name RAWLINS on the tab and put it on the credenza behind him. Digging in his breast pocket for a card, he leaned forward and handed it to Hearne.

Hearne read it, a glimpse of recognition in his clear blue eyes. “Detective Villatoro of the Arcadia, California, Police Department, now I remember. You called and asked for a meeting a few weeks ago. All the way from Southern California.”

“Thank you for meeting with me. I’ve retired from the department since then.”

“Congratulations,” Hearne said, his face showing what he was thinking, that the meeting wasn’t official after all but of a personal nature. And maybe a waste of Hearne’s time.

Hearne said, “Have you ever been to North Idaho before? We say North Idaho, not northern Idaho, by the way.”

“I see.”

“So, have you ever been here?”

“No.”

“How do you like it so far?”

“It’s very green,” Villatoro said, thinking: It’s very white.

“Yeah, it’s our little piece of heaven,” Hearne said.

Villatoro smiled. “It’s a very pretty place. Very peaceful, it seems.”

Hearne said, “It usually is. We’ve got a problem going on this morning, though. You probably saw the poster out there. A couple of local kids are missing.”

Villatoro had observed it all: the women who arrived with the poster, the loud one with the little-girl voice who told everyone in the bank what had happened, the conversation between the loud woman and the rancher who had left Hearne’s office.

“I hope the children are okay,” Villatoro said. “I’ve been struck by how intimate it all is, how local. It’s like the town thinks their children are missing. It warms my heart to witness such an attitude.”

Hearne studied him. Probing for insincerity, Villatoro guessed.

“We do tend to take care of our own,” Hearne said. “Maybe it’s not like that in L.A.?”

“L.A. is too big,” Villatoro said. “It’s not as bad as people make it out to be, though. There are some neighborhoods where people look out for one another. But it’s just so easy to get swallowed up.”

Hearne seemed to be thinking about that, then he looked at Villatoro’s card again.

“So, if you’re no longer with your police department, what can I do for you? Are you looking to retire here?”

Villatoro looked at Hearne blankly. For a moment, it didn’t register what Hearne had said or why he had said it. “No,” he said, alarmed, holding up his hand. “No, no. I’ve got another matter.”

“Oh, then I’m sorry. I just assumed.”

“I want to complete an investigation I worked on for years. It led me here.”

Hearne sat back. “What are you still investigating?”

Snapping open the locks on his briefcase, Villatoro slipped five sheets of paper out of his file and handed them across the desk. They were back and front photocopies of hundred-dollar bills.

The serial numbers for the bills were typed on each one, followed by a series of bank routing numbers that had been highlighted by a yellow marker. Hearne recognized the routing number.

“These came through my bank,” Hearne said. “Are they counterfeit?”

“No, they’re real.”

Hearne raised his eyebrows, as if saying “So?”

Villatoro said, “As you know, there are authorities who electronically scan currency as it flows through the system to check for marked or counterfeit bills. It isn’t a perfect system, but when it registers a hit, they increase the frequency of scanning to determine origin. When there are several hits from a single bank, it may be something significant.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll start at the beginning. Eight years ago, there was an armed robbery at a horse racing track in my town, which is-or was-outside of Los Angeles. Millions in cash was taken, and a man died during the commission of the crime, one of the guards. As you can guess, it was an inside job, and the employees were convicted and sent to prison by the LAPD. I was assigned to the case and served as the liaison between my small department and the LAPD, which had many more detectives and much greater resources. We turned the investigation over to them even though I objected at the time. It was a decision made by my chief, who is a great lover of outside experts.”

“Hold it,” Hearne said. “Was this the Santa Anita robbery? I read about that.”

“Santa Anita Racetrack.” Villatoro nodded. “One of the largest employers in Arcadia. My wife worked there at the time and knew many of the employees, as did everyone in town. Yes-$13.5 million in cash was stolen.”

“Isn’t that where Seabiscuit ran?”

Villatoro said, “Yes. There’s a statue of him there.”

“My wife made me read that book, and I loved it. We saw the movie, too. I didn’t like it as much. I guess they just can’t make a good movie about a horse. Horses are too subtle.”

Villatoro said, “Do you know about horses?”

“I used to ride in the rodeo,” Hearne said. “I do love horses. I miss being around them.”

Villatoro said, “Back to the robbery.”

“Sorry, go ahead.”

He cleared his throat and continued. “Of course, all of the employees who were convicted claimed innocence, but the evidence was too compelling. I’ve read the court records myself, and I would have convicted them as well if I’d had a vote. One of the former employees gave up the others and testified against them all.

“But there is a big problem. None of the cash was ever recovered, and not one of the people convicted has yet to come forward and say anything, even though they could probably bargain their way out of jail. And for seven years, these people have kept quiet.”

“Damn,” Hearne said. “That’s a long time. They must be tough.”

Villatoro waved his hand. “They’re not so tough. My wife says the people in prison just weren’t the types to do this kind of crime, for what that’s worth. To me, though, it’s good information. I’ve met them and talked to them. They’re desperate to get out, and they swear they have nothing to tell us.”

Hearne frowned.

“We keep waiting,” Villatoro said. “I interviewed them every few months, hoping one of them would tell me where the money went. For a long time we thought they’d buried it somewhere. They will get out, probably, in five or six years, maybe more, and I suppose for that kind of reward they could wait. But it doesn’t seem like they know. I really feel, in my heart, that if they knew where the money was, they would tell me. One of them should have broken by now, or found God, or just wanted to get out.”

“What about the guy who testified against them?”

“Ah,” Villatoro said, sighing. “He is no longer with us. He was the victim of a convenience store robbery in L.A. less than a year after the trial. He was there buying milk and was caught in a cross fire between the owner of the store and the criminal who tried to rob it.”

“And whoever shot him wasn’t caught?”

“Alas, no.”

“Interesting,” Hearne said. “So what does that all have to do with me and my bank?”

Villatoro gestured toward the photocopies of the hundred-dollar bills. “At the time of the robbery, the cashiers and accountants at the racetrack had a rather efficient procedure for counting the money and accounting for all of it, but an incomplete method for recording the cash. The racetrack didn’t have marked bills, like your bank surely does, or dye pacs. You can imagine the sea of cash that washes in during a big day, every twenty minutes or so when bettors come to the windows. The robbery occurred after one of the biggest races of the year, the Southern California Breeders’ Cup. It’s all computerized, of course, but the cash still needs to match the computer at the end of the day, so it’s hand-counted in the back. That takes time. Once the cash matches the computer, armored cars take the cash away to the bank. In the kind of rush they are in to get the cash into the cars, there was no way to mark or record the money in any comprehensive way. The best they could do, at the time, was to randomly record serial numbers. In this case, they recorded the serial number of every fiftieth hundred-dollar bill. Now it’s done by scanners, but then it was by hand.”

Hearne was listening closely, and urged Villatoro on.

“In the end, we had the serial numbers for 1,377 hundred-dollar bills. The rest were other denominations, or credit card receipts. But most of it was cash, and most of it was in small, circulated bills. Quite literally untraceable.”

Hearne looked down at the photocopies of the bills on his desk.

“For three years, not a single hundred-dollar bill with a recorded serial number was reported. Not a one,” Villatoro said. “Then one came in that had been routed through four different banks. But the bank of origin was yours. We did nothing because one bill means nothing. It could have passed through a dozen people or merchants during that time. I made a copy, though, and kept it in my file. You have a copy of that one there in front of you. Two others surfaced over the years, one from California, then Nevada, the other from Nebraska. There appeared to be no link at all.

“Two months ago, though, four more turned up,” Villatoro said. “All four originated from your bank. Those are the four sheets on top. Once this happened, I sensed there might be something to it. I took this information to my liaison contacts in the LAPD, but as far as they were concerned the case was closed. They’d moved on. My department was very small, with only four detectives. We didn’t have the budget to send me around the country to follow this up, and my mandatory retirement date was approaching. No other detective wanted to take up the case after I left. But these bills bothered me, and they bother me still. It is my only link to the money stolen, and therefore the criminals. You see, Mr. Hearne, Arcadia is a peaceful place, or at least it used to be. There have never been more than four murders in a year there. Our average for the thirty years I was in the department was two homicides. Only two. And these weren’t heinous, mysterious crimes, usually a domestic or easily solved homicide. The bank guard homicide is the only unsolved murder still on our books, and it was assigned to me. I just can’t leave without trying to solve it, even if it is on my own time.”

Hearne studied the bills, waiting for more.

“I think someone who has access to at least some of the Santa Anita money lives in this area and banks with you,” Villatoro said. “I’d like to try and find out who that might be.”

“How do you propose to do that?”

Villatoro smiled. “I would like to look at your accounts. Primarily those that were opened four years ago that are still active. I think I may find a name that will jump out at me. Especially if I can trace the name back to California. Then I will have narrowed it down.”

Hearne made a face. “You know we can’t just turn over a list of our customers to you. That’s illegal.”

Villatoro nodded his head. “Yes, I know that. But if I can get the proper authorities to request access, I hope you will be cooperative. That’s all I ask. And, of course, if you have any idea at the outset who the person might be.”

Shaking his head, Hearne handed the photocopies back to Villatoro. “I have no idea. We have hundreds of new accounts, and I’d bet a quarter of them came from California. I really wouldn’t have a clue, and if I did, I’m not sure I’d be at liberty to tell you.”

“A man died in the robbery, Mr. Hearne. A man with a wife and two children.”

Hearne looked away. “That has nothing to do with it, and you know it.”

Villatoro sat back. “I’m sorry. I understand.”

“Go talk to the sheriff,” Hearne said. “His name is Carey. If you make your case to him, he might escort you to a judge who can request an order to see the accounts. Otherwise, there’s no more I can do.”

An uncomfortable silence hung in the office for a moment, finally broken by Villatoro: “I will certainly see the sheriff. That was my plan all along. But I’ve learned through experience that often the wisest man in a community, when it comes to assessing the character of others, is the senior official at the most prominent bank. I have learned that often, in these kinds of situations, the bank president or vice president knows where odd amounts of cash come from, and if anything is unusual about their customer’s banking habits. Large, regular cash infusions-say just under the ten-thousand-dollar notification cap-usually attract some attention. Especially if there are… elements… within the community where such amounts of cash are unlikely.”

Villatoro felt the banker’s stare and waited for him to respond. When he did, Hearne’s voice was flat.

“I know what you’re suggesting, Mr. Villatoro. You’ve heard the stories about the white supremacists up here, just like everyone’s heard stories. About Aryan Nations and those Nazis. A lot of the country thinks we’re no better than rednecks, or racists. You’re wondering if those folks bank with us.”

“Well, yes.”

Hearne swiped his hand through the air. “We ran ’em out of here years ago, Mr. Villatoro. We didn’t like ’em any more than you do. We got them the same way the Feds got Al Capone. They didn’t pay their taxes. They’ve been long gone for years, even though the reputation we’ve got up here never seems to go away.”

Villatoro sat for a moment. He believed the heat in Hearne’s statements, believed his outrage. He sensed that Hearne would help him. Many bank officers were openly hostile and could drag out an investigation. Hearne didn’t seem to be the type to do that.

“Thank you, Mr. Hearne,” Villatoro said, shutting his briefcase and standing. “I’m sorry if I insulted you or your community.”

“You’re forgiven,” Hearne said, shaking his hand. “Just make sure to tell your pals in L.A. that we ran those bastards out of here. Besides, this is the last place people like that would want to live these days. Do you realize how many retired police officers have moved here? It’s one of the biggest sectors of our retirees.”

Villatoro nodded. “I’ve heard that. One of my best friends on the LAPD calls this place Blue Heaven. It’s interesting that so many retired officers move here. What’s the reason, do you think?”

Hearne gestured toward the window. “It’s wonderful country, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Mountains, lakes, lots of outdoor opportunities. Plus damned cheap land compared to what you’re used to. And the culture here is welcoming, I think. The folks around here are tough and independent. They don’t ask a lot of questions, and they believe in live and let live. They’re not fond of any kind of government or authority, but they’re law-and-order types. Everyone has guns, and we’re proud of that. As long as you’re a good neighbor, they don’t care where you came from, what you did, or what your daddy did. Plus, they’re blue-collar. Most of ’em were loggers, or miners, or cowboys. I think they feel pretty comfortable with the ex-cops, who are blue-collar at heart. Brother,” Hearne said, flushing, “I sound like a chamber of commerce commercial.”

“It’s okay,” Villatoro said. “You’ve obviously thought a lot about it.”

“I want to know my customers,” Hearne said, sitting forward and grasping his hands together on his desktop in a gesture that brought the meeting to a near close.

Villatoro turned to open the door, but Hearne cleared his throat. “Before you leave, Mr. Villatoro, I’ve got a question for you.”

“Yes?”

“Is the Santa Anita robbery the real reason you’re here?”

Villatoro hesitated before answering. “Yes,” he said softly.

Hearne considered it, then said, “Well, good luck. And welcome to Kootenai Bay.”

“Thank you. Everyone seems friendly here.”

“We are,” Hearne said. “Although the guy with the hundred-dollar bills might disagree with that.”

“I trust everything we’ve discussed is confidential?”

“Of course,” Hearne said, showing Villatoro out the door, “of course it is.”

As Villatoro walked across the lobby toward the door, Hearne called out after him. “The sheriff might be a little busy right now,” he said, gesturing toward the poster of Annie and William Taylor. Villatoro looked at it, then back to the banker.

“I don’t have that much time,” Villatoro said.

AFTER VILLATORO left, Jim Hearne went back into his office and shut the door and leaned with his back to it. This, he knew, was the only place in his office where no one could see him through the windows.

He closed his eyes tightly and breathed deeply. But there was a roar emanating, building within him. His palms were cold, and he reached up and rubbed his face with them.

Villatoro had taken him by surprise. There was a time a few years ago when Hearne thought about what he’d done, or, more accurately, what he hadn’t done, and the thought kept him awake at night. But like everything, it gradually went away. He thought he’d gotten away with it, since there had been no repercussions. Sure, he’d known better, deep down.

He should have known this day would come.

Saturday, 10:45 A.M.

OSCAR SWANN PARKED his pickup in front of Monica Taylor’s house and got out quickly. The pickup was closer than necessary behind a white news van emblazoned with FOX NEWS KUYA SPOKANE on its side. He could see plainly what was happening and was there to stop it.

Monica stood on her front lawn looking aimless and haggard. A young man in dowdy clothes was fitting a video camera on a tripod in front of her, with her house in the background. Near the van, a slim blonde, who seemed scarcely out of college-except for the wolfish look of advanced ambition-held a mirror to her face with one hand and violently raked the other through her hair to make it appear that she had run to the scene. Her bright red lipstick looked like a knife wound slashed across her made-up face, he thought.

He was nearly too late. He should never have taken the time to shower, shave, and put on fresh clothes before he left his house. Singer would tear him apart if he knew that. But the urge to look decent after a long night of driving the roads near his house and staking this one out had left him tired and drained. Plus, he still had a thing for Monica. He remembered the first time he saw her behind the counter of the retail store. She was the best-looking woman he’d run across since he’d moved up there, he thought. After a little small talk, he learned she was single. His cop sense told him she was available if he played it right. Unlike Singer and Gonzalez, Swann couldn’t stand endless hours at his own place with only himself and his hogs for company. He had to get out, and he liked to roam the town, saying little but observing everything. Not to the degree of Newkirk, though. Swann thought Newkirk was naïve and reckless, pretending he fit in.

Swann knew better, and he was learning not to mind. Sure, he looked the part. He was a careful observer, and within a year of arriving he’d learned how to dress down to look like a local: T-shirt, open chambray shirt, fleece vest, blue jeans, ball cap. Maybe a couple days of beard. He’d come to the conclusion that although it was possible for country people to move to a city and eventually adapt, it didn’t work the other way around. He’d never fully get used to doing without; not having a vast choice of restaurants, grocery stores, shopping, the welcome blanket of anonymity within a white noise soundtrack. Here, they noticed you, talked to you without hesitation, asked where you were from. To deal with that he’d invented a persona and wore it around like he used to wear blue. People knew him here as affable Oscar Swann, retired cop who sought the simple life, raised some hogs, chewed tobacco, and admired the pure country goodness of the natives. They’d never know in his heart he thought of them as jaded Europeans thought of Americans: as childlike, boisterous, loud, too insular to appreciate what they had, too unsophisticated to realize how easy it had been for them. Nevertheless, they seemed to accept him although he learned too late that raising hogs wasn’t exactly common. By then he’d come to like it. When he knew Monica, he sensed she’d seen through him, knew intuitively it was an act. He pulled away before she could confront him and confirm it, but that didn’t keep him from still wanting her and jumping on this opportunity. He had needs, after all.

“No, no,” he said to the newswoman, who had paused in her hair-raking while he strode toward her. “There’ll be no interview.”

The reporter glared at him. “What do you mean, there’ll be no interview? I asked her, and she agreed. She wants to put out a plea for her children.”

“Sorry, that won’t happen.”

The reporter reacted as if he’d slapped her, and she squared off to fight back. “And who in the hell are you?”

“Oscar Swann,” he said, extending his hand but looking across the lawn to make sure the camera wasn’t rolling yet.

The newswoman didn’t reach out. “That name means nothing to me,” she said.

“I’m with the task force for the sheriff’s department,” he said, showing her a laminated graphic of a badge on a lanyard they’d made just that morning. “We’ve been authorized to help with the investigation. If you want an interview, you need permission from Sheriff Carey. In fact, he’s going to hold a press conference in a few hours. But we need you to leave Mrs. Taylor alone for now.”

The reporter hesitated, looked at his plastic badge, then his face. He knew he looked fatherly, concerned, avuncular. Trustworthy. He always had.

“Are you a cop? I’ve never seen you around.”

“Retired,” he said in a way he thought clipped and official, as if Singer were addressing the media. “Twenty years, Los Angeles Police Department.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “The woman already agreed to speak with us.”

“Consider that permission revoked,” Swann said. “Let me talk with her.”

“Hey…” the reporter called after him, but he was already gone. He positioned himself between the camera and Monica, who had watched the whole thing.

“Oscar,” Monica asked, “what’s going on?”

He kept his voice low. “Monica, I need to ask you not to speak on camera. This isn’t a good idea.” He told her about the task force at the sheriff’s department, how they’d met and decided to funnel all requests for interviews through the sheriff’s department so they could keep some control of the information.

“But why?” she asked, her eyes big. He took a moment to look at her. She was tired, pale, worn-out. There were dark rings around her eyes, and she wore no makeup. Still, though, he thought she was lovely.

“We don’t want things to turn into a circus sideshow,” he said. “We’ve seen it a million times. These people live on rumors and speculation-anything to fill up airtime. They’ll dissect every word you say and turn it around to use against you. If we want to do the right thing, we’ve got to keep a lid on the information we put out and make sure it’s straight and accurate. You could accidentally say something that would give all the armchair experts in their studios a reason to suspect you. I’ve seen it happen.”

She obviously didn’t understand what he was saying, and shrugged. “Me? Why would they think that?”

“Another thing. Look, the person who has your kids might be watching the news. In fact, he’ll probably be watching. We don’t want him to know what we know yet or what leads we’re pursuing. You might inadvertently say something that will help keep him from us. We’ve decided that only the sheriff should speak to the media, that it all be focused on him. That will keep the reporters in one place-the county building-and not camping out here at your house. If they know you won’t give them interviews, but the sheriff will, they’ll focus on him, not you. That’s how we want to play it.”

“I’m not sure I understand. I just want to find my kids.”

“Monica, you’re in the hands of professionals. We’ve been through this before.”

“That means nothing to me.”

Swann tried to remain calm, maintain the authoritative voice and demeanor. He could sense the cameraman behind him moving his tripod for a shot of Monica. Countering it, Swann moved to his right to stay between them. “We don’t know yet where Annie and William are,” he said. “If the person who has them decides to bring them back or contact you, we don’t want camera trucks and reporters to scare him off. We also have to think about how things look to the bad guy. We want the face of this investigation to be the sheriff, not the victim. Does that make sense?”

She studied him, then shook her head. “No, not really.”

He pointed to the reporter, who had finished with her hair and was standing with her hands on her hips, smoldering. “Look at her. All she wants is a story. She doesn’t care about you or your kids.”

That seemed to work. Monica assessed the reporter in a different light now, he thought.

“You have to decide to trust me, trust us,” he said. “I’m here to help and protect you. Believe me, I’ve been through these kinds of situations before, we all have. There are ways to do them right, and one of those ways is not to turn this into a media frenzy. Monica, we’ve got only your best interests-and the welfare of your kids-in mind.”

She looked at him as if she wasn’t sure about that, but she called, “Later, maybe,” to the reporter, and turned back toward her house. He followed her in through the front door and closed and locked it behind them. Through the front window she could see the reporter and the cameraman talking, heatedly, the reporter gesticulating with her hands. He closed the curtains on them.

What he didn’t say to Monica was what he was thinking: And we don’t want your children to see you crying for them on television.

Saturday, 12:20 P.M.

ON HIS way home, Jess Rawlins stopped for lunch at the Bear Trap, which was located halfway between town and the ranch, at an old culmination of logging roads that came down from the mountains. The Bear Trap was a peculiar, idiosyncratic icon: a rambling structure made of logs that had never been as elegant as intended and was now descending into senility. Once a dance hall, boardinghouse, restaurant, and touchstone for loggers and miners (with prostitutes upstairs), the building, once bold, now seemed to be withdrawing in on itself, looking frail and spindly, ready to collapse at an errant sneeze. It had a vast covered porch filled with mismatched weathered rocking chairs, and a hitching post out front that had been hit so many times by trucks pulling in that it leaned over almost to the ground.

Jess’s father had once been a steady customer for meals but had boycotted the place when some people from Spokane bought it and attempted to gentrify it, upgrading the kitchen, remodeling the upstairs rooms, closing the credit accounts that were delinquent beyond thirty days, taking chicken-fried steak off the menu, and generally ruining it as far as he was concerned. The Bear Trap changed in character from a local tavern to a tourist stop. Trinkets replaced bullets and fishhooks on the retail shelves. Recently, though, the Spokane owners had thrown in the towel rather than invest any further in the deteriorating structure, and the building had been purchased by a retired crosscut saw foreman and his wife who were trying to make a go of it. Jess stopped there as often as he could, more out of support than desire, each time hoping the food would improve.

As he pulled into the lot he noticed the only other vehicle was a tricked-up SUV with Washington plates, ski racks on top and a bike rack on the rear bumper, a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON decal in the back window, and FREE TIBET and WE VOTE, TOO bumper stickers. Idaho had long been considered a third-world country by Washingtonians, a kind of northwestern Appalachia. Despite the changes in the valley and the influx of new residents, the old perceptions still ran deep.

Inside, it was dark and cluttered, and smelled of decades-old spilled Hamm’s beer as well as grease that needed changing out. Jess skipped the tables and went to the bar, waiting for the proprietress, who was busy delivering orders to the four raggedy college-age students occupying a big table in the center of the room. Jess swiveled on his stool and looked at them: two men, two women. They were very loud. The group was obviously passing through. The two men-boys, actually-wore baggy clothes and days-old growths of beard, their hair hanging down over their eyes. One boy had a mass of red hair and light freckles, with a squared-off, oafish jaw. The other was dark, angular, his face slack as if he had just awakened. The girls were young and pretty, one blonde, one brunette, with straight hair parted in the middle. The blonde wore a white tank top and jeans, and the brunette wore a dark T-shirt cut short to expose her belly. A glint of gold winked from a stud through her navel.

As the waitress put down their plates and gathered empty beer glasses, she looked up at Jess with an exasperated expression.

“Another round of beer for my horses!” one of the boys shouted, and the girls giggled, although one of them reached across the table and hit the boy in the arm.

“We’re not, like, fucking horses,” she squealed.

Jess winced. Of course, he had heard the word before, many times, and used it on occasion. But she was so young, and it came so naturally from her.

He thought of his own son, the first year he had come back from college. He was like that, like those boys. Exuberant, loud, crude, full of himself. For almost a year, Jess Jr. was the smartest human being on the planet, and the people he had grown up with were the most ignorant. He had been charismatic in his way, attractive the way a turbo-charged red convertible is attractive to some girls. Jess had been alarmed by the change in him, but his wife had assured him it was normal. She told Jess their son had been repressed all those years and was now feeling his oats. Her implication was that Jess had been responsible for the repression. But no matter how she characterized the change, Jess still couldn’t say truthfully that he liked what Jess Jr. had become. He still didn’t. What he didn’t know at the time was that he would never see Jess Jr. like that again.

The proprietress came around the bar with her spiral notebook out, eyeing Jess with a plea for understanding and sympathy.

“They’re loud,” Jess said.

“It’s not just that,” she whispered. “It’s the mouths on them. Hell, I’m used to loggers, and these kids even offend me. They said they were on their way to Missoula to visit some friends at the U of M, but they don’t seem to be moving very fast. Maybe I’m getting too old for this.”

Jess ordered an open-faced roast beef sandwich and a jar-the Bear Trap served nonalcoholic drinks in Mason jars-of iced tea.

While Jess waited for the short-order cook to cover white bread with presliced, shiny cuts of beef, he thought about his meeting with Jim Hearne. Hearne was a good man, no doubt about it. The banker was doing all he could to put off the inevitable and cushion Jess’s fall. He might even come up with something that would defer the fate of the ranch on a temporary basis. Jess was out of options, though. There was no way to work himself out of the hole he was in, besides selling the place. And he couldn’t yet wrap his mind around that, couldn’t yet consider it as a legitimate option.

Behind him, the din increased. A beer glass crashed to the floor, and a girl whooped. The jukebox started up. The college kids were settling in.

“Another beer, barwoman!” one of the boys shouted.

“Give me a sec,” she said tersely, sliding the plate in front of Jess. “It’s hot,” she said.

Jess absently touched the rim of the plate. No it isn’t, he said to himself.

As the proprietress filled another mug of beer from the tap, Jess overheard one of the boys say, “Dig the white meat on the poster. I could use a little piece of that.” And the other boy laughed. “Stop it,” one of the girls said, mock-alarmed.

Jess turned to see what they were talking about, saw the poster for the missing Taylor children that had recently been tacked up to a bulletin board, along with years’ worth of flyers and notices. No, he thought. They couldn’t be referring to that poster. It must be something else. Jess turned back to his plate but watched the table in the mirror, his anger rising. It had been the dark boy who had spoken of white meat.

“For sale,” the redheaded boy said in a mock rural accent, “two white-trash northern Idaho, um…urchins!”

“Urchins!” the other boy repeated, laughing, reveling in the word choice.

“We plumb ran out of uses for ’em when they cut our welfare checks,” the redheaded boy continued in the hillbilly accent. “Since Billy Bob got laid off at the lumber mill, we been eating squirrel and drinking beer. Squirrel don’t go as far as it used to…”

The girls were now laughing. Drunk and laughing. They loved the redheaded boy’s imitation of a working-class accent, even though the blonde kept saying, “Stop it, stop it, someone will hear you.”

“Look at that girl,” the dark boy said, pointing toward the flyer. “She’d get a few bucks in a white slave deal, don’t you think? Hell, we could sell her to frat boys!”

The girls laughed, the brunette covering her mouth with her hands.

Jess felt dead for a moment, as if someone had hit him with a bat. He couldn’t believe they were joking about the Taylor children, and especially the photo of Annie, whose image had broken his heart an hour before. How could they be joking about that? How was it possible? What world did they live in? Where did these kids come from, that a tragedy like this could be fodder for jokes? Sure, the kids were drunk. But how could the girls laugh at that?

Jess looked up to see the proprietress frozen at the beer tap, glaring at the table. Beer spilled out of the mug and poured into the trap. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing either, and that the mug was full and spilling over the side didn’t register with her. And there was something else, a kind of hurt-puppy look. Jess knew what it was. The college kids were steeped in that old Washington vs. Idaho view. What happened here was beneath them.

He felt something burning in his stomach and behind his eyes, and he slid off the stool. His boots clunked on the hardwood floor as he approached the table of college kids, and they didn’t notice him until he was there. Leaning down and placing his hands on the table, he nodded at each of the boys.

“You two,” he said. “I need to talk with you outside.”

Without waiting for an answer or looking back, Jess straightened up and walked across the restaurant and out the batwing doors. He could hear the redheaded boy say, “What the fuck is wrong with that guy?” and the other say, “We don’t have to go anywhere we don’t want to,” and one of the girls say, “Yeah, we have our rights.”

What rights? Jess thought. He remembered when his son returned from college. Jess Jr. had also thought he had all kinds of rights.

Jess waited on the porch with his arms crossed. He didn’t want to have to go back in and get them if they didn’t come out. He could hear them discussing it, one of the girls telling the boys to stay right where they were, that an old cowboy had no right to tell them what to do.

Finally, the batwing doors swung out and the redheaded boy stepped through them holding a half-drunk mug of beer. The dark boy followed, his face inscrutable in its slackness.

“What’s the problem, dude?” the redheaded boy said. “We just want to enjoy our lunch and soak up some local atmosphere, you know?”

Jess didn’t know where to start. He glared at them, felt a hot kind of hatred build up in him, felt himself on the razor’s edge of violence. But he kept his voice low.

“You were laughing about those missing children in there,” Jess said. “That’s not appropriate to the situation. I need to ask you to leave.”

The redheaded boy started to argue, then looked quickly at his companion, talking about Jess as if he wasn’t able to hear him.

“What’s wrong with this old dude, man? He’s got no right to give us orders like he owns the place…we’re paying customers, dog.”

The dark boy nodded his agreement, but didn’t take his eyes off Jess. There was a hint of uncertainty in his eyes, something the redheaded boy didn’t show.

Jess said, “Apparently, while they were telling you how many rights you had at your school, they forgot about teaching you any respect or decorum. What you were saying in there about those missing kids isn’t clever or funny, and it pisses me off because I’m from here.”

The redheaded boy looked back at Jess, his expression wounded. “Man…”

“I’m sixty-three years old,” Jess said, his eyes narrowing, his voice getting hard. “More than three times your age. And there are two of you. But if you don’t walk back in and get those girls, right now, and drive on down the road, I’m going to knock you both into next year.”

The boys stared back at him, frozen. Jess had no doubt that if they rushed him, it would all be over quickly, and he would be the worse for it. But in the mood he was in, he wanted them to try.

“We didn’t mean nothing…” the redheaded boy started to say.

“RIGHT NOW,” Jess said through clenched teeth.

The dark boy broke first, saying “Ah, fuck this shit” with resignation and, turning toward the door, grasped the redheaded boy’s arm. “Let’s go, Jarrod.”

“We can take this old fart,” redheaded Jarrod said. “He can’t throw us out of here. It’s a public place.”

“Forget it, man,” the dark boy said. “He isn’t worth it.”

Jess let it go. He could grant them a bit of false dignity in their cowardice.

Jess stood to the side on the porch and watched them come out, all four of them glaring at him as they passed. He was pleased that the blond girl at least looked ashamed of herself, ashamed of her companions. The brunette didn’t, though. Her face was a mask of righteous indignation. Jess heard the words white trash as they climbed into their car and threw gravel as they exited the parking lot. The redheaded boy shouted something as they pulled onto the two-lane, and raised his hand out of the window with his middle finger out.

He finished his lunch, which was cold, while the owner cleaned up the vacated table. The last selection finished on the jukebox, and the only sound in the Bear Trap was the ticking of the clock and the clink of the empty glasses she gathered from the table.

He gestured toward the poster. “This kind of thing is on the news so much these days it probably doesn’t even seem real to them.”

“They didn’t even leave me a tip,” the proprietress said as she stacked the dirty plates and glasses behind the bar.

PULLING OFF the road near his mailbox, Jess got his mail and tossed it on the seat next to him. Fiona had placed a Post-It note on an envelope from the county tax assessor with the words “BETTER OPEN THIS!!!” on it.

After changing into his work clothes and replacing his new Stetson with his sweat-stained old one, Jess stuck a pair of fencing pliers in his back pocket and saddled Chile. There was a cold, heavy stone in his belly as he rode up a slate-rock ridge that overlooked the ranch hill on the north side of the near meadow.

Growing up, Jess Rawlins had explored every inch of the ranch within riding distance of the house, and the rest later, on overnights via horseback or dirt bike. He had spent most of his time alone, and he was intimate with the folds of the terrain, the stands of trees, the overhang bank along the creek where he could reach down into the water and, if he was gentle, feel the gills flutter on the three-pound trout that lived there.

The slate-rock ridge was 150 yards from his house. The teeth of the ridge could be seen against the horizon from his porch and from the road, but the slope behind it was obscured from view. It was the perfect place to see but not be seen.

As a boy, Jess had created scenarios where he went into action and saved his family from outside threats. When he was very young he used to imagine Indians attacking. Later, it was escaped criminals or Communists. Aiming down the length of a broom handle or a BB gun, he had hidden himself on the top of the ridge with slate-rock outcroppings, and picked off his targets as they moved down out of the trees into the open ranch yard below. From the outcropping, the main ranch road was in full view as it spilled out of the trees and curved down the hillside in looping switchbacks before straightening for the ranch house. From his perch behind the slate rocks, he would see his mother through the window in her kitchen, but she couldn’t see him. She had no idea he was up there saving her, saving the ranch.

Sometimes, he remembered, the situation got so desperate that he would need to counterattack. He would rise to his feet, holler a war cry, and charge down the hill, bobbing and weaving toward the house as his enemies shot at him. Sometimes they hit him, and to make the action realistic, he would splash water from his canteen on the place where the bullet hit, so he could feel the wetness of the blood. He would be practically soaked by the time he made it to the house and dispatched the last of the bad guys, despite his massive and fatal wounds.

At dinner, his mother would ask him why he was wet. He would say, “I am?”

Years later, he had shown this place to his son, Jess Jr., even urged the boy to hunker down behind the slabs of slate that poked twelve to fourteen inches through the grassy surface of the ridge like shields. Not that he wanted the boy to create scenarios of his own, but he hoped his son would simply appreciate the view the ridge afforded of the ranch, the land, the open vista bordered by dark trees. His son had looked around, then turned to Jess with a shrug, and asked how long it was until dinner.

HE PICKED his way down the slate-rock ridge, looking out at the newborn calves and their mothers, including the new arrivals from the night before, who were racing around in the fenced-off meadow, bawling, quiet only when they were sleeping or nursing from their mothers. He liked new calves. It was the only time in their lives they were ever clean, and their russet-and-white coloring was vibrant. They smelled fresh.

He rode through them, climbed the other side of the corral fence to the near meadow, and followed the fence to the top of the hill. The barbed wires had sagged between two posts, leaving enough of a gap that the calves could escape if they figured it out. Even so, they wouldn’t go far from their mothers, and both mothers and babies would make a god-awful racket trying to reunite. The desperate mothers might cut themselves up on the wire trying to get to their newborns. He dismounted, tightened the wire, and pounded new staples into the posts. After finishing, he did what he always did, which was to walk along the fence, thumping each post to make sure it was sound, making sure the bottoms hadn’t rotted away.

That’s when he saw the strip of color hanging from a barb on the second strand from the top.

Jess bent over and looked at it. The yellow strip was no wider than a half inch and an inch long. It wasn’t frayed or bleached out by the sun or rain, which meant it was new. Maybe, he thought, one of the search team members had brushed too close to his fence. He remembered the description of the Taylor girl from the poster, that she was last seen wearing a yellow sweatshirt.

Then, in the mud near his boots, he noticed two footprints. One was from a small athletic shoe. The other, slightly larger, was made by a bare foot.

He stood up and looked out over his ranch in the direction the footprints were aimed. They were headed for his barn.

Saturday, 2:50 P.M.

I HEAR someone coming,” Annie said, bending forward and clapping her hand over William’s mouth and muzzling a long complaint about how hungry he was. William squirmed in protest and reached up to pry her hand away but heard it too: crunching footfalls in loose gravel outside the barn.

IT HAD been Annie’s idea to hide in the barn the night before, after they had shinnied through the limp strands of a barbed-wire fence. They had seen the barn roof glowing in the cloud-muted blue moonlight. The barn was situated in an open area at the foot of the slope, a clearing that held back the black wall of trees. There was a house down there, too, in fact two of them, but they were dark and she didn’t want to knock on any doors. After what had happened at Mr. Swann’s, she didn’t trust anyone.

They had held hands as they crossed the ranch yard, stepping as lightly as they could through the gravel, waiting for the charge of barking, snarling cow dogs that never came. Instead, a blocky old Labrador approached them, tail wagging, and licked William’s hand.

Luckily, the barn was empty except for a fat cow that stood still and silent in a stall. Half of the barn was filled with pungent hay bales stacked up to the rafters. Annie and William climbed them using the stair-step pattern of stacked bales until they were on the top of the hay. There, she decided, was where they would stop and rest. From the top, she could look down on the floor of the barn and see all of the doors.

“We need to build a nest,” she told William.

“Let’s call it a fort,” he said. “A fort sounds better.”

“Okay, a fort.”

“I’ll protect us,” William said. “I got outlaw blood in me.”

“You mean Billy? Stop that.”

“Dad was an outlaw.”

Annie glared at him. “William, your dad was a criminal.”

“He was your dad, too.”

“I doubt it.”

William’s eyes misted, his upper lip trembled, and Annie felt bad for what she’d said.

“I’m really sorry. Never mind that,” she said. “Let’s build our fort.” “I can do it, really,” William said through a shuddering breath.

“I know you can,” she said.

The bales were heavy, but not so heavy that the two of them couldn’t lift six out of the top row by the twine that bound them and stack the bales around the hole they had formed. Their fort was two bales deep into the stack.

Even though William was literally falling asleep as he stood there, Annie coaxed him back down to the ground, where they found a tack room. They carried stiff saddle blankets and a canvas tarp up to their fort and lined its floor with them. William was asleep before Annie could adjust the tarp to cover him.

She made one more trip to the tack room, and found a long, scythe-shaped hay hook and a pitchfork, which she took up to their fort. The pitchfork was now within reach on the top of the bales. The hay hook, with its long shaft and curled tine that looked like a pointed metal question mark, was stuck in the hay at eye level.

Annie had slept fitfully. Every sound-a bird whistling through the rafters, the fat cow shifting her weight or peeing with the sound of a bucket being emptied-scared her and kept her awake. The events of the previous day and night kept replaying in her head, her reminiscence even more vibrant and vivid than what she had actually experienced in the first place. The bright red blood pouring from the chest and face of the Wavy-Haired Man who’d been shot. The smell of pig manure from Mr. Swann’s boots as they huddled on the floor of his pickup. The sharp pine needles that scratched at them as they ran through the night, putting several hours between themselves and Mr. Swann’s home. William, though, had slept like something dead. When he snored, she prodded him with her elbow to make him stop.

The last thing she remembered, until now, was seeing the muted cream glow from the rising sun through gaps in the east side of the barn.

Someone was coming.

It was much warmer in the barn now, and heat beat down on them from the roof just a few feet over the top of their hay wall. She guessed it was midday, or early afternoon. She threw the tarp back and found herself drenched in sweat. She was thirsty, and her mouth was so dry her lips stuck to her teeth as she tried to talk.

“Here they come,” she said thickly.

A LARGE sliding door opened, flooding the barn with light. The sound of it was like a roll of distant thunder. William’s eyes widened, and Annie withdrew her hand from his mouth.

Who is it? he mouthed.

She shrugged in reply. She didn’t dare rise and peek over the hay bales to see who it was.

“Hello,” a man called. “Is someone in here?”

She tried to judge the voice. It didn’t sound threatening. But neither had Mr. Swann’s.

“I saw some tracks outside,” the man said. “They were pointed this direction. If you’re in here, speak up.”

Annie and William exchanged looks. Annie narrowed her eyes and gestured toward the hay hook and the pitchfork, and William saw them for the first time. He looked back at his sister with admiration.

Annie pulled William to her, and she whispered in his ear. “If he comes up here, we’ll have to defend ourselves.”

William nodded his understanding.

For a moment, there was no sound at all from below. What was he doing, Annie wondered. Had he left? What if he decided to go into his house and call the sheriff? Or his neighbor, Mr. Swann?

“Annie and Willie, are you in here?” the man asked softly.

Annie’s heart raced: He knew their names!

She looked at William, who was scowling. He didn’t like to be called Willie. He reached up and drew the hay hook out of the bale, and ran his finger along its sharpened tip.

The man below was walking through the barn, and she heard the door to the tack room open and the sound of boots scuffing on the slat-board floor. Then the door closed, and the man called out, even more softly than before.

“Annie and Willie, if you’re in here, you can come out. You’re probably pretty hungry and thirsty, and I’d guess you’ve got family who is worried as hell about you. I see I’m missing some blankets and a tarp, and my guess is you needed them to get through the night. That was smart thinking. But I’d bet that a shower and something cool to drink would sound even better right now.”

William looked to Annie and made a face, indicating, “It sure would!”

Annie scolded him with her eyes.

“I imagine you two are scared,” the man said. “I understand. But I’m not going to do you any harm. My name’s Jess Rawlins. I own this ranch.”

Suddenly, Annie had doubts. The man’s voice seemed kind, and caring. There was a timbre to it she liked. But how could she know he was telling the truth? Or that even if he was a rancher, he wasn’t friends with people like Mr. Swann or the executioners?

“I’m coming up there on the top of my hay,” Rawlins said, “because if I was a kid your age, that’s where I’d go. Plus, it looks like my stack is one row higher today than it was last night when I left it.”

William clutched the handle of the hay hook with both hands. Annie slid the pitchfork into their fort from where she had put it the night before. She grasped the rough wooden handle and pointed the rusty curved tines toward the top edge of the hay bales.

They could hear him breathing hard as he climbed the stack, and felt a slight vibration in the closely packed hay from his weight.

“Don’t get scared,” Rawlins said. “It’s going to be okay.”

When the long, brown hand reached over the top bale like some kind of crab, William lunged and swung the hook through the air, striking flesh. The man responded with a sharp intake of breath. The point cut through the webbing of the man’s hand between his thumb and index finger and opened a gash. Blood spurted from the wound.

Annie’s first, instinctive reaction was revulsion. She wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to run. So she swallowed hard, stood with the pitchfork ready, and leaned forward, following the writhing arm down toward a shoulder, then a battered cowboy hat, and a lean, weathered face suspended in a silent scream. She pointed the tines toward his face and tried to scowl.

Rawlins looked back at her, obviously in pain, but his eyes didn’t seem to threaten her.

“Damn,” Rawlins said. “Why’d you go and do that to my hand? It really hurts.”

Annie wasn’t sure what to do. She glanced back at William and found him huddled in the corner of the fort, staring at the hand of the rancher pinned with the hook to the bale of hay. A thin line of dark blood coursed down Rawlins’s hand and dripped on the tarp. A quarter inch of skin held the hand pinned to the bale. The rancher could pull away and break the skin, and keep climbing. William looked up to her for direction, and she saw the terror in his eyes from what he had done and its implications.

She turned back to Rawlins. His other hand was now on the top bale as well.

“I need to reach over with my free hand and pull that hook out,” Rawlins said. “I don’t want you jabbing me with that fork, though.”

Annie knew she had him, and knew he knew it. So why did she feel so awful?

“You’re Annie, right?”

She nodded.

“And Willie?”

“William,” her brother corrected.

“Well, Annie and William, I’m glad you’re all right. The whole county’s looking for you.”

Annie shook her head, as if denying the truth of what she had just heard. If everyone was looking for them, maybe it was safe to come out after all.

“Mind if I pull this hook out of my hand?” Rawlins asked.

“We’re hungry,” Annie said, wishing she could put more sand into her voice. “You can pull it out if you’ll take us in and get us something to eat and drink.”

Jess Rawlins looked at her with something like amusement. Then he nodded at William. “I was going to offer that anyway,” he said. “Luckily, I never liked this hand all that much.”

Saturday, 5:34 P.M.

THE BANKER, Jim Hearne, shouldered his way through the knot of men in jackets and ties and women in cocktail dresses and ordered another Scotch and water at the makeshift bar. It was his fourth in barely an hour.

It was the opening night reception for the Kootenai Bay Recreation Center, financed through his bank. He had been the principal officer for the project and was on the board of directors. The Rec Center had a full-size gymnasium, an Olympic-size pool, racquetball courts, aerobics and weight rooms, a climbing wall, sauna rooms, Jacuzzis. Although financed jointly by the bank, the city, and the county initially, enough charter memberships had been sold-primarily to newcomers to the valley-that first-year financial projections would be exceeded. It was the first facility of its kind built in the community, and over two hundred people were touring it, drinks in hand, talking excitedly, slapping him on the back.

Two of the bars were located in the gym, one under the rim of each basketball hoop on opposite ends of the floor. To disguise his intent, which was to become obliterated as clandestinely as possible, Hearne alternated bars each time he ordered a drink so the bartenders and guests wouldn’t notice how much he was drinking. As The Banker, he was always being watched, observed, talked about. It came with the territory, and he accepted it. But tonight, there was too much on his mind, too many problems, and a serious one he had to keep entirely to himself.

He circulated through the building, exchanging pleasantries, greeting old friends, welcoming new residents, most of whom were bank customers. He tried hard to remember names because they certainly knew him. If he didn’t know their names and couldn’t read name tags, he simply said, “Great to see you, thanks for coming,” and moved on. He tried not to be drawn into any conversations, most of which were about either the new facility or the missing Taylor children.

The sheriff had held a press conference in the afternoon that was televised on the local affiliates and excerpted nationally. Hearne had watched it nervously, always concerned how his community would be portrayed. He was pleasantly surprised how well the new sheriff presented himself, especially since the banker had not supported Carey in the election, thinking him pompous and unqualified. Carey stressed to the media that it was too early to draw any conclusions, that at this point it was a missing persons investigation, not kidnapping or worse. Carey seemed competent, in charge. Photos of the Taylor children were flashed on the screen along with a hot line number. He explained that he’d tapped the resources of a team of retired big-city police officials to assist him with the investigation. The performance was flawless. Hearne wondered who had coached him.

The makeup of the crowd at the center was interesting to him, and something he was getting used to. Three-quarters of the guests were newcomers to the area, having arrived in the last five years. The remaining quarter were from the area, mainly professional people. It was notable how the newcomers grouped together, and the locals did the same. In only a few instances did he see them mixing. The response to the new facility was different also, he noted. The locals were proud of it almost beyond words, their comments a mixture of awe and reverence, as if saying, “I can’t believe what we’ve done!” The newcomers, on the other hand, were happy with the new facility, but in a different way, as if finally they were receiving something they’d long deserved, something they were used to. As if they had taken another step forward in dragging the hidebound old-timers into the twenty-first century.

But Hearne had trouble mingling, spending much time in either group. As the banker he was sort of a host, so he constantly used that excuse to take his leave, as if pressing matters in another part of the facility pulled him away. His position at the bank and his long history as a resident of the valley gave him knowledge that ran deep. His familiarity with the residents and his customers was a huge asset to the bank, one of the reasons he continued to be promoted every time the institution changed hands. He often felt like the human bridge between the old and the new. His life was a balancing act between ingrained loyalties and newfound wealth, power, and status. But sometimes, like now, he felt he knew too much.

The fact was, Hearne couldn’t think of much else than the missing Taylor children and the meetings he had had that morning with Jess Rawlins and Eduardo Villatoro. They all disturbed him, but in different ways. They were moles in a mental Whack-A-Mole game: When he suppressed one the other popped up automatically, as if they were somehow interconnected in a way he couldn’t comprehend.

He approached a bar situated in the alcove to the swimming pool and ordered a fifth Scotch. As he sipped it, he looked out on the pool. The black lanes painted on the bottom wavered in the water more than they should. He would have to slow down. But he didn’t want to.

“What’s wrong with you?”

It was his wife, Laura. He hadn’t seen her approach.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been watching you,” she said. “You’ve been running around this place like a chicken with its head cut off. The only places you stop are the bars. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

He felt himself flush. Caught.

Laura was a plain-speaking, handsome woman, with strong features and all-seeing eyes. Her skin was dark from being outside so much, riding her horses, working at her stables. She was a horsewoman, a former barrel racer, from a third-generation Idaho family. Despite their rise in status within the community, Laura chose to dress in what was comfortable to her: Western shirts, jeans, sometimes a broomstick skirt and boots, like tonight. She was considered vivacious and home-grown by the locals, and Hearne still saw her that way. Only when she was in a big group of newcomers, with their fashion and trendy haircuts, did he realize how different she looked. He appreciated her sense of tradition, though, and admired how she was comfortable with who she was. Sometimes, though, he wished she would dress up a little, like tonight. Didn’t she notice? The thought made him instantly ashamed of himself.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem just a tad distracted,” she said in a mischievous way. “My dad would have said you are jumping around like a fart in a skillet.”

Hearne almost blurted out his Whack-A-Mole analogy but caught himself. Mentioning it would open doors he wanted kept shut.

“I keep thinking about those Taylor kids,” he said, which was true but only part of the reason. “That isn’t the kind of thing that happens here.”

“Maybe it didn’t used to,” she said, then gestured toward the crowd. “Before the immigration and all of your new friends.”

He smiled sourly. It was a point of contention between them. Laura would have been fine if the valley had remained the way it was when she grew up, small, intimate, rural, eccentric.

“My ‘new friends,’ as you call them, helped buy your last three horses and the new barn,” he said.

“I know. Boy, you are testy tonight.”

He looked away, wishing he hadn’t said that.

“You had better slow down,” she said, nodding toward his glass. “I don’t want you falling into the pool in front of all of your…customers.”

“I will.”

“And, Mr. Jim Hearne, don’t play coy with me,” she said, leaning into him, staring up into his eyes. “I know you. You drink when you’re worried, or fretting about something. It never helps, but it’s what you do.”

“I said…”

“Right, the Taylors,” she said dismissively.

“Really.”

She asked, “Which Taylor are you most worried about? The kids or Monica?”

Hearne felt his neck get hot. Laura had never liked Monica Taylor and harbored suspicions about her. Hearne felt defensive whenever Monica was brought up, even though he had explained the situation to Laura more than once. He had told Laura Monica thought of him as a father figure because of his friendship with her father. Laura had raised her eyebrows, and asked, “Is that all?” He stammered, said, “Of course. You know what happened.”

When Jim Hearne was riding saddle broncs on the college rodeo team, and later on his own when he was sponsored by Rawlins Ranch, his closest friend and traveling companion had been Ty Taylor, Monica’s father. Ty was handsome and enigmatic, a star performer, a man who attracted women like a magnet, despite the fact that he was married with a young daughter at home. One of the reasons Hearne partnered with Ty early on was for exactly that reason-where Ty went, women appeared. When Hearne injured his knee and laid off the circuit for a year and returned home, his on-again off-again courtship of Laura got serious, and they married. Ty was the best man, flying home between rodeos in Salinas and Cheyenne to be there.

Hearne finished up his degree in finance while he recovered, but the rodeo was in his blood. Laura didn’t like it when he went back to rodeoing and liked it even less when he hooked up again with Ty. Although Hearne was faithful to Laura and tried his best to rein Ty in, he wasn’t successful. Ty loved women-as a gender, if not individually-and women loved Ty. When the two cowboys came home together, Hearne watched little Monica look up to her father with unabashed hero worship that broke Hearne’s heart, even though it didn’t appear to faze Ty. Apparently he was used to that kind of look, Hearne thought at the time.

Ty was severely injured at the Calgary Stampede when his boot caught in his stirrup and he fell, breaking his neck. Hearne stood by his bed in the hospital while they waited for Monica and her mother to get there, and Ty grabbed Hearne’s hand and asked him to take care of Monica. Ty didn’t care much for his wife, but he said he’d cheated on his daughter, and she didn’t deserve a dad like that. He planned to die before they arrived.

But he didn’t. Over the next few years, Ty stayed home, recovered, but wasn’t able to get medical clearance to rodeo again. So he went back to chasing women throughout North Idaho and eastern Washington. On a warm day in May, he left his family without a word and never came back. Hearne had lost track of him completely over the years, although Ty once called him at the bank to see about a loan “for old times’ sake.” Hearne hung up on him.

Hearne was no psychologist, but it was easy for him to see how Ty’s abandonment affected both Monica and Monica’s mother. Her mother became an alcoholic and moved to Spokane, supposedly looking for a permanent job before sending for her daughter. Monica stayed in the area, bouncing around from place to place, growing wilder and more beautiful by the year. Boys were as attracted to Monica as women had been to her father. Monica didn’t discourage the attention at all. The most important man in her life had walked away. Others were lining up to step right in. The way Hearne saw it, Monica’s mission was to prove to herself she was likable and desirable after all, that her father had made a huge mistake. She looked for men who were dazzling, dangerous, and charismatic like her father had been. That she didn’t seem to recognize what she was doing, despite her intelligence, was one of life’s mysteries to Hearne.

So he had done what he could do, from a distance. He approved a home loan for her after the loan committee turned her down due to insufficient assets. He quietly dismissed overdraft charges on her checking account. When she was seriously overdrawn, he would call her and tell her to move some money into the account and, on occasion, lend her a few hundred when she was strapped. She’d always thanked him for his help very sincerely and never acted as if she was entitled to it.

He liked her, in spite of her reputation and the poor choices she had made. She had come to him the first time she was in trouble, and he’d tried to help her, but helping Monica back in those days was like trying to stop a freight train by standing on the tracks with his palm upraised. Hearne hadn’t been surprised when Monica’s husband was sent to prison. But even now, he couldn’t see her on the street without seeing the face of her in childhood, looking up to her father, unabashed worship on her face. Was he attracted to her? Sure. Every man was. But it wasn’t that. She was a casualty, and he had been there when the damage was done. Even though he thought he couldn’t do anything about it at the time, he had been there when it happened. Looking back, he felt responsibility for the way things turned out with the Taylors. He should’ve knocked Ty down, sat on him, and told him to straighten the hell up. Maybe that would have penetrated Ty’s thick skull. And even if it hadn’t, Hearne would have at least showed Ty he disapproved of the life he was living. Instead, he had stood by, observing, shaking his head, watching Ty wreck his own family. Then going off with Ty to the next rodeo. Laura thought he was nuts for thinking he could have done anything to stop the situation, and said so.

“They’ll find those kids,” Laura said, breaking into his reverie. “I’m sure they’ll turn up at somebody’s house or something.”

“I hope so,” Hearne said. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have children missing. The Hearnes had a son and a daughter, both married and moved away. Their lives had revolved around their children while they grew up. Imagining them missing when they were young was incomprehensible.

But, of course, it wasn’t only that. He thought of Jess Rawlins, how he could see no way to save him, either. Jess was, in Hearne’s mind, the conscience of the valley as he was growing up. Jess had taken Hearne under his wing and treated him as if he were his own son. Jess had never asked for anything for his sponsorship other than “to do us proud.” Us, meaning the valley. Jess was stubborn, independent, but intrinsically fair. That his own family had failed the way it did was a tragedy, Hearne thought, and he blamed Karen, Jess’s ex-wife. Hearne knew things about Karen, about her personal bank account and growing balance while the ranch accounts went dry, about her many dinners with men other than Jess, about her secret life. Karen had drained off the cash flow of the ranch, and Jess never knew it. Hearne had been duty-bound to keep quiet about it for years. A banker had no right to reveal that kind of information without the permission of the account holder. After Karen finally left Jess, and Jess was devastated, Hearne felt immensely guilty for not softening the blow. He could have taken Jess out for a cup of coffee, or taken Karen, and talked to them about what he knew. It would have been an ethical breach, but it would have been the right thing to do, he saw in retrospect. Jess had not recovered from the financial or emotional loss, and now his ranch was literally on the block.

And it wasn’t that Jim Hearne was immune to ethical breaches, and that’s what troubled him most. The meeting with Mr. Villatoro had laid bare Hearne’s own deception, even though Villatoro didn’t yet know it. Hearne knew his own actions-or lack of them-had brought Eduardo Villatoro to North Idaho.

He recalled his first meeting with Eric Singer, who had flown up from Los Angeles to meet with him and make an offer. The timing of the visit was opportune, just days after the board of directors meeting where the chairman decided the only way to keep the bank viable and growing was to change their strategy from low-return and high-maintenance agricultural loans to commercial finance. The bank needed to grow up and out, increase its cash deposits exponentially, and aggressively get ahead of the development boom that was starting to occur at the time. Since Hearne was in charge of ag loans, he saw the writing on the wall. So when Eric Singer walked into his office, it was as if fate had sent a messenger.

Hearne’s first impression of Singer was not good. He didn’t like the man’s superior demeanor and thought his attitude toward the community was condescending. He told Hearne he sought isolation, cheap land, and a live-and-let-live attitude. Rather than being put off by the reputation Kootenai Bay had of harboring white supremacists, Singer seemed drawn to it, saying he’d had his fill of “political fucking correctness.” Hearne remembered biting his tongue as Singer talked, weighing a defense of his home against the prospect of lucrative new accounts. Singer was not the first retired LAPD officer to find his way to North Idaho, nor the last. But unlike the others Hearne had met, Singer promised to bring up a small but well-heeled group of colleagues with him if Hearne was willing to make the conditions right.

Hearne made the conditions right. Singer delivered. Hearne was promoted personally by the chairman of the board. But it haunted him still.

He knew too much, as The Banker. He wished he didn’t. But it was too late for that kind of thinking.

Despite the disapproving look Laura was giving him, Hearne put the empty glass on the bar and ordered another.

Saturday, 6:18 P.M.

THE COMMAND CENTER for the disappearance of the Taylor children had been established in a modern conference room off the Kootenai Bay City Council chambers, down the hall from Sheriff Ed Carey’s office. Off-duty dispatchers had been called in to help set it up with telephones, computers, a fax machine, along with a coffeemaker and mini refrigerator. The straight-backed chairs surrounding the long table had been replaced with the comfortable, ergonomic chairs used by council members for their meetings. Ex-Lt. Eric Singer, the volunteer in charge of the effort, had long since used his sleeve to wipe the white-board clean of past council business. He stood at the board with a fistful of different-colored pens.

Ex-Officer Newkirk was slumped at the foot of the table, looking vacantly away from the whiteboard through a window at the city council chambers, at the nameplates of each absent council member. He felt ill, his skin gritty. His stomach was acting up, and despite the fact that he hadn’t had breakfast or lunch and there was a cold-cut tray in front of him, he wasn’t hungry. The scenario that was playing out in front of him was the last thing in the world he wanted to be involved in. This was the situation that had kept him awake at night for years. This, right here, was the reason he had ulcers.

“Are we ready?” Singer asked, pulling the cap from a green pen.

“Ready,” Gonzalez said, adjusting a legal pad filled with scribbles in front of him. He began to read, and Singer started writing on the whiteboard. The marker squeaked as he wrote, and it filled the room with a watered-down airplane-glue smell.

“When we’re done here, I want you to go get the sheriff,” Singer said, pausing and looking over his shoulder. “Newkirk?”

Newkirk wasn’t paying attention, and Gonzalez leaned over and whapped him on the arm with the back of his hand, saying, “Wake the fuck up.”

Newkirk wheeled in his chair, startled. “What?”

“The lieutenant was talking to you.”

“I asked you if you would go down and get the sheriff when I’m done here,” Singer said quietly, enunciating every word in an exaggerated way. “We need his approval to proceed.”

“Okay.”

“Are you okay, Newkirk?” Singer asked, his ice-blue eyes unblinking. “You with us here?”

Newkirk nodded, then looked to Gonzalez and nodded again.

“You better be,” Gonzalez said.

Singer lifted the marker to his nose. “Ah, it smells like a briefing room in here, doesn’t it?”

They were in control.

AS NEWKIRK entered the Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s office, he noticed a paunchy man in a brown suit waiting in the reception area. Newkirk nodded at the man, then told the receptionist that Singer was ready in the command center.

“The command center, Officer Newkirk?” the receptionist asked.

“The conference room,” Newkirk said, an edge in his voice. “We’re calling it the command center now until we get those kids back.”

The receptionist flushed, turned in her chair, and walked back toward the sheriff’s office.

“It’s a good thing you are doing,” the man in the brown suit said to Newkirk. “Very community-minded.”

“What?” Newkirk turned, adjusted his ball cap, and studied the man. A man wearing a suit in the sheriff’s office on a Saturday evening. He looked out of place, enough so that Newkirk’s antennae went up.

“I heard your name. You are among the volunteers who have come forward. You used to be with the LAPD,” Villatoro said pleasantly, a statement more than a question.

“That’s no secret. You a lawyer?”

“No.”

“You have some kind of interest in this case?”

The man shook his head. “I’m here on another matter.” The man stood and extended his hand. “Eduardo Villatoro.”

Newkirk didn’t reach out immediately. It grated on him when Latins gave their names with Spanish pronunciation, rolling the “r’s” and playing up the accents. Gangbangers would do that, even though most of them were second- or third-generation American. He felt his street cop dead-eye stare take over. Usually, when he did that, the other person in the situation would reveal himself, talk too much.

“I’m here to see the sheriff as well,” Villatoro said. “But it’s after six. I was wondering how long you might be with him before I can talk with him.”

“About what?”

“Another matter.”

Newkirk continued the dead-eye. “Fine, don’t tell me. I doubt it’s as important as this one.”

“I have no doubt of that,” Villatoro said, holding his hands palms up and widening his eyes to try and clear the air. Newkirk liked that.

“What is this other matter?” Newkirk said, letting sarcasm creep into the question.

Villatoro smiled. “You are right. It isn’t as important as the community service you are performing here. I was just wondering if I should wait for the sheriff this evening or come back tomorrow. That’s why I was asking.”

This dark guy made Newkirk uncomfortable, and he wasn’t sure he knew why.

“Come back tomorrow,” Newkirk said.

Villatoro nodded and seemed a little cowed. Good, Newkirk thought. He needed to be knocked down a peg.

The receptionist came out of the sheriff’s office, and said to Newkirk, “He’s finishing up a call and will be with you shortly.”

“I’ll wait.”

He watched Villatoro dig for his wallet and approach the receptionist. “I would like to leave this card,” Villatoro said. “I’ll be in early tomorrow morning to see the sheriff.”

The receptionist took the card without looking at it and placed it on her desk. She watched the light blink out on her handset.

“He’s through,” she said.

Sheriff Carey came out of his office a moment later, looking haggard. His eyes were deep-set, his hair mussed. He was a worried man, Newkirk realized. Cops were one way or the other, he knew. Men like Singer got a case like this and were energized by it like it was new, fresh blood pumping through their veins. But for people like Carey, and Newkirk himself, it was just the opposite. It wore them down.

“That was the FBI in Boise,” Carey said. “They want to know if we’re ready to call them in. I told them to give us a day or two since we should have things wrapped up by then. I hope.”

Newkirk nodded. Singer would be interested in that, since he had advised the sheriff early on to keep the Feds at bay.

“So you’re ready for me?”

“Yes, we are. In the command center.”

Newkirk noticed that Villatoro had slipped out during the exchange.

“Okay, then,” Carey said, heaving a weight-of-the-world sigh.

“Sheriff…” the receptionist called after him.

“Yes, you can go home now, Marlene.”

Newkirk waited a moment while Marlene cleared her desk and the sheriff strode down the hall toward the conference room. When Marlene turned around, he reached over and plucked the business card from her desk and slipped it into his back pocket.

ON THE WHITEBOARD, in green, Singer had written TIMELINE. Under the heading, each fact of the case was bulleted next to the military time it had occurred. The children had left school the day before, Friday, at noon on early release. Between noon and 15:35, when the mailwoman Fiona Pritzle had picked them up on the road and dropped them near Sand Creek, they had presumably gone home, taken the fishing rod and vest, and set out on foot. Monica Taylor became concerned about their absence at 17:30. Her fight with Tom Boyd had occurred at 18:00. She called the sheriff’s department at 19:00, after first contacting friends and neighbors. Boyd staggered from the Sand Creek Bar at 23:30 and hadn’t been seen since.

Singer ran his finger down the list, noting when the rod and shoe had been found near the river.

Newkirk watched the sheriff as Carey listened to Singer. Carey leaned back against the conference table, with Newkirk on one side and Gonzalez on the other. The other volunteer, Swann, had left hours before to go to Monica Taylor’s home.

“Our last timeline entry was 08:10 this morning,” Singer said, looking pained. “We’ve got nothing since then.” He pointed at a figure he had written and underlined: “These kids have been missing for twenty-seven hours.”

His words seemed to hit Carey like individual slaps.

“Our experience,” Singer said, nodding toward the other ex-LAPD officers in the room, “is that once we pass twenty-four, we’ve got a problem.”

“I know we’ve got a problem,” Carey said.

“Word is out,” Singer said. “Everybody knows we’ve got missing kids. Everyone’s looking for them. But there have been no solid leads or sightings since we found that shoe and the fishing rod.”

Carey swallowed.

“We’ve got people volunteering to join search teams up the wazoo,” Singer said, gesturing toward Gonzalez. “Gonzo’s been keeping a list of names, addresses, telephone numbers. There are three teams of ten out there now, combing through the woods on a grid from where that shoe was found. It’s slow but thorough. So far, we’ve got nothing.”

“I know.”

“Sheriff, in your experience, how long would it take for a body to surface on Sand Creek? Assuming the person drowned?”

The sheriff shook his head. “It’s not very deep, but it’s fast with runoff. The creek completely shallows out before it empties into the lake, so there’s no chance any bodies floated all that way. It’s only eighteen inches deep at the mouth. So all we’re talking about is four miles of creek before it empties into the lake.”

Singer looked concerned. “Is it possible the bodies got caught under debris? Or got sucked into, I don’t know, some kind of deep pool?”

“It’s possible but unlikely,” Carey said sadly. “It just isn’t that deep anywhere.”

Singer looked thoughtful. He rubbed his chin with his hand. Then: “Let’s continue.”

Singer had written SUSPECTS in red, and ASSIGNMENTS in black.

Under suspects were Tom Boyd, Monica Taylor, Fiona Pritzle, transient unknown, and “area pedophile.”

“Can you think of any others?” Singer asked.

“I’d scratch the mother and the mail lady off the list,” Carey said. “The mother’s just too upset. And that mail lady was the one who called us. If she had something to do with it, she could have just kept her mouth shut and nobody would even know those kids went up Sand Creek in the first place.”

Singer gestured to Gonzalez. “Gonzo?”

Gonzalez cleared his throat. “I had a guy once who came into the station and said he’d seen a man lure a kid, a young white male, into his car in East L.A. Later, a call came in reporting a missing kid that matched the description. We turned that city upside down looking for the vehicle the witness described. He even had a partial plate number. But we never found it. Two years later, a naked kid escaped from a house and ran down the street screaming that some guy was raping and torturing him. Turns out the perp was the guy who had been the witness on the other case, and that he had tortured and killed a half dozen boys. He had reported the first one just for the thrill of it, to see how we worked.”

Carey visibly shivered. Newkirk could almost read his mind, like he was saying to himself, So this is what the big leagues are like. “Still, I can’t imagine Fiona Pritzle…”

“Let’s not scratch her off just yet,” Singer said. He pointed to TRANSIENT UNKNOWN. “This is the hardest one. It could be a guy who is passing through, or maybe on a sales route. Who knows? I’d have your guys start interviewing citizens at motels and boardinghouses, B &Bs, asking owners if they’ve got-or had-anybody suspicious staying with them. We should assume they checked out today, probably first thing this morning, so I’d get a list on that. I can’t imagine the guy hanging around.”

Carey pulled his notebook from his pocket, and wrote that down. Newkirk noticed that the sheriff tried to stop his hand from trembling, but his writing was wavery. When he was through, he put his hands in his pockets to hide them.

“Area pedophile,” Singer said. “A little easier. I’m sure you’ve got a list of registrations, right?”

Carey nodded. Newkirk remembered that one of the platforms Carey had run on was aggressively keeping up the known pedophile list.

“There are a couple of names on it, last time I looked,” he said. “I think one of them might have moved away, though. We notified all of his neighbors, which really pissed him off.”

“Then I’d key on the other name,” Singer said casually. Carey made a note.

“Then we’ve got Tom Boyd,” Singer said, drawing a star by the name. “He’s got priors. He’s probably on steroids. He had a fight with the kids’ mother, and he was mad at the kids. He never turned in his truck last night, and now he’s missing. When he left the Taylor house, he likely had an idea where two kids might go fishing. M, M, and O.”

Carey looked up. Newkirk could tell he was trying not to reveal that he didn’t know what the acronym meant.

“Motive, method, and opportunity.”

Carey nodded, visibly grateful that Singer had let him off the hook so easily.

Next to the list of suspects were ASSIGNMENTS.

MONICA TAYLOR-Swann

COMMAND-Singer, Newkirk

GROUND SEARCH-Department

TRANSIENT UNKNOWN-Department

AREA PEDOPHILE-Department

TOM BOYD-Gonzalez

FIONA PRITZLE-Newkirk

LIAISON WITH STATE, FEDS-Sheriff, Singer

“This is only a recommendation,” Singer said softly, “based on a cumulative seventy-six years of experience in this room. But you’re the sheriff, and we’re just volunteers trying to help out. You need to make the call.”

Carey didn’t hesitate. “Looks good to me.”

Singer didn’t smile, didn’t pat the sheriff on the back.

“Then we should go to work,” Singer said.

AFTER THE SHERIFF left the room, Singer looked to Gonzalez.

“Hook, line, sinker,” Gonzalez said. “He reminds me that democracy works, though. A county full of idiots elects an idiot to be their chief law enforcement officer. Fuckin’ rube.”

Newkirk saw smile lines form at the edges of Singer’s blue eyes, even though the ex-lieutenant didn’t grin. There was no need for him, or anyone, to say more at the moment. Newkirk turned away, studied the city council chambers some more, thinking: I’m going to throw up.

Singer said, “Take it easy on the sheriff. He’s perfect. He’s our media strategy. Just look at him-he comes across great on camera. Sincerity just drips off him. Doesn’t he look like he might burst into tears any second? They love that, it’s good television. I mean, if it comes to that. Right now, we want to wrap things up quick so we don’t have to worry about it.”

“Thinking ahead,” Gonzalez said to Newkirk, nodding at Singer. “That’s what he does, think ahead.”

Singer flipped open a cell phone and punched a number on speed dial.

“Swannee? Has there been any contact from the kids yet?”

A beat of silence as Singer listened. Then: “Shit. I’m losing patience. At least things are going well on this end. The sheriff signed off on our action plan.”

Newkirk thought, if a third party heard this phone conversation, they would be none the wiser. Singer and Swann were careful. They’d had years to practice saying things that got their message across but could not be considered incriminating. It sounded like Singer was concerned for the welfare of the Taylor children, and was angry there had been no progress on their disappearance, which is exactly what Singer, and the other ex-officers, were supposedly there for.

“Yes,” Singer said. “Gonzo’s heading up the investigation into Tom Boyd. Just like we talked about. Newkirk?”

Newkirk looked up to see Singer staring at him. “Newkirk is assisting me at command central. He’s also assigned to follow up on that Fiona Pritzle woman.”

Singer listened for a moment, moving his eyes off Newkirk. Newkirk wondered what Swann was saying.

“No, he’s okay,” Singer said in a low voice.

No, I’m not, Newkirk thought.

“You don’t look so good, Officer Newkirk.”

“I’m fine,” Newkirk lied, and thought: This is the nightmare, all right. The one where something happens that could threaten them, reveal them, and lead to something else, something worse, another crime. Even Singer, the master at controlling these kinds of things, may get swamped by the sheer magnitude of it. And the only way to keep ahead of the situation, to circumvent discovery and revelation, was to think and become truly evil, to become the antithesis of everything he believed in, everything he reached back for to justify his actions, all of the reasons he had become a cop in the first place. A cop: one of the good guys, a valuable part of a thin blue line that kept the scumbags at bay.

“The fuck is the matter with you, Newkirk?” Gonzalez said. “In for a penny, in for a pound. That was the deal.”

That was the deal. But…

“What are the odds on a couple of kids being there?” Newkirk asked. “Right there, where they could see everything? Ten minutes either way, or a mile down the road, and we wouldn’t be here now.” If his own kids were missing…he couldn’t even imagine how he’d feel.

Singer shrugged. “We can’t change the situation now. We can only deal with what we’ve got. Forget that odds business, Officer. It’s like trying to figure out why anything happens. You can’t do that. If the ass-hole on that street corner hadn’t had a video camera with him, nobody would have ever heard of Rodney King and there wouldn’t have been riots, murders, and beatings. We can’t play that game.”

“Fucking game,” Gonzalez said.

“I just wish it wasn’t kids,” Newkirk said.

“Oh, Jesus.” Gonzalez rolled his eyes.

“We all wish that,” Singer said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Nobody likes it. None of us.”

You saw her face, Newkirk wanted to say. She had a beautiful, wide-open face. And her eyes, big as they were, got even wider as she looked at them and seconds lapsed. She had seen something no child, no little girl, should ever have to see. She would be forever tainted. They had poisoned her, and the little boy. Ruined them.

“How many kids did you save?” Singer asked suddenly.

“What?”

“As a cop. Working the streets. All those domestic violence calls. You worked hundreds of them. You ever tally the kids you saved when you busted some scumbag father or live-in? Or took some crackhead whore in so her kids could be taken in by social services? How many, you think?”

Newkirk paused, thinking back, couldn’t even count them. “Hundreds,” he said.

“Hundreds,” Singer repeated solemnly. Then he cocked his head to the side, his eyes fixed on Newkirk. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to even suggest that because you saved so many kids these two don’t mean anything. But if they surface, and they talk, we go down. Simple as that. Between you, me, Gonzo, and Swann, we’ve saved and protected thousands of citizens. The same people who spit on us and riot like animals with half an excuse. We were the only adults in the room. The politicians and the media pandered to those animals, gave them what they wanted, cooed over their problems. Only us-the police-could keep the lid bolted down. We did good, Newkirk. We waded into the shit swamp and saved people’s lives so they could later bash in a truck driver’s head with a cinder block in the middle of the afternoon, on the street, and slap high fives about it. And so the media could say the riots were caused not by rioters, but because of the situation we created. Like those people had no choice but to act like animals. Like they had no responsibility for their own actions. That was our thanks, my friend. We were the ones being portrayed as the criminals.”

Newkirk said nothing.

“What was our reward?” Singer continued. “The Feds came in to oversee our department like we were the problem. No, we earned what we’ve got now,” Singer said, his voice a whisper. “We can’t let anyone, even kids, take that away from us.”

“That was the deal,” Gonzalez said.

Newkirk nodded weakly.

Gonzalez suddenly leaned forward and placed a huge hand on Newkirk’s knee and squeezed with surprising force. His black eyes burned. “Don’t fuck this up for me,” he said softly but with absolute menace. “Let me tell you what this is all about. My grandfather crossed the border into Texas every day of his adult life to pick beans. He never spoke English and couldn’t read Spanish. All he knew was to work hard and keep his mouth shut so what he did would benefit his kids and grandkids. Every day, when he came to work over the checkpoint, they made him strip naked so they could spray him down with pure DDT so he wouldn’t bring his filthy Mexican lice into their pure white country. He brought my dad with him a couple of times to see what he did to support his family, but my dad saw only the humiliation of a good man. It burned in my dad, and when he told me how they treated my grand-dad, he cried. My old man and my mom worked the fields of the San Joaquin Valley and supported me so I could go to the academy. They never spoke English either, but they made sure I did. Look at me now, Newkirk. Look at me.”

Newkirk didn’t dare look away, didn’t dare blink.

“Look where I live, what I’ve fucking got. I own more than the entire village my grandfather came from combined. I can take care of the people who took care of me. It’s the goddamned American dream, and you’re not going to fuck it up for me, understand? I ain’t going backwards now that I’m here. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You fucking better. You know what happened to Rodale when he forgot the deal we all made.”

Newkirk nodded.

“You in?” Singer asked. Everything rode on the answer.

“I’m in.”

Then he remembered the business card in his back pocket.

“ARCADIA POLICE DEPARTMENT,” Singer said, fingering the card. “Eduardo Villatoro, Detective. Then he handwrote ‘Retired’ under it. From our old stomping grounds.”

Gonzalez asked, “You know him?”

“I know him,” Singer said. “Actually, I know of him, because I always avoided meeting with him in person. He’s that pain-in-the-ass local who kept coming around asking questions. He couldn’t recognize a stone wall if he drove into it. Either that, or he didn’t care.”

Newkirk said, “This could be bad.”

Singer shook his head, dismissing the notion.

“What if he’s here because of, you know?”

“Then we’ll handle him,” Singer said calmly.

“Eduardo Villatoro!” Gonzalez said in heavily accented English, rolling his tongue around the name, just like Villatoro had done.

“He’s an ex-small-town cop,” Singer said, handing the card back to Newkirk.

Gonzalez said, “Maybe he wants to retire here. He’s probably worn-out from a lot of big cases in his career like getting kittens out of trees and shit like that. It means zilch. Let’s not get paranoid. We’ve got a couple of young’uns to locate first.”

Something banged the door, and the three ex-cops exchanged glances. Singer signaled for Newkirk to check out the sound.

Newkirk approached the door silently, then quickly grabbed the doorknob and threw it back.

A janitor stood in the hallway, pulling a mop back from where he had hit the bottom of the door. There were rainbow-colored arcs of soapy mop water on the linoleum floor. Newkirk saw the man jump when he opened the door, and take an involuntary step back. The janitor looked to be in his midthirties, a trustee judging by his orange jail-bird jumpsuit. Stringy brown hair coursed to his thin shoulders. Unfocused-and alarmed-eyes moved from Newkirk to Singer to Gonzalez.

“What do you want?” Gonzalez asked from behind the table. He had folded his arms across his chest in front of him so they looked even bigger than they were.

“Nothin’,” the janitor said. “Jes’ cleanin’.”

“You hear anything?” Singer asked conversationally. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“J.J.”

“What about the first part of my question?”

J.J. looked to Newkirk for help, found none, then lowered his head so his hair obscured his face.

“I’m jes’ cleanin’. I didn’t hear nothin’. I didn’t even know there was anybody in here.”

“Not that there was anything to hear,” Singer said. “We’re assisting with the investigation into those two missing kids.”

The janitor nodded, which consisted of his hair bobbing up and down.

“Take it easy, J.J.,” Singer said. Newkirk closed the door.

“You boys are paranoid, all right,” Gonzalez said, showing his white teeth. “We got it under control as best we can. And we’ve got that sheriff dicked.”

NEWKIRK NEVER TIRED of driving his car up the long, paved, heavily wooded road to his home and seeing it emerge through the trees. It was a mansion, his mansion, even though it was neocolonial and looked out of place among the huge log structures that were being built throughout the county. The only thing he liked better than seeing it in the daylight was seeing it lit up at night. It had been three and a half years since the house was complete, and he still couldn’t believe he lived there.

Three cars were in the circular driveway: his wife’s Land Rover, his sons’ Taurus, and the old pickup he used for cargo. The Taurus was parked in the place Newkirk reserved for himself, so he entered his home peeved. Sometimes, he thought his family didn’t appreciate what they had now, that it had all come so easily. They had no idea what kind of sacrifices he’d made to create this new life, what he’d done so his boys could grow up as Tom Sawyer instead of 50 Cent. Singer and the others, they just wanted to get out for themselves from careers that had become disgusting and intolerable. Newkirk got out for his family, to save them. He wished they knew that, wished they appreciated what they had now.

The boys and his daughter were at the kitchen table, already eating dinner. His wife, Maggie, looked up and glared at him. Newkirk noted the empty place setting that had been for him.

It was only then that he remembered Maggie telling him to be home early to have a family dinner with his kids since getting everyone together was so rare these days, with spring baseball practice and ten-year-old Lindsey’s soccer and all.

“Ah, jeez…” Newkirk moaned. “I totally forgot.”

The boys looked at their food. They knew their mother was angry, and they didn’t want to get into the middle of the fight.

“I guess you did,” Maggie said. She was slight, pale, with red hair and green eyes that could flash like jewelry when she was angry, like now.

“I was at the sheriff’s office…”

“And you were going to call,” she finished for him.

He eased the door closed behind him. It was quiet in the house. Most of all, he felt bad for his kids. His sons could take it, he thought, they were in their teens and totally absorbed in sports, girls, iPods. Lindsey, though, she could break his heart. Lindsey worshipped her dad. She’d known only the Good Dad, the one in Idaho. She never knew what he used to be like, what he used to bring home.

Maggie pushed her chair back and approached him.

“Do you realize how hard it is to plan anything?” she asked. He looked at her. She was livid. “The one night I ask you to be home at a certain time, you can’t bring yourself to do it. The one night!”

Newkirk stepped back, then leveled his eyes on her.

“Look, I’m sorry I forgot. But there are some kids missing, and I volunteered to help find them. I’ve been down at the sheriff’s office with Lieutenant Singer, and Sergeant Gonzalez…”

She rolled her eyes when she heard the names.

“What?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Jim, I thought that was the life we left. You promised me. You promised me.”

He wanted to say, Don’t you care about those kids? but couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not with what he knew.

“So are you home now?” she asked.

He paused. “No, I’m here long enough to get a change of clothes. I’m likely to be down there all night.”

Maggie’s face tightened, and her eyes widened, making her head resemble a skull. She turned on her heel and walked straight to the bathroom off the living room. The slam of the door echoed throughout the house.

Newkirk stood there, his face red. Jason, his youngest son, shot a glance at him.

“There’s some steak left if you want it.”

Newkirk instead turned to Josh, the seventeen-year-old. “When you’re through with dinner, I want you to move your car. You’re in my place.”

Josh sighed. “Okay.”

“I’ll see you kids tomorrow,” Newkirk said, going up the stairs to his bedroom for his clothes. “Tell your mother I had to go.”

Saturday, 6:20 P.M.

JESS RAWLINS cleaned the wound again in the sink and looked clinically at the hole in his hand. It was good that it bled so freely, he knew, because punctures like that should bleed out and wash away potential infection with it. He flexed his hand, cringed at how much it hurt, and stuck it back under the cold running water.

Annie and William Taylor sat at the dining room table, watching him, looking guilty. They looked smaller at the table than they had in the barn. Annie’s feet-one with a shoe and the other dirty and bare-hardly touched the floor. William swung his legs, filled with nervous energy. William looked at him furtively, Jess noticed, not full on, like Annie. He was probably afraid he would be in trouble for the wound, Jess thought. Some kids had strange reactions to the revelation that they were capable of physically hurting adults.

“Let me get this bandaged, and I’ll get some food going,” Jess said. “Then we’ll call the sheriff and let him know I found his strays.”

“Sorry about your hand,” Annie said.

“I’ll live. You are pretty good with a hay hook. Ever consider stacking hay?”

“No. Besides, William did it.”

Jess looked at William, who reacted with a mixture of fear and pride.

“You know,” Jess said, “I almost got into it with a couple of college boys this afternoon who could’ve probably put me in a world of pain, but they didn’t. It took a ten-year-old boy to do real damage.”

William beamed now, until Annie shot him a glance. “You should apologize.”

“I said I was sorry,” he said. To Jess, he said, “My dad was an outlaw. Maybe that’s why I did it.”

Jess thought that over, said, “I’m not sure you want to be too proud of that.”

William looked hurt, and Annie looked vindicated.

“But you swing a mean hay hook,” Jess said quickly. William smiled. Annie didn’t.

William asked, “What are you cooking?”

“Breakfast. Pancakes, steak, and eggs. Is that okay with you two?”

“It’s almost dark out,” Annie said. “Why are you going to cook breakfast at night?”

He looked at her. Her eyes were fixed on him. He thought he noted a kernel of hardness in them beyond her years, like she’d seen a lot in her brief life and was used to being disappointed. Jess felt a pang. There was something about her, all right. He recalled how he felt when he saw her photo on the poster the first time, and the anger that rushed through him when he heard the college kids making their stupid jokes. He felt some kind of affinity for her right off. He didn’t want to disappoint her.

“Because,” Jess said, “I know how to cook breakfast for kids. I used to do it. I haven’t cooked for more than one for a while now, and I’m out of practice. That’s why.”

“Where are your kids?” William asked.

“Only one son,” Jess said. “Gone. Grown up.” He winced as he rubbed the wound with salve, applied a square of thick gauze to the entrance and exit, and wrapped white medical tape around his hand to hold the bandages in place. When he had a good, tight wrap, he reached up and tore the tape off with his teeth. He could hear Annie admonish William in a whisper, saying the rancher was pretty old, so of course his son was gone. He was “probably really old, like forty,” she hissed.

“Okay, I’m calling now. Yup,” Jess said, gingerly taking the handset from the wall with his bandaged hand, “you kids created quite an uproar in town. They’ve got posters up, and even some volunteers, ex-policemen, are looking for you. Your mother must be worried sick about you.”

Annie and William exchanged looks.

He didn’t know whether to dial 911 or the regular sheriff’s department number. He decided on the latter, and thumbed through the directory for the county listings. It struck Jess, once again, that all of his friends were dead or gone. The realization had come to him suddenly a few months before, and it reared again now, filling him with unwanted nostalgia and simple dread. The county had changed while he hadn’t. There had been a time when there were a dozen good men and women-neighbors-he could trust to give him counsel on this situation. Not anymore. They were all dead, or bought out and in Arizona.

As he punched the numbers, he saw Annie, who had left the table, reach up with a dirty hand and pull the phone cradle down, ending the dial tone.

He looked at her, puzzled.

“Mister,” she said, “is Mr. Swann with them? The police, I mean?”

“I don’t know him,” Jess said. “Could be.”

“Tell him, Annie,” William urged from the table.

“Tell me what?”

She said, “You don’t know what we saw. We saw some men kill another man. Down by the river. We saw their faces, and they saw ours.”

Jess looked at her, hard.

While she talked-the words rushed out, and William interjected things to abet her story-she never took her hand down from the cradle of the telephone. Jess still held the handset, but listened. A cold-blooded murder, followed by a chase, a close call with a Mr. Swann, the biggest pigs she had ever seen, fleeing through the dark, wet forest to the barn.

Jess had his doubts. “But, Annie,” he said gently, “I haven’t heard anything about a man being shot to death. That sort of thing doesn’t happen here, and if it did, I’d have heard about it.”

Annie shook her head from side to side, pleading, “That’s what we saw. Me and William. We saw them shoot that man over and over again, then they saw us and chased us. They shot at us!”

“But how do you know Mr. Swann wanted to hurt you, too?”

“I heard him talking on the telephone,” she said. “I told you that.”

“But you don’t know who he was talking to,” Jess said. “You might have thought he was saying one thing when he really was talking about something else. Why would those men want to hurt you?”

As he said it, he thought again of that kernel of hardness, how it had already made her wary and distrustful. It was sad. Kids experienced so much, so early, these days…

“What if you call the sheriff and those men come after us again? They know we can recognize them,” she said, her eyes misting. “What will you do if that happens?”

He started to say he would talk directly to the sheriff, explain the situation and the reason for her fears, get things sorted out. But her face showed such raw desperation, such fear, that he couldn’t make himself say it. She was so sure of what she’d seen, and what had happened. But a murder in Pend Oreille County would be big news. Fiona Pritzle would have tracked Jess down like a dog just to be the first one to break the news, and she hadn’t. Search teams had been all over the banks of the river looking for Annie and William, and they would have found a body in a public campground. Somebody surely would have reported a missing man. It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t sure what to do. Maybe feed the kids, clean them up, wait until they fell asleep-they were no doubt exhausted-and call?

But wasn’t that what Swann had done to them, if Annie’s story was true? Hadn’t Swann betrayed them in that way? He didn’t want to give them a reason to run again, to further frighten them. People could be trusted, he wanted to show them. This was a good place after all.

“Your story is pretty believable,” he said, finally. “But you can’t just live here. You need to get home and see your mom. You might even need to have a doctor look at you both, to make sure you’re all right.”

“We’re fine,” Annie said. “We’ll live in the barn in that cave if we have to.”

“It’s a fort,” William corrected.

“You’re not living in the barn,” Jess said, furrowing his brow.

A minute passed. Annie kept her hand on the cradle.

“How about I call your mother?” Jess said. “I’ll let her know you’re okay. That way she won’t be suffering any longer, and I’m sure she’ll know what to do.”

Jess could see Annie trying to think it through. He could see she wanted to say yes, but something pulled at her as well.

“We’re mad at her,” Annie said.

“You may be,” Jess said, “but I’m sure she loves you and she misses you. You know how moms are.”

Annie wanted to argue, Jess could tell. But she didn’t. She let her fingers slide off the cradle, and Jess heard the dial tone.

“What’s your phone number?”

THE CORDLESS PHONE burred in Monica Taylor’s hand, and she looked at it as if it were a snake. Swann entered from the kitchen at the sound. He had said he would have to screen any calls. The local telephone exchange was monitoring the line, he said, and would be able to track the Pen register and trace the source, if necessary.

Every time the telephone rang, panic rose from her belly and momentarily paralyzed her. It could be good news about her children, and she desperately wanted that. But it could be the worst possible news of all.

“Monica,” Swann asked, “are you going to give me that?”

It rang.

“Why do you have to answer my calls?”

“We’ve been over that. In case it’s kidnappers…or a crank call. Sickos like to prey on people in your situation, especially when it gets on the local news.”

It rang again.

Swann approached her and held out his hand. Reluctantly, she handed him the phone.

“Monica Taylor’s,” he said.

She watched his face for some kind of inkling, some kind of reaction. She could tell from the low range of the voice on the other end that it was a man.

“Yes, she’s here,” Swann said. “Who is calling?”

Swann waited a moment. Monica couldn’t hear the caller.

“Hello?” Swann said.

The caller spoke, and she recognized it as a question by the way his voice rose at the end.

“This is Sergeant Oscar Swann, LAPD, retired. I’m assisting Ms. Taylor. Again, who is calling?”

A hum of a voice. Swann nodded, said “yes” a few times. Then: “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. I have no authority there. I’d suggest you call the sheriff.”

Swann punched the telephone off.

“Nothing?” Monica asked, already knowing the answer by his demeanor.

Swann shook his head and put the phone down on the table. “Some rancher. I didn’t get his name. First, he wanted you, to tell you he hopes your kids get found real soon. But what he was really calling about, he said, was that one of the volunteer search crews knocked down part of his fence and some cows got out. He’s wondering who will pay for the damage, and you heard what I advised him.”

“Mmmmm.”

“Jesus,” Swann said. “You’d think with all that’s going on that he’d wait a little bit before bitching about a fence.”

Monica blankly agreed, but her mind was elsewhere. Why, she wondered, did Swann feel the need to screen calls? If there really were kidnappers, wouldn’t it be best if they thought the police weren’t quite so involved? Like his answering her telephone for her?

But then she realized what was likely happening. Swann, or the sheriff, or the volunteers, really didn’t believe it was a kidnapping. They assumed the worst had happened. Swann was there to deflect the initial blow, to get the news and deliver it to her gently because he knew her.

Monica Taylor tried to close her eyes and sleep right there, but she couldn’t. She thought, Some rancher? There weren’t many of them around in the area anymore. She wondered if it was possible…

ANNIE HAD WATCHED Jess Rawlins place the call and had listened to everything he said. No doubt, Jess thought, she had seen his face flush red.

“You lied,”

she said.

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Jess said, rubbing his eyes with his left hand, “Swann answered the telephone.”

“He’s at our house?”

“Answered the phone.”

“So now do you believe us?” she asked, challenging him.

I don’t know what to believe, he thought but didn’t say. “I’ve got to think about it.”

“Is my mother all right?” William asked. “I don’t know. I didn’t talk with her.”

Annie turned away to William, her expression hopeful. “We can’t talk to her yet, William. That would get us all in trouble.”

In trouble, Jess thought, a kid’s term. As if she would be grounded or something.

“I know,” William mumbled, rolling his eyes.

Jess hadn’t moved. He was trying to think, trying to put things together. Swann could be what he claimed to be: a volunteer with big-city police experience helping out a bereaved mother and an inept sheriff (although the ex-policeman hadn’t said as much). Swann could have an entirely different take on what Annie claimed had happened in his house. Maybe he had been looking out for their safety by talking to people he knew before he called the sheriff, and Annie misinterpreted his conversation. Maybe Jess was buying into a child’s haunted delusion when he should be the adult, thinking clearly, notifying the authorities so the whole county could breathe a collective sigh of relief. Not to mention their mother. He was glad he hadn’t given his name.

And, he thought, if a murder had been committed, given the atmosphere of the last two days, wouldn’t it be possible that the sheriff would keep a lid on it? If for no other reason than not to further panic a jittery community? Or, even more likely, Annie and William had thought they had seen something they really hadn’t, and their active imaginations had taken over.

He wasn’t sure what to do. If the children in his kitchen were his own, what would he do?

“You two go down the hall and get cleaned up,” he said, finally. “There are towels in the hall closet. In the back bedroom are some boxes of old clothes, from when my son lived here. There might even be some shoes that fit, Annie. I’m going to cook you some dinner while you clean up, and then we’ll figure out what our next move is.”

He spoke with authority, and was almost surprised when both children nodded and went down the hallway.

There were always steaks in the freezer, and he pulled a package down to thaw in the microwave. He knew he had eggs. He had not made pancakes for over ten years, but he hadn’t forgotten how.

He heard the shower turn on, then a brief argument over who went first. Annie won, as he thought she might.

JESS WASHED and dried the dishes after dinner, still amazed how much the children had eaten and how much they had liked it. During the meal, he had found himself simply watching them at the table, enjoying the way they dug into their food with unabashed enthusiasm. At one point, William had looked up, and said, “Mister, you sure can cook.”

“Too bad that’s the only thing I can cook,” he had said, smiling.

William shrugged and went back to eating.

Now, as he put the plates into the drying rack, Jess said, “You kids must have been starving.” When no response came, he turned and found them both asleep in their chairs. Annie was slumped forward on the table, her head in her arms. William was splayed out as if shot, his hands limp at his sides, his head tilted back, his mouth open.

Jess carried them one by one into a spare bedroom. Years ago, it had been his son’s room. How small the kids were, he thought, how frail. But he’d forgotten how heavy a deeply sleeping child could be. Calves, which weighed twice as much, were easier to lift and carry. The bedding had probably not been changed for years, but he doubted it would matter much to them. He hadn’t exactly been expecting company, after all. Jess put Annie’s head near the headboard, William’s head near the footboard, and pulled blankets over them both. He knew they would be more comfortable with their new clothes off, but it wasn’t something he wanted to do.

Leaning against the doorjamb, he looked at them while they slept. It had been a long time since there had been children in the house. They brought a fresh smell with them, something else he had forgotten.

What in the hell was he doing? he asked himself.

Saturday, 7:45 P.M.

VILLATORO SAT on one of his two lumpy beds and ate his dinner from a sack between his knees. Two McDonald’s hamburgers, fries, and the second of a six-pack of beer he had picked up at a convenience store. He ate voraciously, wishing he had ordered more since it was late and he had skipped lunch, wishing he had gone into a real sit-down restaurant instead of driving the streets of Kootenai Bay, trying to decide what looked good and eventually giving up. The prospect of eating alone had daunted him, so he drove until he found the McDonald’s north of town and went through the drive-through. French fries and beer didn’t go down well together, and he knew he would suffer for it later.

Beyond the sliding glass door of the room he could hear teenagers out on the sandy shore of the lake, laughing and sometimes singing snippets of songs. He wondered if they knew how good they had it here. He doubted it, though. Kids always wanted out, no matter where they were. A freight train rattled through town to the south, shaking the walls.

The television was on with the news out of Spokane, Washington. The disappearance of the Taylor children led the broadcast, but the anchor and the in-the-field reporters knew nothing more than Villatoro did simply from being in the bank and in the sheriff’s department that day. He leaned forward, though, when an attractive blond reporter interviewed Sheriff Ed Carey. Carey looked sincere and deeply concerned, and said he was doing everything he could to locate the children: following every lead, pursuing every angle.

“I’ve heard it said that you’ve assembled what amounts to a Dream Team to help locate the missing Taylor children,” the reporter said, and thrust her microphone at the sheriff.

Villatoro noticed a hint of a smile on the sheriff’s mouth, a whisper of relief, as if this was the only good news he could convey.

“That’s right,” he said. “We’re blessed in our community to have plenty of retired police officers who have worked situations like this before. They have years of experience, and they’ve volunteered their services to the department and the community.”

“That’s great,” the reporter said, beaming.

Carey nodded. “They’re working tirelessly, without compensation. We’ve greatly expanded the scope of our investigation with the service of these men, and we’re proceeding in the most professional way possible.”

The reporter threw it back to the anchor, who closed the story by saying: “The volunteers are reportedly retired police officers from the Los Angeles Police Department…”

Villatoro paused, a hamburger poised in the air. He wondered how many ex-cops had volunteered to form the task force. And besides Newkirk, who were the others?

AFTER CHECKING his watch and assuming she was still awake, he called his wife, Donna. She picked up quickly, and he visualized her in bed, under the covers with her knees propped up and a book open. He apologized for not calling the night before, and she told him how his mother was driving her crazy.

“Where are you again?” she asked. “Ohio? Iowa?”

“Idaho,” he said gently. “Almost in Canada.”

“Isn’t that where potatoes come from?”

“I think so, yes. But not this far north. Here there are mountains and lakes. It’s very beautiful, and very…isolated.”

“Would I like it?”

“For a while, I think. There’s not much shopping and not many places to eat.”

He told her about the missing children, and she said she thought she’d seen something on the news about it. But it could have been other missing children, she said. It was such a common story these days, she said. So many missing children it was hard to keep up with them.

Donna was Anglo. In the last ten years she had put on a great deal of weight and was constantly fighting to slim down. Villatoro had told her, repeatedly, truthfully, that it didn’t matter to him. His mother had made the situation worse, though, when she announced at breakfast two weeks before that she was making them a new comforter for their bed. “I decided it will be a light one,” his Salvadoran mother had said, “because big people create their own heat.” Donna had been mortified, and had been depressed ever since.

“Have you heard from Carrie?” he asked, inadvertently glancing at the framed photo he had brought of their family. Their daughter, their beautiful, dark, loving daughter, was going to college, majoring in cinematography. Her departure had left a hole in the house that Donna and his mother couldn’t fill.

“An e-mail,” Donna said. “She needs money for some kind of film club.”

“Then send it to her,” he said automatically.

He listened while Donna replayed her day: breakfast with Mama, grocery shopping, fighting with the dry cleaners. The city had turned off the water for two hours that afternoon while repairing the street.

He realized, too late, that she had asked him a question while his mind was elsewhere.

“What?”

“I asked you when you thought you’d be back.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “A few more days. I have a feeling I’m getting close. It’s more than a feeling, in fact.”

“You’ve said that before.” She sighed.

“This time, though…”

“This obsession, it’s not healthy.”

It was more than an obsession. They had had this discussion many times before.

“Why is this so important to you?” she asked. “You need to find out what it’s like to be retired. You haven’t even tried yet.”

“I’m not ready.”

“I talked to the Chows down the street,” she said. Arcadia was 50 percent Asian. “Mr. Chow retired a month ago and they just bought a big RV. They’re going to tour the country. They’re like a couple of kids, they’re so excited.”

“Is that what you think we should do?”

Hesitation. “No, not really.”

He faked a laugh, hoping to defuse the topic. He had explained it before to her. She had said she understood. But if she did, it didn’t stop her from bringing it up again.

For eight years since the robbery, he had lived with the case. It was the only open murder investigation within the department, and it had been his responsibility. Retirement didn’t change that. Villatoro had always taken his responsibilities seriously, even if no one else seemed to take theirs with the same passion. He took good police work seriously, and considered it a calling, like the priesthood. He knew most of his fellow officers didn’t think that way, and he never could understand that. They would have been just as happy and content working as building inspectors or within the city’s recreation department.

He had been shocked when his chief agreed to turn over the investigation to the LAPD and assigned Villatoro a peripheral liaison role in it. The officers he dealt with from L.A. were much more interested in going to Santa Anita and betting the horses than they were in solving the murder of the guard. The L.A. detectives treated their very few days in Arcadia like holidays from their offices, with long lunches, story-telling, and very few questions for him. This bothered Villatoro on two counts. One was that despite the convictions of the racetrack employees, the men who murdered the guard had never been caught. The detectives didn’t seem very concerned about that. They were used to messy, unfinished cases. To them it was about putting in their time, filing a few reports to grow the file, winning a couple of races at the track. The other thing that consistently bothered Villatoro-in fact, it ate at him like a cancer-was that these men were the vanguard of a sprawling, dirty, indefinable city that continued to grow, continued to reach farther out, overwhelming small communities like Arcadia and sucking them in until what remained had no resemblance to what there once was. He saw his fellow officers and neighbors change to adapt, lowering their standards, letting their responsibility to the community and each other slip away into the maw of the beast. Arcadia was no longer the small, sun-baked city it had once been. Now, it was just another colony.

Villatoro was a proud man, despite his humble nature. He noticed how the L.A. cops shot glances at one another when he spoke, was stung when they disregarded his suggestions about following up on the marked bills. One of the detectives, after being told about the second bill traced back to Idaho, said, “Do you have any idea what my caseload is like? Get fucking real, man.”

Villatoro reflected on what he’d said to his wife, and decided he’d been wrong. It wasn’t that he wasn’t ready to retire. He was. But the single unsolved murder was like a hot coal in his belly. It burned. He had told Donna this.

There was the widow of the slain guard, and her children. No one-not the prosecutors, not the judges, not the L.A. detectives-had met the widow, as Villatoro had. She deserved justice, and only he could deliver it.

He told his wife good night and that he loved her.

HE SAT BACK on his bed with the television on but the volume turned down, and thought of his last visit to Santa Anita Racetrack.

He had done it yearly, ever since the robbery, long after the L.A. detectives stopped going to Arcadia pretending to investigate. He chose days when no races were held, when the old, stately place was still and silent. The last time he had been there was the week before, on an unseasonably hot day, ninety-four degrees in April.

Parking his car in the huge, empty lot, he had walked across the hot asphalt with beads of sweat forming on his upper lip. The stadium was blue and massive; heat shimmered and distorted the palm trees and the hills that framed the track. He had loved the place, the feel of it, ever since he took his daughter there for equestrian events during the summer of 1989. It had the look and feel of lost elegance, of a fifties Los Angeles that was bursting with energy, pride, and money. A gentler, more civilized, more humane time, when the issues were water and wider highways and Arcadia had been a sleepy, tree-lined village, like Kootenai Bay was now.

He had found an open gate, as he did each visit. The maintenance men never seemed to lock it, as if he were meant to enter. Walking through Seabiscuit Court on a red concrete path, across manicured lawns with empty tents and tables for guests, he glanced at the statue of the horse, the bronzes of famous jockeys, the monument to George Woolf. The grounds were more of a garden than a racetrack, which was something else he liked. It soothed him. Birds chirped in flowering trees, making the lawns in front of the stadium seem tropical.

The escalator was not turned on, so he climbed the steps, and was sweating hard when he reached the top. He walked though the Front-Runner Restaurant, with its white linen tablecloths and silver place settings, to the Turf Club. From there, he could see everything. The oval track was laid out in front of him, the infield so green it burned his eyes. But the track was eerily empty, not a single employee or horse to be seen.

He turned in the entranceway, and once again ran through the events of that day in May, eight years earlier.

The cash had been counted by a dozen employees in the administrative offices, directly below the stands, in a windowless office. Two armored bank cars idled outside the office, on a service road that was gated on both sides and manned by armed guards. When the cash was counted and accounts reconciled, it was banded and placed in heavy canvas bags, with each bag holding $900,000 to $1 million in cash as well as computer-generated bank deposit slips. There were fourteen bags in all. On a signal, the office doors were opened by the guards, and bonded staff from the bank cars entered to pick up the bags of cash, which were secured with steel cable and clasp locks. On that day, eight bags were placed in the first armored car and six in the second. The driver of the second armored car was a young father of two children named Steve Nichols.

As always, the armored cars waited until the last race of the day commenced. They timed it that way so the cars could slip away from the facility before the races were completed and thousands of customers left for their cars. Plus, for public relations reasons, the owners of the track didn’t like the idea of vehicles filled with betting losses leaving at the same time as the patrons.

When the roar went up from the packed house, guards manually opened the front gate, and the armored cars rumbled away, taking an employee-only road obscured from the fans by banks of trees. They emerged at the far end of the parking lot, where heat waves now almost entirely obscured a sign for PURRFECT AUTO SERVICE.

Villatoro walked to the south end of the stadium and looked over the railing, so he could see Huntington Drive. He visualized the two armored cars, unnoticed by thousands of cheering customers who were watching the final race, proceed east. Past Holy Angels School, past Salter Stadium.

On that day, the vehicles stopped for the red light at Huntington and Santa Anita Boulevard. From there, they planned to turn left and drive a short distance to the on-ramp to I-210, and west toward L.A. and the bank. But at that intersection, something happened.

A man walking his dog along Huntington witnessed it from a quarter of a mile away. He testified later that he could see thick rolls of yellow-brown smoke pour out of the shooting ports of the armored cars, followed by the scene of armed guards throwing open the rear doors onto the street. The police investigation said that canisters of tear gas hidden within the bags of cash were triggered by remote control. The guards rolled in agony on the pavement, the gas now so thick in the air that the witness couldn’t see much else. What he heard, though, was the sound of engines roaring, squealing tires, and a moment later, the sharp crack of gunshots. The speculation was that the robbers had been parked in the lot of the H.N. & Francis C. Berger Foundation building on the other side of the intersection, and that two cars (of unknown description) converged on the armored vehicles. The robbers were armed and probably wore gas masks, or they couldn’t have entered the smoking vehicles to remove the cash bags or kill Steve Nichols, the driver of the second car.

The only witness to the crime, the dog walker, had turned his back to run and couldn’t see the cars tear away, or say whether they escaped west to L.A. or east to San Bernadino on the freeway.

No vehicles were ever recovered that could be tied to the robbery, since no reliable description of the cars was ever made.

Because of the placement of the tear gas bombs, the counting room staff was immediately isolated and questioned. The police determined that several of the employees were involved, and a witness came forth to name names. Despite protestations of innocence by the counting room employees, three people were convicted and imprisoned. The head cashier, a woman named Anita, dubbed by the evening newscasts as “Anita of Santa Anita,” was sentenced first.

Villatoro met Steve Nichols’s widow six months after the robbery. She was young, pretty, with a toddler, and eight months pregnant at the time. Nichols had worked two jobs to be able to afford the small home in Tustin. His death had brought her a little life insurance money, but that would soon be gone. So would the house. She had pleaded with Villatoro to help her, and he could do nothing. As he left the house that day and skirted the FOR SALE sign in the yard, he had made another promise to himself. He would find the man who had killed her husband.

But no one ever came forth with the names of the men in the two cars who had taken the money, killed Steve Nichols, and escaped. Those imprisoned either refused, or, as Villatoro now suspected, did not know the identities of those men. And no one had come forward to shed any light on who they were.

DESPITE THE HOUR, Villatoro pulled the telephone to the edge of the nightstand. Even though it was the weekend, he called his former partner, Celeste, and left a message on her cell phone.

“Celeste, I’m sorry about the time and the day, but will you please go into the office on Sunday and pull all of the Santa Anita files? I need you to go through them to see if you can find the name Newkirk.” He spelled it out. “I don’t know his first name, although I suspect he was a police officer with the LAPD. It may be in our formal reports, or it may be written on a piece of scratch paper, or in the margin on something. I don’t know for sure. I wish I could remember. But the name is familiar, somehow.”

He paused. “If you find it, call me immediately. And whether you reach me or not, cross-reference that name to everything in the case. The investigation, the trial, the after-trial. Anything and everything. I realize what I’m asking you for is beyond what I should, now that I’ve retired. You don’t have to help me, and there are no hard feelings if you don’t. But I don’t know where else to turn, and I want to solve this. I know you do, too.”

He paused again. “Thank you, Celeste.”

Why, he wondered, was the name familiar? What was it about that chance encounter in the sheriff’s office that gnawed at him? Maybe he was wrong. Maybe it was just the fact that Newkirk was the first person he had met so far in North Idaho who looked at him suspiciously. Sure, others looked at him because he didn’t fit, and he didn’t. But Newkirk had eyed him coldly, assessed him. Newkirk stood back and hadn’t offered his hand, as if discouraging any more familiarity.

And he was the first person Villatoro had met who, after initial pleasantries, had not asked, “So, how do you like it here?”

A knock on the door startled him. Villatoro rolled off the bed, used his palms to flatten the wrinkles on his shirt, and tucked his shirttails into his trousers. There was no peephole, so he opened the door a crack.

It was the receptionist from the front desk with a bucket of ice.

“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t order any ice.”

She looked up and smiled conspiratorially. “We could put some in a glass, and pour some bourbon over it, and we’d have a cocktail.”

He could feel his face flush. Even though he was blocking the door, he could see her look into the room, making sure he was alone.

“You seem like a very nice man,” she said.

“A nice married man,” he said.

She laughed huskily. “I’m not asking you to get a divorce. I just thought you might want to have a drink with me. I just finished my shift.”

He didn’t know what to say. She was so open, and so bold. And she wasn’t as unattractive as his first impression of her had been, now that she was off duty.

She read his face, and smiled. “Some other time, eh?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“You know where I am,” she said, handing him the bucket. He watched her walk down the hallway. Nice walk, he thought. He found himself wondering what she had looked like twenty years before. She paused at the end of the hall, looked back at him over her shoulder, and winked. He waved with a flutter of his fingers and shut the door.

He carried the ice bucket into his room and placed it absently on the desk, his mind spinning.

After pacing back and forth, he made a decision: He would sleep in the other double bed tonight. Maybe it wouldn’t be as lumpy.

He lay in the dark, flustered, but a little excited. It had been years since a woman…

Clicking on the bed lamp, he addressed the photo of his wife and daughter. “Sorry, Donna. Don’t worry,” he said, before turning the light off.

Real sleep was still hours away.

Saturday, 10:23 P.M.

NEWKIRK WAS in the backseat of Singer’s white Escalade, looking between the heads of Singer and Gonzalez at the sweep of headlights in the trees. They were on a well-graded dirt road, climbing a series of S-turns in the timber, en route to Gonzalez’s home. Singer suddenly tapped the brakes to let a doe and fawn run across the road, and Newkirk lurched forward, grasping at the front seat for support.

“Didn’t see her,” Singer said. “Sorry, Newkirk.”

Gonzalez said, “I saw her eyes reflect back, but it was too late to say anything. Why don’t they just cross the road when they hear you coming? They wait until you’re right on top of them to decide to run. Fucking deer.”

“There’s a lot of them,” Singer said.

After a beat, Gonzalez said, “You notice how every animal has different-colored eyes when light hits them? Deer are green. I seen a coyote up here, and his eyes were blue. Rabbits are yellow. I seen some orange eyes a couple of nights ago up here on my road, but I still don’t know what the animal was.”

“Badger,” Newkirk said. “My boys and I spotlighted a badger once, and his eyes were orange.”

“Fucking badger,” Gonzalez said.

GONZALEZ LIVED on a hilltop, in a home that perched over a cliff and afforded a vast, breathtaking view of a dark forest valley and the moonlit mountains eighty miles away. From the deck, Newkirk could see a kidney-shaped lake far below that mirrored the stars and moon. Like all of them, Gonzalez lived in a home that would have been unattainable ten years before, something beyond their dreams. The house alone would have cost 7 or 8 million in L.A., and that didn’t include the eighty acres that went with it.

Singer stepped out through the open sliding glass door and handed Newkirk a beer as he joined him at the rail.

“You know the name of that lake?” Newkirk asked.

“No, I don’t.”

“There are so many lakes up here. I’ve tried to learn their names.”

“Gonzo’s Lake,” Singer said. “We can call it that.”

Newkirk took a sip of the beer. It bothered him, once again, that Singer and Gonzalez had no real interest about where they lived.

“You know what the deal is when we go downstairs,” Singer said. “You and I don’t talk. No matter what happens or what’s said, we don’t talk. We don’t want him to know how many of us there are, or who we are. We don’t want him to hear our voices again, or he’ll put things together.”

“And Gonzo is okay with that?”

“Sure he is.”

Newkirk took a deep breath, looked away.

“Yes,” Singer said, acknowledging Newkirk’s concern, “we’re taking a calculated risk here. We’re using Boyd to create a plausible diversion that will pull the search teams out of the woods. We need to get them out before they find something, and we need to change the story from missing kids to finding Tom Boyd. With the sheriff’s office and community attention on Boyd, the odds go way down that the Taylor kids will be found by law enforcement and put into protective custody-or be interviewed on network TV, for Christ’s sake. And if the focus is on Boyd, we can use the time we just bought on doing good police work to locate those kids. Just good, solid, professional police work, meaning chasing up every lead, interviewing every possible witness, using our training. It always works, Newkirk, it always works. This way, we’ll find them before some idiot deputy does.”

“What if a citizen finds them?” Newkirk asked.

“We’ve set it up so we’re the first responders,” Singer said. “We’ll get there first. Then we’ll deal with it.”

“But Boyd…”

“Don’t worry,” Singer said. “We’ll keep him alive. We might need him again.”

Newkirk felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air.

THEY WENT down the stairs into the basement, Gonzalez in front of them, clomping loudly. Newkirk followed Singer down, replicating Singer’s gentle steps. The man in the basement would probably sense there was more than one of them, but he wouldn’t know how many for sure. As he followed, Newkirk heard his stomach gurgle. The dread he felt grew stronger. So did the odor. Urine, feces, sweat, fear.

At the landing, Singer turned and made a face at Newkirk, then drew a handkerchief out and tied it over his nose and mouth. Newkirk didn’t have a cloth, so he raised his arm and pressed his face into his sleeve.

Gonzalez snapped on a light, a bare bulb in a fixture attached to the upper floor joists. The basement was unfinished except for a framed-out spare bedroom and bathroom on the north wall. The floor was bare concrete.

Tom Boyd shouted, “Who’s there?” His voice was muffled because of the cloth sack tied over his head. Burn marks from a Taser stun gun, like snakebites, could be seen just under the collar of Boyd’s light brown uniform shirt. Newkirk was glad he couldn’t see the man’s face.

“Remember me?” Gonzalez said in a fake voice. Newkirk recognized it as what Gonzalez called his “whitey-white” voice, the one he’d used to mock supervisors and politicos back on the force. Gonzo was a great mimic, master of eight or nine dialects. He used to read departmental memos in the locker room in that whitey-white, just-returned-from-a-weekend-in-the-Hamptons voice, and always got big laughs. But it was horrible now, Newkirk thought.

“You probably thought I had forgotten about you down here, Mr. UPS man. But I was busy all day.”

“I know who you are,” Boyd said. “You’re those cops.”

Singer and Newkirk exchanged glances.

Boyd was in a stout straight-backed wooden chair. His hands had been triple Flex-cuffed behind his back, to assure that the heavily muscled man couldn’t break free. His thick torso was tied to the chair with tight bands of climbing rope, his bare ankles Flex-cuffed to the chair legs. Newkirk could see where the cuffs dug deeply into Boyd’s skin. The seat of the chair and the inside of Boyd’s dark UPS uniform shorts were sodden where he’d been forced to foul himself. For some reason, Gonzalez had removed Boyd’s shoes. When Newkirk saw why, he almost retched.

Gonzalez had glued Boyd’s feet to the floor with construction adhesive.

“Jesus, man, I gotta open a window,” Gonzalez said. “You really stink up a party.”

“Please,” Boyd pleaded, his head slumping forward. “I don’t know what you think I did. I don’t know why you’re doing this to me…”

As Gonzalez opened casement windows, Newkirk looked everywhere but at Tom Boyd. He would never need to look again, he thought. The image was seared into him.

There was a workbench attached to the basement wall. On the bench were a video camera bag, Boyd’s shoes, a half-empty box of department Flex-cuffs, and an open toolbox. Newkirk could see the glue gun Gonzalez had used to attach Boyd’s feet to the floor.

“We’re going to start where we left off early this morning,” Gonzalez said, taking a stool from the workbench and moving it near Boyd. He perched on the stool so he was above the man. “You know those kids pretty well. I want to know where they would go if they were trying to hide. Where would they run?”

A sob came from inside the cloth sack. “I told you I don’t know… I don’t know. If I knew, I’d tell you. I thought they’d run to their mother’s house, I told you that. I don’t know of any relatives around, I don’t know their friends. I never fucking paid any attention to them, you know?”

Gonzalez turned and looked at Singer, then shrugged.

Singer nodded. Newkirk wondered what the exchange signified.

He had seen worse. There was a house in Santa Monica the police had used for a while. They called it “Justice Ranch.” Newkirk had been there on several occasions. Justice Ranch was a last resort, used to elicit information from scumbags when every legal avenue had been used or blocked. It wasn’t a place to get confessions that could be used in court, because neither the cops nor the victims wanted to go to court. It was a house of torture, the place where Gonzalez often performed the “guilty smile.” Newkirk became acquainted with both when a judge released a child rapist on a procedural technicality three days before another missing boy was reported. The rapist was picked up in an unmarked car and taken to the Justice Ranch. Gonzo had been there waiting for him. He called himself the Head Wrangler, but instead of tack he had a toolbox. No one ever heard from the rapist again. Then the Feds came in and shut it down.

But that was different, Newkirk thought. He had always been confident that the suspects taken into that house were guilty, even if the cops couldn’t get enough proof for a conviction in court. And if the suspects weren’t guilty of that particular crime, they were guilty of others. No doubt about it. But this was a whole other deal. Tom Boyd was just a local yahoo. It made him sick.

“Look, I’ll be straight with you,” Gonzalez said, leaving his stool for the workbench. “I kind of believe you don’t know where those kids went. I kind of believe it. But I’m not a hundred percent. I need to be a hundred percent to reach my comfort level.”

Newkirk tried not to listen to Boyd, who was begging. Crying and begging at the same time. Saying all the same things, over and over. Offering to do anything, pay anything.

“Anything?” Gonzalez asked, pausing. “Would you bite your own penis off, for example?”

Newkirk winced.

Boyd croaked, “Just about anything.”

“Ah, that’s different. I said I needed a hundred percent. You’re not giving me that.”

Boyd moaned and thrashed his head back and forth. “What do you want? What is it you fucking want?”

Gonzalez walked across the concrete and rattled through the tool box. He removed a pair of needle-nosed pliers. “I need one hundred percent compliance.”

“To do what?”

Gonzalez glanced over at Singer, and Singer raised his eyebrows, as if saying, This is going to be easy.

“I want you to confess.”

“WHAT?”

“I want you to confess that you took those kids and killed them because you were pissed off at their mother, and your brain was fucked up with steroids at the time.”

Boyd moaned again, and the moan turned into a sob.

“You can say it was an accident,” Gonzalez said, raising his whitey-white voice. “That you didn’t intend to hurt them at all. You sort of blacked out, and when you came to they were dead.”

“I can’t…”

“Oh yes, you can, Mr. UPS man.”

“You’ll kill me after I say it.”

“No,” Gonzalez said, shaking his head. “That’s not going to happen if you confess, but it sure as hell will if you don’t. If you cooperate with me, Mr. UPS man, I’ll put you in the back of a car and you’ll be driven to Las Vegas, where you can start a whole new life. That’s the place to start over, Las Vegas, where dreams can come true. I’m not going to give you money, or a new name, nothing. You’re on your own. A guy like you, with all those muscles, should be able to find a job pretty easy. They like muscle down there. Big muscles and little lizard brains look good on a résumé in Vegas. And you can’t ever come back here, you understand?”

Boyd was silent.

Even though Newkirk knew Gonzalez was lying, it had been a convincing performance. Newkirk again looked away, afraid he would get sick.

“I can’t confess to that,” Boyd said.

Gonzalez sighed theatrically. Then he snapped the pliers together in the air a few times, clack-clack-clack, and bent down to Tom Boyd’s naked feet, saying, “How many toenails does a guy really need?”

Newkirk didn’t care if Singer saw him close his eyes and cover his ears with his hands to drown out the scream.

JIM HEARNE sat straight up in bed, his eyes wide open, his breath shallow. He could feel his heart racing in his chest, something that always scared him. His father had died at age thirty-eight from a heart attack that came out of nowhere.

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?