Blue Heaven

Sunday, 2:18 A.M.

IF ANYTHING, the second night was even harder than the first for Monica Taylor. The sedatives helped, reducing the peaks of her emotions, smoothing things out a little, but beneath the blanket the pills pulled over her there was still the relentless fact that her children were missing.

She lay fully clothed on the bed in her darkened bedroom, trying not to roll her head over and look at the time on the digital clock radio. She needed sleep. Her muscles and joints ached for it. But it was more soothing to stare into the darkness with her eyes open than to close them and enter drug-induced, horrific nightmares involving Annie and William and every possible scenario of what could have happened to them.

How many hours now? She couldn’t count, for some reason. Nearly forty, she knew that much. She remembered reading a story in the newspaper about a three-year-old boy who had disappeared from a campsite near Missoula the year before. He was found three days later shivering but healthy on a logging trail. He had survived by eating rose hips and drinking creek water. Three nights was a long time, but the boy had made it. Annie and William were smart. The second night wasn’t even over yet. They would figure out rose hips, if they had to, whatever they were. Or they’d find a cabin, or they’d build a shelter.

She knew, somehow, that they were still alive. She just knew it.

She replayed the last argument with Tom, the slamming door now sounding like a gunshot. She still couldn’t believe he had anything to do with the disappearance of her children, but the sheriff seemed to. How could she have not seen that in him if it was true? How could he have been capable of such evil? And if he didn’t have anything to do with it, where in the hell was he?

She sat up, wide-awake. She needed desperately to talk to someone.

Monica padded through the living room past Swann, who was sleeping under a light blanket on the couch. The phone was on the stand next to him, and she plucked it out of the cradle as quietly as she could and took it back into the bedroom and dialed.

As she expected, it was picked up on the first ring. Her mother would have just gotten home from the bar she worked at near the airport.

“Mom, it’s Monica.”

Hesitation. A long breathy draw on a cigarette. “I’m not surprised you’re calling at this hour.”

Monica pictured her mother in her apartment bedroom, lying on top of her bed in a housecoat with a Scotch and water on the rocks on the nightstand and the television at the foot of the bed flashing washed-out colors on the close walls. She would be watching TV through the V of her naked, misshapen feet, swelled from standing all night behind the bar.

Monica asked, “Are you alone?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“I just wanted to be able to talk freely.”

Her mother laughed a bitter laugh, and Monica could hear the years of smoke and liquor and disappointment in the sound. “I say whatever I want whenever I want. I don’t care anymore if somebody hears me or what they think about it. I’m beyond all that. It’s one of the perks you get when you get old, Monica. I may not have my looks or a pension, but I feel it’s my perfect right to be rude if I want to. I’ve been around the block so many times my tires are bald. I deserve it. And yes, to answer your question. I’m alone as always.”

“Not always,” Monica said, remembering all of the men.

“Now, girlie.”

“Mom, Annie and William are missing.”

“I heard. It’s all over the news. I seen their pictures all over on the TV in the bar. It’s a damn shame. I didn’t even recognize them at first.”

“Mom…”

Monica talked softly, hoping not to wake Swann in the next room. She pressed the receiver close to her ear, though, because her mother had a loud voice that carried through a room. Over the years, her voice had become a grating bray, without inflection or subtlety. Monica wished she knew how to turn down the volume on her phone.

“That reporter who bought me drinks asked me if I was related to you, since my name is Taylor. I told him ‘She used to be my daughter, but she ain’t no more.’ ”

Monica closed her eyes. “You didn’t talk to a reporter, did you?”

The long suck of the cigarette. Then: “Not at first, anyhow.”

“Oh, no. What did you say?”

“Honey, I told him I lost track of you years ago, or more precisely that you shut me out. That I hadn’t seen my grandbabies in four years.”

Monica remembered the last time her mother showed up to see her “grandbabies.” She was drunk and had been driven to Kootenai Bay by a seedy barfly in a porkpie hat who stood in the living room waiting for an invitation to sit down that he never received. Her mother asked Monica right in front of Annie and William for a loan to get her through the month. The barfly leered at eight-year-old Annie, and Monica threw them both out.

Her mother said, “I told him things like this don’t just happen in a vacuum. They might seem like they do, but they don’t.”

“What are you talking about?” “You probably brought it on somehow with your damned attitude, that sense of entitlement you always have. What kind of man are you with now, anyway?”

Monica was speechless.

“Your daddy always thought you were a little queenie. He’d bring you presents and pile them high in your room. But what did he bring me? Nothing, is what. He brought me nothing but a bucketful of trouble,” she said, her voice rising, getting harder.

“This has nothing to do with him, Mom. This has nothing to do with anyone. This is about William and Annie. They’re innocent. They did nothing wrong.”

“Not what I heard on the news.”

“They did nothing wrong,” Monica said through clenched teeth.

“Someone is at fault, and it ain’t me.”

“Please don’t,” Monica said. “I feel so alone, and you aren’t helping. This isn’t about you.”

“You called me. So it’s about me.”

“Not this time. I need support to get me through this.”

“You shoulda’ thought of that before.”

“Mom…”

“It’s time you quit trying to pretend you’re something you’re not. Who do you think you’re fooling? I know you’re wild. I seen it, remember? I was there. Now you act like it never happened, like you’re Miss Priss. I know you better. So do you. Anybody with eyes could see this coming.”

“Please, not now.”

“It all has to do with him. Your daddy. You’re just too worshipful to see it.”

“I wish you hadn’t talked to a reporter,” Monica said in a whisper.

“I got bills, girlie.”

“He paid you?”

“That and the drinks.”

Monica lowered the phone to her lap and shook her head. She could hear her mother say, “I’m tired. I can’t talk no more. I got to work tomorrow.”

“Mom,” Monica said, raising the phone, “this is about my children.” Her mother blew out a long stream of smoke and for a second, Monica thought she could smell it through the phone. “I don’t even know ’em,” her mother said.

“This should have happened to you, not me.”

“But it didn’t, did it?”

Monica pushed the OFF button.

AS MONICA sat on her bed with the phone in her hand, she replayed the conversation with her mother over in her mind, hoping it had been a bad dream, knowing it wasn’t. Hot tears streamed down her face, and she wiped them away with the back of her hand.

Suddenly, she wanted Swann out of the house. She wanted to be alone. It wasn’t anything he had said or done in particular, but she was becoming more and more uncomfortable around him. Maybe it was the way he looked at her with what she thought was a mixture of malevolence and predation. Where there should be pity, there was, she thought, overfamiliarity. As if he knew how things were going to end, and he was there as another actor in her drama. As if he knew more than he let on.

She had asked him earlier why he looked at her in that way, and he’d played dumb, gotten defensive, reminding her how he was volunteering his time, how he didn’t have to get involved at all. She’d let it drop.

But who kept calling him on his cell phone? Why did he immediately leave the room after seeing who was calling on the phone display? Why were his conversations so monosyllabic? And why, when she asked him who had called, were his explanations so lame?

And, she realized with a sudden shudder that broke through the Valium blanket, why was he standing in the doorway to her bedroom, right now?

“What are you doing?” she croaked, her voice thick with exhaustion.

He cleared his throat, spoke quietly. “I thought I heard something. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I was talking to my mother.”

“I wondered where the phone went. Here, give it to me in case somebody calls.”

Meekly, she handed it to him. But he didn’t leave her bedroom. “Is that all you wanted?” she asked.

He paused.

“Get out of my room.”

Swann didn’t respond, but simply withdrew, as if he had never really been there at all. She heard his footsteps in the hallway.

Groggy, she climbed out of bed and closed her door. She remembered closing it tight earlier, she thought, but maybe she hadn’t.

This time, she locked it.

Sunday, 3:15 A.M.

THE PREGNANT COW stood with her legs braced in the stall, her muscles quivering, her eyes wide, her breath heavy and rhythmic. It took effort for her to turn her head and look back at Jess, who sat on an upturned bucket just out of kicking range.

“Just relax, sweetie,” Jess said, hoping the calf wasn’t breech. “It’ll be all right.”

The only sound in the barn, besides the labored breathing, was the grumble-mumble sound of grass hay being chewed. There were two more pregnant cows in the barn, and Jess noticed they would look over at the laboring cow with impassive eyes, stare for a moment, then go back to eating.

The sliding door squeaked as it opened a few inches. Jess slitted his eyes at the sound. He saw a shock of blond hair, and Annie’s face peering in.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What are you doing? You should be sleeping.”

Annie pushed the door open a few more inches and stepped in. She wore oversized pants and a hooded sweatshirt that was several sizes too big. The clothes were familiar to Jess; seeing them tripped something in him.

“I woke up and couldn’t find you,” she said. “I was afraid you’d left us. Then I looked out and saw the light out here.”

“Why do you think I’d leave?”

She shrugged. He noticed her feet were bare.

“Couldn’t you find any shoes?”

“I’m all right.”

Jess noted that the cow in labor had now swung her head around the other way, so she could see Annie.

“I’ve got a cow here about to calve any minute,” Jess said.

“What time is it?”

He looked at his wristwatch. “It’s after three in the morning,” he said.

She shivered. Jess stood up and found another empty bucket and an old Army blanket in the tack room. “Come on over here, if you want. Have a sit, Annie. You can wrap your feet in this blanket.”

Annie nodded and joined him. Despite the oversized clothing, he was again amazed at how small she was. He watched her wrap the blanket around her bare feet.

“Have you ever seen a calf being born?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen anything like that?”

“A boy down the street had a dog who had puppies,” she said. “I saw them before they had their eyes open. I thought they looked like a bunch of mice.”

“This can get pretty, um, basic,” Jess said. “You’ll have to decide how long you want to stay.”

She paused for a long time. He could see how exhausted she was. Her eyelids were at half-mast. “I’ll stay for a while.”

“It’s nice to have some company,” he said.

“You told Mr. Swann something about a fence. I didn’t understand. Was my mother there when you called?”

“We covered that. I assume she was there, but I don’t know for sure. In fact, I’m not sure I did the right thing at all.”

“What are you going to do now?”

He looked at her. “I’m going to help this cow.”

“No, I mean tomorrow. What are you going to do?”

He rubbed the gray stubble on his chin. “I guess I’ll drive into town, see if I can find out what’s going on without showing my hand.”

She was obviously confused.

“I mean, I won’t tell anyone you’re here until I can determine that it’s safe to tell someone. If the sheriff is open to it, without those ex-cops around, I could give him the word. But I’ll need to do a little groundwork first.”

“Groundwork? You talk funny,” she said.

“I’ll do some investigating,” he said patiently. “I’ll find out if it’s okay to tell the sheriff and your mother you’re here. I’m still a little confused why nobody has said anything about a man who got shot. There’s something wrong with that whole deal.”

“We saw him.”

“I know you think you did.”

“No,” she said, leaning forward on the bucket. “We saw it. I could take you there, to the exact place it happened. I could draw you a picture of the men who did it.”

“You could?”

“I can draw.”

“Then tomorrow, after breakfast, I’d like you to do just that.”

“Okay.”

After a few minutes of silence, she asked, “Do you have to do this every night?”

“I do this time of year. It’s calving season. The rest of the year I can pretty much sleep like a normal person. Unless the cows knock down a fence, or one of ’em gets sick or injured, or something like that. Ranching can be a twenty-four-hour job, Annie.”

“My mom has a job,” she said. “She works at a store. Sometimes she has to work at night, but she doesn’t have to work at four in the morning.”

Another long silence. Jess watched the cow. She was starting to dilate. A wet stream ran down one of her legs.

“Won’t be long now,” he said.

“Where is your wife?” Annie asked.

Jess snorted. “That’s to the point.”

“So where is she?”

Annie asked her questions in a matter-of-fact way. When he answered, she didn’t cluck, didn’t hang her head, didn’t feign concern. She just wanted to know what was what, why he was alone.

“She left me.” It just hung there, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like saying the words, either. In fact, it was the first time he had ever said them. “I guess she figured there wasn’t much of a future on this place, and she was probably right,” he said. “She is an ambitious woman, and when our son was gone, she didn’t have much to do. I could have changed a little more, I guess. I thought I was too old to change, and that I was still the man she married. I guess I thought wrong.”

“Where’s your son?”

“Jess Junior? He’s around,” Jess said. “He’s sick, though. Spent some time in rehab, spent some time in jail. Got mixed up with drugs, bad ones. He’s not all there anymore, is what I’m trying to say. It’s not a good story.”

Jeez, he thought. Why am I telling all of this to a little girl?

“Why didn’t you have more kids?”

“I wanted more,” Jess said. “A couple more, at least. Maybe a little girl or two. I asked her about having more, and she said she didn’t want to bring another child into this world. But she meant the ranch, I know now. She meant me.”

He realized he had said too much and turned his head away.

“You do all of this ranch stuff by yourself?”

“I do now,” Jess said. “I had to let my foreman go a couple of days ago.”

“What if you get sick or something?”

“Then things don’t get done.”

“That’s not fair.”

“It’s plenty fair,” he said. “Why wouldn’t it be? Folks aren’t entitled to a living.”

“It just doesn’t sound right,” she said, a little more unsure of herself.

“I’m not saying it’s right. I said it was fair.”

She paused, something else on her mind. “I’m pretty sure Billy wasn’t my father. He’s William’s father, not mine. Someday, I want to find out where I come from. I know I come from somewhere.” She looked up at him.

Jess had no clue how to respond to that.

Her probing eyes finally slipped from his face and back to the cow.

“What’s that?”

“That’s the first sign of a little one trying to get out, and mama is trying to ease it out so she can meet it.”

A gush of liquid burst forth, and it hit the packed dirt with a splash and beaded in the dust.

“Here we go,” Jess said, grunting to his feet and pulling on latex gloves. “Help me welcome a brand-new cow to the world, Annie.”

“Wow,” she said. “A brand-new cow. It’s pretty gross.”

“Life is messy,” Jess said, meaning one thing but realizing it sounded like something else.

Sunday, 7:05 A.M.

WHEN THE sun broke over the mountains, Villatoro was in his compact on a two-lane state highway headed west, trying to get a better sense of where he was, what this place was about. His back was stiff from sleeping in the too-soft bed, and his belly rumbled with hunger. He’d been awake since five, spent an hour drinking the entire pot of bad weak coffee from the motel room coffeemaker and watching cable exercise shows in his bed. He skirted the lakeshore, plunged into shadow and mist, and emerged on a straightaway and an ancient bridge over the inlet of the lake. Dark, forested mountains rose sharply on his left. The road was bordered by heavy brush and knee-high grass beaded with dew, and when the sun cascaded over the peaks, it ignited the droplets, creating fields of sparks. The air smelled of damp pine.

He got a better read on the area as he distanced himself from the town of Kootenai Bay. It was a community in transition, with a new population and culture superimposing itself over another. Older, smaller homes were near the road. Many of them had lawn decorations made of massive old circular saw blades with alpine scenes painted on them. There was something quaint, but tired, about the older homes, no doubt occupied by past generations of families who worked in the original extraction industries of logging and mining. These homes had postage-stamp lawns, small white fences, and a sense of humility about them, a conscious effort by the owners not to overreach. Then there were the huge new glass-and-log homes with sweeping grounds, gleaming new SUVs parked in circular driveways, and attractive new signs out front with names like “Duck Creek Ranch,” “Elkhorn Estate,” “Spruce Casa.” And HOMESITE FOR SALE signs everywhere. A whole new community was forming around the skeleton of the old one. Golf courses were being constructed. Quaint shops and espresso bars occupied old storefronts that still had fading painted signs on their porticos reading GENERAL STORE or NIGHTCRAWLERS.

Within sight of the Montana border, he turned around and drove back. There was more traffic on the road now, and more human activity. Newspapers were being delivered, four-wheel-drive pickups were parked in front of restaurants for breakfast, the drivers pausing to finish cigarettes before entering. By contrast, thin, bronzed women of indeterminate age, some with dogs on leashes, jogged along the lakeshore in tight, colorful clothing, iPod earbuds wired to their heads.

As he reentered town, he checked his watch. It was still too early for Celeste to have come to work if she got the message from him the night before, and therefore much too soon to expect any information on Newkirk. He drove downtown, and swung into a space behind a battered pickup across from an old-fashioned diner called the Panhandle Cafe.

As he killed the engine and reached for his keys, he looked up through the windshield and gasped. The massive round face of a bear stared straight at him from six feet away.

It took a moment to realize what he was looking at, and for his heart to stop whumping. It was a bear, all right, in the bed of the pickup in front of him. Despite open eyes and a gray tongue that lolled out of its mouth, the bear was dead, its head propped up and over the tailgate on the back of the truck. The dead bear’s front paws were arranged on either side of its head, making it look like the animal was trying to climb out.

Once his breathing returned to normal, Villatoro opened the car door and slid out, never taking his eyes off the face of the dead bear. He saw now that a long thick stream of maroon blood ran from the bottom of the tailgate of the pickup to the street and had pooled in the gutter.

“Spring bear hunt,” someone said behind him, and Villatoro instinctively jumped, slamming the car door behind him. He was instantly ashamed of his reaction.

“Sorry,” the man said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

It was a mature man in his late fifties or early sixties, thin, wearing a stained cowboy hat and light denim jacket. One of his hands was bandaged. Villatoro recognized him as the rancher who had preceded him with Jim Hearne at the bank. He didn’t recall the bandage from the day before. They had not been introduced then, and Villatoro wasn’t sure the man recognized him. What was the name on the file Hearne had put away? Rawlings?

“I’m fine now,” Villatoro said. “I just looked up and there was that bear…”

“I know,” the man said. “I wish they wouldn’t do that, but it’s sort of a tradition around here. When a hunter gets a bear, he’s obligated to drive it into town and buy a round for the house.”

Villatoro nodded toward the Panhandle Cafe across the street. “Is that a good place to get breakfast?”

“Yup, it is. It’s not as good as it used to be, though. But it’s still sort of the place where the old-timers like me gather in the morning.”

“Do people here go to church on Sunday?”

The rancher paused. “Yup, they do. I’m usually there myself, but not today.”

“Just wondering. It seems like a community of faith. I used to live in a place like this.”

The rancher looked at him with a hint of suspicion.

Villatoro turned again to the bear. “Do people here eat bear meat?”

The man shrugged. “Some folks make sausage out of it. It kinda tastes like pork. I’ve never been very fond of it myself.”

Villatoro shuddered. He wished the bear’s eyes were closed, at least. It bothered him that the tongue was exposed. If he were ever found dead, Villatoro thought, he hoped his tongue wouldn’t be sticking out like that, swelled up, looking like he was sucking on a gray sausage.

“Well, thanks,” Villatoro said, and crossed the street toward the restaurant. Before entering, he dropped two quarters into a newspaper machine and took the last copy of the Kootenai Bay Chronicle. As he did so, he glanced over his shoulder. The man in the cowboy hat was still across the street, examining the bear. He looked back at the man’s truck, and saw the name RAWLINS RANCHES painted on the door.

Right, Villatoro said to himself. Rawlins.

THERE WAS a time, years ago, when the big round table in the corner of the Panhandle was reserved most mornings for ranchers. Jess had first taken a place there as a boy, with his father. Jess could still remember his elation when his father motioned him over from where he sat at the counter and cleared a space for his son on the half-moon-shaped vinyl seat. It meant something to be invited to sit with the adults, and they all knew it, and they grumbled good-naturedly when they shifted to the left, making a place for him. They teased him a little about the hot chocolate he brought with him, and offered to fill his mug with strong coffee instead. He let them. He knew enough to sit silently, to defer, to listen. The talk was of cattle prices, noxious weeds, predators, politics, cattle buyers. But that was a long time ago. How different it had been when Jess had duplicated the gesture with his own son. Jess Jr. had refused to come over, instead rolling his eyes and turning his back to the table. The other ranchers in the booth had all seen what had happened, and they suddenly found their cups of coffee fascinating to look at. Jess was humiliated. It was the first of many more humiliations to come involving his son.

The table was now occupied by a large family of visitors to the area, who obviously planned a day of hiking, judging by their high-tech boots and garb.

Jess took a stool at the counter and put his hat crown down on the bar. A knot of men talked loudly at the end of the counter, surrounding a young man with a beard who had blood on his shirt. The bear hunter.

“What can I get you?” the hunter asked Jess after wiping beer foam from his mustache.

“Coffee’s fine,” Jess said.

“Nothing stronger? I got a bear out there.”

“I saw it,” Jess said. “Congratulations, but coffee’s fine.” Not saying: I already cooked and ate breakfast a while ago with a couple of missing kids.

VILLATORO WATCHED the exchange from a booth while he waited for his coffee. There was something about Rawlins he admired. There was a quiet dignity about him, something solid and old-fashioned. He wished he had introduced himself, but the dead bear had shaken him to his bones. He would do so after breakfast.

The former detective ordered and spread the newspaper open in front of him. The issue was dominated with stories about the disappearance of the Taylor children. Their photos, the same ones he had seen in the bank and on flyers in the sheriff’s office, were reproduced on the front page. A photo of the woman he’d seen clutching at Rawlins-she was identified as Rural Postal Contractor Fiona Pritzle-was featured under the headline THE LAST TO SEE THE CHILDREN. He read a little of the interview. Pritzle said that she’d “had a feeling that something wasn’t right” when she’d dropped off the siblings to go fishing. “I should have gone with my best instincts and just taken those kids home to their mother,” she said. She blamed herself but was quoted in such a way that she deflected it: “…But I just figured that there was no way those kids would have just taken off like that without their mother’s permission and approval.”

That poor mother, Villatoro thought, shaking his head. That’s all she needs. He searched through the paper for a photo of Monica Taylor and found one on the next page. Monica Taylor was an attractive woman, but she’d refused to be interviewed by the Chronicle. Instead, a volunteer named Oscar Swann, who identified himself as her spokesman, said she was under medication and was too distraught to make a statement.

The name Swann was familiar to Villatoro. He felt himself take several quick, shallow breaths. Could it be that two of them were up here? Would that be coincidence? He didn’t buy it.

Villatoro underlined the name in the newspaper before reading further. Sheriff Ed Carey was quoted extensively. It was the same interview Villatoro had seen the night before on the Spokane news. Carey made several references to his investigative team.

He read:

When asked for more detail on what has been referred to as a “Dream Team” rumored to be made up of retired police officers from the LAPD, Carey said the volunteers had selflessly given their time and expertise to the case, and that he, and the residents of the county, would be forever in their debt. When pressed, Carey refused to reveal the names of the volunteer investigators but said they were being led by a former senior officer who had been involved in dozens of high-profile investigations.

JESS WAS reading the same article after deliberately covering up Fiona Pritzle’s face with his coffee cup.

Swann was describing himself as Monica Taylor’s spokesman? What in the hell did that mean? As he thought it over, his coffee turned bitter and cold in his mouth. If what Annie and William told him was true, Swann had ingratiated himself with their mother so he could head off or prevent any contact with her by them. He would be there if one of them called, probably answering the telephone.

Jesus, Jess thought.

On the television in the corner, the now-familiar photos of Annie and William Taylor were shown, followed by a graphic with a map of the state of Idaho. The room hushed as everyone turned toward the screen. A reporter doing a live shot followed the graphic. He was standing in the middle of the street in Kootenai Bay, holding a microphone and talking straight into the camera. Over the reporter’s shoulder was the sign for the restaurant.

“That son of a bitch is right outside,” the bear hunter said. “If I walked out the front door, you guys could see me on Fox News!”

“We’ve seen enough of you already,” his buddy said.

Jess had a momentous decision to make. Seeing Annie’s and William’s faces on national news triggered it. Either he believed those kids or he didn’t. And either way, he was harboring them, telling no one, while the entire nation worried and searched for them. By not reporting their presence immediately, he had crossed a line. Every minute he kept his secret was another minute he was more guilty. But he had to know more about the situation. Jess had always thought for himself. Hell, everybody did up here. Who could blame him for waiting and listening to make sure he was doing the right thing?

The world was different now, all right. Twenty-four-hour news channels told everyone what to think, what they should be concerned about. If those news networks decided the disappearance of the Taylor children was big news, there was no way he could keep them hidden much longer. He just hoped he could figure out what was what before that happened.

Turning in Annie and William would be the easy thing to do. He could hope for the best and wish things worked out. But who would he be turning them in to? Swann?

“SHERIFF,” THE WAITRESS behind the counter greeted Carey. “What can I get you?”

Like every set of eyes in the place, Villatoro’s watched the sheriff enter the restaurant, walk wearily to the counter, and take a stool. As the rancher next to him had done, Carey took off his hat and placed it on the counter. Even the bear hunter and his friends had stopped talking.

“I guess I should eat, even though I ain’t hungry,” Carey said. “Eggs over easy, ham, coffee, wheat toast.”

The waitress scribbled and took the order into the kitchen.

The sheriff sat with his shoulders slumped, his uniform shirt wrinkled, his face unshaven. His eyes were dark and hollowed. He held his coffee mug with both hands and sipped it cautiously.

“Any news, Sheriff?” the bear hunter asked from the end of the counter.

Carey sighed. “Nope.” Then, as if he realized how hopeless he had sounded, he said, “We’re working on it, though.”

JESS TRIED to keep his own voice calm. He spoke softly. “What’s the deal with the volunteers? Are they really ex-cops?”

Carey eyed Jess with cool eyes, as if trying to determine whether he was a supporter or in the 49 percent who had voted against him.

“And you’d be…”

“Jess Rawlins.”

“That’s right,” the sheriff said, pretending he remembered.

“I’ve got a ranch north of town, not far from Sand Creek.”

“Right. It’s not all that far from where the Taylor kids disappeared.”

“Over ten miles away,” Jess said, feeling defensiveness creep into his voice.

The sheriff heard it as well and looked stricken. “That’s not what I meant…I wasn’t implying anything.”

Jess shrugged it off. “Your volunteers?”

Carey was grateful to move on. “Yes, they’re all ex-cops. LAPD retirees, but not all that long in the tooth.”

“How many of them are there?”

“Four are working with me directly. But another couple dozen on search teams.”

Jess nodded. Annie had made the drawing he had asked her for on the kitchen table. The sketch was folded in his pocket. The caricatures were rudimentary: a thin man with white hair and blue eyes, another wearing a ball cap, the third bigger, darker, with a black mustache. Three of them, not four. Then Jess remembered Swann.

“Did they all know each other before this?” Jess asked.

“I think so,” Carey said. “They seem pretty familiar with each other. They all pretty much agree who the leader is, anyway.”

“Who is that?”

“A man named Singer. Used to be a lieutenant, from what I understand.”

“This guy Swann,” Jess asked, tapping the newspaper with his finger, trying not to convey his trepidation, “the paper says he’s the spokesman for Monica Taylor. How’d that come to be?”

Carey’s antenna seemed to go up, Jess thought. Maybe he was asking too many questions.

“Do you know him?” Carey asked.

“I’ve heard his name,” Jess said truthfully.

“Well, apparently he’s friends with the mother. He volunteered to stay with her in case somebody calls. But with the exposure this thing is getting in the press, he might spend most of his time keeping reporters away from her. I really can’t spare a man for that.”

Jess nodded. “This is kind of a crazy question, but is this the only big case you’re working on right now? I heard a wild rumor about a possible murder in the county.”

Carey’s eyebrows shot up, and he seemed to examine Jess in a whole new way that said, This old man is a nutcase.

He kept his voice down, as Jess had done. “Where in the hell did you hear that?”

“You know how people talk.”

“And where was this murder supposed to have occurred?”

“By the river.”

Carey shook his head. A vein had enlarged in his temple, and Jess could see the sheriff’s heartbeat.

“I wish they’d stick to real life, goddammit.”

“So, no other big crime in the area?”

Carey reached over and tapped the newspaper, as Jess had. His eyes were both angry and pleading. “Isn’t this enough right now?”

The waitress emerged from the kitchen with Carey’s breakfast and topped off their coffee.

“If you’ll excuse me…” Carey said, turning to his plate and stabbing egg yolks with points of toast.

Jess sat back. He hadn’t noticed another man enter the restaurant and walk straight toward the sheriff.

BUT VILLATORO saw him. It was Newkirk. Newkirk approached the sheriff and threw an arm over his back so he could tell him something private.

JESS KEPT his eyes averted but listened carefully. The man had whispered something about a videotape. The man wore a ball cap.

“How’d we get it, Newkirk?” Carey asked, his toast poised in the air between his plate and his mouth.

“Somebody dropped it by this morning. We found it in a grocery sack near the front door of the station. Nobody saw who left it.”

“Have you looked at it?”

Newkirk solemnly nodded his head. “It’s something you need to see, Sheriff.”

“Do I have time to finish my breakfast?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Carey called for the waitress to box up his breakfast.

“Who’s on it? Are the kids on it?”

Newkirk looked quickly around the room before answering. He seemed suddenly agitated, and Jess followed his line of sight. Newkirk was looking at the dark man in the booth who was eating his breakfast, the man who had been startled by the bear across the street.

AFTER NEWKIRK ushered the sheriff out, Jess withdrew the sketch. There he was, the one in the ball cap. He stood, threw down two dollars, and slid off his stool. He was clamping his hat on his head and leaving when the man in the booth intercepted him.

“I didn’t introduce myself earlier. I’m Eduardo Villatoro.”

“Jess Rawlins.”

“May I buy you a cup of coffee?” Villatoro asked, gesturing to the empty seat in his booth.

“I’m kind of coffeed out, thanks.”

“May I ask you a question?”

“Shoot.”

“I overheard you talking with the sheriff. He mentioned the name of a man he’s working with, an ex-lieutenant. What was the man’s name again?”

“He said it was Singer.”

Villatoro’s eyes narrowed. Singer. Now there were three.

“You know him?”

“Yes. This name I know for sure.”

Jess tried to read Villatoro’s face, wondering what he meant by that.

“I guess I will have that cup of coffee,” Jess said.

Sunday, 9:55 A.M.

THE FIRST THIRTY seconds of the videotape was of a Seattle Sea-hawks football playoff game from the previous season. As the quarterback pulled back to pass, the screen faded into snowy static, there was an audible pop, then it was filled with a starkly lighted head-and-shoulders shot of a man in an otherwise dark room.

“My name is Tom Boyd…”

They were in the command center with the door closed. Newkirk stood in the back of the room, watching over the sheriff’s shoulder. Newkirk’s belly was on fire, and his eyes watered from the taste of acid in his throat that wanted to come up. He had not seen the video before now because he had refused to watch it being filmed the night before. Instead, he had stayed upstairs on the deck drinking Wild Turkey and looking at the reflection of the stars on the faraway lake. All he knew was that it had taken a long time. Nine tries before they got it right, Gonzalez said later. Newkirk had rolled home at 4:30 A.M. His bedroom door was locked, blankets and a pillow on the couch in the entertainment room. Even his dog avoided him.

“I work for United Parcel Service here in Kootenai Bay, and I got to get something off my chest before I split the country for good…”

Boyd looked terrible on the tape, Newkirk thought. His face was white and drawn, his eyes gleamed and looked vacant at the same time. Newkirk noticed that either Singer or Gonzo had buttoned the man’s shirt up to the collar to hide the Taser burns. But when Boyd turned his head slightly while talking, Newkirk thought he could see the top edge of one. Would anyone else see it if they weren’t looking for it? He felt a hot surge in his throat and turned away. He needed cold water fast.

“I didn’t mean to hurt those kids. I don’t even remember how it happened. I mean, what caused it. It was like I was there one minute, and I didn’t wake up until after it happened. Like I blacked out, or something. I feel real bad about it…”

The sheriff moaned, “Aw, shit.” Newkirk looked at Carey. The man had looked bad at breakfast, but nothing like he did now. It was as if the sheriff were collapsing into himself. His shoulders slumped, and his hands fell limply to his sides.

“I ain’t saying where the bodies are at, only that you won’t likely ever find them. All I can say is they didn’t suffer nearly as much as I am now. I’m sorry, of course. They didn’t deserve it. Maybe if their mother would’a taught them not to steal, but I ain’t completely blaming her, either. She needs help, but I ain’t the one to give it.”

Boyd paused, swallowed as if it hurt him, then continued.

“Don’t bother looking for me, either. By the time you see this, I’ll be so far away you’ll never find me. All I can say is I wish it never would have happened, and it’ll never happen again. I’m through with the drugs and the alcohol.”

For the first time, Boyd glanced away from the camera lens, then returned to it. To Newkirk, the reason was obvious: Boyd was looking for approval. But would anyone else see it that way?

“That’s it. I’m gone.”

You sure are, Newkirk thought.

The tape once again faded into snow before the game returned. The room was filled with the sound of the announcers describing a replay. No one else spoke for several minutes.

Finally, Singer walked to the VCR and monitor and paused it. “Do you want to see it again?” he asked the sheriff.

“Jesus,” the sheriff said. “No, I don’t want to see it again right now.”

“Looks like we’ve got our guy,” Singer said. “Whether we’ll be able to find him is another thing.”

“Those poor kids. My God.”

“The tape belonged to Boyd, no doubt about it,” Singer said. “He kept a library of Seahawk games from last year. Eighteen tapes, all the same brand, lined up in order on his bookshelf. The last one was missing, which is the one we just looked at. So was his video camera, but he left the case for it.”

“Maybe we should get some dogs,” Gonzalez said. “We could get the scent from clothes at the mother’s house and send the dogs out near the river. I’m guessing that’s where we’ll find the bodies. I don’t know the situation around here, but we used to have some dog guys available we could call in.”

Carey seemed incapable of moving or speaking. He stared at the frozen screen.

“Sheriff?” Singer asked gently.

“The mother needs to know,” Carey said. “I don’t look forward to that conversation.”

Singer screwed up his face in sympathy. Newkirk felt another violent surge. Again, he fought to keep it down. He looked away, at the empty council chambers, hoping that not seeing Singer, Gonzalez, or Carey would settle his flaming stomach.

“We could call Swann,” Singer said. “He could break the news.”

The sheriff looked troubled. “No. That’s something I should do.”

“Swann knows her,” Singer said. “It might be better coming from him.”

Carey considered it. “You’re probably right.”

Coward, Newkirk thought.

“Time to issue an Amber Alert and call in the FBI,” Carey said. “We’ve got a suspect now, but this is beyond us. Boyd is probably halfway across Nevada or in Canada by now.”

Singer’s eyes flared, but so quickly that Newkirk wasn’t sure the sheriff even noticed.

“No FBI,” Singer said. “Do you know how they come in and completely take over a case? I’ve been there, believe me. The most dangerous place to be on earth is between an FBI spokesman and a television camera. They make the locals come off as incompetent and lame. There’s nothing the Feds can do that we’ve not already thought of.”

Carey shook his head. “We need somebody to analyze the tape. Maybe they can figure out where it was shot, or see something in it we can’t see.”

Newkirk was surprised by the sheriff’s determination and mortified by the sudden turn things had taken. Singer had been sure Carey would defer to him.

“Why does it matter where he took it?” Singer asked. “What matters is what he said. He confessed, Sheriff. We’ve got our man. Now we’ve got to concentrate on finding Boyd and locating those bodies. The FBI can’t really help with that here. You know this county better than they ever will.”

Carey cleared his throat. “It doesn’t feel right to me that Boyd here would confess on a tape and, in effect, dare us to come find him. He doesn’t seem proud of what he did. He feels like shit, and he sure looks like shit. Maybe he had to do it to clear his conscience, but why not just turn himself in? He’s no hardened criminal. He’s just a local boy gone bad.”

“Sheriff…”

Carey looked at Singer. “That’s right. Last I looked, I was still the sheriff around here. It makes sense to me to bring in some expertise.”

To an outsider, Newkirk thought, it might look like the sheriff had won. But Singer’s face was calm, impassive. As if he were considering what the sheriff said and thinking it over. But Newkirk knew Singer and knew that Singer was at his most dangerous when he appeared serene.

“Okay,” Singer said, chancing a small smile. “You’re the sheriff. We’re here to help, not to tell you what to do. But please realize that when the FBI comes in, it will no longer be your show. The Feds will look at everything. The way the investigation was run, how you manage your office, everything. If they don’t find Boyd or those bodies, they’ll say it’s because the investigation was botched in the early stages. They’ll hold hourly press conferences to feed the networks their raw meat, and you’ll end up getting the blame. You don’t deserve that, Sheriff Carey. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve worked your ass off, just like we have. But in the end, however it goes, there will be people out there, voters, who will think you waited until the case was botched before you called in the cavalry. Didn’t you say you won with fifty-one percent of the vote? How many votes would swing it back? Less than a hundred, I’d guess. How many people will think you fucked up, even though you didn’t? I haven’t been here all that many years, but I’ve been around long enough to know that the citizens aren’t fond of federal involvement. They’re an independent bunch up here. Why elect a sheriff when all he’s going to do is bring in Federales when he doesn’t know what to do next?”

Carey listened in silence, never taking his eyes off Singer. Finally, Carey shifted and looked at Gonzalez, who was sitting back in his chair, arms crossed, obviously disappointed with him. The sheriff turned back to Newkirk, who said, “Do what you need to do, Sheriff.”

“Twelve hours,” Carey said, standing up. “You’ve got that time to clear things up. There’s a guy down in Coeur d’Alene with bloodhounds we contract with. And we’ll need to reissue the APB for Boyd along with the Amber Alert, to make sure everybody in the country is looking for him. We’ll say we suspect him to be armed and dangerous. But if we don’t have Boyd or those bodies in twelve hours, I’m calling in the FBI.”

“Fair enough,” Singer said.

Newkirk found himself staring at Singer. What was he thinking? What did a day really matter?

Carey left the room and shut the door, only to reopen it and lean in.

“You’ll ask Swann to break the news to the mother?”

“I will,” Singer said. “I’d hold off on any public announcement about the confession, though. At least until tomorrow, if we can.”

“I’ll tell the press about the alert,” Carey agreed. “Until then, we’ll have to see more and more stories about the white supremacists who used to be here.”

SINGER WAITED until the sheriff was back in his office down the hall before addressing Gonzalez and Newkirk.

“That means we’ve got today to find those kids.”

“Son of a bitch,” Gonzalez said. “Maybe the tape was a bad idea.”

Singer shook his head. “No, no, it wasn’t. There’s no doubt in that sheriff’s mind who did it now. That was the purpose of the tape, after all.”

“What if the FBI looks at it?” Newkirk asked. “What if they figure out where it was made? Or they see Boyd looking to Gonzo to see if he’s said everything right? I thought I could see that stun-gun burn when he turned his head.”

Singer responded with a cold stare. Newkirk stopped talking.

“We’ve handed the sheriff a confession, Newkirk. We gave him a fucking slam dunk. He’ll think about it and realize it’s better to close this thing than to keep it open.”

“What if he doesn’t? He seemed pretty determined.”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Singer said. “We’ll stay ahead of him. It’s not that hard.”

“Where are those fucking kids?” Gonzalez asked rhetorically, looking at the map of the county pushpinned to the wall. “Maybe they are dead by now. How long could a couple of kids survive out there in those woods and not be seen by anybody?”

Singer’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It could be that somebody is hiding them. If so, we’ve got to find out who.”

“What if they are found?” Newkirk asked.

Singer snapped back, “If they show up, we’re in perfect position to take care of it. We’ll be able to get to them before they can yap. We’ve got a man with their mother, remember? You think they’d talk if they knew what could happen to her if they did? There is no way they’d be out of our control long enough to fuck us over.

“But I’d rather not have to go that route,” Singer said, abruptly changing his line of thought. “It’s too messy. Someday, one of them would talk. So we’ve got to get out and find them, now. They’re out there somewhere, we know that. We’ve got to deal with this now.”

Gonzalez agreed. Newkirk said nothing.

“Gentlemen, make sure your cell phones are charged up. After we take care of the package, I want both of you out in the field. Start with where we last saw them, Swann’s place. I’ve kept the volunteer search teams out of that area so far. They’ve all been concentrating on the river, where we know those kids can’t be. So start at Swann’s. Go house to house. Start checking buildings. They could be hiding in some old shack or abandoned barn.”

Newkirk suddenly remembered he was supposed to pick up his sons after baseball practice that evening. Jeez…

Singer was on his cell with Swann. He gestured to Gonzalez. “Swann can meet you at his place in forty-five minutes. Can you deliver the package by then?”

Gonzalez nodded. “Same as before?”

“Yes.”

“How much can they eat, for Christ’s sake?”

Singer smiled. “They can eat a lot, Gonzo.”

“Isn’t it inhumane to feed them meat laced with steroids?” Gonzalez laughed. “It won’t be organic pork anymore.”

“Hold it,” Newkirk said, stepping forward. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Singer said, “Mr. Boyd expired on us.”

“He wasn’t so tough after all,” Gonzalez said. “He died of fright or something. I found him dead this morning.”

Newkirk let that sink in. Gonzalez put his hands out, palms up, in a what-can-you-do? gesture.

“You were too rough,” Newkirk said to him.

Gonzalez shrugged.

To Singer, Newkirk said, “You said you were going to keep him alive.”

“We’ll deal with it,” Singer said dismissively. Then: “Go fill in for Swann at the mother’s house while Swann is away. Don’t let her answer the phone or talk to anyone without you clearing it. In fact, just keep her the fuck away from everybody. Swann will be back soon enough to relieve you.”

Newkirk nodded his head. Like Gonzalez, he instinctively patted his weapon under his jacket and his cell phone in his shirt pocket. He had an urge to seat his nightstick in his service belt, but of course he no longer had one.

“Oh,” Singer said to Swann on the cell, “tell her Tom Boyd confessed. That ought to keep her locked away in her room for a while.”

He snapped the phone closed and dropped it in his pocket.

“Newkirk, you with us?” Singer asked suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not wavering, are you?”

“No. It’s just that I had things to do tonight.”

Gonzalez snorted.

“This is a little more important, don’t you think?” Singer asked, stepping across the room and throwing an arm over Newkirk’s shoulder. Despite the gesture, Newkirk could feel Singer’s fingers digging hard into his neck. “I’ll get us through this, Newkirk. Then everything will be like it was, and we can forget about it and move on.”

“Okay.”

“Trust me,” Singer said. “It’s under control.” Newkirk could feel Singer’s fingers stop digging and relax. Singer tousled Newkirk’s hair, knocking his cap off.

“Keep your cell phone on,” Singer said.

Suddenly, a thought came to Newkirk, something he had meant to tell Singer earlier.

“I saw that Barney Fife dude again this morning, at the restaurant. The ex-cop from Arcadia.”

“Villatoro?”

“He was sitting there watching everything. The fucker makes me nervous, Lieutenant. There’s something about him.”

“I’m running a check on him,” Singer said. “He’ll likely turn out to be trouble.”

Gonzalez actually laughed. “Good. More trouble. The hits just keep on coming.”

NEWKIRK MADE it to the bathroom before he threw up. As he cleaned his face with a wet paper towel, he looked in the mirror and saw the janitor trustee, the same one who had bumped the door with his mop the night before.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” Newkirk asked.

“Nothing,” the janitor said. “I guess I gotta clean that up.”

“I guess you do,” Newkirk said, going out the door, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

Sunday, 10:15 A.M.

MONICA TAYLOR took the news with a calmness that surprised her, and told Swann, simply: “I don’t believe it.”

“What do you mean you don’t believe it?” Swann said, closing his cell phone. “He confessed on videotape.”

Monica shook her head. “No.”

Swann’s eyes were unblinking. “Why would he lie about something like this? What could possess you not to believe it?”

She didn’t know, and she didn’t care. And it wasn’t about Tom Boyd at all, she thought. It was about the feeling she had when she’d awakened that morning. She couldn’t explain it to herself, much less to Swann. But she had awakened simply knowing that her children were still alive. It was as if, for the first time, she had recognized an invisible cord that connected her to Annie and William that had always been there. She was sure it hadn’t been severed. They were still out there. Probably scared, probably alone. Possibly hurt. But they were still out there.

“Do you want to see the tape?” Swann asked, his voice rising. “We could go down to the station right now, and you can watch it.”

“I don’t want to see it.”

Swann sighed angrily and turned away. Monica sipped her coffee. She had refused to take the prescribed medication that morning. Her head was clearing. She could see Swann near the stove, see him thinking while holding his phone. Was he weighing whether to call someone back?

He turned back to her. “Denial is a powerful emotion, I realize that,” he said. “It’s a natural first reaction. At some point, though, you need to accept the truth, Monica, as hard as that may be.”

“I don’t have to accept anything, Oscar.”

Again, his eyes bulged, and he turned away. It seemed odd, she thought. He was dealing with her intransigence not with sympathy or pity but with anger. She thought: As if I wasn’t playing the game correctly. She almost smiled to herself, thinking, I’ve never played any game correctly. That’s been my problem. Maybe this time, it’s my advantage.

“Maybe I can ask the sheriff’s office to make a copy and bring it here,” Swann said, mostly to himself. “You’ve got a VCR, right?”

“I do,” she said. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“Is it Boyd?” Swann asked. “Is that your problem? Do you think the guy just isn’t capable of this?”

She didn’t answer. She knew Tom was capable of anything when he was angry.

“Do you still love the guy, or what?”

“I never loved him, I realize now,” she said. “Not the kind of love I have for my children.”

Swann started to speak, then drew back. He simply stared at her, as if she were a mutant, devoid of appropriate human emotion.

“What was the name of that rancher you talked to yesterday? Do you remember?” she asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Swann said. “Besides, he didn’t give me a name.”

“Why did you open my door last night?” she asked.

The question derailed him. “What?”

“Why were you standing in my room?”

Swann leaned back on the kitchen counter, still looking at her in that way. “I was making sure you were all right.”

She smiled slightly. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“You weren’t hoping I would invite you into my bed?”

She watched him carefully, saw his neck flush.

“You’re nuts, lady,” he said, but he couldn’t meet her eyes.

“That’s what I thought,” she said.

How could a man who seemed to be as kind and mature as Swann portrayed himself even think of bedding a mother whose children were missing? Why would his reaction to telling her about the murder of her children be anger when she didn’t fall apart?

Was he really there to protect her, to provide guidance and comfort? Or was Swann there to keep her imprisoned? And if so, why? What did he know?

Monica held all of this in. She hoped her face didn’t betray what she was thinking. She hoped she wasn’t nuts, after all.

Swann anticipated the doorbell ringing in the front room and was moving toward it before it did. Monica waited, frozen with her thoughts, as she heard a brief conversation on the threshold.

Swann ushered a man younger than himself into the kitchen. The visitor looked at her cautiously.

“This is Officer Newkirk,” Swann said. “He’ll be staying with you for a couple of hours while I attend to some business at home. He knows the situation, and he’s a good guy. He’s here to help you, Monica.”

She looked Newkirk over. He was shorter than Swann, with a shock of dirty blond hair sticking out from beneath his baseball cap. He looked strained, and pale, but his eyes had the same hardness Swann’s did. Another ex-cop. She noted his wedding ring.

“You’re my new jailer?” Monica asked.

Newkirk looked quickly to Swann for an explanation. Swann shook his head sadly.

“She just found out about the videotape,” Swann said. “She’s shaken up by it.”

Newkirk nodded as if he understood. “I’m here to do anything I can,” he said.

“Who exactly are you helping?” Monica asked.

Again, Newkirk looked to Swann for an explanation.

“She needs to take her medication,” Swann said like a grumpy father.

“You can talk directly to me, Mr. Swann. I’m right here. You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not.”

Swann sighed again and zipped up his jacket to leave. “See if you can get her to take her meds. If you can’t, call the doctor and ask him to come over. She needs rest.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Monica said.

“Good luck,” Swann told Newkirk before leaving. “Keep her off the phone, and if the press comes, don’t let them see her.”

Sunday, 10:17 A.M.

JESS RAWLINS and Eduardo Villatoro left the restaurant together after Villatoro had insisted on paying the tab. Jess was aware of the ex-cop behind him as he walked across the street toward his pickup.

“Nice morning,” Jess said, stopping on the center line and looking around at the mountains on all sides. There was no traffic. The sky was clear of clouds, and endlessly blue. The sun had yet to take charge of the day, although its intensity warmed his exposed skin.

“Very nice,” Villatoro answered. He could see the news crew from Fox News packing their cameras and sound equipment into their van down the street. The reporter who had been on-screen earlier stood to the side, brushing his hair in a mirror.

They had spent the last half hour probing each other, Jess knew. He had learned why Villatoro was in Kootenai Bay and had listened to the details of the robbery at Santa Anita. He had believed the man when he said he thought he was getting close to something and how important it was to him to solve the case. Jess had listened patiently, trying not to let his mind wander to his ranch, where the children were, or to the implications of his current situation. He had waited until the end of the robbery story, where it would logically loop back to the present, to hear what Villatoro had to say about the ex-cops who were helping the sheriff with the investigation. Jess didn’t want to tip his hand and ask too quickly about them.

When it came to Singer, Villatoro had not provided as much information as Jess had hoped. Lieutenant Singer was a familiar name to Villatoro because he’d been involved in the investigation of the Santa Anita robbery in a peripheral way. He wasn’t the lead investigator, but one of the prime administrative hurdles. Newkirk was connected to the investigation as well, Villatoro said. He was pretty sure Newkirk was one of the team assigned to the case. There were others, Villatoro said. He was waiting for the names, and their ties to the case. There was something else, too. He just couldn’t connect it yet.

“There is simply too much coincidence,” Villatoro had said, “that two of the names involved in Santa Anita are now here, of all places. Don’t you think?”

Jess had said he didn’t know. And he didn’t. “I don’t like the idea of bad cops up here,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of bad cops, period.”

Villatoro agreed. “I hope in my heart that’s not the case,” he said. “I’ve worked with police officers all of my life. For the most part, they’ve been dedicated and honest. Sure, there were some lazy ones. But truly bad cops-no. The idea disturbs me, and I hope it’s wrong.”

“Yup.”

“There were some officers I didn’t like, and who didn’t like me. Too many of the cops I worked with out of L.A. looked down on me and my department. They thought we were small-timers. We probably were, but we were very close to our community at one time. It’s not like that anymore. It’s hard to adjust to being swallowed up, I guess. I see that happening here.”

Jess said, “I’m not one to oppose change. No offense, but my grand-dad changed this place when he moved here and started the ranch. I’d be selfish if I thought, ‘Now that I’m here, no one else has a right to be.’ Live and let live, that’s what I think.”

Villatoro nodded. “That’s a good attitude to have. I admire that.”

“I just want the new ones to have some respect for what was here before they got here,” Jess said. “Hell, if I moved to Los Angeles, I wouldn’t expect ’em to put a cow in every yard and elk in the parks just so I could feel more comfortable.”

Smiling, Villatoro said, “We agree about respect.”

“Damned right. Maybe it’s also having a sense of history,” Jess said.

“And duty,” Villatoro said. “There is duty. I can still repeat the last words of the Peace Officers Code of Ethics, even though I haven’t said it out loud for thirty years.”

Jess raised his eyebrows “Let’s hear it then.”

Villatoro said, “I know that I alone am responsible for my own standard of professional performance and will take every reasonable opportunity to enhance and improve my level of knowledge and competence. I will constantly strive to achieve these objectives and ideals, dedicating myself before God to my chosen profession-law enforcement.”

“Too bad you retired,” Jess said.

“I haven’t retired from that. Not yet.”

Jess thought how unusual it was to have a talk with a man about these subjects. Especially a man he’d met for the first time. That there were others who thought this way made him feel good. He liked this Eduardo Villatoro, but he couldn’t tip his hand about the children, not yet.

Crossing the street, Jess had decided that if nothing else, Villatoro could be an outside resource. If Jess couldn’t work with the sheriff’s department, which he was more and more sure he couldn’t because they were compromised, he would need to contact someone else. Villatoro might be a man he could trust.

As he approached his pickup, Jess slipped his hand into his pocket to make sure Villatoro’s card was there. The man had written down the number of his motel and his room as well. In turn, Jess had given Villatoro the number for his ranch.

“I hope I can talk to you from time to time as my investigation continues,” Villatoro said. “It’s good to have a local expert who knows how things work. I hope you don’t mind. This is a foreign place to me.”

Jess turned. “I don’t mind. Just don’t ask me to gossip about my neighbors. I won’t do that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of asking,” Villatoro said, flashing a smile. “It is just that I see this place as, I don’t know, a million trees with a few people walking around in them. I can’t see the whole picture, it is too strange. It would be like if you were dropped in the middle of East L.A. with no one to help you out. You wouldn’t know what to do, where to go, what was proper. There are predators there, too,” he said, gesturing toward the bear, “but they wear colors and carry guns. It’s so different.”

Jess said nothing. He had always thought it was easier for rural people to live in a city than lifelong city dwellers to move to the country.

“For example,” Villatoro said, gesturing to the eastern range, “when I look at that mountain there, all I see is a mountain with trees all over it. There is probably more to it, but that’s all I can see.”

Jess turned to see where Villatoro was pointing. “That’s Webb Mountain,” Jess said. “See where there’s that big sweep of green on it that’s lighter than the rest? Kind of a mosaic? Those are aspens. There was a forest fire up there twenty years ago, and aspens grow back first. Eventually, the pines will overtake the aspens, but it’ll take centuries. There was some talk about putting in a ski resort on Webb Mountain, but the developers got chased away by the environmentalists. It’s good bear habitat. I’d guess that’s where our hunter here got his bear this morning.”

He looked around to see Villatoro smiling. “That’s what I mean,” the ex-detective said. “I see a mountain that looks like every other mountain of a hundred in every direction. You see history and a story.”

Jess reached for his door handle, then thought better of it. He could walk where he needed to go.

“This is why this is such an amazing country,” Villatoro said. “It is so big, and so different. One will never know all of it.”

Jess suppressed a grin of his own. “You’re an interesting man, Mr. Villatoro.”

“I’m a fish out of water, is what I am. But I’m a determined fish.”

“That you are,” Jess said. “I kinda feel the same way myself.”

They shook hands.

BECAUSE THE county building was only two blocks away, Jess decided to walk. He needed a few minutes to think, to put his plan together. He was overwhelmed and confused. Things seemed to be swirling around him, keeping him off-balance. It had begun when Herbert, his ranch foreman, left and disrupted a routine he had gotten used to. With all of the problems a rancher had to face-weather, prices, natural disasters, regulations, trespassers, bad employees-any kind of routine was a necessity. Tasks needed to be done at certain times. A ranch couldn’t be run by the seat of one’s pants. But with Herbert gone and the appearance of the children-and their dangerous story-he felt cut loose from his moorings. He was adrift and unsure of himself.

Whether or not the murder had been reported-or whether it had even happened-everything else he had learned that morning seemed to lean toward Annie and William’s version of events. The thought that the murderers were ex-cops who had moved in quickly to shape and control events would fit. Placing a man with the mother to guard her would fit, too. But without a body, what the children had told him could be dismissed as the result of overactive imaginations. It all hinged on a murder that apparently hadn’t happened, on a dead man who wasn’t missed by anyone.

Jess thought of the implications of his situation and felt a stab in his chest. If what Annie and William had told him turned out not to be true, he was guilty of a great fraud on the community, and possibly even a crime. Every hour that went by that he kept his secret was another cruel hour for the mother.

And what was on the videotape Newkirk had whispered about to the sheriff?

What held him back from walking into the sheriff’s office and telling them he knew where the missing children were and leading them to his ranch? It was simple, he realized. He believed Annie.

But he still wasn’t sure. He needed more information. What was on the videotape? He had to find out. Then, he would make his decision.

AS HE PASSED by the realty office, Jess quickened his pace, but she saw him.

“Jess?”

He slowed, debated whether to stop or resume his march. He wished he would have taken his pickup to the sheriff’s office and avoided this possibility.

“Jess?”

He stopped on the sidewalk and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking at her under the brim of his hat. God, she looked good. Trim, fit, wearing black slacks, a white shirt and blazer. Her lipstick was a smoky shade he had never seen before, and her dark hair was pulled back. No gray; she must have dyed it. She had never looked that good on the ranch.

“Hello, Karen.”

“I was surprised to look out and see you walk by.”

“Working on Sunday, huh?”

“We’ve got a closing at eleven. I’m waiting for the buyers. Hey-what did you do to your hand?”

“Accident with a hay hook,” he said, hoping that would suffice.

She stopped on the sidewalk and awkwardly crossed her arms in front of her. He didn’t expect a hug, but it seemed odd to talk with her from five feet away. It felt like a mile.

“What are you doing in town?” she asked.

“Going to the county building.”

She pursed her lips. “They’re closed today.”

“Not the Sheriff’s Office.”

“Oh,” she said, looking him over, obviously wondering what would come next.

“I wanted to see if there was any news on the Taylor kids.” Not a lie at all.

“Isn’t that terrible?” she said, shaking her head. “Nobody I’ve talked to can remember such a thing happening here before. I hope they find them, and they’re okay. It’s awful.”

Jess said, “Yup.”

“You came all of the way into town to ask about them?” She was eyeing him closely.

He sputtered, “Had breakfast at the Panhandle, and thought I’d check while I was here.”

“Is that the only reason you’re going there?”

He knew what she was asking and looked away. He hadn’t thought of that. A familiar brand of guilt crept in. He didn’t know what to say. The silence went on a beat too long.

“Talking has always been a problem for you, hasn’t it?”

He felt his palms begin to sweat in his pockets. Thankfully, she changed the subject back.

“Monica Taylor,” she said. “I heard some things about her.”

He looked back.

“I heard she gets around,” she said. “Her ex-husband was in prison, you know. She’s got a little bit of a reputation.”

“Reputations come and go,” Jess said, too quickly.

Her face darkened. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“Can’t you let this thing go? It’s been three years now.”

He looked at his boots, then at the sky. No, he thought, I can’t. It wasn’t that he wanted her back, not now. It was the years of deception before the betrayal. The secret letters, the calls, the liaisons, the men. How could he just move on? How did other people do it? In retrospect, Karen’s darkness was simply stronger than his thin strand of generational hope, and she’d overpowered him.

The door to the office opened, and Karen’s new husband, Brian Ballard, stepped out. He was dressed as he had been Friday: open shirt, jacket, creased Dockers, tasseled loafers.

“Everything okay out here?” he asked, too cheerfully. “Are you asking Jess about the property?”

“We hadn’t gotten to that yet,” Karen said, not taking her eyes off Jess.

“I’m not selling unless I have to,” Jess said. “Nothing’s changed.”

Brian put his arm around Karen, pulling her into him as if to say, mine. “You know, this doesn’t have to be an adversarial thing. We would work with you.”

“I’m busy right now,” Jess said.

Brian looked to Karen for an explanation. She watched Jess. She looked at him in that focused way he remembered, as if by staring at his face she could suck his thoughts out. “Jess, what’s wrong?” she asked. “I can tell there’s something wrong.”

He didn’t dare speak.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”

LEAVING HIS BELT, Leatherman tool, pocketknife, and change with the woman running the security check, Jess entered the sheriff’s office and stood at the counter. He wasn’t sure what, or who, he was looking for. Someone sympathetic, maybe. Someone he knew.

He stepped aside as three men in their late fifties or early sixties came down the hall to retrieve their belongings. It was obvious they were angry about something.

One said, “That’s bullshit.”

Another said, “There’s no way they’ve got enough guys. The sheriff is always whining about manpower, but he turns us away.”

The third said, “How could they have enough help? It’s that asshole Singer, I’d bet. I heard stories about that guy.”

The first man looked up while stuffing his wallet back into his pockets and saw Jess waiting for them to come through the security check.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you wait.”

“Are you fellows here to volunteer?” Jess asked. “Are you policemen, too?”

“Retired,” the second man said. “LAPD. But the sheriff didn’t even meet with us. He had his secretary come out and tell us to leave our names, but he didn’t need our help right now. Can you believe that shit, with two missing kids?”

Jess thought it was more than interesting.

THE RECEPTIONIST told him the sheriff was in, but not available. Before Jess could ask why, she said, “He’s sleeping at his desk. The poor man’s exhausted. He just held a press conference to announce the Amber Alert. Now everybody in the country is looking for Tom Boyd and those poor children. You’ve heard what happened, I assume. Is this an emergency?”

Was it? He wasn’t sure.

Tom Boyd. He’d heard the name. “The UPS man?” Jess asked incredulously.

“That’s him,” she said.

Across the room he recognized Buddy Millen, a sheriff’s deputy who had once worked on a hay crew on the Rawlins Ranch. Buddy waved, and Jess waved back, then went through the batwing doors on the side of the counter and took a seat at the deputy’s desk.

“I was just thinking about you,” Buddy said. “I’ve been on a search team not far from your ranch, looking for those little kids. Every time I see those hayfields of yours, my back starts to hurt.”

Buddy looked tired, and Jess noted that his uniform was dirty from the search.

“Why were those men out there turned away?” Jess asked. “They were retired police officers volunteering to help.”

“They’re not the first to be turned away,” Buddy said. “Half the retirees up here have been in.”

“So why did the sheriff say no?”

Buddy shrugged. “Singer’s call. He had enough people out there already, I guess. He’s calling the shots. Personally, I think it’s bullshit. We ought to have hundreds of searchers out there.”

“That’s what they thought, too,” Jess said.

“Look, I’m just finishing up here, then I’m going to go home and crash. I’ve been up for thirty-six hours.”

“No luck, huh?” Jess asked.

Buddy shook his head sadly. Then he glanced around the room, and leaned forward to Jess. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but things are moving fast. We’re on to something. A local guy confessed on camera.”

Jess sat back. “Really? The UPS guy?” The videotape.

Buddy nodded. “Unfortunately, we’re changing our mission from looking for lost kids to looking for bodies. It’s awful. But please keep it confidential. There won’t be an announcement until tomorrow.”

Jess tried to keep the confusion off his face, tried to stanch his impulse to say, They’re okay, Buddy. But what did this mean that Tom Boyd had confessed? To what?

Okay, Jess thought. Buddy is a good guy. Buddy can be trusted. Maybe he can help sort things out.

“Buddy…”

The telephone rang on the desk. Buddy held up one hand, palm out, and snatched the receiver with the other. Jess waited, trying to form his words, wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea to take Buddy outside somewhere, away from the office, to tell him. Maybe feel him out a little bit, maybe get more information about the confession that had now changed everything and made a confusing situation even more confusing.

Buddy made reassuring sounds to the caller and jotted down an address on a pad.

“Okay, ma’am. Does he have a cell phone? Have you tried his hotel?”

Buddy looked over at Jess and wiggled his eyebrows while the caller talked.

“We can’t really file a missing person’s case until he’s been gone twenty-four hours,” Buddy said. “I’m sorry. In 99.9 percent of these situations, everything turns out all right. But I’ll make a note of it and give the information to the sheriff. I’ll personally follow up with you first thing tomorrow morning. But when he shows up, please remember to call us and let us know right away, okay?”

Buddy cradled the phone and scribbled some more on his pad. “A wife says her husband was supposed to be back from a steelhead fishing trip last night, but he hasn’t shown up. She wants us to go out and search for him, as if we don’t have enough on our plate right now. I’ll bet he’s back by tonight. He probably got stuck in the mud or broke down, or more likely he had a little too much fun in some honky-tonk or strip club. And I’ll lay you odds she forgets to call us and tell us he’s back.”

The words hit Jess like a hammer blow. He knew he flinched. Luckily, Buddy hadn’t seen it.

A man was missing.

He decided to invite Buddy for a cup of coffee.

Buddy said, “She said he’s a retired police officer, and he’d never be late without calling.”

“Was he one of those L.A. cops?” Jess asked, his mouth suddenly dry.

“That’s what she said. Why?”

Jess couldn’t think of a lie. He wasn’t good at them. Instead, he glanced at the pad Buddy had scribbled on. He memorized the name that was written on it.

“No matter,” Jess said.

WITH HIS STOMACH in turmoil, Jess found the men’s room. He splashed cold water on his face and dried off with a paper towel. He felt weak, and his legs were rubbery, his wounded hand throbbed.

He heard the splashing of a mop in a bucket and saw the janitor behind him. Jess closed his eyes for a moment. It was too much for him right now.

The janitor swirled his mop, kept his head down with his long hair covering his face and his shoulders hunched like a man who wanted not to be noticed.

“J.J.?”

The mop stopped. Slowly, the janitor looked up. Eyes looked out through the strings of hair. Jess thought of how he had observed earlier that you could see the characteristics of the future adult in the photographed face of a child. Not that he’d recognized it at the time, but when he looked at the old photos, the grade-school photos, he could see it now. The boy was disconnected early, already on a destructive path. He was born with a form of sickness that was always there, lurking, but didn’t show itself until he was in his late teens, and it hadn’t erupted until his first year of college. The doctors said it was paranoid schizophrenia, and other names Jess couldn’t recall. The boy had always had quirks-talking to himself, brushing his teeth until they bled, refusing from age twelve on to be touched. Then it got worse: hallucinations, rages, the drowning of a litter of barn kittens because the mother cat supposedly had tried to smother him while he slept. He opted to use chemicals to try to change the world around him, to bring it into line with what he perceived it to be. He had succeeded, to some extent. J.J. had never been meant to join the ranchers at the breakfast table.

“Jess Junior, do you recognize me?”

His son stared at him dully. The medication he was on that allowed him to work while incarcerated rendered him passive and emotionless. But without it, he would hurt himself and others.

“Dad.”

“How are you doing, son?”

A slight, simple smile. “Not good.”

“You’re working hard, it looks like.”

J.J. nodded. “Jes’ moppin’.”

Jess tried to sound encouraging. “Are things going all right?”

It took a moment, but J.J. began to sweep his woolly head from side to side. Jess stepped forward, but J.J. held the mop out to keep him back. “Don’ you touch me.”

“I won’t, son. I remember how you hate that. What’s wrong?”

Jess waited a full minute for his question to penetrate and for J.J. to form an answer. His struggle to put thoughts together to speak broke Jess’s heart.

“There’s some bad men here, Dad.”

“In the jail, sure.”

“No,” J.J. said, making his eyes big, shaking his head from side to side in an exaggerated way.

“Do you mean the ex-cops?” Jess said, and withdrew the sketch Annie had made and unfolded it, showing it to J.J. “Is this them?” Jess asked, already knowing the answer by the look of alarm in his son’s face.

J.J. gave an exaggerated nod. “They’re really bad.”

“Son,” Jess said, feeling his eyes mist, “I believe you.”

“Don’ touch me.”

“I won’t, son.”

AFTER RETRIEVING his possessions, Jess found a pay telephone in the lobby of the county building. He tried to shove aside his devastation from seeing Karen and their damaged son on the same morning. He dug Villatoro’s card out of his pocket while he dialed, and was transferred to the motel room. The line was busy, so he left a message.

“Mr. Villatoro, this is Jess Rawlins. I don’t know what it means yet, but maybe you should check on another name. It’s another ex-cop. I’ve got his name here…”

As he spoke, Jess thought things had become much more clear and much, much worse. He knew for sure now which side he was on.

Sunday, 11:40 A.M.

NEWKIRK ROOTED through Monica Taylor’s refrigerator not because he was hungry but because he knew he should eat. His body was starved for something besides Wild Turkey. His hands shook as he pushed a half-full gallon of milk aside on the shelf and looked for something he could warm up. He checked the freezer. Aside from containers of juice and ice trays, there was only a large, aluminum foil-covered pan. He tapped it: frozen solid.

He was unsettled from a telephone conversation he had just had with his wife. She was coldly furious with him when he told her he likely wouldn’t be home for a while. She reminded him of their son’s spring baseball practice, and of previous plans to spend the day preparing her vegetable garden. It all sounded so trivial, he thought, given the situation right now. It reminded him of the bad old days on the force, when he was on a high-stakes assignment and she would be angry with him because he wouldn’t be home to watch television with her. Now, it was happening again. It was exactly what he thought he had left behind in L.A., the tension, the resentment, the fights. Everything was back again. As for his wife, who was showcased in a home she could have only imagined years before, who didn’t have to work outside the home, whose idea of a tough day was to take an exercise class at the gym or turn over the soil in her vegetable garden, well, fuck her. She didn’t know what he was going through-she couldn’t see any farther than her own false eyelashes.

Monica Taylor was in the living room, sitting alone and alert on the couch, staring at who-knows-what. She seemed frustratingly serene. There was something wrong with her, he thought, to be that way, given the circumstances. She was also more attractive than he thought she would be. Now that she was so sure that her children were alive somewhere, she was intolerable. Plus, he didn’t trust her. It was almost as if she knew what they were up to, but there was no way she could know that.

He slammed the refrigerator door shut so hard that he heard a bottle break inside. “Don’t you have anything here to eat?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m starving,” he said, charging into the living room. “I haven’t had a normal meal in two days. All you’ve got in the refrigerator is milk, salad, and eggs. Do you have something I could eat?”

She said, distracted, “I think there are some cans of soup in the pantry.”

“What’s that in the freezer? There’s something in a casserole dish. Is it something I can thaw out?”

She turned and looked directly at him. “Leave that alone. It’s lasagna I made yesterday and froze. Lasagna is Annie’s favorite, and I’m saving it for when they’re back. The first one got burned up Friday night.”

Newkirk snorted, “Jesus, lady.”

His cell phone burred and he drew it out and looked at it. Singer calling. He went back into the kitchen and closed the door.

“How is it going there?” Singer asked.

Newkirk sighed. “Okay. She’s nuts, though. She insists her kids are coming back.”

A pause. “They aren’t.”

Newkirk felt a flutter of both terror and relief. “Did something happen?”

“No, not yet. But I have confidence that you and Gonzo will find them. The more I think about it, the more I agree with Monica Taylor. Those kids are somewhere hiding out. We’ve got to find them.”

“I thought for a second there…”

“No. But we’re in control. I just heard from Gonzo. The package was delivered to Swann, and Swann is overseeing disposal. He should be heading back to the house within an hour or so to relieve you.”

Newkirk tried not to think of what Swann was disposing of.

“I told Gonzo to start on the house-to-house. He’s got a couple of good maps from the sheriff’s office, with every residence and building in the county. He’s going to start visiting people one by one, working out from Sand Creek. When Swann gets back, I want you to recon with Gonzo and do the same.”

“Do you want us to work together or separately?”

“I’ll leave that call up to Gonzo,” Singer said. “My guess is you’ll split up but stay in the same vicinity. That way, you’ll be able to cover twice as much ground, but you’ll be close enough to each other to provide backup if necessary. I think it’s just a matter of time before we find them.”

Newkirk didn’t need to ask what would happen if they did. As he listened, he cracked the door to check on Monica Taylor. She was still sitting there, hands in her lap, relief on her face.

“I’m kind of looking forward to getting out there,” Newkirk said. “This lady is creeping me out.”

Singer laughed softly. “Swann can handle her. Don’t worry.”

“I wish this thing was over with,” Newkirk said, immediately regretting he had confided in Singer. “You know what I mean.”

A long pause. “Are you still solid?”

“Sure, it isn’t that.” But it was.

“Stay tough, Newkirk. We’re only as strong as our weakest link.”

“Believe me, I know.”

“It’ll be over when we find those kids,” Singer said. “So let’s concentrate on that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, I nearly forgot. I heard back from my contacts about your guy Villatoro.”

“And…”

“You’re right. We may have more trouble than I thought. He was the lead investigator for the Arcadia PD on the Santa Anita robbery. That’s where I’d heard his name. He used to give our guys headaches.”

“Fuck.”

“No doubt our former friend’s indiscretions brought him here. So we were right about that.”

Newkirk didn’t care whether they’d been right or not. What’s done is done, he thought. But now they had a new, serious problem, one Singer had predicted long before if anyone went off the reservation and got sloppy.

“What are we going to do about him?” Newkirk asked, anticipating the answer.

“I’m not sure yet.” A note of hesitation, which was unusual in Singer. “He’s retired, so he’s not here in any official capacity. He’s got no juice, so he can’t make any demands. I know he’s not making any progress with the sheriff. He might just give up and go away, if we’re lucky. But we need to keep an eye on him. A very discreet eye, if you know what I mean.”

“Hmmm-hmmm.”

“Before you join Gonzo, take a quick run around town. Take a look at motel registers for his name so we can nail down his location. If anybody asks, just tell them you’re doing follow-up for the sheriff for his sexual predator list. See when he plans to check out. Call me, and we’ll go from there.”

“Okay.”

“Try not to let him see you,” Singer said. “He’s seen you a couple of times already, and we don’t want him to put anything together.”

Why don’t you check out the registers, then? Newkirk wanted to ask. He hasn’t seen you before.

“Are you okay with that?” Singer was asking.

“Sure,” Newkirk sighed.

“Be discreet,” Singer said again. “Then go help Gonzo. Let’s wrap this thing up.”

“Ten-four,” Newkirk said, and closed the phone.

WHILE NEWKIRK was in the bathroom, Monica stared at the telephone and made up her mind. She would call the man she thought could help, who’d helped her before. If nothing else, maybe he could calm her down, soothe her, tell her everything would be all right. He owed her, after all, and she’d not reminded him of it in twelve years.

She crossed the room and snatched the phone out of the cradle. There was no reason to use the phone book. She had memorized the number years before, had intended to dial it a hundred times and never had.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Newkirk asked her, coming out of the bathroom, speaking loud enough to be heard over the sound of the flush.

“Making a call.”

“To who?”

“None of your business.”

“Stay the hell off the line,” he said, snatching the phone from her and slamming it back in the cradle. “You need to keep the line clear in case someone calls who knows about your kids.” Newkirk’s face was red, his eyes dark.

“Are you helping me or guarding me?” she asked.

“Take it up with Swann,” he said.

“Maybe I should go find that reporter and tell her I’m being held prisoner in my own house.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Newkirk said. “We’re trying to keep you out of the spotlight so the investigation can proceed to its conclusion. Didn’t Swann tell you that? There’ll be time for press conferences and other shit once this is over. You don’t want to be gone if a call comes through about your kids, do you?”

She glared at him, tried to see through his words. She wondered why he was suddenly sweating.

Sunday, 11:41 A.M.

VILLATORO’S HEART leaped when the receptionist at the motel handed him a sheaf of documents that had been faxed from his old office by Celeste throughout the morning. The receptionist eyed him with amusement as he shuffled through the papers, and said her invitation would still be open for tonight, if he was interested.

“Pardon me?” he said.

“You heard me.” She gestured toward the documents she had handed him. “Man, I’ve never seen a guy so excited to work on a Sunday.”

He found himself beaming at her.

“I couldn’t help but notice that most of them are lists of names of policemen,” she said coyly. “Do they have something to do with the reason you’re here?”

Villatoro was too elated to be angry with her for snooping. “Yes, maybe. I have to look them over first.”

“Some of those guys I know,” she said. “Everybody stays here while they’re looking for property in the area. I get to know quite a few of them, at least by name. If you wanted me to, I could look back through a few years of registrations…”

“You don’t mind doing that?” he asked.

“Hey, there’s not much going on,” she said, and winked. “I need something to do to pass the time before we have a cocktail tonight.”

He hesitated, and ruled against his instinct. “Thank you for the help,” he said. She smiled at him and brushed her hair back.

DISAPPOINTMENT SET IN as he read over the documents. There were duty rosters, lists of security personnel at Santa Anita, copies of clippings from the L.A. Times, police reports he had already read and reread a dozen times.

Newkirk had been at Santa Anita Racetrack that day, all right. Along with three other off-duty policemen, Newkirk had been hired to provide security in the counting room. It was common for the track to hire off-duty cops, and Newkirk was one of the regulars on race days. Villatoro read Newkirk’s affidavit, one he had read before, which was why the name was familiar. Officer Newkirk stated he had not seen any irregularities during the counting by track personnel and could not provide any information beyond the routine procedure he had witnessed dozens of times before. The cash was counted and banded, a staffer had recorded the serial numbers of select hundred-dollar bills, and the cash had been stuffed into the canvas bags and locked with the balance sheets attached. He had recognized the men in the armored car crew, exchanged friendly insults and pleasantries with them, and stood outside while the truck rumbled away during the roar of the final race.

This was nothing notable, really. That Newkirk was at the track on the day of the robbery and also now living in Kootenai Bay was interesting, a coincidence, but evidence of nothing. Villatoro read the names of the other three off-duty cops, a man and two women officers, hoping to see a name he recognized, but he didn’t. Anthony Rodale, Pam Gosink, Maureen Droz. None of them connected to anything else he could find.

Lieutenant Singer’s name showed up in several more documents Celeste had faxed. Singer had served as the liaison between the LAPD and the California Department of Criminal Investigation on the case. He had been quoted occasionally in the Times, saying that the investigation was proceeding. It was Singer who announced before a press conference that one of the track employees had come forward to name the others and that arrests had been made. It was also Singer who had been quoted announcing, “with profound regret,” the untimely and unrelated murder of the star witness in a convenience story robbery. Villatoro had never met Singer. Singer had been remote, unapproachable, always too busy to accompany his officers to Arcadia. And Villatoro remembered something else. The LAPD detectives, who would joke about anything and anybody, never joked about Lieutenant Singer.

Villatoro thought Singer and Newkirk were both connected to Santa Anita in different ways, and both now lived in North Idaho. Villatoro felt a flutter, but the more he thought about it, the more he discounted his excitement. Sure, it was little more than coincidence now. But how many police officers were involved in the Santa Anita investigation in some way? Hundreds, Villatoro knew. How many ex-cops had retired and moved to Blue Heaven? Hundreds. And Swann’s name had yet to appear on the documents.

He sat back in his uncomfortable chair and stared at the ceiling. He could interview Newkirk and Singer, he supposed. Maybe he could get something out of them, something more. But he remembered the look of suspicion on Newkirk’s face, and dismissed the idea. Villatoro had no authority, and he couldn’t compel the men to talk to him. So far, he didn’t have enough information to go to the sheriff to ask for a subpoena. Ex-cops knew the law and would know immediately to get lawyers to indefinitely delay or prevent interviews. They could easily outlast him since he needed to get back, and they were staying. They knew how the game was played.

Again, the idea of bad cops disturbed him deeply. It was so rare, in his experience, to find a truly bad one. In a city of 3.5 million people, there were 9,350 Los Angeles police officers. How many were corrupt? How many were outright criminals? It defied logic that there were none.

The telephone rang and startled him. It was Celeste. Her tone was anticipatory, excited. He thanked her sincerely for giving up her Sunday, and church, to come into the office and fax him the documents.

“Are we getting closer?” she asked.

“Closer,” he said. “But we don’t have enough yet to do anything. Officer Newkirk and Lieutenant Singer are up here, but that really doesn’t mean anything yet. An officer named Swann is up here and involved with them, but I don’t see any connection between him and either the crime or the investigation.”

“Is there anything else I can send you?” she asked.

She sounded disappointed. He felt he had let her down. “I don’t even know what to ask for,” he said. “I have my files here, and you’re sure you’ve gone through everything we have to match up their names?”

She said she was sure, and was a little insulted by the question. She’d been at the station since four that morning, she said. Again, he apologized.

“There is one more thing,” she said, “but it doesn’t come from the files.”

“Yes…”

“I did a simple Google search just a few minutes ago, typing in both of their names. I found something called the SoCal Retired Peace Officers Foundation, or SRPOF. It’s a nonprofit group. According to the public filing, it’s an organization, a 501(c)3 that exists to provide scholarships to police officers’ children, grants to widows, things like that. Both Singer and Newkirk are officers on the board.”

Villatoro thought about it and couldn’t figure out a reason why the SRPOF information would be helpful.

Then: “Where is it incorporated?”

“Let’s see,” Celeste said, obviously scrolling down her screen. “Burbank,” she said. Then she hesitated. “And Pend Oreille County, Idaho.”

That made him sit up.

“When was it formed?”

She gave him the date of the filing with the Secretary of State’s Office. SRPOF had been created two months prior to the Santa Anita robbery.

“How is the organization funded? Does it say?” he asked.

He could hear her fingers tapping the keyboard.

“Voluntary contributions,” she said. “It doesn’t look like they’ve got a membership set up.”

His mind was spinning. “Voluntary contributions from, I assume, other police officers.”

“I would guess so.”

“Contributions that would come in cash, in small denominations, I would guess. Officers throwing bills into a hat that was passed around the squad room, something like that.”

“I don’t know, but I suppose so.”

“Is there a list of contributors?”

“Not here,” she said. “I don’t know where I would find that without contacting the organization.”

“Who would likely not provide it,” Villatoro said, feeling his excitement return, “because there are no contributors. It’s a perfect way to launder a lot of money in small bills. Slowly, over time, cash-only deposits can be made that supposedly come from random collections.”

Celeste was quiet for a moment. “I don’t follow.”

“This has been one of the things I’ve always been puzzled by,” Villatoro said. “How could the robbers use all of that money without being noticed by anyone? Banks notice when all-cash deposits are made, especially of large sums. They have to report them if they’re over a certain amount. But if the money is deposited over a long period of time, in fairly small amounts, say a few thousand dollars at a time, the bad guys have covered themselves. Especially if it’s understood that the cash came from small contributors to a charity. It’s perfect.”

Celeste was getting it. She said, “My God, Eduardo…”

“But the plan wouldn’t work if someone didn’t deposit the money as he was supposed to, and spent some of it. Especially if the bills were marked. That would be the thing that aroused suspicion, if several of those bills came from the same location.”

While he talked, Villatoro thumbed through his file for the copies of the marked hundred-dollar bills.

“We may have something,” he said, trying to keep his feelings out of his voice. “Who are the other officers?”

She read him the list.

Eric Singer, President. Oscar Swann, Vice President. Dennis Gonzalez, Second Vice President. Robert Newkirk, Secretary. Anthony Rodale, Treasurer.

Bells in his head went off at the names. He had her read him the names a second time, and check the spelling.

“My guess would be that the officers of this organization are well paid,” Villatoro said. “The IRS may be interested in that. And we’ve connected Officer Swann now as well.”

“Are they all up there?” she asked.

“Three of them are, for sure. Newkirk, Singer, and Swann. I need to find out about the other two.”

He could hear her shuffling through papers. She told him to hold on while she checked something.

“I’m looking at the LAPD duty rosters for that day,” she said, and he knew without thinking which day she was referring to. “Swann was on duty. Newkirk, Singer, Gonzalez, and Rodale were off duty. We know Rodale and Newkirk were working security in the counting room.”

Villatoro slapped his desk with his open palm. Two of the officers of the SRPOF were in the counting room. Two others were off duty. The dog-walking witness said there were at least two robbers who entered the armored car and killed Steve Nichols. They could have been Singer and Gonzalez. That would leave Swann, who had been on duty. The getaway cars had fled onto the freeway and literally vanished. That had also been a puzzle for Villatoro. But if the cars had a police escort…

“Good work, Celeste,” he said. “Good, good work. Please tell the chief we may be close.”

VILLATORO STOOD, and his knees popped and his back crackled. His mind spun with possibilities. Finally, finally, things were connecting. Or were they? He knew there were likely to be holes, lapses in logic. What had he overlooked? He needed time to sort it all through, connect the dots that were growing bigger and closer to one another on the page.

Then he realized something. He had heard there were four ex-cops helping out the Taylor investigation. What about the fifth? It could be explained if the two cases were wholly unrelated, of course. But what if they weren’t?

He couldn’t stay in his room. He was too excited. He threw open his door and walked down the hallway, not even noticing the intensity of the high-altitude sun streaming in from the windows.

“Mr. Villatoro,” the receptionist called when she saw him. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said, approaching and grasping her hand with both of his. “I’m more than fine. It’s a beautiful day.”

She blushed and kept her hand there. Suddenly embarrassed, he let go first.

“I’ve got those names for you,” she said.

“I had forgotten,” he said.

She held a small piece of paper above her head, out of his grasp.

“Drinks tonight?” she said.

“Yes, of course.” He had no choice.

“Wonderful,” she said, handing him the paper.

He read the names. Singer, Gonzalez, Swann, Newkirk.

He slowly closed his eyes. Another link.

But what about Rodale? The phone book, he thought. He would simply look up Rodale in the telephone book and go see him. Maybe Rodale had had a falling-out with the others. If so, it might be a perfect opportunity to talk to him. But he’d need to find him first. He’d left the directory in his car that morning, when he’d used it for the maps inside as he was driving.

Villatoro turned and bounded out through the glass door to the parking lot. He saw Newkirk pull in before the ex-cop could open his door.

There you are, Villatoro said to himself, checking up on me.

The genuine surprise on Newkirk’s boyish face fit well with the scenario Villatoro had developed that morning. The ex-cop was shocked to see him standing in front of him. Why would he be shocked if he was just another retiree, minding his own business?

“Hello, Mr. Newkirk.”

“Hey.” Newkirk was obviously trying to come up with a good excuse why he was there. Although Newkirk’s face quickly flattened into the dead-eye cop stare, there had been a second where Villatoro sensed both fear and confusion.

“What can I help you with, Mr. Newkirk?”

“How do you know my name?”

“I recognize it from my investigation,” Villatoro said, stopping himself from saying more. Newkirk had flinched, and Villatoro noted the impact. He didn’t like chance encounters like this. Villatoro was a man of planning, of thinking things through. Especially when there was so much at stake and so much he still didn’t know. But he recognized this as a remarkable opportunity. Newkirk was surprised by his presence and his manner, and perhaps he would give something away if Villatoro pressed on.

Newkirk stepped forward, his eyes hard. “What are you saying?”

“What I am saying, Mr. Newkirk, is that it’s not too late for you to save yourself. I’m no longer an officer of the law. I can’t arrest you, and I don’t necessarily want to arrest you. I was the lead investigator for the Arcadia Police Department. I’ve spent the last eight years of my life looking into this crime. I’d like to find the killers, and the money, or at least as much as there is left.”

“What?”

Newkirk was off-balance, taken aback. Keep going, Villatoro thought.

“When I first saw you I thought I saw a man with a conscience, Mr. Newkirk. I noticed the wedding band on your finger. It looks like mine. Work with me to solve this crime. If you do, I’ll do everything I can to keep you out of the trouble that will come.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Newkirk sputtered.

“Ah, I think you do. You were a police officer, and a good one. You know as well as anyone that deals can be struck that benefit all of the parties. But the chance to help voluntarily lasts only so long. If you don’t take your single opportunity, well, who knows what will happen?”

Villatoro could see Newkirk’s mind working, see the veins in his temple throb.

“You’ve got a family, a good life here. Would providing assistance in my case help preserve that? Are there some things you can tell me that would benefit you and your family?” Villatoro said. “You’ll need to decide. I would guess that your conscience is troubling you, and this is the way to cleanse it.”

To Villatoro’s mild surprise, Newkirk appeared to be listening.

“It’s Sunday. Tomorrow, I will make a call to my contact at the FBI,” Villatoro said. “So you need to make your decision tonight, my friend.”

“I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” Newkirk said without conviction.

“Think hard, Mr. Newkirk. Go see your family. Look at them. Then decide.”

Newkirk started to speak, then pulled back.

“Think hard,” Villatoro said softly. “Contact me here and we’ll talk.”

“I’ve got something to say right now.”

“Yes?” “Fuck off, mister.”

He watched Newkirk slide into his car and drive away.

When he was out of sight, Villatoro breathed in deeply. His knees felt weak. It wasn’t what Newkirk said that struck him. It was what he didn’t say.

Newkirk didn’t ask Villatoro what specific case he was investigating. He didn’t ask what happened in Arcadia that would have brought him here. He didn’t mention that he’d been at the racetrack that day. And he didn’t ask why the FBI was going to be called.

IN HIS ROOM, Villatoro opened the phone book on his knees. The name he was looking for didn’t have a listing. He thumbed through the book for Singer, Newkirk, Gonzalez, and Swann as well. All unlisted. As he searched, he saw his message light blinking. Donna? Celeste? Would Newkirk be calling already?

The message had been left an hour before, when Villatoro had been on the phone with Celeste.

“Mr. Villatoro, this is Jess Rawlins. I don’t know what it means yet, but maybe you should check on another name. It’s another ex-cop. I’ve got his name here. Tony Rodale. That’s R-O-D-A-L-E. His wife called the sheriff and reported him missing. I’ve got an address.”

Sunday, 12:59 P.M.

THE ANCIENT TELEVISION in Jess Rawlins’s home received only three channels, and of those, only one came in clearly. An older satellite dish was outside on a concrete pad, and an electronic box sat on top of the set. Annie watched William try to figure out how to manipulate the blocky old remote control to access the satellite. He wanted to watch cartoons.

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

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

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

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

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

“No you’re not.”

“No you’re not,” he mocked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You told me that three times already.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She reached across him to shut the cabinet door.

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

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

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

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

“Con?”

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

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

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

“Annie…”

“Put it away, now.”

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

She closed the gun cabinet.

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

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

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

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

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

She touched the silver star medal with her fingertips.

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

“I wonder where he got these?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I wonder who it is,” William whispered.

“Could you see anything?”

“Just a black truck.”

“How many people were in it?”

“I couldn’t tell.”

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

“They couldn’t see me.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Sorry,” he whispered.

She glared at him.

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

“Hello, hello!”

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

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

What should we do? William asked with his eyes.

Annie put a finger to her lips.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was going to try the back door.

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

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

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

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

Then he was gone. There was no sound.

Had he left?

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ve seen it on TV.”

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

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

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

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

Sunday, 1:04 P.M.

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

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

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

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

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

He nodded a greeting as his heart sank.

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

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

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

“I’ve seen it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sir?”

Jess turned. The checkout clerk was ready for him, and he gratefully pushed his cart forward.

As he unloaded it onto the belt, he could feel Fiona Pritzle studying him.

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

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

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

She stared back at him, her eyes narrow.

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

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

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

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

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

The rancher accelerated, and his fear was replaced by anger. The house looked to be as he left it: locked up tight. The doors were closed and the curtains drawn. The children must still be inside, he thought, probably scared out of their minds. Who was this man, this trespasser, who strode along his porch with such contempt and familiarity?

Jess slowed and parked behind the black pickup. The man on the porch had now seen him, and he was closing his phone and glowering. The man stopped, his arms folded across his massive chest, waiting for Jess.

He spoke before Jess could. “Is this your place?”

Jess shut his door, leaving the groceries inside. The man on the porch exuded menace. He outweighed Jess by at least forty pounds, and he was younger. The rancher stopped and leaned forward on the hood of his truck. The motor ticked as it cooled. Jess usually had his Winchester in his gun rack for coyotes, but he had taken it out to clean it several days before and had forgotten to put it back in.

“This is my ranch,” Jess said. “The question is what you’re doing on it.”

The man snorted. “I’m with the sheriff’s department. If you haven’t heard, there are a couple of local kids missing.”

“I’ve never seen you before.”

“Ah,” the man said. “I’m sure you haven’t. I’m helping out the department as a volunteer. Several of us are assisting Sheriff Carey with the investigation.”

As he spoke, Jess looked at the man’s reflection in the living room window. He could see the butt of a pistol poking out from his belt behind his back.

“You’re one of the cops, then,” Jess said. “Do you have a name?”

“Dennis Gonzalez. Sergeant Dennis Gonzalez. LAPD.”

“Not anymore.”

Gonzalez smirked and rolled his eyes. He showed his teeth under his bushy mustache. “No, not anymore. But that don’t matter. We’re working with your sheriff.”

“I heard. So what are you doing trespassing here?”

“Trespassing?” he said, the smile growing wider. But his eyes remained black and hard. “You need to watch that language, mister. We’re going house to house looking for any sign of those kids. This place is on my list.”

To Jess’s horror, he saw the curtain part behind Gonzalez, and William’s blue eyes in the window. William was looking at Gonzalez’s gun. To William, Jess wanted to shout: “Get away from there.” To Gonzalez, Jess wanted to plead, “Don’t turn around.”

Jess sighed. “All right, then. I’m back. You can go now.”

“Not so fast. I heard activity inside when I drove up. I’d like to have a look around.”

“It’s just me here,” Jess said, hoping his face didn’t reflect his anxiety. “My foreman left a few days ago. I’m running the place by myself.”

“No wife inside?”

“Divorced.”

“You and me both, brother,” Gonzalez said. “So if nobody is in there, why not invite me in for a cup of coffee or something?”

“I’ve got work to do.”

“On a Sunday?”

Jess nodded. “Yup. Couple of cows about to calve.”

Gonzalez studied his face. “I’d really like to take a look around this place so I can scratch it off my list. I’d like to take a look in your barn, and in that house across the lot there. I want to make sure I wasn’t hearing things when I drove up.”

“You were,” Jess said.

For a moment, a tense silence hung in the air. Jess shot a glance at the window. Gonzalez noticed it, and looked behind him. Thank God, William was gone.

“Let me get this straight,” Gonzalez said, turning back around. “Are you denying me the opportunity to look around here? I’m here to clear you off my list as a kidnapper. Do you understand how suspicious this sounds?”

The word kidnapper hit Jess hard, and he tried not to flinch. Could he let Gonzalez look around? The man would find nothing in the barn because he probably didn’t know what to look for-the missing hay hook and horse blanket, the arrangement of bales on the top of the stack-but how could he let him inside of his house? Even if the kids were hiding, there would be telltale signs: shoes in the mudroom, too many dishes in the sink, unmade beds.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Jess said. “You’re trespassing on my ranch without a warrant. I didn’t even get a call from the sheriff saying you were coming out. This is my place, and my family’s had it for three generations. Nobody has the right to trespass on my ranch.”

Gonzalez laughed harshly. “You’re a fucking piece of work, old man. If we were in L.A…”

“We aren’t,” Jess interrupted. “We’re on my ranch. Now get off, and don’t come back without the sheriff and a piece of paper that says you can search here.”

The wide, insincere smile faded. “You could make your life a lot easier if you let me look around, compadre.”

“I’m used to a hard life,” Jess said. “Now get off.”

Something flashed in Gonzalez’s eyes, and for a second Jess expected the man to bolt off the porch and jam the gun into his face. He wished he was armed himself. But the moment passed, and Gonzalez looked up at the rain clouds forming over the rancher’s head.

“I’ll be back here,” Gonzalez said, stepping off the porch and walking slowly to his pickup. “You and me are going to tangle. You could have avoided it, but you had to go get all fucking cowboy on me.”

Jess said nothing. He kept his palms firmly on the hood of the truck so they wouldn’t shake.

Gonzalez opened his truck door and looked back. “You people. You’re too stupid to know what you’ve just done, old man,” he said, and the smile came back, which chilled Jess to his boot soles. “I’ll be seeing you.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Jess said, his voice firm and low.

“I don’t threaten. I advise.”

“Close the gate on the way out this time,” Jess said. “I’ve got cattle. If they get out, I’ll press charges.”

“You’ll press…” Gonzalez said, but didn’t finish the sentence because he was chuckling.

Jess watched the pickup drive up the road and into the trees. Slowly, he withdrew his hands from the hood, leaving long wet streaks.

“HE WAS one of them, wasn’t he?” Jess asked, unpacking the groceries in the kitchen.

Annie and William stood in the doorway to the living room, their faces pale white. They had obviously heard the exchange.

“Yes,” Annie said. “We thought he was going to come in and find us.”

Jess swung around and pointed a trembling finger at William. “You nearly got yourself hurt and your sister hurt along with you by looking out that window like that. When I tell you to stay inside and not look out, I mean it!”

William stood still, but mist filled his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his mouth curling down, even though he was fighting it.

“Ah, man,” Jess said, walking across the kitchen and pulling Annie and William into his legs. “I’m just glad you’re all right. It’s okay, Willie. It’s okay.”

“William,” the boy said, his voice muffled by the hug.

“Is he coming back?” Annie asked.

Jess released them and squatted so he could look at both children in the eye. “I think so, yes.”

“What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I’m thinking it over.”

“You could show me how to shoot one of those guns in there,” William said. “You could show me and Annie.”

Jess looked at him, about to argue. Then he didn’t.

“For right now, let’s get you two something to eat,” he said instead.

Sunday, 4:03 P.M.

JIM HEARNE sat in a recliner with the newspaper opened on his lap and a Seattle Mariners game droning on in front of him. He didn’t know the inning, the score, or who they were playing. Instead, he stared at something between where he sat and the television set, a wall he could not see through, a wall he had invented, a wall that seemed to get thicker and harder to ignore since that morning, when it came to be.

The wall-he started to think of it as a barrier to everything else-began to grow while he and Laura were in church. It wasn’t the minister’s sermon that triggered it, and it wasn’t the surroundings. It was the fact that for the first time in two and a half days, his mind was empty, partially due to the massive hangover from which he was suffering. The void was filled with thoughts of his meeting with Eduardo Villatoro and what he had read in the newspaper about the effort to find the missing Taylor children. About the ex-cops from L.A. who were heading up the task force. About his own role in everything, his responsibility.

As if seeing things for the first time, Hearne looked around the room he was in. It was a magnificent living room, with high ceilings, slate tile floors covered with expensive rugs, an entertainment center so advanced that he had no idea what it was capable of. Through the huge picture window was a long, sloping lawn that led down to a small tree-bordered lake, his wooden fishing boat turned upside down on the bank. He could hear Laura in the kitchen, cooking and talking to her mother, who was in a controlled-living complex in Spokane. The aroma of Sunday dinner filled his home. She was frying chicken, his favorite, doing it the old-fashioned Southern way by soaking the pieces in buttermilk first, then coating them, then chilling them in the buttermilk again. It took all afternoon. He wished he could get excited about it, but eating was the last thing on his mind.

Hearne felt like an imposter in his own home. A real businessman should live there, he thought, not him. Someone who would not feel the conflict he felt about what was happening in the valley, someone who could justify his participation in it. Hearne, despite the home, the lake, the property, and his status, felt like a piss-poor rodeo cowboy who had made a pact with the Devil. He needed to stop fretting, and do something about it.

He stood up and stretched, heard his back pop like a string of muffled firecrackers. The old injuries set in when he remained still for too long, as he had today, and it took a moment of painful stretching to loosen up. There were three telephones in the house: one in the kitchen where Laura was, one in the bedroom, and one in his home office. Tucking the folded newspaper under his arm, he leaned into the kitchen and breathed in the full brunt of the meal in progress until Laura turned from the stove and saw him. She had the telephone clamped between her shoulder and jaw so that her hands were free. She raised her eyebrows as if to say, “Yes?”

“Will you be much longer?”

“My mother,” she mouthed.

“Tell her hello from me,” he said. “Will you be on the line much longer?”

Laura shot an impatient look at him and covered the receiver.

“She’s on a roll about a dance they had at the center last night,” she said. “We talk every Sunday afternoon, as you know. What’s the crisis?”

“No crisis,” he said, lying. “Don’t worry about it.”

He heard her call after him as he walked back through the living room, grabbed his cell from where he’d left it on the bookcase, and went outside.

Afternoon rain clouds were moving across the sky, blocking out the sun, and he could sense the moisture coming. The pine trees smelled especially sharp, as if their bite was being held close to the ground by the low pressure.

The article in the newspaper listed a telephone number to reach the task force to report any information regarding the Taylor children. Hearne had nothing to report, but he assumed it would be the best way to reach who he needed to talk with. He punched the numbers into his cell phone, and the call was answered after three rings by a female receptionist.

“I’d like to speak to Lieutenant Singer, please.”

“Please hold while I put you through.”

Hearne was placed on hold for a moment, listened to a scratchy rendition of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” then: “This is Singer.” The man’s voice was flat and businesslike.

“Lieutenant Singer, this is Jim Hearne,” he said.

No response.

“Your banker,” he reminded, after a beat.

“I know who you are.” Deadpan, slightly annoyed.

“I was hoping we could have a few minutes to talk.”

“Why? I’m busy right now, as you can imagine.”

“It’s about a retired detective from California. From Arcadia, wherever that is. He was in my office asking about cash deposits and certain bills that have surfaced that apparently were marked. The bills were traced back to my bank.”

The cold silence on the other end of the call unnerved Hearne. “Lieutenant Singer?”

“I’m here.”

“I think we should get together and talk about this situation.”

“Why?” Singer said quickly, his voice dropping.

“Well…” Hearne wasn’t sure what to say.

“Well what?”

“I’m sure he’ll be back. It won’t take him long to identify certain accounts, and he’ll want to know about them.” Hearne didn’t like how he sounded, like a weak coconspirator. He wanted Singer to say something to assure him there was nothing to worry about.

Finally: “Listen to me carefully, Mr. Banker,” Singer said, almost whispering. Hearne found himself clicking the volume button on his cell phone so he could hear. “Do not say a thing to that man right now. Not a thing.”

“But…”

“But nothing, Mr. Banker. As far as you’re concerned, you don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. Or better yet, you’re simply unavailable for a meeting. He can’t hang around here forever. He’ll go away.”

Hearne couldn’t get past the words, He’ll go away.

“We’ll talk when this is over,” Singer said. “We’ll get everything straightened out. Is that a deal?”

Hearne looked at his cell phone as if it had switched sides and turned against him. Then he closed it, ending the call.

WHEN HE turned back to the house, Laura was standing in the doorway.

“Since when do you make calls out on the lawn?” she asked.

He shrugged and tried to shoulder past her, but she stepped in his way. “Jim?”

Enough, he thought. Enough holding things in. He reached up and grasped her gently by the shoulders, looked straight into her eyes. He could see that she was prepared for anything but scared at the same time.

“I’ve put us in a situation,” he said. “At the bank. Now it’s coming back to kick me in the ass. I may be in a lot of trouble.”

She searched his face for more.

“Actually,” he said, sweeping a hand around the grounds, “I may have put us both and all we have in trouble.”

“What did you do, Jim?” she asked.

“It’s not what I did,” he said. “It’s what I didn’t do. I looked the other way when I knew better, which is just as bad. I let something happen without stopping it, without asking the right questions. I did it because I knew if I looked away, deliberately, it would lead to a lot more business, and that’s what happened. But I knew better. I knew something wasn’t right.”

She slowly shook her head. Would she press him for details?

“Jim,” she said, “that’s not like you.” It hurt more than anything else she could have said.

He dropped his head, couldn’t look into her eyes. “Laura, I need your permission to try and square this, knowing that I might not be able to do it. What’s at risk is my job and our reputation.”

She sighed, which surprised him. “You’ve always cared a lot more about our status than I have,” she said. “I’d be just as happy in our old house, with the valley more like the way it was when we grew up. I know I can’t turn the clock back, and neither can you. But I wouldn’t mind if we weren’t always in the middle of making it grow bigger and inviting everyone in. I’m not sure it’s worth it. It doesn’t matter how nice our house is in order to cook Sunday dinner.”

He slowly raised his head, amazed at her, in love with her.

“Do what you need to do to make things right,” she said.

“Then I’m going to miss dinner,” he said.

“It’ll keep ’til you get back.”

Sunday, 5:15 P.M.

WHILE ANNIE AND WILLIAM ate at the table, Jess thumbed through the phone book in the Federal Government listings and found the number for the FBI office in Boise. He looked at his watch. Five-fifteen on Sunday night. Would anyone even be there? Turning his back on the Taylor kids, he dialed and got a recorded message:

“You’ve reached the Boise District Office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Our normal office hours are eight to five Monday through Friday. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911 to contact local authorities. If it isn’t an emergency, please stay on the line and leave a message. A special agent will return your call as soon as possible.”

When he heard the beep, Jess hesitated for a moment. Then, in a hushed voice, he gave his name, number, and said he knew something about the missing Taylor children.

He hung up, not at all sure he had done the right thing. Would the agent call him back directly, or contact the sheriff and the ex-cops first? If the latter happened, everything could go to hell. He stared at the receiver, wishing he could retrieve and erase the message somehow. He should have hung up and waited until tomorrow, when he could talk to a real person. This wasn’t like him, being impulsive. But he had to do something. Gonzalez on his own porch had unnerved him. They would suspect him now, and he was sure they’d come back.

THE CHILDREN seemed to be as comfortable as they’d been since they arrived, Jess thought. They sat in the living room, surfing through television channels. He found himself staring at them from the doorway in the kitchen, wishing he could be as carefree. Annie looked over and smiled at him, then turned back to the television.

Something had happened, he thought. Because they had overheard the exchange with Gonzalez, the children trusted him completely now. They thought he could take care of them. Jess wasn’t so sure about that. He needed help, and some kind of plan. He didn’t know where to turn.

He thought of the man he’d had breakfast with, Villatoro. Jess could tell Villatoro had connections, knew people in law enforcement on the outside. Maybe even their home telephone numbers. Perhaps the ex-detective could put him in contact with a friendly FBI agent who could circumvent a call to the sheriff? Jess dug the card out of his pocket again, called the motel, and again got voice mail. Jess cursed to himself, and left a message asking Villatoro to call him whenever he got back to his room.

Who else could help? Buddy?

He looked up the deputy’s number and called. The phone was busy. Probably off the hook, Jess thought, while the man slept.

Jess paced his kitchen, washed and dried the dishes, stared at his watch and the telephone that didn’t ring.

Maybe, he thought, Sheriff Carey would believe him if he could talk to the man without the ex-cops around. Maybe. He would need to try, and he couldn’t chance waiting until morning. By that time, the ex-cops might be coming back to his house or the FBI might be in contact with them. It would need to be tonight.

And as he looked again at the Taylor children sprawled on his couch, he thought: Don’t let them down. You’ve already overseen the destruction of one family, your own. Don’t let it happen again.

They needed to reunite with their mother, and she needed to know they were all right. Those kids trusted him to protect them. He would do his best, or die trying. He had nothing to lose.

“I’M GOING to be gone for a while,” he told them, after muting the volume on the television so he could get their complete attention. “I need to go to town.”

“Tonight?” Annie asked. “Are you going to leave us here?”

He nodded. “I have to.”

“What if that man comes back?”

Jess paused. “Annie, I’m going to show you how to operate a shot-gun. If anybody besides me comes into this house tonight, I want you to know how to use it.”

Annie nodded slightly. William looked at her with obvious jealousy.

Jess opened his gun cabinet, withdrew his twenty-gauge over and under, and broke it open. “I taught my son how to hunt with this gun,” he said. “Just remember it’s not a toy. Come here, and I’ll show you how it works…”

BEFORE HE LEFT, Jess went back to the gun cabinet. He looked at each weapon, doing a quick checklist of pluses and minuses associated with each. He quickly dismissed his scoped hunting rifles. They were good at long range, of course, but were unwieldy if the target was close or moving fast. The bolt actions made them slow to reload, and he’d be limited to three or four cartridges. The shotguns were devastating at close range and didn’t require perfect aim, which is why he showed Annie how to fire one. But beyond fifty yards they lost stopping power. He needed a weapon that would fill both needs, long and short, and most important, something he was comfortable with.

Jess withdrew the.25-35 Winchester. It had been his grandfather’s gun, a tough little open-sight saddle carbine that held seven cartridges. High-velocity, small-bore, simple, and reliable. He had shot his first deer with it when he was a boy, and had kept it for J.J., who had never showed interest. As he held the weapon, it felt like an old friend, with a tie to the past.

He loaded it as the children watched. “Remember what we talked about,” he said, shoving in cartridge after cartridge. “If somebody besides me comes into this house, point the shotgun at the thickest part of his body and pull the trigger. Don’t forget about flipping off the safety first. Whether you hit him or not, I want you two running and out of here the second after you fire. Annie, where will I find you if you have to run and hide?”

“The old corral up in the trees behind the house,” she repeated.

“Good. Are you up for this, William?”

William nodded. Jess had the impression William was looking forward to it and would be disappointed if Gonzalez didn’t come back.

“Okay, then,” Jess said. “Keep the doors and windows locked, and the curtains pulled. If anybody comes, don’t look out at them.”

Annie and William said they understood.

Jess winked at them. “I won’t be long,” he said.

The Winchester would not leave his side until this thing was done.

Sunday, 5:30 P.M

WHAT IN the hell do you think you’re doing?” Swann asked Monica sharply.

She was packing, throwing clothes into a small suitcase on her bed. Her clothes, Annie’s clothes, William’s clothes. They would surely need a change of clothing. She was startled, hadn’t realized Swann was in the hallway watching her.

“I’ve got to get out.”

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“I’m smothering to death in this house. I feel like your prisoner. Why can’t I leave?”

“What if they call?” Swann asked, sputtering. He had the same panicked reaction Newkirk had shown earlier when she told him she wanted to leave. That told her all she needed to know.

“What if who calls, Oscar? I thought you were all convinced Tom took them? Since when is Tom a they?”

Swann hesitated. She could see him biting his lip.

“Maybe I’ll talk to the reporters down at the county building, make a plea for my children.” She said it to test him.

Her destination, she had decided, was outside of town. But she didn’t want to tell him of her suspicion. That confirmed in her mind that the situation had changed. Swann, she thought, is not here to help me.

“Monica, sit the fuck down.”

His command froze her. She could tell by his face that, if necessary, he would cross the room and make her stay.

“This is for the best,” he said. “You have to trust me on this.”

She weighed his words against the crazy look in his eye, the set of his shoulders, his clenched fists.

“I don’t trust you at all,” she said.

He raised one of his fists, opened his hand. Her car keys were in them.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

Sunday, 5:49 P.M.

THE HOME of Anthony and Julie Rodale was magnificent, Villatoro thought. A huge new log home built with a southern exposure and lots of windows, soft underground lights marking the driveway and pathway, thick Indian throw rugs on the hardwood floor, and a cathedral ceiling in the great room that made him feel insignificant. The heads of mounted mule deer and elk flanked the stone fireplace, a half dozen colorful lacquered fish-he guessed steelhead, although he had never seen one-glowed in the light from the chandelier.

Julie Rodale had been watching 60 Minutes on television when he arrived, sitting in an overstuffed chair just a few feet in front of the wide screen, eating a large bowl of macaroni and cheese. She still dug into it unself-consciously as they spoke, sometimes making him wait for an answer while she chewed.

Julie Rodale was tall and blond, with a round face and full cheeks. By the way her clothes strained at their buttons, he guessed she was either newly heavy or had simply refused to admit that she needed a new, more matronly style of dress. She was not hesitant to talk with him.

“You said you were a detective?” she asked. “I thought you were with the sheriff’s office when you drove up. I’m waiting to hear something on my husband, Tony.”

Villatoro took notes on a small pad he’d found in his motel, mainly to be doing something. It was his experience that people tended to talk more and say more when the questioner appeared to be hanging on every word and taking notes. She didn’t seem to care that he wasn’t with the local police or was retired, only that he was interested in what she had to say.

“You said he went steelhead fishing.”

“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes toward the mounted fish on the wall. “He lives for it. Every weekend, at least. All winter he buys equipment and reads fishing magazines, and all spring, summer, and fall he goes fishing. I tried it with him a couple of times, even took a book to read, but I thought it was boring, boring, boring.”

“Does he often go alone?”

She shoveled in a mouthful of macaroni while nodding. “Not all the time. Sometimes he convinces a buddy to go with him. Jim Newkirk goes along sometimes, but you know, he’s got kids at home, and he just can’t get away as much as Tony. Nobody can, it’s ridiculous.”

Villatoro noted Newkirk’s name.

He tried to keep his tone soft and conversational. “He was supposed to be back this morning?”

“If not last night,” she said, chewing. “He said he had something to do on Monday, so I would have expected him back by now. I’m starting to get pretty pissed off.”

“Are you worried about him?”

“Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s a tough guy. He always takes his service weapon with him. That’s not what I’m worried about. I just think he got his truck stuck somewhere, or he got lost, or he hit the bottle. I tell him to take his cell phone, but he always claims he goes too far away to get a signal.

“A woman gets lonely being a fishing widow,” she said. “That’s what I call myself, a fishing widow. See all those fish on the wall? That’s nothing. You should see our basement. You want to see it?”

“That’s okay,” Villatoro said. “I don’t want to take too much of your time.”

“Do I look busy?” She laughed.

“So you’ve been here four years?” he asked.

“You mean in the house or in Idaho?”

“Both.”

“Yeah, four years. We moved up here just after Tony took early retirement from the force. I would have moved anywhere, after all of those years of wondering if he was going to get shot, or beat up, or something. It was such a relief, you know?”

“My wife knows that feeling.”

She scooped in a large forkful. “I didn’t think you looked like you were from around here.”

He smiled. “So several of you, I mean several retired officers, all came out here at the same time. Is Tony friends with the others? You mentioned Newkirk.”

For the first time, Julie hesitated for a moment. “Why are you asking me about his friends?”

“I’m curious. I heard several of them were helping your county sheriff with the Taylor case. But obviously, Tony isn’t involved in that.”

She laughed. “Believe me, if he wasn’t fishing, he’d be with them. Tony likes hanging out with all of his old cop buddies. You’d think he’d be sick of them after all of those years, but that’s not the case.”

Villatoro shifted in his chair. “Aren’t they all involved in some kind of charity together?”

“Yeah, something. I don’t know much about it. They have meetings every once in a while. Tony don’t say much about it, though. You mean Lieutenant Singer and Sergeant Gonzalez, right?”

“Do they get along okay? Are they friends?” Villatoro was hoping that Rodale was estranged from the other ex-cops, that being the reason why he had not volunteered with them. If he was having trouble with them, Villatoro reasoned, perhaps he would be easier to talk to than the others.

“I think so,” she said, without conviction.

“Was he a little angry with them recently?”

She blew out a long stream of breath to clear a strand of hair from her face. “I’d say he’s been irritable lately. He wouldn’t really say why. But come to think of it, he’s been pissy since their last meeting a couple of weeks ago. Maybe something was said, I don’t know. Tony doesn’t talk about that stuff.”

“Right. Have you called them to see if they know anything about where Tony went?”

“Sure I did. Yesterday. But all they knew is that he said he was going fishing.”

“So they all knew that? They weren’t surprised when you called?”

She paused, fork in midair: “No, why should they be? They all sounded concerned. Lieutenant Singer especially. He said he didn’t think it was ever a good idea to go fishing or hunting by yourself. I said, ‘Amen, Brother Singer.’ Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” he said, and quickly changed the subject. “This is quite a place you’ve got here,” Villatoro said. “I bet it would cost a few million back home.”

“More than that,” she said, grinning. “Tony did well with his pension. He also did really well with investments. All those years, I had no idea he was buying stocks and stuff. But when he told me he wanted to take early retirement, he said he’s been building up this…fortune… in the stock market. He said he got out before the bubble burst, and we could afford a home like this.”

Villatoro watched her carefully. She spoke without guile. She obviously believed her husband came into their wealth through legitimate means.

“He did well,” Villatoro said, looking around. “My wife Donna would kill for a home like this.”

She smiled in a proprietary way. “The man shocked me. Really shocked me. I didn’t know he had any interest at all in stocks or anything. I didn’t even know about this fishing thing until we moved up here. That just goes to show you that you can live with somebody for twenty years and not really know them, you know?”

She sat back and sighed. “I have to admit, though, I sometimes miss the old neighborhood. There was nothing special about it, just a street with a lot of forty-year-old houses on it. But I miss hearing kids out on the street, and the block parties we would sometimes have in the summer. It was chaos, but I miss being a part of it. I guess I miss neighbors. All I ever hear up here is birds. That gets a little boring at times. I’d like to have a reason to charge out of the house to see what’s going on, you know?”

Villatoro stood up and closed his pad. He felt sorry for her, with her big house and big body and big bowl of macaroni and cheese. She seemed like a nice, normal woman, someone his wife would be friends with.

“I know what you mean,” he said, and thanked her and said he would let himself out.

“Stick around,” she said. “You can watch me pound that guy when he finally gets home. I’ll glue a damned cell phone on his forehead for the next time.”

THE SKY FLASHED and there was a rumble of thunder as Villatoro approached his car in the driveway. The storm clouds had shut a curtain over the dusk sun, making it darker than it should be. The air was moist, and he expected rain any minute.

Tony Rodale, who had been working security at Santa Anita with Jim Newkirk on the day of the robbery, who sought early retirement, who was the treasurer for the SoCal Retired Peace Officers Foundation and therefore in charge of making cash deposits into their account, was missing. If he showed up, Villatoro wanted to meet him. There had to be a reason why only four of the five ex-cops had volunteered to help the sheriff together, and the fifth went his own way. Maybe an argument between them, maybe dissension. Maybe, Villatoro conceded, Rodale just wanted to go fishing.

There was a flash of lightning and a thunderclap that seemed to sway the treetops with its power, and sheets of heavy rain lashed through the trees. There was no buildup to the rain, it just came, furiously. He switched his wipers to high and turned on his headlights.

He was so consumed with his thoughts and the driving rain as he drove that when his headlights swept over a parked car nearly blocking the road to Rodale’s home near the two-lane, he reacted late and almost sideswiped it, missing the car by inches. He braked a few feet beyond it and glanced up into his rearview mirror.

The driver’s door opened on the car he had almost hit, and the dome light came on. Newkirk got out. The ex-cop was lit in the red glow of Villatoro’s taillights, and he walked out of the view of the mirror and tapped on the passenger-side window.

After searching for the window switch in the rental car, Villatoro found it, pressed it, and the window whirred down. Newkirk leaned in. “I’ve been thinking about what you told me in the parking lot. I think we need to talk.”

“Do you want to meet somewhere?” Villatoro could smell the whiskey on Newkirk’s breath.

Newkirk shook his head. “No place is safe. I don’t want us to be seen together.”

Villatoro found himself gripping the wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white. Slowly, he let go and relaxed them.

“Too many people know my car,” Newkirk said. “Let’s go in yours.”

“The car is not very big.”

Newkirk looked down. The passenger seat was covered with maps, files, paper. “Clean that off and I’ll get in.”

“I’m not sure…”

“Do you want to talk or not? Make up your mind. I don’t like standing out here where someone could drive by and see me. Besides, I’m getting soaked.”

Villatoro realized what an opportunity this could be. It could crack the case. But he was scared. There was another lightning flash and a low-throated roar of thunder. He gathered up the papers and tossed them over the headrest into the tiny backseat, and Newkirk swung in heavily and closed the door. Steam rose from his clothing.

“Where are we going?” Villatoro asked.

“Just drive,” Newkirk said.

Villatoro put the car into gear, and they slid out onto the state highway. Large raindrops hit the windshield like balls of spit.

“I’m going to show you where the bodies are buried,” Newkirk said, “so to speak.”

Sunday, 6:25 P.M.

JESS ENTERED Kootenai Bay under a strobing pyrotechnic display of lightning, and the rain fell hard and steady, creating a jungle drumbeat within the pickup. A close flash of lightning lit the cab, leaving the afterimage of his Winchester, muzzle down, on the seat next to him.

Sheriff Ed Carey lived in a modest ranch house in an older neighborhood not far from downtown. Streetlamps on the corners lit up the falling rain in the orbs of their halos and created blue lightning bolts on the wet streets. Carey’s county Blazer was parked in his driveway. A white SUV Jess didn’t recognize was also in front of the house. A white SUV? Like the one Annie and William had seen?

Behind Carey’s Blazer was a small yellow pickup. Jess frowned, familiar with it from his daily encounters. What in the hell was Fiona Pritzle doing at the sheriff’s home at this time of night?

He drove by slowly, saw that the curtains were open and the lights on. He continued down the block and parked under a dark canopy of old cottonwood trees, as far away from the streetlights as he could get.

Jess had a yellow cowboy slicker rolled up behind the seat, but he decided to leave it there. The yellow would stand out, even in the dark. He’d just get wet.

Leaving the Winchester in the truck, he walked toward Carey’s house in the rain, stumbling once on a section of sidewalk that had risen and buckled from a tree root.

He didn’t know whether to knock, ring the bell, or try to figure out what Fiona was doing there first. As he approached the house, a thin stream of rainwater poured from his hat brim. He could hear nothing from inside because of the sound of the rain coursing through the trees and hitting the street and sidewalk with a sound like applause.

Rather than walk up the sidewalk to the front door and lighted porch, Jess cut across the grass of Carey’s next-door neighbor toward the corner of the sheriff’s house. There was a picture window in front of the house and a smaller window on the side that was open except for a storm screen. Aiming for the opened window and the shadows beside it, he felt the suck of soft mud beneath his boots. Christ, he thought, I’m walking across their newly planted garden. I’ll apologize later.

Jess stood to the side of the open window in the mud, slightly under the eave of the roof so the rain didn’t hit him. He looked out from the shadows and saw no cars on the street, no neighbors looking out of their windows at the rain.

The sound of Fiona Pritzle’s sharp, high-pitched voice cut through the rain like a razor through fabric.

“There’s always been something odd about him, don’t you think?” Fiona was saying. “I’ve really noticed it lately. Like he’s got a secret life, and he doesn’t want anybody to know it.”

Jess took a chance and looked in the window. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t be entering anyone’s view.

Fiona sat in the middle of the room, perched on the edge of a chair that must have been brought in from the kitchen table. Her hands were clamped between her thighs. She leaned forward toward Carey, who sat on his couch in a T-shirt and sweatpants, his hair uncombed. Jess could see the side of his face, and he looked troubled or irritated. Since it was Fiona sitting there talking, Jess figured both were likely. A man Jess didn’t recognize at first was in an overstuffed chair across from Carey listening to Fiona. He was trim and compact, with close-cropped silver hair. His bearing suggested authority, his face a mask of world-weariness except for his eyes, which studied Fiona with a kind of manic fascination. Jess could see his face in three-quarter profile and identified him from Annie’s drawing. It was Singer.

“He seems, you know, evasive,” Fiona said. “I try to be friendly and sweet as pie, but he always seems to be somewhere else, you know? Like he has other things on his mind.”

Singer turned to Carey, ignoring Fiona, and said, “Do you know him, Sheriff? Is he familiar to you? Gonzo had a problem this afternoon with a rancher who wouldn’t let him search his property. Is this the same guy?”

“I know him,” Carey said. “In fact, I sat next to him at breakfast at the Panhandle just this morning, Mr. Singer. He did ask a few questions about the investigation, as I recall.”

Jesus, Jess thought, they’re talking about me. What is Fiona up to? Jess withdrew from the front of the window but pressed his shoulder against the siding next to it so he could hear better and not be seen.

Fiona said, “You know as well as me what’s happened out there over the past few years. First, his wife left him. You know about his son. He’s a tragedy, just a tragedy. Something obviously happened to him.”

Carey said to Singer, “He’s the trustee who mops the floor at the station. You’ve probably seen him around.”

“I’ve seen him,” Singer said.

Jess couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Fiona continued, “Why else would an old single man be buying food that only little kids eat?”

“That’s not much to go on, Fiona,” the sheriff said.

Her voice rose. “But think about it. His ranch is failing. His son is a mess. His wife leaves him, but he shows absolutely no interest in the opposite sex. I mean, single lonely man, available woman”-Jess could imagine her gesturing to herself-“and he doesn’t do anything? At first I thought it was me, but maybe it’s because he has other interests, you know? Even his employee left him recently, I found out. He’s completely by himself out there. Who knows what he’s up to? Maybe he’s got those kids, and he’s holding them prisoner!”

“Fiona…” The sheriff was skeptical. He turned to Singer. “What’s this do to our theory about Tom Boyd?”

Singer shook his head quickly. “Not much.”

Carey paused, waiting for clarification.

“We’ve got the tape,” Singer said. “Boyd’s missing. That part of our theory still holds.”

“So where does this rancher fit in, if at all?”

Jess was frozen where he stood, stunned.

“I’ve read a lot of magazine articles about sexual predators,” Fiona interjected, her voice rising. “It grows in them. Just grows in them until they get the opportunity to gratify it. I’ve never thought before how much he fits the profile. Look”-she dropped her tone again-“he gets mail in large envelopes without any return addresses on them. Maybe that’s how he gets his pornography?”

No, Jess thought absently. That’s how developers send offers these days, knowing I won’t open them if I know where they came from. Jesus…

“I’m surprised you haven’t looked to make sure,” Carey said, deadpan.

“I can’t believe you said that,” she sniffed. “That’s a huge insult. I could lose my job with the postal service if I did, you know.”

Fiona suddenly got an idea and nearly shot out of her seat. “Hold it! Maybe that’s how he met Tom Boyd? UPS delivers out there, you know. Maybe the two of them struck up a friendship based on a common interest,” she paused dramatically, “pedophilia. I’ve read where those people seek each other out.”

Jess didn’t know what to do. Burst in, set the record straight? He was so flummoxed he didn’t even know if he could speak clearly. But how would he explain the groceries without telling them the rest or coming up with some kind of lie? What if the sheriff held him, or arrested him on the spot? Singer could send that dark ex-cop, Gonzalez, back to his house to find the Taylor children. He wished Singer weren’t there, because he might have a chance of clearing himself if it was just Fiona and the sheriff, because obviously Carey didn’t give Fiona much credibility. But with Singer there…

“You can either do something, or I’ll call my contacts at the networks,” Fiona threatened. “I’m sure they’d find this new development very interesting.”

Jess walked away from the window. The rain pounded his hat. He was angry, and getting angrier. He swung into the cab of his pickup, started the motor, and roared down the street, not caring if anyone could hear him leave.

Sunday, 6:56 P.M.

JESS COULD see J.J. through the locked front doors of the county courthouse. As usual in his orange one-piece trustee jumpsuit, J.J. was cleaning, spraying banisters with disinfectant, rubbing the wood until it glowed. Jess rapped hard on the glass of the door. Inside, J.J. looked up, but in the wrong direction. Jess rapped again, hitting the glass so hard it stung his knuckles. J.J.’s head swiveled, and his eyes narrowed when he saw Jess. There was something canine in the way J.J. looked at him.

“J.J., I need to talk with you,” Jess shouted. The rain pounded the street behind him and sluiced through the gutters.

J.J. shrugged, couldn’t hear him. But he let the cloth fall from his hands and walked slowly across the floor to the doors.

Jess could see J.J.’s mouth. “Locked.”

Who had a key? Jess wondered. He needed to talk with his son.

Jess pulled futilely on the doors, rattling them. J.J. watched as if he expected alarms to go off. He shook his head, scared to open them from the inside.

“Hold on,” Jess said, raising his hand, and turned for his pickup that was parked on the street. He returned with the rifle. J. J. saw it, and backed away, his eyes wide.

Jess used the butt of it to break through a panel of glass on the door. No alarm sounded. He reached through the hole and pulled back on the bar, opening the door.

“I don’t mean to scare you,” Jess told J.J. as he stepped inside and let the door wheeze shut.

“I could get in trouble,” J.J. said. Jess noticed that J.J.’s voice was clearer than usual. It had a deep timbre to it that was usually missing. Jess knew what that indicated. This is when a window sometimes opened, if briefly, a window of illumination. It didn’t last long.

“J.J., I think you can help me,” Jess said, then rephrased it: “I need your help.”

“You broke the door. Man, I’m going to get in trouble now.”

“Tell them I did it.”

J.J. nodded.

“You seem okay. Are you okay?”

“Not really, no,” J.J. said, shaking his head. “I gotta go back for my meds. What time is it?”

Jess looked at his wristwatch. “Nearly seven.”

“I’m late. I shoulda been back to the ward. They’re gonna come looking for me.”

Jess tried to calm himself. If he was calm, J.J. was more likely to respond.

J.J. said, “When my meds wear off my own sick brain starts taking over. I see shit I know can’t really be there.”

“I know that, son,” Jess said, stepping closer. J.J. recoiled.

“Don’t worry,” Jess said, “I won’t touch you.”

“It isn’t you,” J.J. said. “It’s your germs. I can’t get dirty, like these floors. I clean them and clean them, but the people here, they make them filthy again every day. They bring their filth in with them from the outside. I can’t win.”

Jess breathed deeply. He felt a pang for taking advantage this way.

“J.J., tell me about the ex-cops. There are four of them. You’ve been around them here. Are they good?”

“No.” Emphatic, spittle flying.

“Are they honest?”

“NO!”

“What have you heard?”

“They want to find those kids,” J.J. said.

Jess grimaced. Of course they wanted to find the Taylors.

“They want to hurt them,” J.J. said. “And they called Monica a bitch.”

“Monica Taylor?” Jess asked, taken aback by J.J.’s familiarity with her. “You know her?”

J.J. smiled a dark and secret smile. It reminded Jess of the way J.J. used to be, before all of this happened. That wasn’t necessarily good.

“She’s a pretty woman,” his son said. “She was wild.”

This startled Jess. “What do you mean? How did you know her?”

“Some things I remember like they happened yesterday. I remember Monica that way.”

Jess had more questions, but didn’t want to take J.J. down a path they’d get lost on. He didn’t know how long this rare sliver of clarity would last, and he had to use it.

“About the ex-cops. Why don’t you tell the sheriff?” Jess asked.

“He won’t believe me. I don’t want to get in trouble. I like this job, cleaning. I can’t stay in my cell. It’s filthy and disgusting, germs fester there. I need to be out. Away from the nightmares…” J.J. looked away.

“J.J., stay with me,” Jess admonished gently. “I know you can leave here anytime you want. You’ve done your time. You can just walk out whenever you want.”

“Man, I need my meds, Dad.”

Dad. He called him dad. Jess felt his chest well up.

“Come with me,” Jess said suddenly. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

A slight smile. “I want to see the ranch. And Mom.”

Jess didn’t want to explain. Not yet. Now, he just wanted to get J.J. away from there. With what he knew, his son was in danger from the ex-cops and possibly the sheriff. J.J. didn’t know that, but Jess couldn’t leave him there to find out. Jess’s mind whirled, and he felt a tumble of emotions. This had been the first real conversation he had had with his son in over ten years. He was elated, while at the same time he wondered if J.J. had been in there all along, waiting to come out. And Jess had neglected to try.

Jess backed up and opened the door. “Come on, son,” he said gently.

J.J. stiffened. He seemed to grow taller as he became more rigid. His hands, which had hung at his sides, curled into claws.

“No.”

“What do you mean?” Jess said.

“I can’t go out there. It’s too filthy.”

“It’s raining,” Jess said, hoping that would make more sense to J.J. than it did to him.

“NO!” J.J. shouted like a five-year-old, and stomped his boot. “No, Dad! I can’t.”

Jess paused at the door, his heart breaking. J.J. had backed up across the floor and retrieved his cleaning cloth. He rubbed a desktop with it violently, scattering a stack of papers to the floor.

“Damn it!” J.J. seethed, snatching the papers up to put them back. They kept slipping out of his fingers to flutter back to the floor.

“I’ll come back for you, son,” Jess said. “You’ve really been a lot of help to me. You did a good thing, talking to me. But don’t tell anyone what we talked about, okay? Please?”

J.J. was furiously trying to snatch the pages from the tile.

“I miss you, son.”

J.J. didn’t look up. He was gone again.

“DAMN IT!” he screamed.

Jess turned and walked away, the rain slashing him. He paused at his pickup and gazed back. J.J. kept his head down, picking up papers and dropping them like a demon.

Sunday, 7:16 P.M.

MONICA LOOKED up when the doorbell rang, and Swann scrambled to his feet from the couch. He had been on his cell phone with someone, another of his secret calls. Something about going back to his house again that night; Swann didn’t seem to want to do it.

They had not spoken since Swann showed her that he had her keys. She was simply waiting now, biding her time. When he left the room, she’d be out the door. She could borrow a car from a neighbor. Or get a ride with someone. But she wanted him to think he’d talked her out of that idea, so she sat silently. Let him think she’d reconsidered.

“You expecting someone?” he asked as he neared the door.

“Of course not,” she said, hoping it was news of Annie and William.

Swann bent and looked out the peephole. “Some man,” he said, then opened the door.

Monica didn’t recognize the wet cowboy on the front porch. He looked angry, though, the way he squinted inside like a gunfighter, like the sun was in his eyes.

“What can we do for you?” Swann asked.

“Are you Monica Taylor?” the man asked, shouting louder than he needed to, not acknowledging Swann. The rainfall was steady and loud behind him.

Intuitively, she knew it was about her children. She nodded.

“Then you must be Swann,” the man said, reaching back for something that was out of sight. Then he strode into the house holding a rifle in both of his hands. Before Swann could reach for the pistol in his belt, the man clubbed Swann hard in the face with the butt of the rifle. Swann staggered back, blood already gushing from his nose, his hands grasping at air, his feet tangling with her magazine rack. He fell into the wall, sliding down partway, taking a framed photograph of Annie with him. His elbow rested on the top of the couch and stopped him from falling all of the way to the floor. The man was in the living room now, straddling Swann, and to Monica’s horror, he reared back and clubbed Swann again in the head with a short, powerful stroke. Swann went limp, and rolled with his face to the wall, his weight pushing the couch out, and he crashed behind it on the floor. All she could see of Swann were the soles of his shoes. The rest of him was wedged behind the couch.

The cowboy bent over and came up with Swann’s pistol, which he shoved into the front pocket of his Wranglers. Then he looked up, caught his breath.

Monica had not screamed, but had withdrawn into her chair, her feet under her, her fists at her mouth.

“He’ll live,” the man said, nodding his hat brim toward Swann. Then he looked right at her. “I’m Jess Rawlins. I’m here to take you to your kids.”

At the sound of his name, Monica felt her throat constrict. Jess Rawlins. She’d always known of this man. And here he was, in her own living room, there to rescue her.

Sunday, 8:21 P.M.

JIM HEARNE felt panic growing as the rain receded into cold mist and hung suspended in the air above the pavement of streets, and his tires sluiced through standing puddles. Something was going on in his town late on a Sunday night, but he hadn’t yet been able to figure out exactly what it was, how big it was, or how many people were involved. As with the feeling he had had in his living room, when he suddenly felt like an imposter in his own home, he drove through Kootenai Bay under the strong impression that despite the recognizable buildings and layout, he was a stranger in this town.

He swung his Suburban into the county building lot and parked it next to Sheriff Carey’s Blazer. He was grateful for locating the sheriff, since the two other men he had tried to find earlier had been gone. Lieutenant Singer was not at the task force room in the county building, or at his home. And Eduardo Villatoro had not been back to his hotel room since late afternoon.

Hearne got out of his vehicle and tried to calm himself by inhaling the moist air deeply into his lungs. He looked at his watch. He had accomplished exactly nothing for all of his running around, except to confirm that whatever was happening was happening someplace else, and he had no idea where that might be. Now he thought he might be in the right place, judging by the three network satellite trucks that took up most of the parking lot at the front of the building. There was a hive of activity. It was obvious they had all arrived within minutes of each other, and technicians were out on the pavement, jockeying for position. Some unfurled thick cables that snaked across the asphalt. Hearne recognized a celebrity reporter brightly lit by a portable bank of lights, and thought he looked shorter, thinner, and more frail than he did on TV. The man seemed to be waiting for somebody to tell him something in his earpiece. Looking at the trucks, the bustle of men and women, he feared for Kootenai Bay.

Avoiding the news crews, which had situated themselves so the front doors and sign on the county building would be visible in the background for camera shots, he walked around to the back, where the dispatcher was located. The door was open, as it should be, but the dispatcher-a heavyset woman with a bright red helmet of hair-looked up in alarm through thick lenses. She wasn’t used to visitors walking into the building, and unlike most people in town, she didn’t recognize him.

He said, “Is the sheriff in? I saw his vehicle out front.”

“I think he’s in for a minute,” she said, looking around, her eyes winking like crazy behind the glasses, “but I think he’s going to go home. Is this something that can wait until morning?”

Hearne felt a surge of impatience. “Do you think I would be here at this time of night if it was something that could wait? Where is he? In his office?” he asked, pushing through the batwing doors on the side of the reception desk, striding past her.

“Yes, but you should wait until I call him…” she said, her voice trailing off.

Sheriff Carey was in the act of hanging up his telephone. His office blazed with lights, even though the rest of the department was dark. When Hearne stepped into the doorway, Carey looked up slowly, without expression. It didn’t seem to surprise him that the local banker was in his office late on Sunday night. He looked terrible, Hearne thought, completely unlike the confident man holding the press conference the day before.

“Sheriff, are you okay?”

Carey nodded slowly. His eyes seemed moist, oily. The dark circles surrounding them looked painted on. “Hello, Mr. Hearne.”

Hearne reached across the sheriff’s desk to greet him. Carey’s hand was chilly and without strength.

“Sheriff, you look like hell.”

Carey smiled slightly, sadly. “I’m real tired, Mr. Hearne.”

“Call me Jim. I won’t keep you. I’m just trying to figure a couple of things out, and I hoped you could help me.”

“Pretty late for that.”

“I know,” Hearne said, not knowing if the sheriff meant the time of night or the situation in general. He looked hard at Carey and saw a man who was physically and emotionally spent. This was not the time to confess. That would have to be later.

“When I ran for sheriff, I really didn’t think there would be nights like this,” Carey said softly, looking at a place just above Hearne’s left shoulder. “I don’t think I’m… equipped for this sort of thing. There’s too much going on. I’m in over my head, Jim. I just want to go home and get into my bed and never wake up, you know?” Hearne didn’t know what to say. He barely knew the man, and what he knew wasn’t encouraging. He didn’t expect to be witness to what appeared to be a breakdown in progress.

“Can I get you something? Coffee?” Hearne asked lamely.

Carey shook his head. “A bullet in the brain might help.”

When Hearne’s eyes widened, Carey held up his hand. “Just kidding,” he said. “Sort of.” He gestured outside with a nod. “Those people out there want a statement from me. Now, it’s big-time.”

Carey began to tell Hearne what had been happening for the last three days, from the missing Taylor children to the confession of Tom Boyd, from the creation of the task force, to the call he had just received from a deputy reporting the severe beating of Oscar Swann. Not only that, but Monica Taylor was missing from her house, taken by a man who fit the description of Jess Rawlins. “Fiona Pritzle suspects Rawlins as well,” Carey said. Hearne was stunned by it all.

“How could this all be happening?” Hearne asked, finally. “It’s like I don’t know this place anymore.”

Carey shook his head. “Me neither.”

Hearne thought about it for a minute, his mind whirling, filled with possibilities, all of them dark. “Sheriff, do you know where Singer is right now? Or the rest of the task force, for that matter?”

Carey shook his head no. Like everything, he seemed to be saying, the task force was out of his control.

“How can they just be gone?” Hearne asked. “Are they at the hospital, with Swann?”

Carey shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“What about Eduardo Villatoro? The detective? Do you know where he is?”

Carey shrugged again.

Hearne sat forward in his chair, angry. “Look, Sheriff, I realize it’s tough right now. You probably haven’t slept in two days. But damn it, you’re the sheriff. You can’t just sit here.”

Carey looked back, his eyes dead.

“And what you told me about Jess Rawlins. I don’t believe it. I’ve known Jess all my life. There is no way-NO WAY-he’s involved in the disappearance of those kids. Anybody who knows him knows that. Fiona Pritzle is a common gossip, the worst kind. Do you think Singer and the others believed her, for Christ’s sake?”

The sheriff looked away. “Maybe,” he conceded.

Hearne stood up. “You’ve got to set them right! Get ahold of them, and tell them Jess is a good man and Fiona Pritzle is crazy. Tell those reporters out there before they broadcast these allegations to the whole country. Look, I came here tonight because four years ago I opened an account at the bank I shouldn’t have opened. It was right as the L.A. cops discovered us. I looked the other way at the time, I admit it. I should have asked more questions, but I wanted the business. But I didn’t hand over the keys to this whole valley. None of us have. It’s still ours, we just need to reclaim it. It’s time to show some leadership. That’s why the people elected you sheriff! ”

Hearne heard himself yelling, something he rarely if ever did. But instead of getting through to Carey, waking him up, his shouting had the opposite effect. Carey seemed to withdraw further, saying nothing.

Hearne looked around. The red-helmeted dispatcher stood in the doorway, her mouth open, her eyes blinking so fast they blurred.

“Sheriff, I heard shouting,” she said.

“It’s okay,” Carey said, so wearily even Hearne felt sorry for the man. “Just go back to work.”

When the dispatcher left, Hearne tied to calm his voice. “So you don’t know where anybody is?”

Carey shook his head. “Singer might be at the hospital, what I’d guess.”

“Okay, then,” Hearne said, standing. “Please, I’m asking you to get in touch with Singer. Tell him Jess Rawlins is a good guy. Don’t let the press run with this. We can’t have anything happen that shouldn’t.”

Carey nodded blankly.

Hearne turned toward the doorway.

“Jim,” Carey said. Hearne looked over his shoulder. “I’m turning the whole thing over to the state and the Feds. I’ve called them, and they’ll be here by morning. I know it’s only been two days, but this thing is just too damned big for me.”

“That’s probably overdue,” Hearne said. “I’m surprised you waited. And Sheriff, I’d suggest you get a grip on yourself. Go home and take a shower and shave. Try to act professional.”

Carey looked up, his eyes far away. “I’ll try,” he said.

HEARNE TRIED to contact Jess Rawlins on his cell phone as he drove away from the county building toward the hospital. No one picked up, and Jess didn’t have voice mail. He wanted to tell Jess what was happening, warn him what some suspected due to Fiona Pritzle’s gossip. The thought of Jess Rawlins being suspected as a kidnapper or child molester turned Hearne’s stomach.

On his way out of town he decided to stop by the hospital, see if he could locate Singer. Hearne felt a compelling need to tell Singer their business relationship was over, that it was time to let the chips fall where they may. Despite everything that was going on, and Singer’s heroic role in the task force, Hearne desperately wanted to sever their relationship. It would be his first step back to respectability, even though it would also be an invitation to bank examiners to question his judgment, and the board of directors to discuss his continued employment.

He parked his car at the back of the hospital and left it running while he retrieved his cell phone to call Laura, to tell her he would be even later than he thought. While it rang, he looked at the way the word EMERGENCY from the red neon sign above the entrance reflected backwards and upside down on the hood of his car, the colors lighting up beads of rain.

“Hi, honey,” she said by way of greeting. Her voice sounded tired.

“Sorry to call so late,” he said, still looking at the reflection. “I’m going to run out to Jess Rawlins’s ranch before I come home.”

“Jess? Is he okay?”

“I think so,” he said, and tried to briefly tell her what he knew. As he talked, and she listened sympathetically (she had always disliked Fiona Pritzle), he almost didn’t notice the subtle change in the light reflection on his hood as a form passed in front of his car. Looking out the rain-streaked side window, he continued to talk as the form-a man wearing what appeared to be hospital whites with a heavily bandaged head-staggered between the row of cars, reaching from car to car to steady himself and maintain his balance.

“My God,” Hearne said suddenly to Laura. “You won’t believe who just walked by the car and didn’t even see me.”

“Who?”

“That ex-cop I told you about. The one who was beaten. Oscar Swann.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not,” he said distractedly, watching Swann lurch from car to car, now bending at each, looking inside. For what?

Hearne knew the answer when Swann opened the door of an aged red compact and the dome light came on. He watched the ex-officer painfully bend himself into the driver’s seat and heard the rough whine of an out-of-tune motor start up.

“He’s stealing a car,” Hearne said. He heard Laura gasp.

“I’m following him,” he said, knowing her protestation would be next.

SWANN APPEARED to be going home. Hearne held well back, and faded even farther when Swann drove the stolen car beyond the city limits onto the wooded state highway that led to his house. The banker could see taillights in glimpses as Swann cornered or there was a clearing in the dark trees.

Why would the man simply walk out of the hospital like that? And steal a car?

Hearne had his cell phone on his lap and watched as the signal bars decreased until the NO SERVICE prompt flashed. Wherever he was going, whatever he was going to do now, he would be out of touch unless he could find or borrow a land line. He wished he’d have asked Laura to call the sheriff, then thought how pointless that would have been given the condition the sheriff was in when he left the office.

It took half an hour for Swann’s brake lights to flash before he began the turn from the highway onto the two-track that led to his house. Hearne saw the flash, pulled to the side of the road, and cut his headlights. He waited until Swann’s car had vanished into the trees before turning his own lights back on and following.

HEARNE HAD never been to Swann’s house, and he knew he was on legal thin ice the moment he entered private property and began to climb the drive. He had no intention of confronting Swann, or even of approaching the house. All he wanted to do was see where the road took him, see that Swann had settled in (he hoped), and proceed to Jess Rawlins’s place.

Hearne felt equal parts thrilled and terrified by what he was doing. But the pure happenstance of seeing Swann in the parking lot and following him to his home had given him a purpose in a night where his ineffectiveness bludgeoned him blow after blow. Maybe following Swann would lead to nothing. In that case, only Laura would know.

When he could see a dull glow of lights through the trees, Hearne cut his own and pulled over. He didn’t want to drive right to Swann’s house.

He killed the engine and slid outside, careful not to slam the door. As he walked through the trees toward the lights, his eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the tree trunks he had not seen earlier emerged from the gloom. The forest floor was spongy with moisture, and he walked carefully so he wouldn’t slip and fall.

He could hear movement, a drumbeat of footfalls, so he stopped and tried to see. A deer. His heart was racing in his chest, and he could actually hear it when he paused.

Seventy-five yards up the hill, Swann’s house was bright with lights both inside and out. In addition to the red car Swann had stolen, Hearne recognized Singer’s white SUV. There was also a shiny black pickup with chrome wheels. He immediately guessed the whole task force was there, at Swann’s house. Hearne felt real fear. Swann’s house seemed like a very odd choice for a meeting, when the group of ex-cops had the entire sheriff’s department and all of the county’s resources at their disposal. Something wasn’t right.

Fright gripped him, seemed to make his legs heavy and his movements slow. He walked close enough to a large pen to see movement in there: pigs. A massive hog false-charged him, grunting. Hearne jumped back, tripped over a tree root, and broke his fall with his elbows. While he lay in the mud he could hear the shallow, staccato breathing of the hog and smell its putrid hot breath.

His thighs were illuminated by a shaft of light from the house that slipped through the panels on the fence. As he scrambled back to his feet, his phone fell out of his shirt pocket and bounced off his knee and landed a few feet in front of him, in a pool of light.

As he stepped out of the shadows to retrieve it, the front door of Swann’s house was thrown open. Hearne froze and watched as three men-he recognized the profiles of Singer, Swann, and Gonzalez-stepped out onto the front porch. Could they possibly see him?

Hearne couldn’t breathe. He looked from the phone in the light to the men up on the porch. If he could see his phone in the light, they could too. They looked in his direction. He could see no weapons drawn.

Then Singer turned to Swann and said something he couldn’t hear while gesturing in Hearne’s direction. It was then Hearne realized the two men were looking down the dark road and not at him. Like they were waiting for someone. His breath returned, but it rattled in his throat.

Hearne backed up farther into the shadows but didn’t take his eyes off Singer and Swann. He prayed he wouldn’t step on a dry branch under the tree canopy, or trip again in the mud. He would leave the phone. He had no choice.

AS HEARNE felt his way through the trees toward his car, he thought about the accounts at the bank, the ones he had opened for Singer, the accounts that grew quickly with all-cash deposits, each deposit barely under the ten-thousand-dollar figure that would require the bank to notify the IRS. Hearne had advised his head teller not to worry about it, that the money came from donations all the way out in Los Angeles, that it was for a good cause. But he’d known from his first meeting with Lieutenant Singer and Tony Rodale that something didn’t quite fit. An initial deposit for $9,780 in tens and twenties? An additional deposit of $9,670 the next day, and the next?

Jim Hearne knew his culpability. He knew that by looking the other way he had opened the door to all of this, that his small transgression had begun a cascade of trouble and misunderstanding.

He had to warn Jess Rawlins. The ranch was just a few miles away. He would go there first.

Sunday, 8:32 P.M.

SINCE JESS and Monica had cleared Kootenai Bay and headed north, the rain had been sporadic. She had brought nothing with her except a jacket from the closet because he had told her to leave quickly. The Winchester was between them on the bench seat, muzzle down, a smear of Swann’s blood on its butt plate.

In spare, halting language, he had filled her in. How her children had shown up in his barn, defended themselves, told him their story. Where things stood now.

“What are we going to do?” she had asked. “How will we keep my children safe?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She was calm, he thought, not skeptical of him from the minute he had appeared in her door. She seemed to trust him immediately. He wondered to what he owed this pleasure, since they had never met. It was almost as if she knew him somehow. He had stolen glances at her as he drove, looked at her profile. She was attractive but obviously exhausted. Her skin reflected light blue in the passing cones of pole lights, the hollows of her eyes and cheeks were shadowed. Her voice was soft when she said, “I knew they were alive. I don’t know how, but I knew it.”

It made him feel good to know he was bringing her together with her children. She seemed to want nothing more than to be with them.

He thought of what Karen had said about her, that she had a bad reputation. How Fiona Pritzle had denigrated her ability as a mother by saying in the newspaper, “…But I just figured that there was no way those kids would have just taken off like that without their mother’s permission and approval.”

Consider the source, Jess thought. He knew nothing about the woman in the seat next to him except that she wanted to be with her kids. The rest didn’t matter.

“You’re familiar to me,” she said, “even though we’ve barely met. I’ve always thought of you as what was old, tough, and good about this valley, before everything changed.”

He looked at her, puzzled, said, “You’ve got the ‘old’ part right, anyway.”

AS HE PULLED in front of his house, he told Monica to wait for a minute in the truck.

She started to protest.

“Look,” he said, “Annie is sitting in there holding a shotgun. I told her not to open the door unless she was sure it was me. If she panics and something goes wrong, I don’t want her to shoot her own mother.”

“Annie has a gun?” Monica said, her jaw dropping.

Jess suddenly smiled.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“I don’t even want to say it,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“When you asked me that I thought of Annie Get Your Gun. I don’t know why I thought that was funny.”

“I don’t think it’s very funny now,” Monica said, but in a self-mocking way he liked.

Jess walked up to his door and knocked hard on it. “Annie and William,” he said, “it’s Jess Rawlins. I’ve got your mom with me.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jess saw the living room curtain pull back and William’s face, cautious at first, break into a grin when he saw his mother in the cab of the pickup.

JESS STAYED out of the middle of the reunion and went into the kitchen to make coffee after he saw Monica sink to her knees, crying, and take both of her children into her arms. He heard William and Annie talking over each other, retelling the story about the murder they had witnessed and Mr. Swann, about the dark man who had come to the house that afternoon. How Jess Rawlins had taken care of them.

Halfway into measuring coffee for the pot, he remembered the shotgun in the living room and went to get it. He tried not to stare at the Taylors, who had now settled on the couch, with William clinging to his mother, his head in her lap, Annie next to her, talking a mile a minute. Boy, that girl could talk. Monica looked different, as if she were glowing from within. William looked more like a little boy, her child, and he didn’t seem to care if Jess saw him hugging his mother like he’d never let go. This scene, this snapshot, Jess thought, made what he had done to Swann worth it.

Jess put the shotgun next to the Winchester on the kitchen table, wondering if Monica took her coffee with cream or sugar, lamenting that even if she did, there hadn’t been any cream in the house in four years.

As their talking subsided in the living room, he noticed the silence from the roof. The rain had stopped. He parted the curtain over the sink and looked out. There were pools of rainwater in the ranch yard reflecting stars as the sky cleared. Beyond the ranch yard was the muddy ribbon of road that led into the wooded hills and the locked gate. He recalled Gonzalez standing on the porch, and Swann bloodied and stunned behind the couch in Monica Taylor’s house. And there were two others involved in the shooting Annie and William had witnessed, making four in all.

That chain and lock on the front gate would mean nothing to four armed ex-cops who had already murdered and had conspired to manipulate every event since the children had seen the execution. These were men who had not only infiltrated but literally taken over local law enforcement.

Then he felt a presence next to him, his waist being squeezed, and he looked down and saw Annie, her wide-open face turned up to him.

He couldn’t speak, so he didn’t. Instead, he reached down and mussed her hair gently, then cupped her chin in his palm.

“I’m so glad she’s here,” Annie said. “Thank you for bringing her. I’m so happy it’s all over.”

Jess, feeling his lips purse, his own eyes sting from holding back tears, thought, It’s not over, Annie. Not even close.

Sunday, 9:36 P.M.

THE SMELL inside the car was of bourbon, rain, and burning dust from the heater/defroster that hadn’t been used in a while. Villatoro tried to adjust the level of the fan to keep the glass from fogging up inside. Newkirk, damp, drunk, and agitated, had fogged the glass.

After leaving Rodale’s driveway, Newkirk said, “Go that way,” pointing to Villatoro’s left with the mouth of the open pint of Wild Turkey he’d produced from his jacket. Villatoro turned the wheel, heard the hiss of water spraying from beneath his tires on the undercarriage of the little car. He wasn’t sure what road they were on, or which direction they were going. Everything looked the same to him; dark wet trees bordering the road like walls, wet asphalt, no lights. It wasn’t until Villatoro recognized the same sharp corner and turnout for the second time that he realized they’d been going in circles for over two hours. It alarmed him, and he said, “Where exactly are we headed?”

“Want some?” Newkirk asked, handing over the bottle.

“No thank you.”

“Better take some. You’ll need it.”

“You’ve kept me driving for half the night.”

“I’m thinking.”

Because the retired detective wanted Newkirk to talk, he took the bottle and sipped from it. The bourbon was sweet and fiery at the same time. It burned his lips, which were chapped from the altitude, the intense sun, and the thin air.

“Pull over here,” Newkirk said.

“Here? Why?”

“Just do it and get out.”

Villatoro did as he was told. Newkirk got out of the car at the same time. Both men left their doors open. What? Villatoro wondered. Does he want to drive?

“Put your hands on the hood, feet back and spread ’em,” Newkirk said. “You know the drill.”

“This isn’t necessary…”

“Do it,” Newkirk said. “What I’m going to tell you is for your ears only. I’ve got to make sure you’re unarmed, and that you’re not wearing a wire.”

“I’m retired.”

“So you say.”

Villatoro complied, placing his palms on wet sheet metal. Newkirk stepped behind him, expertly frisked him from his collar and shoulders to his shoes. Villatoro felt Newkirk roll his socks down.

“What are you doing down there?”

“Making sure you don’t have a throw-down,” Newkirk said, standing up, satisfied that he was clean.

A throw-down? Villatoro thought. The fact that Newkirk had even thought of that said a lot about where Newkirk was coming from. Villatoro had never considered carrying an illegal weapon in all of his years in the department. There had been no need. Obviously, Newkirk came from a different world, where throw-downs were common.

“Sorry,” Newkirk said, “I needed to be sure.”

Villatoro climbed back in the car and glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard. He thought of the desk clerk at the motel. She was waiting for him, and he felt bad about that.

Newkirk raised the bottle and drank from it. “Harsh shit, man,” he said, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

Villatoro said, “So, you want to talk?”

He could feel Newkirk looking at him, staring at the side of his head.

“No. I just didn’t want to drink alone. Don’t be a dumb fuck.”

Villatoro clamped his jaws. Just let the man talk. Don’t screw it up by prompting him.

Moments passed as they drove. Newkirk drank again, then settled back into his seat. Villatoro kept his eyes on the road.

“I wanted to be the best cop on the force,” Newkirk said. “I didn’t have notions like I was gonna change the world or anything, but I wanted to do my job the best I could, and take care of my family. But mainly I wanted to be a great cop. I wanted to look in the mirror every night when I got home and say, ‘Man, you are a good fucking policeman.’ ”

Villatoro nodded as he scaled back the fan of the defroster.

“I was like everybody, I tried too hard at first. When I saw a crack baby or human beings who treated other human beings like pieces of shit, I let it get to me. I thought I could reason with those people, show ’em somebody cared. But you know what I learned? I learned that the best thing you could do, overall, was arrest as many of ’em as you could and follow through, make sure they went to prison. I learned that maybe, maybe, ten percent of ’em might go straight, and ten percent was all I could hope for. I didn’t even care what ten percent it was, or if it was five percent, as long as I was doing my job. Just fill the prisons, keep those scumbags away from the good people, that’s what I wanted to do. And I did a damned good job of it, even though it was a war zone out on the streets. You have no idea what it was like.”

“No, I don’t.”

“But you can’t talk about this stuff with anybody except other cops,” Newkirk said, talking over Villatoro. “You can’t come home for dinner, and say, ‘Gee, Maggie dear, how was your day? Did you go shopping? How was first grade, Josh? Dad had an interesting day today. I found the corpse of an eleven-month-old baby in a Dumpster with cigarette burns all over her body.’ ”

Villatoro shot him a look. Newkirk’s eyes reflected green from the dashboard lights. He was staring straight ahead, talking as much to himself as to Villatoro.

“You know what it’s like trying to raise a family with kids on a cop’s salary. The wife had to work, and my kids were babies. Day care, the whole stupid thing. Day-care workers who were not much better than the assholes I was arresting out on the streets. In fact, some of them I saw on the street. I started thinking I needed to get my little boys and my daughter away from a place like that. So I started applying for jobs in places I thought I’d like to live-you know, Montana, Wyoming, places with space. But the cop jobs out here paid less than what I was making. I started thinking I’d never get out of there, you know? That I’d turn into one of those lifers, one of those guys who can tell you how much pension they’ve got built up to the penny if you wake ’em up in the middle of the night.”

Villatoro didn’t say, You knew what the job paid when you applied for it. He wanted Newkirk to keep talking.

“So that’s when I discovered the world of off-duty security work.” Newkirk smiled. “I found out I could just about double my income if I was willing to wear the uniform and be a rent-a-cop. It was a lot of extra hours, but damn, we started to swim out from under it. The debts, I mean. See, my wife likes to live beyond our means, and I can’t say no when it comes to the kids. So I worked security a lot.”

“At Santa Anita,” Villatoro said.

“Among other places. But yeah, Santa Anita was the most steady. In the counting room, but you knew that.” The way he said it made the hairs stand up on Villatoro’s neck. He began to believe that Newkirk thought he knew more than he did. In order not to dispel the notion, Villatoro told himself to keep his comments to a minimum.

Newkirk took a long swallow, then rubbed his eyes. “At that point, I was still damned proud to be a cop. I was proud of the LAPD. Despite what you see here in front of you,” he said, gesturing to himself, “I still think they’re one of the best departments in the country. There are thousands of dedicated men and women, risking their lives every day they go out. They’re good people, man. They’re tough and honest, with a couple of exceptions. Too bad everybody points out the few bad ones and makes us all out to be fucking criminals. They say it’s better now, too. That the new chief is cleaning things up. That’d be good if it’s true. But the city’s still a fucking cesspool, and the department needs twice as many cops. Hell, we need three times as many cops. But the taxpayers don’t want to pay the bill for them.”

Villatoro waited a moment, then said, “Santa Anita.”

“Is that all you care about?” Newkirk sneered.

“No, it’s not all,” Villatoro said, trying to sound conversational. “But I’ve spent the last eight years trying to figure out what happened there.”

Newkirk laughed. “Me too.”

Villatoro started to think they were getting nowhere, when Newkirk sighed and said, “It was a pretty good gig, basically just standing around, like so much copwork. We didn’t even open the doors until the security truck got there. Then we just stepped aside and guarded the perimeter while they loaded the trucks. We stuck around until all of the paying customers cleared out, then went home. A good gig, me and Rodale. We worked it all the time together. They liked us, we liked them.

“Gonzalez was our sergeant,” Newkirk said. “Everybody respected and feared the guy. He used to give us a lot of shit about working security at Santa Anita, saying we must have a couple of dollies out there to want to work it so much.”

Villatoro made the connection without saying anything. Gonzalez was one of the names on the list, one of the officers of the 501(c)3, one of the volunteers helping the county sheriff.

“Gonzo was great because he didn’t give a shit about anything. He always did what was righteous, whether it was PC or not. I could tell you stories about Gonzo that would curl your hair if you had any. You ever hear of a ‘guilty smile’?”

Villatoro said, “No.”

“Remind me to tell you about it later. Let’s just say when he took some scumbag into the Justice Ranch, the scumbag deserved whatever he got, okay?”

Villatoro had read something about an investigation into a place called the Justice House, but had never heard the results of the inquiry.

“Singer was our commanding officer, over Gonzo,” Newkirk said. “Singer was the toughest motherfucker in the department, even though he never shouts, never yells. He defended his officers to the death, though. He’d go to the mat for them, and he was so cool under pressure that the brass would always come get him whenever the situation was too hot to handle. There wasn’t a guy in our division who wouldn’t take a bullet for Lieutenant Singer or Gonzo. They were, like, mythical.

“So when Gonzo invited me and Rodale for beers at a cop bar one night, after we’d been working security at Santa Anita for a year or so, we thought that was pretty cool, so we went. Swann was there, too-it was the first time we met him. After a few cocktails, Gonzo started asking us how we would rob the place if we were bad guys-you know, what the best scenario would be to take the place down.”

Villatoro found himself looking over.

Newkirk curled his lip. “It’s not like that, man. It was just a conversation. You know how cops do it all the time, try to figure out how bad guys would do a job, so they can prevent it, you know? Sometimes you’ve got to think like a criminal to stop a criminal. Besides, it wasn’t like it was real money out there, like people needed it to feed their families. It was gambling losses. The idiots had already lost it, so it couldn’t have been all that important to them. Gambling money, you know, like all of that cash the state collects from lotteries and shit like that.”

“But it belonged to someone,” Villatoro heard himself say. “It belonged to the owners of the track.”

Newkirk laughed. “Like they didn’t have insurance? You expect me to give a shit about an insurance company? Everybody hates those guys. Turn here.”

“Where are we going?” Villatoro asked, taking another dark two-lane highway.

“Just driving. I told you that.”

Villatoro tried not to sigh, tried not to show that he was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.

Newkirk drank. Then: “Nobody was supposed to get hurt. Shit. That wasn’t the plan.”

At last, Villatoro thought. Newkirk had admitted being involved. This is what he had worked years to hear.

“Me and Rodale figured out the part about putting the gas canisters in the money bags. That way, they could be set off by remote control when the truck stopped at the intersection.

“To start out, we had this big idea that Gonzo and Singer would bust into the counting room wearing masks and make everybody get on the floor. Shit, we had even worked out a deal where Gonzo would pistol-whip Rodale or me to make it look real. But the chances of them driving off after doing that and not being seen by someone or getting caught weren’t good. So Swann thought of the idea of waiting until the security truck was off the park, robbing it there away from everything. It was the best idea, and we went with it.”

“So it was Singer’s idea in the first place?” Villatoro asked.

“Shit, I don’t know whether it was Singer or Gonzo. It didn’t matter. But Singer was in charge, thank God. He wasn’t the kind of guy to rush into anything, either. We talked about the robbery and planned it for a year and a half. We had meetings where we went over everything and tried to shoot parts down. We did a couple of run-throughs at night so we could walk the route and time everything. Once we decided on the perfect plan, it was still another four or five months before we decided to do it. Singer didn’t even want to try it until he could figure out how to launder the money. I hadn’t even thought about it, but Singer was so fucking smart. He said the only thing worse than robbing a place these days was figuring out what to do with all of the cash, because nobody uses cash anymore. That’s when he came up with the idea to create a foundation and to make all of us officers in it. We’d hide the cash and dribble it into legit accounts, not deposit it all at once. Pay ourselves in officer’s salaries and big bonuses. It was fucking brilliant.”

Villatoro wished he was wearing a wire. But if nothing else, even if he never gained Newkirk’s trust, even if the ex-cop later denied everything, Villatoro would know how the robbery happened, who had been involved, where the money was.

“Also,” Newkirk said, tapping the dashboard with the mouth of the bottle, “we had to wait until all of the stars lined up perfectly. A big cash day at the track, me and Rodale on security, Singer and Gonzo off duty so they could trigger the gas and rush the truck, Swann on patrol so he could escort the getaway vehicle to the auto salvage yard, where it was crushed. Remember, no one ever found a car?”

“I remember.”

Newkirk chuckled. “Swann drove Singer and Gonzo and $13.5 million in cash back to L.A. in a police van we took the seats out of and dropped them off at their houses. Imagine that.”

Villatoro whistled. “But a security guard got killed.”

Newkirk seemed to darken. “Yeah, that still pisses me off. Some yahoo tried to be a cowboy. Gonzo had to take him out.”

“His name was Steve Nichols,” Villatoro said. “He had a wife and two children.”

Newkirk didn’t respond at first, just stared out the windshield. “That wasn’t supposed to happen,” he said.

The ex-cop remained silent while Villatoro drove. Finally, Villatoro said, “What about the guy, the employee, who fingered the other employees in the counting room? Why did he do that if he wasn’t involved?”

Newkirk shrugged. He seemed to be losing enthusiasm for telling the rest of the story. “Singer’s boy,” he said. “The lieutenant had something really incriminating on the guy-totally unrelated to the track. Pictures of him dealing drugs, or with boy prostitutes or something. I never did know what it was exactly, but it was bad enough that the guy did what Singer told him.”

“But the employee died before he had a chance to testify in court,” Villatoro said.

“Yeah, wasn’t that convenient?” Newkirk said darkly. “He gets caught in a cross fire while he’s buying a pack of cigarettes at a 7-Eleven. The clerk gets popped, the witness gets popped, and the robber empties the cash drawer and escapes scot-free. All they can see on the security tape is a big masked guy in black walking in and blasting away.”

Villatoro let it sink in. “Gonzalez?” he asked.

Newkirk nodded slightly. “And Swann was the investigating officer.”

Jesus, Villatoro thought. It’s worse than I imagined.

“Creating the charity was a master stroke, I agree,” Villatoro said. “Making small deposits in a bank in northern Idaho never attracted any attention at all for years. The only problem was tracing a few of the hundred-dollar bills back to here. You must not have realized that some of them could be traced to the robbery.”

Newkirk turned, his face screwed up in contempt. “Of course we knew about the serial numbers on some of the hundreds. Me and Rodale were in the counting room, remember? We knew about that. Do you think we’re stupid?”

“No,” Villatoro said, feeling outright fear rise up in his chest. He tried not to show it.

“That’s where Tony Rodale screwed the pooch,” Newkirk said, his voice rising, his eyes flashing with either anger or tears, Villatoro couldn’t tell which. “He was the treasurer. He made the deposits. Singer had it all worked out. On a schedule, Tony made a cash deposit supposedly collected from random cops in L.A. and other places. But we knew about the hundreds, how a few of ’em were marked. So Tony’s job was to get in his car and drive all around the country to break the hundred-dollar bills in restaurants, or gas stations, or bars, or wherever. He told his wife he was going fishing, but his job was to cash the hundreds and deposit the change later. That’s all he fucking had to do.”

Now, Villatoro started to understand. He thought of the mounted steelhead on Rodale’s wall, thought of the years Rodale had deceived his wife about his absences. Thought of the places of origin from some of the marked bills that had been identified, California, Nevada, Nebraska. All within a day or two driving distance of Kootenai Bay, but far enough from each other that no pattern could be established.

“But the asshole got greedy,” Newkirk said. “Singer noticed that some of the deposits were off, and figured Tony was skimming, which he was. The idiot was using some of the hundreds to bet on football, of all things, with some lowlife bookie in Coeur d’Alene. Tony wouldn’t admit it, of course, but Singer found the bookie and shook him down and proved it to us.”

Newkirk leaned across the car so his face was inches from Villatoro. When he talked, Villatoro could smell his sour whiskey breath.

“Tony risked everything. Not just for himself, but for all of us by paying his debts to a bookie in stolen hundred-dollar bills. Our money. When Singer found out he was afraid it would be a matter of time before someone like you came up here, tracing those bills back.”

“And here I am,” Villatoro said, not sure why he’d spoken.

“Here you fucking are,” Newkirk said, as if in pain.

“But where is Tony Rodale?”

Newkirk started to speak, then looked away. Beads of sweat sparkled on his forehead. The anguished look on his face was lit by dash lights.

“That’s what I’m going to show you,” Newkirk said.

“Oh no,” Villatoro whispered. “You killed him.”

“Not just me. All of us. The agreement was we all put a couple into him, so we were all equally responsible. All of us except for Swann, who was late.”

Another murder, Villatoro thought. It was too overwhelming to process. Steve Nichols, the inside witness, the convenience store clerk. Now, one of their own.

“It might have worked, too,” Newkirk was saying, “except that those two fucking kids saw us take Tony out. Hey, keep driving.”

Villatoro hadn’t realized he had slowed the car to a crawl. Things were connecting in a way he had not anticipated. He felt as if all of the blood had drained from his hands and face.

“The Taylor children,” Villatoro said. “Oh, my God.”

“Everything keeps getting worse,” Newkirk said, and this time there were real tears streaking down his face. “One crime, one perfectly planned crime. We were set for life. Then Tony fucked up, and those kids saw us, then the UPS guy. I feel like I’m already in hell.” His voice cracked. “In fact, I think hell would feel nice and cool to me right now.”

Villatoro sped up but realized his hands were shaking. He had trouble staying in his lane. What did Newkirk’s reference to a UPS man mean?

“This is so much bigger than I had imagined,” he said.

Newkirk’s reaction surprised him. The ex-cop laughed bitterly, then wiped tears from his face with his sleeve before reaching behind him to withdraw his black semiautomatic. He aimed it at Villatoro, shoving the muzzle into his neck.

“It’s about to get bigger,” Newkirk said softly, his voice sincere. “I’m sorry I’ve got to do this, man. Especially since you were a cop yourself.” It was as if Newkirk could not force himself to stop what he was doing, what was in motion, even though perhaps he wanted to.

“Slow down and turn here,” Newkirk said, nodding toward a wet black mailbox on the side of the pavement marking a dirt road.

“What are you doing?” Villatoro asked, his voice stronger than he thought it would be.

“Turn here,” Newkirk said, with more force.

“Someone is coming,” Villatoro said, nodding toward a pair of headlights approaching a quarter mile away on the highway.

“Shit, I wonder who that is.”

“They’ll see us,” Villatoro said. “They’ll see the gun.”

Newkirk lowered the weapon but jammed it into Villatoro’s jacket beneath his armpit. He hissed, “I said turn, goddammit.”

The road he wanted them to take was a two-lane dirt road pooled with rainwater that inclined up the hill into the trees.

“I don’t think this little car will make it,” Villatoro said. “We don’t have any clearance, and the road goes up the hill.”

“Take it fast,” Newkirk said, clearly worried. “Don’t slow down.”

“Go!” Newkirk yelled, jamming the gun hard into Villatoro’s ribs. “Go, now!”

As Villatoro floored it and drove up the hill, the rear tires fishtailing in mud, he recalled the name on the mailbox near the road, the name of the owner of the house they would soon be approaching: SWANN.

With a strange kind of calm, perhaps the calm of shock, Villatoro thought, I’m going to die.

Sunday, 10:01 P.M.

JESS WAS picking up the telephone to try to reach Buddy again when he saw the lights of a car blinking through trees on his access road. He hung up the receiver and walked across the kitchen for his rifle, glancing into the living room, where Monica, Annie, and William were huddled up on the couch, talking softly.

He leaned into the room. “Turn off the lights and don’t open the door unless it’s me,” he said calmly. “Someone is coming down the hill.” He reprimanded himself for not taking a chain up to the gate and locking it closed.

Monica turned her face to him. It drained of color.

“There’s only one car,” Jess said. “Please, now. Turn off the lights.”

Annie disentangled from her mother and bounded across the room to flip the light switch. On the way back, she turned off the table lamp.

“It may not be anything,” Jess said, trying to reassure them.

“Where are you going?” William asked. “Are you coming back?”

“Sure,” Jess said, picking up the Winchester, turning off the lights in the kitchen, and feeling his way through the mudroom to the screen door.

HIS BOOTS crunched in the gravel as he walked across the ranch yard. The pole light in the corrals threw a pool of blue that lengthened and deepened the shadows. Jess didn’t have time to turn it off, judging by how quickly the car was approaching. So he walked away from it, to the side of the barn. From there, in deep shadow, he should be able to see the car and who was in it as well as the front of the house. Noticing that someone had left a light on in the bathroom, he cursed silently.

The car approached quickly, and there was a flash of brake lights before the engine was shut off. Jess timed the sound of working the lever action on the rifle to the car door’s opening. Looking down at his rifle, he saw a wink of brass as the cartridge slid into the chamber. He raised the rifle but didn’t aim.

As the door opened, the interior lights of the car showed one occupant, not three or four. The occupant was Jim Hearne.

Jess frowned in the dark, puzzled.

Hearne stepped out of the vehicle but kept the door open. The banker faced the front of Rawlins’s house, and called, “Jess? Jess Rawlins? Are you in there?”

“Behind you,” Jess said from the shadow.

The sound of his voice made Hearne spin and duck. “You scared me,” said Hearne.

“What do you need?” Jess asked, stepping out from the side of the barn but remaining in the shadows. While he wanted to trust Jim, he didn’t want to expose himself just yet.

“Jess, most of your lights are off, and I didn’t know if you were home. You didn’t answer when I called earlier. You’ve got to hear what’s going on.”

Jess lowered the Winchester and approached Hearne. He saw Hearne’s eyes shift to the rifle.

“Jesus, Jess-were you going to shoot me?”

“Maybe. Let’s go inside.”

“SO ALL of ’em are up there now,” Jess said, shaking his head and sipping from the mug of coffee he had just brewed.

“All except for Newkirk-I didn’t see him. But it was obvious they were waiting for someone.”

“Then what?”

Hearne shrugged. Again, he turned in his chair and looked through the doorway into the living room, where the Taylors were. “I still can’t believe they’re here,” he said softly. “What a relief.”

Jess nodded. He was rehashing what Hearne had told him about the sheriff giving up, about the FBI coming, about Fiona Pritzle and her damned gossip. About the conclave of the ex-cops at Swann’s house.

“Maybe we should gather everyone up,” Hearne said, gesturing toward the Taylors, “and make a run to town.”

“Where would we go?”

Hearne thought for a second. “Maybe if the sheriff saw everyone together…”

Jess shook his head. “What if we can’t find him? What if he calls in Singer? No, I feel safer here until we know what’s going on. All we have to do is hunker down and wait until the morning, from what you’re telling me. We can explain everything to the Feds when they get here.”

Hearne said, “Maybe we could go to my house?”

“Either way, we would need to drive straight down the state highway, right in front of Swann’s place. What if they put up a roadblock? Or have a couple of men in the trees waiting for us?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Hearne said sullenly.

“I know one thing,” Jess said, standing up and tossing the rest of his coffee into the sink. “I don’t like speculation. We’ll just drive ourselves crazy with it.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to see what those boys are up to,” Jess said.

JESS HEARD Hearne come outside behind him. He turned, said, “Keep that shotgun handy while I’m gone.”

“You’re going up there? To Swann’s house? What if they see you coming?”

Jess grinned. “I’m not going to drive.”

It took Hearne a few beats to understand. Then: “I’ll help you saddle up.”

IN THE BARN, Jess shoved his rifle into the saddle scabbard and swung up on Chile. Hearne stepped aside, nearly backing into the pregnant cow in the stall.

“I can get there quicker overland,” Jess said, turning his horse toward the open stall door. “Straight across my meadows and up into the timber on the side of Swann’s place. They’ll be looking for headlights, not a rider.”

“If you aren’t back in an hour,” Hearne said, “I’m going to pile the Taylors into my car and go to town.”

“That sounds like a plan,” Jess said over his shoulder as he walked the red dun out of the barn. “Hand me that length of chain there so I can lock the gate on my way. And in the meanwhile, keep an eye on that cow. She’s ready to pop.”

AFTER LOOPING the chain around the gate and snapping two big locks through the links, Jess turned Chile around and goosed her into the trees until they emerged in a meadow, where he spurred her on. The sound of hoofbeats in the dark lulled and energized Jess at the same time. He asked Chile to settle into a slow lope, trusting his horse to see in the dark better than he could. Nevertheless, he clamped his hat down tight and hunched forward in the saddle in case a tree branch tried to dismount him. The rain had begun to drizzle again.

He rode across the meadow and up into the dripping pine trees. As they climbed, he glanced over his shoulder at his house down in the saddle slope, picturing the Taylors on the couch in the dark and Hearne sitting on the porch with the shotgun across his lap, looking very much not like a banker.

Sunday, 10:32 P.M.

THE LITTLE CAR made it up the hill and the road leveled out. Villatoro could see the lone porch light of a house blinking through the trees. He could no longer feel his fingers, or his feet. A sense of utter calm sedated him.

“Stop here,” Newkirk said.

When he did, Newkirk leaned over him and pulled out the keys. “Get out.”

Villatoro opened the door and unfolded himself. Cold rain stung his face and sizzled through the trees. There was some kind of pen in front of him, and huge, dark forms scuttled behind the slats of a fence. He heard a grunting noise that sounded like a man, then a squeal. Pigs. They were pigs.

A big man, Gonzalez, wearing a raincoat and pointing a pistol at him, stepped out from the shadows near a shed.

Gonzalez said, “Good job, Newkirk.”

“I’ve got a wife and a daughter,” Villatoro said. His voice seemed to be coming from someone else.

Gonzalez stopped and leveled his gun with two hands, the muzzle a few feet from Villatoro’s face.

He heard Newkirk say, “Sorry, man.”

He heard Gonzalez say, “You going to do this or am I?”

He heard Newkirk say, with a choke in his voice, “You do it.”

“You never should have come out here, old man,” Gonzalez said to Villatoro. “You should have stayed in the minor leagues. Shit, you’re retired, right? What’s wrong with you?”

Villatoro looked up and saw a silver ring hanging in the dark inches from his eye. It was the mouth of the muzzle. He wondered if he should strike out, try to hit someone, try to kick someone, try to run. But he had never been a fighter. The two fights he had had as a youth had both ended badly, with him cowering on the ground while being punched and spit upon. He didn’t have the mind of a fighter, preferring reason to force. In thirty years, he’d never been attacked or forced to draw his weapon. Oh, he thought, if I could live my life again I would learn how to fight! He had a strange thought: Do I keep my eyes open or do I close them? Hot tears stung his eyes, and he angrily wiped them away.

“Fuck this,” Gonzalez said, and the ring dropped away. “You need to finish the job you started. That’s what the lieutenant told you, right?”

“I guess,” Newkirk said, sighing.

“Then finish it.”

Villatoro felt his stomach begin to boil sourly and hoped he wouldn’t get sick.

“Take care of this guy,” Gonzalez said, turning toward the house and walking away. “Take care of this fake cop.” Then he laughed softly. Villatoro was humiliated, and angry. But most of all, he was terrified.

Villatoro felt Newkirk’s gun in the small of his back, pushing him forward.

“Walk down to the end of the pen along the rails,” Newkirk said, his voice weak. “And don’t look back at me.”

He’s going to shoot me in the back of the head. That’s better than in the face.

As he stumbled forward, he sensed one of the hogs, the huge one, walking along with him on the other side of the fence. He could hear the pig grunt a little with each breath.

Villatoro’s shoe caught in a root, and he staggered, but Newkirk grabbed the collar of his shirt and held him up. “Watch where you’re going, goddamn you.”

“Sorry.”

“Shut up!”

Newkirk pushed him ahead until they were under a canopy of trees at the corner of the corral. He kept his hand on Villatoro’s collar, guiding him ahead. It was dry there. Villatoro could feel the crunch of pine needles under his soles although the tree dripped all around them.

Any second now. He could barely hear the drip of the trees because of the roar in his ears. And something else…

“Mister, I’m ready to shoot your eye out of the back of your head.” It was not Newkirk who spoke, Villatoro realized. It was a voice from the trees, from the dark. The voice was deep and familiar, but Villatoro couldn’t place it, and for a moment he thought it was his own imagination, his brain trying to give him a second or two of false hope.

But Villatoro felt the gun twitch on the small of his back and heard Newkirk say, “Who is it?”

Another sound, the snort of a horse somewhere in the dark cover of the trees.

“The guy who’s about to blow your head off.”

Villatoro felt Newkirk’s grip harden on his collar, but the gun left his back. There really was someone out there! And the voice, it was that rancher he had talked to at breakfast. Rawlins.

The gun returned, this time pressed to Villatoro’s temple.

“I don’t know who you are,” Newkirk said, his voice rising, “but if you don’t back off, he’s a dead man.”

“He’s a dead man anyway from the look of things,” the rancher said. “So fire away. Then there’ll be two dead. Simple as that.”

Villatoro tried to look in the direction from which he thought the voice was coming, but the gun against his head prevented movement. At any moment he expected to feel and hear an explosion, experience a flash of orange lights and his body dropping away. But Newkirk did nothing.

“Who are you?” Newkirk asked, his voice weak.

“Tell you what,” Rawlins said. “No harm, no foul. Let the guy go and step back, and I’ll let you walk away.”

Villatoro could almost feel Newkirk thinking about it, weighing the odds. Villatoro wanted to speak, but couldn’t find his voice anywhere.

“I can’t just go back,” Newkirk said, sounding like a little boy.

“Let him go, and I’ll let you fire your gun in the dirt,” Rawlins said.

“They’ll think you did your job, and I’ll never tell. Neither will Mr. Villatoro.”

He pronounced my name correctly, Villatoro thought.

“It will never work,” Newkirk said.

“I don’t think there’s a choice in the matter.”

“They’ll find out.”

“Too bad for you if they do.”

“But…”

Villatoro felt the grip on his collar loosen, felt the absence of the gun on the side of his head although the place where it had been pressed seemed to burn on his skin. Then he was free. He chanced a step forward, and nothing happened.

“Keep walking, Eduardo,” Rawlins said. “Don’t stop, don’t turn around.”

Villatoro did as he was told. He emerged from the canopy, felt cold raindrops on the top of his head. Nothing had ever felt better. He kept walking. From the dark, a hand gripped his forearm and pulled him into the warm flank of a damp horse.

“Go ahead and shoot,” Rawlins said to Newkirk, “but don’t even think about raising the weapon again.”

The explosion was sharp but muffled, and Villatoro felt his knees tremble at the sound of it. But there were no more shots.

“Go back to the house now,” Rawlins said to Newkirk.

Finally, Villatoro turned to see a glimpse of Newkirk’s back as he walked away into the foliage. The big pig shadowed him along the rail, grunting for food, agitated.

“Climb up,” the rancher said in a whisper, offering his hand.

“I never rode a horse,” Villatoro said.

“You won’t be riding. You’ll be hanging on to me.”

Sunday, 10:55 P.M.

IT STOPPED raining,” Newkirk said to Gonzalez.

“No shit,” Gonzalez replied.

They were on the deck of Swann’s house, sitting on metal lawn furniture under the eave. Newkirk was still shaking, but he watched the red end of Gonzo’s cigar, watched it brighten as the ex-sergeant sucked on it, the glow bright enough to light up his eyes.

Lieutenant Singer and Swann were inside, Swann talking. Newkirk could hear the pigs grunting and squealing, hungry. Those damn pigs were going to give him away. If Gonzo walked down there and couldn’t find the body…

“That guy from Arcadia must taste good,” Gonzo said, and Newkirk felt a wave of relief since Gonzalez had mistaken the sound. “Did he give you any trouble?”

“No.”

“I’ll never understand that, especially from an ex-cop. Me, I’d fight until my last breath. I’d be like that knight in Monty Python, you know? Cut off my arm, and I’d keep coming; cut off my leg, I wouldn’t give a fuck. I wouldn’t let somebody just take me out and shoot me in the head.”

Newkirk grunted.

“One shot to the brain, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I just heard one shot. But it was raining.”

Newkirk was drunk but not drunk enough. Violent shivers coursed through him, making his pectorals twitch. He tried not to think about Villatoro and what had happened. He wanted to be able to do what he used to do on the force in a bad situation. Like the time he was first on the scene to a gangland slaying, four bodies tied up with electrical cords, multiple shotgun wounds to their heads. He’d been able to think of himself in the third person then. It wasn’t him who walked through the warehouse, through the blood, it was someone else who knew to call for backup in a calm voice. Just like it wasn’t him that evening who gained Villatoro’s confidence, or told him everything for the sole purpose of getting the man to Swann’s place. It was someone else playing him, acting out a role, reading the script he’d been handed. Not him. He wasn’t evil. He had a wife and kids, and he coached soccer. He had even come to like that small-town detective a little. And to turn Villatoro over to the guy in the dark without a fight, then to keep silent about it? Well, that wasn’t him, either. What he couldn’t decide was whether his action was based in virtue or cowardice or something else. Maybe depression. But enough of that kind of thinking.

“What’s Singer planning in there?” Newkirk asked, taking a long pull from the bottle he’d brought with him.

“He’s figuring things out,” Gonzalez said, irritated. “He’s the planner. You know that. You asked me the same question five minutes ago. You’re starting to make me nervous, Newkirk. Just shut up if you don’t have anything to say.”

Newkirk was glad Gonzalez couldn’t see him in the dark, couldn’t see the mixture of hate and self-revulsion he was sure was on his face.

“You better cool it with the boozing, too,” his old boss said, his voice dropping with concern. “We might have to go into action tonight again. You need to be sharp.”

“I thought I’d just let you do the killing,” Newkirk said, surprised that he verbalized it. Sure, he was thinking that, but he didn’t mean to actually say it.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Gonzalez said, instantly hostile.

“Nothing.”

Gonzalez turned in his chair, put his huge forearms on the table between them. “You think I like it? Is that what you think?”

Newkirk wanted to take back his words, but he couldn’t. “No, I don’t think that. Forget I said anything.”

“But you said it, asshole,” Gonzalez said, his voice rising. “So you meant it. That’s what you think, that I like shooting guys in the head. You think I like that, don’t you?”

Newkirk shook his head hard, tried to get his wits back. There was too much alcohol in him. “No, really, I…”

Gonzalez was across the table and his hand shot out. Before Newkirk could pull back, a thumb jammed into his mouth between his teeth and cheek, and he felt Gonzalez clamp down with his fingers and twist as if he were trying to tear his face off. Newkirk groaned and gagged, turned his head in the direction of the twist, his head driven down into the tabletop.

Gonzalez was now standing over him, bending down, his mouth inches from Newkirk’s ear. The thumb was still in his mouth; the pressure and pain were excruciating.

“Don’t you dare get sanctimonious on me, Newkirk,” Gonzalez hissed. “Don’t you fucking dare. You’re in this as deep as I am, as deep as all of us. None of us like what’s happened. I had nothing against that guy…except the fact that he wanted to put me into prison. He wanted to take my new life away from me. I like my life, Newkirk. I’ll do anything to keep it. And if that means shooting a sanctimonious prick like you in the head, I’ll do that, too.”

Newkirk blinked away tears and tried not to make a sound. The thumb in his mouth tasted of metal and tobacco. He wanted to be still, let the moment pass, give Gonzalez a moment to cool down.

“I’m sorry,” Newkirk said after a beat. Or tried to say. But it sounded like a croaked moan with the thumb in his mouth.

Gonzalez relieved the pressure, and Newkirk sat back up.

“I said I’m sorry,” Newkirk said. “I mean it. It was the bourbon talking.”

“Yeah,” Gonzalez said, drying his wet hand on his pants, his anger receding. “But the bourbon used your mouth.”

They heard a chair being pushed back from the table inside. “Somebody’s coming,” Newkirk said.

“It better be Singer,” Gonzalez said, standing.

Singer stepped out onto the porch. “Did you solve our problem?” he asked Newkirk, all business.

“Solved,” Gonzalez said. “The pigs are happy.”

Singer’s face went dead as he listened. “You cut him up?”

Newkirk choked as he spoke. “Nah.”

“I told you to cut him up.”

“When I shot him, he fell back into the pen,” Newkirk lied. “The pigs were all over him. I didn’t want to go in there with him.”

Singer looked away, obviously angry. “What did you do with his car?”

Gonzalez said, “It’s in the garage for now, right next to the UPS truck. We can take it to the chop shop in Spokane later.”

“Was he any trouble?” Singer asked Newkirk.

“Nah, he drove right up here.”

“Anyone see you?”

“No,” Newkirk said. No need to complicate things further.

Singer narrowed his eyes at Newkirk. “What happened to your face?”

Newkirk reached up and rubbed his jaw. He could either tell Singer what had happened or pull his weapon and shoot Gonzalez right now in a preemptive strike. Or he could do neither, which is what he chose.

Gonzalez stepped back and threw an arm around Newkirk, crushing him into his hard barrel chest. “Emotions were running a little high, Lieutenant. We had a little scrap, but everything’s cool now, isn’t it, Newkirk?”

Newkirk nodded, lowered his eyes away from Singer’s fixed stare, and said, “Yup. We’re cool.”

Singer moved his eyes from Newkirk to Gonzalez, back to Newkirk. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

“Okay, let’s meet,” Singer said, turning on his heel and going inside.

THE LIEUTENANT strode behind the kitchen table and turned toward them as they entered. Swann looked bad. Singer said, “He’s got a broken nose and cheekbone and a busted jaw. Somebody worked him over and took Monica Taylor.”

“Shit!” Gonzalez said, hard and fast.

Newkirk thought he knew who had done it.

“The sheriff’s in a panic,” Singer continued, his voice so calm it reminded Newkirk of the rhythm of a bedtime story. “He’s contacted the state DCI and the Feds. I tried to talk him out of it, but I was unsuccessful. The sheriff thinks he’s got a double kidnapping on his hands. The Feds will be here first thing tomorrow in a chopper.”

Newkirk tried to concentrate on what Singer was saying, tried to put it into context and think ahead.

“Who did it?” Gonzalez asked Swann.

Swann’s face was half-again its normal size. He had trouble talking but said, “Tall thin old guy, maybe sixty, sixty-five, wearing a cowboy hat. He had a lever-action rifle with him, that’s what he used on me.”

Newkirk thought, Yes, sounds like him.

“Why’d he take the woman?” Newkirk asked instead, which resulted in a laser-beam stare from Singer.

“I don’t know why he took the woman,” Singer said. “But I’ve got a pretty good guess. Have you been drinking, Newkirk?”

Newkirk felt his face get hot. “Some,” he said.

“Are you okay to work?”

“Yes,” Newkirk said, his voice thick.

“He’ll be fine,” Gonzalez said, trying to smooth things over between them in his brutish way. “He can follow orders and pop a cap in some old cowboy’s ass, if that’s what we need him to do.”

Again, Singer looked from Gonzalez to Newkirk. Analyzing them, dissecting them. Coming to some kind of conclusion that was inscrutable.

“You remember Fiona Pritzle?” Singer asked. Before they could answer, he continued. “She’s the one who gave the Taylor kids a ride to go fishing. She’s a gossip, a local busybody, but she showed up at the sheriff’s house earlier tonight with an interesting story. She said she saw a local rancher in the grocery store buying food that only kids eat, but the guy doesn’t have any kids. She says he lives up the valley, about eight miles from the Sand Creek campground. The sheriff knows the citizen, named Rawlins. Jess Rawlins, our cowboy. Anyway, Pritzle thinks Rawlins may have the kids. She thinks he’s an old pervert. The sheriff wasn’t buying it at the time. I’m sure he’ll tell the Feds about him, though.”

“Rawlins,” Gonzalez said, turning the name over in his mouth. “I ran into that old fucker today. He threw me off his ranch, said I couldn’t search it without a warrant. I wouldn’t mind seeing him again. We have issues.”

Newkirk kept quiet.

Singer was motionless for a moment, looking at something beyond Newkirk but not really looking at anything at all. Thinking, building a plan.

“He’s got them,” Singer said. “He’s got the kids, and he’s got Monica Taylor.”

He paused to let the fact sink in. “Obviously,” Singer said, in a tone as reasonable as it was icy, “we’ve got to get him before the Feds and the state cops come in. We’ve got to force a confrontation. What happens is the rancher gets killed, and the Taylors go down in the cross fire. The dead rancher later gets pinned with the whole thing: kidnapping, sex crimes, murder. We don’t hit the kids ourselves, we use the rancher’s gun to shoot them.”

“Jesus,” Gonzalez whispered.

Newkirk couldn’t say anything if he wanted to. He was too busy trying to stop the surge of sour whiskey from coming back up.

“What do we do when we’ve got a hostage situation?” Singer asked. Silence.

Then Singer slammed his palm down on the kitchen table so hard that glassware tinkled in the cupboards. “Gentlemen,” Singer said, his voice sharp and straight like a razor’s edge, “what do we do when we’ve got a hostage situation?”

Newkirk gagged, then stumbled to the kitchen sink and threw up. He felt their eyes on his back but didn’t turn around until he had gulped down two glasses of water. Finally, he said over his shoulder, “Cut off power and electricity. Try to force them out into the open.”

“Right,” Singer said, satisfied.

Newkirk turned around, leaned against the counter, wiped his mouth and eyes with his sleeve.

Singer leaned toward Gonzalez: “Do you recall when you were there earlier where the power lines are that lead to the ranch?”

“Yeah. They’re along the highway.”

“First things first, then,” Singer said. “Gonzo, go out into the garage with Swann and you two grab his toolbox, then get over to that rancher’s gate, fast. Use your vehicle to block the exit so they can’t get out and can’t get around you through the trees. Figure out where phone lines are-I’m sure they’re on the highway right-of-way with the power. Go now.”

“I’m out of here,” Gonzalez said, scrambling. Swann stumbled along behind him.

“We’ll meet you there,” Singer said, turning to Newkirk. “I want you to follow me in the UPS truck.”

Newkirk shook his head, puzzled. “Why?”

“We want it close,” Singer said. “Close enough to the ranch to take it down there when everything’s over. It’ll help us build the legacy of Jess Rawlins.”

Sunday, 11:17 P.M.

I THOUGHT for a minute you were going to let Newkirk shoot me,” Villatoro said.

“Nope,” Jess said. “It was a bluff.”

“It was a good bluff,” Villatoro said emphatically. “I believed you.”

“Mr. Villatoro, you’ll need to keep your voice down a little,” Jess said softly over his shoulder as he rode. “Sound carries out here. We don’t want them to hear us.”

“I’m sorry,” Villatoro whispered. “My nerves are jangling.”

“Mine, too.”

They were deep in the timber, the mare picking her way over downed logs and between crowded stands of dripping trees. More than once, Jess had to duck and caution Villatoro to do the same as they passed under overhanging branches. They were on his ranch now, he could feel the comfort of it. His passenger clutched him so tightly around his ribs that at times he had trouble breathing and had to ask Villatoro to ease up. The Winchester lay across the pommel of the saddle. Although the moon was still behind clouds, the sky was clearing, and muted shafts of moonlight shone through the branches and blued the barrel of the rifle.

Villatoro whispered, “Will your horse carry both of us all the way back?”

“Hope so.”

“I still can’t believe I’m on a horse.”

“Kind of uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

“I hope I don’t fall off.”

“Me too.”

Villatoro sighed, as if everything that had happened was settling in, exhausting him suddenly. “Jesus,” he moaned. “What a night. All those years in the department, and nothing ever happened like that. I feel foolish for not fighting back, but what could I have done?”

“Not much,” Jess said over his shoulder. “I’ve been thinking. Hearne’s right. As soon as we get back let’s pack everybody into his car and my truck and get the hell to Kootenai Bay. We’ll get through this. We’ll go straight to the sheriff and the media and try to make our case. I’d rather those kids were there than here tonight.”

Villatoro took a cautious breath before asking, “What kids?”

Jess explained.

All Villatoro could say was, “My God.”

JESS COULD feel Chile getting tired, slowing down, stumbling where earlier she was surefooted. But she didn’t protest with a crow-hop, or try to shrug them off. She’s a gamer, he thought. He admired her character.

“Let’s dismount and lead her for a while so she can catch her breath,” Jess said, pulling her to a stop.

“I’d guess the both of us are pretty heavy.”

Jess agreed and nodded in the dark and felt Villatoro slide clumsily off Chile’s back. When he was clear, Jess swung out of the saddle and shoved his hand between the horse’s flank and the saddle blanket, where it was hot and moist with sweat.

“Soon as she cools down, we can ride her in,” Jess said in a low whisper, leading her by the reins. Villatoro walked alongside with a hand on the saddle because Chile and Jess knew where they were headed, and he didn’t.

Above them, in the trees, was a sweep of light.

“What was that?” Villatoro asked.

Jess put a gloved finger against his lips and shushed him. “Headlights,” Jess whispered.

They stopped and listened. Far above them and to the east, Jess could hear a motor and the crunching of gravel under tires. There was the squeak of brakes being applied, a surge of the engine, then another squeak before the motor was killed.

“They blocked the gate,” Jess said.

In a swath of moonlight, he could see Villatoro bury his face in his hands in despair.

Sunday, 11:59 P.M.

VILLATORO AND HEARNE sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee. The shotgun was on the table as well, along with a box of shells. In hushed tones, Villatoro was telling Hearne about the encounter in the trees at Swann’s place, and Hearne kept shooting glances at Jess while he did it. Jess sipped his coffee with his back to the kitchen counter and half listened.

Annie and William were asleep on the couch in the living room under the same blanket. Monica rifled through Jess’s refrigerator and cupboards looking for ingredients so she could make lasagna, but she couldn’t find noodles or cheese and gave up. She said she wanted to cook something because she was too nervous to sleep.

“So it’s all coming together,” Hearne said, sitting back as if he were in a loan officers’ meeting. “They robbed Santa Anita, all five of them, and moved up here. Then Rodale screwed up, and they executed him for it, but Annie and William happened to be witnesses. That set everything in motion.”

Monica had settled on baking a cake, and Jess watched her as she looked again and again at the directions on the back of the cake mix box. He could tell she was distracted, that she was doing something just to be doing it. Who would want to eat cake?

Villatoro turned to Jess. “What are we going to do? Those men are killers.”

Hearne said, “The sheriff told me he called the FBI. They’ll be here tomorrow morning. Like Jess said, all we can do is wait it out until we can tell our story. But the ex-cops have probably figured out where you are and who is here,” he said, gesturing with his head toward the sleeping children. “They’ll want to silence them-and us-before we talk.”

Villatoro looked at his wristwatch. “I wish there was someone we could call.” Celeste should be home and could get the ball rolling urging local law enforcement to contact the FBI or Idaho authorities. Then he thought of Donna, waking her up, telling her what was going on. She would go hysterical. Plus, there was nothing she could do to help. But it was important, he thought, to tell her he loved her. That he always had.

Jess said, “I wish I knew the names of those ex-cops, the ones who got turned away when they tried to volunteer. I would guess they’d want to help us out. There are plenty of good ones up here, I think. They’d be pretty pissed off if they knew what these guys were doing.”

While they talked, Jess noticed that Monica kept looking at him as well as Hearne, as if measuring something besides cake mix.

“Do you have an idea?” Jess asked her.

She shook her head. “Not about that.” Then she looked hard at him. “Jess, I’d like to talk with you.”

Jess felt uncomfortable that she was calling him away from Villatoro and Hearne.

Hearne felt it, too, and said, “Excuse me, I’m going to call my wife. I want her to know I’m safe.”

“That’s a good idea,” Villatoro said, rising from the table. “You call, then I’ll call Celeste and then my wife.” He said it with a tone that barely disguised what he meant, which was, in case we never see them again.

“We can step outside,” Jess said to Monica.

As she started for the mudroom and the door, Hearne turned around with the receiver in his hand. “There’s no dial tone.”

Jess froze. He knew what that meant.

Villatoro said, “They’ve cut the line.”

Jess said to Hearne, “Try your cell phone.”

“It’s gone,” Hearne said, gesturing with empty hands. “I lost it at Swann’s.”

“What about you?” Jess asked Villatoro.

He shrugged. “Mine never worked up here in the first place. Wrong company.”

“So we’re blocked in, and we can’t communicate,” Jess said flatly. “I’ve had better days.”

In midsentence, the lights went out. From the living room, Jess heard Annie scream.