Hellbox

21

Balfour. Pete Balfour.

Was he the one?

Best lead yet, thanks to Runyon, but only because of his connection with the Verrikers; there was nothing to tie him directly to the logging road or Kerry’s disappearance, nothing we could take to Broxmeyer, or direct to the county sheriff, or act on ourselves. Two things we could do. One was to have Tamara run a deep backgrounder on Balfour; I called her after Runyon came back with his news and we’d talked over the situation, and she was on it right away. The other thing was for Jake and me to talk to the man, see if we could squeeze anything out of him.

Tamara worked fast, called back in a little more than an hour. Nothing much, no red flags except for an arrest six years ago on a spousal battery charge. But Balfour’s ex-wife had dropped the charge the next day. Two other brushes with the law: a DUI three years ago and a charge of poaching deer out of season, fines and probation on both. There’d also been two complaints against his construction business, one by a private individual for overcharges on a house remodel, the other by the owners of a restaurant in one of the hamlets at the north end of the valley for use of inferior building materials; the second complaint got him a modest fine by the county licensing board. Those were the only blemishes on his record. Lived alone, no dependents, paid his bills more or less on time. Probably worthy of the mayor tag, but being an asshole didn’t necessarily make him a felon.

But God, I wanted it to be him. I ached for it to be him. If it wasn’t, then we were as much in the dark as before.

I’d been able to sleep some while Runyon was making his rounds-sheer exhaustion had knocked me out for a while-but I didn’t get much more that night. Fits and starts, the dozes interrupted by running dreams and one nightmare that woke me up in a cold sweat but I couldn’t remember afterward. I was in fair shape come dawn, my tank partially refilled. I’d be okay for part of the day, but if it went on like the last two, full of frustration and overexposure to the sweltering heat, I was not sure how long I could hold up.

I was up and dressed at five-thirty, a few minutes ahead of Runyon. As much as I wanted to head out to Balfour’s place right away, I knew it was too early. It wouldn’t matter whether or not he was up at this hour if his front gate was still locked. In that case, with no communication device, the only ways to let him know we wanted to talk to him were a phone call or blasts on the car horn. Guilty or innocent, he’d either refuse to see us or be closed off and hostile if he did. We had to handle this right. If Balfour was the man, Kerry’s life depended on it.

I made coffee, toast, boiled a couple eggs-disposing of time, not because I had any appetite. Runyon didn’t seem to have much, either, but we both choked the food down for sustenance. Not talking much; we’d hashed it all out the night before. He looked a lot more clear-eyed and rested than I did. Plenty of stamina in him, and why not? He was twenty years younger, in better physical shape, and he had no abiding personal stake in this-the woman he loved was not in the hands of Christ knew what brand of maniac.

No, that wasn’t fair. The woman Jake had loved as desperately as I loved Kerry was already dead, the victim of a different kind of horror.

We left the house a few minutes before seven, Runyon driving again. I sat leaning forward, tense, as we wound up Crooked Creek Road to Balfour’s property. And when we got there… gate in the chain-link fence closed, padlocked.

Runyon parked in the driveway and I got out, crossed a short platform bridge, and went up to peer through the gate. House, barn/workshop, another outbuilding at the rear whose roofline I could just make out between the other two. There was no chimney smoke or other sign of life in or around the buildings.

Jake came up beside me. “Looks deserted.”

“Yeah.”

The dog had started barking and snarling somewhere behind the house. From the noise it was making, Jake’s guess of a guard dog, big and vicious, was the right one. I’d had a run-in with another animal like that, a kill-trained Rottweiler, only a few months ago and it had come close, very close, to ripping my throat out. I had no desire for a repeat of that incident. But I’d stand up against this one, too, if it came to that.

I said, “Was that stake-bed truck parked over there last night?”

“Same place.”

“And the carport was empty?”

“As empty as it is now. Up and gone early, maybe.”

“Or he didn’t come home at all last night.”

Neither of us put voice to the possibility that Balfour had closed up shop and left the valley for the holiday weekend.

Silent drive into Six Pines. The Green Valley Cafe was open, and busy with breakfast trade. I scanned the room, but none of the customers was the ugly little guy I’d seen on Sunday. I shook my head at Jake, led the way to where a couple of stools stood vacant at the counter. When the plump blond waitress got around to us, I asked her if she knew Pete Balfour.

“Oh, yeah, I know him.”

“He been in this morning?”

“No. Usually is, but not today so far.”

“Any idea where we can find him?”

“Fairgrounds, probably. Supposed to be finishing up a remodel job in time for the Fourth.”

We drove down there, through the open front gates to where the construction work was going on at a row of concession booths behind the grandstand. Two vehicles parked next to a metal storage shed, two men working-a sixtyish, gray-haired Latino and a young guy with red hair under a turned-around Giants baseball cap. There was no sign of Pete Balfour.

We approached the Latino, who stopped hammering a section of countertop into place inside one of the booths. He wore a sweat-stained, blue chambray workshirt with the name Eladio Perez home-stitched over one pocket. I asked him if Balfour had come to work today.

“ Si. Yes. Very early.”

“But he’s not here now?”

“He go out to buy something he needs.”

“So he’ll be back pretty soon.”

“Pretty soon.”

Runyon asked, “Were you working here on Monday afternoon?”

“Monday afternoon, si. Every day.”

“Was your boss here, too?”

Frown lines crosshatched Perez’s forehead. Trying to remember.

I said, “The day the house blew up on Skyview Drive.”

“Oh, Monday. Yes.”

“ Was Balfour here that afternoon?”

“No. He leave early that day.”

“How early? What time?”

“After lunch. One o’clock.”

“And he didn’t come back?”

“No.”

“Do you know where he went?”

Shrug. “?Quien sabe? He don’t tell me much.” Perez’s expression was more or less stoic, but he had sad, expressive eyes, and the impression they conveyed was that he didn’t much like his employer.

“Have you worked for Balfour long?”

“Six years.” Six years too long, the sad eyes said.

“So, you must know him pretty well?”

“No, senor. I work, he pays me, that’s all.” Then, “ Excuseme, por favor. I must be finish here when he come back.”

Jake had parked in the shade of a big oak; we went to sit in the car and wait. I said, “Some other business on Monday. Like maybe setting a gas-line boobytrap to murder the Verrikers.”

“Maybe. Let’s see what he has to say.”

The voice of reason. But I was tensed up again, fidgety; I couldn’t hold my hands still, kept running them back and forth across my thighs.

The wait lasted ten minutes. Then a dirty white Dodge pickup came rattling along the blacktop and angled to a stop near the shed. The driver hopped out, went around to take material out of the pickup’s bed. Balfour.

He was still unloading when Runyon and I approached him. Pear-shaped, stubby-legged, chinless; bullet head topped with a couple of tufts of colorless hair. And a dirty Band-Aid under one eye that gave him a faintly piratical look. He scowled when he spotted us, then seemed to make an effort to shift his expression into neutral. I don’t normally judge people by their appearance; I’ve spent a personal and professional lifetime letting actions and personalities dictate my opinions. But even though I warned myself to keep an open mind, I took an immediate dislike to the man.

“What you guys want?” Flat, with an undercurrent of irritation.

“Few minutes of your time,” Runyon said. “You’re Pete Balfour?”

“That’s right. Who’re you?”

Jake told him. Names, professions. The last deliberately, so we could gauge his reaction.

There wasn’t much. A couple of eyeblinks, a little twitch along one side of his mouth. He didn’t look particularly bright, but you sensed the kind of self-protective shrewdness that keeps some men from revealing much about themselves when you catch them by surprise.

“Detectives? Yeah? What the hell you want with me?”

I said, keeping my voice even, “We’re trying to find my wife. She’s been missing since Monday.”

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Hope you find her.” Sure he did. “But I didn’t know you was a detective.”

“Does it matter?”

“No. Hell, no. But I can’t help you none. Why come to me?”

“We’re talking to everybody we can,” Runyon said, “looking for someone who might’ve seen Mrs. Wade Monday afternoon. You didn’t happen to be anywhere near the old logging road off Skyview Drive that day, did you?”

“Me? No. I wasn’t nowhere near the valley that day.”

“Mind telling us where you were?”

“Right here, working.”

“All afternoon?”

“Sure. All day. We got to finish these repairs by tonight. Big holiday doings tomorrow, you probably heard about that.”

Lying through his stained-yellow teeth. I had an irrational impulse to grab him, shake him like a dog shakes a bone. I shoved my hands into my pockets to keep them still. Being a liar didn’t necessarily make him a kidnapper. Not necessarily. Not enough evidence yet. Innocent until proven guilty.

“Know of anyone else who might’ve been out that way on Monday?” Runyon asked him.

“No. Wish I did.”

“Well, if you hear of anyone who was, let the deputy sheriff, Broxmeyer, know, will you?”

“I sure will.”

I said as he started to turn away, “What happened to your face?”

“Huh?”

“Under your eye. The Band-Aid.”

His mouth twitched again. He lifted a hand, let it drop without touching the adhesive. “Oh, that. Splinter from a piece of wood I was cutting. Couple of inches higher and they’d be calling me One-Eye.”

Another lie. The hell he was innocent.

Back to the car. When we were inside, I said, “He’s the one, Jake. I can feel it in my gut.”

“He’s a damn liar, that’s for sure.”

“I’m thinking we ought to go back out to his place, climb the gate and look around, and to hell with the dog.”

“If we get caught, then what? If we don’t find Kerry, then what?”

I didn’t argue. Voice of reason again.

We were moving now, heading for the gates. In the sideview mirror, I could see Balfour standing alongside his pickup, pretending to rummage around in the bed while he watched us drive away.

Runyon said, “What we need is more information on Balfour. His life, his habits, if he owns any other property where he could be keeping a prisoner.”

“There’s one person who can tell us. Plenty.”

“Ned Verriker.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Ned Verriker.”