Hellbox

24

It took us a while to track down Ned Verriker. The first place we went was to the sheriff’s substation, but Broxmeyer was out somewhere, and the deputy manning the desk didn’t know or wouldn’t tell us where to find Verriker.

The man Runyon had talked to in the Buckhorn Tavern last night, Ernie Stivic, seemed to be the next best bet. We hunted up a public phone booth at one of the gas stations and looked him up in the directory. Listed, but there was no answer when Runyon tried his number.

Third stop: the Green Valley Cafe again. The plump blond waitress we’d talked to earlier knew where Verriker was, but wouldn’t give out the information no matter how much we pleaded with her. “I know you’re real worried,” she said to me, “and I feel for you, but how could Ned know anything about your wife? The man’s grieving bad, just wants to be left alone.” But we did get one thing out of her, the name and address of the place where Ernie Stivic was employed-a restaurant called Burgers and More, near the high school at the north end of town. He worked there as a fry cook.

Burgers and More turned out to be a cafeteria-style restaurant, small, with a lattice-covered patio area along one side. There were no customers when we walked in, just a young tattooed guy getting the patio tables ready for the lunch trade. A second man was visible through an open kitchen window behind the service counter. Stivic. Runyon called out to him, and he came out wiping his hands on a clean apron.

Sure, he remembered Jake from the Buckhorn. Even before I opened my mouth, he knew who I was, gave me a nod of what appeared to be genuine sympathy. He was willing enough to talk until we asked him for Ned Verriker’s whereabouts, then he closed up. “I don’t know,” he said. “Ned’s in pretty bad shape. He don’t want to be bothered right now.”

“It’s important we talk to him,” I said.

“Why? He was at work all day Monday, he can’t help you find your wife.”

“We think maybe he can. Answers to a few questions is all we want from him.”

“What kind of questions?”

“The private kind. Please, Mr. Stivic. There’s a lot more at stake here than you realize.”

“Like what?”

He’d already tried what was left of my patience. Before I started snapping at him, Runyon stepped in. “Like a criminal act, maybe more than one,” he said. “That’s all we can say at this point, except that Ned Verriker hasn’t done anything wrong and we mean him no harm. All we want from him is information.”

Stivic chewed his underlip, thinking it over. “Criminal acts, huh?” he said at length.

“That’s right. You wouldn’t want to impede our investigation?”

“No, hell no. Okay. Joe Ramsey’s letting Ned stay at his cabin up at Eagle Rock Lake.”

Eagle Rock Lake was the one in the mountains south of Six Pines that Kerry and I had driven around on Sunday, a lifetime ago. A mile or so in circumference, ringed by pine forest and roughly kidney-shaped like a giant’s swimming pool. Cabins and cottages, half hidden among the trees, dotted its shoreline at widely spaced intervals.

The Ramsey cabin, Stivic had told us, was on the southeastern shore. We found it all right from his directions and description-small, plain, built of pine logs and redwood siding more than a generation past judging from the weathered look of the place, with a distinctive front door painted a rust red. A newish, dirt-streaked Ford van was parked in a cleared area in front, visible from the road, the same van that had barreled up to the scene of the conflagration on Monday afternoon and disgorged Ned Verriker. Runyon parked next to it, and we got out into blistering heat. Temperature must already be pushing ninety.

Nobody answered my raps on the door. There was a discernable path along one side; we followed that to the rear. A short dock jutted out into the glistening water, and near the end of it, a man in T-shirt and Levi’s sat in a canvas sling chair staring out at the lake. Back straight, knees and feet together, hands resting palms up on his thighs-the rigid posture of a condemned prisoner about to be executed. Runyon and I made a little noise walking out onto the spongy wooden dock, but the man didn’t seem to notice until we looped around to stand in front of him and block his view. Then he blinked and focused on us. Otherwise, he didn’t move.

He was about forty, well built, lantern-jawed, with sparse ginger-colored hair cut close to his scalp. The face that had stared out at me from the bathroom mirror this morning had been haggard enough, but Verriker’s was worse: gray and ravaged, lifeless red-rimmed eyes half buried in sacks of puckered flesh. The difference between fear of terrible loss and certain knowledge of it.

“Mr. Verriker?”

“Yeah. Who’re you? What you want?” By-rote questions, without spirit or curiosity. I answered both, but I could have told him we were space invaders from another galaxy and gotten the same lack of reaction. His obvious grief was too great to permit concern for someone else’s troubles.

“I don’t want to talk to anybody,” he said. “I lost my wife, my house, everything a couple days ago.”

“We know, and we’re sorry for your loss. But I may lose my wife, too, if we don’t find her soon. You know, if anybody does, how desperate I am.”

“I can’t do nothing for you.”

“You can answer a few questions about Pete Balfour.”

Nothing for a few seconds. Then, “What about Balfour?” in the same dull, cracked voice.

“Does he own any other property besides his place on Crooked Creek Road? Hunting camp, cabin, anything like that?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

“Know of any place he goes regularly to hunt, fish, camp?”

“No.”

“He have any relatives in the area?”

“Only relatives he’s got live under rocks.”

Runyon said, “We understand you’ve had some trouble with him.”

“I’m not the only one. He’s an asshole.”

“So we’ve heard. The Mayor of Asshole Valley.”

“Yeah.” Verriker’s mouth twitched. “I nailed him good with that.”

“And he didn’t like it.”

“Not anymore than I liked what he done to me one time.”

“What was that?”

“Tried to cheat me on some repair work.”

“Where? At your home?”

“My home. Yeah.”

“And you confronted him,” I said. “Then what happened?”

“Come skulking around one night, slashed all the tires on my van.”

“How do you know it was Balfour?”

“Just his kind of mean trick, but I couldn’t prove it. Lied through his teeth when I called him on it.”

“Come to blows with him then, or any other time?”

“No. He won’t fight a man, always backs down.”

“But he’ll beat up on a woman.”

“His ex-wife, yeah. Goddamn coward.”

“He ever hurt another woman that you know about?”

“Never had another woman. Too ugly, too mean.”

“Violent. A violent coward.”

“Cut your throat if he thought he could get away with it.” Verriker stirred, showed a little animation for the first time. “Why you asking about Balfour? What’s he got to do with your wife being missing?”

“We don’t know that he has anything to do with it.”

“But you think he might, or you wouldn’t be here. Why?”

“He lied to us about his whereabouts the afternoon it happened. Told us he was working at the fairgrounds, but he wasn’t.”

“Where you think he was?”

“There’s an old logging road in the east hills a few miles up-valley. My wife was walking there Monday afternoon-the house we’re renting isn’t far away.”

“That’s where she disappeared?”

“Yes.”

“I know that road,” Verriker said. “Nobody uses it much anymore. Balfour wouldn’t have any reason to be up there.”

“We don’t know for sure that he was.”

Silence for a stretch of seconds. Then Verriker blinked, blinked again, and said, “Wait a minute. Monday afternoon. That’s when my house blew up, late Monday afternoon.”

I didn’t say anything. Neither did Runyon.

Verriker’s gray face was mobile now, the dead eyes alive again. He gripped the wooden arms of his chair, lifted himself to his feet. “Accident, that’s what everybody said, but I couldn’t figure how it happened. We never had any gas leaks. I checked the lines and fittings regular.”

Nothing for a few seconds, while he went on connecting the dots. Then, “That logging road runs near the south edge of my property. Be easy to slip down through the trees from the road. Easy to get inside the house, too. Nobody home during the day, nobody around.” Blood-rush had darkened Verriker’s face. He made a fist of one hand, slammed it into the palm of the other. “Balfour. He did it, didn’t he. That son of a bitch made a death trap out of my house.”

“It’s possible,” Runyon said, “but there’s no proof-”

“The hell with proof. He killed my Alice, he tried to kill me-that’s how you figure it, and how I figure it now, too. I’ll fix him, I’ll tear his fucking head off!”

Verriker pivoted away from us. Runyon and I hustled after him, got in his way as he came off the dock. I said, “No, let us handle this.”

“He murdered my wife!”

“And my wife is still missing. Balfour may be responsible for that, too, but if he is, we don’t have any idea where he might be holding her.”

“She could be dead like Alice-”

“She’s not dead. She’s alive and we’re going to find her, but it has to be done our way. I feel for you, I share your rage, but if you try to go after Balfour on your own, we’ll have to stop you.”

The words got through to him. He looked at me, at Runyon, saw that we were dead serious. Battle of wills for a few seconds, then the aggressive anger melted and he said, “All right. But I ain’t gonna sit around here doing nothing.”

“You won’t have to. You can help us.”

“How?”

“We’re going back to the fairgrounds for another talk with Balfour. You come along. We’ll put him in a three-way vise and squeeze him, hard. If he’s guilty and as much of a coward as you say he is, we’ll break him.”

Verriker thought that over, nodded. “What if he doesn’t break?”

“Then Jake will keep an eye on him and you and I’ll take our suspicions to the county law.”

“Broxmeyer? He wouldn’t listen.”

“We’re wasting time. Are you coming or not?”

“… Okay. I’ll follow you in my van-”

“No. I’ll ride with you and we’ll follow Jake.” I didn’t want him changing his mind on the way in, veering off half-cocked on his own.

He went into the cabin for his keys and we got moving. Verriker and I didn’t exchange a word on the drive into town. There was nothing more to say. From the grim set of his face, I knew the kind of thoughts that were tumbling around inside his head-they wouldn’t be much different from the ones I was having.

It was a long fifteen minutes until we trailed Runyon through the open fairground gates. When we neared the construction site, my fingers dug tight into the palms of my hands. The same two cars parked in the same spots as earlier, that was all. No sign of Balfour’s pickup.

The gray-haired Latino, Eladio Perez, and the red-haired kid were eating an early lunch in the shade under one of the trees. Runyon drove up near them, got out in a hurry. Verriker and I followed suit. I heard Jake asking where Balfour was, and Perez’s answer as I ran up.

“He leave right after you talk to him, don’t say where he goes.”

“And he hasn’t been back?”

“No. He don’t come back.”

Verriker said, “Shit!” a half-second before the same word jumped out of my mouth.