Hellbox

25

Balfour’s front gate was still closed and padlocked. But he’d been there. I could tell that as soon as Runyon pulled into the driveway, confirmed it when I crossed the bridge to the gate and squinted through the chain links. The doors to the workshop had been shut when we’d stopped by earlier; now they stood wide open. And there was no sign of any vehicle on the property other than the stake-bed truck. Come and gone.

Jake hurried up. He’d taken his. 357 Magnum out of the locked glove box, was stuffing it inside his belt; sunlight shone on its polymer frame. Just the two of us again-we’d sent Verriker to the sheriff’s substation, to see if Broxmeyer was back from his north valley call and if he was, to try to convince him we were right about Balfour. We didn’t tell Verriker where we were going; if the time had come to start breaking the law-and it had-it was our business.

Runyon said, “What do you think?”

“Balfour knows we’re on to him. He wouldn’t have come here if he didn’t.”

“After money, maybe, if he’s panicked enough to run.”

“And Kerry.”

“If this is where he’s been holding her.”

“Where the hell else?”

“He didn’t have to’ve taken her with him. She could still be here.”

“Pray to God he’s that scared and that stupid.”

The gate and fence were eight-feet high, but not topped by anything like barbed wire that would’ve made for a difficult climb-over. Runyon gave me a boost up; I clawed my way astride the top bar, managed to slide down the other side without doing myself any damage. I was already running toward the workshop by the time he scrambled over.

Now that we were inside, I could see that a long length of staked-down cable had been strung in the grass between the workshop and the house. Dog-run line. Runyon spotted it, too, pulled the Magnum and held it down along his leg as we ran-defense against the guard dog if it attacked us. The animal was making a hell of a racket from behind the house, but it didn’t come charging into sight. We were near the open workshop doors before I saw it: a big black-and-brown pit bull dancing around and half strangling itself in savage lunges at the end of long lead looped over the ground cable. Some sort of stake-hold in the line kept it from coming any closer than the house’s rear corner.

The workshop’s interior was cavernous, choked with the smells of heat and sawdust. The middle was open all the way to the rear, a space large enough for a couple of small trucks to park end to end. We split up to search among the rows of power tools, piles of lumber, construction business odds and ends. No sign that anyone other than Balfour had ever been in there. Both door halves standing open said that he’d driven inside today, but there was nothing I saw that told me why.

We made tracks for the house. The pit bull’s leash let it come about halfway around one side, not far enough to keep us from going up onto the porch. The animal was in a frenzy now, yowling and snarling. The collar around its neck was one of those thick spiked jobs, the lead appeared to be more of the same type of cable, and the stake-hold must have been driven deep into the ground. If the dog had any chance of tearing loose, it would’ve happened by now.

The front door was unlocked; Runyon went in first. Half a dozen rooms plus one bathroom, all of them empty, all of them cluttered and unclean. My gorge rose when I stepped into what had to have been Balfour’s bedroom, but not because of the smelly pile of unwashed clothing in one corner. The bed was a mess, blanket and sheets all twisted together. I made myself untangle them so I could examine the sheets. Gray, dirty, but without the kind of stains I dreaded finding.

Runyon was at the rear window in the other bedroom when I went in there, pulling the curtains back so he could see out. I took a look at the bed even though I knew he’d already checked it. Unmade, the bare mattress free of both stains and body marks. When I pushed down on it, a little cloud of dust puffed up. If anybody had ever lain on that mattress, it had been months, even years, ago.

Jake said my name, motioned me over to the dirt-streaked window.

I peered out. Another outbuilding sat across the rear yard to the right, small, squat, with a sheet-metal roof that threw off daggers of sunlight. Some kind of shed. A door in the facing wall stood open, but the distance and the angle of the sun kept me from seeing inside. The pit bull was back there now, racing frantically back and forth along a section of the ground cable that stretched to within a few yards of the shed; its lead was long enough to let it roam up close along the front wall.

I swallowed a reflux of stomach acid before I said, “That’s where he had Kerry.”

“How it looks.”

“Staked the dog back there so it could guard the door in case she managed to get out. Sick son of a bitch! Be like an oven in there with that sheet-metal roof.”

“Yeah.”

Bad enough thinking of Kerry imprisoned in a sweatbox, but the likelihood that she’d been in there this morning was like a knife in my gut. I slammed my fist against the wall beside the window. “Goddamn it, if we’d come here right after we talked to Balfour, we might’ve found her.”

“My fault,” Runyon said. “I talked you out of it.”

“No. I talked myself out of it. Too damn many years of playing it straight, staying within the law.”

“You want to go over there now?”

“You’d have to shoot the dog first, and we’d just be wasting time. If she was still there, the door’d be shut.”

He didn’t look at me, didn’t say anything. I knew what he was thinking: the door wouldn’t need to be shut if Kerry was lying in there dead. No way, Jake. No way. I’d’ve sensed it by now, I’d be a basket case.

“He took her with him,” I said. “Alive.”

“Hostage.”

“Yeah. Hostage. And that’s why he’ll keep her alive.”

The pit bull’s ceaseless racket echoed and re-echoed inside my head, making it pound, and scraping like sandpaper on my raw nerves. I turned away from the window, hurried back into the front part of the house.

In the living room, on a scarred table next to a food- and drink-stained easy chair, I spotted a pad with heavy block printing on the top sheet. Pad of business invoices headed B ALFOUR C ONSTRUCTION. The same inked words scrawled over and over in a vertical line like column entries, with such angry force that the point of the pen had torn the paper in four or five places.

Verriker dead

Verriker dead

Verriker dead

Verriker dead

Verriker dead

VERRIKER DEAD!

I showed it to Runyon. “We’ve been chasing around looking for evidence… all right, here’s some even Broxmeyer can’t ignore.”

“Can’t tell him we found it on an illegal entry.”

“I’ll claim we picked the pad up at the fairgrounds, it must’ve fallen out of Balfour’s truck. He can’t prove any different.”

We finished up a quick search of the rest of the premises, wading through clutter-stacks of dirty dishes, spilled food, empty beer and whiskey bottles, other crap strewn around on tabletops and countertops and furniture, scattered over the floors. There was nothing else to connect Balfour with the death of Verriker’s wife, nothing at all to connect him with Kerry.

But the search told us one thing: Balfour had no intention of coming back here. On the first pass-through, the place had seemed like the home of a typical bachelor slob, but there was too much disorder for it all to be the result of sloppy housekeeping. Drawers pulled half out of the bureau in his bedroom, several empty coat hangers in the closet and on the floor; cupboard doors hanging open and dropped utensils and food items in the kitchen; an empty glass-fronted gun cabinet in a room full of dead animal trophies-all indications of a hasty packing job. He’d stuffed that pickup of his with a full load while he was here: food, clothing, camping gear, weapons.

“Heading for the woods someplace,” Runyon said as we beat it out of there, “maybe his favorite hunting ground. And getting ready for a siege. That was a big gun cabinet, and he’s the type that keeps an arsenal-rifles, handguns, God knows what else.”

Heading for the woods someplace. Which woods, where? Hundreds of square miles of timberland in this county alone, thousands more all across the state.

Where?

Broxmeyer was listening now. Verriker had got his attention when he came back from his north valley call; the two of them were talking in his office when Runyon and I walked in. The deputy frowned when he saw us, then motioned us to join them.

I showed him the Balfour Construction pad. Verriker went around to look at it over his shoulder, said through clamped teeth, “Crazy fuck!” I had to tell Broxmeyer that we’d been out to Balfour’s place, that it looked like he’d gone there right after leaving the fairgrounds to take on supplies for a run-out. No, we hadn’t gone onto the property; the gate was locked. He didn’t buy that, or my story about where we’d found the invoice pad, but he didn’t make an issue of it, either. Nor did he say anything to indicate he had any doubts that Balfour had made those “Verriker dead” scrawls.

I said, “Convinced, deputy?”

“That Balfour had it in for Mr. Verriker? Yes. But there’s still no proof that he was responsible for the explosion, or that he kidnapped your wife.”

“So you still think she’s lost in the woods?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?” Broxmeyer looked harassed, agitated, maybe a little embarrassed at his earlier treatment of Runyon and me. “Christ, man, I’m not your enemy. But I can’t go off half cocked…”

“That mean you’re not going to do anything about Balfour?”

“No. I’ll put out a statewide BOLO on him and his vehicle.”

“That won’t do any good if he’s planning to lose himself in the wilderness somewhere.”

“You don’t know that’s what he intends to do.”

Verriker said grimly, “Bet you it is. Always bragging on what a great hunter, great woodsman he is.”

I said, “But you don’t have any idea where he might go?”

“No. Heard him say once he had a favorite spot, but he wouldn’t tell where it was.”

I asked Broxmeyer, “Can’t you make it an APB instead of a BOLO?”

“You know I can’t. Nor request a search warrant, either, without more evidence that Balfour has committed even one felony. I don’t have the authority.”

“The sheriff does. Notify him yet?”

“He has my reports to date-”

“Not what I asked you.”

“No, not yet. I will, but I guarantee he’ll tell you the same thing.”

“Do it right now, okay?”

Broxmeyer chased Runyon and Verriker out to the waiting area, but let me stay while he made his call to the county seat. He said when the sheriff came on the line, “I’ve got a situation here, Joe,” and talked for three minutes, mostly listened for another three. I could tell from his expression and his monosyllabic responses that he was being told pretty much the same as he’d told me. I stood it as long as I could, hanging on to my temper, then made gestures until he reluctantly let me have the receiver.

The sheriff was an officious bastard, strictly by the book. He claimed to understand what I was going through, but he wouldn’t listen to my arguments; nor did my not-insubstantial career in law enforcement or my acquaintance with Jack Logan, SFPD’s assistant chief, cut any ice with him. Deputy Broxmeyer was following the correct protocol, he said: there was insufficient evidence to warrant anything more than a wanted-for-questioning BOLO on Pete Balfour.

When he ended the conversation, I had to make a conscious effort not to slam down the receiver. Broxmeyer said, “I’m sorry, but I told you, our hands are tied.” I didn’t trust myself to answer him.

I couldn’t stay in the cubicle or the substation any longer; I’d come close to saying something that would have alienated the sheriff, and I was afraid of losing it with Broxmeyer. Outside, I said to Runyon, “BOLO, that’s as far as they’ll go.”

“We could try going over their heads to the FBI.”

“And run smack into the same stone wall. Nobody’s going to do anything without having hard proof shoved in their faces.” I turned to Verriker. “That favorite wilderness spot of Balfour’s. He always go hunting there by himself?”

“Far as I know. Man don’t have any friends.”

“Anybody you can think of that he might’ve told about it?”

“Well… Charlotte, maybe. His ex-wife. She’d be the only one.”

“She still live in the valley?”

“Right here in Six Pines. Works in the city manager’s office at city hall.”

He took us over there, a refurbished brick building opposite the town park. Charlotte Samuels was a fat woman with dyed-blond hair and dim little eyes; she and Balfour must’ve been some pair. She didn’t want to talk about her ex-husband, but Verriker coaxed her into it-for all the good it did. Balfour had never taken her hunting with him-she liked venison, but hated seeing animals killed-and she had no idea where he went hunting, he’d never told her.

Outside again in the sticky heat, I asked Verriker, “You do much hunting?”

“Now and then.”

“So you know the good spots, the more remote ones-say, within a fifty-mile radius.”

“Some place Balfour might pick? A couple, maybe. But hell, we’d never find him if he’s holed up.”

“We can try. Unless you have another suggestion?”

“No. Wish I did.”

Runyon hadn’t said much since we’d driven back into Six Pines, but that was because he hadn’t had anything to contribute. He’d been thinking though, more clearly than I had. Problem-solving.

He said now, “There’s one other thing we can do if we can’t find him, and the law can’t. Long shot, but so is anything else we try.”

“Let’s hear it.”

He laid it out. Long shot, yeah, but long shots come in sometimes, and if Runyon was reading the situation right, this one just might. The odds were no worse than those on the other long shots we had to depend on-blind luck, a spread-thin sheriff ’s department and a scattering of highway patrol officers, and the whims of an unbalanced mind.