In Harm's Way Part 23

"Nancy?"

"I need a little clarification on something. We just got the GPS coordinates for the pickup truck you requested-"

"Oh, thank G.o.d."

"Thing is, the coordinates have it on the Engleton property."

"What?"

"There's like a five-yard possibility of error or something, so . . . I'm not exactly sure how to proceed with this. You want me to send a dep-"

"No, no!" she said, hurrying to the far side of the living room and looking toward the main house. "I can't believe this. I'm so so sorry. Let me look around and get back to you. Does it show sorry. Let me look around and get back to you. Does it show where where on the property? Does it get that detailed?" on the property? Does it get that detailed?"

"There's a hybrid view: satellite image laid on top of the mapping software. It shows the truck as in the main house. Like the living room. But there's that margin of error."

"I'll look."

"Call me back, would you, please?"

"Promise. Give me five minutes." She disconnected the call and slipped the phone into a pocket absentmindedly. She crossed the driveway, oblivious to the chittering of tree squirrels and a red-sailed para-glider working the thermals above a northern ridge. To her there was only the garage. The closer she drew to it, the more trepidation.

Maybe the device had been removed from the truck and left in the garage, and if so, what did that say about the truck's disappearance? She and Walt had checked the garage, had stood in the empty bay.

She rose to tiptoe and peered through the garage door's gla.s.s pane, looking in on the truck bed. Parked right where it belonged. She felt foolish and embarra.s.sed to have put Walt up to the GPS search. Kira had obviously taken the truck and returned it, and Fiona found herself overcome with anger, furious at the girl for putting her through the worry and concern.

She marched to the front door of the home and found it locked. She knocked loudly, pounding on the door. Kira didn't answer. She tried the handle again, and stormed back across to the cottage to get her key. Returning, she opened the door and barged inside.

"Kira! Kira?" She marched room to room, growing madder by the minute. "Kira!" "Kira!" Hit the stairs running. Up a flight, two doors to the right. Threw open the door. Hit the stairs running. Up a flight, two doors to the right. Threw open the door.

Empty. No sign of Kira, no different than the room had appeared the last time she'd checked. A twinge of fright ran through her. It hadn't occurred to her someone other than Kira might have returned the truck. Someone other than Kira might be inside. The mountain man, for instance-was he the one she'd apparently mentioned while under hypnosis? The one who'd given her the concussion?

She moved stealthily, creeping along the hallway toward the elegant stairway leading to the ground-level living room. Clinging to the handrail, she took each step carefully, turning her head side to side to take in everything around her. Her "d.a.m.n you, Kira" att.i.tude had reversed, and she was now once again concerned for the missing girl's well-being, panicked over her own situation, wondering how she'd allowed her emotions to dictate. Nancy would have sent a deputy had she asked; in her determination to protect Kira and the Engletons, she'd acted hastily and stupidly.

She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. She heard the low hum of the twin Sub-Zero refrigerators, the ticking of the ship's clock on the mantel. Ringing in her ears, and the thump of her own blood coursing past her eardrums. The house was enormous, multiple levels with several wings, a wine cellar, a sauna, a workout gym. On the one hand, she felt terrified; on the other, if Kira had returned the truck, she wanted to talk to her before the sheriff's office did.

The front door called to her. She would feel safer once outside. Instead, she rounded the bottom of the unsupported, curving cherrywood staircase, and moved down a hallway lined with closets and family photos to a back stairwell that she followed lower to the split level. She searched the weight room, the his/her bathrooms, and the sauna. Two guest bedrooms. A utility/storage area. The laundry. She returned upstairs and made her way into the south wing, a guest wing consisting of a pair of two-bedroom suites. Checked all the closets and all four bathrooms.

As she returned to the living room, she was filled with an added sense of dread, the feeling of being watched. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up a leaded crystal cube-a philanthropic award given to Michael and Leslie by a California hospital-clutching it like a baseball, but wielding it as a weapon carried high at her shoulder.

"I know you're in here," she said softly, knowing no such thing. "I can feel feel you." Feeling too much to know what she felt. you." Feeling too much to know what she felt.

She eyed the wide hallway leading to the garage. It stretched out beyond her, suddenly much longer. More closets and a pantry lined it-a person could hide behind any of the doors, waiting. She tried to slow her breathing, to calm herself, but it was useless. She pressed her back to the wall and edged toward the first of the doors, jumped across the hall and backed up to the opposing wall. She kept the gla.s.s cube held high, visualized herself smashing it into a stranger's face. She tacked her way down the hall, wall to wall, ever alert. Reached the garage door and threw it open.

It bounced off the stopper and came back at her and she blocked it with her toe. A box freezer in the garage groaned and Fiona suddenly viewed it as a coffin and moved toward it cautiously, slipping past the pickup truck that shouldn't have been there. With her back to the freezer, her fingers deciphered its latch and forced it open and she lifted its springed lid blindly, finally gathering the courage to peer behind her and see nothing but bricks of frozen meat in white paper wrappers.

Now, finally, she felt her nerves settling. Her last great fear was that she would find Kira in the truck. She gathered her courage, climbed onto the side rail, and, holding to the exterior mirror with her left hand and still clutching the gla.s.s cube in her right, pressed her eyes to the gla.s.s and tried to see inside. She moved front seat to back. Empty.

She climbed into the truck bed and hesitated only briefly before popping the lid on the Tuff-Box toolbox mounted below the cab's rear window. Tools Tools. A jumper cable. No body. She sat down into the truck bed and released an audible sigh, waited for her light-headedness to pa.s.s, and collected herself. Slowly, the anger at Kira reentered her, and it was everything she could do to suppress it.

She owed Nancy a phone call. She owed Walt an explanation. But her imagination got the better of her. She'd been fixated on trying to explain what had happened to her, where Kira had gone, the body at the bottom of the mountain.

Knowing Nancy was expecting her call, she moved quickly now, suddenly energized, freed of the weight of her prior fears. It was almost as if she'd rehea.r.s.ed it, the way she went about it so methodically.

She found the blank sheets of paper and the Scotch tape in Michael's office. The acrylic paint in Leslie's painting studio. She tripped the garage door on her return, and climbed into the truck and found the keys in the center island's cup holder. She slipped the key into the ignition and left the driver's door open and the key alarm sounding as she placed the taped-together sheets of copy paper behind each of the truck tires, mixed the eggplant purple paint with some water, and meticulously applied the paint to the tire rubber as if she'd done it a hundred times. She climbed behind the wheel and backed up the truck, and then collected the four strips of paper and liked three of the four she saw. She repeated the procedure for the front right tire and then wiped down all four tires with a wet rag and parked the truck and shut the automatic door, returning to her cottage, where she generated photographs of the truck tire impressions from the Gale crime scene.

The scale was wrong and so she reprinted two of the photographs, this time enlarging the photos to where she got less of the impression, but a wider width.

Then, placing the photographs next to the impressions she'd taken from the garage, she studied the tread pattern and took out a tape measure from her kitchen junk drawer, and noticed her hands shaking as she counted the rows of tread pattern and tried to calculate the widths. At last she turned around the photo to her right and moved it along the taped-together copy pages, and gasped at what she saw.

She jumped and let out a cry as the phone in her pocket buzzed, jolting her. She reached for it, knowing who it would be before ever checking the caller ID.

Her thumb hovered, wondering whether to answer it or not.

26.

Walt sat facing the computer screen on his dining-room table when he heard the rhythmic tap of footfalls on his front porch steps. He was sending an e-mail to Boldt and hoping to Skype with the detective, to talk through the facts of the case and see if they converged for Boldt as they did for him. The tire impressions had come back from the lab as a BFGoodrich-branded tread-the Radial Long Trail. The pollen collected from Gale's earwax had been identified as coming from a yellow lily. He'd witnessed Boatwright's gardener digging up a flower bed. To mix blood into the soil? If he went after a man like Boatwright, he would need more than pollen and some hunches-an army of attorneys was more like it.

The footfalls stopped and Walt prepared himself for the doorbell or a knock. At nine-thirty p.m., it was late for a visitor, and the longer the pause continued, the more convinced he became that an insecure Fiona awaited him at the door. He pushed back his chair and closed the distance to the front door quickly, not wanting to lose her, throwing it open and feeling his expectation crushed as he stood facing a stranger.

"h.e.l.lo?" he said.

In her late twenties or early thirties, the woman had a tired look about her, stringy brown hair, wore no makeup, had seven empty holes running up the spine of her left ear.

"Sheriff?" A husky, smoker's voice.

"Yes. May I help you?"

"I need to speak with you."

"I keep office hours. If you don't mind-"

"Away from the office," the woman said, interrupting. "A friend knew where you lived. I'm sorry about this."

He motioned her inside, and then to the couch. He offered her something to drink, hoping she wouldn't accept and she asked for coffee-"Any kind of coffee. Instant's all right."

He used his coffee press to make two cups and served her in a Simpsons mug. His was a State Farm.

Beatrice combat-crawled across the floor to the woman's feet and sighed to make sure to be noticed. The woman bent down and petted her and Bea set up camp, climbing to a sitting position and placing just her jaw onto the edge of the couch for convenience.

"I'm sorry," the woman said, "but it's wrong of me to come here. But I can't be seen at your office, or at least I don't want to be seen at your office."

"You don't have to apologize."

"It's about the man. The dead man."

Walt kept his outward appearance calm, though his insides were anything but.

"Martel Gale."

"Martel, yes. I didn't know his last name at the time."

"You knew him," Walt said. He sipped the hot coffee in part to maintain the image of nonchalance.

"Sheriff, I'm a member of NA-Narcotics Anonymous. The whole idea is anonymity, so my being here is radically wrong. But when I saw the story in the paper. When they ran the photograph of him-that football one-I felt an obligation to come forward."

"I'm glad you did."

"He visited our group last Tuesday night. It was a speaker night so there wasn't a lot of sharing, but he stuck around for coffee at the end and I talked to him. We get a lot of guests and like them to feel welcome."

Walt wondered if Martel Gale's good looks had had anything to do with her welcome.

"He stuck around awhile," she continued, "and we got to talking and though he didn't come right out and say it, I think he was here in Sun Valley for the ninth step."

"You know, I'm familiar with twelve-step programs-AA most of all-and believe me, we appreciate their success, but I'm not familiar with the particular steps."

"You might call it atonement," she said. " 'We make direct amends to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or others.' Basically, it's our chance to remove excess baggage and clear the way for our full recovery."

"I realize there is the a.s.sumption of anonymity," Walt said, choosing his words carefully, "but with Mr. Gale dead I'm hoping we can look beyond that and you can tell me as much as you know."

"And I would, except the last part of the step kind of prevents that. I mean, I have no way of knowing who such information might injure, and it's wrong for me to come here and talk about this in the first place, much less accidentally harm or injure someone by doing so. That's for the addict to decide. I'm not about to play Higher Power."

"Let's back up a moment," Walt said. He kept all urgency out of his voice, found his professional self, no matter how odd it felt to engage inside his own house. "He came to your meeting. You two met after the meeting. Did you happen to go somewhere? Did this all take place at the meeting itself?"

"We might have gone for a cup of coffee. At Tully's."

"And from what he told you, you came to believe he was here in town for the ninth step."

"Yes."

"So he would have been meeting with someone," Walt said.

"More than one," she blurted out before squinting at him accusingly.

"The point is," Walt said, "we don't harm or injure people . . ."

"Ellen."

"Ellen. We . . . the sheriff's office . . . our job is just the opposite. We protect people. In this case it's too late to protect Mr. Gale. Our job-my job-becomes explaining his death. And as you can imagine, that can often be a tall order, as it is in this case, given Mr. Gale's status as a visitor to our valley and something of an unknown. Add to that his celebrity status as a sports figure, and it gets more complicated."

"Which is one of the reasons I couldn't come to your office. I do not do not want my name or face on the news. No one knows I used, Sheriff. Not my boss, not my family. NA saved my life, but if I'm outed-" want my name or face on the news. No one knows I used, Sheriff. Not my boss, not my family. NA saved my life, but if I'm outed-"

"That's not going to happen."

"You'd be surprised how easily it does happen."

"You are safe here."

"Until I find some reporter was camped in the bushes."

She was right. Reporters occasionally hounded his home. Her anonymity wasn't perfectly safe anywhere.

"I thought about calling," she said. "But it seemed like the cowardly thing to do. Not that I expect that to make any sense to anyone but me. The point being: I'm here, but I don't think I can help all that much."

"What gave you the impression he was here for the ninth step?" Walt asked, afraid he was already losing her.

"I've said too much."

"Did he mention names?"

"No! Of course not."

"But he did say something."

"He said he was here to fix things, and we talked about a couple of the other steps and I pretty much could figure he was here for the ninth."

"Did he ask your help in finding someone?"

"How could you possibly know that?" she asked.

"Most everyone has post office boxes. Getting a real address can be tricky."

She eyed him suspiciously. "I'm saying a lot more than I intended to." She placed the coffee down and gave Bea another pat on the head. "I should probably go."

He had nothing to go on. A first name. Might not even be her real name. He couldn't let her go.

"Was his mood angry or vengeful?"

"Him? No. Just the opposite. Are you kidding? He was contrite. We're all contrite by the ninth. When you're using, you walk all over the people you care about the most. Steal from them. Lie to them. Cheat on them. Do whatever it takes to stay high. Use getting high as an excuse to do whatever you feel like. Drugs are incredibly convenient in that way, Sheriff. You can do basically whatever you want and it's always the drug's fault, never yours. And doing all that makes you feel s.h.i.tty-pardon my French-so you get high to forget about it, and around and around we go."

"But I imagine some grudges build up along the way. Jealousies, or anger at those who stop helping or call you out."

"You've been around it," she said. "I can tell."

"We see just a little bit of substance abuse in my line of work." She laughed and rubbed Bea out of nervousness. "I guess that's right," she said uncomfortably.

"But not Martel Gale," he said.

"He was a recovering addict. He had his proverbial s.h.i.t together as far as I could tell. Long way to come to make amends. Most people write a letter. Some dare to make a phone call-and believe me, that's not easy. Traveling halfway across the country to do it in person? That's someone you care about. Trust me. Or someones someones I guess, in his case. He was all f.u.c.ked up when he was using: steroids and HGH and any kind of performance enhancer out there. Ma.s.sive quant.i.ties, to hear him tell it. Totally raged. Poisoned by it. A maniac. Testosterone overdose. Put his fist through car windows. s.h.i.t like that. Incredible Hulk stuff. A real terror." I guess, in his case. He was all f.u.c.ked up when he was using: steroids and HGH and any kind of performance enhancer out there. Ma.s.sive quant.i.ties, to hear him tell it. Totally raged. Poisoned by it. A maniac. Testosterone overdose. Put his fist through car windows. s.h.i.t like that. Incredible Hulk stuff. A real terror."

"You'd think that might carry some anger with it," he said, thinking of Vince Wynn firing blindly into the dark hoping to hit Martel Gale. "Some rage."

"He wouldn't have come here if that was still lingering. Doesn't make sense. Just the opposite. He didn't come here to blame, believe me. He came here to take the heat, even if it should be shared. He came here to make it right."