Zach had something small and plastic in his hand. Trevor had only just noticed. “What’s that?”
Zach had been staring intently at the thing. Now he looked up at Trevor. “My mom’s cell phone,” he said. “But there’s no service. I’ve been checking it every once in a while. No luck so far.” He pushed on one of the phone’s buttons until it beeped, then flipped the thing shut and shoved it in his pocket. “Dang it.”
“Maybe later,” Trevor said.
Zach only shook his head.
Trevor tried to think of something else to say. “What’s the doggy’s name?” he finally asked, shivering from the breeze blowing across the open top of the truck bed and down among the three of them.
“He calls him Manny,” said Zach, “but I don’t think that’s really his name.”
“Why not?”
Zach shrugged. “He calls me Georgie. He said I used to be Zach but now I’m Georgie. He’s crazy.”
Trevor nodded. He turned onto his other side and petted the dog’s head. Slow, friendly petting. The doggy accepted it with another wag of his tail and leaned over to lick Trevor on his ear.
“Good doggy,” Trevor said and smiled. Behind him, Zach said something he couldn’t hear. He flipped over again. “What?”
“—said maybe we should try and jump out,” Zach repeated, the words gobbled up by the sound of the truck only a little this time.
Trevor shook his head. “We’d get killed,” he said. “For sure. I saw this movie once where a guy tried to jump out of a car to save himself but he got killed instead.” He continued shaking his head. “Plus, what about the doggy?”
Zach frowned and looked over Trevor at the dog. “I guess,” he said. “You really saw a movie like that?”
“Yeah. But I wasn’t supposed to,” he admitted. “Daddy thought I was sleeping and flipped to the channel, but I was only pretending.”
Zach lay on his tummy with his arms under his head. Even in the dark, Trevor saw the blood on him and the ripped clothes and that one of his shoes was all messed up. Trevor’s head seemed to explode when they hit a big bump in the road. While he held the bloody rag to his sore spot, he thought of what his favorite comic book heroes might have said: Yeeoooowww or oouuchhhhhhhh or grrrnnnnn. Trevor said none of these things; it hurt too bad for him to do anything except squeeze his eyes together and wait.
“What was that?” Zach said.
“What?” Trevor looked at him, felt the dog shift against his back and heard the scrape of claws on metal.
“Look.” Zach sat up, pointing at a sign on the side of the road behind them. The sign was shadowy and disappearing fast, but they both read it in the glow of the truck’s taillights. It said:
Entering Arapaho Natl Forest
His daddy’s house was right by the Arapaho forest—Trevor knew because for a while he’d called it the A-wrap-around Forest—and he’d seen this sign before. There were lots of the Arapaho signs scattered all over the place, but he remembered this one in particular because of a bunch of teeny holes in one corner that Daddy had told him probably came from a shotgun blast. He couldn’t believe any hunter would ever think a sign was a deer or an elk and accidentally shoot it all up. Too silly.
“I was looking for signs before,” Zach said. “I thought maybe I could tell where we were going.”
Yes, Trevor thought. If he paid enough attention, he might remember how they’d gotten to wherever they were going. He blinked back another burst of pain in his head and watched the road. Studied it. Remembered.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Libby had expected a CSI team and a photographer and a whole slew of miscellaneous law enforcers, just like you saw on TV, but no one else arrived. The two deputies, who had apparently done most of the evidence-collecting themselves before she got there, also finished by themselves, bagging individual items, Willis taking a few last pictures with a small digital camera and his partner writing things down in his notebook. Mike remembered and told them about a knife under his bed, and they seemed to bag it a little more carefully than they had the rest of the evidence. Libby didn’t know enough details of tonight’s fiasco to guess why the knife might be of any particular importance, but she was glad they weren’t lackadaisical about everything. She guessed they were probably doing everything they could, but to her it still didn’t seem like enough.
After their little powwow disbanded, she’d gone out to turn off the Honda’s lights and then come back inside to make herself a cup of tea. Fully caffeinated with a little sugar and milk. While she boiled the water, Mike came in and took two mugs from the cabinet.
“Better make it two,” he said, and she took another teabag from the jar beside the microwave.
The deputies hadn’t told them whether or not they could clean up the mess in the kitchen yet, and so they left it, stepping around the shards and busying themselves with the tea.
They’d only just finished steeping their bags when the two lawmen called them into the living room to tell them they were done. Libby didn’t think they’d been at it nearly long enough, didn’t understand how they could possibly have collected all the evidence already, but she said nothing.
Willis gave them a business card with his number and extension at the sheriff’s department in addition to the numbers for both his home phone and his cell. He told them to call him first thing if anything else happened, not to worry about the hour, and Libby felt a little better. The four of them exited the house and stood in a cluster on the over-lit porch.
In the light, Willis’s beard blazed. He said, “And you might see some more deputies here and there, until they’re finished canvassing the area. More than likely they’ll leave you alone—unless they find something—but don’t worry if you hear a knock on the door in the middle of the night. Well, maybe worry a little, I don’t want you letting your guard down, just in case, but don’t go blowing any holes in the doors, okay?”
“I don’t have a gun,” said Mike.
“Good. It’s better that way.”
Libby thanked him half sincerely. Mike shook hands with both deputies and crossed his arms over his chest. They stood side by side on the porch until the sheriff’s deputies had gotten into their Explorer, turned the vehicle around, and disappeared around the bend in the driveway; then they reentered the house.
They cleaned the mess up like a couple of mindless robots, sipping their tea between chores. Mike duct-taped a piece of cardboard to the outside of the kitchen window while Libby swept the broken glass, and then they reorganized the living room together. The bedroom doorjamb had broken beyond repair, but Mike said he had the materials to make himself a new one later, after things had settled down, speaking automatically, as if not totally aware of what he was saying. He’d have to replace the ruined kitchen window screen, but the bedroom window’s was only bent. Mike managed to pry it back into its original shape, or at least close enough that it fit into the window frame. Libby wiped up the blood on the bedroom floor and scrubbed the area with a hardwood cleaner Mike got her from the workshop. She cleaned up most of the mess, but some had seeped deep into the floorboards, which must not have been well sealed.
It wasn’t that she wanted to clean, but anytime she stopped, she felt herself getting hysterical. So she kept going. And kept going. And kept going.
“Don’t worry too much about that,” Mike said. “I’ll have to sand down the floors and then refinish them. Even if the stains were barely noticeable, I don’t think I could sleep in here every night knowing they were there.”