“Yeah,” he said. “A left and then a right.” He knew the general area Pullman was describing and sketched a little map beneath the written directions. He said, “Okay, then what?”
Silence on the line.
“Mr. Pullman?”
Nothing.
He glanced at his phone. It had disconnected. He flipped through the notebook, found Pullman’s number, which Deputy Grey had dutifully written down, and dialed it. The phone rang. Ten times it rang. Twelve. He ended the call and sighed. He’d have to call into dispatch, get somebody up to Pullman’s place to see what was going on. They might have to pull a couple guys out of bed, but hell, if Willis couldn’t sleep, why should any of the rest of them?
He turned back to the body, to the puffy face and the throat slit so deep the head was almost completely disconnected from the body. The neighbor who’d called this in, a neighbor Willis would have to interview (and maybe interrogate) later, had said there was a boy, a son. Kid by the name of Zachary Thompson.
Willis wondered what the chances were that Zachary Thompson was the same kid Pullman’s abductor had been dragging along. Probably, he guessed, the chances were pretty damn good.
He would have to take some pictures, make a sketch of the scene. Eventually, they’d have a whole team up here, but he’d do what he could until they arrived. But first, he’d make the call into HQ. At least two kids were in some serious trouble, and now it looked like their kidnapper might be more of a murderer.
He only hoped someone would get to them in time.
Damn mountains. You might as well try to fight crime at the bottom of the sea.
Willis walked out of the kitchen to make his call, away from the stench of death, thinking about upset parents and a girl without the tip of her nose, thinking about little boys taken away from their families and trying hard not to think about their corpses.
Mike stared open mouthed at the phone. The indicator light was dark, dead. He said, “Oh my god.”
“What?” Libby stared at him.
Mike let out a single, short laugh. It was dry, more of a rasp really, the kind of sound Libby thought a movie mummy might make.
Mike said, “Now my phone’s dead.” He pressed the buttons on the handset but received no response. He might as well have held a brick.
“I thought you plugged it in.”
“I did.” He pushed the phone into the charging cradle. Nothing happened. He scooted the table away from the wall and she saw the plug on the floor beneath the outlet.
“It must have only charged a little bit. Come unplugged when we were moving furniture,” he said and punched at the floor. “Stupid.”
“You don’t have another phone?”
“You know I don’t.”
Actually, Libby hadn’t known, but it wasn’t a point to press. “Isn’t there a speaker phone on the base?”
“Nope, nothing that fancy.”
“Then plug it in,” she said. “It can’t take that long to charge.”
Mike did but said, “It doesn’t matter. Even if I could call him back, there’s nothing he can do. Says he’s at a crime scene and can’t leave. He promised to send everyone he could, but there’s probably nobody else within thirty minutes of here. By the time they get to Trevor, he could be dead.”
Libby thought about Trevor in the bathroom stall, thought about the announcement that had come too late: TREVOR PULLMAN, IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS, PLEASE COME TO SECURITY. YOUR MOTHER IS LOOKING FOR YOU. “So what do we do?”
Mike didn’t answer. He hurried out of the living room, down the hallway, into his bedroom. Libby followed. In his closet, he rummaged through clothes and pulled out a pair of jeans and some old boots. Without looking back at Libby, he pulled off his lounge pants and replaced them with the jeans. He found some dirty socks, yanked them on (one of them inside out) and stepped into the boots.
“Mike?”
He turned away from the closet. “It might be hours before anyone gets to him. I can’t risk that. He needs help now.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Mike frowned at her like she’d just asked him the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “I’m going to save him.” He opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out a set of keys and his wallet.
Libby stood, grabbed his arm. “You’re taking me with you.”
“Like hell,” said Mike. “Stay here and wait for the cops. I only got halfway through the directions. They’ll probably come here first.”
“No,” said Libby. “I’m not asking, I’m telling. We’re going together. Don’t try to force me on this.” She thought about Marshall, thought she’d kicked enough balls today and hoped she didn’t have to kick any more.
TREVOR PULLMAN…YOUR MOTHER IS LOOKING FOR YOU. How long would she have waited if she’d stayed with the security guard? How long before somebody found Trevor sobbing in the bathroom with a pair of dirty pants?
“I’m going.”
Mike sighed. “Let’s hit the workshop on our way out,” he said. “Grab something we can use for weapons.”
Libby nodded. “And let’s take the Honda. I don’t trust that truck.”
Without hesitation, Mike said, “Okay.”
They left the house together.
THIRTY-FIVE
Hank watched the boy flip the phone open and closed several times before sticking it into his breast pocket. He hadn’t said goodbye, seemed to have been cut off mid-sentence. Lost his connection, Hank thought. It surprised him that the kid had managed to make a call from way out here in the first place. Of course, he didn’t know much about all these newfangled electronics. Maybe they had special phones for country folks, better antennas or something. He waited for Davy’s reaction.
The boy only stood there looking clueless, staring at the sky as if he thought he could fly away. Hank wished he could tell him there was no place to go, that if there had been he’d have gone himself, but that was something the boy would have to learn on his own.
Tell Mommy I love her, the boy had said.
Hank had smiled at that. The logical thing for the Pullmans to do, of course, was call every cop in the state and send them Hank’s way with a gun in each hand and a grenade pin between their teeth. But it was hard to be logical when you thought your little boy was in trouble. Hank knew. They’d call the authorities, of course—any good parents would—but they wouldn’t be able to stay put afterward. They’d come. They’d both come. And long before the cops. Fate wouldn’t screw him over a second time. Not today. It just wasn’t possible. Hank pushed out from his hiding spot feeling like he’d won the lottery. His toothpick bobbed, and he flipped it around with his tongue.
Davy didn’t see him at first, but when he did, he jumped back and fell onto his rear end, screaming and looking like he might wet his pants. Hank wouldn’t have been surprised—Davy didn’t exactly have the best control over his bladder. Not that it was the kid’s fault, of course.
“You’re a sneaky little guy, aren’t you?” Hank closed in on the boy, who had stopped screaming, who stood stiller than a headlit animal in the middle of the road. Hank shuddered a little and wasn’t quite sure why. “How in the world did you out?”