The visitor spun around and looked at him. Only then did he realize he’d spoken it aloud into the room.
“What the fuck did you just say?” the visitor asked.
She came to life again, baaing like a sheep. It saved him having to answer. She laughed gutturally as she surfaced. “You aren’t, like, one of those kind of guys?” She pursed her lips, trying to contain her laughter, but it spilled out of her, along with a good deal of spittle, which the visitor then wiped off his hand and onto his pressed pants. “Can I tell you a little secret?” She egged him closer.
The visitor leaned in to her. The syringe hovered in his right hand, like a preacher’s cross at last rites.
She said, “If a guy wants to visit my kitchen door now and then, that’s okay with me. I even kind of like it. But if he comes around to my front door, he’d better wipe his feet.” She guffawed, rocking up the front legs of the big chair.
“One last try, Kira.” He wielded the syringe impossibly close to her face.
She appeared to lock onto it. Perhaps, for just a fraction of a second, she grasped her situation, understood what was to come.
“I want to go home,” she said.
“The sheep, Kira. What’s wrong with the sheep?” The needle pointed south, aimed directly at her forearm.
“I want to go home.”
MONDAY
8
“KEEP TRYING,” WALT TOLD NANCY, HIS SECRETARY, THE phone clutched under his chin as he kneeled on the kitchen floor, wrestling a small foot into a tight boot.
“It’s too tight,” his daughter complained.
“Push harder,” he said.
“Me?” Nancy asked over the phone.
“No. That’s for Emily. You keep trying to reach Mark. I want to hear the minute you find him.”
“Got it.”
He hung up and set the phone down on the kitchen table and went back to the battle of the boots. He’d been caught by the fluke fall storm, hadn’t had any of the girls’ winter clothes ready. Now he was racing to get them dressed and into the car in time to avoid a tardy. He’d managed four hours’ sleep.
“What if I put soap all over it?” he said, holding her foot. “You think that’ll help it get into that boot?” He tickled the bottom of her foot and Emily screeched. It was strange that she should be so ticklish when Nikki was not. In every other way, they were identical. Until Nikki had developed a tiny mole by her right eyebrow, even their parents had had trouble telling them apart.
“Nooo!” She giggled.
“Olive oil?” he asked.
“Nooo!”
“Snot?”
Emily burst out laughing-a barking cackle from her gut that was infectious to anyone within earshot. In seconds, the two of them were rolling around on the floor, while Nikki stood away, trying to force the grin from her face. Nikki had suffered the most from her mother’s abrupt departure. It was she whom Walt worried about on his sleepless nights.
The morning report from Nancy was pretty typical for the day after a storm: five highway collisions throughout the early-morning hours, none fatal; three DUIs issued; a ski shop had found a back window broken and was conducting an inventory; a nineteen-year-old girl had been reported missing by her parents.
A few months earlier, he’d not needed phoned-in reports from Nancy; he would have already been at his desk by now. He resented Gail for every intrusion in his routine. There was no seam in their family life her indiscretion had not penetrated and infected. It was as if the waning gifts of a young face and tight body had compelled her to prove herself still attractive, with no regard to the three she had left behind.
With Nancy ’s help, he’d dispatched a team of twelve Search and Rescue to continue looking for the missing skier. He felt he owed his energy to Mark Aker and the investigation into Randy’s death. He was the only trained investigator for a hundred miles in any direction. As such, he also asked for more on the missing girl. Nancy told him that Kira Tulivich attended a wedding, had gone out drinking with friends, and had not come home. Walt assumed she would stagger home sometime later in the day, with apologies, but he knew to consider it a crime first and to be happy if it turned out differently.
“My coat won’t zip,” Nikki complained, all trace of humor gone from her face.
“Okay, okay,” he said, Emily’s foot finally sliding down into the boot. A small victory. He tried Nikki’s zipper, but she was right: the coat wouldn’t close around her.
“Damn.”
“Daddy said a bad word!” Nikki announced loudly. This time both girls giggled.
“Daddy’s tired. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Lisa, the sitter, would pick them up from school, get them home, and start dinner. She worked for a flat daily fee, not hourly, and she gave him all sorts of breaks, doing everything from picking up dry cleaning to running to the supermarket-and never charged him. She’d made his transition to single parenting doable, though he had miles to go. He felt like a failure most of the time, as if, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he cared, he moved backward. He held himself to higher standards than what he was capable of. He was digging in sand, and, worst of all, he thought the girls knew it.
There was nothing much to do about the jacket. New winter outfits were needed. He tried the snaps; got the middle two to hold. “That’s going to have to do.”
“But it won’t zip.”
“It’s the best we can do for now.” Talk of the zipper reminded him of Randy Aker’s body bag. He thought he should probably hurt more for Randy’s loss. In truth, he felt bad for Mark, but it was difficult to take the victim’s death personally. That emotion had been trained out of him, clipped from his DNA. Even Bobby’s untimely death had hit him much the same way. He grieved not for the dead but for the living.
“I don’t want to wear it if it doesn’t zip,” Nikki said.
“Don’t. Please, don’t. Not this morning. Okay? We’ve got to get to school. We’ll fix it later. Maybe you can go shopping with Lisa.” He was thinking how expensive kids’ winter clothing was. Maybe he’d get lucky and find a secondhand jacket at the Barkin’ Basement.
Despite the best intentions, he went from fuming mad to blind anger as he made the short drive to Hailey Elementary. Gail had cited a dozen reasons for leaving him-his time on the job, the nature of his work and the fear it forced her to live with, her unfounded jealousy of other women-but they both knew the real reason: the two girls in the backseat. Motherhood had not only not come naturally; it had barely ever come at all. He had watched her descend from the initial glow of motherhood to the reality of being overwhelmed. Year by year, she had grown more resentful of losing her own freedom. She might have survived a single child, but the needs of two proved too much. When early frustrations had evolved into resentment, manifested as screaming rants and threats that shaded dangerously close to child abuse, she’d done the only thing available: removed herself from the home. She’d used the affair with Tommy Brandon to keep friends and neighbors in the dark, as well as to renew her own sense of self-worth; but he suspected her failure as a mother was rotting away what little chance at happiness she dreamed of. For him, whatever feelings he’d had for her had dissolved with her inability to cope. In the end, he’d realized he’d never really known her. Never mind that the added burden of single parenting drained him. Never mind that her departure and absence influenced every moment, his every decision, even something as simple as a drive to school. They had reached a disconnect. With divorce now inevitable, he reminded himself to keep it from getting bloody: the girls had to be protected at all costs.