Blue Heaven (36 page)

“J.J., I need to talk with you,” Jess shouted. The rain pounded the street behind him and sluiced through the gutters.

J.J. shrugged, couldn’t hear him. But he let the cloth fall from his hands and walked slowly across the floor to the doors.

Jess could see J.J.’s mouth. “Locked.”

Who had a key? Jess wondered. He needed to talk with his son.

Jess pulled futilely on the doors, rattling them. J.J. watched as if he expected alarms to go off. He shook his head, scared to open them from the inside.

“Hold on,” Jess said, raising his hand, and turned for his pickup that was parked on the street. He returned with the rifle. J. J. saw it, and backed away, his eyes wide.

Jess used the butt of it to break through a panel of glass on the door. No alarm sounded. He reached through the hole and pulled back on the bar, opening the door.

“I don’t mean to scare you,” Jess told J.J. as he stepped inside and let the door wheeze shut.

“I could get in trouble,” J.J. said. Jess noticed that J.J.’s voice was clearer than usual. It had a deep timbre to it that was usually missing. Jess knew what that indicated. This is when a window sometimes opened, if briefly, a window of illumination. It didn’t last long.

“J.J., I think you can help me,” Jess said, then rephrased it: “I need your help.”

“You broke the door. Man, I’m going to get in trouble now.”

“Tell them I did it.”

J.J. nodded.

“You seem okay. Are you okay?”

“Not really, no,” J.J. said, shaking his head. “I gotta go back for my meds. What time is it?”

Jess looked at his wristwatch. “Nearly seven.”

“I’m late. I shoulda been back to the ward. They’re gonna come looking for me.”

Jess tried to calm himself. If he was calm, J.J. was more likely to respond.

J.J. said, “When my meds wear off my own sick brain starts taking over. I see shit I know can’t really be there.”

“I know that, son,” Jess said, stepping closer. J.J. recoiled.

“Don’t worry,” Jess said, “I won’t touch you.”

“It isn’t you,” J.J. said. “It’s your germs. I can’t get dirty, like these floors. I clean them and clean them, but the people here, they make them filthy again every day. They bring their filth in with them from the outside. I can’t win.”

Jess breathed deeply. He felt a pang for taking advantage this way.

“J.J., tell me about the ex-cops. There are four of them. You’ve been around them here. Are they good?”

“No.” Emphatic, spittle flying.

“Are they honest?”

“NO!”

“What have you heard?”

“They want to find those kids,” J.J. said.

Jess grimaced. Of course they wanted to find the Taylors.

“They want to hurt them,” J.J. said. “And they called Monica a
bitch.
”

“Monica Taylor?” Jess asked, taken aback by J.J.’s familiarity with her. “You know her?”

J.J. smiled a dark and secret smile. It reminded Jess of the way J.J. used to be, before all of this happened. That wasn’t necessarily good.

“She’s a pretty woman,” his son said. “She was wild.”

This startled Jess. “What do you mean? How did you know her?”

“Some things I remember like they happened yesterday. I remember Monica that way.”

Jess had more questions, but didn’t want to take J.J. down a path they’d get lost on. He didn’t know how long this rare sliver of clarity would last, and he had to use it.

“About the ex-cops. Why don’t you tell the sheriff?” Jess asked.

“He won’t believe me. I don’t want to get in trouble. I like this job, cleaning. I can’t stay in my cell. It’s filthy and disgusting, germs fester there. I need to be
out
. Away from the nightmares …” J.J. looked away.

“J.J., stay with me,” Jess admonished gently. “I know you can leave here anytime you want. You’ve done your time. You can just walk out whenever you want.”

“Man, I need my meds, Dad.”

Dad. He called him dad. Jess felt his chest well up.

“Come with me,” Jess said suddenly. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

A slight smile. “I want to see the ranch. And Mom.”

Jess didn’t want to explain. Not yet. Now, he just wanted to get J.J. away from there. With what he knew, his son was in danger from the ex-cops and possibly the sheriff. J.J. didn’t know that, but Jess couldn’t leave him there to find out. Jess’s mind whirled, and he felt a tumble of emotions. This had been the first real conversation he had had with his son in over ten years. He was elated, while at the same time he wondered if J.J. had been in there all along, waiting to come out. And Jess had neglected to try.

Jess backed up and opened the door. “Come on, son,” he said gently.

J.J. stiffened. He seemed to grow taller as he became more rigid. His hands, which had hung at his sides, curled into claws.

“No.”

“What do you mean?” Jess said.

“I can’t go out there. It’s too filthy.”

“It’s raining,” Jess said, hoping that would make more sense to J.J. than it did to him.

“NO!” J.J. shouted like a five-year-old, and stomped his boot. “No, Dad! I can’t.”

Jess paused at the door, his heart breaking. J.J. had backed up across the floor and retrieved his cleaning cloth. He rubbed a desktop with it violently, scattering a stack of papers to the floor.

“Damn it!” J.J. seethed, snatching the papers up to put them back. They kept slipping out of his fingers to flutter back to the floor.

“I’ll come back for you, son,” Jess said. “You’ve really been a lot of help to me. You did a good thing, talking to me. But don’t tell anyone what we talked about, okay? Please?”

J.J. was furiously trying to snatch the pages from the tile.

“I miss you, son.”

J.J. didn’t look up. He was gone again.

“DAMN IT!” he screamed.

Jess turned and walked away, the rain slashing him. He paused at his pickup and gazed back. J.J. kept his head down, picking up papers and dropping them like a demon.

M
ONICA LOOKED up when the doorbell rang, and Swann scrambled to his feet from the couch. He had been on his cell phone with someone, another of his secret calls. Something about going back to his house again that night; Swann didn’t seem to want to do it.

They had not spoken since Swann showed her that he had her keys. She was simply waiting now, biding her time. When he left the room, she’d be out the door. She could borrow a car from a neighbor. Or get a ride with someone. But she wanted him to think he’d talked her out of that idea, so she sat silently. Let him think she’d reconsidered.

“You expecting someone?” he asked as he neared the door.

“Of course not,” she said, hoping it was news of Annie and William.

Swann bent and looked out the peephole. “Some man,” he said, then opened the door.

Monica didn’t recognize the wet cowboy on the front porch. He looked angry, though, the way he squinted inside like a gunfighter, like the sun was in his eyes.

“What can we do for you?” Swann asked.

“Are you Monica Taylor?” the man asked, shouting louder than he
needed to, not acknowledging Swann. The rainfall was steady and loud behind him.

Intuitively, she knew it was about her children. She nodded.

“Then you must be Swann,” the man said, reaching back for something that was out of sight. Then he strode into the house holding a rifle in both of his hands. Before Swann could reach for the pistol in his belt, the man clubbed Swann hard in the face with the butt of the rifle. Swann staggered back, blood already gushing from his nose, his hands grasping at air, his feet tangling with her magazine rack. He fell into the wall, sliding down partway, taking a framed photograph of Annie with him. His elbow rested on the top of the couch and stopped him from falling all of the way to the floor. The man was in the living room now, straddling Swann, and to Monica’s horror, he reared back and clubbed Swann again in the head with a short, powerful stroke. Swann went limp, and rolled with his face to the wall, his weight pushing the couch out, and he crashed behind it on the floor. All she could see of Swann were the soles of his shoes. The rest of him was wedged behind the couch.

The cowboy bent over and came up with Swann’s pistol, which he shoved into the front pocket of his Wranglers. Then he looked up, caught his breath.

Monica had not screamed, but had withdrawn into her chair, her feet under her, her fists at her mouth.

“He’ll live,” the man said, nodding his hat brim toward Swann. Then he looked right at her. “I’m Jess Rawlins. I’m here to take you to your kids.”

At the sound of his name, Monica felt her throat constrict. Jess Rawlins. She’d always known of this man. And here he was, in her own living room, there to rescue her.

J
IM HEARNE felt panic growing as the rain receded into cold mist and hung suspended in the air above the pavement of streets, and his tires sluiced through standing puddles. Something was going on in his town late on a Sunday night, but he hadn’t yet been able to figure out exactly what it was, how big it was, or how many people were involved. As with the feeling he had had in his living room, when he suddenly felt like an imposter in his own home, he drove through Kootenai Bay under the strong impression that despite the recognizable buildings and layout, he was a stranger in this town.

He swung his Suburban into the county building lot and parked it next to Sheriff Carey’s Blazer. He was grateful for locating the sheriff, since the two other men he had tried to find earlier had been gone. Lieutenant Singer was not at the task force room in the county building, or at his home. And Eduardo Villatoro had not been back to his hotel room since late afternoon.

Hearne got out of his vehicle and tried to calm himself by inhaling the moist air deeply into his lungs. He looked at his watch. He had accomplished exactly nothing for all of his running around, except to confirm that whatever was happening was happening someplace else,
and he had no idea where that might be. Now he thought he might be in the right place, judging by the three network satellite trucks that took up most of the parking lot at the front of the building. There was a hive of activity. It was obvious they had all arrived within minutes of each other, and technicians were out on the pavement, jockeying for position. Some unfurled thick cables that snaked across the asphalt. Hearne recognized a celebrity reporter brightly lit by a portable bank of lights, and thought he looked shorter, thinner, and more frail than he did on TV. The man seemed to be waiting for somebody to tell him something in his earpiece. Looking at the trucks, the bustle of men and women, he feared for Kootenai Bay.

Avoiding the news crews, which had situated themselves so the front doors and sign on the county building would be visible in the background for camera shots, he walked around to the back, where the dispatcher was located. The door was open, as it should be, but the dispatcher—a heavyset woman with a bright red helmet of hair—looked up in alarm through thick lenses. She wasn’t used to visitors walking into the building, and unlike most people in town, she didn’t recognize him.

He said, “Is the sheriff in? I saw his vehicle out front.”

“I think he’s in for a minute,” she said, looking around, her eyes winking like crazy behind the glasses, “but I think he’s going to go home. Is this something that can wait until morning?”

Hearne felt a surge of impatience. “Do you think I would be here at this time of night if it was something that could wait? Where is he? In his office?” he asked, pushing through the batwing doors on the side of the reception desk, striding past her.

“Yes, but you should wait until I call him….” she said, her voice trailing off.

Sheriff Carey was in the act of hanging up his telephone. His office blazed with lights, even though the rest of the department was dark. When Hearne stepped into the doorway, Carey looked up slowly, without expression. It didn’t seem to surprise him that the local banker was in his office late on Sunday night. He looked terrible, Hearne thought, completely unlike the confident man holding the press conference the day before.

“Sheriff, are you okay?”

Carey nodded slowly. His eyes seemed moist, oily. The dark circles surrounding them looked painted on. “Hello, Mr. Hearne.”

Hearne reached across the sheriff’s desk to greet him. Carey’s hand was chilly and without strength.

“Sheriff, you look like hell.”

Carey smiled slightly, sadly. “I’m real tired, Mr. Hearne.”

“Call me Jim. I won’t keep you. I’m just trying to figure a couple of things out, and I hoped you could help me.”

“Pretty late for that.”

“I know,” Hearne said, not knowing if the sheriff meant the time of night or the situation in general. He looked hard at Carey and saw a man who was physically and emotionally spent. This was not the time to confess. That would have to be later.