Blue Heaven (7 page)

“The big one’s name is King,” Swann said, winking as if he assumed she knew who King was, which she didn’t. “I named him after a guy who gave us a lot of trouble once. King won me a blue ribbon at the Pend Oreille County Fair this summer.”

“He’s
awesome
,” William said. “I bet he can eat a lot.”

Annie had stopped trembling, although she still felt numb. She couldn’t wrap her mind around what she and William had seen at the campsite. Was it possible the man who was shot was still alive? No, she thought, it wasn’t. The image of those men standing over him and firing again and again would never leave her. The eyes of the Driver locking on to her own sent a spasm through her, even now.

“Are you okay?” William asked, feeling her shiver.

“Yes,” she said, not interested in the hogs the way he was. How could he be interested in hogs after what had just happened? Boys were different, all right. Even William.

Swann had thumbed a remote control, and one of three garage doors had opened. Slowing to a crawl, he’d parked inside. Annie had started to open her door when Swann had said, “Wait just a minute.”

She’d waited inside until the door had closed, and watched as Swann had walked back to the window in the garage door and looked down his road. Apparently satisfied that no one had followed them, he’d said, “Okay, you can come out now, kids.”

SWANN’S HOME was clean and light, with one big room after another. It was as unlike her mother’s house as it could be, Annie thought. He was alone, with his family of hogs, and except for the kitchen and the den, the house seemed not to be lived in at all. There were photos of Mr. Swann in his police uniform above the fireplace, and a framed set of medals and ribbons. Other than that, the walls were bare.

He opened a bag of cookies and poured two glasses of milk and set them on the table, saying, “I’m not used to much company way back here.”

Annie wondered if her mother had ever been in the house before, when they were briefly together.

“Just stay here,” Swann said. “I need to go make a couple of calls. Eat up. There’s more milk in the fridge if you want it.”

“Are you going to call our mother?” Annie asked, while William fished three cookies out of the bag.

Swann’s expression darkened and became serious. “Not immediately,” he said. “If those men figure out who you are—and they might
real quickly—the first thing they’ll do is go to your house. If your mother knows you’re here, she’ll probably tell them, or they’ll make her tell them. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Annie felt herself nod yes, felt the cold ball of fear knotting in her stomach again.

“I need to make a couple of calls,” he said again. He was one of those adults who thought he had to overexplain and overenunciate, as if she and William were an alien species. “There are a couple of guys I know who might have a little bit of an idea what is going on. I don’t want to put any of us in more danger than we are now, including your mother.”

“Are you going to call the sheriff?” Annie asked. “They’ll want to know what happened.”

Swann looked at her for a few moments before answering. “After I get a little more information, I’ll call the proper authorities,” he said.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

“You’ll just have to trust me on this,” he said, padding down the hallway to, she presumed, his office. She heard the door close, and the sound of a lock being thrown.
Why did he feel it was necessary to do that?
she wondered.

She turned back to her brother. “How can you eat?”

“I’m hungry,” he said, spewing crumbs across the tabletop.

AFTER A few minutes, Annie left the table and washed her hands and face in the kitchen sink. As she dried her face with a dish towel, she looked out the window and watched the sun drop from beneath the clouds and flash a brilliant wink before plunging into the tops of the trees. It would be dark soon. She didn’t want to be in Mr. Swann’s house in the dark, but she wasn’t sure why she felt that way.

The house was still and quiet, something their own home never was. She could hear the hogs grunting outside and the trill of a bird from somewhere in the shadows. Inside, there was only the rhythmic crunching of William finishing off another cookie.

“You should wash up, too,” she told William, noticing how filthy his fingers were.

He shrugged a nonresponse and continued eating.

“Mr. Swann is nice,” William said. “I’m happy he picked us up.”

Annie nodded toward the photos above the fireplace in the living room. “He’s a policeman, too.”

“He probably has a few guns around here,” William said. “I wonder if he’ll show them to me?”

“Why do you want to see his guns?”

William arched his eyebrows. “Guns are cool.”

Annie glared at him. “Didn’t you see what guns did today? To that poor man?”

“That’s why
we
need ’em. So that won’t happen to us.”

“Oh, brother.” She didn’t want to argue about this.

“I’m ready to go home, though,” William said, sitting back. “When do you think he’ll take us home?”

Annie looked down the hall at the closed door. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should knock,” William said.

Annie shook her head. “I need to find the bathroom,” she said.

“Hurry back,” William called after her.

She paused at the closed office door as she went down the hall. She could hear Swann’s voice inside. It was deep, but she couldn’t make out any words, as if he were deliberately speaking softly.

The bathroom was at the end of the hallway. She turned on the lights and shut the door. Like the rest of the house, it was spare and spotless. The only thing on the wall was a fake old sign that said baths cost a nickel and shaves cost a dime. Even the towels were folded neatly and hung over the bar. She thought she could see why Mr. Swann and her mother probably hadn’t gotten along.

She looked at herself in the mirror and was shocked at how pale and wild she looked. Her blond hair was tangled, with bits of leaves in it. Her eyes stared back from hollows. Her clothes were crusted with dried mud. There was a scratch across her cheek she didn’t remember getting, and it hadn’t hurt until just that second, when she saw it. Now it stung.

When she was through, Annie left the bathroom as quietly as she had entered it. Mr. Swann’s bedroom was dark and large, and she peeked in. His bed was made neatly, and there were no clothes on the floor.

Even though she knew she shouldn’t, she stepped into the room and looked around. The walls were bare except for several framed photos
over a dresser. A phone was on a nightstand next to the bed, and she stared at it. What if he was talking to the sheriff? Or her mother?

The phone seemed to draw her, and she put her hand on the receiver. She knew it was wrong, but she wanted to know who he was talking to. As slowly as she could, she lifted the receiver and covered the mouthpiece with her hand.

“You’ve got him with you now?” Swann asked someone.

“Wrapped up tight,” the other man said. “Leakproof packaging.” Swann chuckled nervously.

Who was this, Annie wondered. What did it have to do with anything?

“Everybody’s with you?” Swann asked.

“Almost,” the man said. “I’m waiting on Gonzo to get back.”

“I hope he doesn’t take too long. I don’t know how long I can keep them entertained.”

Annie’s eyes shot open wide.
Keep them entertained
.

“Yeah, I know. Wait, I think I see his car now.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, it’s him. We’re ready.”

“Let’s get this over with, then,” Swann said. “This is bad, you know?”

“I know. Newkirk is wavering on us. He looks like he’s about to shit.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“That was a good move, taking them home with you. God help us if some citizen saw us on the road with them.”

Annie eased the phone down and hung it up, which was difficult because her hand was trembling.

She realized when she looked up that her eyes had adjusted to the dark of the room. She could see the photos above the dresser, and she approached them. More shots of Mr. Swann in his police uniform, another of him on a fishing boat somewhere on the ocean or a big lake, and another of a group of men, fellow police officers. She looked carefully at it, and her heart began to race.

Mr. Swann stood in the middle of a group of five men. They had their arms around each other, and several had big grins. But not the Dark Man, who scowled. Singer, the Driver, stared at the camera with
the same ice-blue intensity she had seen in his eyes at the campsite. The Ball Cap Man grinned. And the Wavy-Haired Man who had been killed that afternoon looked to be laughing so hard his face was blurred in the photo.

As she ran down the hallway she heard the office door being unlocked by Mr. Swann.

William saw her coming. Luckily, he had left the table and was standing next to the door. He was obviously surprised to see her running so fast, and there must have been something in her face because his eyes widened and his mouth contorted into the look he got before he started to cry.

“Let’s go,” she hissed at him.
“Run!”

He didn’t argue but threw open the door to the garage. Annie slammed it behind her. She heard Mr. Swann holler “HEY! Where are you going?” from down the hallway.

The garage was completely dark except for the nine blue squares of the garage door windows. She didn’t know where the button was for the garage door opener but saw a faint pink glow next to the doorjamb and pushed it. A dull light came on, and the middle door began to open.

“Go!” she yelled, and the two of them ran toward the opening and rolled under it as it rose.

“Stop!” Mr. Swann threw open the door to the garage and snapped on the overhead lights. “Get back here, now!” he yelled after them.

It was raining again. Annie had William’s hand, and they ran past the hog pens. A huge mass blasted out of the shadows and hurled itself against the fence and squealed—King—causing them both to veer away and plunge into the dark brush.

As they ran, climbing over downed logs and pushing through bushes that clawed back at them, Annie could hear Mr. Swann shouting back at the house.

“Stop running from me! You’ll get lost out there! Get back here, now! I talked to your mother! Everything’s okay,
she’s coming to get you!
”

“Annie …” William gasped, winded.

“He’s lying,” she answered, not stopping. “He’s friends with those men we saw today.”

William said something she couldn’t understand. It sounded more like an animal noise. He was crying. She stopped and turned to hug him.

“No …” he said, pushing her away.

She reached out and grabbed him, holding his thin shoulders in her hands, thrusting her face into his. “William, I heard him talking to them, those men we saw today. Mr. Swann is friends with them. They’re on their way up here to find us because we saw them kill that man today. We can’t trust
anybody
, do you understand?”

He started to argue but looked away. “I just want to go home,” he said in a little-boy voice that stabbed her in the heart.

“We can’t go home yet,” she said. “That’s where they’ll look for us first. That’s the one thing Mr. Swann told us that wasn’t a lie.”

“Where do we go, then?”

She pulled him close, wrapping her arms around him, speaking into his ear. “As far away from here as we can get.”

O
KAY,” Ex-Lt. Eric Singer said to Dennis Gonzalez and Jim Newkirk at the rear table in the Sand Creek Bar. “At least we know who they are.”

Their names were Annie and William Taylor. Newkirk would rather he didn’t know their names because it made what they were trying to do so much more personal.

The Sand Creek Bar was a dark, close, run-down local place just out of Kootenai Bay on the old highway, the kind of place silver miners and loggers used to stop at on their way home. It was a good place for the men to regroup. It had seen better days and stood as a remnant of an earlier time. Now, there were just a few vehicles outside in the gravel parking lot, two pickups and a UPS truck. The Sand Creek offered three kinds of beer on tap—Coors, Bud, and Widmer Hefeweizen from Oregon. Anything else was considered exotic and would be served in dusty bottles from the back. The ceiling bristled with hundreds of knives that had been hurled up there over the years into the sooty paneled wood. Seventy years’ worth of pocket knives, hunting knives, fishing knives, survival knives. A few rusty bayonets and an ax in the corner. Occasionally, a knife would drop and stick into a tabletop, the floor, or a drinker’s thigh. Newkirk had been told by local friends that the credo of the Sand
Creek was “Drink hard and fast because you never know when you might get cut and die,” a maxim that applied to the general atmosphere of North Idaho’s rough-and-tumble blue-collar past as well. He’d been there previously a couple of times with his softball team, but Singer and Gonzalez had not. Those two never went anywhere. When he was with them, Newkirk served as their guide even though he hadn’t been in the area any longer than either of them.