Chill Factor (29 page)

It was by accident that she had come even to suspect it. She'd
been
delivering fresh laundry to his room this morning when she noticed his
boots on the floor beside his bed.

They were waterproof, fleece lined, perfect footwear for a
snowstorm. But Scott hadn't been wearing them yesterday when he and Wes
came home for dinner. Ostensibly, Scott hadn't left the house since
then.

But there were his boots, standing in small puddles of water
formed
on his bedroom floor as the snow melted off them. It had been on the
tip of her tongue to ask him when he had gone out, but she'd stopped
herself.

She'd decided she should be armed with some kind of backup
evidence
before accusing him of sneaking out. The power outage had provided her
with an opportunity to investigate.

However, now that she could confront him with the disabled
alarm
system, she was reluctant—or too cowardly—to do so.
He was certainly
old enough to come and go as he pleased. Wes imposed a curfew on him,
but if Scott wanted to leave the house, there was little Wes could do
to stop him short of physically restraining him.

So why didn't he defy Wes and simply walk out the door? Why
was he
sneaking out? It was symptomatic of other changes in him.

Her sweet, considerate, and easygoing Scott had turned sullen,
even
prone to outbursts of temper. He was withdrawn, hostile, and
unpredictable.

Because of the unrelenting pressure Wes placed on him,
performance
anxiety must be partially responsible. But knowing her son as she did,
Dora feared that these personality changes were being caused by
something even more consequential than Wes's badgering. Scott was no
longer himself, and she wanted to know why.

Mentally she traced back over the past year, trying to
determine
when she began noticing these changes.

Last spring.

About the time—

Everything inside Dora went terribly still.

Scott began to change about the time he and Millicent Gunn
stopped
seeing each other.

When the telephone rang, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

"I'll get it," Scott said. "It's probably Gary." He had just
come in
from the garage. Setting the Coleman lantern on the kitchen table, he
reached for the phone. It was the old-fashioned kind of wall phone,
without caller ID or anything else that required electricity to be
operable.

"Oh, hi, Dad." Scott listened for several seconds, then said,
"How
come? Okay, she's right here." He passed the phone to Dora. "He's
calling from the hospital."

Begley wasn't feeling too kindly toward Dutch Burton. In fact,
he
would have liked to plant his size eleven foot in Burton's anus. He
settled for speaking candidly. "Your face looks like raw hamburger."

"They're only superficial cuts." The police chief was sitting
on the
end of the examination table, his posture that of a fifty-pound potato
sack that was only three quarters full. "The doc picked out the glass
slivers. I'm waiting for the nurse to come back with some antiseptic
stuff to put on them. It may not be pretty, but I'll be okay."

"Better than Hawkins. He's got a broken arm, which is a clean
break.
They popped his dislocated shoulder back in. But his ankle-bones are
going to take some work. Both are splintered all to hell."

"Wish it was his skull," Burton muttered.

"Mr. Hawkins was intoxicated," Hoot said from where he stood
just
inside the privacy curtain that divided the treatment areas in the
community hospital's ER. From the other side of the yellow fabric, they
could hear Cal Hawkins moaning. "His blood-alcohol ratio was well over
the legal limit."

"Then he lied to me," Burton said defensively. "I asked him if
he'd
been drinking, but he said—"

Begley cut him off. "I think you hear only what you want to
hear."

Burton glared at him.

"Reconstructing his ankles is going to require delicate
surgery,"
Hoot said. "They can't do it here. Because of the weather, it could be
several days before he can be transported to a hospital that has an
orthopedic surgical team. In the meantime, he's in misery."

"Look," Burton said angrily, "it's not my fault the guy's a
drunk."

"He couldn't have driven up that road stone fucking sober,"
Begley
roared. "Thanks to you, the whole damn countryside is without
electricity. You're lucky this hospital's got an emergency generator or
you'd be sitting here in the cold and dark, looking like a freak show
with hunks of glass sticking out of your face."

Hawkins's rig had collided with one of the tower's four
supports. In
ordinary circumstances, it probably could have withstood the damage.
But with the weight of the ice and snow making it top-heavy, it had
toppled, taking dozens of ageless trees and a network of power lines
with it. Worse, it had fallen across the mountain road, blocking access
to the peak.

Dutch Burton had let his emotions outweigh his judgment.
Unacceptable behavior for any man, but unforgivable for a public
servant. His jealousy-inspired determination to get up the mountain
road today had been irrational and dangerous, and had resulted in
numerous casualties: Hawkins was probably crippled for life; the
sanding truck was out of commission during one of the worst storms in
decades; and the power outage extended into several surrounding
counties.

All that was catastrophic.

But what really chapped Begley was that Burton's idiocy had
eliminated any possibility of going after Tierney. He couldn't even
attempt it again until the mess on that road was cleared, which could
take weeks, or until the weather broke enough for a chopper to take him
to the summit. Either way, valuable time had been squandered. Wasted
time was not just one of Begley's pet peeves; he considered it a sin.

His consolation was that he wasn't the only one hamstrung by
the
situation. Ben Tierney couldn't go anywhere, either.

"Excuse me? Chief?" Harris, the young cop they'd met earlier
at the
lodge, poked his head around the privacy curtain.

"What is it?"

"Dispatch called my radio
.
Mr.
and Mrs. Gunn are at
headquarters."

"Shit," Burton hissed. "They're all I need. Tell whoever's
there to
tell them that I'm in the hospital, to go home,
and
I'll get over to see them as soon as I can."

"He already tried that," Harris said. "Didn't budge them.
Because
it's not you they want to talk to. It's…" He nodded in
Begley's general
direction. "They want to know is it true that Ben Tierney is Blue."

Begley saw red. He managed to keep his volume at a reasonable
level,
but his voice vibrated with fury. "I hope you're joking."

"No, sir."

Begley advanced on the young cop. "Who told them? Who told
them we
were interested in Tierney? If it was you, Officer Harris, I'll pin
your badge to your scrotum and weld it shut."

"Wasn't me, sir. I swear. It was Gus Elmer. The old man out at
the
lodge?"

"We told him not to mention our investigation to anyone," Hoot
said.

"I don't think he meant to," Harris said. "He didn't talk to
the
Gunns directly. He called his cousin to check on her, see how she was
faring the storm on account of her stove has a faulty flue? And he sort
of let it slip."

"Let it slip?"

Begley's bellow roused Hawkins from his drug-induced stupor,
and he
groaned loudly. Harris took a cautious step back. "His cousin does Mrs.
Gunn's ironing," he explained, sounding apologetic. "I guess she felt
she owed it to them to, you know, to tell…" He stammered,
then fell
silent beneath Begley's stare.

"Who else does Mr. Elmer's cousin do ironing for?" His sarcasm
escaped Harris. While the cop was pondering his answer, he turned to
Dutch Burton. "I'd like to use your office for this interview with the
Gunns."

"Fine, but I'm coming, too."

"What about your face?"

"I've got some cream I can put on it."

They trooped out. Begley glanced at Cal Hawkins as he passed
his
bed. Hooked up to IVs, he'd lapsed into unconsciousness. Despite
defending him to Burton, he didn't have any sympathy for the man.

Once they were in their car and under way, Hoot said, "I
thought you
planned on talking to the Gunns anyway, sir."

"I was going to call on them as soon as we left the hospital."

"They why did you get so upset in there?"

"I hoped to scare them into believing how important it is that
we
keep a lid on this investigation. We need to have Tierney in custody
before too many locals learn that we're even looking at him."

"You see how fast gossip travels."

"That's what worries me, Hoot. If we don't pick Tierney up
soon, I'm
afraid a band of Bubbas, led by the chief of police himself, will
assume he's Blue and take matters into their own hands. Righteous
indignation beats the law of the land every goddamn time in situations
like this.

"These good ol' boys, out to protect their womenfolk, may
revert to
the unwritten law of the hills. If they got to Tierney before we did,
he'd be lucky if his rights were read to him as he lay drowning in his
own blood. And wouldn't that be a party and a half? The media would
have a field day. They'd harken back to Ruby Ridge and Waco. The gun
control fanatics would be all over it. We'd be left with one hell of a
clusterfuck."

"And many unanswered questions."

"Precisely. Like where to find the five bodies."

They drove in silence for a moment, then Hoot said, "You said
you're
afraid they'll go after Tierney, assuming he's Blue. What if he
isn't
?"

Begley frowned. "That's another thing I'm afraid of."

CHAPTER  20
TO RETAIN HEAT INSIDE THE CABIN, ALL THE DRAPERIES HAD been kept drawn.
When the lights went out, the bedroom was plunged into darkness.

"That was inevitable," Tierney said.

Lilly gave her eyes a few seconds to adjust, then went to the
windows and pushed back one of the drapes. The premature gloaming
outside provided Tierney with a fresh argument.

"It'll be full darkness by midafternoon," he said. "Which
means
there are only a couple hours of daylight left. It'll take me at least
that long to get to the car and back if I leave now."

Lilly placed the heels of her hands against her temples. "I
can't
argue… anymore."

"So don't. Just unlock the handcuffs."

"You'll kill me."

"I'm trying to
save
your life."

She shook her head, laboring to inhale. "I can…
identify… you … as
Blue."

"You can't identify me as anything if you suffocate."

"A note."

"Oh, I see. You'd leave a note, telling them that I'm Blue.
You'd
place it where they'd be certain to find it."

She nodded.

"If that happened, I'd say that you became delusional from
oxygen
deprivation, that you were also convinced elephants were dancing inside
the walls. They'd believe me. As for that"—he nodded at the
blue
ribbon, now curled on the seat of the rocking chair—"I'd tell
them what
I told you—I found it and was taking it back to town with me
to turn
over to the authorities."'

She motioned toward his hands.

"Yeah, explaining the cuffs would be tricky, but I'd have a
day or
two to think of something plausible. And just possibly I would be able
to work my hands free before anyone got up here."

"I don't think so," she said, nodding toward his bloody
wrists.
"Even if… I was dead … they'd have you." Ending
her argument there, she
turned to leave the room.

"What's the worst that could happen?"

She stopped but didn't turn around.

He pressed on. "If you release me, what's the worst that could
happen, Lilly? Say I am Blue. Say I kill you so you can't finger me to
the authorities. You're going to die anyway. In a matter of hours, if
that long. So how could my murdering you be any worse?"

She turned to face him. "Save another…
victim…"

"Ah, I see what you're saying. You don't want to unleash me
onto an
unsuspecting public, leaving me free to victimize more women, do to
them whatever I've done to the others. Is that it?"

She nodded.

"Okay. That's reasonable. Very altruistic, too. You're placing
the
lives of others above your own." He thought on it for a moment, then
said, "Once I'm back with your medication, once I've carried in enough
firewood to last for another day, I'll let you handcuff me again. I'll
remain handcuffed until we're rescued."

She tried to laugh but didn't have adequate breath. "I'm
…
not that… gullible… not that… oxygen
deprived…yet."

"You don't trust me to keep my word?"

"No."

"You can, Lilly. I swear it. You can trust me."

"Give me one… one reason." In spite of her
determination not to cry,
tears filled her eyes.

"Don't cry," he whispered roughly.

Drawn by his fierce gaze, by the memory of their kiss, she
took a
step closer. "Give me… one reason why… I should
trust you, Tierney."

He was about to speak when her cell phone rang.

For a second or two she didn't grasp what the sound was or
where it
was coming from, only stood there gaping at Tierney, who appeared
equally stunned by the unexpected noise.

When she realized the jangle was her cell phone, she
frantically
fished it from her coat pocket and flipped it open. "Dutch? Dutch!" Her
voice was a mere croak. But it didn't matter. The phone was dead, the
LED dark. The connection had been momentary. A tease. Fate taunting her.

With a sob, she sank to her knees, clutching the silent phone
to her
chest.

"Lilly, don't cry."

"Leave me alone."

"You must not cry. That'll only make it worse."