Last Lie (27 page)

Our new neighbors were planning to build the missing tower on the ranch house after all. They were checking the quality of the soil in that location to ensure they would have no problems with a shifting foundation.

I put my hands together and blew the deep bellow that would call for Emily to return. Twenty seconds later, I had her back by my side as I walked up the steps to Mattin and Mimi's front door.

The damn doorbell was actually working. I could hear it clear as day.

36

N
o one answered the door. I used my mobile to call Diane. "Listen," I said, "I have a problem here . . . at home, with Jonas. Do you know if Mattin and Mimi are around? At home, I mean? Is Mimi still staying with you?"

Diane noted the seriousness instantly. "What kind of problem?"

"I can't find him. That kind. Lauren and I mixed up our after-school coverage plans today, and Jonas ended up being alone for most of the afternoon. Never should have happened, but it did. I just got here, and I can't find him."

Diane knew Jonas's history, and vulnerability, well. I didn't have to explain to her why the stakes were so high. "Shit, um--shoot. Mimi's still here. She's been with me all day. I couldn't . . . actually say where Hake is. There's some difficulty . . . there right now. Between them." She lowered her voice. "I'm not sure they're talking."

"So, no one is home at their house?"

"I don't think so, but I can't say that for sure. Do you want me to ask her? I'm happy to ask her. She's opening a bottle of wine."

"No, it's okay. Wait--Yes. Please ask her if anyone is home now or maybe was there this afternoon. Any . . . workmen, or visitors, or anyone who might have seen Jonas at any time after, say, one o'clock. That would be really helpful. To know if anyone saw him at any point this afternoon would be great."

Diane came back on the phone about a minute later. "Alan? She says that there was someone scheduled to do a soil test this afternoon. She'll try and find out the name of the company for you. If she finds it, I'll call you back. I'm afraid that's it. Have you called the police?"

"Not yet."

"It's dark, Alan. Pretty cold, at least up here. If he's outside? You need to think about calling the sheriff."

"Yeah." I hadn't thought it would come to that. But it was coming to that.

I heard a door open and close at Diane's end of the conversation. Diane's voice went to whisper. "I think Hake's downtown at the St. Julien. I'm pretty sure he's not sleeping at the house. I gotta go."

The fallout from the aftermath of the housewarming, and the fallout from the bicycle accident, were apparently taking a toll on Mattin and Mimi's relationship. That was hardly surprising.

I hit the doorbell one more time before I stepped from my neighbors' porch. Once again, I could hear the bell sing inside the house. In my experience, the thing working twice in a row was almost unheard of. Adrienne would consider it an omen.

I called for Emily to come with me. She ran directly to my side. Emily's a great companion. But obedient? On her whim. She was sensing my tension.

I thought I saw something move on the periphery of my vision. I stopped. Emily took an additional couple of steps in that direction, as though it had caught her attention, too. But she didn't bark.

Shadows covered shadows. I found them difficult to read. I wasn't at all sure what I had seen off to the side. Emily suddenly took off past me but stopped. Could it have been her shadow interrupting my shadow as the silhouettes stretched out in front of me and overlapped? Or had it been yet another shadow entering the montage from another location?

My impression had been that a fresh shadow, a new form, had been added to the mix of dark and light shapes that were projected onto the dust and dirt in front of me.

I spun around, half expecting to see someone standing on the porch I'd just vacated. But the porch was empty.

"Jonas?" I said. Then I said his name again, louder, while I scanned the old ranch house. Four light sources were responsible for all the overlapping shadows. A porch light was lit beside the front door. An identical light fixture was centered high on the gable above the garage door, to the north. A light in the middle of the first floor--I guessed it was in the kitchen--was sending off enough illumination to brighten the big windows on the front of the house. That light was generating some shadows. The upstairs hall light I'd spotted earlier was also sending enough illumination out the adjacent bedroom windows to cause barely perceptible shadows down below, between the two houses where I was standing.

I took a solitary step backward as I looked over my shoulder toward my home. As I changed my position, all the varied light sources caused the shadows behind me to move every which way. I stepped sideways and watched the shadows dance again.

That's all it was,
I thought
. Shadow geometry. Just an alteration in the mix of shadows each time I moved.
I continued walking toward my front door.

Emily barked. I gasped, just a little.

The bark wasn't her throaty,
wooooo,
pay-attention bark. It was Emily's I'm-serious-damn-it, slam-the-Bible-on-the-table, hard-clap, I'm-talking-danger bark.

It was her where-the-hell-is-the-Glock bark.

I stopped again. I spun one hundred eighty degrees. I looked in the direction Emily was looking, directly at the ranch house. "Jonas?" I said.

Emily barked again. Once. The sharpness of her diction was stunning.

I saw nothing alarming. My eyes scanned left, right, up, down. At the house, at the shadows. Back at the house.

Then Emily erupted. The intermittent, solitary, holy-damn barks became a chorus of slamming Bibles. In rapid succession, the claps roared from her throat
rat-a-tat-tat
as though she had loaded a dozen of the fat holy books in a Gatling-gun-style slamming-Bibles-on-the-kitchen-counter machine.

One bark right after another right after the next.

Emily was not happy. I kept my eyes on the house, determined to find the source of any movement. The big dog was definitely seeing something I wasn't seeing.

I knew that it wasn't Jonas. Emily wouldn't bark like that if all she saw were Jonas. She would run to greet him. "Good girl," I said, releasing her. "Go get it."

The Bouvier jumped at the chance to confront the danger, launching herself into motion. I assumed she had a better idea what "it" might be than I did.

She had a destination ready. She took off immediately toward the side of the old house that faced toward the ravine. The side of the house with the walk-out basement door. In a split second the big dog was around the corner, gone from my sight.

The barking stopped soon after.

I was paralyzed in place for a moment. I was trying to decide if I should go inside and get the Glock. Or follow Emily, and the danger.

The shadows in front of me moved again.

That wasn't an illusion.
How? What?

"Jonas? Hey, Jonas? You there? Jonas?"

37

M
y phone was ringing. I reached into my pocket and touched the button to quiet it. When I pulled it out to see who'd called, my wife's photo was on the screen. I switched it to vibrate before I answered. "Yeah," I said. The call had only a small fraction of my attention.

"I'm on my way to the ER in Louisville, Alan. The girls were using Phyllis's sofa as a trampoline and Gracie hit the side of her head on the coffee table. She's okay. But she needs a few stitches."

I wanted to scream
Fuck!
Instead, I mouthed
fuck
. "No concussion? They're sure?"

"No concussion. Phyllis is there. She says the doctor says Grace is fine. Any sign of Jonas?"

"Still looking. Where's the Glock?"

"Right now? It's in my car."

Damn. The one day I want the thing at home . . .

I lied. I said, "I just want to know it's in a safe place. You know, since . . ."

Since I have no friggin' idea where my son is. And since my dog is telling me that she feels danger from the pads of her paws to the roots of her fangs.

"Always," my wife said, reminding me how careful she was with her weapon. "We should think about calling the police, Alan."

"I know," I said. "I was just about to do that when you called."

"Okay," she said. "Well, it's time. What if he's hurt, you know if he fell or something?"

"As soon as we hang up, I will call."

I was about to hang up the phone when Lauren added, "I forgot. I talked to Topher. He said he saw a kid. One he'd seen before. Walking out the lane. Late this morning."

"Out? Topher used that word?"

"Yes. But he wasn't home all day. He spent most of the rest of the day with his sister, he said. Did you know she has melanoma?"

I didn't. But that was a tragedy for another day. "Thanks," I said. "Keep me posted."

My attention was fragmented. I was staring into the dark in the direction where Emily had disappeared. I was listening for any sound at all from any direction that wasn't the hum of white noise emanating from rush-hour traffic on 36. I was waiting for shadows to move.

I started hitting the buttons on my phone to connect with Sam Purdy. I would ask him to coordinate with 911 for me. The phone vibrated in my hand before I hit the second button. Diane's picture filled the screen.

"Yeah. What's up?"

"Mimi's in tears. There may be a . . . serious problem. With her family."

I didn't have time for Mimi's problem. "I'm in the middle of my own problem, Diane. I'm sorry, but we can talk after I find--"

"Shit," Diane said. Then, "Oh fuck--Damn it, I'm trying not to curse. Now somebody is at the door. Can you believe it? Raoul? Will you get that? We live in the middle of nowhere, Alan. People find us anyway. But don't worry, Raoul is going to get it."

I was worried about a lot at that moment. But I hadn't been at all concerned about Diane's profanity or who was at Diane's door.

Diane said, "Mimi didn't want to tell me any of this. I had to press her. She's afraid that--"

"Diane. I really don't have time for--"

"You asked who might be home at her house. Her son may be at their house. That's who."

What? Her son?
I had to review what I knew about Mimi's family. When Diane had originally told me that her friends were buying Adrienne's house, she'd said something about Mimi having a couple of kids from a prior marriage. The older girl was a cheerleader at Kansas. Or Iowa, maybe. Missouri? I hadn't really been paying attention. At the time, it had seemed like information of infrequent utility. She was in the middle of a semester abroad, I thought. Singapore? Hong Kong? No, maybe someplace in Europe. I hadn't been paying enough attention. The only son was younger, a junior in high school at some boarding school for skiing wunderkinds in Routt County, up near Steamboat Springs.

I remembered thinking that I didn't even know there were boarding schools for skiing wunderkinds. In Routt County or elsewhere.

To Diane, I said, "Yeah. Okay. How is that a problem?"

"Hake isn't answering his phone. There had been some trouble between Hake and . . . her son. And between Hake and Mimi about her son."

"The skier? That son?"

"Yes. That son. Hake doesn't want him in the house. Mimi is worried that there could be a confrontation and--"

She stopped suddenly. The truth was that Diane was making me more nervous, which I wouldn't have predicted was possible. Whatever she had going on with Mimi certainly wasn't being particularly helpful with my search for Jonas.

Diane's voice was breathless. She said, "Raoul says the police are at the door. I need to go, Alan. They want--Oh my God. They have a warrant."

The call died.

I tried to make it compute. Why were the police at Raoul and Diane's with a warrant? What kind of warrant?
Search? Arrest?

Emily barked once in the distance, bringing me back to the present crisis in Spanish Hills. I waited for more from her. But the single bark was all I got.

It hadn't been a Bible-slam bark, like earlier. The latest solitary bark had been different. A bark I had never heard before. Soft, at least on the edges. A high pitch at its peak.

A completely new word in her Bouvier vocabulary. A word, unfortunately, I didn't yet comprehend.

It wasn't the most opportune of times for my dog to introduce a canine neologism.

I began taking measured steps in the direction of the bark. I hit the buttons to call Diane.

"Just listen, please. Call the sheriff for me. Tell them I have an emergency up here. I need to go, too. Emily is sensing--"

Just then, Emily came running around the corner of the house toward me at an awkward jog, as though she were running at a forty-five-degree angle. When she got to my side, I reached down to pet her with my free hand so I could get a sense of how winded she was, which might tell me how far she'd run.

My hand came back wet.

I had to lift my hand from the shadows to the light in order to confirm my fear. My hand was covered in blood. One look into my dog's dark eyes told me the blood was hers. She didn't really lay down next to me. She pretty much collapsed beside me.

"Do it, Diane. Now! Call 911. I need the sheriff. An ambulance, too. As fast as they can get here. Call Sam Purdy. Tell him everything. Please, an ambulance, Diane. Got it? And a vet. A vet, too."

"Alan," she said. "They are here with a warrant for--"

"Call 911. Please." I closed the phone.

Go to Jonas? Take care of Emily?
I didn't know what I should do first.

I needed a flashlight and a weapon to go off in the dark to help Jonas.

I carried the eighty-pound dog inside. She stayed where I laid her on the rug in the family room. I ran to the first aid stuff, got a fat round of gauze and a big elastic bandage. I felt through my dog's thick hair until my fingers slipped into a warm wound on her chest on the left side. My fingers disappeared into the gash up to the first knuckle. I covered the wound with a fat fold of gauze and wrapped Emily's taut body with the bandage.

Fiji sat at attention right beside her friend.

I wondered if the half a minute it had taken me to compress Emily's wound would have been better spent searching for Jonas.

Please, please, please,
I kept repeating to myself.
Please, please, please.

"Hold on, girl," I said to the big dog. Fiji's eyes were as big as quarters. Her perky tail was down. Her ears were flat against her head. She looked befuddled, but she also looked like she knew in her heart that her world had just turned completely upside down, and that she had a job to do.

The creature she considered the most powerful animal in the world was down in front of her. I said, "Fiji, take care of Emily."

I grabbed the big, black Maglite and ran back outside.

Jonas. I'm coming.

I really wished I had the damn Glock. I actually felt like shooting somebody.

I recognized at some level that I had just identified a good reason not to be carrying a .9mm handgun.