C Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

DAWN CAME SPLASHING across the Bighorn Mountains north of Sheridan, Wyoming, near the Montana border, the morning sunlight so intense Melissa pulled a blanket up over Angelina’s sleeping face. We’d stopped for gas and coffee in Ranchester, and the smell of coffee filled the Jeep. The morning was cold and crisp. Spiderwebs of creeping frost headquartered in each corner of the windshield.

“Maybe we can get breakfast in Billings,” Cody said.

“He speaks,” Melissa said from the backseat.

“I’ve been thinking,” Cody said.

“He thinks,” I said, chiding him.

Cody didn’t smile. Instead, he reached down and turned the defroster fan up a notch. The frost retreated.

He said, “We’ve got, what, nine days now before Judge Moreland’s deadline? Before he said he’d come and take the baby away?”

“Yes,” Melissa said.

“Not much time,” Cody said, shaking his head.

“But that means nothing anymore,” Melissa said. “We’ve got the photos coming anytime now. And this…” She indicated us, the Jeep, our purpose.

Cody cleared his throat and spoke softly so as not to awake Angelina. “I just want to be clear, so we’re all on the same page. Every mile we drive takes us farther across the line. And the farther we get, the less likely you’ll be able to use any legal options, like getting the baby awarded to your custody in court if it comes to that. That’s because you’re now tainted. We’ve left the land of the innocent and willingly entered the underworld. You understand that, right?”

I exchanged looks with Melissa, expecting at least some fear in her eyes. There was none.

“We understand that,” I said, for both of us.

“Okay, then. So what we’re trying to do here is hit the judge through his son. We want to scare Garrett into signing away custody.”

After a few beats, I said, “Yes.”

Cody nodded. “And you realize that whenever you choose to scare someone into doing something, there can be unintended consequences.” He paused, then said, “It’s not an exact science, being a criminal.”

“Cody!” Melissa said from the backseat.

“I just want to make sure we all understand each other,” Cody said. “It’s better to use plain language.”

“We’re not the criminals,” Melissa said. “We’re not the people trying to take babies away from their parents!”

“The law is on his side,” Cody said patiently. “I don’t agree with it. There’s a lot about the law I don’t agree with. We’ve got Aubrey Coates out on the street, for one thing. But the law is on Judge Moreland’s side.”

Melissa said, “But his wife doesn’t even know about Angelina, so something really weird is going on. And his son, Garrett, killed our dog, not to mention what he and his friend did to Jack and in our house!”

Cody talked to her via the rearview mirror. “Melissa, his wife not knowing is not a crime. It’s strange, yes. But it’s not a crime. And we think we know who killed Harry, but we haven’t proved it.”

“What about Luis?” I said.

Cody smiled bitterly. “I’m the one who kicked the shit out of Luis. For what? For cruising through your neighborhood. Who is the criminal in this instance?”

“Garrett dumped him. That’s a crime.”

“And how do we know that?” Cody asked. “How do we know Luis didn’t dump himself? I mean, Garrett could claim Luis wanted out of the car, that he didn’t know how badly Luis was injured, that Luis just didn’t want to go to the hospital. So Luis wanders off by himself in the dark and stumbles into the South Platte. How is Garrett liable for that?”

I said nothing.

“Why are you doing this?” Melissa asked, tears in her eyes.

“I want to make sure we all realize what we’re doing,” Cody said. “That’s all.”

“We realize,” I said.

“Do you?” Cody asked.

“When Brian gets his hands on those photos, it might all go away,” Melissa said. “Maybe this is as far as we need to go.”

“You trust Brian and his photos?” Cody asked into the rearview. There was a pinch of sarcasm in the question and a dollop of pity. “Think about it. What are these photos supposed to show? Judge Moreland in bed with a girl? With a boy? What if they’re doctored? What if the judge sees them as what they could be-amateur blackmail? Then where are you? And where is Brian when this happens? I’d guess he’d be long gone on one of his business trips.

“I’m just saying,” Cody said. “Speculating, because that’s what us cops do.”

Melissa said, “I don’t like your attitude about Brian.”

Cody shrugged. “Jesus, this is why I should be suspended from the Denver PD, I guess: I can’t keep my mouth shut.”

“Why are you doing this?” Melissa asked again. I reached back for her hand, but she’d withdrawn, crossing her arms across her breasts.

“Because,” Cody said, “once we unleash Jeter Hoyt, we don’t know what the hell will happen.”

I asked Cody to pull over, which he did, and I climbed into the backseat with Melissa. She was stiff at first, but finally let me hold her.

“We’re doing the right thing,” I whispered into her hair. “It’ll be all right.”

“I’ve got one more question for you,” Cody said. He took our silence as assent. “If you had it all to do over again, would you still adopt?”

“Yes,” we said simultaneously.

“Good,” Cody said. “Good for you.” His voice started trailing away. “Children need to be wanted…”

I noticed that as I’d held her, she’d slipped one of her hands out from beneath the blanket and she was holding the edge of Angelina’s car seat in a white-knuckled death grip.

LINCOLN, MONTANA, POPULATION ELEVEN hundred, was a hamlet in the Helena National Forest on the bank of the Blackfoot River. The little community made the news in the 1990s when Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, was arrested there in his hovel of a cabin, which was later shipped whole over Stemple Pass to the capital city of Helena fifty-nine miles to the southeast. It was a tough and sloppy little town that looked as if it had been dropped into the trees from a helicopter, and some of the buildings didn’t land well.

It was also the home of Jeter Hoyt.

We arrived at 3:00 P.M. on Saturday. Fourteen hours. It was like driving across most of Western Europe, and all we’d done was cross one state and enter another.

Cody parked at a bar. Apparently, his cell-phone charge was depleted because it had spent seven or eight hours searching vainly for a signal to grab on to, so he’d need to use the phone inside. I got out with him, said, “You were a little rough back there.”

He lit a cigarette. “I get like that when I’m not smoking or drinking,” he said. “When all I’ve got is reality staring me in the fucking face.”

“Thanks for driving, though,” I said.

“My plea sure.”

“What if your uncle isn’t around?”

“Always a possibility,” Cody said. “It’s the tail end of hunting season. Remember hunting season?” he asked, his expression wistful.

“I do. But you talked to him a while ago, right?”

Cody nodded. “I told him we might be coming up. He didn’t say he’d be here or not. He just grunted at me.”

While Cody went inside, I leaned against the Cherokee with my hands in my pockets. There was snow on the tops of the peaks to the south and the Scapegoat Wilderness Area to the north. I could see a skiff of snow in the shadows of the pines behind the bar. Little mountain towns like this were especially unattractive during two periods of the year: now, when there was just enough early snow to muddy the ground but not enough to freeze and cover it, and again in the spring, when the snow melted and revealed all the garbage that had been tossed aside. But as if to offset the appearance, this is when a town like Lincoln smelled best, a heady mix of pine trees, the forest floor, woodsmoke. As I breathed it in, it reminded me of home, wherever that was.