C Box - Blue Heaven

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.”

OKAY,” 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.