C Box - Blue Heaven

He looked at her. Her eyes were fixed on him. He thought he noted a kernel of hardness in them beyond her years, like she’d seen a lot in her brief life and was used to being disappointed. Jess felt a pang. There was something about her, all right. He recalled how he felt when he saw her photo on the poster the first time, and the anger that rushed through him when he heard the college kids making their stupid jokes. He felt some kind of affinity for her right off. He didn’t want to disappoint her.

“Because,” Jess said, “I know how to cook breakfast for kids. I used to do it. I haven’t cooked for more than one for a while now, and I’m out of practice. That’s why.”

“Where are your kids?” William asked.

“Only one son,” Jess said. “Gone. Grown up.” He winced as he rubbed the wound with salve, applied a square of thick gauze to the entrance and exit, and wrapped white medical tape around his hand to hold the bandages in place. When he had a good, tight wrap, he reached up and tore the tape off with his teeth. He could hear Annie admonish William in a whisper, saying the rancher was pretty old, so of course his son was gone. He was “probably really old, like forty,” she hissed.

“Okay, I’m calling now. Yup,” Jess said, gingerly taking the handset from the wall with his bandaged hand, “you kids created quite an uproar in town. They’ve got posters up, and even some volunteers, ex-policemen, are looking for you. Your mother must be worried sick about you.”

Annie and William exchanged looks.

He didn’t know whether to dial 911 or the regular sheriff’s department number. He decided on the latter, and thumbed through the directory for the county listings. It struck Jess, once again, that all of his friends were dead or gone. The realization had come to him suddenly a few months before, and it reared again now, filling him with unwanted nostalgia and simple dread. The county had changed while he hadn’t. There had been a time when there were a dozen good men and women-neighbors-he could trust to give him counsel on this situation. Not anymore. They were all dead, or bought out and in Arizona.

As he punched the numbers, he saw Annie, who had left the table, reach up with a dirty hand and pull the phone cradle down, ending the dial tone.

He looked at her, puzzled.

“Mister,” she said, “is Mr. Swann with them? The police, I mean?”

“I don’t know him,” Jess said. “Could be.”

“Tell him, Annie,” William urged from the table.

“Tell me what?”

She said, “You don’t know what we saw. We saw some men kill another man. Down by the river. We saw their faces, and they saw ours.”

Jess looked at her, hard.

While she talked-the words rushed out, and William interjected things to abet her story-she never took her hand down from the cradle of the telephone. Jess still held the handset, but listened. A cold-blooded murder, followed by a chase, a close call with a Mr. Swann, the biggest pigs she had ever seen, fleeing through the dark, wet forest to the barn.

Jess had his doubts. “But, Annie,” he said gently, “I haven’t heard anything about a man being shot to death. That sort of thing doesn’t happen here, and if it did, I’d have heard about it.”

Annie shook her head from side to side, pleading, “That’s what we saw. Me and William. We saw them shoot that man over and over again, then they saw us and chased us. They shot at us!”

“But how do you know Mr. Swann wanted to hurt you, too?”

“I heard him talking on the telephone,” she said. “I told you that.”

“But you don’t know who he was talking to,” Jess said. “You might have thought he was saying one thing when he really was talking about something else. Why would those men want to hurt you?”

As he said it, he thought again of that kernel of hardness, how it had already made her wary and distrustful. It was sad. Kids experienced so much, so early, these days…

“What if you call the sheriff and those men come after us again? They know we can recognize them,” she said, her eyes misting. “What will you do if that happens?”

He started to say he would talk directly to the sheriff, explain the situation and the reason for her fears, get things sorted out. But her face showed such raw desperation, such fear, that he couldn’t make himself say it. She was so sure of what she’d seen, and what had happened. But a murder in Pend Oreille County would be big news. Fiona Pritzle would have tracked Jess down like a dog just to be the first one to break the news, and she hadn’t. Search teams had been all over the banks of the river looking for Annie and William, and they would have found a body in a public campground. Somebody surely would have reported a missing man. It didn’t make sense. He wasn’t sure what to do. Maybe feed the kids, clean them up, wait until they fell asleep-they were no doubt exhausted-and call?

But wasn’t that what Swann had done to them, if Annie’s story was true? Hadn’t Swann betrayed them in that way? He didn’t want to give them a reason to run again, to further frighten them. People could be trusted, he wanted to show them. This was a good place after all.

“Your story is pretty believable,” he said, finally. “But you can’t just live here. You need to get home and see your mom. You might even need to have a doctor look at you both, to make sure you’re all right.”

“We’re fine,” Annie said. “We’ll live in the barn in that cave if we have to.”

“It’s a fort ,” William corrected.

“You’re not living in the barn,” Jess said, furrowing his brow.

A minute passed. Annie kept her hand on the cradle.

“How about I call your mother?” Jess said. “I’ll let her know you’re okay. That way she won’t be suffering any longer, and I’m sure she’ll know what to do.”

Jess could see Annie trying to think it through. He could see she wanted to say yes, but something pulled at her as well.

“We’re mad at her,” Annie said.

“You may be,” Jess said, “but I’m sure she loves you and she misses you. You know how moms are.”

Annie wanted to argue, Jess could tell. But she didn’t. She let her fingers slide off the cradle, and Jess heard the dial tone.

“What’s your phone number?”

THE CORDLESS PHONE burred in Monica Taylor’s hand, and she looked at it as if it were a snake. Swann entered from the kitchen at the sound. He had said he would have to screen any calls. The local telephone exchange was monitoring the line, he said, and would be able to track the Pen register and trace the source, if necessary.

Every time the telephone rang, panic rose from her belly and momentarily paralyzed her. It could be good news about her children, and she desperately wanted that. But it could be the worst possible news of all.

“Monica,” Swann asked, “are you going to give me that?”

It rang.

“Why do you have to answer my calls?”

“We’ve been over that. In case it’s kidnappers…or a crank call. Sickos like to prey on people in your situation, especially when it gets on the local news.”

It rang again.

Swann approached her and held out his hand. Reluctantly, she handed him the phone.

“Monica Taylor’s,” he said.

She watched his face for some kind of inkling, some kind of reaction. She could tell from the low range of the voice on the other end that it was a man.

“Yes, she’s here,” Swann said. “Who is calling?”

Swann waited a moment. Monica couldn’t hear the caller.

“Hello?” Swann said.

The caller spoke, and she recognized it as a question by the way his voice rose at the end.

“This is Sergeant Oscar Swann, LAPD, retired. I’m assisting Ms. Taylor. Again, who is calling?”