C Box - Blue Heaven

“Looks like we’ve got our guy,” Singer said. “Whether we’ll be able to find him is another thing.”

“Those poor kids. My God.”

“The tape belonged to Boyd, no doubt about it,” Singer said. “He kept a library of Seahawk games from last year. Eighteen tapes, all the same brand, lined up in order on his bookshelf. The last one was missing, which is the one we just looked at. So was his video camera, but he left the case for it.”

“Maybe we should get some dogs,” Gonzalez said. “We could get the scent from clothes at the mother’s house and send the dogs out near the river. I’m guessing that’s where we’ll find the bodies. I don’t know the situation around here, but we used to have some dog guys available we could call in.”

Carey seemed incapable of moving or speaking. He stared at the frozen screen.

“Sheriff?” Singer asked gently.

“The mother needs to know,” Carey said. “I don’t look forward to that conversation.”

Singer screwed up his face in sympathy. Newkirk felt another violent surge. Again, he fought to keep it down. He looked away, at the empty council chambers, hoping that not seeing Singer, Gonzalez, or Carey would settle his flaming stomach.

“We could call Swann,” Singer said. “He could break the news.”

The sheriff looked troubled. “No. That’s something I should do.”

“Swann knows her,” Singer said. “It might be better coming from him.”

Carey considered it. “You’re probably right.”

Coward , Newkirk thought.

“Time to issue an Amber Alert and call in the FBI,” Carey said. “We’ve got a suspect now, but this is beyond us. Boyd is probably halfway across Nevada or in Canada by now.”

Singer’s eyes flared, but so quickly that Newkirk wasn’t sure the sheriff even noticed.

“No FBI,” Singer said. “Do you know how they come in and completely take over a case? I’ve been there, believe me. The most dangerous place to be on earth is between an FBI spokesman and a television camera. They make the locals come off as incompetent and lame. There’s nothing the Feds can do that we’ve not already thought of.”

Carey shook his head. “We need somebody to analyze the tape. Maybe they can figure out where it was shot, or see something in it we can’t see.”

Newkirk was surprised by the sheriff’s determination and mortified by the sudden turn things had taken. Singer had been sure Carey would defer to him.

“Why does it matter where he took it?” Singer asked. “What matters is what he said. He confessed, Sheriff. We’ve got our man. Now we’ve got to concentrate on finding Boyd and locating those bodies. The FBI can’t really help with that here. You know this county better than they ever will.”

Carey cleared his throat. “It doesn’t feel right to me that Boyd here would confess on a tape and, in effect, dare us to come find him. He doesn’t seem proud of what he did. He feels like shit, and he sure looks like shit. Maybe he had to do it to clear his conscience, but why not just turn himself in? He’s no hardened criminal. He’s just a local boy gone bad.”

“Sheriff…”

Carey looked at Singer. “That’s right. Last I looked, I was still the sheriff around here. It makes sense to me to bring in some expertise.”

To an outsider, Newkirk thought, it might look like the sheriff had won. But Singer’s face was calm, impassive. As if he were considering what the sheriff said and thinking it over. But Newkirk knew Singer and knew that Singer was at his most dangerous when he appeared serene.

“Okay,” Singer said, chancing a small smile. “You’re the sheriff. We’re here to help, not to tell you what to do. But please realize that when the FBI comes in, it will no longer be your show. The Feds will look at everything. The way the investigation was run, how you manage your office, everything. If they don’t find Boyd or those bodies, they’ll say it’s because the investigation was botched in the early stages. They’ll hold hourly press conferences to feed the networks their raw meat, and you’ll end up getting the blame. You don’t deserve that, Sheriff Carey. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’ve worked your ass off, just like we have. But in the end, however it goes, there will be people out there, voters, who will think you waited until the case was botched before you called in the cavalry. Didn’t you say you won with fifty-one percent of the vote? How many votes would swing it back? Less than a hundred, I’d guess. How many people will think you fucked up, even though you didn’t? I haven’t been here all that many years, but I’ve been around long enough to know that the citizens aren’t fond of federal involvement. They’re an independent bunch up here. Why elect a sheriff when all he’s going to do is bring in Federales when he doesn’t know what to do next?”

Carey listened in silence, never taking his eyes off Singer. Finally, Carey shifted and looked at Gonzalez, who was sitting back in his chair, arms crossed, obviously disappointed with him. The sheriff turned back to Newkirk, who said, “Do what you need to do, Sheriff.”

“Twelve hours,” Carey said, standing up. “You’ve got that time to clear things up. There’s a guy down in Coeur d’Alene with bloodhounds we contract with. And we’ll need to reissue the APB for Boyd along with the Amber Alert, to make sure everybody in the country is looking for him. We’ll say we suspect him to be armed and dangerous. But if we don’t have Boyd or those bodies in twelve hours, I’m calling in the FBI.”

“Fair enough,” Singer said.

Newkirk found himself staring at Singer. What was he thinking? What did a day really matter?

Carey left the room and shut the door, only to reopen it and lean in.

“You’ll ask Swann to break the news to the mother?”

“I will,” Singer said. “I’d hold off on any public announcement about the confession, though. At least until tomorrow, if we can.”

“I’ll tell the press about the alert,” Carey agreed. “Until then, we’ll have to see more and more stories about the white supremacists who used to be here.”

SINGER WAITED until the sheriff was back in his office down the hall before addressing Gonzalez and Newkirk.

“That means we’ve got today to find those kids.”

“Son of a bitch,” Gonzalez said. “Maybe the tape was a bad idea.”

Singer shook his head. “No, no, it wasn’t. There’s no doubt in that sheriff’s mind who did it now. That was the purpose of the tape, after all.”

“What if the FBI looks at it?” Newkirk asked. “What if they figure out where it was made? Or they see Boyd looking to Gonzo to see if he’s said everything right? I thought I could see that stun-gun burn when he turned his head.”

Singer responded with a cold stare. Newkirk stopped talking.

“We’ve handed the sheriff a confession, Newkirk. We gave him a fucking slam dunk. He’ll think about it and realize it’s better to close this thing than to keep it open.”

“What if he doesn’t? He seemed pretty determined.”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Singer said. “We’ll stay ahead of him. It’s not that hard.”

“Where are those fucking kids?” Gonzalez asked rhetorically, looking at the map of the county pushpinned to the wall. “Maybe they are dead by now. How long could a couple of kids survive out there in those woods and not be seen by anybody?”

Singer’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It could be that somebody is hiding them. If so, we’ve got to find out who.”

“What if they are found?” Newkirk asked.

Singer snapped back, “If they show up, we’re in perfect position to take care of it. We’ll be able to get to them before they can yap. We’ve got a man with their mother, remember? You think they’d talk if they knew what could happen to her if they did? There is no way they’d be out of our control long enough to fuck us over.