Бентли Литтл - The Disappearance

“You couldn’t get them for that ?” Stacy asked incredulously.

“No proof,” Stewart said. “We called in the FBI, but everything was untraceable. Whoever their computer guy is, he’s good.”

Outside, there was a lessening of darkness, a hint of pink that showed through the slatted blinds covering the window. Gary glanced at the clock on the wall. Six o’clock. It was Thursday morning. He was anxious to go after Joan.

The sheriff stood and pulled open the top drawer of an old-fashioned file cabinet behind his desk. “One thing that will help you, I think, is getting a look at the Home and its layout.” He withdrew a thick manila folder and placed it on top of his desk, flipping it open and turning it to face them.

The first photo, taken from some distance away, showed a sprawling series of single-story buildings framed by a wrought-iron gateway topped with a cross. The buildings were at the far end of a twin-rutted dirt driveway. “We took these during our first raid. This one’s from the road.” Stewart slid the photograph off the top of the pile, revealing the next photo below: an aerial view of the property. “This was taken from a helicopter.” From this angle, Gary could see not only how large the grounds were but how isolated. The flat buildings of the first photo and a barn surrounded by planted fields were the only structures visible. An irregular red line had been drawn with a pen over a center section of the picture, encompassing the buildings, the fields and a sizable portion of woods.

“The front entrance is here,” the sheriff said, pointing with a pencil. “This driveway leads to the road, and the road leads to First Street at the east end of town. The compound’s about eight miles from where we are now. I have two men watching the grounds at this moment. Manny Trejo’s right here, by this tree.” The sheriff moved his pencil. “Ken Faul is staking out the rear of the property from a fire break just outside this part of the picture.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to—” Stacy began.

“What the county attorney doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“And it might help you,” Hubbard said.

“If something happened,” the sheriff said, “if you got in trouble somehow, if you saw something illegal, if you saw something suspicious , Manny and Ken would be in a position to quickly assist you.”

Gary nodded. “I understand.”

Stewart swiveled the monitor on his desk to face them and with a few clicks of his mouse brought up several rows of thumbnail photos. “More shots are on the computer here. Just click on the ones you want to enlarge.”

“Okay.”

“I’m going to get some coffee,” Stewart said pointedly. “Taylor, why don’t you keep me company.”

“Sure,” the deputy said.

“But—” Gary began.

“We’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” Stewart told him.

Brian put a hand on Gary’s shoulder to keep him from protesting as the sheriff and deputy walked out of the room. “They think we’re going to break in,” Brian explained, once the door had closed. “They don’t want to know about it, but they’re giving us time to look over the surveillance photos, to try and find a way inside.”

“Oh,” Gary said, feeling dumb.

“Huh,” Reyn said. “I didn’t get that, either.”

“You two are so naive,” Stacy said. She reached down and picked up the aerial photo. “How do we get in?” she wondered. “This place is like a fortress. Even if they don’t have guards or people specifically assigned to watch for intruders, they probably have cameras and alarms set up.”

“I’m not sure they need any of that,” Reyn said, flipping quickly through the rest of the photos. “Look how many people are here. Front, back, sides. Someone’s bound to notice us.”

“It’s harvest time,” Gary said. “We might get lucky; they might be in the fields.”

“That’s a possibility,” Reyn conceded.

“How do we get in?” Stacy said again.

Gary had taken the photos from Reyn and was looking through them. The front of the Home did not resemble a home at all, but a generic industrial building. A meatpacking plant, perhaps. Or a warehouse. Both the surrounding farm and the Texas setting would seem to make a Western look more appropriate, but there was no wood, only stucco, no portico, only a flat door in the wall. As Stacy said, it was essentially a fortress, and the disparity between function and appearance was disconcerting.

Inside, the decor was just odd: irregularly shaped rooms; looms, spinning wheels and other items from a preindustrial era; a restaurant-sized kitchen with a wood-burning stove; primitive, spartan living quarters, and those ever-present framed photos of a white-bearded old man. Father . The people were even odder, and like the two they had captured back in California, many of the residents appeared to have some sort of physical deformity or mental handicap.

Like Joan’s mother.

He stared at a man with an overlarge head and stumpy extremities, and it suddenly occurred to him that Joan’s mother would fit right in with these people. He thought of the prayer scroll they’d found in Joan’s room.

The Outsiders .

Realization suddenly dawned on him. Joan had belonged to the Homesteaders. She had come from here. And Outsiders were anyone else, anyone who was not part of the cult. Joan and her parents had escaped somehow, and the Homesteaders had tracked her down, brought her back. Her parents…

Gary thought of the dead dog in the empty house.

The spot of red blood on the white linoleum floor.

His thoughts must have shown on his face because Stacy said worriedly, “What is it? What’s wrong? Did you see something in that picture?” She took it out of his hands to examine it.

He didn’t want to say. They were here to help him, and it was wrong to keep information from them, but he rationalized it by telling himself that it was not information, just conjecture. The truth was that he was embarrassed, as stupid and superficial as that might be, and he didn’t want them to know that Joan had ever been involved in any way with these lunatics.

Gary looked at the next photo, a picture of the farm. Rows of crops stretched across a long field bordered at the far end by tall, leafy trees. In the photo, one man was riding an antiquated tractor, while a dozen or so others worked with hoes along the rows. If the tractor had been taken out of the picture, the scene could have been one from two hundred years ago.

“They’re not as primitive as they make themselves out to be,” Brian reminded him, looking over his shoulder. “They erased your electronic footprint. And Joan’s. Someone in there is sophisticated enough to hack into the DMV, UCLA, banks, credit agencies… . They’re not just simple God-worshipping farmers.”

“No, they’re not,” Gary said grimly. “And they’re not just here in Texas. They have allies all over, like those people in New Mexico—”

“Like that sheriff ,” Brian emphasized.

“They’re not just growing potatoes on that farm, either. Whatever they drugged me with tasted like dirt, like some sort of root. I’ll bet they grow that shit right there.”

“Duly warned,” Reyn said. “We have to be careful.”

They spent the next twenty minutes or so looking through the photos on the computer, trying to figure out the best way in. The compound itself was surrounded on all sides by large tracts of open land, so whichever approach they took, they would be easily spotted. Before they even tried to get inside the buildings, they had to reach them, and they went back and forth on how best to do that.

Finally, they heard new voices from the front of the sheriff’s office, and Gary glanced up at the window to see that it was fully light outside. They should have gone under cover of darkness, he thought. That would have been the best way to reach the Home undetected. But Stewart had dissuaded them from that, and now it was too late.