Blake Crouch: Snowbound

The night grew colder as the moon rose over the foothills. An occasional breeze stirred the firs. From the next farm down, he could hear cows groaning at the moon, their bells clanging.

He finally got the cap off, smelled the scorched oil as it drained into the pan.

Another car was coming, which made three in the last ten minutes. Busy night.

The car was slowing now. He heard it stop at the end of his driveway. A city car. A rental perhaps, not the big rumbling gas guzzlers most of his neighbors owned.

The tires began to turn. What the hell? He wriggled himself out from under the truck and came to his feet, stood there shielding his eyes from the headlights as the car rolled toward him down the gravel drive.

It stopped behind the Chevy. The engine quit. The headlights died. For a moment, he couldn’t see a thing, temporarily blinded. A door opened. Slammed. Footsteps moved toward him. The man thinking, Now you’ve fucked up. Should have left this afternoon. Packed a suitcase, gotten the hell out of here. He backed away as his eyes readjusted to the darkness.

“You blinded me with your brights,” he said, “so I can’t see too well right now. Who’s there?” The footsteps stopped. He could see the shape of his visitor now, light from the front porch falling across her face.

It was the woman who had approached his daughter after school.

“Sorry to blind you,” she said. “I must have driven past your mailbox three times before I saw it.”

“Who are you?”

She offered her hand. “Kalyn Sharp.” She was his height, maybe a few years younger, with straight brown hair, pronounced cheekbones. He couldn’t determine the color of her eyes in the poor light, and he didn’t take her hand.

“What do you want?”

“Are you William Innis?”

Surging blast of adrenaline. “No.”

“Well, I have a picture of Mr. Innis here in my purse. You could be twins.”

“You need to leave.” He turned away from the woman, started back toward the house.

“Mr. Innis!” she called after him. “Please!”

He went inside, let the screen door bang shut behind him.

“Who’s out there?” his daughter asked.

“Go finish your homework in your room.” She recognized something in her father’s voice—nonnegotiable fire. The girl gathered up her textbook and notebook and headed down the squeaky hardwood floor of the hallway.

The man stood at the kitchen sink, ran the tap, scrubbed the oil and grease from his hands with hot water and soap, trying to piece together exactly what he would do, what they would need to take, what they could leave. As he looked up to see if the car was backing down the driveway, there was a knock on the door.

He walked over, stared through the screen at the woman standing on his porch.

“Out here in the boondocks,” he said, “when someone tells you to get the hell off their property, it’s usually a wise thing to—” Now she was holding something up against the screen, and when he saw it, his stomach turned.

FBI credentials. A crippling weakness spread into his knees.

What are you willing to do to stay with your daughter?

“Relax,” she said. “If I were here to take you in, you’d already be in handcuffs.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I believe you’re innocent, Mr. Innis.” Her words stopped him cold.

“And why is that?”

“Because your wife . . . Rachael. She wasn’t the first. Or the last.”

THIRTEEN

As Will filled a pot with water from the tap, he glanced over his shoulder at the FBI agent seated at the kitchen table.

“How’d you find us?”

“Year and a half chasing down your aliases. What are you using now?”

“Joe Foster.” The pot was full. He set it on the stove, turned up the gas, took a seat at the kitchen table across from Kalyn. The woman had draped her coat over one of the chairs, laid her briefcase on the hardwood floor. “Which field office you out of?” Will asked.

“Phoenix. So, I’ve been dying to ask—why’d you run?”

“My daughter has cystic fibrosis. I had to assume her mother was dead, and this Ajo detective had a giant hard-on for me right out of the gate. I figured there was a decent chance I was going to be charged. I don’t know how familiar you are with CF, but it’s a terminal disease. Most people who have it never see their thirtieth birthday. I wasn’t taking a chance that my daughter would die without me there by her side.”

“But she’s okay now?”

“We’ve had three good years. That’s not to say she won’t get sick again.”

“How are you making a living?”

“Web design. I work out of my house.”

“Must be hard, knowing what everyone thinks of you. What they think you did.”

“Look, we have a new life now, and it’s pretty good. I know what happened the night my wife went missing. My conscience is clear.”

“You shouldn’t have run.”

“If you aren’t here to arrest me, what is it you want?”

Kalyn reached down and lifted her briefcase. She opened it, pulled out a manila folder. The first thing she handed Will was a map—New Mexico, Arizona, SoCal. Red X ’s had been marked in four locations across the Southwest.

“What’s this?”

Kalyn scooted her chair beside his, laid down a photograph of a woman smiling, with ski slopes in the background. Reflective sunglasses. Enormous down jacket.

“Suzanne Tyrpak. Disappeared in July of 2000 between Gallup and Albuquerque.” She dropped another photograph on the table. “Jill Dillon.” She pointed to an X on the southern border of Arizona. “Disappeared in August 2001, outside of Nogales.” Another photograph. Will’s wife stared at him. Beautiful, devious Rachael smile. He remembered taking the picture on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. “Rachael Innis. Disappeared in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, July 2002. Here’s the last one.” She laid a photograph carefully beside Rachael’s picture. “Lucy Dahl. Disappeared August 2004 on the interstate between El Paso and Tucson.”

A strange silence settled in the house. Chimes clanging in discordance on the front porch. Will feeling like it wasn’t just Kalyn and him in the kitchen. Ghosts present. He glanced down at the photographs, lined up side by side, and a chill pushed through him.

“Oh my God,” he said.

“You noticed.”

“These women could be sisters.”

“I know. The dark eyes. Curly black hair.”

“Is that a coincidence?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll show you what isn’t.” Kalyn took four more photographs from the folder, spread them out. A Lexus. Honda Civic. Ford Explorer. Rachael’s Jeep Cherokee. In each photograph, the driver’s side window was busted out. “You can’t see it here, but the right front tire on all of these cars was punctured.”

“So this is like a, um—”

“An MO. Yes.”

“Were any of these women ever found?”

Kalyn shook her head. “Your water’s boiling.”

Will got up from the table and took two mugs from the cabinet.

“I have peppermint, green tea, and Earl Grey.”

“Peppermint, please.” Will dropped the tea bags into the mugs, and as he poured the boiling water slowly over them, Kalyn said, “I think I know who took these women.”

Will set the pot of water back on the stove, turned off the gas, his hands trembling now.

He stared at the floor and took deep breaths. “You think? Or you know?”

“I’m about eighty percent sure. Let me ask you something. You were a defense attorney. You somewhat familiar with how the cartels operate?”

“Sure.”

“Ever heard of the Alphas?”

Will carried the cups of tea over to the table and sat down. “No, what’s that?”