“But why?” she asked, her eyes big. He took a moment to look at her. She was tired, pale, worn-out. There were dark rings around her eyes, and she wore no makeup. Still, though, he thought she was lovely.
“We don’t want things to turn into a circus sideshow,” he said. “We’ve seen it a million times. These people live on rumors and speculation-anything to fill up airtime. They’ll dissect every word you say and turn it around to use against you. If we want to do the right thing, we’ve got to keep a lid on the information we put out and make sure it’s straight and accurate. You could accidentally say something that would give all the armchair experts in their studios a reason to suspect you. I’ve seen it happen.”
She obviously didn’t understand what he was saying, and shrugged. “Me? Why would they think that?”
“Another thing. Look, the person who has your kids might be watching the news. In fact, he’ll probably be watching. We don’t want him to know what we know yet or what leads we’re pursuing. You might inadvertently say something that will help keep him from us. We’ve decided that only the sheriff should speak to the media, that it all be focused on him. That will keep the reporters in one place-the county building-and not camping out here at your house. If they know you won’t give them interviews, but the sheriff will, they’ll focus on him, not you. That’s how we want to play it.”
“I’m not sure I understand. I just want to find my kids.”
“Monica, you’re in the hands of professionals. We’ve been through this before.”
“That means nothing to me.”
Swann tried to remain calm, maintain the authoritative voice and demeanor. He could sense the cameraman behind him moving his tripod for a shot of Monica. Countering it, Swann moved to his right to stay between them. “We don’t know yet where Annie and William are,” he said. “If the person who has them decides to bring them back or contact you, we don’t want camera trucks and reporters to scare him off. We also have to think about how things look to the bad guy. We want the face of this investigation to be the sheriff, not the victim. Does that make sense?”
She studied him, then shook her head. “No, not really.”
He pointed to the reporter, who had finished with her hair and was standing with her hands on her hips, smoldering. “Look at her. All she wants is a story. She doesn’t care about you or your kids.”
That seemed to work. Monica assessed the reporter in a different light now, he thought.
“You have to decide to trust me, trust us,” he said. “I’m here to help and protect you. Believe me, I’ve been through these kinds of situations before, we all have. There are ways to do them right, and one of those ways is not to turn this into a media frenzy. Monica, we’ve got only your best interests-and the welfare of your kids-in mind.”
She looked at him as if she wasn’t sure about that, but she called, “Later, maybe,” to the reporter, and turned back toward her house. He followed her in through the front door and closed and locked it behind them. Through the front window she could see the reporter and the cameraman talking, heatedly, the reporter gesticulating with her hands. He closed the curtains on them.
What he didn’t say to Monica was what he was thinking: And we don’t want your children to see you crying for them on television.
Saturday, 12:20 P.M.
ON HIS way home, Jess Rawlins stopped for lunch at the Bear Trap, which was located halfway between town and the ranch, at an old culmination of logging roads that came down from the mountains. The Bear Trap was a peculiar, idiosyncratic icon: a rambling structure made of logs that had never been as elegant as intended and was now descending into senility. Once a dance hall, boardinghouse, restaurant, and touchstone for loggers and miners (with prostitutes upstairs), the building, once bold, now seemed to be withdrawing in on itself, looking frail and spindly, ready to collapse at an errant sneeze. It had a vast covered porch filled with mismatched weathered rocking chairs, and a hitching post out front that had been hit so many times by trucks pulling in that it leaned over almost to the ground.
Jess’s father had once been a steady customer for meals but had boycotted the place when some people from Spokane bought it and attempted to gentrify it, upgrading the kitchen, remodeling the upstairs rooms, closing the credit accounts that were delinquent beyond thirty days, taking chicken-fried steak off the menu, and generally ruining it as far as he was concerned. The Bear Trap changed in character from a local tavern to a tourist stop. Trinkets replaced bullets and fishhooks on the retail shelves. Recently, though, the Spokane owners had thrown in the towel rather than invest any further in the deteriorating structure, and the building had been purchased by a retired crosscut saw foreman and his wife who were trying to make a go of it. Jess stopped there as often as he could, more out of support than desire, each time hoping the food would improve.
As he pulled into the lot he noticed the only other vehicle was a tricked-up SUV with Washington plates, ski racks on top and a bike rack on the rear bumper, a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON decal in the back window, and FREE TIBET and WE VOTE, TOO bumper stickers. Idaho had long been considered a third-world country by Washingtonians, a kind of northwestern Appalachia. Despite the changes in the valley and the influx of new residents, the old perceptions still ran deep.
Inside, it was dark and cluttered, and smelled of decades-old spilled Hamm’s beer as well as grease that needed changing out. Jess skipped the tables and went to the bar, waiting for the proprietress, who was busy delivering orders to the four raggedy college-age students occupying a big table in the center of the room. Jess swiveled on his stool and looked at them: two men, two women. They were very loud. The group was obviously passing through. The two men-boys, actually-wore baggy clothes and days-old growths of beard, their hair hanging down over their eyes. One boy had a mass of red hair and light freckles, with a squared-off, oafish jaw. The other was dark, angular, his face slack as if he had just awakened. The girls were young and pretty, one blonde, one brunette, with straight hair parted in the middle. The blonde wore a white tank top and jeans, and the brunette wore a dark T-shirt cut short to expose her belly. A glint of gold winked from a stud through her navel.
As the waitress put down their plates and gathered empty beer glasses, she looked up at Jess with an exasperated expression.
“Another round of beer for my horses!” one of the boys shouted, and the girls giggled, although one of them reached across the table and hit the boy in the arm.
“We’re not, like, fucking horses,” she squealed.
Jess winced. Of course, he had heard the word before, many times, and used it on occasion. But she was so young, and it came so naturally from her.
He thought of his own son, the first year he had come back from college. He was like that, like those boys. Exuberant, loud, crude, full of himself. For almost a year, Jess Jr. was the smartest human being on the planet, and the people he had grown up with were the most ignorant. He had been charismatic in his way, attractive the way a turbo-charged red convertible is attractive to some girls. Jess had been alarmed by the change in him, but his wife had assured him it was normal. She told Jess their son had been repressed all those years and was now feeling his oats. Her implication was that Jess had been responsible for the repression. But no matter how she characterized the change, Jess still couldn’t say truthfully that he liked what Jess Jr. had become. He still didn’t. What he didn’t know at the time was that he would never see Jess Jr. like that again.
The proprietress came around the bar with her spiral notebook out, eyeing Jess with a plea for understanding and sympathy.