Gonzalez said, “Maybe he wants to retire here. He’s probably worn-out from a lot of big cases in his career like getting kittens out of trees and shit like that. It means zilch. Let’s not get paranoid. We’ve got a couple of young’uns to locate first.”
Something banged the door, and the three ex-cops exchanged glances. Singer signaled for Newkirk to check out the sound.
Newkirk approached the door silently, then quickly grabbed the doorknob and threw it back.
A janitor stood in the hallway, pulling a mop back from where he had hit the bottom of the door. There were rainbow-colored arcs of soapy mop water on the linoleum floor. Newkirk saw the man jump when he opened the door, and take an involuntary step back. The janitor looked to be in his midthirties, a trustee judging by his orange jail-bird jumpsuit. Stringy brown hair coursed to his thin shoulders. Unfocused-and alarmed-eyes moved from Newkirk to Singer to Gonzalez.
“What do you want?” Gonzalez asked from behind the table. He had folded his arms across his chest in front of him so they looked even bigger than they were.
“Nothin’,” the janitor said. “Jes’ cleanin’.”
“You hear anything?” Singer asked conversationally. “What’s your name, anyway?”
“J.J.”
“What about the first part of my question?”
J.J. looked to Newkirk for help, found none, then lowered his head so his hair obscured his face.
“I’m jes’ cleanin’. I didn’t hear nothin’. I didn’t even know there was anybody in here.”
“Not that there was anything to hear,” Singer said. “We’re assisting with the investigation into those two missing kids.”
The janitor nodded, which consisted of his hair bobbing up and down.
“Take it easy, J.J.,” Singer said. Newkirk closed the door.
“You boys are paranoid, all right,” Gonzalez said, showing his white teeth. “We got it under control as best we can. And we’ve got that sheriff dicked.”
NEWKIRK NEVER TIRED of driving his car up the long, paved, heavily wooded road to his home and seeing it emerge through the trees. It was a mansion, his mansion, even though it was neocolonial and looked out of place among the huge log structures that were being built throughout the county. The only thing he liked better than seeing it in the daylight was seeing it lit up at night. It had been three and a half years since the house was complete, and he still couldn’t believe he lived there.
Three cars were in the circular driveway: his wife’s Land Rover, his sons’ Taurus, and the old pickup he used for cargo. The Taurus was parked in the place Newkirk reserved for himself, so he entered his home peeved. Sometimes, he thought his family didn’t appreciate what they had now, that it had all come so easily. They had no idea what kind of sacrifices he’d made to create this new life, what he’d done so his boys could grow up as Tom Sawyer instead of 50 Cent. Singer and the others, they just wanted to get out for themselves from careers that had become disgusting and intolerable. Newkirk got out for his family, to save them. He wished they knew that, wished they appreciated what they had now.
The boys and his daughter were at the kitchen table, already eating dinner. His wife, Maggie, looked up and glared at him. Newkirk noted the empty place setting that had been for him.
It was only then that he remembered Maggie telling him to be home early to have a family dinner with his kids since getting everyone together was so rare these days, with spring baseball practice and ten-year-old Lindsey’s soccer and all.
“Ah, jeez…” Newkirk moaned. “I totally forgot.”
The boys looked at their food. They knew their mother was angry, and they didn’t want to get into the middle of the fight.
“I guess you did,” Maggie said. She was slight, pale, with red hair and green eyes that could flash like jewelry when she was angry, like now.
“I was at the sheriff’s office…”
“And you were going to call,” she finished for him.
He eased the door closed behind him. It was quiet in the house. Most of all, he felt bad for his kids. His sons could take it, he thought, they were in their teens and totally absorbed in sports, girls, iPods. Lindsey, though, she could break his heart. Lindsey worshipped her dad. She’d known only the Good Dad, the one in Idaho. She never knew what he used to be like, what he used to bring home.
Maggie pushed her chair back and approached him.
“Do you realize how hard it is to plan anything?” she asked. He looked at her. She was livid. “The one night I ask you to be home at a certain time, you can’t bring yourself to do it. The one night!”
Newkirk stepped back, then leveled his eyes on her.
“Look, I’m sorry I forgot. But there are some kids missing, and I volunteered to help find them. I’ve been down at the sheriff’s office with Lieutenant Singer, and Sergeant Gonzalez…”
She rolled her eyes when she heard the names.
“What?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Jim, I thought that was the life we left. You promised me. You promised me.”
He wanted to say, Don’t you care about those kids? but couldn’t bring himself to say it. Not with what he knew.
“So are you home now?” she asked.
He paused. “No, I’m here long enough to get a change of clothes. I’m likely to be down there all night.”
Maggie’s face tightened, and her eyes widened, making her head resemble a skull. She turned on her heel and walked straight to the bathroom off the living room. The slam of the door echoed throughout the house.
Newkirk stood there, his face red. Jason, his youngest son, shot a glance at him.
“There’s some steak left if you want it.”
Newkirk instead turned to Josh, the seventeen-year-old. “When you’re through with dinner, I want you to move your car. You’re in my place.”
Josh sighed. “Okay.”
“I’ll see you kids tomorrow,” Newkirk said, going up the stairs to his bedroom for his clothes. “Tell your mother I had to go.”
Saturday, 6:20 P.M.
JESS RAWLINS cleaned the wound again in the sink and looked clinically at the hole in his hand. It was good that it bled so freely, he knew, because punctures like that should bleed out and wash away potential infection with it. He flexed his hand, cringed at how much it hurt, and stuck it back under the cold running water.
Annie and William Taylor sat at the dining room table, watching him, looking guilty. They looked smaller at the table than they had in the barn. Annie’s feet-one with a shoe and the other dirty and bare-hardly touched the floor. William swung his legs, filled with nervous energy. William looked at him furtively, Jess noticed, not full on, like Annie. He was probably afraid he would be in trouble for the wound, Jess thought. Some kids had strange reactions to the revelation that they were capable of physically hurting adults.
“Let me get this bandaged, and I’ll get some food going,” Jess said. “Then we’ll call the sheriff and let him know I found his strays.”
“Sorry about your hand,” Annie said.
“I’ll live. You are pretty good with a hay hook. Ever consider stacking hay?”
“No. Besides, William did it.”
Jess looked at William, who reacted with a mixture of fear and pride.
“You know,” Jess said, “I almost got into it with a couple of college boys this afternoon who could’ve probably put me in a world of pain, but they didn’t. It took a ten-year-old boy to do real damage.”
William beamed now, until Annie shot him a glance. “You should apologize.”
“I said I was sorry,” he said. To Jess, he said, “My dad was an outlaw. Maybe that’s why I did it.”
Jess thought that over, said, “I’m not sure you want to be too proud of that.”
William looked hurt, and Annie looked vindicated.
“But you swing a mean hay hook,” Jess said quickly. William smiled. Annie didn’t.