“I’m busy right now,” Jess said.
Brian looked to Karen for an explanation. She watched Jess. She looked at him in that focused way he remembered, as if by staring at his face she could suck his thoughts out. “Jess, what’s wrong?” she asked. “I can tell there’s something wrong.”
He didn’t dare speak.
“Nothing,” he said. “I’ve got to go.”
LEAVING HIS BELT, Leatherman tool, pocketknife, and change with the woman running the security check, Jess entered the sheriff’s office and stood at the counter. He wasn’t sure what, or who, he was looking for. Someone sympathetic, maybe. Someone he knew.
He stepped aside as three men in their late fifties or early sixties came down the hall to retrieve their belongings. It was obvious they were angry about something.
One said, “That’s bullshit.”
Another said, “There’s no way they’ve got enough guys. The sheriff is always whining about manpower, but he turns us away.”
The third said, “How could they have enough help? It’s that asshole Singer, I’d bet. I heard stories about that guy.”
The first man looked up while stuffing his wallet back into his pockets and saw Jess waiting for them to come through the security check.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you wait.”
“Are you fellows here to volunteer?” Jess asked. “Are you policemen, too?”
“Retired,” the second man said. “LAPD. But the sheriff didn’t even meet with us. He had his secretary come out and tell us to leave our names, but he didn’t need our help right now. Can you believe that shit, with two missing kids?”
Jess thought it was more than interesting.
THE RECEPTIONIST told him the sheriff was in, but not available. Before Jess could ask why, she said, “He’s sleeping at his desk. The poor man’s exhausted. He just held a press conference to announce the Amber Alert. Now everybody in the country is looking for Tom Boyd and those poor children. You’ve heard what happened, I assume. Is this an emergency?”
Was it? He wasn’t sure.
Tom Boyd. He’d heard the name. “The UPS man?” Jess asked incredulously.
“That’s him,” she said.
Across the room he recognized Buddy Millen, a sheriff’s deputy who had once worked on a hay crew on the Rawlins Ranch. Buddy waved, and Jess waved back, then went through the batwing doors on the side of the counter and took a seat at the deputy’s desk.
“I was just thinking about you,” Buddy said. “I’ve been on a search team not far from your ranch, looking for those little kids. Every time I see those hayfields of yours, my back starts to hurt.”
Buddy looked tired, and Jess noted that his uniform was dirty from the search.
“Why were those men out there turned away?” Jess asked. “They were retired police officers volunteering to help.”
“They’re not the first to be turned away,” Buddy said. “Half the retirees up here have been in.”
“So why did the sheriff say no?”
Buddy shrugged. “Singer’s call. He had enough people out there already, I guess. He’s calling the shots. Personally, I think it’s bullshit. We ought to have hundreds of searchers out there.”
“That’s what they thought, too,” Jess said.
“Look, I’m just finishing up here, then I’m going to go home and crash. I’ve been up for thirty-six hours.”
“No luck, huh?” Jess asked.
Buddy shook his head sadly. Then he glanced around the room, and leaned forward to Jess. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but things are moving fast. We’re on to something. A local guy confessed on camera.”
Jess sat back. “Really? The UPS guy?” The videotape.
Buddy nodded. “Unfortunately, we’re changing our mission from looking for lost kids to looking for bodies. It’s awful. But please keep it confidential. There won’t be an announcement until tomorrow.”
Jess tried to keep the confusion off his face, tried to stanch his impulse to say, They’re okay, Buddy. But what did this mean that Tom Boyd had confessed? To what?
Okay, Jess thought. Buddy is a good guy. Buddy can be trusted. Maybe he can help sort things out.
“Buddy…”
The telephone rang on the desk. Buddy held up one hand, palm out, and snatched the receiver with the other. Jess waited, trying to form his words, wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea to take Buddy outside somewhere, away from the office, to tell him. Maybe feel him out a little bit, maybe get more information about the confession that had now changed everything and made a confusing situation even more confusing.
Buddy made reassuring sounds to the caller and jotted down an address on a pad.
“Okay, ma’am. Does he have a cell phone? Have you tried his hotel?”
Buddy looked over at Jess and wiggled his eyebrows while the caller talked.
“We can’t really file a missing person’s case until he’s been gone twenty-four hours,” Buddy said. “I’m sorry. In 99.9 percent of these situations, everything turns out all right. But I’ll make a note of it and give the information to the sheriff. I’ll personally follow up with you first thing tomorrow morning. But when he shows up, please remember to call us and let us know right away, okay?”
Buddy cradled the phone and scribbled some more on his pad. “A wife says her husband was supposed to be back from a steelhead fishing trip last night, but he hasn’t shown up. She wants us to go out and search for him, as if we don’t have enough on our plate right now. I’ll bet he’s back by tonight. He probably got stuck in the mud or broke down, or more likely he had a little too much fun in some honky-tonk or strip club. And I’ll lay you odds she forgets to call us and tell us he’s back.”
The words hit Jess like a hammer blow. He knew he flinched. Luckily, Buddy hadn’t seen it.
A man was missing.
He decided to invite Buddy for a cup of coffee.
Buddy said, “She said he’s a retired police officer, and he’d never be late without calling.”
“Was he one of those L.A. cops?” Jess asked, his mouth suddenly dry.
“That’s what she said. Why?”
Jess couldn’t think of a lie. He wasn’t good at them. Instead, he glanced at the pad Buddy had scribbled on. He memorized the name that was written on it.
“No matter,” Jess said.
WITH HIS STOMACH in turmoil, Jess found the men’s room. He splashed cold water on his face and dried off with a paper towel. He felt weak, and his legs were rubbery, his wounded hand throbbed.
He heard the splashing of a mop in a bucket and saw the janitor behind him. Jess closed his eyes for a moment. It was too much for him right now.
The janitor swirled his mop, kept his head down with his long hair covering his face and his shoulders hunched like a man who wanted not to be noticed.
“J.J.?”
The mop stopped. Slowly, the janitor looked up. Eyes looked out through the strings of hair. Jess thought of how he had observed earlier that you could see the characteristics of the future adult in the photographed face of a child. Not that he’d recognized it at the time, but when he looked at the old photos, the grade-school photos, he could see it now. The boy was disconnected early, already on a destructive path. He was born with a form of sickness that was always there, lurking, but didn’t show itself until he was in his late teens, and it hadn’t erupted until his first year of college. The doctors said it was paranoid schizophrenia, and other names Jess couldn’t recall. The boy had always had quirks-talking to himself, brushing his teeth until they bled, refusing from age twelve on to be touched. Then it got worse: hallucinations, rages, the drowning of a litter of barn kittens because the mother cat supposedly had tried to smother him while he slept. He opted to use chemicals to try to change the world around him, to bring it into line with what he perceived it to be. He had succeeded, to some extent. J.J. had never been meant to join the ranchers at the breakfast table.