Jess shut his door, leaving the groceries inside. The man on the porch exuded menace. He outweighed Jess by at least forty pounds, and he was younger. The rancher stopped and leaned forward on the hood of his truck. The motor ticked as it cooled. Jess usually had his Winchester in his gun rack for coyotes, but he had taken it out to clean it several days before and had forgotten to put it back in.
“This is my ranch,” Jess said. “The question is what you’re doing on it.”
The man snorted. “I’m with the sheriff’s department. If you haven’t heard, there are a couple of local kids missing.”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“Ah,” the man said. “I’m sure you haven’t. I’m helping out the department as a volunteer. Several of us are assisting Sheriff Carey with the investigation.”
As he spoke, Jess looked at the man’s reflection in the living room window. He could see the butt of a pistol poking out from his belt behind his back.
“You’re one of the cops, then,” Jess said. “Do you have a name?”
“Dennis Gonzalez. Sergeant Dennis Gonzalez. LAPD.”
“Not anymore.”
Gonzalez smirked and rolled his eyes. He showed his teeth under his bushy mustache. “No, not anymore. But that don’t matter. We’re working with your sheriff.”
“I heard. So what are you doing trespassing here?”
“Trespassing?” he said, the smile growing wider. But his eyes remained black and hard. “You need to watch that language, mister. We’re going house to house looking for any sign of those kids. This place is on my list.”
To Jess’s horror, he saw the curtain part behind Gonzalez, and William’s blue eyes in the window. William was looking at Gonzalez’s gun. To William, Jess wanted to shout: “Get away from there.” To Gonzalez, Jess wanted to plead, “Don’t turn around.”
Jess sighed. “All right, then. I’m back. You can go now.”
“Not so fast. I heard activity inside when I drove up. I’d like to have a look around.”
“It’s just me here,” Jess said, hoping his face didn’t reflect his anxiety. “My foreman left a few days ago. I’m running the place by myself.”
“No wife inside?”
“Divorced.”
“You and me both, brother,” Gonzalez said. “So if nobody is in there, why not invite me in for a cup of coffee or something?”
“I’ve got work to do.”
“On a Sunday?”
Jess nodded. “Yup. Couple of cows about to calve.”
Gonzalez studied his face. “I’d really like to take a look around this place so I can scratch it off my list. I’d like to take a look in your barn, and in that house across the lot there. I want to make sure I wasn’t hearing things when I drove up.”
“You were,” Jess said.
For a moment, a tense silence hung in the air. Jess shot a glance at the window. Gonzalez noticed it, and looked behind him. Thank God, William was gone.
“Let me get this straight,” Gonzalez said, turning back around. “Are you denying me the opportunity to look around here? I’m here to clear you off my list as a kidnapper. Do you understand how suspicious this sounds?”
The word kidnapper hit Jess hard, and he tried not to flinch. Could he let Gonzalez look around? The man would find nothing in the barn because he probably didn’t know what to look for-the missing hay hook and horse blanket, the arrangement of bales on the top of the stack-but how could he let him inside of his house? Even if the kids were hiding, there would be telltale signs: shoes in the mudroom, too many dishes in the sink, unmade beds.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Jess said. “You’re trespassing on my ranch without a warrant. I didn’t even get a call from the sheriff saying you were coming out. This is my place, and my family’s had it for three generations. Nobody has the right to trespass on my ranch.”
Gonzalez laughed harshly. “You’re a fucking piece of work, old man. If we were in L.A…”
“We aren’t,” Jess interrupted. “We’re on my ranch. Now get off, and don’t come back without the sheriff and a piece of paper that says you can search here.”
The wide, insincere smile faded. “You could make your life a lot easier if you let me look around, compadre.”
“I’m used to a hard life,” Jess said. “Now get off.”
Something flashed in Gonzalez’s eyes, and for a second Jess expected the man to bolt off the porch and jam the gun into his face. He wished he was armed himself. But the moment passed, and Gonzalez looked up at the rain clouds forming over the rancher’s head.
“I’ll be back here,” Gonzalez said, stepping off the porch and walking slowly to his pickup. “You and me are going to tangle. You could have avoided it, but you had to go get all fucking cowboy on me.”
Jess said nothing. He kept his palms firmly on the hood of the truck so they wouldn’t shake.
Gonzalez opened his truck door and looked back. “You people. You’re too stupid to know what you’ve just done, old man,” he said, and the smile came back, which chilled Jess to his boot soles. “I’ll be seeing you.”
“Don’t threaten me,” Jess said, his voice firm and low.
“I don’t threaten. I advise.”
“Close the gate on the way out this time,” Jess said. “I’ve got cattle. If they get out, I’ll press charges.”
“You’ll press…” Gonzalez said, but didn’t finish the sentence because he was chuckling.
Jess watched the pickup drive up the road and into the trees. Slowly, he withdrew his hands from the hood, leaving long wet streaks.
“HE WAS one of them, wasn’t he?” Jess asked, unpacking the groceries in the kitchen.
Annie and William stood in the doorway to the living room, their faces pale white. They had obviously heard the exchange.
“Yes,” Annie said. “We thought he was going to come in and find us.”
Jess swung around and pointed a trembling finger at William. “You nearly got yourself hurt and your sister hurt along with you by looking out that window like that. When I tell you to stay inside and not look out, I mean it!”
William stood still, but mist filled his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his mouth curling down, even though he was fighting it.
“Ah, man,” Jess said, walking across the kitchen and pulling Annie and William into his legs. “I’m just glad you’re all right. It’s okay, Willie. It’s okay.”
“William,” the boy said, his voice muffled by the hug.
“Is he coming back?” Annie asked.
Jess released them and squatted so he could look at both children in the eye. “I think so, yes.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” he said. “I’m thinking it over.”
“You could show me how to shoot one of those guns in there,” William said. “You could show me and Annie.”
Jess looked at him, about to argue. Then he didn’t.
“For right now, let’s get you two something to eat,” he said instead.
Sunday, 4:03 P.M.
JIM HEARNE sat in a recliner with the newspaper opened on his lap and a Seattle Mariners game droning on in front of him. He didn’t know the inning, the score, or who they were playing. Instead, he stared at something between where he sat and the television set, a wall he could not see through, a wall he had invented, a wall that seemed to get thicker and harder to ignore since that morning, when it came to be.
The wall-he started to think of it as a barrier to everything else-began to grow while he and Laura were in church. It wasn’t the minister’s sermon that triggered it, and it wasn’t the surroundings. It was the fact that for the first time in two and a half days, his mind was empty, partially due to the massive hangover from which he was suffering. The void was filled with thoughts of his meeting with Eduardo Villatoro and what he had read in the newspaper about the effort to find the missing Taylor children. About the ex-cops from L.A. who were heading up the task force. About his own role in everything, his responsibility.