Balfour gritted his teeth, banged a nail into place.
“And all the refreshment booths open for business. Do you have any idea how much money we’ll lose if-”
Lost it then. “No, and I don’t give a flying fuck!” Spitting the words.
“You have a foul mouth, Balfour. If it had been up to me, you would never have been hired for this project.”
“Yeah, and if it was up to me, the county wouldn’t hire fags to tell people what to do.”
Tarboe’s mouth got thin and tight. “You’ll regret that,” he said. “I’ll see to it that you do.”
“Yeah, yeah. Why don’t you go find somebody to bugger and let me get back to work?”
Big glare. Tarboe turned away, then turned back and said before stomping out, “You know, what everyone’s saying about you is right. You really are the biggest asshole in Green Valley.”
Balfour stood there with the sweat running on him and it felt like the top of his head was ready to come off. Nothing going right anymore, pressure from every direction. Verriker, the woman, the Buckhorn crowd, Charlotte, Tarboe, Donaldson, snotnose kids and half-wits and people he hardly knew… seemed like everybody in the valley was his enemy. Looking at him like he was a pile of dog turds, wrinkling their noses like they couldn’t stand his smell. Ragging on him, laughing at him to his face and behind his back, screwing him over, pulling the noose so tight he couldn’t breathe. Man could only take so much. Some of the pressure didn’t get released quick, he was liable to blow like a boiler with a busted safety valve.
He couldn’t work anymore today. Just didn’t give a shit anymore. He bulled out of the restroom, yanked off his toolbelt and threw it into the storage unit, then got into his truck and roared out of there. Didn’t bother to tell Eladio and the half-wit he was leaving and not coming back; screw them, too.
He drove over to Freedom Lanes, went into the bar, and threw down two double shots and a bottle of Bud before some of the pounding in his head and boiling in his gut eased off. But he could still feel the pressure like a hundred-pound sack of cement sitting on his shoulders, weighing him down.
Out on the alleys, balls thudded on hardwood and pins crashed, and the sounds all seemed to come together into one steady beating noise that got inside his head like a voice talking, shouting. Verriker’s voice, saying the same things over and over.
Biggest asshole I know, maybe the biggest one in these parts. I bet somebody’d nominate you for mayor, I bet you’d win hands down. Pete Balfour, the first mayor of Asshole Valley… mayor of Asshole Valley… mayor of Asshole Valley…
11
Broxmeyer was at the substation to take my call and showed up on the logging road, alone in his cruiser, within fifteen minutes. He examined Kerry’s sun hat, looked over the area where I’d found it, looked at the marks on the ground where the vehicle had been parked, poked around elsewhere in the vicinity. Accommodating, professional, sympathetic up to a point, his expression carefully neutral the entire time. But he was too young, too inexperienced, too detached to share my place sensitivity, or my fears. None of it seemed to add up for him the way it did for me.
“Well, those tire impressions don’t necessarily mean anything,” he said when he was finished looking. We were standing next to his cruiser, me leaning against the rear door because my legs were still a little shaky. “Kids park up here sometimes. One of the other deputies caught a couple last year… you wouldn’t believe what they were doing-”
“I don’t care what they were doing. All I care about is finding my wife.”
“I understand that. But I think you’re jumping to conclusions. There’s no evidence here to support the idea that she was abducted.”
“What about the other marks on the ground?”
“Anything could’ve made them. No clear signs of a struggle.”
“The hat,” I said.
“Not damaged in any way. Nothing on it but some pine needles stuck in the straw.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t forcibly knocked off her head.”
“It indicates she was here, but-”
“Indicates? The hat wouldn’t have been if she wasn’t.”
“On this road, yes. She could have lost it walking along.”
“No,” I said. “I told you, it’s her favorite. If she’d been able to go get it, she would have.”
“Maybe she tried, and couldn’t find it. You said so yourself you missed seeing it the first time you went down the slope.”
“I wasn’t looking for it. It wouldn’t’ve been all that hard to spot if I had been. Besides, there wasn’t any sign that she’d been down there. I told you that, too.”
“There might’ve been some that you missed. You were excited, you moved around down there calling her name. You could’ve accidentally covered up any she made.”
“Except that I didn’t. There was no sign. I’d’ve found it if there was. I’m not an amateur when it comes to situations like this, Deputy.”
“But you are the woman’s husband. Concerned, upset-”
“There was no goddamn sign.” Frustration made me snap the words at him. “Not down there, not anywhere else around here. Just what I showed you.”
“All right, take it easy,” Broxmeyer said. “I’m not saying it’s not possible somebody else was here when she came along. Just that it isn’t likely there was… an encounter. We’ve never had anything like that happen in Green Valley. Not a single incident along those lines.”
“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”
“No, but all I have to go by is what I see and what evidence tells me.”
I said between my teeth, “So what are you going to do?”
“The only thing I can do under the circumstances. Get a search team out here, enough volunteers to scour the entire ridge, if necessary. If your wife is still somewhere in the area, they’ll find her.”
“When? How soon?”
“ASAP. Meanwhile, I’ll run you back to the Murray place.”
“No. I want to be part of the search.”
“Not a good idea. You’re unfamiliar with these woods, the terrain gets pretty rugged higher up-”
“She wouldn’t’ve gone that far.”
“-and you’ve worked yourself pretty hard already. The best thing you can do is wait at the house and let us do the job we’re trained for.”
Distraught old man, tired old man-I could almost see the thoughts reflected in the deputy’s steady gaze. Other thoughts, too, the speculative kind I might be having myself if our positions were reversed. I resented what he was thinking, but I couldn’t blame him for it. Stubborn argument meant delay, and it wouldn’t do any good anyway. He had that ridged-jaw look law officers get when they’ve made up their minds to go by the book.
“All right,” I said. “Your way.”
In his cruiser as we rode, Broxmeyer radioed his dispatcher to contact the list of search team volunteers. Neither of us had anything to say to each other until we pulled up in front of the house. One look was enough to tell me it was as deserted as I’d left it. I’d expected it would be, but I felt an inner wrenching just the same.
He switched off the engine, turned toward me, and said with his eyes fixed on mine, “Mind if I come inside with you, have a look around?”
I’d expected that. Good at his job, but not very subtle and pretty easy to read. It wasn’t that he necessarily disbelieved what I’d told him about Kerry’s disappearance or finding her sun hat; but even if he’d run a check on me, and he probably had, he didn’t know me or what I might be capable of. Without anything concrete to back up my story, he was inclined to be just a little suspicious, and careful, thorough, as a result. When a husband or wife goes missing under unexplained circumstances, there’s always the chance domestic foul play is involved. There’d been any number of high profile cases to make even a rural cop aware of the possibility. The bitter irony here was that Broxmeyer had retained that false suspicion and dismissed the much more likely one I’d given him.