Sorry again. But sorry was a meaningless word. As Kerry had said to me once, quoting one of her agency’s clients, sorry don’t feed the bulldog.
I said, “What now?”
“The search will go on tomorrow morning.”
“In other wooded areas, you mean.”
“Everywhere within a three- to four-mile radius.”
“You’re not going to find her that way.”
Broxmeyer took off his cap, sleeved sweat from his forehead, and ran fingers through his lanky blond hair. Delaying his response so he could frame it in his mind first. “You still think she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Up there on the logging road.”
“That’s what I think. What do you think now?”
“The same as before. Possible, but unlikely.”
“So you don’t intend to investigate.”
He was uncomfortable now. I hadn’t invited him to sit down, and he didn’t take the liberty on his own; instead, he moved over to the railing, leaned a hip against it. “What would you have me do?” he asked. “Those tire impressions are too faint to make identifiable casts. There’s just no way to determine what kind of vehicle made them, let alone who it belongs to.”
“You could check on known sex offenders in the general area.”
“I could, and if I had reason to, I would. But there aren’t many, and as far as I know, none has a violent history.”
“As far as you know.”
“Look,” Broxmeyer said, “nobody guilty of the type of crime you’re suggesting is going to admit it. I’d have to have some kind of strong evidence to do anything more than ask a few polite questions. You were a cop once, you know how the system works.”
Or doesn’t work. “It isn’t the questions you ask,” I said, “it’s the kind of answers you get. Most felons aren’t very smart-they make little slips, show their guilt in other ways.”
His mouth tightened a little; he didn’t like being lectured. “Let’s say your idea has some validity. The person or persons responsible don’t necessarily have to be sex offenders, or have a record of any kind. Could be anyone who lives in the valley or is here on a visit, somebody who acted on a crazy impulse. How do you propose I go about finding a needle in a haystack?”
“By doing what I did this afternoon. Legwork. Look for somebody who saw something, knows something, and move on from there.”
“But you didn’t find anybody, did you?”
“No, but I’m only one man.”
“That’s right,” Broxmeyer said, “and I’m only one deputy. We’re short-staffed in Six Pines and the rest of the sheriff’s department… damn budget cuts. Fourth of July weekend coming up and that means drunks, fights, idiots misusing fireworks-extra work for everybody. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t spare the time or the manpower to mount an investigation based on a distraught husband’s unsubstantiated theory about his missing wife.”
“And you don’t want to.”
“I didn’t say that. Don’t put words in my mouth.” He pushed off the railing, slapped his hat back on and straightened the brim. “All I can do is what I said I would… keep a team of volunteers out searching for as long as it takes to find your wife. You’ll just have to rely on us, be patient. Okay?”
I kept silent.
He said “Okay” to himself this time, then moved on down the steps and got into his cruiser and drove off with a little more speed than he’d used arriving.
Rely on us, be patient. Bullshit. The danger to Kerry was real, her life in jeopardy, and urgent action was necessary.
I thought about calling the FBI. Yeah, sure-another exercise in futility. I had no contacts in the Bureau, and contrary to a television show like Without a Trace, the FBI has no task force that deals with missing persons cases unless there is substantial evidence that a kidnapping has taken place and federal laws violated. The chances that I could convince an agent to come up from Sacramento were slim and none; with the threats of homegrown, as well as foreign, terrorism and the social and political unrest that seemed to be amping up, manpower in the Bureau was stretched thin, and low-priority cases received short shrift as a result. What I’d get was a polite listen on the phone and the same kind of brush-off I’d gotten from Broxmeyer.
Forget the FBI for now, forget the county law. But the conversation with the deputy had convinced me that I could not go on depending on hope, strangers, myself alone. I needed help, which meant it had to come from a known quarter I could rely on. And I needed it fast.
12
KERRY
Sometime during the morning or afternoon, she managed to free her hands.
She no longer had any sense of time. At intervals it seemed compressed, sluggish, and then it would expand in jumps like a defective clock. The light that filtered in through chinks in the wall boarding, at the edges of the shutter over the single window, was no help: there wasn’t enough of it to do more than put a faint sheen on the murkiness. Objects in the shed, the low ceiling, were shrouded in shadow. The gathering heat was the only indicator that the day was moving forward at all. Smotheringly hot in this prison, but it didn’t bring an ooze of sweat from her pores the way it had yesterday. So dried out now, she could no longer produce enough saliva to ease the burning in her mouth and throat. Her thirst was almost unbearable.
But none of that kept her from sawing at the duct tape binding her wrists. She’d squirmed her body painfully from one end of the long bench to the other, in the hope that the other support leg would have a rougher edge. If it did, she couldn’t tell; she had almost no feeling left in her hands or arms. The sensors in her back told her when she had herself positioned, then she’d begun the long, arduous process. Rock forward and back, slowly, scraping the tape against the wood until she could no longer stand the strain; rest for a while and then start in again.
The task seemed impossible. More than once, she came close to abandoning it. But what else could she do, trapped in here, helpless? Wait passively for her captor to return and try to talk him out of killing her? No. She wasn’t made that way. All her life she’d been a doer, a fighter: never give in, never give up. The more difficult the task, the more determined she became. That wasn’t going to change now. Her outrage was greater than her frustration; so was her will to survive.
Now and then she prayed. She’d never been particularly religious, but she did believe in God; and if others believed in the power of prayer, then maybe there was something to it. She’d led a reasonably moral life, a more Christian life than so many of the self-important, hate-preaching hypocrites on the Far Right; maybe God, if He was merciful after all, would take pity on her.
The rest of the time she focused her mind on freeing herself. Her thoughts had grown sluggish anyway, and thinking only led to anxiety, a return of fear, and the crimping edges of panic.
The heavy rasp of her breathing kept her from hearing the duct tape finally rip and split. She didn’t realize she was free, or almost free, until she leaned forward to rest again, flexing her back muscles forward to ease the strain, and her arms bowed outward slightly and she had just enough feeling left in her wrists for an awareness of the tape’s pull on her skin.
A kind of dull elation moved through her. She didn’t have enough strength to tear loose the rest of the tape, and her fingers were useless. All she could do was keep flexing her back muscles, try to work enough feeling down through her arms so she could widen the spread of hands and wrists. It took a long time… bunches of minutes broken up by rest periods, an hour or more for all she knew. Slowly, slowly, the tape pulled and scraped, and there was another ripping sound and a faint stinging sensation on the back of her left hand. And both hands dropped apart and she was free.
Kerry wiggled away from the support, then over onto her side, and then her stomach with arms now splayed out on either side of her body. Still no feeling in either of them or in her hands except a residue of the stinging. She lay there breathing in the stifling air, willing her blood to circulate. More passing minutes strung together like links in an extended chain. Then the pain came, tiny prickles of it at first, gradually increasing until it began to radiate up and down both arms and in her fingers.