The prongs were too wide and too thick to slip beneath tack and wood; she had to use the edge of one prong to work each tack up from the corners. When the first one finally came free, she saw that the spike ends weren’t quite as long as she’d hoped. The metal was fairly malleable; she was able to pry the ends apart. Good. With the help of the prongs, she straightened the tack out. If she could twist two of them together to make a longer, sturdier probe…
She tried it as soon as she had a second tack loose, again with the aid of the plug. It could be managed, another slow task hampered by arthritic cramping in her fingers, but when she had the two tacks wound together, the piece didn’t look or feel tensile enough to manipulate the lock tumblers and snap the deadbolt. She’d have to twist a third tack onto these two, and even then, it might not do the job. There were four more in the chair, enough to make two probes.
It would take time to pry them up, time to fit them together, time to work with them on the lock. Time, enemy time. She prayed as she worked that Balfour wouldn’t show up before she was finished, before she could at least try to get herself out of here.
17
Donald Fechaya was not the man we were after. We knew that five minutes after we found our way to 1600 Old Mountain Road.
The address was an old farmstead, not too well kept up. Green clapboard house, its near sidewall and part of the roof repaired with unpainted sheets of plywood. Vegetable garden, fenced in with chicken wire on one side, and a tumbledown henhouse on the other; a row of fruit trees and a small, dry-looking cornfield at the rear. Chickens and a fat red rooster pecked and clucked among the weeds and dirt in the front yard.
A thin, straw-hatted woman was picking green beans in the garden when we pulled in behind a twenty-year-old Ford pickup. She gave us a long look, put her basket down, and came out through a gate in the fence as Runyon and I quit the car. She looked to be about fifty, stringy and juiceless in a man’s faded shirt and Levi’s, her face a deep-seamed corduroy brown like old leather left too long in the sun. Up close, her pale eyes, steady and direct, told you that she’d had a hard, painful life, but that she’d made peace with it. Probably through her religion.
“Something you men want?”
“We’re looking for Donald Fechaya,” I said. “Is he here?”
“In the house. What you want with him?”
“Are you Mrs. Fechaya?”
“I am. Didn’t answer my question.”
“Was your husband here on Monday afternoon?”
“Why?”
“Please answer the question. It’s important.”
“Important to who? Who are you?”
Runyon said, “We’re looking for a missing woman. We thought your husband might have seen her.”
A mirthless smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. “He didn’t see nobody on Monday.”
“He might have if he was in the vicinity of the old logging road off Skyview Drive.”
“He wasn’t. We didn’t go nowheres on Monday.”
I said, “No offense, but we’d like to ask him.”
Over at the house, the screen door banged open and a man rolled out onto the porch-a shrunken gray man in a wheelchair. “Martha, who’s that you’re talking to out there?”
“There he is,” Mrs. Fechaya said. “Go on over and ask him.”
“How long has he been in a wheelchair?”
“Ever since the good Lord seen fit to put him there six years ago. Tractor rolled on him and broke his back. Changed his life, changed mine.”
“Martha!”
Damn Broxmeyer. He could have told us about the broken back and the wheelchair, kept us from wasting our time coming here.
“Well?” she said to me. The nonsmile flickered again; her voice was wise and weary. “You still want to ask him about that missing woman?”
Runyon said no, sorry to have bothered her, and we got into the car and left her standing there with her crippled husband still querulously calling her name.
Tamara called again as we were making our way through thickening traffic in downtown Six Pines. Wanting to know if there was any news, if either of the two names she’d given me earlier might be the person responsible for Kerry’s disappearance. I told her Donald Fechaya was out, and why, and that we were on our way to Rock Creek to check on Jason Hooper.
She said then, “Well, there wasn’t much I could find out about the Monday night explosion up there. Official verdict is accidental, not a whisper it could be anything else.”
“Anything on the Verrikers?” I asked.
“Not much there, either, and I went down as deep as I could. Ned Verriker, age forty-two. Married to Alice Verriker in 1996, no children. Employed as a clerk and forklift driver at Builders Supply Company, Six Pines, the past nineteen years. No criminal record. Two DUIs, most recent four years ago.”
“Injury accidents involved in either of the DUIs?”
“No.”
“Financial troubles, unpaid personal loan, anything like that?”
“Not that I could find. No outstanding debts other than the usual mortgage and car loan. No recorded problems with coworkers or anybody else. Seems to be a pretty average citizen otherwise. Belongs to the Methodist Church, Elks, Six Pines Rotary Club-”
“Never mind all that. Mrs. Verriker?”
“Her slate’s even cleaner. No criminal or arrest record of any kind. Only blot, if you want to call it that, an illegitimate daughter when she was eighteen.”
“Ned Verriker the father?”
“No. Name on the birth certificate is Randolph Stevens.”
“What’d you find out about him?”
“Enlisted in the army the same year the kid was born. Killed in action in Afghanistan in 2002.”
“And the baby? You said the Verrikers are childless.”
“Given up for adoption at birth.”
And adoption records are sealed. The daughter would be sixteen now. Any chance she could hold a festering grudge against her birth mother for giving her up? Or that a member of her adoptive family did for some reason?
Tamara said, “It’ll take some time, but I might be able to hack up the info if you think it’s worth the risk.”
It wasn’t. What kind of grudge, real or presumed, could prod the daughter or anybody connected to her into turning the Verriker home into a time bomb? The possibility of a tie between the explosion and Kerry’s disappearance was enough of a reach as it was.
“No, forget it. It won’t help us find Kerry.” In time, I thought, but didn’t add. In time.
Jason Hooper was another bust. Forty-mile round-trip over twisty mountain roads to Rock Creek, a wide spot surrounded by wilderness-two and a half hours wasted.
We found Hooper working at his Roadside Garage and Towing Service. He was sullen and belligerent at first, but Runyon and I convinced him to cooperate. We didn’t exactly muscle or threaten him, but we made it plain through choice of words, gestures, and body language that we were willing to do whatever was necessary to get straight answers.
He didn’t know nothing about no missing woman, he said. He’d served his time on “that phony rape charge,” he’d never been in trouble over a woman since, he didn’t want no trouble now. Hell, no, he hadn’t been down in Six Pines Monday afternoon. Hadn’t been there in years, didn’t know nobody lived in Green Valley, why the hell would he go there? He’d been right here working on Monday, same as always. Rush repair job on a Dodge Caravan, his brother-in-law’d come over to help with the job, go ask him and he’d tell us. Had a couple of towing calls, one around three to haul a tourist family’s wagon out of a ditch, the other about five when Ed Larsen’s pickup quit on him on the Hamblin Grade. Check his logbook, the calls and the times were written down in black and white. We checked. He was telling the truth.
Whoever had Kerry, it wasn’t Jason Hooper.