Midafternoon by the time we got back to Six Pines. The town seemed even more crowded now, people gathering and preparing for the holiday weekend. At the high school football field, members of a marching band were practicing for Friday’s parade. The crashing cymbals and bombastic brass notes of a Souza march grated in my ears, set my teeth on edge.
The frustration and the heat had taken their toll. I’d drifted into a half doze for part of the long ride back, but it had done more harm than good. I’d had one of the fever dreams, almost but not quite a flashback, that had plagued me after the time at Deer Run. Only in this one, it had been Kerry who was chained to the cabin wall, and I was outside looking in and couldn’t get to her, and she couldn’t see me because the wall was made of thick, one-way glass. I jerked out of the dream with such sudden violence that Runyon almost swerved off the road.
Now, I felt drugged-the sunlight too bright even with sunglasses on, the shadows too dark, buildings and cars and strangers’ faces fuzzy at the edges. My thoughts fuzzy at the edges, too, so that I had to make a little effort to keep them focused. But I didn’t say anything to Runyon about it. Now that he was here, I could afford to keep pushing myself. If my body rebelled at some point, I knew he’d go on doing everything he could, that he wouldn’t give up. Where Kerry was concerned, he and Tamara were the only people on this earth I had that kind of faith in.
We hunted around for a place that had a Wi-Fi hookup. You can find one just about anywhere these days, and Six Pines was no exception. A pizzeria just off Main Street had a sign in front that advertised it for free. We went in there and slaked our thirst with Cokes while Runyon accessed his e-mail and we waded through the pages of info Tamara had forwarded, looking for another possible lead.
There wasn’t one. None of the other registered sex offenders on her county list lived in Green Valley-the closest was in a small town near Placerville, thirty miles away. The perps in the two statutory rape cases had been nineteen and twenty, the girls fifteen and sixteen, the sex consensual and violence-free. All the other sexual violations had involved the molestation of minors, the oldest child a boy aged ten, or public decency laws. The victims of the two unsolved rapes had both been young women in their early twenties, a waitress assaulted on her way home from work, and a hitchhiker picked up and attacked by two men she’d ID’d as Latinos. One of the female missing persons cases concerned a fifteen-year-old runaway from Six Pines, but that had been seven years ago and the girl had been found six months later living in the Haight in San Francisco.
So what now?
Neither of us addressed the question until we were back in Runyon’s Ford. I said then, “Somebody has to’ve seen the vehicle, whatever it was, going in or out of that logging road. You can’t drive the valley roads without passing another car somewhere along the line.”
“You pretty much covered all the locals in the vicinity. Maybe a tourist roaming around? We could try canvassing the motels, the B and Bs, that campground out in the valley.”
“Long shot. I worked the campground yesterday… nothing. But okay. I don’t see any other option.”
Runyon reached for the ignition key, but he didn’t start the engine. He said, “One just occurred to me. There’s one person out on those hillside roads every weekday-the man or woman who delivers the mail.”
“Right, good thought.”
“If his route puts him in the area afternoons.”
“We’ll find out.”
The post office was housed in an old brick building down one of the side streets. The local postmaster was a woman in her fifties who’d “heard about the missing tourist lady” and was both sympathetic and cooperative when I told her who I was. Frank Ramsey was the mail delivery person for that part of the valley, she said, and yes, his route generally put him in the vicinity of Skyview Drive in the afternoon. He was usually finished and back between four-thirty and a quarter to five.
Ten minutes shy of four o’clock now. The better part of an hour to kill-not enough time to start canvassing the tourist accomodations.
We went back to the air-conditioned pizzeria. The sign in front gave me another idea, slim but worth checking while we waited to talk to Frank Ramsey. Below the Free Wi-Fi was another line that said Free Delivery. Inside, I asked the kid taking orders if any pizza deliveries had been made in the Skyview Drive area on Monday afternoon. No. They didn’t deliver until after five o’clock. He was willing to let us look at their copy of the local phone directory, so we sat with another Coke each and looked through the Yellow Page listings for other Six Pines’ businesses that offered delivery service of one kind or another. There were only a handful. Runyon called each one, asked the same question and got the same answer. No Monday afternoon deliveries.
Almost time to head back to the post office. We sat clock-watching in silence; there was nothing to say until after we talked to Frank Ramsey. I’d been thirsty enough to get most of the first Coke down earlier, but one swallow of this one had been all I could manage. Gaggingly sweet. What I’d really wanted was a cold beer, but in my keyed-up state, it would have been a bad idea.
At four-twenty, we were back at the P.O. The postmistress told us we could wait for Ramsey on the rear dock, and described him so we’d know him when he came in. Four-thirty. Four-thirty-five. Four-forty. Come on, Ramsey, come on. Four-forty-five… six… seven…
A postal van finally turned into the yard, rolled to a stop alongside half a dozen others. The man who hopped out was tall, skinny, knobby-kneed in a pair of uniform shorts-Ramsey. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen him before. We told him our names and asked our questions, and he was as cooperative as the postmistress. Only he had nothing to tell us.
“Sure, I know that old logging road,” he said. “I’m usually up around there about two, two-thirty. Delivered mail to the Verrikers that afternoon. I guess you heard about their house blowing up, terrible thing, poor Alice. But I don’t remember seeing any cars on the logging road that day or any other day. I mean, I pass a lot of vehicles coming and going on my route every day, and I don’t pay much attention unless folks I know honk or wave at me…”
Another bust.
So now it was the motels and bed and breakfasts and campground, and if we didn’t get anything out of them, either, then what?
18
KERRY
She couldn’t pick the lock.
The twisted-together tacks weren’t strong enough to hold and snap the tumblers, she didn’t have the necessary skill, and her fingers and wrists became too crabbed from the effort to maintain pressure. All of that, and the debilitating heat forced her to quit after… what, one, two, three hours? Her sense of time had become nonexistent. She could no longer even remember how long she’d been imprisoned.
All that work with the chair and the TV set and the tacks, all for nothing. Futile time-passers. False hope. Even if she’d been able to spring the deadbolt, she wouldn’t have gotten away. She accepted that now. The pit bull would have torn her apart the instant she tried to slip through the door. The sounds she’d made with her makeshift picks had alerted the animal again, started it barking, brought it close. Very close. When the racket ceased, she’d heard the dog just beyond the door, snuffling and growling. That convinced her its lead reached all the way to the shed. And of just how vicious it must be.
Now, she sat limp with her back against the door, her legs splayed out. She knew she should try to put the room back in order before Balfour came again, right the armchair, somehow get the television back up onto the bench, but she couldn’t make herself do it. Didn’t have the strength or the will. Apathy had set in. In a little while, maybe she’d be able to overcome it. And maybe not.