“Well, if you know him . . .” the driver said, and pushed the door handle.
The smell of mud and rain came into the bus as Bill Monroe stepped inside. Sheridan gasped as he raised the rifle and pointed it at the face of the driver.
“This is where you get off,” Monroe said.
Beside her, Sheridan heard Julie scream.
A HALF-HOUR LATER, the phone rang at the Longbrake Ranch. Missy was having coffee with Marybeth and reading the Saddlestring Roundup. Marybeth was ready to go to work. Joe was in their bedroom, doing who knows what.
Missy answered, said, “Hi, honey,” then handed the phone to Marybeth. “It’s Sheridan.”
Marybeth frowned and took the phone. Sheridan had never called this early because she shouldn’t be at school yet. Maybe they had canceled school after all, Marybeth thought. Maybe Sheridan needed someone to meet them on the highway so they could come home.
“Hi, Mom,” she said.
Marybeth sensed something was wrong. Sheridan’s voice was tight and hard.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on the bus. I need to ask you a question. Is it okay if Lucy and I go out to Julie’s house after school tonight?”
Marybeth paused. The scenario didn’t work for her. She asked Sheridan to repeat what she had said, and Sheridan did. But there was something wrong in the tone, Marybeth thought. There was something wrong, period. What were Julie and Sheridan cooking up? And why would they want to include Lucy in it?
“You know I don’t like it when you spring things like this on me,” Marybeth said. “What are you girls scheming?”
“Nothing,” Sheridan said. “We just want to hang out. There probably won’t be practice.”
“You want to hang out with your little sister?”
“Sure, she’s cool.”
“That’s a first,” Marybeth said. “Let me talk with her.”
“Just a minute.”
Marybeth could tell that Sheridan had covered the mouthpiece of the phone so she could discuss something that her mother couldn’t overhear. Marybeth sat forward in her chair, straining to hear. She could sense Missy looking at her now, picking up on her alarm.
“She can’t talk,” Sheridan said, coming back. “She has food in her mouth.”
“What?”
“She’s eating some of her lunch early,” Sheridan said. “You know how she always does that? Then she doesn’t have enough to eat at lunch and she has to mooch from either me or the other kids?”
“Sheridan,” Marybeth said, dropping her voice to a near-whisper, “Lucy has never done that. She brings most of her lunch home with her, and you know it. If only I could get Lucy to eat. Now what is going on? Where are you calling from?”
“The bus,” Sheridan said, too breezily. “On my cell phone.”
“On your cell phone,” Marybeth repeated back. “Your cell phone.”
“That’s why you got it for me,” Sheridan said, “for emergencies like this . . .”
Suddenly, the call was disconnected.
Marybeth felt as if she’d been hit with a hammer. Sheridan had been trying to tell her something, all right.
“Oh my God,” Marybeth said, standing, dropping the phone on the table and running out of the room while Missy called after her to ask her what was wrong.
“JOE!”
JOE WAS NOT in the bedroom, but in Bud’s cramped and cluttered home office. He had recalled his conversation the day before with Tony Portenson’s office, how he’d requested a fax be sent to him. But since he wasn’t at his house to see what had arrived, he had called again that morning and asked Portenson’s secretary to fax the information to Bud’s home office instead.
He stood near the fax machine, watching the paper roll out.
SHERIDAN SAT WITH Lucy on the bus. Julie was in the seat behind them. Bill Monroe had taken the phone and dropped it in his pocket and had returned to the driver’s seat, saying, “I hope you didn’t just do something there that will fuck us up.” His eyes were pulled back into thin slits and his jaw was set. He needed a shave and he needed to clean what looked like blood off his hands and shirt.
The bus shuddered as Monroe worked the gears and did a three-point turn and the bus almost foundered in the ditch. But he got the bus turned around, and it picked up speed, and Monroe clumsily raced through the gears with a grinding sound.
They were headed for the Thunderhead Ranch.
Sheridan held Lucy, who had buried her head into her chest, crying.
MARYBETH FOUND HIM in the office, holding up a sheet of paper.
“Joe,” Marybeth said frantically, “I think something has happened to the girls. Sheridan just called me and said she was on the bus, but I don’t know where she really is. Or Lucy, either. She said she was calling from her cell phone. Something is horribly wrong.”
The look he gave her froze her to her spot. He held up the sheet of paper and turned it to her. It was the mug shot faxed by Portenson’s office.
“This is J. W. Keeley,” Joe said. “He’s an ex-con who supposedly murdered a man in Wyoming and a couple of others down in Mississippi. The FBI is looking for him. But he has another name, Marybeth: Bill Monroe.”
Marybeth couldn’t get past the name Keeley.
The name of her foster daughter who had died tragically. This man had the same name? And was from the same place?
It all became horribly clear.
28
JOE JAMMED THE MUG SHOT OF J. W. KEELEY INTO HIS back pocket and violently rubbed his face with his hands, trying to think of what to do next. Marybeth stood in the doorway of the office with her arms wrapped around herself, swaying a little, her eyes wide.
“Okay,” Joe said, forcing himself to be calm while his mind swirled with anger and fear of the worst kind. “I need to find the bus. A school bus can’t be hard to find.”
“Should I call the sheriff?” Marybeth asked.
“Yes, call him. Call the school too. Call the FBI in Cheyenne—the number’s right here on this sheet,” he said, handing her the remaining pages of the fax that outlined the allegations against J. W. Keeley. “My God . . .” he moaned.
“Joe, are you going to be all right? Does this man have our daughters?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But he might. I’m going to go find him.”
“I can’t think of anything worse,” she said, tears bursting from her eyes, streaming down her face.
“Stay calm,” he said. “We’ve got to stay calm and think.” He paced the room. “If he took the bus into town, it’ll be easy to find. The sheriff can find it. Ask for Deputy Reed, he’s competent. But if the bus turned around, it would be headed back here or to the Thunderhead Ranch. Or to the mountains. I’d guess he’s going that way.”
Joe plunged into the closet and grabbed his belt and holster and buckled them on. Then he pulled out his shotgun.
“I’ve got my cell phone,” Joe said, clamping on his hat. “Call me and tell me what’s going on since I don’t have a radio. If you hear something—anything—call me right away.”
Marybeth breathed deeply, hugged herself tighter.
“The sheriff, the FBI, the school. Anybody else?” she asked.
Joe looked up. “Nate. Tell him I’ll be on Bighorn Road headed toward the mountains. If he can get there to meet me, I can use the help. If he isn’t there in fifteen minutes, I’ll leave him. I can’t wait for him to do his hair.”
Marybeth nodded furiously.
“Tell him to bring his gun,” Joe said.
Missy came into the room, said, “What is going on?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Marybeth said, shouldering past her. “I need to use the phone.”
JOE ROARED OUT of the ranch yard with his shotgun on the bench seat, muzzle pointed toward the floor. The sky buckled with a thunder boom that rolled through the meadows, sucking the sound from the world for a moment. He drove fast, nearly overshooting the turn from the ranch onto the highway access road and he fishtailed in the mud, nearly losing control of the truck. He cursed himself, slowed down, and felt the tires bite into the slop. If he got stuck now, he thought, he would never forgive himself.