“Nah. Just know who she is. Her type and me, we don’t exactly mix.”
“Her type? You mean she’s older, or pretty, or what?”
“Rich,” he said. “That’s the way it is at schooclass="underline" us and them. You know?”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Crabtree’s hesitation belied his answer. “I don’t know.”
“You know what we’re going to do, Taylor? We’re going to put a forensics team from Boise on your car. You ever seen CSI? Like that. They vacuum the car. Develop prints. Lift some. Photograph others. They’ll be looking for hair and fibers that connect back to Kira Tulivich. That mud on the car. All that evidence-some of it you can’t even see-is going to bring you down like a ton of bricks. You want to get ahead of this, now is your chance.”
Crabtree wasn’t paying attention. Walt followed his line of sight: spotting a couple of pickup trucks coming up East Fork Road and then, in the far distance, a cruiser. His backup, still a mile away.
Walt thought he could use this. “Running out of time here. When was the last time you saw Kira Tulivich?”
Crabtree refocused on Walt’s stern face.
“When I seen her, I thought it was her, but I ain’t never seen her all dolled up like that.” The boy’s eyes drifted back to the advancing patrol car.
“Forget about that,” Walt said. He radioed the unit to hold off. The cruiser pulled to the side of the road just as the two pickups drove out of sight. “You saw her?”
“I said I did, didn’t I?” Crabtree sounded irritated, and more nervous than a few minutes earlier. “Walking…on the side of the road…”
“Walking? What road?”
“And I stopped to… you know.”
“Let’s assume I don’t know,” Walt said.
“She got in. But she was fucked-up.”
“You knew this how?”
“Because she was fucked-up. Shit, Sheriff. Fucked-up. You don’t know fucked-up?”
“In what way?”
“High. Real high. Barely recognized me. Barely standing up. That kind of fucked-up. Real fucked-up.”
“Intoxicated.”
“No. More than that. High. Boozed-up, yeah, but fried, you know? Spaced. And I say, ‘Get in,’ and she gets in, like it’s cool. You know? With me. I mean, that’s like totally not happening. And I say, ‘Where to?’ And this is, like, I don’t know, the middle of the fucking night.”
“And she was on which road?” Walt asked.
Crabtree looked as if he’d been slapped. “This road,” he said, pointing. “East Fork. Headed down toward the highway.”
“And you were headed where at that time of night? The middle of the night?”
“I don’t know. Don’t remember. Smokes, I suppose? Mountain View,” he said, referring to a gas station quick stop.
“Okay.”
“And once she’s in the car, you know, I see she’s all messed-up. The dress is toast. Her face looks like shit, like she’s been beaten real bad. Her left tit comes out of the dress and she barely notices. Stuffs it back in and looks over at me with these creeped-out, dead eyes. And now I’m thinking she’s loopy because someone hit her too hard or something. Like my moms used to get…And I’m no longer asking her, ‘Where to?’ I’m booking it for the hospital.”
“You took her to the hospital?”
“I dropped her there, yeah. I thought about taking her in, you know, but what was going to happen to me? I’d be talking to you. The way I am right now. And no one would believe me, just like you don’t believe me. That’s how it is with me. That’s how it always is, so fuck that. I just dropped her. Let her figure it out.”
“You came to my house the other night,” Walt said. “The back door.”
“That wasn’t me.” Spoken too quickly, and with his eyes to the ground.
“Were you thinking about telling me about Kira?”
The boy had tipped. He was bursting to tell all. Wished for a quiet room, other circumstances. But Crabtree looked at the cruiser again and the light went out of his eyes. He fumbled for a cigarette. The moment had passed.
“There are a couple things that need to happen now,” Walt said.
“I promise you, it wasn’t me. I didn’t do shit to her, Sheriff.”
“You don’t have to go down for this. But I need more. Did she say anything to you? A name, maybe?”
Crabtree tightened. He took a long drag off the cigarette, and the smoke disappeared inside him. “You look scared, Taylor. Real scared. Of me? Of the possibility of prison? Or something else?”
It took Crabtree a long time to speak. “Something else.”
“A rape conviction puts you in the sex offender database. It’ll follow you the rest of your life. People will put posters up on telephone poles near your house. They’ll cross the street to avoid you.”
Crabtree twitched at the mention of rape, his eyes narrowing: he hadn’t known. A weight lifted from Walt. A smile slipped across his face, but he wiped it off with the back of his hand.
“Blah, blah, blah.” Crabtree glanced around again, either afraid to make eye contact with Walt or plotting an escape.
“Don’t try it,” Walt said.
“What?”
“Whatever it is you’re planning.”
“Are we going to do this or not?” He held out his hands to be cuffed.
“Work with me, Taylor.”
Crabtree looked Walt squarely in the eye. “Fuck you and your posters.”
“Please,” Walt pleaded.
“Do what you gotta do,” said Crabtree.
41
THE TERRAIN ROSE UP THROUGH THE TANGLED FOREST, THE dark bark of the trees like burnt offerings against the sparkling, sun-dappled snow. A snowmobile whined as it followed a game trail, its motor straining, its tread spewing ice and elk scat in its wake. The irritating sound grew fainter as it was swallowed by the landscape.
Along that same route stood a majestic fir tree, battle-scarred from a lightning strike forty years earlier. It was split from the first long-dead limb to its four-foot-diameter base. While half the tree had died as a result of the strike, new growth extended up the other half, with gnarly, tightly grouped branches, scarred with veins of charcoal, running like arrows toward the sky. The split gave the trunk a charred, inverted V shape that, at its base, looked like a door to a teepee. It was just wide enough for a man to squeeze through, which was exactly what Mark Aker had done hours earlier. He’d done so without leaving the game path, without causing any prints or impressions that might reveal his hiding place.
Forcing his way through the split in the tree, he’d fallen into the cavity, two feet below the snow’s surface, and onto a bed of leaves. Aker had burrowed down into the leaves, using them as both insulation and camouflage. He passed the coldest hours of the night drifting in and out of sleep, knees to the chest. The buzz of the snowmobile woke him, steadily approaching like a nagging insect. As it tore past his hiding place, he realized that at least for now he was safe. And, though he was regaining strength, if he hoped to save his feet from frostbite, he would have to get moving soon. At some point, he’d have to leave the game trail for deeper snow, even though it would create a path for his captors to follow.
He waited over forty-five minutes for the return of the snowmobile, sunlight blazing on the very tips of the trees he could partially see through. Coats had stripped him of his watch, but he was guessing it was late morning or early afternoon. The horrid machine came back more slowly than it had gone out, Gearbox no doubt at the controls and paying closer attention, attempting to track him. Aker hoped he’d done his job well enough; and when the snowmobile’s whine grew faint, he allowed himself to relax and plan his next move.
42
WALT WAS REELING WITH REGRET WHEN HE TURNED CRABTREE over to booking. The kid was eighteen now; Walt could no longer protect his record.