“You wouldn’t divulge our conversations to the police, would you?”
“Of course not,” I said. I wondered how much Bill really knew about Mallory’s situation. “What do you think happened to Mallory? Did she run? Was she abducted?”
“Those are the only options?” he said.
What? Was he taunting me? “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“Why would she run?” Bill asked.
“Kids aren’t always rational, Bill. Especially when they’re distraught.”
“She was distraught. Christmas was always hard for her,” Bill said. “Always. But I thought we were doing okay this year.”
That’s what Bob had said, too-that Christmas was hard for Mallory. Huh. I reminded myself that Rachel had deserted her family during the holidays years before, and that it wouldn’t be surprising that Mallory was suffering an anniversary reaction.
“You were doing okay, you and she?” I asked.
“What are you asking?”
“Nothing. I’m fishing.”
“Fishing?”
Bill hovered, half-in, half-out of my car for a long three-count before he stood. I sat frozen in place, still troubled by Bill’s admission that he possessed a diary from his daughter that he hadn’t shared with the police. “Let’s do this in the morning, Bill. At my office. Is ten okay?”
He held up his gloved right hand and extended two fingers. “Can’t do ten. I’ll be there at two,” he said before he slammed the door.
The bitter air had frosted the hairs inside my nose.
But I did notice that my ass was nice and warm.
58
The same night, at almost the same time, Raoul was still thinking about Diane and Canada.
He told me later that he was surprised to see how Las Vegas bleeds out into the northern desert. There is no natural demarcation, no river, no ridge, no rail at the craps table. There is no single line in the dirt and sand where a visitor would say, well, this here is Las Vegas, and that there isn’t. At some point you know you’ve left town, but even if someone offered you to-die-for odds, you couldn’t go back and find the precise spot where it happened.
Raoul looked back over his shoulder at the profile of the distant Strip that stained the near horizon with artificial vertical interruptions and radiating flashes of neon. He guessed that he and Tico were about five miles outside of town. It could have been seven, could have been three, but he was guessing five.
Tico had yanked the VW through a lot of turns to get where they were, many more than Raoul thought should be necessary to get from point A to point B across a landscape of flat, mostly barren land. But the turns had accomplished what Tico had intended: Other than being some number of miles out in the desert north of Las Vegas, Raoul didn’t know where he was.
Wide expanses of scruffy land separated the houses. In some other place, somewhere where the soil was arable, such distances between homes might make sense, but in the desert outside Vegas it seemed to Raoul that people lived as far apart as possible simply so that they could feel some separation. In Colorado’s mountains, a ridge or an outcropping of rock or a thick stand of lodgepole pine was enough to leave neighbors feeling distinct from one another. Out in this endless desert, though, the geography made no natural allowances for privacy, and separation apparently meant space.
Tico doused the headlights on the VW a few hundred yards before he pulled to a stop at an expensive wrought iron gate in an even more expensive high stucco wall. There wasn’t much of a moon and the desert was dark. Raoul couldn’t tell where Tico had taken him, but he was guessing the building was a residence. Tico waved casually toward a security camera mounted on the stucco wall, and seconds later the gates clanked loudly and started to swing inward.
The place wasn’t much to look at. It was a sprawling, low-slung ranch with long overhanging rooflines designed to protect inhabitants from the relentless Nevada sun. Raoul dated the construction from the ’60s or ’70s. Somebody had once tried to do some landscaping, but the effort had been abandoned a long time before. Tall, vaguely Greek planting urns sat forlorn and empty at intervals around the property. Adjacent to the crumbling concrete driveway a swimming pool shaped like a spade was a third filled with murky water. The front of the separate pool house was almost totally obscured by junk. The shadowed symmetry of the red tile roof on the shack was interrupted by broken and absent tiles and what looked to be an abandoned array of solar panels.
Raoul said, “That fence we went through is worth more than the house.”
“Boss isn’t picky about stuff. Everything’s temporary but people. That’s what he says, says it all the time.”
“I take it he doesn’t swim.”
“Don’t go there, man.” Tico smiled. “Don’t go there. Uh, uh. No swimming jokes, you dig?”
“Yes,” Raoul said. “Thanks. Does he live here?” He didn’t expect to get an answer and was surprised when Tico decided to give him one.
“Stays here sometimes. Other places, too. A lot. He lives where he happens to be. At some point soon enough this place will get sold. They be another, and another after that. Like that. He gets ’em. Gets rid of ’em. We move on.”
“The Airstream?”
Tico smiled. “Had that one for a while. May be gone now, too.” He killed the tiny engine on the bug. For a moment the clatter of the valves was the loudest sound in Raoul’s ears.
Raoul said, “Your boss and me have that in common. Buying and selling. I’m a bit of a speculator, too.” Initially Raoul thought Tico had been considering saying something in reply, but had thought better of it. “You have some advice for me?”
“Advice?” Tico adjusted the fabric that clung to his shaved skull, pulling it tighter toward his ears, tight enough that a phrenologist could have done a comprehensive exam without removing the cap. “Whatever you think is about to happen here, bro, you wrong. That’s my advice for you. If you think you here ’cause you want to talk to U.P., you wrong. Want to know why you here? You here ’cause U.P. want to talk to you. No other damn reason.” He opened the door and hopped out of the car. “I need to pat you down now. No offense.”
Raoul joined him on the driveway and lifted his arms. “None taken. I apologize for the smell. The shower in the Airstream wasn’t working.”
59
A frosty halo was framing what was visible of the moon as I turned east on Baseline toward my house.
Most days, late rush-hour traffic would have dictated that I take South Boulder Road across the valley, but that night, because of the hour, I took Baseline. I was stopped at the traffic signal at the Foothills Parkway when my cell chirped in my pocket. I fished it out, managed to hit a tiny button with my almost frozen fingers, and said, “I’ll be home soon, I promise. I’m on my way. I’m sorry.”
But it wasn’t Lauren. It was Sam.
“Sweet,” he said. “Total capitulation. I find that so attractive in a man. Where are you?”
“Baseline. Across from Safeway.”
“Good, you’re close. Come on over to the department. I want to show you something.”
“Now?”
“You’ll want to see this.”
The signal arrow turned green. I checked my mirrors and cut across two lanes of the intersection to make one of the more illegal left turns in Boulder history, and accelerated back toward Arapahoe.
“Tell me,” I said.
He of little patience said, “Patience.”
I arrived at the Public Safety Building on Thirty-third Street within minutes and parked on the deserted street out front. Sam was pacing in the public lobby, eating the last few bites of a Chipotle burrito that I knew had originally been almost the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread. My stomach growled at the tantalizing smell.