“How long was he gone before you became concerned?”
“It was getting dark,” I said, thinking. “Three hours, I guess, maybe a little longer. He’d never driven in alone before.”
“Why was that?”
I shrugged. “Hey, why all the questions?”
“I have to ask them, Mr. Hunt.”
“Listen, my friend’s kid is out there somewhere, probably in trouble.”
“Your friend’s kid?”
“Yes, David is the son of an old college friend.”
“I understand you had some trouble with the boy before,” McCormack said. “A deputy had to drive out to your ranch?”
“He got lost in the woods, but I found him.”
“So, he has a habit of going missing,” the man said.
“I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “He was driving this time. Last time he’d had words with his father and ran out of the house drunk.”
“Was he drunk this time?”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“He wasn’t drunk when he left your place,” McCormack said. “Was he drunk when he left town to head back?”
“I think he wasn’t,” I said.
“But you’re not sure.”
I was starting to get mad, but I sucked it in. “A twenty-year-old kid is out there somewhere, maybe pinned under a Jeep, and we’re playing games in here. You should be talking to the thugs in town who are running around shooting cattle and writing the word nigger in the snow with blood.”
“I will,” McCormack said, unfazed.
“No, really, these guys have tried to pick fights with David on a couple of occasions,” I said. “They drive a BMW.”
“Why would they want to fight David?” he asked.
“They don’t like the fact that he’s a homosexual.”
“How do you feel about that fact?”
I stared at McCormack for several seconds, then stood. “Bucky, this is getting us nowhere. You’ve seen the guys I’m talking about. Find them and ask them some questions. In the meantime, I’m going to drive the same roads for the seventh and eighth times trying to find David.”
“I’m trying to help, Mr. Hunt,” McCormack said.
I nodded. “Then talk to the guys in the BMW.”
As I was walking through the main office, I became aware of a bustle of activity. I paused and watched, listened. Bucky came out of his office.
“Hanks found your Jeep,” he said.
The vehicle was parked, almost neatly, about twenty miles off the main highway on an undeveloped road into the Red Desert, about thirty miles west and south of my place. I hadn’t found it because I was looking between my place and town. I used the station phone to call my house and then followed Bucky and McCormack. The Jeep had been spotted from the air and there apparently was no sign of David. As I drove I felt as if progress was being made, but that none of it sounded at all good. Now, my hands were shaking.
Hanks was standing at the rear of the Jeep when we arrived and he had admittedly done little more than wait. The sheriff department’s plane was still circling. The sheriff, McCormack, and I all walked around the vehicle like it might say something. McCormack looked the most closely, asking us to keep our distance.
“We’ll need to go over it,” McCormack said.
“Team’s on the way,” Hanks told him.
McCormack stood next to me. “Your rig?”
I nodded. “Can you tell anything?”
“There’s a small, white, paper bag on the seat,” Hanks said.
“Probably my uncle’s medicine,” I said.
We stood around while clouds collected over us. The plane left. More men arrived and I watched as they examined the Jeep. I looked down the deeply rutted dirt path and wondered how far it went into the desert. I tried to get my bearings by looking at the hills and the distant butte. I realized I wasn’t that far from where I’d found the coyote. We were perhaps only ten miles south of that place.
McCormack came back to me. “You ever been here before?”
I shook my head.
“Your friend didn’t say anything to you before he left?”
“He said, ‘See you later.’”
“I’m just trying to help,” he said.
“Yeah, fuck you,” I said. That was unlike me, but I wasn’t feeling much like myself. I turned and walked toward my truck.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to look for my friend,” I said. I turned and walked back to him. “My uncle needs his medicine.”
McCormack called to one the investigators. “Let him have the bag.”
I took the medicine and left.
As I drove away, I glanced into my mirror and watched McCormack watching me leave. I knew that there was no way for him to implicate me in David’s disappearance, but still I was insulted. I didn’t know what to do. I would go home, give Gus his medicine, tell him and Morgan about the Jeep, and then stare at the telephone. I had to call Howard and David’s mother, Sylvia.
The ruts of the trail threw me about pretty roughly. I hadn’t felt it on the way out, perhaps because of adrenaline or shock. But now every trough and hole bounced the truck. One thing was certain, no BMW had come along this road. That thought slightly depressed me, because the thugs were the only notion I had about what might have happened.
When I arrived at the house I didn’t know how to let Gus and Morgan see me from the porch, I became self-conscious about my gestures. If I shook my head, they might take it to mean that David was found dead. If I didn’t, they’d assume the same thing. A shrug would have been incomprehensible. So, when I set the brake and climbed out of the truck, I shouted, “Nothing!” That was more than an assessment of what was known, it was a statement of what I was feeling. I was numb with shock, too confused to admit my fear and somewhere the anger and guilt and anger about feeling guilty.
I tossed Gus his medicine and he caught it. “They found the Jeep,” I said. “Abandoned in the desert.”
“Oh, John.” Morgan embraced me.
I put my hand to the small of her back, but didn’t find the strength to pull her close.
“What now?” Gus said.
And what a good question that was. I looked at the old man. “I don’t know, Gus. I don’t know.” I looked at the mountains, then felt that the air was turning colder. “I’m going to call Howard. Then I’m going to drown myself in the shower. Then I’m going back out to look for David.” I stopped and looked at both of them. Morgan’s eyes were red from lack of sleep and Gus was as drawn looking as I had ever seen him. “How are you two?”
Gus nodded.
“We all need rest,” Morgan said. Then, “This is all so unreal.”
You watch the news and see stories about awful accidents and missing loved ones and it seems so distant, like it isn’t real and then when it happens to you, it doesn’t seem real. I kept expecting David to walk into the study where I was sitting, then I entertained thoughts that there was no David, that I had made him up. I pulled my rifle from the cabinet and set the cleaning supplies on the desk. I looked at the phone, knowing I would use it. I then looked at the rifle in my lap and had a feeling that I would be using it as well.
I opened my book, found Howard’s number and dialed.
“Howard, it’s John.”
“Hey, I was going to give you a call.”
“Howard, there’s a problem here.”
Howard was silent at the other end.
“David is missing.”
“What do you mean by ‘missing’?”
“We can’t find him.” Before he launched into reasonable, sensible and appropriate questions, I continued, “He drove into town and didn’t come back. He went in to pick up a prescription for Gus. The police just found the Jeep he was driving abandoned out in the desert.”