Chapter 47
She's living in your head rent free. That's what Aunt Maria would have told me. Get out of yourself, she would have said. Go do something for someone else.
She would have been right, too. Nothing good comes from fantasizing about the downfall of another human being.
That's why I give myself a limit. I drink a couple of beers, seethe in my anger, coddle my wounded pride, and moan to myself about how nobody besides me ever gets their comeuppance anyway. I do this until I can no longer tolerate my own company, at which point I drag my sorry ass up off the couch and out the door into the misty, bone-cold afternoon.
I've missed Rufus, though you wouldn't know it by the way I've been leading him on. Every couple of days, he catches my eye through the chain link, and I walk over there and chat for a minute, telling him we'll go out as soon as I'm healed. At first he was wiggly and excited, but he's not as dumb as he looks. He caught on. This time when he sees me approaching, he isn't buying it.
Still, Maggie is happy to hand him over for a couple of hours, and after the initial awkwardness, he forgives me. I could learn a thing or two from him.
My body had been pining for a run. Even with a slight beer buzz, the fresh air and burning muscles and prickly sweat under my beanie and down my back liberate me, remind me what's what. I'm slower than I was, but I'm at least fast enough to outrun the pettiness.
By the time we reach the far end of the loop, the cold fog is hovering so low over the fields that visibility is down to maybe twenty feet.
When I slow to a walk to turn around, Rufus starts his wagging and wiggling and trots off into the murk. I figure a spot of particularly stinky earth called his name, and I keep going.
Then a voice, so paper thin that I think I might have imagined it, floats muffled out of the mist, from no particular direction. "Cecil! I've found Edgar!" it says.
I stop and turn around, surrounded by soggy, gray cotton.
"Rufus?" I say, not because I actually think it's Rufus who spoke, though he is the only other living being I've seen for half an hour, but because there's still no sign of him.
"Cecil?" the voice says again. "Edgar?" Then Rufus comes wiggling out of the mist from a whole different bearing.
I walk in the direction he came from. Off the dirt track at the edge of the partially-frozen, tilled field, I find Mrs. Harold Smith standing in the cloud, small and faded, her eyes searching. She's wearing a heavy bathrobe over a thin nightgown, and her shabby construction boots are about five sizes too big.
When she sees Rufus, she says, "Edgar! I was so worried!"
She bends down and hugs him around the neck, her long, thick gray hair draping over his big head. Rufus, of course, loves it.
"Mrs. Smith?" I say. "What are you doing out here?"
She squints at me suspiciously, her weatherworn skin dewy and hanging loose on her thin face.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Deputy Vic Moretti. We've met before. I gave you a ride home from the fairgrounds."
That had been another one of her outings, but that time it was mid-summer and she was properly clothed.
"The year of the flood?" she asks.
"Yes," I say, though if I remember correctly, the flood of local history occurred sometime in the early 1950s.
"I do recall," she says, reflective, longing.
"Why don't I walk you home, Mrs. Smith?"
"We need to find Cecil. He doesn't know Edgar's back."
"Okay," I say. "We'll look for him on the way."
After checking Google Maps, we set off towards the Smith ranch. I hang back long enough to put a call into Ruby who tells me the family has been searching for Mrs. Smith for a few hours, a task made much more challenging by the weather. Ferg and Bud have been on it all afternoon.
I don't ask where Walt is.
The mile and a half walk doesn't take long—Mrs. Smith is in incredible shape physically, probably because she spends about a third of her life on the lam. The family has been criticized for allowing her to escape so frequently, but what are they supposed to do? Put her on a leash? Tie her to her bed? I knew from the last time that they'd already had to put bars on her second story bedroom window because she'd climbed out of it so many times.
At the ranch, three grandchildren, two daughters, and a dog greet Mrs. Smith with relief and love. She doesn't seem to know who they are, but she obviously knows she's supposed to know, so she endures their affection.
Maybe a hundred yards out from the ranch on our way home, my phone rings. I expect it to be Ruby, but it's a number I don't recognize, and I consider not answering. With the trip tomorrow, though, I figure I should.
"Vic, where are you?"
I'm surprised enough to hear Walt's voice that the panic in it doesn't register right away.
"Where am I?" I say. "Are you seriously asking me that?"
It's close to five o'clock and this is the first contact he's attempted. Give me a break.
"Vic." His voice is louder this time, and I think I hear the drone of the Bronco's engine in the background. "Listen."
He says something else, but the blipping and buzzing of cell phone interference scrambles it.
"Whose phone is this?"
"Henry's." His voice is clear again as is the sound of the engine.
"When I get back from Philly, I'm getting a dog," I say.
"Babe, please," he says. "Please listen to me."
It's a concentrated plug of fear to the gut. He's decided to end it, and he's using terms of endearment to soften the blow.
"What the fuck did you just call me?"
There are a few more blips and buzzes on the line, but I can hear rustling and whooshing, and I know he's still there. Maybe that slaps me out of it because I get a sudden shot of adrenaline, and I stop walking. Rufus stops, too, sits, and looks up at me, little droplets of moisture in his whiskers and eyelashes.
"Walt, what's going on? Where are you?"
"About a hundred miles north of Cheyenne on 25."
"Why?"
"I'll explain, but right now I need you to lock all the doors and close all the curtains and blinds. Check twice. Then get your sidearm out."
The grinding in my stomach shifts to nausea.
"What? What's going on?"
"Can you just do that?" he says, a lot softer, with a lot more tenderness. "I'll be there in two and a half, three hours tops."
"I'm not home."
He's silent for too long.
"Walt, you're freaking me out."
"Van der Horn's out," he says.
"Okay. So? The idea that he'd come after us is a little farfetched don't you think."
"You have to get home."
I explain to him where I am and how we just returned Mrs. Smith. He tells me to stay deep in the fields, far away from the highway, and to run as much of it as I can—this from the guy who is constantly reminding me what the doctor said about a fall setting me back months.
"When you get home, go through the back. Send Rufus in before you."
"Walt, stop."
I'm walking again, now paranoid, checking back over my shoulder, sensing things just out of range of sight creeping up on me from the fog. Rufus is completely chill, though, so I know rationally no one's there.
"He's killed at least three people in the past eight hours."
My heart sinks.
"Who? Why?"
"Robbed a convenience store in Fort Collins. Killed the cashier."
I let the idea of that settle.
It's hard to grasp a guy getting sprung after charges that don't include any violence towards people, then going off the deep end like that.
"The other two?"
"Mark and Earl Waits," he says.
"Should I recognize those names?"
"Ferg's cousins."
I walk faster.
"I just left the scene. The grandmother's car was found abandoned down here on the side of a county road. The bodies were in a line of trees off the shoulder. Both shot in the back."
I start jogging.
"The brothers were on house arrest. Yesterday, they both removed their ankle bracelets and drove down to Denver with a third meth-head to post bail for Van der Horn. The other guy didn't have a record. He hasn't been seen since he walked out of the Denver County Jail with Van der Horn."
"How do they even know each other?" I ask, shivering now and a little out of breath.
"Probably the meth connection. Or just growing up in the area."
"Does Ferg know?"
"Not yet. I'll call him as soon as we hang up. Just get home Vic. Run, and call me when you've got everything secured."
Half an hour later, we approach the dark house from the rear, my heart slamming against my chest wall and my pulse thumping hard in my temples. I check the windows on the ground level, then let Rufus in through the sliding glass door, which I left unlocked.
I grab the dented metal bat that has been leaning against the back of the house for years, and I go through every room, every closet, every space even a very small person could reasonably fit, locking all the doors and windows and drawing all the blinds along the way. When the house is clear, I pull my Glock out of the top of the closet and load a magazine. I haven't had it in my hands since the morning out at Van der Horn's.
I slide it into the back of my running pants, the metal cool against my sweaty lower back, and go out the side door and around the yard to take Rufus home. I warn Maggie to stay inside.
Back home, I lock up and check the whole house again, then take a shower, gun on the toilet seat within easy reach.
For two hours I just wait it out in the semi-darkness, sitting on my bed, watching stupid You Tube videos on my laptop with the sound low.
It's close to eight when my phone rings.
Glock in hand I go down to the side door and let him in.
In the dark of the downstairs hall, he wraps his arms around me and buries his cold, stubbly face in my neck.
"I'll get him," he says, his breath hot on my collarbone, his voice rumbling through the metal and bone.
"We'll get him."
He lifts his head, steps back and puts his hands on my shoulders. "You're taking off in the morning, Vic."
"It's handled. I'm not going until this is settled."
"You're on leave."
"Then reinstate me," I say.
He stares down at me in the half-light, and he sighs. "Come on, Vic."
"Just reinstate me, Walt."
He takes his hat off, scratches his head, gazes out into the dark yard. Then he nods and looks back down at me.
"Go get your uniform on."