HE’S RIGHT, MYER THOUGHT. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what in the hell I’m supposed to do. He sat in the cruiser parked next to the mailbox. He looked at the spot on the ground where Colburn had seen the roll of barbed wire and fenceposts. He looked at the magnolia tree next to the house where Colburn said the twins were playing. He remembered the crowd of men going in and out of the house in the days after, asking questions the mother could not answer. Looking for evidence that wasn’t there.
He got out of the cruiser and sat on the hood. Looked at the valley that surrounded the house and yard. Watching for something he should have seen before. Some answer that might raise its head from a tangle of vines and say I’m over here. What you are looking for is right over here. Get off your ass and come get me. He opened the mailbox, the mail piled up as the mother had gone to stay with a cousin in town. He closed it again and he crossed the yard and stopped at the magnolia tree. Turned around and looked up and down the road and tried to believe the conclusion they had come to. The twins were outside when a vehicle stopped. For whatever reason, by force or seduction, the twins got in the vehicle and then they were gone. It was simple and logical because there was no trace. But the simple and logical did not sit well with Myer and it did not sit well with the people he had to face every day.
I should have something better to do but I don’t know what that is, he thought. How are you supposed to know? One minute you’re dragging a deer off the side of the road and the next minute the whole town is looking at you for answers and you don’t have any. He shook his head. Looked down at the ground at his own shadow. Knowing his entire life he had been walking toward this point of great expectation and wishing he would have paid better attention. Sharpened those things inside him that needed to be sharpened. These things happen to people and you are not ready. You are becoming an old man who is giving nothing. An old man with a limp.
He walked back to the cruiser. Go back to the office and read everything again. Read it like it’s the first time. Read what Colburn said about that afternoon. Maybe there’s a word there that means more. Maybe. He took one more look around. The hillsides covered in green. The ups and downs of the suffocated. He cranked the cruiser and pulled into the road and the engine heaved as he pushed the gas pedal, drowning out the cry that came from somewhere below. Unaware of how close he had been to becoming the hero he wished he could be.