Claude had piloted the ancient Chevy pickup truck belonging to Shep’s brother off Gravel Switch Highway and onto Troublesome Creek Road south of Gideon. He drove down half a mile before he turned off onto a logging road. It was definitely the long way to Gideon, winding over the mountain through the trees. But he wanted to get up on the mountainside opposite Buzzard Knob, which would give them an unobstructed view of the buildings and street below.
Shep sat beside Claude, rifle in hand, with the barrel pointed at the floorboard. It was a 30.06 deer rifle. Not the rifle Shep would have picked if he’d had a choice. He’d never had a rifle fine as this one belonging to Abby’s cousin. Shep had only fired it the one time him and Doodlebug went out target shooting. Put a sight on that thing and you could drop a buck from two hundred yards away. It woulda been nice to have a sight, but he didn’t really need one. Shep intended to get so close he could watch the blood squirt out of their chests.
The rifle Billy Ray had brought to Claude rested on the gun rack behind the seat.
Thunder rumbled and the bald tires on the truck slipped and spun on the wet rock.
“We shoulda stayed on the road,” Claude said, fighting the wheel to keep the truck from sliding back down the incline.
The logging road had been there so long that it had become twin creek beds. The water that poured down the mountainside when it rained had flowed down the double ruts of the road for so long it had worn them down to bare rock.
Claude had downshifted into low gear when they’d turned off onto the logging road and now the old engine on the truck strained and groaned, scrabbling up the wet rocks. Yeah, they shoulda stayed on the road. The higher up the mountainside they went, the more treacherous the going became until it was all Claude could do to keep the vehicle moving forward, inching its way.
Then the engine coughed and died. Claude slammed his foot on the brake pedal, shoved it all the way to the floor and yanked the emergency brake handle to keep the truck from sliding backwards. He could restart the engine, it’d likely crank right up, but without any momentum, trying to climb farther was a useless effort. The tires would just spin. They could back real careful-like down the mountainside to Troublesome Creek Road, but they’d already taken too long.
The two men looked at each other. The water splatting down on the windshield was no longer just drops that had shook off the limbs of overhead trees. It had started to rain again.
There was nothing for it but to go the rest of the way on foot. Shep yanked on the door handle a couple of times before the door swung free. Claude reached back to the gun rack across the back window and took down the rifle. Shep had put extra shells into the pockets on his denim jacket. Claude was wearing a hoodie with the hood up and he had emptied the rest of the box into the big pocket on the front of it. Shep didn’t expect to need a whole lot of ammunition. Two men with rifles firing from above at three people who weren’t armed. Shouldn’t take but a couple of shots each to drop them in their tracks.
Sam raced through the house, crying out Rusty’s name, knowing she was being foolish but unable to help it. She stopped in the doorway of his bedroom. His bedspread was wrinkled — she’d left him here with a stack of comic books, made him lie down because she could see that he was still a little woozy from his ride on the Jabberwock.
The bed was made, of course. Rusty always made his bed. He’d heard some guy give a speech once, saying the rock-solid core of self-discipline started with making your bed every morning. Rusty had decided he wanted to be like that. So he made his bed up the moment he got out of it.
“Rusty always makes his bed,” she said to Malachi, as if somehow that statement would convey to him the same meaning it did to her. He pointed to the shoes beside the bed.
“Is he barefoot?”
Looking frantically around, she couldn’t seem to focus her eyes on any one thing. Malachi crossed the room and put a calming hand on her shoulder.
“One thing at a time. His shoes? Are his shoes here, the ones he usually wears?”
She glanced into the closet and burped out a bleat of laughter. His Air Jordans were right there where they always were. He hadn’t put them on a single time since the last day of school. He’d told her when she bought them for him that he was praying every night that his feet wouldn’t get any bigger. And she hadn’t had the heart to tell him that the chances of a twelve-year-old’s feet not growing at all for the rest of his life were slim indeed. He’d taken such good care of the shoes that they hardly looked used.
His other shoes, his sneakers, lay where he’d tossed them onto the floor when he’d taken them off.
She opened the closet door, checked. He had an ancient pair of high-tops, some hiking boots and a pair of flip-flops. They all were there.
“Yes, he’s barefoot.”
It hit her then, the realization landed on her chest with both feet. She had been denying it on the whole drive from the Middle of Nowhere. There was some reasonable explanation for why Rusty had failed to answer the phone. He’d gone outside … was …?
He was taking a shower. Possible, not likely. Not voluntarily. And you could hear the phone ring in the shower.
He was …
She’d come up with a basketful of ridiculous reasons for why he hadn’t answered, but standing in his bedroom beside his rumpled bed, none of them held any water.
She looked pleadingly into Malachi’s eyes — there was such tenderness and compassion there. She should have cared about that, about him looking at her like that. But right now it didn’t mean beans.
“It’s not really … she couldn’t … wouldn’t …”
The compassion never wavered, but he refused to coddle her.
“It’s obvious Rusty didn’t leave here willingly. Somebody forced him to leave without even putting on his shoes. It was Claire, alright.”
She sat down hard on the edge of the bed. Collapsed. Couldn’t breathe.
“If she’d wanted to harm him, she could have done that here. She took him somewhere. For some reason.”
“I can’t imagine what …”
She couldn’t seem to complete a sentence.
Malachi sat down beside her and actually took her hand.
“Let’s figure this out. She took her son’s body … his dead body. What for?”
Sam said nothing because she could think of nothing to say. It was insane. Yeah, that’s right. It was insane.
“Then she came here and got Rusty. Why would she want them both? What did she plan to do with them?”
Sam had no idea.