Rapping on his window woke Robert up. Robert Senior peered in. Robert tossed his blankets aside and scrambled out of bed. He struggled with the window, his race car–covered pajama top riding up his tummy as he tugged, but finally he got the frame pulled about a quarter of the way up. Cold night air rushed into his closet-sized bedroom.
A thin rivulet of blood ran down the bridge of Robert Senior’s swollen nose. His knuckles were scraped raw. Sweat and liquor pinched Robert’s nostrils.
Robert Senior looked hurriedly over his shoulder. “The cops are looking for me. I borrowed one of their cars. You should have seen the sheriff’s face! Got them good.” He chuckled and swung a thumb behind his shoulder. “Left it a ways back there. Think I hit a deer.”
Bright lights flashed over both of them, illuminating Robert Senior’s swollen, rubber Halloween mask face.
“They’re coming for me, boy!” His eyes lit up. His face flushed. He drummed on the windowsill, chuckling again. “I’m gonna have to make a run for it!”
“Run, Dad!” Robert yelled.
Robert Senior grinned at his son. He reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair with a sweaty palm.
Then he crashed into the woods, and Robert never saw him again. He never told Deb he’d spoken to his father that night. And when Deb said a few weeks later that Robert Senior was in jail in Seattle, the maximum-security prison this time, Robert decided she was wrong. Robert Senior was camping in the woods, where there was less trouble to get into.
* * *
Holt and O’Shay recovered the sheriff’s cruiser at the edge of the trees, its door flung open. Glass from a smashed headlight littered the asphalt. Scratches clawed the driver’s-side door. Holt reached inside to turn off the lights, still splashing blue and red over the trees.
A boot, Rob Kelley’s own dirt-crusted Timberland, lay on the cruiser floor. Like Rob had gnawed it off to free himself from a trap. Holt took a slim digital camera from his holster and began snapping photos. A long shot of the boot, tipped over, laces still tied. Close-up of the tread, to compare with any footprints they might find.
“Oh, shit,” O’Shay swore. Holt hustled over to the front of the cruiser, where O’Shay had been surveying the damage.
A body was splayed near the middle of the road.
Holt’s peripheral vision shrank. An arm, snapped and bent. A wrinkled hand, fingers stretching toward the car’s front right wheel. The head turned away from him, mercifully, so that all he could see was white hair sprouting beneath a ball cap.
Something gleaming in the road, a white island in a sea of maroon. A tooth.
Holt lunged backward and hung his head over the grass. He gagged and heaved, and finally spat bile into the dirt. O’Shay called for an ambulance, though they both knew it was far too late. Then he took the camera from Holt. When he was done taking pictures, O’Shay covered the body with a blanket from the cruiser’s trunk.
“Do you know who it is?” Holt asked.
“No. Could be a vagrant. No ID.” O’Shay pointed at the trees. “Rob’s that way. I just know it.”
“He told me he was a marine,” Holt said. A sour taste oozed down his throat. He peered into the woods. Broken pine boughs marked where Rob must have dived into the forest. Holt ran a hand down his own stubbled cheeks. Those needles must have torn up Rob’s face, his bare arms. Holt turned back to O’Shay. “Maybe he has survival training.”
“That’s bastard’s no marine!” O’Shay yelled. “He’s a drunk with a kid he doesn’t support. I’ve been hauling him in since he was fifteen years old. He disappeared in Seattle for a few years, probably making a complete pain in the ass of himself there, too. But he tells all kinds of stories about what he was up to. He’s a war vet. He’s a middle-weight boxer. He’s been crab fishing up in Alaska. I used to think I could help him. Don’t ever make that mistake. People like him just drag you down with them.” O’Shay spat toward the trees. “At least now he’ll have a true story to tell in jail.”
O’Shay returned to the car and popped the trunk. Holt took a few steps toward the trees. The curtain of needles could certainly hide a man. After all, it still held the bear that Holt had failed to trap.
He tried to forget this second fugitive lurking in the forest as O’Shay tossed him a thick jacket and a pair of gloves, and they parted the trees.