Chapter Eighteen

A crimson disc of sun creeps over woods to the east of the city. It's coming on eight in the morning, daybreak, the depths of winter on the plains. Outlying Nebraska lies buried beneath feet of driven snow. From the second-story window of the law enforcement building, Whicher sees both highways out of town.

A couple of hours sleep he’s managed—restless on a police department couch. Lauren DeLuca has simply vanished into thin air. No sign of violence, nothing out of place. No blonde seen running in the snow. No blood on any tracks.

The marshal stares out at the highway east, vehicles moving on it, now—lights trailing into the distance.

Down at street-level, a car catches his eye, a police vehicle turning in from the strip.

He takes his hat from a desktop, puts it on. Buttons the white shirt at his throat, fixes his necktie in place.

Everything they could have done, they’ve done—short of putting out a stop order, making it public. They’ve searched in every locale known to city police. His gaze shifts to the window, to the fire-like sky. Sun rising indifferent across the fields, above the winter sticks of wood.

A muffled voice sounds from somewhere in the building.

“Marshal?”

Whicher steps out into a hallway.

“Marshal are you up there?”

He hears a sound from the stairs.

Sergeant Tierney is half-way up, hand wrapped around the metal banister. “Somebody had their car stolen last night—they just reported it. Taken from a house on East 5th.”

“Where the hell’s that?”

“Right over from the train station,” the sergeant says.

The marshal runs a hand over stubble at his jaw. “The station?”

Tierney nods. “Real close. Like a few hundred yards...”

“We get over there?”

The sergeant taps his pants pocket. “I already got my keys.”

A brick road is just visible beneath the scrape of ice and snow and dissolving salt. Sergeant Tierney steers the police Chevy past a white-over truck lot.

Whicher eyes the motionless hulks, standing frozen.

Tierney swings the SUV into a tree-lined street.

Board-side houses line the road beyond a post and rail fence.

“This is East 5th?”

“This is it.” The sergeant pulls over at a run-down house, the driveway empty.

He shuts off the motor. The two men step out.

The front door of a screened-gallery opens.

A woman appears, wearing jeans, a sweater, a wool scarf.

Whicher steps onto the pristine snow in the driveway.

“Aileen Brennan?” Tierney says.

The woman folds her arms across her chest. “I already told the police department all the details.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the sergeant says. “The vehicle is a Ford Taurus?”

She nods. “A GL Sedan.”

Tierney takes out his notebook. “White in color. Eight years old.” He reads off a license plate number.

“They broke in the back door,” the woman says. “They took the keys from the kitchen.”

“You didn’t hear it?”

“Not a thing.”

Whicher looks at her. “It was parked here on the yard?”

“No.”

“No?”

“My husband parked it at the curb,” she points out into the street. “It’s been leaking oil, messing up the driveway.”

“How far away from the house?”

She indicates a spot thirty yards off.

“Is your husband here?” Sergeant Tierney says.

“He went to work. A neighbor had to give him a ride.”

“Last night,” Whicher says, “what time y’all turn in?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Ten, ten-thirty.”

“The car was still here then?”

“Rod went to look out,” she says, “my husband. He wanted to see what was going on with the storm. He came down this morning, there was glass on the kitchen floor, the door was unlocked. He couldn’t find anything missing. Then he saw it,” she says. “He saw the car was gone.”

Steam rises from a cup of coffee on the plastic-topped desk in the police department. Whicher dials the Albuquerque number. He glances at the door to the office; it's shut.

The marshal checks his watch—Mountain Time in New Mexico, an hour behind Nebraska.

The call answers.

“McBride.”

“Sir, it’s Whicher...”

“I'm guessing you don't have good news?”

“We searched all night, we found nothing,” the marshal says. “Till thirty minutes back. Somebody reported their vehicle stolen. Taken close to the rail yard, overnight.”

“A car?”

“Police here say they don’t get auto thefts—I want to put out a stop order.”

“If somebody attacked her,” McBride says, “why take a vehicle?”

The marshal puts a hand to the cup of coffee, turns it once. “I can’t rightly say. But somebody broke in a house to get the keys to a car.”

“What time was it taken?”

“Sometime between ten-thirty last night and seven this morning. It's a white Ford Taurus, eight years old, nondescript, not the kind of thing worth stealing.”

McBride stays silent at the end of the line.

“It’ll be covered in snow,” Whicher says, “including the plates.”

“You think there’s any chance she could still be there?”

“We checked every place anybody could think of.”

“If she’s gone, you think there's any point in you staying? She may be dead already…”

The marshal leans forward, takes his weight on his elbows.

“Where are you now?” McBride says. “You might as well go ahead and tell me.”

“Nebraska. A place called McCook.”

“Give me the license plate of the car, I’ll get the stop order put out.”

Whicher stares at the desk.

“And I’ll need your number there,” McBride says. “I’ll have to get back, I got to make some calls.”

Out on the sidewalk, Whicher leans into an ice cold wind. In his pocket a pack of razors and a can of foam from a druggist on Main.

Beneath a hard blue sky, the store owners are out with shovels—clearing the wide, stone paving.

At a diner on the corner, the marshal orders breakfast—scrambled eggs and biscuits and country ham.

He sits a long time. Thinks of Lauren DeLuca. Thinks of a long night, mind turning, going over everything—the train stopping, people getting off and on. Lauren wanting to make a call.

Nobody had attacked her; nobody could’ve been there.

Not a single person knew they’d be on that train.

She must have walked.

He thinks of her in the Denver station before they set out; placing a hand on his—letting it linger.

Remembering the feeling. Was she just waiting, all along? Looking for a chance to come her way?

The stolen car didn’t fit; Lauren DeLuca was white-collar, an accountant—would she know how to break into a house to find the keys?

Maybe she knew a lot of things.

He swirls coffee grounds at the bottom of his cup.

Calls the waitress for the check.

Footsteps in the corridor pull him out of a half-sleep.

Whicher sits up.

Sergeant Tierney is at the door. “There's a call for you.” He points at a phone on the desk in the corner. “You want to take it in here?”

The marshal stands, shakes himself awake.

Tierney squints, “Line three,” he says. He turns on his heel.

Whicher pushes the door closed. The police department washroom had been cold to shave in, dozing in a back office better than no rest at all.

He picks up the phone.

“Is it snowing out there, marshal?”

Whicher looks out of the window.

“There's a ticket waiting for you at the airport,” McBride says. “At McCook. They're flying today unless it comes in bad again.”

“Flying?” Whicher says. “Flying where?”

“I'll get to that,” the inspector says. “I just got done talking with Sheriff Dubois, back in Las Animas County. She sent the canine team up to Millersburg? This morning they found the body of Officer Kyle Guillory in the woods.”

Whicher glances at the deer camp coat on the back of the chair. Guillory’s coat.

“He was underneath a lot of snow,” the inspector says. “Close to a hunting cabin, a family place. They searched the whole area, they found tire tracks up some side-road in the forest. There was a bunch of drag marks, they sent the dog team in, they found a second body.”

The marshal takes a turn around the room, phone clamped against his neck.

“There was no ID on the second victim,” McBride says. “They lifted fingerprints, they had FBI run them through IAFIS. Half an hour ago, they got a hit on a Jimmy Scardino.”

“Y’all know who he is?”

“I don’t. But FBI in Chicago know him—he’s linked with organized crime.”

Whicher waits for the inspector to go on.

“So there’s more than one person involved here, somebody dragged this guy into the woods…”

“There’s at least two,” Whicher says.

“You know that?”

“They used Guillory’s unit to come at us, at least two people were inside.”

McBride grunts into the phone. “Colorado State Patrol found this guy Scardino’s car about ten miles away—by the side of a highway, a Toyota pickup.”

“That was us.”

“Come again?”

“I found the pickup,” Whicher says. “It was in the woods when they took off. We drove it to a highway, to get out, to get away from Millersburg.”

“They're throwing everything at this,” McBride says, “that’s for damn sure. They’ve killed two peace officers—it looks like they got to your witness last night. But here’s the next problem we have; she has a younger brother—also under protection. You need to head for the airport, right now. We need to move the brother. Today.”