Deadlock (37 page)

Her advice had reminded him of one of the reasons he had enjoyed being married. It had tempered him; he had shared life's blessings and had someone to ease its disappointments.

Maybe Page had been right: Hutch possessed an obsessive personality. It simply never had a chance to blossom into nuttiness while he'd been married to Miss “Let's Be Reasonable.” Since finding another guy and hitting Hutch with divorce papers—in that order, he thought bitterly—Janet had become Queen B of the Universe. Prior to that, however, Hutch had loved her dearly.

It had surprised him when Laura had started stirring similar feelings during their long telephone conversations after he'd returned from Canada. But his kids were here, and she was there—and newly widowed, he'd reminded himself. So he'd pushed her out of his mind. And that had been about the time his outrage at Page had ratcheted up.
Filling a void
, he thought now.

Hutch pulled past an empty parking space. His name was stenciled to the wall.

“Hey, that's you,” Dillon said. “Cool.”

It struck Hutch how not just physically, but mentally limber kids were. The world could be ending around them, and they would acknowledge a school chum in the distance or lament missing their favorite TV show. Most adults would label it
lack of focus
—but Hutch thought there was something more important at play, some kind of creative and intuitive energy.

A survivalist he had interviewed told him that getting in a rut, figuratively speaking, was the worst thing that could happen to people lost in the wilderness. The man had said, “It doesn't matter if the rut is thinking you're dead no matter what you do, or being determined to get out alive. Focusing too sharply on one thing means everything else is blurry.”

He described an incident in which a lost hiker was so focused on getting over the next mountain, he'd walked right past a canoe that would have floated him to a nearby town. Instead, the guy had died. Hutch had dedicated a column to one fact the man had told him: businesspeople are more likely than tradesmen to die in survival situations. “Not because they're wussies,” he'd said. “They're just too tunnel-visioned on an outcome, and not so open to the various ways to reach it. They make a plan and stick to it, regardless.”

Hutch thought it boiled down to the age-old wisdom of bending like a young tree, not breaking like an old, dry one. He hoped he could keep that in mind as he faced whatever chaos Page had planned for him.

He put the car in reverse and backed into the space.

“I shouldn't be long, then we'll be off,” he said. He looked over the seat back at Macie. “It's not the kind of car trip I wanted to take with you, sweetie. When we get Logan back, we'll do something really fun, Disney or something like that.”

“Me too?” Dillon said.

“I think we can work something out.” Hutch glanced at Laura, who nodded. He gave Michael a wry smile. “You want to come?”

“I told you I'm ready to help,” Michael said. He opened the car door.

“I meant to Disneyland,” Hutch said.

Michael frowned, then smiled. “Yeah, sure. What about here? You need a hand?”

“Help Laura watch out for dangers. We'll have a few days on the road to figure out how all of us can pull together to get Logan back.” He nodded at the notepad in Michael's lap. They had picked it up for him at Wal-Mart. He said, “The best thing you can do right now is keep writing down everything you know about Outis. The layout, its security, any weaknesses. Think about where you'd stash a twelve-year-old boy.”

Michael flinched as though Hutch had accused him. Hutch believed the damage Outis had done crackled just under the surface. Like cleansing a cult's influence from a former member's conscious and subconscious, it would take years to detoxify this boy.

Michael's flinch, though, was something else, something Hutch had not thought about at the motel. It was guilt by association. Michael had not taken Logan, but his team had: close enough.

Thinking it would shift the blame to the proper shoulders, Hutch added, “If you were Page.”

Michael nodded. He lowered his eyes to the notepad. He put pen to paper, but his hand didn't move. He seemed to stare at the speck of ink the pen had deposited as if waiting for it to snake out across the page and answer Hutch's questions of its own accord.

Hutch felt little fingers pressing on his shoulder. Macie was leaning forward in her seat. He gave her a reassuring smile.

She said, “I don't care about Disneyland, Daddy. I just want Logan home.”

“Me too, sweetheart. He'll be tearing up the house and back to insulting you before you know it.”

“That'd be okay,” she said. “He can if he wants to.”

“That's what big brothers do, right?”

“I wish he was my big brother,” Dillon said.

Hutch narrowed his eyes at Dillon. He said, “You just want somebody to help you with the chores.”

“And to go hunting and camping with.”

Dillon's smile was so broad, Hutch thought he could see every one of the boy's teeth.

“Well . . .” Hutch said. “Logan never really got into the hunting thing. He kind of liked camping when he was little. Not so much anymore.”

Macie said, “He likes video games now. And football and skateboarding.”

“Video games of playing football on skateboards,” Hutch said.

Macie smiled, and he could tell she was thinking of her brother. He raised his eyebrows at her. “And drawing,” he said. “He's been really getting into drawing lately.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Gross stuff. People with big swords, fighting . . .”

“I don't know,” Hutch said. “What about those cartoons?”

Macie laughed. It was a sparkling sound, free of the tension that had tightened her face all day. She glanced around at Laura, Dillon, and Michael, pulling them into her memories of Logan. “He did this one,” she said, barely containing herself. “These babies are sitting around a table in their diapers. They're playing poker and drinking beer and smoking cigars. Under it he wrote, ‘Why guys should not babysit
.
'”

Laura and Dillon laughed. Michael was too intent on the ink spot to have even heard.

Hutch said, “He did that one after I asked him to babysit Macie while I went to the store. I made him stop playing
Zelda
so he could pay attention to her.”

“Logan showed me some of his cartoons,” Dillon said. “They were good.” He shrugged. “It's okay that he doesn't like hunting and camping.”

Hutch opened his door. It lightened his heart to leave them like this, rather than the gloom-and-doom that had been hanging over them. They could not be in a worse situation: Logan kidnapped; the man who took him bent on making a point or revenge or . . . Hutch didn't know; all of them—kids!—on a trek to the dragon's lair.

Still, the mind could be wound only so tightly for so long. They needed relief, a breather. They needed reminders, however brief, of what made life worth living.

According to Laura, adversity was what gave meaning to Hutch. He understood how it could look that way. He sprang to action when a situation required it. Did he feel more alive going after Brendan Page than he did hugging his son, hearing his daughter laugh? He didn't think so. He didn't think that action necessarily translated into living life to its fullest. Otherwise, what was sitting on a grassy knoll, watching the sunset with a person you love? What was falling asleep on the couch, your children cuddled up next to you?

No, Laura had witnessed Hutch's kicking into gear because that's what was required of him. She did not see his heart, what truly made it beat.

“Start the car, if you need the heater or the radio or something,” he told Laura.

“My CD!” Macie said.

“Carrie Underwood,” Hutch said. “It's in there. Disc number four, I think.”

“Got it,” Laura said. She reached for the key in the ignition to give the stereo some juice.

Hutch shut the door and went to the back of the car to fetch the hockey equipment bag they'd picked up at the store. It was full of the Outis items he wanted to show Larry. As he came back around, Laura was leaning over the driver's seat to lower the window.

“What about cops?” she said.

Hutch looked around. He didn't see any guards, just a few stragglers making their way home. He said, “Larry said they'd come by. They think I'm in Washington, but it won't be long for them to figure out I returned. Just keep a lookout.” He slung the bow bag strap over his shoulder, patted the windowsill, and said, “Be right back.”

SIXTY

Hutch's desk was on the fifth floor. It was a level above the newsroom, where people bustled 24/7. His floor housed the staff concerned with less timely issues—entertainment, food, fashion, home and garden. Hutch's column covered people who epitomized the “spirit of Colorado.” To fully embrace his subjects' crises and triumphs—often the impetus for drawing out that spirit—Hutch spent most of his time in the field, interviewing, taking it all in. During the past year, focused as he was on Page, he'd relied heavily on telephone interviews and worked more increasingly from his home office. He didn't get around to his desk here all that much anymore. In fact, he'd learned recently that his cubicle wasn't only his anymore. He now shared his space with the guy who covered little communities around the state and a woman who wrote a column called Women and Wheels. Consequently, he kept nothing here that would help him now.

He traversed the central passageway between cubicles, toward Larry's office. The overhead fluorescents had been turned off. Light from one of the cubicles glowed against the ceiling on the other side of the big room. Fingernails clicked over a keyboard. He thought it was Joanne Macintire, the society columnist, probably back from some black-tie affair. How she cranked out coherent columns after partying, Hutch never knew. When Joanne had heard about his divorce, she had invited him to something like a soirée or debutante ball. Knowing he'd feel as awkward as Hulk Hogan having tea and crumpets at Buckingham Palace, he'd declined.

He was almost at Larry's office. Through the glass wall, he could see his friend behind the desk. His face was buried in his hands.

“Hutch!” Joanne was hurrying toward him in a fancy chiffon dress. “'Bout time you came in.”

“How's it going, Joanne? I just stopped in to see Larry for a minute.”

“What are you doing with that?” She slapped at the bow bag. Metal rattled within.

He turned it away from her. “Camping,” he said.

She looked at him as though he'd said
brain surgery.
A second later, she'd forgotten it. She touched his arm. “Listen, the Governor's Ball is coming up and—just hear me out. You're kind of a local celebrity now, you know, with the saving-a-whole-town-in-Canada stuff and the news stories,
60 Minutes
, oh my goodness. Anyway, I just happened to mention to the mayor that you could maybe be persuaded to come.”

Larry was looking at him now, his eyes wide, his hands spread to say,
Come on!

“Let me think about it,” Hutch said.

“Really? Hey, I'll take anything that's not
no
. I've got a press kit about it . . . hold on.” She flitted toward her cubicle. Her backless dinner gown was way too backless.

“Catch me next time, Joanne,” Hutch said. “I really gotta run.”

She waved her hand at him, and he stepped into Larry's office.

“Shut the door,” Larry said, coming around the desk. He pulled a cord, closing the blinds over his view of the cubicles. Beyond his desk, a large window looked out on the building across the street, a turn-ofthe- century brick structure with lots of interesting architectural features—vastly different from the modern design of the
Post
building.

Hutch always told Larry he had the better end of the deal: “I'd rather be
in
this building,
looking
at that one, than vice versa.” It wasn't the grand vista Page looked out on, but at least the
Post'
s “decorative” Plexiglas-faced balcony-like structure didn't run up over his windows, as it did the science editor's office next to Larry's.

Larry swept his arm over his desk, pushing aside a pen holder, a paper tray, books. “What do you have?” he asked.

Hutch clunked the bag onto the desk. “You'd think I robbed Fort Knox, the way you said that.”

“Hey, evidence that could put Brendan Page behind bars? You bet I'm excited.”

“I don't know about evidence,” Hutch said, unzipping the bag. “I'm sure Page has distanced himself from all of this stuff.” He held the flaps closed and simply stared at Larry, thinking.

“And you know something?” he said. “I don't even care. I don't care if I've got his fingerprints, his DNA, and a video of him stabbing somebody. I just want my son back.”

Larry shook his head. “I know, I know. That's all that matters. You haven't heard anything?”

“He's toying with me, driving me crazy with silence.”

“But you still think he had Logan brought to Outis?”

“It's the only move that makes sense. Even if Logan's not there, Page is. I have to get to one of them.”

Larry said, “And you're willing to let everything you know about Page go? Cut bait and run?” He looked at Hutch skeptically.

“Larry, this is my family. . . .”

Larry's eyes dropped to the bag. “So, what's
this
?”

Hutch pulled out the machine pistol. “I wasn't thinking of evidence. More like, how can these things help us get Logan back?” Hutch handed Larry the weapon.

Larry held it at arm's length by the tips of his fingers.

“It's not loaded,” Hutch said. He pulled a spent shell from his pocket and showed it to Larry. “It fires 9mm. Pretty common. You don't happen to have any or know someone who does?”