From a Dead Sleep (21 page)
“Does he carry a cellphone with him? Or a work number you could reach him at?”
“No,” she answered, eyeing the remnants of a salad she’d fixed for herself earlier in the night. “He’s not in the office and he can’t easily use a cellphone in the field.”
“The field? What does he do?”
She didn’t answer and kicked herself for offering up such information.
After a moment, Marty spoke. “I’m sorry, ma’am. That’s none of my business.”
“It’s okay,” she quickly interjected, recognizing that it wasn’t fair to make him feel awkward for asking a common question. “He’s an accountant.”
There was no acknowledgment from him. She visualized the expression most likely draped across his face—one of puzzlement over why an accountant would work such odd hours when it wasn’t tax season and why contacting him was so difficult. She leaned back against the backrest of her stool and crossed her legs in front of her. It would have been a good time to adjourn the conversation, but she felt drawn to continue. She hadn’t chatted with anyone for days. She was lonely.
“Marty, are you married?” she heard herself ask.
Perhaps too personal and probing of a question for a resident to ask, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“I’m divorced.”
“Kids?”
“Yes. I have a daughter. Her name is Katy. She’s four. The light of my life.”
She smiled, absorbing the pride and sincerity in his voice. “How long have you been divorced?”
“About a year.”
She nodded her head, took a moment, then asked, “Has it been tough?” She heard what sounded like a sigh on the other end. It was a question that most certainly had no short answer. She winced.
Definitely too personal
. “I’m sorry, Marty. Now that’s none of my business.”
He quickly replied, “Oh, don’t worry about it, Mrs. Kimble.”
“You can call me Lisa.”
“Lisa. I don’t mind talking about my marriage. It’s just not the type of conversation I’m used to having with residents. Those are usually along the lines of
Do you think we’ll get any rain today?
or
I’m
expecting guests for dinner
.”
She giggled. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
Marty explained that the divorce had had its ups and downs. Child custody was an issue, but both sides eventually settled on an arrangement he could swallow. His ex-wife was already remarried, which made things difficult on him and created concerns with his daughter’s living situation. As the call continued, the conversation became more comfortable. Lisa soon felt like she was talking to an old friend—one with some gentlemanly maturity. She reminisced about growing up outside of Billings, Montana, and complained of the brutal summers in Nevada. She’d lived there since college, choosing UNLV after her high school boyfriend had earned a football scholarship there. They broke up before graduation. She didn’t bring up her own marriage, however. She wasn’t ready for that.
“Thanks for lending me your ear tonight, Marty. I really appreciate it. I know it’s not in your job description to help pass the time for bored residents in the middle of the night.”
“Believe me, anything away from the normal routine is a good thing. Things down here have been slow, and I’ve enjoyed the company. Only a half hour to go and I’m done until the morning.”
She could feel him grinning through the receiver. She glanced up at a wooden clock that lined the dining room wall. Since her arrival, its intrusive ticking had worn on her nerves. She’d even considered stopping the pendulum the day before. But for the past hour, she hadn’t noticed it once.
“Oh my. It’s eleven thirty,” she said.
“Yes ma’am. I mean, Lisa.”
She didn’t want to hang up the phone, but knew she’d long outworn her welcome. Still, she felt wide awake. “One last thing. A couple years ago, I checked out a movie at your station down there. Do you guys still do that?”
He answered yes, but quickly apologized for the weak selection of video tapes. He began reading off titles, none of which was newer than four years old. She stood and stretched her free arm up toward the open bedroom loft, then walked into the living room where the flush carpet felt good under her bare feet.
“Last of the Mohicans
,” she decided. “I love a good romance.”
She crossed in front of a wall mirror and stopped to take inventory of herself. The slow moving ceiling fan high above dabbled with her hair. She reached back behind her head and unhinged her ponytail, letting her blonde locks float down to just above her shoulders.
“Sounds good, Lisa. I’ll watch for your headlights.”
“Marty,” she responded, “why don’t you bring it up in thirty minutes once you’re off . . .? And why don’t you stay and watch it with me?”
T
he circular outlines of the traffic lights were hazy and nearly conjoined as best Sean’s weary eyes could decipher. He used the palm of his hand to tug at his lower eyelid in an effort to keep his right eye open enough to read the street signs. It was very late by the time he’d finally arrived in Traverse City. Despite the darkness and the humidity that his windshield defroster battled, he could tell that upstate Michigan was lush with heavy trees and occasional wide open areas nestled in between them. Boats sitting on trailers were a common sight. Street lamps were few and far between, which left his car’s headlights the only warning signal for the frequent roadkill that littered the roads. There was a constant dampness in the air though he had encountered little rain on his way in.
Most things in town were closed but he wasn’t concerned with the business district. He was determined to reach his final destination, the location that appeared to be taking him to the outskirts. He’d picked up a city map at a gas station after conservatively electing to fill his tank a quarter full. There, he grabbed some individual slices of pepperoni pizza—the second heating lamp delicacy he’d enjoyed in less than twenty-four hours. They were easy to eat while he drove. The last fifteen minutes had been spent flicking the dome light on and off to verify on the map that he was heading in the right direction.
After he crossed a three-way intersection, a new subdivision crept up on the left. Its perimeter was surrounded by an eight-foot-high, unlit brick wall with overhanging foliage and thick tree limbs sprouting out from behind it. It was clear to Sean that he had just entered an upscale area. A break in the wall up ahead suggested an entrance. He didn’t notice the discreet black and white street sign labeled Bluff Walk Road until he had practically passed it. Bearing down on the brake pedal, he prepared for a sharp left turn, but an imposing black, steel gate stood in opposition. He caught a glimpse of a small brick building in front of it with a single light turned on inside its side window. Yanking the steering wheel to the right to turn off onto an adjacent side street, he grimaced at the honk from an annoyed late-night driver behind him as he screeched off the main drag. Sean flipped a U-turn along the narrow street and parked under a row of fruit trees where he could see the gate from about forty yards away. He turned off the headlights and engine.
Sitting inside the small building, which he recognized as a guard station, was a uniformed man. He appeared to be on the phone, engaged in a cordial conversation. Though Sean could only see him from the waist up, he seemed to have a thin but athletic build and was probably in his early forties. With blonde, short feathered hair and clad in his neatly pressed light-blue uniform, he reminded Sean of a toy soldier.
With his nagging fatigue dividing what should have been a moment in triumph over arriving at his long-awaited destination, his mind chose to allocate what little energy it had left to wondering what kind of wages the guard was pulling in. Sean was certain it was more than he, just based on the geography alone.
He pressed the palms of his hands into the steering wheel, straightened his arms, and flattened his damp back into his seat. The crackling of his joints brought some marginal relief after a hard day’s drive. His eyes were fluttering and he was convinced whatever was on the other side of that gate would have to remain a mystery until the morning. He incautiously crawled back over the driver’s seat and his large body crumbled down into the back. He remembered little else before he drifted off to sleep, other than the faint smell of nectar and soothing, crisp night air.
“T
oby!” His name was shouted throughout the darkened forest for nearly thirty minutes, echoing under the spitting sleet that dropped from the sky.
Their cries had prompted no response and the men from the Winston police department lost track of the boy’s trail. They knew he’d made it at least to the other side of the creek, but couldn’t find much sign of him beyond where his footprints had disappeared into the underbrush. The only crumb of comfort came from the fact that the unusually large footprints, which were assumed to belong to the killer, could not be found in pursuit of the boy. They instead led to an area behind some trees where tire tracks revealed that a car had been parked. Lumbergh called on Ron Oldhorse.
It was fair to say that Oldhorse was an eccentric, a term that could have easily been applied to many who lived in the secluded, mountainous region that surrounded Winston. Adopted and raised by a small restaurant owner and his wife in the Denver metro area, his legal name from years ago was Ronald Wilson. Oldhorse’s childhood was pretty typical of most kids brought up in the city: public schooling, intramural sports, a part-time job working for his parents. Yet, he never sensed that he quite fit in with those he lived among, even in a region somewhat known for its racial diversity and multiple ethnic backgrounds.
In his teens, Oldhorse had formed a deep fascination with the history of the Lakota Indian tribe that he’d discovered his biological parents were descendants of. His mother and father had died in a house fire when he was an infant. His interest in the tribe became an obsession once he returned to Colorado after a few years in the US Army infantry, much of which he’d spent overseas. Despite the bonds he’d formed in the military, he returned to the state as a loner after his adoptive parents retired and moved to Florida. Over the next couple of years, he’d tracked down and sought wisdom among Lakota tribe elders, even traveling throughout the Dakota states and learning to live off the land while he worked as a ranch hand outside of Rosebud, South Dakota.
No one knew what eventually brought Oldhorse to the hills outside of Winston. Some suspected that he’d gotten in some sort of legal trouble up north, but it was nothing more than pure speculation among a rural citizenry that loved its gossip. He was rarely seen in town, infrequently turning up in a local store, picking up supplies or selling well-crafted wood carvings. His home for the past several years had been a bare-bones cabin without a phone or electricity, wedged along a slope near Red Cliff about three miles from Bailey’s house.
Lumbergh had once been told by the previous police chief that Oldhorse “seemed like a man who was on an endless journey to find what he was looking for, but had long ago lost track of what that was.” He’d also been told by the former chief that Oldhorse was the best hunter and tracker he’d ever met. When out in the woods, no blemish escaped his notice and no prey escaped his crosshairs.
Lumbergh watched Jefferson pull up the driveway behind his Jeep and join multiple county squad cars already on the scene. The area was a flurry of officers and activity. The perimeter was being taped off, photographs were being snapped, and multiple work-lights on tripods lit up the range.
Oldhorse was riding shotgun alongside Jefferson, and in his officer’s eyes Lumbergh read a tale of considerable stress. Jefferson’s face was pale, and he looked like he’d been sweating. The men stepped out of the car. Oldhorse seemed emotionless. His salt and pepper, long hair that had been jet-black in his youth was uncharacteristically void of a ponytail. Looking a little heavier than the last time Lumbergh had seen him, he wore an oversized denim shirt under a half-dozen beaded necklaces with stone pendants and jeans with tall moccasin boots that came up to just under his knees. A sparse mustache decorated his upper lip.
The men approached the chief, and before Lumbergh could thank Oldhorse for coming, the rugged Native American quickly spoke in his eerily monotone voice: “Tell me that the lost boy isn’t Sean Coleman.”
Lumbergh was taken aback by the statement. He looked at Jefferson, who shook his head and rolled his eyes.
Oldhorse continued. “Tell me that I’m not being asked to find the yuhektob who once called me Tonto and asked if there was gambling on my reservation.”
Lumbergh’s shoulders sank. “No. It’s Toby Parker who’s lost,” he clarified. “Didn’t Jefferson explain that?”
Jefferson loudly jumped in to defend himself. “It’s a little tough to talk when a knife is being held to your throat!”
An annoyed and dismissive grunt left Oldhorse’s gullet before he turned toward the officer with irritated, narrow eyes. “As I said; I didn’t know it was you that was floundering up my hill like a wounded rhino.”
Jefferson puffed out his chest. “Well if you had a driveway like a normal person, you’d have seen my squad lights and—”
Lumbergh grabbed Jefferson’s shoulder and commanded his silence with a parental glare. He quickly explained the situation to Oldhorse, who sponged up the details without expression. In fact, the quirky recluse displayed such little acknowledgment that Lumbergh half-wondered if anything he’d said had been heard. He looked to be in a hypnotic trance, as if he’d been driving through the desert for hours. Only when his small, precise eyes began shifting from side to side did Lumbergh recognize a hint of comprehension. Just as the chief turned to point toward the creek where they had lost Toby’s trail, Oldhorse jetted off in an adjacent direction, walking purposefully toward Lumbergh’s Jeep where the boy’s mother was sitting inside the open passenger door.
A sheriff ’s department coat was draped over Joan Parker’s low-hanging shoulders, and her short legs hung outside of the vehicle. Her face was wooden and her spirit dead. Lumbergh watched Oldhorse approach her. She didn’t react to him until he was standing directly in front of her. As her eyes rose to meet his, his hand went tenderly to the side of her face and he leaned in close to her ear to speak.