Hunted (Reeve Leclaire 2) (31 page)

A hand on her shoulder, shaking her. They’re in the pickup, stopped at the side of the road.

“Are you okay?” JD’s face is close.

She blinks at him, saying nothing.

“What happened? Reeve, tell me what’s wrong.”

“That photograph . . .”

“What about it?”

“Did you see?”

“See what?”

“In the background . . .” She chokes slightly and tries again. “In the background. I . . . I saw graves.”

J
D Bender has enough of his father in him to want to puzzle out what the heck is going on, but he has enough of his mother in him to notice that Reeve’s color has dropped from pale to ashen. His first thought is to get some nourishment into her, so he stops at the first diner he sees.

He shepherds her inside, insisting she needs to eat. They slide into a booth with red vinyl seats. He opens his menu, but she ignores hers. She’s wearing a thousand-yard stare and rubbing her hand as if it has a mean itch.

“They have twenty-four-hour breakfast. How does that sound?”

She doesn’t respond.

He watches her a moment, wondering how much to tell her, then says softly, “It’s obvious that you’re really upset. Can you fill me in?”

Her eyes meet his, unreadable. She gives a quick shake of her head and stares out the window.

When the waitress appears, he suggests two “Bluebird Specials” and Reeve gives a shrug that he takes for consent. He’s ordering two coffees when she interjects, “No. Hot chocolate,” which he figures is a good sign.

When the waitress brings their drinks, Reeve pulls her cup toward her and holds it with both hands, as if warming them. He watches her until the color starts coming back into her cheeks.

“Please tell me what’s going on,” he says as calmly as possible. “Come on, you said there were graves.”

“You didn’t see them?”

“I didn’t get a good look.”

I was looking at you,
he thinks but doesn’t say. “Did you have a flashback? Is that what happened?”

She closes her eyes and shudders.

Identical plates of two eggs and a short stack of blueberry pancakes appear before each of them. “Aren’t you hungry? Eat,” he urges.

She picks up a fork and pushes at some food on her plate while he eats. The waitress stops by to take his empty plate and refill his coffee cup, and when he looks up again, Reeve is watching him.

She pushes her plate aside. “Go ahead and say it.”

“Say what?”

“You think I’m crazy.”

“I do not.”

She puts her elbows on the table, presses her thumbs into her temples, and shuts her eyes.

“Reeve, I do not think that. But you said ‘graves,’ plural. What did you see?”

“Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I really am crazy.”

“Hey, I’ve seen crazy and you ain’t it. But listen,” he says, making up his mind, “there’s something I need to tell you. Something that was going on behind the scenes during Flint’s trial.”

She opens her eyes. “What?”

“Well, I was always asking my dad a lot of questions, and he told me something that didn’t come out in court.”

“What are you getting at?”

“The prosecutor had an interesting theory about Flint’s father.”

“I don’t know anything about his father,” she says, looking away. “Please don’t tell me about poor Daryl’s childhood. If he was abused, I don’t want to hear it.”

JD leans across the table. “The thing is, his father disappeared when he was thirteen. Disappeared as in vanished without a trace. And eventually Donald Flint was declared legally dead, and then a few years later, Flint’s mother married a pharmacist named Pratt.”

“So what was the prosecution’s big theory?”

“That Flint’s mother murdered his dad.”

She rocks back in her seat. “Are you serious?”

“It’s just a theory.”

“Why didn’t I hear anything about this before?”

“Because it was just speculation. There was never cause for any warrant and there was never any search.” JD reaches across the table and gently touches her wrist. “So tell me, what did you see?”

She gazes past his shoulder for a long moment, then meets his eyes. “By the water . . . in the background, I thought I saw mounds, like graves, and I remembered that Flint warned me”—she blinks rapidly and takes a breath— “that he was going to bury me next to his daddy. He said he’d sit on my grave and fish.”

JD swallows hard and waits, saying nothing, holding back questions.

“I thought his father was still alive when Flint said all that. I thought he was going to kill me and then sit on my grave for years and years, until his father died an old man.”

“But Flint’s father was already dead.”

“Murdered. Good lord, maybe he really did sit on his father’s grave.” The color blanches from her cheeks.

“But you said
graves.
Plural.” JD’s breakfast turns leaden in his stomach.

“I don’t know, I’ve got so much vile crap inside my brain, but I just . . .” She plunges her hands into her hair. “God, I thought I’d be over this by now. I thought I’d be healed and I could get on with my life like a normal human being.”

“I can’t imagine what you’ve had to—”

“Let’s call your father,” she says abruptly. “We need to fill him in.”

JD agrees, places the call, then sets his phone aside with a grimace. “His voice mailbox is full,” he says, mocking the electronic voice. “My dad and technology.”

Reeve drums her fingers on the table. “I wonder where that picture was taken.”

“Yeah, and I wonder when Flint’s father died. She said he didn’t want to be disturbed. That’s an odd thing to say, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I wonder if . . .” She stops drumming the table. “I know just who to call,” she says, lifting her cell phone from her purse.

I
t doesn’t surprise Nikki Keswick in the least when Blankenship tells her to return Mrs. Bender’s call. “The old guy’s wife wants something,” he says. “I’m busy Nik. You handle it.”

His attitude isn’t surprising. But Yvonne Bender’s very first words make her catch her breath.

“Why on earth did you people give my husband back his gun?”

“Excuse me?”

“When he retired, he promised he was done with firearms, and he handed in his weapon along with his badge. He’s no longer an agent, and I think I deserve an explanation.”

“Mrs. Bender, excuse me, but the bureau would never do that. That would be one hundred percent against protocol. Isn’t it possible that your husband simply bought a new gun?”

“No, it is not. He hung up his holster and started behaving like a normal adult. But now his holster is gone and why on earth would—oh!” Yvonne Bender gasps slightly. “It’s that damn Daryl Wayne Flint. That’s why Milo is acting so weird.”

“Weird in what way?”

“Like he did when he was an agent.”

“Like how, exactly?

“Restless. Prowling around the house like a trapped animal. I find him in his office at all hours of the night and morning, mumbling to himself, going through files.”

Keswick purses her lips, saying nothing. This exactly describes her own behavior.

“His desk is all covered with maps and papers,” Yvonne continues, “just like when he was investigating a case. I swear, Milo has an obsession with that criminal.”

“Did you say maps?”

“I’ve been trying to call him but he won’t answer. And when I saw that his holster was gone . . . Oh my god, if Milo has gone out and bought a gun, I’ll kill him.”

Keswick questions Yvonne Bender briefly, then asks her to go into her husband’s office and describe what she sees.

Keswick listens closely, and after hanging up, she cues up one search and then another on her computer. She double checks the timeline, makes a call, and sends several pages to the printer. Then she gathers up her notes, places them neatly in a folder, and tucks it under one arm, eager to carry this news to Blankenship.

She raps smartly on his door and waits.

“Keswick!” says a voice behind her.

She wheels around and sees Special Agent in Charge Stuart Cox leaning out of his office door.

“Have you got something?” he asks.

“Yes, sir.”

“Come and tell us about it.”

She enters his office to find Blankenship already inside.

“Yvonne Bender just called,” she says.

“So did Milo,” Cox says. “We’ve got to check out a guy named Walter Wertz.”

R
eeve insists there’s a pattern. When Otis Poe can’t follow, she cuts him short, saying, “Can you do this for me or not?”

“Damn right I can do it,” the reporter says. “I’ve checked so many marriage records, death records, and property records, I could moonlight as a county clerk. But listen, Reeve, if this turns out to be something real, then you’re giving me an exclusive. Deal?”

“Deal.”

It doesn’t take long until he calls her back. “Daryl Wayne Flint’s father, named Donald P. Flint, disappeared in 1978, declared legally dead in 1985. Then his widow married this guy Pratt, a pharmacist in Tacoma, who has owned the same house since—”

“Forget Pratt,” she interrupts. “What about that other guy, Walter Wertz? Where does he live? Anywhere near a lake?”

“Hold on, Reeve. I’m telling you. Wertz has a house in Olympia.”

“Olympia? Near a lake?”

“It’s Washington, there are lakes everywhere. But no, it’s in a regular residential area.”

She groans.

“But hold on. The records show that Wertz owns some other acreage, too.”

“Where?”

“A couple of places. One parcel is up north by Anacortes, and here’s a larger one in the Cascade mountains, beyond Snoqualmie Pass, in the Granite Reach Wilderness Area.”

She closes her eyes, recalls the photograph, and hazards a guess. “In the mountains. Is there a cabin by a lake or something?”

“I’m pulling up the satellite image now,” Poe says. “I’m enlarging the image . . . No, it’s quite a ways north of Cle Elum Lake and looks to me like it’s just wilderness.”

“But don’t you see a lake or a river or something?”

“No, uh, wait . . . here’s Shadow Bark Creek, and, oh, here’s a body of water. Shadow Bark Lake.”

“That’s gotta be it. I owe you, Otis. But now I need directions.”

M
ilo Bender drives slowly, studying the right side of the road. The weather is working to his disadvantage. It has been snowing lightly since he came through the pass, and once he passed Cle Elum, it started to stick.

He eases off the gas and pulls over at Granite Reach Mini-Mart. He unfolds his map and adjusts his bifocals on his nose, but finds nothing distinctive, just narrow roads winding into rugged terrain. He puts the map away and continues driving. No traffic behind him; none up ahead.

He passes a rickety bridge that crosses a creek. The road banks and climbs and then cuts into a rocky hillside. A bullet-riddled sign warns of falling rocks. He drives on, regretting that the tread on his tires isn’t the best, given these conditions.

A weathered sign announces the Granite Reach Wilderness Area, and he turns off the asphalt onto what can only be a forest service road. It’s snowing steadily now. The light bounces off the flakes, so he turns off his headlights. Soon the landscape will become a pure blankness, obscuring everything, and he’ll be out of luck.

He maneuvers his minivan through the remains of a huge tree that must have fallen across the road years ago. A section large enough to drive through has been cut away, and the bisected trunk still brackets the road like rotting bookends.

He peers out the windshield, looking for anything distinctive—for markers, a trail, or some evidence of recent habitation, if that’s not too much to wish for, because there’s apparently no residence up on this acreage. He rolls down the passenger-side window to get a better look, trying to think like Flint. The cold air rushes in, but he pays no attention.

He spots a moss-covered boulder and a gap in the trees. Could that be a trail? He drives past, craning his neck, trying to judge the opening. It’s worth a look. He continues several yards before he finds an opening in the trees where he can park off the road.

He shrugs on his weatherproof jacket, zips it up tight, and climbs out. The moment his boots hit the ground, he smells smoke. He lifts his nose, studying the skyline, but sees only treetops disappearing into a low, gray sky.

He climbs back into the minivan to retrieve the Glock from the glove box. Once it’s secure in his shoulder holster, he feels like an agent again.

His boots leave tracks in the freshly fallen snow as he studies the terrain. Now he’s sure that the gap between the trees is wide enough for a vehicle. He studies the ground, walking down the middle of what might be a road. It banks to the left, so that trees obscure it from anyone driving past.

Deeper in the trees, where the snow barely filters through the pines, the ground betrays tire tracks, recent and distinct. He hesitates, his breath hanging in the air while he considers whether to go back and place another call to Stuart Cox. Still, what does he have to report? Not much.

He trudges along, the cold stinging his cheeks and numbing his hands. He regrets leaving his gloves in the car, but he’ll just take a quick look around, then head back down the mountain out of this damned snow. There’s no longer any question that this is a road. It hugs the trees, turning, climbing, and descending in a way that would make it hard to spot from even those high-powered satellite cameras. The snow dusts his hair and shoulders as he crunches along, and his body warms from the effort of climbing.

The smell of smoke intensifies. He’s got to be close.

He feels invigorated, alert. The trail becomes slippery and uneven as he hurries on. Something catches his eye in the trees ahead. Freshly broken branches.