Jude Devine Mystery Series (51 page)

“What are you talking about?”

Amberlee wobbled over to the bed and dragged the covers off Tonya. “Don’t you get it? They’re here to see you. This is a big story.”

Tonya stared at the phone. Any minute it would ring and someone would say Corban was safe and they were bringing him home. There was still time for him to be okay. She started crying again. She was a mess. She only had to think about her baby and she couldn’t control herself.

“I should be out there looking for him,” she sobbed. “It’s been a whole day. What if he’s hiding somewhere like in a log or a cave. Maybe he’ll get scared if he hears the searchers. He’s shy. Sometimes he only answers to me.”

Amberlee looked impatient. “You’re getting yourself all worked up over nothing. He’ll answer.”

“Oh, God. Why did I leave him?” Tonya rolled onto her stomach and hugged one of the pillows against her. “I shouldn’t have left him.”

“I suppose you’re going to blame me next.” Amberlee plugged in the flat iron and set about straightening her hair.

She’d spent most of the morning with Saran Wrap around her head to make her home bleach kit work faster. Her hair was now the exact shade of platinum Tonya had wanted for her own hair, only she’d been afraid to use an extreme lightener in case her hair broke off at the roots. So she ended up with a color Amberlee said was light strawberry blond, but was really a pinkish yellow that made her skin look weird no matter what foundation she used.

“Why would I blame you?” Tonya wiped her face and thought about taking a shower. She didn’t know what to do with herself. One minute she felt like throwing up, the next she was crying, then she felt far away. And in between all of those, she got so panicked all she could do was walk up and down the house so she wouldn’t lay in a ball and scream.

“Well, it was my birthday party,” Amberlee pointed out. “I starved myself for months and lost forty pounds so I’d look good. How do you think
I
feel?”

Tonya hadn’t thought about it. She supposed she should have. Amberlee was her sister and she hadn’t even noticed the weight loss. Forty pounds. Tonya wished she could take off the weight she’d put on having Corban. Last time she looked, the scale said 180. She didn’t even want to think about it.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I’m gonna be down to two hundred by Thanksgiving.”

“You don’t even look fat, Ambam. Guys think you’re hot.”

“Thanks, baby sis.” Amberlee was quiet for a few seconds, then she said with a frown, “What’s taking them so long down at the sheriff’s office? I thought Wade would be here by now.”

So did Tonya. “Well, he was the one looking after Corban. The detective said they have to rule him and me out first.”

Amberlee opened the flat iron and stared down at her hair. “Fuck. My hair’s fried. It’s snapping off. Oh, God. This is a nightmare.”

“I told you not to leave that thirty volume on so long.” Tonya got out of bed and found a sweater. “Sit down. Let me see.”

Obediently, Amberlee plunked herself on the velvet-covered stool in front of the dressing table. She met Tonya’s gaze in the mirror and said, “Your eyes are all puffy. You better put some ice on them before we go out there.”

Tonya turned down the heat and slowly worked a strand of her sister’s hair through the flat iron. “Keep it on this setting,” she announced. “Then it won’t break.”

“Thanks. I love you.” Amberlee smiled. “Now go take a shower. You’ll feel better once you’re dressed.” As Tonya headed out the door, she called after her, “I’ll do your makeup so you look good for the cameras.”

Chapter Eight

Debbie gazed out across a white world pockmarked with dark blotches—the tracks of SAR team members. Hundreds of searchers were spread out along the entire route from Cortez to Dove Creek, and to the reservoir, and helicopters were conducting an aerial search. Lone said that although nobody was calling it a search-and-recovery operation yet, anyone with a clue knew they were looking for a body.

Debbie didn’t want to believe that. She imagined happier scenarios—the child taken as a prank, then left safe and wrapped against the elements somewhere he would be found, or abandoned alive by kidnappers who had a change of heart. She kept waiting for that triumphant shout, the thrill of hearing a soft cry and seeing a little one held high in the air and rushed to open ground where one of the helicopters would swoop down to carry him to the hospital. She wanted to see the mother weeping on TV, thanking everyone who had braved the snow and freezing cold to bring her baby back.

That morning, as they’d assembled at the staging area in Cahone, the Montezuma County sheriff had announced that this was the most extensive search operation ever mounted in the Four Corners. Debbie warmed with pride to be a part of something bigger than herself. Most of the time, she never felt as if her life amounted to anything. Today was different. She was filled with energy and determination. She felt good about herself and not as shy around people as she normally did.

Although they were among strangers, everyone seemed to be a friend. It happened at times like this, when a community had to pull together. Barriers broke down and people understood that their shared humanity meant more than their differences. No one had given her and Lone a second glance, even when Lone took her hand to help her over difficult terrain.

An hour earlier, when an SAR leader noticed Lone’s equipment and Lone mentioned her military experience, she and Debbie were reassigned to the crew searching upstream along a ten-mile shoreline of the Dolores River between Bradfield Bridge and Lone Dome. They were with three K-9 units from Dolores, German Shepherds and their handlers and navigators, plus fifty searchers including a Nordic rescue team on skis.

This part of the Dolores was one of those places you’d never find unless you knew exactly where to look. The River of Sorrows meandered through a remote canyon in the Mesa Verde country. Snow hung over the sandstone walls on either side of the river basin and clung to the spindly junipers that straggled along the riverbanks. The water’s silent, sluggish progress was oddly hypnotic.

As she stared down at it, Debbie gulped in the dry Colorado air and tried not to picture a child’s body drifting by. The mere fact that they were searching here meant this was a possibility. The police had to have suspicions. She probed the snow with her pole, this way and that, feeling for what lay beneath and placing her feet where the ground felt level. She had snowshoes in her backpack, but for now wore heavy snow boots and gaiters that kept her feet and legs dry.

Apart from her nose and cheeks, the only parts of her face not covered by her muffler and goggles, she was warm and damp with sweat. They were moving slowly, scouring every square foot, but it was still hard work, and with every hour that passed, a daunting inevitability clawed at her resolve. It was hard to sustain hope, yet the searchers did. That morning, as they waited at the staging area, Debbie had heard various stories of unbelievable survival. Just a few years earlier, a small boy had made it after forty-eight hours lost in this area, in winter conditions. It could happen.

“I’ll take the bottom of this rise, at the river.” Lone headed down a sharp incline. “Carry on and I’ll join you when it levels out again.”

“Okay. Be careful,” Debbie called after her.

She stopped to pull up her gaiters after a few minutes and looked back when she heard the sound of panting. A Montezuma County deputy halted his bloodhound a few feet from her. The dog was wearing boots and a snow jacket. To Debbie’s astonishment this garment was emblazoned on both sides with a Marlboro logo.

“How come your dog is advertising cigarettes?” she asked. “I thought tobacco sponsorship was illegal.”

“No one else came up with the cash.” The deputy, a young man with coal black hair flattened by his helmet, lifted his goggles. “The Marlboro people have been good to Smoke’m and me.”

“Your dog’s name is Smoke’m?” Debbie almost fell over. Literally.

The deputy caught her arm and helped her find her balance. His face was so handsome, she couldn’t help but stare. Where was the justice in men getting the best eyelashes? This guy had the longest she had ever seen, and they framed eyes the rich golden brown of caramelized sugar.

He smiled at her with the sweet shyness of a girl, and Debbie thought if she’d been straight and impressionable, she’d have fallen at his feet. While she was trying to assemble some coherent words, Lone marched briskly back up the slope and introduced the both of them.

They all shook gloved paws and the deputy said, “I’m Virgil Tulley. I’m with the MCSO, based in Paradox Valley.”

“In the old schoolhouse?” Debbie asked.

“Yes, ma’am. There’s just the two of us. One detective and myself. It’s a remote substation, you understand.”

“My place is right down the road.” Debbie smiled. “Small world, huh?”

“Sure is. It’s real community-minded of you both coming down here, by the way.” Tulley lifted his field glasses and signaled to a figure some way ahead of them.

Debbie was immediately embarrassed that she was distracting a K-9 handler from his duties, not to mention staring at a man, even though she’d never found one attractive. Lone had warned her about losing focus. It was easy to let her mind drift in the sprawling white expanse. The glare from the snow was strangely mesmerizing, and she was also tired. She glanced sideways at Lone and smiled at the thought. They’d had so little sleep the previous night, she was amazed either of them could stay upright.

Her heart jumped as she met Lone’s eyes. A jolt of raw awareness passed between them, and Debbie’s knees almost buckled. She might appreciate Deputy Tulley’s looks the way she would admire any beautiful creature, but Lone aroused a completely different reaction. Debbie felt hot, stifled in her layers of cotton and wool. If they’d been by themselves here she would have torn off her clothes and rolled naked in the snow, just to wallow in sensation.

Thinking her feelings for Lone must be written all over her face for the whole world to see, she was grateful when Deputy Tulley moved a few paces ahead and urged his dog on. They exchanged a wave with the deputy as he hastened away and Debbie reached for Lone’s hand, marveling all over again at her good fortune. Apart from making her feel incredibly sexy, Lone made her feel special. She did all those little things that people laughed at these days. She opened doors, helped Debbie into the truck, got things down from high places for her, unscrewed caps and lids, got rid of creepy crawlies.

“Take some water, Debbie doll.” Lone handed her a bottle.

Dehydration was the enemy of alpine rescuers, and Lone had packed all the water they would both need in her own backpack so that Debbie would not be weighed down. They stopped where the contour of the riverbank rose sharply and Debbie drank. The water was so cold it hurt her teeth. She stared at the aqua-gray reservoir in the distance and out across the unforgiving plateau. Winter had vanquished the red and blue of the Four Corners landscape, bleeding the painted hues of all vibrancy until what remained was a mere negative of the summer glory, a colorless infinity with no discernable horizon.

For the first time since they’d started out that morning, Debbie felt a sick chill of apprehension as she gazed around. Lowering her eyes to the icy waters below, she burst into tears and mopped pointlessly at her face with her waterproof gloves.

Lone immediately gathered her close and reassured her, “Everything’s okay, baby. You’re perfectly safe. I’ll never let anything, or anyone, hurt you.”

“It’s not that.” She’d told Lone she found wide-open spaces scary these days.

“Then what?” Lone kissed her cheek. “You can tell me.”

Shocked by her own sudden despair, Debbie whispered, “He’s dead. I know it.” She could just make out the sound of Lone’s heart through her dense clothing.

Lone rocked her slowly, letting her take comfort. “I’m sorry, Debbie doll,” she said eventually. “I know it hurts.”

Debbie played the words over. In Lone’s shoes, having insisted from the start that the little boy was dead, Meg would have said
I told you so.
Being right would have mattered more to her than being supportive.

Lone’s reaction told Debbie something important. She knew how to love.

*

“Thought I’d find you out here,” a man’s voice carried damply in the snow-burdened air.

Tulley peered back over his shoulder. “Hey, Bobby Lee.”

This was a surprise. Bobby Lee Parker wasn’t the type to hike voluntarily. He kept fit with Pilates for men. He said grunt exercise was for yesterday’s insecure macho man.

Bobby Lee took some long strides to catch up. “How’s it going?”

“Nothing so far.” Tulley whistled Smoke’m to heel and checked the Velcro that secured his mush boots. “You been out long?”

“An hour, tops.”

Which was about all he was dressed for, Tulley thought. Who else but Bobby Lee would show up for a big SAR operation wearing a black cowboy hat, jeans, and a fashionable snow vest over a wool plaid shirt. His only concession to the task at hand was gaiters, like that was all it took. Tulley knew what this was about. Bobby Lee was so vain he couldn’t bring himself to be seen in goggles and a helmet. He’d rather look good than behave responsibly.