I stare at Jimmy, immobile.
“Dammit!” Steam appears to rise off his body, as if something smolders below the surface, burning off the rain. “Dammit!” he repeats. “The bastard was watching us. He probably staked out the sheriff’s office right after the media blitz. It wouldn’t take much to single us out, especially with our picture plastered all over the paper. We’re going to have to change vehicles—and hotels.”
“Yeah, but what does he want? He already knows we’re FBI.”
“He wants names. He wants to know who his adversaries are, who’s hunting him. He wants…” Jimmy’s eyes glass over, and for a moment he assumes the thousand-yard stare.
“Oh, God.” His voice is a whisper, a shiver.
“Let me see that,” he says, snatching the wet paper from my hand. He flips it over and right side up. His eyes dart to the top and he exhales sharp and hard, like someone just gut-punched him with a lead fist. It almost doubles him over.
“My home address,” he gasps.
“Your home add— Oh, no. Jane. Pete. No, he wouldn’t. He can’t.”
Jimmy’s on the phone; I’m pacing in the rain.
“He couldn’t have made it to Bellingham,” I say, more to myself than Jimmy. “There wasn’t enough time. Not—enough—time,” I emphasize. But there’s no answer at Jimmy’s house. He tries Jane’s cell.
Nothing.
Jimmy keeps calling; over and over he calls, first the house, then the cell, pleading small prayers in between. Begging God. Begging Jane. Begging anyone.
We’re jumping to conclusions, I tell myself. Sad Face isn’t interested in Jimmy’s family, he’s interested in Jimmy. He’s interested in me. But then I remember Alison Lister. I remember Jennifer Green and Dany Grazier and Sarah Wells. I realize that we know little about Sad Face and what motivates him.
Fishing the phone from my pocket, I flip to the contact list and scroll down, eyes searching. There he is. It’s too early for the office, so I dial his home phone. It rings and rings, and then the answering machine kicks on. Just as I start to hang up, a voice cuts in. “Hello?”
“Dex. Thank God. I need your help.”
*
Within four minutes the first Lynden officer arrives on Jimmy’s doorstep. Within nine minutes two Whatcom County deputies, a state trooper, and two more Lynden officers, including the chief, are on site. With Jimmy’s permission I guide them to the hidden key near the birdbath in the backyard. They enter through the front door, and I hear them sweeping each room and calling out, “Clear,” over and over again as they work their way through the downstairs, then the upstairs.
It’s empty.
No sign of a struggle.
A cell phone sits on the kitchen counter ringing and ringing, then stopping, then ringing some more. “There’s a coffee mug with two inches of black in the bottom,” the chief tells me. “It’s lukewarm. She hasn’t been gone long.” A check of the garage finds Jane’s 2008 Acura TL gone, and the chief calls dispatch and issues a BOLO—be on the lookout—for the car.
“Just a precaution,” I tell Jimmy. “He can’t have gotten up there that fast.”
Time slows, and it’s another hour before we know.
It’s an hour of cursing as we pace.
It’s an hour of rain bouncing off asphalt and traffic moving in surreal slow motion in the distance and bulging clouds weeping and weeping.
It’s an hour.
You can never know the endless length of an hour until you walk it off by seconds and minutes. You can suffer a lifetime in an hour. Purgatory isn’t a place, it’s time.
The call comes at last; it’s Dex.
“We got her,” he says. “Pete, too. They’re fine.”
Seconds later Jimmy’s phone rings. He’s sitting in the passenger seat of the Escape, soaked to the bone and shivering. The rain is finally letting up, so I leave him in the peace of his wife’s voice and give him some space.
Sad Face’s trail leads away from the Ford in a southwesterly direction, cutting through the mulched flower beds that define the edges of the hotel’s property. It dips down into a depression of rocks and weeds now covered by two inches of storm water. I take little notice of the water as I trudge across the hundred-foot depression; my feet have been at risk of trench foot for the last hour, a little more water isn’t going to hurt. My shoes make a wet squishing sound as I soldier on through.
On the other side the ground rises six or seven feet on a gentle sloop, leveling off into a sparse scattering of pine trees. Beyond is a strip mall with a gas station, a convenience store, a Domino’s Pizza, and a custom nail salon.
Sad Face’s trail ends in an empty parking space at the farthest corner of the lot. Any evidence he may have left—a cigarette butt, an empty beer can, signs of an oil leak, blood—has been washed away with the rain.
I turn my attention to the eaves of the strip mall. There’s nothing above the nail salon; nothing on the Domino’s; nothing on the outside of the convenience store. The gas pumps. That’s where I find them: three cameras watching the pumps from different angles, but not one of them points to the far end of the lot.
Still, I have to try.
My phone rings as I’m walking through the front door of the convenience store. It’s Jimmy. He’s exhausted and ecstatic at the same time—you can hear it in his voice. Like a man who just ran a marathon. I tell him where I’m at and ask him to bring the SUV over; my feet have managed to squeeze gallons of water from my shoes and socks and I have no intention of walking through the flooded ravine for a refill.
Jimmy says he’s on the way and as I end the call I size up the tattooed clerk behind the counter. He’s watching a YouTube video on his smartphone and barely looks up when I approach the counter.
“What can I get you?” he manages after a second, setting the phone to the side.
“I need to see your security footage for the last eight hours.”
“You a cop?”
“FBI.”