They passed through into the kitchen. Plates and glasses were still in cabinets. A framed picture of the Rocky Mountains was on one wall.
Robie tried the kitchen faucet and water came out. “They have to be on a well. No water lines out here. Septic, too. Looks fresh and clean. He’s probably paid someone to maintain it all.”
He tried a light switch. It came on. “Place has juice, too.”
“So he must be paying the utility bill.”
Robie opened the door to the garage, and both gazed at the spot where the car would have been with the two dead people inside it.
Robie glanced at Reel, but she didn’t look at him.
They took the stairs up and encountered one bathroom. The fixtures were all from decades ago but the sink and toilet worked.
One bedroom they entered had a bed and an empty closet.
“He obviously cleaned out their closets,” observed Robie.
“And no pictures on the walls or furniture. He must have taken those, too.”
There was only one other bedroom up here. The bed was still in this one, too. And under the bed was a large wooden box.
Robie slid it out, put it on the bed, and opened it. He took out a number of faded athletic trophies and frayed first-place ribbons.
They all had Roger Walton’s name on them.
“He was a high school sports star,” noted Robie.
Reel looked over the items with amazement. “I just thought he was this big brain. I never saw him as an athlete.”
There was a scrapbook in the box. Reel lifted it out and opened it.
On the yellowed pages was basically a chronicle of a youthful Roger Walton’s achievements in Grand, Colorado.
“He made the local paper a lot,” noted Robie. “For sports. And he was high school valedictorian and the damn prom king. He captained the debate team. And this clip is about him accepting a full ride to Stanford.”
“It’s a wonder he had time to sleep,” observed Reel.
“I don’t think he sleeps as an adult,” replied Robie.
“Why do you think he left all this stuff behind?”
“I’m no shrink, but maybe it has something to do with preserving his life here. I mean, the one he has in DC couldn’t be more different from what he has here. Maybe he uses it to balance his life out. Probably why he keeps coming back. To his roots.”
“Robie, he never talked about his life here. Even the DCI didn’t know about this stuff. It would have been in the briefing book.”
“Did you ever talk about your life to him?” he asked. “I never talked about mine.”
“That’s true. But he obviously worked his ass off for all this. Why not be proud of it?”
“Maybe he had a reason. Blue Man always has a reason for everything.”
Reel pointed a finger at a picture on the page in the scrapbook. “And she was the prom queen. I can still make out the names at the bottom.”
They both stared at a decades-old photo of Claire.
“She was a knockout,” observed Robie. “I could definitely see why Blue Man would have fallen for her.”
“Well, there were limits to their feelings for each other. She wouldn’t leave and he wouldn’t stay. Game over.”
Robie looked at her curiously. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” replied Reel, staring at him.
For some reason Robie felt like they were no longer talking about Blue Man.
The next moment they heard the front door open, and footsteps followed as someone came into the house.
Reel and Robie pulled their guns. Robie pointed to the window while he edged over to the door.
Reel peered out the window. “It’s a cop car. Malloy’s.”
A moment later they heard the sheriff call out to them. They headed down the stairs and met her at the bottom.
“Find anything?” she asked, looking around.
Robie said, “An old scrapbook, a bunch of trophies.”
“And no Roger Walton,” added Reel.
“He owns the place and keeps it up, but Claire Bender said she doesn’t think he ever comes here. He must pay someone local to keep it clean.”
“But I don’t see what all this has to do with what happened to Roger Walton. He was obviously not here when he was taken.”
Robie shrugged. “We’re just collecting intelligence. And we can’t rule out the possibility that his disappearance is tied to something in his past.”
Malloy said, “You’re not believing what Zeke Donovan said—”
Robie cut her off. “No, I’m not,” he said, glancing at Reel because she had raised this same point earlier. “But it could be something else. He was the local town hero and then went off to college and then on to DC. Maybe somebody here was jealous of him. And decades later decided to do something about it. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Malloy thought about this for a few moments. “I can check into that. See if anyone here was holding a grudge.”
He handed her the scrapbook. “You might want to start with this. Maybe somebody from high school?”
Malloy took the scrapbook and then looked at Reel. “Where’d you learn to shoot?”
“Wherever I could,” said Reel curtly. “And keep those two morons locked up. For their safety.”
She walked out the front door.
Malloy glanced at Robie. “She always so friendly?”
“You should catch her on a bad day.”
Then Robie walked out, too.
CHAPTER
17
It was night and Robie couldn’t sleep.
It was getting to be a frustrating pattern.
He sat up in his bed, then got out and padded over to the window in his skivvies. He touched the scars on his arm and his shoulder. Both had been repaired to the Agency’s satisfaction, though Robie figured that within another few decades they wouldn’t feel all that “satisfactory.”
He parted the curtain and looked down upon the darkened main street of Grand, Colorado. It reminded him some of Cantrell, Mississippi, his hometown on the Gulf Coast. Actually, Cantrell was a bit bigger than Grand, though it had never been more than a traffic light stop on the way to somewhere else. His father was there with Robie’s half brother, Tyler. It was just his father and the young boy now, after what had happened back then.
When Robie had finally gone back to his hometown, he had discovered secrets that perhaps would have been better left buried in the past.
Blue Man, on the other hand, had come back to his childhood home often. And on this last trip back, the man had vanished.
There were more dissimilarities there than parallels, Robie noted. But had something from Blue Man’s past come back to cause his disappearance? Did it have something to do with the suicide of his parents nearly fifty years ago? But how could it? There was nothing criminal about that.
Or was there?
Earlier, he had sent an encrypted e-mail with their first-day report to the DCI. Her response had been terse but direct.
Dig deeper. And pick up the pace.
Right. Easier said than done in a place like this.
Cantrell had kept its secrets for a long time. Small towns just seemed to be able to do that, though one would think with fewer people the truths would stand out.
Well, those who thought that would be wrong.
Robie knew that each day that went by would make it more unlikely that he would ever see Blue Man again, at least alive.
Robie had few friends.
Blue Man had been one of them.
Is one of them.
Blue Man had never given up on Robie, not even when Robie had perhaps given up on himself. And for that sole reason, Robie could never give up on the man.
His attention turned back to the street.
The growl of a motorcycle.
Robie squinted out into the poor light coming from a few street-lamps.
The rider looked big, his bulk seemingly dwarfing his bike.
He had on no helmet, and as he passed under a disc of thrown light Robie could see that his head was bald. The rider pulled into a slot in front of a building across the street and two doors down from the Walleye Bar. Robie had noticed the building before. There was a large NO TRESPASSING sign on the front door. The windows were all dark.
Robie moved over to his bag, pulled out his night-vision scope, and returned to the window.