“Children having sex?”
“Sometimes, the older ones with Al, mostly, and with each other,” Weeks said, his voice going low.
“Were you ever involved in that?”
Weeks looked away, scared, maybe, shamed for sure. Then he nodded. “Not for a long time. Not for a couple of years. I got too old. Are you going to put me in prison?”
Her heart bled for the kid, for what he’d been through. Who knew where his mother was, or if she was alive or dead. The old man abused and beat him, then used him for profit, forcing him to pose and have sex.
“No, Phillip. What we’d like to do is to get a complete story from you. Everything you know about Michael Drake and Carla and Al, and then, someday, we’ll want you to talk about it in a courtroom,” she said. “But you won’t be going to prison. You’re a victim here.”
But the people who did this?
Hell wasn’t bad enough for them.
Tarley got sandwiches, chips, and soft drinks, and though there was an out-of-sight recorder covering the interview room, he’d also brought out a small digital recorder that Weeks could see. They talked for an hour, leading the kid through a basic statement. As Regan had expected, Weeks had left his home before Flowers, Johnson, and Katy Waller had been to Weeks’s father’s trailer and to Drake’s log cabin, so Phillip knew nothing about the events that led to the shooting of Cain. His father knew about the child porn but had nothing to do with its production.
“He doesn’t know anything about cameras or lights or any of that shit,” he said demolishing a ham and cheese, then washing it all down with a huge swallow of Dr Pepper. “He just took care of the property when Drake wasn’t there.”
His father had guns, Weeks said. Both rifles and handguns, and he was a hunter.
“It’s not a big deal though. Everybody up there’s got guns. Everybody hunts. That’s why you’re up there,” he said, then finished the final half of his sandwich and tore open a small bag of Doritos.
“So Drake has guns?” she asked.
“I never seen one. Maybe he’s the one guy around Grizzly Falls who doesn’t hunt. He fishes, though. And he runs the cameras.”
“Is he sexually involved with the kids?”
“He doesn’t do the sex. He makes the movies and sells them.”
“Where does he get the kids?”
“Dunno.”
“You never spoke to any of ’em.”
“If I did, my dad would beat me. He’s got a special belt.”
She couldn’t wait to put Bart Weeks behind bars.
She asked a few more questions, but Phillip had told them everything he knew. When they were done, Tarley told Weeks that he’d be placed in a cell by himself, for his own protection. He’d be allowed to have most of his own belongings in the cell and would be fed separately.
“Almost like a motel,” the detective said. “Keeping you safe. You’re too valuable to be walking around where somebody might hurt you.”
After Weeks had been put away, Tarley walked Regan outside where night had fallen, the sky stretching dark above the illumination of the streetlights.
“I think you got ’em.”
God, she hoped.
She checked her watch. Just after ten p.m. Flowers and Johnson would probably be in the woods around Drake’s place. Given Phillip Weeks’s statement, and the probable imminent arrest of the RV couple, they had enough evidence to raid Drake’s place, could easily get a warrant, and probably didn’t need anything that Flowers and Johnson might turn up.
She called them from the front steps of the police station, but there was no answer. She left a message and went to look for a motel where she could wait for them to call back.
VIRGIL AND JOHNSON HAD WALKED up the road to Drake’s cabin, staying to the side, where they could step back into the brush if anyone came along. Nobody did, and when they crept up the road across from the cabin, they couldn’t see the BMW they’d noticed on their first visit, though the Jeep remained in the open garage.
Virgil whispered, “Garage first. See if the other car’s here.”
They made a long circle through the forest around Drake’s cabin, pausing every minute or so for one of them to tell the other to be more quiet. That was almost impossible. The brush was so dense that they were constantly tangled up in it. Virgil finally took out a flashlight and splashed its beam on the ground at his feet, tilted back enough that Johnson could see where to step. They emerged behind the garage, with the secondary cabin to their left. The garage had a back window and, through it, they could see that the second and third stalls were empty. Nothing inside but some lawn-care machinery and the Jeep.
“Now what?” Johnson whispered.
“Let’s take a look at the small cabin.”
“Could be alarmed.”
“If it is, we run.”
Johnson handed Virgil a piece of cloth.
“What’s that?”
“Bandanna. Cover your face. Like a cowboy outlaw. In case there are cameras.”
“Jesus, Johnson. Just because we’re in Montana.”
But Virgil did it anyway.
He was carrying Johnson’s gun, not because he wanted to, but to keep it away from Johnson. A tire iron was Johnson’s weapon because he didn’t want to go unarmed. Virgil also had his Nikon, with the 14–24 zoom lens, in a day pack.
At the corner of the garage, they sat and waited, watching the house. There were two lights on inside, one in back, one in front, but none on the second story. A satellite dish sat on the roof, but there was no visible light from an operating TV. The lights never flickered, as they would if somebody walked between them and a window, and after five minutes, Virgil whispered, “Let’s go.”
They snuck, bent over, to the cabin, and stopped, crouching, by the corner and out of sight from the house, listening again. Nothing but the sounds from crickets and frogs, along with a bit of wind sighing through the trees rimming the property. Not a peep from within the house. After a while, Johnson said, “Weird.”
“What?”
“No windows on this side. I didn’t see any windows or a door on the back, either. Only windows in this place are on the front.”
“Cover me,” Virgil said.
“With what? A tire iron?”
He laughed. “Okay. Keep an eye out.”
Silently, Virgil crawled past the front of the cabin, staying in shadow, to the first window. He sat still for a moment, then rose up to look through the pane.
Couldn’t see anything.
A minute later was back with Johnson.
“What’d you see?”
“Nothing. It’s a fake window. It’s a board with some curtains painted on it.”
Johnson said, “Cover me.”
“What?”
But Johnson was already headed for the front of the cabin. A minute later, Virgil heard a crackling sound, like wood splintering and then Johnson saying, low voiced, “C’mon.”
Through the still damp weeds and grass Virgil crept the length of a cabin, where he found that Johnson had jimmied the door with the tire iron and had gone inside.
Virgil followed. “What the fuck are you doing?”