Still nothing. He just slipped on his backpack, took up his rifle and slung it over one shoulder. She noticed he was wearing the knife he’d got at Big 5, the sheath looped over his belt at hip level. And he had his canteen, of course, dangling from the pack, and whether it contained 151 or water she couldn’t say. His boots shone—he polished them every night, the sound of the rag snapping back and forth the last thing she heard before he came to bed. Everything about him seemed to gleam in the light, from the boots right on up to the barrel of the rifle. For her part, she didn’t know one rifle from another—guns didn’t interest her—but this one was some sort of military thing with a clip on it. “What’s with the gun?” she asked. “You going hunting?” And then she tried to make a joke of it: “Bring me back a couple of squirrels. I make a mean squirrel stew.”
He’d glanced up at her then, as if seeing her for the first time. His eyes were clear, a bright transparent blue that went so deep she could have been looking into the ocean and seeing no bottom to it at all. “For protection,” he said.
“From what?” And she couldn’t help herself: “Cougars?”
If he heard her, if he recognized she was making a joke, he never let on. “People,” he said, “motherfuckers, creeps, assholes. Cougars eat deer, people eat everything.”
“And they’re not going to eat you?”
He gave her a smile then—his version of a smile, anyway, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so subtly in acknowledgment—and started out the door, ducking his left shoulder automatically so as not to strike the lintel with the muzzle of his rifle. She wanted to call out to ask him if she should expect him for dinner, but checked herself—she wasn’t his mother. She wasn’t a nag either. And what he did, for as long as he was going to do it, didn’t matter to her. This was temporary. It was a week. Maybe it would go three weeks more. Or maybe . . . but she didn’t want to think beyond that.
She went to the door and watched him stride to the cement-block wall and go up and over it as if it were nothing. Like Jackie Chan. Or the new James Bond, whatever his name was. And what was that martial arts thing called, where you just run right up a wall? Parkour. Adam was a master of that. Of course, he could have just strolled through the doorway his father had made, but he refused to—he wouldn’t acknowledge it, didn’t even seem to see it. If it was up to him he’d seal it up again, she knew that, but then it would be pretty inconvenient for her when she wanted to haul in a load of groceries or take the dog out for a walk, and what was she going to do, use the stepladder? Plus, how could you sell a house with no way in? And Sten intended to sell it, no matter how his son felt about it, and he’d taken her aside and told her as much. The house was in escrow and he didn’t want anything screwing up the deal—the buyer was a friend of his and Carolee’s who was taking the place as is, grandmother’s furniture and all, and he’d agreed to let Adam stay on till the end of the month. Her guess was that they needed the money to pay down the mortgage on the new place in Mendocino, which had ocean views, and ocean views were anything but cheap.
Crossing the yard herself now, Kutya trotting along behind to pause and pee and sniff at her ankles, she came through the doorway just in time to see Adam heading down the slope to the river. The sun glinted off his shaved head and sparked at the muzzle of the rifle, and then he was in the shadow of the trees and she lost him a moment before he reappeared on a bend in the path, moving fast, double time, always double time, as if somebody—or something—was after him.
She’d just got done with the dishes when her phone rang. Without thinking, she hit “talk” and put it to her ear. “Sara here,” she said, figuring it was one of her clients—or maybe somebody new. She was in the Yellow Pages, both in the phonebook and online, and she could never have too much work. The money was good and she worked hard for it, which was why she was never going to give another nickel to the feds, or what—the Franchise Tax Board, and what a joke that was.
“Sara?” The voice was a man’s, deep, a froggy baritone.
“Yes?”
“Sara Hovarty Jennings?”
It was right about then that she began to regret having answered, because what client—or potential client—would ask for her by her full name? “Yeah,” she said, and all the brass had gone out of her voice. “Who’s this?”
“This is Sergeant Brawley of the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department.” A pause to let that sink in. “And I’m calling to urge you to come in voluntarily to the Ukiah station and surrender your dog”—the rattle of a keyboard—“Kutya. Is that right? Kutya, isn’t it?”
Stupidly, she said, “Yes.”
“Let me apprise you that there is a warrant out for your arrest—for failure to appear—and that we have video evidence showing that you entered Animal Control with an accomplice at 2:35 p.m. on Saturday, August 10, and illegally removed your dog from quarantine. What do you have to say to that?”
“I’m quarantining him myself,” she said, feeling up against it now, more angry than scared.
Another pause. More rattling. “And where might that be?”
“I mailed a certificate of rabies vaccination to the court—what more do you want from me, blood?”