Here and Gone(29)

Audra stared at Mitchell, something burning inside her chest.

‘You think I hurt my children?’

Mitchell blinked and said, ‘I don’t know. Did you?’

‘My son, my daughter, they’re both out there somewhere, and you’re not looking for them because you think I hurt them.’

The same soft smile, the same honey voice. ‘Did you?’

With no conscious thought, Audra’s right hand lashed out, across the table, her palm striking Mitchell’s cheek hard and clean. Mitchell recoiled, anger in her eyes, the sting blooming on Audra’s hand.

Audra got to her feet and said, ‘Goddamn you, find my children.’

She didn’t see the patrolman come at her, only felt his bulk slam into her body, the floor racing up at her. Her chest hit the linoleum, crushing all the air from her lungs, the patrolman’s knee on her back, big hands seizing her wrists, forcing them up behind her shoulders.

Audra kept her gaze on Mitchell, who stood at the far wall, breathing hard.

‘Find my children,’ Audra said.





14


‘JESUS,’ WHITESIDE SAID, turning his attention away from the video feed on the laptop’s display to the young fed who’d set it up. He gave the kid the full force of his sneer. ‘That went well.’

The fed – Special Agent Abrahms, if Whiteside recalled correctly – did not reply. Instead, he tapped a few keys, making windows appear and disappear on the screen.

The laptop had been placed on the rearmost desk in the open office, a handful of state cops looking on, a couple more talking on the phones, taking calls, organizing a search operation. Already a map of Elder and the surrounding counties had been stuck up on a wall, a red pin marking the spot where he had picked up Audra Kinney, more pins marking her last known locations, a string from one to the next giving an approximation of her route over the last few days. More feds and state cops were due to arrive in the county between tonight and the morning, the motel over in Gutteridge about ready to burst. Talk was they’d move the operation over to the town hall soon.

Collins haunted the spaces between the station’s desks, pacing the room, sometimes meeting Whiteside’s eyes, sometimes not. A couple of the state cops tried flirting with her and got shot down pretty hard.

The door to the interview room opened and the patrolman emerged, one big hand on Audra Kinney’s arm, her other held by the detective. Whiteside stood and went to the far wall, leaned his back against it. Collins came to his side.

Audra saw them both and bared her teeth. As the two cops led her back to the custody suite, she craned her neck so she could keep them in sight.

‘Where are my children? What did you do with them? What did my husband pay you? You bastards, you tell the truth. Tell them where my children are. You hear me? You tell them. I swear, I’ll …’

Her voice faded to a muted cry as the door closed behind her.

‘Hold your nerve,’ Whiteside said, low enough so only Collins would hear.

‘I’m trying,’ she said, her voice wavering.

‘Trying won’t do it. You keep it together or we’re dead.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘Keep your mind on what comes after,’ he said, ‘what that money’s going to do for you.’

‘Won’t do me any good if—’

‘Shut up.’

Mitchell approached, her iPad in one hand, her notebook and pen in the other. Her gaze travelled from Collins to Whiteside and back again, her face unreadable. Then she smiled and said, ‘Sheriff Whiteside, can you spare me a minute?’

‘Sure I can,’ he said.

He left Collins where she stood and went to the station’s side door, Mitchell following. Heat blasted in as he pushed the bar to open the door. He held it wide for Mitchell to step through, closed it behind them both. A sliver of shade on this side of the building shielded them from the worst of the sun, but still the air bore down on Whiteside, the glare on the fleet of state police cars and black federal SUVs making him squint.

‘What’s that over there?’ Mitchell asked, pointing. ‘Those orange streaks on the hills. Like steps.’

‘Copper mine,’ Whiteside said. ‘Used to be, anyway. Open pit, all the work on the surface. The red is the clay they laid on top of the earth they exposed; they did it when the mine closed. Supposed to stop rainwater leaching acid and stuff into the environment. Not that it rains enough to wet much more than a tissue around here. They call it “rehabilitation.” Isn’t that just great? They rehabilitated the mine like it was some dealer just got out of the penitentiary.’

Mitchell shielded her eyes from the glare as she studied the hillside. ‘What happened to it? Why did they close?’

‘Stopped being profitable,’ he said. ‘They weren’t getting enough out for the work they put in, so, pfft! Gone. This town used to make its living from that mine. Whole damn county, in fact. This used to be a wealthy place, believe it or not. Sort of place a young man could raise a family and know he could provide for them. There’s still copper up there, but the suits figured out it was cheaper just to leave it in the ground, and that was all she wrote. The world still needs copper, needs it more than ever to make all our laptops and cell phones and whatnot, but the world wants it cheap. Just you wait, sooner or later, the bean counters are going to figure out it’s more cost-effective to get all our copper from China, same as they did with steel, and then the whole country’s screwed. It starts in places like this, but it doesn’t end here. Towns living or dying by whatever some Ivy League college boy works out on his calculator or his spreadsheet. They closed that mine, it was a death sentence for us. Anyone fit to work got out long ago. What’s left is living from one social-security check to the next, just waiting to die, along with Silver Water.’