Here and Gone(77)

Louise sniffed and said, ‘Yeah.’

‘Then we need to keep walking. You ready?’

She wiped her hand across her eyes and said, ‘Yeah.’

‘All right, then. Let’s go.’

Sean got to his feet, helped Louise to hers. He went to move off, but she tugged at his hand. When he turned back to her, she wrapped her arms around his middle, pressed her face into his chest.

‘I love you,’ she said.

He embraced her and said, ‘I love you too.’

They set off, walked hand-in-hand through the trees, the sun still at Sean’s right shoulder. Somewhere along the way, they began to sing. Nursery rhymes, songs he hadn’t sung since kindergarten, and he belted them out now, hearing his own voice echoing through the forest. Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-aye-ee-aye-o, Bingo was his name-o, and more. Sean went light-headed, not enough air for singing this high up, but he didn’t care. He sang anyway, as loud as he could.

He lost track of time as they journeyed on, so he had no idea of the hour when the trees thinned and he saw clear air up ahead.

‘What’s that?’ Louise asked.

‘Dunno,’ he said, quickening his step, pulling his sister behind him. He would have run if he could. Moments later, they stepped out of the trees, Sean expecting to see another clearing. But this was something entirely different.

They stood at the top of a shallow slope, weeds and grass leading down to a flat surface that went on and on. Like a frying pan, sloping sides and a flat bottom, but it wasn’t round. It was more like a vague oval, and it stretched as far to his left and right as he could see. Directly in front he could see the other side of the basin, and yet more trees. Between here and there, an expanse of bald cracked earth, like some alien landscape from a space story.

‘What is it?’ Louise asked.

‘I think it used to be a lake,’ Sean said. ‘But it’s all dried up.’

‘Where did all the water go?’

‘Dunno,’ he said. ‘Evaporated, I guess.’

‘I know what that is,’ Louise said, sounding pleased with herself. ‘It’s when the sun sucks up all the water, then it turns to rain someplace else.’

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I guess that’s what happened.’

A movement caught Sean’s eye, off in the distance, above the trees. A great bird circling over the pines. He shielded his eyes with his hand, peered at the wide wings that barely moved as it glided in a wide arc. It seemed so far away, yet it was so big. Its body and wings a deep dark brown, its head pure white, along with its delta-shaped tail.

He pointed. ‘You know what that is?’

‘What?’

‘It’s a bald eagle,’ he said. ‘I’m pretty sure it is.’

‘It’s big,’ she said.

‘Yeah. You know how lucky we are? They’re rare. Most people never ever see one out in the wild. Look, it’s going to land.’

They both watched as it glided to the top of one of the tallest pines, Sean guessed at least a mile away, maybe more. The eagle slowed itself, its wings drawn up, its feet extended. The pine swayed under the weight of it, side to side.

Above the tree, high in the air, the faintest ribbon of gray, no more than a wisp.

Sean shielded his eyes, squinted, tried to focus.

Was it? Yes. Yes, it was.

‘Smoke,’ Sean said, and a giddy laugh escaped him.

‘What?’

‘There’s smoke. Somebody made a fire. Somebody’s there.’

He tightened his grip on Louise’s hand, started down the slope to the dry lakebed, the ghostly finger of smoke fixed in his sight.





46


THEY MARCHED ACROSS the street, Showalter leading, a uniformed patrolman by his side. He carried the warrant in his hand. Mitchell followed, Whiteside beside her, his brain feeling like it was about to burst out through his ears. His eyes felt gritty with fatigue, and he was conscious of the jitteriness of his movements.

‘Jesus, you look like shit,’ Showalter had said when Whiteside had arrived at the station twenty minutes before. He’d barely had time to change into his uniform and hadn’t shaved. A splash of cold water on his face did no good at all.

Whiteside had been tempted to say something, maybe slap the stupid cop, but he held it in check. He knew he wasn’t in his right mind and liable to make rash decisions. And he couldn’t afford mistakes right now.

It had taken hours to find the key to Collins’ motorcycle. He’d walked in circles, taking baby steps, shining his flashlight into the grit and the scrub, wary of finding a snake instead of the key. A rattler or a coral could make a bad situation a hell of a lot worse. It wasn’t until the sun came up above the mountains that he finally saw the glint of metal in a place he had checked at least a dozen times previously. He had giggled when he found it, and he had clamped his hand over his mouth, hearing the madness in his own laughter.

He had to hold it together. Just had to.

But he could feel himself coming undone. He knew it would only take someone to pull at the right thread and he would unravel.

Hold it together, he thought.

The money was surely gone now, there was no helping that. But he was still a free man, and he meant to keep it that way. He just had to take care of a few things. The first was the woman. Once Showalter served the warrant and got her back into custody, Whiteside simply needed to find a way to get her on her own. Then he would get a strip of bed sheet, a belt, maybe even the leg of her pants, and put it around her neck, string her up to something. People killed themselves in their cells all the time. She could do the same.