Blue Heaven (16 page)

They could hear him breathing hard as he climbed the stack, and felt a slight vibration in the closely packed hay from his weight.

“Don’t get scared,” Rawlins said. “It’s going to be okay.”

When the long, brown hand reached over the top bale like some kind of crab, William lunged and swung the hook through the air, striking flesh. The man responded with a sharp intake of breath. The point cut through the webbing of the man’s hand between his thumb and index finger and opened a gash. Blood spurted from the wound.

Annie’s first, instinctive reaction was revulsion. She wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to run. So she swallowed hard, stood with the pitchfork ready, and leaned forward, following the writhing arm down toward a shoulder, then a battered cowboy hat, and a lean, weathered face suspended in a silent scream. She pointed the tines toward his face and tried to scowl.

Rawlins looked back at her, obviously in pain, but his eyes didn’t seem to threaten her.

“Damn,” Rawlins said. “Why’d you go and do that to my hand? It really hurts.”

Annie wasn’t sure what to do. She glanced back at William and found him huddled in the corner of the fort, staring at the hand of the rancher pinned with the hook to the bale of hay. A thin line of dark blood coursed down Rawlins’s hand and dripped on the tarp. A quarter inch of skin held the hand pinned to the bale. The rancher could pull away and break the skin, and keep climbing. William looked up to her for direction, and she saw the terror in his eyes from what he had done and its implications.

She turned back to Rawlins. His other hand was now on the top bale as well.

“I need to reach over with my free hand and pull that hook out,” Rawlins said. “I don’t want you jabbing me with that fork, though.”

Annie knew she had him, and knew he knew it. So why did she feel so awful?

“You’re Annie, right?”

She nodded.

“And Willie?”

“William,” her brother corrected.

“Well, Annie and William, I’m glad you’re all right. The whole county’s looking for you.”

Annie shook her head, as if denying the truth of what she had just
heard. If everyone was looking for them, maybe it was safe to come out after all.

“Mind if I pull this hook out of my hand?” Rawlins asked.

“We’re hungry,” Annie said, wishing she could put more sand into her voice. “You can pull it out if you’ll take us in and get us something to eat and drink.”

Jess Rawlins looked at her with something like amusement. Then he nodded at William. “I was going to offer that anyway,” he said. “Luckily, I never liked this hand all that much.”

T
HE BANKER, Jim Hearne, shouldered his way through the knot of men in jackets and ties and women in cocktail dresses and ordered another Scotch and water at the makeshift bar. It was his fourth in barely an hour.

It was the opening night reception for the Kootenai Bay Recreation Center, financed through his bank. He had been the principal officer for the project and was on the board of directors. The Rec Center had a full-size gymnasium, an Olympic-size pool, racquetball courts, aerobics and weight rooms, a climbing wall, sauna rooms, Jacuzzis. Although financed jointly by the bank, the city, and the county initially, enough charter memberships had been sold—primarily to newcomers to the valley—that first-year financial projections would be exceeded. It was the first facility of its kind built in the community, and over two hundred people were touring it, drinks in hand, talking excitedly, slapping him on the back.

Two of the bars were located in the gym, one under the rim of each basketball hoop on opposite ends of the floor. To disguise his intent, which was to become obliterated as clandestinely as possible, Hearne alternated bars each time he ordered a drink so the bartenders and guests
wouldn’t notice how much he was drinking. As The Banker, he was always being watched, observed, talked about. It came with the territory, and he accepted it. But tonight, there was too much on his mind, too many problems, and a serious one he had to keep entirely to himself.

He circulated through the building, exchanging pleasantries, greeting old friends, welcoming new residents, most of whom were bank customers. He tried hard to remember names because they certainly knew him. If he didn’t know their names and couldn’t read name tags, he simply said, “Great to see you, thanks for coming,” and moved on. He tried not to be drawn into any conversations, most of which were about either the new facility or the missing Taylor children.

The sheriff had held a press conference in the afternoon that was televised on the local affiliates and excerpted nationally. Hearne had watched it nervously, always concerned how his community would be portrayed. He was pleasantly surprised how well the new sheriff presented himself, especially since the banker had not supported Carey in the election, thinking him pompous and unqualified. Carey stressed to the media that it was too early to draw any conclusions, that at this point it was a missing persons investigation, not kidnapping or worse. Carey seemed competent, in charge. Photos of the Taylor children were flashed on the screen along with a hot line number. He explained that he’d tapped the resources of a team of retired big-city police officials to assist him with the investigation. The performance was flawless. Hearne wondered who had coached him.

The makeup of the crowd at the center was interesting to him, and something he was getting used to. Three-quarters of the guests were newcomers to the area, having arrived in the last five years. The remaining quarter were from the area, mainly professional people. It was notable how the newcomers grouped together, and the locals did the same. In only a few instances did he see them mixing. The response to the new facility was different also, he noted. The locals were proud of it almost beyond words, their comments a mixture of awe and reverence, as if saying, “I can’t believe what we’ve done!” The newcomers, on the other hand, were happy with the new facility, but in a different way, as if finally they were receiving something they’d long deserved, something they were used to. As if they had taken another step forward in dragging the hidebound old-timers into the twenty-first century.

But Hearne had trouble mingling, spending much time in either group. As the banker he was sort of a host, so he constantly used that excuse to take his leave, as if pressing matters in another part of the facility pulled him away. His position at the bank and his long history as a resident of the valley gave him knowledge that ran deep. His familiarity with the residents and his customers was a huge asset to the bank, one of the reasons he continued to be promoted every time the institution changed hands. He often felt like the human bridge between the old and the new. His life was a balancing act between ingrained loyalties and newfound wealth, power, and status. But sometimes, like now, he felt he knew too much.

The fact was, Hearne couldn’t think of much else than the missing Taylor children and the meetings he had had that morning with Jess Rawlins and Eduardo Villatoro. They all disturbed him, but in different ways. They were moles in a mental Whack-A-Mole game: When he suppressed one the other popped up automatically, as if they were somehow interconnected in a way he couldn’t comprehend.

He approached a bar situated in the alcove to the swimming pool and ordered a fifth Scotch. As he sipped it, he looked out on the pool. The black lanes painted on the bottom wavered in the water more than they should. He would have to slow down. But he didn’t want to.

“What’s wrong with you?”

It was his wife, Laura. He hadn’t seen her approach.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been watching you,” she said. “You’ve been running around this place like a chicken with its head cut off. The only places you stop are the bars. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

He felt himself flush. Caught.

Laura was a plain-speaking, handsome woman, with strong features and all-seeing eyes. Her skin was dark from being outside so much, riding her horses, working at her stables. She was a horsewoman, a former barrel racer, from a third-generation Idaho family. Despite their rise in status within the community, Laura chose to dress in what was comfortable to her: Western shirts, jeans, sometimes a broomstick skirt and boots, like tonight. She was considered vivacious and home-grown by the locals, and Hearne still saw her that way. Only when she was in a big group of newcomers, with their fashion and trendy haircuts, did he realize
how different she looked. He appreciated her sense of tradition, though, and admired how she was comfortable with who she was. Sometimes, though, he wished she would dress up a little, like tonight. Didn’t she notice? The thought made him instantly ashamed of himself.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You seem just a tad distracted,” she said in a mischievous way. “My dad would have said you are jumping around like a fart in a skillet.”

Hearne almost blurted out his Whack-A-Mole analogy but caught himself. Mentioning it would open doors he wanted kept shut.

“I keep thinking about those Taylor kids,” he said, which was true but only part of the reason. “That isn’t the kind of thing that happens here.”

“Maybe it didn’t used to,” she said, then gestured toward the crowd. “Before the immigration and all of your new friends.”

He smiled sourly. It was a point of contention between them. Laura would have been fine if the valley had remained the way it was when she grew up, small, intimate, rural, eccentric.

“My ‘new friends,’ as you call them, helped buy your last three horses and the new barn,” he said.

“I know. Boy, you are testy tonight.”

He looked away, wishing he hadn’t said that.

“You had better slow down,” she said, nodding toward his glass. “I don’t want you falling into the pool in front of all of your …customers.”

“I will.”

“And, Mr. Jim Hearne, don’t play coy with me,” she said, leaning into him, staring up into his eyes. “I know you. You drink when you’re worried, or fretting about something. It never helps, but it’s what you do.”

“I said …”

“Right, the Taylors,” she said dismissively.

“Really.”

She asked, “Which Taylor are you most worried about? The kids or Monica?”

Hearne felt his neck get hot. Laura had never liked Monica Taylor and harbored suspicions about her. Hearne felt defensive whenever Monica was brought up, even though he had explained the situation to
Laura more than once. He had told Laura Monica thought of him as a father figure because of his friendship with her father. Laura had raised her eyebrows, and asked, “Is that all?” He stammered, said, “Of course. You know what happened.”

When Jim Hearne was riding saddle broncs on the college rodeo team, and later on his own when he was sponsored by Rawlins Ranch, his closest friend and traveling companion had been Ty Taylor, Monica’s father. Ty was handsome and enigmatic, a star performer, a man who attracted women like a magnet, despite the fact that he was married with a young daughter at home. One of the reasons Hearne partnered with Ty early on was for exactly that reason—where Ty went, women appeared. When Hearne injured his knee and laid off the circuit for a year and returned home, his on-again off-again courtship of Laura got serious, and they married. Ty was the best man, flying home between rodeos in Salinas and Cheyenne to be there.

Hearne finished up his degree in finance while he recovered, but the rodeo was in his blood. Laura didn’t like it when he went back to rodeoing and liked it even less when he hooked up again with Ty. Although Hearne was faithful to Laura and tried his best to rein Ty in, he wasn’t successful. Ty loved women—as a gender, if not individually—and women loved Ty. When the two cowboys came home together, Hearne watched little Monica look up to her father with unabashed hero worship that broke Hearne’s heart, even though it didn’t appear to faze Ty. Apparently he was used to that kind of look, Hearne thought at the time.

Ty was severely injured at the Calgary Stampede when his boot caught in his stirrup and he fell, breaking his neck. Hearne stood by his bed in the hospital while they waited for Monica and her mother to get there, and Ty grabbed Hearne’s hand and asked him to take care of Monica. Ty didn’t care much for his wife, but he said he’d cheated on his daughter, and she didn’t deserve a dad like that. He planned to die before they arrived.

But he didn’t. Over the next few years, Ty stayed home, recovered, but wasn’t able to get medical clearance to rodeo again. So he went back to chasing women throughout North Idaho and eastern Washington. On a warm day in May, he left his family without a word and never came back. Hearne had lost track of him completely over the years, although
Ty once called him at the bank to see about a loan “for old times’ sake.” Hearne hung up on him.

Hearne was no psychologist, but it was easy for him to see how Ty’s abandonment affected both Monica and Monica’s mother. Her mother became an alcoholic and moved to Spokane, supposedly looking for a permanent job before sending for her daughter. Monica stayed in the area, bouncing around from place to place, growing wilder and more beautiful by the year. Boys were as attracted to Monica as women had been to her father. Monica didn’t discourage the attention at all. The most important man in her life had walked away. Others were lining up to step right in. The way Hearne saw it, Monica’s mission was to prove to herself she was likable and desirable after all, that her father had made a
huge
mistake. She looked for men who were dazzling, dangerous, and charismatic like her father had been. That she didn’t seem to recognize what she was doing, despite her intelligence, was one of life’s mysteries to Hearne.