Snowbound (2 page)

Rachael Innis was strapped upright with two-inch webbing to the leather seat behind the driver. She stared at the console lights. The digital clock read 4:32
A.M.
She remembered the crowbar through the window and nothing after.

Bach’s Four Lute Suites blared from the Bose stereo system, John Williams playing classical guitar. Beyond the windshield, the headlights cut a feeble swath of light through the darkness, and even though she was riding in a luxury SUV, the shocks did little to ease the violent jarring from whatever primitive road they traveled.

Her wrists and ankles were comfortably but securely bound with nylon restraints. Her mouth wasn’t gagged. From her vantage point, she could only see the back of the driver’s head and occasionally the side of his face by the cherry glow of his cigarette. He was smooth-shaven, his hair was dark, and he smelled of a subtle, spicy cologne.

It occurred to her that he didn’t know she was awake, but the thought wasn’t two seconds old when she caught his eyes in the rearview mirror. They registered her consciousness, flickered back to the road.

They drove on. An endless stream of rodents darted across the road ahead, and a thought kept needling her: At some point, he was going to stop the car and do whatever he was driving her out in the desert to do.

“Have you urinated on my seat?” She thought she detected the faintest accent.

“No.”

“You tell me if you have to urinate. I’ll stop the car.”

“Okay. Where are you—”

“No talking. Unless you have to urinate.”

“I just—”

“You want your mouth taped? You have a cold. That would make breathing difficult.”

Devlin was the only thing she’d ever prayed for, and that was years ago, but as she watched the passing sagebrush and cactus through the deeply tinted windows, she pleaded with God again.

Now the Escalade was slowing. It came to a stop. He turned off the engine, stepped outside, and shut the door. Her door opened. He stood watching her. He was very handsome, with flawless brown skin (save for an indentation in the bridge of his nose), liquid blue eyes, and black hair greased back from his face. His pretty teeth seemed to gleam in the night. Rachael’s chest heaved against the strap of webbing.

He said, “Calm down, Rachael.” Her name sounded like a foreign word on his lips. He took out a syringe from his black leather jacket and un-capped the needle.

“What is that?” she asked.

“You have nice veins.” He ducked into the Escalade and turned her arm over. When the needle entered, she gasped.

“Please. If this is some kind of ransom—”

“No, no. You’ve already been purchased. In fact, right now, there isn’t a safer place in the world for you to be than in my possession.”

A gang of coyotes erupted in demonic howls somewhere out in that empty dark. Rachael thought they sounded like a woman burning alive, and she began to scream until the drug took her.

They started arriving after four o’clock in the afternoon. By five, Rachael’s disappearance was the lead story on all the local news stations, even in Tucson and Phoenix. When six rolled around, there were more cars parked along No-Water Lane than when the Hasslers had hosted their last Fourth of July barbecue.

Come 7:15
P.M.
, more than forty people had crowded into Will and Rachael’s modest adobe home in Ajo, Arizona. They packed the den, the living room, the kitchen, even spilling out onto the deck. It was a strange assembly, all these people drawn to a tragedy in the making. The ambience mirrored the hushed formality of a postfuneral gathering, with the glut of food and alcohol, whispered conversations, the absence of laughter. And it struck Will as he sat on the sofa holding Devlin, surrounded by those he loved, friends he’d not seen in years, neighbors he rarely spoke to, that these people had come to hold vigil with him. They were waiting to hear that she’d been found, though everyone knew that people weren’t found alive when they went missing near the border, if they were ever found at all.

“Will?” He broke from his trance and looked up at Rachael’s mother standing by the built-in bookshelves, a glass of bourbon in her hand.

Debra bore a strong resemblance to her daughter, right down to her trim figure and black hair. From across the room, they could’ve been mistaken for sisters. Closer up, her silver roots showed and the added decades of living in these desert borderlands and the punishment of the sun became evident in the leathering of her face, which more resembled hide than skin.

“I couldn’t remember if you took ice or not,” she said.

“Yeah, I do. That’s perfect.” She handed him his fourth Maker’s of the evening.

“Can I take her?” Debra motioned to her granddaughter, who had fallen asleep in Will’s arms, and he’d have let her, but she was near bulletproof with Valium and vodka.

“I need to hold her, Mom.” As he sipped the whiskey, his face flushed with heat and he theorized through the bourbon-embroidered fog that maybe Rachael’s funeral had already happened and he’d blocked everything out—the eulogies, the stern-faced pallbearers, his daughter in hysterics as she watched her mother’s casket being lowered into the ground.

He staggered to his feet and carried Devlin back to her bedroom. She was beyond exhaustion now. So was he. He tucked her in, knelt on the floor, spent several moments watching her sleep, feeling a sharp pinch in his gut every time he breathed. After awhile, he got up, headed for his bedroom. His and Rachael’s bedroom. He shut and locked the door after him, opened the sweater chest that stood at the foot of their bed.

He found it near the bottom—a tattered sweatshirt that Rachael wore religiously when the weather turned cooler. It was navy blue and had years ago evinced the name of her alma mater, the washing machine having long since stripped away the white lettering.

He brought the sweatshirt to his face and smelled his wife.

• • •

On his way back to the den, he stopped at the guest room. Someone sobbed loudly behind the door. He opened it. There were no lights on, but as his eyes adjusted, he discerned the ponderous form of Rachael’s sister, Elise, curled up in the corner beside a dresser.

“You all right?” he asked. It took her a moment to catch her breath. Looking out the window above her head, he noticed strange lights in the front yard.

“She’s dead, Will. I can feel it.” He shut his eyes and braced against the concussion of her words, could have struck her for giving voice to the malignant prediction on all of their minds. “Can’t
you
feel it, Will?” He closed the door and went back into the den, grabbed his whiskey from the end table.

One giant swallow and he’d reinforced that beautiful cushion that was padding him from reality, the room humming now, just a few sips shy of spinning.

He was en route to the front door to investigate those lights in the yard when someone caught him under the arm.

“Hey, Will. You hanging in there, guy?” He couldn’t recall the man’s name, and then he realized why. It was a neighbor, but they’d never met. Will recognized him only because the man was usually washing a white Lexus in his driveway on Saturday mornings whenever Will and Rachael drove past his house on the way to the gym.

He was Will’s age, Latino.

“I’m sorry, what’s your name?” Will asked.

“Miguel. We always exchange waves when you and your wife pass by my house. I saw the news, all the cars out there. Thought I should come by. If there’s anything I can do… .”

Will could feel his eyes welling, and whether it was prompted by the whiskey or the totality of this terrible day, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the kindness of this man he knew only through gestures.

“Thank you, Miguel.” He wiped his eyes, cleared his throat. “Why don’t you go get something to eat, something to drink. They’ve got a whole buffet thing going in the kitchen.”

When Miguel was gone, Will opened the front door and stepped onto the porch.

He whispered, “Oh God.” The cushion evaporated. The crushing load of Rachael’s absence ripped the breath out of him and he crumpled down on the steps, thinking,
So this is really happening
. It had become a parking lot out in the street. He spotted a news van one block over, a large satellite dish perched on its roof. And in the long grass of the front lawn, a dozen people stood in a circle between the yuccas and saguaros, their faces lighted by the candles in their hands, flames quivering in the evening wind blowing in from the desert.

He sat watching the circle of flames, the sky deepening into dusk, his stomach hurting so much that he could manage only the shallowest of breaths as he strained to hear their words.

A woman’s voice reached him: “Dear Lord, You say that where two or more are gathered in Your name that You are present. Well, here we are Lord, and we’re asking for the deliverance of Rachael Innis.”

He struggled to his feet and stumbled toward them through the grass. He hadn’t prayed in years, since they’d found out their daughter was sick. A standoff fuckoff with God. That ended tonight.

Will slipped away from the circle of candles and started back toward the house to check on Devlin. Though he’d wanted to, he hadn’t prayed aloud. It had been a long time and he was rusty at talking to God, particularly in the presence of strangers.

As he reached to open the front door, it swung back. Rachael’s mother was standing on the threshold, distraught.

“There’s a detective in the living room, Will. He wants to talk to you.”

For some reason, Will had expected a younger man, perhaps his age, with a buzz cut and stern, distrusting eyes. Having dealt with many cops as a defense attorney, he’d come to regard them as authority junkies, an unimaginative and reactionary bunch prone to forming fast, unmovable opinions. But at first glance, the detective on his couch proved none of his prejudices. The man was sitting between two of Rachael’s girlfriends from yoga class, his hands flattened out on his knees, gazing with a Zen-1ike calm at a framed photograph over the mantel—a picture from their Grand Canyon vacation two summers ago. He was an older, clean-shaven gentleman with stark white hair and clear blue eyes, and when he saw Will, he rose to his feet, buttoned his jacket, and flashed an appropriately restrained smile.

“Mr. Innis,” he said as they shook hands. “Detective Teddy Swicegood. You’ve cross-examined me in court a few times, if I’m not mistaken. But don’t worry. Won’t hold it against you. I’m so sorry to be here under these circumstances.”

He had at least four inches on Will, and his wizened face belied the strength of his handshake and the lean, solid build beneath the Sears suit.

“You have news?” Will asked.

“It’s pretty crowded in here. There someplace we can talk in private?”

“Yeah. You want a drink?”

“I wouldn’t object to a whiskey.”

Will poured a pair of whiskies and led Swicegood through the sliding glass door. There were a half dozen people on the deck, most of whom he didn’t recognize, sitting on chairs dragged out from the breakfast table and eating off paper plates like they were at a cookout.

The two men walked down the steps and crossed the grass to a weathered fence that ran the length of No-Water Lane and separated the backyards of Oasis Hills from the desert.

Will leaned on the fence, steeling himself, and said, “Just tell me. Don’t beat around—”

“We’ve got APBs out everywhere across the Southwest and we’re working with the Mexican authorities, as well.”

“You haven’t found her?”

Swicegood shook his head.

“But you think she’s alive.”

“I don’t know.”

“Your opinion?”

“Mr. Innis, it’s just too early to be—”

“Please. Take off the fucking kid gloves.”

“That’s a bad stretch of highway she disappeared on. Notorious for drug running, human trafficking. It doesn’t look good.”

The words hit Will like drops of acid, and it struck him that following a tragedy, grief comes in waves, each bigger than the previous, each carrying a new component of pain. They stood there drinking bourbon, looking south across the desert toward Mexico, where only a tinge of light lingered in the sky, lying across the horizon like the last thread of day.

Then it vanished and stars appeared, numerous and vivid. A coyote cried. He heard the rustling of a large animal, probably a mule deer, running through the sage. Will thought about Rachael, somewhere out there, maybe alive, maybe not, and he knew he wasn’t even close to the pain yet. But he could sense it lurking on the outskirts. It would be waiting for him in the morning when he opened his eyes to face this nightmare all over again.

A match flared. Swicegood lighted a cigarette, blew out the flame. He licked his thumb and forefinger and squelched the heat from the glowing match head before flicking it into the grass. He took a deep drag and sent a train of smoke curling into the desert.

“I was wondering, Mr. Innis, is there someone who could watch your daughter for a little while?” Will had been leaning on the fence. Now he turned and faced the detective. His head wasn’t clear. It took a moment to locate the exact words he wanted.

“Why would she need to be watched?”

“I thought you and I could ride over to the station. Have a little talk.”

The air between them turned electric.

“What about?”

“I’ll be waiting in my car. It’s parked behind the news truck with the satellite on top. You go make sure your daughter’s taken care of, then come on out.”

Will knocked back the whiskey and set the empty glass on the fence post. The darkness seemed to tilt. He felt clammy, sweat beading on his face.

“Shit.” He staggered ten feet away and retched into the grass, stood hunched over, looking back toward the house at all the silhouettes moving like ghosts behind the windows. He took in the dark stillness of the desert, the wet chill of the grass blades brushing at his bare ankles. He wiped his mouth. “You’re serious?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Do I need to bring a lawyer?”

“I don’t see why at this point. I just need you to answer a few questions. Help me sort something out. So, my car. Five minutes.”