Echoes (2 page)

Without a word Sara went back to her cubby and picked up the phone. Tess caught the word "reservations" before Mr. Weston spoke again.

"Keep her? Well, that's not—"

"I know, not what's usually done in cases like this, but please. I can fax you written permission if that would help."

He gave a soft chuckle. "Fortunately there are
some
advantages to being a small town. The bureaucrats don't look our way too often. I think we can bend the rules a little. What time can you be here?"

Good question. She'd gain three hours going west, but... "I need to check into flights, tie up a few loose ends." Still on the phone, Sara gave her a thumbs-up signal. "Why don't you give me your number? I'll call you back as soon as I've booked my ticket."

"That sounds fine." He gave her his office and home numbers. "I'll have to pull some strings, but I'll work out some arrangements for her until you arrive."

"Thank you, Mr. Weston. There's one more thing. Where
is
Mountain Bend exactly?"

"We're a couple hours east of
Sacramento or several hours west of Salt Lake. More or less in the middle of nowhere."

The middle of nowhere. How appropriate.

* * *

"I know it's crazy," Tess said, yanking shirts from her closet and tossing them on her bed. "But what choice do I have?"

Sara pulled them off the hangers and began folding. "I know. Poor little kid. I'm sure she's scared and worried. Have you called the police yet?"

"Tori hasn't been missing that long. Believe me, I know from experience they won't start looking for her yet."

Sara frowned. "You know from experience?"

"Oh yes," Tess said, moving to the bathroom for her toiletries. "Tori's a pro at the disappearing act."

"You never told me that."

"It's not my favorite topic. And since Caitlin was born, she's been more, I don't know, more stable. At least I thought so, but maybe I was just fooling myself. Mr. Weston made it clear that he's fed up with her always being late. Why else would he have been so quick to ship a little kid off to a shelter?"

Sara shook her head. "Maybe he's some crotchety old fart who lives to enforce rules."

"Maybe." Tess stepped in her closet and quickly changed her clothes. "When we were kids, Tori was always running away. She loved to piss off the Colonel."

"The Colonel?"

"Daddy Dearest."

"You called him the Colonel? Did you salute him too?"

"Only when he came in the room."

"Wow. How about you?" Sara asked, trying to organize the items Tess had thrown in the bag.

"How about me what?"

"Did you like to piss off the Colonel?"

Tess shook her head emphatically. "No way. He was a man of God—a Chaplain—but he wasn't a man to cross. It wasn't pretty when he'd catch her."

"Where was your mom during all this? In the mess hall?"

"Not exactly. She was locked away in a funny farm." Tess tried to keep it light, but her voice betrayed her.

Sara looked embarrassed. "I didn't know. I'm sorry, Tess."

"What can I say? We're a colorful family."

A picture of Tess and Tori sat on Tess's dresser. Sara lifted it and stared at the smiling sisters. "Are you sure you weren't adopted? You don't look anything like her."

Tess paused with a handful of underwear in her hand and looked over Sara's shoulder at the picture. Tori was a mixture of darkness and vivid color. Beside her sister, Tess had always felt transparent.

"She looks like my mom. I got the honor of looking like the Colonel." Tess crammed her underclothes into the suitcase and shut it. "I keep thinking of the last time Tori did this. I got a call from the cops at three a.m. Tori was gone, her boyfriend's place was trashed and the guy's brother was sure they were both dead. I spent three days in a panic, a fourth convinced she'd been murdered and then, lo and behold, who should come strolling up on the fifth. Tanned, rested and stunned that anyone might have been
worried
about them."

"Where were they?"

"They'd had a fight and then took off to make up someplace romantic. It's the way she is."

"So why are you running around like a maniac to get there now?"

As Tess pulled her bag off the bed, she looked at her friend, answers coming at her in images that would take too long to explain. Finally she said, "Because she's my sister. We grew up with the Colonel preaching 'do unto others' while he acted like God himself. We moved every five minutes, so neither one of us had any friends. And after my mom checked into La La Land—Well, it wasn't exactly the nurturing environment you might imagine. We were there for each other though. She and Caitlin are the only family I have left. I love them. And besides, Caitlin's just a little girl. She shouldn't have to pay for Tori's mistakes."

Chapter Three

When the call came in that afternoon, Deputy Hector Ochoa didn't think much of it. Mountain Bend had its drunks and troublemakers like everyplace else, but they rarely got going before nine or ten at night. A call before suppertime was as likely a wrong number as anything serious. He didn't even bother to put down the sports page as he answered the phone.

The voice on the other end, however, got his attention. Hector listened for a moment, his mouth going dry before he assured the caller they'd be right there. His excitement made him speak overly loud and he banged down the receiver.

Sheriff Smith looked up from the business section with a frown. He'd been gone most of the day and had only just plopped down in his chair to grumble over the stock market.

"That was Grant Weston," Hector said.

"The actor?"

Hector nodded. "He said he needs us out at his ranch right away."

"What happened? His hair get messed up?"

"Sounded like he'd had the crap scared out of him."

"He didn't tell you what the problem was?"

Hector faltered. "Well, no."

"And you didn't bother to ask?" Smith demanded. "For Christ sake, Ochoa, didn't they teach you anything at the academy?" With a muttered curse, he flung down his paper and stood. Every day of Smith's thirty years as Chicago PD showed on his face and in the hard eyes he pinned Hector with. "You always ask. You don't know if he's got a gun to his head or his cat's stuck in a tree, do you? Do you?"

Knowing he'd just shot himself in the foot—
again
—Hector shook his head.

"No," Smith said.

To his credit, he left it at that. He didn't need to say more. From his first day, Sheriff Eugene Smith had made two things clear. One—he'd come to Mountain Bend this year to escape the grind of big city crime, not to work with amateurs and idiots. And two—never, under any circumstances, call him Eugene.

Silently Hector followed the sheriff to the car and got in. Smith eased himself into the driver's seat, his paunch making a tight fit beneath the wheel. He claimed to have given up the bottle the same time that he'd tossed his last pack of Marlboros in the trash, but he still looked like a man who'd spent too many years drinking whiskey straight and inhaling smoke. Fine red capillaries made a map across his nose before branching into tributaries of abuse over the rest of his face. The skin beneath was ruddy and puffy. But Smith's eyes were a sharp, cold blue that missed nothing.

They made the short drive to the Weston Ranch in silence while Hector tried to clear his head and focus on the possibilities of what might await them instead of dwelling on what a dumb rookie he was. He hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said Grant Weston sounded scared. Scared of what? That was the question Hector should have asked.

Angry with himself, he stared out the window as the ranch came into view. Once it had looked like something out of the movies. The pastures had been the lush color of money and the fences bright and unending. The kind of place where bad things never happened.

Now the fences were broken down and the paint worn to the dull gray of neglect. The paddocks were still green, and a scattering of horses grazed on the waving grasses, though the stables beyond looked like they could be toppled by a determined breeze. The house itself had a hard time appearing anything but impressive though. The sprawling porch and overhanging verandas gave the illusion of success and prosperity. Even the granite basin of mountainsides surrounding it seemed to hold the acreage in a protective embrace.

Smith brought the cruiser to a stop in front of the house and gave him a warning look. "Can I trust you not to get excited and shoot someone or do I need to take your gun away?"

"I can handle myself," Hector mumbled.

Smith snorted. "Well at least try not to shoot me, alright?"

Grant Weston was waiting for them on the porch steps. The last time Hector had seen him was a few years ago in his last movie—an action flick where Grant had kicked ass and slept with both a beautiful blonde and a gorgeous redhead. Grant wasn't one of those pansy actors who looked like they might moonlight as a woman. He was bred from mountain ranchers and he was built to handle the load. He was a man's man. The kind who always beat the bad guy and
always
got the girl.

Hector didn't know how or why he'd given up all that and moved back to Mountain Bend. No one really knew why he'd left
Hollywood behind. But like the ranch, he'd changed.

As Hector and the Sheriff approached, Grant kept his eyes fixed on the small herd of horses grazing in the meadow. He sat with his forearms resting on his knees, hands hanging between. No gun to his head, Hector was relieved to see. He wore a Harley Davidson t-shirt, faded blue jeans and work boots caked with mud. Even sitting, there was no mistaking the size and power of him, but he looked diminished somehow. And his skin was the gray color of river rock. High on his right cheek there was a dark smudge of black that started with fingerprints and ended in a trailing palm. Two other black prints smeared the front of his shirt. A slight tremor shook his dangling hands.

Sheriff Smith strode to the porch and put one shiny boot on the step next to where Weston sat. He waited for Grant to say something, letting the silence ask the questions. Hector had seen the sheriff reduce a belligerent drunk driver to a babbling baby once, without saying a word.

Grant just sat staring at his horses.

A cold bead of unease slipped down Hector's spine at his vacant expression. He scanned the area around them, frowning at the strong singed odor that hung in the air.

"What's going on, Grant?" Smith asked at last.

Grant finally looked at them. His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed, dark with shock. He opened his mouth and closed it again, as if searching for an appropriate response to the question. At last he simply said, "Out back." He jerked his head in the direction of the front door. Hector supposed that meant he and the sheriff should cut through the house rather than take the long way around.

"What's out back?" Smith asked.

Mute, Grant shook his head as tears filled his eyes and his shoulders began to shake. Finally he covered his face with both hands and sobbed.

Smith waited a moment, obviously hoping Grant would pull himself together and offer an explanation. All Grant managed was to choke out something that sounded like "Dad," and nothing else.

Cursing under his breath, Smith drew his weapon and climbed up to the porch with Hector a step behind. He glanced back over his shoulder as Hector pulled out his own gun, silently repeating the warning that had been given in jest in the car. Flushing, Hector nodded.

Their boots made hollow
thunk
sounds in the velvet quiet. The shadows inside stretched down a long, narrow hallway that led from the front door into the cavern-like house. Heavily framed portraits dating back to the 1800s lined the walls from floor to ceiling alongside pictures of Westons taken with Calvin Coolidge, Babe Ruth, John Wayne. Westons had settled Mountain Bend and in the old days, they'd been high society and prominent leaders. Even newcomers like Smith knew who they were.

Hector had never been inside the house, but kitchens seemed to occupy the same place no matter where you went and backdoors invariably opened off them. The Weston place was no exception. Hector tapped Smith's shoulder and indicated the way. Carefully checking everything in between, the two men rounded the corner to the kitchen and approached the open backdoor.

A small stoop and two steps led down to mud, dormant grass and beds that might have once held blooming flowers. The stable, in its state of unsightly disrepair, hunkered to the left of a paddock where a brown horse with a white star on its face grazed beside a sleek honey-colored Palomino. Beyond, a corral with a broken down fence waited for the next rider up. Deep tread marks scarred the earth from the opening of the stable to a point outside the gate of the corral. Hector and Smith followed the tracks with their eyes to the tractor.

It was an old one, probably a survivor of the glory years when the Weston's had money. In its prime, it had been a fine machine. Now the paint was chipped, the hull rusted out and the John Deere logo missing. And it was overturned. Blackened wheel rims poked up at the sky, yet there were no tires, no mud caked tread on them. The freshly turned earth smelled rich and fecund beneath the sharp and acrid scent of burnt rubber.