R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 02 - L O S T (2 page)

A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

King Solomon, Proverbs 17:17

MY BROTHER Jackson and I have not spoken much over the years. The reasons are complicated, but in the end, it is in large part because we are far too alike. Human beings have such incredible difficulty coming to terms with their own imperfections; it is no surprise that we tend to clash hardest with those most like us.

It’s not that Jax and I don’t love each other. I certainly love him, and I know he would be there for me if the walls were ever to come crashing down. Both of us believe family is always there for you. Forever. No matter what you need.

We are only a few years apart. I am the oldest. We’d been friends, off and on, for many years. Through most of our young adult lives, in fact. But things eventually changed. We didn’t exactly grow apart. It was more like old wounds stopped scabbing over, instead remaining diseased and festering.

That has been the hardest truth for me to accept; two brothers who were once so close—the kind of friends that shared their innermost secrets—having become so irrevocably distant. Yet we had. Over the years we fabricated our own personal war—battles and skirmishes would appear and be waged at a moment’s notice, and it seemed over the years that after such conflicts we receded into the frailty of friendship less and less often. Eventually we had to make some kind of peace; we were forced to face the fact that the emotional hurt we caused ourselves and those around us outweighed the value of the friendship.

Scotsmen tend to war within their own borders as well as without, and it is a wise general who recognizes the moment that a campaign becomes untenable.

So it had been a number of years since Jax and I had spoken regularly. We exchanged the obligatory greeting cards and holiday phone calls. I couldn’t speak for my brother, but I learned a long time ago to release my heart’s yearning for the days of yesteryear when my younger brother looked to me as his boon friend and confidant. In other words, I learned to accept the significance of the silence that had permeated our lives.

Therefore, when I saw the message on my desk from the P.A.A. telling me my brother in Idaho called and needed me to get back to him ASAP, I assumed bad news. He wouldn’t call me at work otherwise.

I took the elevator down to the first floor and exited into the bright, sunny bustle of downtown Denver. It was a gorgeous day—the heart of the city beating beneath a vast, baby-blue sky dotted with fat, marshmallow clouds and a seasonal fall warmth that reminded me why I would always live in Colorado.

The nearest city bench looked as good as any spot to digest whatever my brother needed to tell me. I sat, but I did not call him right away. When faced with the prospect of speaking with Jax, I always made an attempt to calm myself first.

Later came the decompression.

“Chief Macaulay,” the voice said.

“Hey, Jax.”

“Bobby. How are you?”

He didn’t seem upset. Unfortunately this realization did little to assuage the trepidation in my gut.

“Hanging in there,” I said. “How’s the family?”

“Trish’s doing great,” he said. “The little ones have grown. Celia is eight; Gracie just turned eleven.”

“Like weeds, right?” I said, wondering where this uncharacteristic chewing of the rag was headed.

“I hesitated to call, but I’ve got a situation up here.”

‘Up here’ was in Rocky Gap, Idaho—a small town in the panhandle of the state, not too far from Coeur d’ Alene. My brother was the Chief of Police.

“Let’s hear it,” I said.

“Well, I can’t divulge specifics. And I sure don’t want you thinking we need some of that big city detecting up here. But I have to admit I could use your counsel.”

“Go on.”

“A local fella up and killed some of his family. Wife and one young daughter. I don’t have to tell you how close that hits to home. Thing is, I know this guy. We all know him. He’s not the family-murdering kind.”

“It’s been my experience there’s no exact blueprint.”

“Well, that’s probably true in a lot of places,” he said. “But I can tell you, here in Rocky Gap, you get to know folks.”

“Understood,” I said.

“I heard a little about what happened down there last year,” he said.

“Heard what?”

“I have a couple of friends that moved down that way—beat coppers. Word of the village has it you all ran into some pretty nasty characters in relation to a double-homicide. Sounds like maybe that one played a bit out of bounds.”

“It was a strange one, all right,” I said. “Not sure how that relates, though.”

“You have any time coming?” he said. “I really could use you up here.”

“I’m a little busy with casework,” I lied.

“I’ve got this guy in my jail. He’s going to stand trial for the whole truckload. Probably face a needle, and God knows, if he did what it looks like he did, I’d push the plunger myself. But he’s got some pretty strange claims.”

“Maybe he’s thinking of an insanity defense,” I said.

“Maybe. We’ve got the feds from Coeur d’ Alene coming up here every other day, scratching at the back door wanting in. I’d like to get this thing taken care of locally—I know you get that.”

“Look, Jax, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I doubt very much if anything that happened down here draws parallel to a guy going stir crazy in the sticks and taking out his entire family.”

“Part of his family,” he said.

“What?”

“I said
part
of his family. There’s one member gone missing.”

“Missing?”

“An eleven-year-old girl.”

“Jesus.”

“The father claims the Devil took her.”

I let the words hang there in the stratosphere a moment. I really didn’t want them to ever come down to earth.

“No kidding,” he said. “I don’t know what to do with this one.”

“I might be able to swing a week or two,” I said.

“This guy, he’s normally so sane it’d bore you to tears.”

“We all have our breaking point. This little girl, how long’s she been gone?”

“Three days,” he said. “We think she may be in the Coeur d’ Alene wilderness.”

I felt like throwing up. 

MEYER WEST, my cousin, the ex-priest, convinced me to drive the 1,222 miles from Denver to Rocky Gap. He was right. Flying didn’t seem like a wise option. It was clear I needed to bring the Crucifix of Ardincaple—the family heirloom that had saved our lives in the forest around Grand Lake, Colorado. I still wasn’t sure that I would be able to command the power of the weapon again, mainly because I had no fucking clue how I’d mastered it the first time. It was more like the weapon mastered
me
.

But we needed to bring it. And we weren’t about to entrust its care to bag throwers at two different airports.

Meyer and I talked in depth about the night at Grand Lake. Calypso. Father Rule. The demon horde. Not easy things to reconcile. The mind is tempted when faced with the unbelievable to construct barriers of explainable alternatives. Meyer’s calm acceptance of the preternatural made my own acceptance less cumbersome, if not easy. Meyer helped me come to grips with what had happened, though he himself admitted to having his own doubts as to what really occurred. Time has a way of eroding our confidence and even adding false memories to events. But still, his camaraderie was important to me. I had become very close with my cousin in that past year. Because of my splintered relationship with my only brother, I believe Meyer’s companionship arrived at exactly the right time. Not only did I need a comrade, I also needed a friend.

Like Burke, my deceased partner, Meyer was an anachronism. Both of them were born out of time. Burke would have been much better suited to the era when men opened car doors without being scolded for it—a time when men were gentle and austere rather than triathlon competitors, weekend warriors, and Wall Street swindlers. And as for my cousin, how many children would tell you they want to be a priest when they grow up? All Meyer ever wanted was to serve the world in the name of God. The betrayal by his own mentor, Father Rule, had extinguished a light in him he believed could never flicker. Rule’s evil had not driven Meyer West from the priesthood because it made him question his faith (although it would be foolhardy to believe it had not)—rather, my cousin felt he had failed; he felt responsible for Rule’s successes. Meyer was shamed that he had not somehow seen through the ruse of the monster. 

My cousin had always held things inside, divulging only what was necessary. After realizing how thoroughly the wool was pulled over his trust and faith, he became even more withdrawn and prone to turn from companionship rather than to seek it. I had to admit, I liked him all the more for it. He cared enough to sacrifice a part of himself to a cause and he felt responsible for the things in his world. In my estimation, these truths made him all the more approachable. More human. I placed an inordinate amount of trust in him right from the beginning. That’s not something a Scotsman does easily. I learned that from my father, Paddy Macaulay, who only ever let a handful of men close enough to really know him.

In the Marines we called it
The
Nine
.

“Fuck all but The Nine.

Six to carry the casket.

Two as road guard.

One to count cadence.”

I already considered my cousin part of that select group.

“You’re kind of quiet,” I said to him, just south of Wilson, Wyoming.

“Mother Theresa taught her followers that God cannot be found in noise and restlessness.”

“I guess that explains a lot.”

“How so?”

“My own relationship with the Lord. Fractured, at best.”

“I think you are closer to him than you realize.”

“Maybe.”

“The fact that you are willing to consider the possibility gives me hope,” he said.

Faith was always a tough rubric for me. I grew up as a pragmatist and a bit of a Missourian. I like the tangible. Questions with answers.

The laws of the physical Universe.

The odds at the craps table.

Divorce rates.

This belief structure based on pragmatism made the Calypso case, what we all witnessed, and more importantly the surprising claims regarding my family history, that much more implausible to the logicians in my head.

The ability of erasure our grounded mind wields is impressive.

“Define distance,” I said.

“God’s distance does not necessarily relate to our own concepts.”

“How so?”

“Everything we consider is based on our own paradigm—the lenses through which we view humanity, the Universe, even time.”

“Okay.”

“God’s view is from a vantage point of omniscience.”

“All seeing.”

“All knowing,” Meyer said, cracking the seal on a bottle of water from our ice chest. “God knows the permutations we’ve yet to consider.”

“Faith is a human construct. We define it, not God,” I said.

“Faith is a connection. It cannot exist in a vacuum. You can’t connect to something that isn’t there. Faith in another implies a relationship. It is a form of trust.”

“But what of faith—or lack thereof—in the
existence
of a thing?”

Before he could answer, a little girl ran from the dense pine forest, across the slight barrow ditch, and directly in front of the truck. My reactions were gelatinous, having been lullabied into apathy by several hours of Wyoming nothingness. As my foot moved instinctively to the brake, I realized there was not enough time or distance.

The mind is a funny thing. Given enough time, the brain would love to ponder such notions as a young girl having no place in the middle of godforsaken Wyoming in the middle of a Wednesday night. But in a moment of mortal decision, the mind reacts. Our nature takes control. Sink or swim. Turn or run down an innocent.

I cranked the wheel and my truck lumbered left, crossing lanes, rubber crying out against the pavement. We missed the girl, but as I went onto the gravel shoulder of the far side, the back end started sliding and caught up with the front.

I resisted the instinct to overcorrect, kept the gas pedal mostly depressed, and let the sixty mile an hour sideways power slide continue. It was our only chance, though I’m pretty sure Meyer did not understand.

As the back end began to fishtail to the left again, I eased a bit off the gas and corrected by turning the wheel right to counterbalance the inertia building in the horizontal slide. After taking out a handful of mile-marker posts, and (thankfully) meeting no new oncoming traffic, we skidded to a stop with the front tires still on the edge of the two-lane blacktop.

My heart was thudding like a bass drum in my chest and my fingers were cemented to the steering wheel. I turned to Meyer, who opened the door, leaned out, and vomited his dinner on the frigid night earth.

“You were saying?” I asked him as he closed the door and wiped his mouth.

“What…in the name…of all that is sacred…was
that
?” he managed.

“I have no idea,” I said, turning around to an empty road. “Where the hell is she?”

“Where is
who
?”

I glanced sideways at my cousin, who had obviously not fully recovered from his emasculating performance.

“Funny. You just keep wiping the bile from your chin.”

“Did you fall asleep?”

“Give me a break. No, I did
not
fall asleep.”

“You almost killed us.”

“I’m not in the business of running down children.”

Father West sat there in stunned silence. I now looked him full in the eyes. I saw the incredulity therein.

“You didn’t see the girl.”

Meyer just kept staring.

“She ran from the tree line. Sunday dress. White shoes. Locks of hair flying behind her. She ran like a fucking
track star
. What the hell are you staring at?”

“There is nothing in the road.”

“Not now,” I said, suddenly feeling stupid and distraught.
Had I fallen asleep? Could I have dreamed it
?

“I think we should pull in when we reach Wilson,” Meyer said. “Get a room. We’ve been on the road too long.”

I nodded, putting my truck back into gear.

What was happening to me? I was sure I had not fallen asleep, but it seemed there was no girl waiting in the road, and I doubted she would have returned to the forest (what sense would
that
make?).

Then it grew inside me, a realization that I’d just seen the girl we were meant to save. How exactly had I known it was her? It wasn’t possible, of course. Not really.

But that didn’t stop me from knowing it.