Waking Lazarus (16 page)

‘‘Okay.’’

‘‘Let’s just say there’s something to your whole signs thing.’’

‘‘Like ‘Welcome to the New Jersey Turnpike’?’’

He winced. ‘‘Sorry about that.’’

‘‘It’s okay. It was actually pretty funny.’’

‘‘What do I do about them? The signs, I mean.’’

‘‘That’ll be pretty obvious, I think.’’

The Kodachrome visions and the copper taste. Yeah, those were pretty obvious. But his next steps weren’t. ‘‘What I mean is,’’ he continued, ‘‘how do I know what to do?’’

‘‘What to do?’’

‘‘Like how to solve the problem.’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’

He stopped, held his breath for a minute.

‘‘You don’t know?’’ He turned to steal another look at Sohler. Still there, still reading the paper. ‘‘That’s not much help.’’

‘‘Are you really wondering what you should do? Or do you already know, and you’re just scared to actually do it?’’

Jude couldn’t come up with an answer. After a few seconds of silence, she spoke again. ‘‘You there?’’

Jude sighed. ‘‘Yeah, I’m here,’’ he said. ‘‘That’s the problem: I don’t want to be.’’

‘‘Look, if you want me to come over,’’ she said.

‘‘No, I’m not at home right now. And somehow, I think I’m not supposed to go home just yet.’’

‘‘Calling from a cell phone?’’

‘‘Do I strike you as the kind of guy who would have a cell phone?’’

‘‘Good point. Well, when you’re ready to spill your story . . .’’

‘‘I’ll call you,’’ he said. He noticed Sohler getting up from his table, and panic seeped from his pores. ‘‘I’m sorry, Kristina. I’m gonna have to run now. I hope I’m doing the right thing.’’

‘‘You will,’’ she said.

He didn’t have time to respond, so he simply slammed down the receiver and hurried back to his booth. He threw some money down on the table, waved to Ginny, then rushed out the door behind Sohler.

21

SEARCHING

At that exact moment Rachel opened the web browser on her iBook at home. Nathan was playing over at Bradley’s for a few hours—she thanked God for Nicole for the thousandth time—giving her a few hours to herself.

Which tonight meant a few hours on the computer. Since Ron’s surprise visit that morning, she had spent the entire day spinning him around in her mind, looking for answers. And she hadn’t found any. Despite her best efforts, she once again felt herself succumbing to the puppy dog syndrome: feeling sorry for him, wanting to help him, comfort him. Maybe even God was directing those feelings.

And yet.

And yet that knot of jumbled emotions wouldn’t leave, and his morning visit had also done much to complicate those feelings of danger. He’d talked about tasting copper; right away that made her think of an epileptic biting his tongue—especially when coupled with his gobbledygook about visions.

She typed
seizures
into her screen’s search box, hesitated a moment, then added
hallucinations
and quickly hit the Search button. There, she’d done it; she’d admitted to herself that Ron was having hallucinations. She scrolled through the list of results until she came to a link labeled ‘‘Joan of Arc and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.’’ The resulting page was a scholarly article examining the life of Joan of Arc, concluding that her visions had been the result of epileptic seizures.

Rachel picked up her glass of water and took a long, deep drink. Did Ron suffer from epilepsy? (Or, as the article called it, TLE?) And if so, did that make him a danger to their son? Her maternal instincts were telling her yes.

Okay, if he had a history of mental instability, mental illness, whatever, he may have been a patient at various institutions. Maybe he’d escaped right before coming to Montana.

She backed up and typed
Ron Gress
in the search bar. Several thousand hits; no good. She tried
Ron Gress
and
Red Lodge
and came up with a few dozen results, most of them related to his employment with the local school district. Had he ever said where he’d lived before? Nebraska. He’d mentioned something about his dad living in Nebraska his whole life. She tried
Ron Gress
and
Nebraska
. The first half dozen or so were road race results. She smiled, doubting that Ron had run any marathons recently. The seventh result was an obituary. She winced when she read it: a young baby, only days old, had died in Bingham, Nebraska, thirty-two years ago. Bingham. Yes, she recognized it now; Ron had mentioned that town specifically—had talked about it when he mentioned his father. Creepy, kind of. But certainly no grand conspiracy at work; people, including babies, unfortunately died.

She returned to the Red Lodge results and clicked on the public employment records for Ron again. She was about to close the window when she noticed Ron’s birth date: it was the same as the dead baby’s from Bingham. She was sure of it. Just to double check, she pulled the birth record out of the browser’s recent history.

Yes, the Ron Gress who was the father of her child shared a birthday with a Ron Gress who had died when he was just three days old. And both of them were from the same small town in Nebraska.

She felt a cold sliver of ice starting to wedge its way into her spine. This was beyond coincidence, and her mind raced immediately to one conclusion: Ron had stolen his name from a dead child.

Everything inside told her this was the case. It made such perfect sense. He’d escaped from some mental facility—probably somewhere in Nebraska, if not in this place called Bingham—then changed his identity. Slipped to Montana, a la the Unabomber, and hidden out for several years.

She had no way of proving that, but she thought she’d probably spent enough time searching on Google. She shut her iBook and went to the sink to refill her glass with more water. Outside the window above her sink, orange and yellow leaves cascaded to the ground. She watched them a few moments, trying to appreciate their beauty, but thoughts of Ron refused to leave her mind.

She had no way of confirming her theory, but did that matter? She’d met the chief of police, a nice enough guy with a name like a Nordic god. Odin, but not quite that. What was it? Odum, that was it. If she called and talked to him, let him know what she’d found, it might be worthwhile; if Ron was wanted somewhere else, she’d be doing a good deed. If it was a dead end, well, where was the harm?

As another golden leaf floated lazily to the ground, Rachel turned and went to the phone.

22

FREEING

As soon as Jude was outside, he made his feet slow down. He wasn’t going to do the kid in the basement any good by piquing Sohler’s suspicions; if Sohler smelled anything amiss, he’d most likely try to lead Jude away from his home.

Jude watched the man walk down the block and get into his pickup, its front now dented from the accident. Jude strolled to his car, using what he hoped seemed a casual pace, then opened the door and jumped in. Sohler was pulling out of his spot, so Jude jammed his key into the ignition and cranked it. He wheeled out into the street, following a half block behind.

He tracked the pickup as it headed north of town, toward the more isolated homes hidden in the surrounding forest. Of course that would be the case; a child kidnapper would want plenty of privacy, wouldn’t he? Jude thought briefly of phoning for help. Maybe he could call the police officers he’d met at the wreck. He couldn’t remember the name of the first one, but he did remember Chief Odum. Yeah, he could call Odum and explain everything.

He took his foot off the gas, letting Sohler get more of a lead. No, Odum was a bad move. Odum would ask how Jude knew about the abducted kid, and he was pretty sure the chief wouldn’t buy any story he might come up with, no matter how clever.

Still, he could call anonymously, couldn’t he? Call Chief Odum and tell him to check out the address of the home, that he was a neighbor who had heard screams or something. Wouldn’t that work?

Maybe. Except another thought lingered in the back of Jude’s mind: He didn’t know what was going to happen in Sohler’s house.

If Sohler killed his victims, he could pick tonight to do it. He could pick the minute he walked through the door, in fact. Maybe he even made it a ritual: he liked to go to the Red Lodge Cafe for the daily special before he killed the kids and dumped them in a ravine behind his house.

No. Jude would have to stop this man himself. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do it, but something deep inside told him he was going to try.

Up ahead, the pickup signaled and made a left turn into a sloping driveway, away from the mountains and toward Rock Creek. Jude slowed but drove past. He pulled to the side of the road a few hundred yards away and killed the engine, then got out of the car. Through a grove of aspens he saw the brake lights of Sohler’s pickup flashing. That meant the driveway was only an eighth of a mile at the most; he could jog to the house easily.

Jude considered his next move. He had no weapon. Maybe he could rummage around and find . . .

An idea flashed in his brain.

He jumped back in his car, started it, and spun gravel as he turned around and headed toward the gas station about a quarter mile back. He floored the accelerator, worried each passing second might be the last for some child. And wasn’t that strange, now that he thought about it? He knew Sohler’s name, but he didn’t know the name of the child in the basement. He had seen the face in the shadows, but he had never—well, maybe
received
was the best word for it—the name.

Jude careened into the gravel parking lot of the gas station, spraying rocks away from his tires as he braked to a stop by the pay phone. As soon as the car was in park, he was out the door and heading for the booth. He reached for the phone book, cursing as he realized he didn’t have to follow Sohler to get his address. He could have looked it up in the phone book, maybe even sneaked out of the Red Lodge Cafe ahead of Sohler and freed the child.

Jude forced the regret out of his mind. He had a job to do right now, and he needed to concentrate on it. He flipped open the phone book and found the ‘S’ listings, then looked for
Sohler, Kenneth
.

He took a deep breath, then picked up the phone and dialed. A man’s voice answered on the second ring. ‘‘Hello?’’

Jude closed his eyes, then spoke slowly. ‘‘Mr. Sohler? Mr. Kenneth Sohler?’’

A pause on the line. ‘‘Yeah?’’

‘‘This is, uh, Chief Mike Odum down at the Red Lodge Police Department. We have a bit of a problem we could use your help with.’’

‘‘A problem? What is it?’’

He took another deep breath. ‘‘If you could come down to the station, sir, we can talk about it here.’’

The line stayed quiet for a few moments before the voice spoke again. ‘‘Is this about . . . did you find . . . Janet?’’

Who was Janet? A girlfriend? A co-worker? Could it be a child he was holding captive? No, he wouldn’t be mentioning her to the chief of the Police Department. Still, it seemed Janet might be the right hook to lure him out of the house.

‘‘Yes, sir, I’m afraid it is about Janet.’’

He heard a long, drawn-out breath at the other end. ‘‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’’

‘‘Thank you, Mr. Sohler. We appreciate your help.’’ He hung up the phone. The phone’s handset was slippery with his sweat, and a dull roar rumbled in his ears, but he had done it.

Jude went back to his car and got in—he’d left it running in his rush to dial the phone—then killed the engine. Kenneth should be speeding by in just a few minutes. He hoped.

He waited two or three minutes but saw no pickup. Saw no car of any kind, for that matter. An icy block of dread began to settle in his stomach. What if he’d just hurried Sohler into killing the child? He hadn’t thought of that possibility after forming his plan, and now . . .

Jude looked at his watch, then slammed his car into gear. It wouldn’t take him more than a few minutes to get there.

When he passed the home, he saw the pickup still sitting in front of it. He chose a driveway farther down the highway and pulled into it. He killed his lights as he parked alongside the driveway, just inside the aspen grove. He put the keys in his pocket and slid out of the vehicle. It was twilight now; in just a few more minutes the whole valley would be dark.

Jude jogged through the trees toward the house. Warm yellow lights glowed inside the home now, although he couldn’t see anybody. At the edge of the trees he paused and considered. He had no choice; he needed to break into the house, because he
knew
something bad was happening.

He crept toward the front door, hoping Sohler didn’t have a dog that would start barking and warn of his presence. He bent over, crouching as he moved to the front door, then peeked in the window.

Sohler was coming toward the door.

Panic gripped Jude for a second, but he didn’t have much more than a second. It was dark out here, no outside lights on the home.

He jumped off the front steps and pressed himself into the corner between the steps and the home’s foundation. Coming from the brightly lit house, Sohler’s eyes wouldn’t be adjusted to the darkness. And who would look into the shadows by their front stairs as they left? Not Sohler, Jude hoped.

The door squeaked open even before he had totally settled into a crouched position. He made himself go stiff, and he held his breath as he heard the shuffling of Sohler’s shoes just inches above his head. After a few terrifying moments of silence, Jude heard an unmistakable metal-on-metal slide he knew very well: the sound of a dead bolt engaging.

Even after Sohler walked down the front steps, Jude continued to hold his breath for a few seconds. Silence returned. Maybe Sohler was standing in front of him, unseen, waiting for Jude to move.

Then, the door of the pickup creaked open and shut again. The engine roared to life, and the lights came on.

The lights. Here was something else he hadn’t thought about. If Sohler happened to be looking at his front steps as he backed up and turned around, he’d see a man crouching at the front of his home. And if, like so many other folks in these parts, Sohler happened to be a hunter, he’d certainly have a gun mounted in that pickup.