The Turning Season (32 page)

“Well, he hasn't exhibited much intelligence so far, so I wouldn't rule it out. But, yeah, the more likely course is that he's long gone. On the road to Chicago or Canada or God knows where. Someplace he can start over.”

I take a deep breath and slowly let it out. “And we didn't have to choose,” I say.

She sounds ever so slightly amused. “Our hands are clean.”

“I feel horrible about all the rest of it, but kind of good about that part,” I admit.

“I think Bonnie's relieved, too. Though, of course, she feels terrible that she feels relieved. She believes she should be strong enough to make tough moral decisions and stand by them.”

I can't help grinning at that. “But why did they decide to move him so soon? I thought he'd be in the holding cell a while longer.”

“Because you were right. They fed his fingerprints into the system and they got a match. To a crime scene up in Joliet.”

Even though the information is hardly news, it still hits me like a punch in the stomach. It's a moment before I can draw in any air. “Then he better keep running,” I finally say.

“That's what we all hope.”

“So is there any reason I need to come to town today? Can I just stay here and live my own life for a few days?”

“I think that would be best. Celeste wants to go back to her own place and we've about decided she should. With the cops all over all of us, she'll probably be safer than she's been in years.”

“That makes sense. All right. Good. Thanks for calling.”

“Talk to you soon.”

I switch off the phone, lay it aside, and drop back onto the bed, snuggling closer to Joe. He says, “I take it Ryan managed to get free without any timely intervention from your little band of jail-breakers.”

“Yeah. He was left unattended as they prepared to transfer him to the county jail.”

“Where do you think he'll go?”

“I don't know. He's got a brother somewhere—Seattle, I think—but they're not close. Has some friends. But surely the cops have frozen his assets. Surely he won't be able to use credit cards or ATM machines. I mean, when he shifts back to human state he won't have
anything
—clothes, wallet, phone, car—I don't know how he'll
get
anywhere. And since his face will be plastered all over the news media as an escaped murderer—” I shake my head, which is just now lying comfortably on Joe's shoulder. “He might not get very far.”

“Ryan strikes me as someone who cold-bloodedly plans for contingencies,” Joe says. “I wouldn't put it past him to have set up a cache of clothes and money somewhere in case he ever needed it.”

“You could be right,” I agree. “He won five thousand dollars at the casino a few weeks ago. That could be hiding somewhere in a buried treasure box, just waiting for him.”

“So he gets away with murder,” Joe says. “Until the next time.”

I lift my head and look down at him. I haven't told him about Alonzo's father—not to spare Ryan, but to spare Alonzo. Joe already knows how hideous and mangled somebody's life was. I don't want him to look at Alonzo and know that was Alonzo's life. “Why do you say that?”

“Someone who believes he has the right to kill usually exercises that right more than once,” Joe says. “But we'll hope that this time he doesn't.”

“Hope hasn't done much for me the past few days,” I mutter. “But maybe it'll come through just this once.”

*   *   *

T
here's no chance of falling back to sleep, so we finally drag ourselves up and confront the day. My sleepiness wears off by the time I'm done with breakfast, and I find myself deeply happy to be back in my own world, my own routine, taking responsibility for my own assigned chores instead of relying on the helpfulness of strangers. The puppies and bunnies are fine, but I've sadly neglected the birds under my care, and before the day is out I've released two of them back into the wild.

Jinx follows me from field to barn to enclosure, trotting along self-importantly with his head held high and his tail straight out. He particularly loves our visit to the puppies in the dog run that used to be his, and he prances around on the other side of the chain-link, barking with smug superiority at the lesser creatures still stuck in captivity. I laugh so hard that I can hardly get the gate shut when I finally emerge.

I even have a chance to do a little honest-to-God veterinary work, since two of the clients who left voice mails for me are able to drive out this afternoon with very little notice. It feels good to be productive, to be useful, to be presented with problems that make sense and have simple solutions.

Aurelia was right about the cops, though—shortly before noon, a cruiser pulls onto the property and out of the car steps an officer who looks like she's about seventeen. No wonder Sheriff Wilkerson wants Joe to join the force. She's polite, I'm polite, but we don't have much valuable information to offer each other. I don't know where Ryan is and she can't tell me where they've already searched. But I get the point—and Ryan, if he's lurking out in the fields somewhere nearby, probably gets it, too. I'm under surveillance, and no escaped murderer is safe taking refuge with me.

Joe comes out and exchanges a few words with the officer before she leaves. I hadn't expected it, but apparently Joe has decided to stay out on the property with me all day. I'm not sure if this is because he doesn't have anything pressing to take care of in Quinville or if he's worried about what Terry Foucault might do—murder clearly being something in even more dire need of avenging than a barroom brawl. But Joe makes himself highly useful, fixing broken boards in the barn, rehanging a door in the second trailer, and picking up branches and other debris from the central clearing of the property.

“Trying to earn your keep?” I ask him that evening as I make dinner. He's emptying the dishwasher and setting the table for four.

“Trying to prove my worth,” he answers. “I want you to see how valuable I would be to have around for the long haul.”

My heart starts pounding madly, but I keep my voice level when I answer. “We have a few more hurdles to cross before we can be sure we're suited for long-term commitments,” I say.

“Yep,” he says. “You haven't done my laundry yet. Gotta see if you use too much bleach or fabric softener.”

“But I thought
you
would do the laundry, dear. And the ironing, of course.”

“Do people really iron these days?”

“Well,
I
don't, but I thought maybe you would.”

I'm standing at the stove, and he steps up behind me and puts his arms loosely around my waist. “I have to see you through a few transformations,” he says into my hair. “I have to see what that's like.”

I don't twist my head around to look at him. “You'll think it's freaky. You'll think it's weird.”

“Maybe. Or I'll think it's cool. Or I'll think it just
is
. But no matter what, I want to be around for the next one.”

“Unless you're on the road.”

“Okay, then the one after that. I want to be here. I want to share it. I want to put myself at the center of your life.”

I don't even bother setting down the spatula; I turn within his arms so I can kiss him. “And I want to be at the center of yours.”

“Venn diagram,” he whispers against my mouth. “The best part is the part that overlaps.”

I
'm awake when my cell phone goes off the next morning, but Joe isn't. Or, well, he wasn't. He skids from sleep with a start and a curse.

“Are you fucking
kidding
me?” he demands. “What
time
is it?”

“Six,” I say as I dive for the phone. “Celeste, not Aurelia. That might be a good sign. Hey,” I say into the mouthpiece.

“He's going to kill Terry,” she says.

I sit straight up in bed. “What? He told you that?”

“No. I just figured it out. He's going to shift back sometime today, and he's going to go after Terry.”

I put a hand to my forehead. Why am I having so much trouble thinking these days?
Because nothing that's happening is making any sense.

“Celeste—are you sure?”

“I know how he thinks! Remember? I was just lying here thinking about what assholes the Foucault brothers are and how I still don't feel all that safe with Terry walking around with a gun license, and then I realized—Ryan will think the same thing. He'll decide I'm not safe. And he won't leave Quinville until he makes sure I am.”

Every word she says makes me more convinced she's right. “All right. Then we—what do we do? Tell the sheriff?”

“No,” she says sharply. “Are you insane? After all the trouble we were gonna have trying to get Ryan out of jail
once
? We have to take care of it.”

“Take care of it
how
?”

“It'll be sometime today or early tomorrow that Ryan shifts,” she says. She's talking so fast I can tell she's already come up with a plan. “Probably this afternoon—his past few cycles have been about thirty-six hours. We have to go stake out Terry's place and wait for Ryan to show up.”

“The junkyard? Where passersby get shot at? I don't think so.”

Now Joe pushes himself up on his elbow. “What the hell are you two plotting?”

“Is Joe there?” Celeste demands. “Can he hear you?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Then go to another room while we talk this out.”

Instead, I put her on speakerphone and lay the cell phone on the pillow between our bodies. “Hi, Celeste,” Joe says.

“Dammit, Kara!”

“I'm not hatching up some crazy scheme without telling Joe about it!” I exclaim. “I'm
not
. So either deal with him, too, or count me out.”

There's silence for a moment while she fumes. “He can't call the cops,” she says.

I glance at Joe and he shrugs his bare shoulders. “Don't need to,” he whispers to me. “They're all over you guys.”

“He's okay with that,” I say aloud. “So go on.”

“I don't think we should go to the junkyard. Terry's in-laws own a farm a couple of miles east of Quinville, and Terry and his wife have been spending a lot of time there. Her mom's sick and her dad died last year, so there's a lot of work to do.”

“How do you know
that
?”

“I know some people who know them, how do you think? It's a small town.”

“Do you have an address for this farm?”

“Oh, I've been there. Ryan and I drove by it last week.”

I look at Joe and shake my head. “After the shootout but before the assault in the parking lot?” I say in a dry voice.

“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, I think that's where Ryan will go. He'll expect the cops to be watching the junkyard. And my guess is—well—”

“Well, what?”

“Plenty of places out on the farm he could have stashed Aurelia's gun. For the next time he'd need it.”

I groan and sink back against the headboard. But of course! Naturally! If you want to use your firearm again, you don't leave it in your car or your apartment or the scene of your first crime! You plant it on-site where you plan to commit your
next
murder!

“So you want us to go skulk around this farmhouse for the next day or two, waiting for Ryan to show up. And you don't think anyone will notice us. And you think we'll be able to catch Ryan before he sneaks in some back window and puts a bullet in Terry Foucault.”

“I didn't say it was a good plan,” she retorts. “But yeah. That's what I think we should do.”

“And why do you think we'll be able to convince him just to walk away?”

“We'll bring him clothes and money. We'll tell him that we'll only help him if he leaves—otherwise, we'll call the cops. We'll tell him that he's only making life worse for
us
. That we've been repeatedly questioned by the cops, even threatened. That Sheriff Wilkerson said he'd hold me as an accessory to murder.”

“He might buy that last one,” I admit.

“I think he will,” she says. “I think he had no clue how badly this could go and he knows he's not thinking clearly and he might be willing to listen to us. Just this once.”

I let out a long sigh of surrender. I'm not happy about it but I simply don't know what else to do. The world has gotten very murky since I started accumulating moral dilemmas.

“All right. When do you want me to be there? Is noon soon enough?”

“Can you make it ten? If he shifts sooner—”

“All right, all right,” I grumble. “I'll pack snacks and water bottles and—I guess I'll see you in a few hours.”

Joe leans over to make sure the phone picks up his voice. “We'll see you later,” he says.

She's silent for a moment. “You're not invited,” she says.

“Too bad.”

“Kara—!” she whines.

“He wants to come, he can come,” I say. “This is a nightmare no matter what.”

Now she's the one to sigh in capitulation and frustration. “
Fine.
But don't tell Bonnie and Aurelia.”

“Wouldn't dream of it. See you later.”

*   *   *

W
e take Joe's truck but leave the dogs behind. On the one hand, I think Jinx would probably alert us to Ryan's presence before we noticed him on our own. On the other hand, if bullets are going to be flying, Jinx and Jezebel are much safer back at my place.

We arrive at Celeste's right at the appointed time, and she has indeed put together a duffel bag for Ryan filled with food, water, clothes, a burner phone, and about five hundred dollars in cash. I'm assuming she went to Walmart this morning to buy most of the items. I never would have thought of the phone, but I approve. We'll be able to keep in touch with Ryan, at least till the charge runs down or the prepaid account runs out.

She climbs into the back of the extended cab, where I've loaded a couple of coolers and tons of other supplies to make the day pass more comfortably—a few blankets, some pillows, a roll of paper towels, two rolls of toilet paper, and hand sanitizer.

“What the hell, Kara, we're not on a camping trip,” she complains as she situates herself among the bags and bundles.

“I didn't bring a tent,” I retort. “And I thought about it.”

“Someone in the house would probably see a tent,” she says.

“Someone in the house will probably see the truck!”

“I don't think so. If I remember the layout, there's a good lookout spot on top of a hill behind some trees. We can hide there.”

Joe exits her parking lot and turns onto the main street. “So where are we heading?”

Celeste gives him directions and we follow 159 past the Strip before we turn off on a series of back roads. The last one's so isolated I'm not even sure it's got a name or designation, and though it's paved, the asphalt has degraded so much that you'd be forgiven for thinking the surface is gravel. On both sides of us, the countryside is mile after mile of cornfields, the dry stalks stiff and pale as old lace. Here and there the plowed fields are interrupted by stands of scraggly trees clustering around a shallow pond or a halfhearted stream. Now and then, an architectural feature will rise above the level landscape—a red barn, a white house, a silver silo.

I spend about five miles thinking there will be no place to hide either a truck or a raiding party, but then Celeste directs Joe to turn onto a dirt road that I would have missed completely if I'd been the one driving. About a half mile in, it splits. To the right, it comes almost immediately to an abandoned barn, its front doors hanging loose from the hinges, its paint so weathered you can see the blistering wood beneath it. To the left, the road snakes past a rise in the ground that's dotted with a stand of skinny poplars, probably planted as a windbreak about a million years ago. Beyond the trees we can see that the road leads to a cluster of buildings—house, sheds, another barn—and then the inevitable patchwork of crop fields. Corn and maybe soybeans. Hard to tell, since the harvest is long over.

“See?” says Celeste. “We can leave the truck behind this old place, and creep up the hill to watch the farmhouse. No one will see us from the house
or
the road.”

“It
does
look like the perfect spot for surveillance,” Joe agrees, guiding the truck to the right. The dirt road is bumpy with rocks and clumps of dried mud, but it feels smoother than the broken asphalt. “So if no one spots us as we're making our campsite, we're probably good for hours.”

The doors to the barn aren't quite decrepit enough for Joe to drive the truck straight in, so he pulls off the dirt track and parks behind it. We load ourselves up with comforts and necessities, then hike over to the trees, up the gentle bump in the ground that barely qualifies as a hill. No one comes driving up to catch us in our not-very-stealthy enterprise, and we don't spot anyone crossing the open space between the porch and the outbuildings as we settle ourselves in for a long wait.

Given that it's November, we've got great weather for a stakeout. It's probably close to fifty degrees, and the sun is blasting down on us from a cloudless sky. There isn't even a breeze to whip up a wind chill. I'm wearing enough layers to see me through an Alaskan winter, so I'm pretty toasty, though that might change after a few hours of sitting on the cold ground.

If we were here for any other purpose on God's earth, I might say this was a pleasant outing.

“So where do you think Ryan is hiding?” I ask Celeste once we've taken our spots. She and I are on one of the blankets, lying on our stomachs, watching the compound below. She's actually brought a pair of binoculars, although, after one quick sweep of the property, she lays them aside. “Or do you think he's not here yet?”

“I think he's here, somewhere close to the house. Probably behind one of the buildings.”

“Do you think he's seen us?”

“Hard to say.”

“Will he come over to us if he has?”

She debates. “I don't think so. Because he'll realize we're here to stop him—and it's going to take some convincing to make him stop.”

Joe is stretched out on another blanket, his head resting on a backpack, an open book propped on his stomach. I can't believe anyone could have the concentration to read in such a setting, but maybe he's just pretending, because he looks up at Celeste's comment.

“You're the one who can always figure out what Ryan's thinking,” he says. “Where'd he stash the gun? If we can find that, this thing could be over before it started.”

I point back toward the truck. “In the old barn? That would make sense.”

“Maybe,” Celeste says. “But I'm thinking closer to the house. Like, right under the porch or something. Or back behind the air conditioner.
Really
close.”

Joe's eyes narrow. “Why do you think that?”

She doesn't look at him, but I'm close enough to see her troubled expression. “Because I think he probably came here straight from the junkyard after he killed Bobby. Hoping to get Terry the same night. But Terry didn't show, or there were too many people around when Terry did drive up, or he couldn't get a clear shot. Whatever. I think he was right there close enough to touch the house, and so that's where he left the gun.”

“Makes sense,” Joe says, and drops his attention back to his book.

The next two hours creep by more slowly than I thought time could actually pass.

Celeste and I are both on high alert, which makes us edgy, but it's hard to maintain a constant focus on a landscape that shows little movement or change. Now and then we see shadows shuffling behind the windows of the house, and we nudge each other, but whoever is inside doesn't come out. Probably Terry's mother-in-law, I think. Maybe his wife as well. A rooster comes strutting around the side of the barn but disappears again after a few moments. A hawk circles overhead and we both watch it, wondering if it's Ryan and his shifting cycle has been somehow disrupted. But if it is Ryan, he doesn't settle on any of the nearby trees before winging away in silence.

We don't try very hard to make conversation, because there's not much to talk about. We've said everything we can think of about Ryan, and we can't talk about Joe because he's sitting right here. Neither of us brought anything to read, and I don't want to run down the batteries on my phone by playing games on it. Besides, I don't want to be distracted—I don't want to miss seeing Ryan as he slips from the barn to the house, or from the fields to the front lawn.