Chapter 4 #3
kept coming, unrelenting in finding flesh and bone until the pain had no beginning, no end, and that was all that remained.
His throat filled with a thick coppery liquid, and Jamie thought he would choke on his own blood.
Hours later, he woke to a gentle shake of his shoulder and a voice. “Oh my God. Hey, buddy, hey,” it said. “You okay?” It
was a young man, his voice scared and uncertain. Jamie tried to open his eyes, but the sky was too bright, and sleep kept
dragging him back into blissful unconsciousness. Every inch of his body hurt, but the electric pain in his mouth was the worst.
He used his tongue to feel around and found the jagged edges of his broken right molars.
The sound of an approaching car filled Jamie with a panic, and he cried out. The cool morning air sent shock waves of pain
into the space where his teeth used to be. The driver was coming back. He was going to finish what he’d started.
“Weston,” a far-off voice said, a woman this time. “Good game last night. You’ll get them next time.” And then there was a
change in her tone. “Everything okay here?”
“I don’t know. It looks like he’s hurt really bad,” the young man said.
Jamie heard the same crunch of dry grass beneath feet that he’d heard the night before.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” the woman said. “He’s just a baby,” she said. “Is he still alive?”
“I think so,” the youth said. “But he’s really hurt.”
I am, Jamie wanted to say. I am alive. He wanted them to call for help, call the police, find his sister.
A shadow moved in front of the sun, and Jamie felt warm fingers press against the inside of his wrist. “He’s got a good, strong
pulse,” the woman said. “I’m going to drive to the gas station up the road and call the police and for an ambulance. You okay
to stay here with him, Weston?” she asked.
Jamie ran the name through his mind. Weston. The only one with anything close to that name was Wes Drake, an older kid. A senior whose family owned most of the land in
the county.
“Yes, ma’am,” Wes said. But he didn’t sound okay. He sounded scared.
Maybe I could still die, Jamie thought. Tears filled his eyes, then spilled down his cheeks, the salty liquid setting the
deep cuts in his face afire.
“Oh man,” Wes said. “Don’t cry, it’s going to be okay. Mrs. O’Brien is going to get help. She’s a teacher at the high school.
I think your sister has her for English. That’s her car down the road, right?”
How did Wes Drake know Juneau? No one knew them, especially the rich kids who lived in Woodson County their entire lives.
Jamie thought of the car barreling toward him, then the hulking figure standing over him before a large foot stomped down
on his face. Where was Juneau? What had happened to her? Icy panic flooded his chest, and Jamie tried to sit up, but the pain
kept him pinned in place. “Juneau,” he tried to say, but it came out as a garbled “Uno.”
“Hold still, hold still,” Wes urged, but Jamie couldn’t. If someone had tried to kill him, then what had happened to Juneau? Did that mean she was dead or lying in a ditch bleeding too?
“Uno, Uno,” he cried out again. Fuck, Jamie thought, he sounded like he’d just won a kid’s stupid card game.
“J. J., stop!” Wes ordered. “Hold still. You’re going to make it worse.”
Jamie knew this was true, could feel the pain migrating throughout his body, but couldn’t stop screaming his sister’s name.
Wes pressed his hands against Jamie’s shoulders, trying to keep him flat, and Jamie felt the other boy’s fingers momentarily
disappear into the shredded flesh below his collarbone, then touch bone. Wes withdrew his fingers as if electrocuted, and
then they were both screaming. It wasn’t until later, after Jamie was out of the hospital and emerging from the painkiller
fog that he’d been in for weeks that he remembered Wes Drake calling him by name. Jamie was surprised and, if he was being
honest, a little bit pleased to know that big-shot football star, Wes Drake, knew who he was.
Now Jamie kicks at the hard-packed dirt at the edge of the road. Over twenty-five years have passed. Why has he come back
here? Jamie wonders. To stare at the spot where he nearly died and his sister disappeared? Seasons have come and gone, and
the wind, rain, and snow have pounded this earth but revealed nothing. In all these years there have been no reliable sightings
of Juneau. Not a scrap of clothing, not the silver ring she wore on her right thumb, no collection of bones or teeth.
Go home, Jamie, Juneau’s voice scrapes across his skin. And this time, he’s going to listen to his sister. Once he wraps up this case, he’s
leaving Nightjar and going home to his wife.
Jamie pulls back onto the road, and the navigation system directs him along a winding road that eventually straightens.
Fifteen minutes later two pinpricks of light appear.
As he comes closer, he sees that they originate from the headlights of a cruiser.
The deputy inside is sipping coffee, making sure no one disturbs the scene.
Jamie parks and steps from his car. The air is still heavy with the scent of smoke and wet wood.
The barn is nothing but a sodden pile of lumber.
Jamie hopes there is still some evidence beneath the rubble, but that will have to wait until sunrise.
He likes to step into the debris field, amid the wreckage, and get an up close and personal perspective of the scene.
He calls out to the deputy, who also steps from his car with his hand on his sidearm.
“Supervisory Special Agent Jamie Saldano,” Jamie says, lifting his badge from the loop around his neck. He squints against
the glare of the flashlight that the deputy centers on his face.
“Bill Ladd. I’m a Woodson County deputy,” the officer says, lowering the light so that Jamie can get a better look at who
he’s talking to. Deputy Ladd is a short, powerfully built man, a few years older than Jamie. “The sheriff said you’d be showing
up. Not much to see right now. Too dark, but you’re welcome to walk the scene. We did put a tent over the explosion site as
soon as the firefighters gave the all clear.”
“It’ll wait until the morning,” Jamie says, agreeing that it’s much too dark to get any kind of sense of the scene. “What’re
your initial thoughts? Accident? Arson?”
“I doubt it’s arson,” Ladd says. “I’m guessing the planned explosion went south. The fire marshal will be here after sunrise.”
Are the homeowners available?” he asks.
“No, they’re both at the hospital,” Ladd says.
“And their names?” Jamie asks.
“Wes and Madeline Drake,” Ladd says, wiping mist from his face. “They own this ranch, along with Wes’s brother, Dix, though
he doesn’t have much to do with the day-to-day workings.”
Jamie’s heart starts pounding as anxiety winds itself around his throat.
This would be the time to call SAC Sykes and tell him he needs to recuse himself from the case, but something stops him.
He hasn’t done any actual investigating yet.
He doesn’t even know what they are dealing with. “How many dead?” he manages to ask.
“Right now, one, but there are plenty of injured. I think there were no less than a dozen ambulances from area hospitals that
showed up. If you want to talk to the Drakes, your best bet is to drive to the hospital in Jackson.”
“I’ll be back at first light, but call me if something comes up,” Jamie says, handing Ladd his business card.
The drive from Lone Tree Ranch to the hospital takes him about thirty minutes. He tries not to think too hard as he travels
down the winding country roads and long highways until lazily spinning wind turbines, ghostly giants, give way to more prehistoric
landforms. Jamie knew he would find himself back in Nightjar again one day. Maybe he’d even wanted to be back here. Why else
would he have taken this job? Why else would he have dragged his wife all the way here?
Jamie parks his car in the hospital lot. It’s one thirty in the morning, but the sooner he can talk to any witnesses, the
better. Jamie pulls his lanky frame from the SUV and stretches, his muscles tight from the long drive from home. He walks
through the brightly lit parking lot to the hospital emergency entrance. Inside, the waiting area is nearly empty now, except
for a few miserable-looking people, and he’s welcomed by a weary woman sitting behind a desk with a plastic barrier. Jamie
shows her his badge, and she guides him into the inner workings of the ER. The smell of latex gloves and antiseptic is strong.
A tall man, dressed in cowboy boots and a Western shirt, his face smudged with soot, is looming over a petite nurse who is not in the least intimidated. The two are shouting at each other, and a deputy is trying to wrench her way in between the man and the nurse, but neither is budging.
Jamie fights the urge to intervene. Over the years he’s found it much more effective, when entering the fray of a new case,
to linger on the periphery, to watch, to examine the dynamics before flashing his ATF credentials. Better to be seen as a
resource rather than an interloper.
“If you’ll come with me, Mr. Monaghan,” the deputy urges. “We can go speak somewhere privately.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” the man shouts. “I want to see my wife. Now!” He glares at the nurse who calmly explains
that there is no way she’s letting him search the examination rooms for his wife.
A very pregnant woman wearing a hospital gown steps from an exam room. Eyes wide, she takes in the scene in front of her.
“Dalton,” she says. No one appears to be listening, and the shouting continues. Jamie is ready to step in when the pregnant
woman speaks again. “Dalton, I’m so, so sorry,” she says, loudly. “She’s gone.”
Dalton turns to her. “What do you mean?” he asks, his voice filled with fear.
“Johanna’s gone. She died,” the woman says, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m so sorry.”
“Died?” the man repeats, his eyes narrowing with confusion. “Johanna?”