Chapter 4
him
Oscar and I got to Seattle just after midnight.
Eggy had slept the entire plane ride. I’d made sure to pack enough of his pain meds to last him through the next ten days, but day by day, I could feel him slowly slipping away.
I held him all night once we got to the hotel for the overnight layover.
Somehow, I resisted the urge to tell the little guy to hold on, but I wanted to.
So selfish to ask a pup that’d been loyal and loving the entire fifteen years of his long life to endure the discomfort and fatigue, to hang in there because I needed him, but I’d come to believe he was my talisman.
If Eggy was alive, there was still hope that Abby was too.
Unless, of course, the rented Tahoe they’d pulled out of the river held her remains. I’d already braced myself for that. Or I tried to.
I swore to myself that I was gonna hold it together long enough to identify her remains, get her and Eggy back home, then give him one final, best day before sending him off to be with her.
Back in Austin, I had the vet on standby, and she was willing to come to the house.
He’d be surrounded by everyone he loved—save the most important one. It was the best I could offer him.
Afterward, I’d bury them together, because both of them would want it that way. And in the place down deep in my heart, where my living grief sometimes found a foothold, I had plans to join them.
“Sir,” Oscar whispered.
I startled and Eggy moaned. He was wrapped in my arms, and I must’ve dozed off for an hour or two. I carefully set him to the side and then edged away from him, tucking the covers around him and getting out of bed.
“What time is it?”
“Five.”
I nodded and yawned. “If I remember, the coffee’s pretty good here.”
Oscar offered me the mug in his hand. “I made you a cup.”
“Thanks, bud.”
“You’re welcome, sir.”
We started to get dressed and pack up when I thought of something. “Oscar?”
“Yeah?”
“Stop calling me ‘sir.’”
He was near the door and my back was to him. I was busy gathering up Eggy in my arms with his blanket.
Oscar didn’t reply right away; he waited until I turned around to face him. “With respect, Special Agent Rivers—”
“I quit, remember?” I snapped. I hadn’t meant to. It seemed like everything out of my mouth these days had a hard edge. With a grimace, I added, “Sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”
“No harm, no foul. But I’m going to keep calling you ‘sir’ because you’ve earned it. Whether you’re an active agent has nothing to do with it…sir.”
I sighed. They all wanted me to go back to being good ol’ Special Agent Dutch Rivers—but that was the guy who had the love of his life at his side. I couldn’t work for the Bureau without her. I couldn’t even walk into the fucking building without her.
Still, I was too exhausted to argue with Oscar, so I gave in. For now. “Fine. Whatever. We gotta go.”
The plane ride to Missoula was cold. Eggy woke up for a bit, and he seemed a little bit perky. I fed him the Canadian bacon from my Egg McMuffin, and he loved it. One positive sign, at least.
From the small Missoula airport, we loaded into the F-150 that Oscar had rented and began to haul ass.
I was glad I didn’t have to tell him to step on it. The waiting for word was killing me.
We finally got to the Lewis he smelled; his uniform was always wrinkled and riddled with stains; and beyond that, he was lazy, stupid, unsympathetic, and without tact or good manners; and he knew as much about investigating as I know French.
“Bon-bon, wee-wee” is the level of Sheriff Wheaton’s investigative and interpersonal skills.
Still, I wasn’t gonna wait to hear the news—whatever it was—about my wife’s fate one second longer than I needed to. “I’m braced. It’s okay,” I told Oscar.
I left Eggy in the truck, wrapped in his sweater and covered in blankets. I wouldn’t leave him long on such a cold morning, but the cab was well insulated and warm, and he’d been fed and given his pain pill, so he’d be fine for at least an hour.
I led the way to the station, which was larger than you might think, with a central A-frame main section and two boxy wings off each side.
Over the course of my investigation into Abby’s disappearance, I’d done a little digging into county records and learned that the county sheriff’s office covered a huge swath of territory—roughly two hundred square miles.
Wheaton and his two deputies mostly patrolled the highway, handing out speeding tickets (“Payday,” as they put it) and responding to the occasional distress call—mostly medical emergencies, auto accidents, drunk drivers—regular stuff.
In the past fifty years, the county had seen thirty-eight people go missing: most before Wheaton’s time.
Of those thirty-eight, twelve had been found, wandering and cold, lost in the woods.
The rest were divided into four camps: Nine had been fly-fishing and had wandered too deep into the river only to get caught up in the current, their bodies later discovered downstream; ten were hunting accidents, which meant someone else had poor aim with a gun or bow;
and the rest died either from natural causes like a heart attack or by suicide.
Up to this past fall, the county had a perfect record of closing their missing persons cases.
Abby was the exception…leave it to her.
I followed Oscar through the entrance and into the stale air of the central building, which was three times bigger than it needed to be, given its purpose.
Wheaton was pouring himself a cup of coffee and telling a story to his deputies that had them laughing.
It immediately ticked me off.
“Wheaton!” I called.
He glanced over his shoulder at us, then turned back to his deputies to finish the punchline.
I badly wanted to deliver my own punchline directly to his face.
Oscar took a step in front of me, probably sensing that I was close to losing my cool.
Wheaton told his joke, his deputies laughed—although one had the sense to do so nervously once he looked at my expression—then the lumbering slob turned and headed toward us.
“Vehicle’s been towed,” he said, by way of greeting.
Oscar and I traded confused glances.
My hands curled into fists. “What does that mean?”
“It means it’s been taken to Sid’s Auto and Body Shop, at the west end of town.”
I ground my teeth. I was on the edge of totally losing my shit, but I wanted to verify the most important detail first. “I take it my wife wasn’t inside the vehicle?”
Wheaton cocked his head at me, like he was watching my reaction closely. “Nope.”
“We need details, Sheriff,” Oscar said. It was a good thing he interjected himself into the conversation because I was about to go Godzilla versus Tokyo on this dumbfuck’s ass.
Wheaton was still eyeing me suspiciously. I stared back with the fury of the gods. Finally, and never taking his gaze off me, he said, “The SUV was found just downstream from the Dalton Mountain Road Bridge.”
My fury turned to confusion. “We searched that area repeatedly. With scanners.”
We’d searched the river up and down for six miles. The Dalton Mountain Road Bridge was just about the midpoint of our search area.
“And yet . . .” Wheaton said, trailing off on purpose.
My fists squeezed together harder. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
In answer, Wheaton turned on his heel and headed over to his desk, where he plucked a piece of paper off the top of a stack there and brought it back over to us.
His wrist rested on the handle of his weapon, holstered to his rib cage, and as he came toward us, his stance was stiff, guarded, ready for action.
The two deputies—whose names I couldn’t remember, so I referred to them only as Mutt and Jeff—had both risen from their desks, their right hands casually resting on the holsters clipped to their waists.
Something was up.
And here I was with my gun safely tucked away in the truck outside.
I hadn’t left it behind out of carelessness; I’d done it out of self-preservation. I didn’t know how I’d react to the news that Abby was dead, and I didn’t trust myself to be anywhere near a weapon if or when that news ever came.
But Oscar was packing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him also casually lay his hand across the handle of the gun at his waist. Neither one of us trusted these assholes as far as we could throw them. Given their largess, that was two to three inches. Tops.
Wheaton stopped in front of me and his deputies moved to the side, flanking him. He held out the piece of paper to me, like it was a smoking gun with my DNA, fingerprints, and a signed confession on it.
I took the paper, staring down Wheaton, then his two deputies, before I looked at the paper.
“What kind of bullshit is this?” I demanded.
Oscar leaned toward me, trying to eye the fine print, so I just handed it to him. I wanted my hands free should I need to strangle this asshole sheriff.
Wheaton nodded toward the paper. “We finally got a copy of Fusco’s phone records,” he said triumphantly.
“And?”
Wheaton punched the paper with his finger. “And…look at the time stamp.”
Oscar looked up from the paper. “Which time stamp?”
Wheaton tapped the paper like an impatient schoolmaster. “It’s right there. His wife’s phone number and the call to Mrs. Fusco’s came in at—” Wheaton paused to cup his ear, like he was waiting for us to answer.
We didn’t.