An End to a Silence: A mystery novel (The Montana Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

A
freezing wind blew into the station as Ward opened the door, and a few tiny ice
crystals followed. He thought it wouldn’t be long before there was a serious
snowfall. Since he had arrived from Texas he hadn’t really been much troubled
by the cold but now he felt it seeping into his bones. He felt sick and his
head throbbed in time with his heartbeat and he slumped into his chair and
suddenly felt woozy. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and when he opened
them he noticed that the middle knuckle on his right hand was showing signs of
swelling and a dull ache spread up from it to his wrist. Shouldn’t be broken,
but he would put something frozen on it later. He tried to recall what he had
done to Troy but couldn’t. He remembered arriving at the house but everything
after that was a blur. He vaguely remembered throwing the ski gloves in a
dumpster.

He looked
around the station and saw that Newton wasn’t around. McNeely was eating an
apple and Ward wondered if she ever stopped eating. Poynter called her Big Mac,
which was an ironic moniker as she was skinny and small but she could eat her
way through a ten-course meal and still stop somewhere on the way home for a
late bite.

He caught
her eye and she gave him a long searching look. She came over and said, “You
look like shit.”

“Thanks,”
Ward said.

“Things
gone quiet around here,” she said.

“So I
see.”

McNeely
took a bite of her apple and her eyes lingered on Ward. “So, what’s the story?”

“Too long
to tell.”

She
nodded as if she understood. “Well, it’s quiet around here.” She took another
bite of the apple and gave Ward space to come back. He didn’t. He took off his
hat and massaged his temples.

“Hand
looks kinda swollen,” she said. “You should get something cold on that.”

“I know,”
Ward said, but he didn’t offer any more and McNeely retreated back to her desk.

On her
way back she shouted, “So goddamn quiet around here. We should party!” and Ward
struggled a smile.

Then he
saw the note on his desk – a telephone message to call the reporter Pete
Larsson. He screwed it up and tossed it in the direction of the trash can but
it fell short. He picked it up on his way out and he slam-dunked it this time.

He’d
brought in the three boxes of material related to the little boy’s
disappearance and Jesús had watched him do it, following him around but never
going out the door.

Ward sat
on the bed and opened the first box of three – witness statements.

It was an
hour later when he next looked up. Jesús was asleep with one eye that kept
opening now and then to look at Ward.

Already
he had two or three people he would like to talk to who had offered statements.
Nothing really jumped out on a first read and he would take a second pass over
it all but one thing that struck him was how the boy just happened to vanish
into thin air. There were possible sightings here and there in the following
days, all of which would have been followed up, but he knew from these kinds of
cases that most sightings would prove to be fruitless. And numbers of sightings
where a child was involved tended to be higher. People wanted to find him and
they wanted to help. But every false sighting was a waste of resources and a
distraction to the focus of the search. And it could result in the police being
diverted away from the real location of the boy and sent on a wild goose chase
across the county or even state. He’d seen it before.

But this
case was different. Yes, there were sightings, and lots of them, but none of them
convinced Ward on first reading. Apart from one. The boy had been seen talking
to another boy the afternoon he’d disappeared. That boy turned out to be called
Percy Mallory. Mallory had said he’d seen Ryan crying and had asked what was
the matter but Ryan wasn’t in no mood to talk and that was that. He was
probably the last person to see Ryan alive apart from his abductor. It wasn’t a
lead. Just told Ward that this was a small town where everybody was connected
with everybody. And he knew he couldn’t go talk to Mallory. Knew Mallory would
probably go running straight to Gammond to tell him Ward was digging in areas
he shouldn’t be.

Way he
was feeling it, the boy had probably been abducted and murdered soon after.
Probably picked up by a predator, a pedophile, and whisked away to his death.
Probably buried somewhere in the woods and unlikely ever to be found save by
worms. Best hope was that an animal would dig him up and uncover enough of him
to be discovered by someone out hiking. But that hadn’t happened yet and was
now an unlikely scenario.

So where
had he gone? Who had taken him? Was it the old man Bill O’Donnell, his own
grandfather? He’d suddenly found God just before Ryan was reported missing. On
the same day as he was out searching for his missing truck. Newton was right.
It did seem odd, but it wasn’t conclusive.

Was it
someone else did it who then paid O’Donnell for his silence? The monthly
payments to Alice White might be classed as suspicious. Was that where he was
getting his money from? Maybe it was a guilty conscience made him hand money
over to Alice for her work with children. Or the old man might just have been
very generous. Nothing definite to say he’d received a payoff.

Ward
decided he would investigate that angle anyway. It added up to a lot of money
on a janitor’s salary. Up to now he hadn’t much else but he would carry on
digging to see what was uncovered. He wrote a list out of people he would like
to re-interview. A man who said he saw something weird on the night of his
disappearance. The principal at the school where O’Donnell was janitor. Alice
White again.

He wanted
to interview O’Donnell himself but he would have to rely on the interview
transcripts from Newton’s interrogations. Was there anything in there that
Newton had missed? Anything he had said that maybe should have been followed
up? Newton’s instinct had maybe been right after all and O’Donnell could
possibly have had some involvement. But he remained unconvinced that O’Donnell
had killed the boy. That still didn’t seem to fit.

He opened
the next of the three boxes. Newton’s case notes and various reports in this
one. Ward started to flick through them and one name was prominent throughout.
William O’Donnell. He tracked Newton’s growing obsession with the man and
seeming desperation as he turned page after page and his headache got worse and
he felt cold and lifeless.

Newton’s
SUV pulled into the parking lot of Sunny Glade. He cut his headlights and the
world was an oppressive gloom. When he stepped out of the vehicle, he looked up
at the sky and ice crystals fell onto his face and he shivered and hurried into
the reception lobby. Jackie, the receptionist, greeted him with a smile. She
knew him most recently from the photograph on the front of the
Westmoreland
Echo
.

Newton
picked up a brochure from the counter and flicked pages over and then put it
back. He saw the yucca plant and the orchids but he didn’t know if they were
real, they were so perfect.

“Is there
anything I can help you with today, sir?” she asked.

Newton
said, “I’m just going to have a look around. Mr. O’Donnell’s room.” And then he
saw the look in Jackie’s eyes. The one that said you let one of our children be
taken and you didn’t catch the son of a bitch that took him. But she continued
to smile and Newton shrugged off the feeling he had. Maybe he was imagining it.

“No
problem. If I could just get you to sign the guestbook,” she said.

“Of
course,” Newton said, and then, “Say, would you mind if I took a look at that?”
He signed the book and flicked back to the night the old man died. Was
murdered. “Everybody who visits signs this, right?”

“That’s
right, sir.”

“So this
here is a record of everybody who visited on the night Mr. O’Donnell died?”

“Yes.”

“You were
working that night, right?”

“That’s
correct. I already spoke to that other police,” Jackie said.

“No,
that’s fine. I just wanted to go over what we know just to be a hundred
percent. Cross the t’s and dot
the i
’s.”

“I
understand that,” she said.

“I don’t
see Mr. Kenny’s signature on here. He said he was here that night. He always
not sign in?”

“He’s the
owner. He doesn’t need to sign in.”

“Okay,
that’s fine,” Newton said. “What time did he arrive?”

“I didn’t
see him arrive, but I saw him leave,” Jackie said, and Newton’s head snapped
up.

“You didn’t
see him arrive? He come through a back entrance?”

“Only one
entrance and this is it. Back door is locked off from the outside in. It’s an
emergency exit only.”

“So how’d
he get in?” Newton was trying not to sound too interrogatory and he smiled to
reinforce that.

“I guess
he walked in,” Jackie’s smile was a distant memory now.

“But you
would’ve seen him, no?”

Jackie
pulled herself upright and said quietly, “You know, I have to take restroom
breaks.”

“Of
course you do. That’s fine. Don’t worry, you haven’t done anything wrong. Like
I said, I just need to double-check everything just to get this thing right in
my own head,” Newton said, and he turned the book back around and pushed it
back to Jackie. “I’ll just go take a look at the room now.”

“Go
ahead,” Jackie said, and then Grainger, the manager, appeared.

“Detective,”
he said. “The other detective asked me to do a full inventory of the pharmacy.
I got that in back if you can wait.”

Newton
nodded and Grainger went into a door behind the reception which led to an
office. He emerged with a few sheets of paper with a computer printout showing
names of drugs Newton had never heard of but suspected he would in a few years’
time.

“This is
the full list and I did a check against what we dispensed and everything tallies.
Yes, sir. Nothing missing.”

“That’s
great, thanks. Am I okay to take this?”

“That’s
your copy. Yes, sir,” Grainger said. Newton took the report from Grainger and
turned to go.

“Say, I don’t
suppose we can take down that tape on the door? You know something like that
can get the other residents a little jittery. If that’s okay. I don’t want to—”

“Of
course, I’ll take care of that,” Newton said, and this time he left Grainger
and Jackie, who looked ready for a restroom break. He heard Grainger say “Yes,
sir” behind him as he strode down the corridor and a ripple of music tumbled
towards him from one of the recreation rooms and it sounded like something from
the 1950s. Nostalgia was keeping these old people alive. Newton wondered if
there was any part of his life that he’d feel nostalgic about.

He tore
down the tape from outside the door and stepped in, pausing in the doorway. The
room was untouched since he had last been there. The picture of Bermuda had
been taken away as evidence, though what relevance it might have Newton
couldn’t figure out. McNeely was thorough. The bed was still ruffled from where
someone had sat and Newton sat there now and as he did he stretched his back
and he felt a twinge but not really pain, just a tightness. Progress, he
thought, and at once he didn’t feel so bad.

He looked
around and took in everything and didn’t see anything. He stood and went over
to the window and looked down at the sill where McNeely had taken the latent
prints. He looked beyond that into the grounds and wondered how tall someone
would have to be to get in that window. He decided he couldn’t see and so he
left the room and tossed the police tape behind him.

Outside
the building he picked his way around a narrow footpath, not designed for
residents but for the gardener to tend his plants. His head reached just above
the bottom of each window and he knew that whoever entered the old man’s room
was tall or very agile. That seemed to rule out James Kenny. He had no need to
clamber through windows anyway as he had a free pass to the place. They hadn’t
gone as far as taking elimination prints yet. Newton thought Ward might insist
on that soon though and piss Kenny off even more.

He turned
around and was about to make his way back when he saw the man at the top of a
small incline which was landscaped with grass and rose beds. The man wore
something that had a hood and Newton started to walk towards him and the man
started to walk away. Newton picked up his pace and so too did the hooded
figure and by the time Newton started to run the man had already made his move.

Newton
knew there was a wall in the direction the man was running and he lengthened
his stride to try to catch him before he could make it over the wall. And then
the man slipped on the moist grass, which had a fresh covering of ice crystals,
and Newton again tried to lengthen his stride. As he did so he gulped in cold
air which seemed to burn his chest and each lungful of air was harder to grab
than the next and he felt the lactic acid building in his legs.

But he
pushed on and he was now only a few yards short of the man as the man picked
himself off the ground, leaving a large divot of grass behind where his boots
had gained purchase. And then the man was off again, and he started to pull
away from Newton as the wall got closer. A pain started to form in Newton’s
chest and seemed to spiral around inside his ribs before settling into a
searing stab just beneath his breast bone. He momentarily pulled up and the air
in his lungs seemed to catch there. He couldn’t exhale and suddenly adrenaline
took its own stab at his heart and the air rushed out of him and he took
another few short gulps of air and the pain receded.

And then
he set off again but by now the man was at the wall, where he paused and looked
back at Newton. He pulled down his hood and revealed the ghost of Ryan Novak.
Newton stopped dead and just stared and blinked heavily twice to clear his eyes
as the cold air swirled around him and scratched at his cheeks, which were
turning redder. He wanted to say something but he couldn’t find the breath to
make the words. His chest heaved and ached and he thought he saw the man who
looked like Ryan Novak take a step towards him. Newton rested his hands on his
knees and wondered if he would fall over as his head felt like it was filled
with helium.

When the
man turned and climbed carefully over the wall Newton didn’t move and didn’t
speak. He stared at the wall and wanted to cry out, but the cry was inside him
and it rattled around his heart, and then he did slump down untidily and sat on
the damp grass. The slope of the grass bank, coupled with gravity, forced him
to lie down, and he looked up at the ice crystals, which continued to fall,
millions of them, each catching the glow coming from the security lights that
shone over the grounds of Sunny Glade. And then Newton realized that the man
had held on to one of the light poles to help himself over the wall. He called
McNeely. There must be prints on it.

Ward was
driving but he still didn’t feel good. He had the passenger window half-down
and the freezing wind circled his head. His head had started to clear a little
and the pain in his temples had subsided. But he felt very tired and his bones
were lead-lined.

He had
received a call from Cherry. She had asked if he would go pick up Laurie from
Troy’s parents’ home in Bozeman. Didn’t know who else to ask. He had
immediately said yes. Cherry especially didn’t want Troy’s father to see her in
the state she was in and Ward agreed that was probably wise. But the mention of
Troy poured on the weariness and made him wince at the pain in his swollen
knuckle, which he looked at now as he drove.

He rolled
down the window on his side of the car and tried to stick his damaged right
hand out of it but couldn’t quite reach across himself to do it, and then the
cold was too much for him and he rolled both windows back up. Speeding cars
passed him every now and then and disappeared into the distance. A salt truck overtook
him slowly and rock salt pattered damagingly against his car but he was too
weary to curse.

His cell
phone rang and he slowed a little and answered it. Newton still sounded short
of breath and Ward was concerned about his shaky voice but said nothing.

“I have
just seen someone who may be important to both cases,” breathed Newton.

“Go on,”
Ward said.

“I saw
him before back at the doctor’s house but I didn’t say anything then. I gotta
tell you I thought I was seeing a ghost but I just seen him again.”

“Who? Who
did you see?” Ward asked and he realized he had pulled over.

“Ryan
Novak.”

Ward
didn’t answer at first because he thought he had misheard. Before he could ask
Newton to repeat what he had said Newton had already repeated the name.

“I don’t understand,”
Ward said.

“Neither
do I, but I saw him just now and I saw him back there too.”

“Did you
talk to him?”

“He ran,”
Newton said. “He ran but then he stopped and he looked at me and it was him.”

“Hold on.
Let me think.” Ward put the wounded knuckle to his lips and blew on it to cool
it.

“Ain’t
nothing to think about, Ward. Ryan Novak was right there in front of me. Could
tell he was an O’Donnell by his features.”

“But you
could be mistaken. It was twenty-five years ago. How could you be sure?”

“I know.”

“So there
is no Ryan Novak murder investigation no more, that what you’re telling me? The
kid’s still alive and well?”

Newton
was silent for a moment and then he said, “I don’t know. I just don’t know what
the hell to think right now. My ass is soaking wet and I fell over and I feel
old again, Ward. I feel old.”