R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 02 - L O S T (7 page)

I FIRST met Tilson Wayne in the forest south of Priest River. Amanda, Meyer, Jax, and I joined the search party the morning after investigating the crime scene at the Grant residence. The night had dumped eight inches of heavy rain across the countryside and it made trekking through the Idaho wilderness that much more difficult. The footing was treacherous at best, and the only shoes I’d brought for outdoor activity were my running shoes. My prosthesis was damn good handling semi-even terrain in the city, but the computer chip was finding the constant recalculations due to ever changing ground levels a bit challenging.

Overcompensation was the worst. I would be hiking up a steep embankment, the gyro having auto-adjusted to compensate for the additional force of the good climbing leg—then the incline would flatten for a moment, or dip in the other direction, and the leg would adjust too quickly, giving me the momentary sensation of having stepped for a stair in the dark that was not there—and I would go down, hard.

“Are you all right?” Amanda asked me after one such fall.

“Shit,” I said. “Yeah. My ego took the brunt of it, I think.”

“Let’s rest,” she said.

“Just me. You keep moving. I need a couple moments to adjust the calibration of this damn leg.”

“You sure?”

“Yep. Head out.”

Amanda left to catch up with Jax and Meyer. I unbuttoned my jeans, pulled them down, and opened up the module on my leg. I switched to manual stance calibration, which meant the artificial leg would be counting on me—what was left of my upper leg—to make the physical compensations. It was a lot more work, and made me slower and less wieldy, but the change would lessen the risk of going down again.

After putting my jeans back on, I caught movement out in the peripheral forest. I spun to see a man, maybe twenty feet away, standing still, his gaze locked on me. He then raised a hand in salutation. Another searcher, I assumed. I waved in return and he moved through the thick scrub, toward where I stood.

“Tilson Wayne,” he said, extending a slender, nearly fleshless hand.

He was haggard and rough looking, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The majority of the left side of his face was tattooed with a strange design—almost like a Scot’s war paint. His hair was stringy and full of grease, as if he’d never washed it.

I accepted his grip. His hand was as cold as the bottom of a grave.

“Sorry,” he said. “Left my gloves in the truck.”

“Bobby Mac,” I said.

“I know. Word moves like greased pig shit in this little burg.”

“Didn’t see you at the gathering point this morning,” I said.

“Don’t care much for groups. Figured I would take a walk, see for myself what a man might find out here.”

“No law against it, I suppose.”

“Laws are for the innocent,” he said, looking into the brooding sky. “Going to pound us here in a bit.”

“What’s your story, Mr. Wayne?”

“Tilly. Can’t abide a man calls me by my father’s name.”

“Roger that.”

“An asshole like no other you’ve ever encountered. Dear old dad, that is. You were in the Marines.”

“You say that as a matter of fact, Tilly.”

“It a fact or ain’t it?”

“It’s a fact.”

“Then I stated correctly.”

“Why am I getting the impression there’s a little ass-busting going on here?” I said, sounding more perturbed than I was.

“A mountain man like me decides to bust your ass, you’ll know it. Sorry for the directness. Afraid it’s the only inheritance I received.”

“Direct I can handle. Did you serve?”

“Never believed much in serving the innocent.”

“That’s twice you referenced the innocent. I take it that puts you in the guilty category.”

“We’re all guilty of something,” Wayne said. “The innocent most of all.”

“I happen to believe something pretty similar.”

Tilson Wayne had distinguishing features—pointy chin with a long tuft of goatee and month-old facial hair. Big sideburns. Up close, the tattoo appeared to be a strange maze-like design. The skin on his face was sunbaked and leathery.

“Do you know the truth behind men such as us, Bobby?”

“Not sure we are cut from the same mold, sir.”

“Family is everything.”

“Family’s not something we choose.”

“Too often it don’t choose us either.”

“Almost never,” I agreed.

“BOBBY,” Amanda shouted from far up the trail.

“Here,” I yelled back. She came jogging back into the small clearing where she’d left me.

“What the hell are you doing back here?” she said. “I had to double back something terrible.”

“Sorry. Just chewing the rag with my new friend.”

I turned around. Tilson Wayne had evaporated into the damp woodland air. Before Amanda could ask me what the hell I was talking about, a thunderhead broke and the heavens poured down unmercifully.

~ ~ ~

“Never heard of him,” Jax told me in the police Suburban.

“Well I’m not crazy,” I said, realizing how totally crazy it sounded to deny it. “You didn’t see
anyone
?”

“No,” Amanda said. “And you weren’t exactly hidden from view either.”

“Thanks.”

“Just calling it like I see it. Or like I didn’t see it.”

“He said something about his old man. You know
any
Wayne’s around here?”

“None currently,” Jax said, “We can check county records when we get back.”

We did just that. And there was one Wayne family listed in the census records.

“Percival Wayne,” Jax said. “Looks like he and the wife died fifty years ago. No children.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Where are birth and death records?” Amanda said.

“Why?” Jax said.

“Census records that far back would have included a house count only. Any children who were born or died between counts wouldn’t show up in the census reports.”

“I need to hook you up with Marta Esteban. County Clerk. Woman is like a bloodhound when it comes to finding a needle in a pile of dusty records.”

~ ~ ~

Marta Esteban was a pleasantly thick, onyx-haired, attractive mixture of Nez Perce and Latina and had the spunk to back it up.

“Bobby Macaulay,” she said when we met her at the Records Division. “Your brother is a hunk and a half. Looks like you got a fair share of those genes, too.”

I smiled in spite of myself. I don’t think Amanda was amused, but she held her temper in check.

“We’re looking for names,” I said. “Babies that were born, died, anything with the Wayne surname.”

“Done, Cariño. Your brother called ahead of you. I already have what you are looking for. Question is how much do you have in recompense.”

“Barter, eh?” I said.

“Si, Cariño.” Marta winked at me and Amanda kicked me in the shin for my part in the flirtation.

“I’m Amanda,” she said. “Mother of the cariño’s
child
.”

“Lo siento, Chiquita. No offense intended.”

“You said you have some information for us?”

“Si, there was a baby born. 1922. ‘Tilson’. Born to parents Percival and Agnes Wayne.”

“Do you have any idea why the census would have missed this name?” I said.

“Census count back then was every fifteen years. There was a count in 1920 and again in 1935.”

“Tilson was born and then died in-between.”

“Si. There is a death certificate from 1933.”

“Thank you, Marta,” I said. “Jax is right, you’re a star.”

“There’s more,” she said. “I searched the old microfiche archives. We have articles from the
Coeur d’Alene Press
from everything after 1901. Including obituaries. Tilson Wayne died of injuries received in a farm accident. I printed the article for you.”

“You’re a doll, Marta.”

She looked at Amanda and shrugged her shoulders. “If you get tired of him, or have any trouble putting him in his place, you know where to find me, Chiquita.”

“Thanks,” Amanda said. “For everything.”

“Still think I was seeing things?” I said.

“No,” Amanda said, holding the printout of the old article. “I didn’t think you were crazy in the first place.”

“I don’t know. If we hadn’t been at Grand Lake—if we hadn’t witnessed the…well, you know. I don’t know what I would believe. I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that.”

“Why would Tilson Wayne be here now? And why would he appear as the full-grown man you describe? Why would he appear only to you?”

“Hmm. Questions without answers. I think that’s what they pay
us
for.”

“We’re going back to the search in the morning,” she said.

 “I think we need to talk to Meyer. The man with the plan. Have you seen him since we got rained out at the search?”

“He hitched a ride back with one of the deputies. Salem. Or Salon. Something like that. Said he had some research he wanted to do.”

Meyer’s room was three down from ours. He knew about my supposed meeting with Tilson in the forest but he’d not seen the newspaper article yet. It was time to share the knowledge.

I knocked on Meyer’s door but there was no answer.

“He’s not here,” I told Amanda.