Torn Apart (24 page)

Hershel nodded. “Had a bit of an emergency.”

“If they’re gone, who’s working the lists?”

“No one right now, but as soon as—”

J.R. grabbed Hershel by the arm. “Chief! Please! I know this is out of line, but this is our son’s life. We’ve wasted so much time already…. Show us what to do. We can read. If it’s just a matter of cross-checking names…”

Hershel’s first reaction was immediate and stronger than it had been the first time the subject came up. “Police procedure dictates…”

Then he stopped. It was the look on Katie Earle’s face that did him in. “What the hell,” he muttered, then pointed at the desks. “To make things simple, this is the list from the DMV. It’s got every late-model blue pickup in the parish. Check every owner’s name against the sexual offenders list. You can see where Tullius left off. But there’s always the possibility that someone was driving a stolen or borrowed a truck when he made the snatch, so even if there’s no match, we can’t rule out any owner with a local address, so put them on that list over there. We want to eliminate them, make sure they still have their vehicles.”

J.R. sat in one chair, Katie in the other. Without saying a word, they put their heads down and got to work as Hershel headed back to his office. He had an Amber Alert to get out.

Bobby had gone to sleep at the kitchen table with a red crayon in one hand and a yellow one in the other, the picture he’d been coloring only half-finished.

It was what Newt had been waiting for. He took the crayons out of the boy’s hands and picked him up. He lusted longingly after the small, fragile body as he carried him back to the bedroom, thinking of what it would be like when they could play.

He was still fantasizing as he tied Bobby up, but when he started to put duct tape over his mouth, he took a second look at the kid and changed his mind. His nose was so swollen, there was a danger his airway was already partially blocked. Shutting off the possibility of being able to breathe through his mouth could be a death sentence. Reluctantly, Newt put down the duct tape, smoothed the dark, ruffled hair on Bobby’s head, then shut the door as he left.

After a quick glance out the front windows, he turned on the television, then grabbed a beer. It had been days since he’d felt like doing anything but eating and sleeping, and it felt good to be up and moving around. Even though it wasn’t quite ten o’clock, he popped the top on the beer and began channel-surfing.

A few minutes later someone knocked on the door. He hit Mute, then got up to answer. It was Sam.

“Hey, Newt! Great to see you dressed and moving around a little better. I take it you’re healing up okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, just fine,” Newt said. “That your boy?”

Sam smiled and nodded at the heavyset man lifting a large chain saw from the bed of a green Dodge 4x4.

“Yep. That’s my Freddy. He’ll get this debris cleared up off your truck in no time,” Sam said.

Newt nodded. “I appreciate it,” he said. “I’ve got someplace to be tomorrow.”

Sam glanced at the raw and peeling skin on the palms of Newt’s hands.

“Reckon your hands will be well enough for you to drive?”

“I’ll manage,” Newt said, then glanced over his shoulder toward the hall. “Look, I got something on the stove. I gotta go.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sam said. “Anyway, sorry for the delay.”

“No harm,” Newt said. “As long as those trees’re gone today.”

“Count on it,” Sam said, then pulled a pair of gloves out of his pocket and went down the steps to help his son as Newt closed and locked his door.

“About time,” Newt muttered, as he returned to his chair. He picked up his beer and took a sip, then kicked back in his recliner and upped the volume on the TV.

Within minutes the loud buzz of a chain saw split the air, indicating the work had begun. Newt smiled to himself and continued to skip through channels before finally settling on a John Wayne movie.

He was just downing the last of his beer when the show he was watching was suddenly interrupted. The loud, intermittent beeps were similar to those that preceded a severe weather warning, but he knew for a fact that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

“What the hell?”

“We interrupt this programming for an important announcement. An Amber Alert has just been issued for a—”

Then they flashed a picture on the screen, and he didn’t hear another word.

The kid! They were looking for the kid! The last Newt had known, they thought he’d died in the tornado. What the hell had changed their minds?

Then he focused back on the announcement and got an answer for which he wasn’t prepared.

“—last seen being picked up by a white male wearing a T-shirt, blue jeans and a dark ball cap, and driving a blue, late-model pickup. If you see anyone answering this description accompanied by the child in this photo, call—”

Newt’s heart was pounding as he catapulted himself out of the recliner. He ran to the front windows, then to the back, peering through blinds, pushing aside curtains, looking to see if the place was surrounded. All he could see was Sam Walker and his son, Freddy, sawing up the trees.

For a few frantic moments he couldn’t think. His first instinct was to get in the truck and run. Leave the kid behind and get out while he could. But the longer he paced, the calmer he became.

The description of the abductor was vague. It could fit any number of men. And they didn’t have a tag number or model for the truck. It could be anything, Ford, Dodge, Chevy…even a foreign model. There were thousands and thousands of late-model blue trucks. He was panicking for nothing.

Still, he couldn’t stop pacing. He’d been living in Louisiana for all these years without registering as a sex offender. He’d managed to fly under the legal radar without calling attention to himself because he’d stayed out of trouble. If only he hadn’t taken the kid. If only…

“Shit. It’s too late for that,” he muttered. “What’s done is done. Now, what am I gonna do about it?”

He ran to the bedroom, just to reassure himself that the kid was still out, which he was. But as he stood and watched Bobby Earle sleeping, he realized he didn’t want to give him up. And that was when he made the decision.

He was going to make a run for it.

With the kid.

As soon as his truck was free, he was leaving Bordelaise for good. He ran to the kitchen, grabbed the box of garbage bags he used for trash days, then headed for the bedroom. He emptied the drawers of his dresser onto the floor, stuffed in as many clothes as the bag would hold, then tied it off. He grabbed another bag, then another, filling them the same way until his closet was empty. And so he went, room by room, filling garbage bags with his belongings until he got to the kitchen.

His hands were shaking, and despite the steady hum of his window air conditioners, he was sweating profusely. That made his clothes stick to his body, which aggravated his healing burns, which meant he needed to shower, put new meds on the sores and get into some dry clothes.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, and stripped in the kitchen, leaving his clothes on the floor where he’d been standing.

But his intent was immediately thwarted when he realized he’d already packed his clean clothes and towels, which meant he had to dig back through the trash bags until he found what he needed. By the time he finally got into the shower, he was shaking. He kept thinking he was hearing knocking on the door and people shouting. By the time he was finished, he was convinced the cops had found him.

It wasn’t until he turned off the water and stepped out of the tub that he realized what he’d been hearing was the movie he’d been watching. It wasn’t cops at the door. It was John Wayne in his living room.

“Lord, Lord,” Newt muttered, as he carefully patted himself dry.

His hands were shaking as he spread new ointment on his sores and then pulled a fresh T-shirt over his head, followed by another pair of loose shorts. As soon as he was dressed, he ran to the windows again.

Sam and Freddy Walker were gone. The trees that had been blocking him from leaving had been cut away, sawed into firewood and stacked at the side of the trailer.

He grabbed the car keys from the cabinet and made a mad dash outside to check on his truck. One fender had a dent. There was another on the passenger side door, along with a multitude of scratches and the shattered back windshield. All he cared about was if it would start. He slid behind the wheel and, with shaking hands, jammed the key in the ignition.

“Please, please, please,” he whispered, then turned the key.

The truck started without a hitch.

“Yes!” he shouted, and slapped the seat with the flat of his hand, then winced from the pain. “Shit,” he moaned. “Reminder to self. Don’t do that again.”

He killed the engine, then headed back inside. Within moments he was loading the back of the truck. The microwave went in first. He wrapped the television in a blanket and shoved it against the cab, then did the same with his computer system. He wanted his table and chairs, and his recliner, but knew he would never be able to move them on his own.

All he had left were the garbage bags—and the kid.

He began loading the bags into the back of the truck as fast as he could carry them, until the truck was overflowing with black plastic bags filled to bursting. He opened the passenger side door, then stopped on his way back into the trailer and gave the trailer park a long, studied look. The only vehicles in the park belonged to Sam and a couple of guys who worked nights, which meant they were asleep. Sam’s son was gone. Hopefully Sam had gone with him.

Satisfied that he was still unobserved, Newt ran back into the trailer and on to the bedroom. He untied the kid’s wrists and ankles, then rolled him up in the bedspread and carried him over his shoulder like a rug. He went down the steps in record time and dumped the kid into the truck seat, then slammed the door shut.

He started to get in, then noticed he’d left the front door wide open. No need to advertise his absence, he thought, running back to close and lock it.

Seconds later he was behind the wheel. He put the truck in gear, backed away from the trailer, then slowly drove away. The truck had less than a quarter of a tank of gas. He could get gas on the west side of town on his way toward the interstate.

He drove through the backstreets, taking care not to call attention to himself. By the time he got to the city limits, he felt as if a weight had lifted off his shoulders.

“Dallas, Texas, here we come,” he crowed, and stomped on the gas.

Fourteen

M
ore than two hours had passed since J.R. and Katie had begun cross-checking the lists. At first it had been awkward, getting into a routine of checking one against the other, keeping track of local owners of blue trucks, along with a separate list of registered sex offenders in the parish, even though they didn’t own or drive blue trucks.

The first time J.R. recognized a name on the sex offender list, he’d been shocked. It had taken further digging to realize how a teenage mistake could haunt a grown man. He remembered the incident that put the man on the list; it had happened during their senior year of high school. A friend of his who’d been on the high school football team had been dating a fifteen-year-old girl from a neighboring town. They’d gone out for several months before her parents suddenly decided he wasn’t good enough and demanded they quit seeing each other. When they were caught sneaking around together, the girl’s father filed a rape charge against the boy because the girl was underage. And it had stuck. J.R. hadn’t realized how such a brand could linger through a grown man’s life, but there it was.

It was yet another reminder of how a single act could change a life forever, which was what the fight between him and Katie had done. And he knew, without doubt, they would have continued to grow further and further apart had this tragedy not happened. He needed to put his family back together—but to do that, they had to find Bobby. He shifted his focus back to the list and kept on working.

Katie’s list was even more overwhelming. The number of late-model blue trucks in town just kept growing. She was beginning to realize this might be an impossible task. In frustration she suddenly stopped, then pushed herself up from the desk and stalked off to the bathroom without comment.

J.R. paused to watch as she walked out of the room and knew she was struggling. He felt her pain. This was beginning to feel like an exercise in futility, and yet they couldn’t stop.

“There’s coffee and doughnuts,” Vera said, pointing to a table at the back of the room.

J.R. nodded, then proceeded to pour coffee for himself and Katie, adding just the right amount of sugar and creamer to hers, while keeping his black. He took a doughnut out of the sack, tore it in half, and when Katie walked back into the room, he handed a piece to her.

“Eat,” he said.

“I’m not hungry,” she muttered.

“Neither am I,” he said, and downed his half in two bites.

Katie almost smiled. “Good thing you’re not hungry,” she said, then took a bite. Then another. And another. Before she knew it, the doughnut was gone and that horrible knot in the pit of her stomach seemed a little less painful.

When she took her first sip of the coffee, it added just enough heat in her belly to settle her nerves.

“Okay. That was a good idea,” she admitted, then lifted her face for the kiss she saw coming.

It didn’t matter to J.R. that Vera was only a few feet away. He needed to know Katie was hanging in there. When their lips met he tasted sugar, as well as a hint of her sweetened coffee. And when he suddenly cupped the back of her head and deepened their kiss to a hard, hungry raid on her senses, Katie sighed. That was what he’d been waiting to hear. Their emotional connection was still there, and for now, that was enough.

When he pulled back, Vera giggled.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’m not,” Vera said, and giggled again.

Katie leaned her forehead against J.R.’s. “Thank you for reminding me to breathe,” she said softly.