“How did that go?”
“I’m a skilled thoracic surgeon, good at cracking chests and dealing with heart problems and traumatic injuries,” she paused for a long time. “I came to the military with previous experience in big city ERs where you think you’re in a war zone much of the time. I was confident that I had the kind of professional detachment to get through it, but I was wrong. I got worn down,” she said as she stirred honey into her tea.
“It’s confronting of horrific injuries day after day, the IEDs. I hate those fucking things. The blast damage, the tearing wounds from the shrapnel. And these kids, they’re so young, many of them, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. I was often up to my elbows in blood, trying to pull off another miracle. But lots of time there was just too much damage. I’d think about their lives, everything that had happened to get them to this point and how if I could get them through it….” Hannah sipped her tea. “You get ground down. Every time you hear the choppers you know you’re going to confront something awful. And when you aren’t working, you are a prisoner in this little compound in the Green Zone. It was a special kind of hell.
“My father was a surgeon in Vietnam,” she continued, “but he never talked about it. He was an alcoholic. I don’t know what part the war might have played in that. He died young, on the golf course, massive coronary. My grandfather was a flight surgeon in World War II. He was stationed in England with a bomber group. He was a tough guy, practiced medicine until he was almost eighty. He came back from the war hating politicians. I don’t think he ever voted again.”
“So where are you?” Ray asked.
“I don’t know. I got some counseling when I left Baghdad and was assigned to Landstuhl and did some more when I got back to the D.C. area. Then I went up to Boston for a special program. The military has finally figured out that women get PTSD, too. For a while I was drinking too much, I worried about that a lot. I thought it might be in my genes. I think I’m past that, the drinking. I just need to keep myself busy with work and exercise. I need to physically exhaust myself daily with running or skiing or kayaking or something.”
“What brought you to this area?” Ray asked.
“My grandparents had a place on Glen Lake. I came up north as a kid, lots of good memories. And there was a guy up here, someone I knew in medical school.”
“What happened with him?”
“People change. When we were sort of a couple in medical school, he was so idealistic. He went into family medicine and later opened West Shore Village Clinic up here.
When we hooked up again he was all upset about how much, or I guess I should say, how little money he was making. And then he got involved in this church. I mean, he’s this smart sophisticated man and he seemed totally taken in by this minister with strange beliefs about Jesus wanting everyone to be rich. He dragged me along to church a few times. It was just weird. It’s a new church of some sort, modern, feels like a sports bar on the interior, screens all over. The minister preaching at you from all directions interspersed with some pretty good rock and roll. I mean, I’m no expert on Christian theology or anything, but it just seemed like the minister was pushing a religion of materialism. It felt like a real slick sales meeting.”
“Did you meet the minister?”
“Oh yeah, Bob wanted me to get to know this guy, Rod Gunne. We had dinner with him one night at this little French restaurant. I mean, Bob is really cheap, but he happily picks up this enormous tab. The minister was there with some real babe, but he spent most of the evening hitting on me. Bob didn’t seem to notice. That was the end. I told him that evening when he was driving me back to my apartment that I didn’t think we were on the same wave-length. Other than running into him at the hospital occasionally, I haven’t seen him since.”
27.
Ray brought the phone to his ear and identified himself. He listened for a long moment and then asked, “Is there anyone available to check it out?”
“Okay,” he finally said. “Keep checking back with the mother. Instruct her to call you if the kids appear. And I’d like you to call the Last Chance, talk to Jack.
If Henry is there, find out if his kids are with him and tell Jack to hold onto him until I arrive. Call me back as soon as you know that he’s there. I’ll be on my way in a few minutes.” Ray ended the call.
“What’s going on?” Hannah asked.
“A couple of young kids, I think they are five and seven now, were spending the day with their father. He was supposed to have them home by six. The kids never arrived and their mother can’t reach the father. The mother has a tendency toward hysteria, but given the history of her relationship with this man, I understand completely. He’s an irresponsible drunk.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“When he’s not working, he’s usually drinking at the Last Chance. If the kids are with him, I’ll take them home. If they’re not, I need to find out where they are.”
“Any chance I could tag along?”
Ray thought about her request for a long moment. “Sure. What do you have on your feet?”
“Hiking boots.”
“Do you have your snowshoes with you?”
“Everything is in my rolling toy chest.”
“Bring them, just in case.”
They were just getting into Ray’s car when he got a second call from County Dispatch. After switching off the phone, he said to Hannah, “As expected, the father is at the Last Chance doing shots of Jim Beam washed down with Bud Light.”
• • •
Before entering the bar, Ray walked around Travis Henry’s dilapidated Dodge pickup, shining his flashlight into the window on the off chance that Travis might have left his children out there. All he could see was litter: soiled clothing, rusting tools, empty fast food and coffee containers, and crushed beer cans.
As Ray entered the Last Chance, Jack, the owner and bartender, now in his eighties, motioned with his head toward the far end of the bar. Ray approached the man, Hannah hanging back and observing. He climbed on to the stool next to Travis Henry, who was slouched over an empty shot glass, a half-empty shell of beer near his left hand.
“Hi, Travis. How you doing tonight?” asked Ray.
Henry didn’t move, his eyes fixed on an empty pack of Marlboros, the lid torn away.
Ray waited.
“Sheriff,” Travis finally mumbled, without changing his focus.
“Got a call from Phoebe. She’s worried about the kids.”
“I took ’em back. Maybe a little late. I took ’em back.”
“Back to the house, back to Phoebe’s house?”
“I dropped them off at Platte Line Rd. Let them walk home. I didn’t want to talk to the bitch.”
“Where on Platte Line?”
“Off twenty-two.”
“Travis, that’s a seasonal road. It’s not plowed. And it’s got to be more than a couple of miles.”
“Like I said, I didn’t want no argument. I was late. And the road’s not that bad. Snowmobiles have been flattening it.”
“How were the kids dressed?”
“Winter stuff, coats, hats, boots. Probably home by now.”
Ray slid off the stool and headed for the door, Hannah followed. She listened to his side of the phone conversation after climbing into the passenger seat.
“Get someone down here, I want Henry stopped as soon as he pulls onto the highway. Any word on the children?” Ray listened to the response. “I’ll do a quick sweep. I may need to have you organize a lot of help. I’ll be in touch.”
“What’s happening?” Hannah asked.
“No sign of the kids. The mother’s becoming increasingly hysterical. Let’s do a quick sweep and see if we can find them.”
Ray switched on the overhead flashers and hit the accelerator as soon as his vehicle was on the dry pavement of the highway.
“You know this guy?” asked Hannah.
“He’s always on the radar.”
“How so?”
“He’s a drunk. He’s always in some sort of trouble. Minor stuff.”
“Why don’t you take away his license?”
Ray chuckled. “I don’t know if Travis ever had one to take away.” He thought about his response a bit. “Probably had one once, years ago.”
“Why isn’t he in jail?”
“He’s been our guest from time to time. And when he isn’t drinking, he’s not such a bad guy. He just can’t stay away from the booze.”
“How does he survive?” Hannah asked.
“He does drywall and plaster. He works for one of the high-end builders who swears that there is no one around that is as good as Travis. His boss will be in tomorrow morning bailing him out.”
“Isn’t there anything that you can do?”
“It’s a catch-22. He makes good money, pays child support and provides the kids with health insurance. If he gets locked up for a long time, that all goes away. It’s a real problem for the prosecutor.”
Ray slowed and turned onto an unplowed road, his vehicle coming to a halt in the deep snow. With snowshoes and poles, they started down the road, forests on one side, long-abandoned farm fields with random clusters of scraggy cedar on the other. The center of the road had been packed down by snowmobile traffic, off that track the snow was several feet deep, sometimes more, in areas where drifts had formed.
Ray followed the snowmobile track, checking the sides of the road for any evidence that the children had veered off in another direction. The stark white glow of Ray’s LED headlamp reflected eerily off the crusted snow. Occasionally he would stop and shout the children’s names, then wait for a response before starting off again.
“Are we getting close?” Hannah asked, following Ray closely.
He stopped and checked his watch. “We’re more than half way,” he answered.
“Emily, Zack,” he shouted, then waited. The snow-covered landscape was a dull gray under the heavy cloud cover. In the far distance the silence of the winter night was broken by the sudden scream of a snowmobile engine. After it faded away Ray yelled again. They stood and waited. “Did you hear that?”
“Just barely,” said Hannah. “Was that a child or something else?”
With an increased sense of urgency, Ray moved forward again, almost a jog on the heavily packed snow. He stopped and yelled again. This time the response was clear, the voice of a child.
He found and then followed a path off the trail into the woods. A small girl, waist deep in snow, was standing in the skirt of a tall pine. “We’re here,” she shouted.
“Where’s your brother?” Ray asked as he approached her.
“He’s here in our fort,” she said, pointing to an opening in the branches that extended down into the snow.
Ray dropped to his knees, his lamp lighting the interior of the natural shelter. He could see Zack curled up near the trunk of the tree looking chilled and frightened.
“Why did you stop here? Why didn’t you go home?” he asked.
“Zack lost a boot and his sock in the snow. He didn’t tell me when it happened. When he started crying I went back to look, but I couldn’t find them. I remembered this place. We play here in the summer. I put my mitten on his foot. I thought mom would come and find us. She’s been here before.”
Ray pulled off his backpack and retrieved a blanket from the interior. “Come here, Zack,” he instructed. Then he wrapped the frail, frightened child in fleece. Turning to Emily, he asked, “Do you think you can walk home, or do you want my friend to help you?”
“I’m okay,” said Emily, “but I was starting to get awful cold.”
Ray pulled a second fleece blanket from the pack and wrapped it around her shoulders. He secured his poles to the pack, pulled it on, and then picked up Zack, cradling him in his arms.
“Come on, Emily, let’s get your little brother home.”
In less than twenty minutes they were in the kitchen of the old farmhouse. Hannah Jeffers checked the children for possible injuries from their extended exposure to the cold while Ray worked to calm their mother.
By the time they left, the children were in a warm bath, Hannah assuring Phoebe that she could find no medical problems, and that a bath and a good night’s sleep was the best treatment at the moment.
“Do you want to snowshoe back to the car, or should I have someone come and get us?”
“Snowshoe,” said Hannah, “If you’re okay with that.”
“Yes,” said Ray, although he was feeling weary. The clouds had cleared and the cold glow of the moon reflected off the snow. They switched off their headlamps and retraced their path by moonlight in the cold winter night.
28.
Ray was keying his report on Travis Henry when Sue Lawrence rolled her acrylic nails at the side of his open door.
“Good morning,” he said looking in her direction. “What’s up?”
“I have a woman here who wants to file a missing persons report. I think you’ll be interested in her story.”
“How so?”
“She’s an expat, she’s been living in China. She’s back in the States for a few months and came up here to check on her parents. She says she’s not close with them, especially her father, but they are getting quite elderly and she thought she should drop in on them.”