“He’s going to kill someone,” she said to his back. “Someone needs to put him in prison!”
Ursula yelled, “I’m calling Ricky to back you up.”
“No,” Tom said. “Call Lee at home and tell him to meet me there. He’s closer.”
“You be careful, Tom! You be so careful! Gus would as soon shoot you as—”
“I’m not going to let him shoot me,” he said impatiently. “Call Lee.”
Gus Craven was the meanest son of a bitch in the valley. He had five sons, each of whom came close in age to one of the five Toopeek children; their oldest were both fifteen. They hadn’t played together, of course, because Gus did all he could to keep his family isolated. The Cravens had a farm in upper Mendocino County near the Humboldt County line. It was a modest farm with a few crops, a few animals. It could be a good business, but Gus was a binge drinker and got tanked up regularly, beat the tar out of the whole family, tore up the house and had to be hauled off till he was sober. Then again, there were times when he knocked the stuffing out of his wife and kids and he hadn’t had a drop. Just a genuine badass.
It was Tom’s duty as police chief to try to stay one step ahead of old Gus so his daughter’s fearful proclamation didn’t turn out to be true. Tom was one-third of the Grace Valley Police Department. Ricky Rios and Lee Stafford, both thirty years old, young husbands and fathers, were his only deputies. The three of them worked all the time. Anyone who lived in the valley could call Tom or the deputies at home if they were needed when the police department was closed. Like this morning.
Tom drove as fast as he dared along County Road 92, but he didn’t run the siren. He didn’t want to give Gus any warning. Tom was going to get him out of there before Gus figured out that one of the boys had called for help. Gus had spent a few nights and weekends locked up for this kind of behavior, but generally it was just enough time to cool him down and get him thinking straight. It was never enough time to make him sorry. He plain wasn’t ever sorry. This time, though, Gus would be gone awhile. Tom had warned him that they didn’t need Leah to press charges. He’d charge Gus with assault and battery himself. It would be Gus’s fifth official arrest on those charges, and he’d do time. Judge Forrest was getting sick of seeing the man come before the bench. Tom was getting fed up with Gus’s failure to have his behavior modified by consequence.
Everyone in town hated Gus, bar none. Who knew why he was such a nasty man? He wasn’t from the valley and no one knew his people. When the Craven family came into town to shop or go to church, most folks gave Gus a wide berth. They’d say hello to Leah and maybe the boys, but no one ever traded words with Gus on purpose. The worst thing about their terrible situation was that Gus had come to the valley, bought that little parcel of land to farm and married a Grace Valley girl. Leah was one of theirs, and they couldn’t seem to do anything for her.
Leah was only thirty-three and Tom remembered her from school. She used to be friendly with one of his sisters. She had been a shy, pretty girl—and smart. How in the world Gus Craven got to her was an eternal mystery. He was seven years older and never, as far as Tom could remember, even halfway pleasant.
The farmhouse was sixty years old, and though solidly built, it had fallen into disrepair. The porch sagged, the paint was chipped, screens were torn. Inside was worse.
The sun was rising over the mountains, casting a long shadow. The lights were on, and Tom could see movement inside as he pulled up in the Range Rover. He headed around to the side of the house, parking in a less obvious position. At that very moment his deputy, Lee Stafford, drove up.
When Tom opened his door, he heard the sounds of domestic war pouring out of the windows: shrieking, hollering, running, crashing, slamming. Kids were screaming and crying, Gus was shouting and cursing, Leah was begging him repeatedly to stop. Tom pulled his shotgun out of the rack and checked that there was a shell in the chamber.
“Let’s get him out of there,” he said to Lee.
Both men, in perfect choreography, jogged up the porch steps. Lee pressed his back against the wall beside the front door while Tom kicked it. Tom always kicked if there was kicking to be done. He would never have his deputies, both younger than him by seven years, face harm’s way in his stead.
Gus turned his rheumy eyes toward the door. He held his thirteen-year-old son by the hair, his other hand raised and ready to pummel him. Leah pulled back on his arm with no real hope of preventing his abuse. For a split second Tom had a rare thought; he wished Gus had been armed with a gun or knife so he could just shoot him and be done with it. He knew he could do it with a clear conscience. But just as fast, the thought retreated and was lost. Tom was, above all, a peace officer.
“Let the boy go, Gus,” he said.
“This ain’t your concern!”
Tom took two long strides into the room. It came into focus around him—the crunch of broken glass beneath his boots, the smell of booze and sweat and grease. The tinny odor of blood. He counted from the corner of his eye—one, two, three, four. “Leah, where is little Stan?” Stan was the youngest boy, only six years old.
She backed away from Gus. Her face was bruised and tearstained, and she wore a torn old nightgown. “He’s upstairs. Hiding, I think.”
“Which one of you sniveling little whelps called the Indian cop?” Gus asked, shaking the boy he still held.
“Gus,” Tom warned. “You let that boy go and back away from him. Now.”
“I been just looking for an excuse to sue you, Toopeek!” he yelled.
Tom let out his breath in what could pass for a weary laugh. Sue? He tossed his shotgun to Lee and walked almost leisurely toward Gus, while pulling his handcuffs from his belt. Gus’s eyes grew round. In one swift motion Tom slapped a cuff on Gus’s wrist, pulled his arm roughly behind his back, swept him off his feet and slammed him onto the floor, facedown. Gus grunted in outrage, a sound soon muffled against the worn carpet. The son he had held by the hair skittered away. Leah covered her mouth with a trembling hand, her eyes milky with fear.
Tom grabbed Gus’s other wrist with a little more difficulty, what with his squirming and all. Once he was cuffed, hands behind his back, Tom held him there with a heavy foot on his back. “I warned you and Judge Forrest promised. This time you’re going away, Gus.”
“I ain’t going nowhere! She won’t press charges! None of ’em will!”
Tom wasn’t sure whether or not Gus was as stupid as he sometimes sounded. The only time he ever had much to say was when he was drunk. Sober, he was glum and silent and seemed to direct his nervous family with eyes narrowed to slits, like Frank’s. And just as Tom had that thought, he looked at the fifteen year old. He saw Gus’s eyes, Gus’s hate reflected there. Frank was a tall, gangly boy, but almost large and strong enough to give his father a real fight. Tom realized that this domestic nightmare was soon going to come to a head. Something was going to pop. Either Gus would finish off this poor family, or Frank would finish off Gus. It was just too volatile to drag on like this.
Tom jerked Gus to his feet. “We’ve been over and over this. No one has to press charges. I can press charges.” He shuffled Gus to the door. “Let me get him settled in the car, then I’ll come back and make sure no one is hurt real bad in here. Okay?”
Leah shook her head. “It’s okay. I’ll see after the boys.”
“Don’t you say one single word about me, woman! If you do—” Tom whacked him on the side of the head, palm open to shut him up. “Ahh! Police abuse! Police abuse!”
Lee holstered his gun and laughed outright. “Man, you got some balls, Gus.”
“Yeah, I’ll show you balls! Take these cuffs off me and we’ll go a round in the yard, huh?”
“I wish,” Lee said.
Tom and Lee dragged Gus away by the arms. Gus stumbled and swore and griped all the way to the Rover.
Tom was back in the house moments later. Leah held little Stan on her lap, wiping his tearstained face with a washcloth. Frank
stood rigid, his back against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, a mighty bruise rising on his cheekbone. There’s the legacy, Tom thought sadly. At least a couple of these boys would beat their wives and kids. Ironically, it could just as likely be the one most outraged by his father’s violence.
“Leah, let me take you and the boys to the clinic. Have June look you over.”
“I’m okay, Tom. I’ll check over the boys, and if anyone needs to go, I can take ’em in. How long’s he gonna be gone, Tom?” she asked.
“At least a few months. Could be up to a year. Judge Forrest is pretty sick of his excuses. Leah, you have to make a change here. You’re running out of time.” He glanced again at Frank, and Leah followed his eyes. “I know you know that.”
She wore a helpless smile. “Where you think I’m going to hide five towhead boys?”
“You lack faith, that’s all. Just call the social worker, get some ideas from her. There’s programs you’ve never heard about, not just shelters at the edge of town. There are people who make helping battered families their life’s work.”
She laughed humorlessly. “It would be a life’s work with me. Five boys, no money, no skills, and a husband who’s taken a blood oath to kill me if I ever leave him.”
Tom fished his wallet out of his back pocket and pulled out a card for Corsica Rios, County Social Services. Corsica lived just south, in Pleasure, but had many ties to the valley, including her only son, deputy Ricky Rios. She also had a great deal of experience with domestic abuse—personal and professional—and had raised Ricky as a single parent. “Just call her. Let Corsica tell you there’s no help before you give up. Hmm?”
Leah held the card for a moment, staring at it.
“You must think awful of me,” she finally said. “That I let him do this to my family.”
Tom covered her small, pale hand with his much larger one. “No, Leah. No one thinks you let him.”
Three
June drove right by the clinic when she got to town. She went to Fuller’s Café, as she always did unless there was some emergency. Customarily, she picked up a coffee to go and a bagel or doughnut or pastry, made a little small talk with the regulars and eased into her day. But she was going to break custom today by adding a twist—she was going to kill George Fuller.
“Mornin’, June,” George called out as he poured her coffee into a large mug.
“George, have you lost your mind?”
“How’s that?”
“What were you thinking, sending people to my house at six in the morning?”
He had a perplexed look on his face. June had gone all through school with George and was quite accustomed to that look, though she knew George wasn’t completely dense. Well, he was obviously dumb about some things, but plenty smart about others. “I didn’t send ’em, June. They asked directions is all.”
“Well, do you give directions to just any stranger in an old pickup who asks you for them?”
Again the look.
Tom Toopeek, June’s best friend since childhood, left his conversation with two locals and wandered over to the pastry counter where June was engaged in ragging on George. Tom leaned against the counter, a faint smile playing on his lips. He held a ceramic cup that had The Law written on it. George kept that cup clean and handy for whenever Tom might wander in.
“It wasn’t much more than the crack of dawn, and I was coming back from turning Buddy out to pasture when that old truck rattled up and the man—nice man if you ask me—says to me, ‘Can you tell me how to get to Doc Hudson’s house?’ And I asked, ‘Old Doc Hudson or young Doc Hudson?’ And he said, ‘June.’ Nice as anything. Like you was old friends. Didn’t look like his family was sick or anything, though that woman took a nasty crack in the face, didn’t she? It was all healed up, though, so I knew she wasn’t needing your services for that. I thought maybe you were expecting ’em. Was there trouble?”
“Oh no, George. There was no trouble! They just let themselves into my house while I was taking a shower!”
Tom chuckled but tried to mute it.
“Aw, June, I’m sure sorry about that. I had no idea—”
“My name’s on the clinic sign, George. It’s no miracle the man knew it!”
“Aw, June, jeez…”
“Well, don’t tell people where I live unless you’re absolutely sure I want them to come to my house! All right?”
“How’m I gonna know?”
“Well call me, George! Or just give them directions to the clinic and tell them we open for business at eight.”
“Sure thing, June. I’m awful sorry. Here, you have a bear claw on the house.” He reached into the pastry shelf and pulled out a huge sugary treat.
“Don’t let it happen again,” she said, mollified. More often than not she got her morning carbohydrate on the house anyway. It was smart to be in the good graces of the medic and the law. George only looked stupid.
“You can count on that, June.”
George Fuller was actually a huge success in Grace Valley. His café brought in a good living; he had a big house, a nice family. His wife was pretty and smart. He sat on the town council most years, coached at the high school on and off and occasionally wrote letters to the editor that were thoughtful, even insightful. He’d gotten A’s and B’s in high school, as far as June could remember, but the occasions of him acting dumb as a stump were not infrequent.
“It must have given you a start, coming out of the shower to find you had company,” Tom observed. The corners of his mouth were twitchy.
“You could say that. Especially since I was running for the kitchen phone, wearing my favorite towel.”
His high, bronze Cherokee cheeks almost cracked. “What a way to start the day,” he said.
“For them or for me?”
“I guess that could go either way.” He didn’t even attempt to conceal his wide, toothy grin.
“Did Ricky get that boy up to Rockport?”
“What boy?” Tom asked, startled.
“I called the department this morning and asked him to give a young patient of mine a lift to the hospital there. It was the boy from my living room. The parents and sister brought him. Mull family?”
Tom frowned as he searched his mental catalog of local names. “I didn’t realize. I was preoccupied. Lee and I were at the Cravens’ at dawn, providing a little relief.”
“Oh God, not again. Poor Leah.”
“She’s going to get a break now. I’m sure Judge Forrest will put Gus away for as long as possible.”
“It can’t possibly be long enough.”
“Ricky said he was hanging around to run an errand for you, but he didn’t say what. He was still waiting as of fifteen minutes ago. And I’m afraid I don’t know of a Mull family.”
It was not unusual for one of the deputies to be doing some errand for June or the clinic without Tom knowing the specifics. Sometimes there were patients who needed transportation, delivery of lab samples, pickup of blood or urgent need of supplies. Any number of things. The only way the clinic could exist was with the support of the local police.
“These people weren’t from around here, Tom. They might be mountain people, or maybe subsistence farmers from another county. The father knew more than he let on, and I’m sure I saw the edge of a tattoo on his hand. Maybe he’s a vet…or possibly even a dope farmer. And Mrs. Mull has that scar George mentioned—it runs down the right side of her face. She’s terribly disfigured and probably vision impaired. If you ever saw her, you’d never forget her. But it’s the boy who needs medical attention. He got stepped on by a jenny maybe two weeks ago, and his tissue’s turning black around an infected gash. He’s warm to the touch, and a few days could make it more than a foot he loses. I worry about them not showing up at the police department. It might mean they don’t intend to go any further to get help for the boy.”
“You didn’t pass them on your way into town?”
“I went out to Mikos Silva’s place
to take his blood pressure,” she said, shaking her head.
“The boy’s a minor?” Tom asked.
“Sixteen. But still—”
“We’ll take a look around.”
“They’re in an old pickup. They can’t go more than thirty miles per hour in it, so they can’t get far.” What she didn’t say was, “Please find them before they get away, disappear into the hills again.”
This was not the first time someone in precarious health had ignored June’s warning and advice, but she had never gotten used to it.
A rumble of chuckles from four old-timers at a table by the window distracted them. George leaned over the counter and tried to see out the front window. “What’s doing?” he called to the men.
“Mary Lou Granger brought a box into the Presbyterian Church ‘round fifteen minutes ago…and here comes Pastor’s wife from the parsonage. She’s got a nose like a hound. Can smell her husband alone with a woman from across town.”
“Here she comes!” someone replied.
June and Tom gravitated to the front of the café and saw Mary Lou, an attractive young mother, maybe thirty years old, exit the Presbyterian Church in something of a huff. She wore fitted jeans and boots, and a sweater that didn’t quite reach her waist. Her long, thick auburn hair swung across her shoulders in wide arcs. When she got to her station wagon she stopped, looked back over her shoulder toward the church, stomped her foot once in anger and finally got in the car.
“Wanna bet Pastor Wickham’s got a nice red swatch across one cheek?” someone asked.
“He’s as brave a preacher as we’ve ever had in this town,” someone said. “Why, would you chance the wrath of Clarice Wickham?”
“That’s the very thing that drives him, I reckon.”
The men all broke into laughter.
“You know, that really isn’t funny,” June said to Tom, referring to the womanizing pastor.
“Oh, I don’t know. You have to keep your sense of humor. Have you seen him lately?”
“No, why?”
“He’s taken off the rug. He now has—what are they called? Plugs?”