The sound blasted through the surrounding forest.
They would have to go thirty-two miles before they would reach the first place where the big rig could be turned around.
52
It was pure luck that Clarence found the train tracks.
He wasn’t looking for anything other than a cave or a creek.
And then he saw the sharp metal stakes that supported the railroad ties.
The next thing he knew, he was staring at a long line of track that snaked uphill after dipping down through the ravine.
The smoke from the fire drifted against the slope, making it appear as if the whole valley was shrouded in yellow fog. That same smoke caused the freight train, part of the Burlington Northern Sante Fe line, to slow.
It had been an uneventful day for the engineer in the BNSF locomotive. At least until he reached Bear Paw Ravine.
It wasn’t the first time he’d been the one to spot a forest fire.
Smoke, dense and swirling, was rising from the pit of the gorge. The tips of orange flames could be seen licking the tops of the freshly roasting pine trees.
Carefully reducing the speed of the long, heavy line of boxcars, the engineer brought the train to a complete stop.
He then dropped a GPS pin on his exact location and quickly snapped photographs. Moments later he let the world know that there was a fire in the forest.
He wasn’t able to see the wreck that had started the problem.
With the temperature hot and the wind blowing from the north, the recipe for a major forest fire was in place, unless something was done.
Clarence Border could never have chased a moving train.
But these railcars were slowing. And then he watched as the whole line came to a stop.
Almost right in front of him.
The smoke was thickening, and at first he believed he was imagining it all.
Maybe the train was from heaven, sent to take him to the higher place?
It was so inspiring that he got to his feet. He could stand. He was dizzy but upright, now minus his dummy.
His hearing wasn’t working, and his ears were ringing. But his vision didn’t fail him.
He wanted to touch the metal of the powerful machine. And so he hopped forward. Moving in wobbly lurches and leaps.
Clarence reached out and grabbed the metal ladder that was positioned on the back of the closest cargo car.
It was real.
The letters BNSF were written on the side.
They were written for him.
Border Never Surrenders for… anyone.
This train had come just to pick him up. It would carry him away. It would take him home.
Clarence summoned all the strength in his battered body and started up the ladder of the railcar, pulling himself rung by rung to the top.
The smoke was making it impossible to breathe. His stump of a leg throbbed. And blood dripped more heavily down his neck, from where he once had an ear.
But a surprise awaited him on the last rung. The railcar had a peel-back top.
Clarence unhooked a strap and pushed the tarp aside. Only a madman, he thought, would have the strength to keep going. He tumbled inside, landing in a full load of grain. It was as if he’d fallen onto a warm beach. His head settled into what felt like a giant beanbag chair.
And then the train began to move.
Someone was looking out for him.
Yes.
The blood from his many cuts and abrasions soaked the golden kernels of wheat, forming a pink outline around his body.
Clarence tilted his head to the side and realized that, if he moved his arms, he could make an angel in that grain.
Didn’t he always leave his mark on the world?
His last thought as he lost consciousness was of the two girls.
He hoped that they’d gone over the edge, too.
The dispatcher for the Oregon State Police had said to remain calm. Help was on the way.
While they waited for law enforcement to come, Sam searched every inch of the rest stop.
He ran to the trees by the highway. He moved through the tall grass near the gravel, all the while terrified that he might find something.
Another shoe.
Clothing.
Or worse.
While Sam combed the grounds, Bobby Ellis took a blue tarp that was folded up in the work area next to the cinder-block pyramids.
More crows had gathered by the dead man’s body, and Bobby got the feeling that it wouldn’t be long before the birds figured out a way to make a meal out of a homicide.
He lifted the plastic sheet into the air and it flapped in the dry wind. The sound caused more anxiety as he placed it over the dead man.
Moments later, Bobby found a seat on a picnic table near the cinder-block bathrooms. He tried to imagine what had happened, but it was too confusing. His wrecked car. A dead body. Destiny’s orange slipper.
It took a long time for Sam to stop shouting Emily’s name. He eventually quit searching in areas where he’d already looked multiple times. He finally took a seat next to Bobby Ellis.
And then he lost control.
He had never broken down like this. The world had come apart. And it was his fault.
Sam put his head between his knees and sobbed.
What had his father done?
Whatever happened next, he would need to go back and get Riddle. And then they would travel south. He could find some kind of job. Maybe he’d just play his guitar on the street for money.
But he would get Riddle into school. They would change their names. They would spend the rest of their lives righting the wrongs. They would never succeed, but they would disappear.
The only thing that he could give the Bells was the assurance that they would never have to see his face again.
A helicopter flew by overhead.
It was red and black and appeared to be official. They both looked up with the expectation that it might simply land at their feet.
But it kept flying.
With each passing minute, smoke from the nearby forest fire thickened. The wind was blowing harder, and before long it was impossible to see from one side of the parking lot to the other.
Sam was already having trouble breathing. The smoke made him choke on every inhale.
And then, his head downcast, he heard the noise of an approaching vehicle.
They couldn’t see it, but they could hear.
Whatever was coming into the rest stop was big. The engine had a roar that broke through the eerie stillness.
Sam looked up and saw a chrome exhaust pipe belching dark smoke, which mixed with the soup of the forest-fire blaze.
An eighteen-wheeled big rig appeared as a moving mass cutting through the haze.
It looked more like a freight train than a truck.
Sam’s eyes had to be playing tricks on him.
Through the smoke, he could make out the silhouette of two girls. The smaller of the two was driving.
And he knew.
The one in the passenger’s seat had dark hair that brushed the top of her shoulders.
He couldn’t see her large eyes. Or her athletic legs. Or her curling toes.
But he didn’t have to.
Emily Bell, with Destiny at her side.
And they were both alive.
Sam wanted to tell her that he would have waited his whole life for her to come back to him.
He would have looked for her in every dawn. And in every star-filled night. He wanted to say that he was lost without her. And that his broken heart would have stayed that way forever.
The truck was still moving when he grabbed the handle of the passenger door and lifted himself up to the cab.
He had the door open, and as Destiny put on the brakes he took hold of Emily.
And all he could manage, over and over again, was to whisper through his tears.
“I’m sorry.…”
The rest stop looked different
as they rounded the curve into the parking lot.
Smoke hung in the air, and the horror of the day flooded the place so that it wasn’t just a crime scene. It was the return to hell.
It had to have been someone else who had a gun shoved in her back and who had sat in that car in silence with the Monster driving.
It was another person who got locked in the trunk. Someone else had dodged a hailstorm of bullets.
And then she saw Sam. Bobby was with him. They were both running.
The next thing she knew, Sam was inside the truck.
It was only then that she returned completely.
This is me now.
Here.
With you.
This is us now.
None of them could remember much more about the rest of that day.
It all disappeared into a jumble of mostly questions.
Emily tried to answer, but not much came out. She held Sam’s hand, and she stayed close to Destiny.
In bits, stopping and starting, they told the story.
They would do that many times. For many different people. And with each telling, the events became more distant, until the characters were not people they knew. For Emily the afternoon would begin to vanish, because she chose to let all the details disappear.
It wasn’t long after the arrival of the big rig that the first highway patrol officer pulled into the rest stop.
He was followed by six other patrol cars.
And then later by Tim and Debbie Bell.
And finally a coroner’s van.
The authorities were notified in California.
The prevailing theory was that Clarence Border had been hiding somewhere close to Merced, and a kind of panic had seized the community.
Now the citizens felt a deep sense of relief.
The investigation of the homicide of K.B. Walton began as soon as the truck driver’s family was notified.
Emily could hear the officer breaking the news.
She shut her eyes and tried to imagine what would have happened if the man and his big rig hadn’t been there at the rest stop.
She asked her mother if they could have the information to contact the trucker’s family.
She wanted to make sure that his loved ones knew how grateful she was that he had come to her aid that day.
K.B. Walton had been there for two strangers. And he had paid the ultimate price.
53
A hard rain fell the day after Clarence had taken Emily.
The sudden summer cloudburst helped control the forest fire.
But the erosion from the burned hillside sent a river of mud through the crash site, and that washed away the trail Clarence had left when he’d dragged his body from the wrecked car.
It wasn’t until thirty-six hours later, when the blaze had been contained, that officials were able to thoroughly investigate the area.
The fire had burned liquid-hot, and the muddy Honda was just a scorched auto skeleton.
Forensic experts were brought in, and careful sifting of the area did turn up a single human tooth. Clarence Border’s DNA was positively identified from that, and the burned remains of an ear.
But the most substantial finding connecting Clarence to the crash was the melted metal pieces from the artificial leg, buried deep in the mangled wreckage.
The rain and the mudslides were the explanation given by the investigators for the absence of other bone and body fragments. It was theorized that animals could have taken off with whatever else remained of his body.
As far as law enforcement was concerned, Clarence Border had officially died in the crash at Bear Paw Ravine.
Sam and Riddle sat together outside and wept at the picnic table in the Bells’ backyard when they got the news.
Their tears were only of joy that their father was dead.
Riddle’s voice was barely a whisper. “Sam, we won’t have to go to court now—right?”
Sam nodded. “We don’t have to go to court. Or talk to the police about him.”
Riddle leaned into his brother. “Ever again.”
Sam answered: “Emily won’t have to do that either. And Destiny doesn’t have to tell her part in the story.”
Riddle shut his eyes as Sam continued. “We get to start over now. Really begin again.”
Bobby wasn’t sure why he’d woken up and decided he wanted to see Sam. He tried to figure out the reason as he biked over to the apartment.
They’d found the dead trucker. That was big.
And he and Sam had spent the longest day of their lives together. Or at least the longest for Bobby.
Plus, they had Emily and Destiny in common. The girls had both made it obvious that they liked Sam a lot more than him, but he was still part of the picture.
Biking across town, trying to put the pieces together, Bobby saw dozens of things he hadn’t noticed before. Being on a bike, he decided, wasn’t all bad. His car was gone, but it was going to be covered by insurance.
Maybe, he thought, it was time to work on a new image.
Bobby stood for several minutes by the door without knocking. He could hear guitar music. At first he thought it was a recording, but then a muffled voice that he immediately recognized started to sing, and he realized what he was listening to was live.
Bobby had always imagined himself performing onstage at a wild concert in a huge stadium. He didn’t want to wear leather pants or cut his hair into a Mohawk. What he wished for was a vast audience of shrieking fans.
And later maybe a magazine cover or two.
Like a lot of his fantasies, the daydreams weren’t based on any kind of reality, because Bobby didn’t play a single instrument.
But he recognized someone who did. So it was with real enthusiasm that he knocked on the door. The singing and guitar stopped, and Sam appeared.
“Hey, Bobby.”
“Hey, Sam.”
They both weren’t great at small talk. They stood in silence for a few moments, and then Sam went back inside like it was natural that Bobby Ellis would just show up to hang out without calling on a Sunday morning.
Bobby looked around the small living room. It was the opposite of his parents’ house. It was simple and sparse and without decoration. He could see a hallway and two bedrooms beyond. Sunlight flooded through the back window, and both of the beds were made.
Bobby always left his room a mess. His mom or the cleaning woman, Hildy, took care of that. But here was a guy who lived by himself and didn’t act like a little kid about it.
Somehow that fit.
Sam took a seat on a chair, and Bobby flopped down onto the couch. “I heard you playing. You’re really good.”
Sam shrugged. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
If anyone else had said that, Bobby would have been certain that they were fishing for more compliments, but in Sam’s case, he knew the guy was scary honest.
Bobby continued. “I never heard that song. Who’s it by?”
Sam shot him a blank look. “Me.”
Bobby’s eyebrows arched in disbelief. “You wrote it?”
Suddenly it was as if the ceiling had split open and hot light poured down into the room and that sunbeam landed right on Bobby. “You should play for people. Record your songs. Someone should make a video of you singing.”
Sam only half smiled in his direction. Bobby continued. “Maybe I could do that.”
Sam didn’t answer, and Bobby took that as a good sign. “I’m interested in filmmaking. My mom’s got a high-def camera at her office. I don’t know anything about it, but I could learn.”
Sam started to laugh, which had to mean something.
And that was enough.
Destiny had a new phone that had a hot-pink cover. Emily had bought it for her.
And then the Bells added her to their family plan.
But what really made Destiny feel that she belonged was when Emily took her to the library. Destiny had never been inside one before. At least no
t that she remembered. Seeing her name and the address of the Bells’ house right there on the front of her library card made her scream. This single piece of plastic showed the world that she was for real.
It was while looking at books on careers that Destiny got the idea for what she wanted to do with her life.
She could see herself with a badge and a gun and a car with a swirling light. She wanted to chase down bad guys and put them six feet under. Or behind bars.
Especially if they had anything to do with hurting kids.
She would need to start by getting her high school equivalency. That would lead to community college and then regular college and then hopefully a police academy.
Emily made high school sound like an interesting place. Destiny had told everyone that she was twenty, but she wasn’t. And she looked fifteen.
Bobby Ellis was begging her to enroll so that they’d all be seniors together.
It was now under consideration. That’s what Debbie and Tim Bell had said. Maybe Destiny would actually go to Churchill High School in September.
She wasn’t tricking anyone into anything with this plan. Everything was right out on the table.
Jared left the house early, because he and Beto had started a neighborhood service. They took in the mail. Fed pets. Brought in newspapers and turned lights on and off when people were vacationing.
They felt like spies because they had access to people’s keys and alarm codes. And they were making money. But the best part, as far as Jared was concerned, was that he finally had Beto as a real friend.
They both had thought Riddle would want to be part of the whole thing, but he wasn’t interested. He didn’t want to go into the houses of strangers. He could live his whole life at the Bells’ and never need to go anywhere else.
Riddle came downstairs with a book under his arm and went outside to the yard. He liked to be there in the morning. Felix and both of the cats followed him through the doorway.
He wasn’t drawing as much. He was reading all the time. And he felt certain that he would do that obsessively for the rest of his life.