Prodigal

Chapter 31-2

Adam unfocused his eyes, blurring the photos in front of him, to get a different perspective. He’d been staring at them long enough that the blurring part wasn’t that hard. A man sidled up next to him, carrying a Styrofoam cup. He was tall and skinny, wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt over another long-sleeved one, and he smelled like dead leaves and sweat.

“You back from a search?” Adam asked.

“Yeah.” The man’s wrists stuck out from the bottom of his shirtsleeves as he reached forward to indicate on the maps. “Here and here.”

“So y’all checked that cabin, over near the old Taylor homestead?”

“Damn Skippy, we checked it out. Les said all those old buildings are at the top of the list. Didn’t find so much as a critter’s nest, though. Doubt if anybody’s set foot in there in years.”

“Same for all the rest?” Adam asked.

“I heard there was one closer to the road some teenagers were using—found empty beer bottles and used rubbers—but that was it, so far as I know. Les checked out most of them himself.”

Of course, they would have searched the cabins. Adam wasn’t sure what he’d imagined he could contribute that no one else had thought of. “I don’t suppose anybody took pictures of the cabins, on the inside, I mean.”

The man shook his head. “Nope. In and out.” He held up his cup. “Off for a refill if you want one.”

“No, thanks.”

The man walked away, but Adam heard his voice again before he reached the stairs. “Hey, Les, I think you got another volunteer in there.”

Well, crap. If Adam pulled his hat down any farther, he wouldn’t be able to see, but maybe if he just moved slowly down the table, looking the other direction…

“What the hell kind of pansy-ass pants are you wearing?” Leslie asked.

Or maybe not.

Adam stopped and turned to face the man.

“Well,” Les said, “if it ain’t Adam Rutledge. Those must be the kind of pants you get when you’re screwing a nurse.”

Adam knew Leslie could probably wipe the floor with him on a good day, much less one when he couldn’t bend to tie his shoes. He also figured the back offices and the bottom floor of the building were crawling with law enforcement, and he knew from experience that his inability to reside at a single address for more than three months made a lot of those types suspicious. Finally, Leslie was a caveman, so it wasn’t worth starting anything.

But the caveman made it so very hard.

“Believe it or not, I fell in the shower. Hate to think what the hospital’ll charge me for these when I get my bill. And they’re so thin, I can feel the wind blow right through ‘em.”

“Huh,” Leslie said. “You ought to be more careful.”

“I know. How’s it going with the searches? Anything?”

“Nope, not a goddamned thing.”

Adam leaned lightly against the table behind him, trying to look more casual than he was capable of feeling. “You’ve gotta know this area as well as anybody. You think somebody’s really got her somewhere out there?” Adam asked.

“Well,” Leslie said, pulling a piece of hard candy from his pocket, “what’s the alternative?”

Adam shrugged, then tried to make his pain look like a thinking pose. Experience had taught him to never let someone like Les know how bad he was hurting. “So what wouldn’t show up on these maps or these photos?”

Leslie popped the candy in his mouth before resting his head on his chin and gazing at the maps. “Well, obviously there’s a lot of unofficial structures—hunting cabins, tree stands, whatever—that wouldn’t show up on the tax maps, or probably any other ones for that matter. Now, I believe they just took photos of areas that were interesting, places they might want to search, but I heard they’ve got people going over satellite coverage of everything. With the leaves mostly gone, you’d probably get a decent view in.”

He pointed at a green patch on a photo while rolling the candy with his tongue. “I don’t know s**t about the tech, but I’d imagine it’d be hard to see a structure where there’s dense conifers overhead. And if it’s something small…” he shrugged his shoulders. “We’re looking at hundreds of square miles. That’s a damn lot of ground to cover.”

Adam felt like they were missing something. He leaned on the table, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. Slowly it got darker, darker than his shuttered eyelids alone could account for, and the table dropped away beneath him—

A big hand squeezed Adam’s arm. “Hey!”

Adam opened his eyes again, fighting a familiar wave of nausea.

“Y’alright there, Rutledge?” Leslie asked. “Don’t go passing out on me.”

“She’s still out there,” Adam said, confident. The question was whether she would make it through the night.

Leslie looked at him uncertainly, almost as if he were frightened of him. Then he inched even closer and squeezed Adam’s arm harder. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re playing at. You might have the sheriff and his little w***e fooled—”

“Les!” A voice yelled from across the assembly room.

The break gave Adam just enough time to connect Leslie’s verbal dots. He straightened, finding himself eye to eye with the man (surprising, since Adam had never been within four inches of his height as a kid), and twisted his arm free of Leslie’s hand. “If you ever—”

“Leslie!” Luther cut in. “This is no time for shitting around. We got a tip on the girl.”