He braked, leaving the shotgun in the truck, and slid the van door back. The interior light went on and he looked at Jessica Logue, sitting in the center of the middle seat with her hands on her lap. Her face was stained with dried tears.
“Jessica, what are you doing?”
“Mrs. Pickett asked my mom if I could come out here,” Jessica said, looking at her hands. “My mom said I could.”
“They’re inside?” Jessica nodded.
Joe reached in and patted her shoulder. “Stay here, then. I won’t be long.” He started to shut the door.
“Mr. Pickett?”
“Yes?”
She looked up at him. “I hope you can help my mom.” “I’ll try, honey.”
Nate stood in the dark behind him.
“I think you should stay out here,” Joe said. “I don’t know what the situation is inside. Maybe you can watch through a window, and if things aren’t under control, well . . .”
“I’ll be ready,” Nate said. “Is the little girl going to be okay?”
“I’m not sure.”
joe knocked on the front door, and tried to see through the opaque curtain beside it. There was dim light inside, from a room on the right of the hallway, but he couldn’t see Marybeth. He knocked again, and saw a dark form step into the doorway.
“Joe, is that you?” It was Marybeth.
He tightly closed his eyes for an instant—she was all right—then answered her.
“Are you alone?” she asked. “Yes,” he lied.
“Is it alright if Joe comes in?” Marybeth asked someone inside the room.
His hand was already turning the knob when she said, “It’s okay to come inside, Joe.”
He stepped in and shut the door behind him. The hallway was dark. Why didn’t Marybeth come to him, he wondered. Was someone threatening her inside?
Jesus, he thought. What if it’s Garrett?
He quickly reached for his pistol but stopped when Marybeth, almost imperceptibly, shook her head no. Joe paused and pointed outside and mouthed “Nate.” She met his eyes and blinked, indicating that she understood.
His boots sounded loud on the hardwood floor, in the still house, as he walked toward Marybeth. As he neared her, she turned her head inside the room and said, “Marie, Joe’s coming in now.”
“Okay.”
Marybeth stepped back and Joe entered. He took in the scene quickly. The room was dark except for two low- wattage desk lamps. Book-lined shelves covered the opposite wall. A television set and stereo occupied an entertainment center, but both were off.
Marie Logue leaned with her back against an upright piano. She had a glass of red wine in one hand and a semiautomatic pistol in the other. Her eyes looked glazed, her expression blank. There were dried tear tracks down her cheeks, like her daughter’s.
Across from Marie, in two overstuffed chairs, sat an old couple. They looked shriveled and flinty, and both peered at Joe from behind metalrimmed glasses. The man wore suspenders over a white T-shirt, and the woman wore an oversized sweatshirt. The woman’s hair looked like curled stainless-steel shavings.
“Joe, I don’t believe you’ve met Marie’s motherand father-in-law before,” Marybeth said with a kind of exaggerated calmness that signaled to Joe that the situation was tense. “This is Clancy and Helen Logue.”
Joe nodded.
“This is Joe, my husband.”
Clancy Logue nodded back, but Helen stared at Joe, apparently sizing him up.
“I was just about to kill them,” Marie said from across the room, deadpan. “Marybeth is trying her darndest to talk me out of it.”
Joe looked at her.
“I bet I can get you to say three words now,” Marie said, her mouth twisting into a bitter grin.
Marie, do you mind if I fill Joe in on what we’ve been discussing?” Marybeth asked, still with remarkable calm.
Marie arched her eyebrows in a “what the hell” look, and took a long drink of her wine. Her eyes shifted from Joe to Clancy and Helen as Marybeth told the story.
“Marie learned last week that Cam has been trying to buy the Over-street Ranch in secret. That the secret buyer he told us about was Cam himself. Apparently, the only people he told about it were his parents. He told them that he was going to buy back their old ranch but that they weren’t welcome on it. But there was another reason, other than nostalgia, why Cam wanted the ranch. Am I doing okay so far, Marie?”
“Perfect,” she said.
“As you know, Joe, the Logue home used to serve as an archive for the old county clerk. Cam liked to go
