there?”
“Matter a fact, boy down by Naples got one. Dicky, we use him for search-and-rescues when a tourist gets lost hiking in the woods. I’ll give him a call.” He turned to his phone but stopped. “Tell you what. Meet me here at oh-six-hundred, we’ll drive down there together. Little air recon might do me good.”
“Oh-six-hundred,” Ben said. “We’ll be here.”
“Check your time, Colonel. We’re on Pacific time up here.”
The sheriff stood, walked over, and opened the door.
“You know, Colonel, one good thing about you hunting your girl without the Feds.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t gotta worry about them getting her killed.”
“You just missed him,” the store owner said, “not half an hour. Boy didn’t know a tampon from a Tootsie Roll.”
He laughed at his own words. The General Store on Main Street had been in his family for over fifty years. It was a place where you could buy food, fertilizer, clothes, and tampons.
“Like a boy asking for rubbers. Hands me a little piece of paper with the name on it”-the owner leaned down under the counter; Ben could hear him rustling in a trash can-“yep, here it is.”
He bumped his head on the underside of the counter, then he reappeared, rubbing his bare scalp with one hand and holding out a scrap of white paper with the other. Two words had been written on the paper- Tampax tampons — and under the words a happy face had been drawn.
“That’s her handwriting,” Ben said.
“And her happy face,” John said.
The owner ducked his head slightly and said, “Am I bleeding?”
Ben shook his head. “Can you describe him?”
“Blond hair, blue eyes, about your height but stockier, maybe twenty-five. I see him a half-dozen times a year. Strange bird.”
“How so?”
“What he buys-girls’ clothes, pink pajamas, Barbie doll…”
“Gracie doesn’t do dolls,” Ben said.
John gritted his teeth: “Bagbiter.”
“No, he didn’t want a bag. Stuck the box under his coat like it was a girlie magazine and left… say, that reminds me. Few months back, he bought a Fortune magazine. I remember ’cause he didn’t look like an investor. May still have the one.” He bent over again and rummaged around below the counter. “Yeah, here it is.” He came back up with the Fortune magazine. He looked at the cover picture of John and then at John. “Say, that looks just like you.” He glanced back at the cover. “That is you.” He opened the magazine to the story with the Brice family portrait. “I was standing right here reading your story when he just snatched it out of my hands.”
“Notice which way he drove out of town?”
“North. He was parked right there where you are. Pulled out and headed north, sure did.”
Ben thanked the owner for his time, and he and John turned to leave.
“Oh, one more thing,” the owner said. They turned back. “He’s missing a finger. This one.”
The owner was pointing at the ceiling with the index finger of his right hand.
Ben and John stepped outside. They were canvassing the town, showing the photos to every business owner on Main Street. The general store was their fourth stop.
Ben said, “He didn’t buy tampons for a dead girl.”
“Tampons,” John said. “I didn’t think she was there yet.”
“She’s not. She just wanted him in town.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew I’d… we’d come for her. She’s a smart girl, John.” Ben faced north; the glow of the sunset was dimming now. “And she’s out there somewhere.”
Gracie hadn’t heard noises from the other room for hours now, since Junior had knocked on her bedroom door and begged her to come out so he could explain why they had to kill the president. She had refused, so he had said he was going into town to get her “girl stuff.” She had heard the truck roar off. Junior was gone. Now was her chance to escape. If she could escape, Ben wouldn’t have to drink more of his whiskey to forget killing Junior and Jacko.
She moved everything from in front of the door to her bedroom. She cracked the door and peeked out. The big room was empty. She came out slowly.
“Hi, sweetie.”
Gracie jumped at the voice behind her. She whirled around. A big fat ugly man was now standing between her and the door to her bedroom: the man that killed Bambi. His breath smelled of alcohol; his body odor could stop traffic.
“You ever touch one of these?” the fat man asked.
Gracie looked down to his hands cupped by his crotch. He was holding his penis. It wasn’t all wrinkly and limp like Dad’s that day in his bathroom; it was purple and swollen up like it was going to pop. It was plenty big enough to hurt a girl her age. She recalled Ms. Boyd saying something about erections, that a boy’s penis becomes hard in order to penetrate a girl’s “You touch this bod and Junior’s gonna kill you!”
“Well, Junior ain’t here right now, is he?”
She now recalled Ms. Boyd’s advice from sex ed class. She pointed a finger at the man and said, “No! And no means no!”
He just laughed. “Not to me it don’t.”
She made a mental note to tell Ms. Boyd that “no means no” doesn’t work so well with big fat ugly men on a mountain in Idaho. Finally, she recalled her mother’s advice: If a boy doesn’t take no for an answer, kick him in the balls. Gracie assumed that advice applied to big fat ugly men. So she kicked him in his balls, her best Tae Kwon Do kick with the hiking boots-but the fat man only yelped and waved his hand around. From the look he gave her, she had only succeeded in making him really mad. There was only one thing to do now.
Run.
The cold air shocked her as she hit the cabin door. The fat man would never have caught her if she hadn’t slipped on the ice. His hot breath hit her neck like a blow dryer. His hands grabbed at her clothes. Her feet were dangling.
“Come on back inside, girlie. Bubba ain’t had no virgin since-”
She heard a dull thud and the fat man groan. He released her, and she fell to the ground. She looked up to see Junior swinging a shovel and hitting the fat man in the head again.
“Bubba, you son of a bitch!”
Bubba went down to his knees; his eyes were glazed over and his head was bleeding. Junior’s face was wild; he was swinging again when Jacko grabbed the shovel from behind.
“Now don’t go and kill our only munitions expert, Junior,” Jacko said. “He’s just drunk.”
“He’s out!” Junior yelled. He kicked the fat man named Bubba in the stomach. “Get the fuck off my mountain!”
Junior threw a set of keys at Bubba. He grabbed the keys, crawled away to a safe distance, and then got to his feet and stumbled over to an old pickup truck. He got in and drove fast down the mountain.
“Oh, Junior, you saved me!”
Patty hugged him real tight. Tears were in her pretty blue eyes. Ever since Junior had seen her picture in that
