A Bad Day for Sorry

all just a trick?”

The elder Merton snorted. “There’s a box of his clothes and shit out in the garage, but I expect what he’s missing most is them illegal drugs he left in my daughter’s home.”

He dragged out the syllables in “ill-legal” to show his distaste, even as his son rolled his eyes heavenward in a grand show of impatience. “Ain’t but a couple a nasty smoked-down blunts, Dad.”

“And that mess of para-pher-nalia,” Merton huffed, glaring at his son and Chrissy in turn, as though he suspected them of being in cahoots. “Them papers and clippers and I’m sure I don’t know what all else. My daughter ain’t got no use for that sort of thing.”

“Don’t look at me. I don’t want none of it,” Chrissy said. “Listen up, sugar,” Stella said. “Tucker isn’t here. These men don’t know where he is, and it sounds like Darla doesn’t know either. I’m afraid this might just be a dead end.”

Chrissy nodded, frowning.

“All right,” she said, never taking her eyes off the Merton men. “We’re going to leave now. But if you find out anything—and I do mean anything—about my little boy, you call me right away. ’Cause if you don’t, I will find out and I will hunt you down. Now get me something to write on.”

As Chrissy wrote their cell phone numbers on the back of a takeout menu, underlining the digits three times and circling them, Stella noted that any traces of the earlier Chrissy—the one who battled her fears with nothing stronger than Oreo cookies—were long gone.

With two avenues left to explore—Pitt and the hornet’s nest of corruption brewing in the northeast end of town—Stella made an executive decision as they got back in the Jeep and Chrissy pulled away from the curb at what was, for her, a sedate pace.

“Sweet pea, I think it might be time to let the law do its thing,” she said. “If Pitt’s got Tucker, the longer we wait, the further he could be taking him.”

“You’re saying Pitt wants to keep Tucker for himself, like that?”

“Well… I’m just saying, we got to consider all the scenarios here. That’s one of them.”

Chrissy frowned doubtfully. “I seen them tapes. What was that, England or something? Where they got that little girl in the grocery store and snipped off all her hair in the bathroom and put her in boy clothes. But Stella, that’s over there. Pitt wouldn’t ever do like that.”

“How can you be sure, Chrissy?”

“Well, I know him, is all. He’s tryin’ to court me to death.”

Stella tried to figure out a polite way to ask how sneaking over for noontime quickies counted as courting, or if there were some other romantic behaviors she wasn’t aware of. “But let’s say… I mean, here’s Pitt, wanting you to, ah, to date him again. And on the other hand, there’s a baby he thinks is his, and we know how that can get a man’s spurs up, right? So if you had to guess, sugar, and meaning no disrespect, which would you say is front and center in Pitt’s mind? You or Tucker?”

Chrissy slowed to a few miles an hour to avoid a yellow dog lying in the street, snoozing in the afternoon sun. “He wants the whole package, Stella. Me ’n Tucker and the white picket fence shit. I’d’ve been tempted too ’cause I am fond of that man, but I just know myself a little too well, you see what I mean?”

“Uh, not exactly…”

“Well, just that you know how some men scratch your itch a little but they still leave you feeling restless. And then there’s the ones that do it for you and then some, you know? Like a little bit a what they got goes a long way, they just kind of shiver you all over. Inside, outside, and twice on Sundays… see? Pitt’s the first kind of man, and that’s how I ended up steppin’ out on him when we was married, and I just know I’d do it again.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s the gift of being in your late twenties, is you get mature. You know yourself.”

“Hell, if you’ve managed that already, you must be some kind of genius,” Stella exclaimed. “It took me until I was almost fifty.”

“Well… you’re smart in other ways,” Chrissy said kindly, driving lazily across the center line as she turned to give Stella a reassuring pat on the knee. Chrissy, who’d barely let the needle drop below eighty on the way over, was negotiating the streets of Harrisonville like a blind old lady.

“But how do you explain him leaving town then?”

“What you said—he could be visiting someone or catching a show in Branson or something. Course, that was back when you were still shuttin’ me out of this here investigation, so I don’t guess you even believed them poor excuses when you said ’em.”

Ouch. The girl had a point, and Stella swallowed hard, guilt weighing heavy on her. “There still might be a logical reason…”

“Tell you what, let’s just save that for now. What I’m worried about is, you said if the law gets on this and word gets back to them Kansas City gangsters and Roy Dean is involved with all that, then it could be even more dangerous for Tucker if he’s with Roy Dean.”

“Well…” There was an uncomfortable amount of truth in what Chrissy said. Stella still couldn’t piece together a logical reason why Roy Dean would have taken Tucker, but if he’d done something stupid and pissed off the mafia, it wouldn’t matter if he’d taken the Hope Diamond or a can of pork and beans into their midst: either way, he wasn’t likely to come out again. And if that was the case, their only hope of getting the boy was to somehow get inside their inner circle and take him back themselves. “I guess… if you’re sure about this… me and you are going to have to go turn over some rocks.”

“What sort of rocks?”

“Ugly, nasty ones. The rocks rolling around at Benning’s. Only look here, Chrissy. I think there’s every chance in the world I’ve poked a mad dog in the eye that don’t have anything to do with Tucker. I mean, even if Roy Dean took him through there on his way out of town, there’s no reason those men would want anything to do with a little boy.”

“Yeah… I guess. But I know Roy Dean. He wouldn’t be able to stay away from a bunch of losers like that. Prob’ly made him feel all important. Mr. Big Man.”

Without warning, she hit the gas, and they screeched forward down the couple of blocks leading back to the state road. A man working the front of his lawn with an edger jumped out of the way just in time as she barreled past him.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Stella asked as Chrissy turned the wrong way down 9.

“Just a quick stop at Wal-Mart. We’re gonna need some supplies if we’re going to bust into that place.”

“But—but Wal-Mart’s the other way.”

“Not that Wal-Mart. We’re going to the other one, over in Casey.”

Stella’s head throbbed, and she gently massaged her temples, avoiding the bruised and stitched areas of her face as well as she could.

“I almost hate to ask, but what are we shopping for exactly?”

Chrissy glanced over at Stella, an all-business expression on her face. “Clothes for sneaking around in. I figure we got to get back over to Benning’s tonight, after dark, and look around. Best we wear black so we don’t stand out. Or camo, maybe. They make practically everything in camo these days, you know.”

“Oh.” Stella had to hand it to Chrissy for jumping right in to the details, which were still fuzzy in Stella’s own mind. Of course, Chrissy had the advantage of not having a concussion. “So… we’ll head out there tonight.”

“Yeah, well, we need to go when they’re closed, right? I mean, it’s not like they’re going to be happy to see you again, ’specially since it’s probably them as beat you up. You think we ought to get some of those night vision glasses?”

“I don’t know.… I think they’re pretty expensive.”

; “Yeah. Thanks to our stupid government,” Chrissy said, disgusted. “They pay six hundred dollars for a toilet seat, they probably want, like, a thousand bucks for those glasses.”

Stella was lost. “How does the government figure into what Wal-Mart charges?”

“Oh come on, Stella, don’t be naive. The government doesn’t want us to defend ourselves. Or bear arms or anything like that. They put a special tax on things that it’s our constitutional right to buy, and then the money goes