“I know. That’s why you’re going to stay at my friend’s house.”
“Oh, great, I get to stay with some stranger?”
“No, you’ll have the place to yourself. He’s in Florida for the winter.”
“Then why didn’t we stay there in the first place instead of bunking down with the spider community in hillbilly hunter’s haven?”
“Because I don’t have a key to his house and it isn’t very isolated. As long as you keep a low profile, you should be okay there alone. It’s my face they’re looking for.”
“Wait. If you don’t have a key to the house, how are we going to get in?” Then I remember how he picked the lock on Callie’s apartment and say, “Never mind.” I sit back against my seat with my arms folded over my chest and pout, sensing that Hurley isn’t going to back down.
A little while later, Hurley parks on a street in the small town of Tomah. “Come on,” he says, taking the gun from beneath the seat and sticking it in his jacket pocket. “We’re going to make the rest of the trip on foot. I don’t want to risk my car being seen near the house.”
We walk several blocks through working-class residential neighborhoods until we come to a small ranch house. Hurley’s eyes are busy checking out the surroundings, watching for anyone who may be watching us. He steers me through a privacy fence and into the backyard, and as soon as we’re secluded, he takes out his lock toolkit and goes to work on the back door.
We’re inside within minutes and the first thing Hurley does is close the blinds on the front windows. The house is neat and sparsely furnished, and the air smells faintly of burned wood. There is a woodstove in the living room but there’s also a thermostat on the wall to regulate a furnace.
“Don’t use the woodstove,” Hurley cautions. “The smoke coming out of the chimney might attract attention.”
Next we head to the kitchen where Hurley opens the refrigerator. It’s on and cold inside, but the shelves are bare except for an open box of baking soda. Next he opens the freezer, which produces better results. Stacked neatly on the shelves are a dozen or so frozen, microwavable meals—my sort of cuisine. The pantry is well stocked, too, with canned soups, fruits, and instant oatmeal.
“I’ll be back later tonight after it’s dark and I’ll bring some groceries with me,” he says. “Make yourself at home in the meantime but stay inside and keep the blinds drawn and the doors locked. If you want to watch TV, use the one in the basement and keep the volume down. If anyone comes knocking, don’t answer. I’ll let myself in when I get back.”
“Hurley, I don’t think this is a good—”
“I don’t want to discuss it anymore, Mattie.” He walks off and enters a den, where there is a desk and a computer. He boots up the computer and when it’s done loading, he launches the Internet browser and types in Connor Smith’s name. One click later he’s scribbling down Smith’s office address and a couple clicks after that he has the man’s home address.
“You’ll be fine,” he says, stuffing the sheet in his pocket. He takes out a wad of cash and peels off a handful of twenties. Then he takes the extra gun out of his pocket and hands it to me along with a full clip. “I don’t think you’ll need either of these, but just in case I don’t get back for some reason, use them if you need to. I’ll see you later.”
Two minutes later I’m alone in the house, feeling frustrated, lonely, and bored. So I take the next most logical step and start snooping. Rummaging through the desk drawers, it doesn’t take me long to find out the name of the person whose house I’m staying in: Carl Withers. When I get on the computer I see that he has Outlook for his e-mail server and though I feel a few seconds of guilt, it’s not enough to stop me from browsing through his e- mails. On a whim, I search through his old saved ones looking for Hurley’s name and come up with nearly a page full. From these I glean that Carl is a widower who was a longtime friend of Hurley’s father. The e-mails are brief and nothing but chitchat.
Bored with my snooping, I decide to head out to the kitchen and fix something to eat. I opt for an oriental Lean Cuisine dish and carry it over to the microwave, which is mounted beneath a cabinet not far from the back door. That’s when I see the key rack.
There are two keys there, one that looks like it might be a spare house key and one that is obviously a car key with a fob. Curious, I leave the kitchen and explore the hallway that goes to the bedrooms. Halfway down it I find a small laundry room that also serves as a mudroom. There is a metal exterior door at the other end and when I open it, I discover the garage and a relatively new Lexus.
The discovery of the car seems like a good omen to me and without a second’s thought I head back to the den, get back on the computer, and pull up the browser history. When I’m done I head back to the garage and climb into the Lexus. Apparently Carl Withers is a short man because I have to move the seat back as far as it will go just to get my knees to clear the steering wheel. And as I do so, I flash back on the discovery of Callie’s car and how the lab tech had to move the seat back when he got in.
That’s when it hits me. There’s no way Hurley could have driven that car with the seat in the position it was found because of his height. And then I remember the basement window in my house, and the trouble I had squeezing through it, which resulted in a cut from leftover glass, a cut that required stitches. Granted my butt may be bigger than Hurley’s, but my shoulders aren’t, and they barely fit through. Hurley’s shoulders are delightfully, appealingly broad, much wider than mine. He never would have fit through there. Combine these things with the apparent left-handedness of the person who stabbed Callie and it all points to someone other than Hurley.
Five minutes later I’m pulling out of Carl Withers’s garage with a picture of Connor Smith from a newspaper article about Dilles’s trial, and the addresses for his home and office on the seat beside me. Hurley’s gun and its clip are safely tucked beneath the seat, and Hurley’s cash is safely stuffed in my bra. I wish I had a way to call Hurley and tell him what I’ve figured out but he has the cell phone with him and I don’t know the number for it. Without my own throwaway phone, I have no way to reach him.
The Lexus is equipped with GPS navigation and when I plug in Smith’s office address, it tells me that my estimated arrival time will be well into the evening hours. His home address isn’t much better since it only shaves fifteen minutes off my travel time, so I settle into the Lexus—easy to do since the seats are quite plush and come equipped with a butt warmer—and drive.
As soon as I hit the interstate I take my speed up to sixty-nine, wanting to travel as fast as I can but unwilling to risk getting pulled over, especially since I’m now guilty of operating without a license and car theft— though I’m hoping Carl Withers will see it as more of a car borrowing kind of thing. I know Hurley tends to be a bit of a lead foot but I suspect he’ll be cautious too, given that he doesn’t want to get caught. Though I don’t really expect to catch up to him, I keep scanning the cars ahead of me, looking for Hurley’s.
An hour into my drive, when I’m only half an hour or so outside of Sorenson, I notice that the Lexus’s gas gauge is bordering on empty and I start looking for an exit that can provide me with food, gas, and a toilet. Though stopping somewhere this close to home makes me a little nervous, the next exit has what I need, so I take it and prepare to pull into a mini-mart gas station combo. But I get caught in a bottleneck almost as soon as I leave the freeway and as I inch my way toward the end of the exit ramp, I see why. A blockade of cop cars is positioned in front of the mini-mart and an officer is directing us to go around. I follow the rest of the drivers, rubbernecking like everyone else but also wary of being seen and recognized.
And that’s when I see Hurley, handcuffed and standing beside a police cruiser in the mini-mart parking lot.
Chapter 40
My first impulse is to hide but I realize that with all the attention focused on Hurley, I’m not likely to attract any more attention than any of the other drivers. Besides, I don’t even know if anyone is looking for me. My second impulse is to stop and tell the cops that I know Hurley and what’s more, I know he’s innocent. But I quickly realize how suicidal that move would be. While I may be able to prove Hurley’s innocence eventually, he’ll be locked up anyway and who knows what might happen. So I stay in line with all the other cars, drive past the mini-mart, take the first U-turn I see, and get back on the freeway.
My mind is a whirlwind of questions and worries, wondering what the hell I should do now that Hurley is in
