“If you find anything interesting, call my cell.”
After stopping by the house, depositing the bag of breast milk into the refrigerator and spending half an hour feeding and cuddling the baby, she kissed her husband good-bye, assured him that she would be fine and that, though she missed her family terribly, she loved her job and would call them from the road.
“We have to talk about this,” Santana said.
He was taller than she by half a foot, a cowboy type who actually worked on a ranch and was tough as nails. His hair was black, his eyes dark above a hawkish nose, his smile, when he rained it on her, an irreverent slash of white.
“We already did.”
“Then we need to talk about it again. You’re exhausted, the baby needs you, the older kids, too. Hell, I need you.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Make it sooner,” he said and kissed her on the lips, a long slow kiss that turned her inside out, just as it had the first time. She weakened, wanted to melt against him, wanted the feel of him inside her, but that would have to wait.
“I’ll try,” she promised.
Then she took off.
On the way to Butte, she called Flowers and brought him up to speed as the miles rolled by. She told him what FBI agent Burch had said about getting photos of the inside of the studio.
“That’s what we need. Pictures of the place. Something that will nail them, connect the RV or house or some landmark up there to pictures that have already been taken.”
“We’ll go up there after dark,” Flowers said. “Give us a call later on, around midnight.”
• • •
IN BUTTE, REGAN FOUND PHILLIP weeks sitting in the corner of a drunk tank, where the Butte cops had put him after picking him up at the bus station. A Butte detective named Charlie Tarley unlocked the door and pushed it open. Weeks, looking terrified, slowly rolled to his feet.
Tarley, African American and looking as if he worked out regularly, said to him, “You got a visitor.”
She stepped forward, into the kid’s range of vision, and held up her badge. “Detective Regan Pescoli. Pinewood County Sheriff’s Department.”
Fear showed in Weeks’s eyes.
He was tall, unnaturally thin, weathered in the way of street people, farmers, and lumberjacks. He bore a fading bruise below one eye.
Tarley said in a calm voice, “C’mon out, Phillip. Detective Pescoli made a long drive to see you. We all need to chat.”
“What’d I do?” Weeks asked.
“You probably took six hundred dollars from a young girl at the WJ Ranch, but your old man paid it back, so that’s not it,” Regan said. “But I think you might know why you want to talk.”
Weeks shoved both hands in his jeans pocket and stared at the floor a second, then looked up through the dark strands of the hair falling over his forehead. Pinning Regan with his suspicious gaze, he said, “He paid it back?”
She nodded.
Weeks shook his head. “Where’d he get the money? He was drinking and didn’t even have enough cash to buy a box of cereal. I know he didn’t have six hundred dollars.”
“He gave it back. All of it. So you’re good on that score,” she said. “C’mon out of there.”
Shuffling reluctantly Weeks followed Regan along a short hallway to an interview room, Tarley trailing behind, talking on a cell phone. The square, windowless room had a table and four chairs. Regan sat directly across from the boy with his downcast eyes, Tarley on her right.
“I’m going to read you your rights,” Tarley said.
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Just listen,” she ordered. “Hear him out. This is all part of the deal.”