Chapter 10: The Warning
Sarah came back the next morning alone.
Boone saw her through the diner window β standing a moment in the lot with her keys, a woman assembling herself β and he understood before she sat down that yesterday had not been the whole of her errand. Poppy was with a sitter, she said. A grandmother from the weekly rentals, vetted with a thoroughness that made Otis nod in approval.
"There's a second thing," Sarah said. "I carried two things. Yesterday was June's. This one β " She folded her hands, nurse's hands, steady by training. "This one is mine. And I need you to hear it the way you'd hear a diagnosis. All the way through, before you decide anything."
"Say it," Boone said.
"Daryl Ketch was released six weeks ago."
The name landed the way such names land β not as a surprise, exactly, but as a physical fact, like a change in air pressure. Boone had known the arithmetic of the sentence the way he knew his own mileage. He had simply arranged to stop doing it.
"He served his time on the related charges β the leaving, the stolen truck he was driving, the rest of the list. Parole. Six weeks ago he walked." Sarah's voice stayed level, clinical, a chart read aloud. "He has already violated. Missed check-ins. Left his approved county. There is a warrant. They are looking for him, and I am telling you the part that is not in any newspaper. Three nights ago, a long-haul driver named Reese β a reliable man, come through my ER twice β treated a stranger to coffee at a truck stop off Eighty, two towns east of here. The stranger was asking about the Millers Crossing plaza. About whether a big biker named Hartley still fueled there. Still lived out the valley road."
Boone said nothing. Outside the window, the pumps ticked and flashed in the ordinary sun.
"Reese called me because he knew the name, and knew I was moving here. He said the man was polite. He said that was the part he didn't like."
Sarah's phone was already on the table. "Janet Krol is his parole officer. I called her this morning. She's expecting to hear from you β I asked her to take it from me, so it's official and not truck stop. May I?"
He nodded once. She dialed, set it to speaker, and a tired, competent voice filled the booth.
"Mr. Hartley, this is Officer Krol. What Ms. Larson told you is accurate. There is a warrant. We believe he's in the region, and in custody statements he has referred to β I'm quoting the file β 'the man who named me.' Your plate sighting and your statement put him at the scene, and he has organized a good deal of his thinking around that. I am not calling to frighten you. I am calling because you should lock your doors, vary your routine, and call this number β not the local number, this number β if you see him, or hear from anyone who has. And Mr. Hartley β "
"I'm here."
Let us do the looking. That is what the warrant is for. And if his name comes up anywhere β a bar, a lot, a stranger asking after you β you call this number. You don't weigh it first. You call.
The call ended. The coffee sat between them going cold, and Boone Hartley looked at his hands on the table β hands that had been steady on a wrecked road, hands that had given a statement and gone home to an empty house and kept the law's pace for four years, while a coat hung in the dark, waiting.
"All right," he said at last. "Then we do it the way she says."
"You could have phoned this in," he said, after a moment. "You didn't have to drive it down here yourself."
"I know it," Sarah said. "Reese called me. After that it was mine. And I was coming here anyway." "Also, nobody warns a man like you by telephone. You'd have said 'uh-huh' and gone back to your eggs."
Despite everything, that pulled the corner of his mouth. "Probably."
Otis, refilling, was told the shape of it β not all, enough. A man was being looked for. Boone would be fueling at odd hours, and if anyone asked after him, the answer was that Otis didn't traffic in other men's schedules, and there was a number to call. Otis wrote the number on the pad by the register and did not ask the questions behind his eyes. "Your booth's yours," he said. "However it needs to be."
Sarah left with a nurse's handshake, firm and brief, and Boone stayed at the window until her car pulled out onto the highway east. Then he went out to his bike, and checked the locks on the house in his mind, one by one, the way other men say a rosary.
Chapter 11: The Trooper