Long lost

"Three people trying to breathe in a trunk? Jesus."

Something in the detectives' eyes made me guess what they were thinking. As dangerous as Petey was, it might be only two people trying to breathe. He might not have let the driver live.

"Wyoming? But why in hell would he have gone to Wyoming?" At once, I remembered something Petey had said. "Montana."

"You sound like that means something to you," Pendleton said. "What are you getting at?"

"Montana's north of Wyoming."

They looked at me as if I was babbling.

"No, listen to me. My brother said that when he saw me on the CBS Sunday Morning show, he was having breakfast in Montana. In a diner in Butte. Maybe that's why he's heading north. Maybe something in Montana's drawing him back."

For the first time, Webber was animated. "Good." He hurriedly pulled out his phone. "I'll send descriptions of this guy, your wife, and your son to the Montana state police."

"We'll contact the Butte police department," Pendleton quickly added. "Maybe they know something about this guy. If he's been arrested, they'll have a photograph of him that we can circulate."

"Assuming he called himself Peter De

"There are other ways to investigate. Kidnapping across state lines means the FBI will get involved. The feds will do their best to match the fingerprints we find with ones they have on file. If this guy ever used an alias, we have a good chance of learning what it is."

I tried hard to believe what they were saying.

"Have you a recent photograph of your wife and son?"

"On the mantel." I looked in that direction. The beaming faces of Kate and Jason made me heartsick. I'd taken the photograph myself. Normally, I hardly knew which button to press on a camera, but that day, I'd gotten lucky. We'd been to Copper Mountain skiing, although falling down was more what Kate and I had done. Jason had been a natural, however. He'd gri

"We'll return it as soon as we have copies made," Pendleton said.

"Keep it as long as you have to." The truth was, I hated to part with it. The empty place on the mantel reinforced my hollowness. "Anything else-anything at all-just ask."

What they need more than anything, I thought, is for God to answer my prayers.

3

Throughout, the phone had rung frequently. I'd been vaguely aware that a policeman had answered it. Now he handed me a list of who'd called, mostly reporters wanting an interview-TV, radio. What had happened would be all over the state by evening.

"Jesus, Kate's parents." Hurrying, I left Webber and Pendleton in the living room. In the kitchen, my bandaged hand shook when I pressed numbers on the telephone.

"Hello?" an elderly man said.

"Ray…" I could hardly make my voice work. "Sit down. I'm afraid I've got bad news."

It made me sick to have to tell them, to hear their lives change in a minute. Neither of them was in good health. Even so, they immediately wanted to drive the three hundred miles from Du-rango through the mountains to Denver. I had a hard time convincing them to stay home. After all, what were they going to accomplish in Denver? Kate's father was breathing so fast that he sounded like he was going to have a heart attack.

"Stay put," I said. "All we can do now is wait." I had a terrible mental image of Kate's father rushing to get to Denver, losing control of his car, and plummeting down a gorge. "You can wait just as easily at home. I'll let you know the instant I learn anything."

Setting down the phone, I took a deep breath, then noticed Webber and Pendleton at the entrance to the kitchen.

"What?" I asked.

"We just got a call from the Wyoming state police," Webber said.

I braced myself.

"A woman from Casper's been reported missing. Saturday evening, she was en route from visiting her sister in Sheridan, which is about a hundred and fifty miles north of where she lives."

"You think my brother carjacked her?"

"The timing fits. Just after dark, she would have approached the rest stop where the Wyoming state police found your wife's Volvo. If the woman had to use the rest room…"

Inwardly, I flinched as I imagined Petey coming at the woman and how terrified she must have been.

"She was driving a 1994 Chevy Caprice," Pendleton said. "Apart from the fact that she was driving alone, her abductor probably singled her out because that type of car has a large trunk. He kept heading north. The Wyoming police gave the license number to the police in Montana, who found the Caprice at a rest stop on Interstate Ninety near Billings."

"Were my wife and son…"

"With the Caprice? No."

Something about Pendleton's tone made me suspicious. "What about the woman who owned it?"

He didn't answer.

"Tell me."

Pendleton glanced at Webber, who nodded as if giving permission.

"Her body was in the trunk."

"Dear God." I didn't want to know, and yet I couldn't stop from asking, "What did Petey do to her?"

"Tied her hands and covered her mouth with duct tape.

She"-Pendleton's voice dropped-"had asthma. She choked to death."

Thinking about the woman's desperate struggle to breathe, I could barely concentrate as Webber explained that Petey could have driven the Caprice from Casper, Wyoming, to Billings, Montana, that same night. He'd presumably carjacked another vehicle at the Billings rest stop. As the driver got out of the car to go to the bathroom, Petey would have lunged from the shadows.

I imagined how horrifying it would have been for Kate and Jason, pressed next to the dying woman in the dark, the air foul, feeling her thrash, hearing her muffled choking sounds, her frenzied movements, her strangled gasps slowing, getting weaker, stopping.

"It's never going to end," I managed to say.

"No, we could be close to boxing him in," Pendleton said. "You predicted right. He was headed to Montana. Probably back to Butte. Billings is on the interstate that leads there. The local police don't have any criminal record for someone named Peter De

"But what if Petey senses the danger and leaves?"

"We thought of that. The Montana state police have unmarked cars along the interstate, watching for any white male in his thirties who's driving alone. As soon as the FBI processes his fingerprints, we'll have a better idea of who we're dealing with. The way he operates, he's had practice. He's probably got a criminal record, in which case the feds will come up with a recent mug shot we can distribute."