Killer View

“Can you ask Mr. Levy if I can try again?”

“If he takes you back at the school, what’s to say you’ll toe the line?”

“Ask Elbie. I’m reliable. I’m never late. I don’t cheat on lunchtime or anything.”

“I’ll speak to Barge.”

Crabtree nodded, holding the ice gingerly. “I lied about Kira.” He threw it out there.

“Before you dig yourself in any deeper,” Walt said, “let me tell you a couple things I know. First, you didn’t pick up Kira Tulivich on the side of the road. Second, I know she was in your car and that you dropped her at the hospital, as you’ve said. Third, that bruising on your face-it’s still faintly there-wasn’t Kira’s doing and it wasn’t a snow-boarding accident. There are no indications she resisted.”

Crabtree’s eyes widened with surprise. Or maybe it was concern that he had little to offer Walt now.

“We have no evidence co

The boy nodded.

“So should I call the ambulance guys in?”

He shook his head.

“You’re afraid.” Walt could see it on the boy’s face. “Of what, retaliation? By who?”

Only Crabtree’s eyes moved. A quick, surgical strike, locking onto Walt.

“Who?”

Crabtree didn’t answer.

“It’s natural for a young man in your situation to gravitate toward a group. A gang? Are you in with the Mexicans?”

He coughed up a laugh. “Oh, sure.”

Walt said the next thing that came into his head. “The Samaki

Crabtree’s face froze.

“I want you to think very carefully, Crab,” Walt said, feeling a rapport developing. “Association with the Samaki

“You don’t fucking get it, do you?”

“I’m afraid not. Help me out, Crab. I want to get it.”

“Shit.”

“The bruises. The ones you already had when I saw you at Elbie’s. Did Kira give you that face?”

“I did not do anything to Kira.”

“And you did not get those bruises snowboarding.”

“I rescued her.” His eyes, unflinching and bloodshot, glared at him. “You’ve got it backwards, Sheriff. I’m the one that saved her.”

“Okay? From?”

“Them. Coats and the other guy.” He broke the eye contact. “He lives up there, you know? Triumph. Coats does. He and his dogs. Fucking dogs never stop barking. But is anybody going to complain about it? No way…”

“Roy Coats,” Walt said. Coats was one of the last true mountain men left in the area. A tracker. Some said illegal tracker. He’d been accused more than once of using collared dogs to track down mountain lions for anonymous clients. Walt rolled around the rumors surrounding Randy Aker and poaching. Coats? Fish and Game had tried to bring charges against Coats several years back. He hadn’t heard the name since then.

“I saw him take Kira out of a dog crate. Back of his pickup. This was really late at night. Snowing bad, and he’s got her in a dog crate.”

Walt looked around. He longed for a tape recorder and yet didn’t want to put Crabtree off his statement. Pulling a notepad from his shirt pocket, he said, “I’m going to write some of this down.”

Crabtree nodded. “He dragged her inside.”

“How close is his place to yours?”

Walt’s nephew, Kevin, had taught him well about when a teen shifted into avoidance mode. Crabtree’s eyes went to a cigarette burn on the edge of the table. His shoulders folded forward. Walt’s impatience and his lack of sleep almost got the better of him. He nearly marched around the conference table and took Crabtree by the shirt and shook some sense into him. But he’d learned self-control a long time ago, had learned to make these interrogations-confrontations-less personal. Crabtree wanted to improve both his current situation and his future. Walt could play the catalyst, if he could get his own frustration out of the way.

“Can you see his house from your mobile home?” Walt asked, his voice calm and collected.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“ Taylor…help yourself out here. You can do this. It’s the right thing to do. Forget about you for a minute. Think about Kira. You’re helping Kira. You want to help Kira, right?”

The look on his face showed anger and frustration. Walt knew all about both. “What?” Walt said.

“I can’t tell you.”

“You have to tell me.”

“But I can’t.”

“Okay, how about this? We start the clock right now. Anything you tell me for the next five minutes is off the record. It never happened. I never heard it.”

“That’s a cop game. You ever seen Law and Order? I know all about cop games.”

“Four minutes,” Walt said, looking at his watch. “No tricks. I give you my word.”

Crabtree looked Walt up and down. Something about Walt’s promise resonated.

“Coats isn’t there much. He hunts with the dogs, I think. Maybe has some other place. Not there much at all. But the dogs… a lot of them stick around. And there’s this girl… watches the place for him. Takes care of the dogs. Smoking-hot, this girl.” He dared a glance at Walt, who tried to convey no opinion in his expression. Crabtree was apparently going to leave it there.

“A good-looking girl,” Walt said.

“Asked me to take care of the dogs for her one time her mother got real sick and she couldn’t stick around. I said sure. And she gave me a key.”

Again he paused. Again, it seemed as if he wasn’t going to continue.

“A key to Coats’s place.”

“Correct,” Crabtree said.

“And you helped her out by feeding the dogs. Does this co

“I put a pair of webcams in there.” His head was hung in shame.

Walt’s heart raced in his chest. He looked around for a glass of water. There wasn’t one.

“Inside the house.”

“His cabin, yeah.”

Walt’s jaw dropped. He sucked up his surprise, cleared his throat, and tried to sound as normal as possible. But, inside, he was both churning over the invasion of privacy and jumping at the thought that Taylor Crabtree might have witnessed the assault. Depending on if he ever found Mark Aker, depending on his condition, proving the abduction could be difficult. But a witness to a sexual assault, a rape, tried and convicted in Blaine County, could put Coats away for most of his adult life. It would be a poor trade-off but one that Walt would be happy to have in his back pocket.

“ Taylor, I understand that your concern here is prosecution over the existence of the webcams. It’s a legitimate concern, given your being expelled from the Alternative School for the same offense. If we charged you, a judge wouldn’t like that at all. But I can guarantee you-guarantee, Taylor -that that will not be the case here. If you witnessed what I think you witnessed, those charges will never be filed. Not only that but others will be lessened or eliminated. But most of all, I need you to be honest. Do you get that? Absolutely honest. The slightest embellishment will hurt everything.”

The boy nodded. “I have hours of DVDs,” he said.

“Of?”

“The girl. In the shower. Dressing. Undressing. In bed. She had a boyfriend who… you know. He came over a lot when she was there. And they… you know.”

“You recorded it,” Walt said, his voice shaking slightly. He couldn’t hold himself back. “The assault, Taylor? Crab? Did you record the assault?”