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“He’s a good boy,” she insisted. Izzy frowned. “I can’t see how he’d do a thing like this. He’s such a good boy.”
Izzy resisted the urge to point out that Jeter was anything but a good boy. He was a murderer, and a kidnapper.
“How long has it been since you’ve seen him?” Izzy asked.
The woman sighed. “Oh, a while. It’s been…a while.”
“A few weeks?” Izzy ventured.
The woman’s gaze fell.
“Months?”
The woman took a deep breath. “It’s been about two years now.”
Izzy winced. She couldn’t imagine living in the same city as Pop and not seeing him all the time.
“Are you police?”
Izzy sighed inwardly. She wouldn’t lie to the woman, even though the assumption that she was an officer helped her immensely.
“No,” Izzy replied. “I’m a bail bondsman.”
The woman’s brow furrowed. “Jeter’s not out on bail.”
Not this time, Izzy thought. But Jeter had been arrested multiple times over the years for minor offenses.
“No, ma’am. But I track down folks who don’t appear in court and occasionally I help the police find other people as well.”
This was stretching the truth a bit. She’d made it seem as though she was actually working with the police, which wasn’t the case. Denver PD wouldn’t turn down a collar that a bounty hunter made, but they didn’t exactly encourage citizens to insert themselves into police investigations—especially not ones as serious as these.
“I think the police want to kill my boy for what he’s done,” Mrs. Paul said quietly.
Izzy shook her head. She wasn’t a cop, but she didn’t like painting them in a bad light either. “I don’t think so,” she replied. “Denver PD just wants to find him… and the girl. But he’s not in Denver, is he? He’s headed somewhere else. A place where they might shoot first and ask questions later.”
The woman considered this at length and then stepped back. “Come in,” she said wearily.
Izzy carefully moved past the dog that was nipping at her steeled-toes. Mrs. Paul shut the front door behind them and moved to the living room that lay just beyond. Mrs. Paul’s house was her son’s polar opposite—clean and tidy, with several framed photographs and knick-knacks laid out on shelves and end tables. The small fireplace had a mantle that was filled with photos. Izzy wasn’t too surprised by this. Sometimes the apple fell from the tree, rolled down the fucking hill, and came to a stop as far from the tree as it could possibly get—Izzy was living proof of that.
“He is a good boy,” Mrs. Paul insisted. “Or…he was. But then his father died and..” She trailed off. “I don’t know how things got this bad. Greg, that’s my husband, always kept Jeter in line. Guess I didn’t realize how much I needed him here to do that until he wasn’t anymore.”
Izzy inspected photos of a poor, but generally happy family—at least when the camera was pointed at them. Jeter’s hair was short in the family snaps. He’d obviously grown it out considerably since then.
“You won’t kill him?” the woman pleaded.
Izzy turned to look at her and shook her head. “No, ma’am. I just want the girl back.”
Izzy held out hope that the woman had some scrap of information, some idea of where her son had gotten the crazy idea for this spree and where it would all end. But the older woman’s face crumpled in despair and Izzy knew she was still just trying to make sense of it all. Izzy sighed and turned back to the photos. One caught her eye and she picked it up, swiping at a thin layer of dust over the glass. Jeter was much younger. Izzy would guess about 10 or 12. At least she assumed it was him. He had the same dark hair. His arm was crooked around the neck of a boy about the same age—a boy with sandy blond hair.
“He seems happy,” Izzy said, holding up the photo.
Mrs. Paul wiped her eyes and nodded. “That’s Jason. His cousin. Greg took him up for a visit every summer, to see his brother. Jason’s his boy. Thick as thieves, those two always were.”
“Jason,” Izzy repeated. “Paul?”
Mrs. Paul nodded.
Izzy looked down at the photo and swiped her thumb across the glass. Two young boys smiled back at her against the backdrop of a bright blue sky. And a sign that read “Badlands National Park.”
Chapter 6
Caleb pulled his sleek, black and chrome Harley into his former lieutenant’s circular driveway. Chris “Shooter” Sullivan had purchased the two-story log cabin for his wife, and they were slowly filling it up with kids. As he entered the house through the front door, he saw Shooter’s wife, Sarah, standing in the living room, the first of their brood perched on her hip.
“Hey, Slick,” he said, leaning down to kiss Sarah on top of her head. He ruffled baby Hope’s short, wispy hair. “Hey, kiddo.”
