Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [83]
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking about how desolate it is out here. What if everyone believed that the boys went in one direction, and they actually went in another? I mean, with spaced-out Emmy as the only witness, how reliable was the information? Maybe they didn’t search for them in the right place.”
“Kendra, you read the reports last night and this morning. This place was swarming with law enforcement agents and volunteers, twenty miles in every direction. There wasn’t a sign of either of them.”
“But they didn’t start looking until the boys had been gone for almost two days. They could have walked more than twenty miles in two days, Adam.”
“From what I read in the files, those hills were scoured. But we can always go over the files again with Sheriff Gamble. Maybe there’s something we missed.”
“Maybe.”
Kendra leaned closer to the window to rest her chin on her arms. “The ranch looks smaller, shabbier. When I was here before, there were more people. More activity. It’s so quiet out here now.”
“Maybe it was your aunt who kept things moving.”
“No doubt. Mom always said she was a lightning rod, that things always happened when she was around.” Kendra looked back at the hills as Adam started the car. “Strange to think that she died almost a full year before Mom and that no one called us.”
“Do you think it would have occurred to Emmy?”
“I don’t think there’s much that occurs to Emmy,” she said dryly.
“Shall we see if her son has anything meaningful to add?”
“To Benson.” She pointed straight ahead. “But I doubt Christopher will be of any more help than his mother was.”
It appeared that Christopher would be no help at all.
The small private hospital that Christopher Moss called home sat at the edge of the desert. Out front, the pink blooms of the barrel cactus were just beginning to open. Hummingbirds darted around the feeders that hung from the low branches of the cottonwoods. The hospital was mission style, with arches and tiles set into the stucco walls. The grounds were manicured and neat. The overwhelming impression was of money, exclusivity.
“I wonder if my aunt paid for this,” Kendra said in a low voice as she and Adam approached the courtyard.
“Emmy didn’t appear to be a lady of means.”
“It would have been good use of Sierra’s money,” Kendra told him, thinking of some of the ways she was putting the Smith money to work. Father Tim’s Mission was only one beneficiary. “Better to take care of Christopher than to have Emmy and her gang smoke it away. Or worse.”
The hospital was cool inside, the staff cordial. Kendra and Adam were taken to Christopher’s room by a young male orderly who had a buzz cut, several tattoos, and a friendly manner.
“Chrissy, you have some company,” the orderly announced as he led the visitors into the room. He opened the drapes to let in the scenery, then pointed to a chair next to the window.
The man in the chair appeared to be in his thirties, though Kendra and Adam were well aware that he couldn’t have been more than eighteen. His pale hair was long and pulled back in a ponytail held with a red rubber band. He wore a shirt that buttoned down the front and cotton pants with a drawstring at the waist of the same color blue as the shirt. He stared out the window, and it wasn’t until Kendra spoke that his eyes shifted to look at her face, though his head never moved. His left hand moved to one of the buttons on his shirt, which he began to stroke, holding it between his thumb and his index finger.
“Hi, Christopher,” Kendra said as she took a few steps forward, then stopped. “Is it okay if I sit down in the chair there, next to you?”
“He doesn’t talk,” the orderly said, as if Christopher was deaf as well as mute. “He never talks. Well, rarely, anyway. Sometimes you can get him to write or draw pictures, but that’s all.”
“Christopher, my name is Kendra. I’m Ian’s sister. Do you remember Ian?”
Christopher looked past her, to some place beyond the window.
“We saw your mother today, Christopher. Emmy. We went to see her at the ranch.