“Yes, Wolfe,” he said, his voice rising. “Please call me Leland, if you would.”
“Sure.” I settled the phone more comfortably in my hand. “I’ve got your saddle and bridle ready to be picked up—or I couldship it—but the blizzard is making travel impossible. Either by one of your men, or by UPS.”
“Yes, the blizzard. We’re getting a bit of snow down here, but nothing like where you are. How is it?”
Talking with Leland Tate was always a pleasure. He was typically pleasant, always polite, and the way he talked told me he was very sharp. But I was worried. He’d paid a great deal for the repairs to his set. He should already have it in his possession.
“A whiteout,” I said. “Sideways wind and probably below zero temperatures by now.”
There was a pause. Some clicks. “My app says it’s twenty below where you are,” Leland said. “A good night to be inside. A hot chocolate with marshmallow night, as Jamie says.”
I thought Jamie might be Leland’s partner. Gus had mentioned him, but beyond that, nothing more, and I didn’t want to pry.
“You got that right,” I said, wondering if I had any powdered cocoa on hand. And whether Blue might enjoy some. At the same time, I shifted in my seat, feeling cold. If I’d not found Blue when I had, he’d be dead by now. “But about the saddle.”
“It’ll keep, son,” he said.
Sometimes he called me that. Son. As if he knew me, or had met me in person. I didn’t really mind as I had a feeling he liked me. Maybe Gus had put in a good word for me.
“Of course, it’d be nice to have that saddle back. Bill cussed me out something fierce when he found out what I did with it.” A low chuckle. “Maybe take a picture and send it to me so I can show him that it’s in good hands? You send that invoice, I’ll pay it, and we’ll both keep an eye on the weather. Maybe I’ll have Hudson drive it down. He used to be in my rehab program for ex-cons. He works for Gus now.”
I knew about that program but had not applied, mostly because my third-class aggravated assault charge was far toopiddly for me to be considered an ex-con. I wouldn’t have gotten in. At any rate, I’d been released in August at the tail end of the solitary summer they’d had the program.
“Would he be willing?”
“Hudson?” Tate paused. “I believe so. He used to be a trucker, so maybe he’d be up for it.”
“That’ll work,” I said. “I’ll take that picture and send it to you, and when the weather clears, we’ll get your saddle back.” I didn’t mention the invoice, which was for quite a bit, because I knew Leland Tate was good for it. He had a solid reputation, even all the way up here in Montana.
We ended the call. I put the cell phone down, took a picture of the saddle and bridle, and sent it to him. Then I dug up the invoice, checked the figures against the repairs, which included sheepskin replacement, re-flocking, new stirrup leathers and so on, and emailed it to him.
Getting up, I went into the small living room to check on Blue. He was still asleep, firelight reflecting in his golden hair, but he seemed content and not restless, so I sat at my desk again and opened my computer, pulled up a browser. And paused for a moment as the wind scurried against the glass and tried my best to figure out what it was I needed to know.
Blue had amnesia. He was beyond slender; he was skinny. Grubby. Beat up. In my mind, he’d been one of those kids on the train or near the tracks in Hysham. He’d been riding the rails. But for how long? How old was he? Younger than me, that was for certain. And was anyone missing him at home?
My mind jumped from that idea to the question: Was he just some kid who had left home? Or was he someone who was considered missing?
I was pretty good at the computer, and especially good at browsing. I had my accounts in a homemade spreadsheet, and I kept track of my tools and supplies and projects on Airtable. Iknew my way around the internet, but it took me a few minutes, my fingers hovering over the keyboard, to figure out what to type.
I entered the facts that I knew. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Around five feet ten inches. And skinny. Oh, so skinny. What else? Fine features. Articulate. Missing? Runaway? I erased that last word because surely he was too old to be considered a runaway.
The blizzard seemed to be making the internet slow; still, the browser gave me many pages of results. The first few were sponsored articles about runaways and missing people, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I scrolled until I got to non-sponsored results and started clicking.
The first group of links I clicked took me down rabbit holes, including one Rick Astley video and one about the old TV show calledMissing Persons. On another site was a database of actual missing persons, but I didn’t want to log in and give them my information and leave a trail. After eight months in prison, I knew better than to leave a trail.
I tried again, shifting the words around. I addedon the runandrunawayto the search bar and pressed the Enter button. More sponsored links displayed at the top of my screen, and beneath that was a link that said,Missing From Home: The Story.The link wrapped around, making it so that I had to click on it to read the article.
The result was a solid gold jackpot. At the top of the page was a picture of Blue, paired with a picture of another young man, who looked a lot like Blue but who was older. And the bold headline:Sommerville Family Scandal — One Son Dead, The Other Missing.
My eyes were drawn to the picture of Blue. Shorter hair, the same blue eyes. Still pretty, but unmarked by the world. Younger. Wide eyed. The text under the picture read:Crispin Sommerville, 17, last seen at The Reserve, Virginia. I scannedthe article. It indicated that Blue—Crispin—had left the Reserve without permission two years prior, in September. Which meant that Crispin was 19. Not a child, but barely a man. Twelve years younger than I.
What was the Reserve? I looked it up. It was a reform school and detention center down in Virginia and, by the number of articles that popped up, it did not have a good reputation.
Who were the Sommervilles? That’s when it got wild, as my research pulled up articles that read like a barroom brawl during the gold rush. The Sommervilles had money and clout. They lived at their million-dollar Virginia home in summer, flew to Barbados for the winter to stay at their beach shack (not a shack). They rented jets. Chartered yachts. They owned horses. Cars. I blinked.
The reward for information about Crispin’s whereabouts was one hundred thousand dollars. This had been raised from the prior year’s amount, which had been seventy-five thousand. The year before that, it had been fifty thousand. He was the only son. The heir to his parent’s fortune.
From what I gathered in the article, the Sommervilles had a long lineage, a family branch in Maine, an interest in a fishing fleet there, and friends in high places. The other son, Cameron, had died of a drug overdose the very month Crispin had been sent to The Reserve. What was with these people? One son dies, and the other gets locked up?
