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"No," I said.
"Then I'll do it."
"Boots, if they screw it up, he'll kill her. We'll never even find the body."
Her face was white. I set the shotgun down and pulled her against me. She felt small, her back rounded, inside my arms.
"We've got a few hours," I said. "If we can't get her back in that time, I'm going to do what he wants and hope that he turns her loose. I'll bring the sheriff and the FBI in on it, too."
She stepped back from me and looked up into my face.
"Hope that he—" she said.
"Doucet's never left witnesses."
She wanted to come with us, but I left her on the gallery with Elrod, staring after us with her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides.
It was almost dark when we turned off the old two-lane highway onto the dirt road that led to Spanish Lake. The rain was falling in the trees and out on the lake and I could see the lights burning in one trailer under the hanging moss by the water's edge. All the way out to the lake Rosie had barely spoken, her small hands folded on top of her purse, the shadows washing across her face like rivulets of rain.
"I have to be honest with you, Dave. I don't know how far I can go along with this," she said.
"Call in your people now and I'll stonewall them."
"Do you think that little of us?"
"Not you I don't. But the people you work for are pencil pushers. They'll cover their butts, they'll do it by the numbers, and I'll end up losing Alafair."
"What are you going to do if you catch Doucet?"
"That's up to him."
"Is that straight, Dave?
"
I didn't answer.
"I saw you put something in your raincoat pocket when you were coming out of the bedroom," she said. "I got the impression you were concealing it from Bootsie. Maybe it was just my imagination."
"Maybe you're thinking too much about the wrong things, Rosie."
"I want your word this isn't a vigilante mission."
"You're worried about procedure. . .. In dealing with a man like this? What's the matter with you?"
"Maybe you're forgetting who your real friends are, Dave."
I stopped the truck at the security building, rolled down my window, and held up my badge for the man inside, who was leaned back in his chair in front of a portable television set. He put on his hat, came outside, and dropped the chain for me. I could hear the sounds of a war movie through the open door.
"I'll just leave it down for you," he said.
"Thanks. Is that Julie Balboni's trailer with the lights on?" I said.
"Yeah, that's it."
"Who's with him?"
The security guard's eyes went past me to Rosie.
