C J Box
Blue Heaven
© 2008
For Ann Rittenberg
…and Laurie, always
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to acknowledge the fine people of Sandpoint, Idaho, who provided background and hospitality, including Marianne Love and Roley and Janice Schoonover. Thanks to Mark Whitworth in L.A., who first mentioned a place called Blue Heaven.
Sincere appreciation to Ben Sevier and Jennifer Enderlin, who brought this baby home.
This novel would not exist without the patience and perseverance of Ann Rittenberg.
DAY ONE.Friday
In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
– Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835
WELCOME TO THE INLAND NORTHWEST
– sign greeting arrivals at Spokane Airport
Friday, 4:28 P.M.
IF TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Annie Taylor had not chosen to take her little brother William fishing on that particular Friday afternoon in April during the wet North Idaho spring, she never would have seen the execution or looked straight into the eyes of the executioners. But she was angry with her mother.
Before they witnessed the killing, they were pushing through the still-wet willows near Sand Creek, wearing plastic garbage bags to keep their clothes dry. Upturned alder leaves cupped pools of rainwater from that morning, and beaded spiderwebs sagged between branches. When the gray-black fists of storm clouds pushed across the sun, the light muted in the forest and erased the defining edges of the shadows, and the forest plunged into a dispiriting murk. The ground was black, spongy in the forest and sloppy on the trail. Their shoes made sucking sounds as they slogged upstream.