A Grave End

by Wendy Roberts

  “I’m handling it,” I said. “I’m not drinking or freaking out. I’m just taking it on like any other job.” I cleared my throat and pleaded, “Could we talk about something else?”

  So I joked about Tracey going out with Ray and how nervous she was, and he talked about how they were wrapping things up on his case and he’d be home soon. Just the soothing sound of his voice caressed my heart in comfort and smoothed the sharp edges of my anxiety. Garrett told me how much he loved me and missed me and tears stung my eyes as I told him I missed him too. I crawled onto his side of the bed, giving up mine to Wookie, just so that I could breathe in the faint scent of my love.

  I was just nodding off when Tracey called.

  “Oh my God, I’m in lo-o-ove!” she shrieked.

  “You are not.” A smile played on my lips through my weary sigh.

  “Well, maybe not love but if I’d had time to shave my legs, I would’ve dragged him into bed so fast it would’ve made his head spin.”

  I burst out laughing and listened while she talked about how he’d come to the door with a single rose and then they’d gone to dinner and taken a long walk in the rain afterward. How he’d asked first before taking her hand and hadn’t even tried to give her another reading even though she wanted one.

  “Sounds like you’ll be seeing him again.”

  “Definitely. I was hoping for tomorrow but he said he’s working on interviewing more people for this Alice thing and doesn’t want to be distracted.”

  “That’s very noble of him.”

  “Yeah that’s what I thought!” She sighed. “Oh! By the way, I love the website.”

  I thought back to checking his online presence that first time we met and didn’t remember anything spectacular about it. “I saw his site but I guess I didn’t take that close a look,” I admitted.

  “No-o-o-o, your site. Both of yours. The Julie and Ray site.”

  “The what?” I bolted upright in bed.

  “Oh shit, I hope I didn’t blow the surprise. He did say it wasn’t live yet.”

  “Text me the link right now,” I told her and hung up.

  Seconds later her text showed up and I clicked on the website.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I growled.

  Ray Hughes had taken the time to do a website that basically sold us as a team. The page opened with a split screen with his picture and bio on the left and mine on the right. He’d taken my photo and biography right off my own website. There was a tab at the top that said: Click Here for More Information. When I did, the page opened a new page with a description that read that Ray and Julie were making it their mission to help the loved ones of missing people, both alive and deceased, and to Contact Us Now for Help in bold print that pulsed with light.

  I could feel a vein pulsing at my temple as I seethed at the audacity.

  “Enough is enough,” I snarled.

  This time Ray had gone too far.

  Chapter Eight

  I called Ray’s phone number and he picked up immediately.

  “You’ve got a very special friend there,” he began without a hello. “I’m just blown away by her...her spirit and...and her joyful love of life.”

  “Yeah, she’s terrific, but I’m not calling about Tracey.” I tried to keep my voice hard but he sounded as sappy and goofy as Tracey so I could feel my anger diminish. “She told me about the website and—”

  “Oh wow, I completely forgot to ask her to keep it under wraps. I was just playing around, Julie. Trust me, I would never, ever put up something like that without discussing it with you first. The site isn’t live, as you can see, I was just thinking of the future, and well, I got carried away. Honestly, it’s just me getting my hopes up and playing around online.”

  I exhaled loudly. “Look, Ray, I appreciate your help in finding Alice. Really. But I usually prefer to work entirely on my own.”

  “I get that, and hey, I’ve been the same way but don’t you find it overwhelming?”

  “All the requests?”

  “Yeah, all the people you have to turn away because it’s not possible to help everyone.” He paused. “It kind of breaks my heart, you know? I just thought maybe one day, if we teamed up, we could help so many more of those people who are hurting than we do working alone.”

  Ugh. When he put it that way, it did make me think his idea wasn’t completely horrible and that maybe I was the selfish one.

  “I’m not giving you a definite no,” I said slowly. “All I’m saying is let’s get one case done before we go off thinking about building some kind of partnership.”

  “Absolutely! From now, I’ll only focus on finding Alice.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” I took a deep breath. “I’m going up to Ozette tomorrow to talk to Roscoe.”

  “Good idea. Although, you know you don’t have to drive all the way there. You could do a Skype visitation.”

  “I prefer to get a feel for his reaction when he’s sitting across from me.”

  “Sure.” Ray added, “I think I’ll try to find Alice’s sister. You heard about her, right? She killed their dad and just got out of the pen before Alice was murdered.”

  “Yes, and I already talked to Lois.” I thought about Ray and his overenthusiastic approach to everything. “Could you just leave her to me? It took a lot to get her to talk to me about Alice and I have a feeling that if you go to talk to her too, she’s just going to spook and shut down.”

  “Sure. I’ll leave her one hundred percent to you,” he promised. “I’ll cross her off my list.”

  I thanked him, and after the call ended, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out big decisions in my life and hoping there was a magic wand that could solve it all. I tossed and turned throughout the night.

  Wookie’s steamy hot breath in my face dragged me from sleep land too early in the morning. I put out food for him and Fluffy, and after they ate, I snapped a leash on the dog and took him for a walk around the neighborhood. Wookie kept looking up at me, wondering when we were going to break into a run, but today that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Sorry, Boy, I just don’t have it in me today.”

  My body was tired and my mind even more so. When we got back, I grabbed my pack for the long drive to the Ozette Corrections Center.

  I was halfway to the prison when Garrett called me.

  “Hey, I’m home but you’re not?”

  “Awww.” My heart fell just a bit because I could’ve used a day spent in his arms. “You’re home, and meanwhile your girlfriend is on her way to prison.”

  I laughed and brought him up to speed on wanting to touch base with Roscoe to see if he’d heard the rumors of Alice’s cheating and whether or not he could shed light on if those were true. I hoped that one look on his face would give me the answer even if he was willing to lie about it.

  “And what if you find out he knew she cheated and that gave him a solid motive? Are you willing to accept he’s the murderer?”

  “Sure, I’ve always believed there’s a good chance he’s guilty. You can’t ignore the murder weapon was his sword and the blood was in his truck. Like I told you last night, I still want to try to find her body.”

  “I know but I hate the idea of you continuing to torture yourself by going back there. Have you talked to Dr. Chen about what’s going on?” His tone was gentle and filled with concern for my mental health, and I hated that all my failings as an alcoholic had placed some of that worry in his voice.

  “Kind of,” I said. “I’m trying to look at it as being cathartic. You know, a way to leave behind that place with a positive note by helping someone I knew.” When he didn’t reply right away I added, “I don’t expect you to understand but I will give myself a time limit, okay? If I don’t find Alice’s remains in the next few days, I’ll return the deposit and walk
away. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  “Did you wrap things up on your case or are you hitting the road again?”

  “I’ll be here for the night,” he said. “Then I need to leave in the morning to tie up a few loose ends before taking a few days off.”

  “I can’t wait until you’re all mine for a few days,” I told him honestly and hoped by then I could lay the Alice mystery to rest as well.

  We said goodbye and I exhaled in relief. I always missed him when he was away doing FBI stuff, but knowing he’d be there later today gave me something to look forward to.

  I arrived at Ozette and was impatient through the visitor intake procedure, and by the time I was in front of Roscoe I wasn’t willing to waste any time with small talk.

  “Tell me about Alice’s lover.” I tugged out a chair across from him and took a seat.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Roscoe leaned back in his chair, rocking it onto the back legs, and gave me a cool look. “You think I’m the kind of guy who’d put up with a cheating wife?”

  “Well, you didn’t put up with it, did you? You kicked her out, and next thing you know, she’s dead.”

  He was sporting a fresh black eye that was nearly swollen shut, so when he attempted to roll his eyes it looked painful.

  “Roscoe, if you want me to find her body so that you have a hope in hell of getting out of here...” I leaned forward on the table. “You need to be completely straight with me. No more screwing around.”

  A guard walked by and tapped him on the shoulder so Roscoe brought his chair back upright and frowned at me. Beneath the frown was a flurry of other emotions I couldn’t quite read. I waited a full minute before speaking again.

  “I don’t need this. You’re lying to me and it’s written all over your face. You can’t expect me to find Alice when I don’t have all the information.” I pointed a finger at him. “Tell you what, I’ll drop the case and Kim can use the money to help pay for your mother’s care home, and then you can cool your jets in your cell forever for all I care.”

  I moved to get up from my chair, and he put up both hands and made a motion for me to take a seat.

  “This is hard for me to say.” Roscoe’s voice was so low I had to lean in to hear him. I waited and resisted the urge to drum my fingers on the table between us. Finally, he continued, his voice even lower. “I told you she wanted kids.”

  “Yes.” Spit it out for God’s sake.

  “Well, so did I but...” He cleared his throat. “I couldn’t. I had bad swimmers so...” He shrugged. “Baby making wasn’t in my equation. I suggested adoption and she wasn’t completely against it, but she kept saying she wanted the pregnancy experience. She wanted to feel what it was like to have a baby grow inside her.” He sighed. “I hated that look on her face when she knew it wasn’t in the cards for us and it all came down to money. Made me feel even less of a man than being the entire reason she couldn’t get pregnant in the first place.”

  He tilted his head from side to side until his neck cracked loudly, and then he finished, “So she bought some kits that would tell her exactly when she was ovulating and we agreed that she would find some dude and, you know...” He made a circle with one hand and crudely gestured with his finger in the other inserting it into the circle.

  “She slept with someone with your blessing so she could get knocked up.”

  “Yup.” He cleared his throat. “I never told a single soul about that.”

  “But maybe that guy is the one who killed her,” I hissed. “Did you think about that?”

  “Dude, of course I did, but I told her I didn’t want to know nothing about the guy. Not his name, what he looked like or anything about him, so it’s not like I had someone else I could point the cops to, you know?” Roscoe licked his lips. “So when she got pregnant, I thought I’d be okay, right? We could go around telling everyone it was ours and nobody would be the wiser. Except it didn’t happen. She met with some guy a time or two but every month when she found out she wasn’t pregnant, she got sadder and sadder, and the entire situation just made me angry. She’s out doing the between-the-sheets tango with someone else and it was just killing me. I told her she had to stop and she agreed. She hated it too. So we got Jet, but of course that didn’t fix things. A dog ain’t a baby no matter how hard you try to make it that way.”

  “And you honestly know nothing about this guy? Was he local or did she travel to meet him?”

  “I swear I have no idea who he is. I made her promise that the guy wasn’t going to be someone from our area. Last thing I wanted was to raise my kid and constantly be wondering if the guy we just walked by on the street was his daddy, right?”

  “So she stopped trying and you got the dog and...” I knew there was something else.

  “She tried another time without telling me.” His lips formed a thin white line of rage. “She did tell me when she peed on the stick and it came back positive. How could I be mad then? She was walking on air, yanno? But a week after the pregnancy test confirmed she was pregnant, she had a miscarriage and she just went dark after that. There was nothing left inside her but anger and resentment. Every time she looked at me, it felt like she was blaming me for not giving her what she wanted. I couldn’t take it anymore so I kicked her out. It killed me.”

  “Who else knew?” I asked Roscoe.

  “Nobody. That was part of the deal.” He rubbed his hands over his jumpsuit-covered arms as if he was cold. “She had to hide it. I didn’t want nobody knowing she was sleeping around.”

  “But people in town obviously found out, so one of you must’ve told someone to get those rumors started. A best friend? Your sister? It’s almost impossible to be that discreet when you’re in a city that size.”

  “I wouldn’t have told anyone if you set me on fire. Jesus, how embarrassed do you think I was, whoring my wife out to get knocked up? And I don’t think Alice would tell anyone either. We loved each other. I know that’s hard to believe but it’s true. We were totally on board raising a kid together and living the happily ever after. Anyone knowing would’ve screwed that up.”

  His voice was firm and I began to believe he was telling the truth. At least I knew that was what he believed, but if there were rumors going around that she cheated, those must’ve formulated somewhere and somehow. I asked how he thought the rumors could’ve started, and he only gave an elaborate shrug.

  “Whoever she screwed...” Roscoe rubbed his head. “That’s all I can figure. It must’ve been him telling people.”

  That’s what I thought too. “Unless someone saw them together.”

  “She said she was careful, but sure, anything’s possible, right? It’s not like she was an expert at sneaking around. She promised to go out of our community and that it wouldn’t be anyone I knew. She said she even used a fake name but I guess that doesn’t mean somebody didn’t spot her somewhere.” His eyes grew hard. “I’ll tell you this, if I get out of here I will find whoever killed Alice and it’ll be worth it to get slammed back in here just to be able to put my hands around their throat and—”

  I cut him off. “Did Alice have a best friend? Someone she met for coffee regularly? Someone from work she got pedicures with? This was a pretty big secret to try and hide.”

  “Nobody. Alice kept to herself. She was all about family and she had none of her own, unless you count the half sister who killed her dad. She was friendly to people but she wasn’t a girly girl, and she had trust issues, know what I mean?”

  I knew exactly what he meant. “Maybe she arranged her meeting with this guy through social media. I know the cops probably looked through her Facebook and Instagram accounts but I wouldn’t mind searching to see if anything pops up. I don’t suppose you know her login and passwords.”

  He rattled off her email address for the login information and then added, “As for the pas
sword...” He rubbed the back of his neck with a frown. “As I told the cops when they asked, she used the same password for just about everything. I used to give her shit about that because, yanno, hackers and stuff.”

  “What was the password?”

  “Her middle name. Jeanie.”

  “Okay, I’ll look into her accounts and see what I can find. So there’s nobody you can think of who she’d share her secrets with?”

  He looked up at the ceiling as if the answer might be written up there somewhere.

  “If she was gonna tell anyone...” He pointed a finger at me. “And that’s a big if, she would’ve told my mom. I asked her not to, but at the time she said, ‘Who is she gonna tell?’ on account of Mom couldn’t talk after her stroke. She can hear fine but just can’t talk.”

  “She was close to your mom?”

  “Yeah.” Roscoe scrubbed his hands across his face, as if trying to wipe away any emotion. “My mom liked her way better than she liked me or Kim even.”

  I slowly nodded as I absorbed that information. Could a woman in a rest home who didn’t have speech have the ability to spread gossip? There was only one way to find out.

  “Which care home is your mom in?”

  Roscoe gave me the name of one in Bellingham and I got to my feet.

  “It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” His voice sounded dejected as he spoke on a long exhale.

  Something in the emotional way he’d spoken about Alice screwing some guy just to get pregnant, and the venom behind the way he wanted to get his hands on whoever hurt Alice made me realize either he loved her, or he was an excellent actor. And I didn’t think Roscoe was smart enough to put on this kind of a show.

  “I’m going to keep trying,” I told him as a goodbye.

  But I had to admit that I didn’t feel confident.

  On the drive back I was reviewing everything I learned while focusing on getting home to Garrett. I wanted to be in his arms to cleanse away the filthy feeling I’d had in dealing with my hometown and this entire case. I was less than a mile from where I’d found Rachel Wu’s body in the ditch and decided to go into a small coffee shop.