A Grave End

by Wendy Roberts

  “It was obviously self-defense,” the officer told Garrett as he was walked to the door. “I’m certain there’ll be no disputing that fact, and the community is safer now that this guy is going to be locked away.”

  After that was done, Garrett set me up on the sofa with an ottoman and pillows for my sore leg and a side table littered with healthy snacks. Wookie and Fluffy both took up residence nearby, keeping a watchful eye on me. After calling Tracey and asking her to come over, Garrett headed to the store saying we needed a thousand things to keep me healthy. I laughed because everything I ever needed was already here.

  Tracey arrived as soon as he was gone.

  “I’m going to be an aunt?” Tracey shrieked with joy and then sobbed openly. “I was so worried. When Garrett called me looking for you and then I heard they found your rental car behind the grocery store, I thought I would absolutely die. I can’t believe it was Ray!” She slumped on the sofa next to me. “I screwed a murderer.”

  “He was pretty good at showing a different side of himself.” I thought about my vague memories of him at Wayland and compared the long-haired, bearded, teal-eyed person to the clean-cut guy I’d been working with the past few days. “I’m just glad you didn’t get hurt.”

  “But you did,” Tracey said solemnly. “I should’ve seen what he was capable of. My radar when it comes to men is really off.” She blew out a long breath. “My mother is right. I need to stick with guys she can fix me up with.”

  “So you’re thinking of allowing your mom to set you up on dates?” I laughed at the thought.

  Tracey chatted but mostly I tuned her out and finally told her she had to leave so I could have a nap. I was tired, but really I just wanted to be able to think. After she was gone, I hobbled over to the kitchen table and opened my laptop. By the time Garrett was back home, I had my backpack by the door and was itching to leave.

  “Whoa, where do you think you’re going?”

  “Since I can’t drive with this dumb boot, you’re taking me on a little drive.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he said firmly. “You’ve had a traumatic experience and you’ve been physically injured. What you need...” He put a hand on my flat stomach. “What you both need, is rest.”

  “I promise to rest and let you feed me kale smoothies as soon as you take me to check this one last thing.” When he opened his mouth to protest I added, “I know where Alice is.” I told him my idea and his face grew hard with worry. “If you don’t take me, I’ll ask Tracey.”

  Reluctantly he agreed, and minutes later I was sitting in the passenger seat of Garrett’s sedan as he drove north on I-5. The closer we got to our destination, the more antsy I became. I had packed my backpack to include all the paperwork I had on Alice’s case. As Garrett drove, I read through my notes and once again looked at the five pictures Alice took on her phone on that final evening. There was a tingling of an idea in the back of my mind but I pushed the thought away for now.

  An hour later as Garrett drove down a rutted gravel driveway, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. The house where I’d been raised had long since been demolished by the new landowners, and the trailer where I’d lived as an adult on the same property had been hauled away. Even though the buildings were different, the air felt the same in my lungs.

  “It’s not too late to change your mind.” Garrett put the car in park, then reached for my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You don’t have to do this. I can have a team here within a few hours and they can search this entire property and—”

  “I have to,” I whispered. “I’m pretty sure Alice was dumped here because this was the last place people thought another body would be found. She was brought here to hide her from me.” I looked at him and straightened my spine. “I need to finish this.”

  After pulling out my dowsing rods, I climbed out and hobbled on my boot around the front of the car. With my rods held outward, I began limping slowly but with determination. Starting where the house used to be, I made my way from the far left of the acreage, slowly toward the right of the land. Then I turned and began walking down another row. The land had been cleared and was hard, compact scrub weeds. Driving a pickup out there to dump a body would not have been difficult.

  As I struggled to walk, all the dark, quicksand evilness that occurred on this land tried to rear up and take hold of me. Dark, nasty thoughts flooded my mind. Bursts of memories of all the excruciating moments of abuse suffered at the hands of my grandmother on this very soil, and the tyranny of an even more evil grandfather threatened to weaken me. Using the power of all the positive affirmations and meditations taught to me by Dr. Chen, I continued to walk and forced thoughts of my own trauma to stay in the past where they belonged. Whenever I felt a spark of doubt, I closed my eyes to feel Garrett’s concerned gaze that followed me the entire time. I knew it was nearly impossible for him to let me do this on my own, and I loved that he respected me enough not to stop me.

  By the time I reached the back of the property, my ankle was screaming inside the boot, and the stitches in my thigh were a fire of punctuation with each step. When my grandmother’s voice began to hiss wickedly in my mind, I shouted back, “You have no power over me, old woman!”

  The horrors of this place had held my mind captive for a long time, but I’d done the necessary healing work and now I was free. The power of that allowed me to push forward.

  A garden shed at the back of the property leaned precariously in on itself. Time and weather had it to the point where it was ready to collapse. As I stepped close to the shed door, my rods crossed slowly but purposely. There’d been a time I’d been locked in that shed in the cold and dark. Left to die, but I’d been able to claw myself out and live another day.

  Alice had not been so lucky.

  I didn’t open the door to the shed to confirm what was inside. Instead, I just looked over my shoulder and made eye contact with Garrett. He jogged across the acreage toward me. He took me in his arms and we embraced for a full minute before he helped me back across the field to his car. Once he tucked me safely inside the vehicle, he returned to confirm what we both already knew. When Garrett came back to the car he was just ending a phone call to the local law, letting them know to gather their team and bring them here.

  It wasn’t until he’d started the car, turned on my seat warmer and handed me a bottle of water that he asked the question.

  “Was it Ray?”

  “No.” I shook my head slowly. “I have an idea... Let’s go see Kim.”

  I gave Garrett instructions on the short drive to Kim’s trailer. She was sitting on the front porch with a light jacket pulled tight across her chest. As Garrett put his car in park, she didn’t even look up.

  “Hello,” I said as I approached. “Can we go inside?”

  She gave me a sharp nod and got wearily to her feet. Her gaze dropped briefly to Garrett but she never asked who he was or why he was there. We followed her inside and I once again looked around the old trailer but it no longer felt like my old home.

  “You found Alice.” Kim lowered herself into the recliner.

  “Yes.” To Garrett I said, “Those final pictures that Alice took on her phone? The last one with the blurry, hairy object in the corner?”

  I picked up Kim’s key ring from a nearby kitchen counter and held it up for him to see. Dangling from her keys was a troll doll with black hair. “I thought the tiny bit of hair in the corner of the picture was a bit of Jet as he moved out of the shot, but it was Kim’s keychain. Alice knew something was up and she snapped a picture just before Kim killed her.”

  Garrett removed the revolver from the shoulder holster under his jacket and aimed it steadily at Kim. She didn’t even flinch at the accusation.

  “Your stepdad had always helped Alice and Roscoe out financially while ignoring you.”

  “I wasn’t blood.” Kim’s
voice was low and hoarse. “So I was nothing. When Alice told me they were going to have a baby, I didn’t know it was Lois right away. I thought Alice was saying she was pregnant with Roscoe’s kid.”

  “So you killed her and framed your own brother.”

  She picked up one of the troll dolls from the end table and wordlessly stroked the bright pink hair on its knobby head without replying.

  “Alice’s cell phone is in the bathroom,” I told Garrett. “In the cupboard under the sink.”

  Kim’s gaze shot up in shock.

  “I caught a glimpse of something under your sink when I used your washroom,” I told her. “Something red with sequins. It never occurred to me until a few minutes ago that Detective Larry mentioned Alice’s phone had a red sparkly case.”

  Kim covered her face with her hands. She knew it was over.

  “Check to see if it’s still there,” Garrett instructed as he kept his gun pointed at Kim. “But don’t touch it.”

  The cabinet door broke the rest of the way off as I tugged on it and there, nestled between a tampon box and a pile of toilet paper, sat Alice’s cell phone with its sparkly red case.

  It wasn’t long before the police arrived. Garrett told me to wait in the car and I met Detective Larry just pulling up as I left. I told him Garrett was inside and then briefly informed him about the phone and the troll doll hair in the picture.

  “She did it,” he said.

  “Yes. She had access to the sword and his truck. She killed Alice because she knew a baby would change everything. Her stepdad was already helping Alice and Roscoe out financially and ignoring Kim’s needs. I’m sure if the will is checked, it will say that Kim isn’t entitled to anything if there are grandchildren, and the costs of the care home were already more than she could stand.”

  I waited in the car while Detective Larry and a host of other local law went inside and arrested Kim without incident but when they led her out of the trailer in handcuffs, I climbed out of the car to confront her. I limped toward the officer’s car and stood in front of her.

  Garrett came over and put a hand on my shoulder but it was unnecessary because Kim was in cuffs held by an officer and I was a few feet away.

  Kim hissed at me, “When you look at this place, you see your own prison but this is my castle.” She leaned forward and screamed, “Mine! I worked this land. It was always supposed to be mine, not to share with Roscoe and some bastard kid. I gave Alice a ride here that night. She said she wanted to talk to Roscoe and tell him that soon they could get back together because they were going to have a baby. She was so excited. I told her to wait until he sobered up in the morning and put her to bed in my room.” Kim rolled her eyes at that. “When Roscoe came home drunk that night, he passed out almost immediately. I took his sword off the wall, woke Alice up and brought her out to the truck. At first I was just threatening her to get off my land and leave us alone but then she said that the property would belong to her, Roscoe and their baby. It wasn’t until recently, when I was thinking about how to ditch Alice’s phone that I saw on there a message from Lois that she was carrying a baby for them two. Then I knew I had to get Lois too.”

  “Why dump her on my land?”

  “My stepdad was always talking about how cool he thought it was that you found bodies. I knew he would reach out to you to find Alice but rumors around town always said you had bad PTSD about your old homestead.” Kim smirked. “Never thought you’d have the balls to go back there.” She shook her head. “Guess I was wrong.”

  I only nodded because it confirmed what I knew. Just as the officer was bending her into the back of his car, Kim began to shout toward me.

  “Guess what? I knew your grandmother was abusing you. I saw all those marks when I was babysitting you. Guess I could’ve stopped it but I didn’t give a shit!” Her screams were carried to me on a howl of wind. “Even as a kid you always acted like you were too good for the rest of us.” Her face was twisted in rage as she screamed, “This is all your fault! You’re nothing but a freak, Julie Hall! May you rot in hell!”

  Her rant continued but it was lost as they folded her into the back of the cop car and slammed the door.

  “She let her own half brother go to prison for a crime she committed,” Garrett said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. He shook his head sadly. “What kind of family is that?” Then, as if suddenly realizing the land we were near, he placed a hand on my leg. “Sorry.”

  We both knew the evil that could reside within families.

  “Let’s go home.” Garrett started up the car.

  I was suddenly more weary than I’d ever been in my life and I slept the entire drive back home. The memory of the rest of that day and all of the next were a blur of half sleep, with snippets of Garrett waking me regularly to feed me foul kale smoothies and prenatal vitamins. At Dr. Chen’s recommendation and Garrett’s insistence, I spent some time relaxing so my physical injuries could heal and did phone sessions with my psychiatrist to do the mental health work.

  I mostly ignored my emails but I did read one from a person who contacted me through my Divine Reunions website. It was the waitress from Wayland, who thanked me profusely for helping to pay off her medical bills. Garrett had done that and told me afterward that it was a thank-you to the woman who stuck me in a cab and sent me home so that Ray couldn’t abduct me.

  When he had to go to work, Garrett had Tracey come stay with me, which was great except for her obsession with reciting obscure baby names.

  “How about Cinema Rumi? It works for both a boy and a girl.”

  I just looked at her and laughed.

  I’d heard from Detective Larry that Lois had been discharged from hospital and was recovering at home. That same day I texted Lois and asked her if she was up to having company. She said she’d planned on having more people over and would love to see me.

  Tracey drove but stayed in the car when I went inside Lois’s apartment.

  “I can’t thank you enough.” Lois pulled me into a tight hug.

  She still had a lot of bandages covering her body, and it looked like she’d forever carry the physical scars of trying to help her sister.

  “When Kim came to my door that day,” Lois began, “I let her in because she’d contacted me saying that she had a few things that belonged to Alice and asked if I wanted them as keepsakes. She tossed a large sack on the counter, telling me everything was inside. I turned around to look in the bag and felt a sudden pain and...she...”

  “You don’t have to talk about it,” I assured her. “I’m sorry you got caught up in it.”

  “I don’t mind talking about it.”

  “Do you know why Kim tried to kill you?”

  “The night Alice was killed I’d just met her briefly for coffee. I’d parked down the road and watched as Roscoe broke Alice’s car window to free Jet. I got out of my car and was going to intervene if things got too heated but it seemed to blow over quickly. When Roscoe left with Jet and the onlookers went back about their business, I figured it was over so I got in my car. Just as I was pulling away, a woman walked by and we made eye contact. It was Kim. She looked quickly away but I’d never met her before so seeing her meant nothing to me. Obviously she figured I could place her near Alice on the night she was killed.”

  “Alice’s car was left on the street that night. I guess Kim convinced her to leave with her.”

  “I owe you big-time,” Lois said, lowering herself gingerly into a chair and pointing for me to do the same. “You found my sister’s body and her killer.” She swiped at the tears that sprung to her eyes. “If there’s ever anything I can do...”

  “I just want to know one thing,” I said. “You got pregnant for Alice and Roscoe.”

  She shook her head. “No. I had a one-night stand and found out I was pregnant. I wasn’t planning on having it but then I heard how bad Alice wanted
a baby and I had the idea to have the baby and let them adopt it.”

  “That was an extremely kindhearted thing to do.”

  “I just knew how bad she wanted a baby.”

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.” I gave Lois a hug before I left. I was happy to be able to return home with all the pieces of the Alice puzzle together at last.

  * * *

  A week later Garrett returned home with a paper lunch sack that he placed next to me on the sofa.

  “I swear if that’s more kale I’m going to barf,” I told him.

  “Not kale. It’s something that was found in Ray Hughes’s home a few days ago, and I had to do a lot of wrangling to make sure it didn’t get locked up with all the other evidence.”

  Curious now, I picked up the bag and peered inside.

  “My ring!” Tears swelled in my eyes. “Oh my God! He must have taken it from me that night at Wayland.”

  “His bedroom had an entire corkboard filled with information on you, and a bookshelf filled with a ton of paraphernalia on psychic stuff from crystals and tarot cards to a dozen different kinds and shapes of dowsing rods, and in with all of that was a box containing your ring.” Garrett lowered himself to the sofa next to me and took the ring out of the bag. “He was probably intending to use the ring to impress you with his psychic power.”

  “He planned on putting it somewhere and then if I was doubting his ability he’d give me a reading that brought me to the ring.” And that would’ve worked to convince me he was the real deal, but just knowing about Wayland had been enough.

  In his deranged mental state Ray had believed he was a true psychic. As much as I hated him and hoped he’d never leave the mental hospital again, I also hoped that with the right medication he could get help.

  Garrett held my hand gently in his and placed the band on my finger, where it belonged. Happy tears traced their way down my face and he kissed them away.

  Over the next few months my belly grew impressively large and I took a rest from finding the dead and instead increased my visits to Dr. Chen. I needed to be absolutely positive that when our baby arrived that I was in the best mental state possible. I heard that Roscoe was released from prison and had found a place to live near his mother’s care home. Kim had confessed to everything and I was grateful because that spared me having to relive the case testifying in court.