The Truth We Bury: A Novel

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Shea locked Dru’s gaze. “It couldn’t be—”

  “No,” Dru said. “Of course it isn’t Kate. She went hiking at Bella Vista.”

  “But Erik said—”

  “They missed each other,” Dru said, but the sick feeling in her stomach belied her reassurance.

  The cordless phone on the kitchen counter rang, and she and Shea stared at it. Few people called the landline anymore. Telemarketers, people looking for donations. Dru crossed the floor to answer it, blood pounding in her ears. She didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID screen. She answered anyway. “Hello?”

  “Dru, it’s Ken Carter with the Wyatt PD.”

  “Yes, Ken,” she said, and she stiffened, preparing herself to hear it, the awful confirmation. Shea knew it, too. It was as if the sense of it was borne on the air, absorbed through some horrible process of osmosis. She came to Dru, and she wrapped her arm around Shea’s waist.

  Ken went on talking, as Dru had known he would, about the body that was found at Cedar Ridge Canyon Park. He was terribly sorry to inform her and Shea it was Kate Kincaid.

  “Are you sure?” Dru asked fruitlessly, as if asking could alter reality.

  Ken confirmed that he was.

  Shea pulled away, stricken. “It’s Katie?”

  Dru said, “Yes,” gently. It struck her that, unlike Joy, Charla didn’t have another child to live for, and the wave of her grief for Charla’s loss cut more deeply, knotting her throat, burning the lids of her eyes. “Does her mother know?” she asked Ken.

  “Kate’s fiancé—Erik Ayala?—is on his way there. He asked if he could be the one to tell her parents. It’s a real help to us. We need our officers at the scene.”

  “Well, it’s a blessing. Charla, Kate’s mom—she likes him so much.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ve heard.”

  Shea’s hands, tented at her mouth, were outlined in her tears.

  “Erik is telling her folks,” Dru said to her.

  “Was he with her when she fell?” Shea asked, and Dru relayed the question to Ken.

  “He arrived shortly after my partner and I did. Evidently there was some mix-up about where they were meeting, and when she didn’t show at Bella Vista, he went to Cedar Ridge Canyon, figuring she was there. I don’t know much more than that. He’s agreed to come to the police station here in Wyatt and give a more in-depth statement once he’s spoken to Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid. Here’s the thing, though, Dru, why I’m calling.” Ken’s voice sharpened. “We’re investigating this thing; we’ve got eyes on it, you know, because of everything else that’s happened.”

  “You think Kate’s death is related to Becca’s murder?” Dru’s voice thinned. She was aware of Shea, backing up, shocked, disbelieving.

  “I’m not saying that, not yet. But we did find something, a charm on a silver chain. When we showed it to Erik, he recognized it. He identified the charm as a lotus blossom and said it belonged to AJ, that your daughter gave it to him before they got engaged. Seeing that necklace shook Erik up, I can tell you.”

  Dru looked at Shea, and the knowing was cold inside her that if she asked, Shea could produce the exact same charm on the exact same silver chain. Shea had hunted for the charms after learning that the lotus blossom was the symbol of rebirth. It was her and AJ’s shared amulet, their juju, Shea had said when she’d shown the charms to Dru. She could see them in her mind’s eye, two finely made flowers, wrought of silver, no bigger than her thumbnail.

  What could it mean if one of the pair of charms had been found at Cedar Ridge Canyon this morning other than that AJ had been there, that he had something—if not everything—to do with Kate’s death?

  “I know this is rough,” Ken was saying, “but you add it up—you know, there was the break-in at the xL yesterday and the note that was left on Leigh’s car last night. The two deceased young women were members of the same wedding party. They evidently exchanged texts prior to Becca’s death, a fact Kate wasn’t exactly forthcoming about.”

  “I thought that was odd, too,” Dru said.

  “We can’t ignore the possibility of a connection among these events, and while we don’t know Isley’s exact whereabouts, finding the necklace makes it pretty obvious he was following Kate, possibly stalking her.”

  “Is my daughter in danger?” Dru didn’t wait for Ken’s answer. “You need to find him.” Fury heated her voice. “You people need to have every officer in this state looking—” She broke off, darting a glance at Shea, inwardly wincing on meeting her daughter’s anguished gaze.

  “Trust me,” Ken said, “we’re closing in on his location. In fact, his truck was found today, around daybreak. About the same time those hikers found Kate’s body. Close to the same location, too.”

  “Where?” Dru asked.

  “Monarch Lake. Do you know it? It’s maybe a half to three-quarters of a mile southwest of Cedar Ridge Canyon.”

  Dru said she was familiar with the lake. “Who found it?”

  “AJ’s mother,” Ken said. “Lily Isley.”

  13

  Thunder cracked overhead as Lily left the house, and the sky opened as she slid into the Jeep. The rain broke over the windshield, sounding like birdshot, sheeting the glass. She was glad for the noise. She had worried her dad would hear the car, that he’d catch her, question her, try to stop her, and there wasn’t a way to explain where she was going without sounding insane.

  She could have driven down to the front gate and taken the highway as far as the turnoff to Monarch Lake, and she considered it. It made sense, given the stormy weather. But, instead, once she got the Jeep started and dropped it into gear, she turned right onto the old service road that led around the back of the barn. It wound first in a southeasterly direction, passing Winona’s house, before looping north and then west. Few people knew about it; even fewer used it. The twisted, meandering route, what remained of a long-ago state highway, was barely passable even in good weather, but it would shave minutes off the drive.

  The Jeep’s tires bumped and slid over the uneven pavement, dropping into caliche-choked potholes, jerking over muddy ruts. Passing Winona’s house, Lily was surprised to see a shaft of light cracking the front curtains. Had she come home? Lily hoped so; she prayed for it. But she couldn’t stop to find out. The dream, the sense that AJ was at Monarch Lake, that he was in trouble and needed her, was too strong. The old service road ended at CR 440, and turning left, she accelerated, feeling the Jeep’s tires grab the county road’s firmer surface. Water rose on either side of her; the white froth churned in her wake. Her hands gripped the wheel, sweaty and slick in her anticipation and fear.

  Scenes from her dream flashed before her eyes, vivid and terrifying. It felt as if it was only days ago she’d almost let AJ drown. She’d had nightmares for weeks after it happened. AJ had wakened in the night, crying, too, but only for a little while, and then he’d seemed to forget. There had been no lasting effects. Not even a fear of the water. Before that awful summer was over, he’d learned to swim from a certified Red Cross instructor in a proper pool. Paul had insisted; he had forbidden Lily to take AJ to Monarch Lake again. But that hadn’t been the worst of it. No. One morning not long after the incident, she had wakened at home in Dallas and gone to AJ’s bedroom, as was her habit, but he hadn’t been in his crib. She’d found him downstairs in the kitchen with the nanny Paul had hired. Behind her back without consulting her. Whatever confidence had remained to her, whatever pride, was all but destroyed.

  She hadn’t fought Paul on it, and that had cost her—so dearly—thousands of treasured moments she would have shared with her small son, whispering nonsense into his ear, waking to his tiny hands patting her cheeks, his astonished joy at new discoveries. She’d given all those precious memories away, given him away, God help her, to the nanny, because she had felt incompetent and frightened that she couldn’t keep AJ safe. She had retreated from his life, left him on a separate shore. But she couldn’t think of that now, the terrible
wrong she had done him and herself.

  The rain had eased, and cresting a hill, she caught a glimpse of the eastern shore of the lake, and beyond it, the bright glint of water. She found the turnoff and followed it past an assortment of picnic tables, deserted at this early hour just as they had been the last time she’d been here. The rain stopped, and the sky began to clear. Water puddled the road, fell from the trees. The windshield fogged. She bent forward, straining to see.

  She was almost past the clearing, where she’d come with AJ before, when she recognized the live oak where she’d spread the quilt, and beyond it, the graveled shoreline where Butternut had gone to drink. Heart tapping, she pulled into the weed-choked verge and got out of the Jeep. The growth of juniper trees was more pervasive than she remembered, and so dense that only the tops were green, like paint-filled brushes, while nearer the ground their branches were desiccated and viciously tangled. They tore at her clothing as she made her way to the water’s edge.

  It was while she was standing there that the cloud cover broke widely, making her blink in the sudden glare. But as the moment lingered, shimmering, she became aware of the deep silence, the utter sense of desertion. Was AJ here? Hiding? A shout rang out from the water; someone was crying. She looked and saw nothing. Dream, said her mind. More dream images came, pulling her back, but this wasn’t the past. AJ was here now. She felt his presence. He would have heard her, cracking a path through the underbrush that was dry despite the rain. He’d come out now, seeing her. He would know he was safe with her, the way he’d known it as a very little boy.

  “AJ?” she called softly, sidestepping a bit along the shoreline. “AJ?” Louder now. She turned in a circle.

  That was when she caught sight of it. Some fifty yards beyond where she’d parked the Jeep, a pickup truck was nosed partway into the juniper thicket. There was something not right about it. Or was she misled by the vestiges of her dream? They hung about her like a shroud, obscuring her sight line. Closing her eyes briefly, she became aware of a peculiar smell; it permeated the air, acrid, nose burning. Her brain labeled the odors: smoke, gasoline, chemical, plastic. It was the sort of foul smell that hung around after a fire, the kind of evil stench that said, Get away. But she took a few steps toward the vehicle, then stopped to study it. It was a white double-cab pickup. A Dodge. AJ drove a white double-cab Dodge pickup.

  Now she was running as she had before, twenty-three years ago, but instead of water, she was tearing through a wicked maze of juniper. Dead branches as bony and sharp as witches’ fingers ripped her cotton shirt, tore her skin, drawing blood. Breaking through the last of the needled scruff, she stopped abruptly, several feet from the driver’s side of the double cab, panting, brain ticking, registering the relatively undamaged exterior, stark in comparison with the interior, which looked as black as the inside of a closed coffin. The windows were up. She was perhaps ten or twelve feet away; the light glancing off the glass made seeing inside impossible. But fearing what she’d find, she didn’t want to go closer. Latent terror uncoiled from the floor of her mind, begging her—warning her―to leave. If she didn’t look, advised a voice in her brain, AJ couldn’t be in there. It was in spite of herself that she took a step toward the truck, then a series of steps before stopping again. How could she do it?

  But it was AJ’s truck. If he was in there . . . injured . . . worse . . .

  Quickly now, she covered the remaining distance, and when she was within reach, she touched the front door handle tentatively. It was cool under her fingertips. Still, Lily drew back her hand. Glanced off to her left, where the surface of the lake was visible through the trees, sparkling, serene. She could hear it laving the shore. She saw herself out there, water lapping her torso beneath her breasts. She held baby AJ on his back, balanced in the cradle of her arms. She saw his small face, the soft curves of his cheeks, the rosebud of his mouth, his belly button, that tiny adorable part of his anatomy that had once connected them.

  A noise―a sob? a scream?—rose in her throat. She clamped her jaw, and turning back to the truck, she grabbed the front-door handle hard, yanking it toward her. Nothing happened. She tried the back-door handle. Neither door would budge. “Nooooo . . .” Her protest broke through her teeth. She looked around for something to shatter the glass. The ground was strewn with rocks, but none were big enough. Impulsively, before she could think about it, she put her face to the glass, cupping her hands at her temples, making herself look carefully. Although the window was cloudy from the smoke, she could see that the instrument panel was blistered, and the seat upholstery was burned through to the padding in some places. She shifted to the back window. The bench seat was damaged but not as badly.

  There was something on the floor.

  Blankets? A tarp? A rug? Her heart faltered.

  Her gaze was drawn to the passenger side. Juniper branches were smashed against the window, but it was the hook hanging over the door that caught her attention. It supported a number of paper-wrapped hangers, like those used by dry cleaners. Whatever was suspended from them now—AJ’s dress shirts? His chef’s jackets?—was singed and filthy and coated in melted plastic.

  But what was that bulky thing on the floor?

  She fought looking again.

  Backed away from the truck, casting a glance over the roof. Panic rooted her feet to the ground. But she had to do it; she had to see if she could somehow get to the passenger-side doors and open them. But there wasn’t a way. As soon as she rounded the truck bed, she realized it was wedged too tightly into the thicket to allow access.

  Returning to the Jeep, she opened the hatch, hunting in the cargo area for a crowbar, any kind of tool that would work to pry open the truck doors or break the glass. But there was nothing of any use. Her hands pattered over the contents—a single, cracked rubber boot, a fishing tackle box. Rags. A pair of sunglasses with a missing lens.

  Going to the driver’s seat, she got her phone, dialed the landline at the ranch. The call wouldn’t go through. She looked at the screen. No bars. She tried 911. Wasn’t it supposed to work regardless of reception? She put the phone to her ear. Nothing. Only the frightened huff of her breath. She felt on the verge of hysteria and, closing her eyes, willed herself to calm down, to order her thoughts. A sound came from out on the highway, high and thin, a siren, she thought, coming from the east, from Wyatt. She straightened, but the jolt of her relief was momentary. It couldn’t be coming here. No one knew what she’d found. She hadn’t even left a note for her dad. The siren went by her location, unseen, heading west, hell-bent.

  Car accident, maybe. But Cedar Ridge Canyon was that way. Lots of hikers there. Maybe someone had fallen. A boy in her eighth-grade class had died there from the injuries he’d sustained in a fall.

  Lily looked back at her phone. She would never get service here. If she wanted help, she’d have to leave. Leave the lake, leave AJ’s truck and whatever was inside it.

  It took her half an hour to get back to the ranch road. She pushed the Jeep to the maximum speed, losing traction around curves, bouncing over the ruts, jaw tight. Her dad came to the back door when she drove up.

  “Where have you been?” He opened the porch screen. “I was worried as hell.”

  “I found AJ’s truck.” She stopped at the foot of the steps. “We need a crowbar, but first, I want to call the police so they can meet us there.”

  “Lily, slow down. Meet where? Where is AJ’s truck?” He ducked back onto the porch and got his hat off the hook.

  “Monarch Lake.” She flattened her palm on her breastbone, willing herself to do as he suggested and slow down. “It was set on fire,” she said, and she relayed the rest, pulling her cell phone from her jeans pocket. “I tried calling 911 from out there but couldn’t get service.”

  “I don’t think you will here, either. The storm knocked out service, phone and electric. Who knows when they’ll get crews out.” Her dad came down the steps, striding past her, heading for the barn, where he kept his too
ls.

  “It wasn’t that bad when I left here.” Lily followed him.

  “It got worse. Wind blew like hell. Woke me up, and I went looking for you. I couldn’t believe you went out in it.”

  “I’m sorry if I scared you. I had a dream—” She broke off. There was no way to explain that part.

  “Maybe we don’t want the cops involved,” her dad said.

  “Didn’t you hear me? There’s something, a rug, a tarp—I couldn’t tell, but AJ could be in there, hurt or—” Dead. The word dead stood up in her mind. She bit her teeth against it.

  “Sissy.” Her dad faced her. “Think about it. If AJ took the money and your mama’s jewelry out of the safe, if he then went to the airfield and hired himself a pilot to fly him out of here, it’s entirely possible he stashed his truck first. The location’s good. Hardly anybody knows about Monarch Lake, much less goes there.”

  “But it’s not really hidden. Somebody would be bound to see it.” Lily followed him into the barn. “If he really meant to get rid of it, wouldn’t he have made sure the fire burned it up?”

  Her dad disappeared into the tool room without answering.

  Lily paused in the doorway of the tack room, thinking about it. There would have been smoke, but at night, it wasn’t likely anyone would have noticed. She was thinking that, and trying to sort out the timing, when the fire might have been set, when she noticed the bundles of cash. They were lying on the old worktable. Five rubber-banded stacks, sitting there as if they belonged among the rest of the litter, a jar of saddle soap, a couple of brushes, some kind of antibiotic ointment in a tube.

  Lily crossed the room to the table to be sure that’s what she was seeing. The windows above it needed washing; the light wasn’t the best, but she knew money when she saw it, and she knew this money was from the safe in the house. The very cash her dad had reported stolen—that the local cops were certain AJ had taken. But if he had, why had he left it here? In plain view? It made no sense—unless AJ wasn’t the one who had opened the safe. She’d never believed it, or at the very least, she hadn’t wanted to believe it. But even as her heart buoyed with relief, it fell in consternation. She picked up two of the bundles, holding one in each hand, studying them.