Lena actually stuttered. 'I–I . . .' She stopped, trying to calm herself.
Jeffrey was watching them both closely. Without warning, he changed his earlier strategy, saying, 'Terri, do you mind if Lena asks you some questions?' Dale seemed about to protest, but Jeffrey asked, 'Mind if I get another look at that Dart? She sure is sweet.'
Dale didn't seem to like the suggestion, and Lena could see him trying to work out an excuse. He finally relented, picking up the toddler standing beside him. 'All right.'
'We'll be back in a minute,' Jeffrey told Lena, giving her a meaningful look. He'd want an explanation, but Lena was at a loss for a story that did not incriminate herself.
Marla offered, 'I'll take care of this one,' holding up the baby, making him squeal.
Lena said, 'We can talk in Jeffrey's office.'
Terri only nodded. Lena could see a thin gold chain around her neck, a tiny cross hanging at the center. Terri picked at it, her fingers brushing the cross like a talisman. She looked as terrified as Lena felt.
'This way,' Lena said. She moved first, straining to hear Terri's shuffling footsteps behind her as she walked toward Jeffrey's office. The squad room was almost empty, only a few cops in from patrol to fill out paperwork or just get in from the cold. Lena felt sweat pouring down her back by the time she got to Jeffrey's office. The walk had been one of the longest of her life.
Terri did not speak until Lena closed the door. 'You were at the clinic.'
Lena kept her back to the woman, looking out the window at Jeffrey and Dale as they walked around the car.
'I know it was you,' Terri said, her voice tight in her throat.
'Yeah,' Lena admitted, turning around. Terri was sitting in one of the chairs opposite Jeffrey's desk, her hands gripping the arms as if she could pull them off.
'Terri –'
'Dale will kill me if he finds out.' She said this with such conviction that Lena had no doubt Dale would do it.
'He won't hear it from me.'
'Who will he hear it from?' She was obviously terrified, and Lena felt her own panic drain away when she realized that they were both bound by their secret. Terri had seen her at the clinic, but Lena had seen Terri, too.
'He'll kill me,' she repeated, her thin shoulders shaking.
'I won't tell him,' Lena repeated, thinking she was stating the obvious.
'You damn well better not,' Terri snapped. The words were meant as a threat, but she lacked the conviction to carry it off. She was almost panting for breath. Tears were in her eyes.
Lena sat down in the chair beside her. 'What are you afraid of?'
'You did it, too,' she insisted, her voice catching. 'You're just as guilty as me. You murdered . . . you killed your . . . you killed . . .'
Again, Lena found her mouth moving but no words coming out.
Terri spat, 'I may be going to hell for what I did, but don't forget I can take you with me.'
'I know,' Lena said. 'Terri, I'm not going to tell anybody.'
'Oh, God,' she said, clutching her fist to her chest. 'Please don't tell him.'
'I promise,' Lena vowed, feeling pity take over. 'Terri, it's okay.'
'He won't understand.'
'I won't tell,' she repeated, putting her hand over Terri's.
'It's so hard,' she said, grabbing Lena's hand. 'It's so hard.'
Lena felt tears in her eyes, and she clenched her jaw, fighting the urge to let herself go. 'Terri,' she began. 'Terri, calm down. You're safe here. I won't tell.'
'I felt it . . .' she began, holding her stomach. 'I felt it moving inside. I felt it kicking. I couldn't do it. I couldn't have another one. I couldn't take . . . I can't . . . I'm not strong enough . . . I can't take it anymore. I can't take it . . .'
'Shh,' Lena hushed, smoothing back a wisp of hair that had fallen into Terri's eyes. The woman looked so young, almost like a teenager. For the first time in years, Lena felt the urge to comfort someone. She had been on the receiving end for so long that she had almost forgotten how to offer help. 'Look at me,' she said, steeling herself, fighting her own emotions. 'You're safe, Terri. I won't tell. I won't tell anyone.'
'I'm such a bad person,' Terri said. 'I'm so bad.'
'You're not.'
'I can't get clean,' she confessed. 'No matter how much I bathe, I can't get clean.'
'I know,' Lena said, feeling a weight lifting off her chest as she admitted this. 'I know.'
'I smell it on me,' she said. 'The anesthesia. The chemicals.'
'I know,' Lena said, fighting the urge to slip back into her grief. 'Be strong, Terri. You have to be strong.'
She nodded. Her shoulders were so slumped she looked as if she might fold in on herself. 'He'll never forgive me for this.'
Lena didn't know if she meant her husband or some higher power, but she nodded her head in agreement.
'He'll never forgive me.'
Lena chanced a look outside the window. Dale was standing at the car but Jeffrey was to the side, talking to Sara Linton. He looked back at the station, throwing his hand out into the air as if he was angry. Sara said something, then Jeffrey nodded, taking what looked like an evidence bag from her. He walked back toward the station.
'Terri,' Lena said, feeling the threat of Jeffrey's arrival breathing down her neck. 'Listen,' she began. 'Dry your eyes. Look at me.' Terri looked up. 'You're okay,' Lena said, more like an order than a question.
Terri nodded.
'You have to be okay, Terri.' The woman nodded again, understanding Lena's urgency.
She saw Jeffrey in the squad room. He stopped to say something to Maria. 'He's coming,' she said, and Terri squared her shoulders, straightening up as if she were an actor taking a cue.
Jeffrey knocked on the door as he came into the office. He was obviously disturbed about something, but he held it back. The evidence bag Sara had given him in the parking lot was sticking out of his pocket, but Lena could not tell what it contained. He raised his eyebrows at her, a silent question, and she felt a lurch in her stomach as she realized she hadn't done the one thing he had told her to do.
Without pausing a beat, Lena lied. 'Terri says she's never seen anyone at the garage but Dale.'
'Yes,' Terri said, nodding as she stood from the chair. She kept her eyes averted, and Lena was grateful Jeffrey seemed too preoccupied to notice the woman had been crying.
He didn't even thank her for coming in, instead dismissing her with, 'Dale's waiting outside.'
'Thank you,' Terri said, chancing a look at Lena before she left. The young woman practically ran through the squad room, grabbing her kid from Marla as she made for the front door.
Jeffrey gave Lena the evidence bag, saying, 'This was sent to Sara at the clinic.'
There was a piece of lined notebook paper inside. Lena turned the bag over, reading the note. The four words were written in purple ink, all caps, taking up half the page. 'ABBY WASN'T THE FIRST'
Lena walked through the forest, her eyes scanning the ground, willing herself to concentrate. Her thoughts kept darting around like a pinball, one minute hitting against the possibility that there might be another girl buried out in these woods, the next colliding into the memory of the fear in Terri Stanley's voice as she begged Lena not to tell her secret. The woman had been terrified by the prospect of her husband finding out what she had done. Dale seemed harmless, hardly the type of man capable of Ethan's kind of rage, but she understood Terri's fear. She was a young woman who had probably never held a real job outside her home. If Dale left her and their two kids, she would be completely abandoned. Lena understood why she felt trapped, just as she understood Terri's fear of exposure.
All this time, Lena had been concerned about Ethan's reaction, but now she knew there was more to worry about than the threat of his violence. What if Jeffrey found out? God knew she had been through a lot of shit in the last three years – most of it of her own making – but Lena had no idea what would be the final line she crossed that made Jeffrey tu
rn his back on her. His wife was a pediatrician and from what she had seen, he loved kids. It wasn't like they had political discussions all the time. She had no idea where he stood on abortion. She did know, however, that he would be pissed as hell if he found out Lena hadn't really interviewed Terri. They had been so tied up in their mutual fears Lena hadn't asked her about the garage, let alone if there had been any visitors Dale didn't know about. Lena had to find a way to get back in touch with her, to ask her about the cyanide, but she couldn't think how to do this without alerting Jeffrey.
Less than two feet away from her, he was muttering something under his breath. He had called in pretty much every cop on the force, ordering them to the woods to check for other gravesites. The search was exhausting, like combing the ocean for a particular grain of sand, and throughout the day, the temperature in the woods had kept going from one extreme to the other, the hot sun pouring through one minute, the cool shadows of the trees turning her sweat into a chill the next. As night was settling, it became even colder, but Lena had known better than to go back and get her jacket. Jeffrey was acting like a man possessed. She knew he was shouldering the blame for this, just like she knew there was nothing she could say that would help him.
'We should've done this Sunday,' Jeffrey said, as if he could have miraculously guessed that one coffin in the forest meant there would be at least another. Lena didn't bother pointing this out; she had tried and failed several times before. Instead, she kept her eyes on the ground, the leaves and pine needles turning into a melted mess as her thoughts went elsewhere and her vision blurred with the threat of tears.
After nearly eight hours of searching and only getting through half of the more than two hundred acres, she doubted she would be able to find a neon sign with a big arrow pointing down, let alone a small metal pipe sticking out of the ground. Not to mention they were losing light fast. The sun was already dipping down low, threatening to disappear behind the horizon at any moment. They had pulled out their flashlights ten minutes ago, but the beams did little to aid the search.
Jeffrey looked up at the trees, rubbing his neck. They had taken one break around lunch, barely pausing to chew the sandwiches Frank had ordered from the local deli.
'Why would someone send that letter to Sara?' Jeffrey asked. 'She doesn't have anything to do with this.'
'Everyone knows y'all are together,' Lena pointed out, wishing she could sit down somewhere. She wanted just ten minutes to herself, time enough to figure out how to get back in touch with Terri. There was the added problem of Dale. How would she explain why she needed to talk to his wife again?
'I don't like Sara mixed up in this,' Jeffrey said, and she understood that one of the things driving his anger was the fact that Sara's involvement might put her in jeopardy. 'The postmark was local,' he said. 'It's somebody in the county, in Grant.'
'Could be someone from the farm knew better than to mail it from Catoogah,' she pointed out, thinking anyone could've dropped a letter by the Grant post office.
'It was sent Monday,' he said. 'So whoever did it knew what was going on and wanted to warn us.' His flashlight beam flickered and he shook it to no avail. 'This is fucking ridiculous.'
He held his portable radio to his hand, clicking the mic. 'Frank?'
A few seconds passed before Frank asked, 'Yeah?'
'We'll have to get lights out here,' he said. 'Call the hardware store and see if we can borrow anything.'
'Will do.'
Lena waited until Frank had signed off before trying to reason with Jeffrey. 'There's no way we'll be able to cover the whole area tonight.'
'You want to come out here tomorrow morning and realize some girl could have been saved tonight if we hadn't knocked off early?'
'It's late,' she told him. 'We could walk right past it and not even know.'
'Or we could find it,' he told her. 'Whatever happens, we're back here tomorrow looking again. I don't care if we have to get bulldozers out here and dig up every fucking square inch. You got me?'
She looked down, continuing to hunt for something she wasn't even sure was there.
Jeffrey followed suit, but he didn't give up. 'I should've done this Sunday. We should've been out in full force, gotten volunteers.' Jeffrey stopped. 'What was going on with you and Terri Stanley?'
Her attempt at a casual, 'What do you mean?' sounded pathetic even to Lena.
'Don't dick me around,' he warned. 'Something's going on.'
Lena licked her lips, feeling like a trapped animal. 'She had too much to drink at the picnic last year,' Lena lied. 'I found her in the bathroom with her head in the toilet.'
'She's an alcoholic?' Jeffrey asked, obviously ready to condemn the woman.
Lena knew this was one of his buttons, and not knowing what else to do, she pressed it hard. 'Yeah,' she said, thinking Terri Stanley could live with Jeffrey thinking she was a drunk as long as her husband didn't find out what she was doing in Atlanta last week.
Jeffrey asked, 'You think she makes a habit of it?'
'Don't know.'
'She was sick?' he asked. 'Throwing up?'
Lena felt a cold sweat, forcing herself to lie, knowing even as she did it that she was making the best choice given the circumstances. 'I told her she'd better straighten out,' she said. 'I think she's got it under control.'
'I'll talk to Sara,' he said, and her heart sank. 'She'll call Child Services.'
'No,' Lena said, trying not to sound desperate. It was one thing to lie, quite another to get Terri into trouble. 'I told you she's got it under control. She's going to meetings and everything.' She racked her brain for some of Hank's AA talk, feeling like a spider caught in its own web. 'Got her chip last month.'
He narrowed his eyes, probably trying to decide if she was being honest or not.
'Chief?' his radio crackled. 'West corner near the college. We've got something.'
Jeffrey took off, and Lena found herself running after him, the beam from her flashlight bobbing as she pumped her arms. Jeffrey had at least ten years on her, but he was a hell of a lot faster than she was. When he made it to the crowd of uniformed patrolmen standing in the clearing, she was still a good twenty feet behind him.
By the time she caught up, Jeffrey was kneeling beside an indentation in the earth. A rusted metal pipe was sticking up about two inches into the air. Whoever had spotted the site must have done so out of sheer luck. Even knowing what to look for, Lena was having trouble keeping her focus on the pipe.
Brad Stephens came running from behind her. He was holding two shovels and a crowbar. Jeffrey grabbed one of the shovels and they both started digging. The night air was cool, but they were both sweating by the time the first shovel thumped against wood. The hollow sound stayed in Lena's ears as Jeffrey knelt down to brush away the last of the dirt with his hands. He must have done this same thing with Sara on Sunday. She couldn't imagine what the anticipation had been like for him, the dread when he realized what he was uncovering. Even now, Lena was having a hard time accepting that someone in Grant was capable of doing such a horrible thing.
Brad jammed the crowbar into the edge of the box, and together he and Jeffrey worked to pry away the wood. One slat came up, flashlights shining eagerly into the opening. A foul odor escaped – not of rotting flesh, but of mustiness and decay. Jeffrey put his shoulder into the crowbar as he pried another board, the wood bending back on itself like a folded sheet of paper. The pulp was soaking wet, dirt staining it a dark black. Obviously, the box had been buried in the earth for a long time. In the crime scene photos of the grave by the lake, the grave had looked new, the green pressure-treated wood doing its job of holding back the elements even as it held in the girl.
Using his bare hands, Jeffrey pulled up the sixth board. Flashlights illuminated the interior of the stained box. He sat back on his heels, his shoulders sagging either from relief or disappointment. Lena felt her own mixture of both emotions.
The box was empty.
Lena h
ad stayed around the potential crime scene until the last sample was taken. The box had practically disintegrated over time, the wood soaking into the ground. That the box was older than the first they had found was obvious, just as it was obvious that the box had been used for the same thing. Deep fingernail scratches gouged out the top pieces Jeffrey had pried away. Dark stains riddled the bottom. Someone had bled in there, shit in there, maybe died in there. When and why were just two more questions to add to the growing list. Thankfully, Jeffrey had finally accepted that they couldn't continue looking for another box in the pitch dark. He had called off the search and told a crew of ten to show back up at daybreak.
Back at the station, Lena had washed her hands, not bothering to change into the spare outfit she kept in her locker, knowing nothing but a long, hot shower could wash away some of the distress she was feeling. Yet, when she came to the road that led into her neighborhood, she found herself downshifting the Celica, making an illegal U-turn to bypass her street. She unlatched her seat belt and drove with her knees while she shrugged off her jacket. The windows slid down with the touch of a button, and she turned off the noise coming from the radio, wondering how long it had been since she had a moment to herself like this. Ethan thought she was still at work. Nan was probably getting ready for bed and Lena was totally alone with nothing but her own thoughts to keep her company.
She drove through downtown again, slowing as she passed the diner, thinking about Sibyl, the last time she had seen her. Lena had screwed up so many things since then. There was a time when no matter what, she didn't let her personal life interfere with her job. Being a cop was the one thing she was good at, the one thing Lena knew how to do. She had let her connection to Terri Stanley get in the way of her duties. Yet again, her emotions were jeopardizing the only thing in Lena's life that was a constant. What would Sibyl say about Lena now? How ashamed would her sister be at the kind of person Lena had become?
A Grant County Collection Page 57