The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel)

by Loreth Anne White

  Crystal came scurrying back with a red cookie tin covered in white hearts.

  “Why don’t you offer them around,” Piper said gently, removing the lid.

  The child glanced shyly at Jeb, then Rachel. She slowly approached with the cookie tin held between both hands. Jeb took one. “Thank you.”

  Again he couldn’t help thinking of Quinn. The lost years. How foreign it was to simply be inside a home like this, be accepted and free to go where he pleased. To be able to dream again. But he reminded himself that, while Piper and Dracon accepted him, the rest of the town didn’t. He was not truly free. Not until he had proof that could be used in a court of law.

  “Is there anything else you can recall about the vision?” he said as he bit into his cookie. “Anything about the setting?”

  “Well, I got a sense from Amy of oppressive weight overhead. As if the place where this crime happened was under something, lots of earth pressing down, maybe. At the time I had a feeling . . . of being underground.”

  “Not in a cabin?” Rachel said.

  “It didn’t feel like a cabin, no.”

  Jeb cleared his throat. “Sophia mentioned that during hypnosis Amy experienced a sensation of cold, dankness, and she could scent dirt along with marijuana smoke. Do you feel the crime could have happened in . . . some sort of cave, maybe? Would this fit with what you saw and felt?”

  “It would, yes, absolutely.”

  Rachel suddenly sat forward on the couch. “Jeb, the mine!” Her eyes glittered. “The old copper mine above the gravel pit, near the trailhead to Mount Rogue. Rogue Falls comes down near the mine entrance. You said Amy heard water rushing. Back then you used to be able to drive the trestle bridge over the Rogue Falls gorge. A car could have been taken right to the mine opening.” She paused. “It could have happened right there, up above the gravel pit. The music Amy heard—the rhythmic repetitive music—could have been coming from a car parked outside, perhaps with the doors open.”

  Adrenaline punched through Jeb. It was possible. But it didn’t explain why Amy was found wandering on railway tracks over twenty miles north.

  “Piper,” he said, “before Amy died, she was listening to music, a CD called The Philistines: The Best of Damani Jakeel, and she was apparently smoking dope. Do you think she might have been trying to re-create the events of that night by using the stimuli she was starting to recall, including the scent of marijuana? Because this is the kind of thing Sophia had been trying with the retrograde hypnosis.”

  “It would make sense,” Piper said. “What else did Sophia say Amy remembered during the hypnosis sessions?”

  “An odd string of words: lewd boy brain is coming crashing now. Sophia said these words would go round and round and round in Amy’s brain. Then everything would come to halt as an image of a dragon came into her mind. An undulating dragon. Pumping dragon were the words she used.”

  Piper’s gaze shot to her husband, a frown furrowing into her brow. “Dracon, your name means dragon. Does this mean anything to you? Could it have meant anything to Merilee, perhaps, something Amy might have been aware of?”

  He pursed his lips. “By the time Merilee was in high school, I hardly knew my sister. You know how a gap of a few years can seem monumental at that age? And when she disappeared, I’d been out of school for four years already, living in Victoria and working toward my doctorate.” He gave a slight shrug. “The word dragon means nothing to me apart from the fact that’s what my name translates to. It’s a family name. My great-grandfather was called Dracon.” He hesitated. “What did you say those other words were again?”

  “Lewd boy brain is coming crashing now.”

  “And you said she was listening to a Damani Jakeel CD?”

  “Do you know of him?”

  He got up, went over to a shelf containing racks of CDs. He pulled out one, held it up. It was the same CD that DJ PeaceWorld had given them.

  “They were selling these at the annual Snowy Creek spring music festival last April. Damani Jakeel and the Toots performed at the festival this year—they’re one of the oldest original ska and rocksteady Jamaican bands still around. Jakeel himself had just turned seventy and the spring concert in Snowy Creek was part of their finale tour. The band formed in the early sixties when ska was hot. Their first performance in Snowy Creek was thirteen years ago, at the premiere Snowy Creek music festival. It was a coup for the festival organizers to bring them back again. I went to the concert for old times’ sake. Picked one of these up.” He brought it over to Jeb.

  “Take a look at the lyrics from that track.” Dracon pointed to a song titled “Rude Boy” on the back.

  Jeb took the CD, opened the box, removed the CD booklet, and turned to the song labeled “Rude Boy.” He read the lyrics, a chill sliding down the groove of his spine.

  C’mon all you crashers . . . c’mon you all rude boys and girls

  The rude boy train is coming crashing now

  Coming now

  Ticky ticky tick

  Rude boy train is coming crashing now

  Rude boy train is coming crashing now

  You dance hall crashers

  You all hypocrite, you . . . rude boys and girls . . .

  He glanced up, pulse racing.

  “The songs are repetitive like that,” Dracon said. “Kind of gives one an earworm. I can imagine it going round and round in Amy’s head if it was something that was playing during a traumatic event.”

  “Rude boy. Not lewd boy. Amy misheard the lyrics.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time someone remembered the wrong lyrics of a song. I certainly have. Rude boy was a slang term that originated in 1960s Jamaican street culture. It was associated with violent youths and ska and rocksteady music. A lot of the ska and rocksteady music of that period either supported or criticized the rude boy violence. Like this one by Jakeel and the Toots.”

  Several beats of silence ensued before Rachel said, “But who would have played a CD like that nine years ago, while Amy was assaulted? Who at the time liked old ska, rocksteady reggae music from the sixties? I mean, kids like trendy stuff.”

  Dracon snorted. “After Jakeel and the Toots’ first tour to Snowy Creek, there was at least one fan I know of, including myself. We kind of bonded over the music interest at the time. He was in the class below me.”

  Everyone’s gaze was suddenly riveted on Dracon.

  “Who?” Jeb said, his pulse quickening even further.

  “Adam LeFleur.”

  Rachel’s mouth dropped open.

  “You’re kidding,” Jeb said.

  “Adam became a die-hard fan of the old Jamaican stuff. And it started with that concert here in Snowy Creek thirteen years ago.”

  “What day did Jakeel perform last April?” Rachel asked quickly.

  Dracon’s brow furrowed. “The festival is always held during the spring break, which falls around the second weekend of April. Hang on.” He pulled his smart phone out of his pocket, scrolled. “The performance was April seventh. A Wednesday.”

  “Jeb.” Rachel’s voice was hoarse suddenly. “That was the day before Amy died. She was shot April eighth. Do you think that’s why she came up here and missed her appointment with Sophia? Because she’d learned Jakeel was playing, and she wanted to re-create something? Do you think she was remembering, and that’s why she bought the CD, went back to her place, kept playing the music?”

  Jeb stared at her. “Jesus, it’s possible.”

  “We need to go back to the gravel pit,” she said, lurching to her feet. “And we need to go up and check out the mine. What if it happened right there, in the old copper mine, just up the road from the pit party? Someone could have driven Amy north and dumped her at the trapper’s cabin after the assault in order to deflect attention from the mine.”

  “Which means,” Jeb said ver
y quietly, “Merilee could still be down there.” He got to his feet. “We should go. We still need to stop by the village.”

  They both thanked Piper and Dracon. Jeb noticed that Rachel, once again, avoided taking Piper’s hand. While they were walking back to the truck, Piper stopped him with a gentle touch on his arm, holding him back.

  Startled by the sharp electrical sensation, he glanced down into her eyes. Her intensity was suddenly strange.

  “You’re reading me?” he said.

  Piper smiled. “I can tell she consumes you, Jeb. You don’t need to be psychic to see that.”

  “Yeah, well—” He glanced at Rachel, who was already at the top of the driveway, opening the door of the truck. “She does. Always has.” He gave a soft snort. “It’s not like I met a lot of other women in the joint, you know.”

  “I want you to know why Rachel was steering clear of me inside,” Piper said. “When I met her for the first time, when I tried to interview her five years ago, I shook her hand.” Piper paused. “And I saw you in my mind. It was like a brick to the head. Stark as day. I knew it was you from the photos, from the research I was doing for the docudrama. The intensity was truly overwhelming. You were the ghost that haunted Rachel.”

  “Five years ago?”

  Piper nodded.

  Jeb’s gaze went to Rachel, now waiting in the truck. She was watching them. His chest was suddenly tight. She hadn’t let him go. Not even after his conviction. She had held him in her mind, her heart, and her spirit.

  “You’re part of her fabric, Jeb. And she’s part of yours. I just wanted you to know that.”

  Jeb swallowed. Unsure.

  “I believe in destiny,” Piper said. “You both need to fight for this, no matter what happens. Otherwise neither of your lives will ever be right, or whole. Trust me. I know this.”

  “You and Dracon, it was the same for you?”

  She smiled ruefully. “I’ll tell you the story someday. When you have more time.”

  He hesitated, held her eyes. “Thank you. For everything. I truly mean that. I wouldn’t be here had it not been for you.”

  “Go,” she said. “Finish it off.”

  Jeb turned and marched up to the truck where Rachel was waiting.

  “What did she say to you?” she asked as he climbed into the drivers’ seat.

  “Nothing much.”

  Rachel crooked a brow. “It was that woo-woo stuff of hers, wasn’t it?”

  He keyed the ignition. “Her woo-woo stuff saved my bacon. It brought Sophia to me. It gave me Quinn. It got me here, with you. I’m not gonna sneeze at Piper Smith’s ‘woo-woo.’ ” He geared the truck, drove up the steep driveway and out onto the road that wound around Pine Cone Lake.

  “It doesn’t make sense, you know,” Rachel said after they’d been driving a few minutes.

  “What doesn’t?”

  “Adam. You think those guys could have been protecting him by lying in court? I mean, he was already a cop at the time, with the RCMP in Edmonton. He’d been with the Mounties three years and was just home for the Thanksgiving break. Yet I can’t see it. Not Adam.”

  “Easier to believe it was me?”

  She shot him a hot glare.

  They drove in silence round the lake, back toward the village, to the fire hall.

  Dry leaves scattered across the road, and branches swayed in the mounting wind. A sense of something about to break whispered around them, like the storm electricity in the air.

  “She’s out in the sunroom,” Rubella said with a smile as she opened the condo door to Adam. “She’s having a good day. Go on through. I’ll bring some tea out.”

  “I can do the tea, Rubella,” Adam told his mother’s home-care nurse. “If you want to run some errands, I’ll be here for an hour or so.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Of course. Go.” Adam would rather be here than breaking news to Lily that he’d been placed on mandatory leave. He found his mother in the glassed-in sunroom off the living room. She was sitting in her wicker rocker, bent like a question mark, a fleece blanket over her lap. Her blonde hair had been worked into a braid, which Rubella had tied with a small pink ribbon. It looked absurdly girlish. His mom had been a tough top cop, never girlish.

  Dementia had a way of doing that, robbing people of dignity, pride, making them helpless babies again. Not cute babies that called out to be touched and cuddled, but clumsy old babies who smelled and needed diaper changes and help being fed. Adam would rather terminate his own life than end up like this.

  He went through the French doors. It was pretty out here, the glassed-in alcove surrounded by clematis, the desiccated blooms still hanging like fragile ghosts on the autumn vines. Birds darted to and from a feeder hanging outside. His mother was watching them. Bird feeders were deemed bear attractants out here, but Adam didn’t have the heart to remove it. His mother loved the hummingbirds especially.

  “Mom?”

  She looked up. Confusion creased her brow. She was still handsome; the echoes of a beautiful, strong young woman were yet evident in the lines of her face. Sheila Copeland LeFleur was not so much old as robbed of her brain. Early onset dementia, they called it. Hereditary, they said. It had been compounded by a stroke that left one side of her face out of sync with the other. The shock of Luke’s disappearance, they said, could have precipitated things.

  “Rafe,” she said, recognition suddenly lighting her eyes. “Where have you been?”

  He lowered himself onto the wicker ottoman in front of her. “It’s Adam, Mom.”

  The frown etched back into her brow. She started to pat her knee lightly. A nervous tick. Fear. Of not knowing things.

  “I know,” he offered. “I look a lot like Dad.”

  “Where is he? Rafe should be home by now. I get so worried.”

  How many times could she bear the pain of being told her husband was dead, never coming back, that he’d died at age thirty-two? Almost the same age Adam was now. Each time she was told, it wounded afresh, as if she were hearing it for the first time.

  “He’s out,” Adam said finally. “He’ll be back later.”

  He waited until he heard the front door close behind the nurse. Then he leaned closer and said, “Mom, do you remember the Zukanov-Findlay case, the missing girls?”

  Her face twisted into a range of expressions as she sent her mind scurrying down neural pathways only to find holes, missing links. Dead ends. It was like watching the face of someone whose features were being sparked by electrodes planted in the brain, and the scientist in control was randomly testing which connection activated which muscle.

  The UBC Innocence Project lawyers had tried to bring his mother in to testify about the evidence log, the additional DNA found on the bloodied shirt. But she’d been deemed medically, mentally unsound. Adam had wondered at the time if she might have been trying to hide behind the illness that was progressively ravaging her brain. Or if she’d truly slipped into a forgotten place. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

  He placed his hand over hers to stop the knee patting. “Mom. Sheila?”

  Her eyes flickered at the use of her name.

  “Do you remember, when the girls went missing, we had an argument about a small gold Saint Christopher medallion. I found the medallion in my Jeep after Luke borrowed it the night the girls vanished. I put the medallion in an envelope in my top drawer. Someone took it two days later. I thought it was Luke who’d done it. He denied it, and he and I had a huge row. You heard us. Afterward you came to me, and you told me to let things rest—do you remember that?”

  She looked out the window. “When will Rafe be home?”

  Frustration tightened in Adam. He blew out a long, controlled breath. There was no harm now in just shooting it from the hip. The longer he left this, the more she would forget. “Mom, that medallio
n, it was like the one Merilee was wearing when she went missing from the gravel pit.”

  “It’s late. Rafe should be here by now.”

  “The bloodied hoodie with the empty Rohypnol pack in the pocket, your officers didn’t find it in Jebbediah Cullen’s car, did they? It was Luke’s shirt, wasn’t it? It came from our house. You put it directly into evidence and logged it as having come from Cullen’s vehicle, didn’t you?”

  A distant, soft smile crossed her face, and her eyes turned misty. “Adam is such a good boy, Rafe. He’s following in your footsteps. He’s a Mountie, like you are. He’s going to make a great cop someday. Luke . . .” She shook her head sadly. “He’s not strong-minded like our Adam. Sometimes Luke gets in with a bad crowd, that’s all. He has no malice, though. It won’t happen again. He’s going straight into the army, where he can stay focused.” She clasped Adam’s hand tightly and leaned suddenly forward.

  “You see, Rafe, I can’t allow Luke to ruin Adam’s career, his life, before it’s even started. It was Adam’s Jeep, you see, that Luke borrowed that night. It was that girl’s blood on Luke’s shirt; that’s what the lab showed in the end.”

  Adam’s heart stuttered. Sweat slicked down the groove of his spine. “Mom—Sheila—”

  “Yes, Rafe,” she said with another girlish smile.

  “You’re saying the male DNA found on the hoodie would match Luke’s profile?”

  Her face crumpled. She withdrew her hand, started tapping her knee again, fast.

  Adam sat back, dragged his hands through his hair. His shirt was soaked under his armpits, his mouth dust dry.

  “It’s so tough being a single mother of two sons, Rafe. I . . . I have to protect my boys. Once Luke is in the army, it’s going to be okay. And Adam will have a clear record. I can’t have this thing touching him. I told him so, Rafe, to let it be. Because he has to make a choice. Either he goes after his own brother and mother. Or he keeps quiet. And what evidence is he going to go after his own brother with? Those boys already made a pact. Adam’s got nothing concrete on them. It’s better this way.” Her eyes went distant. “Jebbediah’s an evil boy,” she whispered. “He killed his own father. It was right. I did what a mother had to do.”