My Sister's Grave

by Robert Dugoni

  “I don’t know,” Armstrong said, shaking his head and looking confused.

  “What difference does that make?” Calloway asked.

  “For one, it could be indicative of a premeditated act,” Tracy said. “If someone knew the area was being developed, they could have planned to use the hole.”

  “Why would a killer use a hole in a place that he knew was going to be developed?” Rosa asked.

  “Because he also knew the development was never going to be built,” Tracy said. “It was a big story around here. The resort was going to have a big impact on the local economy and make Cedar Grove a vacation destination. The developer submitted land use applications for a golf course and tennis resort, but shortly thereafter the Federal Energy Commission approved the construction of three hydroelectric dams across the Cascade River.” Tracy stood, walked to the front of the room, and held out her hand for Finlay’s marker. The deputy hesitated before handing it to her. She drew a line. “Cascade Falls was the last dam to go online. That was mid-October, 1993. When it did, the river backed up and the lake’s perimeter expanded.” She drew the lake’s new perimeter. “It flooded that area.”

  “Which put the grave site under water and out of reach of animals,” Rosa said.

  “And out of our reach.” Tracy turned to Calloway. “We searched that area, Roy.”

  Tracy knew. She’d not only been part of the search team, she’d kept the original topographical map after her father had died. In the intervening years, she’d gone over it so many times she knew it better than the lines on the palm of her hand. Her father had divided the map into sectors to ensure a thorough and systematic search. They’d gone over each sector twice.

  When Calloway continued to ignore her, Tracy spoke to Rosa. “They took down Cascade Falls earlier this summer.”

  “And the lake receded back to its natural dimensions,” Rosa said, understanding.

  “They just reopened that area to hunters and hikers,” Armstrong said, also catching on. “Yesterday was opening day of duck season.”

  Tracy looked to Calloway. “We went over that area before it flooded, Roy. There was no body there.”

  “It’s a big area. You can’t rule out the possibility we missed it,” he said. “Or that it isn’t her.”

  “How many other young women disappeared around here during that time, Roy?”

  Calloway didn’t answer.

  Tracy said, “We searched that area twice and did not find any body. Whoever put the body there had to have done so after we’d searched and just before the flood.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Tracy bolted upright, the bedsheet slipping to her waist. Disoriented, she thought the clatter that had startled her from sleep was the bell echoing through the halls of Cedar Grove High, signaling that she was late to teach her next chemistry class.

  “Phone,” Ben moaned. He lay on the mattress beside her, a pillow pulled over his head to block out the slats of sharp, morning light filtering through the blinds. The phone finally cut off midring.

  Tracy fell back onto her pillow, but now her mind wanted to continue orienting itself. Ben had picked her up from the shooting competition to go to dinner. In her mind she watched him push back his chair and drop to one knee. The ring! Her mouth inched into a sleepy grin and she held up her left hand, tilting the diamond to reflect the prisms of light. Ben had been so nervous he could hardly get the words out.

  Her thoughts shifted again, this time to Sarah. Tracy had meant to call Sarah with the news when she got to her rental but then one thing had led to another with Ben, though Sarah apparently already knew. Ben told Tracy that Sarah had helped plan the evening. It was why Sarah had missed the two targets. She had wanted Tracy to win so she wouldn’t go off to get engaged in a bad mood.

  Feeling guilty for having scolded Sarah, Tracy rolled over and checked the time on the digital alarm clock on the carpet beside the mattress. It glowed red numerals: 6:13 a.m. Sarah would never get out of bed this early to answer the extension in the hall of their parents’ home. Tracy would have to wait to call her.

  No longer interested in sleep, Tracy rolled close to Ben, spooning his body and feeling the heat radiate from him. When Ben didn’t react, she pressed closer and ran her fingers over the ridges of his stomach muscles and took him in her hand, feeling him harden.

  The phone rang.

  Ben groaned, and not in a good way.

  Tracy threw off the sheet, rolled out of the bed and stumbled over the clothes they had hastily discarded last night. She snatched the phone from its cradle on the wall in the kitchen. “Hello?”

  “Tracy?”

  “Dad?”

  “I called earlier.”

  “Sorry, I must not have heard—”

  “Is Sarah with you?”

  “Sarah? No. She’s at home.”

  “She isn’t home.”

  “What? Wait, aren’t you still in Hawaii? What time is it there?”

  “Early. Roy Calloway said he couldn’t get a hold of anyone at the house.”

  “Why was Roy calling the house?”

  “They found your truck; did you have car trouble last night?”

  Tracy was having difficulty tracking the conversation. Her head pounded from too much red wine and too little sleep. “What do you mean they found it? Found it where?”

  “The county road. What happened to it?”

  She felt a sense of dread wash over her. She’d told Sarah to stay on the highway. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure! Roy recognized the sticker in the back window. Sarah’s not with you?”

  She felt sick to her stomach, lightheaded. “No, she drove home.”

  “What do you mean she drove home? Weren’t you with her?”

  “No, I was with Ben.”

  “You let her drive home from Olympia alone?” He was starting to shout.

  “I didn’t let her . . . Dad, I got . . .”

  “Oh my God.”

  “She’s probably at home, Dad.”

  “I just called there twice. No one answered.”

  “She never answers. I’m sure she’s asleep.”

  “Roy knocked. He knocked on the front door—”

  “I’m driving over there now, Dad. Dad. I said I’m going over there now. Yes, I’ll call you when I get there. I said I’ll call you when I get there.”

  She hung up the phone, trying to make sense of it.

  Roy Calloway said he couldn’t get a hold of anyone at the house.

  They found your truck.

  She took a deep breath, fighting against the spreading anxiety, telling herself not to panic, telling herself that everything was fine.

  I just called there twice.

  Sarah was probably asleep and either hadn’t heard the phone ring or had ignored it. It would be just like her to ignore the phone.

  Roy knocked. He knocked on the front door—

  No one answered.

  “Ben!”

  CHAPTER 7

  Tracy parked at the end of the caravan of cars lining the gravel road leading to the never-built entrance to the Cascadia Resort. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, then sat on her rear bumper and exchanged her flats for hiking boots. Though the sky was clear and the temperature October crisp, she tied a Gore-Tex jacket around her waist, knowing that rain could come quickly and the temperature dropped when the sun dipped below the treetops.

  After they’d gathered, Finlay Armstrong led them down a dirt trail, Calloway behind him, followed by Rosa and her team. Rosa carried a dig bag, which was the size of an overnight bag with multiple pockets on the outside for things like scrapers, brushes, and small hand tools. Stanley and Coles carried sawhorses, a screen, and white buckets. The needles of the ponderosa pines had begun to turn a familiar soft shade of gold, and those that had fallen created a natural ground covering and familiar scent. The leaves of the maple and alders also hinted at the impending fall. Farther along the path, they passed the “No Trespassing”
signs Tracy and Sarah and their friends had thrown rocks at as they rode their bikes along the mountain trails to reach Cascade Lake.

  Half an hour into their hike, they stepped from the path into an area that had been partially cleared. The last time Tracy had been to this site, single-wide construction trailers had served as Cascadia’s temporary sales offices.

  “You wait here,” Calloway said.

  Tracy held back as the rest of the group walked closer to where a deputy stood beside wooden stakes driven into the ground. Yellow-and-black crime-scene tape strung between the stakes created a crude rectangle, perhaps eight feet wide and ten feet long. In the lower right quadrant, Tracy saw what looked like a stick protruding from disturbed soil. Her chest tightened.

  “We’ll set the second perimeter here,” Calloway said to Armstrong, keeping his voice soft and reverent. “Use the tree trunks.”

  Armstrong grabbed the roll of crime-scene tape and began defining the second perimeter, which Tracy thought was overkill. No one else was coming. No one in Cedar Grove still cared, and the press would not find their way to this remote area of the North Cascades.

  Armstrong approached where Tracy stood, looking almost apologetic. “I’m going to need you to step back, Detective,” he said.

  She stepped back as Armstrong finished wrapping the yellow-and-black tape between the trees.

  Rosa quickly went to work. After restaking the grave to increase its dimensions, she used string to divide the plot into smaller sections, then dropped to her knees by the section with the protruding foot and methodically began brushing away the dirt. She used hand trowels to scoop soil into one of the five-gallon buckets. Each bucket was labeled with a capital letter corresponding to a particular section of the dig site, A through D. Stanley periodically dumped the dirt onto the screen set between the two sawhorses and sifted it. Anna Coles took photographs. Any bones or bone fragments found would be given a lowercase letter. Everything else—bits of clothing, metal, buttons—would be numbered. Rosa worked methodically, without breaks. She’d want to complete the task before the fall light fell below the treetops.

  Shortly after one thirty, Tracy sensed the first break in Rosa’s routine. The anthropologist stopped digging and sat back. She spoke to Stanley, who began handing her progressively smaller brushes from the dig bag as Rosa went back to whisking away dirt, though in a more and more concentrated area. After another half hour, Rosa stood. Whatever she’d unearthed, she now held in her gloved hand. She discussed the object with Roy Calloway, and then gave it to Stanley, who slipped the object inside a plastic evidence bag and labeled it with a black marker. After cataloguing it, Stanley handed the bag not to Rosa, but to Calloway, who seemed to be contemplating what Rosa had unearthed.

  Then he turned and directed his gaze to Tracy.

  She felt a surge of adrenaline. Sweat trickled from her armpits and rolled down her sides beneath her shirt.

  As Calloway approached, her heart pounded. When he handed her the evidence bag she could not bring herself to look at it. She continued to study Calloway’s face until the sheriff could no longer meet her gaze and looked away.

  Tracy looked down at what Kelly Rosa had unearthed, and her breath caught in her chest.

  CHAPTER 8

  Tracy felt sick to her stomach. “You okay?” Ben reached across the cab and touched Tracy’s shoulder, but she did not acknowledge him. She kept her gaze directed out the window, on the side of the mountain and the bits of shale littering the edge of the road. She had not found Sarah’s boots on the front porch or in the entryway of their home. Sarah had not answered when Tracy had rushed up the grand staircase shouting her name. Sarah was not asleep in her bed or taking a shower. She was not in the kitchen eating or in the family room watching television. Sarah was not home. And there was no indication that she had been.

  “There,” Ben said as they came around another bend in the road.

  Her blue truck looked abandoned, parked along the shoulder that sloped into the North Cascades wilderness.

  Ben made a U-turn, parked behind Roy Calloway’s Suburban and turned off the engine. “Tracy?”

  She felt paralyzed. “I told her not to take the county road. I told her to stay on the freeway and double back. You heard me tell her.”

  Ben reached across the seat and squeezed her hand. “We’re going to find her.”

  “Why is she so stubborn all the time?”

  “It’s going to be all right, Tracy.”

  But the sense of dread that had enveloped her as she had hurried from room to room in her parents’ home grew more constricting. She opened her car door and stepped down onto the dirt shoulder.

  The morning’s temperature had continued to rise. The asphalt was already dry and showed no lingering hint of yesterday’s heavy evening rains. Insects danced and buzzed about her as Tracy approached the truck. Weak and lightheaded, she stumbled. Ben steadied her. The shoulder of the road seemed narrower, the drop-off steeper than she recalled.

  “Could she have slipped?” Tracy asked Roy Calloway, who stood waiting at the bumper of her truck.

  Calloway held out his hand and took the spare key. “We’ll take this one step at a time, Tracy.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  Tracy had been expecting one of the tires to be flat, or the body to be dented, or the hood to be raised to indicate a problem with the engine, though that was not likely. Their father was religious about bringing the cars to Harley Holt for servicing.

  “We’ll get that figured out,” Calloway said. He slipped on a pair of blue latex gloves and opened the driver’s door. A discarded Cheetos bag and empty Diet Coke bottle remained on the passenger-side floorboard—Sarah’s breakfast the morning they drove to the competition. Tracy had given her a hard time for eating that crap. Her light-blue fleece remained rolled in a ball on the narrow bench seat where she’d put it. She looked at Calloway and shook her head. Everything looked as she remembered it. Calloway leaned across the steering wheel, inserted the key in the ignition, and turned it. The engine whimpered. Then it clicked. He leaned in farther and considered the dash.

  “It’s empty.”

  “What?” she asked.

  Calloway stepped back so Tracy could lean in. “She ran out of gas.”

  “That can’t be,” Tracy said. “I filled up Friday night so we wouldn’t have to do it that morning.”

  “Maybe it’s just not registering because the engine is dead?” Ben suggested.

  “I don’t know,” Calloway said, though he sounded skeptical.

  Calloway removed the key and walked to the back of the truck. Tracy and Ben followed. Tinted glass prevented them from seeing inside the camper shell. At the back, Calloway said, “Why don’t you turn around?”

  Tracy shook her head. “No.”

  Ben wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Calloway unlocked the canopy door and bent to peek inside the bed before letting the door lift open. He lowered the tailgate. Again, everything remained seemingly as Tracy remembered. Their rugged carts were strapped to the bed walls. Tracy’s duster lay strewn with her boots and red bandanna.

  “Isn’t that her hat?” Calloway pointed to the brown Stetson.

  It was. Then Tracy remembered plopping her black Stetson on Sarah’s head. “She was wearing mine.”

  Calloway started to raise the gate.

  “Can I go in?” Tracy asked. Calloway stepped back. She climbed in, uncertain what she was looking for but feeling the same urgency she’d felt when she and Ben had driven off the night before, as if she’d forgotten something. She unlocked their rugged carts. The shotguns and rifles remained racked, barrel up, like pool cues in a rack. Sarah’s pistols were stored in an interior drawer, the ammunition in the lock box. In a second drawer, where Sarah kept buttons and badges from other competitions, Tracy found the photograph of Wild Bill presenting her with the silver belt buckle: Sarah and the third place finisher stood on each side of her. She slid the photograph into her bac
k pocket, lifted the duster, and checked the pockets.

  “It isn’t here,” she said climbing out.

  “What isn’t here?” Calloway asked.

  “The championship buckle,” Tracy said. “I gave it to Sarah last night before we left.”

  “I’m not following,” Calloway said.

  “Why would she take the buckle and not take her guns?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s just . . .”

  “It’s just what?” Calloway asked.

  “I mean, she wouldn’t have had any reason to take the belt buckle unless she intended to give it back to me this morning, right?”

  “She walked away,” Calloway said. “Is that what you’re saying? She had time to decide what to take and started walking.”

  Tracy looked down the deserted road. The white center line snaked with the hillside’s contours, turning and disappearing around a bend. “So where is she?”

  CHAPTER 9

  The silver plating had lost its luster, but the cast image of a cowgirl firing two single-action revolvers and the lettering etched along the perimeter remained distinct: 1993 Washington State Champion.

  They’d found the belt buckle.

  They’d found Sarah.

  The emotion that welled inside Tracy surprised her. It wasn’t bitterness or guilt. It wasn’t even sorrow. It was anger, and it coursed through her like venom. She’d known. She’d always known Sarah’s disappearance wasn’t what everyone had wanted her to believe. She’d known there’d been more to it. And now she had a sense that she could finally prove it.

  “Finlay.” Calloway’s voice sounded as if it were coming from the far end of a long tunnel. “Take her out of here.”

  Someone touched her arm. Tracy pulled away. “No.”

  “You don’t need to be a part of this,” Calloway said.

  “I left her once,” she said. “I’m not leaving her again. I’m staying. To the end.”