My Sister's Grave

by Robert Dugoni

  Rosa’s eyes narrowed in question, but she apparently decided to let it go. “Okay. But if I could offer a suggestion . . .”

  “Please.”

  “Let me send her remains directly to a funeral home. It’s easier. You don’t want to have to transport them.”

  Twenty years ago, some in Cedar Grove had suggested a service. They’d been seeking closure, but James Crosswhite wouldn’t hear any talk of funerals or funeral homes. He would not hear any discussion that his baby girl was dead. Tracy no longer had any such hope, but now she had something she’d been waiting twenty years for. Hard evidence.

  “I think that would be best,” Tracy said.

  CHAPTER 14

  Early on the morning of the third day after Sarah’s disappearance, Tracy opened the front door to find Roy Calloway standing on the porch, kneading the brim of his hat. From his expression, Tracy knew Calloway had not come bearing good news.

  “Morning, Tracy. I need to speak to your father.”

  Tracy had dragged her parents home when darkness had made searching the hills above Cedar Grove no longer practical. She had worked beside her father, who had been using his den as their command center. He had called police stations, congressmen, everyone he knew in positions of power. Tracy had called radio stations and newspapers. Sometime after eleven, as her father studied a topographical map, Tracy had curled up in one of the red leather chairs to take a fifteen-minute nap. She had awoken beneath a blanket, the morning sun streaming through the leaded glass. Her father remained seated at his desk, the sandwich she’d made him the night before untouched. He was using a ruler and compass to divide the topographical map into quadrants. She got up to make coffee but found a pot already brewing in the kitchen. Her mother had evidently left earlier that morning without awakening her. About to pour a cup for her father, she’d heard the knock on the front door.

  “He’s in his den,” she said.

  The sliding doors behind her were already pulling apart, and her father stepped out, fitting his glasses behind each ear. “I’m here,” he said. “Tracy, make some coffee.”

  “Mom has a pot brewing.” She followed them into the den.

  “Did you speak to him?” her father asked.

  “He says he was at home.”

  Tracy knew they were talking about Edmund House.

  “Can anyone verify that?”

  Calloway shook his head. “Parker worked the night shift at the mill and got home late. He says he found Edmund asleep in his bedroom.”

  When Calloway didn’t immediately continue, her father said, “But?”

  Calloway handed her father Polaroid photographs. “He has scratch marks on the side of his face and the back of his hands.”

  Her father held one up to the light. “How did he explain these?”

  “He said a piece of wood exploded on him while he was working in the metal shed where Parker makes his furniture. He said it splintered and cut him.”

  Her father lowered the picture. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Neither have I.”

  “These look like someone raked fingernails across his face and arms.”

  “I thought so too.”

  “Can you get a search warrant?”

  “Vance already tried,” Calloway said, frustration seeping into his voice. “He called Judge Sullivan at home. Sullivan turned him down. He said there wasn’t enough evidence to invade the sanctity of Parker’s home.”

  Her father massaged a kink in the back of his neck. “What if I call Sullivan?”

  “I wouldn’t. Sullivan goes by the book.”

  “He’s been in my damn house, Roy. He comes to my Christmas party.”

  “I know.”

  “What if he has Sarah there? What if he has her somewhere on that property?”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s Parker’s property. I asked if I could take a look around, and he gave his consent. I searched every room and every building. She isn’t there and I didn’t see any sign to indicate she had been.”

  “There could be other evidence—blood in his car or in the house.”

  “There could be, but to bring in a forensic team—”

  “He’s a Goddamn felon, Roy. A convicted rapist who has scratch marks on his face and arms and no one to account for his whereabouts. How the hell is that not enough?”

  “I said the same thing to Vance, and he made the same argument to Judge Sullivan. House did his time for that crime.”

  “I called King County, Roy. House got off on a damn plea because the police screwed up. They say he raped and beat that poor girl for more than a day.”

  “And he did his time, James.”

  “Then you tell me, Roy, where’s my daughter? Where’s my Sarah?”

  Calloway looked upset. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

  “So this is what, just one big coincidence? They let him out, he comes to live here, and now Sarah’s missing?”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “He has no alibi.”

  “It’s not enough, James.”

  “Who then? A drifter? Someone passing through? What are the odds of that?”

  “The bulletin is out to every law enforcement agency in the state.”

  James Crosswhite rolled up the topographical map and handed it to Tracy. “Take this to your mother down at the American Legion building. Tell her to give it to Vern and get the teams together. We’re going back out. This time I want the search done in a systematic manner so there is no margin for error.” He looked to Calloway. “What about dogs?”

  “The closest team is in California. Flying them is a problem.”

  “I don’t care if they’re in Siberia. I’ll pay whatever it takes to get them here.”

  “It’s not the cost, James.”

  Her father turned to Tracy as if surprised she hadn’t left. “Did you hear me? I said get going.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “Do as I say, damn it!”

  Tracy flinched and stepped back. Her father had never raised his voice to her or to Sarah. “Okay, Daddy,” she said, walking past him.

  “Tracy.” He gently touched her arm, taking a moment to regain his composure. “You go on, now. Tell your mother I’ll be down shortly. The sheriff and I have a few more matters to discuss.”

  CHAPTER 15

  A week after they’d located Sarah’s remains, Tracy drove back to Cedar Grove. Though the drive from Seattle had been mostly in sunshine, as she approached, a dark cloud had gathered and now hung over the town, as if to mark the somber reason for her return. She was coming home to bury her sister.

  Traffic was lighter than she’d expected and she arrived half an hour early for her meeting at the funeral home. She looked around the dilapidated storefronts and shops, before spotting the neon sign in the shape of a cup of coffee on what had been Kaufman’s Mercantile Store. The air was heavy with the earthy scent of impending rain. Tracy fed a quarter into the meter, though she doubted there was a meter maid within a hundred miles, and entered The Daily Perk. Long and narrow, the space had once been the mercantile store’s soda and ice cream counter. Someone had built a false wall to divide the space into a coffee shop and a Chinese restaurant. The decor was a mishmash of furniture that resembled a college apartment. The couch was threadbare and covered with newspapers. The lathe and plaster walls displayed long cracks that were poorly disguised by a fresco painting of a window looking out on a city sidewalk of people walking past brownstones. It seemed an odd choice for a rural coffee shop. The young woman behind the counter had a nose ring, a stud piercing her lower lip, and the service skills of a government employee one week from retirement.

  When the girl didn’t bother to greet her, Tracy said, “Coffee. Black.”

  She took the cup to a table by the real window and sat looking out on a deserted Market Street, remembering how she and Sarah and their friends used to get in troub
le for riding their bikes on the crowded sidewalk. They’d lean them against the wall, never bothering to lock them, and go inside the stores to buy supplies for whatever Saturday adventure they’d planned for that week.

  Dan O’Leary stood forlornly over his bike. “Damn it.”

  “What’s the matter?” Tracy had just exited Kaufman’s after stuffing a length of thick rope, a loaf of bread, and jars of peanut butter and jelly into her backpack. With the leftover quarter, she’d bought ten pieces of black licorice and five pieces of red. Her father had given her the money that morning, when she’d asked permission for her and Sarah to ride their bikes to Cascade Lake. Sarah had found the perfect tree for a summer rope swing. Tracy was surprised her father had given her the money so readily. This was ordinarily the type of extravagance that she and Sarah were expected to pay for with their allowance money. Now a high school sophomore, Tracy also earned money working part-time in the ticket booth at Hutchins’ Theater. Her father not only gave her the money, he told her to spend it all, and said that Mr. Kaufman “was having trouble making ends meet.” Tracy suspected that was because Mr. Kaufman’s son, Peter, who was in Sarah’s sixth-grade class at Cedar Grove Grammar School, had been sick and in and out of the hospital for most of the year.

  “Flat tire,” Dan said, sounding as deflated as his bike’s front wheel.

  “Maybe it’s just low on air,” Tracy said.

  “No. It was flat this morning so I pumped it up before we left. It must have a hole. Great. Now I can’t go.” Dan slid his backpack off his shoulder and sank onto the sidewalk.

  “What’s the matter?” Sarah asked, exiting the store with Sunnie.

  “Dan’s got a flat tire.”

  “I can’t go,” he said.

  “Let’s ask Mr. Kaufman to use the phone to call your mom,” Tracy said. “Maybe she’ll come down and buy you a new tube.”

  “I can’t,” Dan said. “My dad’s been on my ass about being irresponsible. He says money doesn’t grow on trees.”

  “So you’re not going?” Sunnie said. “We had it all planned out.”

  Dan lowered his head to his forearms crossed over his knees. He didn’t bother to fix his glasses when they slipped down the bridge of his nose. “You guys just go without me.”

  “Okay,” Sunnie said, getting her bike.

  Tracy glared at her. “We’re not going without him, Sunnie.”

  “We’re not going? It’s not our fault he’s got a lousy bike.”

  “Quit it, Sunnie,” Sarah said.

  “You quit it. Who invited you anyway?”

  “Who invited you?” Sarah spat back. “I found the tree, not you.”

  “Stop it, both of you,” Tracy said. “If Dan can’t go, then none of us is going.” Tracy grabbed Dan’s arm. “Come on, Dan, get up. We’ll push your bike to my house. We can tie the rope on one of the branches of the weeping willow and make a swing there.”

  “Are you kidding? What are we, six years old?” Sunnie said. “We were going to jump in the lake. What are we going to do, jump in the lawn?”

  “Let’s go.” Tracy looked about but did not see her sister. She sighed. “Where’s Sarah?”

  “Great,” Sunnie said. “Now she’s disappeared again. This day is getting worse by the minute.”

  Sarah’s bike remained against the building, but she was nowhere to be seen. “Wait here.” Tracy went back into the store and found Sarah at the counter talking to Mr. Kaufman. “Sarah, what are you doing?”

  Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of dollar bills and quarters, dropping it on the counter. “Buying Dan a new tire,” Sarah said. She swung her head to get strands of hair out of her face. It drove their mother crazy, but Sarah refused to wear a clip or pull her hair back in a rubber band.

  “Is that your movie money you’ve been saving?”

  Sarah shrugged. “Dan needs it more than me.”

  “Here you go, Sarah.” Mr. Kaufman handed Sarah the box with the new tire tube. “This should be the right size.”

  “Do I have enough, Mr. Kaufman?”

  Mr. Kaufman scooped the money from the counter without counting it. “I think it’s plenty. You sure you can fix it? It’s a pretty big job.” He looked at Tracy and winked.

  “I’ve seen my Dad do it. It’s only the front tire so I don’t have to take the chain off.”

  “Maybe your big sister can help you,” he said.

  “No, I can do it.”

  He reached beneath the counter and handed Sarah a wrench and a flat-head screwdriver. “Well, you’ll need these. You let me know if you need any help.”

  “I will. Thanks, Mr. Kaufman.” Sarah took the box and the tools and ran out of the store shouting, “Dan, I got a new tire, so now you can go!”

  Tracy watched out the window. Dan looked confused, then surprised, and finally popped to his feet grinning.

  “You let me know if you need any help, okay, Tracy?” said Mr. Kaufman.

  “I will,” Tracy said.

  He handed her a bike pump. “Just bring it back with the tools when you’re done.” He looked out the window. Sarah and Dan had dropped to their knees, and Sarah was fitting the wrench onto the front nut. “She’s a pistol, that sister of yours.”

  “Yeah, she’s something. Thanks, Mr. Kaufman.” Tracy started from the store but turned back when Mr. Kaufman called her name. He held out one of the extra-big Hershey’s bars, the kind her mother bought to make s’mores when they went camping. “Oh no, Mr. Kaufman. I don’t have any more money.”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “I can’t take that,” she said, remembering her father saying that Mr. Kaufman was having trouble making ends meet. She already suspected that the tire cost more than Sarah had put on the counter.

  Mr. Kaufman looked as if he was about to cry. “Do you know she rides her bike all the way to the hospital to visit Peter?”

  “She does?” The hospital was one town over in Silver Spurs. Sarah would have been in big trouble if their parents found out.

  “She brings him coloring books,” he said, eyes moist. “She said she’d been saving her popcorn money.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Tracy shook the rain from her jacket as she entered the front door of Thorenson’s Funeral Home. Old Man Thorenson, which is what they’d called Arthur Thorenson when they were kids, had once embalmed everyone who died in Cedar Grove, including both her mother and her father. But when Tracy had called earlier in the week, she’d spoken to Darren, his son. Darren had been a few years ahead of her at Cedar Grove High and had apparently gone into the family business.

  She introduced herself to the woman seated at a desk in the lobby and declined a seat or a cup of coffee. The lighting inside the building seemed brighter than she remembered, and the walls and carpeting a lighter color too. The smell, however, had not changed. It smelled like incense, an odor Tracy had come to associate with death.

  “Tracy?” Darren Thorenson approached in a dark suit and tie, arm outstretched. He took her hand. “It’s good to see you, though I’m sorry about the circumstances.”

  “Thanks for taking care of all the arrangements, Darren.” In addition to cremating Sarah’s remains, Thorenson had notified the cemetery workers and obtained a minister for the service. Tracy hadn’t wanted a service, but she also wasn’t about to dig a hole in the middle of the night and unceremoniously dump her sister in the ground.

  “Not a problem.” He led her into what had been his father’s office when Tracy and her mother made the arrangements for her father’s funeral and when Tracy had returned after her mother had died of cancer. Darren took the seat behind the desk. A portrait of his father, younger-looking than Tracy recalled, hung on the wall beside a family photograph. Darren had married Abby Becker, his high school sweetheart. They apparently had three kids. He looked like his father. Heavyset, Darren combed his hair back off his forehead, which accentuated his bulbous nose and thick, black-framed glasses, like the kind Dan O’L
eary had worn as a kid.

  “You’ve redecorated,” Tracy said.

  “Slowly,” he said. “It took some time to convince Dad that reverent didn’t have to mean bleak.”

  “How is your father?”

  “He still threatens to come out of retirement from time to time. When he does, we stick a golf club in his hand. Abby said to pass along her condolences.”

  “Did you have any problems with the plot?”

  Cedar Grove Cemetery had existed longer than the town, though no one knew the date of the first burial since its earliest graves were unmarked. Volunteers tended to the upkeep, pulling weeds and mowing the grass. If someone died, they dug the grave. They worked for free, the unspoken understanding being that someday someone would repay the favor. Because of limited space, the City Council had to approve every burial. Cedar Grove residency was mandatory. Sarah had died a Cedar Grove resident, so that wasn’t the issue. Tracy had requested that her sister be buried with their parents, though technically her parents were in a two-person plot.

  “Not a bit.” Darren said. “It’s all taken care of.”

  “I guess we better get your paperwork taken care of.”

  “That’s all done too.”

  “Then I’ll just write you a check.”

  “It’s all good, Tracy.”

  “Darren, please, I can’t ask that of you.”

  “You didn’t ask it of me.” He smiled, but it had a sad quality to it. “I’m not going to take your money, Tracy. You and your family, you’ve been through enough.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I appreciate this. I really do.”

  “I know you do. We all lost Sarah that day. Things were never the same around here. It was like she belonged to the whole town. I guess we all did back then.”

  Tracy had heard others say similar things—that Cedar Grove hadn’t died when Christian Mattioli had closed the mine and much of the population had moved away. Cedar Grove had died the day Sarah disappeared. After Sarah, people no longer left their front doors unlocked or let their kids roam freely on foot and bicycle. After Sarah, they did not let their children walk to school or wait for the bus unaccompanied by an adult. After Sarah, people weren’t so friendly or welcoming to strangers.