Even I watch enough CSI with my rabbit-ears TV to know what she meant. But I didn’t want to go back into that room. Or face Barry again, once he saw what I’d done. “But if the parents are dead anyway…”
“Barry’s not!” she shot back. “Who knows what happened to this poor child? And if the police can’t examine the crime scene, how will we ever know?”
She put the bin in my arms and shoved me toward the door. At the last minute, she touched my arm. To my surprise, her voice was soft.
“Go tell Jessica. She won’t give you grief.”
CHAPTER TEN
I drove down the highway slowly. I hate the mess of other people’s lives. I like having just me and Chevy to worry about. Some people think that’s lonely, but it’s always suited me fine. People complicate things.
Now I was mad at myself. Why did I take on Barry Mitchell’s job? Why did I open that basement door? Why didn’t I just leave the bones where they were and let well enough alone? Why did I ask Aunt Penny for advice? There was no going back now that she knew. I was going to have to face that room again, face Barry, and lie to the cops about touching the bones.
I shivered. The temperature was dropping. Black clouds raced low over the hills ahead. I saw the police station up ahead on the highway. There were no cruisers out front, but someone was always on the desk. Maybe I should just come clean. Dump the bin on the desk and tell them I moved the skull before I realized what it was.
I slowed and steered my bike into the lot. First I’d see who was on the desk. I knew almost all the cops, and some were nicer than others. I get a lot of teasing around town about my goat, my organic garden and my junk collection. Mostly I shrug it off.
Constable Jessica Swan is another story. I can hardly talk to her. I get all red and my tongue ties in. When she laughs, it’s even worse. She’s got these big blue eyes that crinkle up. Every thought I have just flies out of my brain.
I pushed open the glass doors to the detachment, scared she’d be the one on the desk. Also scared she wouldn’t be. Aunt Penny was right. Jessica Swan wouldn’t tease me. She would listen to my story. And she probably wouldn’t give me trouble about moving the bones.
It wasn’t her on the desk. It was Frank Leger. Frank’s got a bad hip and a few months to retirement, so he’s on the desk most days. When he works at all. Frank wouldn’t want a skull dumped in his lap. Too much work.
He looked up from the sports page and grinned when he saw me.
“She’s not here,” he said before I opened my mouth.
“Sergeant Hurley in?”
“No one’s in, Rick. You want to come back later?”
I knew that’s what he was hoping, but I figured I was there. A few questions wouldn’t hurt. “Maybe you can help me.”
Frank looked wary. “With what?”
“If a case is thirty years old, would the police still investigate?”
“What kind of case?”
“Well…a death.”
“What kind of death?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an accident, maybe not.”
Frank sat back, laughing. “What is it this time, Rick? You kill someone with that exploding scarecrow?”
I went red. I was never going to live down that lawn-mower-powered scarecrow. Every summer there was some joker who ordered one to keep the crows off his cornfield. “No. Just wondering. If I found something and it looked like someone had died, what would the police do?”
“Well, first off, you have to fill out a form.” He opened a drawer behind the desk.
I hate forms. Spelling and me don’t get along. I backed up. “No, it’s not that. I just need to know…How do you investigate? I mean, after all that time?”
Frank sighed. He looked like he was getting tired of humoring me. “You’d be surprised. Crime scene techs can tell a lot. They’ll check out the scene. If there’s still any evidence, they’ll piece it together. Look at the Pickton case. DNA years after the fact. So if you’ve buried anybody, O’Toole, you’d better confess.” Frank laughed.
I made myself laugh. I started to back out the door. “Just curious.”
“Can I tell Jess you were looking for her?”
“No.” The word was out before I thought. “Yeah, okay.”
“Sure thing, Romeo.” He laughed again. “You can tell her all about your body.”
I was already out the door, hiding my red face.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As soon as I was back on my bike, I got mad at myself again. I should never have mentioned death. I should have just asked about investigating an old crime. That way I could send the cops down into the room and let them discover the whole scene for themselves. I could hope Frank would forget I mentioned it, but he was having way too much fun with it to forget.
As I headed back toward the Mitchell place, I kept a nervous eye on the angry clouds. I wanted to get the dirt bike safely home before the skies opened up. Now it was past two o’clock and over half the day was shot. If I was lucky, Barry would have left again so I could sneak the skull back into the basement. I detoured down toward the Lion’s Head to see if his truck was there.
The town seemed deserted. But down near the bar, two police cruisers blocked the road to the beach, their lights flashing. The sides of the road were lined with parked cars. As I got closer, I saw a huge white police truck with the words Search and Rescue on its side. Below it, a line of yellow police tape flapped in the wind. Everyone in town seemed to be there, pressed up against the tape.
On the other side of the tape, there was no one on the beach except cops and paramedics. My stomach did a little flip when I saw Constable Swan’s blond ponytail peeking from under her cap. She always looked so tiny even in her Kevlar vest and utility belt. She was standing at the icy water’s edge with the others.
No one was talking. Everyone was staring out over the lake. The wind had whipped the open water into whitecaps. All the town boats were gone and there was only one police Zodiac out near the mouth of Silver Creek. It bucked in the waves, fighting the wind. As I watched, two orange buoys popped up in the water. People pointed and started to mutter. Then two police divers surfaced and swam over to talk to the cops in the boat. They turned and gestured a thumbs-up toward shore. Everyone gasped. The muttering grew louder. I could only hear a few words.
“Found it?”
“Sled?”
“What about…?”
An engine rumbled down the road behind me. Even before I turned around I recognized the knocking pistons of Nancy’s flatbed tow truck. Constable Swan jumped into the cruiser and moved it aside to let Nancy pass. The rusty old truck rattled down the hill onto the beach. The crowd parted to let it through, then closed up afterward. I spotted Aunt Penny in the thick of things. I left my bike behind the rescue truck, making sure the skull was well hidden in my jacket. Then I went down to join her.
Something big was happening. I could feel the air crackling. Slowly, carefully, Nancy turned the truck and backed it down to the water’s edge. She climbed down without a word. Every scrawny inch of her concentrated on her cables. She unwound them about fifteen feet and handed them to one of the cops wearing bright yellow foul-weather gear and hip waders. Probably one of the Search and Rescue team.
The Zodiac, with the divers aboard now, came ashore, and the divers grabbed one cable each. Nancy was talking to them. Pointing to the truck, holding the hooks and waving her hands. Probably explaining how to work the cables. I’d helped her rig up that winch system.
They must have found something in the water.
Something heavy enough to need a winch.
After a bit, the divers climbed back into the Zodiac and it pushed off. The wind tossed it around like a beach ball. It fought its way back out to the orange buoys. Nancy and the cops stood on the shoreline watching. So did everyone else. The muttering had stopped.
That’s when I heard the roar. Kind of like a wounded bear.
There was a scuffle near the back of the cro
wd. I turned to see Barry shoving his way through. Two cops were trying to hold him back. Even from a hundred feet away, I could see his face, red from cold or booze or rage.
“Not sure he’s in shape to see this,” I said to Aunt Penny.
She followed my eyes. “Looks like he’s already seen that.” She nodded toward the edge of the beach. For the first time I noticed the large yellow tarp spread out on the ground beside the paramedics’ van. It had a lump in the middle, like there was something underneath. I sucked in my breath.
“Is that one of them?”
She nodded again. She worked her lips like she was trying to get the words out. Normally nothing gets to Aunt Penny, so that was a switch. “Pete,” she finally said.
I knew that was coming, but I still felt the blow. I knew how Barry felt seeing the body. No matter how you got along with a parent, something is torn away.
“Looks like he tried to cross by the creek after all, never even made it two hundred yards from the Lion’s Head,” she said. “Damn fool.”
There was a shout from the water. The divers came back up and signaled toward shore. Nancy started her truck and put the winch into gear. The cables slowly grew tight. They quivered and groaned as the winch reeled them in. Dragging whatever they were attached to under the water.
At first I could see nothing. Then the waves began to churn and heave as an object came toward shore. Like a giant shark bubbling through the current. I braced myself. I was expecting Connie’s body. Beside me, Aunt Penny gripped my arm. A leg broke the surface. Everyone gasped. I stared as another leg emerged. Then the waves lifted the huge, round, black body and slammed it onto shore.
A snowmobile.
A little laugh ran through the crowd.
Once it was out of the water, Nancy stopped the winch and the cops ran over to look at it. I got only a glimpse of it before it was surrounded. But enough to see the green decals of an Arctic Cat. A vintage Cat.
“Any sign of Connie?” someone shouted from the crowd.
Sergeant Hurley emerged from the group and walked over to Barry. He slipped a blanket over his shoulders. I couldn’t hear what he said, but the news spread through the crowd soon enough.
“No sign of Connie yet. But they’re sending the divers back out. As long as the light and the weather hold, they’ll search the area. Her being lighter, her body probably traveled farther in the current.”
Another cop van came roaring down the hill, swerved around the Search and Rescue truck and plowed to a stop inches from the crowd. This one had Forensic Identification Services on its side. Two cops jumped out.
“I told you guys to hold the recovery till we got here!” one of them shouted, still fifty feet away. “We need to photograph the scene as it was!”
“We got your photographs,” Hurley snapped. He was trying to keep his voice low. He waved at the black clouds. “Look at that! I didn’t want to wait till that came down on us full force.”
“If you screwed up the crime scene…” the forensic guy said. “If we can’t recreate what happened here…”
Hurley grabbed his arm and led him over to the snowmobile. I leaned in toward Aunt Penny. “What’s he talking about? What crime scene?”
She looked grim. “Something was odd about the way they found Pete. There was a keg of beer in the luggage bin at the back, so it would have gone down like a stone. Pete’s jacket was caught on the seat. So even if he was sober enough, he couldn’t have jumped off in time.”
Movement caught my eye. I looked up and saw Barry heading full speed up to the Lion’s Head. He yanked the blanket from his shoulders and threw it on the ground. People tried to talk to him, but he brushed them off. I could tell he had only one thing on his mind.
To get blind drunk.
I looked across the open lake to the Mitchell house. My mind was racing. Had Pete and Connie’s death been deliberate? Had someone added extra weight to the sled on purpose? Was this another murder that Barry was trying to cover up?
CHAPTER TWELVE
I scrambled back up to my bike. Barry might be good for a few hours in the Lion’s Head. But given the mood he was in, he might not stay put anywhere very long. I had to get the evidence back into the basement before he discovered what I’d done. Then I had to notify the police.
The sky was nearly black when I got to the farmhouse. There was still no rain yet, but the wind whipped through the yard. It rattled the windows and howled in the eaves. I shivered. Grabbing the wooden bin, I ran inside and turned on the basement light. I took a deep breath. Barry’s fear was getting to me. One more time, I told myself. I hurried down the stairs before I could change my mind. Saw the door and stopped dead.
Barry had barricaded it up. The crowbar was jammed against it. Two-by-fours were nailed across it at crazy angles from top to bottom. It would take an hour to pry them loose. While Barry drank himself deeper into blackness at the Lion’s Head.
My thoughts raced. I could just forget the whole thing. Bury the wooden bin somewhere in the yard. Bury the secret of Louie’s death with it. No one would know, except Barry and me. And Barry sure as hell wouldn’t be telling.
But Aunt Penny would know. So would Frank Leger. He was too lazy to make an issue of it, but it might slip out someday. As a happy-hour joke.
Or he might mention it to Constable Swan.
That did it. Constable Swan believed in the truth. She believed in doing the right thing. I might not be high on her list of cool guys, but I wasn’t at the bottom anymore either. She smiled now when she saw me. That was worth everything.
Picking up the crowbar, I began to pry the two-by-fours off. Before long I was sweating. Barry had put at least ten nails into each end. No way evil was getting out. I pried and shoved and pulled and cursed. All the time I could hear the wind wailing around the house. Like a haunting.
I popped the last board off and tossed the crowbar aside. Pulled open the door. Cold rushed out. Its fingers curled around me. I jumped back with a gasp. Get a grip, O’Toole! It’s not a ghost. I shone the flashlight inside. It was empty.
I grabbed the bin and stepped into the dark. I felt like dumping the whole thing on the ground and running back out. But I tried to remember how everything had been laid out. The cops would need to know that. I picked up the little bones to put the cloth underneath. They felt clammy in my hands from the cold earth.
Thunder cracked. I jumped. Listened. I heard another sound. A rumble. More thunder? A car? I scooped the skull out of the bin. Heard the front door bang open.
Fuck! He was here! I dropped the skull on the floor and scrambled out the door.
“O’Toole!”
His voice bellowed through the house. I could hear the rage. The booze. I looked around for a place to hide, but it was no use. He’d seen my bike for sure. I grabbed the storage room door to push it shut, but it stuck halfway. Behind me I heard him thump down the stairs, his breath heavy and stale with beer. I turned around, blocking his view and putting on a big smile. It died the instant I saw him.
He filled the middle of the basement. His eyes were fixed on the dark hole behind me. His hand gripped the crowbar.
“It’s been a rough day, Barry. How about I come back—”
He blocked my path to the stairs. “You went in there again!”
I had no answer to that. Couldn’t find my voice anyway.
His eyes were bloodshot and his face sagged. “I don’t want to hurt you, Rick. But I need to know what you’re going to do.”
“C-close it up again. That’s all.”
“Bullshit!” He grabbed my arm with his free hand and hauled me back across to the half-open door. “What did you see in there?”
His grip was like a vise, but I could feel him shaking. “Nothing,” I said. “It’s just an old root cellar.”
He peered inside. Squinted. The skull was sitting plain as day in the middle of the room. “Nooo-ooo!”
The cry made me jump. Fear shot through my gut. Barry began to crash aro
und the basement. “Oh fuck, it is there!”
I had no idea what to do. What to say. I just wanted to get out of there.
“It wasn’t my fault, Rick! I was just a kid!”
“Sure you were,” I managed.
“I don’t even remember doing it!” He paced, waving the crowbar. “I just remember this crowbar. My father yelling. Louie just laying there. My mother screaming, ‘You killed him!’ Over and over again. ‘You killed him!’”
Terrified, I began backing toward the stairs. Barry was like a cornered bear, trapped by his memories. Nothing I could say would calm him down. But I had to try. “Let’s get away from here, Barry.”
He whipped his head back and forth. “All over those stupid chocolates! Dad said it wasn’t my fault because I was only a kid. Said he’d take care of it. But, oh Jesus, I didn’t know, I wasn’t sure…This is where he put the body!”
I was astounded. Inches from the stairs, I paused. “He never told you?”
“He said we could never talk about what happened. Never tell. Oh God, why did you open that door?” Barry jerked his head up. I froze, one foot on the bottom stair.
“What are you doing, O’Toole?” he roared. He grabbed my arm. Dragged me over to the open door. With one powerful shove, he threw me inside.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The force sent me crashing against the wall. I scrambled to my feet just as the door slammed shut. I threw myself at it.
“Barry, what are you doing?”
A hammer began to pound. Through the banging, I heard Barry crying. “Damn it, O’Toole! Why did you open the fucking door?”
Bloody hell! I hammered back. “Forget the door. Forget this room.”
“I’m not going back to prison. I can’t!”
“You won’t. Just let me out.” I tried to keep the panic out of my voice. I had to calm him down. “Open the door, Barry.”
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