Unspoken Fear

by Hunter Morgan

  "I know." He walked back to the stove to turn off the burner. He left the hot dogs in the water and the rolls on the counter and wandered into the living room that mostly served as an office. He didn't even own a couch, and his TV was in his bedroom. When he read, his favorite pastime, he sat in a big recliner, feet up, with a good floor lamp positioned over his left shoulder.

  He sat down in the executive chair behind his monstrous oak desk that had been his grandfather's. "The first time you see an incinerated body, it can spook you. My first was a vehicular accident. A bunch of high school boys from New Jersey at the beach for the weekend. I saw their bodies every time I closed my eyes for at least a month afterward." He didn't know why he'd told her that; he'd never told anyone.

  "It's not just what she looked like," she said on the other end of the line, her voice full of emotion. "It's what she smelled like."

  She was quiet for a second, and just when he was about to say something, she spoke again. "I don't think the boyfriend did it. I'm afraid we missed something at the scene."

  He was quiet long enough for her to say, "Chief?"

  "I'm listening. Thinking. What do you mean, missed something? Like what?"

  She gave a little laugh. "I don't know what. How could I, if I missed it?"

  He smiled.

  "I just..." She paused and then started again, her voice stronger now. "I have off tomorrow. I don't come in until Monday, but would it be all right if I go back to the scene?"

  "I don't see why not. Place is still taped off. I haven't released it."

  "I just thought I'd walk around, maybe early tomorrow morning. With the place cleared, I might see something we missed before."

  He leaned back in his chair, propping his bare foot on one of the drawer handles of his desk. "We have the keys to the trailer at the station if you want to stop by and pick them up. Just sign them out."

  "I might do that. The other thing, Chief..." She let her voice trail off into silence.

  Snowden felt strange, holding onto the phone, waiting in anticipation for her next words. He found himself wishing she was here. Wishing they could sit here together and talk about this. "Yes?"

  "I was looking over the file we started. I didn't take it home with me," she said quickly. "I followed procedure, making copies and logging in that copies had been made."

  He smiled to himself. "That's fine, Delilah."

  "This is going to sound crazy, and I'm sure one has nothing to do with the other, but did you see that even though she was working at the chicken plant now, she used to work at the cup factory?"

  He felt the weird shiver again. "No, no, I didn't see that."

  "It was on the next page. Easy to miss," she said.

  "Did she work there while Johnny Leager was working there?"

  "Had to have. He'd been there since he was twenty."

  "Did they work together?" Snowden asked sitting up in his chair.

  "I don't know, but I can find out."

  "Go pay a visit to the personnel office on Monday. I think you're riding with Lopez."

  "Yeah, I saw that on the schedule," she said softly.

  "I figured I better be in the station this week," he said, not knowing why he felt he had to justify that they would not be riding together. "Besides, I think we're just about through with your initial training. You're an excellent officer, Delilah."

  "Thanks."

  He could almost hear her smile, and it made him smile. "Let me know if you find anything tomorrow."

  "Will do, Chief."

  "Good night, Delilah."

  "'Night, Snowden."

  He hit the off button on the phone but just sat there holding it, wondering what the hell was going on with the case and what the hell was going on between him and Delilah.

  * * *

  Sunday morning, Noah found the kitchen a mass of confusion when he walked in to grab his cup of coffee. Mrs. Santori was putting homemade waffles on the table and fussing about juice boxes being all over the house. Mattie was standing smack in the middle of the kitchen between her and the table, slowly tying his tie, making the housekeeper go around him each time she went to the table with plates or syrup. And Mallory and her mother were going at it as only a mother and a four-year-old daughter could.

  "Why can't I wear my w... red cowboy boots?" Mallory demanded, making a concerted effort to pronounce her Rs properly.

  "Because they're old and they're dirty and they don't go with your pretty orange dress."

  Mallory stood in the doorway that led into the living room, her red cowboy boots planted, feet apart, her arms crossed stubbornly over her chest. "They go with my dress."

  "They don't." Rachel struggled to get an earring in her ear without the benefit of a mirror.

  She looked nice this morning, dressed for church in a pair of tan capris, a robin's egg blue T-shirt, and sandals. She'd washed her hair and blow-dried it, leaving it to sweep loose over her shoulders.

  "They don't match, and besides, they're too small, Mallory. They need to be donated to the church clothing closet." She finally got the earring in and let her hands fall. "Why don't you wear your nice, new white sandals we bought? You like those."

  "I don't like them." Mallory uncrossed and recrossed her arms. "I like my boots."

  "We do this every Sunday." Rachel threw her hands up in the air.

  "Coffee?" he asked, making a concerted effort not to smile.

  "Please," she groaned, turning back to Mallory. "In your chair. Breakfast is on the table, and Mattie's going to be late to play the organ for service if we don't hurry. You're going to be late to Sunday School."

  Noah filled the two mugs Mrs. Santori had left on the counter and carried one to Rachel. Turning his back to the little girl climbing into her booster seat at the kitchen table, he murmured under his breath as he passed by Rachel, pushing a cup into her hand. "Personally, I think the red cowboy boots go nicely with the flowered orange and pink dress."

  "You're not being helpful," she whispered back, cutting her eyes at him. Her tone was light, almost playful. "You know, I knew you'd be this way, I always said so. You just want to give the children anything they want."

  Noah lifted the mug to his lips but didn't take a drink; his gaze met hers, her expression changing. She was referring to conversations they'd shared prior to Isaac's and Abraham's births.

  The minute the words came out of her mouth, he could tell she hadn't meant to say it. At least not in that way.

  For a moment, their gazes locked, they shared a ripple of sorrow for the baby boys they had buried together in St. Paul's cemetery. He felt her pain, and he sensed she felt his.

  She looked away, taking a swallow of coffee. "Mattie, stop fussing with your tie. You look fine. Sit down and eat."

  Noah walked to the door to remove himself from the breakfast table and give himself a minute to recover. He had loved those baby boys so much. They both had. And he and Rachel had felt guilty for bringing them into the world with a fatal genetic disease. The difference between them, though, was that she had been able to recover from their deaths. Obviously, he hadn't or he wouldn't have lost himself in a bottle.

  She'd recovered, all right. Recovered well enough to try again. Of course, without him. With the disease Tyrosinemia, a metabolic disease that affected the liver, both parents had to be carriers.

  Which brought him back to the question of who Mallory's father was. Had Rachel fallen in love with a man but chosen not to marry him, even though she carried his child? If so, where was he? Here in town?

  Or had she simply had sex with someone, just to have the child she so desperately wanted, the healthy child he couldn't give her?

  Once, he would have gotten down on his knees and prayed to God to help him through these feelings of anger, of resentment, of jealousy. He wanted Mallory to be his child, his and Rachel's, so desperately that he lay awake in bed at night thinking about it. But he didn't pray. He had no prayers left inside him. No confidence left to believe
anyone was listening.

  The strange thing was, in the past, these feelings would have depressed him, making him feel hopeless. This morning, though, it just made him angry. Angry for what he had done. Angry that he wasn't taking advantage of the opportunities he had right here, right now.

  He thought about what Sister Julie had said about accepting forgiveness, forgiving himself and moving on with his life, making the best of what he had. Making a difference in the world with the time he had left.

  The day she had said it, the idea had seemed so farfetched, so beyond possibility, that he hadn't really considered it. This morning, though, seeing Rachel and Mallory, having Mattie here at his table, made him want to make the best of whatever was left inside him.

  It was an odd feeling, one he thought might take some getting used to. What was really strange was that he liked it.

  Chapter 10

  It was still cool early Sunday morning when Delilah arrived at Pam Rehak's place. She parked her red Toyota midsize pickup on the side of the road and walked up the dirt driveway, trying to open her mind to any evidence she might have missed the day before.

  The lot was wooded, but not with the elegant oaks, elms, and other deciduous trees in many of the forests in the county. It was sandy here, and the trees that surrounded the beat-up trailer were mostly scraggly pine. Though it was late June, the underbrush of tangled briars and weeds was already thriving, pressing in, encroaching on the unmowed lot.

  As she walked up the driveway, Delilah studied the mishmash of tire tracks in the soft sand. After all the vehicles that had been in and out of here the previous day, there was no way to distinguish one vehicle from another or tell how many times Ed Parson had been in and out on his Harley the night Pam had died. If he'd left to dispose of the evidence after he killed Pam, there was no way for them to know.

  After entering the clearing where the trailer sat, underpinning sagging, its aluminum sides stained with streaks of rust, she halted and took in the scene. Pam's '86 Honda sedan sat parked catty-corner where she'd left it after arriving home from work Friday afternoon. The grass that was in desperate need of mowing had been crushed by all the vehicles and people on the scene the day before, but little tufts of weeds and crabgrass poked up here and there.

  Delilah spotted a hint of color in the green grass... a kid's yellow bucket, the kind you took to the beach. She walked around the trailer to the backyard, where the grass was even higher. She could see paths where people had walked around the previous day, but no vehicles had been here.

  She spotted a rusty metal barrel on top of cinder blocks. A trash barrel for burning. It was no longer a legal means for citizens to dispose of their garbage, but that didn't stop some people from burning anyway. It saved the cost of a trash service or the trip to the landfill. She walked over to the barrel and peered inside. A sample had been taken the day before to be analyzed to be certain no one had burned blood-spattered clothes in it, but the ashes removed had been caked and damp and probably there for some time. From the look of the pile of garbage bags around the cinder block back step, Ed was a little behind in his trash-burning chore.

  She walked to the step to study the trash bags. They'd been searched, too. No sign of anything pertaining to the crime. She glanced up at the woods line, noticing a bunch of white papers, newspapers, and other assorted trash caught in the briars. Someone must not have re-tied one of the bags tightly. She plucked a pair of disposable gloves from the rear pocket of her jeans and slipped them on. She didn't know why she would care about the loose trash; the property was obviously not well kept. But the idea that law enforcement agents had created the mess made her feel responsible.

  At the edge of the property, she leaned over, picking up sheets of white paper. There were pages of U.S. history notes. Pam had been a student at the community college; she must have tossed them when the semester ended. There were sheets of the local newspaper, hot dog roll wrappers, a chip bag. She balled up the paper and stuffed it into the chip bag. After picking up the last piece of notebook paper, she turned to walk back to the trash bags when a smaller piece of paper caught her eye. She'd almost missed it in the weeds.

  She walked over, leaned down, and picked it up. As she lifted it, she recognized what it was, and the chip bag of trash fell from her hand. "Holy crap," she muttered.

  How had they missed this?

  It was a page torn from a Bible. A page from Leviticus with a verse underlined in ballpoint pen. She didn't have to read it to know what it said.

  She studied the page for another second, thankful she had thought to put on her gloves, and then she reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out her cell phone.

  She didn't get Snowden, just his answering machine. He was probably at church, where she belonged, according to her mother. Delilah left a brief message for Snowden and then, grabbing the chip bag and depositing it in the burn barrel, she walked around front to sit on the steps and wait for him.

  * * *

  "There you are."

  Noah looked up from where he knelt on the ground securing one of the anchor wires on an end trellis. Like most vineyards on the east coast, they used a two-wire trellis system with the trellises eighteen feet apart. In the Chancellor grape field, the rows were five hundred feet long and ten feet apart.

  "Hey," he said seeing Rachel hurrying toward him over the slight rise that was perfect terrain in the area for growing grapes. He got to his feet, brushing the dirt from his knees, sensing something was wrong. She was still dressed in her church clothes, traipsing through the field in her sandals. "What's up?"

  "I don't mean to sound like a helpless woman," she said, exasperation plain in her voice, "but I need you." She halted at the end of the trellis row. "It's Mattie."

  "What's wrong?" He picked up the tools he'd been using to tighten the trellises and carried them to the wagon hitched to the lawn tractor. "Is he all right?"

  "He's fine." She ran her hand over her face. "No, I guess he isn't." She let her hands fall to her sides. "He won't get out of the car, and I don't know what's wrong."

  Noah frowned. "Won't get out of the car?"

  "We got home from church, and when Mallory and I got out, he didn't. I just left him, thinking he needed a minute. You know how he is about being rushed." She looked at Noah. "Mallory and I went in the house to make tuna salad—she wanted to bake cookies—and the next thing I knew, an hour had passed and still no Mattie."

  "He was still in the car?"

  "In the backseat, in the garage. Never moved. I tried talking to him. He won't even look at me. I put down the windows, because it's really hot in there, and then, when I tried to take his hand he—" She glanced away, not finishing her sentence.

  Noah took a step toward her, now genuinely concerned. "He what, Rachel?"

  "He flinched." She met his gaze. "He acted almost as if... as if he was going to hit me."

  "You're kidding. Mattie's never been violent in his life. Come on, let's get back to the house. Where's Mallory?"

  "I thought it would be safe to leave her. I know he would never hurt her, and I didn't know where to look for you."

  "It's okay, Rachel," he said gently. "I know she's fine. Where is she?"

  "In the house. I left her in front of the TV with cookies." She raised one slender shoulder. "I mean, he won't get out of the car, right?"

  Noah climbed on the tractor and started the engine. "Come on," he said, putting out one hand as he adjusted the throttle with the other.

  She shook her head, raising her voice above the rumble of the engine. "I'll just walk."

  "And ruin those pretty sandals?" He looked at her, offering half a smile. "Come on." He slid over on the seat and put out his hand again. "There's plenty of room."

  She hesitated for a moment and then, glancing up, must have realized it was easily a five-minute walk back to the house and it was silly to walk if she could ride with him. Reluctantly, she climbed onto the tractor, squishing into the seat beside him.


  Noah pushed the tractor into gear and followed the dirt road along the edge of the grape field, past the hardy Pinot Noir field and cut onto the main lane that ran east to west across the property and directly back to the house. As he drove the lawn tractor back toward the farmhouse, which they could already see in the distance, he tried not to think about the feel of Rachel pressed against him on the seat, or the scent of her shampoo that he could smell, even driving at the speed they were going.

  She felt so good. Having her next to him, her body brushing his, made him feel stronger. More capable.

  They passed the pressing shed and the fermenting barns, pulling into the yard hitting the crushed oyster shells as they drove onto the driveway. The minute he hit the brakes, even before he cut the engine, she was off the tractor and running up to the house.

  Noah set the parking brake on the tractor and headed for the garage. As he passed the house, he could hear the sound of the TV and Rachel's and Mallory's voices. Apparently, Mallory was just fine. Noah knew she would be. He'd seen the little girl and Mattie together often enough to know Mattie adored her.

  Noah found Mattie, just as Rachel had said, seated in the backseat of her Volvo station wagon. He walked around the back of the car and opened the rear door opposite where Mattie was sitting.

  "Hey, buddy," he said, sliding onto the rear seat. Even with the windows rolled down, it was hot inside, and Mattie, still in his shirt and tie, was sweating profusely. "What are you doing in here?"

  Mattie sat in the seat, his hands pressed against his knees, staring straight ahead.

  "Mattie, you have to come out of the car," Noah said gently. "It's too hot to sit in here all afternoon." He waited.

  Mattie just kept staring at the back of the seat in front of him.

  "Was there somewhere else you wanted to go?" Noah asked after another minute of silence. "You wanted to stay at church or something?"

  Still nothing.

  Noah studied his face for a moment. Mattie was beginning to look older than his thirty-eight years. His hair was graying and thinning, and with the extra weight he had put on, his jowls were beginning to sag. He looked sad today.