by Tess Oliver
"We just need your permission or even your assistance to do a little digging up on that trail," Sutton said. "The rangers don't come through there too often, but they might get in the way. If they saw a police officer"—she flashed him one of her sparkling smiles. It was doing the trick—"You look great in uniform by the way, Ty."
A smile spread across his face, distorting and stretching his freckles. "Kenzie used to call me Ty," he was gushing about the nickname. "Guess I never really got the chance to know you, Sutton. You were always so much—"
"Much more of a hermit?" Sutton asked. "That's all right. I don't mind. I'm used to it, and I do remember her calling you Ty. I guess that's why it came to mind. Hope it's all right."
Just like me, Tyler was instantly transported back to his teen years when those brilliant green eyes could make a guy's heart slam against his ribs.
"If you're just going to do a little digging, I'm sure I can help. I'm off duty in two hours. I can meet you in the park. Brent, the ranger in that area, is a friend of mine. We sometimes hit the putting green together. I'll call him ahead to let him know we're just looking for a lost—"
"Piece of jewelry," Sutton supplied.
"Right, that works. In the meantime," Tyler continued. "We can't tell anyone at all what we're up to. Word will get back to Nick Jensen. Even though he's retired, he still has a lot of power. People still freeze in their uniforms when he steps into the precinct for a visit."
"Sounds like the story of my life," Sutton quipped. She reached over and pressed her hand over his. "We can't thank you enough, Ty, and don't worry, we're keeping this tightly under wraps. No one wants to unleash the kraken that is my dad."
20
Driving into the police station parking lot had pushed Sutton into a panic attack, but the town of Westridge, itself, had a different effect. She had her face nearly plastered to the passenger window as we rolled through the streets.
"Oh my gosh, Mrs. Rivers still has all those pink rose bushes. She must be like a hundred years old, and look, Janey Gregor's house still has that one shutter falling off. You'd think a hammer and nail could take care of it, but I guess they didn't have tools. Janey was always a crybaby in school. It seemed that whenever someone was crying, you could find the source by finding Janey. Otherwise, I think she had it pretty good. She had her own room. I remember her bed was covered with stuffed animals. She had names for all of them. Whenever I went over there to play, she made me kiss each one hello. Had a mouthful of synthetic fur by the time I'd greeted each one."
I laughed. "Can't believe how much you remember. I never would have noticed that broken shutter, but I guess I'd remember kissing a bunch of stuffed animals."
She pointed out the window. "There's Becka Miller's house. It's all rundown. I remember they moved out of town before junior high. Her dad got some job in Hawaii. Can you imagine living in Hawaii?" She rested back and closed her eyes for a second. "What a dream—just lounging on the beach and drinking piña coladas." Her enthusiasm for the nostalgic trip through town quieted as we reached the bridge that crossed the river. There was less water in the river each year and more and more rocks were exposed. As sharp as my memory was of that fateful afternoon when Kenzie died on those rocks, I was sure Sutton's memory was much more intense.
Her eyes glassed with tears as I drove over the bridge. I reached across and took hold of her hand.
"I'm all right," she said quietly. "It's just I haven't seen that bridge since that day. My social worker came the next day and whisked me off to the foster home. I haven't been back since. Sometimes, I think my extreme fear, possibly even paranoia about my dad came from the way Mrs. Fulton looked when she came to pick me up. Like I said, she was terrified of my dad. She'd brought some men with her, some police from the next county. Her eyes were bulging behind her glasses. She kept looking around, waiting for my dad to show up, I guess. It reminded me of a rabbit leaving its hole in the middle of a wolf's den. 'Get your things. Leave what you don't need. We can collect it later.' She was talking fast and low, and she looked as if she might just throw up from fear, even with her security detail standing right beside her. That's when it occurred to me that my dad was such a terrible monster that I was no longer safe living in the house I grew up in."
"I'm glad the social worker put aside her fears and saved you. There's no doubt that you would not be sitting here next to me if she hadn't," I added, darkly.
We both sat quiet with our thoughts, about how different things would have been, should have been as I drove to the park. I hadn't mentioned to my parents that I'd be in town. We'd only be there for a few hours, less possibly, depending on how good my memory was. I didn't want to let them know anything about Sutton or what we were up to. They'd definitely advise against it. The less people who knew, the better. My dad liked to chat with neighbors and people at the market. I was sure he'd let it slip. The last thing we needed was word to get around to Jensen. I was counting on him being far enough away from town and out of touch with the locals to keep him from getting any whiff of what we were up to.
A mid fall day, one shaded by clouds, meant the park was mostly deserted. The fact that our generation was one of the last to grow up in the shrinking town also meant less chance of kids hanging out.
"We've got about a half hour before Tyler gets here," I noted. "The place is deserted. We could get a head start by carrying the shovels up to the spot where I remember seeing your dad and Isaac." As I spoke, I noticed her expression growing worried, sad. "Sutton? I could just do this with Tyler. You don't need to go."
"No, I want to. Guess I'm just scared—" She looked over at me with that sort of lost kitten look that always grabbed me in the chest. "What if we find her? What if she's there? Sometimes I let myself imagine that she's, you know, like Becka, living the life on a Hawaiian beach. Even if she left us behind, it's easier thinking that she escaped his reign of terror and found happiness somewhere on a tropical island than thinking she's been lying there, alone and cold and forgotten in a dirt grave."
"Think of this as a way to bring closure and, most importantly, a way to let you lead a normal life because the monster who put your mom in the grave would be behind bars." I parked the truck and gave her a second to absorb everything.
"I'm going," she said, resolutely. "But let's not hike up there yet. Let's wait for Tyler. I think we should hang out at our old table, the one where we kissed. It'll give me some time to collect my thoughts and fortify myself for the possibility of what we might find up on that trail."
"That's a good idea." We climbed out of the truck and headed across the small lot and stretch of browned grass to the cluster of picnic tables in the secluded corner of the park. The tables had been recently painted an odd teal blue, but whoever painted them had not done an ounce of prep work. All the rough patches, splinters and even some of the initials and words we'd carved into the last paint job were still visible through the shiny new color.
"Wonder who thought this color was the way to go?" I joked.
Sutton's attention had been drawn to a cluster of yellow wildflowers poking out from the mostly dormant landscape. "Look at these flowers. They must be the last blooms before winter." She pulled off a few yellow flowers and stuck one behind each ear.
"What kind are those?" I asked, knowing that Sutton was well versed in the Latin names of plants and animals.
She laughed. "How should I know? I'll just call them yellow cuties." She sat on the end of the table and hung her legs off the edge, swinging them back and forth, just like Kenzie used to do, especially in summer, when she knew we were all watching her legs.
I stared at her, stunned, confused and feeling entirely off balance. Yellow cuties was not the answer I expected from Sutton Jensen. I shook off the odd feeling, reminding myself that it had been a long time since Sutton was in Westridge, and she had not continued with her education. I could only remember half the stuff I learned about being a medic after I took the training. It was one of the reasons I
always balked at the idea of joining Bronx in an ambulance during the off-season.
Tyler pulled into the parking lot earlier than expected. I was ready to get digging. I'd carried the picture of that scene in my mind for the last few hours hoping it would help me find the exact spot where Jensen was standing that night. I was tired and wet and angry at my parents, but the whole thing was so weird, it had stayed vivid in my head.
I walked out to meet Tyler and grab the shovels, leaving Sutton still collecting her thoughts and wearing the wildflowers she couldn't name behind her ears. Tyler looked a little more flustered than I expected.
"Listen, Tyler, if you're worried you might get in trouble for this, I can do it myself. I know the place to dig. The ground up on that trail is pretty soft since there's been no frost."
"No, No, King, that's all right. I want to do this." He pulled a pair of gloves out from his pocket and looked past my shoulder to see that Sutton was out of earshot. Still, he lowered his voice and leaned in.
"You're not going to believe this, but I talked to Brent. Didn't tell him what we were looking for," he briskly added. "I said a friend had lost a ring out on the trail, and that I promised to look for it. Told him she was worried it got buried under all the soft dirt so I let him know I'd be doing a little digging." His face pushed closer to mine as he glanced past me to make sure Sutton was still on the picnic table. "Do you know what he told me?"
Tyler paused and actually waited for me to respond.
"Uh, no, I don't," I answered.
"Right, no, you wouldn't because frankly it all sounded a little crazy. In fact, he started the whole thing with those exact words, 'this might sound a little crazy'. Brent told me to avoid the third pine tree after the shed. He said there's a flat spot there that all the rangers avoid because for a long time the dogs used to go wild sniffing and barking. Now, he says, it's just as strange. The dogs aren't interested, but neither are the grasses or weeds that would normally grow there. Everyone calls it the haunted tree."
"Fuck. The dogs went wild, but no one thought to dig for a body?" I said it too loud, but it seemed Sutton was lost in her own thoughts and didn't hear me. "What the fuck is wrong with them?" I hissed.
"To be honest, when Jensen was still sheriff, no one, not even the rangers did anything in Westridge without his permission. Who knows? Maybe someone brought it up and Jensen stopped it from going any further."
I nodded. "You might be right. One thing is for sure, it's going to be easier than I thought to find the right place to dig."
21
The old shed was more splinters than wood. You could see right through it, and it seemed as if some of the forest birds and smaller critters had made the decaying structure home. It was the marker I counted on, but the information Tyler had arrived with made it almost unnecessary.
As we carried the shovels toward the trailhead, I'd quietly told Tyler not to mention any of the stuff the ranger had told him. It sounded so macabre, so creepy. I didn't want to freak Sutton out. She was already climbing the trail as if the hair was standing up on the back of her neck.
My footsteps took me back to that night. I'd been so mad at my parents for all but ignoring my birthday. I couldn't help but think how badly I could have used Malcolm and Virginia Bristow back then. I was glad they were back in good form and putting on some of the best parenting days of their lives now, but I wished they'd been there for me then. I might have even mentioned seeing Sheriff Jensen up on the trail with a shovel and a flashlight, but in my mind, they had zero interest in anything that I had to say or anything that happened to me back then. And still, at least they weren't cruel monsters like Jensen.
Tyler and I each had a shovel. He walked up ahead, and I stayed back with Sutton. Trepidation had slowed her pace.
I stopped and turned to her. "You can go back, sit on the bench, and we'll fill you in on all the details." She shook her head enough to dislodge the last of the yellow flowers.
"No, King, I feel like I need to be here—in case—in case you find her. I need to be here for her, do you know what I mean?"
I hugged her with my free hand and kissed her forehead. "It's just up around this bend." We hiked ahead. With a lack of young people in the town, the trail was mostly slippery debris. When Sutton, Tyler and I were teens, the path was worn hard and easy to find by all the footprints. Now it seemed nothing traveled it except the animals and birds. We rounded the curve, the same curve I rounded that cold, wet night when I found myself face-to-face with the county sheriff. He blinded me with his flashlight. The anger and worry in his voice was palpable.
"This looks like the spot. Void of all growth just like Brent said," Tyler crowed and then sealed his lips together, realizing what he'd said.
Sutton looked over at me. "What did Brent say? Does he know why we're here? I thought we weren't going to tell anyone?" Panic rose in her tone.
I put down the shovel and took her into my arms. "Brent doesn't know a thing. It's all right. No one knows what we're doing up here except the three of us standing here."
I could feel her relax in my arms. I held onto her for a few seconds longer. More for me than her.
I finally released her and gazed into her green eyes. "Should we get started? How about you stay here on the trail and keep an eye out for other hikers and mountain lions, not necessarily in that order because I'd rather know about the lion first."
My comment made her smile. She saluted me. "I will keep watch of all things with legs and without them too because snakes are the absolute worst."
"I agree with you there." I picked up the shovel and joined Tyler.
"Sorry about that," he muttered.
"That's all right," I muttered back as I stared down at the flat spot beneath the tree. Every other inch of forest floor had some kind of life growing from it whether it was grass or weeds or saplings trying to spurt up beneath their parent tree, but there was a six by three foot section of empty ground beneath the tree. I glanced down to the trail and turned back to Tyler. "This is it. This was the place I saw Jensen and Rangel with their shovels and their flashlights."
Tyler's face paled, once again making his freckles more prominent. "Then I guess we should start digging," he said grimly.
Sutton stayed clear of the dig site, choosing instead to stay on the trail and keep watch for whatever or whoever might wander by. I was certain we wouldn't see any hikers on such a cloudy day, and with the trail being in rough shape, it seemed, even if it had been a day filled with sunshine, there would be no hikers. It just wasn't a well-traveled trail anymore. That worked well for us.
The ground was unexpectedly soft beneath the tree. Tyler noted the same thing.
"Did not expect this to be so easy," he said. "It certainly seems as if this place has been dug up before, and not just thirteen years ago when you spotted Jensen out here with his creepy buddy."
I pushed the shovel in more lightly than I would if I was out on a hillside kicking up soil to smother embers. If there were remains below, I didn't want to disturb them. Tyler was taking the same ginger approach.
"So Rangel is still alive and kickin'," I said. "I know he's probably only in his sixties, but he always looked like he could keel over dead at any minute."
Tyler shook his head. "He's kickin' and worse than ever. He sits on his porch all day with an old shotgun across his lap. It's not even loaded. He was always paranoid, but now he thinks every time one of us heads up to his cabin for a wellness check that we're there to haul him off to jail or steal his property. And he looks like hell, beard to his belly, no hair left on his head and there's a bunch of skinned rabbits and squirrels hanging off what's left of his porch railing. Not sure if that's what he's eating or not. He never comes into town anymore . . . thank goodness. You know I feel like we're getting to the bottom of whatever this was. The looser dirt is being replaced by a hard bottom." He tapped his shovel against the solid, clay bottom of the trench.
We stared into the empty trench.
"I agree with you there, but it seems we're lacking a body in this particular grave."
Sutton was still wearing her cap. She pushed up the brim and gazed up at us. "How is it going? I noticed you stopped." Her voice was slightly shaky.
I shook my head. "It's empty."
A small cry of relief escaped her.
"Poor thing," Tyler said. "That sounded like relief, but it would be so hard not knowing what happened to your own mom. Do you really think it was Jensen?" he asked quietly.
"I think so, only without the body—"
"Yep, looks like he might get away with it. Maybe he moved the body worried that people were going to find it. The rumor about this weird spot that all the dogs were sniffing was all around the ranger center. Jensen might have heard it was happening so he came up here to cover his tracks."
I nodded dejectedly. "Thought we had him."
Sutton made her way up to the dig site. Even though I'd assured her it was empty, she crept cautiously to the edge to look inside. Her face paled under the gray sky. "That looks like a grave."
"Yeah," I agreed. I didn't know what to add because I was feeling as though my promises to bring Jensen to justice had just been broken all at once. Without the body, we only had Sutton's testimony from that day. She was a kid and it was long ago and surely a district attorney would ask why she waited so long. On top of that, with Jensen's ties to law enforcement, she wouldn't be taken too seriously.