My Sister's Grave (40 page)

“I found a spot up the road where I had a better view of your bedroom window. Some nights I’d watch for hours. I liked the way you used to get out of the shower and look out your bedroom window with your hair wrapped in a towel like a turban. I knew what we had was special, even though you started dating that guy. Never did see what you saw in him, or why you’d move from that big old mansion to that shitty house. He complicated things, always being around. I couldn’t just walk up to your front door or wait inside the house for you. I realized I was going to have to create my own opportunity. That’s when I got the idea of messing with your truck so it’d break down.”

The thought that House had been watching her made Tracy’s skin crawl, but House’s mention of the truck raised another, more sickening possibility. Sarah had been driving Tracy’s truck that night. She looked to the black Stetson on the shelf.

“Threw me for a loop first time I saw your sister,” House said. “She came into the coffee shop one time while you were working, snuck up behind you, and covered your eyes. I thought I was seeing double.”

“You thought she was me that night.”

House stood, pacing. “How could I not? Shit, it was like that Doublemint gum commercial with the twins. You guys even dressed alike. ”

Though the cave was bone cold, Tracy had broken out in a sweat.

“When I saw the truck on the side of the road and then saw her walking in the rain, alone, wearing that black hat, I thought for sure it was you. Imagine my surprise when I got out of the truck and realized it wasn’t. I was disappointed at first. I even contemplated just driving her home. But then I thought, hell, I’d gone to all that effort. And who was to say I couldn’t have you both.”

Tracy slumped against the wall, her legs weak.

“And now I have.”

“You didn’t bury her. That’s why we couldn’t find her.”

“Not right away. That would have been a waste. But I couldn’t have her escaping like Annabelle Bovine.” House’s jaw clenched and his face went dark. “That bitch cost me six years of my life.” He pointed to his temple. “A smart man learns from his mistakes, and I had six years to contemplate how to do a better job the next time. We had some good times here, your sister and me.”

Sarah disappeared August 21, 1993. The Cedar Falls Dam had gone online in mid-October. An acidic burn inched up the back of Tracy’s throat. Her stomach lurched and cramped and she bent over, retching.

“But that asshole Calloway kept pressing me. When he told me about the witness, about Hagen, I knew it was just a matter of time. A man like that has no integrity. It’s disappointing isn’t it? I imagine you must have felt the same disappointment in your father.”

She spit bile from her mouth and looked up at him. “Fuck you, House.”

His smile broadened. “I’ll bet your father never imagined that someday I’d use the jewelry and pieces of hair he used to frame me to get out of that hellhole, or that you’d be the one to help me do it.”

“I didn’t do it to help you.”

“Don’t be that way, Tracy. At least I never lied to you.”

“What are you talking about? This whole thing was a lie.”

“I told you they framed me. I told you they manufactured the evidence. I never once said I was innocent.”

“You’re fucking delusional. You murdered her.”

“No.” He shook his head. “No. I loved her. They murdered her—Calloway and your father, with all their lying. They didn’t leave me a choice. With the dam going online, they forced me to do it. I didn’t want to do it, but big-shot Calloway wouldn’t let it go.”

CHAPTER 63

S
arah lifted her head when she heard the squeak of the gate echo down the mine. He’d come back sooner than she’d expected. Usually the light died completely before he returned, but the bulb was still emitting a dull-yellow glow.

She hurried to finish what she was doing, picking up bits of the concrete and sweeping the dust into the hole she’d made. The light from the single bulb continued to grow weaker and she could not see well enough to be certain she’d found each piece, but she also didn’t have time to keep looking. She put the stake in the hole and refilled it with dirt, tamping it flat.

The door in the wall pushed open as she shifted the carpet back in place, moved to sit with her back to the wall, and picked up the paperback he’d brought for her. Edmund House stepped in, set a plastic bag on a folding table, and cranked the generator handle. The filament brightened, making her squint.

House turned. He seemed to take longer than usual to consider her. His eyes shifted to the piece of carpet on the ground, and in the light she could see that she had not replaced it squarely in the same location it had been.

“What have you been doing?” he asked.

She shrugged and held up a paperback. “What can I do? I’ve read every book twice. Kind of spoils the story when you already know the ending anyway.”

“You complaining?”

“No, just saying, you know. Maybe it would be nice to get a couple new ones.”

By her calculations, it had been seven weeks since he’d brought her here. It was difficult to keep track of the days without any windows, but she used him as her clock. She put a scratch in the wall each time he came back, which she figured to be a new day. He’d taken her on Saturday, August 21. If she’d calculated correctly, it was now Monday, October 11.

A month into her captivity, she’d found a metal spike partially buried at the base of a vertical beam. She figured they used it to put in the tracks for the mining carts to haul the silver out of the mine. Ten inches long, it had a flat end that must have been used to hammer it into the ground. She’d been using it to chip at the concrete around the metal plate he’d bolted to the wall. The plate’s bolts had some play in them that allowed her to dig behind the plate so he wouldn’t notice. If she could loosen the plate enough, she might be able to yank it free of the wall.

“Did you get the supplies?” she asked.

He shook his head. He looked distracted, sad. Like a little boy.

“Why not?”

He leaned against the table, the muscles in his arms prominent. “Chief Calloway came back again.”

She felt the flicker of hope but tamped it down. “What did that asshole want this time?”

“He says he has a witness.”

“Really?”

“That’s what he says. He says he has a witness who will say he saw you and me on the county road together. I don’t remember anyone. Do you?”

She shook her head. “Not that I remember.”

He pushed away from the table, approaching, his voice becoming angry. “He’s lying. I know he’s lying, but he says he has one and that his testimony is going to be enough to get a search warrant. What do you think he’s going to find?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. You said you were careful.”

He reached out and touched the side of her face with his fingertips. She fought the impulse to flinch and pull away. It only made him angry. “You know what I think?”

She shook her head.

“I think I’m being set up.” He dropped his hand and walked away. “If they made up the witness, they’ll likely make up some evidence to try me. Do you know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means this could be the last time we see each other.”

She felt a wave of anxiety. “They won’t catch you. You’re too smart. You outsmarted them.”

“Not if they cheat.” He sighed and shook his head. “I told Calloway he could go fuck himself. I told him that I’d already raped and killed you and buried you in the mountains.”

“Why would you tell him that?”

“Fuck him,” he said, now pacing, voice rising. “He can’t prove it, so let him live with that on his conscience the rest of his life. I told him I’d never tell him where I buried your body.” He started laughing. “You want to know the best part?”

“What?” she said, feeling more and more anxious.

“He wasn’t recording the conversation. It was just the two of us. He has no proof that I said anything.”

“We could leave,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic. “We could go someplace together, disappear.”

“Yeah, I thought of that,” he said. He pulled clothes from the plastic bag. She recognized her shirt and jeans. She thought he’d burned them.

“I washed them for you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Don’t I get a thank you?”

“Thank you,” she said, though uncertain of his intent.

He tossed them at her feet. When she didn’t move, he said, “Go ahead and put them on. You can’t leave dressed like that.”

“Are you letting me go?”

“I can’t keep you here anymore. Not with Calloway on my ass.”

She slid the frock he’d given her from her shoulders and stepped out of it, naked before him. He watched as she picked up her jeans and slid them on. They hung from her hips. “Guess I’ve lost some weight,” she said, her rib cage and collarbones prominent.

“You had a few to spare,” he said. “I like you skinny.”

She held up her arms. “My wrists,” she said.

He took the key from his pocket and unlocked the left manacle. She slid her arm through the sleeve of her Scully shirt and expected him to reattach the manacle. Instead, he unlocked her right wrist and let the manacles and chains fall at her feet. It was the first time in seven weeks that both her arms had been free. She slid the shirt on, snapping the buttons, fighting to remain calm.

“Where are we going to go?” she said. “We could go to California. It’s big. It would be impossible to find us.”

House walked to the shelving and shook her jade earrings and necklace from a can on the shelf. He picked up Tracy’s black Stetson, seemed to consider it a moment, and then put it back on the shelf. He handed her the jewelry. “You might as well put these back on too. No reason for me to keep them.”

She bit back tears. “You’re letting me go?”

“I knew it would always come to this.”

Tears flowed down her cheeks.

“Don’t start crying about it.”

But she couldn’t stop. She was going home. “When are we leaving?” she asked.

“Right now,” he said. “We can go now.”

“I won’t say anything,” she said. “I promise.”

“I know you won’t.” He nodded to the door. When she hesitated, he said, “Well, go ahead.”

It was all she could do to keep from running, anxious to get away, to breathe fresh air again, to see the sky, hear birds, and smell the scent of the evergreens. She took a tentative step toward the door, and looked back at him. His face was a blank mask.

Sarah took another step and thought of seeing Tracy again, and her mother and father, of waking up in her own bed, in her home. She’d tell herself that it had all been just a nightmare, a horrible nightmare. But she wouldn’t dwell on what Edmund House had done to her. She was going to get on with her life. She was going to go to school and graduate and then she’d come back to live again in Cedar Grove, just as she and Tracy had always planned. In her excitement, she did not hear him pick up the chain from the floor.

She’d reached the door when the chain wrapped tightly around her throat, strangling her. She tried to dig her fingers beneath the links, then tried to scratch his arms, but he yanked her backward with the chain, flinging her with such force he lifted her off her feet. The light through the door grew distant, as if she were falling down a darkened well. She reached for it, arms straining, and thought she saw Tracy just before the back of her head hit hard against the concrete wall.

CHAPTER 64

I
hated to kill her.” Edmund House had resumed his seat atop the generator box, forearms resting on his thighs as if he were tending to a campfire and telling a ghost story. “But I knew I wasn’t going to get an opportunity to get rid of her body like that again. And I wasn’t going back to prison.”

He sat up straighter. Anger crept into his voice. “I should have been in the clear. I’d planned it perfectly, bringing her here. But then Calloway made up all that bullshit evidence and got everyone on board—Finn, Vance Clark, your father. Even my uncle turned against me. So I decided, if I was going to hell for the rest of my life, I was taking Calloway with me, and I told him exactly what I’d done to her.”

House grinned. “One big problem. He wasn’t recording it. Man, I knew that would piss him off, but never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be used to hoist him by his own petard. How’s that for irony? When they closed the door to my cell at Walla Walla that first day, I thought that was where I’d spend the rest of my life.”

He paused, taking her in with his eyes in the way that made her sick. “And then you came to talk to me.” He started to laugh. “And the more we talked, the more I realized they’d never told you what they’d done. You told me about the jewelry, how you knew your sister hadn’t been wearing it that day, how she couldn’t wear it, but that no one would listen to you. I got to admit, you got my hopes up, but then I realized that, with her body at the bottom of a lake, I’d screwed myself. So I settled in to do my time. I guess fate took over.”

Tracy slid down the concrete wall, her legs suddenly weak. She knew who’d made the decision not to tell her. It was what DeAngelo Finn wouldn’t say, that day she had gone to visit him. It was what Roy Calloway had nearly said outside the veterinary clinic. It had been her father’s decision, and he’d made them swear to never tell her. Tracy was the one Finn was referring to, the one still left, the one her father had loved so very much.

Her father and Calloway had figured out that it was Tracy that House had wanted, that it should have been Tracy shackled in this hellhole, abused by the psychopath standing before her. James Crosswhite had forbidden them to say a word, knowing that the guilt would have been too much for Tracy to bear, that it would have killed her.

“I’m afraid I have to leave now.” House stood. “I have unfinished business.”

“You’re never going to get away with this, House. Calloway knows. He’s going to come for you.”

House smiled. “That’s what I’m counting on.”

CHAPTER 65

C
alloway stopped at the edge of what Dan surmised to be Parker House’s property, both men breathing hard, the wind howling. “Harley found the break in the gas line. House must have done it in Olympia while they were at the competition. Maybe it was supposed to be a trial run to see what would happen, how far the car would go.”