My Sister's Grave (6 page)

Sarah walked back to the bed, savoring each step as Tracy glared at her. Sarah pulled the flowered book from beneath the covers and Tracy snatched it from her hand, taking a swipe at her. Sarah ducked and ran from the room.

“You’re not supposed to be reading my diary, Mom. It’s a total invasion of my privacy.”

“Turn around. You’ll get tangles.” Abby Crosswhite ran the brush through Tracy’s hair, and she relaxed at the feel of bristles tickling her scalp. “I didn’t read your diary. That was a mother’s intuition. Nice admission of guilt, however. The next time Jack Frates comes over, tell him your father would like a word.”

“He won’t come over. Not with that brat here.”

“Don’t call your sister a brat.” She pulled the brush through a final time. “Okay, bed.” Tracy slid under the covers, feeling the lingering warmth of Sarah’s body. She adjusted a pillow behind her back, and her mother bent and kissed her forehead. “Good night.” Her mother picked up the wet bath towel from the floor and closed the door halfway, then leaned back in. “And Tracy?”

“Yeah?”

Her mother belted out the song lyrics.

Tracy groaned. When the door shut, she climbed from bed, closed the door to the bathroom, and looked for a better hiding place for her diary. Finally, she slipped it beneath her sweaters on the top shelf of her closet, where Sarah couldn’t easily reach. Back beneath the covers, she opened Dickens.

She’d been reading for nearly half an hour, and had just flipped forward to find the end of the chapter, when she heard the bathroom door creak open. “Go to bed,” she said.

Sarah swung from the door handle into Tracy’s peripheral vision. “Tracy?”

“I said, go to bed.”

“I’m scared.”

“Too bad.”

Sarah stepped to the edge of the bed. She’d dressed in one of Tracy’s flannel nightgowns. The hem dragged on the floor. “Can I sleep with you?”

“No.”

“But it’s scary in my room.”

Tracy pretended to continue reading. “How can you be scared in your room and not scared hiding under covers?”

“I don’t know. I just am.”

Tracy shook her head.

“Please,” Sarah pleaded.

Tracy sighed. “Fine.”

Sarah leaped onto the bed and climbed over her, scurrying under the covers. Settled, she asked, “What was it like?”

Tracy looked down from her book. Sarah lay staring up at the ceiling. “What was what like?”

“Kissing Jack Frates.”

“Go to sleep.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever kiss a boy.”

“How do you plan on getting married if you never kiss a boy?”

“I’m not going to get married. I’m going to live with you.”

“What if I get married?”

Sarah’s face scrunched in thought. “Could I live with you?”

“I’ll have a husband.”

Sarah bit at a fingernail. “Could we still see each other every day?”

Tracy lifted her arm. Sarah slid closer. “Of course we will. You’re my favorite sister, even if you are a brat.”

“I’m your only sister.”

“Go to sleep.”

“I can’t.”

Tracy put Dickens on the nightstand and slid beneath the covers. She reached overhead for the power switch to her lamp. “Okay, close your eyes.”

Sarah did so.

“Now take a deep breath and let it out.” When Sarah exhaled, Tracy said, “Ready?”

“Ready.”

“I am not . . .”

“I am not . . . ,” Sarah repeated.

“I am not afraid . . .”

“I am not afraid . . .”

“I am not afraid of the dark,” they said in unison, and Tracy clicked off the light.

CHAPTER 10

A
s a younger man, Roy Calloway had liked telling people he was “tougher than a two-dollar steak.” He could go for days on just a few hours of sleep and hadn’t taken a sick day in thirty-plus years. At sixty-two, it was getting harder to keep those kinds of hours, or to convince himself that he wanted to. He’d been knocked down by the flu twice the last year, the first time for a week, the second for three days. Finlay had served as the acting sheriff, and Calloway’s wife had been quick to point out that the town hadn’t burned to the ground or suffered a crime wave without him.

Calloway hung his coat on the hook behind the door and took a moment to admire the rainbow trout he’d caught on the Yakima River the previous October. The fish was a beauty, twenty-three inches and just under four pounds, with a colorful underbelly. Nora had had it stuffed and hung it on his office wall when Calloway had been out. Lately, she’d been after him hard to retire; the fish was meant to serve as a daily reminder there were more to catch. Subtle his wife was not. Calloway had told her the town still needed him, that Finlay wasn’t ready. What he hadn’t said was that he still needed the town, and the job. A man could only fish and golf so much, and he’d never been much for travelling. He couldn’t stand the thought of becoming one of “those guys” wearing the white, soft-soled orthotics, standing on the deck of a cruise ship pretending to have something in common with everyone besides being one step from the grave.

“Chief?” The voice came through the phone speaker.

“I’m here,” he said.

“Thought I saw you sneak in. Vance Clark’s here to see you.”

Calloway looked up at the clock: 6:37 p.m. He wasn’t the only one working late. He’d been expecting a visit from Cedar Grove’s Prosecuting Attorney, but had thought it would not be until the morning.

“Chief?”

“Send him back.”

Calloway sat at his desk beneath the sign his staff had given him the year he had become Sheriff.

Rule #1: The Chief is always right.

Rule #2: See Rule #1.

He wondered.

Clark’s shadow passed the smoked-glass panes leading to Calloway’s office door. He knocked once and entered with a limp. Years of running had taken their toll on Clark’s knees.

Calloway rocked back in his chair and put his boots up on the corner of his desk. “Knee bothering you?”

“Aches when the weather starts to get cold.” Clark shut the door. He had a hangdog look about him but that was not unusual. A monk’s ring of hair displayed a full brow that seemed perpetually furrowed.

“Maybe it’s time to give up the running,” Calloway said, though he knew Clark wouldn’t stop running for the same reason he wouldn’t stop being Sheriff. What else would he do?

“Maybe.” Clark sat. The fluorescent tubes hummed overhead. One had an annoying tick and occasionally flickered, as if about to go out. “I heard the news.”

“Yeah, it’s Sarah.”

“So what do we do now?”

“We don’t do anything.”

Clark’s brow creased. “And if they find something in the grave that contradicts the evidence?”

Calloway lowered his boots to the floor. “It’s been twenty years, Vance. I’ll convince her that, now that we’ve found Sarah, it’s time to let the dead bury the dead.”

“What if you can’t?”

“I will.”

“You couldn’t before.”

Calloway flicked the head of the Félix Hernández bobblehead doll his grandson had given him for Christmas and watched it bob and twitch. “Well, this time I’ll just have to do a better job of it.”

After a moment of seemingly deep thought, Clark said, “Are you driving down for the autopsy?”

“I sent Finlay. He found the body.”

Clark exhaled and swore under his breath.

“We were all in agreement, Vance. What’s done is done. Sitting here worrying about something that may never happen isn’t going to change anything.”

“Things have already changed, Roy.”

CHAPTER 11

T
racy kept her head down as she stepped from the elevator and made her way to her cubicle. She’d meant to get in early, but traffic had turned the two-hour drive back to Seattle from Cedar Grove into three and a half, she’d drunk Scotch for dinner, and had forgotten to set her alarm. Or she’d slept through it. She didn’t know.

She draped her Gore-Tex jacket over the back of her chair, dropped her purse inside her cubicle cabinet, and waited for her computer screen to come to life. Her head felt like someone was drumming inside her skull, and a handful of Tums had not extinguished the small brushfire in her stomach. Kins’s chair creaked and rotated, but when she did not turn to acknowledge him, she heard him rotate back to his computer. Faz and Delmo were not yet at their desks.

Tracy started going through her e-mails. Rick Cerrabone had sent her several that morning. The King County prosecutor wanted copies of the witness statements and Tracy’s affidavit to complete the search warrant Tracy was seeking for Nicole Hansen’s apartment. He’d sent a second e-mail half an hour after the first.

Where are witness statements and affidavit? Can’t go to judge without.

Tracy picked up the phone, about to call Cerrabone, when she saw an e-mail above his second message. Kins had copied her on his reply. She opened it. Kins had provided the witness statements and sworn out an affidavit. She swiveled her chair toward him, annoyed that he’d responded for her, even more annoyed that he’d done the affidavit when she was the lead detective. Kins glanced over his shoulder, caught her glare, and rotated to face her.

“He called me, Tracy. I figured you had enough on your plate and took care of it.”

She swung back to her keyboard, hit “Reply All” and started to type a nasty response. After a minute she sat back, read what she’d written, and deleted it. She took a breath and pushed back from the keyboard. “Kins?”

He faced her.

“Thanks,” she said. “What did Cerrabone say about the search warrant?”

Kins walked over, hands thrust in his pants pockets. “Should have it later this morning. You all right?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m feeling. My head hurts.”

“Andy came by,” he said, referring to their lieutenant, Andrew Laub. “He wants to see you.”

She laughed, rubbed her eyes, and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Great.”

“Why don’t we go get some breakfast? We can take a drive and talk to that witness down in Kent in that felony assault case.”

Tracy pushed back her chair. “Thanks, Kins, but the sooner I get this out of the way . . .” She gave him a resigned shrug. “I don’t know.” She made her way around the perimeter of the cubicles and down the hall.

Andrew Laub had been the A Team’s sergeant for two years before his promotion to lieutenant. That had earned him a small interior office with no window and a removable nameplate in the slot beside his door. Laub sat sideways at his desk, eyes focused on the computer screen, fingers pecking at the keyboard. Tracy knocked on the door frame.

“Yeah?”

“This a bad time?”

The clicking stopped. Laub turned. “Tracy.” He motioned her in. “Close the door.”

She entered and shut the door. The photographs on the shelves behind Laub served as a biography. He was married to an attractive redhead. They had twin daughters, though not identical, and a son who looked a lot like his father, with the same red hair and freckles. The boy apparently played football. “Take a seat.” The light from his desk lamp reflected in his glasses.

“I’m fine.”

“Take one anyway.”

She sat.

Laub removed his glasses and set them on his desk pad. Red impressions marked where the nose pads had pinched the bridge of his nose. “How you holding up?”

“I’m good.”

He eyeballed her. “People care, Tracy. We all just want to make sure you’re all right.”

“I appreciate everyone’s concern.”

“The medical examiner has the remains?”

Tracy nodded. “Yeah. Brought her back last night.”

“When will you get the report?”

“Maybe a day.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “At least now I know. That’s something.”

“Yeah, that’s something.” He picked up a pencil, tapping the eraser on his desk pad. “When’s the last time you slept?”

“Last night. Slept like a baby.”

Laub leaned forward. “You want to tell everyone else you’re fine, that’s your prerogative, but you’re my responsibility. I need to know you’re okay; I don’t need you to be a hero.”

“I’m not trying to be anyone’s hero, Lieutenant. I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Why don’t you take some time? Sparrow can handle the Hansen case,” he said, referring to Kins by the nickname he’d picked up working undercover with narcotics. He’d grown his hair long and sported a wispy goatee, making him look like the Johnny Depp character, Captain Jack Sparrow.

“I can handle it.”

“I know you can handle it. I’m saying, don’t. I’m saying, go home, get some sleep. Take care of what you need to take care of. The job will still be here.”

“Is that an order?”

“No, but it’s a very strong suggestion.”

She got up from her chair and made it as far as the door.

“Tracy—”

She faced him. “I go home and I have nothing but the walls to look at, Lieutenant. Nothing but time to think about things I don’t want to think about.” Tracy paused to get her emotions under control. “I don’t have any pictures in my cubicle.”

Laub set down the pencil. “Maybe you should talk to somebody?”

“It’s been twenty years, Lieutenant. I’ve gone through it every day for twenty years. I’ll get through these days the same way I got through those, one bad day at a time.”

CHAPTER 12

T
he second morning after Sarah’s disappearance, Tracy’s father entered his den looking utterly exhausted, despite a shower. Her parents had flown the red-eye from Hawaii. Her mother had not come home. When the plane had landed, she had gone directly to the American Legion building on Market Street to mobilize the volunteers already gathering there. Her father had come home to meet with Roy Calloway and had asked Tracy to stay in the event that the Sheriff had additional questions, though she’d already answered so many she couldn’t think of what else he could ask her.