The Buried Book (26 page)

CHAPTER 50

The victim has been described as an addict and a hustler. Would you say that’s true?

Jasper imagined Old Hoyt being chased by Nicodemus through the pasture the whole ride back to Uncle Leo’s. The dirty bastard deserved to be gored, but he’d probably just hop the fence if he’d been out there at all. Still, picturing Hoyt scared shitless made Jasper feel just a little bit better. He deserved so much worse.

A car blew past them.

“Hey!” Jasper yelled after it. It was bad manners to pass a tractor that fast. But then it registered that it was the sheriff’s cruiser slowing to a stop right in front of his uncle’s farm.

Wayne turned to Jasper in the back. He was riding on top of a four-foot stack of boards and logs. “Whatdya think he wants?”

Jasper’s mouth went dry. All he could think was that they had found his mother’s body. He just shook his head.

Wayne eased their load down the sloped driveway, careful not to jostle loose the wood, while Jasper’s eyes stayed locked on the sheriff’s car. His uncle, his father, and the sheriff were nowhere to be seen. Wayne hopped down and motioned him around to the back of the barn. They crept up to their usual spot and listened.

Uncle Leo was talking. “I’m sorry, Cal. I’ve got a house to rebuild today.”

“I understand, Leo. You got your work cut out for you, but I still need to ask a few questions if you’ll humor me. Have you seen any strange cars up or down the roads in the last two months?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Any strange folks hangin’ about? You hear of anybody odd stoppin’ in at the Tally Ho or in town?”

“That’s more a question for Clint Sharkey, don’t ya think?” Uncle Leo sounded annoyed.

“I’ve talked to Clint. I’m just doin’ my due diligence, Leo.”

“Hang your due diligence, Cal. Now, what the hell is this all about?”

There was a sigh. Jasper squinted through a knot in the siding and could see the back of a tan hat shaking back and forth. “I tell ya, I never thought I’d see the day in St. Clair County . . . but storms like these are funny things.”

“I don’t see what’s so funny about ’em,” his uncle piped up. “This one damn near destroyed half the state.”

“Yeah. And it kicked up all sorts stuff when it did.”

Jasper braced himself.
They found her.

“What stuff?” Uncle Leo asked.

“Jim Jenkins found a burlap sack in his back field this mornin’. We found another one in Harding’s vegetable patch this afternoon.”

“So?”

“So, we’re sending them down to a lab in Detroit for analysis, but I can tell you those bags ain’t filled with sugar.”

“What are you sayin’?”

“I’m sayin’ we’re gonna need to check your fields, just like we’re checkin’ all the fields in the county.”

“Fine. But what are you sayin’, Cal?”

“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ about nothin’ until the narcotics report comes back.”

Jasper and Wayne turned to each other with the same question on their faces.
Narcotics?

His aunt’s voice calling from the driveway broke the silence that had fallen inside the barn. “Jasper? Wayne?”

The two boys scrambled away from their hiding spot, ran a wide circuit, and reappeared from behind the tractor. “Yes?”

“Oh, there you are! Jasper, honey, I need you to go walk the back fields and see what else there is. Wayne walk the front.” Aunt Velma gave Jasper a worried smile. “Don’t try to lift anything too heavy by yourself, you hear?”

“Yes’m,” the boys answered. Jasper trotted to the other side of the barn to grab his wagon. The three men walked out to the drive. Jasper skirted around them as they were all shaking hands.

“It’ll just take an hour or so,” the sheriff was saying.

“Help yourself, Cal. You let us know if there’s anything else we can do.” Uncle Leo patted the man’s shoulder, then headed back to the barn. His father gave the sheriff a nod and followed him.

Jasper kept his head down and pretended not to notice the policeman as he walked past. He recognized Sheriff Bradley’s voice from that night at the Tally Ho. The man knew his mother and Big Bill and God knows what else. A second police car pulled into the driveway, and Jasper quickened his pace.

Random objects littered the ground—a shovel, a pitchfork driven over a foot into the ground, a tractor seat. He busied himself surveying the scarred rows of green sprouts in the barley field. He tried to focus on gathering what he could but felt himself drawn toward a stand of trees on the horizon that had somehow survived the storm.

The oaks and maples grew taller as he approached the patch of overgrown grass. Jasper stopped and looked over his shoulder. Sheriff Bradley and his man were a half mile away, walking rows of corn, searching for something.

The jolt he’d felt when he saw the police cruiser tremored in his gut.
They still haven’t found her body.
He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed.

The trees stood there waiting. Jasper hadn’t visited the place since that night. He avoided it on purpose, taking convoluted routes through the fields to keep wide of his nightmares, but now his feet were drawn there.

Behind the trees, there was nothing left of his grandmother’s house but a broken foundation. Charred stones stuck up out of the ground in a rectangular outline of what had once been. He gazed up at the spot where her window had looked out over the fields. Smoke had billowed out through the hole in the roof. He could smell it. Echoes of gunshots still hung in the trees. He reached up and touched the scar on his head. He hadn’t fallen through the floorboards like they said.

Jasper sank down to his knees in front of a blackened stone.

“What happened?” he whispered, gripping the book in his pocket. “Were you there?”

“What brings you out here, son?” a voice said.

Jasper lurched up to see a man walking down the hill from the creek. It was Detective Russo.

CHAPTER 51

Did she have any enemies? Abusive boyfriends?

Jasper’s mouth opened and shut, but no sound came out.

“I said, what brings you out here? Doesn’t your uncle need you back at the house?” The detective cocked a sly grin. He wore a suit and a hat like a traveling salesman, but there was a gun at his hip.

“I—I was just . . . looking for stuff,” Jasper stammered. His eyes darted about for a place to hide and came up empty. “I . . . my aunt asked me to go see what I could find from the storm.”

The detective looked him up and down, amused at his consternation. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Sheriff Bradley said it would be alright if I poked around. I’m looking for something too.”

Jasper scanned the fields again for the sheriff and his deputy.

Detective Russo walked over to him and appraised the foundation of the old house. “It was quite a doozy of a storm, wasn’t it? Blew half of St. Clair County off the map. Was this here blown away too?”

Jasper could tell he already knew the answer. “No, sir. It burned down.”

“Really?” The detective raised his eyebrows. “When?”

Jasper shrugged the best he could with a busted shoulder. “I don’t know. A year ago.”

“How’d it burn down?”

He could feel the man’s eyes drilling through him and turned away.

“What’s wrong, son? It’s not a hard question.”

“Sorry, it’s just that . . .” A lantern exploded in his head. “It was all my fault.”

“Your fault?” The detective sounded surprised. “What happened?”

“I was snooping around in the old house, and I lit a lantern . . .” His mother had been holding it. He could see her plain as day, motioning him into her arms. Tears gathered at the thought, but he shook it away. It couldn’t be right. “It, uh . . . and I knocked it over.”

“Oh. I see.” The detective patted him on the shoulder. “That must’ve been very scary for a young boy—burning down a whole house. I bet your uncle was none too pleased.”

Jasper blinked his eyes clear. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, we all make mistakes, Jasper. The key is to learn from them.” The detective squatted down on his haunches like they were about to discuss a football play. He was pretending to be his friend, but Jasper could tell he just wanted to get a closer look at him. “Now, you understand that lying to me would be a terrible mistake. Don’t you, son?”

“Yes, sir.” Jasper didn’t like the way the man smiled at him. He took a step back.

“Not so fast.” The detective grabbed his arm. “Who else was inside the house with you?”

“Sorry?” Jasper wanted to kick him in the groin and run. His eyes darted over the fields. The sheriff was nowhere in sight.

“You couldn’t have been by yourself. You’d have only been, what? Seven years old?”

“I was nine,” Jasper whispered. He’d always been small for his age, but he’d been old enough to know better.
It was my fault. I wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Right. So . . . who else was inside with you?”

“No one.” Jasper could tell the man didn’t believe him. He didn’t believe it himself anymore.

“What were you doing in a house all by yourself?”

“I woke up early and . . .” He’d gone looking for his mother. Jasper searched for words that wouldn’t betray her. She’d been hiding from Big Bill and Galatas and God knows who else. He risked a glance into the detective’s hard eyes and quickly looked away. “I just got bored, I guess. I shouldn’t have gone snooping.”

“Bored, huh? You’re lucky you didn’t get yourself killed.” It sounded like a threat.

“Yes, sir.” Somewhere out there the sheriff was searching the fields. If he ran away screaming, maybe the detective would hesitate. He tensed his legs.

As if he could sense the boy’s plan, the detective tightened his grip on his arm. “Where is your mother, Jasper?”

“What?” He tried to wrench his arm free, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Where is she?”

“She’s—she’s gone.”

“Where did she go?” Detective Russo demanded.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You must know something, damn it. Where is she?”

She’s dead!
he wanted to scream. Instead, he just shook his head.

“I know this has been hard on you, kid, but you need to tell me what you know.”

“I don’t know
anything
!” Jasper cried, letting his arm go limp. “I’m just a kid. Nobody tells me anything.”

“Damn it, Althea!” The detective let go of him and shook his head. “I’m sorry, kid. I hate to have to do this.”

“Do what?” Jasper staggered several feet back. “Are you going to take me away? Is that why you’re here?”

The detective sighed but didn’t answer the question. “We were supposed to meet. She had something for me. Something very important. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Jasper shook his head again.

“We had a deal. Then the next thing I know, one of my prime suspects blows up his car and she disappears like a goddamn ghost. We’ve been looking for her, high and low, for months. Damn it, she’s been toying with me this whole time. We were so close to blowing the doors off this thing.”

Jasper was hardly listening. His brain had ground to a halt.

“A lot of lives are going to be ruined if I don’t find her, Jasper. A lot of lives. And now that this damn storm came through . . . I don’t know if I can stop it. I need your help.”

“What?” The man was obviously a lunatic. The trees were only ten feet away. Jasper took a step toward his escape route. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

“You need to let me know if you see her. If you see or hear anything, I won’t be far. Okay?” The detective dropped his voice to a gentler tone and smiled. “We don’t want anything to happen to her. Do we?”

CHAPTER 52

If she had evidence of some sort of conspiracy, why wouldn’t she go to the police?

The detective disappeared over the hill. Jasper watched until he was gone, then stumbled into the stand of trees. The man hadn’t dragged him away to an orphanage or jail, but he could still feel his hand clenching his arm.

We don’t want anything to happen to her, do we?
The detective’s warning repeated in his head. Jasper sank down with his back against a giant oak and cried.

She’s gone, goddammit! And she’s not coming back. File her under “Dead.”
His father had screamed it at the top of his lungs.

Jasper wiped his tears, then pulled the diary out of his pocket.
What does he want from me, Mom? Why did you have to die? I need you.

He leafed through the book again, searching for any sign at all, forcing himself to read her last words again and again.
Anyone but you.
The last twenty pages were empty, but he searched them too.

“Jasper? What the hell are you doin’ up here?” his uncle’s voice boomed through the trees.

Jasper dropped the book. He jumped up and tried to block his uncle’s view of it lying on the ground. “Sorry, I guess I just . . .”

“The rest of us are out workin’ our tails off, and you’re just sitting here on your duff? Didn’t you hear your aunt callin’?” He could tell by the hard line of his face that Uncle Leo was in no mood for long explanations.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Whatdya got there?” His uncle pointed to the ground behind his feet.

“No—nothin’. Just this uh . . . book. I was out doin’ a sweep and found it right over there.” Jasper pointed to a random spot in the field.

“Give it here.” His uncle held out his hand, leaving Jasper no choice in the matter.

He picked the diary up off the ground and handed it to his uncle.

“Why you standing there lookin’ like somebody died? Git!”

Jasper knew he’d better run back to his wagon, but he hesitated for two seconds too long. His uncle grabbed him by the collar.

“You’ve been reading this nonsense?” he demanded, waving the open book in Jasper’s face.

“Um . . .” Lying would only make it worse. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t go believing a thing in here, ya hear me? She wasn’t right in the head back then, making up all sorts of stories.”

“What do you mean, not right in the head?” Jasper whispered.

“None of your goddamned business. That’s what I mean. This book is not for you to read. I should’ve burned the thing months ago.”

“But why did she—”

“Stop.” His uncle held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear another word about it. She’s caused enough trouble for one lifetime. The last thing you need is to go snoopin’ around in her mess. If you want answers, go read your Bible.”

“But . . .” His uncle was going to burn it if he didn’t say something. “They don’t seem like lies! What happened to her?”

“I told you—”

“She’s my mother!”
Jasper shouted over him, not quite believing he was raising his voice to the man. “I need to know what happened to her.”

“What do you want to know, huh?” he roared back. “You want to know how she went crazy and ran away from home? You want to know how she came back drunk and reeling, screaming a bunch of nonsense, and burned our house down? Or how she wrecked our family’s reputation and my father hung himself? How my mother died of a broken heart? You want to know how she disappeared for ten years and we all thought she was dead or in prison? Is that the sort of thing you want to know, Jasper?”

The boy just stood there dumbstruck.

“Goddamn it!” his uncle shouted up at the sky. He swept a hand across his mouth as if to wipe away his last several words, and then he leaned down and grabbed Jasper by the chin. “Forget all that, Jasper. You’re the best thing that miserable woman ever did. Don’t mess that up for her. Just let it go. It’s the only thing you can do to help her now. Understand?”

Jasper nodded but couldn’t look his uncle in the eye. The man hated her, and maybe he was right. She’d left her own son to die on the farm she hated. She’d up and disappeared. Her father died because—

“Good. Now get yourself together and get your ass back to the house.” Leo stormed off toward the barn with Althea’s diary in his hand, leaving Jasper alone in the woods with black-and-white thoughts of his grandfather swinging from a noose.

Everything about her was a lie.

The only thing he knew for certain anymore was that she’d gotten mixed up with criminals like Big Bill and Galatas.
Who do you think ran the stills when making liquor was against the law?
Mrs. Babcock’s voice asked him again.
Gangsters, killers, and thieves.
And she was one of them. The police were still after her.

But she’s dead . . . isn’t she?

The thought brought Jasper back to his feet. He scanned the trees and creek bed behind him for Detective Russo. Every shadow had eyes. The specter of his grandmother’s house loomed behind the tall oaks, watching him.

I won’t be far.