Chapter 38 Annie
The church was empty and silent, except for the two fans on the ceiling that creaked in slow circles, swirling warm, stale air around the room.
Annie scanned the sanctuary, with its polished wooden pews and its imposing pulpit.
The eight windows that punctuated the long walls were darkened by the thick patch of forest into which the building was nestled.
Leafy bough tips bent against the panes and overgrown rosebushes crept up from beneath the sills.
The only piece of stained-glass in the room was a small, round window above the baptismal tank that showed a pair of hands, folded in prayer.
“Daniel?” she called out.
Annie walked down the center aisle, her footsteps echoing on the wooden floor.
There was a door to the right of the baptismal, and she pulled it open with a screech that reverberated around the sanctuary.
It led to a narrow hall with a kitchen the size of a closet, an office, and another closed door at the far end, which Annie reached for in the hope of a way down into the basement.
Behind the door, musty air met her at the top of sagging wooden stairs, badly in need of repair. The steps disappeared into a darkness below that smelled damp and fetid, and Annie’s pulse started to hammer as that childish pull to turn and run from unseen monsters gripped her.
“Daniel?” she called into the darkness.
There was the muffled sound of someone moving around below, and then a voice called back.
“Annie?”
She took the decrepit stairs as quickly as she dared, sticking to the edges and avoiding the sagging middles. Halfway down, the banister ended abruptly, the lower half lost to termites or some other malady. Only when she reached the bottom did she risk lifting her eyes to look around.
At first, she saw nothing. It was so dark in the recessed room; only one small window high in the far corner that let in choked light. And then she found the cells lined against the wall.
Annie’s hand flew to her mouth. Three rusted metal pens about eight feet tall and deep sat side by side, and Daniel lay curled on the floor in one of them, his form vague in the darkness.
Annie ran to him, nearly tripping on the uneven dirt floor under her feet.
There was no cot in the cell, no chair, and nothing but the earthen floor on which to rest. It was a cage.
With a sob rising in her throat, Annie knelt and stretched her arm through the bars to touch his shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
Slowly he sat up, one cheek dusted with dirt from where he’d rested his head. “I’m fine. Just sleeping.” He turned to look at the hand on his shoulder and Annie let it drop.
“We need to talk.”
Daniel lifted his eyes to hers and smiled tiredly. “You can’t break up with me. We sort of already did that, remember?”
Annie’s heart cracked at the sadness in his voice, and she raised her hand again to brush away the dirt on his face.
“We’re running out of time,” she said. “I need you to tell me the truth about that night. All of it. Anything you left out. I need to know what really happened up there.”
“I told you. I found Jamie in the lake and asked her to leave, then I went back to bed.”
“There has to be something else. Something you’re forgetting. Think.”
His gaze faltered and fell.
“Tell me.”
Daniel did not look at her as he answered.
“When Jamie climbed out of the water, I… my drawing pad was right there, and I… I showed her the drawing I’d done of her swimming in the lake.
She loved art. Wanted to study it, actually.
I thought she’d appreciate seeing the sketch, and I asked if she was okay with me selling it.
She said it was fine. I told her she could have it, since I’d already done the outline on the bigger canvas, and she touched it, just reached out and brushed her thumb over it for a second.
I think that’s where the charcoal came from. ”
“But she didn’t take it?”
“No. She wanted me to keep it.” Daniel hesitated. “She said she wanted me to think about her every time I looked at it. I didn’t want to hurt you by telling you before, but I think we’re past that now.”
Annie nodded. They were way past hurting each other. All that mattered now was finding the truth.
“And the wood shavings on her shorts? Did you take her out in the canoe?”
“No.” He shook his head firmly. “Her killer must have done that. She jumped down off the dock and walked into the dark, but I didn’t stick around to make sure she climbed the gate and started back toward home. I just assumed she did, but she must not have.”
Annie wrapped her hands around the bars. “And your lighter. Why did you go for that box of matches when I asked you to build a fire? Where’s that little orange lighter I’ve seen you use all summer?”
Daniel frowned. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Annie’s grip on the bars tightened. “Just tell me.”
“It’s in my bedroom. In the nightstand. I rewired the electricity after the tree came down, and lately I’ve been having issues with it. Sometimes the light shorts out back there. I keep a candle and the lighter in my nightstand just in case. You can go up and check if you don’t believe me.”
Annie sat back on her heels. She would check. As soon as she left here. She had to be sure. So much hinged on it.
She deliberated for a moment, then quickly told him about finding the lighter in the woods, and about her interaction with Ian. Then she leaned forward, hesitating, her face almost touching the bars. Her next words would come as a shock.
“I’m wondering if it could have been Jake.”
Daniel’s mouth fell open, and he coughed the word:
“Jake?”
Annie nodded, and Daniel stared at her as though she’d just suggested that Christ himself had taken human form again to commit the crime.
“Annie, come on… of all the men in this town, Jake is the last person who’d be capable of something like that.
And then to lock me up for it?” Daniel shook his head with conviction.
“No… no, he wouldn’t do that. We may be at odds right now, but that’s only because he’s a good cop, and a good man. He… cares about me.”
“Exactly.” Annie leaned close. “Why would anyone else move her body? Jake wouldn’t want you to be blamed for it, and he knows the lake like the back of his hand.
He knew he could get her through the briars and into the woods where it would look like Justin Grimes had killed her, and he brought me straight there on a hike the next day to find her body. ”
“But didn’t he know Justin Grimes had already been caught?”
“He didn’t find out until afterward. I was with him when he got the message. He seemed stunned, just… frozen. And I can’t help but wonder if part of that reaction was because his plan had just gone out the window. He only took you in when he realized there were no other suspects left.”
Daniel’s gaze fell to the dirt floor, eyes roving back and forth as he thought. After a long moment, he sighed and shook his head again.
“No, Annie. Jake isn’t one of those people who pretends to be a good person. His faith is genuine. He’s a good, decent man, and there’s no way you could convince me he’s capable of something like this.”
Annie sat back on her heels, staring through the bars into the bleak cell where Jake had locked his best friend.
“Really?” She waved an arm around at the dark, dank surroundings. “That man just sent you to hell without blinking an eye.”
“Hell?”
To her great surprise, Daniel laughed, then sank into a silence through which he smiled softly.
“I’ve been to hell, Annie,” he said, shaking his head. “This isn’t it.”
But Annie could not move past the darkness, and the earthen floor, and the bitter smell of mice.
“How can it even be legal to lock you up somewhere like this?” she said, voice rising. “There are standards, laws.”
Daniel shook his head. “He had nowhere else to put me. Besides, it’s just for today. He said I’ll be transferred down to Vancouver tonight to wait for the trial.”
Annie sat back, blinking at him. “I don’t get it. Why aren’t you angrier?”
Slowly, Daniel reached an arm through the bars and took the end of her braid in his hand, running the copper strands through his fingers. Annie did not pull away.
“I was angry last night. Really angry, but… it’s out of my control now,” he said with his eyes on the fine ends of her hair. “And I realized that no matter what, even if this is my fate, even if this is how my story ends, it still can’t take away what you’ve given me.”
Annie swallowed, and the hand holding the end of her braid moved to her cheek, stroking her skin.
“You gave me my freedom.”
Annie stilled beneath his touch, staring into his eyes.
“I never really came back,” he murmured. “For seven years, I was still that kid in the basement, standing there paralyzed with fear, ready to end it all. I was hiding. I was surviving, but not really living. I didn’t truly come back to life until I met you.”
Tears filled Annie’s eyes, and she let them fall.
“Don’t give up,” she whispered. “This isn’t the end of our story.”
“Even if it is, I regret none of it. ‘It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.’ ”
The words landed somewhere far back in her memory and she pulled them forward. They belonged to The Count of Monte Cristo, her father’s favorite novel.
Annie turned her head, kissing the palm of Daniel’s hand, before rising to her feet.
“Dantès made it out of his prison cell,” she said, looking down into his eyes. “And if I have my way, you will, too.”