Chapter 21 #2
“Nothing like that. The missus called because he didn’t come home last night. Technically it’s not a missing persons case until he’s been gone forty-eight hours, but it is unusual for him by all accounts. If you see him again, tell me.”
He issued it like a command, and I bit back a scathing response.
“You and I are going to come to an understanding on this fawn,” he said, just before he closed his car door—a parting shot.
I scraped up just enough magic to curse him as he drove away, the words so poisonous they stripped the taste off my tongue as I said them.
As soon as he was out of sight, I bolted back up to the house and to my room.
I thrust my arm under the mattress; the deed came out water stained and torn.
I had almost destroyed it last night, but I’d been so frantic I hadn’t trusted my own mind.
I’d waited, trying to anticipate if I’d have some use for it, but it was stupid to have kept it at all.
I took it downstairs and held it over the sink as I struck a match.
My hands were trembling and it took a few tries, but the paper went up quickly, and after a few seconds, I washed the ashes down the drain.
I knew in my heart it wasn’t the last I’d see of it; Zeke probably had more than one copy.
All I’d done by burning this one was hide the motive for the murder, give myself plausible deniability that I knew the true ownership of the sanctuary.
The sanctuary belongs to me, I told myself. A single piece of paper doesn’t change that.
Christine called me the following day. I stared at the phone for several seconds, trying to summon the will to speak, to act as if nothing was wrong. I picked it up on what was probably the last ring and forced cheer into my voice.
“Hi, Christine.”
“Hey, Tess, glad I caught you. How are things?”
“Oh, not too bad. What’s up?”
“Well, I wanted to let you know the harvest festival planning meeting today is canceled. We’re organizing a search party for Pastor Zeke.”
I was half-turned to look at my wall calendar, not even flipped to the correct month, but I froze when she mentioned a search party. I’d known they would find the truck eventually, but I had hoped for more time, more wind and rain and dust to settle over it and obscure the tracks I’d missed.
“I thought you might want to come help,” Christine continued. She did not say to prove you’re not a bad person or to show you hold no ill will, but it was there in the long exhale that followed.
“Of course,” I said. “Of course I’ll help. What happened?”
“Rachel said she hasn’t seen him since the day before yesterday, but you know how it is with the police—”
“Yes, forty-eight hours and all that.”
“Right, yes. But some out-of-towner was checking on his hunting cabin yesterday and found the truck in his driveway, no sign of Pastor Zeke.”
I closed my eyes at my wretched luck—of course the private drive had been to a hunting cabin. With bow season only weeks away, the truck was bound to be found.
“I’ll bring first aid supplies,” I said. “Where are we meeting?”
She gave me directions on how to get to the very spot I’d dumped the truck, which I probably needed anyway; the whole event was a blur in my mind, and I wasn’t sure I would’ve found my way back on my own.
“I’ll see you there in an hour,” she said. “I just need to make a few more calls.”
I hung up, feeling bile rise in my throat. The whole town would know. There was no way to smother the curiosity, no way to make people forget, no redirection or diversion I could provide.
I bolted to the bathroom and retched into the toilet, my breakfast of black coffee running like acid over my throat. As I was bent over the bowl, I heard the sound of the fawn’s hooves across the floor, and I kicked the door shut behind me. I was no longer willing to show her my weakness.
When there was nothing left in my stomach but gnawing anxiety, I washed out my mouth and went to pack a first aid kit.
I was not particularly thorough, knowing there’d be nothing to find, but as I shoved the sterile gauze, antiseptic, and disposable gloves into a backpack, I found myself wishing I’d kept something of the pastor’s—a scrap of sleeve or, ideally, a boot.
When more than an hour had passed, I left, locking both the house door and the gate firmly behind me. I dawdled down the road and to the private drive, wanting to make sure I wasn’t the first one there. The last thing I needed was to look like I was trying to get time alone at the scene.
But the road opposite the driveway was lined with cars when I pulled up.
As I walked around its curve, I spotted police tape and a small crowd of people.
Broder was there, along with a handful of cops, and I spotted Christine and Max talking with Will Thornton, a town council member.
There were three other council members there, plus a handful of folks I recognized but didn’t know.
As I glanced around, I locked eyes with Evelyn; she turned away to talk to Georgie, who held my gaze longer but made no move to greet me.
There was no sign of David or Rachel.
“There you are, Tess,” Christine said, hurrying down the drive toward me. I was conscious of every eye that followed her to land on me. “I was starting to worry you weren’t coming.”
“Sorry, I got caught up with chores,” I lied. “Is this it? I thought Broder would’ve called in the dogs.”
“He did, but they couldn’t pick up anything. The handlers said it must’ve been because of the storm that went through.”
“But they’re sure this is his truck?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“And Broder said it was okay for a search party to be here? It’s not going to mess up the scene or whatever?”
Christine gave me a strange look; the question was paper thin. “We can’t go within the tape, but it’s not a crime scene—not yet, anyway. Besides, Chief Broder asked me to do it since they don’t have the manpower.”
“Oh, okay.” I wanted to ask why the pastor’s wife and son weren’t here to join in the search, but Christine was watching my face closely, and I didn’t dare push my luck. “Well, I’m ready when you are.”
My mind raced as Christine and Max rounded up the other volunteers. Since the dog hadn’t found anything, they already knew the truck was here before the storm. Unless Broder was even dumber than I thought, he would already have a timeline. How long before he decided it was a crime scene?
The volunteers grabbed walkie-talkies and counted off in pairs, and there was an odd number. “I’m fine to go alone,” I said. Christine nodded.
“I don’t think anyone should go alone,” Evelyn said—loud enough that everyone else went quiet and turned to look. “We should all keep an eye on each other.”
I spun on her, a scathing reply on the tip of my tongue, but then a meaty hand landed on my shoulder.
“Officer Perry will go with you,” Broder said; he was too close, and his breath reeked of onions. “We don’t need anyone else getting lost.”
Officer Perry’s first name was Mark, and I’d met him before.
He was a quiet, bookish man in his late forties.
His wife had multiple sclerosis, and every year at the harvest festival he pushed her wheelchair around to the games and bought her cotton candy.
He was clearly caught wrong-footed by Broder’s suggestion, but he didn’t argue, and neither did I.
We set off into the woods. I had no walkie-talkie, but I could hear Perry’s radio crackling from his shoulder.
For the first few yards, the pairs on either side of us were visible, but as the volunteers fanned out, they were lost to view.
The woods here were not as old as mine, the trees dozens of years old rather than hundreds, but they were poorly kept and choked with scrawny saplings and brush.
Perry trailed a few feet behind me, content to let me make the path.
As dense as the woods were, the undergrowth was not spared in the recent deluge.
There were large limbs down everywhere, many still showing live wood, and in some places the brush had been flattened into a mat by the weight of the wet, fallen leaves.
In the few places where the forest floor was visible, water had cut little furrows into the dirt and piled leaves along their sides.
The trees all seemed to be varying shades of gray, a forest of iron.
“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been this way in a long time,” Perry said after a while.
“Hard to tell when everything’s washed out,” I said. “Besides, if he was hurt or disoriented, he probably wasn’t walking in a straight line. We might intersect with a trail.”
He didn’t answer, but his silence was doubtful.
We walked for an hour more without saying a word to each other.
How’s your wife? I could’ve asked, but the fact was that I didn’t care.
All I cared about was how clear it was that no one had passed this way, and how clear it would be to the rest of the search party.
There wasn’t so much as a deer path through the trees, and even if I’d had a boot or a scrap of cloth from the pastor, it would’ve been an obvious plant.
Occasionally, Perry’s radio crackled to life, and he would mutter back into it behind his hand. I strained my ears to catch what was being said, but the snapping of the small branches around me and under my feet was too loud. Only once, he said, “No one else has found anything either.”
Sometime later, we broke out of the trees. A field stretched at our feet, yellowed soybeans crushed into the mud or floating in standing water. About forty yards away, I saw another spot of color emerge from the trees—one of the other pairs.
Perry clicked the button on his radio. “We’ve cleared the woods; no sign of him.”
The voice on the other end instructed him to return. I heard it clearly, and yet for a moment I stood there, staring out across the field and swallowing down the panic climbing up my throat.
“Time to go,” Perry said, as if I’d been arrested already, as if he would perp-walk me back.