Twenty-Six Detective Olivia Newhouse
Twenty-Six
Detective Olivia Newhouse
Someone is screaming.
I feel myself drifting through the fog of sleep, rushing toward the sound. I need to wake up. He’s calling my name. “Liv! Liv! What the hell happened?”
My eyes open.
Sunlight filters in through the plantation shutters. It’s so bright. I close my eyes again.
“Liv!”
Hands grip my shoulders and shake me.
I open my eyes. David is staring at me, his expression clouded with fear, his eyes wide in uncertainty.
Walt. What if something has happened to Walt?
Air rushes into my lungs as if I have only now started to breathe. I sit up. “What happened?”
David blinks, stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind.
“What happened?” he echoes. “That’s what I want to know.
” He waves a hand at the bed. “Where the hell did all that mud come from? I’ve been all around the house, and I can’t figure out where this came from.
Your shoes are on the side porch caked in mud.
The floorboard in your Subaru is smeared with mud.
Did this happen at a crime scene? What time did you leave the house? ”
As the questions fire from his lips, my gaze travels down the length of me. He has pulled the covers back, and he’s right, I am covered in mud from the waist down. My jeans are caked with it. My socks are muddy. I stare at my hands; they are muddy as well as bloody.
Blood? Shit. Where did the blood come from?
“Tell me what’s going on, Liv? Please, baby. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me. Something is very wrong.”
I meet his gaze. “I was called to a crime scene. It was storming.” I blink to hide the lie in my eyes.
“A headache started on my way home. By the time I got here, I was out of my mind in pain. I must have come straight upstairs and climbed into the bed. I’m sorry.
” I look at the mess I’ve made. “I’ll clean it up. ”
“No.” He waves his hands back and forth. “Don’t worry about that. The housekeeper will take care of it. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, David,” I argue as I sit up. The room spins. “I’m fine.”
He shakes his head. “Liv, you are not fine. You’ve had way too many headaches in the past few days. Something is very wrong,” he repeats.
My heart sinks and my stomach lurches.
“I . . . I have to go to the bathroom.” I stumble from the soiled linens and rush to the bathroom. There’s nothing in my stomach to evacuate beyond the bitter bile that coats my throat and mouth on its way up and out. I sit on the Italian-tile floor, the cold leaching into my bones.
Finally, when I have heaved until I feel like my eyeballs will pop out of my head, the urge fades and I drag myself to the shower and turn on the water.
Feeling like death, I peel off my filthy clothes and climb beneath the hot spray, allow the heat and pressure to cleanse my skin, to warm the muscles and bones beneath.
My palms burn as if I’ve poured alcohol onto an open wound.
I turn my hands up and stare. The skin is raw and red, and what looks like ruptured blisters seep blood.
The shovel. The words penetrate the cloud of disbelief still banked around my brain and images seep in. Digging. Rain pouring down on me. My hair plastered to my head. My hands burning as I kept driving the shovel into the ground.
A flash of lightning reveals the barn in the distance.
The farm. I was at the farm . . . digging?
Did I bury the files? Try to hide my father’s connection to Fanning?
I shut off the water and grab a towel. As fast as I can, I scrub the high-end terry cloth over my skin and rush to the closet.
Jeans, sweat shirt, socks, and sneakers.
I run a comb through my hair. I should dry it, but I don’t care.
There’s no time for that. I take my badge and service weapon from the bedside table.
No phone. I glance around the floor. I check beneath the tousled covers. Nope. Dammit.
Taking the stairs as quickly as I dare, I try to think where my cell phone is. What about my wallet? I’m not big on purses, so when I’m on duty, I just carry a small credit-card-style wallet with my license and pertinent plastic. Anything else I need, I stick in my jacket pocket.
I would rather avoid the kitchen since David is probably in there and will want some sort of explanation, but my keys and fob aren’t in the entry hall. They’re likely in the kitchen, on the counter, since he said I left my muddy shoes on the side porch.
I push my wet hair from my face. Water from the ends seeps into the cotton of my sweatshirt.
“Coffee?” He lifts his cup as I enter the room.
“No time.” I walk straight to the counter by the side door and reach for what I need to be on my way.
“You’re just going to leave? Liv, you need to see a doctor. I am really worried about you.”
I close my eyes and wish for a way to explain, but there is no way. I have no idea what’s happening to me. How am I supposed to explain it to him?
“We’ll talk when I get home,” I promise the same way I’ve promised a dozen times before. Just this week I’ve made that promise several times.
He moves up behind me, and I shiver with the urge to run. He has no idea that I am falling apart—unraveling at the seams—and I don’t know why. I only know that I have to go and find out what I was digging up last night. Or burying.
My mother is buried at Woodlawn in the same family plot as her parents and her brother, who died as a toddler. My father was buried next to her just a few months ago. There can’t possibly be anyone buried at the farm.
“Are we okay, Liv? Maybe you just don’t know how to tell me you don’t want me anymore.”
I turn to him, can’t leave him feeling this way.
“It isn’t you, David.” I stare up into his eyes and tell him as much of the truth as I can .
. . as I understand. “Something is wrong with me. Something I can’t comprehend.
These headaches are coming with bizarre flashes of memory, and I don’t know what any of it means.
I have to figure this out before I can do anything else, do you understand? ”
Maybe it was the sheer agony in my voice or the fear in my eyes, but he nods. “Is there anything I can do? I want to help.”
I hug him tight for a moment, then I draw back. “Just let me do what I have to do. I promise I will explain everything when I know how.”
He nods. “Okay. I’ll be here waiting.”
Then I do what I should have done minutes before. I walk out the door.
My cell phone and my wallet are in my car.
The cell phone is dead, so I put it in the charging slot and drive away from the man who will thank me when this—whatever the hell it is—is over.
No matter that I have no idea what any of this means, I understand with utter certainty that David is far better off without me.
The blisters on my palms burning, I grip the steering wheel more tightly and barrel out onto the street.
I drive like a bat out of hell. The sooner I get to the farm, the sooner I’ll know what really happened last night.
Half an hour later, I park in front of the house. The door stands wide open.
My heart drums in my chest.
I swallow, wish I had some water.
I climb out of the car and walk toward the porch.
My fingers curl around the butt of my weapon.
Without making a sound, I climb the steps.
The breeze whispers in my ears. I tune it out.
Slowly I move across the porch and into the house.
Total silence. Room by room, I go through the downstairs.
All is clear, the safe room is just as I left it, with the dried vomit on the floor and files spread around like discarded life stories.
I check the library and that side of the house, then slowly climb the stairs. I go through the four rooms, including the one that was mine until recently. No one. Nothing.
The house is clear. I must have left the front door open.
Deep breath. I descend the stairs and walk back outside. The sun is warm and so bright, it hurts my eyes.
There’s no mud on the porch, so I left the house open before I got muddy. Did I see something in the files that made me believe something was buried on the property? Other files my father wanted to hide? Information about Fanning?
Or was I the one doing the burying? It’s possible that during some sort of crazy blackout, I decided I needed to protect my father from whatever I found. I may have buried evidence.
My body begins to shake and I feel sick to my stomach.
My gaze rests on the barn. I start in that direction, but then I notice the shed door is standing open.
Behind the house, there is the detached garage, and a few yards beyond that is a garden shed that belonged to my mother.
It was her haven. Her gardening tools and fertilizers are still stored there.
Did I go in there? My heart thumps.
I walk toward the shed with the sensation that I am watching myself do this. It feels surreal. Not me. This can’t be me. Can’t be my life. The closer I get to the shed, the more certain I am that I cannot go inside.
No choice.
I rest my hand on the butt of my weapon, and I step inside. The interior is shaded from the sun; it’s dark and cool inside. I reach up and pull the string. A single bare bulb flares to life overhead.
No mud. Nothing appears out of place. My gaze darts around the room. It’s about fifteen by twenty feet, with a nice long worktable in the center. Shelves line three of the walls. Tools hang from pegboard along the fourth wall.
My gaze settles on a pale shadow on the pegboard. The place where a shovel once hung. My gut tightens.
Okay. There was a shovel. Apparently I did do some digging.
My palms burn, reminding me that there was never really any question.
I walk back outside and wander around the yard, widening my search for a chunk of mud or some muddy tracks.
If I dug something up and then walked back to my car, based on the mud on my shoes and jeans, I had to have left a trail.
I see a blob of mud in the grass. Then another and another. I follow the random trail until the mud splotches become bigger, closer together. The path leads me to the tree line and then disappears into the thick undergrowth.
I have to look carefully to find the broken sprigs of greenery, the bent limbs of wild shrubs, but I locate the path I obviously took.
As I wade through the brush, my clothes getting damp from the moisture clinging to the leaves, I see where larger limbs have been broken from bushes and small saplings.
I couldn’t have wreaked that much havoc just walking or running past. I inspect a fractured limb.
This was broken off at my shoulder level.
Why would I feel the need to tear off limbs and sprigs of shrubs?
I must have totally lost my mind.
Fear knots in my belly. I am, I decide, slipping over some edge that I cannot see.
About twenty yards into the woods, I find a small clearing. The missing shovel lies on a mound of dirt that has been exhumed from the center of the clearing. At the head of the open hole is a rusty metal cross that has obviously been here for some time. My knees threaten to give out on me.
The hole in the ground takes up most of the cleared space next to the mound of dirt. The shape is undeniably the proper size for burying a body.
I shake my head. This cannot be. But the cross—my gaze touches the rusty metal again. My heart thumps harder and harder and I can’t breathe.
I stare into the hole, where the missing tree limbs and sprigs of brush line the bottom. My next breath is a struggle. “Just get it over with,” I mutter.
Holding on to a sapling, I ease down into the waist-deep pit. Whatever else happens, I have to know what I put in this fucking hole . . . or whatever was already here. I reach for the limbs, toss the first one and then another out of the way.
I remove another handful, and there, on the ground in front of me, are bones.
A skeleton. Terror lights in my chest. It appears to have been wrapped in a pink blanket.
The band of slick pink nylon that served as a border is all that remains of the covering.
The rest has decomposed and vanished into the earth.
But the bones are there. Splattered mud is stark against the white shape that lies almost fully intact like the skeletons you see hanging in a science classroom.
I blink, take a step back. My backside hits the ground behind me as I stare at the bones. No. No. No. This can’t be.
Not an animal. Human bones. Bones that have been buried for a very long time.
Horror burns through my veins. I know these bones.
Noooo reverberates around me like the wind, buffeting my being. I jerk my head up to see where the soul-shattering sound is coming from, and it is only then that I realize the screams are coming from me. I scramble out of the pit, my head spinning.
The next thing I know, I’m running . . .
running toward the house. I rush inside, fly up the stairs, mud on my shoes causing me to slip.
I scramble onward, toward my room. I need to be in my room—the one where I slept my whole life.
The place where my history is documented from birth until just before my father died when he hung a photo of the two of us above the lamp on the bedside table.
I remember that day as clearly as if it were yesterday.
What is happening to me?
I stare at the photo, our smiling faces.
This is who I am. Whatever is wrong with me, isn’t about that .
. . can’t be about my family. I close the door, sag against it to catch my breath.
When my body stops trembling, I look at the wooden doorframe to my left and the tick marks my parents posted there each time they measured my height from the time I was old enough to stand on my own.
Happy laughter echoes in my head. My mother and I twirling around the room.
This is my room . . . my space. My history. My life.
I go to the bookcase above the desk where I did homework as a kid. I grab a photo album and stare at the pictures of my parents and me. My muddy fingers flip through the pages. I stare at photo after photo. It’s all there. All the memories in my head are right here on these pages.
The pain shears through my head, and I stagger, close my eyes.
Not again.
The stabbing pain intensifies. I squeeze my eyes shut more tightly. Drop the photo album and stumble to my bed. I curl up on the soft, familiar comforter and pull a pillow over my head.
If I’m very, very still . . . keep my eyes closed tight . . . maybe it will pass.