Buried Truth (15 page)

I
t was hours before Rudley returned to take Tina to Aunt Jean’s. Egan and Margot waited in the shade, talking quietly about geological topics Bill had never heard of. Heather played with Tina and Tank, watching Bill from the corner of her eye when she thought he wasn’t looking.

His heart felt like a hardened lump in his chest. All he could think about was Leanne. She might have had a shot at a normal life, a steady job, two children who could have reconnected with her someday. All the time, he had thought he’d let her down by not noticing her drug abuse. Now he realized he’d been feeling guilty for the wrong thing; Oscar Birch had taken her life, right under Bill’s nose, and he’d never suspected it because deep down he believed his sister would fail.

Deep down he always knew or feared she would start using again.

And maybe deep down he believed the same about Heather.

Oh, God, help me.

He didn’t know what he needed help with. Forgiving Heather? Forgiving himself for not trusting Leanne? He wanted some warm feeling, some tender comfort to latch on to, but he couldn’t see anything but blackness.

There was only one thing left to accomplish that meant anything.

Bringing down Oscar Birch.

Rudley helped put Tina’s bag in the car and approached Bill. “Crow will be suspended pending investigation.”

Bill nodded. It could not be any other way; the man was no longer trustworthy as an officer. Still, Bill felt both angered and sorry. What would Crow do now without his badge? Bill knew firsthand what it felt like to be adrift without a career and only regrets and shame to fill up the days.

Heather took a few hesitant steps toward him but he turned away, his mind too full of despair to risk a conversation with her. He heard the motor start up and watched them drive off.

Egan stood on the small bridge, looking down at the spot where only a dry gulley was carved into the earth by long-ago rains, without appearing to see it. Bill did not want to speak to him, but he found himself drawing close anyway, while Tank bounded down into the dry chasm after a squirrel.

Bill cleared his throat. “Dr. Egan?”

Egan looked up, startled. “I thought you would go with them.”

“No. They’re better off without me.” Both men looked into the creek bed, now filling with dust as Tank raced through it. “I apologize,” Bill said, surprised at his own words.

Egan continued to stare down at the creek.

“I blamed you for not telling me about Leanne’s drug abuse, but there may not have been anything to tell. You were good to her, got her a job and all.” He picked up a leaf that landed on the wood rail and tore it up. “Anyway, I just wanted to say that.”

Egan turned to him, his face pained. “Thank you. I know that must have been hard for you to say.”

Bill nodded.

“So what will you do now?”

“Find Oscar Birch.”

“And kill him before he kills you?” Egan’s eyes locked on Bill’s.

Bill checked his watch. “Almost five. I think I’d better get out of here.” He didn’t want to be anywhere near Heather as Oscar’s deadline approached. “I’ll walk you back to your car.”

Egan stuck his hands in his pockets as they headed back. “Don’t blame yourself too much, Mr. Cloudman, for thinking your sister was using. Sometimes people get in over their heads and one small choice ensnares them.”

The heavy weight in Bill’s chest felt as if it would sink him into the ground. One small choice. Heather’s choice to start drinking to dull the pain of her mother’s abandonment. His choice to arrest her. His decision long ago to pursue Oscar Birch up into the hills. The thoughts all whirled together in his mind, so he didn’t notice Egan had stopped walking until Tank barked.

He jerked from his reverie. Egan stood on the dusty path. “Mr. Cloudman, you aren’t going to believe this, but I think I just figured out where Oscar Birch might be hiding.”

Bill’s breath caught. “Tell me.”

“When I came here five years ago, the lab had just broken ground. They picked out a site to house the construction equipment. It’s outside the fenced perimeter, well off the main road. It’s no more than a small warehouse, really, and it’s completely abandoned.”

“Why do you think he might be there?”

Egan’s eyes darted in thought. “Because I like to hike at night sometimes. It allows me to see angles and geological deposits that I might not see in the daytime. I was hiking a week or so ago and I thought …” He trailed off.

“What? You thought what?”

“I thought I heard a humming noise coming from that area. I moved in closer to check, but I couldn’t see anything and the noise stopped suddenly.”

“A humming noise, like the kind made by a generator?”

Egan’s eyes widened. “Exactly.”

Finally. This time Oscar would be surprised. “Do you think you could show me the spot?”

Egan nodded. “Without a doubt.”

Heather sat in the back of Rudley’s car next to Tina. Her mother was in front chatting to Rudley, who looked as if he would rather be anyplace else. Tina’s pockets bulged and she fished out a length of string and some bright pink beads, which she began to slide onto the string.

“What are you making?”

“A leash for Tank.”

Heather hid a smile, picturing the enormous dog trotting along at the end of a pink beaded leash. Her thoughts turned back to Bill and the impenetrable anguish that had settled over him with news of his sister’s murder. And all the time the evidence of that murder had been right next door, hidden among Tina’s baubles.

“Would you please stop at the post office, Agent Rudley?” Margot said. “I need to pick something up and I believe it closes at six.”

Rudley looked exasperated. “Can’t it wait?”

“No,” Margot said, calmly. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s that important?” he asked.

“It is to me.”

He sighed and pulled over at the post office, where Margot got out and made her way inside. Rudley sat, engine running, fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

Tina had strung more than twenty beads on her string,
when the knot at the end gave out, sending the beads sliding all over the floor.

Tina threw the string down in frustration. “It always breaks. Everything breaks,” she wailed.

“We can fix it,” Heather said, hurriedly scooping up the beads as her mother got back into the car, pocketing a white envelope.

“No,” Tina said, sticking her fingers into her mouth. “No more.”

Heather exchanged a look with her mother. Tina was not crying about the beads but about the frustration and fear she felt, which was too much for a child to express. Heather was not sure what to say, so she settled for scooping up the pink beads and putting them into her own pocket. “We can fix it later. I’ll bet Aunt Jean will help.”

Tina did not answer. She turned her face to the window and stared out at the cars coming and going from the post office parking lot.

Heather gave her mother a questioning “what should we do?” shrug, but her mother looked just as perplexed as Heather felt. She remembered with a jolt that her mother hadn’t been there for much of the difficult parenting, so she probably had even fewer tools to fall back on than Heather had.

She was still struggling with trying to coax the child to talk when Rudley asked, “Have we got everything we need now?”

Margot favored him with a serene smile. “Yes, thank you. That didn’t take very long, did it?”

Rudley didn’t answer, but took off quickly out of the lot.

Heather wondered about the subject of the papers her mother had taken out of her pocket to peruse. She could not imagine what would be so important that it would completely absorb her mother for the next few miles, but it did exactly that.

The car was oppressively silent.

Rudley drove at a good clip away from town and toward the reservation. Heather closed her eyes and laid her head back against the seat. She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was, but now the fatigue almost overwhelmed her. Dusk was upon them. The temperature was warm in spite of the air conditioner.

It made her remember a fall day when Bill had taken her to hike along Fox Creek, a scooped-out section between an upland plain and soaring cliffs on the other side. On the dry edge of the white-clay creek bed she’d found an enormous black boulder shattered into fragments. She’d picked up a piece, surprised to find it was dense and porous like an old slate blackboard. Bill had told her it was shale, rock formed from the decayed matter and disintegrated rocks of what had once been the bottom of the sea.

She hadn’t told him she already knew it, a fact remembered from some long-ago conversation with her mother that she barely recalled.

She had stood there holding evidence in her hands that that dry place had once been an ancient sea. It had struck her then how sad it was that her mother, the one person she knew who could appreciate the meaning of that dull rock, was gone, leaving some of her own interests and passions buried deep inside her unwanted daughter. She had stood there for a long time, holding that rock, until she had felt Bill’s hand on her shoulder.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He had wanted her to share, to expose that vulnerable wound, to trust him with her most delicate feelings.

“Just a rock,” she had said, tossing it away.

And later, she’d drowned the feelings in one drink after another.

If she had trusted him then, would he have helped her with her addiction?

She squeezed her eyes closed to hold in the tears.

It was too late to wonder.

Too late.

A sudden bang roused her. It felt as if something had struck the car. Her eyes flew open. She heard her mother gasp. Out the window she saw a large boulder still moving from impacting the driver’s door.

Rudley turned, face deadly serious. “Get down.”

“What? Why?” Heather gasped.

“Just …” He didn’t get to finish the sentence before a bullet shattered the front window, passing between Rudley and Margot and blowing a hole in the backseat, so close Heather could feel it cut through the air. Bits of glass showered down around them.

She grabbed Tina and pulled her down.

Rudley swore as he stomped on the gas, and the car lurched forward. He yelled something over the squealing tires.

Heather screamed as the driver’s side window suddenly exploded and Rudley crumpled, a red stain appearing on his temple. At first she couldn’t understand what had happened.

“He’s been shot,” Margot screamed. The car continued to roll until it began to slide toward the sharp drop along the shoulder.

“Grab the wheel,” Heather yelled at her mother.

In spite of her mother’s frantic yanking, the car continued to slide until it toppled over the shoulder. Bumping violently, it gained speed until it crashed into a gnarled pine, halfway down the incline.

Fear galvanized her into action. She grabbed Tina and shoved at the door on the passenger side. At first it didn’t open. With strength she hadn’t realized she possessed, she shoved at the door until it gave and they tumbled out. Pushing
Tina along, all Heather could think of was getting away from that car, until she realized her mother was not following. She turned to find her still in the front seat, staring in round-eyed horror at Rudley.

She hammered on the door with her fist. “Unlock it, Mom.”

Her mother didn’t move, so she pounded against the window. “Mom, listen to me.”

Her mother turned and seemed to waken.

“Unlock the door,” Heather pleaded again.

When Margot lifted a trembling hand and unlocked it, Heather wrenched open the door, pulling her mother out.

“Run for the trees. We’ve got to get away.”

They scrambled through brambles and shrubs, stumbling and sliding down the steep slope, not daring to look behind them as they ran. It was Oscar. Though she hadn’t seen his face, she knew he’d been watching, waiting for the opportunity to use them to hurt Bill. Tina’s face was white in the waning sunlight as Heather dragged her along, down, down, until they slithered to a stop where the land gave way to a flat ribbon of whitened soil that must have been a creek bed. A cliff rose on the other side, striated with dark bands of color. In both directions the dry creek twisted out of sight.

Which way?

Her heart pounded in her throat as she considered. She could not hear the sound of pursuit, but she knew Oscar would be after them any minute. Tina whimpered and Heather wanted to take the time to comfort her, but she didn’t dare. She looked at her mother, who seemed to be in a state of shock.

“This way,” she hissed at them, plunging toward a clump of aspen. “We’ve got to hide.”

Her mother stumbled once and almost went down, but
Heather grabbed her elbow with her free hand. The three of them staggered along, feet slipping on the loose dry soil.

As they ran she could hear the sound of a car door. Had Rudley been able to get himself out of the car? Maybe Oscar had given up and driven away, rather than finish off a federal agent. She dismissed the thought.

Nothing would stop him.

And no obstacle would get in his way for very long.

Gripping Tina and her mother tighter, she practically hauled them to the shelter of the trees a hundred yards away, where they flopped to the ground, panting.

Tina’s face was stark against the shade. She didn’t speak, but terror was written clearly in her brown eyes.

Margot appeared calmer, but her limbs were shaking from either fear or the physical effort she’d just endured.

Heather knew she must be the one in charge if they were going to survive. Peeking past the trees, she saw that the way became rockier, littered with boulders that had broken from the cliffs above and come to settle in the creek. Small humps of white rock stood out against the darker sand and gravel here and there.

“Limestone.”

She jerked, not realizing her mother had come to stand next to her.

Heather gave her mother an incredulous look. “Now is not the time for a geology lesson.”

Her mother’s lips quivered. “It’s all I know. It’s all I’ve ever known.”

She recognized the helplessness on her mother’s face. “It’s okay. Do you have a cell phone, Mom?”