The Dead Will Tell (13 page)

“I’m doing the best I can.”

“Not good enough. As usual.” He jabs his finger at me. He’s so angry, his hand is shaking. “If anything happens to me, Burkholder, it’s on your fucking back.” He jabs again.
“Yours!”

“Norm—”

“Go to hell.”

He turns away, stalks to the door, and pushes it open with both hands. It swings wide and bangs against the wall hard enough to rattle the framed map of Holmes County.

CHAPTER 11

I’m usually pretty good at letting things roll off my back, especially when it comes to my job. A police chief invariably encounters a high level of conflict in the course of his or her duties—and a fair share of criticism. I learned a long time ago that you can’t please everyone. When you’re chief and you have an entire town counting on you to protect and serve, it’s foolish to try.

Still, my conversation with Norm Johnston troubles me as I head toward the farm. It’s not until I reach the county road that I realize it has more to do with his overreaction to the situation than his actual overt hostility. Worse, I can’t shake the feeling that he’s not telling me something. But what?

It’s after ten when I arrive at the farm. I’m preoccupied with the case, the conversations and suppositions of the day. Thoughts of work evaporate when I spot Tomasetti’s Tahoe parked in its usual spot. Anticipation swells in my chest. It seems like days since I last saw him. In reality it’s been less than twenty-four hours, but suddenly I can’t wait to see him. I park beside his vehicle, shut down the engine, and get out. It’s raining again, so I grab my umbrella from the backseat and hightail it to the house.

I open the door and step into the brightly lit kitchen. Tomasetti is sitting at the table, his laptop open in front of him. The room smells of spaghetti and the bowl of potpourri I keep on the console table in the hall.

He looks up from his computer as I shake the rain from my coat. “Hey,” he says, rising.

“Hi.” I hang my coat on the hook, but not before I notice the tumbler of whiskey on the table beside his laptop.

He goes to the cupboard and pulls out the bottle of cabernet we opened the day before. He pours a generous amount into a glass and hands it to me. “You look tired,” he says.

I take the drink. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Tomasetti.”

“In that case, first things first.” Taking the glass from me, he sets it on the counter, then raises his hands to either side of my face and kisses me.

Even after living with him for almost six months, this kind of intimacy still feels foreign and new. It moves me and I lean into him, my legs seeming to melt beneath me.

After a moment, he pulls back and hands me the wine. “Hungry?”

“Starved.”

He turns to the stove and removes the lid from a small saucepan. “Leftovers okay?”

“You’re not trying to make up for leaving without a word this morning and avoiding me all day, are you?” I ask.

He looks at me over his shoulder and grins. “I thought I’d try.”

“It’s working.” I walk to the stove and look into the saucepan to see that he kept spaghetti warm for me. “Smells great.”

“Have a seat.”

I take my glass to the table and sit across from where he was sitting and sip the wine. It’s dark and rich and leaves my tongue with a happy aftertaste.

Tomasetti places a plate of spaghetti, French bread, and a small salad in front of me. “So how’s the case going?” he asks as he takes the chair across from me.

I give him the highlights, ending with a recap of my conversation with Blue Branson.

“You think he’s involved with the murder?” he asks.

“I don’t think so, but he’s hiding something.”

“Protecting someone?”

“Maybe,” I tell him.

He turns his attention to his laptop. I take the opportunity to wolf down the food. “You wouldn’t think less of me if I licked my plate, would you?” I ask.

“No.” He doesn’t look up from the laptop, but his mouth twitches. “But I might get turned on.”

Smiling, I rise and take my plate to the sink. “What did you do today?”

“I went to Joey Ferguson’s house up in Bay Village.”

I nearly drop the dish in the sink, and I turn to face him. “Are you kidding me?”

He types something on the keypad. “Nope.”

“Tomasetti, I don’t have to tell you that was a bad idea, do I?”

He says nothing.

But I’m not ready to let it go. “You can’t have any contact with Ferguson.”

His sigh holds a hint of annoyance that doesn’t come through in his voice. “I’m aware.”

“But you did it anyway?” My temper begins to spiral, an uncomfortable pressure in my chest that climbs up my throat like some clawed animal. I know at least part of what I’m feeling is because I’m sleep deprived and frustrated with my case. But the bigger part of me is angry because this man I love doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that his actions no longer affect just him.

Taking a deep breath, I reel myself in, focus on keeping my voice level. “Tomasetti, I know this thing with Ferguson is difficult. And I know you’ve suffered. I get that. But you have to let this go.”

“In a perfect world—” He cuts off the rest of the statement, but the words hover between us, so tangible I could reach out and snatch them from the air with my fist.

In a perfect world, my wife and children would still be alive.

While I hate it that he was hurt so horribly, that three people he loved were stolen from him by violence, another part of me wants to remind him that he has me now.
My
heart.
My
love. And that if his family were here now, he and I would never have met.

After setting the plate in the sink, I go back to the table and sit across from him. “Tomasetti, if something happens to Ferguson—”

“If anything happens to Ferguson, it’ll be his own doing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I stare at him, refusing to acknowledge the pinpricks of unease on the back of my neck.

“It doesn’t mean anything.” He picks up the tumbler of whiskey sitting beside his laptop and sips. “I’m not going to do anything, so you can stop worrying. All right?”

“You’re going to his house. You’re talking to him. What do you call that?”

He doesn’t look up from his laptop. I see his eyes moving and I realize he’s reading, and that only pisses me off more. “I mean it, Tomasetti. This isn’t just about you anymore. The things you do affect me, too. It’s incredibly selfish of you not to consider that.”

He closes the laptop and looks at me. “Joey Ferguson is a piece of shit. He’s a murderer and a rapist and he’s going to continue fucking up people’s lives until someone stops him.”

“It doesn’t have to be you.”

“Who else is there, Kate? The Cleveland PD? BCI? A jury of his peers? Here’s a newsflash for you: They didn’t get the job done. The law failed me. It failed my family.
My children.
” Up until this point, he hasn’t raised his voice, but that final word is fraught with emotion, and I know that’s the heart of the matter here. That he lost his children. That they’d suffered before they died, and he hadn’t been there to protect them.…

“Your kids loved you,” I tell him. “They wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself in the name of revenge.”

“You don’t know anything about them.”

“For God’s sake, Tomasetti, you know better than anyone that sometimes terrible things happen to good people. The people we love get hurt. Sometimes we lose them.”

“Not like that!” His shout is so abrupt, so loud and filled with emotion that I jump. “They didn’t deserve what he did to them. He didn’t just murder them, Kate. He tortured them. He raped and terrorized them. And then he burned them alive. I couldn’t even bury them, because there was nothing left.”

“I know what they did!” I shout back. “And yes, it was the most horrible thing imaginable. But you survived—”

“Did I, Kate? Did I really?”

“Yes! Damn it, you’re just getting your life back on track. Tomasetti, you’ve got a lot to lose.
We’ve
got a lot to lose if you do something stupid.”

“Should I just let it go, Kate? Let that son of a bitch go on with his perfectly happy life while those caskets full of bone and ash rot in the ground?”

“Don’t go there. Don’t do this to yourself.”

He rises and approaches me. His nostrils are flared, teeth clenched. When he speaks, his voice is deadly and soft. “Do you know what he was doing earlier this evening?”

“It doesn’t matter.
He
doesn’t—”

“It matters, damn it. It matters to
me
.” His hand shakes when he scrubs it over his jaw. “Ferguson threw a party at his mansion on the lake. To celebrate his freedom, evidently. He hired a band and caterers and invited all of his sleazy friends.” I see him pulling himself back, but he’s having a difficult time of it because some vital part of him has already gone over the brink. “There were kids there,” he grinds out. “I saw them. Playing in the yard. Oblivious to the fact that their host is a monster.”

“I know. And I’m sorry, but—”

“All of us are sorry. But you know what, Kate? Sorry doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t help. Being
sorry
doesn’t erase the fact that my kids suffered. I can’t get that out of my head. You know what makes all of this even worse? They died because of me. Because of what I do. Because of who I am. The same laws I devoted my life to enforcing failed me, Kate. Failed them. How the fuck am I supposed to live with that?”

“I don’t know,” I say, stepping toward him. “I don’t have the answers. But you can’t let Ferguson destroy you, too.”

“He already has.”

“No!” I shout. “I don’t accept that.”

For the span of a full minute, we stand silent, listening to the water pouring off the roof and the wind whistling around the eaves outside the window above the sink. I can feel my nerves zinging just beneath my skin. My breaths coming short and fast. My thoughts ricocheting inside my head so that I can’t focus on a single one.

After a moment, he says, “Living in a fantasy world won’t keep your nightmares from coming true.”

“What are you planning to do?”

“I’m not going to do anything.”

I stare at him, my heart pounding. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that.”

A little voice of reason tells me to go upstairs, take a shower, and go to bed.
Let it go.
But I’m angry with him. Worse, I’m scared. I’m terrified he’s going to do something that will jeopardize this precious thing we’ve built.

“I can’t compete with them.” In the periphery of my consciousness, I hear myself say the words, hating them the instant they’re out because they sound jealous and shallow and petty, three things I’ve never been.

The air around me feels fragile, like if I move, something will shatter and I’ll never be able to pick up the pieces. For an instant, I’m frozen in place, undecided, unable to breathe.

But I can’t stay. Not like this. Rising, I snag my coat and keys and then head for the door.

“Kate.”

I open the door. His voice follows me into the night, but he doesn’t come after me.

CHAPTER 12

She dreamed of that night. Even after all this time, and so many years spent trying to forget, it was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. The absolute dark of an Amish farm. A drug-fueled plot that had gone horribly wrong. The spill of innocent blood. It was a night in which a series of bad decisions had led to more bad decisions and culminated in a nightmare. People she thought she’d known turned into strangers she wished she’d never met.

Six people had died because of them. An Amish mother and father. Four innocent children. A teenaged boy had been left alone, to fend for himself. But those weren’t the only tragedies that night. Four other lives had been irrevocably changed. Promising young lives wrecked by unfathomable guilt and secrets they would have to live with forever.

Those secrets had destroyed her life, stolen her innocence, and any semblance of happiness or hope for the future. In the weeks that followed, she’d even found herself questioning whether she wanted to remain on this earth. But somehow she’d gotten through those dark days. She’d graduated from high school. Gone to college. Gotten married and had children. After the divorce and with the kids grown, she’d thrown herself into her art and opened the gallery. Through it all, Jules had never found happiness. She knew something about herself she couldn’t live with. It was like living with a person you hated—someone you could never trust nor leave.

Murderer.

Jules woke with a start, the word a whisper in her ear, her heart pounding, her body slicked with sweat. Sitting up, she threw her legs over the side of the bed and put her face in her hands. “Damn you,” she muttered, not exactly sure whom she was cursing. Herself. Or maybe the others.

She grabbed her robe off the foot of the bed and worked it over her shoulders as she padded to the kitchen. Like so many nights before, she went to the refrigerator for the bottle of chardonnay she kept in the door for such occasions. Mild annoyance rippled through her when the fridge light didn’t come on, but she knew by heart where to find the bottle. The wine didn’t kill the pain; nothing could do that. But it would get her through the night.

In the murky light coming through the window above the sink, she uncorked the wine, snagged a stemmed glass from the cupboard, and poured. She stood at the counter and drank it down without stopping. She poured a second glass and recorked the bottle. A glance at the wall clock told her the electricity had gone out at 3
A.M
. Vaguely, she wondered if any of the others were awake. If they were as frightened and tortured as she was. If they ever considered doing anything about it.

Goddamn them.

Back at the refrigerator, she tugged open the door and replaced the bottle. Quickly, she drained her glass, then turned to take it to the sink. Ice slinked through her body when she noticed that the window was open. She stood there, frozen in place, trying to make sense of it even as she realized the screen had been removed. It was the only window she ever opened. It faced the pretty backyard and sometimes in the morning, she’d stand at the sink drinking coffee and watch the squirrels and the birds and think about all the things that might have been.