Graveyard Games (4 page)

“
Hey.” Buck straightened
up, his jaw tight, but his eyes softened when he looked at her.
“Listen, I know it’s hard to accept…”

Dusty wanted to scream at
him. Instead, she took a deep breath and asked, as calmly as she
could manage, “Sheriff, what
evidence
do you have about the
animal that allegedly killed my brother?”

He sighed, shaking his head. “You know
better than anyone that this stuff takes time. This isn’t Chicago,
Dusty. You grew up here, you know that. I’ve done everything I can
do. We’ve got some evidence over at the lab in West Lake that
should help us identify the animal, and I’ve called in more help
from the West Lake force for the night watch out at the
cemetery.”

“
If you’ve got a watch out
there, how did my brother manage to get into the cemetery without
you noticing?” Dusty’s voice shook with anger. She couldn’t help
it.

“
We…” Buck cleared his
throat. “We actually just started it.”

“
Joe’s death wasn’t
enough?” Dusty snapped. "You had to wait for Nick to die before you
decided a few guys with guns paying attention might be a good
idea?”

“
Well, Joe wasn’t
actually
in
the
cemetery…”

“
Never mind.” Dusty held
her hand up, shaking her head in disgust. “I want to come see what
you have so far. I want to see the incident reports.”

He stood still for a moment, lips pursed,
looking as if he were thinking of a response. “I can’t let you do
that.”

“
And why not?”

He cleared his throat. “You don’t have
jurisdiction.”

“
Oh come on…”

He drew himself up to his full, considerable
height. “I don’t want a suspended officer poking around in my
department.”

Dusty’s heart dropped and she glanced toward
the family room, afraid someone had overheard. She hadn’t told
Julia or her father yet.

Buck went on, “Your captain called me
yesterday. Nice fella, name of Jack Fishburne. He called just to
give me a head’s up.”

Damn Jack. Of course he’d called. He’d
probably been on the phone the minute she hung up with him after
telling him she was flying out to Detroit for her brother’s
funeral. They had to have a physical contact number—not a cell—at
the very least, Jack said, in case they had any questions for her
during the investigation. Her face burned, from both the memory of
the conversation—Jack insisting she come back to Chicago and
finally relenting to Dusty’s refusal—and from the shame of Buck
Thompson knowing she’d been suspended in the first place.

“
There’s really nothing
more to do, anyway.” Buck put his hand on her shoulder and she
wanted to shake it off but didn’t. “Except watch and
wait.”

“
Yeah, you did such a
bang-up job of the watching the first time…” she mumbled, her jaw
clenching and unclenching.

“
Dusty…”

“
Okay, okay.” She sighed,
shaking her head and looking at him. His eyes were still kind,
concerned, and now she wanted to hug him and fought that urge, too.
“I’m sorry. Forget it.”

“
I’m the one who’s sorry.”
He squeezed her shoulder and started toward the family room. He
stopped in the doorway, looking over his shoulder to ask, “Oh, and
Dusty…you said you talked to Nick that night?”

She nodded. “About seven o’clock. I’m sure
it’s on my cell records.”

“
I just wondered…” He
paused, his eyes assessing. “Are you sure he didn’t say where he
was going?”

Dusty looked at him, silent. He had asked
her this before on the phone—she had answered his questions
standing in the O’Hare terminal, still in her stocking feet,
waiting for her plane to board—and she had told him no. The lie had
come unbidden—at the time, she had no idea why she’d said such a
thing.

Now she thought she knew why. She just
didn’t trust him. And now, with him out of uniform, with his vague
evasiveness, she trusted him even less. Besides, they had brought
Shane in for questioning, she knew, and they obviously hadn’t found
anything out. So what was the sense in telling him?

"I'm sure," Dusty said.

"Your parents said Nick didn’t tell them
where he was going…"

She shrugged. “It’s not a big town, Sheriff.
I don’t think they were worried.”

"You’re sure he didn’t mention anything?"
Buck asked with a frown.

"No," Dusty told him, her eyes on the
linoleum. "No, he didn't."

"I see." Buck stared at her and she felt
uncomfortable, as if he could see through her lie.

"Well, Sheriff Thompson! How good of you to
come!" Julia sailed into the kitchen with an empty tray.

"Nice to see you, Julia." Buck nodded toward
her. "I'm very sorry about your boy."

"Yes, thank you." Julia paused a moment, her
eyes downcast. "Well, everyone’s in the family room, so you can go
right on in, Sheriff."

"Thanks." He glanced once at Dusty before
heading in the direction of the voices.

"Nice man," Julia commented. "You should go
in and say hello to everyone."

Dusty just watched her stepmother fill the
tray up with small, stuffed something-or-others.

"Shane and Suzanne are in there. I’m sure
they could use someone more their age to talk to.” Julia’s voice
dropped a little then. “I really don't like that boy. I don't
suppose we'll be seeing or hearing much of him now, do you?"

Get rid of a son, get rid of his friends—is
that the way it works?

“
Why don't you come pass
these out? I could use the help." Julia turned to face her and
frowned. "You don't look well. Are you all right?"

Yeah, I’m great. We buried my brother about
two hours ago, you’re having a party and passing out hors d’oevres
and you want me to play hostess with you. I’m just peachy.

"I'm okay." Dusty swallowed past something
stuck in her throat. "I'll be there in a minute. This dress is a
little uncomfortable. I'm going to change first."

"Okay." Julia picked the tray up. "Don't be
too long."

"I won't."

Dusty climbed the stairs, her whole body
aching. She turned right when she came to the top, as she always
did, in the direction of her room—and Nick's. She realized she
would have to pass it, and was suddenly, inexplicably afraid. She
walked slowly, her breathing shallow, looking neither left nor
right, focusing only on the door to her room at the end of the
hall.

His door was open. Of course. He kept his
door open all the time, and he would have left it open when he went
out that night. She sped up when she reached his door, passing
quickly, almost as if she thought she would be burned by the light
spilling from his room into the hallway.

She sighed when she reached her old
childhood room, closing the door behind her. It was just as she had
left it before the funeral. Her bed was unmade, clothes tried on
and discarded still scattered around the room. She peeled off the
black dress and threw it on the floor.

Hunting through her suitcase, she pulled out
a University of Michigan sweatshirt, blue with gold letters. She
dug through, looking for her sweat pants, but realized they were in
her hamper in Chicago with the rest of the week's dirty clothes.
She opened the closet and the drawers, but the clothes she’d left
here were from high school—a size or two too small.

She sighed, sitting on the bed and pulling
the sweatshirt over her head. She could borrow something from Julia
maybe. But her stepmother was tiny, lacking Dusty’s curves, and
anything she had probably wouldn’t fit either. Besides, Julia had
been so busy making funeral arrangements for Nick, accepting
condolences, and making sure Dusty wore and said the right things,
who knew if the laundry had been done?

What’s the big deal? Just go get a pair of
his sweats.

She didn’t want to go back down the hall to
his room, but if she didn’t, Julia would come looking for her, and
that would be worse. The only thing she could think of to do was to
borrow a pair of Nick's sweats. They would be big, but that was
okay. She used to borrow his clothes all the time. The thought of
wearing something of his was both comforting and saddening.

She got up and opened her
door, peeking out. What are you afraid of? she chided herself.
Ghosts? But she
was
afraid. She was afraid he
was
in there, that she would see him there, and he
would tell her that it was her fault for letting him go that night,
her fault for not being more insistent that he stay and talk, her
fault for letting Shane take him away.

"Don't be stupid," she whispered, and the
sound of her own voice was comforting. "Just run in there and get a
pair of sweats."

She edged her way down the hall and stopped
just short of the slant of light spilling onto the floor from his
open door. Dusty took a deep breath and stepped into the warmth of
the sunlight, and then into his room.

She wasn’t expecting the pain. That came as
a shock. He really was there—oh, god, he was everywhere. The entire
space was filled with him. There wasn’t a thing in the room that
wasn’t Nick. And she couldn’t believe how much that hurt.

"Oh, god," she said, looking at his dresser,
where a hair dryer and Bedhead gel still sat on the top. His bed
was rumpled, the pillow retaining the slight indentation from his
head.

Her breath caught and held, and she closed
her eyes, fighting the tears. If they started, they’d never stop.
The pain would come with sharp, razor-like teeth and eat her alive.
Once she thought she had it under control, she opened her eyes
again, and headed for his dresser. He’d unpacked his clothes into
his drawers—how long had he been living here, she wondered, before
he broke down and told her? She found a pair of yellow sweats in
the second drawer.

Walking toward his bed, she saw a picture of
Nick and Shane on the night table, taken on a hay ride out at the
cider mill back when they were in high school. Dusty had taken it
herself, and Nick had liked it so much he’d asked her to blow it up
to an eight-by-ten, so she had. At the time, Dusty had thought it
was the image of he and Suzanne that he wanted to keep—her arm was
around his waist on his other side—but it was Shane who filled the
frame with her brother, his arm draped around Nick’s shoulder, a
smug smile spread across his face. Suzanne had been folded under,
hidden from view.

Nick smiled at her out of the gold frame,
and the bitterness filled her throat as she picked up the picture,
hugging it to her chest for a moment, cuddling it, her insides
burning, as if she had swallowed dry ice.

In her grief, she didn’t hear the footsteps
behind her, and when the hand fell on her shoulder, she screamed,
dropping the picture onto the bed and whirling around.

"What are you doing in
here?" Julia. Jesus, god, it was just Julia, coming up to check on
her as Dusty had known she would. "And
what
are you wearing?"

Dusty's heart rate was going back to normal,
and she managed to answer her. "I... I came in here for a pair of
sweats. I forgot to pack mine."

"You were going to wear sweats?" Julia's
voice was full of disapproval.

"Well, they're all of Nick's that I could
wear without them falling off. Suzanne's wearing sweats," she
added, hating herself for the explanation and the excuses, but
unable to stop them with Julia's eyes on her. She felt reduced to
eight-years-old, vulnerable and exposed standing there in just her
sweatshirt and a pair of black panties. Julia hadn’t seen her in
her underwear since she was twelve.

"Well, you can't wear those. I'll have to
lend you something."

Dusty felt a lump rise to her throat for no
apparent reason, and she fought it, holding back tears.

"Shane asked after you, and then he left,
and good riddance to bad rubbish is what I say. Do you realize
you've been up here for twenty minutes? I asked you not to be too
long." Talking all the while, Julia walked toward the door, and
like the eight-year-old she felt reduced to, Dusty followed,
obedient.

"Come on, you can change in my room," Julia
said as they entered the hallway. "You'd better put those on for
the moment, until we get downstairs to the bedroom." Dusty watched
as Julia shut Nick's door behind them. It was the first time she
had seen that door shut in years.

"Well?" she asked when Dusty didn’t move.
Dusty just looked at her.

Her stepmother’s eyebrows drew together and
her lips pursed. "Dusty, come on, I'm not in the mood for this
ridiculous behavior. Don't you think I've had enough to deal with
in the past few days? Now, don't be difficult."

"Difficult?” Dusty’s jaw tightened. “What am
I, six?”

Julia crossed her arms over her chest.
“You’re acting like it.”

“
I'm not going to let you
make me feel guilty," Dusty snapped. "I've had just as much to deal
with as you have."

"Dustine Victoria Chandler, don’t you go
ruining this day," Julia said in a harsh whisper. “Now come get
changed.”

Dusty cringed at the sound of her full name.
"I don’t know if this day could get any more ruined than it already
is.”

“
You can’t wear that.”
Julia’s voice was both horror-filled and pleading. “Now come
on…”

“
Why? Because these
aren't
proper?"
She held up Nick's sweats. "Don’t you get it? Those people
down there aren't going to care if I wear the right thing or say
the right thing." Dusty tried to keep her lower lip from trembling
and failed. “He was my brother, and I loved him—even if you
didn’t.”