The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) (29 page)

He heard the loud, long whistle of the train. Once. Twice. The screech and rumble. He could feel the vibration in his car.

Jeb realized with a start that a real train was approaching. Rachel touched his thigh. “Go with it, Jeb. Keep your eyes closed. Look back into that rearview mirror in your mind.”

He glanced up into rearview mirror of memory, his eyes still shut.

The screeching of the train along the tracks grew deafening. He felt the wind of it. Could smell metal. The wood chips and lumber it was carrying.

“Music,” he said suddenly, eyes still closed. “There was music coming from somewhere, drowned by the sound of the train, but I knew it was there. The girls were laughing and Amy told Merilee to look at something behind us.”

Jeb went still. In the mirror he saw the shadows of the dark grove of alder trees on the far side of the clearing. Suddenly a light came on in the shadows. It was the interior light of a partially hidden vehicle. And in that brief moment Jeb glimpsed shapes inside the vehicle; several people. He saw the orange flare of a cigarette being lit. Then all went dark again.

A dialogue between the girls sifted into his memory.

It’s them.

Do you wanna go?

Is he there?

I think so. They’ve got the good shi
t . . .

Better than with Jeb. Hey, Je
b . . .

Laughter. Drunken laughter.

Words formed in his own mind.
Who are you talking about? Who is behind us?
I should take you home.
Words he never uttered because another part of him didn’t want to know who was behind them. He just wanted the girls gone. He was happy for them to leave.

He felt a tightening in his stomach. Doors opened. The girls got out of his car and turned into silhouettes as they ran toward the hidden vehicle in the trees, where the music was coming from. The train passed. He drove over the tracks, turned left, never looked back.

Jeb’s eyes flared open and he spun round, stared out the back window, the memory shattering into a million mirrorlike shards at his feet. His heart was thumping. He was wet under his arms.

“Rachel,” he said thickly. “I think there was a vehicle parked in the trees over there.”

He got out of the truck and quickly marched over to the clump of trees. Rachel came running behind him.

“There. It was parked right in there, partially hidden, but the interior light came on for a second, and I saw it.” He spun to face her. “Those four guys, they said in court they were sitting here, in the copse, smoking, when they saw me turn north onto the highway. I remembered the girls running to join someone behind us, but there was not one mention of a vehicle. Why not?”

“Are you sure?”

He raked his hand over his hair, staring at the trees, doubt whispering around the edges of his drunken memory.

Wind gusted, rustling dead alder leaves. Several clattered down on them.

“Close your eyes again, Jeb.” She placed her hand on his arm. “See it. Talk me through it.”

He shut his eyes, inhaled deeply.

“Which way was the vehicle facing?”

He thought for a moment of the shape of the vehicle that was so briefly lit up.

“That way.” His eyes flared open. “Rachel, it was facing that way, toward the old road leading up to the trestle bridge, to the mine.” He stilled as something hit him. “A Jeep,” he said. “It was a Jeep.”

“How do you know?”

“The shape of the windows.”

The wind rustled again through the dry trees and brush. The faint scent of smoke filled their nostrils. Rachel glanced up at the sky. Jeb followed her gaze. The orange haze was moving in fast from the west, while a purple bank of clouds was building over the peaks to east. The sky was darkening.

Thunder growled, soft and distant in the mountains.

“Adam used to own a Jeep,” she said softly. “He had a Hawaiian sticker on the back, near the right taillight. White, with a rainbow and a hand making that ‘hang loose’ surfing sign. I saw it up at the pit earlier that night.” Rachel rubbed her hand over her brow. “Oh, God. I remember—Luke was driving the Jeep when I saw it. I never thought of it again, Jeb.
I . . .
I didn’t even think about whose Jeep it was, or where it went. It was irrelevant at the time.” Her eyes glittered with emotion. “I should have remembered.”

“That’s why this technique works. It can help you see pieces you never thought fit at the time. This is not your fault. I didn’t recall a Jeep either, until now, until the smell of smoke, the sound of the train, being here with you, taking my mind back.”

She looked away, struggling.

He took her arm. “Come. Let’s drive up that logging track to the trailhead where the trestle bridge crosses over to the mine. That’s the way the Jeep was pointing. Maybe it did go up there that night.”

They arrived at the trailhead where the track forked. The right-hand fork led to a hiking trail along the flank of Mount Rogue and up to the glacier that fed Rogue Falls. The left fork led to the trestle bridge and mine. But it was barricaded by a row of giant boulders. This was as far as they could take a vehicle. A large yellow sign warned that the road had been decommissioned and was dangerous.
B
RIDGE UNSTABLE
. N
O
ACCESS
.

Rachel and Jeb left the truck and continued on foot along what was now a small grassy track. A grouse
whoop whoop whooped
in the woods, the soft sound like a muted owl. A squirrel chucked a shrill warning. The air whispered with the scent of smoke and dryness. As they neared the bridge, they could hear the rushing waters of Rogue Falls, and the air grew damp and cool.

They came to the edge of the gorge where the old trestle bridge spanned the plunging chasm and raging waterfall. Mist rose in clouds. Fine droplets began to cling to their hair. Nine years ago they would have been able to drive over this bridge to the old mine on the other side. Now crosspieces of the bridge were missing, gaping maws opening to the gorge below.

Had the Jeep come this far and crossed over to the entrance of the old copper mine? They could see the mine entrance on the other side, a black hole in the red rock of the mountain.

Rachel rubbed her arms. “Amy remembered the sound of rushing water.”

“And dirt, cold, dark, damp. Piper mentioned earth, heavy above their heads.”

She shivered. Jeb put his arm around her, drawing her close.

“Do you think it’s possible that Merilee is down there,” she said, “at the bottom of a shaft somewhere? Because if she is, there could be evidence with her. Her body could have been fairly protected down there. She could still tell what happened.”

He moistened his lips, staring at the black maw in the red mountain. He could almost sense a presence, something reaching, calling from that hole, from the dark bowels of the mountain. “Every contact leaves a trace,” he whispered. “Like in tracking. Wherever a person steps, whatever he touches, it will serve as silent witness against him.”

“We could walk across, using the crosspieces,” Rachel said. “The side railings still look solid.”

“Risky,” he said. “No idea how rotten that wood might be. The best way would be to access the mine entrance by coming up from the north side of that gorge. We’d need equipment to get down the shafts.”

“Equipment and expertise that Rescue One has,” Rachel said. “But I don’t see them helping us with this, Jeb. How are we going to do it?”

He looked up at the darkening sky. The wind was blowing harder. Thunder grumbled into the distance again, louder this time, rolling into the peaks. “I don’t know. Yet. We need to go fetch Quinn. This weather is not looking good.”

Jeb could tell Rachel felt it too, a sense of time closing in. Pressure building. The storm was almost on them.

They hiked quickly back to the truck. Lightning flickered against the puce sky to the east. Thunder clapped. Wind gusted and raindrops began to spit from the sky.

As they drove back down the mountain, Rachel leaned forward, turned the radio on to the local news channel.

They were talking about the Wolf River wildfire. It was burning out of control again, and heading back toward Snowy Creek, fueled by fresh southeasterly winds. Another small fire had also been ignited by a lightning strike below the peak of Mount Barren, and it was burning on the south flank. More strikes were expected to spark many more spot fires as the storm cells moved in.

“There’s no time to drop you at home first,” Rachel said. “We should go straight to pick up Quinn.”

He nodded. It would mean people might see them all in the truck together. But he didn’t like the sound of fire on the south side of Barren. Things could get ugly fast.

When they reached the highway, Jeb increased the gas. He was worried about getting his child now. Keeping them all together.

CHAPTER 23

Rain bombs down, fat drops hitting dry ground and rolling like mercurial marbles in the dust. I run with my jacket over my head toward the staging area for Quinn’s bike camp. Jeb has parked a small distance away in an effort to remain incognito in my vehicle. Wind gusts in strange, unpredictable eddies fueled by mountain downdrafts and valley crosswinds.

The thought that Merilee could be down there in that mine dogs me. To think of her family tearing themselves apart, suffering so painfully, aching for closure, her mother dying with grief while her daughter’s broken body lies down a shaft so close to home. We don’t know for certain she’s down there. Yet everything fits. I could almost feel in my bones as we stared across that old bridge that her ghost was in that mountain.

As I head into the trees and near the cross-country skiers’ hut, I realize there is no longer a whisper of doubt in me that Jeb is innocent. And I’m boiling inside with rage toward the people who have done this to him. Those who have lied, kept this heinous secret, turned a blind eye all these years, stealing his life while they all built their own. Brutal, selfish cowards who set in motion a series of interlocking events that possibly led to even the death of my sister and brother-in-law. To Quinn coming into my home.

I wonder again, when does something really begin, and end? Can you pinpoint the moment you start on a collision course with others destined to cross your path?

I recognize the group of women huddled in rain jackets beneath the boughs of a huge hemlock. There is a sense of urgency in them, too, as they wait for their children. The storm and smoke are growing thick around us. Those kids should have come down already.

They all glance up sharply as I approach—Lily, Beppie, Stacey, Vickie. The emotion in their faces is raw and hostile. I hesitate. Something has changed. But my jaw steels with fight, and aggression pumps through my blood as I go up to them.

Beppie’s complexion is white and she glowers at me. Stacey’s eyes are narrow and resentful. Lily’s face is pugnacious, and Vickie, Levi’s personal assistant, stiffens visibly as I reach them.

“How can you do this, Rachel?” Lily demands immediately. “How dare you tear the town apart like this and drag that poor Zukanov family through hell again. You should never have brought his kid back here. Spawn of the devil, that’s what she is!”

I freeze dead in my tracks. “
What
did you say?”

“We know,” Stacey replies. “From Trey. We know that Quinn is his offspring.”

“
Offspring?
”
I almost choke. My hands fist at my sides. I now know what it must be like to mentally crack, to kill someone. To feel pure, black hatred. To feel the rush of violence in one’s veins.

“We all know,” Beppie says darkly, strangely.

“If you hadn’t brought his kid back here,” says Lily, “he would have stayed away. Now look what you’ve done.”

Thunder cracks above us. They flinch. I feel nothing. Rain bombs harder.

“Trey?
He
told you?”

Stacey smirks.

“I don’t believe you people.” I’m shaking with the cocktail inside me now. “You’re blaming an innocent child for tearing lives apart? You’re blaming
me
?”

They stare coldly at me.

“I dare you all to place the blame where it really lies. Do you honestly think what your men said all those years ago is the truth? What if”—I go closer to them, right up to them, my gaze lasering each one of them in turn—“the crime never happened up north? What if someone borrowed a Jeep to go to the party at the gravel pit that night?” My gaze settles on Lily. “And what if that Jeep had a Hawaiian sticker on the bumper and was parked in a copse of alders near the Green River rail crossing when Jeb stopped at the tracks to wait for a train? What if there was old Jamaican ska music blaring from that Jeep, the
Best of Damani Jakeel
, perhaps?”

Lily swallows hard. Her hair is plastering to her cheeks with rain.

“What if the two girls got out of Jeb’s car at the tracks and ran back to that Jeep, and the Jeep was then driven up to the old copper mine?”

Lily started to shiver.

“Maybe the girls were brutally assaulted in the mine, and one died. Maybe it was even an accident, but everyone panicked. Maybe they threw her body down a shaft. Perhaps they didn’t know what to do with Amy, who was still alive, but they couldn’t just kill her there in cold blood. Possibly they drove her north twenty or so miles, in that Jeep, trying to figure out what in hell to do with her. Then they dumped her in that trapper’s shed. Perhaps one of the guys tried to strangle her with a rope. Whatever happened, a pact was made. A lie was told. They all said the girls never got out of Jeb’s car and that they’d seen him driving north with them. And when Amy was eventually found, still alive, the search for Merilee happened twenty miles north of where she really lay. At the bottom of a mine shaft. That hoodie with the drug packet wasn’t Jeb’s, so whose was it?”

Thunder booms right above our heads and sheet lightning pulses in the darkening clouds. The sky grows black.

“Where the fuck are you going with this, Rachel?” Stacey snaps suddenly.

“You’re frightening me.” Lily is sheet white. “You’re just trying to wreck our lives.”

Beppie reaches out to quiet Lily. But she’s listening intently to me, a strange look entering her eyes.

“No,” I say. “It’s not me or Jeb or my niece wrecking lives. Someone else already did that nine years ago. You’re just feeling the ripples of that now, feeling the impact of those lies.” My stomach is churning up into my chest. I know on some level I’ve lost it. I’m heading down a road from which there can be no return. But they already know Quinn is Jeb’s child. Thanks to Trey. Goddamn Trey. The whole town must know now. It’s over. Urgency pulses through me. I peer through the rain into the dark trees, desperate to see Quinn’s shape coming down on her bike through the trails, Brandy in tow.

“You’ve gone mad,” Vickie says. “Stark raving mad.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I have,” I say, staring into the trees, my clothes starting to stick to my body, my hair plastering to my cheeks. “Mad as hell that people could do this, turn a blind eye, send an innocent man to prison.”

“None of those guys could do something like that,” Vickie says. “I know Levi, I know he—”

I spin back to face her. “Right. It’s easier to believe that the guy from the wrong side of the river did it. Much easier than facing the truth. Because one of you must know something. At least one of you must have come across a black ski mask in a laundry basket, black clothes that smelled of smoke, or maybe even had some blood on them. Someone’s husband, or lover, or boss, took a blow to the face in the early hours of Thursday morning, and he has bruises and cuts on a knuckle from beating up Jeb. Someone here drives a silver SUV or dark truck.”

I turn on Beppie. “Perhaps someone here is also missing the handgun that shot Amy six months ago. Perhaps someone’s husband was in the city on the morning my sister’s house burned down. Perhaps someone’s husband has a dragon tattoo emblazoned across his ass! Because that’s one thing Amy did remember before she was shot dead six months ago—an undulating dragon moving between her friends legs as she was raped.”

Lily gasps. Beppie staggers backward. Vickie and Stacey stare, eyes huge.

“But hey, no worries. Because when we get ropes down into that mine, we’ll all know for sure.”

Lily makes a furious lunge at me. “I wish you’d die! Just go away, leave us all alone! I won’t let you do this to Adam, I won’t!” Beppie grabs Lily’s arm, holds her back.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rachel,” Beppie says with a strange calm. “You need help. This is messing you up. And these accusations will hurt our children.”

“Like those lies in court ended up hurting Quinn? You all have a choice to make. And yes, think of your children. Do the right thing. They’re the ones who will judge you in the end.”

Suddenly the kids are coming, bikes bombing out of the trail. They’re spattered with mud and soaked with rain. Panic races across the women’s faces as they see the children. They seem trapped between me and their kids.

I catch sight of Quinn and I run to her, grabbing her handlebars before she’s even properly stopped. I force a smile. “Hey, how was it?”

Quinn dismounts, takes off her helmet. She looks at me funny.

“Come, let’s get out of the rain.” I start pushing her bike and we walk smartly toward the truck. My heart is slamming. My throat feels as though it’s stuck together from dryness. Quinn has to run to keep up with me.

“Bitch!” I hear someone yell behind me. “Go to hell, Rachel!”

In my peripheral vision I see Brandy heading over to the group of women with Beppie’s girls in tow. They all huddle together, talking urgently. Brandy looks our way. She must be wondering why I didn’t wait to talk to her, to tell her I was taking Quinn. Right now I don’t care. I just want to get Quinn away from those madwomen.

“Why did they yell like that?” Quinn asks, aghast as she trots beside me. “Why did they call you that word?”

I fake another smile. “You mean that word you called me once?”

“I didn’t mean it,” Quinn said.

“I’m sure they didn’t either. Come, let’s move faster.” The rain is pelting sideways now. I’m drenched to the bone.

As we near the truck, Quinn spots Jeb in the driver’s seat, hesitates. “
He’s
here? You brought him?”

“He wanted to come see where you ride.”

“He did?”

“Yes.”

She does a happy skip. And by God I want it to all come out right. I want her to be happy. I want us all to be free just to live in peace.

“Can he come for dinner?”

We reach the truck. Jeb gets out, takes the bike from me, lifts it into the back.

“What happened?” he says. Worry darkens his eyes. “It looked like you were getting into it with those women.”

“They called Rachel
a . . .
really bad word.”

“Hey, you.” He ruffles Quinn’s wet curls, opens the back door. “Hop in.”

She clambers up onto the backseat. Jeb closes the door. “What happened back there?” he asks me again.

I reach for the passenger door. “Later. Just drive. I don’t want Quinn to hear about it.”

He pulls out into the road but keeps glancing at me. I push wet hair back from my face. My hands are trembling like leaves. I finally understand what it means to lose one’s temper and fly into a blind rage, to act without logic. I can fully comprehend Jeb attacking his father all those years ago.

Thunder smacks again, almost above us. A jagged yellow streak stabs down from the sky. The wipers clack but have trouble keeping up with the rain.

“Jeb,” Quinn says from the backseat.

He tenses. Shoots me another hot glance.

I look away.

“Are you coming for dinner?”

“Yes,” I say. “He is.”

He drives in silence, hot energy coming off him in waves. He glances every now and then at my hands, which I press down hard on my wet jeans in an effort to hide the shaking.

As I boil spaghetti once again, for there has been no thought of grocery shopping, Quinn gets plates. Jeb comes up behind me, and under the rumble of the stove fan, which is sucking up steam from the roiling pot, he says, close to my ear, “What did you say to those women? What happened back at the bike camp?”

“They know,” I say quietly as I stir the pasta. “Everyone in town knows you’re her father. Lily called her ‘spawn of the devil’ to my face.”

He goes dead still. I glance up at him, nervous.

“Trey. He did this?”

I say nothing. I’m afraid of the fury crackling in his eyes.

“Jesus. I told you, that guy—”

“Enough. She’ll hear you.”

“You could have told me up front that he knew about her,” he growls near my ear.

“You didn’t ask, did you? It was obvious he’d know. I was going to marry him, and you were still in prison, supposedly guilty, supposedly unaware of your child’s sex let alone where she went.” I angrily stir the pasta, steam heating my face.

“Besides,”
I add. “
You
could have told me you suspected Amy was murdered, that you thought my sister’s fire was deliberately set. You could have
told
me you thought there was an active killer lurking out here.”

“What are you talking about?” Quinn says behind us. We both jump.

Quinn is staring up at us, a look of worry entering her face.

“It’s nothing, Quinnie,” I say as brightly as I can, handing Jeb the pasta spoon and leading her to the table. “We were just arguing about how much hot sauce to put into the pasta.”

“I hate hot sauce.”

“That’s what I told him.”

“You’re not telling me the truth. You were fighting.”

“Here, sit.” I pull out a chair. “Jeb will bring the pasta.”

The radio is on. There is urgent chatter about the fires. Mount Barren is burning aggressively along the south flank now. There is a second storm cell moving in. It sounds as though things could get a lot worse. I make note to turn on my scanner and tune into the emergency channels as soon as we’re done eating. There’s always a chance the winds will turn away again, and we’re in a good place right here on the glacial lake. I hope it will all be okay. Rain hammers down on the metal roof. Wind rattles the window panes, bombing debris down onto the house.