The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) (3 page)

She’d looked down at him that September morning, squeezed his hand in reassurance, and smiled, but her eyes were a liquid black over the sharp flare of her cheekbones, and they told another story. Jeb hadn’t understood the look in his mother’s eyes that day. Now he recognized it for what it was. Regret. She’d brought him to this public school to hide him, to protect him from something that had grown too dark and dangerous in their own home. She had wanted to keep him away from his father as much as possible that coming winter. It had been a terrible fishing season. Not many salmon had come up the coast. Which meant the long winter would be worse than usual.

And it had been. Far worse than the young Jeb could have dreamed.

Before the snows had melted that year, it was a nine-year-old Jeb who’d had to protect his mother.

A gust of wind swirled the memories away in a clatter of yellow leaves. Jeb sank down onto a wooden bench in front of the trees. A chopper thudded in the distance up high above Crystal Peak. Jeb checked his watch. Almost lunch break, but right now the school grounds were empty, the morning sun spooling gold beams through mist rising from the marsh at the north end of the fields.

He closed his eyes a moment, letting it wrap around him; the croak of a raven in a dead snag, the chatter of black-headed juncos pecking among dead leaves at his boots, the shriek of a lone osprey. The scents of fall. All things he’d missed for nine long years.

A bell buzzer sounded and a woman’s voice came over a loudspeaker. His eyes snapped open. Up on the grassy rise, kids came out the doors like tumbling jelly beans in colorful jackets, scattering down the path, rolling out into the fields with the leaves. Their voices carried on the cool, dry air. His pulse quickened. He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, eyes narrowing as he sifted through the kids’ shapes. Would she come down to these fields, like he used to?

Would he recognize her?

For years he’d waited for this moment, just to see her. In living, breathing color. To maybe hear her voice, her laugh. Look into her eyes.

Just watch. Do not go near or engage her in any way. Not yet. Not until you are free. She must not know who you ar
e . . .
this is your promise to Sophia and Peter. To yourself. To your chil
d . . .

He caught sight of a slight, dark-haired girl coming determinedly down the grass knoll. She wore a baggy sweater of brightly knitted rainbows, and her hair was a mass of wild curls, the color of a raven’s feathers gleaming in the sunlight. Curls as wild and untamable as the surrounding BC wilderness. Like his father’s hair. She walked with shoulders hunched slightly forward, forging ahead as if blocking out the world around her. She carried a book and a brown lunch bag.

Jeb quickly fumbled in his pocket and removed a wallet-sized photo album. He flipped it open to the most recent picture that Sophia had brought him in prison. But he didn’t look at the photo. He was transfixed by the black-haired girl as she climbed up a stand of bleachers and sat on the middle bench. She put the brown bag beside her, removed and unwrapped a sandwich, took a bite.

Her knees were knobby under her jeans, legs thin, almost too long for her body. A little colt. She chewed as she watched the Steller’s jays beginning to cluster around her, squawking and bombing in attempts to attract food. She broke off a piece of bread, tossed it out onto the grass. The electric-blue birds dived and cackled as they squabbled for a share. But his eyes were riveted only on the child.

In his bones, in every molecule of his body, he believed it was her.

Quinn. His daughter.

His blood in her veins.

Her DNA used to convict hi
m . . .

A dull roar began in Jeb’s brain—the sound of past and present and future colliding. He closed his fist tightly around the photo album, as if holding control over his own fierce urge to go to her, speak to her.

There will come a time, a pastor once told him in prison, when you believe everything is finished. But that will only be the beginning.

That little girl was the beginning.

She was the reason for everything he was going to do now.

CHAPTER 3

As Jeb watched the child on the bleachers, an image of Quinn’s birth mother curled like smoke through his mind, and he was thrust instantly back into the courtroom—Amy in the witness stand, her head bent forward, a fall of red-gold hair hiding her profile. She’d looked so thin, so pale, in spite of the fact she’d been about to give birth. Jeb felt a visceral stab at the memory. He’d learned from his lawyers that their infant would likely be surrendered in a private adoption, that his paternal rights in the decision would be waived if he was found guilty. While DNA from the fetus proved it was his, he hadn’t even been told the sex of the baby as he’d sat there in the prisoner’s box.

The scents of the courtroom filled his nostrils. He could feel the thickness of the tension in the room as the lead prosecutor had opened her case against him.

“. . .
On the night Amy Findlay and Merilee Zukanov disappeared, Jebbediah Cullen, the accused, was sexually frustrated and enraged,” she told the jury. “Why was he so fired up? Because the evening before the party at the gravel pit, his then girlfriend, Rachel Salonen, had terminated their relationship during a heated argument over sex.” The prosecutor paused, meeting the eyes of each and every juror. “Sex,” she repeated, letting the word hang in silence for several beats. “The only reason Jebbediah Cullen even went to the gravel pit that night, by his own admission, was to confront Rachel Salonen. Witnesses will testify he arrived angry, and when he saw Rachel Salonen kissing Trey Somerland, his rage intensified.”

She spun round and pointed at him in the prisoner’s box. The jury’s eyes snapped in his direction.

“That man,” she said, “the accused, has had a history of violent behavior since he was a child. Rachel Salonen will testify to this. We will also bring forward witnesses who saw Jebbediah Cullen verbally threatening both Salonen and Somerland at the gravel pit that night. We will present irrefutable evidence that will place both Amy Findlay and Merilee Zukanov in Jebbediah Cullen’s vehicle as he drove away from the gravel pit around ten p.m. We have witnesses who saw Findlay and Zukanov in Cullen’s vehicle as he crossed the Green River rail bridge and turned north onto Highway 99.” She paused. Her voice lowered.

“And seven days later Amy Findlay was found twenty miles north of that gravel pit, wandering half-naked, beaten, and dazed along the railway tracks with no memory of what happened. There were rope marks around her neck that match the climbing ropes found in Jebbediah Cullen’s car. Medical testimony will show that Amy Findlay had been brutally sexually assaulted, that she was pregnant with Cullen’s child. An empty blister pack of flunitrazepam—also known as Rohypnol, or the date rape drug—was found in Cullen’s vehicle, which medical experts will show can explain Findlay’s loss of memory. That drug pack was in the pocket of a hoodie covered in Merilee Zukanov’s blood. Merilee Zukanov who is still, to this day, missing. Zukanov’s hair and one of the earrings she was wearing the night she disappeared were also found in Cullen’s vehicle. As was a roll of duct tape. That man”—she pointed at Jeb again—“came prepared. He
planned
an assault. He’s a man with a history of extreme violence from a very young age, a man who was physically frustrated by the sexual rejection of his girlfriend. A man, we will show, who possesses the distinct psychological markers of a sociopath.”

Jeb inhaled deeply as he tried to stop the vivid images assailing him from the past, but they came anyway.

“. . .
Amy Findlay, is the man who sexually assaulted you in this room?”

“Objection!” his defense counsel yelled, lurching to his feet. “The witness has already stated she has zero recollection of the assault—”

“Withdrawn. I’ll rephrase. Ms. Findlay, is the father of the baby you are carrying in this room, a baby that medical evidence has shown was conceived at the time of your disappearance?”

The room fell silent. The atmosphere grew heavy. Jeb could smell sweat. He could feel his mother’s eyes on him. Rachel’s eyes on him. The journalists’ eyes on him.

Amy’s head remained bowed. She nodded.

“Could the witness please answer out loud into the microphone?”

Slowly, Amy lifted her face. Her red-rimmed, watery-blue eyes met his. Jeb’s chest clutched.
Tell them, Amy. Goddammit, please, tell the
m . . .
please remember!

She stared at him for several long beats. Sweat slicked down his spine.

“Yes.” Her voice was thin. “That’s him.”

Noise rustled through the courtroom. A reporter left his seat, scurrying out the back door. Jeb heard soft sobbing. He didn’t know it if was his mother. Or Rachel. He couldn’t look.

“Please note, the witness has identified the accused, Jebbediah Cullen.”

Even now, a sick, cold oiliness swam through his stomach, and as if it were yesterday, he felt the physical punch of the word.
Guilty.

It beat against his brain.

Guilty.

On the count of sexual assault causing bodily har
m . . .

Guilty.

On the count of forcible confinemen
t . . .

Guilty.

Sweat dampened his torso and a cold, quiet determination calcified around his heart.

Two women had lost their lives. While Amy might have physically survived the assault, she’d buckled mentally. For nine long years she’d struggled in her own kind of prison. Then she’d finally cracked. She’d committed suicide in Snowy Creek the night before Peter and Sophia died in the house fire in Vancouver. Jeb didn’t like the coincidence, the timing. He had his own suspicions about Amy’s death, and about the house fire. He was here to find the answers.

He was here for retribution. To reclaim what was his. And he was going to start by probing into the lives of the four guys who had lied about him in court: Levi Banrock, Clint Rudiger, Harvey Zink, and Luke LeFleur.

Another courtroom memory snaked into his mind. Levi Banrock in the witness stand, the prosecutor questioning him.

“And who did you see inside the car with Jebbediah Cullen?”

Levi refused to look at Jeb in the prisoner’s box. “I saw Merilee Zukanov and Amy Findlay in his car.”

“You’re certain it was them?”

Levi cleared his throat, nodded his head. “Yes. They drove right past us where we were sitting under some trees. Amy wound down the window, called out to us, waved.”

Jeb’s entire body went tight. It was a lie. Wasn’t it?

He couldn’t recall seeing Luke or anyone in the trees that night. He didn’t remember Amy waving or calling out. But maybe she had. He’d had too much to drink. His memory of precise details was fuzzy, riddled with gaps. He’d been so steamed about Rachel he hadn’t been focused.

“What did you see next?” the lawyer said.

Again, Levi cleared his throat. “I saw the car waiting at the tracks for a train to cross. Once the train passed, Jeb drove across the rail bridge and turned north onto the highway.”

“With Merilee Zukanov and Amy Findlay still in his car?”

“Yes.”

Nausea rushed into Jeb’s throat. His eyes burned. His hands shook. It was a lie. A goddamn lie. He had
not
turned north. The girls had gotten out of his car at the rail crossing. He’d turned south. Gone home. Alone. Of that he was absolutely certain.

The lawyer called Clint Rudiger to the stand next. And one after the other, the four guys told the same story. They told the court Jeb had turned north onto the highway with those two girls in his car. And Jeb had been sunk.

He drew air deep down into his lungs, clearing the memory from his brain.

One or all of them had been protecting themselves or someone else—someone who knew where to find Merilee Zukanov’s body.

And those men had not only perjured themselves to convict him. They had stolen his child from him.

Because of them, he’d never hugged his baby in his arms.

He’d missed her first smile, first tooth, first steps—every goddamn birthday. He didn’t even know for certain it was her on those bleachers, although he felt it in his bones.

He’d not been able to hold his mother’s hand, comfort her as she’d died. She’d passed on believing in his guilt. Believing he’d turned into something worse than his father.

And Rachel? She was lost to him forever.

He wondered if it was Rachel who’d wrapped that sandwich for Quinn, who’d packed her lunch this morning. Her hands. Her care. His child. Jeb breathed in deep, trying to control his pulse, the dizziness, the pinpricks of rage at the four who’d done all this.

It was not over. Not by a goddamn long shot. He could never reclaim those lost years. He could never dream of winning back Rachel. But that child hunched over her lunch bag in the field—she was the reason he needed justice. Not revenge, but legal restitution. The wrongs had to be set right. Someone had to pay. Closure must be found. He could not let her grow up to learn she might be the child of a rapist and killer.

As he watched, a small group of girls started down the rise. All blondes, all straight hair. Fashionable clothing. Little clones molding themselves to some cultural ideal, precariously balanced between childhood and adult awareness. They were older than the girl on the bleachers, and Jeb didn’t like their body language, the way they were exchanging glances, a pack gathering courage from each other as they gravitated toward the girl.

Like a prison yard, he thought, his muscles tensing as he watched for the telltale tipping point, that edge from where things would go bad. If the targeted victim allowed it.

But the girl on the bleachers sensed them coming and glanced up slightly. She didn’t engage eye contact. Instead she stuffed her half-eaten sandwich back into the brown bag, closed her book, got up, and made her way at an even pace down the bleachers. She began to cross the grass, heading away from the blondes toward a gravel pathway that snaked up into a wooded knoll on the far side of the ball field.

The cadre of blondes followed.

His heart beat faster. On instinct Jeb surged up from the bench and moved quickly along the dirt track that ran along the outside edge of the field next to the swamp. He was acutely aware of legal jurisdiction: the Snowy Creek Resort Municipality owned and maintained these ball fields. The school district paid for the use of them. He was within his rights to be on them, yet he adhered to the path off the side.

The dark-haired girl disappeared into the woods. The clutch of blondes halted under a large oak among a puddle of red-gold leaves, talking among themselves, casting backward glances toward the school building where yard monitors watched the younger children. One of the blondes lit a cigarette, passed it to another. Jeb judged them to be about ten, maybe eleven years old.

He went quickly up the path into the woods, looking for the child he believed was his daughter. The path opened out onto a sidewalk. She was on the sidewalk, checking left, then right. She crossed the street and headed for a small convenience store at the end of the road.

Jeb scanned the area. Cars were parked in driveways and along the curb. The old ski-style chalets looked empty. No one was outside. It was still shoulder season, the resort quiet during the week.

He followed her. Compelled. Part of him knowing he shouldn’t do this. Yet he was physically incapable of breaking sight of his own daughter now that he’d finally seen her, as if in losing her around a corner now, he’d lose her forever. Another part of him wanted to be certain it was her.

She was walking fast. He absorbed her totally, the shape of her thin body, her gait, how she carried her head, the tightness in her shoulders. Was she afraid of those girls? Grieving for Sophia and Peter, the only mother and father she’d ever known? Missing her old school, her friends, her home?

Stumbling on paving that had been cracked by frost heave, she dropped her lunch bag. The book she’d been clutching fell open to the ground.

Lightning fast, on pure gut instinct, Jeb moved in, scooping up the bag and the open book. Heart racing, he caught the name written inside the cover—
Quinn MacLean
.

It was her.

He glanced over his shoulder again to ensure no one was watching. “Hey,” he said, fighting to keep his voice light, normal. “You dropped something.” He handed both bag and book to her.

She looked up at him, mouth tight, her features guarded.

He smiled into her eyes, his heart thumping. They were his eyes. And his father’s. The same deep, indigo-blue Irish eyes. She had faint freckles over her nose. Jeb felt he might implode.

“Thanks,” she muttered, taking the book and bag. Something inside him stilled in awe at the sound of his own child’s voice. His eyes filled. Burned.

She turned, resumed walking, a little faster now.

Desperate to hear another word or two, he caught up to her.

“
Schooled
, huh?” he said, mentioning the title of the book as he matched her pace.

She clutched the book tighter to her chest, walking faster.

“My favorite character is Rain.”

She stalled, glanced up, looking at him anew. “You’ve read it?

Jeb smiled slightly. “I’ve had a lot of time to read a lot of books. Some good, some terrible. I liked that one, though.”

She frowned as she regarded him, her gaze going to the tattoo on his neck. “You read books for eight-year-olds?”

He swallowed. He’d read every single one of the books Sophia had told him Quinn was reading. He’d pinned her school art on his cell walls, even a medal he’d managed to persuade Sophia to leave with him. He knew his daughter’s favorite color, what she liked to eat, what her favorite TV shows were.

He grinned. “Like I said, I had a lot of time.”

Something relaxed in her, a light entering her eyes—ever so subtly—as curiosity began to edge out caution. His heart lifted.

“We had to read it for class last year,” she said.

“And you’re rereading it?”

She nodded. “Why do you like Rain?” she said.

“Because she marched to the beat of her own drum.”

She eyed him, one brow lowering more than the other. “I like Cap.”