An End to a Silence: A mystery novel (The Montana Trilogy Book 1) (24 page)

And then
it hit Ward full on smack in the face. He went over to McNeely, who had been
watching him but rubbing Jesús at the same time.

“I need
the newspaper. I put it in evidence.”

“I’ll get
it.”

He reread
the story Penny had been reading to Bill O’Donnell when he had had his
outburst. Nothing there. He slammed the newspaper onto his desk and as it
landed he saw on the opposite page Principal Leon Taylor of Meriwether
Elementary School. The school where Kenny’s construction company was building a
new science wing. The school where Bill O’Donnell had been janitor. “Time
Capsule Makes Way in the Name of Science,” read the headline. That’s the page
that O’Donnell would have seen while Penny was reading the one on the opposite
side. Ward read the news article. The time capsule had been buried in 1986.
Probably by O’Donnell himself. To be dug up in fifty years’ time and reveal the
secrets of a few dozen children. And the secrets of an old janitor, Ward
thought. O’Donnell had buried something of his own in the capsule. That’s why
the story had spooked him. If they opened the capsule whatever secrets he had
left in it would be revealed. Secrets about what happened to Ryan is what Ward
thought. The time capsule was to be moved and reburied away from the new
development, according to the article. He checked the details. The capsule was
due to be moved next Monday. It couldn’t wait.

He went
over to McNeely and took
Jesús’s
leash from her desk
and the little dog struggled free of her petting hands and skittered after
Ward, who was already striding out of the station. When Jesús caught up with
him he bent and attached the dog’s leash and then let it fall. He grabbed one
of the pickaxes and one of the spades that had been used in digging up Ryan’s
body. Before he was out Gammond called out from the doorway of his office.

“Where
you going?”

Ward
stopped and looked over at Gammond, who stood there waiting, with his head
tilted in curiosity, for Ward’s answer.

“To the
school,” Ward said without further pause. “To dig up O’Donnell’s secret. Maybe
Kenny’s too.”

It was
almost dark. Midwinter dark. The moon lit up big gray clouds that looked like
huge misshapen beasts migrating south. These shape-shifting behemoths chased
across the sky as if pursued by something bigger. And then he saw what they
were running from. A huge stampede, altogether more yellow and carrying snow,
obliterated the moon. Almost instantly the snow started to fall. Large flakes
this time. By the time he reached the school, the ground was already covered
with the fresh snowfall and the wheels of his car began to find grip a
difficult task as he pumped the gas pedal gently and pulled up the ramp and
onto a short driveway which led into the parking lot.

“Stay
there,” Ward said to Jesús, but the dog jumped over from the passenger side
onto the driver’s seat and straight out of the car like an excited puppy.
Flakes of snow landed on his face and he shook his head and sneezed and
snuffled and the leash flapped and rattled about him.

“Okay,
but I don’t want no trouble from you.”

Jesús
danced on the freshly fallen snow and Ward smiled as he opened the trunk and
took out the spade and pickax.

Ward
walked around the south side of the main school building towards where the entrance
was, where the new development was going to take place, and there he found a
small area of lawn, almost completely covered in white aside from one edge
which had been afforded some shelter by the school building. The grass was
bordered with winter flowers and in the middle, just visible, was a circular
indentation, about a foot in diameter. Ward bent down and wiped the snow away
with his hand to reveal a plaque. He read the inscription – Meriwether
Elementary School Time Capsule: To Be Opened 2036. The plaque was embedded into
the ground and Ward took the pickax and levered the plaque out and rolled it to
one side and then let it drop with a thud. The ground underneath it was a rug
of anemic grass shoots and tangles of webbed roots and Ward took hold of the
spade and thrust it into the ground. It went in an inch and he dug out a layer
of soil, liberating the albino grass with it. He rammed the spade in again,
harder this time, and he managed to go deeper. The ground here was not as hard
as the ground in the forest which had held Ryan. He repeated this a few more
times and his fingers became stiff with the cold, despite the gloves. His right
hand ached miserably.

When the
spade struck metal with a hollow clunk he stepped back and took a deep breath
and he rubbed his hands to try and get some warm blood back into them. Jesús
was straight in, scratching away at the capsule like a maniac. Ward let him
have his fun for a minute and then pulled at his leash, which was soaking wet
from the snow.

“Good
work there, boy,” Ward said to Jesús, and the little dog wandered off and took
a leak on the flowers. And then he trotted away and disappeared around the side
of the school building, his nose sniffing as much ground as it could as he
went.

Ward
started to dig around the time capsule then. He’d have to go deep to give
himself any chance of getting the thing out of the ground. The soil yielded
more readily as he dug deeper and a short time later he could see what he
thought must have been most of the capsule.

The capsule
had a lip around the top edge and that gave him something to grip onto. He
could see the lid wasn’t welded on and he was grateful for that. His fingers
hooked under the lip and he tugged at it but it didn’t move. He took the spade
and turned it upside down and inserted the handle into the hole he had dug and
he used it to lever the capsule. He did this all around it and eventually he
figured it was loose enough. He tossed the spade to the ground and again he
crouched down and started to tug at the capsule. Immediately it broke its
sticky bond with the earth and he heaved it out and set it on the grass. By now
he was covered almost completely in snow and he thought if he stayed still long
enough he would become a perfect snowman in the middle of the commemorative
garden. He took off his hat and shook the snow off it, then set it back on his
head.

He tried
the lid, which was somehow screwed onto the capsule like a soda bottle top, and
it didn’t budge. So he took the pickax and gave it a few whacks and tried
again. With all his strength applied, the lid started to turn and it let out a
high-pitched groan as it did so. Two or three rotations and it was off.

He took
out his flashlight and shone it into the cylinder. There were three large
sheets of paper which had been rolled up. There were little handmade envelopes
with pretty personalized decorations on them, no doubt containing children’s
letters to their future selves detailing their hopes and dreams and predictions
for the future, most of which would have been fanciful and unrealized. There
were other knickknacks from 1986, some which only kids could have deemed
important enough to preserve for posterity; a Transformer toy, a Rainbow Brite
Color Kid, a copy of
The Wind in the Willows
, which the younger kids had
read that year in class. And on the top of all this was an envelope, not
manmade this one. And on the front it said something in pallid blue-gray ink.
Ward carefully picked it out and turned it over and the words on the front read
“Please Deliver to The police,” written in an untidy but grown-up hand. The
flap of the envelope had been stuck down in 1986 but the glue had since
perished and the envelope was open. Ward shook off his right glove and let it
drop to the ground. He had fresh strapping on his hand and yellow and blue
bruising spread out from under the bandage. He slid the piece of paper out from
the envelope. It was then that he heard the rumble of a car slowly pulling up
on the other side of the school building where the parking lot was. Then he
heard the car door close. He didn’t pause. He opened the letter and began to
read. On the second read he heard the snow-cushioned footsteps behind him. He
reached into his coat but the voice stopped him.

“Take
your hand slowly from your jacket, Ward.” The voice had a nervous tremble
coating it. But Ward recognized it. He took his hand from his coat and he held
out both hands at right angles to his body, the letter in his gloved left hand,
the bandaged one empty.

“Now turn
around slowly.”

Ward did.

“What you
got there, son?” Gammond said.

“Took you
longer than I thought to get here. Bad traffic?”

“Dang it.
I said what you got there?”

“It’s a
letter.”

“I can
see that,” Gammond said, and his gun hand shook as he spoke.

“It tells
everything,” Ward said. “’Bout what you did. Kenny. It’s all there.”

Gammond
took a deep breath. “Well, that’s a dang crying shame.”

Ward
said, “Why?”

“Why?”

“We can
take this down to the station if you like,” Ward said.

Gammond
chuckled in his chest but his face was frozen, his lips tightly shut.

“I ought
to read you your rights,” Ward said.

“That’s
not how this is going to go, son,” Gammond said.

“Just
tell me why. Why does a cop do something like that?” Ward said, and he looked
down at the ground. The spade, the pickax, the metal cylinder containing broken
dreams and half-assed predictions of some sci-fi futuristic vision of flying
cars and rocket packs.

“Dang. I
just wanted… I was just trying to help, you know. It was an accident. Didn’t I
tell you not to go reopening
ol
’ wounds? Didn’t I
tell you that, son? I told you that.” And Gammond’s shoulders slumped and his
gun hand lowered slightly.

“If it
was an accident we can sort this out,” Ward tried but Gammond chuckled again.

“That’s
not going to work,” Gammond said. He was quiet a moment, eyeing Ward, who stood
motionless with his arms stretched out at his sides.

“You want
to talk about it?”

“Not
really.” Gammond’s shoulders dropped a couple more inches. “Dang. Dang it.” And
then he looked at Ward but almost over his shoulder, avoiding eye contact. “I
was on patrol. Driving up Rochester and I saw the car and knew something was
off. I gets out the car and sees the little boy. Boy was dead already. I tried
CPR but he was gone. I was going to radio it in but then things got away from
me. I was going to… I’d called Kenny on the boy’s cellphone. Told him we’d got
a situation.”

“You
called Kenny?”

“Boy had
asked me to call him. Straighten things out. Truth be told I can’t remember why
I did it. I knew Kenny and… well…”

“You knew
Kenny from the golf club, right?”

“I’d
recently joined. He was one of my proposers.”

“You’d
done him favors before.”

“Oh,
little things, you don’t need to know. We ain’t got the time. You see, the
little boy had apparently run out into the street and Arthur hadn’t been able
to stop in time. Ran him down. The kid was crushed under the dang wheels.”

“Arthur?”
Ward said, and he began to move from one foot to the other to keep warm.

“Don’t be
moving around,” Gammond said, and he waved the gun. “Arthur is James Kenny’s
son.”

“I still
don’t understand why you didn’t call it in,” Ward said.

“Well,
you see, Arthur had been at the liquor. Was well over the limit. He was in
college. Had a promising career ahead of him. You see how it would’ve been bad
for the kid. Had big plans to be some highfaluting lawyer in New York.”

“And then
O’Donnell came, right?”

“Just as
we was wondering what we was going to do with the body.”

“And
O’Donnell just went along with it? Just like that?”

“It was James
Kenny we were dealing with. Dang. I told you about his influence but you
wouldn’t listen. You know how he influences?”

“Money.”

“Well,
that’s just some of it. He has a way of putting things. People fall into his
words like one of those pit traps you see in the movies. He’s like a snake oil
salesman.”

“He’d
paid you off before O’Donnell got there.”

Gammond
didn’t say anything but scratched at his cheek.

“And it
was you who talked O’Donnell into getting rid of the body. It was you Kenny
sold the snake oil to. And you sold it on to O’Donnell. Don’t go putting this
all on Kenny. It was you brokered the deal and you took your commission.”

“Dang, it
was best all around.”

“Best for
who? Best for you who got rich? Best for the boy? Best for O’Donnell?”

“Boy was
dead. Ain’t nothing going to bring him back. No point ruining a young man’s
life. I just made it clear to O’Donnell that if he didn’t go along with it he’d
find himself in a heap of trouble in other ways. He worked with children and…
you know. Rumors could start.”

“And you
didn’t want to lose your heap of cash that Kenny had offered you.”

“Like I
said. It was better for everybody.” He looked to Ward like he had some regret.
“Anyways, we’re running out of time here. I got to clean up this mess you
made.”

“No, tell
me what happened to the boy.”

Gammond
looked directly at Ward now and studied him through
slitted
eyes. “O’Donnell said he would bury the boy. He was in pieces. So he took the
boy in his truck.”

“The truck
that O’Donnell said was stolen. You took that call. You set it all up.”

“Easy
thing to do. I told him to get rid of the truck. Forest fire did the rest.”

“You know
why O’Donnell was out looking for the boy?”

“I
guessed the boy had run off.”

“He was being
abused by his father.”

Gammond
paused.

“Don’t
tell me you didn’t know that.”

“Well,
that poor little bastard,” Gammond said. “Well, that’s too sad. Dang. But don’t
change anything enough to bring the boy back to life.”

“Kenny
bought your silence and you engineered it all.”

“Our Lord
works in mysterious ways.”

“I got
his bank statements here and it wouldn’t take much to show that the withdrawals
he made found their way into your pocket,” Ward tapped his pocket.

Gammond
shouted, “Hey
hey
. Hands. Hands. I’m going to have to
have those. And the letter.”

Ward’s
hand went back towards his pocket. Gammond waving his gun stopped it.

“I’ll
take them from your body,” Gammond said.

“You
destroyed Newton.”

“Collateral
damage,” Gammond said.

“You have
any remorse?” Ward asked.

“Ain’t
got time for sentimentality, truth be told. Being police, you should know how
that is.”

“Why’d
you get Lafayette to confess?”

“Oh, he
ain’t never getting out. Another kill to his reputation. Well, you know.”

“And get
us off the case.”

Gammond
shrugged.

“So, who
killed Bill O’Donnell? That you?”

“I ain’t
laying claim to that.”