My Sister's Grave (28 page)

His eyes widened with mock indignity. “Hey, it was one flat tire!”

She laughed while continuing to consider how their intertwined fingers seemed like a natural fit, and imagining what his fingers would feel like caressing her skin.

“Are you going to be all right in that motel?” Dan asked.

“I won’t be eating anyone’s famous bacon cheeseburgers, but I’ll probably live longer for it.”

“You know, not having you stay at the house had nothing to do with what happened to Rex,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was upset and said some things . . .”

“I know.” She closed the gap between them, looking for a cue. When he bent down she rose onto her toes and met him halfway. Despite the cold, his lips were warm and moist, and she didn’t feel the least bit odd kissing him. In fact, it felt as natural as their hands felt twined together. When they parted lips, a snowflake landed on her nose. Dan smiled and brushed it aside.

“We’re both going to catch pneumonia out here,” he said.

“They gave me two keys to the room,” she said.

She lay beside him in the sallow glow cast by the lamp mounted over the headboard of her motel bed. The snow had dampened all sound outside the room, and it was eerily silent but for the occasional hiss and tick of the radiator beneath the window.

“You okay? You’re kind of quiet.”

“I’m doing great. How about you?”

He squeezed her close and kissed the top of her head. “Any regrets?” he asked.

“Only that you can’t stay.”

“I’d like to,” he said, “but Sherlock’s a big baby without his brother, and I do have to prepare for a fairly important hearing tomorrow.”

She smiled. “I think you would have been a good father, Dan.”

“Yeah, well, some things aren’t meant to be.”

She propped herself onto an elbow. “Why didn’t you have kids?”

“She didn’t want kids. She told me before we got married, but I thought she’d change her mind. I was wrong.”

“Well, now you have your boys.”

“And I’m sure one of them is getting anxious.”

He kissed her and rolled onto his side to get out of the bed, but she reached for his shoulder and pulled him back down. “Tell Sherlock I’m sorry you were late,” she said, rolling on top of him and feeling him harden beneath her.

After, she lay beneath the covers watching him dress.

“Are you going to walk me to the door or just kick me to the curb?” he asked. She slipped out of bed to grab a nightshirt, surprised that she did not feel self-conscious standing naked before him. “I was only kidding,” Dan said, “though I am enjoying the view.”

Tracy slipped the shirt over her head and walked him to the door. Before opening it, he pulled back the curtain and looked out the window next to it.

“A media throng with cameras?” she said.

“Doubtful in this weather.” He pulled open the door and she felt the chilled air on her still bed-warm skin. “It’s stopped snowing. That’s a good sign.”

She looked past him. The snow had stopped, but recently, judging by the three-inch layer on the deck railing, and likely not permanently, given the cloud-darkened sky. “Remember snow days?” she asked.

“How could I forget? Those were the best days of school.”

“We didn’t have school.”

“Exactly.”

He bent and kissed her again, and goose bumps danced across her skin, causing her to fold her arms across her body.

“Is that from me or the cold air?” Dan said, smiling.

She winked. “I’m a scientist. Not enough empirical data yet.”

“Well, we’ll have to change that.”

She hid behind the half-open door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

His boots crunched fresh snow. When he reached the staircase, he turned back before descending. “Close the door before you freeze to death. And lock it.”

But she waited until he’d reached the Tahoe and slid inside. About to shut the motel door, she noticed a car parked down the street—not the car so much as its windshield. It had been cleared. Once was odd. Twice was purposeful. If it was a reporter or a photographer, he was about to get the lesson of a lifetime about the perils of stalking a cop. She shut the door, quickly slipped on her pants, parka, and boots, grabbed her Glock, and pulled open the door.

The car was gone.

The hairs on the back of her neck tingled. She shut the door, bolted it, and called Dan.

“You miss me already?”

She pulled back the curtain, looking at the space where the car had been parked. The tires had left shallow impressions in the snow, which meant the car had parked after the snow had fallen but hadn’t remained parked there long.

“Tracy?”

“Just wanted to hear your voice,” she said, deciding that Dan had enough to worry about.

“Something up?”

“No. I’m just a worrier. A hazard of the job.”

“Well, I’m fine. And I still have half of my security system at home.”

“Not being followed?” she asked.

“If I were, I’d have to be an idiot not to know it. The roads are deserted. You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “Good night, Dan.”

“Next time I want to wake up beside you.”

“I’d like that.”

She disconnected and exchanged her clothes for pajama pants and her nightshirt. Before climbing back into bed, she pulled back the curtain and considered the empty space where the car had been. Then she slid the chain lock across the door, set her Glock on the nightstand, and turned off the light.

Dan’s smell lingered on the pillow. He’d been a gentle and patient lover, his hands firm but his touch soft, just as she’d imagined. He’d given her time to relax, to free her mind until she was no longer thinking, just reacting to the motion of his body and the touch of his hands. When she’d climaxed, she’d clung to him, not wanting the feeling, or him, to leave her.

CHAPTER 43

S
he slept through the night, the first time in months, and the following morning awoke feeling refreshed, though anxious about the upcoming day. She didn’t recall ever feeling nervous as a cop. The days when the shit hit the fan were the good days for her, the exciting days, the days when her shift flew by as if the hours were minutes. But the simple act of sitting through another day of the hearing provoked anxiety as the trial had all those years earlier.

She retrieved a copy of the
Cascade County Courier
in the motel lobby. The front page included an article on the hearing, with an accompanying photograph of Tracy entering the courthouse, but thankfully no picture of her and Dan kissing outside the veterinary clinic or entering her motel room together.

Finlay met her in the courthouse parking lot as planned and facilitated her access through the media and into the courtroom, and Tracy could not help but sense that Finlay took some pride in his role as her guardian.

As the 9:00 a.m. hour approached, Tracy expected fewer spectators, figuring the novelty of the first day would have worn off for some, and the worsening weather would deter all but the hardiest, but when the courtroom doors opened the pews again quickly filled. If anything, there were more people in attendance, perhaps intrigued by the article on the first day of the proceedings. Tracy counted four additional media badges.

House again entered the courtroom escorted by multiple correctional officers, but this time when he reached counsel table and faced the gallery to allow the officers to remove his handcuffs, House did not look to his uncle. He looked directly at Tracy. His gaze made her skin crawl, as it had twenty years earlier, but unlike that day, Tracy had no intention of looking away, not even when House’s mouth inched into that familiar grin. She knew enough now to know that the stare and grin were his façade, meant to make her feel uncomfortable, but that House—while physically hardened in prison—very much remained emotionally stunted, the insecure kid who had abducted Annabelle Bovine because he couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving him.

House broke his gaze when the clerk entered and commanded the room to rise. Judge Meyers resumed his seat, and day two was underway.

“Mr. O’Leary, you may continue,” Meyers said.

Dan called Bob Fitzsimmons to the stand. Twenty years earlier, Fitzsimmons had been the managing partner of the company that entered into contracts with the State of Washington to construct three hydroelectric dams across the Cascade River, including Cascade Falls. Though now retired and in his seventies, Fitzsimmons looked as if he’d just stepped from the board meeting of a Fortune 500 company. He had a healthy head of silver hair and wore a pin-striped suit and lavender tie.

In short order, O’Leary had Fitzsimmons explain the process of obtaining the necessary federal and state paperwork to build the dams, a public process covered in the local newspapers.

“Naturally the dam backed up the river,” Fitzsimmons said, legs crossed. “You need to create a ready source of water in the event of a drought.”

“And what was the ready source of water for Cascade Falls?” O’Leary asked.

“Cascade Lake,” Fitzsimmons said.

O’Leary used two diagrams to compare the size of Cascade Lake before the dam went online and after the area had flooded. The increased area included the location where Calloway had put an
X
to signify where Sarah’s body had eventually been discovered.

“And when did that area flood?” O’Leary asked.

“October 12, 1993,” Fitzsimmons said.

“And was that date public knowledge?” O’Leary asked.

Fitzsimmons nodded. “We made sure it was in all the newspapers and the local broadcasts. It was a state mandate and we did more than the state required.”

“Why was that?”

“Because people hunted and hiked in that area. You didn’t want anyone trapped out there when the water came.”

O’Leary sat. Clark approached. “Mr. Fitzsimmons, did your company do anything else to ensure no one was ‘trapped out there when the water came,’ as you put it?”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“Didn’t you also hire security personnel and put up roadblocks to keep people out of that area?”

“We did that several days before the plant went online.”

“So it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to have entered that area, wouldn’t it?”

“That was the intent.”

“Did any of your security people report seeing anyone trying to enter the area?”

“Not that I recall.”

“No reports of someone carrying a body down a trail?”

Dan objected. “The prosecutor is testifying, Your Honor.”

Clark shot back, “Your Honor, that is exactly the insinuation being made here.”

Meyers raised a hand. “I’ll rule on the objections, Mr. Clark. The objection is overruled.”

“Did you receive any reports of anyone carrying a body down a trail?” Clark asked.

“No,” Fitzsimmons said.

Clark sat.

O’Leary stood. “How big an area is this?” He used the diagram to note the flooded area.

Fitzsimmons frowned. “My recollection is the lake was about two thousand five hundred acres and closer to four thousand five hundred after we went online.”

“And how many trails cut across that area?”

Fitzsimmons smiled and shook his head. “Far too many for me to know.”

“You put up roadblocks and posted security on the main roads, but you couldn’t possibly have covered every point of ingress and egress, could you?”

“No way to do that,” Fitzsimmons said.