Tell No Lies (22 page)

 

The property gate was closed, but that had never stopped Ian before. The gate was a halfhearted measure to keep folks out. The Aldridges owned too much of the surrounding land to enclose the entire property so he simply walked around, veering toward the woods where he’d found the shoe the day he’d first met Augusta.

Scrambling down the embankment, he slid onto the oyster gravel drive in front of the little cottage near the shore. Augusta’s car was parked in front, along with another vehicle

It was dark. Peering into Augusta’s car, he found it empty. So was the car beside it.

Lightning ripped the skies around him, illuminating the porch. The wind rattled the bottles on the little bottle tree. The front door was wide open, so despite the voice of caution, he walked inside to take a look.

The house was completely dark, but when he walked inside, he kicked an object on the floor and it lit up. He bent to pick it up, recognizing Augusta’s cell phone.

His gaze took in the room as he clicked the ON button, turning on the screen. It was still logged into her text program and his last text to her was the last one he saw.

Something had distracted her, but what?

He poked his head into the kitchen, where a cat was crouched on the kitchen counter. He could barely see the animal silhouetted against the window, black against the night sky.

No one else was here.

“Hello?” he called out.

No answer.

It was a tiny house—not much chance he wouldn’t be able to hear someone skulking around, but he poked his head into the bedroom anyway—just in case.

He walked back outside, onto the front porch, a bad feeling settling hard in his gut, and he set out toward the main house on foot, calling Augusta’s name.

 

Augusta sat shivering beneath the rotten boat hull.

Underneath, it smelled of mold and old, wet wood—and something worse. She was sitting in the middle of sludge, soaked to her teeth, her hair caked with mud, but she didn’t dare move from beneath the little shelter. Outside, the rain pelted the back side of the boat, dripping in where the wood had already rotted through. A persistent drip on her back, and another on the top of her head kept her on edge, feeling vulnerable and terrified of being discovered.

Who was he? Why was he in Sadie’s house? Where was Sadie? And why wouldn’t she answer her phone? She wondered if Caroline had come home yet. Would she spot her car at Sadie’s? Or worse, would the man go after her sister?

Even the mere possibility made Augusta feel like a horrible person, because she was so frightened she couldn’t move to save her own life. She felt paralyzed with fear. She had always thought she would be braver than this, but she was frozen with indecision, terrified to her core. She swallowed salty tears, her throat constricting as she held back a sob.

She couldn’t think straight. Outside, lightning cracked again, illuminating her dubious shelter. It was more like the skeleton of a wooden boat, long forgotten in the tidal flats. Probably some fisherman got stuck at low tide and didn’t bother to come back for the boat because it was too much trouble. From the looks of it, it had been here a long time.

Lightning flickered again, and this time, she spotted something red outside, near the boat—a bag maybe. She must have unearthed it as she’d trudged toward the boat.

Shuddering with fear or cold—she couldn’t tell which—she stretched out a hand to grab the strap of material and pull it under the boat.

She had to tug hard, and nearly thumped her head on the roof of the boat, but the bag finally came up, and along with it, something else. Another flash of lightning revealed a small hand, decomposing still, and Augusta couldn’t hold back a shriek of fear.

Her mouth opening to scream again, she slapped a hand over it, and shoved the bag away, scurrying out from under the boat. Suddenly, she became aware of things in the mud—solid things—things that felt terrifyingly familiar as she bumped her way through them. Her mind refused to identify them, but they were everywhere, touching her. She froze, standing outside in the rain, knee-deep in plough mud, and focused suddenly on the sound of her name in the distance.

 

“Augusta!” Ian called again.

She wasn’t up at the house, and all the doors were locked so he made his way out to the dock.

“Augusta!” he shouted.

The boathouse door was hanging, half of it collapsed into the water. Inside the boathouse, one of the bay doors was open and he assumed a boat was missing because the bay was empty.

There was no damned way she would have taken a boat out in this weather, he reassured himself—no damned way—and he retraced his steps, going back onto the dock. He walked to the end of it, which stretched out a little farther into the water than the boathouse did. From there, he could see nothing. The sky was pitch-black, the sliver of moon obscured by sheets of rain.

“Augusta!” he shouted.

Suddenly, he heard a voice in the distance, and he stopped to gain his bearings. She was screaming. Out there. Somewhere. The sound of terror sucked the air out of his lungs.

“Augusta!” he shouted, and started in the direction of her screams.

Augusta was in a panic now.

Now that she’d heard Ian’s voice, she knew she would be safe, but she didn’t think she would ever be okay after all that she had seen. Sobbing, she trudged through the mud, pushing past the horrors in the marsh, toward the sound of Ian’s voice.

“Ian!” she cried, and kept walking, following the promise of his voice.

At last, when she reached firm land and could see his face, illuminated by a flash of lightning, she fell down and curled up into a fetal position to sob.

As the rain pummeled her, she was aware of Ian’s body suddenly shielding her, lifting her up, carrying her. She clung to him, desperate for an anchor in the storm.

The ER at Roper was crowded, but they took Augusta immediately upon seeing her. In shock and shivering feverishly, she was given a bed and her wounds examined. Ian refused to leave her. She wouldn’t stop sobbing so they gave her a sedative.

“There were bones everywhere,” she kept saying. “All in the mud!”

They called the police. Ian called Jack Shaw, grateful now that he had a direct line to reach him. Jack came straight from Lockwood station.

“There were bones,” Augusta repeated over and over, sobbing still. “Everywhere . . . touching me . . . there was a hand, Jack!” And then she began to sob uncontrollably again.

Jack placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, eyeing Ian. Judging by the look on his face, he was trying hard to keep his personal feelings out of his work, but clearly the story Augusta was telling disturbed him for more reasons than the obvious. He spoke to her with the patience of a father, gently but firmly. “Augusta, tell me again what you were doing in the marsh.”

The sedatives were beginning to take effect and she was having trouble focusing. She clung to Ian’s hand. “I told you . . . there was a man . . . Sadie’s house. He chased me. I fell in the boat.” She shivered and her eyes sought Ian’s, as though to gain strength from his presence. He sensed it and her trust moved him deeply. They were connected somehow. He felt it now more than ever.

“You
fell
in the boat?” Jack persisted.

“Jumped,” she clarified and wiped her nose against Ian’s sleeve. The fact that he thought it was endearing, not disgusting, was incredibly telling. “I didn’t know where else to go!”

“There are contusions on her chest,” the male nurse explained to Jack. “We’re taking her back as soon as we can for X-rays to make sure there are no broken ribs.”

Ian squeezed Augusta’s hand, but said nothing, letting her talk directly to Jack, sensing she was about to pass out and knowing that what she had to say was important. He reached out to smooth the mud-encrusted hair from her bruised and cut face, flicking it away where it had dried to her skin. There was bloody mud all the way down the left side of her face and some caked on her lips . . . lips that were now as familiar as his own.

“Where is Caroline?” she asked groggily.

Jack sighed, a heavy, burdened sigh. “With Sadie, Augusta. We’re searching for Daniel.”

“It wasn’t Daniel,” she offered, then hiccupped, and closed her eyes.

“I thought you said you didn’t recognize the man?”

“I didn’t,” she said, without opening her eyes. “But it wasn’t Daniel,” she persisted. “He wore a mask.”

Ian shrugged when Jack looked at him for answers. “I didn’t see anyone,” he told Jack. “I walked the entire property.”

“Can you tell me where you saw the bodies?” Jack asked one more time, directing his question at Augusta.

“In the . . . mud,” Augusta replied with a whine that sounded so much like a child’s, Ian wanted to scoop her up into his arms and hold her close. It was killing him to see her lying there, looking so vulnerable—nothing like the firebrand he knew she was. She was clearly shaken to the core. Whatever she had seen out there had done this to her.

He refused to consider that for even a second.

“Augusta . . . where exactly?” Jack persisted.

“. . . old boat,” she replied, but didn’t open her eyes.

The nurse returned and Jack asked him, “What did you give her?”

“Diprivan. It works very quickly but wears off fast.”

All Ian wanted to know was that she wasn’t seriously injured. “Can you tell if anything is broken?”

The nurse was checking her vitals. “Doesn’t appear so, but we still need to make sure.”

“What about the cut on her head?”

“Superficial. She shouldn’t need stitches. We’ll just clean that up and put a bit of surgical glue on it.”

Ian bent to kiss Augusta on the forehead, right next to her cut. She whimpered in her sleep, dozing fitfully now.

“Did you see anything at all?” Jack asked, directing the question to Ian.

Ian shook his head. “But I know the direction she came from.” Torn, because he didn’t want to leave Augusta here alone, but knowing in his gut that whatever she had found out there in the salt marsh was pertinent to Jack’s investigation—critical to the protection of others—he offered, “I can show you where.”

Jack nodded, considering Augusta, too. She had released her hold on Ian’s hand and lay there resting now. “She should be fine here in the meantime,” he said. “I’ll call her sister,” he offered, and then pulled out his cell phone to dial her right there.

“Alright,” Ian said, but his tone was full of conflict.

“Don’t worry, she’ll be fine,” the nurse reassured. “She’ll get a little rest and we’ll take some X-rays and then you can probably come back and take her home after.” Clearly he mistook Ian for her significant other.

Jack ended his call, then dialed another number. Ian heard him leave a message, and assumed he was talking to someone at the
Tribune’s
offices.

“She’s damned lucky you were looking out for her,” Jack offered, as he ended the second call.

Ian brushed the hair from Augusta’s lips, thinking of all the times she had come to his rescue, even when she hadn’t known him all that well. With the same tenacity her sister had exercised to crucify him, Augusta had become his savior. “I’m the lucky one,” he said, and meant it, and then he bent to whisper in her ear. “I love you, Augusta. I’ll be back soon.”

“She won’t even know you’re gone,” the nurse assured him.

Ian nodded, and then before he could change his mind, he left her while she slept.

Cody threw up a little after drinking the water that had accumulated in a puddle on the floor. But now he felt a little better. He focused on that feeling.

His grandma Rose always said a joyful heart was good medicine. Cody thought it might be from her Bible, but he didn’t know for sure. The only medicine he had right now was his brain so he was gonna use it.

He kept thinking about mind over matter, remembering the time he worried about throwing up in his dinner at Grandma Rose’s house, but he’d ordered himself not to, and he didn’t. He waited until he and his parents walked out of his grandma Rose’s house and the screen door closed behind him, then he threw up in Grandma Rose’s azaleas.

He worried the snake would slither down out of its wooden throne and try to bite him, but it stayed right there in its dark corner—under the boards—not sleeping exactly, ’cause its eyes were open and watching—resting, and keeping Cody company.

Somehow, he understood that if he let it be, it would leave him be, as well. It was like a silent pact they’d made, one he felt down to his aching bones.

It was still raining outside, and the night was foggy. He could barely see the train trestle through the mist. The steady pelting on the roof calmed him. It spoke to a distant memory of noises lulling him to sleep . . . the sound of the ocean, the gentle song of spring rain, a gurgling brook . . .

The bad man was never coming back again, he thought, and now that he felt a little better, he tried to figure out what he had to do. Gross as it might seem, he pretended to be a snake and used his tongue to lick up bugs that crawled past his face. He saw once in a war movie that soldiers ate maggots to keep themselves alive.

He was a soldier here, fighting for his life. If he was smart, maybe he would live long enough for someone to find him and take him home.

His skin was on fire, but that didn’t matter.

His eyes burned, but he focused harder.

His legs were numb, but he remembered the pain.

The snake coiled up on its bed of wood, idly flicking its tongue out, showing Cody how to feed himself.

Cody blinked, focusing on the ant crawling toward him on the floor, waiting . . . like his friend the snake.

 

 

The Aldridge property comprised a great portion of the salt marsh surrounding Oyster Point Plantation, and whatever wasn’t owned by the family had been annexed by the City of Charleston. Despite the final successful bid for township in 2012, large portions of the island still belonged to the City instead of the town of James Island. The result was spotty police protection as some areas were still policed by the City of Charleston, while others were patrolled by the county . . . and others, barely at all.

Fortunately for Jack, the area they were searching belonged both to the Aldridges and to the City so he didn’t feel the need to wait for a search warrant, knowing Caroline would give her permission without question. The search party began on Aldridge property. They couldn’t bring dogs out—impossible to track within the marsh, but they found Augusta’s boat grounded at the mouth of the creek.

In the pouring rain, they swept northeast, twenty men deep, from the point at which they discovered her boat to the point at which Ian had discovered Augusta stumbling through the spartina flats. Some of the men were forced to use boats, because the water was too deep to wade through. Others kept to the shallows. Overhead, choppers lit the night sky, spotters slicing through the heavy mist. SLED and FBI joined them with every available man in the area.

They found the small, wooden boat Augusta had told them about at approximately 10:32
P.M
. It was wedged into a small sandbar surrounded by deeper waters. The boat had once been a small fishing skiff. Now all that remained were parts of a rotting hull, clinging to a wooden spine that was visible enough above the water at high tide not to require any warning markers for area boaters. It was entirely possible the boat had been there since Hugo. Since it didn’t impose any real danger, it hadn’t warranted much attention, but it apparently missed a recent cleanup of debris along the estuaries. Converging tides along with vegetation had created a natural earthwork of sorts. Behind it, semi-protected from the currents, they found the mass grave.

Some of the bodies had been there for years, judging by their state of decomposition—slower than it might seem possible because the marsh was a natural preservative. On some of the older bodies the skin was still intact and hair clung to the scalp. Working closely with the search team, the medical examiner led the efforts to make certain they salvaged every trace of evidence—mostly for identification purposes. The most recent bodies were still in a much-decelerated state of decomposition, but even so, the physical evidence would be compromised by time submersed in the water.

There was no way to move heavy equipment into the marsh, so wearing biohazard suits, and using whatever tools they could find—waders, nets, heavy gloves—the men worked by hand to unearth the most gruesome discovery in Charleston in nearly forty years. Within the first hour, they had exhumed more than six bodies.

 

About an hour before Caroline left the office, Daniel was taken into custody. Wanting to be certain the breaking news surrounding his arrest was covered, and covered fairly, Caroline had worked late. It wasn’t until she’d been about to leave the office that her receptionist finally gave her the message that Jack had called. Unfortunately, her cell phone had died around 6
P.M
. and she had forgotten her charger in Jack’s car, so she was completely incommunicado on the drive home. By the time she reached Oyster Point, the property was blanketed with flashing blue lights. Choppers roared overhead, spotlights swinging all over the night sky.

Caroline’s first thought was of Augusta. Heart thumping painfully against her ribs, she ran into the house. Finding it still locked and empty, she came rushing back and ran toward the marsh. There were officers swarming the boathouse. More out on the water.

She tried to get information from one of the uniformed officers on the dock. Something momentous was happening here, but no one seemed inclined to share any information.

“This is my property!” she told one uniformed officer.

“You’ll have to talk to Detective Shaw,” the man insisted, and pointed out toward the lights on the marsh.

Unless she took one of the boats out, there was no way to reach Jack, and her cell phone was dead. Realizing the phone in Sadie’s house was closer and easier to reach, she made the trek over to Sadie’s. But Sadie wasn’t home either, and there were more policemen guarding her front door. She asked to use the phone and was refused.

“I’m sorry, we can’t let you in,” the man insisted.

Frustrated, Caroline returned to the main house and hurried back to the office, where there was one of only two available landlines in the house. It crossed her mind that people were entirely too dependent on cell phones. Now that she needed one, there was none to be found. She tried Augusta’s number first, but there was no answer. It went straight to her voice mail. Next she tried Jack, but his, too, went straight to voice mail. Sadie’s, as well. Finally, she checked her messages and discovered the message from Jack. Thankfully, Augusta was at Roper with minor injuries. No word from Sadie, though she was certain she knew where Sadie must be.