The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) (26 page)

“What was that about?” he says.

I ignore him. My mind is reeling. I know both Amy and my sister died while I was in Bali, but I’d been focused solely on my family. Amy was in the buried past for me. Not relevant at the time of my loss. But no
w . . .

“What was the date?”

“The date?”

“Yes, dammit, the exact date of Amy’s death!”

He inhales deeply. “April eighth.”

“The day before my sister’s fire?”

He says nothing.

I feel like I’m going to throw up. “And Amy could have called Sophia? Saying she knew who did it?”

He still doesn’t reply. Anger mushrooms inside me.

“You knew,” I say, very quietly. “You didn’t believe Amy’s death was a suicide. You believed there was a connection between her death and my sister’s death.”

“I didn’t know. I had a feeling.”

“A
feeling
?” I glare at him. “You had a feeling Amy was murdered, a feeling it was somehow connected to my sister, and you said nothing.”

He starts the engine and pulls into the road. Amy’s aunt is watching from her window. The wind has suddenly picked up again, dead leaves blowing across her lawn.

Jeb drives for Piper’s house, hands fisted on the wheel.

“Talk to me, dammit. I told you, no secrets. How can I trust you when you do this to me? Thi
s . . .
this is my sister we’re talking about.” My whole body is shaking.

He refuses to meet my eyes. He inhales deeply and slowly. “Sophia called me in prison the night Amy left that message.”

I go stone cold. I reach for the door handle, clench it. Terrified at what is going to come next.

He glances at me. “Sophia and Peter went out for dinner that night, which is why they missed her call. They came home to the message. Sophia said Amy sounded very drunk, but that she said she knew who did it.”

“Stop.”

He shoots me another glance.

“Stop the car! Right now!”

He slows down, draws over to the curb, comes to a halt. I swing round in my seat, face him square. Anger, hurt, fear, it’s a violent cocktail swirling in my gut, pounding through my blood.

“From the beginning. Every damn detail. You tell it to me now or you get out of my truck and stay the hell away from me and Quinn.”

His features tighten, eyes darkening. Even as I say the words, I know he has rights to Quinn no matter what I say. I feel ill. We’re locked together, whether I like it or not.

“Rachel—”

“From the beginning.”

He turns off the engine, scrubs his hand hard over his face. “It started with Piper. Five years ago. She was interviewing people for the CBC
True Crime
docudrama—”

“I know all this. She tried to interview me, too. I refused.”

He nods, holding my gaze. “You also know Piper has an ability to see things that haunt people, especially people who’ve experienced a deep psychological trauma.”

I give a harsh snort. “Yeah. So-called psychic.”

“Whatever you want to think of her ability, when Piper met Amy and shook her hand, she got a vivid image of several young men assaulting a screaming woman. Piper told Amy about this vision, and she questioned Amy about the possibility of there being more than one rapist. Amy completely shut down.”

“How do you know this?” My voice is going shrill and I hate it.

“I know from Sophia.”

I tighten up. I feel so left out, so betrayed in a way, by my own sister.

“The initial thinking was that Amy was so drugged she was not able to form memories of the event. But Piper felt that because she’d received this vision from Amy herself, that the memories were actually there, locked in Amy’s brain, and subconsciously haunting her.”

He clears his throat and raises his hand slightly, as if to touch me. But I recoil, pushing my back into the truck seat. I’m a dangerous mess. I’m ready to implode. “Go on.”

“Piper met with Sophia and told her about the vision she received when she touched Amy. Sophia decided to ask Amy whether she’d be willing to try a new form of hypnosis to prompt potentially locked-down memories.”

“All based on a psychic experience?”

“There was also the DNA evidence from the hoodie that indicated there might be at least one other male involved. Amy agreed. She and Sophia had several sessions. Amy started to recall some things—”

“Autosuggestion. From Piper. That’s what it could have been.”

“It’s possible. However, the few images that Amy did recall prompted Sophia to visit me at Kent. She came first under the pretext she was doing research for a series of case studies. She said she wanted to talk to me about that night.”

“And you agreed.”

“I was prepared to tell my story to anyone who might actually listen. Yes. I agreed.”

“So that’s how it started, five years ago, the bond between you and Sophia, because of some psychic. And then Sophia told you about Quinn?”

“Because of what the lab tech revealed about there being an unidentified DNA profile, and because of Amy’s growing self-doubt, because of her snippets of returning memory. And because of me. After visiting with me on several occasions, Sophia began to believe I was telling the truth. She took on my cause, for Quinn. For truth, justice. She approached the UBC Innocence Project.”

I curse softly under my breath. “And what did Amy allegedly remember in those hypnosis sessions?”

“More than one rapist. A group of guys. Repetitive music. A cold place with a musty smell, darkness, a low ceiling or sense of heaviness overhead. The smell of soil and marijuana. The sound of water rushing. Like a river.”

“The old trapper’s cabin they traced Amy’s tracks back to, after she was found, was near a river. It had a low roof.”

He nods. “Amy also recalled an odd phrase that seemed to go round and round in her brain:
Lewd boy brain is coming crashing now
.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what it means. Sophia believed more context would come with further hypnosis sessions. She felt they were getting close. But Amy started to get scared and stopped the sessions. Sophia let it ride; we had enough with the DNA and the tech’s testimony at that point to appeal my case. Sophia felt Amy might grow more courageous once the judge ruled in my favor. And when it looked like he really was going to rule in my favor, Amy agreed to try again. That was six months ago. But she missed her appointment with Sophia, and two days later she called from Snowy Creek, leaving that message on Sophia’s home phone. By the time Sophia got it, Amy was dead.”

“Oh, God,” I whisper as I look down at my hands. My brain is spinning. I can’t seem to absorb it all at once.

He lets me sit in silence awhile. Then he places his hand gently over mine. I allow it. I need him. As much as I resist, I need Jeb. I love Jeb. I want Jeb. I hate that he’s had this intimate relationship with my own sister. That I was not a part of any of it. Logically I can see why. But it doesn’t stop the hurt. The sense of aloneness.

Emotion burns into my eyes.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me all this.”

“It was too much at once, Rach.”

“That’s not for you to decide.”

Again, he remains silent for several beats. Then, quietly, he says, “Sophia also told me that Amy recalled an image of a dragon, an undulating dragon.”

I look up slowly. “A dragon?”

“That’s all I know. Every time this image of a dragon came into her mind, the rest of the memories went blank.”

I take my hands out from under his and rub my brow. “Did Sophia go to the cops with this?”

“She didn’t trust the cops who had handled the case, or the original defense counsel. She took the information to the Innocence Project lawyers instead. There was enough for the judge to rule last week that I didn’t get a fair trial.”

Last week.

He hasn’t even been out a week. It feels like a lifetime has passed in just a few days.

“Sophia’s been gone
six months
,” I whisper. “She never got to hear the final verdict. She died before she could see what she’d done.”

“These wheels turn slowly. The judge took his time. But six months ago we were all feeling good about it, positive it was going to come down in our favor.”

“It must have been hell, remaining in prison those last six months, waiting. Especially with the news Sophia was gone.”

“It was the longest time of my life. I miss her more than you can know.”

I hold his eyes. “I’m sorry, Jeb.”

“I’m sorry, too. She left a big hole in a lot of lives.”

I turn and look out the window.

“When she called you in prison,” I say, my voice coming out thick, “the night before the fire, did she say anything else?”

“Only that Amy had left the message saying she was in Snowy Creek and that she knew who did it. As soon as Sophia got the message, she tried to return the call, but there was no reply. She said she was going to drive up to Snowy Creek first thing in the morning, to see Amy. She called me because she was excited. She told me this could be it, we might finally learn who did it. But the next morning the fire took her life.”

Ice forms in my veins.

“Jeb,” I say, very quietly, “if—just if—Amy was killed by this guy in a ball cap, do you think this same guy might have learned from Amy that she’d called my sister and left a message? Do you think my sister was murdered?”

He says nothing.

“Fuck!” I reach into my pocket, take out my smart phone. I call Jonah Tallingsworth, my crime reporter. He would have been the one to write the stories on Amy’s suicide.

He answers and I waste no time with pleasantries. “Jonah, it’s Rachel. The Amy Findlay suicide story in April this year, do you still have your files for that?”

He asks me to wait as he pulls out his notes. I hear paper rustling.

“I have copies of the coroner’s report,” he says. “And the police report.”

“Was the gun Amy used registered to anyone?”

He pauses, going through his notes. “Serial number was filed off. The cops figured she obtained it on the black market.”

“Any mention of phone calls she made the night she died?”

He’s quiet for a few beats. “Yes, the report mentions she made two calls that matched the numbers left on a piece of paper on the table. First call was to the Snowy Creek Fire Hall. The second to her therapist in West Van, Dr. Sophia MacLean.” He hesitates. “Your sister.”

My mouth goes dry. “She called the fire hall?” I glance at Jeb. “Do you know who she connected with at the hall? How long the call was?”

More papers rustle. “There’s no record here of who she spoke to at the hall. Just the fact she dialed the number.”

“Can you give it to me?”

“You mean the fire hall number?”

“Yes.”

He recites it, including an extension number. My pulse quickens. “Whose extension is that?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t follow it up. It was ruled a suicide. The case was closed.”

“And you just dropped the story there?”

“I had no reason to pursue it further. We had a lot on our plates at that time.”

“Thank you, Jonah.” I kill the call. Immediately, I dial the fire hall plus the extension. The phone rings twice, then clicks over to a generic fire hall voice mail.

I hang up, heart racing. “I want to go there,” I say. “When we’re done with Piper.”

“The hall?”

“Yes. Kerrigan Kaye works Fridays—she’s an old friend of mine.”
Or used to be.
“I can ask her who the extension belongs to. I want to know who has access to that phone, and who was on duty at the time Amy called.”

When Annie Pirello returned to the station, she pulled the Findlay suicide file. Rachel Salonen’s insinuations had piqued her interest.

In the file, Annie found the two numbers Findlay called before she died. She jotted them down. One was for the Snowy Creek Fire Hall, with an extension. The other belonged to Dr. Sophia MacLean. Annie double-checked the dates. Salonen was right. The MacLean house fire had broken out the morning after Findlay died.

She sat back, thinking.

A woman like Amy Findlay? She doesn’t eat a gun. She takes pills, an overdose. Annie pulled out the photos of the scene, laid them out on her desk. She pursed her lips as she studied them. She leaned forward suddenly as she caught sight of the open newspaper at Findlay’s feet in one of the photos. The paper was open on a full-page advertisement for a firefighters’ fundraiser. Included in the ad were two pictures from the new firefighters’ calendar. One was a photo of a man’s muscled back as he worked an old-fashioned water pump. She knew who the man was because she had the same calendar at home; she’d read the small caption underneath.

Quickly Annie turned to her computer and ran a cursory background check that set her spidey senses tingling.

She got to her feet, reached for her jacket. “Novak.”

Her partner looked up from his desk.

“We’re taking a drive to Pemberton.”

CHAPTER 21

Piper was wearing a long, flowing dress, soft Ugg boots, her hair a tumble of honey-colored curls around her face. She was beautiful, thought Jeb, but in a way that was very different from Rachel’s looks. Rachel still did it for him.

“Come in.” Piper’s voice was warm, husky, as she invited Jeb and Rachel into her home on the west side of Pine Cone Lake.

A striking dark-haired man with angular features, olive skin, and hooked brows got up from the table at which he was sitting, in front of a window overlooking the lake. In front of him on the table were a laptop, notebook, scattered papers—he was working. A toddler sat in a high chair at the table beside him. A girl of around four was drawing pictures in front of a crackling fire in the hearth. The dark-haired child got up quickly and went to hug her mother’s skirts while spying curiously up at Jeb and Rachel.

Jeb’s heart did a funny squeeze as he imagined Quinn at that age, holding on to Sophia’s legs. Emotion suddenly rode hard through him. This was taking its toll.

“This is my husband, Dracon, the horror writer, as everyone refers to him here,” Piper said with a smile. “Dracon also lectures at the new private university in Snowy Creek.” She had an aura of happiness, contentment. Their home exuded a sense of family, of peace. Suddenly it was everything Jeb craved, and more. He glanced at Rachel and she met his gaze. She was seeing the same thing he was, but she looked uneasy.

Jeb moved forward and shook the hand that Dracon offered. The man’s eyes were black as night. He had a silver streak at his widow’s peak that Jeb guessed had little to do with age and more to do with genetics. He looked as mysterious and haunting as the kinds of books he wrote. Historical gothics and horror novels set in the Pacific Northwest. Jeb had read a couple in prison.

“We finally meet,” Dracon said, shaking Jeb’s hand with a solid grip. He exuded a casual confidence, the kind of ease that came with wealth.

“You’re Merilee’s half brother,” Jeb said.

“Older half brother, yes,” he added with a smile. “Hence the different last names.”

“And you hold no animosity toward me?” Jeb needed to clear it out of the way.

Dracon glanced at his wife. “I’ve learned the hard way to trust Piper’s intuition. I’ve believed for some time now that you’re not the one who knows where Merilee is, or the one who did this.”

Jeb stared at Dracon. To be so openly accepted at face value, to not have to erect walls of defens
e . . .
it turned his bones to a feeling of water for a moment.

“And this is Crystal,” Piper said, smoothing the hair of the girl hugging her skirts. “Sage is the little monster eyeing you from his high chair with cereal on his mouth.”

Rachel took Dracon’s hand. “We’ve met.”

“We have indeed. Thank you for the coverage and reviews in your newspaper.”

“Your books speak for themselves,” she said with a smile that belied the wariness in her eyes. “I’m a fan.”

“And we’ve met, too, of course,” Rachel said to Piper. Jeb noticed Rachel did not take Piper’s hand. She was keeping a physical distance from the psychic.

“I tried to interview Rachel for the docudrama,” Piper offered in way of explanation for Jeb. “But I understand the reasons for declining.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not into all that rehashing true crime stuff. I’m sorry.” Rachel rubbed her arm. It was a nervous habit. “However, I can see that in this case the show offered something really valuable. Jeb’s freedom. We’re hoping it’ll now all lead to the truth somehow.”

Piper eased the tension with a grin. “Come, take a seat in the living room. Anyone want tea?”

Both Jeb and Rachel declined.

They sat on overstuffed sofas surrounded by artsy decor. The view over the lake was stunning from the living room’s large picture windows. Shelves lined the one wall and were packed floor to ceiling with books and magazines.

“What can we help you with?” Piper said.

Jeb leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “You had a vision when you first touched Amy all those years ago. Are you able to tell us exactly what you saw? Can you still remember it?”

Piper nodded. “Indelibly. I saw two distinct figures, males—”

“You saw their features?” Rachel interrupted.

“It doesn’t always work like that,” Piper explained. “I didn’t see their faces in this case, but rather the shadowy forms of two distinct males, which is likely what Amy remembered, and what I was picking up from her subconscious. However, I also had a sense of there being two or more other guys as well, in a peripheral way.”

Rachel’s mouth flattened and her eyes narrowed slightly. Jeb could see doubt written all over her. “How can you be sure? I mean, if you don’t see faces?”

“It’s a sense of separate souls, individuals. Distinct.”

“I see,” Rachel said.

“I know it’s difficult for some people to grasp.” Piper bent down, spoke softly to her daughter. “Crystal, can you go fetch the cookie tin in the kitchen?” She waited while her child slid off the sofa and left the room, then said, “The two males in the foreground of my vision were attacking, raping a screaming woman. I got an image of a handgun, and one of them wa
s . . .
” She glanced toward the door, making sure Crystal had disappeared. “He was using it to rape the woman.”

Rachel swallowed hard, her face going markedly pale. Jeb felt ill. No matter how many times he heard this stuff, it affected him physically. It had come out in court that Amy had been sexually assaulted with a foreign object, front and back.

“Was it Amy who these two guys were attacking in your vision?” Rachel asked, her voice tight.

“I believe what I was picking up was Amy’s suppressed and horrific memory of watching her friend Merilee being raped by at least two guys.”

Dracon looked away, out the window, features tight.

Piper reached over and placed her hand over her husband’s knee. “That’s how it works for me. I can see people’s nightmares, the ghosts, memories that haunt them. Often those hauntings are vivid images locked in the subconscious. I can bring them out in starker detail sometimes if I sit down and draw the person being affected by the image. The act of drawing seems to open a channel in my mind and connect me more deeply.” She glanced at Dracon as she spoke.

Crystal came scurrying back with a red cookie tin covered in white hearts.

“Why don’t you offer them around,” Piper said gently, removing the lid.

The child glanced shyly at Jeb, then Rachel. She slowly approached with the cookie tin held between both hands. Jeb took one. “Thank you.”

Again he couldn’t help thinking of Quinn. The lost years. How foreign it was to simply be inside a home like this, be accepted and free to go where he pleased. To be able to dream again. But he reminded himself that, while Piper and Dracon accepted him, the rest of the town didn’t. He was not truly free. Not until he had proof that could be used in a court of law.

“Is there anything else you can recall about the vision?” he said as he bit into his cookie. “Anything about the setting?”

“Well, I got a sense from Amy of oppressive weight overhead. As if the place where this crime happened was under something, lots of earth pressing down, maybe. At the time I had a feelin
g . . .
of being underground.”

“Not in a cabin?” Rachel said.

“It didn’t feel like a cabin, no.”

Jeb cleared his throat. “Sophia mentioned that during hypnosis Amy experienced a sensation of cold, dankness, and she could scent dirt along with marijuana smoke. Do you feel the crime could have happened i
n . . .
some sort of cave, maybe? Would this fit with what you saw and felt?”

“It would, yes, absolutely.”

Rachel suddenly sat forward on the couch. “Jeb, the mine!” Her eyes glittered. “The old copper mine above the gravel pit, near the trailhead to Mount Rogue. Rogue Falls comes down near the mine entrance. You said Amy heard water rushing. Back then you used to be able to drive the trestle bridge over the Rogue Falls gorge. A car could have been taken right to the mine opening.” She paused. “It could have happened right there, up above the gravel pit. The music Amy heard—the rhythmic repetitive music—could have been coming from a car parked outside, perhaps with the doors open.”

Adrenaline punched through Jeb. It was possible. But it didn’t explain why Amy was found wandering on railway tracks over twenty miles north.

“Piper,” he said, “before Amy died, she was listening to music, a CD called
The Philistines: The Best of Damani Jakeel
, and she was apparently smoking dope. Do you think she might have been trying to re-create the events of that night by using the stimuli she was starting to recall, including the scent of marijuana? Because this is the kind of thing Sophia had been trying with the retrograde hypnosis.”

“It would make sense,” Piper said. “What else did Sophia say Amy remembered during the hypnosis sessions?”

“An odd string of words:
lewd boy brain is coming crashing now
. Sophia said these words would go round and round and round in Amy’s brain. Then everything would come to halt as an image of a dragon came into her mind. An undulating dragon.
Pumping dragon
were the words she used.”

Piper’s gaze shot to her husband, a frown furrowing into her brow. “Dracon, your name means dragon. Does this mean anything to you? Could it have meant anything to Merilee, perhaps, something Amy might have been aware of?”

He pursed his lips. “By the time Merilee was in high school, I hardly knew my sister. You know how a gap of a few years can seem monumental at that age? And when she disappeared, I’d been out of school for four years already, living in Victoria and working toward my doctorate.” He gave a slight shrug. “The word
dragon
means nothing to me apart from the fact that’s what my name translates to. It’s a family name. My great-grandfather was called Dracon.” He hesitated. “What did you say those other words were again?”

“Lewd boy brain is coming crashing now.”

“And you said she was listening to a Damani Jakeel CD?”

“Do you know of him?”

He got up, went over to a shelf containing racks of CDs. He pulled out one, held it up. It was the same CD that DJ PeaceWorld had given them.

“They were selling these at the annual Snowy Creek spring music festival last April.
Damani Jakeel and the Toots
performed at the festival this year—they’re one of the oldest original ska and rocksteady Jamaican bands still around. Jakeel himself had just turned seventy and the spring concert in Snowy Creek was part of their finale tour. The band formed in the early sixties when ska was hot. Their first performance in Snowy Creek was thirteen years ago, at the premiere Snowy Creek music festival. It was a coup for the festival organizers to bring them back again. I went to the concert for old times’ sake. Picked one of these up.” He brought it over to Jeb.

“Take a look at the lyrics from that track.” Dracon pointed to a song titled “Rude Boy”
on the back.

Jeb took the CD, opened the box, removed the CD booklet, and turned to the song labeled “Rude Boy.” He read the lyrics, a chill sliding down the groove of his spine.

C’mon all you crasher
s . . .
c’mon you all rude boys and girls

The rude boy train is coming crashing now

Coming now

Ticky ticky tick

Rude boy train is coming crashing now

Rude boy train is coming crashing now

You dance hall crashers

You all hypocrite, yo
u . . .
rude boys and girl
s . . .

He glanced up, pulse racing.

“The songs are repetitive like that,” Dracon said. “Kind of gives one an earworm. I can imagine it going round and round in Amy’s head if it was something that was playing during a traumatic event.”

“
Rude boy
. Not
lewd boy
. Amy misheard the lyrics.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone remembered the wrong lyrics of a song. I certainly have.
Rude boy
was a slang term that originated in 1960s Jamaican street culture. It was associated with violent youths and ska and rocksteady music. A lot of the ska and rocksteady music of that period either supported or criticized the rude boy violence. Like this one by Jakeel and the Toots.”

Several beats of silence ensued before Rachel said, “But who would have played a CD like that nine years ago, while Amy was assaulted? Who at the time liked old ska, rocksteady reggae music from the sixties? I mean, kids like trendy stuff.”

Dracon snorted. “After Jakeel and the Toots’ first tour to Snowy Creek, there was at least one fan I know of, including myself. We kind of bonded over the music interest at the time. He was in the class below me.”

Everyone’s gaze was suddenly riveted on Dracon.

“Who?” Jeb said, his pulse quickening even further.

“Adam LeFleur.”

Rachel’s mouth dropped open.

“You’re kidding,” Jeb said.

“Adam became a die-hard fan of the old Jamaican stuff. And it started with that concert here in Snowy Creek thirteen years ago.”

“What day did Jakeel perform last April?” Rachel asked quickly.

Dracon’s brow furrowed. “The festival is always held during the spring break, which falls around the second weekend of April. Hang on.” He pulled his smart phone out of his pocket, scrolled. “The performance was April seventh. A Wednesday.”

“Jeb.” Rachel’s voice was hoarse suddenly. “That was the day before Amy died. She was shot April eighth. Do you think that’s why she came up here and missed her appointment with Sophia? Because she’d learned Jakeel was playing, and she wanted to re-create something? Do you think she was remembering, and that’s why she bought the CD, went back to her place, kept playing the music?”

Jeb stared at her. “Jesus, it’s possible.”

“We need to go back to the gravel pit,” she said, lurching to her feet. “And we need to go up and check out the mine. What if it happened right there, in the old copper mine, just up the road from the pit party? Someone could have driven Amy north and dumped her at the trapper’s cabin
after
the assault in order to deflect attention from the mine.”