I opened my emails and searched until I found the ones from Kim Ebert, Roscoe’s sister, and the earlier ones from his dad. I read through all half dozen of them pleading for me to take her case to help free Roscoe from prison. In one of the emails Kim had given her phone number and address. Even though it was already late, I picked up my cell phone and sent her a text.
This is Julie Hall. When would be a good time to meet and talk about Roscoe’s case?
I’d fallen asleep in front of the television when a text reply chimed on my phone. Kim messaged that she was home most days because she was currently unemployed. She sent a second text giving her address and asking if I’d decided to take the case. I didn’t send a text reply.
That night as I was climbing into bed, Garrett called and I told him that I was driving up north to meet with Roscoe’s sister in the morning.
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “You going to take Tracey with you?”
“No.”
We both knew that going back to my hometown would be triggering. Still, I hated the worry in his voice and detested that my inability to remain sober had put it there so I added, “I’m going to be okay. I have a phone session with Dr. Chen in the morning.”
“Okay. That’s good.”
I asked about his case, and even though he couldn’t share the details with me, he talked about his new partner, who was vegan. We laughed about a restaurant they’d tried and how Garrett had ordered something vegan that had turned out to be so good he was thinking of converting both of us to a meat-free diet.
As I stretched out in bed and listened to his voice through the phone, I felt happy to have him in my life. The deep baritone of his voice caressed my ear and caused all my tense muscles to relax but after the call was over, I hated myself for the things I left unsaid. I’d failed to tell him about Raymond Hughes and his impromptu reading, and another thing that weighed heavy on my mind. I didn’t feel like I could speak out loud about that even to myself yet.
The morning came with the snout of a rottweiler in my face and Wookie’s insistence that I get out of bed. When a hundred-thirty-pound dog wants you to do something you should just give in. I opened the patio door and let him race out into the backyard to pee.
“Good morning, neighbor!”
I glanced over to see Preston and his husband, Phil, sitting on their deck having their morning coffee.
“Morning.” I gave them a nod.
“Thanks for the cookies.” Phil smiled.
“You’re welcome.”
“Phil’s got stew in the slow cooker,” Preston mentioned. “There’s plenty if you want to come for dinner.”
“No.” I took a breath and forced myself to take the sharpness out of my tone. They were good to me, and if Garrett had asked them to keep an eye on me, it was only because I’d brought it on myself. “Thanks but I have plans.” I smiled and told them to enjoy their day.
I stepped back inside and left the door open for Wookie to return after he was finished. I liked my neighbors but I’d been raised on a farm outside of town and then lived in a singlewide trailer on that property as an adult. Sometimes my introverted little heart longed for a space between my closest neighbors.
By the time I’d shooed Fluffy off the counter so I could make myself some toast, Wookie was back inside. I filled both the critters’ bowls and paused to enjoy a rare and brief moment of affection from Fluffy when he purred and wound between my feet to show gratitude for his food.
I had a Skype counseling session with Dr. Chen. I’d been seeing her for enough time now that I could hear her words even in her pauses. When she didn’t comment on the fact that I was taking a case near the place where I grew up, I felt a need to fill the void.
“I’ll be fine. Really. It’s not a big deal.”
“Did you ask someone to go with you? Garrett? Tracey?”
The comment rankled.
“They’re both working.” I glanced away from the screen and then back. “I can handle it. Besides, we both knew I had to go back to work eventually.”
Again, she let a silence stretch between us.
“I’ll check in with Garrett or Tracey while I’m there if I feel even the least bit...” Like the quicksand thoughts would swallow me whole. “Like I’m not okay.”
“It’s important to let your support system be there for you.” Her voice was velvet and her face concerned. “Have you talked to Garrett yet about—”
“No.” I cut her off. “Not yet. I will.” I cleared my throat. “He had to go away for a few days for work.”
I wrapped up the session by assuring her that I’d do some meditation exercises before I hit the road. Dr. Chen was the mother I never had except I never saw her outside of her office or video chat, and I paid her a couple hundred bucks each time for her concern.
The promise to meditate was only a white lie. I packed up my backpack and filled up my water bottle from the tap. Once on I-5, I pointed the nose of my Jeep north and tried not to think about going home.
Home.
The word caused a full-body shudder.
As I drove, I turned up the volume on a self-guided meditation, ignoring the parts that told me to lie down and close my eyes since that wouldn’t be wise while barreling down the highway.
In stark contrast to how I felt inside, the October clouds became thinner the closer I drove to my destination and soon I was reaching for my sunglasses. A few miles before entering the town I took a westbound exit that delivered me to acreage of farmland that spread between the highway and the ocean. I knew the area as well as I knew every scar on my body caused by living there.
I took a right on a gravel driveway only a couple miles from the farm where I grew up. On either side of the road were acres of harvested cornfields, the dried brown stalks a desiccated army of thousands stretching as far as I could see. Next to the singlewide stood a wooden outbuilding that might have been a garage or large shed. The paint was curled and peeling and it listed to one side. The trailer itself looked in marginally better shape but dirt and moss clung to the once white siding like a blotchy green skin.
As I parked near the tired trailer, my throat grew tight and my belly soured.
“You’ve got this.”
I turned off the Jeep, stuffed my keys into the pocket of my hoodie and strode toward the trailer. Dried, leggy petunias sat in pots going up the stairs. The door was opened a crack before I could raise my fist to knock.
“Hi, Julie. C’mon in, just watch the dogs don’t make a run for it.”
I opened the door just wide enough to angle my body inside while blocking one large dog and one small with my leg.
“I guess you’re Kim?” I shouted over the loud yips and yaps of a Chihuahua and then bent to give the small dog and a black lab each a scratch behind their ears.
“Yup, I am,” she told me. To the dogs she yelled, “Go to your beds!”
Roscoe’s sister was around five feet tall with soft rolls around her middle and a two-inch white skunk stripe down the part of her dyed black hair. A thick greasy smear of red bedecked her thin lips.
“Let’s have a seat.”
I glanced around for a place to sit. I’d lived in a singlewide trailer on farmland for a number of years and I wasn’t put off by the disarray I saw here or the cheesy decor. In fact, even though dark memories threatened, the place felt familiar. Kim lifted a pile of laundry from a corner of the couch and dropped it on the dirty shag carpet. I sat on the cushion she’d made available and Kim sat in a worn recliner. The first thing that struck me was the age difference. Roscoe looked my age of thirty but Kim looked a hard fifty.
“So you’re Roscoe’s sister.” My eyes flitted around the room, resting on one colorful troll doll to another perched around the trailer. Apparently Kim collected the bright-haired trolls because there must’ve been a couple dozen of them.
“Half sister.” She grabbed the lever on the side of her chair and raised the footrest. “Mom’s first husband, my biological dad, died. She remarried at forty and then—oops!—along came Roscoe.”
She laughed, exposing yellow teeth marred by smudges of her ruby red lipstick, then nervously scratched at a scaly rash the size of a dollar bill that ran from her collarbone up the side of her neck.
From across the room the dogs were watching us and whining.
“You and Roscoe have the same last name. Your stepdad adopted you?”
“Yeah, and my mom thought it would be good for family unity if I took the name.”
“I’m sorry to hear about the passing of your stepdad.”
“Cancer is evil.” She sighed. “There was one good thing that came out of it though—he became a better person. More about family...or at least more about Roscoe.” She nodded to me. “That’s why he contacted you.”
“Is that Roscoe’s dog, Jet?” I pointed to the black lab.
“Yup.”
At the sound of his name the black lab bounded over, followed quickly by the Chihuahua. Both jumped on the couch next to me, the lab sniffing and the small dog yapping. I patted their heads and tried to turn Kim’s attention back to why I was here.
“I guess Jet is the reason this all started,” I began. “Roscoe broke into Alice’s car, took the dog, and a lot of people witnessed the fight in the middle of town.”
“I guess.” She nodded and scratched at her neck more, flaking off some of the scales to reveal angry red skin. “You might say it’s all the dog’s fault. Stupid mutt.” She reached for a can of Coke and took a long drink. “Now all I do is dog sit those two for fifteen dollars a day. I was working as a cook but a car accident last year hurt my back.” She put a hand to her lower lumbar as if to prove it.
“Is that where Roscoe kept his sword?” I pointed to a couple of hooks on a wall that seemed about the right distance apart.
“Yup. Of course, it’s in evidence now.”
“Roscoe claims to be innocent, and obviously, your dad...stepdad...believed that too, since he was the one who first emailed asking me to find Alice to try and get evidence to free your brother.” I waited for Kim to also proclaim Roscoe was innocent but she seemed really focused on a hangnail on the corner of her thumb so I continued, “Blood was found in Roscoe’s pickup along with Alice’s thumb. How do you think that happened, if your half brother wasn’t the one who killed her?”
“Obviously anyone could’ve taken his truck.” She gave me a look that said I was dimwitted not to see that. “Everyone who knew Roscoe also knew that he left the keys to that truck under the floor mat. He came home. Passed out with Jet in the back bedroom. Meanwhile someone must’ve taken his truck and killed Alice. We never lock our doors here so...”
“Someone came inside here and took his sword too.”
She only nodded.
“Why would someone kill her?”
“Like I would know?” Kim snorted. “I heard she was humping anything that moved while they were married so maybe some guy got jealous.”
I frowned because I hadn’t heard that Alice had cheated. “That could still implicate your brother. Especially if he had hopes of reconciling.”
“Well, I guess if I’m honest the cheating thing was just a rumor. You know how this town likes to talk. Second, there is no way on hell those two were ever getting back together.” Kim shook her head vehemently.
“How about we start from the beginning?” I asked her to tell me everything she knew, starting with Roscoe and Alice meeting and getting married. By the end of the story the dogs finally got bored with sniffing, licking and yipping at me and jumped off the couch. The Chihuahua made a nest in the pile of laundry. Nothing Kim said was different from Roscoe’s story. In fact, some of her phrases were verbatim, which immediately gave me the sense they’d rehearsed their story.
“Why did the police immediately show up here the next morning?”
“Well, her car was still at the coffee place in town. When the shop owner showed up the next morning, he recognized Alice’s car parked out front and saw her purse and keys were inside. Sure the back window was broken because Roscoe broke it to get the dog out but the car was still drivable so I guess the guy thought it was weird.” Kim shrugged. “He called the police because he thought it was strange. Cops checked her basement suite and she wasn’t there. Then they came here because, of course, by then they’d heard about the big hullaballoo in the middle of the street over Jet. When they saw the blood and the thumb in the bed of his pickup, he was arrested on the spot,” she said, wrapping up the story. “Roscoe never knew what hit him.”
“I’m guessing Alice knew who hit her.”
Kim’s eyes got hard. “Roscoe’s the kind of guy who catches spiders and sets them free outside. His dad tried to take him out hunting when he was little but he just cried. He’s as tame as a kitten.”
“So you think he’s innocent.”
She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. I waited. Finally she said, “I don’t know what to think. All the evidence sure points to him, doesn’t it? I guess everyone has their breaking point.”
I thought about the man I’d met with the tattoo of a knife stabbing a heart on his neck and the Chinese symbol on his forehead.
“I try not to judge a book by its cover,” I began. “But his tattoos...”
“Yeah. Yeah.” She shook her head. “Bad choices considering...you know.”
“You know that the Chinese symbol on his forehead means death.”
She nodded.
“If everyone with stupid tattoos was guilty of murder, a whole lot of us would be in jail.” She cackled then rolled up the cuff of her sweatpants to reveal a faded and stretched tatt of ballet slippers that said princess underneath. “Do I look like a ballerina or a princess?”
“Point taken. I guess if someone were to ask me what kind of tattoo you’d have, I’d say a troll since you obviously like them.”
“You’re right!” She smiled brightly. “I love those damn things. My ma got me started collecting them when I was a kid. Something about their stupid rubber bodies and bright hair just makes me laugh.” She picked up a green-haired troll from a nearby table and gave its hair a rub. “So you going to look for Alice so we can free my brother?”
“Honestly, I don’t know where I’d even begin. You really don’t want to pay me to walk all over Washington with my dowsing rods.”
“There’s money set aside for you to try and find Alice. My stepdad made sure of that.”
“Roscoe said whatever was left would go to the care home, which you’re paying for. So that money would be going to you instead, right? Wouldn’t you rather take it for yourself instead of paying me? Or did you already get money from your stepdad too?”
“Never saw eye to eye with the man so I have no interest in his cash. My stepdad always gave Roscoe money. If his son had a hankering for a new expensive toy, his daddy would buy it.”
I watched her face but there didn’t seem to be any resentment there. “That didn’t bother you?”
“I’ve always fended for myself.” Kim rubbed again at her neck. “If you’re looking for my help on where to start looking, I’m afraid I haven’t got a clue. My mom had a stroke a couple weeks before then so I was with her in the hospital that night. Now she’s in a home with only me to visit her.” She pouted. “You do whatever you feel is right. I don’t blame you one bit for not wanting to get involved. It’s a mess.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to help. I just need a clue where to start looking.”
“Well...” She frowned. “Seems to me that you being from around here, you’d know just as well as anybody else where a body could be buried.”
I resisted rolling my eyes. “Whoever killed Alice could’ve dumped her just
about anywhere, including into the ocean. The currents could’ve swirled her out to sea where she was eaten by an orca.”
Kim shrugged. “Sorry. I wish I could be of help but...” Her voice just trailed off.
I told her my rate and how much I’d need for a deposit. She didn’t even flinch, which made me ask, “What if you spend all your stepdad’s inheritance paying me and there’s not enough money to keep your mom in the care home? Even worse, what if I find Alice and it only proves Roscoe is guilty?”
“My stepdad wanted you so, far as I’m concerned, it’s him hiring you and whatever happens happens.” Her lips pursed in a harsh slash of red. “Sure I got some bills to pay and Mom’s expenses are high, but the man put the money aside to pay you so I’m guessing that’s what I’m gonna do.”
I looked around at the ragged old furniture and stained carpeting. What I was getting paid could go a long way on home improvement but it sounded like her decision was made.
“Okay, all I can tell you is that I’ll ask around, talk to people who knew Roscoe and Alice and see if I can get any idea of where to start looking for Alice’s body.” In essence I was promising to spend even more time in the hometown that brought back sick memories. My subconscious was unsettled by the idea. I quickly added, “I’ll give it a week. If I’m not making any headway at all after that, I’m calling it quits. That way you’re not just throwing money away. Deal?”
“That sounds fair.” She gave a sharp nod.
“What about Alice’s family? Do they know you’ve hired me?” I got to my feet and walked to the door.
“Her dad’s dead. Her mom moved to Florida with some new guy and never came back.”
As I slipped my feet into my runners, Kim added, “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“From back when I lived out here? I’m sorry.” I searched my memory. “I’ve forgotten more than I could ever remember about this area.” Dr. Chen would’ve said I was repressing those memories and she would be right.
“I was your babysitter!” Kim exclaimed with pure glee.
A Grave End Page 4
