by S. K. Grice
“Have you reported this stalking to police?”
“No. He’s never approached me. He just slips in and out of my sight.”
“Do you know him?”
“Of course not. I’m not even sure it’s a man, to be honest. The person wears all black and a hoodie. I can never get a look at the face.”
“Any threats?”
I hugged myself. “No. Just follows me.”
“Hmm. Unfortunately, unless someone threatens you, there is nothing the police can do.”
“But there’s something more. A few months ago, I was at a teacher’s assembly and I saw him outside the school. He’d left an oak leaf on my car windshield.”
Riley narrowed his eyes. “You saw him do this?”
“No. But I saw him running away through the parking lot. No one else was around.”
“Okay.” He ran his hand over his mouth. “But putting a leaf on your windshield is not a crime.”
“But it’s not the first leaf.” I pulled the anonymous letters bound with a rubber band from my purse. “For the past four years, someone has been randomly sending me a leaf in the mail. I have a total of nine letters.” I handed him the bundle.
Riley removed the rubber band, shuffled through the envelopes, and then opened one. His eyes narrowed as he unfolded the waxed paper. “A leaf.”
“All the letters are the same. The first one came to my house about three years ago when I was still married.” I exhaled a breath. All this talking had knocked the wind from me. “After the divorce, they kept coming, but to my townhouse by the bay. Then to my home on Willow Road.”
“You checked out the return address?”
“A fake one. It doesn’t exist.”
“Uh-huh.” He opened another envelope, then another. “Just a leaf? Never a note?”
“Just what you see. Nothing else. And the leaves started showing up more frequently a few months ago. Right at the time police received the first anonymous call.” I watched him, waiting for a reaction.
Riley stayed tight-lipped as he opened the file folder on his desk. He slid an envelope next to the file then pressed a finger against his lips. A spark flickered in his eyes. “Hmm.”
I fiddled with my chain bracelet. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m not certain.” He traced his fingertips down the file page.
I leaned forward to catch a glimpse of what had him so absorbed. The application I’d filled out at the reception desk. A vein pulsed on my wrist. I’d only given basic information, so why his sudden twisted face? “Something wrong?”
“Did you fill this out yourself?”
“Of course. When I arrived at your office.”
Riley placed a few of the envelopes side by side with my application and then stood. “Come… look close at the handwriting on both your application and the handwriting on the letters. Compare the two.”
Standing next to him behind the desk, I looked at my own handwriting. I’d written in print. A simple style I’d picked up as a kid after a teacher had praised my neatness. I’d pretty much stuck with it.
I studied the handwriting on the envelopes. They were also written in print. A similar block-style print. I snorted. He thinks I did this. Determined to keep control, I crossed my arms. “Okay. The handwriting is similar. Military style. A lot of people write like this.”
“No, Jolene.” His tone softened. “Look closer. The handwriting on the envelopes looks exactly like your writing on the application.”
I snapped up the envelope and application and held them next to each other as I searched for a difference. “Look.” I pointed to the letter ‘R’ on the envelope. “This ‘R’ is squared.” I held up my application. “Mine is rounder.”
Riley looked closer. He sniffed and jutted out his chin. “Perhaps.”
Heat flared up my neck. He was wrong. Wrong as the conspiracy theorists who believed man had never landed on the moon. Did he believe anything I’d said to him today? “Are you implying I sent these leaves to myself?”
He put his hands on his hips. “I’m not implying anything, really. It’s just an observation.”
“Why would I send leaves to myself? It makes no sense.”
“No. It doesn’t. But you do have a history of blocking out memories.” He shrugged. “Then again… the similarity in the handwriting could be a complete coincidence.”
“That’s all it is—a coincidence.” I plopped the file back on the desk and took my letters back with me to my seat.
“Getting back to Mike Morton.” His tone picked up and he sat. “I need to ask you something, Jolene.”
My mouth dried. I nodded. “Yes?”
“Is it possible that Mike Morton is not buried under the tree?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it possible he wasn’t dead when you buried him?”
My eyes shifted to the ground. Had we buried him alive? I’d asked myself that question several times. I had no answer—only shocking thoughts of Mike’s gaping mouth full of dirt. Dirt. Dirt. Dirt. I looked at Riley. “He wasn’t breathing. He was dead.”
“You said you didn’t plant the tree until the next morning.” He paused, waiting for confirmation.
My fingers found a spot on my palm stained with dirt. I scraped the skin to feel the warmth. “Yes. Early.”
“Maybe he dug himself out of that hole during the night. Maybe he disappeared for another reason, and now he’s come back to stalk you.”
I pressed my fingernail into the sore I’m made on my hand. My heart raced. The urban legend of the man in the pine barren. Self-doubt seeped into my thoughts. Was he alive when we buried him? Did he crawl out of the hole?
No. I remembered seeing the imprint of my sneaker on top of the soil the next morning. I jabbed my finger into the broken skin. I looked at Riley. “You think I’m insane?”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just looking at all angles. From what you’ve told me, there may not be a body.”
I looked out the tinted glass window overlooking the parking lot. Riley wanted to give me the best defense. I knew he did. But he also thought I was crazy… and maybe I was, but sometimes insanity was truth. I turned to him. “There is a body. I know because Annette and I buried him.”
“We’ll take this one step at time.” He stood. “In the meantime, Jolene, go home and try to get some sleep.”
Resigned to Mike being found and my secret exposed, my next problem was how to explain all of this to Aaron and the twins. They were all I had left of family. Would they still love me once they learned what I’d done?
I lifted my weary body from the chair. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The next morning, I stood on the back deck as a roaring excavator ripped across my green lawn, its tracks tearing through the turf like an army tank. I pressed a fist to my mouth to hold back a scream.
“The court order is clear.” Riley folded the warrant Noah had handed me only moments earlier. “The police have enough evidence for probable cause. And you can forget fighting this. Apparently, the Morton family have friends in high places. It’s signed by the governor.”
I stuffed the warrant in the back pocket of my jeans and watched Noah and Detective Larson on the lawn near the family tree. Two men wearing dark blue jumpsuits with ‘Forensics’ emblazoned in white letters across their backs approached and shook hands with the detectives.
Noah waved the excavator to move closer to the tree, and then held up his hand to halt.
The claw fell to the ground and an orange-vested driver jumped out of the cab of the machine. Forensics and the detectives greeted the driver and started a demonstrative conversation while pointing at different parts of the tree. I couldn’t hear a word but smelled and tasted my defeat. Sweat. Bile. Nothing could stop this from happening.
Riley patted my back. “Wait here. I want to get closer to what they’re doing.” He made his way to the team of people surrounding the tree.
&nb
sp; The back door squeaked. Melissa came out onto the deck wearing grey sweats and tan Ugg boots. She scratched the side of her head and narrowed her eyes toward the commotion at the tree. “I heard all the noise. What’s going on?”
My chin trembled and heat spread across my cheeks. We hadn’t spoken since she’d left for work yesterday afternoon. So much had happened since then. If she’d been home when I’d returned from Riley’s office last night, I might have broken down and told her everything. But after half a bottle of wine and a Xanax, I’d drifted into a deep sleep and hadn’t woken up until my alarm had gone off an hour ago.
I shoved the warrant deeper into my back pocket and kept my attention on the activity. “The police have a warrant to dig under the tree.”
She came to my side and clutched my arm like a scared child. “A warrant… why? Does this have something to do with the search for Mike Morton?”
Nausea turned in my stomach. I needed to spew out the poison of my secret and tell Melissa everything. She was my friend. She’d understand once I explained, wouldn’t she? I glanced at Riley standing near the excavator along with Noah and Detective Larson and the forensics team. Riley was right—until the body was found, I needed to keep my mouth shut. “I-I think so.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the deal with the tree?”
I shook my head like I was just as confused. And I was. Who the hell told the police where Mike was buried?
She jiggled my arm and tilted her head like a curious puppy. “Well… what does the warrant say? Tell me.”
Fuck. Hiding the truth for all these years had suddenly seemed easy. Now, I couldn’t even look my friend in the eye. I kept my focus on the police and wondered how they planned to treat the tree.
“Joleeene.” Melissa dropped my arm. “What’s going on?”
I understood her interest. Any normal person would act just as inquisitive, but I needed to stay calm and quiet. “Something about evidence about what happened to Mike.”
The forensics team, Riley, and the detectives all stood in a semi-circle talking as two more men approached the tree. They wore jeans and green polo shirts with a tree logo on their front pockets. They each carried a chainsaw. Noah caught my eye, and then turned away.
My breaths came fast and hard. I didn’t like standing helplessly on the deck. I wished Melissa wasn’t there to watch this unfold, but I couldn’t stand by while this team of workers destroyed my tree. “I need to get closer and see what’s happening.”
Melissa was on my heels—nothing I could do about that. She lived here, too. I slipped into the space between Riley and a forensics officer, and edged closer to Riley. “What’s going on?”
“They’re going to start removing limbs from the tree. We all have to back up.”
Everyone backed up as the two workers from Greenview Arborists approached the tree and pulled on a chainsaw. Vroom vroom vrooooom.
My body tensed as I pressed my hands to my ears, blocking out the dreadful noise slicing through my brain. “One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three—”
The noise had drilled into my head, breaking my perfect sequence. I ran my hands through my hair, scraping into my scalp and suffering every brutal slice cut from the tree.
Vroom vroom vrooooom. The arborists hacked off the lower limbs.
“One, two, three, four, five. One, two—” Hot blood thrummed through my veins. I couldn’t focus and started again.
“One, two, three, four—”
A cherry picker moved in and the arborists started work by chopping off the scarlet crown. Vroom vroom vrooooom. As the branches and boughs toppled, red leaves fell like teardrops to the ground.
This is happening so fast. I had to start over. I had to stop this from getting worse. It didn’t have to happen this way. The tree could be saved. I ran to the workers. “Stop! You’re destroying Patsy’s tree.”
Riley pulled me back. “There’s nothing we can do, Jolene.”
My knees buckled, and Riley looped his arm into mine for support. The chainsaw restarted, sending branches crashing to the ground. A large dump truck backed onto my lawn and the arborists tossed the branches and debris into the back.
In less than an hour, the tree was stripped down and looked like a naked totem pole.
Melissa looked at me with droopy worried eyes. “What the fuck, Jolene… what’s under the tree?”
“Excuse me.” Riley smoothed a hand over his paisley silk tie. “I’m Jolene’s attorney, and I’ve instructed her not to speak with anyone until this search is complete.”
“This is a bunch of crap.” Melissa puffed and walked away toward the detectives.
Riley pulled me closer. “You doing okay?”
“Not really.” I didn’t bother telling him that no matter how much I didn’t like snubbing Melissa, it had been the agony of watching the tree get destroyed that was killing me inside. It felt like someone had torn into my chest and ripped out my beating heart. I was alive, but empty.
The roar of the cherry picker broke my thoughts. It was roping the top of the naked tree. I stood frozen as three chunks were roped, sawed off, and tossed aside until all that remained of the majestic tree was a three-foot tall stump.
“Let’s start digging!” Noah called out.
I paced the yard, watching from a distance. My legs grew tired, but I couldn’t rest until this was over.
The excavator dug a wide, one-foot-deep circle around the tree, like a moat. It kept digging round and round in the circle, making it deeper with each turn. The noise screeched against my eardrums and hurt my teeth. I put my hands over my ears.
Two feet. Three feet.
The bearded forensics officer held up his hand, and the excavator stopped. “Let’s get to work.”
The two-man forensic team stepped into the hole with hatchets in their hands. I clutched my stomach. The frisky cadaver dog sniffed and scratched around the trunk too much for my liking.
The men whacked at the thick roots, but the stump held strong, determined to keep its position in the ground.
Whack. Whack. Whack.
I flinched with each bruising blow at its tender, fibrous roots. Each hit chipped closer to my painful secret. This was the end. The end of an era. The end of the memories of Patsy’s love of the tree and her love for me.
The forensics team crouched to their hands and knees, reached past the roots, and sifted the earth with their gloved hands.
The bearded forensics officer climbed out of the hole and approached Noah. I drew closer to hear what was happening.
Rubbing and swiping dirt off his hands, the forensic officer spoke to Noah and Larson. “The root system under this tree is massive. Oak roots in this area don’t normally go deeper than two, maybe three feet deep. These roots are at least five feet deep.”
A shrill, nails-on-chalkboard noise sliced through my brain, shutting out all my senses. I cupped my ears to shut out the sound, then Annette’s voice came through loud and clear. The hole is at least five feet deep.
“Damn tree must’ve been fertilized with steroids,” the younger forensics officer said, wiping his forehead on his shirt sleeve. “We’ll need to pull back the stump so we can get deeper.”
Noah turned to the orange-vested excavator driver. “You heard the man. Let’s rip out the stump.”
“You got it, boss.” The driver saluted and took off.
Riley came to my side with a concerned expression. “Hey, maybe you want to come back to the deck and sit down.”
“No, I can’t sit.” I walked away, shaking off the noise in my head. Wandering along the tree line surrounding the house, I paced closer and then further away from the nightmare, unable to decide if I wanted to watch or not. I picked at the raw skin on my thumb where I’d peeled off my cuticle. Nerves burned under my skin.
When I reached the side of the house, I looked to the road. My heart chugged a ragged beat. People. I counted six. Mrs. Nichols was one of them. They stopped talking
and looked at me—the deer in the headlights. From where they stood, they couldn’t see what was going on in the backyard with the tree. But the police, forensics, and K-9 vehicles parked on the road were enough to make them assume a crime was being investigated.
The excavator roared back to life, and I dashed back to the work at the tree. The claw had grabbed hold of the stump and was now wrenching, jerking, and tugging it out of its earthly foundation like it was a wisdom tooth being pulled from a jawbone. Moments later, the stump lay on its side.
My feet melded to the ground, and everything moved around me in slow motion. Then the engine stopped, and every nerve in my body sizzled like a frayed electrical wire.
Noah moved in closer to the hole and stump then crouched to his haunches.
The cadaver dog sniffed around the ripped roots, pawed the earth, and sat. “I think we have a body here, men,” the K9 officer said, slipping the hound a treat.
The forensic team hopped into the hole and hacked away at the roots still clinging to the tree. On their hands and knees, they sifted through soil.
Minutes passed until the younger forensic officer spoke. He pulled aside some roots. “Hey, Roger. Looks like human bones.”
My vision blurred and my knees wavered.
The bearded one I now knew as Roger took a closer look. “Holy shit, man. That’s incredible. The taproot grew straight through the torso.”
Dark spots appeared, and my eyes couldn’t focus, but I dared a glance in the hole.
White bones. A tuft of hair. My legs collapsed, and all I heard was my pent-up scream.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I sat at the kitchen table and Riley handed me a glass of water. My hands shook so hard that I could barely lift the drink to my lips. “Thanks.”
I’d momentarily blacked out, and Riley had helped me back inside the house. My vision was blurred—everything except the white bones entangled in tree roots. My stomach turned, but I’d already vomited its contents on the lawn. The image was forever imprinted in my brain.
