Traces of Guilt

by Dee Henderson

  “How’s it going, Josh?” he asked.

  His brother grimaced. “She stands looking out at the lake a lot, or silently crying as she walks behind me, marking the map. She won’t talk about much of anything. She’s sometimes got headphones on, listening to music while we trail the dogs.”

  “Want me to come up with a solid reason she can’t come out here for a few days?” Gabriel asked.

  Josh shook his head. “It won’t change things for her, Gabriel. Every day we clear more of this land and don’t find anything, her sadness goes deeper. She’d convinced herself her parents were here, that we could find them. She’s letting that go now. She’ll go back with Ann and Paul Thursday evening, let me finish the search without her. Later in the week, the weather looks like it’s going to turn, slow the search down.”

  “She’ll be at your place this evening?”

  “Dinner and a movie, then I’ll take her over to our folks to sleep. It helps that she’s not trying to stay at the campground—I don’t have to worry about a reporter or former neighbor showing up. Why don’t you bring Evie over and join us? Or at least take Evie out to a movie or something. She’s been doing nothing but work too. It can’t be what she planned when she thought about coming to Carin for a working vacation.”

  “She’s got a guy, Josh. Name of Rob Turney. And the more I think about it, the more I think he might be good for her. Evie’s like Ann. She gets her head into a case, she just keeps turning it until something gives. She needs a life with someone other than a cop. The work never shuts off otherwise.”

  “All the more reason she needs to take a break. Frankly, you need the break more than any of us. You’re looking pretty low, Gabriel, and it’s not just the day-old stubble on your chin.”

  Gabriel rubbed his jaw, knew the tension he felt was visible, looked ahead at the farmhouse as they approached it. “This place does that to me.”

  “Yeah, we’re both feeling a hint of what Grace is going through.”

  Josh pushed aside a low-hanging branch. “Grace hasn’t said anything directly about her uncle. She’s alluded to it, if you know what to listen for, but that’s all. She did mention she’s been going to church with Ann and Paul. I find it interesting that she’s been able to face her pain with God easier than she’s been able to talk with people.”

  “A little at a time,” Gabriel replied. “How about you—you’re going to be okay if she does mention it?”

  Josh nodded. “I think so, if only because there are a few things I would like to say that I can’t bring up until she opens that door. I think at times she is the saddest person I know, but then her gaze will clear and there’s the Grace I remember.”

  “She’s cracked a window, coming back here, letting herself remember.”

  “I think so,” Josh agreed. “She’s doing this alone, and that’s the part that’s so troubling.”

  “You’re there for her. She can’t fall that far down into her memories when friends like you are around.”

  “That’s mostly what Ann and Rachel were doing, just being there. Anyway, food and a movie tonight. Come by if you change your mind, bring Evie,” Josh mentioned again as the two caught up with Grace and the dogs.

  “I’ll see,” Gabriel said. He went and said goodbye to Grace, then turned toward his truck. He wasn’t sure he wanted to knock on that door. He’d found some kind of footing with Evie—task-focused, a friendship forming, not unlike the early days with Ann. Evie didn’t want anything else right now. Another week, the Florist case solved or not, Evie wasn’t even going to be here. He was careful to keep that in mind, for her sake as well as his.

  Gabriel pushed open the post-office door, held his hand palm down behind him in the silent command Will had taught him.

  “Do you know what the weather was like the night they disappeared?” Evie called over to him without looking up. “Full moon and bright, cloudy and dark, or . . . ?”

  “Quarter moon, clear skies, but relatively dark,” he replied. “And good evening to you too.”

  She looked up then, smiled, yet all she said was “Thanks,” and then turned back to her notes.

  “How does pizza sound for dinner again, shared with your dogs?”

  That got her attention. He whispered a Dutch word Will had taught him as he stepped aside, and the dogs both barked. Evie was up in a flash. The dogs raced across the concrete floor to join her. She laughed and crouched down to give them a double hug. “Oh, you adorable guys, you look wonderful!”

  Gabriel smiled at the warm greeting. “While you’ve been working, at least these two have been having a real vacation.”

  “Yeah, I saw the photos of them on the course Will had built for his own dogs, the teeter-totter and the hurdles to jump. I felt guilty even considering bringing them into town after I saw what they were enjoying with their two new friends.”

  Gabriel handed over the tug-of-war rope Will had made for them. “Apollo, Zeus, here you go,” and the dogs leaped over to pick up either end, showing off for Evie. She laughed, watching them.

  “What kind of pizza do you want? I’m going to order a medium meat-lovers just for them.”

  Evie’s grin lit her face. “Canadian bacon and pineapple, if you don’t mind being weird.”

  “I can handle it.” He nodded at the second wall she was now filling in. It was, surprisingly, mostly artwork. “I’ll order us dinner to be delivered and then you can talk to me about what you’re doing. Does that work for you?”

  “That would be great.”

  Gabriel offered her the sack of other dog toys Will had sent with him. Evie sent a couple of tennis balls sailing down the length of the post office, and the dogs gave an excited bark and surged after them. Gabriel pulled out his phone and ordered dinner with an extra twenty-minute delay. She needed the time to play with her dogs.

  Gabriel pulled another tasty piece of pizza from the box, glad he’d ordered the thick crust. He picked up his root beer. For having dinner with a lady, it was as comfortable a date as most he’d had, which was either a sad fact or an acknowledgment that he didn’t mind an evening with good food and work mixed in . . . along with an intriguing woman, he added silently, watching Evie over the lip of the bottle.

  Evie had settled on a chair with her feet propped on another one, the dogs on either side of her. The dogs were content, having eaten well, played hard. Evie gestured at the second wall. “The sketches show the most likely routes the Florist family took that night from the house to the campground. If they needed to stop for gas, they went this way”—she pointed—“if they were interested in scenery along the route, they went that way. I started putting Xs on the routes, trying to figure out if that was where the crime happened, what was the most likely scenario. At the house, someone wants the cash they’ve got stored in the safe. At the gas station, someone wants the truck they’re driving. That kind of thing. Just plotting where possible events might have taken place, seeing what makes the most sense.”

  “Okay, I follow. Anything new pop out?”

  “A couple of things.” She drank the last of her root beer. “What if they were killed in a car accident, three people dead? A truck and camper accident, in this case. We see that all the time. A family gets killed in a bad vehicle accident. Only someone covers up the crash. Someone with multiple DUIs. Someone hauling a drug shipment. Driving a stolen semi. Someone with a reason to hide the accident from the authorities decides to cover it up.”

  He leaned forward, finding the idea interesting. “A bad accident that kills people is possible,” he agreed. He’d worked a few horrific crashes during his career. “And I agree there could be a motive to hide a wreck, but the means to do so? If the truck could still be driven well enough to haul the camper, it probably wasn’t a serious enough wreck to kill three people. And you’re talking major moving equipment to clear vehicles off a road that were damaged enough for deaths. A tow truck. A tractor. You couldn’t haul them much of a distance unless you could get them on a fl
atbed. If they went over the side of a bridge, down a ravine, smashed into a cornfield, or were moved there, the vehicles eventually get found. Maybe not in first few days, but the first week or two they’d get spotted from the air.”

  Evie considered that, nodded. “A wreck is the cleanest answer, and not finding them means someone wanted to cover it up. But I’ll go along with you that it isn’t easy to hide a wreck of this magnitude.”

  She leaned over to pat each dog. “Here’s another idea. Say they arrived at the campground as planned, got parked, and settled in. Since the whole idea of the trip was family time, they get up early and rent a boat to go fishing, get out on the lake at dawn. Did the family get killed on the lake?”

  Gabriel found the question equally intriguing. “A boating accident?”

  “Could be,” Evie said. “The boat flips suddenly, the water’s really cold, three people drown. It happens. The problem is the truck and camper. Again, someone would have to have a reason to cover up what happened and move their truck and camper out of the park.”

  “State parks after hours use an honor system,” Gabriel said. “You choose a place to park, the next morning park staff comes by and collects the lot fees, signs you in. You could figure out quickly who was a recent arrival by seeing who didn’t have a check-in card lying on the vehicle dashboard. It’s possible they could have arrived at the park and there’s no record of it—if the vehicles were moved before staff came around.”

  “That’s good to know. But it doesn’t fit that it was a stranger crime. Someone recognizes the Florist family, kills them on the lake, knows what their truck and camper look like, finds the vehicles in the campground, and moves the vehicles before their friends call the cops to report they hadn’t arrived,” she summarized.

  Gabriel liked the clean lines of it. The family was killed on the lake, the vehicles were moved, and all before the cops began the search. But he could see problems. “Bodies float,” he pointed out, “unless they’re weighted down. And gunshots on the water echo—a violent crime would have been heard by someone. I can see choppy water and a speedboat wake causing a smaller boat to flip over, I can see a near collision between boats, I can see an accident that puts the Florist family into the water, and maybe the son panics—it’s cold water, trying to save each other, the family drowns. I can even see it being unnoticed—other boaters a distance away don’t realize what’s happened, especially if there’s fog early in the morning. But the bodies would have been found. Maybe not that morning, but a day or two underwater, a body comes back to the surface. Three people drown—they get found unless deliberately held down somehow.”

  Evie thought about it, then said, “The family is killed on the lake. Someone had a reason to kill them and the time to cover it up, weigh down the bodies. They were out on the lake at dawn. Did anyone else disappear that weekend? Did the Florists see a body dumped in the lake, and someone had to kill the family to keep what they saw under wraps?”

  Gabriel had to smile. “Now you’re really getting out there, Evie.”

  “Yeah, I’m getting out there,” she conceded. “But the idea of something happening to them after they arrived at their destination seems like a possibility. That lake is the perfect place to make bodies disappear.”

  She glanced over at him. “I’ve been looking at the Durbins—I was sure it was them for part of a day—but as volatile as they are, it’s mostly petty stuff. I didn’t get any particular hostile vibes from my interviews with them, and the money as a motive just doesn’t work. They simply weren’t broke enough to justify killing an entire family.”

  “I could have told you that had you asked,” Gabriel said mildly.

  “It would have been a family thing if it was them, and I didn’t want to drag you in that direction again.”

  Gabriel chuckled. “I appreciate it. They’re mostly nice people, who direct their annoyances and frustrations at each other. The rest of the world gets a pass.”

  “I concluded the same. Something happening at the campground, after the Florist family arrived—that idea still resonates as interesting to me.” She studied the sketches again. “And I come back to the initial question. Where did this happen, Gabriel? At the house? During the drive? At the campground? Or is this a case where the family decided to run, and they vanished because they chose to?”

  “Evie, those are questions we’ve been asking about this case on and off for twelve years. You need to accept that it may not be solvable, at least not with what we know today. You’ve given us a lot more information to consider than we had before, but the missing piece may not be here.”

  He could see from the stubborn set of her jaw that she didn’t want to accept that. He felt an odd tenderness at the fact she didn’t want to let this go. He’d admit they were finished before she did, but she’d get there. “What are the checkmarks on the aerial maps? Those are new.”

  She shifted to look at where he pointed. “I’ve been checking off properties where I can document an interview took place. It’s another way to look at the same basic question—the most likely routes they might have traveled that night and where something might have happened. Thirty miles is a lot of territory. I wanted to make sure everyone living along those routes was interviewed, that there weren’t gaps in the coverage asking the basic questions—did you see anything, hear anything, notice something unusual that Thursday night or Friday morning? There are a few gaps as you get farther north toward the campground, a few stretches where it’s four miles between interviews, but it’s not out of line with the number of homes in the area. It was an interesting question, except it didn’t take me anywhere particularly useful.”

  Gabriel studied that map. “Trying to fill in those gaps after this many years is a long shot, but it’s something to consider.”

  “If someone had noticed something, I’m guessing they would have made a point to call and mention it at the time,” Evie replied. “Putting out a new reward for information might help, though, give someone with a sliver of a memory a reason to call you.”

  “Let’s give that some thought. So the new IDs haven’t gone anywhere?” he asked.

  Rather absently, she shook her head. “They don’t appear to have ever been used, not for a driver’s license, for tax returns, to register a PO box, take out a business license, buy real estate or a vehicle. The state databases don’t have the names, and the FBI is about done looking at national records.”

  “What about the idea of the son becoming a cop?”

  “I’ve been looking through police academy class photos, because I like that idea, looking for someone who resembles Scott’s photo when he was twenty. So far it’s not led anywhere.”

  He studied the work she’d done and nodded. “Evie, let’s call it a night. Ride with me out to Will’s with the dogs, they might as well stay with him the last few days rather than be stuck in town. We’ll find something to talk about that isn’t work. At some point you have to accept this case has pushed as far as it’s going to move, and let it go.”

  Evie looked at the two dogs stretched out beside her, ran her foot over Apollo’s back. “They have been enjoying their stay with Will and his dogs.”

  He smiled. “Why don’t you let me help you pack this case away tomorrow, you can have Thanksgiving with us on Thursday, and then you should get yourself home, have Friday through Sunday as a true vacation before you’re back at work with the State Police on Monday. I’m feeling rather guilty you haven’t watched more than one movie since you’ve been on this so-called vacation, haven’t enjoyed that nice house you rented. You’ve only worked. Rob would enjoy seeing you this weekend, I’m sure, and there’s probably stuff you need to do in Springfield.”

  Evie faintly smiled back. “Kicking me out, Gabriel?”

  “Just trying to be fair-minded. I really do appreciate what you’ve done here, Evie. These people are my friends, and I want to know what happened to them. But there’s a point you put it back in the box and go on with life. I
think we’re there.”

  She nodded. “I’ll think about it, Gabriel. There’s a place where I’m content to say I’ve done what I can do, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet. Let’s take the dogs out to Will’s. You can find me some ice cream for dessert if there’s a place still open this late.”

  “I imagine there is,” he replied, mildly amused. As stubborn as Ann, he thought, but really didn’t mind. Evie did this job until there was nothing else to do. That determination was apparently bedrock to her personality.

  Evie slipped her shoes on, the dogs crowding around her. She laughed. “I’m coming with you, guys.” She glanced over and smiled. “I’ve missed running with them. They do a couple of miles with me most days.”

  He tried to imagine doing that for fun, couldn’t picture it. “I’ll settle for tossing a tennis ball for them to chase.” He held the door open, and the dogs maneuvered Evie outside ahead of them. Gabriel looked between Zeus and Apollo, thought the two animals had her figured out. They shepherd her around as the third member of their pack without her even realizing it. Smart dogs. He held the back door of the truck open, and they scrambled in behind the front seats. “Think they would like ice cream? We could get them both basic sundaes.”

  Evie clicked her seat belt in place. “They’d love it.”

  Gabriel wouldn’t mind another hour with the dogs around. Evie relaxed when they were with her. He’d take full advantage of that.

  FOURTEEN

  Evie Blackwell

  Evie heard Gabriel’s whistle as the door opened, noted he’d taken it up again, and had to admit the song fragment was growing on her. She could almost whistle it in harmony now.

  “Thanksgiving, Evie. Shut it down for a couple hours for some good food.”