He ignored me and followed me to the door. When I opened it he was prepared to step inside and I blocked it.
“You don’t take no very well, do you?”
“You failed to notice your grandfather’s Taurus parked back at his place when we drove by. Know how it got there? I had someone deliver it back to him.”
“Well, um, thanks. I appreciate it but—”
“And your DUI will disappear. Not so much as a suspension of your driver’s license. The Bureau has that kind of power. We did that because you are an asset, Julie. We need you on this case. I need you.”
I frowned as that sank in. “Look, I don’t know what to say but—”
“What you can say is thank you.”
He pushed past me, put the bag of groceries on the counter and began emptying the contents.
“Get in the shower and clean yourself up,” he ordered. “While I put together a gourmet meal the likes of which you’ve never tasted.”
“You’ve got a box of pasta and a jar of sauce,” I pointed out, a smile creeping across my face. “I think you might be stretching things to call it gourmet.”
“And a bag of salad,” he added.
When I didn’t move he looked me in the eye.
“When was the last time you ate?”
I glanced over at the table where the bag of sandwiches Gramps brought over days ago still sat untouched. The burning in my gut did not crave food. My body was bone weary and achy and I could smell the stench off my own skin. Wordlessly I gave in and headed for the shower. If my hot water tank wasn’t so impossibly small I probably would have stayed in there for an hour but it ran cold after a few minutes. I brushed my teeth and gagged when the toothbrush got near my back molars. I quickly slipped out of the washroom with a towel around my body and went next door to my bedroom where I found clean sweatpants and a sweatshirt to put on.
Pierce was ladling sauce onto the pasta when I came back to the kitchen. I poured myself a glass of water and drank it empty. Then I refilled it and got a glass for Pierce and brought both to the table and sat down.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the DUI thing. It would be hard to get to work without being able to drive.”
Panicked, I looked around for my phone. Did I even have a job? I got up and disconnected it from the charger. There were still a dozen unread texts from Katie and there was one this morning from Jonas asking if I’d be making my shift tomorrow. He had plans and didn’t want to work another double. I looked back on the calendar on my phone and saw I’d lost nearly forty-eight hours and almost missed Gramps’s birthday. Jesus. I hit reply and told Jonas I’d be there tomorrow.
Pierce was right about one thing. That bagged salad and jarred sauce on spaghetti was probably the best meal I’d had in a long time. I was ravenous and finished everything. The meal calmed the pain in my head but I was mortified beyond belief.
“Thanks for the food and for getting me out,” I said quietly.
He handed me a small stack of money.
“What’s this for?” I asked.
“Iris Bell. You didn’t say how much so I just got you three-hundred-eighty-five again. Figured it was your going rate.”
It felt wrong to take money for that after all he did. I pushed the money back toward him.
“You did more than enough to pay me back for that,” I said. “Thanks but no thanks for the money.”
“You performed a service and I’m paying you.” He pushed the money back to my side. “But you still owe me. I’m going to need you to help me out.”
This had been my fear. My gaze went to the kitchen counter where I’d tossed my dowsing rods without care. It hurt to even look at them.
“I hate to say no after you helped me out here but—”
“No isn’t an option, Julie, and I’m sorry about that. You’ve got a lot of shit going on so I wish it could be a no but it can’t. This is bigger than both of us. It sure as hell is a lot bigger than your stupid boyfriend and the fact that you want to bury yourself inside a bottle. Another girl went missing yesterday and I have a loose tip on Kari Burke.”
Another girl? That hurt my heart. I couldn’t look him in the eye so I looked down at my plate smeared red with sauce.
“I might be able to find bodies but you are the one that needs to catch this guy and make it stop.”
“I’m trying. I feel like we’re close. We had traces of evidence on Iris Bell. Possibly the killer’s DNA. That’s huge.”
He reached across the table and covered my hand with his. It was meant to be reassuring but it felt wrong. Sexual. I pulled my hand away and quickly agreed to help under one condition. When I said what that condition was he only smiled.
The next morning Agent Pierce helped me remove the seats from my old Jeep and then we stopped by the furniture store to get the recliner. It was heavy as hell but we managed to squeeze it into the back of my Jeep and then used bungee cords to tie down the hatch. Gramps had tears in his eyes when he saw it.
“I’m so-o-o sorry,” I whispered in his ear as I caught him in a swift hug. Then I sang out loudly, “Happy birthday to you-u-u!”
Agent Pierce stood there awkwardly after he positioned the chair in the living room. Wookie insisted on sniffing his crotch and no matter how many times Pierce pushed his head away, the dog was not giving up until he got a good sniff.
“I’m sorry to leave you stuck with the hound again,” I told Gramps. “A few hours maybe and then you’ll need to put on a clean sweater so I can take you out to dinner.”
“I’ll put my dancing shoes on,” Gramps said.
He plopped himself down in his new chair and grabbed the handle. The footrest flung up with a loud bang that caused Wookie to scatter.
“Thanks for helping with that,” I told Pierce as we left Gramps’s place and climbed into his car.
“No problem. It’s nice that you do something special for his birthday. Now that your grandmother’s gone, I’m sure he’s lonely.”
Was it possible that he actually missed her? I’d often wondered. Maybe she was good to him when I wasn’t around to see it. Kind even. It seemed like an almost impossible thing that she could be a different person. Growing up I had no recollection of the two of them interacting romantically at all or even uttering words beyond those necessary when sharing the same space. Then again, I’d been so intent on her in relation to me, I’d not exactly been in tune to them as a couple.
“The new missing girl was older this time,” I remarked. I’d briefly listened to the news. Sue Torres had been snatched on her way home from her job at McDonald’s.
“Yes. Nineteen. That doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s changing his MO. When you look at her picture she looks about the same age as the others.”
He exited the I-5 and took a road lined mostly with tall cedars and long private drives. The more well-to-do farmers lived this way. You could guess that from the prettily painted mailboxes clustered every so often and the long paved drives. Even when our land had been leased at a hefty price to those wanting to coax raspberries from the soil, we’d never had the kind of money that would lend itself to anything extra or fancy like a paved driveway. We drove through one town after another, and I had the rods in my lap and was hoping for a bridge-free day.
For the first time Pierce broke the silence of one of our drives by turning on the radio. He tuned into a classic rock station playing music definitely more in his realm than mine. He even hummed along as the fields went by as if he was strangely happy. I didn’t know quite what to make of it.
“Did you ever try and find your mother?” he asked.
The question was so out of left field it took me a minute to process both the question and my answer.
“Um, well, I used to dream that she’d just show up one day,” I admitted. “I had this fanta
sy where she’d come get me at school. Of course she’d be in a limo because she’d become a world-famous actress and only left me with my grandparents while she was seeking fame and fortune.” I forced a laugh at my own naiveté and found myself blushing. I added more seriously, “When I was young I’d go to the library. I could use their computers to search but I didn’t have any luck finding her.”
“She tossed you out of her car like a hamburger wrapper,” Grandma hissed. “Why the hell do you care where she is? She doesn’t want you. Neither do we but, guess what? We’re stuck with you!”
“When I got older I realized she knew where I was if she wanted to find me and I was probably better off without her in my life.”
Sometimes I wondered if Grandma had treated my mom the same way growing up. That hurt me the most because then she knew exactly what my life would be like and she still never looked back.
“That’s a very mature mindset but it must’ve been really hard.”
We were beyond rows of cedars now and farm fields went by my window. Pierce slowed the car to a crawl to let a hesitant squirrel cross the road, and just as he began to accelerate again the squirrel doubled back and he slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting it.
“Why the hell do they do that?” Pierce called out in frustration.
“Fear can make you do crazy stuff,” I whispered.
He looked at me and our gaze held for a split second before I put my headphones in my ears.
“What book are you listening to?” he asked.
“How do you know it’s a book?” I pulled out one earbud so I could hear him.
“I can make out the tone of someone speaking but I can’t hear any music.”
Damn cheap headphones.
“It’s a self-help book,” I said sheepishly with the shrug of one shoulder.
“Huh. I’ve read a ton of those. I’m actually somewhat of an expert I think.”
“No way.” I turned in my seat to look at him to see if he was pulling my leg. His face looked both abashed and serious. “Which ones?” I challenged.
“Um... The Happiness Project, The Secret, Feeling Good...” He rolled his eyes. “Those are just a few from the past few months. Oh and don’t let me forget all the ones on handling grief and moving on with your life.”
It was very weird to think of him reading self-help books when he looked like he had his shit completely together. Certainly more together than I ever had but then he’d had a wife and she died. Maybe it had been true love, the forever kind you see in movies and read about in books.
“Did the books help?”
He considered that for a while and finally he nodded slowly.
“You know what? Sure.” He glanced over at me. “I’d say they helped but not in the way you’d think.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when you read the books they give you an idea about how to fix yourself and your life. Some of the ideas you think, okay, sure, I can do that but others you know won’t ever work for your own situation. I couldn’t bring myself to write long essays about my feelings and stuff like that. It just wasn’t me. But, in the end, even though I didn’t try many of the exercises they tell you to do, whenever I was hit with a really low day, I’d think back to something I’d read and it made me feel better somehow. Maybe because I knew others had suffered before me. Hell, so many people had gone through it there was a book out there just about my situation. I guess misery loves company. Made me feel like if others could handle it, so could I.” He laughed then. “Sounds crazy.”
It didn’t sound crazy to me. I’d been listening to the same book over and over for months and had not tried any of the suggestions. It hadn’t healed me but I felt like it had softened the jagged edges a little because there were a few passages that spoke to that damaged part of me.
“Maybe we’re all a little crazy. I like self-help books because it makes it feel like I’m learning how not to give up.”
My face grew hot and red and tried to cover it up with a light chuckle but he looked at me like I’d just said something wise or profound and that made me feel stronger inside. After that, I didn’t put the earbuds in because it seemed like he wanted to talk and it made me curious.
“I’ve been researching what you do,” he announced after a bit.
“You have?”
“Yes. The dowsing thing. Well, not just what you do but other kinds as well.” He glanced over at me. “Have you heard of pendulum dowsing?”
“Yes.”
“It’s when you dangle a weighted object from a string or chain or something and—”
“Yeah, I know.”
“And sometimes people who are intuitive, like yourself, can ask yes or no questions of the object and—”
“I know what it is!” I shouted.
Pierce glanced at me curiously because of my outburst.
“I mean,” I said quickly, “I’ve tried it before and it doesn’t work for me. Sorry.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded and gave me a quick smile.
Ugh. Now my head was sinking into syrupy quicksand thoughts that made my stomach roll. Desperate to change the topic and talk about something...anything...else, I blurted, “So do you have kids?”
“Damn, I think I missed the turn.”
Pierce cursed under his breath and pulled the car over to the shoulder. He tapped on his phone a minute before turning around and heading back the way we came.
“Dakota Creek.” He looked at me. “Do you know it?”
“From here? I don’t think it’s too far.” I pointed straight ahead. “You’re going to want to turn left at Sunrise Road and I think it’s right there.”
Dakota Creek. Shit. More water. Probably more bridges. My stomach turned and I clenched my hands into fists, willing myself to remain calm. And he hadn’t answered my question about kids. Now I didn’t know if that was because he wasn’t willing to talk about it, or he didn’t hear me. Either way, I couldn’t exactly ask again. No matter how curious I was.
“So this is Kari Burke we’re looking for, right? The one that went missing after Luna Quinn and Iris Bell?” I wondered out loud. “What kind of tip do you get that tells you almost where the body is but not exactly?”
“The kind I can’t talk to you about, Julie. Honestly I wish I could.” He gave me an apologetic half-smile.
I rolled my eyes.
“The FBI must have a ton of profilers all over this, right? I mean, you said so before. Why do they think the guy puts girls under bridges or near creeks and rivers?”
“I’m sure the profilers would say a lot of mumbo jumbo about it. Maybe his mother bathed him too roughly.” He sneered. “I think it’s because water washes away evidence. It’s spring. The creeks and rivers are moving fast because the snow cap is melting.”
It made sense but it didn’t.
“Luna Quinn was stuffed under the bridge. She didn’t even get wet.”
He licked his lips before answering. “My personal opinion? Something or somebody scared him off before he could get her in the water.”
He took the corner on Sunrise and slowed as the road crossed over the creek. Not even really a bridge so much as a hump in the road with guardrails. My kind of bridge. We both glanced at the rods in my lap. Nothing. Pierce drove a few yards ahead and pulled into a short dirt drive that crossed over a ditch and led into a field. The short gravel road was the kind farmers used to get their equipment on the fields. He turned off the ignition and climbed out of the vehicle.
In the car it was warm; the spring sun was trying its damnedest to encourage plants to grow and we’d been in an aquarium atmosphere because the car windows angled the sun’s rays on us. Once I stepped outside, though, the cold March breeze bit my cheeks and stung my eyes. I zipped my light hoodie up to my chin but it
wasn’t much protection from an icy blast blowing in from Canada on forty-degree temperatures.
Pierce rubbed his hands together to create some warmth. “Man, it’s cold.” He was wearing a lightweight nylon jacket that didn’t look much warmer than what I had on.
“So-o-o cold,” I agreed.
With a tug I yanked my hood up and pulled the drawstrings tight under my chin, then stuck out the dowsing rods and started to walk. The sooner this was done, the quicker I’d be back inside the warm car. The rods occasionally jiggled and trembled but whenever Pierce grew rigid with attention I had to point out it was just the wind. With no hints from the rods other than the occasional wobble caused by the breeze, I followed my gut and our history and made my way along the creek bed first on one side of the road and then on the other.
Pierce was so close I could hear his anxious breathing over the wind in the weeds and he kept staring intently at the rods. Agitation lifted off him in waves. It felt like I was letting him down by not finding a body.
“Nothing?” Pierce asked me after we’d been stomping around in the cold forever.
“No.” I tucked the rods under my armpits and blew hot breath into my hands. “Maybe this is a good thing. She could, you know, still be alive.”
His reply was just to stare at me expectantly with his arms folded tight against his chest. I was tempted to hand the rods over and tell him to give it a shot. But, with a reluctant sigh, I walked on. Time passed and we were both irritated and frustrated after over an hour of nothing but numb fingers and faces.
“Just a few minutes more and maybe a little closer to the water,” he suggested. “If nothing comes up, we’ll call it a day.”
He stepped through the tall weeds along the rushing water. I followed a few steps behind, arms outstretched, willing the rods to move and yet simultaneously terrified that they would.
“Watch your step here, it’s a little rocky.”
It was a fine warning but the words reached me too late. I tripped over a rock the size of a basketball that was obscured behind a choke of wheatgrass. My arms were still stretched out in front of me with the rods in my hands when I landed gracelessly in the glacial creek up to my waist. One of the rods flung out of my hand but I splashed around and grabbed it again just as Agent Pierce hauled me up by my armpits.
A Grave Calling Page 8
