Stray Narrow

by Jerusha Jones

  CHAPTER 5

  My office is cramped on a normal day. And this wasn’t a normal day, even in my highly varied role as curator of an exceedingly eclectic collection of memorabilia, art, historical artifacts, and other assorted miscellanea. As a former nursery on the third floor, my office’s overwhelmingly redeeming feature is a huge picture window that overlooks the Columbia River—essentially providing a front-row seat to the most breathtaking scenery on the planet.

  But I might be biased.

  Burke, however, seemed to agree with me. He shoved the leather case he’d been carrying onto my already crowded desk and went straight to the glass, leaning so close that his breath left splotches of condensation on the cold surface.

  “It’s like being in a tree house,” he murmured.

  Was that a clue? “Do you have a tree house?” I asked as softly as I could.

  He shook his head without turning, still transfixed by the view. “No, but I’ve read about them.”

  It was his second mention of reading—either his or his father’s. I’d highly suspected that Burke’s schooling had been neglected, given the most recent living arrangements he’d disclosed. But if he could read, and enjoyed doing so, and had had access to books, then that changed a great deal about my perspective.

  The second best feature of my office are the bookshelves that line the remaining walls. “You’re welcome to read anything in here,” I offered even though most of the tomes are specialized histories, geographical and topographical studies, records of archaeological digs, and in-depth exposés of very specialized art geared toward the rabid collector. “Since we found the coroner’s medical kit so quickly, I’m afraid the rest of our day will be pretty quiet.”

  The more academic aspect of my job—research—is truly fascinating. To me. But from Burke’s perspective, it would look a lot like me sitting in a chair, clicking through websites on my laptop and taking notes. In other words, boring.

  “So you’re going to build an exhibit?” Burke wandered over to lean against the edge of my desk, those blue-green eyes slowly—and thoroughly—raking the contents of my office.

  I’d been stacking the boxes containing Sheriff Marge’s contributions from the storage closet at the station in neat rows, and they took up most of the available floor space.

  “That’s right.” I nodded, appreciating his use of the term build. It’s like that, really. Taking all the pieces and constructing a cohesive exhibit that tells an engaging story. But I was worried that Sheriff Marge’s exhibit might require more detailed information than I had access to.

  The two cultural bastions of Sockeye County are the Imogene Museum and the tiny historical society that is manned by one headstrong and overbearing matron and the few acolytes she’s managed to coerce into doing her will. Altogether, they have about three cardboard file boxes of old photographs, a few tattered Victorian hair wreaths, and some needlework accessories from pioneer women in their collection which they’d been trying for over a decade to set up in display cases in one of the minions’ garages. Their whole situation was going nowhere fast.

  Consequently, I tried to stay out of that mess and had instead made friends with the directors and principal volunteers who serve in the less contentious historical societies in all the counties surrounding my own. Just in case. Because sometimes stuff—actual physical items and, perhaps more importantly, lore—migrates. If I hit a dead end, I had people I could ask.

  “Including that?” Burke pointed to the grisly bear trap that was poking out of the top box in the nearest stack.

  “Yeah.” I decided to test an idea. He was eleven, after all. “That trap stopped a bank robber. He got his leg stuck in it up on Gifford Mountain.” I watched him closely out of the corner of my eye.

  Burke snorted. “Traps all over the place up there. He should’ve watched where he was walking.”

  Okay, not the response I’d been expecting. I cocked my head and refrained from pointing out that the robber had been captured in the 1960s. Maybe trying to nudge Burke into revealing more about himself wasn’t the best course. And maybe time stood still where he came from.

  “How do you feel about arranging all that stuff into chronological order?” I asked. That likely wouldn’t be the way I’d end up displaying any of the items from Sheriff Marge’s collection. I had a feeling topical kiosks were going to be the best method, but I had to start somewhere, and cataloging all the bits and bobs of paper, reports, dry and crusty evidence, etcetera was still necessary.

  “Sure.” Burke shuffled forward and gingerly lifted the well-used bear trap from the box. Clearly it was already the pièce de résistance of the—as yet unformed—new exhibit.

  In short order, it became obvious that Burke was quick, whip-smart, and highly intuitive. He watched every move I made and was mimicking them closely within a matter of minutes as we gently started distributing Sheriff Marge’s items into piles based on decade.

  I fetched a bunch of big plastic tubs to hold the three-dimensional items, and the papers were slotted into special archival boxes. We’d go back and do the fine-tuning by date later.

  But the most fascinating—and disturbing—items were housed in evidence pouches. Some had tags with spidery, faded handwriting attached to them and some just had their identification information scrawled onto the outside of the pouch. Bullets, shell casings, a pair of scissors, knives with dried and cracked wooden handles, lots of scraps of clothing—much of it stained with various substances I didn’t want to think about, a child’s torn rag doll, a couple silver whiskey flasks that would still fetch a pretty penny, lengths of rope. And more—much more.

  “They don’t need these anymore?” Burke finally asked after a long bout of working silently but companionably.

  I lifted my head to find him fingering an extremely rusty revolver that had a tag dangling from the trigger guard. My heart leaped into my throat, and a sharp warning nearly pushed its way past my lips. But then it died just as quickly, and I swallowed it down.

  Because Burke was being careful. And I didn’t want to sound like a worrisome nagger.

  “Right,” I said instead, attempting nonchalance. “In most cases, the crimes have been successfully prosecuted and the appeal process has been exhausted, so the sheriff’s office isn’t required to store the evidence anymore. In the other cases, the statute of limitations has run out, so the case can’t be prosecuted. Sheriff Marge told me there are a few cold cases in here that she really wishes could’ve been solved, but the perpetrators would be long dead by now and beyond the reach of human justice. They’ll likely remain a mystery.” That was a lot of big words for a kid—on a topic that stymied most adults in the United States, but he absorbed them without apparent confusion.

  Burke had a knack for picking out the items that would make the best displays. A few minutes later, he held up a packet of painfully obvious counterfeit bills. They appeared to have been hand drawn by a preschooler. Dollars was misspelled as dollors and Andrew Jackson sported what looked like a Mohawk hairdo—way, way before the style had been briefly trendy on old white people.

  “Not too bright,” I whispered.

  Burke shook his head with a mischievous grin and went back to sorting.

  In the late afternoon, we uncovered a reenactment diorama from the days long before PowerPoint and digital pictures. It almost looked like a dollhouse, but the scene inside was not exactly one of domestic bliss. Half spectacle for the jury and half forensic training tool, it was morbidly detailed with careful clothes sewn to the soft figures and matchstick furniture glued in place. There was even a replica murder weapon under the bed and several “bloody” footprints in what appeared to be red India ink.

  “Pretty clear who did it, huh?” I muttered, rethinking, yet again, whether or not bringing Burke to the museum had been a great idea.

  He seemed mature. He seemed small. He seemed eager to please, but he also seemed reserved. And now he seemed scared. I didn’t know how it was possible, bu
t those pristine mineral eyes got bigger and the edges of his lips turned white.

  “Did he go to jail?” Burke’s voice was small and scratchy. And incredibly vulnerable.

  Remorse washed over me. What had I just dredged up from his past? Most people don’t go out and live alone in the deep woods without some sort of horrible prompting. Made me wonder what Burke’s father—or Burke himself—had encountered that turned conventional sociability into something to be shunned.

  “I’m sure he did,” I lied. The truth was, I wouldn’t know until I’d read the case notes that went with the diorama. But with the depiction glaring us in the face, it seemed a good bet the jury had found a preponderance of evidence.

  I pulled the diorama toward me and piled a few folders on top of it, effectively covering the worst of the scene.

  oOo

  While Burke was in the men’s room washing a day’s worth of ancient grime from his hands, I placed a quick call to Sheriff Marge.

  “I got nothing,” I said, “except that he’s excellent company, highly intelligent, patient, a hard worker, and has had a reasonable level of education so far. Also, he’s extremely hungry, but you know that bit. Tomorrow I’ll have to pack three times as many snacks.”

  Sheriff Marge grunted. “Did he exhibit any particular fears—of men, loud noises, claustrophobia, that kind of thing? Any signs of abuse?”

  “We didn’t examine him,” I stuttered, thinking of the bath Burke had administered to himself, privately, the evening before. “Should we have? I mean, I haven’t seen any obvious bruises or anything, but not a lot of his skin is showing—you know, because it’s cold out and he’s wearing long sleeves and long pants.” This was so beyond my normal realm of experience that I hated to think about all the possible ways of hurting a child. “He moves okay,” I added quickly. “Not like he’s in pain or has had any recently broken bones.”

  “That’s all right. We’ll give him a period of adjustment, see what he feels like sharing when the time is right. You’re doing good,” she added with an encouraging gruffness.

  I wasn’t so sure. I told her about finding the diorama and Burke’s reaction to it.

  Sheriff Marge grunted. “Forgot that was in there. But you can tell Burke that not only did Hugo Clayton go to prison for stabbing his mistress and her other lover to death, his trials went through without a hitch and he was rather expeditiously hanged out at the penitentiary in Walla Walla.” She sighed heavily into the phone. “Or maybe you won’t tell him all that. Been a while since I had boys his age under my roof. Working in the profession I do, you kind of just end up telling it like it is…”

  “I understand,” I said quickly. “Any word back on his father?”

  “Still waiting to hear. Could be a while since we don’t know exactly where he went or what route he took, or if he ever actually got to where he was going.”

  “Can you register him as a missing person?”

  “Already have. But there’s nothing to go on. No photo. No identification. Only Burke’s word that his father’s complete name is Cullen Brightbill and his approximate age. I’m also having a records check done with the state to see if we can find their birth certificates—both Cullen’s and Burke’s—but if they weren’t born in Washington, then...”

  Again, I could fill in the blank. The situation did seem hopeless.

  Burke emerged from the restroom and halted skittishly about fifteen feet away, watching me with tentative curiosity and no small amount of hesitation.

  “Catch up with you later,” I said to Sheriff Marge by way of little-ears code, and plastered a cheerful—and hopefully reassuring—smile on my face as I hung up. I had a boy who needed his supper.

  CHAPTER 6

  Sheriff Marge’s timing is impeccable. My phone rang just as I was licking off my fork after indulging in a headily delicious slice of Harriet’s peach honey pie—the one that had been too frozen to eat for Burke’s inaugural dinner the night before. It wasn’t frozen now. It was warm and syrupy and perfect with vanilla ice cream melting down the sides of each slab.

  Both Burke and Pete were working on their second slices. I had to rinse my hands at the sink so I wouldn’t gum up the phone’s keypad. Once I saw the caller ID, I ducked out onto the porch in case privacy was in order.

  It was.

  “Bad news,” Sheriff Marge sighed. “I’ve gotten a report on Cullen Brightbill.”

  “Jail?” I whispered.

  “That would be good news.” Sheriff Marge’s voice was heavy with weariness, and my stomach rolled into leaden knots at the finality of her words. “He’s dead.”

  “Is there proof?” I gulped. “Could it be a case of mistaken identity?”

  “Afraid not. I have his medical records and death certificate here on my desk. He told the nursing staff he had a boy named Burke. Repeated Burke’s name with frantic urgency while he was delirious, to the point that they had to sedate him. He was in a severely weakened condition when they found him and brought him in, but it was pneumonia that got him.”

  Tears built up on the rims of my eyelids, but it was too cold for them to fall. I upended a split piece of firewood and sank down onto the precarious temporary seat, my goose-bumped arms crossed over my aching middle. “What happens to Burke now?”

  “He’s a ward of the state.”

  “I hate the sound of that.”

  “Me too. Which is why I’ve already made an executive decision. I wasn’t kidding when I said you and Pete would make terrific foster parents.”

  “What have you done?” I whispered.

  “I filed a sheriff’s petition for protective custody and listed you two as his guardians—for now. That’ll give Hester Maxwell down at Children’s Services the chance to run you through the foster parent program and get you certified without disrupting Burke’s location. If you’re willing,” she added softly. “He’s already had a lot of upheaval in his young life, and he doesn’t need any more tonight.”

  I was the most terrified and the most certain I’d ever been in my life, even more than in those few minutes before I’d said “I do” to Pete.

  “Yes,” I breathed. “We’ll do it.”

  “Good,” Sheriff Marge grunted. With some relief, I thought.

  “You said found,” I backtracked. “Cullen Brightbill didn’t admit himself to the hospital?” I was going to have to find some way to explain this tragedy to his son, and I needed every single detail I could grab.

  “He was living out of a car in a makeshift homeless camp on the edge of Sidney, Montana. Residents were complaining, so the Richland County sheriff’s department cleared out the camp and found a few men in need of medical attention. Cullen Brightbill was one of them. It’s been a rough winter out there. But his medical treatment is the one reason I was able to locate him so quickly. Sheriff Monroe is mired in overtime, but he gave me a courtesy call because the Brightbill name was familiar.”

  “I don’t know where Richland County is,” I murmured.

  “Far eastern edge of Montana, right in the thick of the Bakken Formation. Lots of oil wells, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s enough work to go around.”

  “Did Cullen have any personal possessions, anything that Burke can remember him by?”

  “Sheriff Monroe’s packing up and sending the contents of the car to me. I told him to sell the car and use that money to help offset Brightbill’s medical bills because that’s all they’re going to get from his estate. And Meredith,” Sheriff Marge added, “a couple deputies and I will go look for the cabin on Gifford Mountain that Burke talked about. I don’t like loose ends, so we’ll board it up, pack any personal items in from there as well. We’ll get him as much history as we can.”

  “Thank you.” The tears were dropping now, straight onto my knees in frosty spludges.

  oOo

  We didn’t tell Burke until the next morning. Mainly because I had to talk with Pete first. After all, I’d included him in a huge, life-changing co
mmitment, and he had the right of first refusal. I also needed to be able to pass along the horrible news without bawling my own eyes out in front of the kid.

  So I bawled on Pete’s shoulder after we went to bed. I’m not quite sure how I kept it together in those intervening hours of routine washing up and tidying and preparation for the following day.

  “Babe, babe, babe,” Pete murmured into my hair, his arms warm and strong around me. “You did the right thing. Absolutely we will take care of Burke. No question.”

  I sniveled pitifully.

  Pete pulled my left hand up to rest on his chest, and he began to massage the simple gold band around and around on my finger. It was his secret code to me—one he’d started on our wedding night—and I loved it. Just a subtle reminder that we were glued together for life now.

  “I’ll clear out the room at the end of the hall and bring in the appropriate furniture,” he said, already moving on to practical matters. “Good thing Herb and Harriet left us so much to choose from.” I nearly snickered through my tears—it was the understatement of the year. “We’ll let Burke pick what color of paint he wants, yeah? Get him enrolled in school. As soon as he’s ready,” Pete added in his soft deep rumble as he tilted onto his side and propped his head up on the heel of his hand to look at me in the dark. “We won’t push him.”

  I rolled my head from side to side on the pillow in agreement.

  “He needs to continue going to the museum with you in the meantime. Provided Rupert’s okay with that.” Pete’s thoughtful tone seemed to resonate in my chest. “Burke needs to see a normal, good life in operation before he’ll be able to fully trust us. Babe, you’re a master at that.”

  “Living a normal, good life?” I croaked.

  “Yup. You’re the bravest woman I know.”

  I released a watery chuckle. “Current evidence suggests otherwise.”

  “Temporary and passing, but that’s why you have me.” His words were muffled against my neck, and I took solace in his embrace.