The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel)

by Loreth Anne White

  “Why would I leave when you’re here?” he whispered, bringing his mouth close to hers.

  Rachel’s eyes flared open at his sudden proximity. She stared up into his eyes, her own darkening with arousal. Then, suddenly erupting into laughter, she rolled onto her side, launched up, and raced to the end of the dock, where she dived into the clear water. Jeb got to his feet, watched the ripples fanning out from where she’d gone in as sleek as a fish. She surfaced a distance away and called out to him. “Race you to the far end!” She swam, kicking water splashes up into the sunlight. He’d watched her go, and something in him had known that day it wouldn’t last.

  He was pulled back to the present by a group of young snowboarder dudes, baggy pants hanging low around their butts as they ran across the intersection with an awkward wide-kneed swagger, presumably to keep their pants on.

  Jeb’s skin felt hot.

  It was all the same, yet all was new. As if he’d been put on pause while the rest of the world had gone on. Time, his youth, Rachel, robbed from him. A soft, dark anger swelled in his chest.

  The lights turned green. He revved his bike aggressively and roared ahead of the Volvo, but quickly slowed back to the posted limit, tempering both anger and speed.

  Violence, it turned out, came easily when you lived with anger swimming permanently inside you, when you were trapped in a cage with no other hope. But after a few early incidents in prison, Jeb had learned to accept his fate, to control his impulse to resort to physical aggression in the face of a threat. He’d turned his energy toward getting a degree instead. He’d begun to find reward in reaching small goals.

  It was a simmering, hard-won control, and he was not about to lose it now that he was back. Patience, he told himself. The mind of a hunter. Be prepared to lie quietly in wait. Because there would be cracks, and cracks were where the light would get in.

  Jeb aimed to first cut straight through town and head north into the Wolf River Valley, to his old home, the five acres of land his mother had left him. He’d check it out and set up shop. Tomorrow he had an interview scheduled with the editor of the Snowy Creek Leader. He was not here to hide. He was here to make his intentions known, to rattle cages, mess with minds. To shine a spotlight on people who might try to run him out of town. But as he neared the turnoff that led down to Snowy Creek Elementary, Jeb’s chest constricted and he chanced a quick glance at his watch. If the school still followed the old schedule, it would almost be lunch break. And on a split, impulsive second, he took the left-hand turn off the highway and headed down the road to the elementary school, inexorably pulled by the possibility of seeing his daughter for the first time in his life.

  He slowed to the posted school zone speed, his bike grumbling down the hill as he rode past the main entrance, aiming instead for the river, where he planned to double back into the neighboring subdivision and circle round to the rear of the school grounds, where the ball fields abutted a treed swamp. Where the kids used to go out and play at lunch when he had attended that same school.

  He turned into the residential subdivision, rumbling slowly into a place of quiet, untroubled calm. A red scooter lay discarded at the edge of a lawn. A plastic truck and an expensive-looking bike lay in a driveway. People here trusted their neighbors. A baby kicked his chubby legs in a stroller on a porch. Two mothers talked over a fence while toddlers played on grass at their feet. Carved pumpkins, fat and orange, had already been placed in windows, harvest garlands on doors.

  The mothers glanced up and stared at him as his bike growled past. A small terrier bolted from nowhere and yipped in his wake. The dog veered off as Jeb rounded the crescent. He parked off a cul-de-sac next to a small park with a brightly colored play structure. Leaving his helmet with his bike, he walked through the park toward a stand of alders that screened the park from the ball fields. Everywhere around him dry leaves and drought-burned pine needles whispered for rain. The first thing he saw when he came through the trees was the school building up on a rise, a red-and-white maple leaf flag snapping in the breeze.

  And suddenly Jeb was thrust back in time.

  He was nine years old, standing outside that same squat building, his hand tightly clutching his mother’s. The fall wind was blowing cold, lifting the ends of her blue-black braid and ruffling her straight bangs.

  As if it were yesterday, Jeb felt a surge in his chest, a mix of hot anticipation, anxiety. Fear of what lay ahead. It was to be his first year at the school, the first time he’d be missing the fall hunt with his dad. The first year his mother would not homeschool him through the winter.

  She’d looked down at him that September morning, squeezed his hand in reassurance, and smiled, but her eyes were a liquid black over the sharp flare of her cheekbones, and they told another story. Jeb hadn’t understood the look in his mother’s eyes that day. Now he recognized it for what it was. Regret. She’d brought him to this public school to hide him, to protect him from something that had grown too dark and dangerous in their own home. She had wanted to keep him away from his father as much as possible that coming winter. It had been a terrible fishing season. Not many salmon had come up the coast. Which meant the long winter would be worse than usual.

  And it had been. Far worse than the young Jeb could have dreamed.

  Before the snows had melted that year, it was a nine-year-old Jeb who’d had to protect his mother.

  A gust of wind swirled the memories away in a clatter of yellow leaves. Jeb sank down onto a wooden bench in front of the trees. A chopper thudded in the distance up high above Crystal Peak. Jeb checked his watch. Almost lunch break, but right now the school grounds were empty, the morning sun spooling gold beams through mist rising from the marsh at the north end of the fields.

  He closed his eyes a moment, letting it wrap around him; the croak of a raven in a dead snag, the chatter of black-headed juncos pecking among dead leaves at his boots, the shriek of a lone osprey. The scents of fall. All things he’d missed for nine long years.

  A bell buzzer sounded and a woman’s voice came over a loudspeaker. His eyes snapped open. Up on the grassy rise, kids came out the doors like tumbling jelly beans in colorful jackets, scattering down the path, rolling out into the fields with the leaves. Their voices carried on the cool, dry air. His pulse quickened. He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, eyes narrowing as he sifted through the kids’ shapes. Would she come down to these fields, like he used to?

  Would he recognize her?

  For years he’d waited for this moment, just to see her. In living, breathing color. To maybe hear her voice, her laugh. Look into her eyes.

  Just watch. Do not go near or engage her in any way. Not yet. Not until you are free. She must not know who you are . . . this is your promise to Sophia and Peter. To yourself. To your child . . .

  He caught sight of a slight, dark-haired girl coming determinedly down the grass knoll. She wore a baggy sweater of brightly knitted rainbows, and her hair was a mass of wild curls, the color of a raven’s feathers gleaming in the sunlight. Curls as wild and untamable as the surrounding BC wilderness. Like his father’s hair. She walked with shoulders hunched slightly forward, forging ahead as if blocking out the world around her. She carried a book and a brown lunch bag.

  Jeb quickly fumbled in his pocket and removed a wallet-sized photo album. He flipped it open to the most recent picture that Sophia had brought him in prison. But he didn’t look at the photo. He was transfixed by the black-haired girl as she climbed up a stand of bleachers and sat on the middle bench. She put the brown bag beside her, removed and unwrapped a sandwich, took a bite.

  Her knees were knobby under her jeans, legs thin, almost too long for her body. A little colt. She chewed as she watched the Steller’s jays beginning to cluster around her, squawking and bombing in attempts to attract food. She broke off a piece of bread, tossed it out onto the grass. The electric-blue birds dived and cackled as th
ey squabbled for a share. But his eyes were riveted only on the child.

  In his bones, in every molecule of his body, he believed it was her.

  Quinn. His daughter.

  His blood in her veins.

  Her DNA used to convict him . . .

  A dull roar began in Jeb’s brain—the sound of past and present and future colliding. He closed his fist tightly around the photo album, as if holding control over his own fierce urge to go to her, speak to her.

  There will come a time, a pastor once told him in prison, when you believe everything is finished. But that will only be the beginning.

  That little girl was the beginning.

  She was the reason for everything he was going to do now.

  CHAPTER 3

  As Jeb watched the child on the bleachers, an image of Quinn’s birth mother curled like smoke through his mind, and he was thrust instantly back into the courtroom—Amy in the witness stand, her head bent forward, a fall of red-gold hair hiding her profile. She’d looked so thin, so pale, in spite of the fact she’d been about to give birth. Jeb felt a visceral stab at the memory. He’d learned from his lawyers that their infant would likely be surrendered in a private adoption, that his paternal rights in the decision would be waived if he was found guilty. While DNA from the fetus proved it was his, he hadn’t even been told the sex of the baby as he’d sat there in the prisoner’s box.

  The scents of the courtroom filled his nostrils. He could feel the thickness of the tension in the room as the lead prosecutor had opened her case against him.

  “. . . On the night Amy Findlay and Merilee Zukanov disappeared, Jebbediah Cullen, the accused, was sexually frustrated and enraged,” she told the jury. “Why was he so fired up? Because the evening before the party at the gravel pit, his then girlfriend, Rachel Salonen, had terminated their relationship during a heated argument over sex.” The prosecutor paused, meeting the eyes of each and every juror. “Sex,” she repeated, letting the word hang in silence for several beats. “The only reason Jebbediah Cullen even went to the gravel pit that night, by his own admission, was to confront Rachel Salonen. Witnesses will testify he arrived angry, and when he saw Rachel Salonen kissing Trey Somerland, his rage intensified.”

  She spun round and pointed at him in the prisoner’s box. The jury’s eyes snapped in his direction.

  “That man,” she said, “the accused, has had a history of violent behavior since he was a child. Rachel Salonen will testify to this. We will also bring forward witnesses who saw Jebbediah Cullen verbally threatening both Salonen and Somerland at the gravel pit that night. We will present irrefutable evidence that will place both Amy Findlay and Merilee Zukanov in Jebbediah Cullen’s vehicle as he drove away from the gravel pit around ten p.m. We have witnesses who saw Findlay and Zukanov in Cullen’s vehicle as he crossed the Green River rail bridge and turned north onto Highway 99.” She paused. Her voice lowered.

  “And seven days later Amy Findlay was found twenty miles north of that gravel pit, wandering half-naked, beaten, and dazed along the railway tracks with no memory of what happened. There were rope marks around her neck that match the climbing ropes found in Jebbediah Cullen’s car. Medical testimony will show that Amy Findlay had been brutally sexually assaulted, that she was pregnant with Cullen’s child. An empty blister pack of flunitrazepam—also known as Rohypnol, or the date rape drug—was found in Cullen’s vehicle, which medical experts will show can explain Findlay’s loss of memory. That drug pack was in the pocket of a hoodie covered in Merilee Zukanov’s blood. Merilee Zukanov who is still, to this day, missing. Zukanov’s hair and one of the earrings she was wearing the night she disappeared were also found in Cullen’s vehicle. As was a roll of duct tape. That man”—she pointed at Jeb again—“came prepared. He planned an assault. He’s a man with a history of extreme violence from a very young age, a man who was physically frustrated by the sexual rejection of his girlfriend. A man, we will show, who possesses the distinct psychological markers of a sociopath.”

  Jeb inhaled deeply as he tried to stop the vivid images assailing him from the past, but they came anyway.

  “. . . Amy Findlay, is the man who sexually assaulted you in this room?”

  “Objection!” his defense counsel yelled, lurching to his feet. “The witness has already stated she has zero recollection of the assault—”

  “Withdrawn. I’ll rephrase. Ms. Findlay, is the father of the baby you are carrying in this room, a baby that medical evidence has shown was conceived at the time of your disappearance?”

  The room fell silent. The atmosphere grew heavy. Jeb could smell sweat. He could feel his mother’s eyes on him. Rachel’s eyes on him. The journalists’ eyes on him.

  Amy’s head remained bowed. She nodded.

  “Could the witness please answer out loud into the microphone?”

  Slowly, Amy lifted her face. Her red-rimmed, watery-blue eyes met his. Jeb’s chest clutched. Tell them, Amy. Goddammit, please, tell them . . . please remember!

  She stared at him for several long beats. Sweat slicked down his spine.

  “Yes.” Her voice was thin. “That’s him.”

  Noise rustled through the courtroom. A reporter left his seat, scurrying out the back door. Jeb heard soft sobbing. He didn’t know it if was his mother. Or Rachel. He couldn’t look.

  “Please note, the witness has identified the accused, Jebbediah Cullen.”

  Even now, a sick, cold oiliness swam through his stomach, and as if it were yesterday, he felt the physical punch of the word. Guilty.

  It beat against his brain.

  Guilty.

  On the count of sexual assault causing bodily harm . . .

  Guilty.

  On the count of forcible confinement . . .

  Guilty.

  Sweat dampened his torso and a cold, quiet determination calcified around his heart.

  Two women had lost their lives. While Amy might have physically survived the assault, she’d buckled mentally. For nine long years she’d struggled in her own kind of prison. Then she’d finally cracked. She’d committed suicide in Snowy Creek the night before Peter and Sophia died in the house fire in Vancouver. Jeb didn’t like the coincidence, the timing. He had his own suspicions about Amy’s death, and about the house fire. He was here to find the answers.

  He was here for retribution. To reclaim what was his. And he was going to start by probing into the lives of the four guys who had lied about him in court: Levi Banrock, Clint Rudiger, Harvey Zink, and Luke LeFleur.

  Another courtroom memory snaked into his mind. Levi Banrock in the witness stand, the prosecutor questioning him.

  “And who did you see inside the car with Jebbediah Cullen?”

  Levi refused to look at Jeb in the prisoner’s box. “I saw Merilee Zukanov and Amy Findlay in his car.”

  “You’re certain it was them?”

  Levi cleared his throat, nodded his head. “Yes. They drove right past us where we were sitting under some trees. Amy wound down the window, called out to us, waved.”

  Jeb’s entire body went tight. It was a lie. Wasn’t it?

  He couldn’t recall seeing Luke or anyone in the trees that night. He didn’t remember Amy waving or calling out. But maybe she had. He’d had too much to drink. His memory of precise details was fuzzy, riddled with gaps. He’d been so steamed about Rachel he hadn’t been focused.

  “What did you see next?” the lawyer said.

  Again, Levi cleared his throat. “I saw the car waiting at the tracks for a train to cross. Once the train passed, Jeb drove across the rail bridge and turned north onto the highway.”

  “With Merilee Zukanov and Amy Findlay still in his car?”

  “Yes.”

  Nausea rushed into Jeb’s throat. His eyes burned. His hands shook. It was a lie. A goddamn lie. He had not turned north. The girls had g
otten out of his car at the rail crossing. He’d turned south. Gone home. Alone. Of that he was absolutely certain.

  The lawyer called Clint Rudiger to the stand next. And one after the other, the four guys told the same story. They told the court Jeb had turned north onto the highway with those two girls in his car. And Jeb had been sunk.

  He drew air deep down into his lungs, clearing the memory from his brain.

  One or all of them had been protecting themselves or someone else—someone who knew where to find Merilee Zukanov’s body.

  And those men had not only perjured themselves to convict him. They had stolen his child from him.

  Because of them, he’d never hugged his baby in his arms.

  He’d missed her first smile, first tooth, first steps—every goddamn birthday. He didn’t even know for certain it was her on those bleachers, although he felt it in his bones.

  He’d not been able to hold his mother’s hand, comfort her as she’d died. She’d passed on believing in his guilt. Believing he’d turned into something worse than his father.

  And Rachel? She was lost to him forever.

  He wondered if it was Rachel who’d wrapped that sandwich for Quinn, who’d packed her lunch this morning. Her hands. Her care. His child. Jeb breathed in deep, trying to control his pulse, the dizziness, the pinpricks of rage at the four who’d done all this.

  It was not over. Not by a goddamn long shot. He could never reclaim those lost years. He could never dream of winning back Rachel. But that child hunched over her lunch bag in the field—she was the reason he needed justice. Not revenge, but legal restitution. The wrongs had to be set right. Someone had to pay. Closure must be found. He could not let her grow up to learn she might be the child of a rapist and killer.

  As he watched, a small group of girls started down the rise. All blondes, all straight hair. Fashionable clothing. Little clones molding themselves to some cultural ideal, precariously balanced between childhood and adult awareness. They were older than the girl on the bleachers, and Jeb didn’t like their body language, the way they were exchanging glances, a pack gathering courage from each other as they gravitated toward the girl.