The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel)

by Loreth Anne White

  I force my brain to think. Brandy’s sister is a large-animal vet in the ranching community up north where Beppie and Clint live. Brandy might have accessed the drug through her sister. It’s an analgesic, tranquilizer, hallucinogenic. Brandy is a trained paramedic, knows how to administer meds. My legs suddenly give way fully, but she hooks her hands under my armpits and wrestles my feeble body into the passenger seat.

  The interior light is on. I see Quinn slumped against the backseat. Like a wet rag doll. A strip of duct tape has been plastered over her mouth. I want to scream, lunge, tear at Brandy’s hair. I want to kill her for drugging Quinn. But I cannot move or talk at all now. I’m a prisoner inside my own body and my brain is also fading.

  She clamps the seat belt over my chest. My head lolls to the side. Drool comes out the side of my mouth. I remain conscious, though. I try to hold on.

  She brings her face close to mine. “Tell me where Jeb is.”

  I want to laugh in her face and ask her how she thinks I can tell her now that I can’t even talk. Her hands rummage through my jacket pockets. She finds my cell phone. I stare helplessly as she scrolls through my contact list and finds Jeb’s number. I wish fervently that I’d put password protection on my phone. I’ve never felt a need to, until now.

  She hits the dial button.

  I struggle to lift my hand, to slap the phone from her grip. But I can barely move a finger.

  It’s ringing. I can hear it ringing . . . there’s still a cell tower working. It strikes me that she wants Jeb more than us. She hasn’t killed us because she wants to use us to bait him. I can’t quite make sense of why Brandy would want this. I’m trying to find links, to think, but my brain is molasses. My vision starts to pinprick. I can’t hear anything anymore, can’t see . . . then my world goes dark.

  Jeb parked the SUV and cut the lights. He positioned his headlamp on his head, opened the door. Rain came sideways at him. The smoke was thick here, and it burned acrid in his nasal passages.

  He’d come the longer way round and up the north side of the gorge to avoid the trestle bridge, but he’d made good time. Carrying Rachel’s father’s rifle and spare ammunition, Jeb hiked the rest of the way up to the mine entrance, keeping his headlamp off. If Clint was already on the other side of the bridge, Jeb didn’t want him to see light. There was a chance Clint might come up the same way, which was why he’d hidden the SUV about a quarter mile back in some trees.

  The air was colder higher up the gorge. Rogue Falls thundered below, sending up mist. Jeb found the mine entrance. A black maw. The air coming from it was icy, as if the mountain itself was exhaling from its deep, frozen interior. He peered inside. Darkness was complete. Jeb felt a shiver as he thought of Merilee perhaps lying deep down in there somewhere, waiting for closure, justice. He crept farther along the narrow road above the gorge, keeping well away from the edge because the road barrier was long gone.

  If he could get closer to the old trestle bridge, he might be able to stop Clint from coming across. And in case Clint came the other way, he needed a position from which he could see that, too.

  But as Jeb rounded a rock, he pulled back, his pulse quickening. There was a light moving on the other side of the gorge. Slowly he peered back round the rock. There was another light moving in an irregular fashion behind the first. He realized it must be headlamps. Two people. Clint must have brought one of the others. Shit.

  The person with the first headlamp turned round to face the second, and Jeb saw with a start that the second person was a woman. Fair hair. Plump.

  Beppie?

  His heart hammered and his brain raced. Why Beppie? Was she helping him? It didn’t make sense.

  A buzz in his pocket suddenly made him jump. His phone. Swearing inwardly, he thrust his hand into his pocket, felt for the sound button, and turned the buzzer to silent. Blood thudded in his ears. He held dead still. Had they heard it? Jeb peered slowly back round the side of the rock. They were not looking his way. The rain, wind, waterfall must have drowned the sound. He reached into his pocket, checked to see who’d called. Only a handful of people had this number—Sophia and Peter, the UBC lawyers, Rachel.

  He saw Rachel’s number.

  Worry stabbed into him. But before Jeb could think further, he heard yelling. Quickly, he moved to peer back round the rock. The couple was arguing. The woman—Beppie—carried a gun, shotgun or rifle. Her headlamp lit clearly on Clint’s face. It was unmistakably him, the big square features, correct height and build. He was carrying a heavy box. The dynamite? They seemed to be quarreling about who was going to walk over the trestle bridge first. The woman had a bag slung across her shoulder.

  As he watched, Jeb saw that Clint was making Beppie go first, her headlamp darting through the blackness as she grasped the low railing with her right hand, gun in her left. Cautiously placing one foot in front of the other along the wide outer support beam of the bridge, she began to cross toward the middle of the plunging chasm. Something gave underfoot and she almost dropped to her knees, catching herself as one of the crosspieces went tumbling down into the white mist. She stalled, then slowly started to move again.

  The bastard was using her as guinea pig to test the stability of what was left of the bridge. When she was halfway across, Clint started coming over himself. Carefully balancing along the same support beam Beppie had used as he carried the box.

  Conflict twisted through Jeb. He hadn’t counted on Clint’s wife being present. Beppie was nearing the other side now. Clint was in the middle of the bridge. Jeb had to make a move, soon. His phone suddenly vibrated again in his pocket. But before he could fully register, Beppie suddenly spun round and lifted the gunstock to shoulder. She aimed directly at her husband.

  Shock sliced through Jeb.

  Clint stopped dead in his tracks.

  Without a word, Beppie pulled the trigger. The sound boomed and echoed off the gorge walls. A scream, raw, rose above the water.

  Jeb blinked.

  Clint was still there. Standing on the bridge. She’d shot wide. But he’d dropped his box of dynamite. Some of the sticks were rolling along the trestles. Others had plunged down into the gorge.

  “What the fuck, Beppie, put that thing down!” Clint screamed. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Thinking of my girls, Clint. In the name of the Lord God Almighty, in the name of retribution, I can’t let you do this.” She raised her gun to her shoulder again, peered down the barrel.

  Clint clutched the railing. “You’re not thinking straight, woman.”

  “Was Merilee the first? How many others after her, Clint? How many?”

  “Put that thing down, goddammit.”

  “So you can blow me up with the evidence in the mine? I know you, Clint, I—”

  He took a step toward her and she fired instantly over his head.

  He ducked, swore.

  “Was it just you?” she yelled, reloading. “Or did the others rape her too? Tell me. I want to know everything that happened that night or I swear on my girls’ lives I will kill you right now, right here.”

  “Beps, just listen to me—”

  She fired again, blasting a chunk out of the trestle near his boots. Jeb saw her reloading.

  “Jesus, fuck, okay, okay. I’ll tell you. They wanted it, Beppie. They both wanted it.”

  “Louder! I can’t hear you, tell me louder!” she yelled.

  “We used the drugs. Date rape drugs in their booze so their memory would be fucked!” He screamed over the water. “Satisfied, woman? Is that loud enough for ya? The drugs made them limp, like jelly. Easy pickings. I started with Merilee, in the mine.”

  Beppie staggered backward. Water roared. Time stretched.

  “All of you?” she finally yelled. “Levi, Luke, Zink?”

  “Just put it down, okay?”

  She fire
d again.

  Clint ducked, swore.

  “Okay, okay! It was me first, then Zink. We made Amy watch. We had a rope around Amy’s neck and we made her watch. Levi was gung ho, ready to go, dick out of his pants.”

  Beppie reloaded. She had shells in the bib of her dungarees.

  “But Levi chickened out when I used the gun to fuck Merilee. I used a gun, okay! I got off on it. But Amy started screaming hysterically and Levi, he freaked. He said, no man, this isn’t cool. We got in a tussle. We bashed into Merilee and she cracked her head on a rock. Her neck went all funny. Limp. There was blood everywhere. She was choking on it. I yelled at Levi to bring something to stop the bleeding. He ran to the Jeep and brought Luke’s sweatshirt. Luke, the asshole, was passed out in his T-shirt in back of the Jeep. But by the time Levi got back, Merilee was dead. I don’t know what happened, she had no pulse. Maybe she drowned on her own blood, choked, or some shit. Or maybe it was injury to her brain, or her neck. Dead. You never saw guys sober up so fast. We panicked. She was full of our semen, our DNA. Mine and Zink’s. We pushed her down the shaft. Okay, satisfied?”

  Beppie was eerily still.

  A sick coldness settled through Jeb. There was no fire of rage in him, but something else. The reality of what this man, those guys, had done, it steeled his muscles. It made his brain numb.

  “Beppie,” Clint yelled. “You satisfied? Will you put that gun down now?”

  “Go on!” she screamed, edging closer. “I want all of it. Every detail. What did you do with Amy?”

  “Amy saw it all. We didn’t know what to do with her. I wanted to push her down the shaft with Merilee, but Levi said they’d come up here, looking. They’d find their bodies. They’d find our semen in Merilee. We’d all go down. So we took Amy and put her in the Jeep. I drove. We went north. I was amped from drugs and booze. Levi was freaking out. Luke didn’t know what the fuck was happening, he was still passed out cold. We figured we’d dump Amy far enough away, and if they found her, there wouldn’t be any of our semen on her. And then they’d look for Merilee in that area, too. No one would think to look way south in the mine. We made a pact to say we saw Cullen going north with them. That part was easy because they’d been in his car before they saw us at the rail crossing. Beppie?”

  Another shot blasted chunks of the railing into the air beside Clint.

  “All of it!” she yelled.

  Jeb didn’t dare move. His muscles were humming, tight. He wanted to hear. All of it. Like Beppie.

  “We drove her up the Rutherford drainage, to the old trapper’s cabin. The others waited in the Jeep while I took her in. She was blathering, stumbling, falling as I led her by the rope around her neck. Like an animal. It turned me on, okay? It made me feel powerful. I hurt her in the cabin. Knocked her about, raped her with my gun, front and back, and then I strangled her. I thought she was fucking dead. Her pulse must have been so low from the drugs that I didn’t feel it, or I was too amped up to register it. And you know what, Beppie?” he screamed. “I fucking liked it, okay! It whet my appetite. I did more women after her, in Bosnia, while on deployment. And in Sierra Leone I did one of the military females. She dropped charges, but it got me kicked out. Now I go hunting for one or two each fall, along with the moose and the caribou, and I bring back my trophies.”

  Silence.

  Just the thundering of the water far below, the sound of beating rain. Thunder in the hills.

  “What about the hoodie? How did it get in Jeb’s car?”

  He laughed. Loud and guttural, like some kind of wild man on the bridge. “I only realized when we got back it was still in the Jeep. I took Luke home and put the damn thing on him, left him outside the door. He woke up as I was hauling him out of the Jeep. I figured he’d wash it or whatever. He wouldn’t know what the hell happened anyway. But I got edgy at home. I remembered there was a GPS in the Jeep. So I came back before dawn to wash the Jeep down and erase the route recorded by the GPS.”

  “You tried to kill Jeb the other night, didn’t you?” Beppie yelled. “You burned down his land, started the Wolf River fire. You used my truck.”

  “Me, Zink, and Levi did. I got rid of that therapist and Amy, too. Just need to finish off here now, Beppie. And it’s all under control.” Clint threw his arms out wide, put his head back, and laughed again. As if he was all-powerful, king of the wilderness. Jeb tensed. Things were coming to a head. He sighted Clint down the barrel of his rifle, aiming for just below the glow of the headlamp. But he had a bad line. Beppie was in his way. He didn’t want to risk hitting her. And Clint was edging closer and closer toward his wife, who seemed rooted to the bridge.

  Jeb tightened his finger softly around the trigger.

  Move, Beppie, move, dammit.

  Jeb knew in his gut that Clint was going to send her over that bridge. No way in hell would he be telling her this stuff if he had any intention of allowing her to live.

  If Jeb yelled for Beppie to move, it would distract her, Clint would take the gap. Jeb cursed. It was a tough shot as it was. It had been almost a decade since he’d last hunted, fired, or even touched a rifle. He’d been an ace marksman once. He didn’t know if he still had it.

  Suddenly Jeb caught sight of another light approaching rapidly on the far side of the gorge—someone holding a flashlight, running. His gaze flashed back to the bridge. Clint had his back to the approaching person. He had no idea someone was coming.

  “Your actions will not touch my girls, Clint!” Beppie screamed suddenly. “You must pay for this. The world must see what you did to Merilee and Amy. Justice must be done. A man must be set free—your family must be set free!”

  “Police!” came a voice.

  Everyone froze.

  “Put that gun down, Beppie Rudiger. You don’t want to do this.” The voice was female. Strident.

  Jeb stepped out from behind his rock, aiming his rifle at Clint as he approached the other end of the bridge. “Listen to the officer, Beppie. Let her take him in!” he called over the water. “Put the gun down. I’ve got him covered.”

  She hesitated. Confused suddenly.

  Then she whipped the stock back to her shoulder and fired. The shot boomed. Clint whirled sideways and went over the barrier, a tumbling black shadow into white mist and roaring water. Beppie dropped her gun and lowered herself into a sitting position on the bridge. The shotgun spiraled down into the foaming gorge after her husband. Beppie held her knees, rocked, moaning.

  Jeb got to her before the officer did.

  He reached down for Beppie’s hand, helped her up, and he guided the sobbing woman across to the cop, who was approaching from the other side. It was Pirello, the same cop who’d come to Rachel’s door looking for him, the one who’d responded to the call at school when Quinn got in trouble.

  Pirello took Beppie’s hand, helping the woman back onto solid ground on the far side.

  “I’m so sorry,” Beppie said. She was soaked through, shaking like a leaf. “I’m so sorry, so sorry, sorry . . .” She slumped down onto a rock, taking off the bag she had strapped across her shoulder. She held it out to Pirello.

  “What’s this?” Pirello said.

  “His trophies. His hunting trophies.” Her voice was shaking. “He was going to put me in that mine and blow me up with all his trophies.” She dug into the bib of the dungarees she was wearing and took out a something small and dark, around the size of a cell phone. “And this.” She held it out to Pirello with her trembling hands. “I got him. I got him on tape.”

  Pirello glanced at Jeb.

  “I made him yell loud enough so he could be heard over the water.” Beppie was shuddering hard now, the aftereffects of shock taking hold of her body. “I . . . I hope I got him.” She looked up at Jeb. “I . . . I’m so sorry for what they did to you.”

  CHAPTER 26

  I come round slowly.

&nb
sp; My head feels as though it has exploded. My mouth tastes strange. I’m in a vehicle—I can feel the motion, hear the engine. I manage to open my eyes a little. Wipers are going. Rain. Thunder. I smell smoke. I move my head slightly to the side.

  Brandy. Driving.

  Quinn.

  Shock slams through me as I remember. I struggle to look over my shoulder. I can see her. She’s come round. She’s staring at me—her eyes huge above her taped-up mouth. A force explodes through me—I can’t let anything happen to Quinn. But I can’t seem to move. My limbs are still paralyzed.

  “What . . . what . . .” My mouth is thick, throat raw and dry. “Brandy . . .”

  She glances at me and her face scares me. Her eyes are red-rimmed, puffy, wild.

  “Where is he?” she barks.

  My brain is slow. “Who?”

  “Jebbediah Cullen. Why won’t he answer his phone?” Her voice goes shrill. Her fists are tight on the wheel. Her neck is all corded muscle. I realize we’re going up the mountain, up a switchback road. I can see fire burning across the drainage. We must be on Bear Mountain because the last I heard, Mount Barren was aflame. She’s taking us up Bear Mountain while the entire village below is being evacuated. Wipers are streaking rain and ash like mud across the windshield.

  I try to move my legs, but can’t. Things seem strangely distant. I swallow, forcing moisture into my mouth. My arms are squashed behind my back, a zip tie cutting into my wrists. She hasn’t killed us. She could have. She might still. But she wants Jeb first. I must buy time, try to figure her out.

  “Why . . . do you want him?” My voice comes out hoarse.

  Her gaze shoots to me. “You shouldn’t have meddled. You should have let him be. If I fix this, if you go away—” She beats the steering wheel with the palm of her hand.

  “Let . . . who be?”

  “If you all just go away, if I stop you all from digging into this. The evidence will never be found. It’ll all die down. We can still be together. I need him. I need him.” She slams her hand on the wheel again. “Where is he, Rachel?” The truck slides in mud as she almost misses a switchback.