My Sister's Grave

by Robert Dugoni

She pulled back the curtain, looking at the space where the car had been parked. The tires had left shallow impressions in the snow, which meant the car had parked after the snow had fallen but hadn’t remained parked there long.

  “Tracy?”

  “Just wanted to hear your voice,” she said, deciding that Dan had enough to worry about.

  “Something up?”

  “No. I’m just a worrier. A hazard of the job.”

  “Well, I’m fine. And I still have half of my security system at home.”

  “Not being followed?” she asked.

  “If I were, I’d have to be an idiot not to know it. The roads are deserted. You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “Good night, Dan.”

  “Next time I want to wake up beside you.”

  “I’d like that.”

  She disconnected and exchanged her clothes for pajama pants and her nightshirt. Before climbing back into bed, she pulled back the curtain and considered the empty space where the car had been. Then she slid the chain lock across the door, set her Glock on the nightstand, and turned off the light.

  Dan’s smell lingered on the pillow. He’d been a gentle and patient lover, his hands firm but his touch soft, just as she’d imagined. He’d given her time to relax, to free her mind until she was no longer thinking, just reacting to the motion of his body and the touch of his hands. When she’d climaxed, she’d clung to him, not wanting the feeling, or him, to leave her.

  CHAPTER 43

  She slept through the night, the first time in months, and the following morning awoke feeling refreshed, though anxious about the upcoming day. She didn’t recall ever feeling nervous as a cop. The days when the shit hit the fan were the good days for her, the exciting days, the days when her shift flew by as if the hours were minutes. But the simple act of sitting through another day of the hearing provoked anxiety as the trial had all those years earlier.

  She retrieved a copy of the Cascade County Courier in the motel lobby. The front page included an article on the hearing, with an accompanying photograph of Tracy entering the courthouse, but thankfully no picture of her and Dan kissing outside the veterinary clinic or entering her motel room together.

  Finlay met her in the courthouse parking lot as planned and facilitated her access through the media and into the courtroom, and Tracy could not help but sense that Finlay took some pride in his role as her guardian.

  As the 9:00 a.m. hour approached, Tracy expected fewer spectators, figuring the novelty of the first day would have worn off for some, and the worsening weather would deter all but the hardiest, but when the courtroom doors opened the pews again quickly filled. If anything, there were more people in attendance, perhaps intrigued by the article on the first day of the proceedings. Tracy counted four additional media badges.

  House again entered the courtroom escorted by multiple correctional officers, but this time when he reached counsel table and faced the gallery to allow the officers to remove his handcuffs, House did not look to his uncle. He looked directly at Tracy. His gaze made her skin crawl, as it had twenty years earlier, but unlike that day, Tracy had no intention of looking away, not even when House’s mouth inched into that familiar grin. She knew enough now to know that the stare and grin were his façade, meant to make her feel uncomfortable, but that House—while physically hardened in prison—very much remained emotionally stunted, the insecure kid who had abducted Annabelle Bovine because he couldn’t bear the thought of her leaving him.

  House broke his gaze when the clerk entered and commanded the room to rise. Judge Meyers resumed his seat, and day two was underway.

  “Mr. O’Leary, you may continue,” Meyers said.

  Dan called Bob Fitzsimmons to the stand. Twenty years earlier, Fitzsimmons had been the managing partner of the company that entered into contracts with the State of Washington to construct three hydroelectric dams across the Cascade River, including Cascade Falls. Though now retired and in his seventies, Fitzsimmons looked as if he’d just stepped from the board meeting of a Fortune 500 company. He had a healthy head of silver hair and wore a pin-striped suit and lavender tie.

  In short order, O’Leary had Fitzsimmons explain the process of obtaining the necessary federal and state paperwork to build the dams, a public process covered in the local newspapers.

  “Naturally the dam backed up the river,” Fitzsimmons said, legs crossed. “You need to create a ready source of water in the event of a drought.”

  “And what was the ready source of water for Cascade Falls?” O’Leary asked.

  “Cascade Lake,” Fitzsimmons said.

  O’Leary used two diagrams to compare the size of Cascade Lake before the dam went online and after the area had flooded. The increased area included the location where Calloway had put an X to signify where Sarah’s body had eventually been discovered.

  “And when did that area flood?” O’Leary asked.

  “October 12, 1993,” Fitzsimmons said.

  “And was that date public knowledge?” O’Leary asked.

  Fitzsimmons nodded. “We made sure it was in all the newspapers and the local broadcasts. It was a state mandate and we did more than the state required.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because people hunted and hiked in that area. You didn’t want anyone trapped out there when the water came.”

  O’Leary sat. Clark approached. “Mr. Fitzsimmons, did your company do anything else to ensure no one was ‘trapped out there when the water came,’ as you put it?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  “Didn’t you also hire security personnel and put up roadblocks to keep people out of that area?”

  “We did that several days before the plant went online.”

  “So it would have been extremely difficult for anyone to have entered that area, wouldn’t it?”

  “That was the intent.”

  “Did any of your security people report seeing anyone trying to enter the area?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “No reports of someone carrying a body down a trail?”

  Dan objected. “The prosecutor is testifying, Your Honor.”

  Clark shot back, “Your Honor, that is exactly the insinuation being made here.”

  Meyers raised a hand. “I’ll rule on the objections, Mr. Clark. The objection is overruled.”

  “Did you receive any reports of anyone carrying a body down a trail?” Clark asked.

  “No,” Fitzsimmons said.

  Clark sat.

  O’Leary stood. “How big an area is this?” He used the diagram to note the flooded area.

  Fitzsimmons frowned. “My recollection is the lake was about two thousand five hundred acres and closer to four thousand five hundred after we went online.”

  “And how many trails cut across that area?”

  Fitzsimmons smiled and shook his head. “Far too many for me to know.”

  “You put up roadblocks and posted security on the main roads, but you couldn’t possibly have covered every point of ingress and egress, could you?”

  “No way to do that,” Fitzsimmons said.

  O’Leary followed Fitzsimmons with Vern Downie, the man James Crosswhite had specifically enlisted to lead the search for Sarah in the hills above Cedar Grove because Vern knew those hills better than anyone. Tracy and her friends used to joke that Vern, with his thinning hair and five o’clock shadow on a craggy face, would have been a hit in horror movies, especially with a voice that rarely rose above a whisper.

  In the intervening twenty years, Vern looked to have forsaken shaving altogether. His gray-and-silver beard started just a few inches below his eyes, obscured his neck, and extended nearly to his chest. He wore fresh blue jeans, a belt with a silver, oval-shaped buckle, boots, and a flannel shirt. For Vern, this was church attire. His wife sat in the first row for moral support, as she had at the trial. Tracy recalled that Vern wasn’t much for public anything, particularly public spe
aking.

  “Mr. Downie, you’re going to have to speak up to be heard,” Meyers cautioned, after Vern whispered his name and address. Perhaps sensing Vern’s anxiety, Dan eased him into his testimony with some background questions before getting to the substance of his examination.

  “How many days did you search?” O’Leary asked.

  Vern stuck out his lips and pinched them. His face scrunched with thought. “We were out there every day for the week,” he said. “After that we went out couple times a week, usually after work. That was maybe a few more weeks. Until the area flooded.”

  “How many people were involved in the search initially?”

  Vern looked to the gallery. “How many people in this room?”

  Dan let the answer stand. It was the first light moment in two days.

  Clark stood and approached the lectern. Again, he was brief. “Vern, how many acres are those foothills?”

  “Hell, Vance, I wouldn’t know that.”

  “It’s a big area isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s big.”

  “Is it rugged?”

  “Depends on your perspective, I guess. It can get steep and there’s a lot of trees and shrub. Dense in places, that’s for sure.”

  “A lot of places for someone to bury a body and not have it found?”

  “I suppose,” he said, and he glanced at Edmund House.

  “Did you use dogs?”

  “I recall they had dogs in Southern California but we couldn’t get them up here. They wouldn’t fly them.”

  “As systematic as your search was, Vern, do you believe you covered every square foot of those foothills?”

  “We did our best.”

  “Did you cover every square foot?”

  “Every square foot? No way to know that for sure. It’s just too big. I guess we didn’t.”

  Dan followed Downie with Ryan Hagen, the auto-parts salesman. Hagen took the stand looking like he’d put on thirty pounds since the Saturday morning when Tracy had surprised him at his home. Hagen’s jowls fell over the collar of his shirt. His hairline had further thinned, and he had the ruddy complexion and bulbous nose of a man who liked his daily cocktails.

  Hagen chuckled when Dan asked if he had a purchase order or other document to confirm his trip on August 21, 1993.

  “Whatever the company, I’m sure it’s long since gone out of business. Most of this is done over the Internet now. The traveling salesman has gone the way of the dinosaur.” As she watched him, Tracy thought that the salesman might have left, but Hagen still had the salesman’s smile and mannered charm.

  Hagen also couldn’t say which news broadcast he’d been watching.

  “You testified twenty years ago you were watching your Mariners.”

  “Still a fan,” Hagen said.

  “So you know the Mariners have never been to the World Series.”

  “I’m an optimist.” Others in the audience smiled along with Hagen.

  “But it didn’t happen in 1993, did it?”

  Hagen paused. “Nope.”

  “In fact, they finished in fourth place and didn’t make the play-offs that year.”

  “I’ll have to take your word on that. My memory isn’t that good.”

  “Which means their last regular season game was Sunday, October 3, a seven-to-two loss to the Minnesota Twins.”

  Hagen’s smile waned. “I’ll take your word for that also.”

  “The Mariners weren’t playing in late October, 1993, when you claimed to have seen this broadcast, were they?”

  Hagen kept smiling, but now it looked strained. “It might have been a different team,” he said.

  Dan let that answer linger before shifting gears. “Mr. Hagen, did you make service calls on any establishments in Cedar Grove?”

  “I don’t recall,” Hagen said. “I had a big territory.”

  “Natural salesman,” Dan said.

  “I guess I am,” he said, though he no longer looked the part.

  “Let me see if I can help.” Dan picked up a Bekins box and set it on the table. He made a production of pulling out the files and documents. Hagen looked perplexed by this turn of events and Tracy noticed his gaze shift to where Roy Calloway sat in the gallery. Dan pulled out a file Tracy had recovered from the file cabinets in Harley Holt’s garage and moved to a position beside the lectern, blocking Hagen from making eye contact with Calloway. The records in that file documented regular orders of parts by Harley Holt from Hagen’s company.

  Dan asked, “Did you not call upon Harley Holt, the owner of Cedar Grove Service and Repair?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  Dan made a production of flipping through the documents. “In fact, you called on Mr. Holt fairly regularly, once every couple months or so.”

  Hagen smiled again, but he’d flushed and his brow glistened with perspiration. “If that’s what the records show, I won’t quibble with you.”

  “So you did spend some time in Cedar Grove, including during the summer and fall of 1993, didn’t you?”

  “I’d have to check my calendar,” Hagen said.

  “I did that for you,” Dan said. “And I have copies here of purchase orders that contain both your and Harley’s signatures on them, dated the same day that your calendar indicates you called upon the Cedar Grove Service and Repair.”

  “Well, then I guess I did,” Hagen said, sounding less and less sure.

  “So I’m wondering, Mr. Hagen, during those visits with Harley Holt, did the subject of Sarah Crosswhite’s disappearance come up?”

  Hagen reached for a glass of water next to the chair, took a sip, and returned the glass to the stand. “Could you repeat the question?”

  “During your visits with Harley Holt, did the subject of Sarah Crosswhite’s disappearance come up?”

  “You know, I’m not really sure.”

  “It was big news in Cedar Grove, wasn’t it?”

  “I, I don’t know. I suppose it was.”

  “They had a billboard right there on the highway offering a ten-thousand-dollar reward, didn’t they?”

  “I didn’t receive any reward.”

  “I didn’t say you did.” Dan pulled out another document and acted as though he was reading it as he asked his question. “What I asked was, even though Sarah Crosswhite’s disappearance was big news all over Cascade County, one of your geographic sales areas, are you saying you can’t recall you and Mr. Holt ever discussing it?”

  Hagen cleared his throat. “I believe we probably did, you know, in general. Not in any detail. That’s the best I can recall anyway.”

  “So you knew about Sarah’s disappearance before you ever saw a news program, didn’t you?”

  “The news program may have jogged my memory. Or I could have spoken to Harley about it after the fact. That’s probably what it was. I’m not too sure anymore.”

  Dan held up more sheets of paper as he spoke. “It didn’t come up in August or September or October.”

  “I don’t recall specifically, is what I’m saying. I suppose it could have. Like I said, twenty years is a long time.”

  “During your visits to Cedar Grove, did you ever discuss Edmund House with anyone?”

  “Edmund House? No, I’m pretty sure his name did not come up.”

  “Pretty sure?”

  “I don’t recall his name coming up.”

  Dan took another document from the file and held it up. “Did Harley ever tell you his service and repair shop had ordered parts for Parker House’s vehicles and had done the maintenance on a red, Chevy stepside truck?”

  Clark rose. “Your Honor, if Mr. O’Leary is going to ask questions from documents, I would ask that they be entered into evidence rather than continuing with this exercise to test Mr. Hagen’s memory about discreet meetings that may or may not have occurred twenty years ago.”

  “Overruled,” Meyers said.

  Tracy knew Dan was acting. She had tried unsuccessfully to find a reco
rd that confirmed Harley had ordered a car part from Hagen for the Chevy Parker House had been restoring. Hagen, however, did not dare call Dan’s bluff at this point. The salesman had turned a beet red and looked as though someone had put a hot plate beneath his seat.

  “I believe we did discuss that,” Hagen said, shifting to cross his legs and then parting them again. “It’s kind of coming back now. I remember saying to Harley that I saw a red Chevy on the road that night, or something like that. That must have been how I remembered it.”

  “I thought you remembered it because you heard about it on a news program as you were watching a Mariners game and the Chevy stepside was your favorite truck?”

  “Well, it was probably a little bit of both. It was my favorite truck, so when Harley mentioned that, you know, Edmund House drove one, then it clicked.”

  Dan paused. Judge Meyers looked down at Hagen with a furrowed brow.

  Then Dan stepped directly beside the witness chair. “So you and Harley Holt did discuss Edmund House by name,” he said.

  Hagen’s eyes widened. This time he could not muster a smile, not even a pained one. “Did I say Edmund? I meant Parker. Right. Parker House. It was his truck, wasn’t it?”

  Dan turned to Clark without providing an answer. “Your witness.”

  CHAPTER 44

  When Judge Meyers returned to the bench for the afternoon session, he looked troubled, and considered the daunting blanket of snow continuing to fall outside his courtroom windows. “While I believe it is important to proceed expeditiously, I also do not want to be foolhardy,” he said. “The weathermen indicate the snow is supposed to let up this afternoon. Having lived in the Pacific Northwest much of my life, I prefer my own method of meteorology; I stick my head out the front door.” The audience chuckled. “That is precisely what I did during the break, and I didn’t see any blue sky on the horizon. This will be our last witness of the day so as to avoid many of you driving home in the dark.”

  Dan displayed a series of charts and photographs on the flat-screen television as he walked Kelly Rosa, the King County forensic anthropologist, through her testimony. He started with Finlay Armstrong’s phone call and the photograph of the bone.