My Sister's Grave

by Robert Dugoni

  He shook his head. “Not anymore. I’m retired.”

  “Did hell freeze over?”

  “For three days,” he said.

  She smiled. “You got that right. How’s the leg?”

  “Doctor says I get to keep it after a few more surgeries. I’ll walk with a limp and need a cane, but he said it won’t keep me out of the streams.”

  She took his hand. “I’m sorry I put you through this, Roy. I know my dad told you not to say anything, and when I kept pushing for answers, I put you in a situation where you felt the need to protect Vance and DeAngelo and try to convince me to let it go and just leave.”

  “Don’t go making me out to be some hero,” he said. “I was covering my ass too. You know, I thought about telling you.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed you,” she said.

  “That’s what I figured. That’s why I didn’t try. You’d made up your mind, and I knew you were as stubborn as your old man.”

  She smiled. “More.”

  “He didn’t want you suffering any more than you already were, Tracy. He’d lost Sarah. He didn’t want to lose you too. He was afraid that the guilt would be too much for you to live with. He didn’t want that, Tracy. He didn’t want you thinking Sarah died because of you. She didn’t, you know. House was a psychopath. He killed her because he got the chance. But I guess I don’t need to tell you that. I imagine you get a fair share more of those types of killers than we get here in Cedar Grove.”

  “What do you think happened to him, Roy?”

  “Who? Your father?”

  “You knew him as well as anyone. What do you think happened?”

  Calloway seemed to give his answer some thought. “I think he just couldn’t get past the loss. He couldn’t get over the grief. He loved you both so much. He felt so much guilt because he wasn’t here. You know how he was. He thought if he had just been here, he could have stopped it somehow. It hurt their marriage, you know?”

  “I figured it did.”

  “He blamed her for him not being here, for them being in Hawaii. He didn’t, but . . . he did. And then when he thought that we weren’t going to be able to get justice for Sarah, I think it just kind of put him over the edge and it snowballed on him. He was a man of such high character. I’m sure that planting the evidence just weighed on him even more. Don’t judge him, Tracy. Your father was a great man. He didn’t kill himself. The grief did that.”

  “I know.”

  Calloway took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “Thanks for what you did at the news conference.”

  “I just told the truth,” she said, unable to suppress a grin.

  Calloway chuckled. “I’m not sure it will satisfy the Department of Justice.”

  “They’ve got bigger fish to fry,” she said. Besides, Tracy thought there was merit to what DeAngelo Finn had said to her, about people not always being entitled to the answers, not when those answers could do more harm than good. She felt no guilt blaming her father. “My father would have wanted it this way,” she said.

  “He had broad shoulders.” Calloway reached for a glass on a table next to his bed, took a sip of juice through a straw, and set the glass back down. “So, will you be leaving?”

  “Still anxious to get rid of me, aren’t you?”

  “Actually, no. It’s been too long.”

  “I’ll be back to visit.”

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “You can’t bury the ghosts if you don’t confront them,” she said. “And now I know I don’t have to let Sarah go, or my dad, or Cedar Grove. They’ll always be a part of me.”

  “Dan’s a good man,” Calloway said.

  She smiled. “Like I said. I’ll take it slow.”

  “So, you’re going to be okay with it, knowing?” he asked. “If you ever have a need to talk, you call me.”

  “It’s going to take time,” she said.

  “For all of us,” he said.

  DeAngelo Finn was just as philosophical when she visited his room.

  “I would have been with my Millie,” he said. “And that’s not such a bad thing, you know.”

  “Where will you go?” she asked.

  “I have a nephew near Portland who says he has a vegetable garden in need of weeding.”

  Last on her rounds was Parker House. As she entered his hospital room, she remembered her father telling her at the trial that Parker was suffering too. She could only imagine what he was feeling now.

  House had bandages on both his hands and presumably his feet, though he lay beneath a thin hospital sheet. He looked pale and gaunt, more than normal, and Tracy wondered if, in addition to the shock from his wounds, Parker was also experiencing the shock of not having a drink for several days.

  “I’m sorry, Tracy,” Parker said. “I was drunk and I was scared. He wasn’t right. Edmund wasn’t right from the moment he first came to live with me, but he was my brother’s boy, and I felt responsible for him.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you or Dan or his dogs. I was just hoping to scare you from going forward with it. I guess I just never thought there would come a day when he might get out, and it scared me to think of what he was capable of doing. I just panicked, I guess. It was a dumb thing to do, shooting out that window.”

  “I want you to know that my father never held you even the slightest bit responsible for what happened, Parker. I don’t either. Not then and not now.”

  Parker nodded, his lips pressed tight. “You were a good family, Tracy. I’m sorry about what all came about, everything that happened because of him. Sometimes I think about what might have happened if he’d never come around, what Cedar Grove might have been like. You ever think about that?”

  Tracy smiled. “Sometimes,” she said. “But then I try not to.”

  CHAPTER 73

  She stayed in Cedar Grove as long as she could, but by Sunday afternoon, Tracy could not put off the inevitable any longer. She needed to get back to Seattle. Back to her job. She and Dan stood on his porch, Dan’s arms wrapped around her. His kiss lingered. When their lips parted, Dan said, “I don’t know who’s going to miss you more, me or them.” Rex and Sherlock sat beside them, looking forlorn.

  Tracy punched him lightly in the chest. “It better be you.”

  He released her and she rubbed the bony knob atop Rex’s head, now free of the plastic cone. The vet said he’d be as good as new. Not to be forgotten, Sherlock nuzzled her hand for attention. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to forget either of you,” she said. “I’ll be coming back to visit, and you can come see me in Seattle, although you’re going to have to wait until I get a house with a yard. And Roger’s not going to be too happy about the two of you.” She could only imagine her cat’s reaction when more than two hundred eighty-five pounds of dog invaded his sanctuary.

  During the days she had spent convalescing in Dan’s home, Dan had never asked what their future held, whether she might consider staying. But as she’d told Parker House in the hospital, sometimes she couldn’t help but imagine the Cedar Grove she’d known, even when she tried not to. It was a part of her. Still, she and Dan both knew that they had separate lives and that neither could be immediately disrupted. Tracy had a job to do, and Dan had made a life again in Cedar Grove. He had Sherlock and Rex to care for. His criminal defense practice also looked like it was about to explode due to the notoriety brought by his defense of Edmund House, as well as the aftermath.

  Dan and the two dogs walked Tracy to her car. “Call me when you get home,” he said, and it felt good to have someone care enough to worry about her.

  She put her hands on his chest. “Thanks for understanding, Dan.”

  “Take your time. We’ll be here when you’re ready, me and the boys. Just keep swinging that sledgehammer.”

  She waved as she backed down the driveway into the street, then again as she drove away, wiping a tear from her cheek. When Tracy reached the freeway entrance, she p
assed it, no longer anxious to leave, and instead turned right and drove into Cedar Grove. The downtown area looked better in the sunshine. Everything always did. It seemed more vibrant, the buildings not as dilapidated. People walked the streets and cars were parked in front of the storefronts. Maybe the mayor would succeed. Maybe he’d revitalize the old town. Maybe he’d even get a developer to finish Cascadia and make Cedar Grove a vacation destination. It had once been a place of great joy and comfort for a young girl and her sister. Maybe it could be again.

  Tracy passed the single-story homes with kids in snow clothes playing in the yards, the remnants of their snowmen almost completely melted. Farther out of town, she came to the larger homes on the bigger plots of land, the ones with rooflines protruding above manicured hedges. She slowed as she approached the largest hedge, hesitating only briefly before she drove between a gap in the hedge framed by two stone pillars and up the driveway.

  She parked in front of the carriage house and walked to where the weeping willow had once stood like a majestic guardian of the property. Sarah used to climb the braids and pretend the grass was an alligator-infested swamp. She’d dangle above the lawn, crying out to Tracy to rescue her from their snatching jaws and razor-sharp teeth.

  Help! Help me, Tracy. The alligators are going to eat me.

  Tracy would step carefully along the path to the stone closest to the tree, lean out over the lawn, and stretch out her hand.

  I can’t reach, Sarah would say, fully enveloped in her fantasy.

  Swing, Tracy would reply. Swing to me.

  And Sarah would start to move her legs and body to get the braids to swing. Their fingers would brush. On the next pass, they would touch. Finally, she’d be close enough for Tracy to grasp her hand, and their fingers would intertwine. Now let go, Tracy would say.

  I’m scared.

  Don’t be afraid, Tracy would say. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. And Sarah would let go, allowing Tracy to pull her baby sister to safety.

  The front door of the house pulled open behind her. Tracy turned. A woman and two young girls stood on the porch. Tracy guessed the girls’ ages to be twelve and eight. “I thought it was you,” the woman said. “I recognized you from your picture in the newspaper and on the news.”

  “I’m sorry to intrude.”

  “That’s okay. I heard you used to live here.”

  Tracy looked to the two girls. “Yes, with my sister.”

  “It sounded so horrible,” the woman said. “What happened. I’m so sorry.”

  Tracy looked to the older sister. “Do you slide down the staircase banister?”

  The girl grinned and raised her eyes up at her mother. Her sister laughed.

  “Would you like to come in?” the woman said. “Take a look around? The house must hold a lot of memories for you.”

  Tracy considered what had been her home. That was exactly the reason she’d driven out to the property, to begin the process of reminiscing about the good times her family had shared there, instead of the bad. She smiled again at the two sisters. They were now whispering mischievously. “I think I’m okay,” she said. “I think I’m going to be okay.”

  EPILOGUE

  Tracy adjusted the knot of her red bandanna just off center, dug at the ground with the toe of her boot, parted her legs, and squared her shoulders. Then she mentally went through the progression of shots.

  “You ready, Kid?” the range master asked. “I can go over the sequence again if you need. I know it can get confusing keeping it all in your head. We like to give everyone a fair shake, especially the beginners.”

  On this early Saturday morning, a month after Tracy had returned to Seattle, the sun filtered through the canopy of trees. The sunlight added intrigue to the façades of makeshift storefronts built to replicate an Old West town, and cast shadows across the dozen other competitors. Dressed in old-fashioned cowboy attire, they chatted amicably or readied for their turns to shoot.

  Tracy looked again at the targets through her yellow-tinted shooter’s glasses. “Sure,” she said, sensing he wanted to run through it again. Besides, her father had always taught her to take any competitive advantage she could get.

  “Two shots each,” he said. “Then you move to the second table and use the shotgun to take down the tombstones. When you’re finished, you run to that storefront and shoot out the window at the five orange targets. One shot each.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I think I got it.”

  “Okay, then.” He stepped back and called out. “Shooter ready?”

  “Ready,” she said.

  “Spotters ready?”

  Three men raised their heads and stepped forward. “Ready.”

  “On the beep,” the range master said. “You got a line you like to use?”

  “A line?” she asked.

  “It’s something to let me know when you’re ready. Some people say things like, ‘I hate snakes.’ I say, ‘We deal in lead, friend.’ It’s from The Magnificent Seven.”

  She considered what she’d always said in competition, what Rooster Cogburn had said in True Grit right before he’d ridden across the open field, guns blazing. Fill your hands, you son of a bitch. “Yeah, I have one.”

  “Well then, let’s hear it when you’re ready.”

  She took a deep breath and exhaled. Then she shouted, “I am not afraid of the dark!”

  The timing mechanism beeped. She grabbed the rifle from the table, shot, and levered the second bullet as the first shot hit metal with a ping. She hit the target a second time, levered, shot again, and continued until she’d hit the four remaining targets twice in rapid succession. Already on the move, she picked up the shotgun from the second table and hit the first tombstone. Before it had hit the ground, she’d already pumped and fired at the second target, taking them left to right, the big gun barking. She placed the shotgun down and hurried to the makeshift storefront, stepped inside, squared her shoulders to the window and drew the pistol from across her body. She shot out the window and hit each target in sequence, multiple pings ringing out.

  When she finished, she spun the pistol and fit it back in its holster.

  “Time!” the range master yelled.

  No one spoke, not a word, though every competitor now stood watching.

  Wisps of smoke filtered in the morning air and brought that familiar, sweet smell of gunpowder. The three spotters each held up a fist, looking to one another as if uncertain.

  Tracy had no doubt. She knew she hadn’t missed a target.

  The range master considered the timer, looked to another competitor as if disbelieving, and considered the timer again.

  “What is it, Rattler?” The question came from an older competitor seated on a barrel. He had his legs apart, his hands resting on his thighs. His cowboy handle was “The Banker” because he wore a bowler hat and a red-paisley vest with a gold pocket watch and chain. “Did it malfunction?” he asked, though his handlebar mustache twitched as he said it, and his mouth broke into a shit-eating grin.

  “Twenty-eight point six,” Rattler said.

  The other competitors looked at Tracy, then at one another. “Are you sure?” one of them said.

  “That can’t be right,” another said. “Can it?”

  Tracy’s time was six seconds faster than that of the fastest shooter, three seconds slower than her best time when she’d seriously competed.

  “What did you say your name was?” the range master asked.

  Tracy stepped from the storefront and reholstered her Colt. “The Kid,” she said. “Just the Kid.”

  As the light of day faded, Tracy pulled her rugged cart across the dirt and gravel in the direction of the parking lot. It was the same cart her father had handcrafted for her. She’d retrieved it from storage, along with her guns, when she had gone to get some of her parents’ furniture. She’d moved into a two-bedroom home in West Seattle and needed to fill the rooms. It had a big yard for when Rex and Sherlock came t
o visit.

  The Banker, who had kept a keen watch on Tracy throughout the rest of the competition, came up beside her. “You leaving?”

  “I am,” she said.

  “But they haven’t announced the winner yet.”

  She smiled.

  “What should we do with the belt buckle?”

  “Is that your granddaughter I saw shooting today?”

  “Yeah, she’s mine.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Just turned thirteen, but she’s been shooting damn near since she could walk.”

  “Give it to her,” Tracy said. “Tell her to never stop.”

  “Appreciate that,” he said. “Twenty years ago, I saw a shooter, went by the name Kid Crossdraw, I believe, though everyone just called her ‘The Kid.’ ”

  Tracy stopped.

  The Banker smiled and continued. “I saw her in Olympia. Best shooter I ever saw, until today. Never saw her again after that, though. She had a father and a sister that were pretty good too. You wouldn’t happen to have heard of her, would you?”

  “I have,” Tracy said. “But you’re mistaken.”

  “What about?”

  “She’s still the best shooter.”

  The Banker played with an end of his mustache. “I’d love to see it. Do you know where she might be competing next?”

  “I do,” Tracy said. “But you’re going to have to wait a bit. She’s shooting at higher targets now.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, there are many to thank. First and foremost, before anyone e-mails to tell me I don’t know my geography, Cedar Grove is a fictional town I created in the North Cascades. Yes, there is a Cedar Grove, Washington, but I’ve never been there. I created the town name because I liked the ring of it, and when I later learned of the actual town’s existence, I didn’t want to change it. So there!

  I’ve received so much help from so many sources that it is hard to know where to begin. This book was a long time in the making, so some of the interviews and research go back several years. As always, the people acknowledged are experts in their fields. I am not. Any mistakes or errors are mine and mine alone.