Rock Spider (A New Hampshire Mystery Book 2)

by Mira Gibson

  She spotted the marker a few yards off. Face down, the rounded granite looked like any other rock out here hiding in vegetation, but she fetched it and by the time she returned to the grave, Jake had lowered Rusty’s remains down in the hole where he belonged.

  Together, they grabbed dirt by the fistful and began filling the hole. It crossed her mind to mention she should’ve gotten a shovel, but then she remembered she didn’t have one.

  Offhandedly, he asked, “How is your memory?”

  “Good enough to go to work, evidently.”

  “You don’t remember me.”

  She paused; dirt balled in her fists, and stared at him. Had she met him? Maybe she wasn’t plagued by déjà vu, but actually scratching the surface of things that had happened.

  “We know each other?”

  He released the dirt from his hands and it pattered onto the blanket. “We didn’t know each other, but we met,” he began. “I met your sister, too. Or saw her, I should say. At the farmer’s market with you, a few months back, but you don’t remember, do you?”

  “No,” she said, intrigued.

  Jake shot her a self-deprecating smile then sobered up. “I guess I didn’t make much of an impression.”

  “What happened?”

  Pushing a mound of dirt into the hole, he said, “I asked you out.”

  Hearing that, a wave rolled through her, ratcheting up her fascination.

  “Did we go out?”

  They’d filled the grave and Jake started patting down the soil, perhaps using the task as a means not to answer. But then he said, “No, you turned me down.”

  “Oh.” It surprised her and she couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t have wanted to get to know him. “Sorry.”

  He shrugged and she was well aware he hadn’t looked at her, but when they got to their feet, he shook it off with a brittle smirk.

  “I’m sure you had your reasons,” he concluded, taking hold of the wheelbarrow.

  Gertrude placed the pet marker in the center of the plot, working it into the dirt to be certain it’d stay put.

  “It’s not just you,” she said. “There’s a lot I don’t remember. It doesn’t make sense and my doctor can’t explain it. Most of my childhood has been wiped out. I don’t remember the accident. I barely remember my teenaged years, yet I have no difficulty remembering the minutia of every day at the DCYF. I remember Doris in terms of the months she was living with me here at the cabin, but not in terms of all the years we spent growing up.” She frowned, getting lost in the dark pattern of grass at their feet.

  “I don’t want to scare you,” he said, his tone turning serious. “But if someone tried to run you off the road, and now this? It’s connected.”

  “I know,” she said, her stomach bottoming out now that the Xanax had worn off.

  “I think it has to do with the Kings.”

  She did as well, but was too scared to say it out loud. To confirm his suspicion would make it real and some part of her was hanging on to the false hope it was random, a mistake, kids at the wrong address.

  “Will you be alright here alone?”

  “Yeah,” she said quickly as if doing so would make it true.

  “You’ve got locks on all the windows, the door?”

  “If I use them, yes.”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  “No, I hate guns,” she said even before she realized the root of her aversion.

  A gun had gone off that night, hadn’t it? Jake was saying something about being cautious, but she couldn’t hear him, as a sealed corridor in her memory suddenly sprang open, sucking her down it—a foggy windshield, Doris messing with the glass, the silence between them, the gunshot, then Gertrude swerving hard, but why?

  It hadn’t been that she’d driven too fast or that the bend in the road had snuck up on her or that she shouldn’t have had those drinks. She’d had to swerve. She hadn’t had a choice. She’d tried not to hit something.

  “Gerty?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you want to head in? It’s cold.”

  “Yeah.”

  Jake left the wheelbarrow beside the deck when they reached it and she led him inside where he closed the door and locked it then collected her gloves, stripping one then the other off her hands and returning them to the closet, as Gertrude stood puzzling over the fragments of that night that were trying so desperately to touch her.

  “I have a few contacts in Grafton County,” he said, nearing the blood stained bookshelf. “I almost wish you hadn’t cleaned this.”

  “Contacts?”

  “We can’t trust the police around here. I’d like to find out whose blood this is, wouldn’t you?”

  “Hmm,” was all she could say, images of that night clouding her thoughts.

  Systematically, Jake examined book after book until it appeared he found one he liked.

  “Do you have a plastic bag?”

  She made her way into the kitchen and found a cluster of old shopping bags under the sink.

  “A few, if you’ve got it,” he called out and when she returned with two, he used the first to wrap one of the candles and the second for the book.

  “Do you know what time Maude was shot on July 2nd?” she asked him.

  “Zhana told police around two in the morning, but I’ve lost faith in terms of trusting those reports.”

  Two in the morning was when she and Doris had driven home from the bar that night. Her accident had been on July 2nd.

  All of a sudden, she saw a figure in the fog—a flash from that night popping into her mind as stark as a strobe.

  Flying over the bridge then the gunshot then the figure in the fog—how many minutes had gone by?

  It was a blur, but as Gertrude watched Jake pace, hunting for clues, it became undeniably clear that the Kings had killed her sister.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Like a gopher, Wendy had been popping up to peer at her over the cubical wall all morning—Coffee? And, Need help? And, Thought you said something—and each time Gertrude had hit her with I’m fine, or Gotta work, or Wendy, please! As though it was a game of Whack-A-Mole that neither could win.

  She was due back at the King's house that afternoon. Harold McNeil had called in every last favor he had with the District Attorney to push through the 10-1C Application for Temporary Removal of a Child and finally the Belknap court had granted the DCYF the right to remove Roberta King from her home. Which meant that Gertrude had less than five hours to coordinate the necessary arrangements, and Wendy was being more distracting than helpful.

  It also didn’t help that Gertrude kept getting sidetracked with the mind-bending correlation between Maude’s death and her sister's. Complicating matters was the satanic aspect, which gave a whole new meaning to Roberta’s self-mutilation scars. But every time Gertrude attempted to follow the thread linking the probable cause and effect, she became bogged in woolly confusion differentiating Roberta from her own sister. Doris had harmed herself in the exact same way, after all.

  And it was for this reason that Gertrude had gotten no further than the “Foster Family Recommended” field in the online template. Staring at the blank field, watching the cursor blink, ignoring Wendy’s sudden appearance over the cubical wall that divided their work spaces—Snack? I could use a sugar bump, and Gertrude’s response NO THANK YOU—she visualized entering her own name, but couldn’t bring herself to type it.

  Wendy shuffled past her desk, making her way to the break room, and Gertrude pulled up the webpage for the New Hampshire Department of Corrections on her laptop, which she’d positioned to the right of her desktop computer. Plugging in her DCYF access code, she puzzled over the possibility of Satanism. It seemed so unlikely. Considering Charlie King, Maude’s death, the homicide cover, the suicide report, the uncanny connection with her own accident, and all the other cogs and sprockets making up this twisted machine, she didn’t see how satanic rituals could be the grease on its wheels, not to mention the stat
e of NH wasn’t exactly known for sadistic cults.

  But the vandalism in her cabin had been satanic, and Charlie King had locked up five men for messing around with his daughter. It was possible men like Tom Jefferson, Jimmy Dalton, and Mike Waters would have insight as to precisely how it all tied in. Whether or not they’d talk to her was an entirely different matter, but regardless she pulled up the correctional facility contact page and began scheduling appointments.

  As soon as Gertrude set her desk phone in its cradle, Wendy perched against the cubicle wall.

  “The Wong’s could take her,” she said offhandedly then blew on her steaming mug of coffee. “They’re over on Opechee, near you as a matter of fact. And they have a daughter, Jennifer I believe, who’s Roberta’s age, or younger.” Wendy wracked her brain, mumbling to herself, then mentioned, “Fifteen?”

  “I’m still reviewing the options.”

  “If you want Roberta spending her senior year at the same high school, I’m afraid there aren’t many options.” Wendy shook her frizzy hair back and smiled encouragingly, but it looked more like an empathetic grimace. “The Wong’s are good people.”

  Gertrude swiveled her chair so she wouldn’t have to strain her neck continuing the conversation.

  “I’ve built a fair amount of trust with Roberta,” she began, keenly reading Wendy’s reaction in case she would need to pull the plug. Wendy had always been her confidant and biggest supporter, and in the same vein had consistently guarded Gertrude against career mistakes. If Gertrude wanted her advice and help, she’d have to be delicate in her presentation. “She’s disclosed things to me and she’s expressed that she’d like to live in a different home.”

  “Well, that’s half the battle right there.”

  “She’s also voiced her concerns. I think she’s afraid of where she might end up.”

  “A perfectly natural reaction,” said Wendy before blowing on then sipping her coffee. “Just remind her you’ll be there every step of the way.”

  Her chest felt tight and her scalp where her hair was growing in under the beret was hot and itchy so she pulled her hat off and grazed her fingernails along the side of her head.

  “What if she stayed with me?”

  Wendy tensed, smile hardening, freezing awkwardly with her mug hovering beneath her mouth.

  “Social workers have done it in the past,” Gertrude argued.

  Regaining her faculties, she gently said, “Not in this division.”

  “But it’s not unprecedented,” she pointed out.

  “Gerty,” she said on a sigh, setting her mug on the edge of Gertrude’s desk. “Why would you want to do that to yourself? It’ll put you through a hell of a lot and you’re still recovering, aren’t you?”

  “It was just an idea.” As if to brush it off, though the sting of Wendy’s disapproval was consuming, she turned to her desktop computer. “I’ll see about the Wong’s.”

  “I think that would be best.” Wendy took hold of her mug, giving Gertrude one last look, then rounded to her side of the wall and disappeared into her cubicle.

  When Gertrude returned her fingers to the keyboard, gaze locking on the blinking cursor, she typed her own name within the “Foster Family Recommended” field and hit Submit before doubt could creep in and stop her.

  She kept in the shade, making her way to her Audi, which was parked between Wendy’s dusty minivan and a jetty of hedges partitioning the lot from a dentist’s office next door. She’d spent the majority of yesterday taping new index card reminders all over the interior so when Gertrude climbed in behind the wheel, she was momentarily bombarded by commands that didn’t apply—lock the door! and, windows shut?—and a few that did make sense—where’s your cell? and stay off the highways.

  Setting her laptop satchel in the backseat, she scanned the parking lot, checking for spying eyes. When she faced forward, she found Reverse on the third try and backed out slowly, the glare from the azure sky reflecting off her windshield as soon as she hooked around the hedges. Then she shifted gears and drove off, heading towards Route 3, which would take her south to Manchester at fifty-five miles per hour.

  A one-story brick structure with a rotund glass entrance and matching watchtower jutting up its back, the correctional facility homed convicts from all over the state. According to the Warden, Tom Jefferson had been charged with a Class B felony for felonious sexual assault, which had earned him seven years, though as of today’s date he only had three years to go with the possibility of parole in one. Mike Waters and Jimmy Dalton hadn’t been so lucky, sentenced to twenty years for Class A felonies, the result of one little word tacked onto their charges: aggravated. To Gertrude, it was the difference between Charlie King stumbling through his first rodeo and becoming practiced. Tom Jefferson might have been a trial-by-error experiment, but the men who’d followed in his footsteps, succumbing to Roberta’s dark allure as orchestrated by her father, had been the victims of Charlie’s expertise. Most disturbing was the fact that the other two men incarcerated for messing around with Roberta—Raymond Soule and Maxwell O’Malley—had been killed in the prison during a riot that had broken out four months prior.

  As Gertrude walked through the parking lot, squinting up at an American flag that hung limp in the summer heat, its post grounded in yellowing grass beside the entrance, she was struck by the serenity of the landscape—white, popcorn clouds inching lazily across an azure sky, sun-kissed bricks cheerful as Sesame Street, a hill of lush green vegetation spilling into the prison. It felt like a lie.

  Inside, a security guard inspected every item in her purse and sent her through a metal detector, which started screaming as soon as she passed through. He waved her back then prompted her to step forward again, but it rendered the same result.

  “I have a few metal pins in my head,” she explained, removing her beret and offering him the bald side of her head as proof.

  Grumbling, the guard fished a wand out of a bucket beneath his folding table, which was set off to the side of the metal detector, and flipped it on. It whined as he stroked it down her torso, over her hip, down the outside of her left leg then up the inside, down the right leg and up again, thoroughly checking her every inch. And when it didn’t blare, he sent her on her way.

  Approaching the Reception Center, she returned her beret to her head then found her driver’s license in her purse.

  “Gertrude Inman,” she told the guard behind the counter. “I have a noon appointment with an inmate, Tom Jefferson.”

  He slapped a clipboard on the counter and told her to fill out the forms, as he collected her ID and verified the appointment.

  “DCYF?” he asked, finally meeting her gaze.

  “That’s right.”

  “I need the ID number.”

  “I lost my badge,” she explained, pressing her pen against the form in a white-knuckle grip. “Will that be a problem?”

  He eyed her for a tense moment then told her it was fine. After filling out the forms and sliding the clipboard over the counter, he indicated the Visitor’s Center through a set of double doors down the hall. When she reached them, she presented her driver’s license to another guard, who punched a code into the keypad on the wall, opening the door.

  Entering, she noted an inmate dressed in orange—his hair buzzed to his scalp, his eyes wild and angling on the young woman he was nuzzling as if memorizing her every pore, their hands knotted together on the table. In another corner of the room, a variation of the same story unfolded—the convict’s plight. At a different table she spied another orange jumpsuit, the man inside embracing a boy, who looked too young to understand why his mother had dragged him here. He tried to wriggle free, his face twisting into a dreadful grimace that his parents didn’t notice.

  Gertrude chose a table near the windows so she could look out at the hill while she waited, but when she turned her attention, the door at the back of the Visitor’s Center blared and a guard appeared ushering an inmate through.

/>   In his orange jumpsuit, the man looked like every gas station attendant who’d ever filled up her tank—a broad forehead and tight facial features, winter-weathered skin aged worse from sucking cigarettes, a receding hairline that accentuated a widows peak, hair short and dark, its color as indeterminate as his beady eyes, which locked on her, pupils dilating like an owl. His neck as well as his knuckles were blue with tattoos and the way he was staring at her as he stalked towards her table reminded her of a feral cat she’d once seen in Opechee Park—hell bent on eating, itching to kill for it, acting twelve times its size.

  When he reached the table, he looked down, assessing her or asserting his place on the food chain or maybe just waiting for her to say something. Her heart was punching in her chest too hard to get a read on him.

  “Tom?”

  He settled into the seat across from her and planted his elbows on the table.

  “What’s this about?”

  “You were living on Moulton Street next to the King’s?”

  Standoffish, his brow furrowed as if waiting for an explanation.

  “So?”

  “I’m not sure you should be in here.”

  Cocking his head, Tom’s expression eased with interest.

  “I wanted to ask you about the events leading up to your arrest,” she said.

  “You going to get me out?”

  “I might be able to improve your situation,” she offered.

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, there’s a pattern I’ve noticed.”

  He snorted a laugh. “Yeah, a lot of people have noticed. Nothing’s been done about it.”

  “Could you tell me about what happened.” She quickly interrupted herself with, “Not your night with Roberta. I don’t need to hear about that. But did you notice anything at the King’s, see something, before you got together with Roberta?”

  “Who sent you? You with the court? IA?”