Three Graves Full

by Jamie Mason

  But, of course, Reid wasn’t there. He was dead, and not just presumed. He’d been chewed by time and the elements alongside the last Barbie doll to have caught his eye. She shrank away from the cold cruelty of that thought. She tried to conjure the image of Reid’s face, so handsome in concentration and so utterly goofy in animation. Think of the good things, Leah. Think of why you put up with all that crap.

  Which brought her around to that alien solitude again, that space walk of isolation that stole the comfort of sleep. When they had fought, Leah had always been welcomed by the rest of Reid’s family as the wronged party. They’d shut out their lovable scoundrel in favor of his long-suffering victim. They’d always loved her best when Reid had acted his worst.

  Over the years, she’d sulked for hours with his brother, Dean, and his young friends. They plied her into sunnier moods with Dr Peppers and endless games of pool when they were of a certain age, and then with tequila shots and bong hits when they were older. She’d made dozens of pots of spaghetti with his mother, an exercise each time that lasted the entire afternoon and produced gallons of rich, red sauce. Served up in company, it was a balm to the betrayed edges that had left everyone on eggshells. At the end of the ritual feast, always taken in a silence that still echoed with Leah’s cursing and crying, Sheila would request, with an imperative flick of her head toward the kitchen, that Dean and whoever else was there help her with the dishes—right now. Reid and Leah would be left alone, plucking awkwardly at their napkins, until one of them, usually Reid, suggested they catch a late show at the movies or bowl a couple of games at the West End Lanes.

  But now, Sheila had been dead for more than two years and Dean had followed his girlfriend to Seattle at Christmastime and she hadn’t yet been able to reach him. Leah was alone with her knowledge and her memories. The first night in her new role as the girl with no presumptions was long and fitful.

  • • •

  Jason Getty and Leah Tamblin, miles apart, but with overlapping worries, dropped off to sleep at almost exactly the same moment. While Leah’s musing spanned the better part of two decades, Jason’s preoccupation was more immediate, more tactile, closer to home as it were. The two bodies that had flanked the house on either side had been taken away, but Jason couldn’t shake the dread of having hovered all this time in a Bermuda Triangle of sorts, and of his own making. He had closed his world into a wedge of hidden misdeeds with an uncanny mathematical precision. And he’d slept in the eye of this wicked geometry for more than a year and a half.

  What he had learned of the case, however, eased his mind, at least a little. It looked like a simple soap opera of a cuckolded husband with a rifle and a reasonably steady aim. Once they found the man who had lived here before him, the case would be closed. Jason would be your average citizen again, with only an invisible psychic chain to tether him to the undiscovered corpse he’d planted at the back of the plot. He’d come to terms with the secret months ago, had only just finally been able to manage it. Once the police had their man, Detective Bayard would have no reason to wonder about Jason. As it stood even now, there wasn’t any good reason for the detective to give Jason a second thought.

  But the policeman did give him that second thought; Jason knew it. And he feared that it had even maybe strayed into third- or fourth-thought territory.

  The first seeds of a plan B took root that night. Jason dozed, and the dream of the burial, so worn with use, played again. But that night it played in reverse. The black dirt flew in the moonlight, out of the hole this time, instead of into it. Jason’s mind remembered the deep sting in the muscles of his back and he moaned out loud into his pillow. The glow of the exposed white sheet grew rather than dwindled, and in his dream, Jason gathered the corners and gave a mighty heave.

  6

  Where the heck have you been?” Over his big feet crossed atop a stack of papers on his desk, Ford glared at Tim.

  “You know, I thought I’d dodged a bullet, finding a wife who didn’t nag,” Bayard said, as a smile tugged up one corner of his mouth. “But the universe just has this way of balancing itself, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for almost three hours. I found your radio in your desk drawer. What, is it too heavy for you?”

  “It was taking up too much space in the spare-change dish at home, of course.” Bayard laughed and shoved Ford’s feet off the desk, then rummaged through the flotsam. “I’m hungry.” Tim waved his find, a well-worn Chinese menu liberated from a folder of interoffice memos. “What? I told you I had some things to do this morning. You could have—oh, crap.”

  “Yeah.”

  Bayard covered the empty space on his belt where his phone clip should have been. “We went to the movies last night. I switched it over to vibrate. Then I forgot it on the floor of the car and I didn’t hear it.”

  Ford sighed. “You’re not supposed to hear it. You’re supposed to feel it. That’s why normal people wear their phones.”

  “I know, the clip broke. But I can’t say I miss it. It bugs me.”

  “It bugs me if I can’t get ahold of you.”

  Bayard slid a tower of files aside to make a space on the corner of Ford’s desk and sat in a contrite slump. “Sorry. What’s up?”

  “Ooooh, nothing,” Ford said with a grand display of hand waving and head shaking. “Obviously, speaking with your flower-bed-burial guy, the one who used to live there, Boyd Montgomery? Guess chatting with him isn’t so high on your to-do list today.”

  Open wonder blanked Tim’s expression. “Today? You found him already?”

  “Nope. I found him last night. Didn’t want to disturb your evening.” Ford’s pleasure in needling his partner sparkled under a mask of long-suffering. “I thought it could wait till this morning.” Ford sucked his teeth ruefully. “Guess the joke was on me.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Ah, don’t worry about it. Let’s just order ourselves some lunch.” Ford hmmmed over the menu, eyes shining with mischief. “General Tso’s chicken, isn’t that the stuff you like?”

  “Ford.”

  “It’s okay. The guys over in East County can handle it.”

  At that, Tim bolted from his perch, tipping the uppermost folders off their ledge to break open and spill their reams of paper across the floor. “He’s here? I thought he went to Texas. El Paso or something.”

  “He came back. Last known address”—Ford pulled the relevant memo from the mess with a flourish—“Branson Heights.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “Yep.” Ford squared the remnants of his filing system even with the edge of the desk. “Still hungry?”

  • • •

  The name Branson Heights slapped an overly ornamental tag on a shaggy, gray area of the map where suburbia fizzled to unkempt and unkempt transitioned to middle-of-nowhere. It was high neither in altitude nor in splendor, and the whole thing ignited suspicions that whoever had named the place intended, in some vague future, to tack a premium on the lots and tracts for sale. The overall effect was weedy, rusted neglect, dotted with the tacky efforts of a few cheery homesteaders by way of spinning plastic sunflowers and garish garden gnomes.

  Winter had reached forward into spring for one last tug at the change of seasons, sending all but the hardiest folk back to their attics, basements, and top shelves for the warm clothes that had been stowed away in optimism. The sooty sky and cold gusts did nothing to improve the view through the truck’s windshield. Dog breath did nothing for the atmosphere inside. Tessa fogged the cab from her custom-fitted seat on the back bench, her wide dog-smile pivoting under alert eyes that could never take in everything that interested her, not even if she’d been allotted all of the nine lives of her feline foes.

  “Good God! What have you been feeding her?” Tim asked.

  Ford laughed. “Garlic!”

  “You’re insane.”

  “It’s good for her coat and eyes.”

  “Well, it’s making my eyes wate
r,” Tim said.

  Tessa, knowing full well she was the topic of discussion, turned to him expectantly for more, blasting him with tongue-lolling humidity. He nudged her snout to a more neutral compass point. “Come on, Tessa, give me a break.”

  For Bayard, the ride to a confrontation was always too short. Even the long trips. Tim was thoroughly rehearsed, but the suspects never knew their lines. Of course, that was the entire point, but it also made it one of the most dangerous aspects of the job. Squirmers were fun. Stonewallers were annoying and predictable. But this deck was always stacked with wild cards, and it wouldn’t do to walk into these situations looking nervous. So every ride was spent in meditation, in the plastering over of any giveaway that didn’t project complete competence and the shine of integrity. From several turns into the labyrinth of his own mind, Tim heard Ford’s voice, but not the words that formed the question. “What?”

  “What do you want to do about East County?” Ford asked again.

  Navigating interrogations, tricky as they were, was much simpler than balancing interdepartmental etiquette. Deputized toes, once stepped upon, were kinked for an unreasonable amount of time, and no one holds a grudge better than a spurned cop.

  “I say we call them just as we get there. That way, they’re invited—we just get first crack at him.”

  Ford’s attention flicked to a tilting road sign. “Well, get your phone out then, if you think you can find it, ’cause we’re just about there.”

  The two lanes of crumbling blacktop were a snug fit between the borders of bracken just into its full greenery. The gloom was permanent down this lane, no matter what the weather. Even vigorous sunshine would be snuffed out by the heavy canopy of oak and hemlock.

  Ford eased the truck to a stop next to a dented mailbox leaning sentry at the mouth of a long gravel drive. “Ready?”

  “I can’t believe he’d come back here,” Bayard said, his eyes drilling the kudzu twilight ahead. “Arrogant prick.”

  “No telling. Let’s go hear what he’s got to say, then.” Ford let off the brake and the wheels crunched over the graveled ruts toward the clearing and the house.

  Tessa began whining even before Ford killed the engine. She strained over the seatback and thrust her nose deep into his face space.

  “It’s okay. We’ll be right back. Watch the truck.” Ford kissed her sleek brow. “You’re in charge.”

  Tessa’s worried whine went up an octave, but her tail wagged devotion in spite of itself.

  Ford came around and joined Bayard on the passenger side as he leaned in to gather up his notepad and phone. The two men watched Tessa’s frantic tap dance on the leather seat. Bayard said, “What’s with her?” At the same instant, Tessa brayed a chorus of sharp barks over the low warning growl of the lead dog in a pack of three, rounding the truck’s back end. Tessa lunged at the open door, but Ford intervened and slammed it shut before she could bolt into the fray.

  With heads slung low from thick necks, the three advancing animals were of indeterminate breed, but obvious purpose. Two of them bared teeth, and all three forced their ears flat against their blocky heads in a show of intensity.

  Tim pressed himself against the side of the truck. “Oh, shit.”

  Tessa bellowed threats through the passenger window as the other dogs pinned Ford and Tim to their places with growls and spring-loaded menace. The dogs spaced themselves across the path to the house and bristled hungry aggression. Their concentration spoke to training, but instinct had them flitting anxious glances at Tessa, thrashing berserk in the truck. Tim stretched a tentative hand for the door handle, and their grumbling erupted into a soul-shriveling racket, backed up by a frenzy of impotent protective calls from Tessa, imprisoned behind the men. She banged her muzzle against the window, splaying her lips from her fangs and smearing the glass with distraught foam.

  “Don’t move,” said Ford, taking his own advice by barely moving his lips to say it.

  “Best have yer dog go quiet,” said a man from the splintered and sagging front porch. “It’s workin’ up my gang too much.” He leaned against the roof support, eating a bowl of cereal.

  The crazy notion that the bright white milk dripping from the spoon would be the last random thing he’d ever notice streaked through Tim’s mind, but it was better than watching the pulse pounding in his own eyeballs. A primal panic pinholed his throat, and thinking past the vision of curved, yellow teeth tearing the meat from his leg was a struggle. He knew he’d probably been this scared before, but he just couldn’t think of when that might have been.

  Ford rapped the glass with a knuckle and hissed an urgent command. “Tessa! Quiet!”

  Tessa bit back on the next bay with a jerk of her head. The fur over her throat rippled as if she were swallowing something too large, and she rolled her terrified eyes to Ford for acknowledgment of her great effort. The other dogs relaxed back into their sullen, toothy vigil.

  “Good girl.” Ford turned back to the man on the porch. “Call them off, Mr. Montgomery.”

  The man took another lazy, slurping spoonful. His vowels were wide in a mellow twang. “One word either way. We’ll see. I’m not big on unannounced comp’ny.”

  Tim found his voice. “This is Ford Watts and I’m Tim Bayard. We’re with the Carter County Sheriff’s Department.” Tim eyed the animals a foot and a half off his knee. “A patrol car from East County Division will be here shortly.”

  If he was impressed, the man didn’t let on. “What do you want?”

  “We want to ask you about your wife.”

  “I ain’t got a wife.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t,” Ford muttered under his breath.

  Tim took the lead. “Where is Katielynn, Mr. Montgomery?”

  The man startled hard and set the bowl on the slivered railing board. “Oh, good God. You want to talk to Boyd.” He gave an ear-piercing whistle, then called to the dogs, “George, Ringo, Yoko! Back!”

  Impressively, all three animals did exactly that. They backed up, all six eyes never leaving the two men, until they drew even with the porch and their master’s blue-jeaned legs.

  “You’re a couple of Beatles short,” Tim offered.

  The man grinned. “Well, as it happens, John ran off, and I shot Paul for bein’ ornery.”

  With the immediate danger at least a few strides away, Tim turned his full focus to the man’s face. He and Ford had studied Boyd’s picture from an old mug shot taken after a tailgate party gone ugly at the local high school some years earlier. Same yellow-blond hair; same dimpled chin.

  Their scrutiny was not lost on the man on the porch. “Look just like him, don’t I?” He walked past them to Ford’s truck, Tessa’s agitation growing with every foot of ground he covered, until her lather was frothed nearly as badly as it had been moments before. With no hesitation at all, the stranger yanked open the door. Tessa readied her legs to lunge and snapped her teeth at him. “Now hush,” he commanded. Tessa cocked her head and pitched to sitting instantly, but still growled.

  “Hush, ’n’ I mean it.”

  Tessa stopped the noise immediately, looked past the man to Ford, and stamped her indecision.

  “Cookie?” the man asked.

  Tessa pawed the air and woofed, unsure. Her tail decided earlier than her head and started a slow sweep of the seat. The man pulled a dog treat from his shirt pocket and smiled back to a gaping Ford and Bayard.

  “I like dogs.” He shrugged. “And mostly they like me. ’Cept for Paul.” As if to prove his prowess, he pointed at his own three. “Y’all, go say hi.” Released from the spell, the three transformed directly into smiling, wagging mutts. The tan one licked Bayard’s hand.

  “Neat trick,” Bayard said. He didn’t like being humbled at the outset.

  The man sighed. “Boyd’s my brother. My twin. Least he was. He’s been dead a year and change. I’m Bart Montgomery.” He patted his thigh, and Tessa leaped from the cab, but straightway pledged allegiance to her master’s
knee. “Let’s all go inside,” Bart said. “I guess I got a story to tell.”

  • • •

  The East County patrol arrived halfway through the interview, scrambling the balance of the room, though to no real consequence. All official opinion came quickly to the same conclusion: as far as homicides and their fallout go, the case of Reid Reynolds, Katielynn Montgomery, and her husband, Boyd, was as neatly sewn up as they come.

  Boyd, and everyone presumed Katielynn, had packed up and moved from Stillwater three years before. Never reliable to anything but his own interests, and more than a little disinclined to explain himself, Boyd’s pulling up stakes didn’t make much of a ripple through the small circle of folks who even noticed he was gone.

  Katielynn had been clear of her dirt-floor-and-outhouse kin for more than a decade by then, and it had been a good handful of years since any of them had even asked after her at Christmastime.

  A year later Boyd appeared on his brother’s doorstep, disheveled and morose, claiming that Katielynn had run off with another man. After a fashion, it was the truth, although well after the fact and only if the Great Beyond could be agreed upon as a place a young couple could indeed run off to.

  Eight months droned on in his self-imposed seclusion, and Boyd drank his government disability checks. Then one day, Bart came home to a confession scrawled into a suicide note on the back of the telephone bill and an ungodly mess of splattered Boyd. Bart saw no need to tarnish his brother’s already smallish reputation. What was done was done, and done thoroughly. A load of official ugliness stamped to Boyd’s name wasn’t going to bring any of them back, so Bart cleaned the linoleum and buried his brother in the woods. He also hadn’t seen any reason to stem the cash flow.

  It was an easy scam. Apparently not overburdened by a diligent conscience, Bart already had Boyd’s face by virtue of being his twin, and he held his paperwork by having not buried his brother’s wallet in the ground with the rest of him. The checks just kept coming, and that was reason enough, in his mind, to keep cashing them. Bart had, however, possessed the foresight to keep the suicide note handy lest his brother’s sin, at some point, become his own problem.