The Dead Season

by Tessa Wegert

  There had been a search like this in my town once, when I was a kid. That time it was Crissy who went missing. Searchers found her unconscious and injured. Something bad happened to her in those woods, though she never talked about what it was.

  Come on, Trey, I thought. Please be close.

  The ground had no give under the weight of my boots, the fallen leaves were tissue-thin, and the creeks were halfway frozen. If Trey was here, we’d see him straightaway. We searched the underbrush near the trails, looking for a lean-to or a snatch of color, any sign of life. For the most part the search party stayed together—Tim on one end of the line and me near the other—but an hour and a half into the hunt he slowed his pace, doubled back, and drew up beside me. Quietly, we veered away from the group until we had privacy enough to talk.

  Leaves rustled and bounced lightly over the ground. The wind was picking up, and the cold made my teeth tingle. Tim coughed into his sleeve and wiped his nose on his glove. “How long do you want to keep this up?” he asked.

  “By which you mean ‘when the hell is your ESP gonna kick in?’”

  “If this is what you think we need to do, we’ll do it.”

  “Even though there’s no evidence Trey has been, or ever will be, in these woods?”

  “Even then.”

  While I appreciated the vote of confidence, part of me wished he’d second-guess my every move. What if I was dead wrong, and we were wasting time we didn’t have? What if I was seeing connections where there were none?

  I wanted to feel secure in the whispers that drifted in, the stirrings in my gut. I needed to be able to trust my intuition. There were plenty of things I remembered about Abe. Just as many were as elusive as smoke slipping through my outstretched fingers. Lately, I felt like I was wandering the hinterland of my mind like a ghost. Thinking about my childhood in Swanton often turned up nothing but noise. It was as if someone cut the cable and the picture started twitching, a nightmarish phantasm of static and light. The only explanation I could come up with was that Bram reconditioned them somehow. His stories were my stories, too, but the retelling of my past made me doubt what I knew. I couldn’t be sure my memories were still mine.

  “If I could explain all this,” I said to Tim, “I would.”

  “I trust you,” he said. Then, “That message on the poster. Seems like it was personal to you. Have you gotten anywhere with figuring out who Bram is?”

  Crap. “I think we went to school together,” I said quietly. “It’s not a big town.”

  In the faint moonlight, I saw Tim nod. “Do you think he was a friend?”

  Damn it, Shay. Keeping things from Tim hadn’t served me well before. The regret I felt—over Abe, and the people Bram killed, and the secret I was keeping from the man who was my partner—chewed at my insides like battery acid.

  We’ve got to have trust, Shane. That’s what Tim said to me on Tern Island. The first time I concealed Bram from him, it was because I feared he’d see me as weak. He knew me now, though, and respected my skills regardless of the mistakes I’d made.

  I could tell him. Reveal Bram was Abe here and now and stand aside while Tim and Mac took every shred of information I possessed to the NYPD and the neurocriminologists who specialized in the anatomy of violence. But that information was tangled up with my life, and my family’s, too, and where would that leave them? Once Blake Bram’s identity was made public, their connection to him would be trumpeted across the country. My parents, Felicia, Crissy, and Doug would be linked to Bram’s sadistic crimes for all eternity.

  Maybe that’s exactly what Bram wanted. Maybe this was a test. I was a criminal investigator; Bram knew how ashamed I’d be of our bond. I was terrified of where honesty might lead. But enlisting the help of my peers might put me at an advantage, and didn’t I need any leg up I could get if we were going to find Trey alive?

  Yes, Tim, I thought. We were as close as two kids can be. I knew Abe Skilton loved Power Rangers and, later, grunge music, and that he’d sooner eat dirt than mayonnaise. I’d comforted him when he asked why his family couldn’t be more like mine, encouraged him when he decided to convince his parents they should reconcile. Together, we’d walked all the way to the factory where Brett worked, hoping to talk Abe’s dad into coming home. Good and bad, we shared everything.

  Don’t overthink it, I told myself. Do what feels right.

  “Tim—”

  “Sorry.” He shook his capped head. “Christ, what a horrible thing to say. Of course you weren’t friends. The guy’s a goddamn monster, and probably always wa—”

  Tim stopped walking. Stood stock-still, and stared straight ahead. As I stumbled to a halt and the crunch of dead leaves broke off, I heard the voices, too. They were coming from a few hundred yards up ahead. People were calling to one another. It was the sound of a commotion. Tim and I exchanged a glance and broke into a run.

  Not far from where we’d been walking, the tree line came to an abrupt end at a small clearing. Low fence posts connected with chain encircled an informational sign similar to others we’d seen along the trails. “What is this place?” I asked, craning to see over the searchers’ heads.

  “It’s a memorial for some of the soldiers who died during the War of 1812. The Battle of Cranberry Creek,” Tim said. “It’s a gravesite.”

  Bogle, his height an advantage once more, had elbowed his way to the sign and was urging the civilian searchers to step back. Tim and I pushed through the crowd, picking up Mac along the way. I felt my lips shape around commands I ached to utter—out of the way, secure the area. It was Tim who was in charge now, so I let him do the talking and hung back. Blood rushed through my ears as he rushed forward.

  “Don,” Tim said when he reached the rest of the team, “what have we got?”

  Bogle’s face was white as milk. His wide body blocked the sign, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t see past him. I tilted my flashlight to expose the rest of the scene. The yellow beam gave the faces around me an unearthly glow. The searchers were shuffling forward now, straining to see over the investigators’ heads, frenetic energy radiating from their bundled bodies. McIntyre spun away from the team to help manage the volunteers, and when she realized I was among them she gestured for me to come forward.

  “Jesus,” Sol said just as I reached the huddle. His deep-set eyes, perpetually ringed in tawny circles, seemed to retreat further into his skull. Bogle had finally stepped aside, exposing the sign in full. Behind him parents, grandparents, teachers, and friends grew quiet.

  I shouldn’t mind the sight of blood. Detectives are like surgeons that way; the frequent exposure is meant to make us immune. We can’t allow ourselves to be diverted from the task at hand, so we ignore the visceral reaction that fills our mouths with bile, tune out the stench and ghoulish sheen inherent to the gore. It shouldn’t bother me.

  When I finally got a good look, I had to hold a finger to my lips to keep from vomiting into the grass.

  “Get an evidence bag,” said Tim, his voice cold as he reached for the blood-soaked Purple Pirates baseball hat, sticky and black in the half-light.

  * * *

  * * *

  I couldn’t go back to the station.

  Believe me, I wanted to. In the next few hours, someone would deliver that bloody hat to our forensic analyst and confirm what we all suspected was true: the blood belonged to our lost boy, and there was lots of it. Tim would hold a debriefing tonight, and my colleagues would gather around a table cluttered with coffee cups and crumpled bags of chips from the vending machine to pool their collective knowledge and hatch a plan. I was already pushing my luck by being at the press conference and out in the woods with the team. I knew that if my supervisor got wind of my involvement with Trey’s case, there was no way he’d green-light my return to the force. All I could do was reluctantly accept that while Tim, Mac, Sol, and Bogle headed back to A-Bay, I w
ould be going home to Mac’s place in Watertown, alone.

  Minutes ago, when we’d disbanded the search party and the good people of A-Bay drifted stunned and silent back to their cars, I’d heard some of the searchers talking. Everyone believed they knew the lay of the land. The hat was a good sign, they’d said, much better than finding a body. Even bloodied, it meant Trey stood a chance. It took no time at all for Sol and Bogle to convince themselves a ransom note was imminent. I wasn’t so sure. On the way back to the country road where we’d parked, Tim promised to feed me as much information as possible, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread as I watched him drive away.

  When I unlocked my SUV and climbed into the driver’s seat, that feeling was quickly replaced with a flash of alarm. Through the windshield, in the dark, a man’s pale face stared back at me. Heart thumping, I got out and reached for the paper that was pinned down by a wiper. It was the article about Brett, the same front-page story from the St. Albans Messenger I’d seen in my parents’ kitchen, Brett’s smiling mug centered on the page. Now, a clipping of the article was here. In Alexandria Bay. Affixed to the front of my car.

  I held it like a stick of dynamite as I slid back into the SUV and hit the locks on the doors. My hands shook as I flipped the newspaper over to see the message I knew would be there, scratched on the back of Brett’s face in the same black ink that was used on the poster. Now, there was a second line for me to ponder.

  Wanna play?

  Go home.

  Cold November darkness pressed in on me while I parsed the message in the context of two cases, one in Swanton and the other in A-Bay, and all at once I understood what Bram was playing at, where I fit into his scheme. This was a trade. Show me yours; I’ll show you mine. One secret in exchange for another.

  Nobody was going to find this lost boy.

  Not until I could unravel the mystery of a murdered man.

  FIFTEEN

  The landscape was a blur of black and white, and through the window I’d cracked to help keep me awake, I smelled wood smoke and the clean, ozone scent that marked the threat of snow. I thought about Bram all the way to Vermont—because I did go back to Swanton, of course I did. It was days until my evaluation, the event that would determine my future with the New York State Police, and possibly the most important meeting of my life. But like the hat, the note on my windshield was a warning I couldn’t ignore.

  There was no ambiguity to this message. Go home, or the next name on Bram’s list will be Trey. Weighted down by this warning, I’d tucked away the newspaper clipping, pocketed my apprehension, and texted Tim and Mac to let them know I was headed to my parents and would be in touch. I knew my shifty egress would baffle Tim, but there was no time to explain that. Actually, I’d be violating my suspension by investigating not one case but two.

  As I drove, I went over everything I knew about Brett’s death so far. After remaining hidden for two decades, his body was recovered for one reason alone: the police in Swanton had received an anonymous tip. The more I mulled it over, the more plausible it seemed that Bram was the one who alerted the police to the whereabouts of his father’s remains. This would mean Bram knew his dad was dead, though, and something about that didn’t prove out. Twenty years ago, my cousin and I were as close as two kids could be. If he knew, why hadn’t he told me?

  The only answer I could think of was so unspeakable that when I pulled onto my parents’ street at 2:00 a.m., it was all I could do not to drive right by and leave this aberration of a life behind.

  There was a car in the driveway that hadn’t been there before, and through the living room window I saw a light on deep within the house. I’d called ahead to let them know I was coming back, and they’d hidden a key for me. That allowed me to creep inside without being heard. Even before I made it into the hall I knew what awaited me. Sure enough there was Doug, shoulders hunched at the kitchen table, a bright green bottle of Dad’s J&B at his elbow.

  My brother stirred at the sound of my footsteps creaking on the hardwood, and the corner of his mouth glided into a grin. The gravitational effects of age had drawn his weight toward his waist and his blond hair was graying around the ears, but to me Doug’s face was etched with a lifetime of shared Christmases and family road trips. When he stood up, I rushed into his arms.

  “It’s late,” he said into my hair.

  “Sorry I broke curfew, swear to God it won’t happen again.” Doug’s shirt had a chemical sweetness to it, that freshly laundered scent, and the realization of what I must smell like—sweat, rank marshland, Bogle’s cigarettes—made me cringe.

  “Not good enough,” he replied gruffly, playing along. “You’re grounded—and you can forget about that sleepover with Suze.”

  We laughed when we parted, equally amused. “I saw her, you know. Suze owns a dance studio on Merchant Row now, and she’s married with a second kid on the way.”

  “Sounds like she got her shit together.”

  It was with fondness that I said, “Yeah, I think she did.” I rubbed my eyes and felt exhaustion bear down on me from all sides. This day was a serious contender for the longest of my life. I’d seen Crissy and Suze and Sam and Tim, conducted a search for a missing kid, and driven for hours from Swanton to A-Bay and back again. I had watched my past and present converge, and the experience had left me dead on my feet. The soft, warm bed upstairs was persistent in its call, but I gave it the brush-off and slumped into a kitchen chair. “Josie asleep?”

  “She stayed at home with Hen.” Doug sat down next to me. “Work and school tomorrow.”

  “Ah.” I hadn’t seen Henrietta in ages, and feared that at thirteen my niece was on the verge of casting Auntie Shana aside. “No work for you?”

  “Took a couple days off.” He tipped back his head. “Don’t act like you don’t know why I’m here.”

  My brother and I haven’t always been close. The three and a half years between us felt like ten when we were younger, when he had no desire to let a whiny tween shadow him wherever he went. That changed as we aged, and by the time Doug was off at college and I was plodding through my final year of high school, we’d cultivated a whole new relationship. It wasn’t built on common interests or even sibling loyalty, but a mutual recognition that our family was screwed up, and a solid hunch that there might never be anyone else in our lives who understood that as well as we did.

  Doug walked to the cupboard to retrieve an empty tumbler and poured me two fingers of scotch. “River Street, huh?” he said in a faraway voice. I knew he was thinking the same thing I was: Brett had been right under our noses for years. His expression darkened. “Well, sis, what do you say we have a chat about old Uncle Brett?”

  “Why not,” I said, and we raised our glasses to a dead man.

  My brother has the best memory of anyone I know. Even now, in his midthirties, he can conjure the color of the tablecloth Mom used for his sixth birthday party and the names of every teacher, coach, and babysitter he ever had. When I don’t trust my estimation of distant happenings, which lately is often, I’ve always counted on Doug to recount even the most infinitesimal details with total accuracy.

  As with Suze, our conversation made me realize there were problems with my recollection of events. Some of the stories Doug told about Brett were familiar. The man used to make a great onion dip, and always looked the other way when we devoured half of it before the grown-ups could sink a single ruffled chip. Brett was also the one who introduced us to The X-Files. Unsolved cases involving supernatural forces were right up my alley, and I dressed as FBI agent Dana Scully three Halloweens in a row. But again, whenever Bram né Abe factored into the narrative, the likelihood that I’d retained all the particulars took a nose-dive. In spite of that, talking to Doug about our uncle felt cathartic, even comforting—until he asked why I was yo-yoing between my new home and my old one. “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of getting inv
olved in this,” he said, his lips stretched over his teeth.

  “I’m involved already. We all are. Brett’s family.”

  “He was family, before he left Felicia and Crissy. Before he went and got himself killed.”

  Family is family for life. That’s what Mom would say. What I said was, “Someone killed him, yes. That doesn’t mean it’s his fault.”

  “Look, Brett was fun, but he was no angel. Maybe you were too young to notice, but I saw him for what he was. For one thing, he was totally addicted to gambling. When that casino opened in Montreal in the early nineties, he drove an hour each way to hand over his paycheck every single week. Dad used to say the only French Brett knew how to say was ‘hit me.’”

  I thought about laughing and decided against it.

  “Did you know,” Doug went on, “that he defaulted on his mortgage? He spent every cent he made on gin and poker chips while his family lived on cheap hot dogs. A couple of times Felicia had to ask Mom and Dad for a loan, which she never paid back, of course. How could she, when he left her with nothing?”

  “You don’t have to convince me he was shitty at life, but it’s not like the bank sent out a hit man.”

  “My point is, he was murdered—right here in town—and you shouldn’t get mixed up in that. Anyway, aren’t there rules about investigating family? As in, don’t do it?”

  Doug finished his drink, turning the glass in his freckled hand, and I wondered if this was his first or his fourth. His blinks were decelerating, and the booze would affect his concentration. I talked fast and prayed he’d do the same.

  “What about Abe?”

  “What about him?”

  “You said Brett left Felicia and Crissy. But he left Abe, too.”

  “Yeah,” Doug said with contempt, “and look what happened.”