The Dead Season

by Tessa Wegert

  This was the last thing I wanted to discuss with my brother, but the drive over had planted a seed in my head, the same unspeakable idea that had almost compelled me to flee. Awful as it was, I had to lay the theory to rest, and I was hoping my brother’s memory would prove useful.

  “Doug,” I said almost inaudibly, thinking of Mom and Dad in bed right upstairs, “do you think he could have something to do with this?”

  Doug studied the empty glass in his hand. “You’re asking if I think our cousin murdered his father.”

  Nausea rolled over me like a groundswell. If that was true, it meant Abe was a killer even then. That no version of the friend I thought I knew was pure.

  I don’t remember exactly when my mother told us Felicia had an anxiety disorder. Whether it was to shelter my brother and me, or to prime us for our family’s deficiencies, she doled out the dark truths about Crissy and Abe’s life over time. Every tidbit of information was a contribution to the arsenal of historical and psychological data Doug and I would need to navigate the craggy territory that was our kin.

  When my cousins were kids, Aunt Fee wouldn’t wash their clothes until they were stiff with dried food and sweat. She cut their hair at home with dull scissors, and berated them if they tried to minimize the damage. More than once I’d seen her break Abe’s toys in some twisted attempt to acclimate them to her world, a place where faults made you undesirable, and being undesirable kept you safe.

  There were more than a few flaws in her ideology. As a preteen, Abe had a terrible overbite, and as much as he begged, Felicia wouldn’t take him to an orthodontist. His faults didn’t keep him safe then. All they did was expose him to merciless mocking from his peers.

  To everyone but her, Felicia’s rules seemed illogical and cruel. Crissy’s response was to fight off her mother’s demands like a rabid opossum. For his part, Abe did as he was told, and suffered for his obedience. If it wasn’t for me, I doubt he would have had a friend to his name.

  “Abe’s childhood was seriously fucked up, no question about that.” Doug thought for a minute more before going on. “If Brett really was killed in 1998, that would have made Abe twelve. Almost the same age as Hen.” He shook his head in a way that implied heartbreak, but in the warm walnut light of the lamp that hung over the kitchen table, his face held an angry flush.

  “There are some kids in Hen’s class who are awful,” Doug told me. “This one girl? The lies come so easily to her, even when she’s talking to adults, that she convinced us she had a brand-new baby sister, even made up a birth date and name. It was bullshit, every word. You can imagine what happened when Josie congratulated the girl’s mom.”

  I gawked at him. Doug went on.

  “As messed up as that girl is, Abe was worse. Something was missing with him. Innocence, maybe? I don’t know. But after Brett left—or was killed, I guess—it only got worse.”

  I thought he was done with the booze for the night. When Doug’s stare landed on my scar, he reached for the bottle again.

  It happened at Abe’s house, in the small garden shed at the back of the yard. That shed could have been lovely, a place to nurture seeds and trim away rot, but it overflowed with paint cans and rusted lawn furniture, piles of termite-ridden wood. Abe had asked me to meet him. He wanted to talk. It had been a while since we did that, and I knew he wasn’t taking it well. Even Mom noticed the change, and chided me for my behavior. I told her it was nothing, hoping that by dismissing it, she’d do the same. In response, she reassured me that a friendship as strong as ours could survive anything.

  When I approached Abe that day, there was a second when I wondered if Mom might be right. The spirit of our past bond seemed to hover expectantly between us. Maybe there was some way we could mend our broken ties. If anyone could change Abraham Skilton, I thought, it was me.

  No, Shay. You can’t change this.

  For our little symposium he’d set up two old aluminum lawn chairs, the green-and-white-striped pattern of the seats black with mildew stains. Abe sat in one of them, his arms crossed over his chest. I lowered myself into the other and waited to hear what he had to say.

  The questions came quickly. Why don’t you want to hang out anymore? What did I do wrong? You were always into it before. Why not now? I tried to make him see he’d taken things too far. I needed him to understand I wasn’t the dumb kid I’d been, that I knew about the cat now, the torched tree house and stolen money. I was seventeen by then, with my sights set on a career in law enforcement. I’d taken some psychology classes in school and was actively researching criminal behavior. Armed with the power of distance and retrospection, I’d looked at our childhood through fresh eyes and seen a lot of red flags. Abe deceived me. He’d done horrible, beastly things. Bottom line? I didn’t trust him. And I was afraid.

  For me, that meeting in the shed was a courtesy. I would be leaving for college soon, and in spite of everything, I wanted us to part on good terms. Abe thought we shouldn’t part at all. He tried to convince me to stay in Swanton. We can apply for jobs clerking at the police station right here, he said. You don’t have to go away. But I did have to go, because now when I looked at him, I saw a juvenile delinquent and felt a bone-deep sense of foreboding. Like Doug said, his childhood was fucked up, and with Brett gone and Crissy rarely at home, Abe had to contend with Aunt Fee himself. It wasn’t right, but neither was the intensity in his eyes. I couldn’t stand it. I had to get out.

  There was no one around to see me jump up while my foot was stuck through the aluminum frame of that chair, and no one to witness the stumble that followed. Nobody but me saw the long, rusty nail my cousin had been hiding in his hand all along. That was the last day I ever spoke to Abe. In that moment, I piled thousands of late-night giggles and whispered confidences and words of solace onto a funeral pyre, struck the match, and watched the fire burn.

  My brother finished what was left of his warm scotch in a single swallow. Finally, he set his glass down on the table and pushed it aside. “Abe was twelve,” he said. “Twelve fucking years old. But he was a psychopath even then. So you tell me if you think our cousin could have attacked his father and left him for dead.”

  SIXTEEN

  My conversation with Doug stayed with me long after we loaded our glasses into the dishwasher and parted ways in the carpeted upstairs hall. Outside, the moon painted the street silver, and the house sounds dwindled to radiator clinks and the wind whispering at my window. My overactive mind was compounded by a headache and a hint of wooziness from the scotch, but that didn’t stop me from picking up my phone and scouring the Internet for mentions of Trey Hayes.

  With the witness from the shop and Trey’s hat as evidence, my station had issued an Amber Alert. It included Trey’s picture, but until the sketch came back from Tim’s forensic artist, we had no image of Bram to share. Most of the news outlets had published a paragraph or two about Trey’s disappearance, along with phone numbers for Crime Stoppers and the New York State Police. It wasn’t enough. There was little chance Bram was going to parade the kid around town, and nobody but the shop owner and me knew what Trey’s abductor looked like. If we were going to find either of them, it would be through a yet-untapped witness or by the grace of exhaustive legwork.

  I kept seeing Trey’s face alongside Abe’s, the way Abe looked at age twelve. Could Bram’s origin story really involve patricide? It wasn’t unheard of for children to commit heinous acts. In Britain, a fourteen-year-old killed her mother and sister with the help of an accomplice her same age. More recently, two thirteen-year-olds murdered a schoolgirl in Dublin. The idea of delving into the psychology of these crimes made me burrow deeper into my blankets.

  Drawing the comforter up to my chin, I texted Tim. I wanted him to look for garden sheds in and around A-Bay, another prominent place from our mutual past that Bram might try to replicate now. Was I forcing correlations that didn’t exist? Maybe so. But I c
ouldn’t afford not to turn over every stone.

  * * *

  * * *

  The temperature plummeted overnight, and I woke up to frost-covered grass that crackled beneath my feet as I walked to my SUV. The roads were black and dusty-dry today, and the drive to downtown Swanton took less than five minutes.

  In my previous job with the NYPD, I’d seen quite a few detectives tackle cold cases. They’d ruffle through heaps of papers on their desks and pore over ancient data, hoping new eyes and fresh resolve would help them see something somebody hadn’t. It was no easy feat. Aside from working with evidence no one else had managed to streamline into a solve, they often dealt with witnesses who’d long since died, taking their testimony with them.

  In contrast, my cases were always handed to me. I was typically the one collecting the statements. So I wasn’t sure what to make of the situation with Brett. There was no previous inquest into his death, which meant no files to reference or witnesses that I knew of. No missing persons report or predetermined timeline, either. Alibis would be hard to come by so many years after the fact, and anything else I did manage to rustle up would be tough to corroborate. I stood on the precipice of a crime so masterfully executed it took decades for anyone to realize it even existed.

  How on earth was I going to do this? By working the angles you alone can see. I was here in Swanton, with direct access to Brett’s family and friends. My mother hadn’t been entirely surprised this happened to him. That suggested there might be something in the man’s past that could point me to his killer. I may not have been assigned to find Brett’s murderer, or even authorized to run an investigation in Vermont, but as far as I knew I was the only one who understood there was a link between Brett’s death and the current missing persons case in A-Bay. I owed it to my uncle to pursue every line of inquiry.

  That said, I didn’t think the local authorities would take kindly to an outsider foraging for information, so I’d ignored the smell of marmalade toast and fried eggs crisp around the edges that wafted in from my parents’ kitchen, and disregarded my yearning to join my family. I had work to do.

  Swanton’s police force shared a municipal building with numerous other government agencies, but it took no time at all for me to locate the guy I was looking for. That’s the beauty of village life: the regal lady with the hooked nose at the DMV pointed me to Fire and Rescue, where I got the name I needed from a sinewy man with an earring and a red goatee. Swanton Police Chief Fraser Harmison had a cleft in his chin, a bushy white moustache, and thinning hair scraped back from his face. As he listened to me identify myself and explain that his victim was my uncle, he adopted a sideways squint.

  “I’m not here in any official capacity,” I assured him, “or to get in your way. I do plan on asking some questions, though, so I thought you should know who I am.”

  “So the stranger nosing around a homicide doesn’t become our next suspect?” Harmison’s jowls bobbed when he chuckled. “Probably a good idea.”

  “Next suspect? Got your eye on someone already?”

  “We’re looking at some of Skilton’s past associates. Old friends and such. The boys in St. Albans are giving us a hand, but I’ll be honest with you, this case is stone-cold.”

  I said, “I guess Felicia and Crissy Skilton already filled you in on the last time they saw Brett?”

  “I interviewed them both yesterday morning. We know he made plans to move to Philly in June of ’98. We’re working on a timeline of his final days here in town.”

  “Well, I’d be happy to share whatever I find out.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” He paused. “I guess you’re hoping I’ll do the same.”

  I smiled at him. “If you’re so inclined. The cause of death, perhaps?”

  Harmison gave me an admiring nod. “Why not? It’ll be in the paper soon enough. The bones are badly weathered, but we found a star-shaped fracture on the occipital lobe that suggests blunt force trauma.”

  The occipital lobe. Brett was attacked from behind. “Any thoughts on the murder weapon?”

  “Best guess? A branch or log. So you can imagine what kind of success we had finding it at the gravesite.”

  “He was dumped in the woods, I hear. Anything about the whereabouts that wasn’t in the news?”

  “Let’s see,” he said, thinking. “You know Hook Road off Route 78? Runs parallel to the Missisquoi River?”

  I nodded.

  “There’s a fishing access over there, a little boat launch with a parking area big enough for five, six cars. In the trees just off that lot is where we found him. Dumped might not be accurate, though. We’re thinking the killer left him where he fell.”

  “So the gravesite’s the murder site. Interesting. How far was he from the road?”

  “Not very. About twenty-five yards.”

  “Jesus,” I said, “that’s a bold move. Those woods are dense in summer, but I bet the boat ramp gets a lot of use, and in winter the trees are pretty sparse. It’s amazing his remains weren’t found sooner.” I had driven that road a hundred times since 1998. Passed my uncle’s body without even knowing it. “What kind of grave are we talking about?”

  “The half-assed kind. The killer threw some leaves and branches on his body and called it a day. Whoever left him there must have been in a hurry.”

  Or in a panic. “How much were you able to recover? If the grave was shallow, surely animals got to him eventually.”

  Harmison touched his nose. “Bingo. Bones were scattered, but we got lucky with that pocketknife. ID’ing him couldn’t have been easier.”

  “Great for you, not so great for his killer. Any blood on the knife, his or someone else’s?”

  “Nope.”

  I chewed my lip. “Whoever did it must not have been aware Brett was carrying a weapon, which might mean they didn’t know him very well.” According to Mom, Felicia believed Brett carried the knife at all times. There was no telling whether he kept up the habit after their separation, but he did have it with him the night he was killed.

  “At the same time,” I continued, “Brett had a weapon and didn’t use it. It’s possible he didn’t see the attack coming. It’s also possible the perp was someone he knew. I know it’s a long shot, but is there any evidence at this stage that might point us to the killer? Other lost objects at the site, maybe? I could drive over there, take a peek for my—”

  “Look, Merchant, was it?” The expression on Harmison’s lined face told me I’d crossed a line. “You seem nice enough, but I really can’t have you stepping on my team’s toes.”

  “I understand,” I said. Then, “Can I ask about the anonymous caller?”

  The police chief sighed. “Yeah, that was strange.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, he didn’t seem to know exactly where the victim was. First thing he said was there’s a body in the woods off River Street, up in the refuge. He mentioned the fishing access, said we’d find the deceased nearby, but when my officer asked him to pace it out—those woods are huge, and without a precise location we’d be searching for ages—he got squirrely. So I’m wondering, if he couldn’t pinpoint the location, how did he know the body was there?”

  Good question. “I heard he asked to remain anonymous, but do you have anything to work with on that front?”

  “Wish I did. We’d like to have a conversation with him, believe me. The officer who took the call thought he was on the younger side, late twenties or early thirties. No discernable accent, though my guy said he sounded local.”

  I tilted my head. “How could he tell that?” Some Vermonters do have an accent, but that folksy, lyrical cadence isn’t as common among younger citizens.

  “He called it River Street,” Harmison said. “Out-of-towners usually say Route 78.”

  I gave a nod. “For what it’s worth, I think Skilton’s known associates
are a good place to start. They might be able to help us put together that timeline of events.”

  “Us?” Another sigh. “Like I said, I can’t have you—”

  “No, of course,” I said quickly. “But his family is my family. I’m coming at things from a different angle. You never know where that might lead.”

  Harmison agreed he couldn’t do much to stop me from talking to my cousin and aunt. I didn’t mention that I planned on questioning Brett’s friends, too.

  Before I left, we exchanged cards and a promise to keep in touch. All told, the visit served as confirmation that Mom was right. When it came to finding Brett’s killer, the locals were getting nowhere.

  * * *

  * * *

  When I lived in New York, the anonymity afforded by its massive population was one of the things I enjoyed most. Every morning I’d let myself be pulled into a writhing mass of humanity, just another herring in the school. Lying low in a small town is more of a challenge. That was unfortunate for Brett’s former best friend. I drove straight over to the plant on Jonergin Drive and was face-to-face with Russell Loming in no time. The man was due for a break when I arrived in the front office, and his supervisor was kind enough to let us chat in the employee lounge, a cubicle-sized room that smelled of stale powdered donuts and sweaty feet.

  It didn’t surprise me that Loming was still working in manufacturing, trade jobs in Swanton being what they were. Like Brett, Loming was a local; I’d crossed paths with his youngest kid in school, a loudmouth named Max, but had no recollection of Loming himself. It took all of thirty seconds for me to see why he and Brett had been an inseparable pair. Even wearing faded blue coveralls, Loming had that same smirk and swagger, and while he might have passed for handsome once, his bulging middle now made him look considerably more pregnant than Suze.

  Loming didn’t waste any time with pleasantries, though he did shake my hand. “I already told that fat old cop I don’t know anything about what happened to Brett, but I’m happy to repeat myself. Glad I wore my best suit,” he said. There was something sexual about his grip. I snatched my hand away and resisted wiping it on my pants. I didn’t bother to clarify that I wasn’t with the local police, just flipped open my notebook and asked if I could take some notes. Loming gave me a withering look, but didn’t debate my request.