Dylan's Redemption (4 page)

Picking up his glass for another swallow, Brian thumped the empty mug back on the table. His eyes roamed the room as if he’d just remembered the other people. He spotted the waitress and held up his empty mug. He waited for her nod. His eyes caught Dylan’s, and he almost seemed surprised Dylan was still there.

Dylan reached across the table and grasped Brian’s arm, his fingers digging into muscle. “What happened when you got home?”

“Nothing. The house was quiet and empty. I walked through the front room and headed into the kitchen to grab something to eat.” His focus on the table, he shuddered. “I can still see it as clear as the day it happened.”

“What? What did you see?”

“Smeared blood on the linoleum and a bloody knife.”

Dylan couldn’t believe the words stumbling out of Brian’s mouth.

“She wasn’t there, just a bunch of blood on the floor and that knife.”

As impossible as it seemed, Brian’s silence drowned out the music and people around them. Dylan released Brian’s arm and fell back against the booth seat.

“The old man came home the next morning with a nice shiner and blood on his shirt and pants. I sat on the couch right where I’d been all night. He came in and went to the kitchen and stopped short in front of the blood, like he was surprised by the sight of it. He fisted his hand in his hair and shook his head like he was trying to remember something.”

Eyes still on the table, Brian traced a finger over the scarred surface. “He found a bucket, filled it with soapy, hot water, and scrubbed the floor clean with a rag. Tossed the knife in the garbage, like it didn’t mean anything. He changed his clothes, came back out with the bloody ones and burned them in the fireplace. He turned to me. I couldn’t even speak, I was so scared. He said, ‘Time to go to work,’ like nothing happened. He never said a word about that night or Jessie. Not that day, or any day since. I never asked. I didn’t want to hear the truth.

“He took to drinking even more. Only after that particular night, he drank in the kitchen. He’d sit at the table and look at that spot on the floor and he’d drink. He’d stare at that spot like he was waiting for something. I think he couldn’t remember if he killed her or not.”

Possible, if Buddy blacked out, then passed out somewhere in his truck, and woke up the next morning with a raging hangover and no recollection of how he got there.

“But you think he did kill her.”

“They were fighting when I left her there. When I got home, they were both gone. Only one came home,” Brian slurred. “Add it all up, Sheriff, and I’m sure you’ll come up with the same thing I did.”

Dylan didn’t want to come up with Jessie dead. He grieved for her all these years, but always held out hope she was still alive despite the rumors that painted just as gruesome of a picture as Brian’s story. Maybe she’d been hurt and simply left. Wishful thinking. At this point, maybe that’s all he had left to hold on to. He sure as hell didn’t have Jessie.

“Why didn’t you go to the cops and report what you saw right away?”

“He threatened me. If I said one word about the blood and clothes, he’d kill me. With Jessie gone, I believed him. First chance I got, I moved out of that house. Every time I saw him, he’d give me this look, like if I ever told, I’d pay.

“Besides, I didn’t see anything. I don’t know what happened. Even when they did find out and questioned us, they didn’t do a damn thing. Can’t prove something when the old man kept his mouth shut for the first time in his life. Weren’t no body, or a witness.”

Dylan had read the sparse details in the police report. Add Brian’s fear to speak up and the past sheriff’s piss-poor investigation and you came up with Buddy getting away with murder.

Brian tilted his head back and to the side, his focus turned inward. “He never, and I mean never, tried to start a fight with me. He always went after her. From the time she was five, he had it in for her. I can remember him screaming at her that she looked just like her. She’d end up just like her.”

“Like who?” Dylan asked, trying to follow Brian.

“Our mother. She looked just like our mother.”

“Didn’t your mom die when Jessie was five?”

“Yep. I think the old man blamed Jessie for her death.”

“How’d she die?”

“Took a bottle full of pills, slit her wrists. Dad found her in the bathtub. Come to think of it, the day she disappeared was the anniversary of our mother’s death.”

The catalyst that set Buddy off that night.

Hard to comprehend so much tragedy in one family. Jessie was gone, and it was eating him alive. The rumors were true. Buddy Thompson killed Jessie one night while in a drunken rage and hid her body. No one had ever found her. It made him sick to think of her out there, somewhere, and no one knew where. He didn’t know where.

“Come on, man, I’ll take you home,” Dylan offered. “Your wife must be worried about you.”

Brian laughed under his breath. “Sure she is. I turned out to be quite the catch. She’s probably burning my clothes and poisoning my dinner as we speak.”

Dylan got up, placing his Stetson back on his head. Most everyone in the bar watched him stand, probably wondering if he’d arrest someone or leave them to their night of partying.

He slapped Brian on the shoulder, put his hand under his arm, and hauled him up and out of the booth.

“Let’s go, man. It’s time for you to sleep it off. Things will look better in the morning.”

Dylan hoped he spoke for himself as well. Right now he wanted to crawl into a bottle with Brian and drink himself into oblivion. After all these years of thinking and dreaming about her, Jessie was gone, absolutely beyond his reach.

Chapter Three

D
YLAN TOOK
B
RIAN
home, left him in the care of his wife. Nice woman, someone he vaguely remembered from high school. A pretty blonde cheerleader with a lot of spunk and sass. Her petite frame appeared even smaller next to Brian’s six-foot height. Strong and capable, Marilee ushered Brian into the house. She’d be a good mother if she looked after the baby like she took care of Brian. Too bad Brian wasn’t capable of looking after her, let alone himself. Living with a drunk couldn’t be easy.

He drove away from their rented house and over to Buddy Thompson’s place. The sun had set long ago, and he assumed the house would be empty. Except, maybe, for the ghosts.

The paramedics took Buddy to the morgue after a friend discovered him this morning. They’d planned to meet for a fishing trip. Buddy hadn’t shown up, so his friend came calling. He found Buddy in bed, presumably sleeping off a night of drinking.

Buddy wouldn’t be going fishing anymore.

Dylan pulled up in front of the house and sat in his truck, staring at the place. Dark and empty, the black windows stared back at him, cold and foreboding.

He’d been there a hundred times, a thousand times. His mother hadn’t liked him hanging out with Brian and, especially, Jessie. For some reason, she, like Buddy, never thought Jessie good enough. Dylan had a feeling they knew she’d been better than them all. Jessie never looked down on others, was always the first to lend a hand, and was a true friend. He wished he could say he’d treated her in kind. He hadn’t. He had no idea what she really felt about him when she’d died such a horrible death. It left a gnawing in his gut that constantly ached.

She’d died like she’d lived, with the whole town ignoring her.

No one would ever know what really happened to her that night. Not with Buddy and Jessie dead.

He pulled out his cell and called the one person sure to brighten his black mood.

“Hey, Lorena, is he still up?” Lorena took care of his adopted son, Will, after morning preschool and while Dylan worked.

“I just finished his books. Hold on.”

“Hi Daddy. When you coming home?”

Dylan turned away from Jessie’s house, focused on the street in front of him and his little boy and the joy he felt every time he saw him or heard his voice. “Not for a little while yet. I’ve got something I need to do.”

“Come home.”

“Soon. I promise.”

“I didn’t find the mommy today.” Will wanted the same thing other kids had, a mother.

“Finding the right mom isn’t easy, but I hope we find one for you.” Choked up, he thought of Jessie, her life cut short before she’d ever really lived.

“Maybe tomorrow.” Will yawned.

Dylan didn’t want to get Will’s hopes up, so he dropped the subject. “Sleep good. I’ll be there soon. I’ll see you first thing in the morning.”

“Smiley-face waffles.”

“Yes, I promise.”

Will loved it when Dylan cut up strawberries and made a face on his waffles. Dylan loved the boy’s enthusiasm for the simple things in life. He wished with every breath he took Jessie was here and he could introduce her to his adopted son. He’d tell her about his job, how it led him to a young girl in need and a boy he loved more each day. He’d dedicated his life to helping people like Jess. He tried every day to make up for abandoning her.

“I love you,” he said to his son, and meant it to Jessie too.

“I love you, too, Daddy. See you in the morning.”

“See you in the morning, buddy.”

Dylan hung up and slid from the car, feeling better but dreading walking back into his past. He took the cracked and broken path bordered on both sides by overgrown and mostly dead grass and weeds to the front porch. Reaching above one of the side windows, he ran his fingers along the edge until he found the spare key. He snatched it, stepped back to the door to unlock it before replacing the key. He stepped inside the house and into his past and what had been Jessie’s hell.

With a flip of a switch, a single lamp came on in the family room just beyond the tiled entry. Buddy’s housekeeping skills left a lot to be desired. Beer bottles, two empty bottles of whiskey, a tumbler glass, and a dozen or more newspapers and food wrappers littered the coffee table and floor. A dead plant sat in the corner and the fireplace hadn’t been cleaned in a decade of fires. Ashes spilled out onto the hearth.

Dylan didn’t come to see this. No. He needed to see Jessie’s room, see if there was anything left of her. Walking through the family room toward the kitchen, he stopped in the archway looking in before he proceeded down the hall to his left.

Liquor and beer bottles covered the kitchen table. A single chair faced the archway. Almost precisely where Dylan stood. He imagined the pool of blood Brian saw on the floor. He glanced back into the family room and the couch with the coffee table littered with bottles. Buddy could have sat there and seen into the kitchen to this very spot.

The butcher block on the counter had several empty slots. Searching the kitchen, he found one steak knife in the sink and several in the dishwasher along with a long cutting knife. He checked the drawers and cabinets, but couldn’t find the other three missing knives. To his dismay, he couldn’t find the butcher knife that fit the largest slot. He hoped that wasn’t the bloody knife Buddy used on Jessie and threw away.

His mind played every scenario imaginable of how Jessie and Buddy went at it that night. No matter how he ran the scene, his mind conjured Jessie’s image on the floor in a pool of blood with a knife stuck in her.

Shivering, he walked out of the kitchen and down the hall, skipping over Brian’s old room and stopping in front of Jessie’s closed door. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and stood looking at her deserted room. Everything appeared untouched, like she’d never left, though a thick layer of dust covered every surface. A green quilt lay over the bed. Her backpack and schoolbooks sat scattered on her desk, along with makeup and hair bands. The dresser and night table had a few trinkets and mementos. Alongside some discarded change and a pack of gum sat a picture of her mother. Dylan took special notice of the woman he’d never met.

Jessie was the image of her mother, with long, dark wavy hair, hazel eyes, and that flawless satin skin. He wondered how a beautiful woman like Jessie’s mother ended up with a man like Buddy. Maybe Buddy had been a different man when they were young. Time had slipped away, until Jessie’s mother couldn’t deal with the consequences of marrying an alcoholic.

Always a neat freak, none of Jessie’s clothes littered the wood floor or hung from the drawers. Nothing out of place except the black gown she’d worn to the prom hanging on the closet door. Her high heels sat on the floor, one tipped on its side. He imagined her lying on the bed looking at the dress and remembering the night they’d shared together. He wondered if the few short days she’d had left after the prom were happy or sad. Did she miss him? Curse him? Hate him?

He hoped looking at that dress brought her happy memories of their night together. Standing there now, looking at the gown and imagining her wearing it, a multitude of emotions washed through him. Mostly anger because she wasn’t here. He gripped the dress and buried his face in the material, inhaling deeply, hoping for even a hint of her scent. After all this time, even that was gone. He smoothed his hand over the material, adjusting it just so, his stomach in a knot, his heart heavy in his chest.

He’d always wanted a chance to make things right. He’d thought a thousand times what he’d say.

Ah, Jess. I was so damn young and stupid.

I wanted you to no end.

Why’d I have to fall in love with you right when I was leaving?

I’m so sorry, honey. I wish I’d been here for you. I wish I’d realized Buddy was hurting you. I wish a lot of things. I wish you were here.

I miss my best friend.

Dylan ran his hand over the dress. He remembered how he’d slid the zipper down her back, her soft skin at his fingertips. She felt so good in his arms. She’d given herself completely, trusted him completely.

The dress went out of focus, along with his memories. His eyes burned and his throat constricted painfully.

He missed her more each day.

He owed her for so much. The years of friendship they’d shared. The career he’d chosen. Most of all, he owed her for showing him just how much a person could be loved. He had no doubt she’d loved him with her whole heart.