Give It All (27 page)

Duncan frowned.

Quiet, remote spot,
the voice taunted.
But not too far from the road. All partitioned off with a pretty little fence and everything. Just needs a neon sign and a flashing arrow.
B
ONES
G
O
H
ERE
.

Nonsense.

But even nonsense seemed worth pursuing, when the alternative was to give up entirely.

Duncan was beyond racing the sunset—the dark had already swallowed all but the white buildings and lit windows. No matter. No matter that the bike’s headlamp was completely inadequate, because once he left the town proper, the roads were deserted. Past Three C’s arch, and he began to question what he’d even seen, the rutted dirt access road appearing miles later than he’d expected. He took a right, the world becoming deep blue above, black below the horizon. He stopped long enough to pull out the powerful LED flashlight Vince had left in the bike’s cargo box. He gripped it and the handlebar in one hand, making an already awkward ride all the worse. In
three days, he’d tipped over or fallen perhaps ten times. In the next three miles, he wrecked an additional four. Slowly, harmlessly, but still. If he couldn’t find that bloody graveyard, he’d be—

In the glare of the beam, four glowing discs.
Eyes.

Coyotes, but more important, the bright gray glow of limestone slabs. He skidded into yet another graceless dismount, his surely already black-and-blue leg earning fresh bruises.

No matter. He felt no pain, only purpose. He was on his feet, beam illuminating the two scrappy scavengers. Tucking his flashlight in his armpit, he stole a trick he’d seen Vince use once, clapping and bellowing until the animals slunk off into the blackness beyond the artificial aura.

He walked to the cemetery, no more than fifty paces from the road . . . but five miles or more from the nearest streetlight. Discreet, but distinct. And first the crows had made a curiosity of it, now the coyotes.

And me.

What did they smell that he couldn’t? he wondered. The cemetery wasn’t suspicious, though, merely eerie. He stepped over the low fence, mentally apologizing to Miah’s dead relatives. No X marks the spot, just coyote tracks in the dirt. He followed them to where the earth turned powdery, churned up by coyotes. A large, thick headstone lay flat on the ground—intentionally or because it had been overturned, Duncan couldn’t guess. E
UGENE
E
.
C
HURCH
was carved into it, the letters softened in the decades since it had been carved—
DIED 1932
.
And there was a gutter framing the fallen marker, a rut carved in the dirt by scrabbling paws. A deep one.

Suddenly the headstones all shifted in unison, approaching headlights washing the scene in added dimension, the shadows of the stones and fence and grass blades sliding across the ground. Duncan squinted to the road, but it was impossible to see who’d arrived with their high beams trained in his direction.

He heard a door slam, and shouted, “Hello,” as he got to his feet.

Not Miah. Please not Miah.
The man had never trusted Duncan, so finding him on his property, poking around the graves of his dead relatives . . . ? Yeah, if ever he was going to earn that fistfight, now would be it.

“Welch?” Shit, he knew that voice, and that body as Miah’s
long silhouette started toward him, rifle in hand. He said, “To me,” and in a breath his dog was trotting at his side. And that dog had never looked quite so intimidating.

“I realize this doesn’t look very good,” Duncan said.

Cowboy boots crunched over the dry earth. “You know this is private property?”

“I suspected as much. Apologies. My ride took me rather far off the beaten track.”

Miah stepped over the fence, stopping mere feet from Duncan. He rested the rifle on his shoulder, posture taut and leering. His black hair had grown long of late and his beard was nearly full, and Duncan had to remind himself he had about four years and three inches on him. Miah moved and spoke with the inherent, egoless confidence of a man who broke horses and roped cattle, and had probably shed stoic, manly tears over the bodies of animals he was forced to euthanize. With his rifle. At sundown.

Trimming Astrid’s claws is no trip to the malt shop, either,
Duncan assured himself.

“You wanna tell me what the
fuck
you think you’re doing on my land? In my family’s fucking
cemetery
?”

“It won’t happen again.” Though if Duncan’s intuition did indeed work, before the night was over, there could be quite a party out here in the middle of nowhere. He glanced to the side, to that overturned headstone.

“No, it goddamn will
not
happen again. But you tell me why right now or God help me, I will
fuck
you up before I even bother getting your ass arrested.”

“I thought I saw something strange here this afternoon, when I was out riding.”

Miah’s chin cocked with the force of a shotgun. “Saw what?”

“There’s a large headstone just there, lying on its back. Eugene Church.”

He frowned. “What do you mean, on its back? Show me.”

Duncan aimed the beam on it. Miah snatched the flashlight from him. “Son of a bitch.”

“I take it it’s not usually like that.”

“And what’s with all the tracks? Did the coyotes dig it loose, or some drunk asshole?”

“I’m not certain it was either,” Duncan said, then eyed Miah’s dog. “Does he have a keen sense of smell?” he asked, pointing.

“She’s a dog, so yeah.”

“Would you indulge me for two minutes?”

“Why in the fuck would I do that?”

“Please. Just let your dog sniff around, just there. I was riding earlier today and I saw a load of crows gathered here. And when I first came tonight, two coyotes.”

Miah frowned. “They’re probably smelling blood from a dead animal.”

“A dead animal, tucked beneath a fifty-pound slab of limestone? Please, Mr. Church. Two minutes of your time.”

Miah shook his head, but his sigh was limp with surrender. To the dog he said, “That’ll do, King.” It relaxed visibly—posture softening, tongue appearing—then left them momentarily, its main concern seeming to be its bladder.

“So your female dog is named King?” Duncan asked.

“You can go fuck your small talk, Welch.”

“As you wish.”

The second the dog was done with its business, it returned to the cemetery at a trot. Then it changed course abruptly, snuffling around the fallen stone.

“Because of the coyotes,” Miah said. “King.”

The dog ignored its master, now sniffing madly at the ground all around the stone. Its tail was frantic, paws scrabbling at the rock’s edge, then pacing, digging, pacing, digging, whining.

“Whoa— Hey! King, here to me.”

The dog abandoned its frenzy to stand by Miah’s side. “Jesus, she never cries. Load up,” he ordered, and the dog took off toward the truck.

“There’s something under there,” Duncan said.

“No lie. And dead animals don’t bury themselves, tucked up all cozy under gravestones.” Miah eyed him. “If you know what the fuck this is about, tell me now, Welch.”

Duncan swallowed. “I’ve a strong suspicion I do.”

“And?”

Duncan looked to the ground, lit up like an alien landscape before them. “And I think this is where Tremblay hid them. The bones your friend was murdered over.”

For half a minute, Miah just stared back at Duncan, black eyes wide.

“Bones?” he finally asked.

Duncan nodded.

“Like the ones from whoever got burned up in that mine?”

“I don’t know for sure. I don’t
know
anything. It’s just what I suspect.”

“Based on?”

“Three days’ exhaustive riding, a few scavengers, a gut feeling. Some logic.” Though not nearly enough for his comfort.

Miah looked to the stone, and took a deep breath. “If it’s nothing, and we move this thing, no harm done. If you’re fucking right, we could be contaminating a crime scene.”

“We’d sound like idiots if we called the feds to do it for us and then found nothing, so I vote we move it.”

“All right, then.” Miah leaned the rifle against the fence and got in position, and Duncan set the flashlight down and did the same.

“On three. One. Two. Three.” Fifty pounds? Try a hundred. Duncan pulled so hard his bad elbow screamed, but nothing.

“Again,” Miah said. “One, two, three.”

And after a moment, the stone lifted. Just an inch or two, but with the next heave they managed to tip it up onto its edge, then eased it onto its face, exposing the ground it had been covering.

Miah murmured, “Sorry, Great-great-grandpa.”

Duncan grabbed the light. The earth he shone it on didn’t look like anything special—more pebbles, more dried grass. He got to his knees and began drawing dirt aside, flashlight clamped
between his cheek and shoulder. Miah followed suit. Duncan’s already thumping heart raced, as clods of dry roots came away too easily, as though they’d been wrenched from the dirt already.
Someone buried something here,
was all he could think, the realization of it a frenzied mantra after all this blind speculation.
Someone buried
someone
here.

“Whoa.” Miah froze, and Duncan could see why. A black stone as big as a plum, amid the rusty red and sandy brown.

Not a stone.

“Your sleeve,” he said to Miah.

Miah had a long thermal shirt on, and he understood. He wrapped his hand in his cuff and began clearing the dirt from around the unmoving black shape. Not a stone, no. A knob of bone, the tip of a femur.

“Fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck—fuck.” Miah was on his feet in a blink, slapping his dirty sleeve against his jeans as though it were on fire. “Fuck. Jesus. This is fucked. Call the fucking feds.”

Duncan stood, heart pounding with fear and triumph at once, adrenaline coursing like a narcotic. He pulled out his phone and found Flores’s number, hit
CALL
, but nothing—zero signal. “Goddamn it. My carrier’s useless out here.”

Miah offered his own phone, hand shaking visibly. Duncan cued up the digits, and after four rings—

“Flores.”

“It’s Duncan Welch. If you’re not dressed, I suggest you remedy that.”

“What is it, Welch?”

He took a single rattling, intoxicated breath and said, “I’ve found the bones.”

A pause, miles long. “You found the bones.”

“Correct. I’m just going to wait until you and your people show up.”

“Where are you?”

“If you head east past the Three C ranch’s main gate and take the dirt access road about four miles farther, you’ll see my motorcycle and Jeremiah Church’s pickup perhaps another two miles down the road.”

“Don’t move, you hear me?” The sounds of a frantic man were layered behind his stern voice—keys jingling, clothes rustling. “And don’t fucking touch anything. What phone are you calling from?”

“Church’s cell. Do you need the number?”

“It’s in my call log. Just stay right where you fucking are,” Flores ordered, and the line went dead.

Duncan handed the phone back. “Now we wait, I suppose.” The chemicals were already bleeding out of him, manic energy giving way to a softer persuasion of shock. And a tidal wave of uncertainty—it wasn’t as though Duncan’s achievement didn’t reek of wild coincidence. Of
outrageous
convenience.

Miah shook his head and stared skyward, into an ever-expanding sea of stars.

Miah blew out a mighty breath. “Goddamn, I could use a drink just about now. This is so completely fucked.” He sat on the ground, forearms on his knees.

“Agreed.” And Duncan was humble enough to be grateful he wasn’t alone in it all. “I appreciate your—”

Miah waved his words away like a nasty smell. “I’m not here for you. And I’m not here because it’s what Raina would want me to do, or Vince. I’m here for Alex, you got that?”

Duncan nodded.

“Good. So don’t waste your breath thanking me.”

“Noted.”

Miah called his dog to where he sat.

After a pause, Duncan said, “You’re working awfully late.”

“We’ve found evidence of some drug dealing happening out here lately. I’ve taken to making the odd sweep after dark, see if I can’t catch the fuckers.”

Casey’s addled words echoed in Duncan’s memory.
A fire on a starless night.
The rarest of conditions out here, no doubt. And a fire, set by whom? By a drug dealer? Duncan wondered for a split second. He set the ridiculous thought aside. He was reading mysteries into everything in this state.

Miah kept his attention on his dog, scratching its neck. “I heard Raina’s got a thing tonight. How come you’re not there?”

Duncan shrugged, mood souring. “I stopped by.”

Miah smiled, neither cruel nor kind. “Lemme guess—not a big fan of her hanging out with a load of men she’s seen half-naked, right?”

“Something not unlike that.”

Miah nodded. “Been there. I used to tell her it was don’t ask, don’t tell, with me.”

“It’s a bit more complicated when you can hear the buzzing coming from the next room. At any rate, I’m sorry for ruining
your night. I couldn’t have blamed you for calling the authorities. Or beating me senseless.”

Miah just shrugged.

Silence descended for ten minutes or more, until vehicles appeared down the road.

“King, load up.” At once, the dog ran and leaped into the bed of the truck and Miah stood.

Flores’s silver SUV and a BCSD cruiser approached and parked. Two male deputies appeared, and Flores and his sometimes partner exited the SUV, and the four of them came marching across the dirt toward Duncan and Miah with duffels and bins in tow—crime scene accoutrements, presumably.

“Where?” Flores demanded.

Duncan pointed and kept his mouth shut and his feet planted, watching as spotlights were assembled and switched on, illuminating the cemetery.

Flores crouched, not speaking for nearly a minute. Then, “No way. No fucking way.”

And the authorities got busy. Duncan and Miah were ordered to stay put, and in time another cruiser appeared, then another. A wide area was cordoned off with tape, all the way from the graves to the road.

It was easily forty minutes before Flores broke from the group to approach Duncan and Miah. By then they’d already told their story to two other agents. Flores dusted his shins with latex-gloved hands, a limp halting his gait after all that time kneeling.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” Miah asked him. “Those goddamn bones Alex got killed over.”

“They’re bones, yes.”

“Burned?” Miah asked, but Flores ignored him.

He stopped before Duncan and stared him dead in the eye. “You got any idea how bad this looks? How fucking suspicious
you
look?”

Duncan’s stomach turned. “That’s not lost on me.”

“You just . . .
found
these. Out here, miles from any place.”

“That’s accurate. ‘Miles from any place’ seemed a good place to start looking, considering what I was after.”

“How, Welch? If you didn’t know how they wound up here to begin with, how? On private land? Based on
what
?”

Based on that fucking hunger bullshit.
Instinct had muted logic . . . or perhaps enhanced it. But intuition wasn’t proof,
and Duncan needed very badly to sound as rational as possible just now.

He forced a calm breath, tired deep down in his own bones. “I tried to imagine what Tremblay would have done with them. Put them somewhere hastily, somewhere he stood a chance at finding them again, when he had the luxury of destroying them properly, perhaps. Trust me, it’s no coincidence I wound up out here. I’ve ridden every mile of passable road in this town, looking for a place that screamed both discretion and distinction. I saw the crows here, this morning, and thought little of it. Then coyotes tonight, and that toppled headstone . . .”

Miah nodded. “That’s true—he didn’t
just
find them. He’s been riding around since Monday.”

Flores raised a snarky eyebrow. “I’d love that statement from a character witness who’s not also a part of your little motorcycle gang. What do you all call yourselves? The Dirt Dogs or something?” Duncan knew Flores’s style well enough to guess the gaffe was intentional.

Miah made a gruff sound at that, like a rankled bull. “Look, this pompous dick is sleeping with my ex. Trust me, I wouldn’t lie to protect him.”

“Three days of looking,” Flores said, turning to Duncan, “against the sheer square acreage of Fortuity’s badlands, with the help of some woodland friends. Fuck of a lucky break, Welch, that’s all I’m saying.”

Duncan’s temper was fraying. He needed a Klonopin. With the blind drive of his mission suddenly gone, all the anxiety and uncertainty he’d been ignoring was exposed, bright and raw as an open wound. He wanted to go home to Raina. He wanted her arms around him, his face tucked against her throat. He wanted her warm sheets and body, and her voice telling him everything was going to turn out okay. Wanted warm recognition in her eyes, not the passing, indifferent glance he’d been offered at the bar.

He didn’t know anymore if this past week’s insanity was a good or bad thing. Only that it had changed him, that he’d never been laid so bare before—never been
laid
so intensely in his life. He only knew he really didn’t care what anyone thought of his car anymore, or his clothes, or even his innocence. He only cared that he got to see that fire in a woman’s eyes when she took him to bed. Only cared that he got to feel wanted for
a few hot moments at a time, wanted on a level he’d never felt before—not as a lover or a man or a human being.

Christ, he was so fucking fed up.

“I called you, you know,” he said to Flores. “
I
called
you
. If I had anything to do with Tremblay and Levins’s cover-ups, why the fuck would I produce these bones and help your investigation?”

“Plenty of reasons.”

“I’m innocent.” Duncan nodded toward the crime scene, lit up like a tiny stadium. Press had begun to show up, kept at bay by BCSD officers. “Dental records or missing persons leads are going to identify this body,” Duncan said, “and Levins’s lie is going to unravel—you know as well as I do that he’s full of shit. Fingers are going to get pointed, and none of them will be aimed at me.”

“Don’t tell me what I know, Welch.”

“I assumed I was merely giving your intellect due credit,” Duncan said sharply, fevery from anger. Behind them, camera flashes strobed as the exhumation continued. “The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter how suspicious I look. I won’t be disbarred, because I won’t be found guilty of anything. But if Sunnyside rescinds my termination tomorrow, fuck them. Not even an
obscenely
generous bonus is going to keep me in this terrible town a single day longer than need be.” He pictured Raina then, and wondered how true that statement might actually be. “I can be found innocent tonight, and I’m still basically ruined.”

“You already planning your defamation case?”

Duncan took a deep, ragged breath, struggling to muster some semblance of calm. “I don’t even bloody know. I just want this to be over, Mr. Flores. I want permission to get on with my life. I want answers. That’s why I found these bones for you. And I’m not even asking for a thank-you card.”

“The both of you are going downtown,” Flores said to Duncan and Miah.

“For fuck’s sake,” Miah said. “He just did your goddamn job for you.”

Flores whistled and called a couple of patrol officers over. “These two need to be detained and questioned. Somebody get them into separate cars. Church can go to a holding cell, Welch in my office.”

Miah tossed his hands up, exasperated. “Wow. You’re welcome.” As he was escorted to the road, Duncan heard him say, “I gotta drop my dog off.”

Before Duncan could be led away, he turned to Flores. “Wait. One phone call first. One fucking minute.”

“Later. At the station.”

“Now, please. No privacy required—I just want to tell Raina why I’m not coming home tonight, all right? One minuscule little favor, after the tremendous break I’ve just given you.
Please
.”

Flores eyed him, expression hard.

“One minute,” Duncan repeated. “Even criminals get a phone call.”

“Later.”

“It’s far more modest a prize than the posted reward for leads to do with those godforsaken bones.”

“Later,”
Flores repeated.

Godforsaken
. That word echoed, and Duncan cast his gaze on the crime scene.
But not completely forsaken.
Whoever those bones had once been, whatever they’d done to inspire another person to murder, those things would be known. It could be shocking how easy it was for people to be forgotten. Discarded. Deemed inconvenient and shut away in a hole or a box or an institution and left to rot. But this man or woman or child wasn’t slipping so quietly out of public consciousness.

No. He or she would be front-page news by the time the sun rose.