My Sister's Grave (2 page)

Tracy dipped the brim of her Stetson, took a deep breath, and gave deference to the best Western movie ever made. “Fill your hands
,
you son of a bitch!”

The timer beeped.

Her right hand drew the Colt from her left holster, cocked the hammer, and fired. Gun already drawn and cocked in her left hand, she took down the second target. Finding her rhythm and gaining speed, she shot so fast that she could barely hear the ting of lead over the discharge of the guns.

Right hand. Cock. Fire.

Left hand. Cock. Fire.

Right hand. Cock. Fire.

She took aim at the bottom row of targets.

Right, fire.

Left, fire.

Three final shots rang out in rapid succession. Bam. Bam. Bam. Tracy twirled her guns and slapped them down on the wood table.

“Time!”

A few spectators applauded, but their clapping quieted as more began to realize what Tracy already knew.

Ten shots. But only nine tings.

The fifth target in the bottom row remained upright.

Tracy had missed.

The three spotters standing nearby each holding up one finger to confirm it. The miss would be costly, a five-second penalty added to her time. Tracy eyed the target, disbelieving, but staring at it wasn’t going to make it fall. Reluctantly, she collected her revolvers, slapped them in their holsters, and stepped aside.

All eyes turned to Sarah, “The Kid.”

Their rugged carts, handmade by their father to hold their guns and ammunition, rattled and shook as Tracy and Sarah pulled them across the dirt-and-gravel parking lot. Overhead, the sky had rapidly blackened. The thunderstorm would arrive sooner than the weatherman had predicted.

Tracy unlocked her blue Ford truck’s camper shell, lowered the tailgate, and wheeled on Sarah. “What the hell was that?” She did a poor job keeping her voice low.

Sarah tossed her hat into the truck bed, blonde hair falling past her shoulders. “What?”

Tracy held up the Championship silver belt buckle. “You haven’t missed two plates in years. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“The wind kicked up.”

“You’re a terrible liar, you know that?”

“You’re a terrible winner.”

“Because I didn’t win; you let me win.” Tracy waited for two spectators to hurry past, the first drops of rain starting to fall. “You’re lucky Dad wasn’t here,” she said. August 21 was their parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and James “Doc” Crosswhite hadn’t been about to tell his wife she’d have to forsake Hawaii to celebrate at a dusty shooting range in the state’s capital. Tracy softened, though she remained agitated. “We’ve talked about this. I’ve told you, we both have to try our best or people are going to think the whole thing is rigged.”

Before Sarah could further respond, tires crunched gravel. Tracy diverted her attention as Ben swung his white pickup around her Ford, smiling down at them from inside the cab. Though he and Tracy had been dating
for more than a year, Ben still smiled every time he saw her.

“We’ll talk about this more when I get home tomorrow,” Tracy said to Sarah and stepped away to greet Ben as he dropped from the cab and slipped on the leather car coat Tracy had bought him last Christmas. They kissed. “Sorry I’m late. Whoever outlawed drinking and driving never drove through Tacoma traffic. I could use a beer.” When Tracy straightened the collar of his jacket, Ben glanced at the belt buckle in her hand. “Hey, you won.”

“Yeah, I won.” Her gaze shifted to Sarah.

“Hey, Sarah,” Ben said, looking and sounding confused.

“Hey, Ben.”

“You ready?” he asked Tracy.

“Give me a minute.”

Tracy shed her duster and red bandanna, tossing both into the truck bed. Then she sat on the edge of the tailgate and held up a leg for Sarah to pull off her boot. The sky had turned completely black. “I don’t like the idea of you driving alone in weather like this.”

Sarah tossed the boot into the bed and Tracy raised her other leg. Sarah grabbed the heel. “I’m eighteen. I think I can drive myself home; it’s not like it never rains here.”

Tracy looked to Ben. “Maybe she should just come with us.”

“She doesn’t want to do that. Sarah, you don’t want to do that.”

“No, I definitely don’t want to do that,” Sarah said.

Tracy slipped on flats. “There’s supposed to be thunderstorms.”

“Tracy, come on. You act like I’m ten years old.”

“Because you act like you’re ten years old.”

“Because you treat me like I’m still ten years old.”

Ben checked his watch. “I hate to break up this intelligent discourse, ladies, but Tracy, we really have to go if we’re going to keep that reservation.”

Tracy handed her overnight bag to Ben and he took it to the cab as Tracy addressed Sarah. “Stay on the highway,” she said. “Don’t take the county road. It’ll be dark and the rain will make it harder to see.”

“The county road is faster.”

“Don’t argue with me. Stay on the highway and double back off the exit.”

Sarah held out her hand for the truck keys.

“Promise me,” Tracy said, not relinquishing them without Sarah’s commitment.

“Fine, I promise.” Sarah crossed her heart.

Tracy pressed the keys into Sarah’s hand and curled her fingers over them. “Next time, just knock down the damn targets.” She turned to leave.

“Your hat,” Sarah said.

Tracy removed her black Stetson and popped it on Sarah’s head. When she did Sarah stuck out her tongue. Tracy wanted to be angry, but Sarah was impossible to stay mad at. Tracy felt a grin inch across her own face. “You’re such a brat.”

Sarah gave her an exaggerated smile. “Yes, but that’s why you love me.”

“Yeah, that’s why I love you all right.”

“And I love you too,” Ben said. He’d pushed open the passenger door and was leaning across the cab. “But I’ll love you more if we make that reservation.”

“I’m coming,” Tracy said.

She hopped in and shut the door. Ben gave Sarah a wave and made a quick U-turn, heading for the line of cars forming at the exit, the falling rain now looking like flecks of molten gold in the truck’s headlights. Tracy shifted to look out the cab window. Sarah remained standing in the rain, watching them leave, and Tracy felt a sudden urge to go back, as if she’d forgotten something.

“Everything okay?” Ben asked.

“Fine,” she said, though the urge persisted. She watched as Sarah opened her hand, realized what Tracy had done, and looked quickly again at the cab.

Tracy had pressed the silver belt buckle into Sarah’s palm along with the truck keys.

She would not see either again for twenty years.

CHAPTER 3

C
edar Grove Sheriff, Roy Calloway, still wore his fly-fishing vest and lucky cap, but he was already feeling far removed from the gentle rocking of the flat-bottomed boat. Calloway had driven straight to the station from the airport, his wife silent in the passenger seat, none too pleased to have their fly-fishing trip cut short, their first real vacation in four years. She hadn’t made an effort to kiss him when she’d dropped him off, and he’d decided it best not to push the issue. He’d hear more about it at dinner for sure, and he’d say, “This one couldn’t be helped,” and she’d say, “I’ve been hearing that for thirty-four years.”

Calloway entered the conference room and shut the door. His deputy, Finlay Armstrong, stood at the head of the rough-hewn wood table wearing his khaki uniform. Finlay looked pale beneath the fluorescent lights, but his complexion was robust compared to Vance Clark’s pallid coloring. The Cascade County prosecutor sat at the far end of the room looking sickly, his checked sport coat draped over a chair, the knot of his tie lowered, the top button of his shirt undone. Clark didn’t bother to get up. He gave Calloway a subtle nod.

“Sorry you had to come back for this, Chief.” Armstrong stood in front of a paneled wall containing a photo gallery of Cedar Grove’s sheriffs. Calloway’s photograph had hung last on the right for thirty-four years. At six five, he still maintained the barrel chest of the man in that photograph, though he couldn’t help but notice when he looked in the mirror each morning that the weathered lines on his face, which had once been hard edges to complement chiseled features, had become soft creases, and that his hair had thinned noticeably and turned gray.

“Don’t sweat it, Finlay.” Calloway tossed his cap onto the table, rolled out a chair, and sat. “Tell me what you got.”

In his midthirties, tall and lean, Armstrong had been with Calloway for more than a decade, and was next in line to have his picture hung on the conference room wall. “Call came in this morning from Todd Yarrow. He and Billy Richmond were cutting through the old Cascadia property to their duck blind when Hercules took off on a scent. Yarrow said they had a hell of a time getting him to come back. When he did, Hercules had something hanging from his mouth. Yarrow grabs it thinking it’s a stick and gets this white, slimy stuff on his hand. Billy says, ‘That’s a bone.’ They didn’t think much of it, figured Hercules dug up a deer carcass. Then Hercules takes off again, barking and making a hell of a racket. This time they chased after him and found him pawing at the ground. Yarrow couldn’t call him off. Finally had to grab him by the collar and pull him away, and that’s when he saw it.”

“Saw it?” Calloway asked.

Armstrong played with the buttons of his iPhone as he stepped around the table. Calloway removed the half-lens reading glasses from the pocket of his fishing vest—he could no longer thread the flies onto the line without them—slipped them on and took the phone, extending his arm to focus. Armstrong leaned over his shoulder and used his fingers to enlarge the picture. “Those white lines there, those are bones. It’s a foot.”

The bones were encased in dirt, like a fossil being unearthed. Armstrong flipped through a series of photographs showing the foot and the grave site from various distances and angles. “I told them to mark the spot and meet me at their vehicle. They had the bone in the back of Todd’s Jeep.” Armstrong slid his finger across the screen until he came to an image of a single bone beside a flashlight. “The anthropologist in Seattle wanted it to scale. She said it looks like a femur.”

Calloway glanced to the end of the room, but Vance Clark’s gaze remained focused on the table top. Calloway directed his question to Armstrong. “You called the medical examiner?”

Armstrong took back his phone and straightened. “They had me talk to a forensic anthropologist.” He checked his notes. “Kelly Rosa. She said they’d send a team, but they couldn’t get here till tomorrow morning. I had Tony sit on the site so no other animals could get to it. Going to need to send someone to relieve him.”

“She thinks it’s human?”

“Doesn’t know for certain, but she said it’s the right length for a femur, a female. And you see the white stuff, the slimy stuff Yarrow got on his hands?” Armstrong rechecked his notes. “She called it adipocere, decomposed body fat. Stinks like rotting meat. Body’s been there for a while.”

Calloway folded his cheaters and slipped them back into his vest. “You up for walking them through it when they get here?”

“Sure, no problem,” Armstrong said. “You going to be here too, Chief?”

Calloway stood. “I’ll be here.” He pulled open the door, in search of coffee. Armstrong’s next question stopped him.

“You think it could be her, Chief? You think it could be that girl went missing back in the nineties?”

Calloway looked past Armstrong to where Clark remained seated. “I guess we’re going to find out.”

CHAPTER 4

S
hafts of morning light filtered through the thick canopy of trees, casting shadows on the rock wall climbing straight up from the edge of the county road. A century before, tons of the mountain had been sheared away by dynamite, picks, and shovels to carve the road for mining trucks, revealing hidden springs that wept like tears down the stone face, streaking it with rust and silver mineral deposits. Tracy drove on autopilot, the radio off, her mind numb. The medical examiner’s office had not had further information. Kelly Rosa had been out of the office and the minion Tracy had spoken with could only confirm what Kins had told her—a deputy from Cedar Grove had called with a photo of what appeared to be a human femur, unearthed by a dog belonging to two hunters on their way to their duck blind in the hills above the town of Cedar Grove.