“No, it’s not. We don’t keep secrets from each other. And the only way that works is if we don’t yell at each other. Right?”
Christopher nodded.
“You can tell me anything, Christopher. Always know that. Okay?”
“I know,” he said.
She waited to see if he would. But Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“I love you,” he finally said.
“I love you, too.”
With that, she kissed his forehead, closed the door, and went down the hall. She turned on The Tonight Show to distract herself. The host told funny jokes, but Kate Reese didn’t laugh at any of them. She just looked at the screen, having a pretend fight with her son.
“You lied to me. You’re still not telling me everything. I know it. You know I know it. So, what the hell is going on inside that head of yours, Christopher?”
And as she closed her eyes for sleep, she could almost hear his answer.
That’s for me to know and you to find out.
Chapter 29
The sheriff entered the woods alone. It was Thursday night. The air didn’t feel like Thanksgiving. It was too warm, too dry, too perfectly wonderful. The only signs of autumn at all were the leaves. Yellow and red like blood. The trails were soft under his leather shoes. Quiet as a mouse.
Something was wrong.
It had been five days since the skeleton was discovered, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He thought about his old captain’s dog back in the Hill District. How every now and then, Shane would sit up and start barking for no reason. The captain would always say, “Quiet, boy. There’s nothing there.” But maybe there was something there. Dog whistles have a pitch that only dogs can hear.
Maybe there’s something that only dogs can see as well.
The sheriff didn’t understand why he was having those thoughts. He was a practical man. To him, this was an investigation like any other. Yes, it was a dead child, and that was a horrible tragedy. But it was nothing new to him. In the city, people die every week. Including children. In his old job, he’d seen children living in filth and closets and basements. He’d seen things so bad that it took the department shrink a couple of mandatory sessions to whitewash it out of his brain.
Except that little girl with the painted nails.
He’d never forget her.
But why was he thinking about her so much this week?
That he couldn’t explain.
Nor could he explain the voice inside him. Something that just said this case was important. That’s what people didn’t understand about police work. They see a crime committed on television and truly believe there are enough man-hours to throw ten full-time detectives at a single homicide. In the real world, choices were made. Resources allocated. The sheriff was good at that. Sometimes too good. But this time, something in him said to bet the farm. So, once the skeleton was discovered, the sheriff called in a favor.
His old friend Carl was as good at forensics as he was bad at physical exercise. And since they were investigating a child, the sheriff had asked Carl to come to the crime scene immediately, even though it was on a Sunday. Double time be damned. He wanted to know everything he could about this skeleton. If anyone could tell him, Carl could. The Feds at Langley had tried to poach him several times over the years, but Carl’s wife was a lot scarier than the FBI.
“The government can go screw itself, Carl. I’m not leaving my mum in Homestead!”
Case closed.
When Carl arrived at the scene, the two walked around and compared notes. Both of them thought it was a child of about seven or eight judging from the missing front teeth. And both of them thought the body had been buried a long time.
How else could you explain the tree roots wrapped around the body like a snake?
At the end of the evening, Carl and his team took the body away to do as much of an autopsy as they could. Carl said he had a full plate around the holidays, especially with his mother-in-law needing to be driven to mass three times a week, but he would try to squeeze in the work and get back to the sheriff by Friday.
The sheriff spent the rest of the week dealing with fallout. In the city, people don’t stop when they hear news of a dead body. But this was a small town. And in a