“Of course, but…” She seemed to be having trouble talking—that gag was still on her face. “Just answer one question. Was my father behind it all?”
He didn’t think so. Don had always told Jeremy they couldn’t tell Tug about the suitcase or anything else. But if he wasn’t making any sense, he had to be wrong. “I guess.”
The locks presented no problem. Whoever had attached them to the flimsy door hadn’t realized that the hinges could be pulled out with the claw side of a hammer, so the size and strength of the locks didn’t matter. They weren’t going to stop anyone who really wanted to get inside.
It took Isaac and Rusty less than ten minutes to remove them.
“This looks like Jeremy’s handiwork to me,” Rusty said as he shoved the last lock to the right so he could open the door.
Isaac had to agree. Surely if Don wanted to secure his valuables he would’ve done a better job.
Rusty turned to look back at him. “What do you think the big deal is?”
“Jeremy’s probably trying to protect some possession he’s afraid to lose, like that survival gear he’s always talking about.”
Rusty opened the door. “Or maybe it’s a blow-up doll he doesn’t want his father to know he has.”
They didn’t find any of those things. But once they poked through a few boxes filled with old bedding and household items that’d been stashed near the door, they discovered a suitcase shoved into the far corner, behind the furnace.
“I think you’d better get the sheriff,” Isaac said as soon as he saw it. There was no reason for it to be where it was. The color and style suggested that it belonged to a woman. And he remembered that Alana’s suitcase had gone missing the day she did.
But Rusty had come this far; he wasn’t about to stop before he’d had a look. He laid the suitcase on its side and popped the locks.
Inside, just as Isaac had feared, they found a skull and human bones, plus ragged shreds of cloth, sitting in some nasty-looking liquid inside a clear garbage bag.
“Oh, God!” The deputy drew back in disgust.
“It’s Alana.” They’d found Claire’s mother. The police would have to use dental records or some other way to identify her, but there was no question in Isaac’s mind.
“What’s she doing here?” Rusty wanted to know.
Isaac had no idea. But it made him uneasy. He’d left Claire with Jeremy in Libby, and it was clearly Jeremy who’d put all those locks on the crawl space door. Which implied that he had a pretty good idea of what was under the house.
A sick feeling settled in the pit of Isaac’s stomach. “You don’t think Jeremy’s capable of this kind of violence…?.”
Rusty couldn’t seem to remove his gaze from that bag. “Oh, hell, no. Jeremy would only have been sixteen when Alana went missing.”
Isaac had thought of that. But he’d always been big for his age. Strong as an ox, too.
“He never even fought back when he was picked on at school,” Rusty added. “Remember?”
Isaac remembered, all right. He’d had to fight Jeremy’s battles for him. Or Claire or David would threaten to go to the principal if the ridicule didn’t stop. Isaac couldn’t recall Rusty getting involved, but he’d never been much of a focal point for Isaac.
“So now that you’ve seen this, where do you think Don is?” Isaac asked.
The sight of those remains seemed to be getting to Rusty. A bead of sweat rolled down his face, even though it was cool under the house. “He could be on the run. We’ve been looking for him in conjunction with the break-in at Claire’s house. Maybe that spooked him.”
“What about the bullet in the wall?”
He wet his lips before answering. “I told you. That bullet doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Someone could’ve been cleaning a gun when it accidentally went off. It hit too high to have injured anyone.”
“You’ve seen this—” Isaac pointed at the suitcase and what was inside it “—and you’re still saying you don’t think what we saw upstairs is worth worrying about?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
Isaac grabbed his flashlight and angled it into the corners. His breath caught in his throat when he spotted an area where someone had been doing some digging. “Look at that.”
Rusty glanced over and grimaced.
“Looks like a grave to me,” Isaac said.
“I don’t feel so good. I gotta get out of here.” Rusty hurried for the entrance but got only as far as the boxes by the door before throwing up. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he mumbled, presumably talking about the body in the suitcase. He wiped his mouth. “I’ll never forget it.”
Isaac knew he wouldn’t, either. He was afraid they’d find an equally ghoulish sight if they did a little excavating. But he was too worried about Claire to start digging. He kept telling himself that Jeremy was as childlike and innocent as he seemed…?.
Regardless he wasn’t sticking around. He was heading back to Libby. Rusty was right; he wasn’t a sheriff’s deputy. Lincoln County’s finest could take over from here.
The smell of bile completed what Isaac knew would be one of the worst moments of his life. He gagged and thought he might be sick, too—until Rusty distracted him by calling from the stairs. The deputy said something like, “You coming? How can you stay under there?”
But Isaac never got the chance to answer. A gunshot rang out above.
“Rusty?” Isaac yelled.
There was no answer. He heard a thump, thump, thump as if someone had just fallen down the stairs. Then silence.
“You have to untie me.” Claire had been trying her best to make mental notes about how long Jeremy drove and in which directions. But without being able to sit up and see any landmarks, she’d probably only confuse herself if and when she had the opportunity to navigate her way out.
Her best bet was to convince him to turn around. Except that she wasn’t sure he knew how to get back. He’d been driving randomly, and he was becoming more unhinged as the minutes ticked by. He was almost delusional at this point, mumbling about zombies and bears and her mother waiting to get out of the trunk.
The most coherent thing he said was that they were going to get married and live together out here in the wilderness. But he couldn’t tell her what they’d eat or drink—apparently, he had no food or water, even for the short-term—or what they’d do for heat in the very cold winters. He was living in his own little world, and if she couldn’t get him to see reality, they’d both wind up wandering around in the forest until they died of hunger or thirst or fell prey to some wild animal.