Page 102 of ILY
He makes a noise to get my attention. ‘Tell me,’ he begs.
I nod. ‘A few decades ago, some people went missing. The last place they were seen was here. At your mother’s farm. A few years after that, another man went missing. There’s a pattern, and I think I’ve found some evidence that might prove the last person to ever see them alive was your mom.’
Rain says nothing, his face blank. Then he swallows thickly. He looks…afraid. Not surprised, but not guilty.
‘Is there anything you can tell me about her?’
He shakes his head.
I nod and take another breath for my final question. ‘Is there anything you think you might know about the missing people?’
He pales slightly, his hand shaking as he lifts it, forms a fist, and tips it forward. ‘Yes.’
What Rain knows is a lot of speculation from the perspective of a child. He was ten when his dad took him away for good. It was already a struggle for him to be at his mom’s, who didn’t sign, and Rain hadn’t learned to lipread until he was in high school.
He was in her house without any method of communication and no access to anyone or anything since she never went into the city and didn’t know her neighbors.
‘One night, right after I turned ten, she sent me to bed early with no dinner because I wouldn’t use my voice,’ he explained tome near the end of the call. ‘I was hungry, so snuck downstairs after all the lights were out. I was scared because I knew things made noise, but I didn’t really understand how at that time. But I was careful. I grabbed a bowl of fruit from the kitchen table and started to go back up to my room when she came in through the cellar door. She had dirt all over her—in her nails, in her hair.’
He was very clearly distressed by the memory.
‘She had something dark brown on her legs. It looked like blood, but I wasn’t sure. In the morning, I tried to get into the cellar, but it wouldn’t budge. She caught me and looked at me like she knew I’d seen her.’
That answered my question about when the door was sealed.
‘When my dad came to pick me up the week after, I begged him not to let me go back. She never asked to see me again. I would visit for holidays if the guilt got to me. But she became different in the last few years before she died.’
‘If you were asked if you think she could have done this,’ I asked him right before ending the interview, ‘what would you say?’
‘I would say that anyone is capable of anything…especially her.’
Rain agreed to speak to another investigator in the case, and I promised he’d be given a professional interpreter when it happened who was not his cousin. He gave me his work email, and then the call ended.
Now I’m sitting at the table with more suspicion laid at Lynda’s feet, but no concrete proof she did anything except dig in the dirt and seal a door shut.
Rising from the chair, I grab my phone and shove it into my pocket, then head outside. Leaf left me the keys to the shed on a hook, so I snag those from the wall, then make my way across the grounds, scanning the horizon.
There’s so much property here, I don’t know how long it’s going to take, or if the Bureau is going to bother spending money and resources digging around. I need to find more than a tooth and a bin full of shoes and photos. I’ve sent copies of the potential victims to one of my friends in forensics, but I haven’t heard back yet, so I currently have zero leads.
God, I don’t want to upend Leaf’s world for nothing, and I realize I care way more about what this will do to him than solving some big case before I leave. Personal growth, maybe? Or is this just the way people feel when they fall in love?
Unlocking the shed, I step inside, and it looks much the same as it did when I put the plants in there. They’re on the table, waiting to be transplanted into the ground, and I check the moisture of the dirt before grabbing a shovel from the wall and heading back out.
I have no idea where to start. I march over to the concrete stamp that was meant to hold the underground silo, and I know there’s not a chance in hell that I’m going to be able to dig any of that up.
And then my eyes spot something to the right of it. There’s a ton of wild grass growing, but there’s also a mound of dirt. I peer down into the hole and realize it’s one of Michael’s little tunnels.
“What have you been doing, you little shit?”
Suddenly, there’s a loud noise—it’s high-pitched, right in the range that I can hear it almost perfectly. I stand up, not quite sure what direction it’s coming from or what the hell could make a sound like that.
But it doesn’t take me long to see what it is.
Michael is standing up on his back legs about a hundred feet away from me, and he’s got something in his mouth. My glasses are inside, so this far away, I can’t make it out, but my stomach does that thing it’s always done when I’m right on the verge of discovering something real.
I walk slowly, afraid he’ll take off, but he doesn’t move. He just sits there until his fuzzy brown form starts to get more and more clear. And so does what he’s holding.
He blinks at me with his big, inky eyes, then opens his mouth, and it falls to the ground. His nose twitches, and before I can react, he’s gone.
