Spirit (26 page)

Timmy sucked in a shivering breath of air. His chin trembled. “Daddy was hurt here. Daddy was hurt bad.”

I ran my hand over Timmy’s shorn hair, trying to comfort him. “What do you mean?”

And he opened his fist. “Lookit,” he said again. “Look what I found in the dirt. It was shining in the dark. I thought it was a diamond.”

Sam and I gazed at the object lying on Timmy’s dusty palm. It was a tooth. A human tooth.

“My God—” Sam didn’t finish the sentence. I guess he figured it didn’t need finishing.

The crowbar we had found flashed in my mind.
The fucking crowbar.

I tried to pluck the tooth from Timmy’s hand, but he quickly pulled back and wrapped it safely inside his tiny fist again. “It’s mine,” he said. “It belonged to Daddy. That makes it mine.”

I tried to give him a reassuring smile and bury my own fear at the same time. “You’re right. I’m sorry. It is yours, and no one else’s. But tell us where you found it. Can you do that?”

Sam squeezed up close to me, both of us staring intently at the boy. “Yes,” Sam said, “tell us
exactly
where you found it. Please, Timmy. It’s important.”

Timmy pointed to the unturned ground in the corner. It was the spot from where we had moved the broken slabs of concrete. The only place we hadn’t dug.

“There,” he said. Another tear skittered down Timmy’s cheek. “I think—”

“What,” Sam asked, groaning his way to his feet. “
What
do you think?”

I stood with him. We were too tired to squat for long. Our legs were too sore. Together we waited for Timmy to answer.

Clutching the tooth in his fist, and holding his fist to his heart, Timmy gazed up at each of us in turn. First Sam, then me. The house stood silent above our heads, as if as eager to hear what Timmy had to say as we were.

Dropping his eyes from us, Timmy turned and stared down at the ground where he had pointed. “I think Daddy’s still there,” he said in a hoarse whisper, fighting back a sob. “I think that’s where he sleeps. All alone in the dirt. I think… that’s why he’s sad.”

My pulse thundered in my head. I stared at the unchurned earth at my feet. Sam watched me, wondering what I was going to say, what I was going to do. I had no choice. There was only one option. We would have to dig. We would have to dig and dig until we solved this mystery once and for all. But not with Timmy here. No way.

We would have to put him to bed first.

Without consulting Sam, I scooped Timmy into my arms. “Come on, kiddo. It’s time for bed.”

Timmy seemed exhausted. He didn’t even argue. He simply nodded and reached out his arms for Thumper. Sam lifted the dog and placed her in the boy’s arms.

“Come on,” Sam said, his hand on Timmy’s shoulder, his eyes burning into mine, filled with sympathy and sorrow—and excitement. God forgive me, but I think that same sense of excitement was burning in my eyes too. We were about to learn the truth, and we both knew it. It was all we could do to hide our exhilaration from Timmy.

But while there was exhilaration, for me there was also fear. Fear of the truths we were about to unearth. Literally. If Timmy’s father was indeed buried in the ground at our feet, then who had put him there? And how could it be anything but wrongful death?

Murder. How could it be anything but murder?

Lost in our separate thoughts, we carried Timmy up the stairs, through the ground floor of the house, and up the second flight of stairs to Sam’s bedroom. Just like Bugs Bunny told us to do.

God, I hoped I would never have to explain that Bugs Bunny part to the police.

I pulled off Timmy’s trousers and shirt and tucked him into Sam’s bed in his Marvin the Martian undershorts, dirty feet and all. I rattled off a litany of nonsensical words while I smoothed the sheet over him and laid Thumper at his side. “You’re on vacation, kid. You get the night off from tooth-brushing and butt-scrubbing and pajama-wearing and all that other stuff you usually have to do. You’re tired. You can barely hold your eyes open. Sam and I are going to do some work downstairs. You sleep. Everything will look better in the morning. Thumper’s here to protect you, all right?”

Timmy nodded, his eyes heavy. He still clutched the tooth in his hand. I didn’t mention it, and neither did he. So I let it stay where it was, wrapped snugly and lovingly in his warm little hand.

Tears sparkled in Timmy’s crystal-blue eyes yet again. A dimple appeared in his chin as he fought the urge to cry. “Will Daddy be okay?”

I patted his cheek and gave him a wink, all the while fighting back a sob of my own. “Sure, honey. Daddy’ll be just fine.”

He turned up his little mouth and gave me a weary smile. “Good,” he said as he snuggled into the pillow and closed his eyes.

Sam quietly set up the baby monitor on the nightstand by the bed and turned it on.

I switched off the light, and Sam and I moved to the door. I wasn’t sure, but I thought Timmy was already asleep.

I was wrong.

As we closed the bedroom door quietly behind us, Timmy spoke from the slash of moonlight shining through the window onto the bed.

“Uncle Jason, Uncle Sam?”

“Yes?” I answered. “What is it, Timmy?”

“Watch out for the bad man,” he said. “Daddy says he’ll be here soon.”

What the hell does he mean by that?

I stared at Sam.

“He’s half asleep. He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” Sam whispered, clutching my shoulder, his lips to my ear.

I nodded for Sam’s benefit, but I wasn’t so sure I agreed with him.

“All right, Timmy,” I said, loud enough for the boy to hear, but not loud enough to wake him if he was beginning to doze off. “We’ll be careful. Now go to sleep.”

We waited for a handful of heartbeats, and when Timmy didn’t speak another word, I gently pulled the door closed until it clicked. I stepped to an antique secretary standing alone in the hallway, and from the top drawer, I extracted a key. It was a skeleton key that fit every lock in the house. I returned to Sam’s bedroom door and locked it.

When I was satisfied Timmy was safely locked inside, just like we had been instructed by that wascally goddamn wabbit, I dropped the key in my pocket.

Afraid to speak, afraid to voice our fears, Sam and I headed back to the basement. I grabbed the baby monitor from my bedroom on the way. No matter what lay ahead, I was determined Timmy would remain safe.

Nothing else mattered.

Except the “bad man.” What had Timmy meant by
that?

Who the hell is the bad man?

I
GRABBED
the pick and just as quickly set it back down. “Sam, I can’t use the pick here. What if I…
hit
him?” I shuddered. Only after I spoke the words did I fully admit to myself I believed it all now. I believed everything Sam had believed from the beginning. Paul was still here. He had never left this house.

Sam shuddered too, considering what I’d said. “We’ll use the shovel, then. And we’ll dig carefully. Okay?”

I nodded, rubbing the goose bumps from my arms. “Okay.”

I stared at the ground, my attention snagged by a tiny rill of dirt shifting beside my foot. It was moving by itself. I watched as a tiny avalanche of pebbles and earth buried my toe. What was going on? Why was the ground moving?

“Feel it?” Sam asked, clutching my arm. “Feel the house trembling?”

I ducked as beams creaked in the ceiling above our heads. It sounded like the house was gently settling—or quivering in anticipation
.
From beneath the stairs leading up to the service porch, I heard the hum of the baby monitor where we had plugged it in. Timmy’s room was silent, reassuring me the boy was still safe. The crackly static generated by the monitor, the mindless white sound it cast out across the basement, was like a promise to me that Timmy could come to no harm without my knowing.

We stood quietly, my hand at the back of Sam’s neck, waiting for the house to stop shuddering around us. Finally, it did. The creaking walls and ceiling once again grew still. Expectant. Only the reassuring hum of the baby monitor was left behind.

Sam laid the tip of the shovel to the dirt and drove it into the ground with his foot. He grunted as he turned up a spadeful of soil and tossed it a few feet away. He had a relieved expression on his face I fully understood.
He hadn’t hit anything.

“Oh, Jesus, Jason. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.” It was the first time Sam had shown any uncertainty at all. It astounded me to hear it now.

“Want to call the police?” I asked. “Want to let them take it from here?”

Sam shook his head. “No. What if we’re wrong?”

“But we’re not wrong,” I said.

Sam glowered. “I know.”

The line of his mouth narrowed in determination. His brow furrowed. He drove the shovel into the ground again, pressing it deep with his foot, once again tossing the upturned soil aside to keep it out of the way.

Sam hit a hard patch of earth so I moved in with my pick and carefully broke the ground up for him. Then I stepped back and let him go to work with the shovel again.

As he worked, I saw a tear slide down Sam’s cheek. “That tooth,” he muttered, his voice warped and raw with emotion. “What did Paul go through before… the end?”

I moved in and wrapped my arms around Sam, bringing his digging to a halt. He melted into me, letting me soak up his heartbreak, glad to be rid of it maybe. Glad to be sharing it. And I
did
feel it leak into me. But it wasn’t the only misery I felt. My heart was breaking too.

I stroked Sam’s back and whispered into his ear. We were both trembling with exhaustion and emotion. “I don’t understand what could have brought it all on, Sam. What happened that changed Paul from a doting husband and father to a—to a
victim
? How did so much evil enter into this house? There was a new baby. A young couple. Lives waiting to be led. And then—what? Murder? Cold-blooded murder? Out of nowhere? What the hell brought it on?”

Sam could only shake his head, as confused by it all as I was. While we both seemed to have a handle on the reality of what had happened here, we still had no idea of the cause of it all.

And could Sally really be involved? Could my sister really lift that crowbar and swing it at the man who fathered her child? Smashing his face, breaking his teeth? Killing him? It was impossible to comprehend such a thing. But if she had, could she then turn around and bury the body like so much garbage. Even go to the trouble of hiring masons to construct a wall across her basement, sealing the gravesite away from prying eyes for what she hoped would be forever? Explaining the wall away as an upgrade to the property? Then selling the house, the ground, the grave,
the body
to her own brother as if nothing had happened here at all? Could Sally do that?

Could anyone do that?
And if Sally did do it, how in God’s name could she live with the guilt? She had loved Paul once. She must have. Could she really take his life and then simply go on with her own, never looking back? Never considering the ramifications of her actions?

And what about her son? What about Timmy? Could she take such an important piece of his life away and never let him know what a wonderful man his father had been? Even go so far as to cut off the rest of Paul’s family from the boy? Or did she do that to put Paul out of her mind? Was that the only way she could deal with the guilt of what she had done? The fewer reminders that Paul had ever existed at all, the easier it would be?

Could it really be that simple? That cold and that simple?

Sam pressed his stubbly cheek to mine. He kissed me, then gently pushed me away.

“Let’s get back to work. Let’s finish this. I want this night to be over.”

“All right,” I said and stepped back. “Let me soften the ground for you.”

He allowed me to stab the earth repeatedly with my heavy pick until I could barely lift it one more time; then he stepped in and took over, once again shoveling the dirt away, tossing it to the side. While he dug, the house remained silent, looming over us like a great bird of prey. Waiting. The baby monitor hummed its silent white song under the stairs. I could picture Timmy sleeping alongside his best friend, his troubles hopefully forgotten. For a while.

The tooth of his murdered father still clutched in his tiny fist.

Perhaps an hour later, Sam drove his spade into the pungent earth, and we heard the hollow thump of what sounded like the shovel striking a wooden box.

The sound startled us so, we froze like statues, staring at the ground at Sam’s feet. When we reclaimed our senses, I grabbed the pole lamp in the corner and dragged it closer. We looked in the hole Sam had been digging and saw a narrow expanse of leather and wood. It appeared to be the top of a treasure chest. Then I realized what it really was.

It was an old steamer trunk.

Sam tapped it with the shovel again. It rang hollow in the ground.

He scraped the shovel over the top of it, carefully exposing more and more of the trunk as he worked. The leather strips on the top of the trunk appeared rotten. The shovel peeled them off as if they were hardly connected to the wood at all. I saw a buckle. A brass buckle, green and corroded with age and moisture. Then another. The top of the steamer trunk was rounded and fat. I wondered if it had belonged to the old lady who owned the house before Sally. Perhaps it had been in the basement when Sally bought the property from her.

But what was it doing here, buried in the ground? And how could I be dumb enough to even ask myself that question?

What the fuck did I
think
it was doing here buried in the ground?

“Oh lord, Sam.” My heart was in my throat. I had the horrible sensation of being on the verge of heaving my guts out. That realization made me think,
Crime scene. Don’t do it. Don’t puke. For Christ’s sake, don’t puke.

Oh God.

“He’s here,” Sam said. His tears were falling once again. He had a stunned expression on his face, as if he had really not believed any of it until this very moment. As if it had been a game. Just a game. “He’s here at our feet, Jason. My brother. Paul. He’s here in front of us.”