“Stay here,” she said to Tyler, and grabbed her phone as she fled the room.
She was almost out of breath by the time she reached the front door and opened it wide to find Detective Marissa Hardy standing there. Hardy had already noticed the bloody door handle.
“Ms. Keeling,” Hardy said. “Where is your brother?”
“Tyler?” she said, noticing that there were two uniformed officers standing behind the detective and three police cars on the street in front of the house.
Hardy already appeared to have run out of patience. “Do you have another brother, Ms. Keeling?”
“What do you want with Tyler?” Jayne asked.
Hardy waved an envelope in front of Jayne’s face. “We have a warrant for his arrest. Is he here?”
Jayne couldn’t find the words.
“Are there any weapons on the premises?” Hardy asked.
“No, of course not,” Jayne said. “This is ridiculous. Tyler wouldn’t hurt—”
“You believe he’s hurt someone?” Hardy asked. “Is there a reason why you think we’re here because Tyler hurt someone?”
Jayne was, once again, speechless.
Hardy pushed past her. The two uniformed officers followed.
“Please,” Jayne said, on the edge of weeping. “Please be gentle with him.”
She couldn’t bear to see it happen. She stepped out the front door, held up her phone, and called Andrew again. But this time the call immediately went to voice mail.
“Andrew, please, please call me,” she said. “They’re taking him away. They’ve come for Tyler.”
Even though she was outside, Jayne could hear scuffling and shouting up on the second floor. Then Tyler, screaming.
“Get your fuckin’ hands off me! I didn’t do anything! I only wanted to talk to her!”
Moments later, Hardy and the two officers emerged from the house with Tyler, his wrists cuffed behind him. Tears streamed down his face.
Jayne ran after him as he was bundled into the back of one of the police cars.
“It’s going to be okay!” she shouted. “I’ll find out what’s going on! I’m going to get you out of this!”
“I didn’t do it!” he kept shouting. “I didn’t!”
Tyler, once seated in the back of the car, turned and pressed his face to the window. His eyes were red with tears as he looked pleadingly at his sister.
She placed her hand on the glass. “Hang in there,” she said. “Just hang in there.”
An officer got behind the wheel and the car pulled away, Tyler twisting around so that he could see his sister out the rear window. Jayne, overwhelmed, felt on the verge of collapse. And then it happened. Slowly she crumpled, her legs weakening. She placed a hand on the pavement to keep her upper half upright.
She looked up and saw Detective Hardy standing there.
“How could you?” Jayne said. “What on earth do you think he’s done?”
“We’re arresting him in connection with a homicide,” the detective said.
“A homicide?” Jayne said disbelievingly. “Who?”
Hardy hesitated. “That picture I showed you on Saturday? The woman at Andrew’s old address? Her.”
“Brie,” Jayne whispered. “Brie Mason.”
Hardy extended a hand and helped Jayne get back to her feet.
“This woman’s name is Candace DiCarlo,” Hardy said. “Lived in a house over on Rosemont.”
Jayne blinked. “But... I don’t understand. I thought you said it was Brie.”
“I said it was the woman in the picture. But that woman isn’t Brie.”
“Are you sure? It’s not Brie, but this other woman — Candace? — with her identity?”
Hardy, stone-faced, said, “We’re in the early stages of our investigation, Ms. Keeling. I’m sorry. There’s not much I can tell you at this point.” She paused. “Do you know a good lawyer? Because your brother is going to need one.”
Jayne shook her head.
The detective sighed and gave Jayne a sympathetic look. “We can place him at the scene. He was witnessed riding away, covered in blood. He’s in a lot of trouble, Ms. Keeling. If I were you, I’d hire the best.”
The detective went back into the house, presumably, Jayne figured, to collect evidence.
This time, instead of phoning Andrew, she typed out a text. All caps. Two words.
BIG TROUBLE
It failed to deliver.
Forty-Six
Andrew
When my cell phone rang, the sound coming from the front pocket of my jeans, Matt perked up.
“Toss it over,” he said.
I got out the phone, saw that it was Jayne calling, then threw it over to Matt. It landed in the leaves. Matt bent over, grabbed it, then circled around me to reach the huge rock. Holding the phone screen down, he slammed it onto a jagged outcropping of the rock’s surface three times before he was satisfied it was dead. Then he pocketed it.
“Carry on,” he said.
I’d moved to the new dig location, only a couple of steps over from where I’d made the first hole. While my idea to start digging in a new spot had been simply to buy time, Matt was considering the possibility he’d had me start in the wrong place. I was ready to shovel a hole as broad as a tennis court if there was a chance it might give me time to figure out how to keep Matt from killing me.
I dug the blade into the ground and turned over some dirt. If the blade didn’t connect with bone — Jesus, the idea of whose bones it would be made my head swim — once I’d gone down twelve inches, I’d ask Matt whether he wanted to consider a third location.
“Anything?” Matt asked.
“No. You can take over anytime you want.”
Then it was his turn to have a cell phone go off. He took out his phone, glanced at the screen, rejected the call. I stopped and looked at him
“Wife,” he said.
If only he were closer. I’d fling some dirt in his face, try to temporarily blind him. Long enough to either tackle him and try to get the gun from him, or hit him over the head with the blade. Go in sideways, open the son of a bitch’s skull like a melon.
But what I actually did was drive the shovel into the ground for what felt like the thousandth time. “What if—”
I hit something.
A sliver of something gray-white, and what looked like nearly disintegrated fabric, could be seen through the dirt.
Matt took a step forward, still keeping his distance, but close enough to see that maybe I’d found something.
“Now we’re into detail work,” he said. “Hands and knees.”
I crouched down, the forest floor feeling cool on my knees even through my jeans. I began the process of scooping away dirt, a handful at a time, as though I were on some archaeological dig. Slowly, what looked like a rib cage began to materialize.
“I need a minute,” I said, and sat back on my butt.
“Don’t get all fucking weepy on me.”
That wasn’t going to be easy. I was overwhelmed. I’d seen more than a few movies where someone had been forced to dig his own grave, but I couldn’t recall one where a man was expected to dig up his own wife. I put my soil-smeared hands over my eyes and took a few breaths.
“Come on, let’s do this,” Matt said. From where he stood, he tried to get a better look at what I’d uncovered. “This is good. Means she didn’t crawl out or anything like that. Now we just have to make sure I didn’t grab the wrong person.”
“I left my DNA kit in the truck,” I said. “Wait here, I’ll go get it.”
“Funny,” Matt said. “Keep going.”
I resumed digging, shifting my attention to where I figured the head would be. Slowly, I began to uncover what appeared to be a forehead, then eye sockets. Wisps of hair. A head. I was still hoping that maybe, despite the odds, this skull, and the skeleton it was connected to, could not be Brie. That somehow this was someone else, however unlikely that seemed. That maybe that woman who’d mysteriously appeared during the weekend really was my wife.