“Your daddy was a hero,” Ruth said to Megan.
So much a hero, the cemetery didn’t have enough parking. A good number of people missed the final prayer before Dustin Atkins was lowered into the ground. They only got to see Megan carrying her daddy’s flag back to the limo. Finally, the family returned to the funeral home where Ruth signed one final paper.
She’d just taken care of Dustin for the last time.
Twenty minutes later, she pulled into the driveway of the house she and Dustin had shared. Cars lined the streets of her neighborhood, spilling around the corner. Dustin’s friends, her friends, were bringing food. Megan had the back door opened before the car completely stopped.
Ruth’s mother could only utter, “Oh, my,” as they crossed the lawn and finally entered the house to find a banquet of casseroles, fried chicken, chips, so much food they wouldn’t need to cook for a week. And in the kitchen, there was Sam trying to find room in the refrigerator for some hard-boiled eggs while Rosa washed dishes at the sink.
Rosa was noticeably alone, even as her church friends patted her on the back and whispered encouragement. Suspicion’s cloak might as well have been colored bright red. It was clear that the community was not only doubtful as to her involvement in Dustin’s murder, but also as to how Ruth might react to seeing Rosa in her kitchen.
“Miss Rosie,” Megan cried, running over to her beloved friend. “You’re here.”
And that was when Ruth knew she hadn’t just taken care of Dustin for the last time. She still had one more thing to do: find his killer.
SEVEN
Ruth’s mother hustled the last visitor out the door just after nine o’clock, picked up her crochet and settled on the couch to watch a legal thriller rerun. Ruth changed out of her black clothes and a few minutes later she stood staring at the mounds of food littering her kitchen.
It would take them a year to make a dent in all this. She took a tentative step toward the table where bags of chips and a stack of canned goods waited. She looked around the kitchen for someplace different to set them, then put them back down. She couldn’t do this, rearrange the food in the kitchen, act normally.
Where had this exhaustion come from? Burying her husband today? Finding her husband last week? Worrying about her husband the last few years? It was a good thing she’d learned to pray because prayer was the only thing that would give her any comfort tonight.
Three years of wondering was over. It was time to go on with “let go and let God” as Sam would say. First she wanted God to let her go find Dustin’s killer. No, second she wanted God to let her go find Dustin’s killer, first she wanted God to help her take good care of the daughter Dustin left behind.
Turning off the kitchen light, she tiptoed down the hall to check on Megan. The little girl had fallen asleep hours ago while the house still bustled with activity. Stuffed with the food and attention of those who loved her, she’d just plain worn out.
Ruth stood in Megan’s doorway, listening to the gentle breathing, and then she headed out to the garage, to her office. Three years ago she’d moved her mother into Dustin’s office, and Dustin’s office out here. Back then, for a solid week, while her mother got to know Megan, Ruth had gone through each and every one of Dustin’s notes, looking for information about the Santellises and writing everything in notebooks. She knew they were the murderers. Later, convinced there was nothing left to discover, she’d packed up his files and stored them in the crawl-space sized attic. She didn’t need them anymore; she’d started taking her own notes on the Santellises.
Now was as good a time as any to open up the files that had been gathering dust for almost a year. It looked as though Rosa needed her, but this time it seemed that Rosa’s plight had something to do with Dustin.
The last time she’d written anything down had been when she testified for Eric Santellis. Her testimony helped release him. She’d thrown up afterward.
Her mother opened the door that separated the garage from the laundry room. “Please don’t tell me it’s starting again.”
“What?”
“You, the notebooks, the search for answers, this obsession with the Santellises and the town of Broken Bones.” Carolyn gripped the door so hard, Ruth thought maybe her mother was about to faint.
“I need to know what happened.”
“But Ruthie, some things are better left alone.”
“Like what? The fact that someone moved Dustin’s body, put it in a shed, next to another body that somehow wound up there, and now the local authorities think they can blame Rosa? I have six weeks of leave. I intend to find the murderer this time.”
Her mother shook her head and slowly closed the door. How many times had Ruth seen the exact same move whenever her father was acting out? Mom had retreat down to a fine art. Not so Ruth. First, she pulled out the maps Dustin had kept of the area. He probably knew as much about the area as anyone. Some of Dustin’s earliest maps were yellow-and-brown with age and looked as if a ten-year-old had made a pencil drawing. They showed the old mines, a small town, long-eradicated tunnels and only two roads. The latest map was a few years old and was not only in color but also glossy. There were quite a few more roads.
How had Dustin’s body gotten to that shed? In the trunk of somebody’s car? In a bag? From which direction? Closing her eyes, she could see the outskirts of Broken Bones as it was almost two decades ago when she lived there. It was a brown, ugly town that smelled like hot cement and sweat. A sign at the city limits boasted a population of just over five hundred.
She spent two years of her life in Broken Bones. Years that centered around a drab house, a lonely school, a bar, a sheriff’s office and a grocery store—in that order. The house was as brown and ugly as the town. She’d attended Thomas T. Mallery Elementary School for third and fourth grades. Her one-and-only friend had been Ricky Mason. Elizabeth Winters, Doc’s wife, had been her third-grade teacher. When Ruth’s mother worked late cleaning for the Winters family, Ruth saw what a family meal looked like. It’s was Ruth’s first introduction to the prayer before meals. Doc had always said it, and Mrs. Winters’d said “Amen.”
Pictures, of the Winterses’ grown children and their children, had lined their walls. A time line of family antiques filled the shelves. Ruth knew even in fourth grade that she wanted what the Winters had.
What she didn’t want was what she had. Namely, a father who couldn’t stay out of trouble and who preferred Axel’s Bar to home. “Just going to town,” Darryl George would tell his wife many an afternoon. “I’ll pick up some milk.” Sometimes, as if to prove his story, he’d take Ruth with him. A few times, he even remembered the milk. More often than not, he forgot about his daughter sitting there, outside the bar, waiting, on the sidewalk. Sometimes she still felt like that lonely, lost girl, picking herself up off the sideway and walking home, believing in the ghosts of Broken Bones the whole way.
The jail was another establishment Ruth knew well. True, she’d visited it plenty after Dustin disappeared, but she’d known it two decades earlier, as well. It was the only two-story building in Broken Bones. Two cells were upstairs. The main floor housed offices, a waiting room, booking room, etc. All the rooms the general public expected to see. The basement had one cell and storage.
Ruth’s dad had always been upstairs. His crimes were enough to build his reputation as a petty criminal but not enough to warrant moving him to Florence or Perryville Prison. He’d turn over in his grave now if he knew his daughter was an officer of the law.
“You need to go to bed.” Her mother appeared again.
Ruth glanced down at the maps and at the file labeled Broken Bones. She hadn’t even opened it. She’d been lost in her own history instead of Dustin’s. “I hate Broken Bones,” she whispered.
Carolyn nodded.
“And