Better left buried, p.19
Better Left Buried, page 19
I’m probably overreacting. I hope I am.
“I hope she’s okay,” Gus says as I push the door open.
There’s sincerity in his voice, but still. Still. I let the door slam behind me.
I swing my leg over my bike and roar off down the road, not caring that the rain is nearly torrential, that it whips my hood back and soaks me to the bone, that I can scarcely see a few yards in front of me.
I drive all the way up the long, winding road to the gate at the end and stare through at the mansion, silhouetted against dark gray clouds. It looks as if the house itself is glaring at me, demanding to know why I’m here, what I want.
Where is she? I want to scream, at the house, at the family inside that has taken so much from me. Where is Lucy?
I drive back down the mountain, slowing my pace and staring into the trees as I pass.
As if I would be able to see more than a few feet in on a good day. As if there are any footprints left now that the rain has washed everything away.
When I reach town, I loop around each road, down to each dead end. I pass the diner slowly, peer inside in case I missed her somehow, in case she found her way here by some happy accident.
Nothing.
Lucy vanished, and I wasn’t there to stop it.
So then I do the thing that scares me more than anything else ever has.
I drive back up that winding road, higher and higher into the forest, and then, finally, down the abandoned lane that leads to the empty lake, the husk of a park. Alone.
In the rain, at nightfall.
There is new crime scene tape at the edge of the park, near all the old TRESPASSERS KEEP OUT signs, so I walk my bike into the underbrush, where it won’t be visible if someone parks in the lot.
It would be worth it if I found her. If I found anything.
And because I am desperate now, I hop off my bike and race across the park, down the uneven path toward the roller coaster. In my head, the memories come alive—teacups swirling faster than they should, carousel horses bobbing manically, disjointed music playing faster and faster. The roller coaster creaking to life.
Lucy, I scream over and over again. Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.
I approach the roller coaster, the platform, the bloodstain.
How many more will this place take from me?
Lucy, Lucy, Lucy.
But there’s no one there.
Any trace of footprints has vanished, and even the bloodstain in the pavement is beginning to wash away.
Finally, when I have searched in every corner of this damn park, I turn and walk back toward my bike, trying to push aside the small noises I hear in the darkening park. The whisper of something stepping on last year’s dead leaves, muted by the sound of the rain. The crack of a twig in the forest, barely audible above the spring storm. The creak of a roller coaster that isn’t, couldn’t be moving.
I’m just about to haul my bike back out to the parking lot when the crunch of tires stops me.
Lucy, I want to shout, but of course it’s not.
It’s the sheriff’s car.
Cliff steps out, looking around carefully.
I crouch in the thicket of trees, keeping myself as still as possible, my heart slamming against my ribs. It’s not weird for him to be here, of course, but the way he’s looking around—careful, watchful, as if making sure he is unseen.
He walks slowly, still looking around him as if searching for signs of life.
I trail along the edge of the woods, shadowing his footsteps. When it becomes impossible to hide under the cover of trees, I slip behind the carousel, crouching near a molding unicorn whose sparkly harness has darkened with lichen.
It creaks gently, and I bite back a gasp at the noise.
Cliff is at the base of the roller coaster now, searching carefully in the mud. He paces back and forth, back and forth, squatting and then running his fingers through the earth.
If Lucy was here, she’d be inching forward, snapping pictures, chattering my ear off. So I take the picture of Cliff hunched over in the mud, running his fingers back and forth as he searches for something he clearly expects to be there, unsure of what it could mean. And then, my hands trembling, I sneak back out of the park.
But when I reach my bike, the air is leaking from both tires.
A slash mark runs along both edges, deliberate, deep.
Someone took a knife and cut these while I snuck through the park following Cliff. Which means someone was watching us both.
And now I’m stranded here in the dark.
The high beams of a car cut the darkness, their light distorted by the rain.
Maybe the Anselms have come to kill me. To take revenge.
Maybe Cliff has come to arrest me.
I can’t bring myself to run, to care, to move at all.
I am crouched on the concrete next to the fading bloodstain, staring up at the roller coaster. The metal beams bisect the rain-black sky.
They are there with me, Dad and Pierce Anselm. Eyes bulging, necks blue. Heads bleeding.
I hear voices, but I can’t hear what they are saying. It’s as if the lake has returned, filling the hollow, and drowning the old amusement park and me with it. As if I’m underwater, and the people calling my name are far, far above.
Audrey, their voices blur with the sound of the roller coaster, the music from the carousel, the wind whipping through the park. Audrey, Audrey, Audrey.
Like I called for Lucy today as I ran through the park. It feels like a hundred years ago.
And then Lucy is in front of me, cupping my face in her hands and speaking to me.
Can you hear me? she shouts. Audrey, I’m here. I’m here. You’re safe.
And then I can hear everything. Rain on dead leaves. The motor of a car. Lucy’s voice. The creak of the old roller coaster above me, a gentle sort of groan.
The cups and carousel are not moving, empty of people, empty of everything. They are not careening down the old tracks, the rusted metal is not creaking and screaming above me like I had thought.
Lucy tugs my hand, trying to reach me, trying to pull me back.
Her mom, standing behind her with a flashlight, looks pale, too.
I’m sorry, I’m telling them, over and over again. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
And I can’t tear my eyes off the bloodstain beside me.
Lucy. 9:17 p.m.
It takes a long time for us to get the whole story out of Audrey. We found her crouched beside the puddle of blood and rainwater where Pierce Anselm died last week.
We take her back to the motel, and after a hot shower, a meal, and a long, long time staring at empty space, she tells us. That she went looking for me. That she saw Cliff at the base of the roller coaster, looking for something.
That her tires were slashed. That she panicked, that she doesn’t quite remember a bit of what happened in the middle, but that she does remember sitting at the base of the roller coaster and crying.
Katy is serious and sad and quiet, focused entirely on us for the first time since we arrived in Haeter Lake.
Finally, when Audrey has snuggled beneath the blankets on my bed, Katy stands.
“Langley is at the clinic,” she says quietly. “I’m going to go have a talk with her. Tell her—and the sheriff—what happened to you. We’ll put the bike in the back of my Jeep and bring it with us. I can talk to the deputy about investigating who would have slashed your tires.”
“We know,” Audrey whispers.
“Excuse me?”
She looks up, her eyes haunted. “It’s the Anselms, Katy,” she says. Her voice sounds as hollow as the teacups at the park. “It’s always them. You should know that.”
Katy sighs. “Well, I think there’s only one working camera, so it may not give us what we need. Are you two going to be all right here by yourselves for a while?”
Audrey stares into space again, her brown eyes vacant.
But I nod, and Katy leaves us behind. The hope I saw in Katy’s face earlier is gone, replaced by grim determination.
Audrey twists her hands together. “What do you think is going on?” she whispers.
“I think there’s more going on than we really know,” I say. “I wish I had answers.”
I stare at Katy’s briefcase, left on her bed. It’s closed, but not…not locked.
“Um,” I say. This is yet another bad idea, but I plunge onward. “We could look at my mom’s case files?”
Audrey giggles a little hysterically. “You’re serious?” she says. “Today was…Today was the worst fucking day, and somehow you’re still coming up with bold, ridiculous ideas like this? Incredible. What would I do without you, Sundress?”
She’s been calling me Sundress this whole time, so why does it make me blush now? “Well,” I say, “you would probably be pretty bored.”
She leans back on the pillows and laughs, that snort-giggle that seems to take her whole body. “Yeah,” she says. “You know what? I think I would be.”
I nudge Katy’s briefcase open. Inside is a thick folder labeled PIERCE.
I’ve seen her case files before. And okay, maybe I’ve even snooped in them before, but we don’t need to talk about the Fallwell case. But my point is that if this was a normal case, it would say something like ANSELM, PIERCE, 03/11/2021 (HOMICIDE).
But this file just says PIERCE, as if that is the only detail she needs to know. As if she will remember everything else about this case, forever, without any help.
This man was like a dad to her.
And, like my own grandparents, I only knew him after he was a body at the base of that stupid, cursed roller coaster.
It’s a heavy feeling in my chest, all the missing pieces of our history that I have never had. But how can you miss someone you never met? How can you wish for someone you never knew?
I open the folder and take a breath.
First are the pictures. Crime scene pictures, autopsy pictures.
I flip to the back to read the copy of the autopsy report.
“Wait,” I say. I stare down at the next words for so long that they blur together.
Evidence that death occurred before the fall.
Holy shit.
“What is it?” Audrey sits up and scoots closer to me. “What did you find?” She catches sight of the pictures and flinches back. “Oh Jesus,” she says. “Lucy, I don’t…I can’t look at those.”
“No, not the pictures,” I say. “He…He was dead when he fell. The fall didn’t kill him. That bloodstain we saw? Audrey. Did he die in his office? Did they throw him off later?”
“What? But why would someone drop him from up high if he was already dead?” Audrey asks, cocking her head at me. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Could they have been trying to make it look like a suicide?” I ask. “But if someone was trying to stage that, they did a shitty job. Cliff and my mom both knew it was homicide right away.”
“That was because of the phone, though, right?” Audrey interjects. “Because they couldn’t find the phone. And that means someone else has it. But I thought…I was assuming someone pushed him?”
I flip through the folder, to some notes Katy has scribbled across the back inside flap of the folder.
9:30 p.m.—Pierce Anselm leaves mansion
12:30 a.m.—apology text sent to everyone in the
Anselm family
TOD could have been earlier? 11:15 p.m.–1:15 a.m.
Who sent the text?
Audrey is pale, but she looks strangely relieved. “Lucy,” she says. “I have to tell you something.”
I freeze.
“I didn’t tell you earlier because—well, we didn’t know each other yet,” she says. “And I was worried you would think…that I had something to do with the murder. But now that we know that he didn’t die from being pushed off the top of the platform…”
“Yes?” I ask her when she trails off and stops speaking entirely. “Audrey?”
“You already know I was there,” she whispers. “The night he died, I was there. I saw him fall. But I…he texted me first. He asked me to come.”
I sit bolt upright, my spine stiff, my stomach dropping down to my toes. It was one thing to have suspected, but another to hear her confirm it. “What were you doing there?”
I swear I didn’t know, the text had said. I’m so sorry.
“Before he died,” she says. “He came to my house around seven thirty on Friday night. Mom had just gone to work, and it was just me home, and he stood there and he looked…He looked scared, and I didn’t understand. He kept saying he was sorry, and he kept saying he didn’t know, and I asked him what the fuck he was doing in front of my house.”
She pauses, and I want to reach for her hand. I want to be brave enough to do that for her.
“And he just left,” Audrey continues. “But then later I got these texts. Whoever was texting me kept saying they were sorry. And then they told me to go to the park that night and they would tell me everything. It seemed so cruel, you know?” Her voice breaks a little, but she continues. “That he would ask me to meet him there when it was where my dad died. He was an asshole. Even at the end, he was an asshole.”
“Yeah,” I murmur. “Or whoever had his phone was.”
“Either way, I think…I think he was trying to do the right thing, after all those years. I believe he was going to tell the truth about what happened to my dad.”
Finally, I take Audrey’s hand in mine, and she squeezes mine in return. “Did you see him?” I ask. “Did he say anything to you?”
She shakes her head. “I got there too late,” she whispers. “I just stayed in the woods, hiding and waiting and trying to feel brave. I was so scared. I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to ever go back there, not for anything. But if there was a chance that I could get some justice for my dad, I had to take it. When I finally climbed the gate and went in, I…I saw him fall. I heard someone scream. I thought it was him, but now that we know he was already dead when he fell…”
Her voice trails off again.
I imagine again the horror of that night, the creaking wood of the platform, the rusting metal roller coaster, Audrey trying to brave the ghosts that waited for her there. And Pierce Anselm, falling and breaking open on the concrete. It is somehow more horrifying that it was his body tossed from the platform. That he was murdered and then broken again. I shudder, but I keep tight hold of Audrey’s hand.
“Lucy,” Audrey continues in a small voice. “I was…horrified by what I saw. But I wasn’t sad. The first thought in my head was, He deserved it. What kind of monster thinks that when a man has just been murdered? What is wrong with me?”
I don’t know how to answer Audrey’s questions. But I do know that the girl beside me with tears in her eyes is not a monster. “I’m sorry,” I tell her, because there isn’t much else to say. “I’m so sorry. For everything you went through. For everything you lost.”
This time, Audrey doesn’t cry, but when I wrap my arms around her, she rests her head against my chest and just stays there, her body shaking.
I adjust my position so that I’m leaning against the pillows and she’s leaning on me, and then I reopen the folder. “I’m going to see what else I can learn,” I tell her softly. “You…You rest.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” she whispers against my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s okay. I understand why you didn’t. Did you tell anyone else? Your mom or Cliff or anyone?”
“No,” she says. “But I think…I think my mom guessed. I think she might even know, somehow. And the Anselms know, if they’re telling the truth about having footage of me in the parking lot.” She freezes.
The thought hits me at the same time it hits her.
“If they do,” I whisper. “If they have working cameras.”
Trust no one, Mom said.
“Then they knew,” Audrey says. “When we drove there together. When I went back to look for you.”
“So they have to be the ones who slashed your tires?” I ask. “But why? And which of them is it? Curtis hates his family, and they hate him. Blake and Veronica don’t get along.”
“Do they think I killed Pierce?” Audrey asks. “But if they think that, it means they didn’t kill him. I don’t understand, Lucy. I don’t understand any of it.”
I stroke her hair gently, my fingers tangling in her curls.
With my free hand, I flip through Mom’s notes on timeline and alibis. They interviewed Langley after they interviewed the family, and I pause on a note Mom jotted at the bottom.
He wasn’t worth oxygen.
Langley had been overheard saying that the week before.
And about a year ago, on the anniversary of her husband’s death, she had been heard saying Someday he’ll get what’s coming to him.
And just months after that, I’d rather watch you die.
I picture Langley’s vivid brown eyes staring at me in her car, sharp and deadly, and I wonder how much we really know about her. If maybe she has been keeping as much from Audrey as Audrey is keeping from her.
“What is it?” she asks.
She must feel the tension in my body, and it seems too late to keep all the truth from her. “They interviewed your mom,” I tell her. “Would she have had any reason to be out at the park that night?”
“She was at work,” Audrey says. “I told you. She left in her scrubs, and she was gone until her shift was done. I heard her come back in early in the morning.”
I snap the folder shut. “My mom refuses to talk about the case, but…she’s scared of their whole family.” I don’t say anything about the tab at the back that says Audrey. “So you think Pierce was going to tell you something he had learned about your dad’s accident?”
“At the time,” Audrey says, “they claimed that Dad had chosen not to listen to the attendant who told him to tighten his seat belt and his seat. They said it was Dad’s fault, that he had been careless and endangered himself. The Anselms closed this park after pressure from the mayor, but they still have dozens of other parks around the country. They stayed rich, and we stayed broken. But I’ve always thought—I’ve always known that Dad wouldn’t have endangered himself. Not on purpose, not in any way. It had to have been faulty equipment. It had to have been. But it would have hurt the Anselms’ business to admit that. And it could have even resulted in jail time, criminal negligence. I looked into the charges later. I thought the whole family should have been charged with murder.”
