Page 61 of Snow Creek

“Can I speak?”

It’s Ruth.

Brother and sister step back to give her room.

“I’m very sorry that I don’t know my nephew and niece better. I can make excuses, but I want you two to know the truth.” She holds her breath. “Your father kept us apart too. He didn’t… didn’t want her to be close to anyone. I’ll miss her every day. Just like I have the past six years.”

Ruth Turner looks at her sister’s body, bends down, and pulls a frilly blue bachelor’s button from the shroud.

Her lips are tight and she’s trembling.

“May I?” she finally asks.

Joshua nods and watches as his aunt drops the blossom into the open grave.

We stand there silently, then Eve does the same, so does Sarah. We all do.

Joshua sends a shovelful of loose, loamy soil over the flowers in the symbolic grave. Then another. He goes faster and faster. A strange jolt of mania has taken over his body. Two… five… six. Again, his sister intervenes.

“That’s enough,” she tells him. “Put down the shovel.” He does as he’s told, and I think it’s a somewhat strange dynamic. She’s younger, but she is the dominant of the two.

She takes the shovel and scrapes soil onto the now-disappearing collage of flowers.

“Bye, Mom,” she says, now kneeling and pulling a flower from her hair. “Our hearts are broken. Don’t worry. We’re strong like you. We’re fighters too.” She drops the daisy on to the empty grave they’ve made.

I look at Sheriff. He’s rolling his tongue over what I’m sure is his missing filling.

“I’m going to tell them to leave,” I say, indicating the TV crew.

“Yeah, tell them to get lost.”

A news reporter with flawless skin, shiny dark hair, and a distinctly cocky prance in his walk, comes at me. A camerawoman follows.

“Jake Jackson, KING TV,” he announces. “You’re the detective on the case.”

He’s wearing makeup already. This is going to be one of those “live from the scene” type stories. This was big. In the past when there was some interest in something happening here, they’d have one of the kids from the high school shoot the video and then—at their own expense—drive it to Seattle. Now just about everyone with a smartphone is doing the same thing.

Before I answer, the camerawoman chimes in.

“She’s Millie Carpenter, Jake. God, you are embarrassing.”

He turns red under his makeup. I don’t correct her because I like the results of her mistake.

“I’m afraid we’ve no comment about this case. It’s an ongoing investigation. We’ll update what we can when we can.”

“Was the killing related to a particular belief system?” He points to the orchard. “Wheaton buried in a shroud.”

“In the ground,” adds the dimwit with the handheld.

“Look, you’re going to need to leave now. This is private property.”

“Ms. Chesterfield said we could be here.”

Of course, she did.

I show my badge. “I outrank her.” I look over my shoulder at Sheriff. “And he outranks all of us. Please go.”

I hear him say something about just doing his job, and she chirps as they turn to pack up: “Does that mean we’re not going to that restaurant?”

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