Page 12 of Tears on Her Grave

Twotrees held up a hand. “Calm down, everyone. Arguing about what’s already done will get us nowhere. All we need to do is get our stories straight, is all.” He looked at Josie. “Tell us from the beginning what happened today. Don’t leave out a single detail.”

He listened as Josie recounted the sheriff’s visit. He looked around the group. “The one thing we need to make clear is we didn’t go near the caves. As we moved into the other group’s camp down the mountain making a noise, everyone will recall we arrived late. I built the fire with Jess and we made a point of talking to everyone so people there would remember us being there. As us guys were all wearing our college jackets and identical Halloween masks, I doubt anyone noticed Cole and Abby were missing. They’d have seen a group of Alpha Pi guys, is all.”

“I recall Bella Crooke asking me if I’d seen Abby.” Lily looked at him with haunted eyes. “We were all cheerleaders, if you recall. I told her she’d headed up the mountain with Cole. So if the cops get to her, she might remember our conversation.”

“I had a similar conversation with Valerie Janecki but she was asking about Cole.” Wasser grinned. “I told her he’d headed into the forest with his girlfriend.” He laughed. “She wasn’t happy. Seems she had a message for him from his mom. They were neighbors.”

Nodding, Twotrees stared out into the rain and then back to the others. “Anything else specific you can recall about that night?”

“Yeah.” Jess Hallon’s brow wrinkled into a frown. “Cory got into a fight with Birch over some girl. Remember they stumbled through the fire and we had to stamp it out?”

Twotrees nodded. “Yeah. So we can add that information.” He looked around. “Only tell the story of who you spoke to, not ours, or it will sound rehearsed. We’re not kids. We can handle the cops as long as we give them the same information about Abby and Cole.” He looked around the group. “They left and we never saw them again that night. We figured they’d gone somewhere to be alone and then left.”

“We were all too busy toasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories to notice they didn’t return.” Wasser shrugged. “That’s what we were doing. Just do a time shift in your memories.”

“Just remember.” Hallon stared at the three women. “If one of you chickens out, we’ll fall like a house of cards. Think before you do anything else stupid, Josie.”

“Okay.” Josie’s cheeks reddened and her fingers trembled as she pushed a strand of wet hair from her eyes. “I’m just wondering who pointed them in my direction in the first place?”

“They know we were Abby’s friends. They’d only need to ask our folks or look in a darn yearbook.” Marissa shrugged and gave him the stink eye. “It was just bad luck they decided to speak to her first, is all.” She blew out a long breath like smoke from a cigarette. “I need to get home. We done here?”

Twotrees had a bad feeling someone in the group would talk. Everyone would go to prison for life and he had no plans to ruin his life for a slip of the tongue. He nodded slowly and looked at the others. “Keep the contact between us to an absolute minimum and don’t call everyone. Call one of us using the burners and get them to pass on the message and so on. Let’s get out of here, one at a time, not in a darn convoy. I’ll shut the gate.” He went to his truck and watched everyone drive awayin intervals. Nothing had convinced him that they’d get through this unscathed. Not now that the sheriff was making waves. He shook his head as they left one by one and stared at the red taillights vanishing into the darkness. A cold breeze tainted with rain brushed over him and all around him the old barn moaned. The sound might have bothered some people, with the tales of the dead rising and haunting the old barn and ranch house, but not him. The dead were dead. It was the living he needed to worry about. He headed for his truck and climbed inside. The faces of his friends hadn’t changed and most looked almost the same as on that Halloween night. He let out a long sigh. “Which one of you will fold first?”

TWELVE

TUESDAY

Gray storm clouds rolled across the mountains to join the mist-covered pine trees, and it was as if the forest was living under a cloak of fog. The continuous rain was getting monotonous, and Jenna and Kane spent two hours driving from one place to another to inspect the flooding. The updates were coming in regularly from the Montana Department of Transportation, and Jenna expected the governor to declare a state of emergency as the flooding became widespread. After flooding a year or so previously, the drainage throughout the town and much of the surrounding county had been updated, but nothing could stop the constant flow of water. Swollen rivers were breaking their banks at a rapid rate. The melt was always a problem, but no one had expected it to rain for a month.

As Jenna sat in the Beast her phone buzzed. She checked the caller ID as it lit up the screen in the truck. It was Johnny Raven. Raven had agreed to join their team as a consultant. He had a trained K-9 that would take on dangerous work that wasn’t suitable for Duke. Raven served in the Medical Corps and after an injury spent his rehabilitation learning how to become a K-9 trainer. So he offered double value to the team. He was an extra doctor, a pilot, and, at six-five and two hundred fifty pounds,a good person to have for extra backup should the need arise. When not needed, Raven trained rescue dogs for self-protection and in general was a dog guy, finding forever homes for strays he’d used for his dogsled and offering medical services to the off-the-grid folks in the mountains.

Jenna glanced at Kane and gave him a surprised expression. Raven rarely called the office. “Good morning. How are you, Dr. Raven?”

“Oh, come now, Sheriff. No one calls me Dr. Raven.”He chuckled.“I’m Raven. The folks around here like that just fine. Are we on speaker? I can hear the Beast’s engine.”

“Morning, Raven.” Kane smiled at Jenna. “What’s happening in the mountains? We have no idea. You’ve been blanketed in mist and rain for so long we’ve forgotten the mountain is there.”

“Conditions are not good, I’m afraid, but I do have some good news.”Raven blew out a long breath.“I’ve spent a long time clearing an old trail that leads from my cabin to the fire road. It means I can now drive my truck into town and get to you at short notice. That’s the good news.”

Jenna nodded. “That’s great and much safer for you. What’s the bad news?”

“You’ll recall the avalanches we had over winter. Well, it seems they’ve done more damage than we first anticipated. Trees have been ripped out by the roots. Fine if you need a good supply of firewood or need to build something but real bad with this rain.”Raven cleared his throat.“I’m no expert but I figure you need to get someone to check out the avalanche areas. They look too darn unstable to me and we’re still getting rumbles through the mountain. It’s only a matter of time before we’ll get mudslides.”He sucked in a breath and let it out in a huff.“You know there’s people living all over up here. Many don’t want to be found but we need to at least warn them if there’s a chance of mudslides.”

Frowning, Jenna stared at the screen. “Yeah, I’ll call it in and see if they can get a team up there to check it out. I’m not sure what they can do to stop it.” She pushed hair behind one ear, thinking. “Last time we had a bad slide, the forestry planted a ton of new trees and undergrowth, but that’s impossible in this weather.”

“If there’s a chance of mudslides, I can contact people over the CB radio, and messages get passed along. You could get warnings out over the media.”Raven paused for a beat.“There are many old cabins people could move into out of the danger areas. They just need to know the threat is there.”

Trying to consider whom she needed to contact, Jenna nodded. “Okay, I’ll get things moving and keep you in the loop. Thanks for letting me know.”

“I appreciate it.”Raven disconnected.

Jenna made the necessary calls and nodded slowly as she repeated the same request. Disconnecting, she turned to Kane. “Everyone I called is going to coordinate a team to check the state of the mountain in the avalanche areas. It’s a matter of organizing the right people. I guess we wait and see.”

“I’m sure they can see that this is a matter of urgency.” Kane pulled into a parking space out back of the office. “I’ll be interested to see what Rowley and Rio have come up with this morning. We need more details on the college friends of Josie Campbell. The person she mentioned, Marissa something, is someone we can hunt down today.”

Working on a cold case was always difficult because people had short memories and details were overlooked. It usually entailed a ton of grunt work and interviewing people who couldn’t remember what they had for breakfast the previous morning. For Norrell, it was something to get her teeth into. Her work with Wolfe would no doubt bring to light more details to assist with the case. Jenna nodded. “Yeah, I’d like to hear whatshe has to say.” She met his gaze. “You might believe I’m losing my mind but have you ever felt as if you’re in a mystery novel? I mean this case is throwing us tiny morsels of clues as if they’re being fed to us via an author.”

“Hmm, I guess that’s one way of looking at it.” Kane burst out laughing. “Do you figure they would let us have a peek at the end of the book? It would save time and we could go home and cuddle in front of the fire.”

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