Page 21 of Our Lips Are Sealed
“And what was her reaction to your return?”
Samuel smiled broadly, and Liam blinked at the difference in him. “She was pissed.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing.”
He chuckled as if Liam had told him a joke. “Keep asking your questions, Cohen. I’m not going to lie to you.”
Ready or not, Liam reached over and switched off the recording app. “But you have already lied to me.”
Going on alert, Samuel frowned. “About what?”
Extracting the autopsy reports from his file, Liam arranged them on the table.
“On July 4, 1999, Laura Jean Eddins sustained two gunshot wounds. One to the upper chest and a second in the left abdomen, with the bullet lodging into the spine. Immediately upon impact, her airway hemorrhaged, cutting the air supply.”
As he read the report, Samuel went eerily still. Liam pointed to the final sentence on the page. “It also notes the death of a male fetus in its nineteenth week of gestation.”
Liam covered Laura Jean’s report with Devon’s. “It was much of the same for Devon Howard. The medical examiner stated his injuries were also to the abdomen and chest, but one bullet sliced clean through. I’m assuming that bullet struck Abe?”
As he repeatedly went over the reports last night, Liam had thought of Abe in his chair. Father and son had been together that day, with Abe sustaining damage in the attack.
“I never lied about it.”
“I told you what Mathis said, and you didn’t correct me,” Liam countered, putting away the autopsy reports. “Agreeing to a lie is lying.”
Samuel promptly went on the defensive. “That’s clever,” he sneered. “Is that one of your father’s sayings, or did you come up with it all on your own?”
Ready to take his gamble, Liam retrieved a separate file he’d created just this morning. If he was wrong, he was wrong. But if he were right, then discovering how Laura Jean and Devon died was only the tip of the iceberg.
“I stayed up pretty late, and when I did sleep, I had these weird dreams, so I got up early to do some digging and found something interesting in my research,” he said. “In the late nineties, the population in the county where Haven sits was barely half the size it is today, and a quick search for deaths occurring on July 4, 1999, yielded some surprising results. There was a tractor accident, a heart attack, a car wreck right off the interstate.”
Liam set two more death certificates on the table. “And then these two.”
Samuel stared ahead, refusing to look at the words typed neatly on the paper in front of him.
“Female, Jane Doe, estimated to be in her late twenties,” Liam read. “Cause of death; gunshot wound to the head.” He flipped the page. “The second is another Jane Doe, believed to be age ten, who also died of a headshot wound.”
Samuel paled, his hands fisting in his lap. An excruciating silence settled over the room, and Liam waited, giving him time.
“She was eleven, not ten,” Samuel murmured, his eyes drifting close when he finally spoke. “Her birthday was the month before she died, and we’d had a big party on Haven’s lawn. Mom and Josie made her a unicorn cake, but it looked more like a turtle than a unicorn.”
Liam tried to remain calm, every hair on his body standing on end. “Who was she?”
“My cousin.” Samuel opened his eyes, the usual hardness in them replaced with an absolute all-consuming sadness. “Her name was Olivia, but we called her Livy.”
Chapter 6
July 4, 1999
Eviewasgone.
Laura Jean heaved out a sigh, disappointed, although she shouldn’t be. Not many mothers had the privilege of seeing the woman their daughters would one day become, but Laura Jean’s dreams allowed for it, and she accepted the gift with immense gratitude.
Even though she would have liked more time.
How in love her kitten seemed, and with Samuel, nonetheless. She couldn’t wait to wake up and tell Ben that one day he would see she’d been right about those two.
On Haven’s lawn, the young woman Evie told her to ignore was in the same spot, hanging on the shadowed line of dark and light. Rebecca had joined her, the pair standing shoulder to shoulder to watch the house with lifeless eyes.
