Page 78 of We Already Dug the Grave

Frances’s mouth dropped open, and hurt flickered over her face.

Our mother was a killer; there was no disputing that. Hattie-May killed bad men, and Frances believed the rumors that when Ruth was a teenager, she’d killed a man too. I’d killed Shane. No wonder it was easy for her to imagine I’d be okay with murdering Burt. He deserved it, after all.

But I couldn’t. Something inside me—something even deeper than the Sight—told me if I killed again, I wouldn’t come back from it.

I heaved a sigh. “Let’s stick with the plan. We have everything we need now. We might as well see it through and put him behind bars. Whatever happens next, we deal with.”

“It’s not going to work,” she repeated again, quietly. “You’ll see. You’ll see, but it’ll be too late.”

“We have to try.” I remembered the hollow expression she’d worn as we’d walked into her home. “Then, we have to drive to Puddle Creek.”

“I thought we were getting a hotel to recuperate?”

“Yeah well, the leaves never lie,” I said, remembering the reading I gave her in my apartment. How the leaves had shown me Puddle Creek. “We are going to Tennessee.”

Burt knew too much. Frances said he loved games, so I had to take away one of his moves.

I had to move Casey’s body.

Chapter 29

Now

The storm blew in from nowhere.

A flash of lightning. A crack of thunder. Then the first raindrops pelted the windshield as we slowed to a crawl, crossing the bridge over the creek where Burt had buried Andrea’s body in a shallow grave. In the seconds it took to reach the other side, the bottom had fallen out of the sky in a soupy downpour.

“I don’t know about this,” Frances said, as I pulled to the side of the road, rain pelting the windows like sticks on a snare drum. She bit her bottom lip. “What if it just pisses him off? You don’t understand—he will find me. And it won’t be good.”

“It’ll work.” It had to work. I forced more confidence into my voice than I felt. “You have everything?”

She nodded, holding up the engraved wristwatch and Blake’s and Andrea’s driver’s licenses.

We were going to plant everything where it couldn’t be missed.

Another streak of lightning illuminated the sky, followed by a rip of thunder.

If the rain doesn’t ruin everything and wash it away.

I pushed the thought aside. There was no going back.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Ready,” Frances replied.

Neither of us moved.

We both stared out the windshield silently.

The road stretched out in both directions, hugged on either side by ditches and tall pines. I imagined Burt bringing Andrea’s body to this same creek, late one night, dragging her down the embankment toward the water, while less than ten miles away Frances slept in their bed, oblivious.

Afterward, had he gone home and climbed under the covers next to my sister, giddy with anticipation? How long had it taken him to plan it? Had he watched Blake ever since getting the helmet—or perhaps after Frances first told him the story? Or were Blake and Andrea simply unlucky enough to be the wrong people at the wrong place, wrong time, their connection to Frances too much for Burt to resist?

My hand was on the door handle when Frances grabbed my arm.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “The cops already combed this area, and suddenly there’s a tip to look again? Then they find not only the driver’s licenses of the dead girl and missing boy but also Burt’s watch? It’s too convenient. And Burt is… He’s Burt. I keep telling you how the local cops love him, but I don’t think you understand. I don’t doubt they’d make everything disappear, and the state police won’t ever even know about it.”

“First off, police miss stuff all the time, right?” My knowledge of what police did or did not miss mostly came from Law & Order and Criminal Minds, except there’d been that conversation with the cops at the Huddle Hut. Something they’d said. How the creek would make it harder to find evidence—how it could flood and wash it downstream. That could explain why certain things—like a watch and licenses—weren’t discovered until later. “Besides,” I continued. “We aren’t only calling the police tip line. We’re also calling the media.”