“Besides, I didn’t see anything. I don’t know what happened. Even when they did find out and questioned us, they didn’t do a damn thing. Can’t prove something when the old man kept his mouth shut for the first time in his life. Weren’t no body, or a witness.”
Dylan had read the sparse details in the police report. Add Brian’s fear to speak up and the past sheriff’s piss-poor investigation and you came up with Buddy getting away with murder.
Brian tilted his head back and to the side, his focus turned inward. “He never, and I mean never, tried to start a fight with me. He always went after her. From the time she was five, he had it in for her. I can remember him screaming at her that she looked just like her. She’d end up just like her.”
“Like who?” Dylan asked, trying to follow Brian.
“Our mother. She looked just like our mother.”
“Didn’t your mom die when Jessie was five?”
“Yep. I think the old man blamed Jessie for her death.”
“How’d she die?”
“Took a bottle full of pills, slit her wrists. Dad found her in the bathtub. Come to think of it, the day she disappeared was the anniversary of our mother’s death.”
The catalyst that set Buddy off that night.
Hard to comprehend so much tragedy in one family. Jessie was gone, and it was eating him alive. The rumors were true. Buddy Thompson killed Jessie one night while in a drunken rage and hid her body. No one had ever found her. It made him sick to think of her out there, somewhere, and no one knew where. He didn’t know where.
“Come on, man, I’ll take you home,” Dylan offered. “Your wife must be worried about you.”
Brian laughed under his breath. “Sure she is. I turned out to be quite the catch. She’s probably burning my clothes and poisoning my dinner as we speak.”
Dylan got up, placing his Stetson back on his head. Most everyone in the bar watched him stand, probably wondering if he’d arrest someone or leave them to their night of partying.
He slapped Brian on the shoulder, put his hand under his arm, and hauled him up and out of the booth.
“Let’s go, man. It’s time for you to sleep it off. Things will look better in the morning.”
Dylan hoped he spoke for himself as well. Right now he wanted to crawl into a bottle with Brian and drink himself into oblivion. After all these years of thinking and dreaming about her, Jessie was gone, absolutely beyond his reach.
Chapter Three
* * *
DYLAN TOOK BRIAN home, left him in the care of his wife. Nice woman, someone he vaguely remembered from high school. A pretty blonde cheerleader with a lot of spunk and sass. Her petite frame appeared even smaller next to Brian’s six-foot height. Strong and capable, Marilee ushered Brian into the house. She’d be a good mother if she looked after the baby like she took care of Brian. Too bad Brian wasn’t capable of looking after her, let alone himself. Living with a drunk couldn’t be easy.
He drove away from their rented house and over to Buddy Thompson’s place. The sun had set long ago, and he assumed the house would be empty. Except, maybe, for the ghosts.
The paramedics took Buddy to the morgue after a friend discovered him this morning. They’d planned to meet for a fishing trip. Buddy hadn’t shown up, so his friend came calling. He found Buddy in bed, presumably sleeping off a night of drinking.
Buddy wouldn’t be going fishing anymore.
Dylan pulled up in front of the house and sat in his truck, staring at the place. Dark and empty, the black windows stared back at him, cold and foreboding.
He’d been there a hundred times, a thousand times. His mother hadn’t liked him hanging out with Brian and, especially, Jessie. For some reason, she, like Buddy, never thought Jessie good enough. Dylan had a feeling they knew she’d been better than them all. Jessie never looked down on others, was always the first to lend a hand, and was a true friend. He wished he could say he’d treated her in kind. He hadn’t. He had no idea what she really felt about him when she’d died such a horrible death. It left a gnawing in his gut that constantly ached.
She’d died like she’d lived, with the whole town ignoring her.
No one would ever know what really happened to her that night. Not with Buddy and Jessie dead.
He pulled out his cell and called the one person sure to brighten his black mood.
“Hey, Lorena, is he still up?” Lorena took care of his adopted son, Will, after morning preschool and while Dylan worked.
“I just finished his books. Hold on.”
“Hi Daddy. When you coming home?”
Dylan turned away from Jessie’s house, focused on the street in front of him and his little boy and the joy he felt every time he saw him or heard his voice. “Not for a little while yet. I’ve got something I need to do.”