The Slow Burn of Silence (A Snowy Creek Novel) Read online

  “Your weapon, Adam.”

  He spun round. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”

  Silence.

  Adam LeFleur unsheathed his Smith and Wesson, laid it on the top cop’s desk. “You know what you’re doing? You’re giving Jebbediah Cullen power. You’re playing right into his hands, all of you are—Banrock, the mayor, the police board, town council, tourism board. This is exactly what he wanted.”

  “Let us prove him wrong.”

  LeFleur slammed the glass door on his way out.

  The chief waited until he saw LeFleur actually leaving the station. He went to his door, held it open. “Pirello! Novak!”

  The two constables exchanged a glance, got up, and answered the chief’s summons into his office.

  Once they’d closed the door and seated themselves in front of his desk, Mackin said, “We already have a full complement of investigators handling the Wolf River arson. But I want you two to keep an extra eye on this whole Cullen thing. And keep it quiet.” Mackin held the gaze of his two constables. He then told them about the call he’d just received from Vancouver.

  “You’re saying the Vancouver arson investigators believe someone here, in Snowy Creek, could be good for the fire that killed Salonen’s sister and brother-in-law?” Annie said.

  “I’m saying I want a very subtle extra eye on this whole thing.” He paused, his gaze lasering each of theirs in turn. “Deputy Chief Constable Adam LeFleur is taking some time off. Report directly to me.”

  “Shit,” Annie whispered.

  Adam sat in his truck outside the SCPD station, engine running, Lily’s words echoing through his head . . .

  What did your mother mean that night, nine years ago, when I overheard you two arguing after Amy and Merilee went missing . . . When she said all you had to do was say nothing?

  Adam put his truck in gear and drove up to his mother’s condo in the benchlands.

  CHAPTER 20

  I rub my face hard, then get out of the truck.

  Jeb is waiting for me next to a “For Sale” sign that has been stuck crookedly into the grass on the verge.

  “Looks like her aunt is trying to offload the place,” I say with a nod to the sign as I approach. He’s watching me intently. His words echo through my mind, and panic flutters through my stomach all over again.

  I love you, Rachel . . .

  I clear my throat. “Her aunt lives next door, over there.” I jut my chin toward the neighboring property. “She owns this duplex as well. Amy had open-ended use of the left half for whenever she wanted to come up to Snowy Creek. The other half was rented out.”

  He nods. As if he knows it all. The suspicion that he’s withholding something from me deepens. “What exactly did you want to see here, Jeb?”

  “I called the tenant early this morning, while you were with Quinn. He’s a young snowboarder from Toronto. He and his mates have taken over both sides of the duplex now. I asked if we could look inside Amy’s place, talk to him. He’s expecting us. I also called Piper Smith. She said we can go round anytime this morning.”

  “How did you get the tenant’s number?”

  “You left me your laptop, remember. I looked up the articles the Leader ran on Amy’s suicide. The tenant’s name was in one of them—Doug Tollet. He found her body.”

  I reel at the fact I didn’t know this. I try to remember what ran in my own paper on the suicide. But I’d been publisher only four months by the time Amy shot herself. I was in Bali with Trey when it happened, a prearranged trip to celebrate our engagement. Cass was newly hired and I’d left her in charge of the editorial side of things. It was also in Bali that I received news of Sophia’s and Peter’s deaths. Next there was Quinn coming into our lives. No wonder it’s blurry in my mind.

  My gaze flashes to the duplex. An Australian flag now hangs in the front window of what was Amy’s half. The place looks sad. But it’s the feeling in my stomach, an anxiety, that distracts me. The fact that Amy shot herself right around the time of my sister’s house fire is beginning to bother me.

  The front door of the tenant’s side opens, and a young man steps out. “Hoi,” he calls across the lawn. “You the Cullen guy?”

  Jeb takes my arm. “Come.”

  As we approach the door, a white Subaru station wagon draws into the adjacent driveway. My pulse quickens.

  “It’s Rebecca Findlay,” I say to Jeb. “Amy’s aunt.”

  “We’re within our rights to be here. Tenant invited us. Just keep walking.”

  The woman gets out of her car. “Hey!” she yells, running over her lawn toward us, leaving the driver’s door open, engine still running. “What do you want here? This is private property!”

  “Go ahead,” I say quietly to Jeb. “I’ll handle this.”

  I move quickly toward the woman. “Mrs. Findlay, I’m Rachel Salonen, a friend of Amy’s—”

  “I know who you are. Saw you all over the damn news. Digging up muck, dragging our family through hell again. What on earth do you think you’re doing? Do you know how much pain that . . . that man”—she points at Jeb, her voice quavering—“has caused our family? He killed our Amy. She shot herself because of him, because she couldn’t go on living with all that weight on her mind, because he sucked all the life out of her, all that was good and true. What do you think you’re doing here?”

  “We just want to talk to the tenant, about Amy.”

  She staggers backward, face red, her hand going to her throat. “I don’t believe this. The audacity. Get off now. This is my property!”

  “Mrs. Findlay, Rebecca, we just—”

  “I’m calling the cops. I’m calling 9-1-1.” She scurries back to her car, leans inside, and scrabbles in her purse for her phone.

  “Mrs. Findlay!”

  But the woman climbs back into her Subaru, slams and locks the door. I can see her punching the keypad of her phone, head bent forward.

  I jog over to Jeb. He’s at the door, talking to a lean guy with long, dirty-blond dreadlocks and baggy striped pants.

  “We better move fast,” I whisper, placing my hand on his arm. “She’s calling in the cavalry. They’ll be here any minute.”

  Doug Tollet introduces himself as DJ PeaceWorld. As he lets us in, he informs us he works at The Base, an underground nightclub in the village.

  “This is so sick, man. I saw you both on TV.” He’s staring at Jeb as if he’s some celebrity. “Me and a bunch of eight others have the whole duplex to ourselves now. She—the landlady—was having hassles renting out the left half after the shooting. But we’re like, no problem, man, if the rent is real low, it doesn’t matter there was a death in there. She’s trying to sell the place now. It’s been on the market ever since the shooting, but no takers yet. Until she does sell, the rent is supercheap.”

  He shows us to a door that leads into the other half of the duplex. “When I had just the one half, this connecting door was permanently locked. Basically it’s plywood, thin. Soundproofing is crap in the adjoining walls, too. The place was built back in the late seventies on the cheap as a ski cabin, you know, before Bear Mountain really took off. Before the fancy village was built.”

  Before Banrock’s money . . .

  I shoot a glance out the window, expecting sirens and police cruisers any second now.

  “So you were home that night,” Jeb says. “You heard the shot through the door and walls?”

  Something chases through DJ PeaceWorld’s features. Amy’s death has affected him in spite of his cool-dude machismo.

  “Yeah. She arrived from Vancouver two days before it happened. I saw her going inside with her bags and shit. I saw her again the following afternoon, carrying grocery bags. She’d been to the liquor store—I could see from the logo on one of the bags she was carrying, the tops of bottles sticking out. Then, in the evening, she started p
laying this music real loud.”

  “What music?”

  “Reggae shit. Old shit. Here—” He goes to a shelf, rummages through a pile of CDs, finds what he’s looking for. “Landlady didn’t want to keep it.” He hands us the CD.

  Jeb reads the title out loud, a frown lowering his brow. “The Philistines: The Best of Damani Jakeel?”

  “Yeah. Old Jamaican reggae. Amy was playing it over and over. Louder and louder. I could smell dope. You can keep it,” he says, nodding at the CD. “Not my thing.”

  DJ PeaceWorld shows us through the connecting door into the other half of the duplex.

  “That’s where I found her.” He points. “There was a chair against the wall over there. She was slumped in it. Gun was lying on the floor, her hand hanging over it. Shot herself through her mouth.” He jerks his chin toward the wall. “There was blood and . . . stuff . . . spattered across that wall behind her. Came out the back of her head.”

  Nausea washes through my stomach as I stare at the wall. The paint has clearly been scrubbed clean.

  “So you heard the shot,” Jeb says.

  “Yeah.” PeaceWorld rubs his brow. “Like I said, you can basically hear anything through these walls. Even when there’s no one home and the answering machine clicks on, you can hear the message, everything. Before the shot was fired, Amy turned the music down and she made two calls. The first one, she was yelling, slurring at some guy.”

  “A guy?” I say.

  He gives a shrug. “It sounded like it was a guy from the way she was talking. She called him an effing bastard. Some dude came round right after.”

  Jeb and I exchange a fast glance. “You told this to the police?” Jeb says.

  “Look, I was out of it, stoned, basically. The cops . . . I don’t know. They didn’t think my timeline was reliable or something. But yeah, I told them.”

  “Which cops?” I say.

  DJ PeaceWorld looks at me. “You know, the tall dark one, the one you were arguing with on the television. Thick hair. Movie star face. That one.”

  “The deputy chief handled this himself?”

  “Yeah. He came and took over from the officers who were first on scene. This is so sick, man. Seeing him and you on the news like that. And now you’re here.” He’s still staring at me. I wonder if DJ PeaceWorld is out of it now, too. But a movement outside the front window snares my attention.

  A police cruiser is pulling up behind my truck on the opposite side of the street. Rebecca Findlay runs over her lawn toward the cruiser. That dark-haired female cop and her partner get out. “We need to hurry,” I whisper to Jeb.

  “We’re within our rights, Rachel.” But I can see he’s tense from the way his neck muscles tighten. “And you saw this guy who came over after the phone call?” Jeb asks PeaceWorld.

  “Big dude. Maybe just over six feet, wearing a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, and a blue jacket. It was already dark out by then. I didn’t see his face.”

  My pulse kicks.

  “When did this guy leave?” says Jeb.

  He scratches his head. “That’s where it kinda gets fuzzy, dude.”

  “Fuzzy?”

  Pirello is coming up the path now, hands on her gun belt. Her partner remains talking to Mrs. Findlay at the car.

  “I didn’t actually, like, see him leaving before Amy shot herself. Maybe I passed out for a moment or something and missed it. But the shot startled me right up. There was no music. Just dead silence. I banged on the door, then went round to the front window to look in. That small light was on near the chair. I could see her. Amy.” An involuntary shiver chases over the guy and he looks pale suddenly. “I ran next door, to the landlady’s place, banged on her door. She came with keys. We went in together. She called 9-1-1.”

  “So this man who visited Amy, he could have left after the shot? Gone out the kitchen slider at the back, maybe?” Jeb says, studying the layout of the place.

  PeaceWorld nods. “I suppose, yeah.”

  “Did you see if she left any note?” says Jeb.

  “Just a piece of paper with phone numbers. On that little round table there, which was next to the chair we found her in.”

  Constable Pirello is at the door.

  “There was also an open newspaper on the floor by her feet. Snowy Creek Leader.”

  A banging sounds on the door.

  Jeb stiffens. “Open on a particular page?”

  “It was open on a full-page advertisement for a firefighters’ fundraiser. It had pictures from their new calendar.”

  “You remember this?”

  “Shit, man, from that point, from the time I saw her in that chair like that—it’s burned into my brain. The whole scene. I can’t get rid of it.”

  The banging sounds louder. I glance at Jeb. He nods, telling me to get it. I go to the front door.

  “You mentioned Amy made a second call, before this man came around,” Jeb says quickly.

  “Yeah, right after I heard Amy arguing with some dude on the first call, she made the second one. But it was short. It sounded like she was just leaving a message. I couldn’t hear the exact words, just a name. Sophia. Then Amy said something like, ‘I spoke to him. I know who did it.’ ”

  I freeze in my tracks. “Sophia?”

  More banging. “Police, open up!”

  “What time was this?” Jeb says, holding my eyes. Deep inside my belly, I start to shake. My skin grows hot.

  “Maybe around seven?”

  “Then after Amy left the message, the guy showed up?”

  “Yeah. They started talking. Then arguing.”

  “What about?”

  He glances down. “Man, I took a hit of acid. I didn’t kind of register. Like I said, it was the shot that woke me right up again.”

  “Police. Can you open up, please?”

  I swallow, reach for the door, open it.

  Constable Pirello’s cheeks are flushed, her violet eyes flashing. Her gaze shoots over my shoulder at DJ PeaceWorld. “Everything okay in here?”

  “Thank you, Officer Pirello,” I say. “We were invited by the tenant to see the place.”

  She studies my face intently. “We received a complaint of trespassing from the landlady.”

  “It’s cool, man,” says PeaceWorld, coming up beside me. “I did invite them. I have a right to invite people. Says so in my lease. Tenants’ Act and all.”

  “It’s all good,” I say. “We’re just leaving anyway.”

  Pirello steps aside as we exit. Jeb walks ahead but I hesitate, holding back as I recall Pirello’s words when she handed me her business card . . .

  I know who all testified against him. Why the conviction was overturned. Things might not be what they seem here. I’m new in town; I don’t have a vested interest . . .

  “It was Adam LeFleur who signed off on Amy Findlay’s death as a suicide,” I say suddenly, taking the gamble, hopefully sowing a seed of doubt in her head. “Are you all so certain it was suicide?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am?”

  “Did you know that Amy was visited by a big guy in a ball cap and a blue jacket just before the shot was fired? And that no one actually saw him leave before the shot was heard?”

  Her features remain emotionless. Her gaze is unwavering, but I believe I see a flicker of interest in her beautiful big eyes.

  “And before Amy was visited by this guy, she made two calls, did you know that?”

  She says nothing, waits for me to continue.

  “One call might have been made to the guy who showed up. The second call might not have been answered. She might have left a message.” I’m shaking slightly now with the intensity of the thoughts charging through my head. “Do you know who she might have left that message with? My sister. The victim’s services worker who first treated Amy after the r
ape nine years ago. What message do you think Amy might have left my sister? Has anyone tried to look into that, retrieve the message?”

  “It wasn’t my case, ma’am.” Her voice is deadpan. “I joined the SCPD only three months ago.”

  I hold her eyes. “Right. It became Adam LeFleur’s case. The deputy chief took it over himself.”

  I turn and leave Constable Annie Pirello standing there.

  Her partner is leaning against the cruiser, and he watches me as I march toward my truck. Jeb is already in the driver’s seat. I climb in.

  “What was that about?” he says.

  I ignore him. My mind is reeling. I know both Amy and my sister died while I was in Bali, but I’d been focused solely on my family. Amy was in the buried past for me. Not relevant at the time of my loss. But now . . .

  “What was the date?”

  “The date?”

  “Yes, dammit, the exact date of Amy’s death!”

  He inhales deeply. “April eighth.”

  “The day before my sister’s fire?”

  He says nothing.

  I feel like I’m going to throw up. “And Amy could have called Sophia? Saying she knew who did it?”

  He still doesn’t reply. Anger mushrooms inside me.

  “You knew,” I say, very quietly. “You didn’t believe Amy’s death was a suicide. You believed there was a connection between her death and my sister’s death.”

  “I didn’t know. I had a feeling.”

  “A feeling?” I glare at him. “You had a feeling Amy was murdered, a feeling it was somehow connected to my sister, and you said nothing.”

  He starts the engine and pulls into the road. Amy’s aunt is watching from her window. The wind has suddenly picked up again, dead leaves blowing across her lawn.

  Jeb drives for Piper’s house, hands fisted on the wheel.

  “Talk to me, dammit. I told you, no secrets. How can I trust you when you do this to me? This . . . this is my sister we’re talking about.” My whole body is shaking.

  He refuses to meet my eyes. He inhales deeply and slowly. “Sophia called me in prison the night Amy left that message.”