No Time for Goodbye Part 27

"Who?"

"She was killed a few months before Clayton and Patricia and Todd vanished. Upstate. Looked like a hit-and-run, but wasn't, exactly."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rolly said. "What do you mean, it looked like a hit-and-run but wasn't? And what could that possibly have to do with Cynthia's family?"

He almost sounded annoyed. My problems, and the conspiracies whirling around them, were starting to wear him down just as they had me.

"I don't know that it does. I'm just asking. You knew Clayton. Did he ever mention anything about an accident or anything?"

"No. Not that I can remember. And I'm pretty sure I'd remember something like that."

"Okay. Look, thanks for getting someone for my cla.s.ses. I owe you."

Cynthia and I hit the road shortly after that. It was more than a two-hour drive north. Before the police took away the anonymous letter in a plastic evidence bag, we copied the map onto another piece of paper so we'd know where we were going. Once we were on our way, we didn't want to stop for coffee or anything else. We just wanted to get there.

You might have thought that we'd have been talking nonstop all the way up, speculating about what the divers might find, what it might mean, but in fact we hardly said anything at all. But I imagined we were both doing a lot of thinking. What Cynthia was thinking, I could only guess. But my mind was all over the place. What would they find in the quarry? If there were actually bodies down there, would they be Cynthia's family? Would there be anything to indicate who'd put them there?

And was that person, or persons, still walking around?

We headed east once we pa.s.sed Otis, which really isn't a town, but a few houses and businesses s.p.a.ced out along the meandering two-lane road that eventually winds its way up to Lee and the Ma.s.s Turnpike. We were hunting for Fell's Quarry Road, which was supposed to run off to the north, but we didn't have to look that hard for it. There were two cars with Ma.s.sachusetts state troopers marking the turnoff for us.

I put down the window and explained to an officer in a trooper hat who we were, and he went back to his car and talked to someone on a radio, then came back and said Detective Wedmore was already at the scene, expecting us. He pointed up the road, told us to look for a narrow gra.s.sy lane about one mile up that led to the left and climbed, and that we'd find her there.

We drove in slowly. It wasn't much of a road, just gravel and dirt, and when we reached the lane it got even narrower. I turned in, heard tall gra.s.s brus.h.i.+ng the underside of the car. We were driving uphill now, thick trees on either side, and after about a quarter of a mile the ground leveled off and the trees gave way to an open area that nearly took our breath away.

We were looking out over what appeared to be a vast canyon. About four car lengths ahead of us the ground dropped away sharply. If there was a lake down there, we couldn't yet see it from where we sat in the car.

There were two other vehicles already there. Another Ma.s.s. State Police car and an unmarked sedan that I recognized as Wedmore's. She was leaning up against the fender, talking to the officer from the other car.

When she saw us, she approached.

"Don't get close," she said to me through the open window. "It's a h.e.l.l of a drop."

We got out of the car slowly, as if jumping out would cause the ground to give way. But it felt pretty solid, and thank G.o.d for that, given that there were now three cars up here.

"This way," Wedmore said. "Either of you have trouble with heights?"

"A bit," I said. I was speaking more for Cynthia than myself, but she said, "I'm fine."

We took a few steps closer to the edge, and now we could see the water. A mini-lake, maybe eight or nine acres in size, at the bottom of a chasm. Years ago, this area had been carved out for rock and gravel, the pit left to fill with rain and springs once the aggregate company had moved on. On an overcast day like this one, it was difficult to tell what color the water might normally be. Today it was gray and lifeless.

"The map and the letter indicated that if we're to find anything," Wedmore said, "it'll be right down here." She pointed straight down the cliff we were standing atop. I felt a brief wave of vertigo.

Down below, crossing the body of water, was a yellow inflatable boat, maybe fifteen feet long with a small outboard attached to the back. In the boat were three men, two dressed in black wetsuits, diving masks, tanks on their backs.

"They had to come in from another direction," Wedmore explained. She pointed to the far side of the quarry. "There's another road that comes in from the north that comes up to the water's edge, so they were able to launch their boat there. They're looking for us," at which point Wedmore waved to the men in the boat-not friendly, just a signal-and they waved back. "They'll start searching below this point."

Cynthia nodded. "What will they be looking for?" she asked.

Wedmore gave her a look that seemed to say "Duh," but she was at least sensitive enough to realize she was dealing here with a woman who'd been through a lot. "I'd say a car. If it's there, they'll find it."

The lake was too small for the wind to whip up much in the way of waves, but the men in the boat dropped a small anchor just the same to keep from drifting away from their spot. The two men in wetsuits dropped backward out of the boat and in another moment disappeared from view, a few bubbles on the surface the only evidence that they'd once been there.

A cool wind blew over the top of the cliff. I moved closer to Cynthia and slipped my arm around her. To my surprise, and relief, she did not push me away.

"How long can they stay down there?" I asked.

Wedmore shrugged. "I don't know. I'm sure they have way more air than they need."

"If they do find something, what then? Can they bring it up?"

"Depends. We might need more equipment."

Wedmore had a radio that connected her to the man left in the boat. "What's happening?" she asked.

In the boat, the man spoke into a small black box. "Not much so far," a voice crackled through Wedmore's radio. "It's about thirty to forty feet here. Some spots, further off, even deeper."

"Okay."

We stood and watched. Maybe for ten, fifteen minutes. Seemed like hours.

And then two heads emerged. The divers swam over to the boat, hung their arms over the inflated rubber tube edges for support, lifted up their masks and removed from their mouths the gear that allowed them to breathe underwater. They were telling the man something.

"What are they saying?" Cynthia asked.

"Hang on," Wedmore said, but then we saw the man pick up his radio and Wedmore grabbed hers.

"Got something," the radio crackled.

"What?" Wedmore asked.

"Car. Been there a long time. Half buried in silt and s.h.i.+t."

"Anything inside it?"

"They're not sure. We're going to have to get it out."

"What kind of car?" Cynthia asked. "What does it look like?"

Wedmore relayed the question, and down in the lake, we could see the man asking the divers some questions.

"Looks sort of yellow," the man said. "A little compact car. Can't see the plates, though. The b.u.mpers are buried."

Cynthia said. "My mother's car. It was yellow. A Ford Escort. A small car." She collapsed against me, held on to me. "It's them," she said. "It's them."

Wedmore said, "We won't know that for a while. We don't even know if there's anyone in that car." Back into the radio, she said, "Let's do what we have to do."

[image]

That meant bringing in more equipment. They thought that if they brought in an oversized tow truck from the north, got it right up to the edge of the lake, they could run a cable out into the water, have the divers attach it to the submerged car, and slowly pull it out of the muck at the bottom of the lake and to the surface.

If that didn't work, they'd have to bring in some sort of barge affair, take it out onto the water, position it over the car and lift it up directly from the bottom.

"Nothing's going to happen for a few hours," Wedmore told us. "We've got to get some people up here, they've got to figure out how they're going to do this. Why don't you go someplace, head back to the highway, maybe go up to Lee, get some lunch. I'll call your cell when it looks like something's about to happen."

"No," Cynthia said. "We should stay."

"Honey," I said, "there's nothing we can do now. Let's go eat. We both need our strength, we need to be able to handle what may come next."

"What do you figure happened?" Cynthia asked.

Wedmore said, "I guess someone drove that car right up here, where we're standing, then ran it right off the edge of this cliff."

"Come on," I said again to Cynthia. To Wedmore, "Please keep us posted."

We drove back down to the main road, back to Otis, then north to Lee, where we found a diner and ordered coffee. I hadn't had much of an appet.i.te first thing in the morning, so I ordered a midday breakfast of eggs and sausage. All Cynthia could manage was some toast.

"So whoever wrote that note," Cynthia said, "knew what he was talking about."

"Yeah," I said, blowing on my coffee to cool it down.

"But we don't even know if there's anyone in the car. Maybe the car was ditched there, to hide it. But it doesn't mean anyone died in that accident."

"Let's wait and see," I said.

We ended up waiting a couple of hours. I was on my fourth coffee when my cell phone rang.

It was Wedmore. She gave me some directions that would get me to the lake from the north side.

"What's happened?" I asked.

"It's gone faster than we thought," she said, bordering on amiable. "It's out. The car's out."

[image]

The yellow Escort was already sitting on the back of a flatbed truck by the time we arrived at the site. Cynthia was out of the car before I'd come to a full stop, running toward the truck, shouting, "That's the car! My mother's car!"

Wedmore grabbed hold of her before she could get close. "Let me go," Cynthia said, struggling.

"You can't go near it," the detective told her.

The car was covered in mud and slime, and water was seeping out around the cracks of the closed doors, enough so that the interior, at least above the window line, was clear of water. But there was nothing to be seen but a couple of waterlogged headrests.

"It's going to the lab," Wedmore said.

"What did they find?" she asked. "Was there anything inside?"

"What do you think they found?" Wedmore asked. I didn't feel good about the way she'd asked. It was as though she thought Cynthia already knew the answer.

"I don't know," Cynthia said. "I'm scared to say."

"There appear to be the remains of two people in there," she said. "But as you can understand, after twenty-five years..."

One could only imagine.

"Two?" Cynthia said. "Not three?"

"It's early yet," Wedmore said. "Like I said, we have a lot of work before us." She paused. "And we'd like to take a buccal swab from you."

Cynthia did a kind of double take. "A what?"

"I'm sorry. It's Latin, for 'cheek.' We'd like to get a DNA sample from you. We take a sample from your mouth. It doesn't hurt or anything."

"Because?"

"If we're fortunate enough to be able to recover any DNA from...what we find in the car, we'll be able to compare it to yours. If, for example, if one of those bodies is your mother, they can do a kind of reverse maternity test. It'll confirm if she is, in fact, your mother. Same for the other members of your family."

Cynthia looked at me, tears forming in her eyes. "For twenty-five years I've waited for some answers, and now that I'm about to get some, I'm terrified."

I held her. "How long?" I asked Wedmore.

"Normally, weeks. But this is a more high-profile case, especially since there was the TV show about it. A few days, maybe just a couple. You might as well go home. I'll have someone come by later today for the sample."

Heading back seemed the only logical thing to do. As we turned to walk back to our car, Wedmore called out, "And you'll need to be available in the meantime, even before the test results come back. I'm going to have more questions."

There was something ominous about the way she said it.

28.