When the Dead Speak

Chapter 72

Chapter 72

With a dampened paper towel, Sam slowly erased the writing on the white plexiboard. The names of Hap, Bubba, Shadow, and Booker disappeared one by one. Next was Preston, George Abbott, Leonard Ames, and Parker Smith. Their names reduced to faded images before one last wipe erased all evidence of their existence. It took longer to erase her father's name. It was like losing him a second time, as if his existing on a plexiboard somehow brought him back to life.

With the board completely cleaned off, she gathered the papers from the study and the dining room table and carried them to the living room. She pressed the igniter and brought the gas fireplace to life.

From the hearth in front of the see-through fireplace, Sam stared wistfully at the window seat in the dining room. She thought back to last night and the way Jake's arms felt wrapped around her, and the look of longing in his eyes, or maybe she had imagined it. Maybe it had been the longing in her eyes.

She struggled to bring her mind back to her encounter with Carl and her conversation with the President. Whittier admitted he had received her father's package of information. Carl denied having seen it until just recently. But he also had the pages from her father's safety deposit box. And there was only one person who could have given them to him.

The writing had been on the wall. She didn't know how she failed to see it. As she watched the flames flicker, she thought of the night Jake had appeared on her patio. The familiar way his eyes deciphered every movement, registered every detail, his serious demeanor. FBI.

Jake had been nothing more than another watchdog for Carl. His concern had been a lie, the key he finagled out of Abby, his staying here all these nights. She inhaled long and deep, daring those tears to make an appearance. She heard a key in the front door but didn't look up.

Jake walked down the steps to the dining room. The table was cleared of all the notes, papers. The sandblasted grapevine tree trunk was back in the center of the table with all its greenery, fake cactus, and flowers.

"It isn't hot enough outside for you?"

Sam tore sheets of paper into halves, then quarters, and slowly fed them to the fire. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him walk over, toss his sportcoat on the couch.

"You're destroying evidence."

She looked up at him, gave a resigned sigh and tossed another handful of scraps into the flames, watching the edges curl up and turn to ashes.

"I sold my soul to the devil today," she started. "I gave President Whittier an offer he couldn't refuse."

"President Whittier?" His eyes questioned her as he took a seat on the arm of the couch.

"Yes." She closed the door to the fireplace and brushed the dirt from her hands. She turned her attention to him, tried to look at him as her nemesis, not the man whose strong arms had protected her in the fall from Preston's fence. Focus. That had always been her strong point. She just had to force herself to focus.

"In exchange for not revealing that the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee was aware over twenty years ago that the bodies of missing GIs were buried at Mushima Valley, Whittier is going to appoint Abby to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and grant a few other odds and ends." A tense laugh escaped her throat. "I can almost get used to this deal-making."

Jake's face became as stony as Carl's had been earlier.

"The President, on the other hand," Sam continued, "will make the murders and Preston's involvement public. We can finally get the bastard behind bars and reinstate Hap and his unit to their proper, honorable status."

"He agreed to that?"

He said it cautiously. Sam saw no hint of exposure behind his eyes, those soft brown eyes. Focus. All a lie. Set up. She had to keep saying the words like a mantra. Meanwhile, her chest felt as if a four-hundred-pound sumu wrestler were sitting on it.

"Oh, he blubbered on and on about how he couldn't give the Black Hills back to the Sioux." She thought back to the folder Carl had, wondered if Jake might have been behind one of those doors all the time she was there. She felt her face flush, felt tears welling up. Again, she forced them back. "And I agreed to report that my father's papers were just recently discovered without any hint that the President was ever aware of their existence. He'll be a hero in the black community. That should be great for votes."

Sam glared at Jake. "Would you believe, there were two more pages to my father's report? It mentioned the names of the guys in Hap's unit and where Hap suspected their bodies had been buried." She thought she saw a light turn on behind those stolid eyes. She gave him time to digest the information before asking, "How long were you with the Bureau?" She wiped the tears away as soon as they dared to show up.

Jake reached over to help wipe them but Sam pulled away and moved over to the love seat.

"I was going to tell you, Sam."

"When, Jake? After Preston received a pat on the hand?" She watched him move from the arm of the couch to the couch. The coffee table between them could just as easily been the Grand Canyon.

"I talked to Carl until I was blue in the face. Frank and I both did."

"Frank?" She was beginning to feel like the punch line of a bad joke. "You trusted Frank enough with the truth but not me?"

"It was what Carl wanted. And as far as Carl changing the President's mind, Carl's hands were tied, Sam. We both want nothing more than to see the reputation of Hap and the others cleared. And I DO want Preston to be tried for murder."

He reached across that canyon for her hand. For a brief moment he touched her. It unleashed her flood of tears again. She pulled her hand away and leaned back. Her eyes were penetrating, accusing, the same piercing coolness she had exhibited the first time she met him at Preston's.

"You had the videotape of me at Preston's but you never used it." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Now I know why. You needed to be Carl's eyes and ears. He needed to know how close I was getting to the truth, how much I uncovered."

"That may have been true in the beginning."

She saw pain behind those brown eyes, but told herself he was a good actor. Where was Abby when it came to witnessing the true Jake Mitchell, the man she seemed to trust and mother ad nauseam? Abby's powers picked a bad time to go on shutdown.

The grandmother clock in the corner of the dining room clanged, echoing off the walls, filling the cold silence. Sam leaned an elbow on the back rest of the loveseat. Her fingers tugged on her hair, winding and unwinding the strands around her index finger.

She despised the fact that Jake had broken through her shell, that he had made her vulnerable. More important, she hated the fact that he made her feel emotions that were foreign to her.

"You discovered Lincoln Thomas was Ling Toy and whisked him right off to Carl."

Jake leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He studied his hands as if answers were written in the deep creases. "There's nothing I can say that will make you understand."

Her head turned sharply. "You're right." She was beaten. She didn't have one more ounce of fight in her. Her emotions had zapped it all out. Rising slowly from the couch she said, "I want you out of here." As she passed him she ordered, "NOW."

She opened the front door and stood waiting. Jake placed his hand on the door, leaned close to her. Distance. She needed to distance herself from him before she weakened.

"Sam." His voice was a whisper. "Don't do this."

She turned away. "Call first before you stop by to pick up your things. Make sure I'm not here."

Quietly, he left. She closed the door, started climbing the stairs to her room but dropped down on the third stair, too emotionally drained to move. She drew her knees up close and wept.

All this time she had never been able to find a way to get rid of him. She never knew it could be so easy, or so painful.