Murder Beyond the Grave Read online

  He begins to the fill the empty jug at the tap. The water in the container is cloudy from the milk residue.

  “Danny,” Nancy says softly, “is something wrong?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says, without taking his eyes off the milk jug.

  “You’re not dealing again, are you?”

  She regrets the words as soon as they come out. Danny’s head jerks toward her, and he fixes her with bloodshot eyes.

  “No, I’m not dealing again, goddamn it!”

  He slams the jug down on the counter, and milky water sloshes out of it.

  “If I was dealing again, would we have to live in this crappy little house?” he shouts. “Would we have a dishwasher that leaks all over the goddamn place?”

  “I’m sorry. I just don’t want you doing anything …” she says, trailing off.

  “Anything what?” Danny growls. “Anything stupid?”

  Nancy steps back. “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but that’s what you were thinking,” Danny says, leaning over her. “You think I’m stupid?”

  She cowers against the countertop between the stove and the dishwasher. He raises his hand to slap her but holds back.

  “You should be thankful for what I do for you,” he says.

  Nancy feels a burst of courage, and she stands up straight and glares at Danny with tear-filled eyes.

  “Don’t you love me anymore?” she says.

  This snaps him from his trance. He lowers his raised hand, looking at it as if he doesn’t know how it got there. He takes a few steps back and leans against the counter, his shoulders slumped.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m just really stressed out right now.”

  Nancy takes a deep breath, steadying her voice. “Let’s go to bed,” she says. “You look exhausted.”

  “I just need a little space right now,” he says, grabbing the milk jug and putting the lid back on. “I’ve got an errand to run.”

  He heads to the door, and Nancy stares at the empty space he left behind. She has the feeling of being watched. She turns to see Benji standing at the threshold of the kitchen, wearing striped pajamas. His chin quivers as he tries to stop himself from crying.

  Nancy kneels and embraces him. His tiny body trembles in her arms.

  “It’s going to be okay,” she whispers into his ear. “It’s going to be okay.”

  She hopes her son believes her more than she believes herself.

  CHAPTER 15

  AFTER PUTTING BENJI to bed, Nancy walks through the house to make sure the doors are locked. She peeks into the garage and sees that the weird box Danny built is gone. She feels a twinge of relief and isn’t sure why.

  She pours herself a glass of wine and goes to her bedroom. She pulls off her jeans and blouse, and she puts on one of Danny’s T-shirts she uses as a nightgown. The shirt is big on her, hanging halfway down her thighs. The shirt smells of him, and the odor gives her mixed feelings. She loves him, but she knows he’s not good for her.

  She stands at the window and looks down onto the street. Part of her wants Danny’s van to pull into the driveway. At least that way she would know he’s safe. But another part of her doesn’t want that. In fact, part of her hopes he never comes home again.

  She crawls into bed and grabs the telephone from her bedside stand. She dials her friend Julie’s number. Nancy takes a long drink of wine while she waits for Julie to answer.

  “Are you okay?” Julie says right away.

  Nancy opens her mouth to say yes, but she can’t let the lie out.

  “No,” she says, and she starts to cry. “It’s Danny.”

  “What did that bastard do to you? Did he hit you?”

  “No. Nothing like that.” Nancy pictures Danny raising his hand to strike her, but she doesn’t tell Julie how close he came. “He’s just acting really weird. He’s up to something.”

  “Is he cheating on you?”

  Nancy considers this. She wouldn’t put it past him. He’d been married with two kids when he started pursuing Nancy. She’d met him at a bar, but she’d avoided him because she knew he was married. He’d been relentless and she finally gave in. They’d dated, but she wouldn’t let things get serious until he started divorce proceedings.

  She remembers how he’d made her feel special, how he claimed that he couldn’t stay away from her. His persistence had been flattering. But times have changed. They have no money, and Danny sleeps on the couch more often than he sleeps in bed with her.

  Maybe that’s what this is all about. He’s out there chasing women again, and he’s found a new pretty young thing to replace her.

  Nancy talks this theory through with Julie, but it doesn’t feel right. If he was cheating, he’d probably be on his best behavior at home—not on the verge of hitting her.

  “He’s keeping a secret from me,” Nancy says. “That’s for sure. But he’s still motivated to take care of me. He doesn’t seem to want to leave this life with me—he just wants to make that life better.”

  With this statement, Nancy feels guilty for doubting him. Danny is far from perfect, but he’s always had the best intentions when it comes to Nancy. She can’t imagine the stress he is under. He’s given up a life of crime and is struggling to make ends meet.

  Julie keeps talking on the other end of the phone, but Nancy’s mind is focused on that thought: he’s given up a life of crime.

  Nancy feels a cold chill.

  Has he given up his life of crime?

  CHAPTER 16

  DANNY’S VAN CRAWLS through a desolate area in eastern Kankakee County known as the sand hills. Danny’s headlights illuminate the sandy ground, barren except for weeds and gnarled bushes. He finds a place that looks perfect—there are no tire tracks, no footprints, no evidence that anyone comes here.

  Welcome to the middle of nowhere, he thinks.

  Danny climbs out of the cab and circles around to the back of the van. Inside sits the wooden box he built, the PVC pipe, a cloudy jug of water, an assortment of candy bars, a car battery, and a shovel. Danny reaches for the shovel and circles back to the front of the van, where the headlights illuminate a section of sandy ground.

  Danny stabs the blade of his shovel into the loose dirt. He tosses a shovelful of sand aside. Then another. And another. Particles of dust float in the headlight beams. He works hard, breaking a sweat. His hands start to ache. He takes a break to smoke a cigarette and then gets back at it.

  When the hole is big enough, he turns the van around and backs up to it. He grabs ahold of the box and drags it out. It fits snugly in the hole. Once he shovels the dirt back on top, there will be a good two feet of earth between the box and the outside world.

  Danny puts the car battery into the box, along with the water jug and the candy bars. He closes the lid and admires his craftsmanship—and his plan.

  But Danny isn’t done yet. He takes the shovel and begins scraping a trench in the dirt, starting from the hole and working his way toward a cluster of weeds about twenty-five feet away. Once he’s satisfied with the trough, he takes the PVC tubes out of the van and begins connecting them. He lays them in place and then shovels back over the trench until the only pipe visible is a stub sticking into the hole that he will connect to the lid once he seals the box. The other end of the air tube is hidden in the weeds.

  Danny sits in the back of the van and lights a cigarette. His hands are filthy, his shirt sweat-stained.

  To the east, the dark horizon is beginning to turn blue with the first hints of sunrise.

  Danny smiles to himself. It’s a good plan, he thinks. It’s going to work.

  CHAPTER 17

  September 2

  NANCY WAKES UP to the sound of the shower. Warm sunlight floods the room. She sits up and notices that a cup of coffee and a doughnut are sitting on her nightstand.

  Danny comes out with a towel around his waist, his hair wet and dripping. He smiles and gives her a firm kiss on the lips. She looks at him skeptically. Does he not remember what happened last night?

  “I’ve got an idea,” he says, more chipper than she’s seen him in months. “After we drop off Benji at his dad’s, let’s go for a drive. We can go look at horses.”

  Nancy can’t help but smile. She loves taking drives and looking at horse ranches. She’s tempted to stop him and say they need to talk about what happened last night, but Danny seems to want to move past it. She decides to let it go. He’s under a lot of pressure, and this is his gesture of making amends.

  Thirty minutes later, they’re zooming out of town toward the countryside. Danny whistles. Nancy lets her hand dance in the breeze. They pass farms and horse paddocks, and Nancy feels relaxed. They don’t need a lot of money. All they need is each other and a nice scenic drive—when Danny isn’t acting weird, that is.

  They’re approaching the area known as the sand hills, where the vegetation isn’t as lush. Danny pulls over next to a railroad crossing. He parks the car in a pullout, and Nancy has the thought that he’s going to lean over and kiss her, the way he used to when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

  Instead, he looks her in the eyes, suddenly serious, and says, “Do you know where we are? Could you find this place if you came back without me?”

  Nancy nods, uncertain what’s going on.

  “I need you to do me a favor,” Danny says. “I need you to pick me up here at three o’clock tonight.”

  “Three o’clock?” she says, incredulous. “In the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Nancy feels sick. All morning she’d been thinking he’d turned over a new leaf. Things were finally going to change. But he is up to something.

  “This whole morning wasn’t so we could spend time together,” she says, hurt. “You’ve got some kind of scheme going on, and you’re trying to rope me into it.”

  Danny looks at her sincerely. “Listen, Nancy. I need you to do this for me. Don’t ask me why, but I’ll need a ride from this place at three o’clock.”

  Nancy looks out her window, thinking. They’re in the middle of nowhere. She can’t imagine what Danny will be doing here in the middle of the night.

  Unless he’s making a drug deal.

  “You promised me that you were done with anything shady,” she says.

  “Just this last thing,” Danny says. “I have to do this, and then I promise I’m done forever.”

  “Just tell me one thing,” she says. “Is it drugs? Are you dealing again?”

  Danny takes her hand in his and looks earnestly into her eyes.

  “I promise I am not dealing drugs,” he says.

  “Okay,” she says, taking a deep, nervous breath. “I’ll do it.”

  As they drive away, the mood in the car has changed. Danny seems agitated again, stressed. Nancy is quiet. She tries to convince herself that as long as Danny isn’t dealing, then whatever he’s up to can’t be too bad.

  It doesn’t occur to her that it might be worse.

  CHAPTER 18

  STEPHEN SMALL AND his wife, Nancy, sit in their bed talking about plans for the upcoming Labor Day weekend. It will be the kids’ last big hurrah before school starts again, and they want to make it memorable. As they wrap up their conversation, Stephen leans over, kisses Nancy good night, and then takes off his glasses and sets them on the nightstand. He reaches to turn off the lamp, but stops. Downstairs, the telephone begins to ring.

  “Who is calling at this hour?” Stephen says.

  It’s after midnight.

  Stephen pulls his legs out from under the comforter and slides his feet into a pair of slippers. The phone stops ringing.

  “Ramsey got it,” Nancy Small says. “He’s up watching a movie, remember. It’s probably one of his friends.”

  Stephen is putting his legs back under the blanket when Ramsey knocks gently on the door and pokes his head into the room.

  “Dad,” the fifteen-year-old says. “The police are on the phone.”

  “The police?” Stephen says.

  “Yeah. He said he needs to talk to you. Said it’s important.”

  Stephen gives Nancy a perplexed look and then heads downstairs to the phone.

  “This is Stephen Small,” he says. “How may I help you?”

  “Sir,” says a male voice, “I hate to bother you at this hour, but there’s been a break-in at the Bradley House. You own the house, correct? The one in the historic district?”

  “Yes,” Stephen says, his heart pounding.

  “We’ve caught the intruders,” says the voice on the other end. “We’ve got them at the Kankakee Police Station. But we need you to come down to the Bradley House and assess the scene, see if there’s any damage or anything missing we don’t know about.”

  “Of course,” Stephen says. “I’ll be right there.”

  He hangs up the phone and jogs up the stairs.

  “I’ve got to run down to the Bradley House,” he tells his wife. “Apparently someone broke in.”

  He explains that the perpetrators have been caught, but the police need him to take a look at the house and make sure everything is okay.

  Stephen pulls on a pair of blue jeans and a T-shirt. He slips his feet into a pair of loafers and grabs his eyeglasses off the nightstand.

  “I love you,” he says, kissing Nancy on the cheek.

  “Be careful,” his wife says.

  Stephen hurries through the yard toward the detached garage. He unlocks the side door and steps inside. He presses the button to raise the garage door. When he opens the door to his Mercedes, he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.

  A dark figure ducks under the opening garage door and bounds to the side of the Mercedes. He points a gun directly between Stephen’s eyes.

  Stephen can’t see the armed man’s face. It’s covered with a motorcycle helmet. Stephen looks at his own terrified reflection in the helmet’s visor.

  “What’s this all about?” Stephen says, his voice trembling.

  “We’re going for a ride,” says the man with the gun.

  His voice is muffled because of the motorcycle helmet, but Stephen still recognizes it. The voice is the same one he just spoke to on the telephone.

  CHAPTER 19

  September 3

  DRIVING HIS MERCEDES while the mysterious man sits behind him, Stephen has trouble gripping the steering wheel because his hands are shaking so much. The back of his T-shirt is soaked with sweat.

  The streets of Kankakee are empty, the shops closed up for the night. Stephen keeps hoping he’ll see a police car and be able to get the officer’s attention somehow. But there’s no one around. The streetlights illuminate vacant parking lots, storefronts with their lights turned off, empty sidewalks along the roadway.

  Stephen checks the rearview mirror to look at his kidnapper. He notices the man has a ski mask underneath the helmet. Whoever he is, he’s gone out of his way to disguise his identity, which gives Stephen a flicker of hope. If the man planned to kill him, he wouldn’t have bothered hiding his face. At least Stephen hopes that’s the case.

  “I’m a rich man,” Stephen says. “I can give you money, if you just let me go.”

  “I know you’re rich,” the kidnapper says, but that’s all.

  Stephen drives for a minute without speaking, and then he decides to try again.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “If you don’t shut up,” the man says, lifting the gun and aiming it at the back of Stephen’s head, “I’m going to splatter your goddamn brains all over the windshield.”

  Stephen’s breath catches in his throat. He feels his insides constrict.

  “Turn here,” the man says, and Stephen does as he’s told.

  They pass the Welcome to Kankakee sign and head out of town. Soon the residential streets turn to rural countryside. There are no streetlights, just patches of forest and fences lining pastureland.

  The kidnapper tells Stephen to pull off the paved road onto a dirt road. Soon after, he directs Stephen to leave the dirt road altogether, and Stephen finds himself navigating around trees and brush and patches of weeds.

  Stephen’s hands start shaking even more. He thought the man didn’t plan to kill him, but what other purpose could he have for bringing him out to the middle of nowhere? This is the perfect place to bury a body.

  “If you kill me,” Stephen blurts out, “you won’t get your money. I’m rich. I can pay you. Please just let me go.”

  “Calm down,” the voice behind the helmet says, sounding much more relaxed than he did while they were in the city. “Everything’s going to be fine. I’ve worked out all the details. You’re not going to die.”

  “Then let me go.”

  “Not just yet,” the man says. “Stop here.”

  Stephen parks the car, its headlights illuminating nothing but sandy, weed-filled ground. Stephen starts to shake uncontrollably.

  “Turn off the lights,” the man says.

  Stephen presses the button, and then the two of them are sitting in blackness.

  “Shut the engine off.”

  Stephen can hardly grip the key because of his trembling hands, but he finally gets his fingers to cooperate.

  “Hand the keys to me.”

  Stephen reaches behind him, and the man takes the keys.

  “Now get out of the car,” the man instructs him. “If you want to tuck your kids into bed or kiss your wife good night ever again, you’ll do exactly as I tell you.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THE MASKED MAN orders Stephen to hold out his arms and then clips a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, squeezing the metal rings tight against his skin.

  “Walk,” the man orders, pressing the barrel of the pistol against Stephen’s lower back.

  Stephen staggers forward. The moon is out, but it’s far from full, casting barely enough light for Stephen to see by. He isn’t dressed for this kind of cross-country trek. His loafers quickly fill with dirt. It’s a hot, muggy night, and Stephen’s skin is sticky with sweat. He hears insects chirruping, and somewhere in the darkness a bullfrog croaks.