Murder Beyond the Grave Read online

  “I’m not trying to get away with anything.”

  “Why should we believe you, Nancy? You’re driving around making ransom calls in the middle of the night—”

  “No I’m not.”

  “—and you’re living with a drug dealer.”

  “He’s not a drug dealer. He’s cleaned up his act. He’s a carpenter now.”

  “Well, carpenters make a lot less than drug dealers, don’t they?” the agent with the glasses says. “Money must be pretty tight right now. That can make people desperate, can’t it?”

  Nancy opens her mouth to speak but stops herself. She thinks of how strange Danny has been acting, how stressed out he’s been.

  She wonders if he could have something to do with what the police are talking about. But then she pushes the thought out of her mind. There is no way Danny could be involved in something like this.

  Sure, he sold drugs in the past. He isn’t perfect.

  But kidnapping?

  That isn’t Danny. He is a good person, deep down.

  “I asked you a question,” the agent says forcefully.

  Nancy snaps back to the present.

  “What?” she says. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you.”

  “Did you or did you not stop at the bait shop in Aroma Park last night and make a phone call?”

  “Sure,” she says. “Danny made a call. He was calling his—”

  “And the night before,” the agent says, “where were you at approximately three a.m.? You were making another phone call, weren’t you?”

  Nancy thinks. She can’t keep pace with all that’s happening. She remembers picking up Danny at the railroad crossing. She remembers him making a phone call.

  But if they think he’s mixed up in this, then she doesn’t want to get him in any trouble. She wants desperately to talk to him.

  I can’t tell them anything, she thinks. Not until I talk to Danny and figure out what’s going on.

  “I was home,” Nancy says.

  “We know you’re lying,” the agent says with deadly earnestness. “And if you keep lying, the grave you’re digging for yourself is only going to get deeper.”

  CHAPTER 32

  September 4

  7:00 p.m.

  AFTER HOURS OF questioning—a whole day practically—they lead Nancy out of the room in handcuffs. She is hungry and tired. Her skin is clammy with sweat. She wishes she could go home, take a warm bath, and curl up in bed and sleep for about twelve hours.

  Instead, they lead her down a narrow corridor to a series of jail cells. Once she’s inside, they have her turn her back toward the bars so they can unlock her handcuffs.

  “I want to see my son,” she says, rubbing her wrists. “He needs his mother.”

  The agent with glasses glares at her.

  “I’m sure Stephen Small wants to see his sons too,” the agent says. “I’m sure his boys need their father.”

  With that, he turns and leaves. A female police officer in uniform remains standing outside the cell.

  Nancy can’t imagine why they think they need a guard posted outside her jail cell. She isn’t a dangerous criminal. She isn’t going to escape. But then she understands why the officer is there. They want someone nearby in case she decides to tell them something important.

  She can’t imagine what they think she might know.

  There is a bed in the room, nothing more than a cot really, and a metal toilet with no seat. The cinder-block walls are painted a drab yellow. The room stinks like its last occupant didn’t know what a shower was.

  Nancy doesn’t particularly want to touch the mattress—who knows who has slept on it?—but it’s the only place to sit besides the floor, and she figures that must be even more gross.

  She lies down. The thin mattress provides very little comfort. The wire springs press against her back.

  She tries to ignore the discomfort and stares at the ceiling, thinking. This is the first opportunity she’s had to really let her thoughts catch up with what’s been happening. The FBI agents bombarded her with questions for hours. The only time they left her alone, she assumes, was when they were down the hall doing the same to Danny.

  She thinks she stuck to her story, but they kept catching her in inconsistencies. She didn’t want to tell them about picking Danny up at three o’clock in the morning or about any phone calls he made that night. But at first she told them she was sleeping and later said she was watching a movie.

  It doesn’t matter, she thinks. Once they find Stephen Small and all of this gets sorted out, then I’ll be free to go.

  She didn’t do anything wrong. So this nightmare can’t go on much longer. Can it? She thinks of Danny, wherever he is. He must be scared too. She wishes she could comfort him.

  But then she stops herself. It seems more and more clear that he’s involved in this mess somehow. His behavior has been so weird lately. There was the box he built in the garage. The way he disappeared for hours in the middle of the night. The strange late-night drive to supposedly get her bike fixed. And the three a.m. pickup at the railroad tracks.

  Danny’s erratic behavior should have been a telltale sign that he was up to something. The way he snapped at her. The way he almost hit her. The way his mind has seemed a million miles away for the past few days.

  Nancy thinks that he must have been roped into being involved. Maybe the drug dealer he used to work for coerced him because Danny still owed him money. Maybe other past associates tricked Danny.

  This couldn’t be Danny’s idea.

  But then she remembers him sitting in the kitchen, next to Benji, drawing designs on paper. He wouldn’t tell her what he was building. But it had been him who built the strange box in the garage, him who drew the designs, him who went to the lumberyard and bought supplies.

  Danny wasn’t following anyone’s orders, doing anyone else’s bidding.

  Now Nancy’s mind turns to Benji and the memory of him sitting next to Danny, drawing pictures. She’d liked the sight of the two of them together. She remembers thinking that Danny could be a good father figure for Benji.

  Could she have been that wrong about him? She has the desperate need to see her son, to hold him in her arms.

  When I get out of this mess, she thinks, I’m going to be the best mother I can possibly be.

  She vows to love him and hold him and stay away from any bad influences.

  She’ll stay away from men like Danny, she swears to herself.

  She suddenly recognizes how stupid she’s been, lying to protect Danny. Her concern should be for Benji. She needs to get out of here. She needs to be with her son. Let Danny worry about himself. She needs to worry about her child.

  Down the hall from her jail cell, Nancy hears a commotion. Urgent voices. The female officer posted outside her cell glances Nancy’s way, then heads down the hall to find out what is happening.

  Wait, Nancy thinks. I’m ready to tell the truth.

  CHAPTER 33

  DANNY EDWARDS SITS in an interrogation room similar to the one Nancy was questioned in. His eyes are bloodshot, with dark circles underneath. He doesn’t know how long the questioning has gone on, but they’ve finally given him a break.

  And a cigarette.

  He takes a drag. The room is so quiet he can hear the flame eating away at the paper and tobacco. He tilts his head back and exhales a long stream of smoke that puddles against the ceiling, creating a hazy cloud around the yellow fluorescent bulbs.

  Danny isn’t worried. He hasn’t told them anything. He’s denied everything. He knows they know he is lying, but he also knows how the police and FBI work. Just because they know he did it doesn’t mean they can prove he did it. It doesn’t matter if there are inconsistencies in his stories or if they know he’s lying.

  They have no evidence.

  He’s worked the police before, and he’ll work them again this time. He knows he holds the cards here. He isn’t going to tell them anything they need to know—not unless there’s something in it for him.

  He hears the bolt being pulled back on the other side of the door. The agent who was questioning him earlier, the one with glasses, swings the door open and looks in at Danny.

  “The clock is ticking, Danny. What side of this thing do you want to be on?”

  Danny stubs the cigarette out on the table. He flicks it into the corner defiantly.

  “How many times do I have to tell you?” he says, shaking his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The agent steps inside. He leaves the door to the interrogation room hanging open behind him. A uniformed police officer stands behind him, so it’s not as if Danny can escape, but still this is something different. Something has changed. They’re not coming in for another marathon round of questioning. This is going to be quick.

  Maybe Danny doesn’t hold all the cards after all.

  The FBI agent holds up a police radio and rotates the volume knob so Danny can hear it. Static crackles, and voices talk back and forth.

  “… all available units …”

  “… Pembroke County …”

  “… Mercedes matching the description …”

  “… keep the plane in the air until we get officers in the area …”

  “ … let’s try to find it before the sun goes down …”

  The agent turns the volume back down, then leans close to Danny’s face and says coolly, “An airplane with infrared sensors found Stephen Small’s missing Mercedes, Danny. I’m guessing Stephen is stashed somewhere nearby. We’re getting closer. If you want any chance of leniency, you better cooperate now.”

  Danny sits back, takes a deep breath. All day he’s been calm, but now his limbs start to tremble.

  The agent says, “On the phone, you said Stephen had forty-eight hours of air. We’re approaching forty-eight hours, Danny. Kidnapping is a serious charge, but it’s not the same as murder. If this thing turns into murder, you’re looking at the death penalty.”

  Danny tries to swallow, his throat suddenly very dry.

  He’s been wrong all day. He has no cards in his hands. He’s only been bluffing. It’s time to fold.

  “Okay,” Danny says. “I’ll take you to him.”

  CHAPTER 34

  NANCY STANDS AT the bars of her cell, trying to look down the hallway. She can’t see anything, but she hears commotion. Lots of voices and static from the police radio. She hasn’t been able to make out everything, but she understands enough. The police are going somewhere. They think they know where Stephen Small is being kept prisoner.

  A knot of people begins walking down the hall toward Nancy’s cell. A group of cops and FBI agents are clustered around Danny. He is in handcuffs. His head is hanging low.

  “Danny,” Nancy says, her voice a whisper full of fear. “What’s happening?”

  Danny looks up at her.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” he says. “I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

  As he passes by, she stares at him. The yellow lighting makes his skin look pallid, his hair greasy, his eyes red with burst capillaries. More than just his appearance disgusts her. The way he carries himself, as if he doesn’t care what’s going on, as if all of this is some kind of inconvenience to him. His apology to her lacked any sort of conviction in its tone. He’s not sorry.

  She sees him in a way she’s never seen him before.

  He’s a thug.

  A selfish, no-good narcissist who only cares about himself.

  A criminal who would rather sell drugs than get a job.

  How could she have ever fallen for him?

  Tears fill her eyes as Danny and the rest of his entourage disappear down the hall. Nancy turns her head and the woman cop returns and stands outside the jail cell.

  There is no sympathy in the woman’s face.

  “You better hope they find Stephen Small alive,” the woman says. “If he’s not, you’re going to get the electric chair.”

  “But I didn’t know,” Nancy says, sobbing.

  “They shave your head, you know,” the woman says. “So your hair doesn’t catch on fire.”

  Nancy collapses to the floor, weeping. She hears the woman’s boots retreat down the hallway, leaving her alone with her tears.

  “I want to see my son,” she wails.

  Her cries echo down the empty hallway.

  No one is listening.

  CHAPTER 35

  “STOP HERE,” DANNY says.

  The FBI agent driving the car pulls to a stop and puts the vehicle in park. They are in the sand hills outside of Kankakee. The sun is low in the sky, coating the clouds in red and casting a pink, bloody hue onto the sandy ground.

  The driver and the agent in the passenger seat get out. The one with the glasses opens the back door of the sedan for Danny, who steps out. His hands are cuffed.

  The irony is not lost on Danny that two days ago he was the one leading a handcuffed man down this same path.

  This time, instead of just Danny and Stephen Small, Danny is joined by an entire contingent of FBI agents, police, paramedics. There are people all around him, waiting for him to take them to the place where he buried Stephen Small.

  “This way,” Danny says.

  He walks through the sandy soil.

  Danny’s stomach is knotted, as if someone has taken his intestines and twisted them into a tight ball.

  Off to his left, Danny hears a crunch. He pauses and looks over. One of the cops lifts his shoe and looks down. Beneath his foot is a crushed pair of eyeglasses.

  The glasses that had fallen off Stephen Small’s face.

  “Hurry up,” one of the agents says, shoving Danny forward.

  Danny continues until he spots the PVC pipe sticking out of the ground.

  “There,” he says.

  From the tube sticking out of the ground, it’s easy to see the disturbed segment of ground where the rest of the pipe is located, leading to a large swath of disturbed earth.

  “He’s buried down there,” Danny says, then adds, “I gave him food and water.”

  Officers come in with shovels and get to work. One of the agents leans over the pipe and calls to Stephen Small.

  “Mr. Small, it’s the police,” he shouts. “We’re almost there. Just wait a little while longer.”

  There’s no answer.

  Danny stands back. His heart hammers in his chest.

  He remembers pointing the gun at Stephen Small and the fear he saw on the man’s face. Later, when Stephen didn’t want to get into the box, Danny had assured him he would live.

  Danny had believed his own words.

  The cops work furiously, throwing shovelfuls of dirt. Several of them are digging, but the work is slow.

  Hurry up, Danny thinks. Hurry.

  Finally, one of the shovels strikes wood. The officers double their efforts, trying to clear the lid.

  “Hang in there, Mr. Small!” one of the agents shouts.

  They get enough room around the edge of the box, and an officer kneels and wedges his fingers underneath the lid. He pulls up, and the still partially buried plywood groans under the weight.

  Then he pries the lid open so everyone can see inside.

  CHAPTER 36

  STEPHEN SMALL IS lying in a curled ball, like a fetus.

  He isn’t moving.

  An EMT kneels down next to him, placing two fingers on his neck, searching for a pulse from the carotid artery. Another EMT leans next to the hole, ready to help.

  After only a few seconds, the EMT closest to Stephen looks at the agent in charge and shakes his head.

  “He’s dead,” the EMT says.

  Danny’s legs go wobbly. He feels like he could throw up. He begins taking deep breaths—long and slow—trying to get himself under control.

  Then it occurs to him. What he’s doing—breathing deeply—was exactly what Stephen Small couldn’t do. Danny had buried a man underground and he had suffocated.

  The EMTs step away from the hole, and a new process begins. This is no longer a rescue mission—it is a homicide scene. Detectives begin photographing the body. Others start taping off the perimeter.

  The agent in charge approaches Danny. He’s furious. Danny can tell by looking at him. But there’s something else in his expression too. Sadness. They’ve solved the crime, but it’s too late. There’s no satisfaction in the resolution, only anger and sorrow and confusion about why this had to happen at all.

  The agent takes Danny by the arm and leads him close to the grave.

  “Take a good look,” the agent says. “I want you to see what you’ve done.”

  Stephen Small’s skin is gray. His milky eyes are vacant, staring at nothing. His loafers are in the corner of the box, and his bare feet are contorted with the toes curled up. Up until this moment, Danny had thought perhaps the EMTs were wrong. He had thought there was still a chance that Stephen Small might sit up, yawn, and look around with sleepy eyes.

  But seeing the body this close, there is no mistaking it. A dead man looks different from someone who’s sleeping. There is no air inflating his lungs. There is no blood pulsing through his veins.

  Stephen Small is not asleep.

  The man Danny kidnapped is gone forever.

  Another officer approaches them, holding up a length of PVC pipe.

  “This diameter is way too narrow for how long it is,” the agent says to his colleague. “There was no way for him to expel his carbon dioxide out of the box. And no way to pull in adequate oxygen from the outside. We’ll have to wait on the autopsy, but judging by the rigor mortis, I’d say he’s been dead for at least a day. I doubt he survived more than a few hours with this ridiculous contraption.”

  The agent looks at Danny. “He might have been dead before you ever made the first phone call to request a ransom.”

  With that, the agent walks away, getting back to work.

  “What made you think he had forty-eight hours of air?” the agent in charge asks Danny.

  Danny stares at the body of Stephen Small.

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” Danny says, and it seems to him that it’s a blanket statement that could describe the ill-conceived air pipe as well as the whole kidnapping scheme. It is a statement that might encompass his entire life, practically every decision he has ever made.