Page 90 of Stay Buried

They walked a good ten minutes, her keeping a safe distance, him slowing now and then to look back, to look all around, still clutching the hatchet. They followed the trail through the woods, past a pond. At last they came to a small clearing that Ashley could see was the site of an old house. There were the remains of a cellar hole, a crumbling brick chimney, slate roof tiles, old bits of timber. Sad Willy stepped down into the old cellar hole, only a couple of feet deep after decades of filling with leaf litter. Saplings had sprung up here and there. There was a small ring of stones that had been used as a campfire. And a sleeping bag.

He took a seat on the sleeping bag and gestured for her to join him.

“Do you think you could put the hatchet down?” she asked.

He looked at the old rusty hatchet in his hand and seemed almost surprised to find it there still.

“Sorry,” he said, dropping it onto the sleeping bag; then he reached into the opening, pulling out a bottle of Old Crow bourbon. He took a sip, offered the bottle to her. She knew she should say no, but she wanted—no, needed—to earn his trust. So she clambered awkwardly down, sat near him, accepted the bottle, and took a good glug of it.

He smiled at her.

“Were you expecting someone else back there? Under the bridge?” Ashley asked, passing the bottle back to him. He took a good long swig.

“Maybe,” he said, wiping some stray drops of bourbon from his beard.

“It seems I’m in a bit of trouble myself,” she told him.

“Is that so?”

She nodded. “The knackerman left his mark on my motel room door last night.”

He was silent, just watching her.

“I heard he marked your door too. Mini told me. Two years ago, right?”

He said nothing, just stared.

“And then the next day, the town hall burned.”

He flinched a little here.

“The thing is, Willy, I was hoping you could tell me about that day. About what happened. Because I believe my mother may have been involved somehow.”

“Your mother?” He set down the bottle of bourbon, leaned toward Ashley. He smelled like old sweat, cigarette smoke, and booze.

Ashley nodded. “She came to Boone’s Ferry two years ago to do some family history research. She was the granddaughter of Thomas and Margaret Endicott.”

“Louise,” he said, frowning, saying the name like it hurt him. “You’re Louise’s daughter?”

“Yes! You met her?”

“No. But my wife did.”

He looked down at the ground, scowling.

“Anna, right?” she asked softly.

“That’s right. Anna. She worked at the town hall.” His voice got thick. He took another sip of bourbon.

Ashley was quiet, waiting.

“The night before we got the mark, Anna told me about your mother coming in with all kinds of questions—about her family, but the flu too, all about Boone’s Ferry. Anna liked her, wanted to help, and in their digging around, they found something—discovered some secret in old papers.”

“What kind of secret?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed, rubbed his beard. “She said she needed to get one last piece of evidence, then she’d tell me. That it changed everything. And she and your mother, once they had this final bit of proof, they were going to tell the whole world what they’d found.”

Ashley spoke around the hard lump in her throat. “But they never got the chance.”