Chapter 11

ELEVEN

The Old Mitcham Ranch

Head bent against the rain, Wyatt Twotrees used bolt cutters to break the chain securing the gate to the Old Mitcham Ranch and pushed it wide open. It had been a very long time since he’d been at the haunted ranch house. After more than one mass murder had happened in the exact same place, he figured it wasn’t only Mitcham, who’d murdered his wife and then hanged himself, who haunted the place now. The old place was dangerous and anyone could be waiting in the shadows. The hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention as he looked out across the shadowed driveway. The haze from the rain had been enhanced by the swirling mist rising from the river and in the moonlight the old ranch house, with its peeling paint and empty windows, radiated a warning not to enter. He looked toward the barn, where Mitcham had hung himself from the rafters. The legend was that on Halloween he could be heard swinging back and forth, the rope creaking with each sway of his decaying body.

Wyatt wasn’t sure if he believed in ghosts, but over the years, he had sure seen a few weird things happening in Black Rock Falls, so anything could be possible. He stood to one side as vehicles drove into the driveway forming a circle, their headlights highlighting the downfall of rain and making the perimeter outside dark and foreboding.

Over the last twelve years since the incident at the Whispering Caves everyone involved had taken a low profile, going their separate ways and meeting only at college reunions. They all had close friends within the group, figuring that was normal as they’d spent so long together in college. He’d married and divorced and worked in the spare automobile parts industry, and his close friend Clint Wasser worked in sales. He was still single, saying he liked to play the field on his sales trips. Both his other college buddies Jess Hallon and Dustin Crawley worked on their parents’ cattle ranches. Dustin was often away on the rodeo circuit and had never married, but Jess had a son and a wife. The girls in the group he didn’t make contact with at all. Josie had married Bob Campbell. Marissa, a tax accountant, was still the little scared mouse he’d known at college, and Lily was a hairstylist. They did talk but kept it on the down-low. In all, they’d hid their secret from the world very well.

He climbed into his truck and headed for the other vehicles. He buzzed down his window. “I’m not standing out in the rain. Drive into the barn.” He grinned at them. “Unless you’re chicken.”

“I don’t know why you dragged us all out here in the middle of a flood, Marissa.” Wasser shook rain from his baseball cap and glared at her. “No one is going to know we’re talking. Why do you figure the cops believe we’re involved?”

“It’s been a very long time, Clint.” Marissa stared at him from under her hood. “Haven’t you watched the news? The sheriff is hunting down friends of Cole and Abby. They found their bodies floating in the river. I wanted to make sure we all understood the implications of what was happening and to ensure that after all this time, our stories were the same.”

“I agree.” Hallon shrugged and removed his hat to shake out the rain. “You know the law. Murder doesn’t come under the statute of limitations. We covered this up and I’m not blaming anyone because most of us would have done the same thing in the circumstances, so we’re all equally guilty. If the truth comes out, we’ll all go to prison for murder one.”

“I still find it hard to believe Cole murdered Abby.” Lily pushed both hands into her coat pockets. “Why would he? They got along real well and she was really nice. I know she loved him. I wonder what really happened. Did they argue?”

Rolling his eyes, Wyatt Twotrees gaped at her. “That’s water under the bridge now, Lily. Why he did it is irrelevant. All we need to remember is he murdered Abby and needed to be stopped. You all know it was the right thing to do and any one of us would have done the same. We all agreed to bury the bodies that night and nothing has changed.”

“If we’d let him go, he’d have murdered us in our sleep.” Dustin Crawley, rugged and strong, rested both hands on his belt and his buckle glistened in the headlights. “It’s too late now to have second thoughts. We go over the story and stick to it.” His gaze swung to Josie. “I hope you didn’t spill your guts.” His gaze shifted to the other women. “Y’all are weak links and we’re trusting our lives to you. One slip and y’all become liabilities. Us guys are solid. Look what happened today. Who did they question first? Josie, and they’ll get to the rest of y’all and try and make you talk. You know the sheriff’s reputation: she can read a lie and she will hunt us down like a dog after a bone.”

“It doesn’t matter who killed Cole.” Clint Wasser folded his arms across his chest and his gaze moved around the group. “We’re all equally to blame. We have never spoken about it since that night, and Josie calls Marissa the second the cops leave. How stupid is that? Don’t you figure they’ll check the phone records?”

“Yeah, and what does Marissa do?” Jess Hallon stood feet apart and back straight. He pointed a finger at Marissa. “Within seconds of disconnecting, she contacts Lily.” He shook his head. “Didn’t you think it through before you acted? You’ll get us all life in prison.” He threw his arms up in the air and glared at them. “My dog’s got more brains than you two.”

Twotrees held up a hand. “Calm down, everyone. Arguing about what’s already done will get us nowhere. All we need to do is get our stories straight, is all.” He looked at Josie. “Tell us from the beginning what happened today. Don’t leave out a single detail.”

He listened as Josie recounted the sheriff’s visit. He looked around the group. “The one thing we need to make clear is we didn’t go near the caves. As we moved into the other group’s camp down the mountain making a noise, everyone will recall we arrived late. I built the fire with Jess and we made a point of talking to everyone so people there would remember us being there. As us guys were all wearing our college jackets and identical Halloween masks, I doubt anyone noticed Cole and Abby were missing. They’d have seen a group of Alpha Pi guys, is all.”

“I recall Bella Crooke asking me if I’d seen Abby.” Lily looked at him with haunted eyes. “We were all cheerleaders, if you recall. I told her she’d headed up the mountain with Cole. So if the cops get to her, she might remember our conversation.”

“I had a similar conversation with Valerie Janecki but she was asking about Cole.” Wasser grinned. “I told her he’d headed into the forest with his girlfriend.” He laughed. “She wasn’t happy. Seems she had a message for him from his mom. They were neighbors.”

Nodding, Twotrees stared out into the rain and then back to the others. “Anything else specific you can recall about that night?”

“Yeah.” Jess Hallon’s brow wrinkled into a frown. “Cory got into a fight with Birch over some girl. Remember they stumbled through the fire and we had to stamp it out?”

Twotrees nodded. “Yeah. So we can add that information.” He looked around. “Only tell the story of who you spoke to, not ours, or it will sound rehearsed. We’re not kids. We can handle the cops as long as we give them the same information about Abby and Cole.” He looked around the group. “They left and we never saw them again that night. We figured they’d gone somewhere to be alone and then left.”

“We were all too busy toasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories to notice they didn’t return.” Wasser shrugged. “That’s what we were doing. Just do a time shift in your memories.”

“Just remember.” Hallon stared at the three women. “If one of you chickens out, we’ll fall like a house of cards. Think before you do anything else stupid, Josie.”

“Okay.” Josie’s cheeks reddened and her fingers trembled as she pushed a strand of wet hair from her eyes. “I’m just wondering who pointed them in my direction in the first place?”

“They know we were Abby’s friends. They’d only need to ask our folks or look in a darn yearbook.” Marissa shrugged and gave him the stink eye. “It was just bad luck they decided to speak to her first, is all.” She blew out a long breath like smoke from a cigarette. “I need to get home. We done here?”

Twotrees had a bad feeling someone in the group would talk. Everyone would go to prison for life and he had no plans to ruin his life for a slip of the tongue. He nodded slowly and looked at the others. “Keep the contact between us to an absolute minimum and don’t call everyone. Call one of us using the burners and get them to pass on the message and so on. Let’s get out of here, one at a time, not in a darn convoy. I’ll shut the gate.” He went to his truck and watched everyone drive away in intervals. Nothing had convinced him that they’d get through this unscathed. Not now that the sheriff was making waves. He shook his head as they left one by one and stared at the red taillights vanishing into the darkness. A cold breeze tainted with rain brushed over him and all around him the old barn moaned. The sound might have bothered some people, with the tales of the dead rising and haunting the old barn and ranch house, but not him. The dead were dead. It was the living he needed to worry about. He headed for his truck and climbed inside. The faces of his friends hadn’t changed and most looked almost the same as on that Halloween night. He let out a long sigh. “Which one of you will fold first?”