Chapter 8 - The Christmas Cards From a Dead Man

Ruth kept the cards in a kitchen drawer.

Twenty Christmas cards.

Every December.

Different cities.

Phoenix.

Denver.

Seattle.

Boise.

Always the same short message.

Still chasing warm weather. Hope you’re well. — Sam.

Ruth laid them across the table.

Adrian examined the handwriting.

Matteo called a forensic document specialist.

By midnight, they had an answer.

The cards were written by three different people.

Ruth sat down.

“No.”

“The first four appear consistent with Samuel Reed’s known handwriting,” Matteo said gently.

“The rest do not.”

“Then who sent them?”

No one answered.

Ruth began thinking back.

Samuel had vanished shortly after the Briarwood collapse.

Thomas said he moved west.

Ruth never questioned it.

Why would she?

Thomas was her husband.

She trusted him.

Then she remembered the last argument she ever heard between them.

Samuel shouting in the driveway.

Thomas saying, “You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

Samuel answering, “Then we make sure everyone knows.”

Three days later, Samuel was gone.

Ruth’s face drained.

“Thomas knew.”

Adrian crouched beside her.

“Knew what?”

“Whatever happened to Samuel.”

The old environmental files contained a map.

One area near the ridge had been marked with a red X.

Not contamination.

A drainage culvert.

Investigators searched it the next morning.

They found nothing.

For three hours.

Then a ground-penetrating radar unit detected a void beneath an abandoned concrete pad.

By sunset, police had sealed the entire property.

Ruth watched from her porch.

She did not ask what they found.

She knew when the detective started walking toward her.

Human remains.

One body.

Buried for approximately twenty years.

Dental records later identified Samuel Reed.

Ruth cried until no tears came.

Not because she had loved Samuel.

Because she had spent twenty years believing a lie somebody mailed to her every Christmas.

Investigators found something else with the remains.

A stainless-steel keychain.

HOLLOWAY INDUSTRIAL SERVICES.

Grant’s father had died six years earlier.

But the evidence did not die with him.

The old case reopened.

Grant’s current charges expanded.

His attorney stopped returning reporters’ calls.

Meridian Crest suspended the acquisition team connected to Ruth’s property.

Stephen Carr, the attorney who brought the eviction papers, hired his own lawyer.

The notary agreed to cooperate.

Then Ruth asked the question everyone had avoided.

“Did Thomas know Samuel was dead?”

Adrian did not answer.

Ruth looked at him.

“You always tell me the truth now.”

“Yes.”

“Then tell me.”

“We don’t know.”

“But you think he did.”

“I think he suspected.”

Ruth nodded.

That hurt enough.

Later that night, she sat alone in Thomas’s chair.

The house felt different.

Not unsafe.

Older.

As if the walls themselves had secrets.

Adrian came into the room carrying tea.

“You don’t have to take care of me.”

“I know.”

“You are very stubborn.”

“So are you.”

She accepted the cup.

Then smiled faintly.

“My sons would have been impossible.”

Adrian looked at her.

“You wanted children?”

Ruth’s eyes lowered.

“We had a daughter.”

He went still.

“She died when she was five.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thomas never recovered.”

Neither had Ruth.

They had simply learned how to keep living.

She looked at Adrian.

“Maybe that is why I asked you boys.”

“Why?”

“Four strangers looked easier than one empty chair.”

Adrian said nothing for a long time.

Then his phone rang.

Matteo.

He answered.

His face changed.

“What?”

Ruth watched him.

Adrian stood.

“Where?”

Another pause.

“We’re coming.”

He ended the call.

Ruth’s heart began pounding.

“What happened?”

“They found a second recording in Michael Vale’s old archive.”

“About Samuel?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Adrian looked at her.

“It’s Thomas.”

Ruth stopped breathing.

“Speaking to who?”

Adrian’s eyes held hers.

“To Grant Holloway.”

“When?”

“The day before Thomas died.”

Ruth’s tea cup trembled against the saucer.

Thomas Miller had supposedly died of a heart attack.

Alone.

In his truck.

Beside the creek.

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For twenty years, Ruth had never questioned it.

Until now.