The Grave That Held No Body Still Buried Every Lie Between Them

“Because Thomas has evidence that could buy me a federal agreement.”

“There it is.”

Cole glanced at him in the mirror.

“You wanted a moral reason?”

“No.”

“Good. I don’t have one.”

They left the city limits and followed the river west. Warehouses gave way to wooded hills, trailer parks, and small houses with boats covered in blue tarps.

Leo watched for pursuing vehicles.

“Where are we going?”

“A former convent outside Mercer Ridge.”

Harold turned. “Saint Agnes?”

Cole looked at him. “You know it?”

“My wife worked there when it was a nursing home.”

The old building sat behind a rusted iron fence three miles from the nearest town. Its brick walls had blackened beneath the gutters. A statue of Mary stood in the courtyard with both hands missing.

Cole parked near a side entrance.

“Thomas has been here four days,” he said.

“Why?”

“He was moved after someone entered his motel room.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know.”

Cole took a pistol from beneath the driver’s seat and checked the magazine.

Leo’s body reacted before his mind did. His shoulders tightened. His gaze fixed on the weapon.

Cole noticed.

He put the gun back.

“Your father is unarmed.”

“That supposed to reassure me?”

“No. It’s supposed to explain why I’m not.”

The convent’s interior smelled of mildew and floor wax. A generator hummed somewhere below. Many rooms were empty, doors removed from their hinges. In the old dining hall, plastic sheets covered stacked furniture.

A woman in medical scrubs met them in the corridor.

Her name tag read JANICE.

She looked at Cole. “He’s awake.”

“Any change?”

“Fever’s down. He still needs a hospital.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Leo asked.

Janice looked toward Cole for permission.

Leo stepped between them. “I asked you.”

“An infected wound,” she said. “Left side. Possibly a fractured rib. He was beaten.”

“How long ago?”

“Maybe two weeks.”

Twelve days.

The last time Cole knew where Thomas had been.

Leo pushed past her.

The room at the end of the corridor had once been a chapel office. A narrow cot stood beneath a boarded window. Medical supplies covered a folding table. A lamp cast yellow light over the bed.

Thomas Miller lay beneath a gray blanket.

He was asleep or pretending.

His face had become smaller. The jaw Leo remembered looked delicate beneath untrimmed white stubble. One eye was yellow with healing bruises. His hair lay damp against his forehead.

Leo stopped in the doorway.

For fourteen months he had imagined his father’s body in a sealed casket, burned too badly for viewing. He had imagined the shape of him beneath funeral cloth. He had imagined soil striking the lid while no one from the family stood close enough to hear.

The living man on the cot seemed less possible than the dead one had.

Thomas opened his eyes.

He looked at Leo.

No one moved.

Then Thomas said, “You kept the jacket.”

Leo looked down at the faded charcoal sleeve.

Thomas had bought it for him at a discount store the winter before the robbery. It had never fit correctly in the shoulders.

Leo crossed the room and struck him.

The sound was flat and ugly.

Thomas’s head turned against the pillow. Janice stepped forward, but Cole held out an arm.

Leo stood beside the cot with his fist still closed.

Thomas touched his lip.

Blood appeared on his fingertips.

“I deserved that,” he said.

Leo hit him again.

This time Thomas raised an arm too late. The blow caught his cheek. He gasped and folded slightly around his injured ribs.

Janice shoved Leo backward.

“That’s enough.”

“No,” Leo said. “It isn’t.”

Thomas coughed into the blanket.

Janice moved between them. “He has an infection and at least one cracked rib. You hit him again, you may put him in the hospital before you get your answers.”

“He should be in a hospital.”

“Yes.”

“Then why isn’t he?”

“Because he believes someone there will kill him.”

Thomas lowered his arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Leo turned on him.

“Do not say that yet.”

Thomas’s eyes filled, but no tears fell.

“All right.”

“Don’t agree with me either.”

Thomas looked down at the blanket.

Harold appeared in the doorway and removed his cap.

Thomas saw him and gave a small nod.

“You found him.”

Harold’s voice roughened. “He found the grave first.”

Thomas closed his eyes.

Leo laughed once without humor. “You didn’t think of that?”

“I did.”

“No, you thought of evidence. You thought of lockers and fake identification and videos. Did you think about me getting out with nowhere to go and taking a bus to the cemetery?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I hoped Harold would reach you first.”

“You hoped.”

Thomas did not answer.

Leo paced to the boarded window and back.

“Who buried you?”

“No one.”

“Who signed the death certificate?”

“A physician Hale had paid before. The body was an unidentified man killed in a vehicle fire.”

Evelyn stiffened. “You used someone else’s body.”

“The body was never released to my family. The funeral home received an empty sealed casket.”

“There was a cremation permit,” Harold said.

“Forged.”

Leo stared at his father.

“Somebody died, and you used him.”

Thomas swallowed.

“Yes.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“I was told he could not be identified.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Thomas turned his face away.

Leo saw the answer in the movement.

He had not asked.

Thomas had been afraid, and fear had made another dead man convenient.

Leo sat in a metal chair because his knees no longer felt reliable.

“What happened twelve days ago?”

Thomas looked at Cole.

Cole leaned against the wall, arms folded.

“Tell him,” Leo said.

Thomas touched the cut on his lip.

“I met Rebecca Sloan at a motel near the state line. She had the original payment ledgers and copies of Vey’s informant reports. She was supposed to give them to me.”