Exousia (Karass Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  She had learned that all you had to do to discover the truth about people was to watch how they treated the “minor” people in life. People that they considered less than them. Of course, the fact that they thought anyone was less than them was a dead giveaway.

  But sometimes it wasn’t noticeable until they interacted with people like waitresses, or people of a different race, or religion, or gas station attendants. Like her. A gas station owner maybe, but she was a nobody. She was not worth a second glance or a kind word from people like that unless they wanted something from you. Tina had learned the hard way. If they could maltreat anyone, it would eventually turn on you. Bottom line.

  She wasn’t sure about the people of Doveland yet. Everyone seemed to be friendly enough. But once again, it sometimes took time to see the truth of someone. Besides, she had only been back in town for a few months. Hiding from Frank for years meant she didn’t have any contact with him, so she had no idea he had gone to jail last summer.

  Eventually, Valerie, that nice lady who ran the Bed and Breakfast Inn had tracked her down with the help of Sam. She knew Sam used to be in the FBI and that’s how they found her. Bet they’ll be using him on whatever is going on now, she thought.

  Frank was in jail, never to get out again. That’s what she prayed for every night anyway. Once she knew he couldn’t get to her, she divorced him. Sam helped her get Frank to sign over the gas station to her as part of the divorce. She didn’t know what he had said to Frank, but she was now the owner of a beat-up old gas station.

  Since she knew next to nothing about gas stations or business, the first few months had been a disaster. Literally. But, she learned. One of the bank managers taught her about bookkeeping and checked on her every week to make sure things were flowing smoothly. She thought he was probably protecting his investment since she had to take out a small business loan to fix up the station. On the other hand, she was grateful they had taken a chance on her. Still wasn’t sure why. Tina knew she was an unknown commodity.

  And then there were those other women. Always checking on her. Sometimes bringing her food because she was constantly working and had zero time to cook for herself and her kids. There was a small house behind the gas station that they were renting, which was helpful because it was so close. But she had them do their homework at the station, sitting at the counter so she could see them. Plus, she figured that they might as well learn how to run a business while she learned.

  What Tina wanted right now was to run across the street and ask one of those women what was going on. She could see Mandy still serving over at Your Second Home. But Tina couldn’t leave the station, and there was nothing on the news yet. Maybe Mandy or Barbara would stop over and tell her. Tina hadn’t been in town long before she realized that it was those women who knew what was happening. If she needed something, she only had to ask one of them. Usually, Tina was a little put out that they were always checking on her. Today, it was different. She wanted to know what was going on

  At least she knew that Frank wasn’t involved. He was long gone. On the other hand, who knew? Perhaps he had been smarter than she thought.

  Nah, she thought, shaking her head. He was too stupid. Look how easily he had been caught. No, something unrelated to Frank was happening.

  The bell dinged. A customer. It was time to get back to work. She’d find out soon enough. As long as it didn’t touch her or her family, they would be okay.

  Seventeen

  Hank didn’t show up at the house until after everyone had gone to bed. He had a key, so he let himself in. Ava had insisted that Hank keep his room in the bunkhouse so that he would always have a place with them. Hank had resisted her kindness at first, but realizing she would never give up, he had given in. Tonight, he was grateful for her stubbornness. He was dead tired, too tired to drive to Concourse. He had called Melvin to let him know where he was staying, and probably would be for a few days. He needed to be closer to the scene of the crime.

  Another scene of the crime. How many times would he be present at a scene of a crime? Hank had thought that last summer would be the end. Grant was dead. Lenny was in jail. He was out of the crime game. He was out of the helping FBI game. He was done, or he had thought he was.

  Perhaps it was his lot in life to never be done. The only thing that eased the pain was the knowledge that this time he had nothing to do with it. Well, other than digging it up. He didn’t put that body there. Hank corrected himself—bodies.

  Silently making his way through the dimly lit hallway in the bunkhouse, he thought about Emily waiting in her room to find out what had happened. He didn’t want to be the one to tell her there was more than one body. It was terrible enough when they uncovered the one. Now it was a nightmare. A nightmare that was probably just beginning.

  So in spite of thinking that he owed it to Emily to let her know, he decided against telling her now. Hank knew that sleep could be a great healer and he needed some healing time before the day began again, only a few hours away. Besides, once he told her, she might not ever get to sleep.

  Lying quietly in bed, Emily heard Hank moving through the hallway. She knew it was Hank. He had called Ava earlier when they were still all up, sitting in the living room, shell-shocked with no answers. She hoped he would knock on her door and tell her, and at the same time, she prayed that he wouldn’t. She wasn’t ready.

  Now that he was in the bunkhouse with her, Emily felt strangely at peace. Actually, she had felt surprisingly at peace from the moment Ava had picked her up. In spite of everything, surrounded by Ava, her family and friends, Emily had found herself relaxing.

  Lying in bed, unable to sleep, Emily puzzled it out. The only conclusion she could come to was that for the first time she knew she wasn’t alone.

  Whatever was going to happen, she wouldn’t have to face it by herself.

  As she heard Hank softly close his door, she knew she could sleep now. As Emily drifted off, she had the thought that everyone should have that feeling at least once in their life. The realization that they weren’t alone.

  *******

  Evan heard Hank too. When he heard him walk around the back to the bunkhouse he knew that Hank didn’t want to talk about it yet. Evan was okay with that. Hank needed to rest, even if he couldn’t. Evan had given up trying to sleep. Instead, he lay awake thinking about the day.

  When Ava had gone to get Emily that afternoon all they knew was that something terrible had happened out on the hill. Before she left, Ava assured him that Hank said everyone they knew was safe. Still, Hank wanted Ava to bring Emily home to stay with them for a few days.

  Evan’s job was to stay home with Ben and wait for Hannah to come back from school. Ava said she would call when she knew more. While Evan waited, he prayed that whatever was wrong was temporary, and the good would override and dissolve anything evil going on. When Ava called from the hill, she still didn’t tell him what had happened. Ava said that Emily was in the car with her. But it was the faint quiver in her voice that told Evan she felt it was too distressing to talk about over the phone.

  When Hannah got home from school and discovered that Miss Emily was coming to stay at her house, she decided that she was probably the luckiest girl in the world. However, when Evan couldn’t tell her why Miss Emily was staying, Hannah knew another terrible thing had happened. Well, she knew what to do about that. She would wait to hear what it was, and then she would ask Leif to come talk to her. She missed Suzanne, but Leif did his best to be comforting. He just did it differently.

  On the other hand, Hannah thought that Sarah might be calling him to her too, so perhaps they could talk to Leif together later when Sarah came over to the house. Hannah knew that would be what would happen because it always did when something needed to be discussed.

  Hannah was right. That night almost everyone came over, and as usual, food came with
them. In spite of the pall of what was happening, they tried to maintain a cheerful and optimistic point of view. Later, when Hank called and said he wouldn’t be back until late, and that he wanted to talk to them in person, they decided to go home and get some rest and come back in the morning.

  Sarah and Leif, who had shown up as Hannah expected, suggested that they take ten minutes and sit in silent meditation or prayer together. No one objected. Emily had never done such a thing before but was comforted by the thought that everyone was quieting their thinking and praying to surrender to peace.

  Leif went with Hannah as she got ready for bed knowing that she was looking for alone time with him.

  “Do you know what is happening, Leif?” she asked.

  “Yes. And for now, we are not going to talk about it. What we are going to talk about is the idea of evil. Just for a minute. I know that you have already experienced what that looks like, but you have also experienced the power of good. Good is the side you always want to be on.

  “However, we sometimes mistake something as good when actually it is evil. Either it is evil because people didn’t know, or it is evil because someone knew what they were doing and did it anyway.”

  “Why do they do it anyway?”

  “Well, that’s the tricky question. I think we all do things we shouldn’t because we rationalize that it’s okay. Other people do it. The end justifies the means. Because no one will know. But that never changes the fact that walking with anything other than right intentions for all people all the time, is not good. And sometimes it is evil.

  “So, you have to be aware, sweet girl. You have to pay attention to the why of things. Why are you doing something? Is it to help, but not harm? Is it because you have rationalized that it will be okay? Is it because you want something and don’t care what happens to anyone else to get it?”

  “Why are you telling me this, Leif? Do you think that I have been doing wrong things?”

  Leif sat on the bed the best that he could and said, “It’s times like this that I wish I hadn’t left so that I could hug you right now, Hannah. No, I don’t think you have been doing wrong things. I just want you to pay attention. Sometimes grownups miss things that children see.”

  “I wish you were still here too, Leif,” Hannah said, a tear running down her cheek. “Is what you did more good than the good of staying?”

  “That’s a hard question, Hannah. I can see how sad it has been for Sarah and you, and me too. But yes, I still think I did the right thing.”

  “You had a bigger reason than what felt good to you?”

  “When you say things like that Hannah, I know you understand. Now get some sleep. There’s school in the morning. There will be plenty of time to find out what happened.”

  As Hannah drifted off to sleep, she mumbled: “Only good has power….”

  Leif smiled, and whispered, “Amen to that, little one. Amen to that.”

  Eighteen

  They chose a table in the back of Your Second Home. It was a rainy and sleety Monday morning in April, so Grace had the wood stove lit, making the room warm and comforting. Hank was grateful for the warmth because what they had to talk about was far from comfortable.

  Sam had asked Craig to meet with them. He knew that Craig was not a pathologist, but Sam thought Craig could be very useful for the investigation. Although Sam was no longer with the FBI, when the bodies were discovered, Sam asked to be the point man for them in the research into what had happened. They were delighted that he asked and agreed that if the FBI needed to send a team, they would.

  But for now, Sam was to help the local authorities with their investigation. Such as they were. It was a small police force, not equipped to deal with such a large scale murder. Which is what everyone was assuming they had on their hands. The police knew they needed help, and were grateful for any assistance from Sam. None of them were happy that once again, they needed to work together because of another tragedy.

  And that’s why the three friends were meeting. It had been three days since the discovery of the bodies. Up to this point, Craig only knew what Hank had told everyone at Evan’s house on Saturday morning, the day after the discovery. It wasn’t much. Craig knew he needed to get more details before he could be of any help at all.

  However, he had already helped with one thing. When Sam told him the bodies had been sent to Pittsburgh because of the potential magnitude of their deaths, Craig asked who was doing the autopsies. It turned out to be someone he had gone to medical school with, so he contacted him and asked if he would make their autopsies a priority even though it was a weekend.

  After almost promising his firstborn child, if he ever had one, they agreed. The three of them were expecting the report this morning, and Craig was hopeful that was where he could be of most help. Interpreting the results.

  After Mandy delivered their coffee and scones, Craig asked Sam to run him through the sequences of the event. Sam deferred to Hank, saying Hank was there from the beginning. Would he tell the story of what happened?

  Hank squirmed. He knew that he needed to tell what happened but every moment of it was pure torture. Not only because of his past, but because of what he had felt when he saw the bodies. But he knew it had to be done, so he began:

  “We had scraped off the brush from the site for the landing the day before. So on Friday, it was time to prepare the bed of the site. To do that, we dug down about eighteen inches so that we could level the ground to get it ready for the rocks and gravel that go in next. Everything was going smoothly, but right before the lunch break one of the crew yelled at the driver of the bulldozer to hold up.

  “None of us were really worried about it. This kind of thing happens all the time. Something gets stuck, there is a rock the driver hadn’t seen, things like that. But it didn’t take us long to realize that this time it was different because he was frantic.

  “I was up the hill looking at where the house is going to be and had to run down to see what was happening. It took a full minute for me to actually see what he was pointing at in the ground. It was so incongruous that I couldn’t recognize it.”

  “What did you see, Hank?” Sam prompted when Hank stopped talking.

  “Sam, I have seen dead bodies before, you know that. I should have been ready for it if there is such a thing. But it was just a hand, a skeleton of a hand, reaching out of the ground. I couldn’t believe that is what it was. I kept thinking, perhaps a wild animal had died there. But a hand? It had to be human.

  “None of us moved for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, I grabbed my phone and began taking pictures. I asked the men to call 911, while I called you. We didn’t move anything. Everyone has seen enough crime shows to know that rule. Then you arrived, and you know what happened after that.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Craig said. “Someone keep the story going.”

  Sam looked at Hank fiddling with the handle of his cup and realized he was done talking for the moment, so Sam continued the story.

  “Hank did the right thing. He had everyone step back from the digging. The equipment stayed exactly where it had been, and he called Ava to help Emily who had seen the whole thing.”

  Hank broke in. “It was awful. She had been sitting on her rock watching and ran up to see what the problem was. It was her screaming that made me realize that it was more than an animal. One of the men went to her and caught her just as she fainted.”

  “I didn’t know she fainted,” Sam said. “Poor girl. So much at stake for her. And then to see a hand sticking out of the ground.”

  He and Hank exchanged looks, both remembering what Emily had looked like after seeing what had been uncovered.

  Gathering his thoughts, Sam continued, “After Ava took Emily home, we started digging out the body. No one in the area had done anything like that before so we had
to move slowly. As the day progressed, it got worse. We found other bodies. All of them about the same depth as the first. It was as if someone didn’t feel like digging. It turned out to be a mass grave.”

  Sam stopped and took a drink of coffee. Sighing, he continued the story. “I called my old boss at the FBI, and he told me to supervise. We took pictures and videos as we worked. In total, we found four bodies. How long they had been buried, or who they were, we have no idea. We carefully wrapped them, included soil samples, and sent them to Pittsburgh to get answers.

  “The local authorities went through the rest of the hill using sonar to see if there are any more bodies. Since nothing more was found, I think they will release the site back to Emily sometime this week. Assuming nothing else comes up before then.”

  “Does anyone have any idea of what could have happened?” Craig asked.

  “None. We are having a title search of the land done which should help find out what used to be there.”

  Hank glanced up to see Dr. Joe walking towards the table. “Did you invite him, Craig?” he asked.

  Craig shook his head, no, but stood to greet Joe. “I think you know everyone? he said.

  Joe nodded and said, “I know you are busy with what is happening on Emily’s hill, but I thought perhaps I could provide you all with a little information. I have lived in Doveland for fifty years. Perhaps I can be of help?”

  A chair was pulled over for him, and Mandy came to take his order. Once she put his coffee on the table, he leaned in, and asked, “Okay. I am at your service. What can I do to help you?”