Page 28 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

It took half the night to get the body excavated.

Jonah and I hiked out of the woods far enough to get a signal, marking our path on the way out, and waited for a deputy to show up.

He took us seriously, followed us to the spot on the edge of the creek bank, and surveyed the scene with a floodlight that illuminated the entire hole of the uprooted tree.

The bones sticking out of the dirt looked like the bottom of a leg. Smaller bones were littered among the leaves, twigs, and moss, but most of the foot had probably been taken by scavengers.

“Did you disturb the area at all?” His floodlight lingered on a smooth indent in the dirt.

“I fell into it and dropped my phone.”

Jonah didn’t say anything. No point telling the deputy I’d been punched into the grave. That would bring irrelevant questions, and luckily the night hid any damage Jonah had done to my nose. We didn’t need to derail the conversation.

He was still suspicious, though. As we hiked out to call the crime scene team, the deputy asked what we’d been doing out here.

Jonah showed him the picture of Kate as I gave him the basics—we were PIs hired to find a missing woman—omitting the part where the missing woman and her mother might have buried a body in these woods.

“You think that’s her?”

“I don’t see how. She’s only been missing for ten days and that body is completely decomposed. Been here a few months at least.”

“Why were you looking for her out here?”

Jonah took that one. “We got a tip that she’d been seen in this area.”

He called in the 10-55 and requested a team, then took all our information and had us repeat our stories before sending us home.

I asked to stay and observe the recovery.

There could’ve been some clothing still intact, a clue that might tell us whether this was the body of Kate’s stepfather.

But even as an ex-cop, I wasn’t allowed back on the scene.

The deputy was respectful but firm as he sent us away.

The house’s dark brick walls and black windows looked even more abandoned at this time of night. Something creaked in the eaves as we walked to the car, but nothing moved inside or out. It felt as lifeless as the corpse in the woods.

“Should we call Valerie?”

Jonah thought about it as we pulled away and drove through the tiny winding streets back to the freeway.

He didn’t seem angry anymore and if one clock was all it took to get my friend and partner back, I was relieved.

He hadn’t broken my nose, but I wouldn’t have said a word if he had.

Now it was on me to not screw everything up again.

“We didn’t tell her we were coming here. That already damages the trust we built with her today.”

“If she finds out through the media, she’ll put two and two together. It’ll be better coming from us.”

In the end, we called. She didn’t sound surprised by what we’d done, and took the news with quiet resignation. When I asked outright if she would flee like Kate had, she shut me down before the question was even finished.

“When they ask, tell them where to find me.”

Then she hung up.

I had a standing date on Thursday night, or Therapy Thursday, as we’d started to call it.

Shelley and I had begun marriage counseling sessions with a once-a-month schedule in mind, but after the first session, okay, probably less than ten minutes into the first session, our counselor, Angelica, recommended a more frequent schedule.

It was eighty bucks a pop after insurance, which Shelley said was a bargain, and I tried not to multiply eighty by the number of times we’d sat on this Zoom call after dinner, telling a woman with multiple nose piercings and a penchant for the phrase “trauma response” about our week.

“How are nightly check-ins going?” Angelica asked, which was how she usually started the call.

Shelley went first and I was nodding along when Angelica interrupted.

“Max, you don’t seem very present for your wife tonight.”

Shelley laughed. Angelica didn’t know it, but we had therapy bingo cards and “not present” was a corner spot.

Shelley had stuffed them in my Christmas stocking last year as a joke, and we’d graduated from filling them in after sessions to actively hiding the game from Angelica.

The first one to get a bingo won a single demand, no questions asked.

Shelley had burned through her honey-do list and banned me from wearing my favorite T-shirt out in public because of a few sweat stains no one at Lowe’s would ever notice.

In the few times I’d won, I’d gotten my favorite lasagna and made her watch the Die Hard franchise.

If either of us ever got a blackout, there were special favors.

I didn’t know what hers would be exactly, but she told me once it involved a Scottish accent.

Shelley marked her bingo card with a Cheez-It underneath the camera’s view and casually popped a few more markers into her mouth.

“You’re right, I’m sorry.” An apology gave me a center spot. I grabbed a Cheez-It from Shelley. “I’ve got a frustrating case at work and it’s taking up a lot of my headspace this week.”

“Are you able to discuss the case with Shelley? Share your frustration?”

“He found a body last night.”

Angelica’s professional mask slipped and she leaned forward with equal parts horror and interest. “Oh my god, that must have been so traumatic.”

I absently added another Cheez-It to my card as the image of bones protruding from the dirt wiped every other thought from my head.

“It is and it isn’t.” I thought for a second, trying to be honest about this in a way that someone beside Jonah or the guys in ICPD might understand.

“I’ve seen more than my share of human remains and you get desensitized to them.

You have to be, to do the job. But it’s always a gut punch if you let yourself think about it.

Because it’s never just a body. It’s not just evidence.

It’s a person, someone who had likes and dislikes, with allergies and maybe a bad back, who had a cluttered desk at work they told themselves they’d clean up one day, and maybe went to therapy just like this and tried to be a better person.

And in the end they’re a pile of tissue and a case number. ”

“Was it a murder?”

“We haven’t gotten the autopsy report yet, but you don’t end up somewhere like that on accident.”

“Right.” Angelica nodded, looking vaguely sick. “How does that make you feel?”

“I’m trying not to feel anything because I don’t know what the right way is to feel about this.

The body? They were a victim, but I don’t know if they were innocent.

This person might have been someone’s abusive estranged husband, a guy who controlled and terrorized his wife until it literally came to life or death.

And if it is—if it turns out to be this asshole—I’m going to feel worse about discovering and reporting it than if I’d left the entire story alone.

” We were no closer to finding Kate and now, because of me, her only family might go to prison.

It ate at me the whole way home from Illinois.

All day today, I’d felt restless, uncomfortable, like a sickness about to start.

Something was whispering at the back of my mind.

“There’s always a body. There’s always a crime. What we do—Jonah and I—is built on the worst moments of people’s lives. We profit off their suffering. It’s not why we do it, but it doesn’t change the fact that we do. I think that’s why . . .”

I broke off, staring blindly at the bingo card as the words on it wavered in and out of focus.

The whisper grew louder, became audible.

Shelley’s hand found mine. And then it all came out.

The mysterious package of money. Siphoning it into the business without telling anyone.

Feeling like shit but relieved at the same time, because we could do this job without needing it.

We could chase Jonah’s dreams without our hands out.

I could say yes to Garrett’s overnight baseball camp and pay for our office rent and Shelley’s favorite Thai takeout and furnace repairs and therapy.

“No matter how many people we’ve found, it doesn’t make it right. I should’ve told you,” I turned to Shelley, “I should’ve told you and Jonah right away and we could decide what to do together. I didn’t have any right to make that call on my own.”

Tears filled Shelley’s eyes. She nodded toward my face. “Is that what happened to your nose? Jonah found out?”

“Yeah.” It was swollen and purplish and throbbed every time I sneezed. “I told him.”

“Are you two okay now?”

“Are we?”

She looked away and my heart fell into my gut. If this was the thing that broke us—after everything we’d been through and fought and survived—if this was how I lost the woman I’d loved for twenty years, I would lose my goddamn mind.

“Shelley, you know I’m shit at this. You know I’m going to say the wrong thing.

I’m going to screw it up. And after this thing, I’ll screw the next thing up.

I’m never going to get it right. But you also know that you mean more to me than anything in the world.

There’s about thirty grand of the money left.

I’ll go get it now and you can decide what to do with it.

You can light it on fire. You can book your bucket list trip to Iceland.

You don’t even have to take me, but I need you to come home to me. ”

She still hadn’t turned around and the panic started building.

I bargained with the back of her head, the messy bun that got in my face at night, the smell of her that I woke up to every morning.

“There isn’t a home if you’re not here. You’re my home.

You and Garrett. You’re the reason I go out there and screw everything up.

Not that it’s your fault. I’m not blaming you, Jesus Christ, it’s—I’m trying to say . . .”

Digging into the Cheez-It bag, Shelley pulled out a handful. She turned around and her cheeks were wet.

Without saying a word, she slowly covered every square of my bingo card.