Chapter 16 - THE SECOND BODY
The court order for exhumation came at 5:46 the next morning.
I had not slept.
Neither had Julian.
He found me sitting in the federal building cafeteria with a paper cup of coffee I had forgotten to drink.
Victor was in custody on charges related to witness tampering, kidnapping conspiracy, obstruction, and unlawful surveillance.
Price warned us that those were beginning charges, not final ones.
The shooting at the chapel had complicated everything.
Alan Broome remained missing.
Gabriela and Sofia had been moved to a federal safe location.
Thomas was in the hospital under guard.
Owen was being questioned and negotiating through an attorney.
Conrad had returned to the hospital voluntarily after another episode of chest pain.
For the first time in thirty-six hours, Julian and I were in the same room without somebody shouting, bleeding, lying, or serving legal papers.
It felt suspicious.
"You should sleep," he said.
"So should you."
"I tried."
"What happened?"
"Every time I close my eyes, I see the highway film."
I looked at him.
"Me too."
He sat across from me.
"I remembered something else."
My body tightened automatically.
"What?"
"After you pulled me from the car, you kept saying a name."
"My mother's?"
"No."
He looked embarrassed by uncertainty.
"It sounded like Dee."
David.
Maybe I had known more about my biological father at seventeen than I remembered now.
Trauma had not only given me nightmares.
It had edited them.
"Gabriela says David Reeve was my biological father."
Julian nodded.
"How are you with that?"
"I am not anything with it yet."
"Fair."
I gave him a look.
He almost smiled.
"Sorry."
The smallness of the moment hurt more than I expected.
For twelve years, Julian had existed in my memory as a pair of frightened eyes in rain.
Now he was a man sitting beneath fluorescent cafeteria lights apologizing for a word.
That felt more dangerous than recognition.
"What happens with Vivian?" I asked.
He looked down at his hands.
"There is no engagement."
"I know."
"There has not been one since the ballroom."
"I know."
"She is cooperating with Price."
"I know that too."
He looked up.
"Then what are you asking?"
I thought about it.
"Whether you hate her."
Julian was quiet for a long time.
"No."
"Even after what she did?"
"I hate what she did."
"Different thing."
"Yes."
He leaned back.
"I also hate how easy it is to understand the machinery that made her that way."
"Understanding is not absolution."
"No."
"She still chose to pull my dress."
"Yes."
I appreciated that he did not soften it.
"And your father?"
His face closed.
"That answer is harder."
At 8:10, Naomi brought Lily to the cafeteria.
Lily ran to me carrying a paper bag with two bagels.
"Ms. Naomi says you forgot breakfast."
"Ms. Naomi is bossy."
Naomi set her briefcase on a chair.
"Ms. Naomi prevented you from going to a cemetery hostage exchange without federal backup."
"You make one good decision and never stop mentioning it."
Lily giggled.
That sound was the first truly normal sound I had heard in two days.
I hugged her.
"You are staying with Naomi today."
Her smile disappeared.
"Why?"
"I have to go somewhere difficult."
"Dangerous?"
"No."
This time it was true.
"Sad."
She thought about that.
"Can I help?"
"Later."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
At 10:30, forensic personnel began opening the grave marked ELENA MARIA NAVARRO.
The cemetery had been closed to the public.
Agents kept media beyond the gates.
I stood under a black umbrella with Gabriela on one side and Julian on the other.
Gabriela had changed into jeans and a gray coat.
Without the red scarf, she looked less like the woman in a clue and more like my sister.
That was somehow harder.
"You do not have to watch," she said.
"Neither do you."
"I do."
"Then so do I."
The first casket lay six feet down.
It was inexpensive wood, badly deteriorated.
The forensic team moved it to a temporary tent.
According to the original records, it contained my remains.
I watched technicians open the casket that had carried my name for twelve years.
Inside were partial skeletal remains of a teenage girl.
Not me.
I knew that without DNA.
Seeing another girl's bones beneath my name made me physically ill.
"Who is she?"
Price stood nearby.
"We do not know yet."
"Somebody had a daughter who disappeared."
"We will identify her if we can."
"Victor stole her name too."
Price did not correct me.
The excavation continued.
The cemetery register had shown the grave depth as six feet.
Ground radar showed disturbed soil another three feet below.
At seven feet, the team found plastic sheeting.
At eight, a metal clasp.
At eight and a half, the second body appeared.
Adult female.
Wrapped.
No casket.
Gabriela made a sound beside me.
I reached for her hand without thinking.
She gripped mine.
One technician called the medical examiner.
Another photographed the remains.
A small object lay near the adult woman's wrist.
A ceramic bird.
Blue glaze.
One wing chipped.
My knees gave way.
Julian caught my elbow.
"Elena."
I could not breathe.
The ceramic bird had sat on my mother's kitchen windowsill my entire childhood.
After the apartment fire, I believed it had burned with everything else.
Now it lay eight feet beneath my false grave.
"That is hers."
Gabriela was crying openly.
"Mom kept it by the sink."
I nodded.
The forensic team recovered a small medallion from the remains.
Saint Christopher.
My mother wore one every day.
I knew before DNA.
Gabriela knew too.
Rosa Navarro had not died in an apartment fire.
She had been killed elsewhere and hidden beneath the grave created for her living daughter.
Victor had buried one crime inside another exactly as she predicted.
I walked away from the tent because grief had become too physical to contain standing still.
Julian followed at a distance.
He did not touch me.
I appreciated that.
I reached the chapel wall and pressed my forehead against cold stone.
For nine years, I had imagined my mother died alone in smoke.
Now I knew she had survived the fire because the fire had never been where she died.
That should have been a relief.
It was not.
It was another theft.
Someone had stolen even the manner of her death from me.
Gabriela joined me.
"I should have come to the funeral."
"It was not her funeral."
"I know."
"I stood there holding an urn full of nothing."
"I know."
"Stop saying you know."
She flinched.
I regretted it immediately and could not take it back.
"I am sorry."
Gabriela wiped her face.
"You are allowed to be angry at me."
"I am angry at everybody."
"That seems efficient."
A laugh escaped me through tears.
It sounded terrible.
Gabriela laughed too.
For one second, grief made us sisters faster than blood had.
Price approached.
His expression told me there was more.
I almost told him to go away.
"What?"
"The adult remains show evidence of a gunshot wound."
My stomach clenched.
"Can they tell when?"
"Not yet."
"Anything else?"
"There is a projectile lodged near the spine."
Julian stepped closer.
"Ballistics?"
"If it is intact enough."
Price looked at me.
"We may be able to compare it to weapons recovered from Lawrence security."
My phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
I almost ignored it.
Then a text appeared.
YOU DUG TOO DEEP.
Beneath it was a photograph taken from outside the cemetery gate.
It showed Lily getting into Naomi's car that morning.
My blood went cold.
Victor was in custody.
Someone else was still watching us.
A second message arrived.
THE OLD MAN IS NOT THE ONLY LAWRENCE YOU SHOULD FEAR.
I showed Julian.
His face changed.
Vivian's name appeared on my screen almost immediately afterward.
She was calling.
I answered.
"Elena."
Her voice was shaking.
"Where are you?"
"At the cemetery."
"Get out."
"Why?"
"Because I found my father's contingency file."
"What is that?"
"Instructions for what happens if he is arrested."
I looked toward the gate.
"Who gets the instructions?"
Vivian started crying.
"My brother."
I remembered seeing only one Lawrence child in magazines.
Vivian.
"You do not have a brother."
"That is what everyone thinks."
Her next words opened another door I had not known existed.
"Vivian sent us a photograph of Alexander taken when she was nineteen.
They stood on opposite sides of Victor at a private family dinner.
Alexander wore no smile.
Victor had one hand on his shoulder.
Vivian looked at the camera with the polished expression she had perfected young.
"Why keep a photograph if he was secret?" I asked.
"Because secret is not the same as unloved," Julian said.
Vivian corrected him over the phone.
"It is not love either."
She told us Alexander was brought to the Lawrence estate only when Victor wanted something done quietly.
At first she thought he was a distant cousin.
At twenty-one, she found a trust document naming him.
When she confronted Victor, he told her Alexander was "an old responsibility."
"That is what he called his son?"
"Yes."
"Did Alexander know you knew?"
"I do not think so."
The idea of two siblings moving through the same family house with unequal versions of the truth felt painfully familiar now.
Vivian had been displayed.
Alexander had been deployed.
Victor had found different ways to use both children.
It explained them.
It did not excuse what either did next.
"Why would Alexander help kill Rosa?" I asked.
Vivian went quiet.
"Because my father made usefulness the only way Alexander knew how to be chosen."
The sentence stayed with me.
People who are starved for approval can become dangerous when the person feeding them cruelty calls it love.
May you like
His name is Alexander, and he is the man who has been using Alan Broome's identity."
