The Bones She Buried

Sixty-One

Back at the station house, it only took Josie fifteen minutes of reviewing Colette’s file to find what she was looking for. She made a call, and her suspicion was confirmed. She immediately called Noah, but he didn’t answer.

“We need to go,” she told Gretchen.

Josie tried calling Noah again as she and Gretchen raced toward his house. No answer. She tried Laura’s phone but got no answer from her either. As the streets of Denton flew past them, Gretchen said, “Call a backup unit.”

“We’re just asking him to come in,” Josie said. “I don’t want to spook him.”

“They’re not answering their phones,” Gretchen pointed out.

Josie called dispatch and asked for a backup unit at Noah’s house.

The front door was locked, but Josie had a key. She slid the key into the lock and opened the door tentatively. She could hear the sound of the television in the living room and see the glow of the lamp on the end table next to the couch. No one was in the room. She motioned for Gretchen to follow her down the hall toward the kitchen. As they approached, they heard the sounds of Laura and Grady talking.

“Grady, please,” Laura said, a desperation to her voice that Josie hadn’t heard before. She quickened her step.

Grady said, “I don’t want to talk about this in front of him, Laura. He’s a cop for chrissake.”

Laura shot back, “You didn’t do anything illegal, Grady. Just immoral. You’re such an asshole. How could you do this? With the baby coming?”

“I thought I could help—”

His words died as Josie and Gretchen reached the doorway. Noah sat at his table, his casted leg propped on another chair, a cup of coffee in front of him. Grady stood near the fridge, one palm on the door handle. Laura was only a few feet away from him, her enormous belly taking up almost all the space between them. Noah looked relieved to see her, but Laura said, “How did you get in here?”

Josie said, “I have a key.”

Laura had no response to this. Josie looked at Noah. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said but his face was pinched. It was his annoyed look. He was fine, but he couldn’t take much more of his sister and her husband.

Gretchen said, “What were you two arguing about?”

Laura’s voice went up an octave. “That is none of your business.”

Noah said, “Grady racked up some gambling debts.”

“Noah!” Laura snapped.

“What?” he said. “Josie’s my girlfriend—if she’ll still have me after the way I’ve acted the last couple of weeks—so I’m going to tell her anyway. I mean, I assume you guys are going to want your share of Mom’s estate pretty soon given your current situation.” It was then that Noah seemed to really register Gretchen’s presence; that she and Josie weren’t there for a social call. “What’s going on?” he said.

Josie said, “We need Grady to come down to the station and answer some questions.”

Laura laughed but it was a hollow sound that died quickly in her throat. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “I think we need to get a lawyer. I mean, how long are you going to stretch this out? What could Grady possibly have to offer you?”

Noah swung his casted leg off the chair and reached for his crutches. He started to stand on his good leg but Grady said, “Sit down, little brother.”

The sound of his voice—cool instead of ingratiating—froze Noah in place, half standing, half sitting. “What did you say?” he asked Grady.

Grady took his palm away from the fridge handle. “I said sit down. I’m not going anywhere.” He pointed at Josie and Gretchen. “You want to talk? We talk here.”

“Fine,” Josie said. “The day Colette was murdered, you were working from home, is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct. But our housekeeper was there. She saw me, and my truck never left the driveway.”

Gretchen said, “But Laura’s car did, didn’t it?”

“Laura was at a work function,” Grady said.

Laura looked from Grady to Josie and back to him. “Grady,” she said, her voice shaking. “I was driving a company car that day. You know that. Did you take my Jeep out?”

He didn’t answer.

Josie said, “We called your housekeeper before we came over here. She saw you when she arrived for work. You went into your study. She called goodbye to you from the hall before she left. You didn’t answer. She was in a hurry to get home to dinner so she left.”

“So?” Grady said. “So what?”

Gretchen said, “She didn’t see you for about three hours before Colette was murdered or after Colette was murdered. She didn’t see you at all that day except in the morning.”

“I was in my study working,” Grady said.

“Then who took my car out, Grady?” Laura demanded.

Josie changed tactics. “What’s your shoe size, Grady?”

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“You’re a size ten, right?”

He hesitated for just a moment and then scoffed. “Yeah, who cares?”

Trying to keep him off balance, Josie said, “Laura told me that Colette said some pretty strange things when she was having episodes of dementia.”

Grady, Laura, and Noah stared at her. Josie forged on. “She once told Laura about some bodies she knew about. She ever say anything like that to you, Grady?”

Grady was so still, Josie wondered if he was still breathing.

Josie said, “Did Colette ever say anything to you about a mass grave on the Sutton Stone quarry property?”

A sharp intake of breath came from Laura. Her hand flew to her chest.

Josie kept her gaze on Grady. “She ever mention anything about how Laura’s boss killed a bunch of people and buried them on the quarry property and covered it up? How Colette had the only evidence?”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Laura cried.

“Laura,” Noah said, shooting her a look that said be quiet.

“She didn’t tell you what it was, did she? That’s why you couldn’t find it. She wasn’t lucid, so she told you she buried it. That’s why you had her out in the yard with a shovel, isn’t it? What were you going to do with it when you found it?”

“Shut up,” Grady said.

“Is this true, Grady?” Laura whimpered.

Josie said, “I’m thinking you were going to use it to blackmail Mr. Sutton. That would have paid off your gambling debts, wouldn’t it?”

“Grady,” Laura said, her voice small.

Grady said, “Laura was being groomed to take over the company. I was trying to protect her. If something like that came out, it would ruin Sutton Stone Enterprises.”

“Oh my God, Grady.” Tears streaked Laura’s face.

“Colette was getting worse. She would have popped off about it eventually to the wrong person. I had to stop her.”

“You son of a bitch,” Noah said.

“Did you go there with the intention of killing her?” Gretchen asked. “Or did you just want the evidence?”

“I never meant to kill her,” he said.

But Josie didn’t believe it for a second. She also didn’t believe he’d been protecting Laura’s position at Sutton Stone. “Grady,” she said. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Colette Fraley.”

Before she could finish reading him his rights, he lunged forward and grabbed Laura’s upper arm, yanking her to him, his chest pressed tightly against her back, his arm wrapped around her neck. With his free hand he fumbled on the counter behind him until his hand touched the butcher’s block. Beside Josie, Gretchen drew her weapon and shouted for him to freeze. But his fingers had already found the handle of the largest knife in the block. The room erupted into shouts as he unsheathed it and pressed the point against Laura’s distended belly.

“Grady, stop,” Noah yelled. He stood on his good leg, using the back of his chair for support.

Josie said, “Don’t do this. Put the knife down.”

Laura sobbed in his arms. “Grady, what are you doing? Stop. You’re going to hurt the baby. Grady, please. Stop this. Don’t hurt the baby.”

Gretchen kept her weapon trained on him. “Put the knife down and move away from her.”

Josie raised both her hands in the air. She reached over and pressed down on the barrel of Gretchen’s gun, easing it downward so it pointed to the floor. It wasn’t a clean shot anyway, not even at close range. Too much could go wrong, and Josie wasn’t willing to risk killing Laura or the baby—or both. “Noah, sit down,” she instructed.

From her periphery she saw his fists clenching and unclenching. “Please,” Josie said. “Sit.”

He glared at Grady for a long moment before sitting back down on the chair. Still, Josie could feel the tension rolling off him in waves. She took a step toward Grady, but he needled the point of the knife harder into Laura’s belly, causing her to cry out. A tiny pinprick of blood bloomed on her shirt.

“Look at me, Grady,” Josie said.

“Shut up,” he yelled.

“Grady, look at me. I’m not armed. Gretchen’s not pointing a gun at you. No one here is a threat to you.”

“You came here to arrest me.”

“I did,” Josie said, keeping her voice calm, reasonable-sounding. “That’s my job. You know that. Listen, right now you’re in a lot of trouble, but I can help you.”

“Oh fuck you,” he spat. “That’s what all cops say right before they screw you over.”

“Well, sure, that’s true in a sense,” Josie said. “And if you weren’t holding a knife to your wife’s belly right now, I probably wouldn’t be inclined to help you, but it’s also my job to make sure innocent people don’t get hurt, you understand?”

His wild eyes flitted all over the room, but he nodded.

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Josie said. “You know what I mean, right? Just like you didn’t want anyone to get hurt. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Grady? You never intended for anyone to get hurt.” She pointed to Laura who was sagging in his grip. “Especially not Laura or your baby.”

She didn’t even know if he realized he was doing it, but his head kept nodding along with her words.

“Everyone in this room knows you never meant to hurt anyone. Especially Colette. She was your mother-in-law. She was good to you, wasn’t she? Her sweet potato casserole that we had last year at Christmas dinner, that was your favorite, wasn’t it?”

“Stop,” he said, as tears glistened in his eyes.

Josie pressed on. “You knew that if Colette had something that incriminated Zachary Sutton—something as bad as what she was babbling on about—none of you would be safe once her dementia took hold. You knew the safest thing for all of you was to find whatever evidence she had for yourself so you could decide what the best thing to do was, didn’t you?”

“I wasn’t going to hurt her,” he said. “I swear. But when she wasn’t lucid, she didn’t make any damn sense. I only went there to find whatever it was she had. Laura was at an all-day work event. No one was going to know. I was just going to get it. That way even if she started saying all these crazy things, people would just think it was the dementia. I would have turned it over to the authorities, I swear.”

Lies, all of it, Josie thought, but right now she just had to convince him that they were on the same team, that she believed him and understood him, so he would put the knife down and release Laura.

“I know that,” Josie said. “Everyone in this room knows that, Grady. Laura, Noah, me—we’re your family.”

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he said. “But she was just so damn frustrating.” He looked at Noah. “You know how she was when she was having one of her episodes. Making no goddamn sense. Not doing one fucking thing you told her or asked her to do. It was like dealing with a fucking toddler.”

Josie could see the muscle in Noah’s jaw ticking double-time. He was having difficulty keeping his composure, but he understood what Josie was attempting, so he nodded and through gritted teeth, muttered, “Yeah.”

Josie said, “We all know how difficult things were becoming, Grady. We get it. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to hurt Laura or your baby. Just put the knife down, and we’ll talk.”

The pressure of the knife on Laura’s stomach lessened slightly. Grady said, “You’re still going to arrest me.”

Josie pursed her lips and looked to the floor as if considering something. Then she said, “Well, yes. I have to do my job, but we can talk about the best way to do this. Listen, there’s a backup unit on the way here. If they roll up and find you with a knife to your wife’s pregnant belly, there’s not much any of us in this room can do to help you. They’re going to take you down. If they come in here, and we’re all sitting around talking, and you agree to come down to the station peacefully with me and Gretchen, things are going to be a whole lot better for you in the long run.”

Gretchen pulled her phone out and looked at it. “They’ll be here any second.”

He hesitated for a moment. Then slowly, he put the knife back onto the counter. Laura sagged to the ground, sobbing uncontrollably. The second Josie’s body was between Grady and his wife, Gretchen surged forward, taking one of his arms, whipping him around and slamming him into the refrigerator.

“Hey, you said we were going to talk,” he cried.

Josie helped Gretchen secure his hands behind his back with zip ties. Noah was on the floor, dragging himself over to Laura. He took her in his arms. “Call an ambulance,” he said. “This stress can’t be good for the baby.”

Josie and Gretchen lowered Grady to the floor, face down, and Gretchen read him his rights while Josie called dispatch for an ambulance. Outside, they heard the long wail of the backup unit’s siren.