Matt waited.
“We’d like to conduct autopsies.”
“Autopsies?” Matt processed this. “I thought—the gas leak—the Mexican cop said they closed their investigation. I don’t under—”
“I promise you, Matt, I’ll explain everything tomorrow, but I have to tell the Lincoln field office if they need to have someone available.”
“I don’t understand.” Matt’s mind was racing. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would—”
“Matt, there’s no easy way to say this, but there’s evidence of possible foul play.”
Matt felt his knees buckle a little, the air stripped from his lungs.
“Are you there?” Keller said. “Matt?”
“Yes. Okay, you have my consent.”
“Thank you. We understand your aunt plans to have the funeral on Sunday. So the medical team will be done by tomorrow. It’s been given top priority.”
Matt just held the phone, still trying to process. Trying not to think of his family dissected on cold stainless-steel tables.
“And, Matt,” Keller said.
Matt still didn’t reply.
“I’m really sorry.”
Matt severed the connection. He stood there outside the old bar, the sound of music leaking from cracks in the walls. For whatever reason, his thoughts drifted to Kala and Jordan Peele and M. Night Shyamalan and destiny.
And then it hit him. Maybe that was it. Maybe this was why he’d survived.
To find out what really happened to his family.
CHAPTER 36
OLIVIA PINE
BEFORE
“Do you miss your mommy?” Tommy asked.
Liv gave a fleeting smile. She looked at her mother’s white marble headstone in the back half of the cemetery, remembering the day when she was ten years old—a cold winter morning, the wind biting her wet cheeks as she watched them lower the casket into the ground. Today the sun was shining and the family plot didn’t look so dreary. Old trees gave plenty of shade, tiny American flags and flowers adorned graves, and the grounds were well maintained. Were it not for the hundreds of dead underfoot, it would be a nice spot for a picnic. Her great-great-grandparents had purchased this serene family plot more than one hundred years ago.
“I miss her every day.” Liv eyed the vacant spot next to her mother’s grave. Sadness flitted through her chest as Liv realized that it wouldn’t be long before Dad joined her.
“I’d miss you if you died,” Tommy said.
Liv crouched down. She looked at him with those beautiful gray-blue eyes. “You don’t have to worry about me dying.”
“Promise?”
Liv hesitated. Visiting her mother’s grave had obviously scared Tommy, and she wanted to comfort him. But she couldn’t promise him she would never die.
“I’ll be an old gray-haired woman”—she stood and stooped her back and feigned a stagger—“and you’ll have to help me walk.”
Tommy giggled. “I almost died once, right, Mommy?”
Ugh, more with the death. It served her right for bringing him here. “Nope. Your silly appendix just decided it was time to come out.” She tickled his tummy.
In truth, the pediatrician had missed the signs, mistaking Tommy’s stomachache for constipation. When his appendix ruptured, it was life-threatening, compounded by the hospital not having enough of Tommy’s rare blood type on hand. She remembered the terror—Evan running into the hospital, panicked—and them both thinking, but not saying, Why us?
Tommy rubbed the scar on the lower right side of his abdomen. Then came the barrage of questions. Where do you go when you die? Why do we bury dead people? Do worms eat your body? When would I die? How about Daddy or Maggie or Matt? Liv noticed he didn’t ask about Danny. It shouldn’t have surprised her. After all, he’d never met Danny in person. Her oldest son had forbidden any of his siblings from visiting him in prison. Tommy had seen photos of Danny, and knew he was in jail for something he didn’t do. But his big brother was like a storybook character, a fable, a superhero, a legend fueled by Evan Pine.
“You want to get some ice cream?” Liv asked, trying to change the subject.
Her son’s questions stayed with Liv as she watched ice cream drip down Tommy’s arm at Sullivan’s Ice Cream. She’d been thinking a lot about death herself lately, but she supposed it was her age, her father’s condition, perhaps. Maybe it was Evan’s blowout fight with Matt over the holidays, the two still not speaking to each other. Maybe it was the Supreme Court denying Danny’s appeal. Maybe it was Maggie graduating and soon leaving them for college. Maybe it was knowing this town, her childhood community, hated her.