Oblation: A Spine-Tingling Crime Thriller set in Small-Town California, page 1
There is only one person to whom I can dedicate this book, and that is Karen, my wife, without whom none of this would even be possible. 45888
CONTENTS
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part II
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Part III
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Part IV
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Acknowledgments
About the Author
ONE
Alturas, Modoc County, California, 2012
Eric Crenshaw lay sleeping on his side, completely unaware of the man standing beside him. He was dreaming about his wife. Even in his sleep, he could feel himself smiling. Mary was beautiful, and she only grew more beautiful as she grew older. Even on the day she died, after losing almost half her body weight to cancer, she was still beautiful. Her hair had fallen out, but he loved her and saw her as the bride he had married so many years before. He had kissed her, and then she had simply fallen asleep. He liked to think that his kiss had filled her with enough love that she had been able to let go and enter the loving embrace of the God she had always held close from afar.
But this dream was not about that day. This dream was about the day he proposed to her. He was so nervous. They had been dating for over three years and had professed their love for each other so many times that it was almost laughable. Everybody expected them to marry, but he was nervous and had even convinced himself that she would say “no.” It was the anniversary of their first date, April 22, and like every year since that first date until they moved to northern California, they returned to the same picnic site along the Clinch River in Tennessee. The early spring day was perfect. The leaves on the trees along the river were in full growth and provided plenty of shade under the bright new green growth. He lay on his back on the blanket that only thirty minutes before had doubled as their table while she rested her head on his stomach. He knew it was only a matter of moments before she fell asleep.
“Will you marry me?” he whispered.
Mary’s eyes blinked open. “What?” she said, turning her head to look at him.
He took a deep breath, and as he exhaled, he repeated, “Will you marry me?”
She sat up and, leaning on one elbow, wiggled close to his neck. “Say it again,” she teased.
“Will you marry me?” he repeated as he rolled his eyes.
She kissed him hard on the lips and laid her head back onto his stomach with her eyes open, looking up at the sky. “I won’t marry you today, but yes, I will marry you.” She smiled, and they both started laughing.
Eric Crenshaw felt the joy of the moment suddenly ripped away from him as he gasped for air. He was in the Clinch River and drowning. Wait! Stop! This is not the way it happened! We were happy. We laughed and jumped in the river, but I did not drown.
But he was drowning. He could feel the air leaving his body, and there was nothing he could do about it. He reached up, trying to push the water away from his face, but he couldn’t. Swim, just swim, he thought in a panic. But there was nothing he could do. The harder he tried, the more he felt himself being dragged down into the darkness of the water. I’m drowning! “Mary, help me!” he screamed, not sure if it was out loud or in his dream…
The man standing next to the bed stood up and placed the pillow, which mirrored Eric Crenshaw’s face, next to the still body. He looked down at the old man. “It is necessary,” he whispered.
TWO
Roselyn Guerro yelled down the main hallway of the house, “Michael, hurry up! You’ll be late for school.”
“Com’n, Mom. Just have to find my baseball cap.”
“Which one?”
“The Cardinal one. Remember, I’m going as Yadier Molina for Halloween.”
“It’s out here at the base of the stairs,” she answered back down the hall as her husband joined her in the front foyer. “I swear that boy would lose his legs if they weren’t attached to him.”
The look of shock on his face made her immediately regret what she had said, but Giuermo smiled and gave a little laugh as he bent over and kissed her on the cheek. “I guess sick jokes can be a form of healing.”
“Perhaps, but I shouldn’t make comments like that.” Peeking around his shoulder to make sure they were still alone, she added, “It’s been almost two years. I know he has progressed and is coming along, but I don’t ever want to use humor like that to make fun of him. It’s just cruel.”
“But you weren’t making fun of him,” Giuermo replied. “The comment came out so quickly and effortlessly that I think it is a positive thing. You’re becoming less self-conscious of his condition.”
“How?”
Lifting his hand, he softly stroked her cheek with his index finger. “Because it shows that you are getting comfortable with the situation. You aren’t walking on pins and needles worrying about saying the wrong thing or hurting his feelings. Or, for that matter, my feelings.” He pulled her close and hugged her tight. Roselyn rested her head comfortably on his shoulder. “And no matter what,” he reassured her, “your heart is in the right place. I know it, and Michael knows it.”
“Are you two smooching again?” Michael teased from the other end of the hall. “I swear every time I come around a corner, I see you two huggin’ or kissin’. Get a room, why doncha?”
Pulling away from her husband, Roselyn smiled at her son. “Well, if you’d let your father put playing cards in the spokes of your wheelchair, we’d hear you coming, and you wouldn’t be able to sneak up on us like that.”
“I think this chair is loud enough. You guys just get caught up in each other and ignore everything else.”
“That’s what love is all about,” Giuermo said with a grin.
Michael gave the wheels a hard push with his hands, and the chair rolled completely down the wide hallway that separated the two halves of the first floor. The hallway of the old house extended from the front door clear through to the back of the house, with two rooms on either side and a second floor that mirrored the first.
The one big difference between this house and all the other houses, just like it in Alturas, was that, at some point, the kitchen had been moved from the back of the house to the front. There was no record of when it was done, and Giuermo and Roselyn could only guess as to why. Most of their friends thought having the kitchen in front was a bit strange, but Roselyn liked it. It allowed her to keep an eye on the large front yard and the driveway while in the kitchen. The backyard extended only about twenty feet beyond the back of the house, so the children spent most of their time in the front, and she could keep an eye on them.
Michael circled the wheelchair around the front of the stairs toward his mom and dad, handling it so effortlessly that Roselyn couldn’t believe it had only been two years since his accident.
Two years. It didn’t seem possible that the very thing that she loved about the kitchen being at the front of the house was also a daily reminder of her most painful memory. She had watched from the kitchen window as a baseball sailed over Michael’s head after being thrown by his best friend, Sean. It flew toward the street beyond the front yard, and like every boy his age, Michael ran after it at a dead sprint. Just as Michael was about to grab the ball, it rolled into the ditch, paralleling the road. He jumped, cleared the ditch, but landed and stumbled into the street just as a motorcycle came around the curve. The rider tried to stop laying the bike over with a sickening sound of grinding metal against asphalt, sending up a shower of sparks. Michael saw the bike too late, and the bike and rider took Michael’s legs out from under him, knocking him into the air.
In an out-of-body experience, Roselyn saw herself jumping down the front stairs before Michael’s body ever came to rest on the pavement. By the time she reached his unconscious form, she knew he would never walk again. His legs were contorted and twisted. But worst of all, his hip was facing 90 degrees in the wrong direction.
Her motherly instinct screamed for her to cradle his body in her arms, but thank God another instinct told her to stop. All she could do was kneel next to him, hold his hand, and cry until the ambulance arrived. The doctors later told Roselyn that had she listened to her first instinct, she most likely would have severed Michael’s spine causing full paralysis. She repeatedly thanked God for guiding her heart and preventing her from grabbing Michael like she wanted to. Michael wasn’t paralyzed, but every muscle connected to the legs had either been ripped loose or stretched to the point of tearing.
The surgery took six hours, and the doctors tried to temper Roselyn and Giuermo’s expectations. They warned against false hope, trying to prepare them for the fact that he would never walk again. Michael soldiered through eight more surgeries along with physical therapy and the pain each one brought. Roselyn didn’t know how he managed everything at such a young age, but she loved him for it. It was from Michael’s courage that she drew strength over the course of his recovery. Now two years later, he was dressed in jeans and a Yadier Molina jersey, rolling through the house at a speed she would not have thought possible when he was first placed into the chair.
“Tell me again why you like Molina so much?” she heard her husband ask.
“Come on, Dad! You know.”
“I know, but I like to hear it anyway.”
Like every other teenager reacts when parents ask questions, Michael gave a deep and audible sigh but decided to humor his father. “All right, you’ve seen Molina snap throw to first or second base, right?”
“Yeah?”
“He doesn’t even stand up. He stays sitting on his butt, yet his arm is so strong, and he is so accurate, that he can throw a man out without ever getting to his feet.” As he spoke, Michael’s right hand floated in a circle over his head, and Giuermo pictured the ball leaving his son’s hand. “That’s how I am going to play baseball again. I’m going to be a catcher. Learn how to snap throw like Molina, and I won’t even need my legs. That’s why I spend so much time lifting weights, to build up the muscles in my arms.”
“Well, no matter how old a ball player is, he needs a good breakfast,” his mom interrupted. “So get over to the table before your brother comes down and eats it all.”
As his dad placed the Cardinal cap on his head, Michael maneuvered the wheelchair between his parents, calling up the stairs as he did so. “Alex, come on, it’s almost time to go!”
Seven-year-old Alex came leaping down the stairs, skipping every other one as his parents watched. Barely slowing down, he grabbed the newel post at the base of the stairs and propelled himself into the kitchen. “I swear someday we are going to have two boys in wheelchairs,” Roselyn exclaimed and followed Alex into the kitchen.
“Sorry, no can do,” Giuermo responded. “This house only has room for one bedroom on the first floor, and that is occupied.”
“That’s okay,” Alex chimed in. “Michael and I can share the bedroom if I have to get a wheelchair, too.”
“No way am I sharing a bedroom with him! He’s barely seven, and I’m about to enter high school,” Michael said as he poured Frosted Flakes into his bowl. “Besides, what happens if I bring a girl home to study with me in my room? I can’t have Alex in there too.”
“First of all, young man,” Roselyn said, glancing over at her husband, “if you bring a young lady over to help you study, it will be in the living room or here in the kitchen. And secondly, we are only going to have one boy in a wheelchair in this house, not two.”
Catching the look from his wife, Giuermo knew exactly what he was expected to say: “That’s right!” But when Roselyn opened the refrigerator door and bent to look inside for the milk, he gave Michael a wink and whispered, “What’s her name?”
“Never you mind,” Roselyn’s voice echoed from inside the refrigerator.
Michael looked once at his mom and turned to his dad, mouthing, “Amanda.”
Giuermo smiled and lifted his coffee cup to his lips, grimacing. “Ugh, this has gone cold.”
Coming over from the refrigerator, she placed the milk on the table in front of him. “Well, if you’d spend more time tending to your breakfast and less time getting secrets from your son, maybe you’d be able to have hot coffee.”
Giuermo gave his best mischievous grin and winked at Michael. This earned him a love tap on the back of his head, followed by a kiss to make it better. “Now, eat your breakfast.”
THREE
As usual, Sheriff Phylis Tarpley woke just before the alarm. She had allowed herself the luxury of sleeping in because it had been a late night, and she knew she needed to have at least six hours of sleep or else she would be useless the whole day. She had no early appointments and did not have to answer to anyone except the county commissioners, all of whom were most likely still sleeping in their big houses on the other side of town.
She felt the body of her partner snuggling up tight against her back. Tarpley reached behind her, giving her bedmate a soft push. “Come on, Samantha, time to get up.” Tarpley rolled over and received her morning lick across her face. “God, you’ve got bad breath.”
Sam stood and shook the covers off her back before jumping down onto the hardwood floor of the bedroom and bounding out the door. “All right. I’m coming,” she said as she swung out from under the covers. It was fall and starting to get cold, and the uninsulated flooring above the crawlspace allowed the interior wood flooring to get cold. Definitely need to get slippers this week.
As she walked through the house toward the kitchen, she heard the radio alarm come on in the bedroom. A disembodied voice announced that it was seven o’clock and 58 degrees in Alturas, California. Then the voice joyfully proclaimed, “And if you’re not up yet, you better be, Alturas.” A fake laugh followed and faded into some almost forgotten ’80s song by The Police. A soft bark from Sam greeted Tarpley as she entered the kitchen. “All right already. You know I have to pee too. Especially after standing on this cold floor, so hold your horses.” Tarpley opened the back door, and Sam jumped off the back porch into the backyard and immediately squatted, looking back at her owner as if to say, “Beat you to it.” Sheriff Tarpley gave a snicker, closed the door, and proceeded to her own bathroom, but not before pushing the brew button on the coffeemaker.
Five minutes later, she was at the back door again, letting in Samantha, who went directly to her empty dish on the other side of the kitchen, looking back at the sheriff again. “All right. Damn, I haven’t even had my first cup of coffee, and you already want your breakfast.” She opened the small pantry door and examined the yellow bag of dog food that she had picked up at the local feed shop. It was not a national brand, and she could not remember why she had chosen it, but Sam seemed to like it, and that was all that mattered. But Sam sometimes eats other dogs’ poop, so there really is no accounting for taste when it comes to Sam’s choice of food. Sam started eating the hard disks even as Tarpley poured them into her bowl.
She was solidly built, standing at almost six feet. She had spent twenty years in the Marines but had returned to her native county of Modoc to join the Sheriff’s department. A native of the town, she was also one of the residents of the county who could unquestionably trace her ancestry back to the Klamath Tribe, which had lived in California long before the coming of the white man. She was fiercely independent, and while California had a reputation as tree huggers and pot smokers, Modoc County stood out from the rest of the state. Like most of the people of the county, Sheriff Tarpley was as hard and independent as the land that made up most of the county. After fifteen years on the force, she was elected Sheriff by 63% of the voters. When she ran again, she was re-elected to a second term without any meaningful competition.
