Chapter 11: Digging Up the Corpses
Gabriel Gray awoke feeling very stiff, as people often do when they sleep in a car instead of a bed, and wondered why he wasn't in his much more comfortable bed. Then it all came back to him - late last night his telepathic young friend, Edward Cullen, had shown up at his door, announced that he felt like visiting his family's previous home in Washington, and asked Gabriel to come along with him, citing the fact that the drive from New York to Washington was a long one to make alone. Gabriel had protested that he couldn't just up and leave the state, but Edward had been so insistent that in the end it was easier just to go along with what he wanted. Besides, it might be nice to get out of the clock shop for a few days.
What Edward hadn't seen fit to mention was that his family did not, under any circumstances, want him returning to Forks, so he had been forced to forget about it until the rest of the Cullens had left on a hunting trip - hence his beginning the journey at such an absurdly late hour - and his real reason for wanting Gabriel with him. It wasn't because he was afraid of getting lonely. Hunting trip or no, he knew that Alice would tell on him the instant she saw what he was up to, and then the whole family would come after him and drag him home again.
He also knew that, for some bizarre reason, Alice couldn't always see Gabriel clearly - she had once said it seemed to her that Gabriel wasn't all there, that the Gabriel Gray Edward knew was only half of the person he truly was, which dovetailed perfectly with the feelings Edward sometimes got that there were hidden things buried deep inside Gabriel's mind, things Gabriel had forgotten or purposefully shut away, things that could burst free at any time and...who knew what would happen then? And so Gabriel's future was constantly subject to change, beyond Alice's ability to predict.
Edward felt sorry for the man - missing a part of yourself was terrible, as he had realized when he'd left his heart behind with Bella - but if Gabriel's fractured psyche shielded him from Alice's precognition, Edward was more than willing to use him to conceal his sure-to-be-disapproved-of activities.
So far he had avoided explaining all this, but he sensed that he would soon have to - he could read the questions forming in Gabriel's mind. It was just a matter of choosing which one to answer first; Edward picked the one requiring the shortest answer. "No, my family does not know where I am, and I want to keep it that way. Why? They don't want me to go back home; they think it would only stir up unpleasant memories."
"You're lying," Gabriel accused him, "or at least you're hiding part of the truth. There's another reason your family doesn't want you going back."
Dammit! Well at least I learned something: his ability to detect lies can't be bypassed with half-truths. I'll just have to be completely honest...and hope he isn't frightened too badly. "All right, I'll admit there is more to it - my family is concerned about what I want to do in Forks."
"Which is?"
Edward's hands clenched, almost breaking the steering wheel before he got himself under control. It was hard to talk about this - about her - and Gabriel had ripped the wound wide open so casually... Control, he reminded himself. Telling him won't hurt anything. "I want to get my girlfriend back," he said tersely.
"And that's a problem because...? Does your family not like her?"
"No, they loved her. The problem is that she was murdered last March."
Gabriel said nothing, and his mind went blank - he didn't know what to make of this. Edward took advantage of his silence to outline his plan, before Gabriel could begin shooting questions at him. He fully expected the onslaught to begin the instant he stopped talking, but instead Gabriel just said, "So we're going to bring your girlfriend back to life?" as if he were merely asking about tomorrow's weather forecast.
"That is the basic idea, yes," Edward replied, cautiously relieved that he wasn't getting a lecture on how wrong his plan was, although that part must be coming...
But no, Gabriel seemed genuinely unopposed to the idea. "You really think you can do it?" In fact, he sounded almost excited.
"I believe so."
"Then I'll help you." Fixing Edward's dead girlfriend should be more interesting than repairing clocks...even if it does sound a little crazy. But hey, it's not any crazier than people who can read thoughts and move things with their minds, right?
Edward smiled. "Thank you, Gabriel - I'm glad there's someone who doesn't think I'm insane."
Two days later
Forks Cemetery
"You're insane."
"Come on, Gabriel - you can't honestly tell me you didn't think of this beforehand? No, wait, don't answer that - I can tell that you didn't."
"You really expect...I mean, you actually want us to..."
"I actually do. If you've changed your mind about helping me..."
Gabriel swallowed hard. "No, I said I would, and I will. Isn't grave-robbing a crime, though?"
"I suppose we'd be in a world of trouble if we got caught," Edward said carelessly, "but the murder of an innocent young girl is the real crime here. We're simply righting a great wrong, and if we're forced to commit some rather unsavory acts in order to do it-"
"That'll make me feel a lot better when I'm stuck in jail with you. How d'you plan on getting inside the cemetery anyway? There's a ten-foot fence around it, and even in a town this small, they probably don't leave the gate unlocked at one in the morning."
"The fence isn't much of an obstacle for me." Edward opened his Volvo's trunk and took out the shovel and tarp he'd bought yesterday. "You wait here, and warn me if you see anyone coming." With his enhanced hearing, Gabriel might actually detect an intruder before Edward did. Besides, retrieving Bella from her grave was a job he preferred to do alone.
Jumping the fence was easy, even with his heavy equipment; after that it was just a simple matter of finding the right grave to dig up. Edward was sure she had been buried near her paternal grandparents, so he searched near their graves first, and sure enough, there was a fresh one right beside the Swans' double plot. Too fresh, in fact - the new grave looked only weeks old, rather than months. This can't be the right one, but I would have thought Charlie would want her next to his parents.
Reluctant to admit the grave couldn't be Bella's, which would mean he'd have to start over and check every marker in the place, he moved closer to examine the tombstone.
HERE LIES CHARLIE SWAN
APRIL 7, 1964 - JUNE 29, 2005
DEVOTED SON, FATHER, AND FRIEND, DEDICATED POLICE CHIEF
HIS DEATH IS A GREAT LOSS TO THE TOWN OF FORKS
WE'LL ALL MISS YOU, CHARLIE
Edward stepped back, eyes widening in shock. Charlie, dead? It couldn't be! Yet there was his grave, too solidly real to leave even a shadow of a doubt. A shame - Charlie was a good man. I wonder what happened to him? He spent a silent moment at the graveside out of respect for Bella's father, then continued his search for Bella herself.
He hadn't gone far from Charlie's grave when the toe of his shoe collided with a rectangular piece of stone - another marker, almost hidden by tall grass even though it seemed very new. Edward bent down to read the engraving, which read simply:
ISABELLA MARIE SWAN
SEPTEMBER 13, 1987 - JUNE 29, 2005
BELOVED DAUGHTER
MAY SHE REST IN PEACE
Edward's first thought was that they had put the wrong date of death - Victoria had killed Bella on the twenty-third of March, not the twenty-ninth of June. Then he realized the date wasn't the only thing that was wrong with this picture; according to the epitaphs, Bella and Charlie had both died on the same day, but while Charlie's grave was still distinguished by a large mound of recently excavated earth where grass was only just beginning to sprout again, the ground around Bella's marker was completely undisturbed. No grave had been dug there, not even a small one for an urn filled with her ashes. The stone had been placed there in memory of her, but her body wasn't in this cemetery.
###
When Gabriel heard someone approaching from inside the graveyard, he checked to make sure it was Edward and then quickly turned away, hoping very much that the body was securely wrapped in the tarp - if the girl had been dead for four months, give or take a week or two, by now she was bound to be an ugly sight, one the watchmaker was not at all eager to see.
Edward's footsteps came closer, paused; there was a soft sound like a sudden gust of wind as he leaped over the fence, a muffled thud as he landed, and then he said, "You can look now, Gabriel - I'm not carrying a rotten corpse." He sounded put out and discouraged.
Turning to look at him, Gabriel saw that Edward was empty-handed except for his shovel and tarp, which was still rolled up and obviously not enshrouding a body. "You didn't get her after all? Why not?"
"Her body wasn't buried there." Gabriel wanted to offer his sympathy, but Edward went on before he could open his mouth. "Don't worry, I have a theory as to where else we might look - her parents were divorced, and her mother lives in Florida. It's possible that Renee may have wanted her buried closer to her."
"So we're going to Florida now? Don't you think we should be sure that's where she's buried first?"
Edward considered it, then agreed. "I suppose I can break into the mortuary and see if they have any record of shipping her body-"
"There's an easier way," Gabriel interrupted. "You used to live here, and people know you dated this girl. Why don't you just ask somebody where her grave is?"
###
Following Gabriel's advice, the next day Edward sought out the person most likely to know the location of Bella's final resting place (as well as everything else that had happened in Forks during the last decade) and least likely to get suspicious when he asked for it: Jessica Stanley, for whom it was the last weekend at home before she left for college in California.
"Bella isn't buried anywhere," she told him. "She totally burned up in the fire that killed her and her dad."
"A fire?"
"Yeah, a freaking huge one. You can go by where their house used to be, and there's, like, nothing left of it. And when they found Chief Swan, his head was torn off. I almost hurled when my mom told me about it, and I didn't even see him; I'd hate to be the fireman that did. I mean, how does someone's head come off in a fire? They think some piece of debris must've fallen on his body and cut it off. Isn't that terrible? And Bella was never found at all - she's probably just a little pile of ashes now, and I bet she's still in the house somewhere. That's so horror-movie-of-the-week, isn't it?"
"Indeed," Edward said vaguely; his mind was a million miles away, working at hyper-speed as he tried to figure out exactly what was going on here. He read in Jessica's mind that she sincerely believed what she was telling him was the God's honest truth, but he knew for a fact that Bella had died at Victoria's hand, not in a fire - he had seen the redheaded vampire's memory of plunging her hand through Bella's chest, ripping out her heart and crushing it in her fist. It was possible that Victoria had set a fire to destroy the evidence of what she'd done, lest the Volturi decide it was too conspicuous a kill and come after her, but she had murdered Bella in a dark alley in what looked like a seedy part of Seattle, not in the Swans' house.
Meanwhile, Jessica was still blathering on. "...think the fire had to have been set by her boyfriend's cousin, personally."
Instantly she commanded Edward's full attention once more. "I beg your pardon?"
"Peter and Claire's cousin, Elle. She came to visit them over the summer, and I just got this feeling about her, like she was the kind of girl who could totally burn someone's house down if she wanted to."
"And who might Peter and Claire be?" Edward asked, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Jessica smacked herself on the forehead. "Right, I totally forgot you wouldn't know about them! They came into town after your family moved out, and Claire was Bella's new best friend from, like, her first day at school, which I totally didn't get - I mean, Bella was this total depressive case after you left, walking around like a zombie and everything, and Claire was cool. What she wanted with someone like Bella... Anyway, she introduced Bella to her uncle, Peter, and they started dating. Bella wasn't a zombie anymore after that - not that I'm saying she was normal either, I mean, she was still herself..."
Edward tuned out again. So Bella had moved on, had found someone else. Jessica had met the new boyfriend once, at her birthday party; Edward watched the memory of that night playing out in her mind's eye and had to admit that Peter seemed like exactly the type of person he'd always known Bella should have - another human, someone who wasn't risking her life just by being near her, someone she wouldn't have to give up her soul to be with, someone who could give her the life she deserved...someone safe. Unless he'd brought a crazed arsonist into her life, of course.
"Jessica? Was there any actual evidence to support your theory?"
"Well, the fire department said they couldn't find any accelerant, gasoline or whatever, or matches - it was like the fire just started all by itself. So nobody could prove it was arson, but when the police went to tell Peter and Claire that Bella had died, they were gone. Some of their things, like clothes and stuff, were gone too, but a lot of it had just been left. Like they packed up and got outta town in a big hurry. Why would they disappear on the same night the Swans' house burned up unless they knew their cousin was behind it and wanted to protect her? I'm not the only one that thinks so," she added defensively, seeing Edward's skeptical expression. "The cops were looking for them for like a week after the fire, but they're just gone. Like an episode of Without a Trace."
"Yes, I can certainly see how their well-timed disappearance would arouse suspicion. Thank you, Jessica."
After parting ways with his ex-classmate, Edward conducted his own investigation into what she'd told him and found evidence in the form of illegally-obtained police records and the burned-out ruins of Charlie Swan's house that supported her story. Which left him wondering how Victoria could have had such a vivid recollection of killing Bella when he'd just seen proof that Bella had been alive months after the supposed date of the incident.
Well, at least Gabriel will be pleased to know that we won't be digging up any graves after all. I should go find him, tell him the good news, I suppose...
Suddenly another mental 'voice' drowned out his own. Edward Cullen, what the hell do you think you are doing? You had better come here right now - I'm not running all over this town playing hide-and-seek with you, do you hear me?
He cringed. He hadn't been away from Gabriel for very long - half an hour at the most - but apparently it had been long enough for Alice to find him, and she didn't seem to be in a very good mood. He estimated that there were still a couple miles between him and her - her thoughts were so loud in his head that she could have been screaming right into his ear, but only because she was actively projecting them at him. She knew he would hear her once she got closer anyway, so she'd decided to be proactive instead of trying to sneak up on him. In doing so, she'd given him a chance to escape before she could catch up with him, but he wasn't going to; he'd had enough of running from and being chased down by his own family. Besides, he needed to discuss his findings with Alice anyway.
###
He found her leaning on her new car, a canary-yellow Porsche Jasper had given her for an anniversary present; she must have driven it at top speed to have reached Forks so fast. "That was very clever of you, waiting until we left to hunt and then hiding behind your mentally fractured friend so that I wouldn't see you sneaking out, but not clever enough. When we came home and found you gone, we knew there was only one place you'd go - well, besides Italy, but I saw enough to know that you didn't intend to try that again. You're lucky I was able to persuade Carlisle to let me retrieve you by myself - you'd be in a world of trouble if he were here. He's convinced that you've decided to take up grave-robbing, that you came here to steal Bella's body. You know, I can understand the need for a new hobby after a century or two, but can't you pick something else, like pottery or sky-diving?"
"I assure you I wasn't going to disinter Bella just for thrills, Alice. But I think it's safe to assume you already knew my plan regarding her?"
Alice held up her hands, palms facing outward in a 'just stop' gesture. "Yeah, I got that part too. And while it's incredibly touching that you'd go to all this trouble because of the slimmest of slim chances that you might be able to bring her back...it's still just a little sick. Not to mention that I don't think it can be done. I know Carlisle brought you back from the edge when you were human and dying, but you weren't dead. There are some lines you just shouldn't cross, Edward."
She's only saying that because she doesn't know how it feels to lose the person she loves most in the world. If our positions were reversed, I wonder if there would be any line Alice wouldn't cross to have Jasper returned to her. "Well, you needn't concern yourself over this issue any longer." He told her everything he'd learned from Jessica, finishing with, "So it seems that Bella is gone beyond my reach. Somewhere in the world there may be a person, or people, who can repair their bodies after sustaining fatal damage, but I doubt there's anyone who has the power to turn ashes back into a body."
"Oh. Edward, I'm so sorry. I know how hard it must be for you to have to accept that she's really g-"
"No, you don't. You can't begin to know how I feel," he said harshly.
A look of indignation flashed across Alice's features; then she softened. "I suppose you're right. Look, I don't want to argue. Will you come home with me now? Please?"
Edward sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to harden himself against Alice's compelling entreaties. "I'm afraid I can't do that, not now that I've learned there's more to Bella's death than I had previously suspected."
"What does that matter now?" Alice burst out, frustrated. "Is it really important whether Victoria killed her or some arsonist did? The end result is the same!"
"It matters to me. Over the last months I considered resuming my hunt for Victoria, if I was ever allowed to leave the house again - yes, I know it would be a long shot, what with her talent for evasion, you don't need to tell me that - but now I have a new target, a human one, which means I can't put off hunting them for an indefinite time. Humans are generally not around as long as we are."
Alice pursed her lips as she turned this over in her head, then sighed. "All right, I'll help you track the people you think may have been responsible for Bella's death. I want to punish her killer as much as you do. So are you going to tell me who we're looking for?"
"Her name is Elle Bishop; she's a distant cousin of Claire Bennet and Peter Petrelli, who moved to Forks after our family's departure and became Bella's best friend and boyfriend, respectively - no, don't feel bad for me, Alice. I wanted her to see other humans, remember? Although one whose family connections put her in danger was hardly what I had in mind-"
"-It would be Bella's luck to find someone like that," Alice finished. "Poor girl. Now, why don't you go find Gabriel, and then we'll track these people down and find out exactly what they did to Bella."
I think it's about time Edward learned Victoria didn't kill Bella, yes? He was so behind the times that I was beginning to feel sorry for him. Of course he still thinks she's dead and now suspects Elle of having done her in instead, and Peter and Claire of having helped her get away with it, which was not the direction I'd planned on going. I had a different plan for this chapter but realized it was too improbable, and that Bella's friends making a hasty exit from Forks the same night her house burned down would look very suspicious. All in all, this approach seemed to work.
Also, I'm thinking this will be the last Edward-centric chapter before this little arc about him and Sylar merges with the story's main plot. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what that means...