Disclaimer: Any recognizable Twilight characters and ideas are property of Stephenie Meyer. I am not profiting from the distribution of this story. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and followed in the last few weeks. I really appreciate you sticking with me, and to those who took the time to review, thank you so much. Love hearing from you!
In the handful of weeks since I last updated, I've continued to write, so I'm still well ahead of myself. Definitely look for one of these every three or four weeks!
From Chapter Six – Bound & Gagged: I wasn't sure, but I couldn't shake the distinct feeling that I witnessed something fairly significant happening between Sam and Jacob. Billy had been the rightful chief, but his son was never exactly excited about learning to lead, one day. With his dad's passing, it seemed like maybe Jacob was starting to take the stand that Billy was afraid he'd never take. I had a feeling that the power struggle between those two boys was only just beginning.
Things were definitely changing in La Push, and I had every intention of using it to help me get my little girl back.
Chapter Seven – I Am Not There
Present Day
Charlie POV
By the time I slowly turned my squad car into the barely visible driveway that led to that house, I couldn't believe where I was really heading for the first time in years. Well, almost. Even the exhaustion I couldn't shake combined with my pent-up anger from the incredibly frustrating argument with Sam wouldn't be enough to completely distract me from the fact that I was driving straight towards the Cullens' old place. Within just a few weeks, this was the place where I had both married and memorialized my little girl, and I sure as hell hadn't wanted to set foot back here since.
Honestly, I knew it was my duty to respond to this particular call, but I didn't know just what I thought what use I was going to be in coming down, this afternoon. After everything that had happened since Billy took a turn for the worse, my mental facilities weren't exactly up to snuff for a major investigation like one into a cop's disappearance. I was running on fumes as it was. At this point, the best I could hope for was to be seen. Sometimes the best way to lead was simply by showing up and providing a little encouragement.
And let the others do the thinking this afternoon. I'm done.
The overgrown branches that had been scrapping along both sides of the car finally started leaving my paint job alone as the road widened into a clearing, and then all of a sudden the Cullens' house was just there. Still huge, maybe even bigger than I remembered it and refusing to let me ignore it. Basically a big, white middle finger flipping off my heart in the middle of the forest.
Deputy Steve Martinez's muffled voice called my name from outside the car and thankfully stopped me from shooting the bird right back at that stupid house. I rolled down my window as he jogged over to my car.
"Charlie, thank God. It's been crazier than hell for the last couple hours. Go join the club over there, and then we'll head over together," Steve said.
I'd been so focused on the monstrous house and everything it stood for when I pulled into the sunny clearing that I hadn't even noticed how many red and blue lights were bouncing around all over the siding. Damn near every department vehicle we had was parked on scene, as well as what had to be well over half of the Port Angeles force. Add to that the FFD trucks and ambulances hanging further back, and it was already a very crowded little area. The vehicles started on the driveway and spilled out far onto the grass in front of the house. It looked more like a parking lot than a front yard at this point.
Seeing so many responders didn't surprise me in the slightest. That's what you're gonna get when a cop goes unaccounted for like Brian had. The brotherhood in what I do was one of the reasons I stayed doing my job through all the crap I've had to deal with over the years. We have each other's back in a really real way. I just wished for Brian's family that we had come together today for a different reason.
When I had gotten my car securely parked near the rest of my department's vehicles, I stepped out and took a deep breath. It's funny. I kind of expected the air to smell like it did that day. It was hard to remember too many of the details, but that had stuck with me. The smell of flowers had been so thick in the air, just like it had been the day of their wedding. Of course, Alice had definitely gone all out, again. But this time, it was so different.
September 8, 2006
It's time.
I should go inside. I should just get out of the car, now.
No. Not yet. Maybe in a little bit.
I can't do this.
God, I can't do this.
Maybe we can reschedule.
Of course we can't. That's an idiot thing to think.
The car's still idling. I could just leave.
No, I really should get out, now.
They're gonna come looking for you if you stay out here any longer.
Let them, then, because I'm not doing this.
I'm not doing this.
I'm just gonna leave.
Just put the car in reverse and go.
No one will blame you.
Just go. Just go. Just g-
A couple knocks at my window. "Charlie?"
My eyes blinked pretty hard as I dragged myself out of my head. Alice was standing outside the driver's side of my cruiser. Her face told me she was pretty worried.
Great, you asshole. Her brother is dead, and now you made her worried on top of it all.
Her best friend is dead, too.
Bella is dead. Bella is dead, too. Oh my God, Bella is-
"Charlie? Charlie, please. Just…put the car in park. You don't even have to turn it off. Just put the car in park," Alice said through the window.
I looked down at the gear shift. It was in reverse. Did I actually put the car in reverse? When did that happen? Where the hell did I think I was going? Leaving their home wasn't going to change anything. Wouldn't bring her back.
But it would be so much easier.
No small talk. No choking down food.
This is not happening.
It is happening.
I have to get outta here.
"Charlie!" Alice called out. I didn't look up from the steering wheel, but I did hear her continue a little more quietly but no less…I couldn't think of the word to describe it. But I didn't like the tone I heard in her voice. "Please, just…Make the choice to stay, okay? Just make the choice. You need to put your car in park and just stay. Please."
Desperate. That's what the tone was. Alice was desperate, and I made her that way.
I met her eyes just then, and they looked glassier than usual. Oh, Jesus. I couldn't handle that girl crying, right now.
How long had she been standing there before I heard her? How long had I been just sitting in my car? I looked at the clock, but I didn't even remember the drive over here, let alone what time I pulled in. The current time wasn't going to help me. It seemed like later than it should be, though. That was probably bad.
"Just put your car in park, Charlie. Please. You need to do this. For Bella. Please. Stay."
My gut clenched at hearing that name. Was that the way it was going to always be? Every single time one of the Cullens were sharing a happy memory or coworker slipped up and asked how I was doing with her loss, would it feel this way? Like I wanted to claw at my chest until my fingers bled if it distracted from the other pain for just a moment?
Maybe it would be best to avoid saying her name from here on out. At least for a little while. At least until I could think around it.
That day may come. It may get better.
No, it won't.
Maybe one day.
But would that be better? Forgetting her? Moving on?
Alice laid her hand on the window. "Charlie, damn it. Put your car in park. You're staying. Get out of the car. You don't know what you're doing."
Gone were her unusually bright eyes. This Alice's eyebrows were all scrunched up in a way that might have been cute if I didn't know better how fierce she could be.
"Now, Charlie. Promise me. You can't even think about leaving," Alice said, pointing at hands that were somehow white-knuckling the steering wheel – at ten and two, no less.
Could I really get through this?
I thought about the question for a few extra moments, even though I was pretty sure there could only ever be one answer. My hand dropped to the gear shift and threw the cruiser into park and then turned it off. Both hands fell into my lap.
No, I can't do this. But I will.
"Thank God," Alice said when she saw I'd given up.
Did she sound relieved? Did she think I would have actually taken off?
Would I have?
I looked past the large, white house that filled up my windshield towards the small groups of people that were making their way towards the backyard area. It seemed like only yesterday that they were doing the same thing, but for a very different reason. Of course, it was practically yesterday. Not even a month.
A soft rapping at my window pulled me out of my thoughts. Alice motioned for me to get out of the car. Wasn't it enough that I'd parked the damn thing? I even turned it off. What the hell did she want from me?
She wants you to man up and do what needs to be done as the father, not sit here with your crazy showing a bit too much.
"I know it's a lot," Alice said. "But can you please come on out, now?"
Ah, back to asking. I must look a little less unraveled as I did when she first came over.
My hand felt like it was pushing through thick gelatin rather than air on its way to the door handle. Was it always so hard to just open a damned door?
You know it wasn't.
Oh God, I can't do this.
This isn't happening.
The door handle came towards me as easily as always, and then it was done. Alice was pulling the door all the way open faster than I could process the action. Even though she was a tiny little thing, she was kind enough to offer me her hand to help me out of the seat. I'm not entirely sure I could have maneuvered my way out without her support.
Hell, forget getting out of the seat. I could have been halfway home by now without her.
As soon as I was out of the car, I took a huge whiff of the fresh September air to clear my head. The minute the smell hit my senses, I knew I had made a big mistake. There were floral arrangements everywhere – along the driveway, wrapped around trees, littering the porch. Everywhere. Groupings of these little white and light purple flowers. Maybe not as many as the day of the wedding, but far more than I'd expected to see.
The smell reminded me of her in a weird way. Maybe she carried some in her bouquet at the wedding? In any case, she would have liked these. She likes purple.
Liked purple.
All I knew is that I'd never be able to smell them again and not think of her and this shitty, shitty day.
The smell in the air was hard to think around, but now that I was out of the car and away from my crazy thoughts, I knew choosing to stay for this wasn't the best choice. It was the only choice. What the hell had I been thinking?
That she's dead. Oh God. She's not coming home. Oh God, I can't-
"Why don't we head into the house for a minute," Alice suggested, thankfully saving me from having to keep listening to myself. "Renee got here a while ago. Phil is with her, but I think she'd really like to see you."
We started walking up the driveway towards the house - Alice with one hand on my lower back and one laid on my arm and me not really seeing anything. Except for my mismatched shoes. Both black, but definitely not the same damn shoe.
How did I not notice that before? I had wanted everything to be perfect for her. Wanted to look my best. Couldn't even do that right.
But when you couldn't even keep her safe, the most important thing on this Earth, how the fuck did you ever think you could look good enough for her?
"Um, Charlie?" Alice asked. "I don't think your shoes are exactly the same."
"I just saw. I-I don't even know where to begin with that."
The hand on my arm squeezed it just a bit tighter. "It's okay. I'm pretty sure that Carlisle and you wear the same size shoe. We'll just ask him if you can borrow a pair."
I really wanted to roll my eyes at what I had to assume would be the cost of whatever Alice was about to put on my feet. But at the end of the day, I would look good for her, and that's all that mattered. Rather than the eye roll I had momentarily kind of considered, I just gave Alice a quick nod.
So once again, it was Alice to the rescue. One day, I was really going to have to thank her for saving me, today. In more ways than one.
We had almost gotten to the front porch with its two greenhouses worth of flowers when Alice said, "Oh, and Charlie? You were sitting outside our house for thirty-two minutes. Had a feeling you might wanna know."
Present Day
Freesia.
During one of our phone conversations in the first year without Bella, I had used Rainier to find the liquid courage to ask Alice a couple things about that day – details I had missed being on autopilot the way I had been since we had made the decision to call off a search and hold a memorial. The first question I had asked Alice was about the flower she'd picked for the services. Apparently, the little white and purple flowers were both different kinds of freesia, and she had picked them because, "their scent completely reminds me of Bella whenever I run into it. She and Edward both loved freesia. You know, she was the one who pick them to carry in her bridal bouquet. Maybe I thought that some people would agree with me and would want to smell her one last time."
In spite of the roller coaster from hell I'd been on these last couple weeks since Billy's letter had quite possibly changed almost everything I knew about the Cullens, I didn't think it could ever really change the way I thought of Alice. She was one of the good ones through and through.
"Chief, come on over!" Steve called to me from just inside the taped off section.
I took one last look at the white house before walking up the drive to join my deputy. He looked exactly like I felt – exhausted.
The Port Angeles unis keeping watch by the tape motioned me to duck under it without showing any creds. Being on scene without my uniform or badge was beyond weird, but it helped that the boys from the PAPD recognized me. Technically, I needed to have my badge no matter what, but no one was going to stop me.
Just past the police barricade line was the patrol car. If it weren't for members of the CSI team beginning to swab for evidence, it may have just looked as though Brian had parked the car for a stroll in the woods. On the Cullens' property. The more I tried to tell myself nothing was connected, the more my cop gut was telling me otherwise.
"What do we know?" I asked my deputy.
While we watched the team start to crawl around the car looking for anything that could help us figure out what happened, Steve filled me in. Apparently while I'd been on the rez cussing out a bunch of boys who looked like they'd all had their asses handed to them several times over, shit had completely hit the fan at the department.
A noise violation had been called in from an anonymous tip, which drew a couple of uniforms to the scene. Apparently, they had immediately seen Brian's car and called for backup. Twenty minutes later, the K9 unit arrived on scene and refused to track the scent.
"What the hell do you mean?" I snapped.
"It was the damnedest thing, Charlie. I've never seen a K9 buck like that at a scene."
I hadn't seen anything like that, but I sure as hell had heard about it happening years ago when a certain couple went missing in the woods. "Do you think it's possible that he just wasn't picking up on anything?"
"Hell, no. Ice refused to take a single step. Banes kept on coaxing him towards the scent. He'd get the whiff, and then he'd try to head for the hills. He just wouldn't follow it."
Goddamn it. What did they always say at the academy? Trust your gut as a cop. It'll do right by you each and every time.
I was right. I had to be. Something about this had seemed off from the beginning. And now, here we were, back at Cullens' house, and we had another K9 refusing to track a scent. Ice was a good dog with four years of service. He'd never refused a scent before.
Just like what the state trooper's notes had said.
What the hell was going on here?
"Okay," I responded, not really sure how to begin to process the new information with my deputy looking right at me, waiting for my reaction. "So how did we find the other scene? Is it possibly related to the original noise violation?"
Steve nodded. "You'd better believe what we found is related to it. Looks like a goddamn bomb blew up about two hundred yards in."
"A bomb?"
"Not an actual bomb," he said. "Well, at least that's what we're thinking. The Explosives Detection Unit is en route from Olympia to investigate, but the damage doesn't seem to be consistent with any one explosion. We just can't figure out what would have taken down a whole trees in the area."
More mysterious crap. Great. "Has anyone looked into blaming the group behind the boulders?" I asked, really only half joking.
Before Steve could respond, there was some increased activity around the car on the driver's side. "Chief! We've got a bunch of prints here."
Well, that was quick. Likely just Brian's if they were discovered so quickly. "Got anything that's not our man's?"
Jessica Barrett, one of the specialists, was comparing the print they'd lifted to a chart that I had to assume contained examples of Brian's prints. "I can't say for certain, but no, not matching up at all."
"They're all over the place," Yesenia Torres called out from inside the car. "That one we pulled from the door, but I've got the gear shift, as well."
So our guy was deeply stupid. Well, that or this was someone who had expected to be returning to the stolen car and just didn't. Although someone who steals a marked cop car, disables tracking, and then goes for a joyride through the very same town he stole it from most definitely had be leaning towards Option A. At least it would make finding the asshole a little easier if the prints were in the system. Idiots like this usually were.
I gave a quick nod to both ladies as they continued to follow their procedures for securing evidence. "Make sure we get those prints sent out as soon as possible. I don't want it taking one day longer than it has to for them to come back." To Steve, I continued, "Come on. Let's walk. I wanna see what happened after the perp took off from the car."
Steve and I started walking towards where the trees began in the distance. If I wasn't mistaken, I was pretty sure these were the same trees I'd been staring at during the services on the day from hell.
September 8, 2006
This was better. Pastor Weber finally wasn't speaking anymore, and that was absolutely an improvement over when he was. I would tackle any hardship the universe had in store for me if I didn't have to hear that man eulogize my baby girl for one word more.
But now music had started playing - the classical kind with piano. Is that a thing? I didn't think I remembered music at my parents' funerals. Did Alice have to play music at a time like now?
Doesn't she see what it's doing to Renee?
Sitting to my right, Renee was the exact opposite of how she had always seemed to me – full of life and bubbling over with this energy that no one could get a lid on. She had always been so full of sunshine that even making the difficult decision, or at least I hope it was a difficult decision, to leave me wasn't even enough to completely put a damper on her. The day she left, she still smiled sweetly and explained why we weren't working and still giggled at Bella's antics as I said goodbye to my little girl.
Today was different. It was a lot different. Renee was a shell of the woman I knew. Just a month ago when the photographer was trying to just do his job, he found that he had also inherited the problem that so many of us had dealt with over the years – trying to keep Renee still for two seconds. Now, she was definitely able to sit still. In fact, Renee had sat almost perfectly still like a statue during the eulogy, except for her shoulders that would shake every now and then as she stared at some spot on the ground.
Once the music started playing, it was like Renee had been pulled out of her trance. Phil had pulled her into his chest to attempt to comfort her while she sobbed. During the eulogy, she had grabbed for my hand when Pastor Weber began talking about our daughter. Now that she was leaning into her husband while still holding on awkwardly to my hand, I tried to remove it to make her comfortable.
"No, please," Renee moaned into Phil's suit.
I met Phil's eyes. He shook his head at my attempt to untangle my hand from his wife's, so I guessed that meant it would be staying put for now.
The damned song just kept going. I decided I'd need to ask Alice after the memorial why the hell she felt like she needed to ruin whatever song this was forever. After today, I'd never be able to listen to it again.
Had I ever listened to it? It did seem a little familiar.
Before my thoughts could scatter even further than they already had, Alice leaned over from my left and whispered, "Edward wrote this for Bella, last spring. We just thought he would have wanted it played for her one last time."
Well, shit.
Now I felt like an asshole.
Oh and look. Renee overheard Alice's whisper and had upgraded her crying against Phil's shoulder to all out sobbing.
Screw felt like as asshole. I am an asshole.
I felt a cool squeeze from my left hand. Alice. She was an awfully big Godsend for someone so small. Even though I never would have asked her to sit with me, I would never forget her kindness leaving her own family to stabilize me. I didn't want to admit how alone I was feeling. My best friend had come, but refused to come too close to where I was sitting surrounded by the Cullens. Damn fool. This was a family in mourning, not a group of people with the plague. Her friends from the rez were also sitting by Billy, glaring openly at the entire Cullen family. Every time I looked back at the boys, Sue was trying to redirect their stares, but it didn't look like she was having much success.
Not that Edward's brothers weren't giving as good as they were getting. Aside from that day in August when a small handful of the boys had shown up, I'd never seen them all in the same place. It was easy to see why. The hatred was thick in the air. If looks could kill might have been a cliché, but I was starting to believe it had somehow started with the rez boys and the Cullens.
Since no one from La Push would come anywhere near the family, that left me with Renee on one side, and what would have been no one else on the other. I didn't know what had possessed Alice to come sit over by me rather than her boyfriend and her mom, who had been so quiet all day. Whatever it was that told her I needed her more than Esme did, I was glad to have her. Really, Alice had been my everything since the moment she demanded that I get my ass out of the car and not take off like I still kinda wanted to. I had grabbed onto her harder than a leech on a doomed man.
The song playing reminded me of the music that been playing while we had still been staged in the house before the service, none of us eager to face what was waiting for us. I had to wonder if Edward had written that one, too. Such talent. Such a waste. Made me feel like a complete shit that I had ever acted like a silverback gorilla around him. Never even took the time to get to know him even before he broke her heart. Maybe that was wrong of me.
No, it was definitely wrong of me.
Almost as soon as the thought came into my head and the guilt began to creep in, Alice lightly squeezed my hand, and I felt my shoulders drop back down and relax. I guess being around family at a time could do that – stop yourself from adding to the hell you're in with thoughts and feelings that don't help anyone. It had been the same way when the Cullens and my broken little family had walked out together as a unit to the backyard to endure what was coming. I had felt completely surrounded by love and comfort as we headed towards the seats that someone saved for us directly in front of the makeshift memorial.
My eyes skimmed over the two elaborate flower arrangements, again, but I wouldn't let allow myself to really study them beyond that. I knew the flowers' colors were purple and white. I knew that a wedding photo of the two of them stood framed in the middle, but which one it was, I couldn't say. And I knew that in front of each set of flowers was a small, shoebox-sized pine box containing the scraps of clothing found on the scene. With the attack having been classified as an accident and the bloody scraps being the only thing recovered, the state boys returned them to us in the event we'd like to bury them.
I remember accepting them as graciously as I could because I knew cussing them out for even mentioning how wrong it was to have to bury anything of my daughter's that wasn't her didn't seem socially appropriate.
Or, at least, that's what Alice had said when she stepped in between me and the unis to intervene before I could actually get down the business of cussing them out. If it weren't for her, I wasn't sure if my FPD badge would have been enough to not land me in lockup that day.
Her smiling face in the photo was almost directly in front of me, almost like it had been just last month in this yard. There was no aisle, this time, of course. Instead, there was just a semicircle of chairs gathered around memorials I couldn't look at that had me sitting next to a broken ex-wife and in front of a best friend who couldn't even drop his prejudice against the Cullens for one God forsaken say to at least pretend to be civil.
What the hell had my life become?
At least Alice had mercifully planned the memorial setup so that the chairs in the semicircle faced a different backdrop of trees than they did the last time we had all gathered here. And thank God for small miracles. I didn't think I could stand to look at those other trees, right now. If I had to avoid looking at both the memorials and the trees beyond them, I'd be stuck having to look at Edward's family and Phil and Renee, and I just wasn't equipped to handle their grief on top of my own.
Just as it had been doing since I'd found out that she was gone, moment pulled me out of my head, and I wondered how long I'd been lost in my thoughts, this time. Pastor Weber was standing at the front looking ready to speak, again. Was he going to give another eulogy? He couldn't. I'd leave, this time for real. Not that the first one wasn't perfectly touching. It was.
It's just that it also sucked. It sucked so much. How could I be expected to listen to someone who'd just married them a month ago talk about their love in the past tense? Talk about them in the past tense?
"If anyone had anything that they'd like to share, the families would like to invite you to come up at this time."
Oh God, no, we wouldn't. We definitely wouldn't. I just need this to be over.
Or, wait. Shit. How did these things work? Is this something we have to do? Are people expecting me to talk, here? Like, is this some kind of backwards devil's toast where the fathers each have to get up and say…
Oh God, no.
How did I not ask this question before now?
Why didn't anyone tell me?
Leaning forward in my seat, I stared at Carlisle for a few moments before eyes caught mine. He apparently saw the question and panic on my face before I even asked it. A small shake side to side and I had my answer.
No Devil's toast, today. Thank God.
I held out hope for just a moment longer that maybe no one would come up to the front. And for a little while, I thought that the universe was actually going to grant me this one thing.
No one stand up. No one dare stand up.
Angela Weber stood up.
Well…Okay. If anyone was getting the chance to say something outside of the families, it was definitely her.
Pastor Weber gave his daughter's shoulder a squeeze when Angela reached the front. It was out of comfort. I knew that. I know I knew that, but I just couldn't stop myself. I glared. Hard. When her father took a step back, my eyes followed him and stayed fixed on his stupid hand.
Why the hell did he get to squeeze her shoulder? This father got to comfort this daughter. Show her he loved her. Be strong for her.
I didn't have that same honor. And I never would again.
Fuck his hand.
As quickly as it came, my anger suddenly subsided just enough to hear Angela say, "I'll never forget her."
Angela hurried back towards her seat. What the hell? Did I miss her entire tribute to her because of some dude's hand? I really must be outta my mind.
"Jacob, no," Billy's voice called out behind me. If he'd been trying to whisper that, it sure as hell wasn't very successful.
Billy had his hand on his son's shoulder, stopping him from standing completely. I couldn't make out Jacob's whispered, heated response, but seeing him shake out of his father's grasp made me very concerned about what the boy had in store. As Jacob continued walking towards the front, I could only pray that he would keep his cool.
Alice was saying something under her breath to herself, but I wasn't quite catching it. Down the row, the two Cullen boys leaned forward. I had a feeling that if this went south and my friend's idiot son started saying anything less than favorable about him or their relationship, I was going to have to try and find the strength to break them all apart.
Please, for the love of God, just say something appropriate, Jake.
I turned around to meet Billy's eyes. The same thought was clearly going through his mind because the fire there was unlike anything I'd seen from him. He was every bit as concerned as I was that Jake was about to do something incredibly stupid.
"Uh, hi," Jacob said and drew my attention back to him.
For what felt like a hell of a long time, Jacob just stared down at the paper in his hands. Was it me, or was it shaking a little?
The special place in my heart I held for this kid broke seeing him as messed up as he was. I had known him from the time he was just a squirming little bundle in my arms, and even though he'd never be able to replace the one that I had just lost to my recently estranged wife leaving me, I took to him immediately. I'd known him Jake entire life, but I hadn't seen him quite so wound up since Sarah was killed in that horrible wreck. That losing her had messed him up pretty good was obvious to anyone that looked at him.
"It's just, I've been trying to think of what I could say," Jacob finally said. "I don't really do this. Bella's the one who's good with words and everything. I mean, she doesn't think she is, but…"
He stopped to collect himself for a second, his pain at the use of present tense evident on his face. Jasper and Emmett leaned forward in their chairs even further as Jake continued, "Okay, so, I love Bella, and I think I probably will for the rest of my life. It really sucks that she isn't going to just be a motorcycle ride away ever again. I had a whole lot that I needed to say about that today, but it turns out that I can't really say any of it. So I decided that, well, maybe I should just go ahead and use someone else's words. This is what I found online. It's a poem for Bella. I'd like to think that she's actually here with us today and would tell us this, if she could.
"Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there; I did not die."
Jacob stared me down for a moment before skulking back towards his seat.
I had heard the poem before. In fact, I'd heard it read at a few funerals over the years. It was a nice sentiment, and probably hard for Jake to have done.
What I didn't understand was the reactions from Quileutes. Billy, Sue, and the boys were sitting with wide eyes, as though they couldn't believe Jacob would read a poem like that. I couldn't lie. I was pretty freaked out myself that he would get on up there and profess his undying love in the world's most inappropriate way. Maybe they had expected him to pick a fight with the Cullens? I don't know. I had sure thought that's what he might do.
But what the hell did I know? The kid had kept it mostly sweet. Better than I could have done. I wasn't brave enough to stand up and say something at a time like this.
Jacob had gotten almost back to his seat when I looked over at the Cullens. I had hoped they liked the poem Jake had chosen, but most of them just looked absolutely appalled. Guess I wasn't the only one who'd noticed that kid's slip-up about loving her.
I couldn't help the tiniest of smirks at how brightly his torch was always lit for her. So close to not offending anyone, Jake. So close.
Present Day
Back then, I didn't realize it, but I had been holding a torch for Jacob and Bella to get together in every way that he had held one for her. Maybe they would have been happy together, but she and Edward already were happy together. I swore on my life that if I ever got to see Bella again, I would apologize for being such an ass.
Once we'd been walking in the forest for some time quietly next to each other, I said to Steve, "You never did tell me what happened after Ice refused to follow the scent."
"Damnedest thing," Steve muttered to himself again. A little louder, he continued, "Well, search and rescue started to spread out by then. It definitely didn't take them long to find the site of the…whatever the hell it was that happened. See? Look."
I followed where Steve was pointing and saw exactly what he was talking about. Thick bramble, ground cover, and new growth was pretty much everywhere around these parts of the woods the minute you walked more than a foot or two away from an establish path. Next to where we were walking, all of it was clearly broken along a brand new path. Both branches and bramble had collapsed in on themselves. Ground cover was trampled and shredded. The destruction looked new and done in a hurry. It was almost like a motorcycle had driven right through the forest without taking enough damage to have to stop or leaving any tire marks to speak of behind it.
This wasn't making any sense, but with the news about Ice's little revolt, I was hardly surprised. It was reminding me more and more of the first time we encountered the first boulder – lots of clues that didn't add up to anything.
When I was done inspecting the broken branches, the two of us kept on trudging through the maze of trees and ground over. "So, where's SAR, now?"
"Spread out," Steve replied. "Looking for any signs of our guy or Brian. Ice is out with them. Banes said he reined in the freak out and started following his commands again the further they moved away from both core areas."
I had to ask, even though I knew the answer. "They're taking the necessary safety precautions? Our guy could still be out there."
"Of course, Chief."
We passed a few minutes walking in silence getting close enough to hear the activity from officers beginning to do the work of policing the area.
Finally, I had to ask the question that had been bumping around in my brain since I'd first heard that some of our boys had been called onto the scene. "Help me out here, Steve. What I'm not understanding is just who would have been in the area and able to call the police for a noise disturbance. The Cullens lived pretty far away from the nearest residential area. A hiker, maybe? Why not leave a name?"
"That's what we were thinking, too, and we don't know, either. We tried to trace the call, but only got a prepaid cell for our trouble. We're hoping we can at least trace the number to its point of sale."
"Has anyone considered that our perp was the caller? Why else would anyone have been out this way? Maybe got into trouble and…and the, uh…"
I completely lost my train of thought as I ducked under the police tape and got my first good look at what was going on with the second part of the crime scene. The destruction was just about absolute. Within a ring of maybe sixty square feet, some of the smaller trees were completely down, laid out on their sides with sections pulverized into wood chips. The more hearty, older trees seemed to mostly be intact, but they, too, had large gouaches blasted out of their trunks. The fresh wood was exposed without rhyme or reason. Some high. Some low. Directions of impact had clearly come from all sides.
"Like a bomb went off. No shit," I muttered.
Steve nodded. "Yeah, now you see how it's a little difficult to explain. But wait. It gets even weirder."
I followed Steve to one of the tall trees still standing at the far corner of the taped off section. He pointed to the right side of the impact area. "Take a look at that, Chief."
Chunks of fur were imbedded along the edge of the gaping hole. "Huh. Tan. Mountain lion?"
"That was our first thought, too, but we've also found chunks of fur in at least three different colors," Steve answered.
"Well, that doesn't tell us a whole lot," I said. "We're in the middle of a forest, Steve."
Steve rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah. Give us a little credit, Chief. Those are the different kinds we found lodged in more of the holes like this one. So whatever did this, there were at least four different animals involved. Oh, and check this out."
He led me over to a particularly muddy area within our barricade radius. Several large animal paw prints were easy to pick out. They looked like a dog's. Well, kinda. "Now what the hell animal makes that print? I mean, it sure looks like a dog. You know, if it were bigger than us. You think maybe it's the same thing we were dealing with in the spring? Those huge wolves that we thought were bears? Think they're back?"
A memory steamrolled me as I studied the paw print in the ground that quite clearly belonged to some kind of rioded-out dog.
Bella had come storming into the house with her face all flushed. "I saw the bear…It's not a bear, though – it's some kind of wolf. And there are five of them. A big black one, and gray, and reddish-brown."
Even though I'd tried to reason her out of it, Bella insisted that she had seen a pack of five wolves. My team had searched and searched for any evidence of the super wolves Bella swore she had seen. Back then, I was so happy to see her out of the house and living her life that I was inclined to believe anything she told me just to encourage her to keep talking.
We never did find anything, and the killings stopped happening not long after that. The cases still sat cold in our department. I honestly hadn't given much thought to them until today. Maybe Bella had been on to something, after all.
"Well, I'll be goddamned," I said as I stood back from the print.
"You can say that again," Steve agreed.
I put my hands on my hips and kicked my leg out in front of me to think. The boys liked to call it standing "Charlie Style" when they thought I wasn't listening. "Gonna be honest with you, man. I was pretty sure at the time that this thing didn't exist."
Steve nodded. "You're definitely not the only one."
"Well, okay. So Bella said she saw five wolves, back then. Even if there is such a thing, could five huge wolves actually cause this kind of damage?" I asked as I took in the felled and damaged trees all around us. "I've been around the block in the Pacific Northwest, and I've just never seen anything like this. We need to call in some experts to analyze the damage. My gut's telling me we're in over our heads with this on our own."
As he wrote down my instructions, Steve said, "Got it, Charlie. And I agree with you, for sure."
"And we're sure that our alleged perp went this way?"
"Without Ice, we can't be positive just yet. But it sure looks that way," he said.
Had the animals been chasing him? Did he know they were coming? Whether or not he was involved with Brian's disappearance, what would have possessed a guy to find himself in with a stolen cop car going for a joyride in the same town it was stolen from? And why the hell did he park on the Cullens' property? What was out there for him?
Nothing was adding up. Again.
Steve sighed and shook his head "Well, whatever happened here, it must have been one hell of a fight."
My head whipped around to look at my deputy. "What did you just say?"
"There must have been one hell of a fight. This place is a mess," Steve repeated.
Someone from PAPD's CSI team called for me, and I motioned for Steve to go over in my place. I needed a long moment or two to myself. Or possibly a hundred.
One hell of a fight, Steve had said. Kind of like the sort that would leave a bunch of young men with bruises and gashes that looked like they'd exchanged blows with a jaguar?
Or a wolf?
No. No, that was ridiculous to even consider.
But was it?
The reality was that my cop's gut was firing away, again. I was never one to ignore it, but I needed a whole lot of space to think.
"Hey, Steve?" I called.
I waited for him to look up from where he was still checking in with CSI before continuing, "I'm gonna head back. Should probably stay more centrally located with so many teams here. You can stay out here? Keep everyone organized?"
Steve shot me a quick thumbs up. "You got it, Chief."
Even though I felt relief wash over me as I was escaping back into the woods for some privacy, I could feel my stomach twist into a thousand knots at the same time. I really wanted to tell myself that I was just being a crazy old fool. How could Jacob and the rest of the boys possibly have anything to do with whatever the hell happened in those woods to take down entire trees?
But I couldn't shake the feeling that something wasn't right. Sam had asked me not to come, today. Said it wasn't safe. That I should have someone from the rez come with me to my own department's crime scene. Why would he even ask that of me? I'd been called away on business plenty of times when I was down at the rez, and it was no big deal. What made this one any different in their eyes? Unless, of course, Sam and Jacob knew exactly what I would find when I got down here.
Again, I felt crazy even thinking it, but was it really all that crazy given what I knew?
Billy had told me so many of the tribe's stories over the years, even if he refused to get into what he liked to call the "really messed up shit." I couldn't come close to retelling them word for word from memory like Billy always did, but one thing I definitely remembered from so many of the legends was that the Quileutes had a special relationship with the wolf. They tended to feature in many of the tribe's stores. When Billy would get to telling them over our fourth or fifth Vitamin R, I'd like to interrupt him randomly with, "And then a wolf came!" He'd throw an empty at me and keep telling his tales.
In my defense, wolves really were everywhere in the stories he'd share with me. Sometimes, I'd give him a hard time when a wolf did something impossible. The Quileutes took their legends very seriously, and they were always grounded in truth at their core. I would give him crap, but Billy would just calmly explain that these wolves were unlike any I had ever heard of before. They were the tribe's unquestioned protectors, to be trusted and respected above all else.
A wave of lightheadedness overcame me that idea fully registered. Memory after memory of the Quileute legends, the argument today on the rez, and the paw prints at our second core area flipped through my brain like a flipbook on speed.
Protectors.
Protectors.
Holy shit.
I stopped walking and plopped myself down on a log that wasn't too far away from the path. It occurred to me that I was literally sitting down on the job when a fellow officer's life was at stake, but if I was right, his disappearance was bigger than anything my small, Podunk department could handle, anyway.
My skin felt like it was about the crawl clean off me, and my breath was coming short and fast. If my heart failed me and I bit the big one now, Billy was sure as hell about to get the chewing out of his afterlife for putting me through this with his cryptic crap. I dropped my head into my hands and focused on breathing nice and slowly while I recounted everything that happened at the rez, this afternoon.
Protectors. The wolves in Billy's stories were forever protecting the tribe from any kind of harm and guiding them to make the best decisions. Billy always spoke of them in hushed tones, like he was in awe of them.
I had always chalked it up to Billy taking his ancestry very, very seriously. He was a proud man from a line of proud men, and he loved the Quileute Nation with every square inch of his heart. But what if maybe the stories weren't all stories? What if the reason Billy talked about the wolves the way he did was because they really existed? Huge, bear-sized wolves out here in the real world would certainly count as the "really messed up shit."
Then there was Bella. She came in that afternoon swearing she'd seen the wolves in the woods and was legitimately freaked out about whatever had actually been out there. When we couldn't find any sign of gigantic wolves anywhere, I figured that the hell she was suffering made her think that bears or maybe some large bucks she saw were actually wolves. If those paw prints were any indication, though, maybe she had been right all along. And the colors she'd listed off? Didn't Steve say that the chunks of fur imbedded in the tree trunks were lots of different colors?
Damnit. I should have just trusted her.
So, if the wolves were real, then the rez boys must know about them. Maybe even have a part in protecting the reservation? It did feel like the boys thought they were always protecting La Push from something. Sam had cracked open his thesaurus and called me astute and everything when I mentioned it, this morning. And Billy had also used the term protectors in reference to the boys on several occasions.
The boys would have to be pretty strong to manhandle giant wolves, wouldn't they? Did the Elders give them some sort of herbal crap to be able to? It sure as hell would explain why Jacob went from being a scrawny fourteen-year-old to Mr. Universe almost overnight.
And why he could have gotten a tree to budge, today. A fucking tree. Just like the ones that were knocked down in the middle of the forest, back there.
This whole line of thinking wasn't doing anything for my breathing issues.
But something still wasn't adding up. What was it Jake had said, today? "This isn't like the other times. It's getting worse. People are gonna get hurt."
What was getting worse? Was it possible that had the wolves turned on the tribe?
It was certainly possible. The boys sure did look pretty worse for wear. And animals involved would explain why a bunch of them had some pretty good sized gashes crisscrossed all over their bodies. No fistfight I'd ever gotten into or broken up had many cuts like that unless glass was involved. Even then, that wouldn't have accounted for just how many gashes were all over them. Who knows what kind of condition Seth was in.
I should have forced Sam to let me check in on Seth. Shit.
Was I seriously considering that there was somehow a giant wolf pack trotting around the reservation, and that no one, except for maybe Bella, outside of the Quileutes had ever seen them? That these wolves used to protect the Quileutes, but were running around unchecked now like the Tyrannosaurus in one of those terrible Jurassic Park sequels?
Maybe Billy's letter had me seeing conspiracies everywhere, but I knew I was right with this. Jake had seemed pretty upset, this afternoon. But didn't that mean that the boys on the rez were involved with, or at least knew about, the attack here? Hell, they may have even been at the scene. They could be witnesses.
Could that mean they're connected to the mysterious boulder crap, too?
My cell phone buzzed, pulling me out of my head. A quick conversation with one of my officers later, and I was walking on shaky legs towards the Cullen house. Sitting having a panic attack at a time like this wasn't exactly in the job description. I needed to put my crap on hold as best I could, for now. All I knew was that the second I got home, I was going to be looking into the legends that Billy and Harry used to go on and on about. I needed to find out absolutely everything I could about the wolves.
Just as I was almost back to the clearing when my phone went off, again. What the hell? I'm an old guy. Walking as fast as I can here.
I glanced at the screen. Not any of my boys. Just a blocked call.
As soon as I stepped out of the woods, Josh Rex, the officer who'd called me earlier, flagged me down and brought me up to speed on the cruiser. CSI was still working, but they had already been able to lift several more intact and partially intact prints from the car, both inside and out. They were sending them out to the firm that handled the processing for us. The turnaround was usually about two-four weeks, depending on how backed up the agency was. However, Josh was hoping that a cop's disappearance being involved with the case would possibly help the prints get bumped up in the queue. It was worth a shot.
Josh looked down at his notes and back up at me looking for all the world like he definitely didn't want to say whatever he needed to. I decided to cut the guy some slack. "Out with it, Josh. Whatever it is, just tell me."
"Alright," he said, still almost cringing away from me. "Look, we know this is probably a touchy subject with you, but it's about the Cullens."
"Probably a touchy subject?" I repeated. With a sigh, I rolled my eyes. They didn't know the half of it. "Yeah. What about them?"
Josh hesitated again before saying, "Look, we're going to be checking the normal avenues just to rule out the possibility that any of the Cullens were involved. We've got that covered, but we'll also need to-"
"We need to talk to them. Goddamn it," I finished for him. Of course we'd need to. My head was so wrapped up in shirtless young men and huge ass wolves that I was losing too much focus.
"Exactly. Problem is we don't have any way to contact them. We can try to hunt down cell phone numbers, but who knows how long that could wind up taking. Some of us were hoping you'd have a way to reach out to them?"
I nodded. "Well, I do have a contact for them. Kinda. I'll take point on reaching out to them."
Damn right I would – on and off the record.
"Okay, good. We were sort of hoping you could get in communication with them," Josh said. "Make sure you go ahead and officially notify them about the other…whatever the hell that is in the woods since it's on their property."
"Wait, 'on their property?' Steve told me it's at least two hundred yards from the house. Could even be a little more than that based on the walk we just took out there."
Josh looked down at his notes. "Well, according to city records, they still own a little more than a hundred acres of the forest surrounding the house. So our site is well within those boundaries."
Holy crap. Just how the hell much money did those people really have? Land was dirt cheap up here, but even that's gonna start adding up when you talk a hundred acres.
"Uh, yeah. Sure. I'll make sure they're notified," I replied.
I was a little dumbfounded, but hell, after all the meetings with the Cullens' lawyer about the life insurance policy that they'd taken out in Bella's name with me as the benefactor, nothing should really surprise me when it came to their wealth.
My cell phone went off, again. Another damn-blasted blocked call. I rolled my eyes and went to find the PAPD chief who'd just arrived on scene.
About five hours later, I declared that I needed to step back for a little bit. The sun was already down, and we were getting ready to wrap for the day. SAR would continue through the night, but we were losing hope that we'd find any trace of Brian or our perp, at this point. They were both gone without barely a trace. Maybe the prints we'd lifted at least lead to something in the coming weeks.
I walked into the house and threw my keys down on the cabinet. The envelope from the photo was still where I'd left it on the floor, this morning. How did that only happen earlier in the day? It seemed like it had been years since I'd been home.
Just as I was hanging up my jacket, my cell phone buzzed, again. Blocked call. Goddamn it. I was so done. These fools had called me seven more times before I'd left the crime scene. I was stressed out enough from everything going on the last few weeks, and now these assholes were about to take the brunt of it.
I pressed the answer button and yelled, "Listen, I have had it up to fucking here with the-"
"Charlie! Finally! Thank God!"
Alice.
Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Please consider leaving a review to let me know what you thought! Want updates on chapters or read my general ridiculousness? Follow me on Twitter at _Horizon77_ (yes, you need the annoying underscores). See you all for the next chapter! Love to you all!