The river parcel looked insignificant enough to be forgotten.
That, I later understood, was probably why Grandpa kept it.
It sat at the end of a gravel road that narrowed into two ruts between fields. Cottonwoods leaned over the riverbank. Waist-high grass moved in the evening wind.
The investigators refused to let June approach until deputies cleared the property.
Robert went to the hospital under guard.
Dale remained at the farm answering questions.
Carol stayed behind with Mark.
Only June and I rode with the investigators.
Darkness arrived while we were still on the road.
June barely spoke.
When she did, it was to ask the same question in different forms.
“Why bury Samuel?”
Nobody could answer.
Grandpa might have been protecting Raymond.
He might have been protecting the family.
He might have been frightened.
None of those explanations made the act smaller.
The convoy stopped near a rusted cattle gate.
A deputy cut the chain.
We continued on foot.
The river sounded louder than I expected.
Water moving through darkness has a way of making every other sound seem temporary.
The eastern parcel contained three large cottonwoods.
Only one was old enough to have been there in 1981.
Its trunk was enormous, hollow on one side from a lightning strike.
June immediately walked toward it.
The investigator caught her shoulder.
“Wait.”
A deputy circled the tree with a flashlight.
Fresh soil had been disturbed beside the roots.
“He’s been here.”
The hole was shallow.
Someone had dug recently and quickly.
A broken shovel lay nearby.
June crouched.
“Did he find it?”
The answer came from a deputy examining the hollow.
“No.”
He reached inside and removed a rusted metal box.
The box was about the size of a loaf of bread.
It had been wedged deep behind splintered wood.
The lid bore a scratched S.
Samuel.
The investigator photographed it before opening anything.
June stood with both hands pressed against her arms.
I could tell she wanted to touch it.
She did not.
When the box finally opened, the first thing inside was not a document.
It was a photograph.
Three young men stood beside an International Harvester tractor.
Harold in the middle.
Raymond on the left.
Samuel on the right.
All three smiling.
June looked at the faces.
“They look happy.”
Nobody said what she was thinking.
Before.
Every family has a before.
Before the money.
Before the betrayal.
Before somebody decides a lie is easier than grief.
Under the photograph were folded papers wrapped in waxed cloth.
Loan documents.
Promissory notes.
Copies of deeds.
Letters.
Several bore signatures that appeared to belong to the brothers’ father.
A handwritten note from Samuel was tucked beneath them.
The paper had yellowed but remained readable.
The investigator read silently first.
Then June asked him to read aloud.
Samuel wrote that Raymond had been borrowing money using forged family documents.
He feared Raymond would eventually lose the farm.
He had copied everything.
If anything happened to him, Harold should take the box to Sheriff Donnelly.
June closed her eyes.
“He never did.”
No.
Harold never did.
Samuel had trusted his brother.
Harold had chosen something else.
The investigator turned another page.
A second note had been written later, the ink darker.
Harold knows.
June looked up.
“What does that mean?”
The sentence continued.
Harold knows about Evelyn.
Carol had never mentioned an Evelyn.
Neither had Robert.
June stared at the paper.
“Who is Evelyn?”
The investigator photographed the note.
Another folded letter in the box answered part of the question.
It was addressed to Samuel.
Signed Evelyn Mason.
The language was personal.
Intimate.
She wrote that she was pregnant.
Samuel was the father.
June covered her mouth.
“Samuel had a child.”
“Possibly,” the investigator said.
The letter was dated February 1981.
Samuel disappeared in August.
A second letter arrived in June.
Evelyn had given birth to a boy.
His name was Thomas.
June looked toward me.
“Thomas Parker?”
“Maybe Mason.”
The investigator kept reading.
Evelyn asked Samuel to come to Wichita.
She wanted them to build a life away from the farm and away from Raymond.
Samuel apparently intended to go.
A bus ticket stub to Wichita was preserved beneath the letter.
Dated two days after the night he died.
June sat on the grass.
“He was leaving.”
The story changed again.
Samuel had not been fighting for ownership.
He had been trying to escape.
And someone had stopped him.
A flashlight beam moved across the field.
One deputy called from the road.
“Vehicle!”
Everyone froze.
The investigators drew weapons.
June and I were pushed behind the cottonwood.
Headlights appeared through the trees.
An old pickup came down the rutted road.
It stopped fifty yards away.
The driver’s door opened.
Nobody got out.
A deputy ordered the occupant to show both hands.
Nothing happened.
Another command.
Still nothing.
They approached carefully.
The truck was empty.
Its driver’s door had been propped open.
The engine remained running.
Raymond was not inside.
On the passenger seat lay a cellphone.
June’s cellphone rang.
UNKNOWN CALLER.
The investigator nodded for her to answer.
She put it on speaker.
Raymond’s voice came through immediately.
“You found Samuel’s box.”
June looked around the darkness.
“Where are you?”
“Closer than you think.”
Deputies spread into the trees.
June kept talking.
“Why did you kill Samuel?”
Silence.
Then Raymond laughed.
“Robert told you his version.”
“He said he saw you hit him.”
“He saw what Harold wanted him to see.”
June frowned.
“What does that mean?”
“Your grandfather killed Samuel.”
The world seemed to hold still.
June said nothing.
Raymond continued.
“He spent forty-five years making me the monster.”
The investigator scribbled a note.
KEEP HIM TALKING.
June swallowed.
“Robert saw you with the tire iron.”
“Robert saw me holding it.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The difference is Samuel was already on the floor.”
June stared toward the black river.
“Who hit him?”
Raymond’s voice became quieter.
“Ask why Harold poured the concrete before the sheriff searched.”
“Because he buried Samuel.”
“No.”
Raymond almost sounded amused.
“He buried more than Samuel.”
The call disconnected.
Deputies searched for Raymond for nearly an hour.
They found footprints near the river.
Nothing else.
He knew the land.
That gave him an advantage.
While the search continued, the investigator returned to Samuel’s documents.
Among them was a handwritten ledger.
Entries from 1980 and 1981.
Money moving between Raymond, Samuel, Harold and an account labeled E.M.
Evelyn Mason.
June pointed.
“Grandpa was sending her money.”
Small amounts.
Every month.
Even after Samuel disappeared.
For years.
“That doesn’t look like guilt,” I said.
June stared at the numbers.
“It could.”
The ledger continued until 1994.
Then the payments stopped.
Another note had been clipped to the final page.
Thomas college.
June sat back.
“Grandpa paid for Samuel’s son.”
It appeared so.
The investigator made several calls.
Evelyn Mason had died in 1998.
Thomas Mason was alive.
Fifty-five years old.
Living in Wichita.
June stared at the name.
“Does Thomas know who his father was?”
Nobody knew.
Then the investigator uncovered something else.
A newspaper clipping.
January 1982.
Local man missing after suspected river accident.
The article described Raymond Parker.
Authorities believed he might have died after the abandoned truck was found.
No mention of Samuel.
June read the final paragraph twice.
“Why wasn’t Samuel reported missing?”
That question mattered.
Carol had said Samuel disappeared the same night.
Yet only Raymond became an official missing person.
The investigator called the county records office.
Old files were retrieved electronically as scanned images.
The answer was worse.
Samuel Parker had not merely gone unreported.
A document filed six days later claimed he had left Kansas voluntarily.
The statement was signed by Harold Parker.
June stared.
“Grandpa lied to the sheriff.”
“Yes.”
And another signature appeared beneath Harold’s.
Robert Parker.
June closed her eyes.
“My father lied too.”
The investigator said nothing.
Then we found the third signature.
Carol Parker.
June looked toward the darkness.
“Everybody knew enough to lie.”
Not necessarily enough to know what happened.
But enough to protect Harold’s story.
The investigators searched until after midnight.
Raymond did not appear.
Finally June agreed to leave.
As we walked toward the vehicles, I heard something in the grass.
A metallic click.
“Stop.”
June froze.
The deputy behind us swept his flashlight.
A thin wire crossed the path.
It ran toward a tree.
The deputy moved us back.
A small hunting alarm had been rigged there.
Not lethal.
Just noise.
A warning system.
Raymond had prepared the ground.
“He was watching us,” June said.
Probably.
The investigator guided her toward the road.
Halfway there, June stopped.
“Wait.”
She looked back at the cottonwood.
“What?”
“The box.”
“It’s evidence.”
“I know.”
“No, something about it?”
June frowned.
“If Raymond knew Samuel buried something here, why did he dig beside the roots?”
“Maybe he didn’t know the exact location.”
“But Grandpa did.”
She looked toward the hollow.
“Someone scratched an S into the box.”
“Yes.”
“Samuel wouldn’t need to label his own box.”
I understood.
“Grandpa found it.”
June nodded.
“He knew exactly where it was.”
The investigator looked back.
That meant Harold had discovered Samuel’s evidence at some point.
Yet he had left it hidden.
Why?
June answered her own question.
“Because he wanted somebody to find it later.”
The investigator’s phone rang.
He listened.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He turned toward June.
“The hospital.”
Her father had disappeared.
June’s face hardened.
“What do you mean disappeared?”
“Robert left during a transfer.”
“How?”
“They’re checking.”
Then came the detail that mattered.
Robert had not escaped alone.
Security footage showed someone entering through a staff corridor shortly before Robert vanished.
An older man.
Gray hair.
Lean build.
Raymond.
June stared.
“He kidnapped him again?”
The investigator shook his head.
“No.”
On the footage, Robert walked beside Raymond voluntarily.
June said nothing.
The investigator continued.
Before leaving, Robert had accessed the hospital’s public computer.
He searched one name.
Thomas Mason.
Samuel’s son.
June looked back at Samuel’s box beneath the cottonwood.
Suddenly the buried documents no longer felt like the most dangerous thing Grandpa had protected.
Somewhere in Kansas was a man who might have spent fifty-five years not knowing his father had been murdered.
And June’s father and Raymond were both going to find him.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: Samuel’s Son Opened His Door to June, Then Produced a Forty-Year-Old Letter That Changed Who Had Really Betrayed the Parker Brothers
The Will Gave Us Each One Dollar, Then the Lawyer Put Grandpa’s Sealed Envelope in Front of June
Part 6 of 50
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