by Karen Harper
“I haven’t touched anything in the immediate area,” Drew went on. “It’s a bizarre scene, to say the least. We’ll need photos of three other nearby sites, too.”
The men moved toward the hollow tree. Jessie was sweating but shivering, too. At first she stayed put, hugging herself for warmth, then went slowly closer, keeping her flashlight beam pointed at the ground, while the men had theirs trained into the hollow trunk. She saw the coroner pull out a jar of Vicks and put some in his nostrils, then pass the jar to the other men. The scent of the scene staggered her; she took some, too. Then, for a moment, she just stared into the outer darkness, until the strobe from Tyler’s camera jolted her back to reality.
Longing to flee—to hide from this nightmare—she shuffled closer, listening to the crackle and swish of sang leaves as they carefully uncovered her mother’s body. As the glare of lights and Tyler’s flashes illumined the scene, she peered between the two sheriffs’ shoulders.
She gasped. Long, red-black cuts or scratches, like the patterns of the berries, marred her mother’s cheeks and forehead. Her long hair, streaked and matted with blood, had come loose, but that didn’t hide the fact her head was twisted at a terrible angle. Only that one arm, stretched out with her marriage band on the finger, seemed at all normal.
“It’s not an accident!” Jessie cried, louder than she meant to, louder than the whine of wind or rumble of the falls. “It’s murder!”
When Jessie woke, she wasn’t sure where she was. Oh, yeah, Cassie’s bed again. After the coroner had taken her mother’s body to Highboro for an autopsy, Drew would not let Jessie go home again. He wanted to question Seth first thing in the morning. Seth lived too close to her place for her to spend the night there alone.
Cassie’s bedroom was as black as the forest had been, and the wind moaned outside almost as bad as it did up on Shrieking Peak. A ghost floated into the room—Cassie in her long, white nightgown. Pearl had been sick to her stomach, but Cassie didn’t want to leave Jessie alone, so she slept here but kept getting up to check on Pearl.
“You awake, Jessie?” she whispered.
“I think the wind woke me. What time is it?”
“Somewheres around three.”
“How’s Pearl’s tummy?”
“Not much better, though I dosed her with feverfew and pennyroyal tea.”
“Not good, old sang?”
“Would you believe, she doesn’t like the taste of that?”
“Maybe she ate something from the gardens that made her sick.”
“I got anything toxic fenced off out there.” Her voice sounded contentious but then softened. “You want to talk? You ’bout collapsed when Drew got you here.”
“There’s not much to say until he tells us what the coroner learns from the autopsy. I’ve got to plan a funeral, and you can sure help with that.”
“I’d be honored. I loved her, too.”
“I know you did. We both had two mothers, didn’t we?”
Cassie got back under the covers on her side of the bed and reached over on top of the quilt to squeeze Jessie’s shoulder. “And sharing Mariah makes us at least half sisters, so anything I can do to help, I will.”
Jessie clasped Cassie’s hand before she pulled back. “I just can’t fathom anyone hating or fearing my mother enough to commit murder. Can you? Why would anyone want to take another life, ever?”
Cassie shifted so hard away that the bed bounced.
“Cassie, do you know someone who had it in for her?”
“No, ’course not.”
“Someone’s going to pay. I know Drew will work hard at it, but I will, too. I’m going to take a leave of absence from my work, or maybe bring some of it here with me. I want to try using sang leaves instead of the rare roots to slow the growth of cancer tumors.”
“It’s a good thing you’re doing—the lab work,” Cassie told her, but her voice came muffled now that she was turned away.
“I want to ask you about something, to see if you think it’s weird.”
“Tyler’s photo?”
“No. I’m thinking of using those ginseng plants that covered her body for lab work. Then something that was with her at the end could be put to good use with the research. You don’t think that’s morbid, do you?”
“No. Waste not, want not. Mariah and I believed in putting things from the woods to good uses. ’Sides, lots of mountain women die from breast cancer, and it’s near impossible to convince them to get mammograms. Your research might help them. And something else. You want to help Drew find out who hurt Mariah, I got a suggestion.”
As Jessie leaned up on one elbow, she felt her poison ivy start itching again. Like her fears, it seemed worse at night. “Tell me,” she said.
“Try catching flies with honey and not vinegar. You know, ’stead of taking someone like Vern Tarver on, like you said Drew did, pretend to lean on him. Vern, I mean. ’Sides, I’m not going to work for him this fall like I did last, so maybe he’ll give you the job in the trade store, ’cause everyone who wants sang passes through there sooner or later. Peter Sung, that Brazzo woman, you name it.”
“I had thought of that—being nice to Vern, not working for him. But that’s a good idea. I could put out the word I’m buying the sang plants while he’s buying the roots. The leaves will just die back by winter anyway.”
Again, Jessie was pleased that she was thinking straight, because she felt so twisted inside. This was all real, this living nightmare.
“Cassie, one more thing, then I’ll shut up and let you sleep, because I know you’ve been up and down with Pearl all night. What did the thing in Tyler’s photo look like to you? He said you saw it, but I haven’t had a chance yet.”
“Looks like a cross between a black bear too tall for these parts and an old mountain man. ’Member those stories some of the old miners used to tell about dead, trapped coal miners in those long-lost pioneer drift mines who emerged to take captives down below for company? They always wore some strange head covering and their skin and clothes hung real loose. I know, I know, just ghost stories, old haint tales. Emmy Enloe—works for Drew—was always one of the worst, telling those crazy yarns. She’ll take to this one big-time.”
“She’s got another kind of critter on her mind big-time lately, and it’s no monster. Some good-looking government surveyor named Ryan Buford’s back in town, and Emmy looks ready to sign up for an up close and personal survey. Cassie, what is it?” she asked when her friend threw the covers off and got out of bed. “Sorry for yakking on, but it just helps to—”
“Pay me no mind. I just heard Pearl fussing, that’s all,” she said and hurried out.
Jessie dropped back on her pillow, blinking back tears that speckled her face and tracked down into her hairline and ears. She shouldn’t have been carrying on so when Cassie, too, needed her sleep, but she was sure Pearl hadn’t been fussing. Still, that was the thing about mothers: they could tell when their kids needed them before they even called.
She rolled onto her side and curled up in a fetal position. She needed her mother so bad now, so bad, but she was on her own.
Drew was surprised Jess looked as good as she did—she emanated an angry calm—when he picked her up the next morning at Cassie’s. He told Cassie they knew nothing yet, and they waved to her as they pulled away. But when he looked at Jess this close, he saw her eyes were blood shot from crying or lack of sleep. He hadn’t been to bed last night, but she said she had.
“Really? Nothing yet from the coroner?” she asked as she fastened her seatbelt.
“The autopsy itself will be done this morning, but Clayton Merriman did some photos of the external cuts on her.”
“But—those cuts didn’t cause all that blood in her hair, did they? I was hoping—praying, she was already dead of a broken neck when she was cut. But dead people don’t bleed.”
Her knowledge surprised him. Most people who had seen TV or the movies or even Italian operas thought corpses bled d
ramatically all over the place. He turned to look at her, then immediately back to his driving.
“It looked like her neck was broken,” he said, “but that wouldn’t cause the bleeding either. On first examination, Merriman said she’d evidently been struck hard on the back of the head, some sort of skull fracture.”
Jessie sucked in a quick breath and gripped her hands tightly together.
“Are you okay?” he asked. “You wanted the truth, so—”
“It isn’t that. For one second, it was as if I saw and felt it—but not from afar. It was as if, as if…I don’t know. As if I were going to relive that hallucination I had in Hong Kong I told you about. That feeling I had to run, run, because someone’s chasing me. But I think I was just reliving the terror I felt last night when I thought someone was chasing me in the woods and it turned out to be Tyler Finch.”
“Jess, I don’t go much for the ESP, psychic stuff, but I know some pretty smart people do. Maybe when you get this flashback feeling, you should go with it, not fight it. Maybe it’s as simple as something you’ve buried in your relationship with your mother that might give us some insight into who would hurt her.”
She turned to face him. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not even sure. Maybe she said something about Vern or Seth or someone else in passing to you that will give us a clue about a motive. Hell, I don’t know.”
To his dismay she reached for the brown envelope he had stuck between his seat and the central console. “Are they here?” she asked. “The initial coroner’s photos? The scratches on her are etched in my brain, but a closer look—”
“Jess, other than examining your own memories, you are not on this case!” he insisted, seizing her wrist with his right hand to stop her from seeing the photos. “Besides, they’re hard to look at.”
“They can’t be worse than finding her like that, or was she cut places other than her face?”
“No.”
“Was she assaulted—raped?”
He was shocked she sounded so matter-of-fact and that she was thinking clearly and like a police officer or investigator. “They don’t think so,” he told her, “but today’s autopsy will tell.”
“I’m going to see her body later anyway, Drew. I can do this. I’m a trained scientist, which is more than I can say for our Lowe County coroner, I don’t care how many dead bodies he’s seen. I can look at facts and be objective. And I am on this case—not officially, I know. But don’t think I won’t be looking at everyone at the wake and the funeral. Don’t think I don’t mean to keep an eye on Vern Tarver. And I’m not putting the house up for sale—not yet, anyway. I’m going to bring some lab work here and ask Vern if he’ll hire me at the Fur and Sang Trader.”
He heaved a huge sigh and loosed her wrist so she could look at the photos. It surprised him how happy he was that she intended to stay for a while, despite the fact he was afraid she’d get in the way of the investigation. Worse, that she’d get hurt. He wouldn’t mind her uncovering some inside information on Vern, but no way was he going to let her be bait to flush out whatever human animal had killed her mother.
And then, of course, there was the wild card possibility that this was a random slaying by some lunatic, who had just stumbled on a lone woman in the woods.
The envelope crinkled loudly as Jess pulled the photos out. “Did Tyler take these?” she asked.
“No, the coroner at the morgue. You okay?” he asked, glancing away from the road at her. She had gone pale and bit her lower lip. “Do I need to stop the car?”
“Neither of us is stopping until we find out who did this,” she said, her voice strong and color coming back into her cheeks. “Maybe the killer wants us to think these claw marks are from a bear. You know that necklace Seth wears around his neck? What if those claws match this?”
“I’ve thought of that, and, no, you’re not coming with me to question him. You stay put at home.”
“I’m going to phone the funeral home in Highboro and then drive in to meet with them and choose a casket. I’d ask Cassie to go with me but Pearl’s still feeling nauseous. Are you going to show Seth these?” she asked, evidently unwilling to be distracted by anything. She tapped a finger on the top photo, then shuffled through them a second time. “The cuts look like the exact pattern of the sang berries laid out at the three sites.”
“If I have to show them to Seth, I will. I’m not sure how that will go.”
“This all points to him so far, but I don’t think he’d hurt her.”
“I agree, because he’d so obviously be pointing at himself if he left all those clues, especially that bear face at the last sang site. But I have to start with him, then maybe move on to persons of interest who might want to blame him.”
“People who hated Seth, not necessarily my mother? Who set him up and she was just the means to that end? And what about that photo Tyler and Cassie have seen? If that turns out to be a real bear, surely she wasn’t killed by the animal? The slash marks are too perfect. Then to have her laid out and unmauled like that, when bears usually go for the soft belly parts—”
Looking as if she’d puke again, she amazed him by sliding the pictures back in the envelope. Tears trembled on her lashes, but she sat erect, looking, as she’d said last night, devastated but determined. He’d seen his mother react like that with strength and courage when his dad had beaten her. She’d stayed with the bastard for his and his brothers’ sakes, because the whole area was poor and she had nowhere to go. Beaten down, yet never bowed or even bent—that’s why Drew had dared to fight his father for her. Now, though he desperately wanted to protect Jess, his feelings for her had nothing to do with the way he’d loved his mother.
Chapter 13
13
“N ow you just come on in anytime after one this afternoon,” Etta Merriman, the coroner’s wife, told Jessie on the phone when she called the Merriman Funeral Home in Highboro to see when the autopsy would be completed. “I’m so very sorry for your loss, my dear, but we’ll take good care of her and you can pick out a lovely casket here. Such a tragedy.”
“A traditional casket,” Jessie told her. “All wood, quite plain.”
“Why, that sounds lovely. I’m sure that will suit her. I must tell you, Miss Lockwood, the newspaper people have been calling, but we always tell them no comment and, in this case, to contact Sheriff Akers or Sheriff Webb. I surely hope that will spare you some troubles.”
Spare her some troubles, Jessie thought. On top of everything else, now outsiders would be asking questions and getting in the way. Mrs. Merriman assured her that, yes, she could talk to Mr. Merriman when she came in.
Jessie showered and dressed, putting on one of her mother’s long denim skirts and jackets. She paced the house, seeing her everywhere, hearing her voice. Strange how she pictured her, not as she had looked in these later years, not as she looked all huddled up in that hollow tree smothered with sang, but younger. Somehow, Mariah had never aged for her. Those memories of when they lived here together haunted Jessie with bittersweet longing.
But she had things to do. She’d promised Drew she’d check Tyler Finch out online, so she got out her laptop and searched for him. A bio related to a professional organization he belonged to came up. That linked to some of his photographs—beautiful, evocative—mostly ones on the Web site of his New York City employers, Bailey and Keller. We will help you build your brand…We will help you tell your story, the Web site promised future clients. That sounded great, but at what price, she wondered.
“What’s the real story of what happened to you?” she asked aloud, as if her mother were in the house with her. She stared at the tree trunk Seth had carved for her, which Drew had helped her tip upright at the corner of the hearth. Then she added, “I’m going to find out, Mother. With or without Drew, I’m going to find out.”
She had a lot of e-mail to read, but she merely skimmed it. Almost all were professional messages or newsletters to download. It would ha
ve to wait. Everything would have to wait now.
She planned to stay in Deep Down after the funeral to help Drew; she would bring some of her work here. She put her laptop away, then paced the house again, trying to decide where to put a temporary, makeshift lab. She’d need countertop space for her microscopes, test tubes and centrifuge, good light and a refrigerator to keep the cancer cells and isolated ginsenosides stored properly. She’d need room for bins to store the ginseng plants. Drew and Sheriff Akers had said, after they’d combed through it all, she could have the sang that had covered her mother in her forest grave. The next time he went back to the hollow tree, Drew had said he’d be bringing the plants out, and she planned to harvest more from the nearby sang sites. The great hope for her research was that she could use the leaves without harming the precious, protected roots.
Jessie decided the back sunporch where her mother had always dried or processed her herbs and other forest treasures would work best. The eight-by-twelve room had counters and storage, though it would need a good scrubbing, and she’d have to buy a space heater for the coming cold weather. The porch was entirely glassed in so the light would be good, though she’d put up some kind of better ceiling lights and install vertical blinds so she could work at night and not feel someone outside in the dark was watching her—watching her…
Jessie stood for a moment in the center of the sunporch and stared out through the hollow toward the forest, then looked toward Slate Creek that connected her mother’s—now her—land to Seth Bearclaws’s. Could there have been some relationship between Seth and her mother, besides being neighbors or longtime friends? When her mother went out with Vern, could Seth have been angry or jealous?
“Damn, Jessie,” she scolded herself aloud, “you’re not writing a soap opera script. Get real.”
But everything seemed unreal. To clear her head, she stepped out the back door to see how the sun porch looked from the outside. Windows might need caulking, cracks, too, from the autumn and winter winds.