Deep Down (I)

by Karen Harper

  “We’re going to meet Beth Brazzo here,” Tyler told them. “A couple weeks ago, she found a great ginseng site with the falls in the background when she was jogging, and hasn’t found a better one since. The ginseng leaves have turned yellow, but we can’t wait for next summer for this shoot, so we’ll just doctor up the photo to turn them green.”

  “You can do things like that?” Cassie asked as she pulled into a grassy spot just off the bumpy track that served as a road here. No other vehicle was in sight, so maybe Beth Brazzo had jogged up here. It was only a couple of miles from town, and Tyler had told her the woman ran many miles each day to stay in shape.

  “You’d be surprised at my photographic magic,” he said. He was happy and excited today, but that made her even more upset than she already was. Once the shoot for their ad was over, surely Tyler as well as Ms. Brazzo would be leaving Deep Down. Cassie knew she was coming to care for him. A mistake, of course, but she couldn’t help herself. But it was really riling her right now that he’d mentioned doctoring up a photo. Could he have fixed up that picture with the beast in it, just to get everyone’s attention?

  Tyler was explaining all the things he could do to make a photo reveal things that were not true. “I can insert clouds in a clear sky,” he boasted, “or take them out. I can make someone short look tall, or take a pair of open eyes from one photo and substitute them in the face of someone who had their eyes closed.”

  “That’s really magic!” Pearl finally spoke.

  “It’s called digital imagery, Pearl. Actually, amateurs can do that these days, too, but it’s my job, so I’ve been good at it for a long time. The sounds in the ad can be altered, too—as a matter of fact, I told Beth we’ll probably have to redub that background whine from Shrieking Peak. Okay, I’ll play guide today instead of you, Cassie,” he said, getting out his heavy gear, including a silver tripod with a large cupped disk on the end of it. She knew the tripod opened up quite tall, but he had it telescoped right now to one-fourth of its length.

  With his free hand, he held hers and squeezed it, then, when she took Pearl’s, led them off across the meadow toward the trees with the falls roaring far beyond under the frowning brow of Shrieking Peak.

  “Beth said the ginseng’s in a stand of beeches and maples just across from the falls,” he told them. “You have any idea what beeches look like?”

  “So you do need me, after all,” Cassie told him. She was amazed at the teasing, flirty tone she’d used. She’d felt so low lately, but Tyler’s mere presence perked her up a bit. Is that what love was, not the kind that tore you up but lifted you up?

  “Right this way, over here,” she said, pointing and tugging him in that direction. “The maples will soon be flaming-red, but the beeches will go gold. Those are beeches over there, see?”

  Still holding hands, they looked into each other’s eyes. “I’ll have to come back to see them when they turn gold. I will come back, to visit my cousin in Highboro, but more importantly, to visit you and Pearl—and Teddy.”

  “I hope so. I’d like that.”

  “Deep Down grows on you,” he whispered. “I’m kind of glad Beth’s late today, because…” He leaned forward to kiss her.

  Pearl, thank heavens, didn’t make a peep. Besides, it was only a peck on the cheek, but it sent her head spinning with possibilities. After he’d set up his equipment and Pearl was picking Queen Anne’s lace a few trees away, he kissed her harder on the mouth. She returned his kiss and embrace fervently, surprising herself with the hot rush of need that left her breathless. She’d had no man—wanted no man—trusted no man—this way for years.

  When the kiss ended, she peeked at Pearl. She was getting too close to the steep bank facing the falls. “Pearl, come on back here now,” she called, reluctantly moving from Tyler’s embrace.

  “Bring those flowers, Pearl,” Tyler added. “I’d like to take a few photos of you and your mother before Beth gets here.”

  Pearl turned back to face them but didn’t budge. Her pale face had gone even whiter. Cassie’s insides lurched. What if she was going to be sick again?

  “If she has lots of black hair,” the child said, pointing behind her, “I think she’s already here. But she’s sleeping.”

  Both frowning, Cassie and Tyler looked at each other, then rushed to where Pearl stood. On a flat stone ledge below, in her jogging sweats and shoes, stretched out with her head twisted at a sharp angle, lay Beth Brazzo.

  Drew had to admit that Peter Sung’s hounds were amazing. A breed developed by the mountain men of the Plott family over a two-hundred-year period in North Carolina, the muscular, agile dogs were quick and clever, perhaps like their master.

  “They can tree anything, including a bear,” Peter boasted. “They’re tenacious and fearless. They may drool and slobber a bit, but that’s their only weakness. In a home, they’re loyal, gentle and good with children, too. But you wanted to see the tracking collars?”

  “Yeah. If I had one of these beautiful dogs, I’d sure hate to lose him.”

  “At over a thousand dollars a pup, I would, too,” Peter said, chuckling as if he’d made a joke.

  The kennel was immaculate, built like a miniature horse stable. The entire estate looked pristine and new, even the ubiquitous black tobacco-drying barn at the rear of the property. Drew watched closely as Peter opened a wooden cabinet and brought out a collar. Jess came closer, too. The collar looked identical to the one he’d found in the general proximity of Mariah’s body!

  “It looks like those buckle on tightly,” Drew observed. “It would be bad if the dogs lost one. Has that ever happened?”

  Peter looked at him instead of the collar. “Not that I recall, but here’s how they work. Embedded within is a chip that sends out a radio transmitting signal. Collared dogs are tracked with handheld receivers and antennae mounted on a chase vehicle. I only buy state-of-the-art equipment, a step up from what most locals with other hounds might use. These can even transmit activity and behavior signals. For example, they indicate whether a dog is running or still, even whether his head is pointing upward, as it might be when he were baying at a treed animal.”

  “Amazing,” Jess said, speaking for the first time since they’d come into the kennel. She’d left most of the dog talk to him and Peter. “Could you also keep track of someone—maybe a kid who was out hunting with one of these—if he’d keep it on his person?”

  “Do you want to try it?” he asked. “It surely would work, but I think a little demonstration might convince Drew. I don’t expect a sheriff to just take my word for things.”

  That statement hung in the air for a moment. Another challenge or a threat? Drew wondered. Unless he’d fallen victim to the stereotype of the inscrutable Chinese, Peter Sung seemed to speak with a subtext most of the time. Jess agreed to try a demonstration, putting the collar on like a big necklace, then followed Peter’s suggestion she walk across the yard to the back porch of the house. She would move and turn while Peter, with his back to her, would read the signals from his equipment and tell Drew, who could see for himself what she was doing.

  As Jess walked away, Peter produced a handheld receiver and a long, sturdy-looking silver antenna from his cabinet. The receiver crackled when he turned it on. He adjusted it with a short joystick, from a selection of four of them attached to the small black control box. With his back to Jess, he told Peter, “She’s much closer, of course, than a hound would be, but she’s moving erratically—weaving.”

  “True,” Drew said with a glance her way. “Does it take much work to learn to read the signals?”

  “Some practice. One of these is probably more than a small police department like yours could afford, but I could see myself donating one of these with a hound or two, just to know you are in my corner to keep the ginseng trade going.”

  The hair on the back of Drew’s neck prickled. A blatant bribe, one that was probably also intended to keep him in Peter’s corner should the murder investigatio
n go in a direction he didn’t like. Yet they were alone, so he could deny it later, say the new sheriff had misunderstood. How harmless, how generous, the donation of tracker dogs and equipment.

  Or worse, was it even a taunt, implying that there was no way a backwoods sheriff could track down Mariah’s murderer without help? Could Peter have tried to buy Mariah off with something, and she told him no? Jess was no doubt testing the theory right now that Peter had planted some sort of tracking device on Mariah so he knew exactly where to find her in the random spots she covered.

  Drew looked away from Jess’s wavering path. She had gone back toward the black barn but was now sitting on a fence on the far side of the driveway near the house. He faced Peter squarely. “It’s to everyone’s benefit that the sang trade stay strong,” Drew told him. “But a sheriff upholds the law, and the government law says, sang count too low, exports no go.”

  “A poet and you didn’t know it.” Peter recovered instantly with a shrug and a smile. “Ah,” he said, looking down at the control box and listening to the clicks and static from it, “your Jessica has gone toward the meadow instead of the house, right?”

  “That much is right,” Drew said. “We appreciate your time and hospitality today. So, when will you be back in Deep Down?”

  “Tomorrow, to oversee the packing of Junior Semple’s crop at Vern’s store.”

  “I can’t find Junior, you know. He’s evidently jumped bail.”

  Peter frowned. “He vowed he would not. Well, when he turns up, you can lock him up longer for that, and his cultivated jen-shen will help my customers. After all, otherwise some poacher could have stolen it.”

  The two of them walked back toward the house just as Jess was divesting herself of the collar. Peter’s houseboy, butler or whatever he was, came out onto the porch and held out his hand to get it back from Jess. No, that wasn’t it. He was holding a mobile phone out toward Peter and speaking to him in Chinese. Drew wondered if it was a call from the Kulong family no one knew much about, and whom Drew had always pictured as a sort of Chinese Cosa Nostra.

  Peter said, “The call is for you, Drew, from your office manager. Important, she says.”

  Drew took the phone and put a finger in his other ear to mute the buglelike baying of the Plotts in the kennel. “Emmy, go ahead.”

  “Tyler, Cassie and Pearl were supposed to meet Beth Brazzo up near Indian Falls. But she must have tripped jogging on the path and broke her neck. Drew, she’s dead!”

  Chapter 20

  20

  D rew put his portable, magnetic, red flashing light on top of the Cherokee, and they sped back to Deep Down. Drivers quickly slowed or got out of their way. Still, he wished he had Sheriff emblazoned on the side of the vehicle instead of those deep scratch marks, ones, he’d noted, Peter Sung had not even blinked an eye at when he greeted them or saw them off. Perhaps the man just didn’t notice them in the overcast day. Or maybe he was too polite to pry. Or he figured, if he made a big deal about them, it would look suspicious.

  The guy definitely was under suspicion. Possible proximity to Mariah’s murder and motive, motive, motive. He had said he’d be back in Deep Down tomorrow, when Jess was determined to start her sang count. Now protecting her would be even harder, since he would have not only Mariah’s death to look into, but Beth Brazzo’s. Two women dead in little Deep Down in less than two weeks. As far as he recalled, they had never even had two natural deaths in that timeframe. But, of course, Peter Sung had an ironclad alibi that he hadn’t hurt Beth Brazzo—if she didn’t just stumble while jogging.

  Emmy had told him that Tyler would meet him at the place they’d found Beth’s body, but he saw Cassie’s truck was here, too. Emmy was taking care of Pearl for a while, so Cassie could wait here with Tyler. Both of them walked toward Drew and Jess as they got out. Drew had told Emmy to call the coroner, but he obviously wasn’t here yet.

  “No one’s touched the body or even gone down to it,” Tyler told them, “though I did take a couple of photos for you. It’s—she’s—on a ledge that kept her from falling way down.” The man looked distressed, but then he had been Beth’s colleague. His hands and voice shook. Drew wondered how well he’d known Beth Brazzo. Had theirs been just a professional relationship or personal, too? Was there friction or harmony between them over Tyler’s pet project and his closeness to Cassie? Those questions would have to wait.

  “She could have tripped and fallen over the edge—you’ll see,” Cassie put in, sticking tight to Tyler. “We saw a couple of gnarled roots where she could have caught her foot. It was actually Pearl who spotted her. She said she thought Beth was asleep, but her neck’s at a horrible angle.”

  He and Jess darted a look at each other.

  “From the fall, no doubt,” Tyler added. “A little puddle of blackish blood is under her head. We shouted and shouted, but she didn’t stir. After Pearl pointed her out, we tried not to mess up possible footprints above where she fell.”

  She fell. Drew noted the words. They were assuming this was an accident, and he should, too, unless evidence proved otherwise. But he’d become so distrustful of everyone since Mariah’s death, including fantasy ogres shuffling through the woods.

  “You both handled it just right,” he assured them. “The coroner’s coming with the paramedic recovery team from Highboro, but I’m going to try to get down to her now. I’ll take individual statements from each of you after.”

  He took a coil of rope from the back of his vehicle and slung it over his shoulder. The four of them started toward the edge of the escarpment overlooking the falls and Shrieking Peak. It was a beautiful spot, he thought, despite the perpetual whine of the wind through the distant crags.

  “Do you know if she was just out jogging?” he asked Tyler.

  “Yes and no. She jogged out to meet us here because this is the spot she’d finally picked for the power drink ad shoot—lots of untouched ginseng. I was going to do some stills to send back to Bailey and Keller so they could okay them. The two actors for the shoot were coming in day after tomorrow.”

  “Drew,” Jess said as she stretched her strides to keep up with him, “a sang site with beech trees with a view of Indian Falls…I’ll bet there are twenty-four four-prongers there.”

  “Yeah. Puzzle pieces are fitting together, but what’s the picture?”

  “What about this place?” Cassie asked. “Did Beth tell you about it, Jessie?”

  When she didn’t answer, Tyler said, “Beth told me she’d volunteered to count ginseng with you, but she wasn’t sure you were going to take her up on it.”

  When Jess only nodded, Drew realized she was leaving it up to him whether they explained about this site. “Tell them,” he said as they approached the cluster of tall beeches which framed the cloudy sky, distant falls and gray-green Shrieking Peak beyond.

  “I think Beth might have been interested in this place for the shoot for over a week at least,” Jess told them, “so she must have known it quite well. My mother recorded in her notes, which Cassie and Pearl found, that if Beth was going to use this special sang site for the ad, she wanted to swear her to secrecy about it.”

  “Secrecy from whom? She was going to share it with Cassie and me, the shoot team and actors,” Tyler said. “Not to mention it would be part of a nationally broadcast ad campaign for TV and print media.”

  “I don’t know,” Jess admitted. “A lot of things don’t make sense yet.”

  They reached the site and edged out, avoiding the area directly over the ledge in case there were footprints there. Beth lay sprawled below on her side, her legs spread as if she still ran, her arms bent, her head twisted to the side with her raven-black hair fanned around her face. Despite the thick cover of it, Drew realized Tyler was probably right that a puddle of blood had congealed under her head. Drew thought the angle of her head was similar to the way they’d found Mariah, yet these circumstances were night and day from that—weren’t they?

  “See there?” Cas
sie said, pointing to the gnarled roots of the beeches that clung clawlike to the edge of the precipice. “She could have tripped on one of these and toppled over.”

  Drew moved them even farther away from where she must have gone over. He uncoiled the rope and tied one end of it around a tree trunk, one not directly above the body. Yeah, this looked like an accident, but for one thing: the strangely blurred footprints he recognized in the area Tyler had said they’d been careful not to trample. At first glance, they look like the prints he’s seen near his clawed Cherokee.

  He looped the other end of the rope under his armpits and double-knotted it, then let himself over the edge, slowly, swinging his butt out and walking his way down. His feet missed, then hit the ledge. Not stopping to untie himself, he bent to feel for the carotid artery at the side of Beth’s neck. Nothing. She was cold and going stiff. This time, at least, the coroner would be able to estimate time of death.

  He lifted a bit of her thick, black hair. She’d usually worn it pulled back in a ponytail. Would she have had it flying free if she was running? Would the fall have been enough to cause it to come loose, or could there have been a struggle? And with whom?

  It didn’t look as if she’d been struck in the back of the head like Mariah, but he would let the coroner turn her over. Besides, unless someone had leapt out from behind one of these trees when she passed, he couldn’t picture anyone catching, murdering, then moving the strong, agile Beth Brazzo the way Mariah had been handled. Two dead women—it had to be coincidence, didn’t it? But as he’d told Jess, there was no such thing as a coincidence in police work.

  Jessie wasn’t saying so, but she’d been convinced from the first that Beth had been chased and murdered, too. She kept quiet about that because she had no proof, but her certainty went deeper than womanly intuition. Gut instinct, yes, but beyond that—she wasn’t sure.