The Body Finder

by Kimberly Derting

  She knew that the new and improved Jay was partially responsible for these unwelcome feelings. But that wasn’t really it…or at least, that was only part of what was troubling her.

  Violet wasn’t sure exactly what the rest of it was. She woke twice to look around for Carl, assuming he was the cause of her midnight discomfort. She thought that maybe he was too near her, too soon after his kill. But when she looked for him, he was nowhere to be seen.

  Finally, at just after six o’clock in the morning, as the sun was rising up through the gloom in an effort to conquer the sky, Violet decided to give up. There was only one thing she could do when she was feeling this way, only one way to clear her tangled thoughts.

  She dressed quickly and quietly in shorts and a T-shirt. Despite the fact that the September day promised to be warm, it was still early and there was a damp chill in the air, so, as an afterthought, she also pulled a sweatshirt over her head.

  She tiptoed out of the house, passing Carl in the kitchen and noting that the reek coming off him was beginning to fade already.

  As she stepped outside, she took a deep breath of the dewy air while she put the earbuds from her iPod into her ears.

  And then she jumped down from the porch and started running…slowly at first, an even, steady pace. She was acutely aware of the gentle rhythm of her feet pounding up from her soles and she concentrated on the tempo, letting it clear her mind as she synchronized her breathing into measured regularity with her footsteps.

  As she reached the end of the road, she took a sudden, sharp left, leaving the blacktop in favor of a gravel trail that appeared between the stands of tall cedar and fir trees. She could feel the crunching of the gravel beneath her sneakers vibrating all the way up the muscles of her legs.

  As she entered the clearing, at the top of the pasturelands that stretched out before her, the sight of the mountain against the painted backdrop of the dawn made her draw a deep, appreciative breath.

  Violet had been born and raised in Buckley, a little nowhere of a town that sat on a stretch of highway that joined the western and eastern halves of the state. Buckley rested in the shadow of Mount Rainier, in the foothills of the Cascades. She had seen the majestic white peak rising high above the Cascade mountain range more times than she could count, and yet she never tired of the magnificent view. The larger mountain dwarfed the smaller ones that surrounded it, making it look as if it was floating above them. It was like a beacon, even against the most brilliant sky.

  What made it even more of an extravagance, something not to be taken for granted, was that the mountain wasn’t out every day. Of course, Violet knew that it was always there; but in an area where the sun found itself cloaked by cloud cover more often than not, it was even more of a rarity to see Mount Rainier in its entirety, unobstructed by fog or the high clouds that often hung over the mountain from the top down…or flat-out obliterated by dense, dark clouds that blocked even the most tenacious light that tried to penetrate them.

  She ran in the shadow of the mountain for as long as she could, until the trail she followed veered left again, winding around the rich, verdant pastureland that bordered the gravel pathway.

  She was surprised that something so small as witnessing the mountain at sunrise could make her feel so much better. But it did. Already the foreboding feeling that had been hanging over her was lifting, and she felt clearer, calmer.

  She settled into an easy pace, allowing her thoughts to drift away, lost in her music and the steady cadence of her body’s movements. She liked the feeling of control she had when she ran, that she was in command of her body, in charge of each muscle’s perfectly timed movements. She felt strong as she looked down at her long, ground-eating stride, and felt powerful in at least this element of her life.

  She passed several weak death echoes as she ran. She’d grown accustomed to these, the ones that didn’t compel her—didn’t draw her—and she was able to ignore them easily enough. She didn’t know why these forgotten corpses didn’t call out to her in the way that others did; she only knew that they didn’t.

  Not in the way the girl in the woods had when Violet was eight.

  Emilee Marquez had been only fourteen years old when she was abducted on her way home from school. She was murdered before being buried in the soft soil where Violet had found her. The draw to find Emilee had been almost overpowering, something beyond Violet’s control.

  But why?

  Maybe it was because not much time had passed, or maybe it was because of the violence of the girl’s death. Or worse, Violet thought, perhaps it was because she was so aware of what was happening to her as she died. Maybe she understood too much, and that memory was forever burned on to her body in the form of an echo.

  The girl’s killer was never found, but Violet would never forget the sound—the haunting voice—that had called her to the body. Sometimes she had nightmares that she would run into him, the man responsible, at the supermarket or at the mall, carrying the imprint of Emilee’s death on him like some unspeakable shadow that he could never escape.

  Violet pushed the unsettling thought away.

  She slowed only once, when the heavy sweatshirt became too warm for her to wear any longer, and she tugged it over her head, tying it tightly around her waist with its sleeves. But she reached her stride again easily and settled back into her rhythm.

  By the time she’d run full circle, reaching her house, her T-shirt was saturated in sweat, and she felt relaxed from head to toe.

  It was the car in the driveway, and the man-boy perched on the hood waiting for her, that made her lose some of her newfound tranquillity.

  He was grinning at her in a way that made her legs feel like they were made of nothing more solid than gelatin. They might have even quivered from something other than her early-morning run.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked as she slowed from a jog to a walk and placed her hands on her hips. It would take her a few minutes to get her breathing back to normal. Longer if he kept smiling at her like that.

  He shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep. What about you?”

  She opted for the obvious and filled her voice with as much sarcasm as she could. “I live here, actually.”

  “Ha-ha, smart-ass. I was asking if maybe you couldn’t sleep too.” He shook his head at her wisecrack. “You know, since you were running at six-thirty in the morning? I was gonna see if you wanted to go for a walk or something.” He eyed her up and down, looking a little disappointed as he hopped down from the car’s hood. “But it looks like you already went without me. That’s okay, it was a long shot anyway.”

  Violet didn’t like the way she was suddenly so eager to be near him. Even though they’d been nearly inseparable for the past ten years, it now felt urgent to keep him close.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  “Are you sure?” He seemed skeptical. “I don’t want to talk you into it.”

  “No, really, I’m not ready to go inside and start my homework yet anyway.” She was already leading the way into the trees that surrounded her house, and he was following right behind.

  They walked for a long time like that, with him tagging along in her wake, not saying a word to each other. It was normal for Violet to take charge once they’d entered the cover of the woods; she had done so since they were just little kids. And even though Jay was nearly as familiar out here as she was after all these years, he let her lead anyway, comfortably taking second place to her.

  It was already getting warm. The forecasts predicted late- summer temperatures in the low eighties. Violet loved this time of year, relishing the lingering sun before it was cast away by the wintry gloom. Summer generally arrived late in her part of the world, usually waiting until July was well under way before making a regular appearance, so the persisting summerlike temperatures were welcome for as long as they wanted to stick around.

  “So, are you going to the lake today?” Jay asked, finally falling into step beside Violet as t
heir pace slowed. They headed nowhere in particular when they hiked like this, exploring places they’d been more times than they could add up, both on, and off, the well-known paths.

  Violet shrugged. “Are you?”

  She already knew the answer; they both did. Today was the big end-of-summer party at Lake Tapps. Kind of a last blast before the sun disappeared for the year. Pretty much everyone they knew would be there.

  Jay shrugged too. “I was thinking about it.”

  Inwardly she smiled at the prospect of spending one of the few remaining lazy summer days with him at the lake. “Yeah?” she questioned, not needing him to actually ask her along. “Maybe I’ll go too.”

  He grinned, practically beaming at her, and an unfamiliar warmth that had nothing to do with the weather crept through her. “Cool. You can drive,” he suggested.

  She shook her head. If it had been anyone else, she’d probably feel like she was being used, but instead she loved the exhilarating feeling of having something he didn’t have, especially in light of the fact that he suddenly seemed to have everything that she wanted. “Fine, then you can buy me gas,” she added, raising her eyebrows and daring him to say no.

  But the accident happened before Jay had a chance to respond.

  And it was all his fault. At least that’s how Violet would remember it when she replayed it in her head. If he hadn’t been smiling at her like that when she’d looked up at him she would never have lost her concentration…or her footing.

  But he had been…and she did. And when her foot failed to clear the thick, gnarled root that crossed the path in front of her, Violet felt herself careening off balance. She kept moving forward even when her foot did not, and before she knew what was happening she was plummeting toward the ground.

  Jay tried to grab her, but it happened so fast.

  Her hands hit the ground first, scraping against the compacted dirt, followed just milliseconds later by the sensation of the jagged rocks on the pathway ripping at the tender flesh of her knees.

  When she stopped sliding, she wasn’t sure whether she was hurt more physically or emotionally.

  “Vi? Are you all right?” Jay asked, right beside her now, pulling her off the ground.

  Tears burned in her eyes, and it wasn’t just from the painful sting radiating up through her hands and knees. Humiliation threatened to overcome the hurt.

  Jay hauled her up. She could smell his musky scent in his sweatshirt, and she tried to hold her breath against it. This was bad…this was a bad, bad place for her to be.

  “Are you hurt?” He pulled her away just enough so he could look down at her.

  She bit her lip, trying to will the tears away. She blinked and looked back at him. “I’m okay,” she responded, but her voice broke, making her words sound puny, pathetic even.

  He cringed as he bent down and looked at the angry red scrapes on both her knees. He reached out to lightly brush away some of the dirt from them, but she knew that he was afraid of hurting her, so he barely touched them. “We’d better get you back so we can clean those up.” He straightened, and then surprised her by picking her up as he started to carry her along the trail.

  She struggled against him. “I can walk!” she protested, feeling even more like a baby as he held her in his arms.

  He looked down at her in disbelief. “Are you sure? ’Cause I think I just saw you trying, and it didn’t work out so well for you.” He didn’t seem inclined to let her down just yet; he just kept walking.

  She laughed but insisted again through her teary giggles, “Seriously, put me down! I feel stupid enough already—I don’t need you treating me like an invalid.”

  He slowed down unsurely before setting Violet on her own two feet. Internally she cursed herself for being so stubborn, and she wished that he’d put up more of a fight. Why couldn’t he have insisted on carrying her all the way home?

  Instead, he reached out and grabbed her hand. “If it’s all right with you, I think I’ll keep ahold of you anyway. I don’t want to be responsible for letting you fall again.”

  She didn’t argue.

  The walk home went way too quickly for Violet. Jay had led her through the trees and into the clearing behind her house in no time at all.

  Her parents had already gone for the day before she and Jay arrived back at her house. Her dad was working, as he did almost every Saturday, even when it wasn’t tax season, and her mom had rented out a booth at the farmer’s market to display some of her paintings.

  Jay insisted on carrying her up the back steps and into the kitchen, and this time Violet didn’t complain when he lifted her. He set her down gently on the kitchen counter, and then he rummaged through the cupboard while Violet told him where the Band-Aids were. He came back with bandages, gauze, cotton balls, antibacterial wash, and two tubes of ointment. It seemed like overkill to Violet, but she didn’t say anything. She wanted to see what he planned to do.

  “Okay, this is probably gonna sting,” he warned as he leaned over and began cleaning her wounds.

  It did sting, more than Violet let on, and she had to bite her lip as the tears came back all over again. But she let him keep working without even flinching, which was no small feat as he stripped away the layers of dirt from her skin.

  The wounds were big, and round, and raw. She thought she looked like a little kid with the giant scrapes on her knees, and she imagined that they were going to scab over and possibly even scar. She felt like such an idiot for falling over her own two clumsy feet.

  But Jay was gentle, and he took his time, being careful not to hurt her. She admired his patience and took perverse pleasure in his touch. He didn’t look up to see how she was doing; he just kept working until he was satisfied that her scrapes were cleaned out. And then he picked up the antibacterial wash and some cotton balls.

  Violet sucked in her breath when he brushed the soaked cotton ball against the angry red abrasions. Jay looked up at her but didn’t stop dabbing at them. Instead he blew on her knees as he labored over them, just like her mother used to do when Violet was a little girl. She thought it was sweet, and she swore that she was even more attracted to him than ever in that tender moment.

  When he finished with the wash, he gingerly patted an antibiotic ointment on her knees before covering them with bandages.

  “There,” he said, admiring his own handiwork. “Good as new.”

  Violet glanced at the ridiculously huge Band-Aids on her knees and looked at him doubtfully. “You really think so? ‘Good as new’?”

  He smiled. “I think I did pretty good. It’s not my fault you can’t walk.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him that it was his fault, that she would never have tripped if he’d just stayed the same old Jay he’d always been, gangly and childlike. But she knew that she was being irrational. He was bound to grow up eventually; she’d just never imagined that he’d grow up so well. Instead she accused him: “Well, maybe if you hadn’t pushed me I wouldn’t have fallen.” She made the outlandish accusation with a completely straight face.

  He shook his head. “You’ll never be able to prove it. There were no witnesses—it’s just your word against mine.”

  She giggled and hopped down. “Yeah, well, who’s gonna believe you over me? Weren’t you the one who shoplifted a candy bar from the Safeway?” She limped over to the sink while she taunted him with her words, and she washed the dirt from the minor scrapes on her palms.

  “Whatever! I was seven. And I believe you were the one who handed it to me and told me to hide it in my sleeve. Technically that makes you the mastermind of that little operation, doesn’t it?” He came up behind her, and reaching around her, he poured some of the antibacterial wash onto her hands.

  She was taken completely off guard by the intimate gesture. She froze as she felt his chest pressing against her back until that was all she could think about for the moment and she temporarily forgot how to speak. She watched as the red scrapes fizzed wi
th white bubbles from the disinfectant. He leaned over her shoulder, setting the bottle down and pulling her hands up toward him. He blew on them too. Violet didn’t even notice the sting this time.

  And then it was over. He released her hands, and as she stood there, dazed, he handed her a clean towel to dry them on.

  When she turned around to face him, she realized that she had been the only one affected by the moment, that his touch had been completely innocent.

  He was looking at her like he was waiting for her to say something, and she was suddenly aware that her mouth was still open. She finally gathered her wits enough to speak again. “Yeah, well, maybe if you hadn’t done it right in front of the cashier, we might have gotten away with it. Instead, you got both of us grounded for stealing.”

  He didn’t miss a beat, and he seemed unaware of her temporary lapse. “And some might say that our grounding saved us from a life of crime.”

  She hung the towel over the oven’s door handle. “Maybe it saved me, but the jury’s still out on you. I always thought you were kind of a bad seed.”

  He gave her a questioning look. “Seriously, a ‘bad seed,’ Vi? When did you turn ninety and start saying things like ‘bad seed’?”

  She pushed him as she walked by, even though he really wasn’t in her way. He gave her a playful shove from behind and teased her, “Don’t make me trip you again.”

  Now more than ever, Violet hoped that this crush of hers passed soon, so she could get back to the business of being just friends. Otherwise, this was going to be a long—and painful—year.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE LAKE HOUSE WAS CROWDED WITH TEENAGERS, and they seemed to be coming and going in waves. The lawn leading down to the water was littered with towels and blankets, water bottles and pop cans, bags of chips, and kids of all shapes and sizes basking in the warmth of the summer heat as they soaked up the last of the season’s sun.