by Celia Roman
Weren’t him I should be mad at. Like as not, the good sheriff was behind the cover up. Couldn’t blame ol’ Todd for protecting his job by gluing his lips shut. Naw. I decided then and there to place that rancor where it belonged, smack dab at the feet of Chip Treadwell.
Sometimes I just hated that my feller belonged to one such as him. We couldn’t help our relations. I learnt that firsthand, didn’t I, starting about the time I turned twelve. Riley’s kin weren’t his fault, but I sure didn’t like having the sheriff as my beau’s daddy, no sirree.
I arrived at the newest crime scene not half an hour after packing hot ham biscuits into a cooler. Hadn’t been hard to figure out where it was. The other two’d been close together. No reason to think this’un weren’t near to them, and sure enough, I found it on the first try, about half a mile this side of Lily and Ferd’s campsite.
Was hard to miss, truth be told, in spite of the lack of patrol cars standing guard. Yellow police tape hung across a narrow gap in the winter bare wood. I spotted it right off, parked, and near about regretted the bribes I cooked all the morning long.
Oh, well. More for me. Maybe I’d get right ambitious after having a look-see and take some to Riley, just to cement the forgiving.
The morning was a dew damp chill in my nostrils. I sniffed, hoping to ease the cold, and wound up getting a good whiff of blood and death and the dank musk of a cave.
It’s here, that voice screamed, louder’n I ever heard it. I winced as I slammed the IROC’s door shut and tried to shake off the urge crawling under my skin to move, run, hunt.
Something cracked deep in the woods.
I took off at a flat run straight toward the police tape, following instinct more’n reason. That crack had sounded an awful lot like somebody, or some thing, stepping on a dead branch. I wasn’t alone out here. Maybe whoever else was out there was just like me, curious as to the doings, or maybe it was something else, something worse.
Say, something what could poke a hole straight through a growed man’s chest.
I ripped right through the cautionary tape, breaking it, and headed toward the cracking sound I’d heard. Air whipped past me, seeping through my jacket, but I was hot on the trail and hardly noticed the cold.
And it was cold. Weak sunlight filtered through the trees, warming the woods a mere fraction above freezing. My breath wisped outta me in short huffs as my boots pounded along the ground. The trail was short and narrow, and ended, like most around here did, on a campsite. Only difference? Blood and gore and debris was strewn around, marking the bare dirt and stone ringed fire pit with the signs of violence.
I ignored all of it, too focused on finding whatever was out here with me to note much. Ahead of me, bare barked oaks stood at rigid attention amongst poplar and beech and the green fringed limbs of evergreen pines. Leaves rustled not twenty feet out, and narrow shoulders clad in plaid ducked behind a tree.
A man, then. Oh, I was just itching to find out who.
I sprinted ahead on a burst of energy I was afraid to question, weaving around trees and laurel as I tracked him. His scent hung in the air, sawdust and liquor and the faint aroma of fresh brewed coffee, and memory jangled in my head, warring with the instinct clamoring at me. I knowed that scent, that build, but where from?
The answer arrived soon enough. I rounded a monstrous oak, and there he was hunched over, sucking frosty air into his lungs quick as he could. I skidded to a stop near about on top of him, reached out a claw fingered hand, and snagged the collar of his worn, flannel shirt.
The man looked up and scowled at me. “Dagnabbit, Sunny. What’re you doing?”
I yanked him upright, grinning like a devil come to claim his due. “Looks like it’s time for some payback, Harley,” I said, and had the deep pleasure of watching ol’ Harley Jimpson’s wrinkled skin pale to ghost white.
Chapter Fifteen
Harley reared back and nearly broke my grip on his shirt. “Whatever I did, you deserved it.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, sarcasm thick in my voice. “I deserved being throwed to a danged ol’ man-sized catfish.”
“Belinda was the one what put me up to it.”
“Didn’t mean you had to go along.”
His scowl deepened the wrinkles on his forehead above bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. I had him there and he knowed it.
“What’re you up to out here anyhow?” he asked.
“Don’t play dumb, Harley. Ever body in God’s creation knows what I’m up to.” I dug my fingers in good, leaned forward a mite, and let just a little of Mama’s crazy seep into my eyes. “Question is, what’re you doing out here? You and Belinda up to your old tricks again?”
His gaze skittered away from mine and his shoulders hunched under his thick flannel shirt. “I was just curious, is all.”
I snorted. “You’re a crappy liar.”
Right about then, a terrible crashing noise drifted to us, like a bear lumbering through the woods at a dead run. Hunh. Somebody musta seen my car, probably the guard what was supposed to be posted on the roadside ‘til the investigator cleared the crime scene. If my luck held, it was Deputy Franks running toward us. Him, I could persuade into ignoring my presence whilst taking Harley in at the same time.
I stepped around the tree, dragging a struggling Harley with me, and when I saw who was a-coming, my heart sank plumb down to my knees.
Sheriff Treadwell.
I sighed. Oh, well. My luck was never that good to begin with. No reason to think it’d turned now.
I stood my ground, chin thrust out, shoulders straight, and refused to back down when he stomped up to me and jabbed a finger toward my chest.
“You’re trespassing,” he spat out. “I ought to arrest you right now for interfering with a criminal investigation.”
“I was biding my time at the roadside, waiting for a deputy to show up ‘til I heard this’un in the woods.” I shook Harley again, none too gentle. “You wanna haul somebody in, might as well be somebody what deserves it.”
The sheriff’s mouth thinned into a flat line. He stared at me for a beat and a half, then shifted his flinty gaze to Harley.
In true Jimpson style, Harley blanched and started babbling. “I was minding my own, taking my early morning constitutional, when Miss High and Mighty here run up on me and threatened to tear me limb from limb.”
I glanced at him, only half amazed at the garbage spewing outta his mouth. “I don’t threaten, Harley. I do. You want, I can demonstrate.”
“Let him go,” Sheriff Treadwell said.
“No,” I said, flat and hard. “Him and Belinda Arrowood was the ones what brung harm to me and Riley out on Greenwood Cove. Or did you forget that?”
He met my flat with pure granite. “I don’t forget anything where my son is concerned.”
“Then maybe you can remember as how Belinda’s fingerprints was found all over the campsite where Lily and Ferd was murdered,” I shot back. “You reckon maybe this’un had something to do with that?”
“I will not discuss an ongoing investigation with the niece of my prime suspect.”
I spat on the ground at his feet. “That’s what I think of your investigation.”
His mouth twisted into a cold smile. “I do believe that’s assault.”
“And?” I shoved Harley forward and let go. “Here’s your prime witness. Have at it.”
“Hey, now,” Harley said. “Ain’t no call for pushing.”
“Two counts of assault.” Sheriff Treadwell snagged Harley’s arm, holding the slippery rascal in place. “Dating my son won’t earn you any leeway.”
“Neither does the truth, apparently.” I crossed my arms over my chest and exhaled as much mad as I could. Getting het up weren’t gonna help me nor Fame neither one. On the inhale, that funky musty smell tickled my nose. My head swung around like a hound dog catching a scent. “Something’s out there, waiting for us.”
Sheriff Treadwell’s gaze followed mine and his free hand re
ached automatic like for the gun strapped to his waist. “Where?”
I sniffed real good, trying to pinpoint the origin, and got a schnozzle full of two men’s aftershave. “Can’t tell.”
“Try again.”
I backed up a coupla steps, tested the air, shook my head. Maybe I’d imagined it.
Instinct stirred and whispered disagreement, and just like that, it hit me.
“Caves?” I asked.
Sheriff Treadwell jerked his chin to the north. “That way. Why?”
“That’s where it’ll be.”
Him and Harley both stared at me, one like he was pondering what I was up to, t’other like he seen a ghost and weren’t too keen on seeing it again.
I shrugged. Weren’t no never mind to me if they believed me.
I pivoted toward north and let instinct guide where my feet landed. Behind me, Harley whimpered. No telling what the sheriff had done to him. Something deserving, I hoped, maybe a little too hard.
“Sunshine,” Sheriff Treadwell said. “You can’t go off on your own.”
“Watch me.”
“This is my investigation. You need to go home.”
I snorted. As if. “Go away. I need to pee.”
“Really?” Harley said.
I near about rolled my eyes, would’ve if the trail was better. As it was, I didn’t dare look away from it, lest I lose my footing. “You coming or not?”
“Let me take him back to the car and lock him up,” the sheriff said, and on cue, Harley squawked a protest.
I ignored ‘em both. Let ‘em follow or not. Whatever urged me forward was growing stronger with each footstep through the sparse underbrush. I needed to go see what was out there, needed to figure out why, to understand what was going on here, not just for Fame, but for me, too.
I needed to know. Didn’t they understand that?
Whether they did or not, I never could ken. The sheriff’s low curses reached my ears right about the time leaves crunched behind me. I broke into a steady jog, breathing deep and steady of the crisp mountain air. There it was, that faint hint of mustiness, underlain by the scents of dirt and rock. Wind stirred the leaves, carrying rotting vegetation along its eddies, and the scent was gone again.
I pushed on, heading north toward the caves as the hair on the back of my neck stiffened. It was close, whatever it was, close enough for me to feel. I stopped long enough to work Daddy’s knife outta its sheath, then hopped into a full blown run.
“For the love of God,” Harley muttered.
“Hush it,” Sheriff Treadwell said.
The words barely registered. I was deep in the hunt, ever sense focused on the monster I was sure I’d find. Faster I went through ever denser wood. I skirted a laurel thicket, lost the scent, doubled back and nigh on mowed the two men down whilst trying to find it again.
There, that teeniny voice cried, and I was on the move again, hunting like the cat I shoulda been.
Up ahead, a sheer rock face rose outta the forest, easy to spy now that we was close and the sun shone on it, lightening the dull granite to a sparkling gray. The scent growed stronger, thicker, and I caught a new scent mingling with the old: human blood, same as what was spilled in the crime scene not far from here. How I knowed that was beyond my reckoning, but know it I did with as much certainty as I ever held. Whatever killed the person in that campsite was up ahead, and I was past ready to deal with it.
Outta the corner of my eye, I caught movement along the rock face. On instinct, my gaze shifted and zeroed in on that point. The granite rose high like a mountain cut in half, and was interspersed with the milky white of quartz. Rust stains splashed down where rain carried red clay mud down the rock aeon after aeon, and tiny saplings struggled to take root where dirt clung to the crevices.
Nothing stirred, not even the wind.
The skin of my nape tingled and my heart skipped and stuttered. I clapped a hand to the back of my neck and rubbed, uneasy of a sudden. Something was out there. I could feel it under my skin, in the blood pounding through my veins.
Sheriff Treadwell stepped up beside me, one hand on the hilt of his gun, the other wrapped around Harley’s quivering arm.
“It ain’t right,” Harley murmured, so low I could scarce hear him. “It just ain’t right.”
I had to agree. Something was off here, something primal and dark. Goosebumps popped up on my arms under my clothes, and it weren’t from the cold. My breath was still coming fast from the run out here, sweat dotted my forehead, and my limbs felt loose and limber, like a noodle cooked just right.
The sheriff said, just as soft as Harley, “I don’t see anything.”
“But you feel it, don’tcha?” I said.
He shifted beside me, restless under the hard stare he was aiming at the rock face. “We need to get back to the road.”
I eyed him close. He been a cop for long as I could remember, since before Riley was borned, that was for sure. Now, folks can say what they want about small town cops, but you side with the law long enough, you’re bound to develop a feel for things, much like I developed an instinct over the past few years where monsters was concerned.
Though I suspected my instinct was helped along by whatever I inherited from my daddy’s kin, them what walked on four furry legs now and again.
The sheriff’s instinct was probably telling him to go get backup. Mine was a-telling me to wait, watch, listen. Patience, it said, not in that new voice I hadn’t gotten used to yet, but in something akin to the voice my daddy used to use when he taught me how to track.
Wait for it, Sunny. You’ll see.
I returned my gaze to the rock face and, starting from the point where I coulda sworn something moved, I begun a slow, studied sweep of it, near about memorizing the rifts and whorls and variations. A thin trickle of water dribbled down, caressing the rock in a random trail from top to bottom where it hung in dripping icicles off a narrow jut. Moss clung to the shadowed places, deepening the folds, and grass grew out of slices carved into the rock face over weathered millennia, brittle now on the cusp of winter.
A cave interrupted the pattern, creating an abyss within nature’s bas-relief. My hand tightened on the hilt of my knife. Was that where the thing we was hunting rested its head now? Was that where we’d find the bones and blood of them what was lost to the living?
Harley yelped as Sheriff Treadwell jerked his gun outta its holster and pointed the tip ahead and to the left.
My gaze whipped around and focused on where he was aiming, and there it was, a twitch along the rock, like a section got up and moved. Only this weren’t no rock. It was large and rough and narrow, maybe as tall as the sheriff, and it raised a thin limb and pointed straight at us. Danged if it didn’t look like whatever was on the end of that gnarled limb was elongating.
I took half a step forward, full on intending to go find out exactly what kinda critter it was. Sheriff Treadwell’s gun arm swung around and clocked me right in the chest, knocking me back a pace.
I shoved his arm. When it didn’t budge, I sidled around it, and he obligingly moved with me, blocking my way.
I turned a hot glare on him. “What in blazes are you doing?”
“What are you?” he shot back, his voice low and hard. “You can’t go running off half-cocked.”
“I ain’t a-going nowhere half-cocked. See this?” I wiggled the hand holding Daddy’s knife. “I took down scarier things with less. Now get outta the way so I can go do what I come here to do.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” He holstered his gun, so steely calm it was scary, then reached out and, lightning fast, snagged my arm in the same trap he’d snared Harley in. “We’re going back to my car and calling for backup.”
“Are not!” I yelled and started jerking my arm.
Harley got the same notion and set in on the other side, only he was smart enough to’ve unbuttoned his shirt whilst me and the sheriff was otherwise occupied. He slipped outta it faster’n a greased pig at
the county fair and took off at a dead run in the opposite direction, wearing naught but a yellowed undershirt over saggy corduroys.
“Well, damn,” Sheriff Treadwell said, then he narrowed them cold eyes on me. “A bird in hand.”
“I ain’t no dadgum bird.”
I woulda said more, only right then ever muscle in my body stiffened and shouted danger. I whirled around best I could and spotted the rough, not-rock critter, and got the surprise of my life. It was standing not ten feet away, pointing at us with a finger-like digit what was growing longer by the minute and heading straight toward us.
Sheriff Treadwell cursed a blue streak as he stumbled back, taking me with him. “Go.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. We twisted around in near unison and took off at a dead run, me ahead of him by a half pace. I didn’t dare look over my shoulder. Didn’t have to. I could feel the critter’s stare boring into my spine, like it wished it coulda used that long, spindly finger on me instead.
Chapter Sixteen
We crashed headlong through the woods for a good fifteen minutes before reaching the place where I snagged Harley, and another ten before we plopped out onto the road next to the sheriff’s SUV and a coupla deputies’ cars.
Sheriff Treadwell didn’t even wait ‘til he caught his breath good. He hauled me upright and yanked me close, his cheeks so red I thought he was gonna have a heart attack, and started giving me what for in front of God and half the Sheriff’s Department.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” he yelled. “Goddamn it, I should’ve arrested you the minute I caught you snooping around the first crime scene.”
My own cheeks caught fire and I thrust my chin out. “I wouldn’t be snooping if you was doing your job.”
“Doing my…?” He let go of me, whipped his hat off, and slapped it against his thigh, looking so much like Riley in that moment, my heart flipped over. “My job is to protect the law-abiding citizens of this county from the riffraff masquerading as people.”
Oh, that fired me up good. “Your job is to enforce the law, and ever body knows you only enforce it when you feel like it.”