Summer of the Dead

by Julia Keller

  Naturally, she would set his mind at ease after a while. Wouldn’t keep him in suspense. It was too easy, for one thing. Way too easy. Despite his pretense of sophistication, Jason was pretty gullible. Easy prey for jokes.

  Lindy climbed the front porch steps into the house, still thinking about Jason and his face, still amused by the idea of how he’d look when she teased him—the worried frown that would scrunch up his features like a wadded-up paper towel, the perplexity in his eyes while he tried to figure out if she was serious or just yanking his chain.

  She was, therefore, preoccupied. And that was why she didn’t notice the slight movement of the curtain just before her hand cupped the knob and shoved open the front door. That was why, furthermore, when the vicious blow roared forth from the shadow lurking behind that door, striking the side of her head, she was caught so totally by surprise.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “Let me see if I’ve got it all straight,” Sheriff Fogelsong said. He settled his broad back against the high padded booth, big hands flat on the stainless steel table, musing amid the quiet of JP’s in the middle of a weekday afternoon. There was always a lull between the lunch and dinner rush. That made it his and Bell’s favorite time to come in and reconnoiter.

  “This Jed Stark,” Nick went on, “was more than just a low-down troublemaker. He must’ve been some kind of hillbilly hit man. Voorhees—at the request of Riley Jessup, or so you’re theorizing—hired him to do something or other. Stark, being a stupid sack of shit, gets himself killed before he can do a damned thing. And the nature of his employment is so sensitive, so potentially explosive, that his widow gets a nice big windfall to guarantee that she keeps her mouth shut about it.”

  “Right.” Bell used her french fry, now heavily ketchup-laden, to point at Fogelsong, the way a teacher might use a piece of chalk to indicate a student who’s come up with the correct answer. “Jed Stark’s assignment had to be extremely serious. Only way to explain the money paid to Tiffany Stark. You don’t spend that kind of cash to cover up anything less than murder.”

  With her first swallow of coffee Bell had realized she hadn’t eaten all day, and so quickly ordered fries. Jackie, who’d sent her waitresses home due to a lack of business and now dealt with the occasional customer herself, tried to steer Bell toward the Fruit Medley. No dice. Not even when Jackie used putatively enticing phrases such as “refreshingly cool” and “nutritionally advantageous.”

  “Jackie,” Bell had patiently responded, “it may be ninety-five degrees outside, but I’ve still got a craving for something deep-fried—and really, really bad for me.”

  Jackie had let a raised eyebrow serve as her reply. She returned a few minutes later, placing the order of fries in front of Bell with a resigned politeness. “Salted ’em extra,” Jackie murmured. “Long as you’re indulging, might as well make it count.”

  Once they were alone again, Fogelsong returned to his summation of what Bell knew and didn’t know. The latter, unfortunately, was well in the lead. “Okay,” he said. “So who the hell was Stark supposed to knock off—or whatever it was he was supposed to do? And why?”

  “Don’t know,” Bell admitted. “Odell Crabtree’s name was on the card in Stark’s pocket, but there’s no good reason why anybody would want Crabtree dead. He’s a sick old man.”

  “Agreed,” Fogelsong said. “All you have to do is wait a little while—and nature’ll take care of it for you.”

  Bell had procured another fry, but abruptly dropped it back on the plate. “What did you say?”

  “Don’t get mad. I was agreeing with you.”

  “Not mad. Want you to repeat what you said.”

  “Just meant,” he said obligingly, “that if you really want Odell Crabtree out of the picture, you don’t have to go to all the trouble and risk and expense of hiring some skunk like Jed Stark to do it. You can just sit back and wait a spell. Odell’s an old man. Had a hell of a hard life. Rumor is, he’s half out of his head, anyway. Death’ll be a relief. And it’s definitely not far off.”

  “So what if Odell Crabtree wasn’t the target?”

  “It was his name on the card.”

  “Well, it’s his house. The name might’ve meant the location, not the target. Because he doesn’t live there alone.”

  “His daughter, Lindy, you mean. Haven’t seen her in a long time. Doesn’t get out much anymore, except to go to work. Takes care of her father, I hear. Won’t accept any help.” Fogelsong frowned. “Why would somebody go after a nineteen-year-old girl?”

  Bell was digging through her wallet for the money to settle her lunch tab.

  “Nick,” she declared, “We’ve had two homicides already this summer. I’m not real interested right now in the why. I’m interested in telling Lindy to be careful. To keep an eye out.”

  * * *

  Caught in the ardent spotlight of the late-afternoon sun, the house looked just as it had during Bell’s previous visit: broken-down, slovenly, engaged in a sort of time-lapse unraveling toward utter ruin. She parked in the driveway behind Lindy’s car and waited a moment, taking in the full range and particularity of the dilapidation; it came not solely from neglect, she theorized, but also from natural entropy and from some very daunting odds. Lindy Crabtree surely did the best she could, but the old house and its half-acre lot were more than she could handle on her own.

  Bell climbed the crooked front steps. There was no doorbell, so she knocked on the warped and weather-battered door. No response. She knocked again. She was determined to have another conversation with Lindy—and this time, to be more insistent. Bell was fairly certain that the young woman hadn’t been entirely forthcoming with her in their earlier conversation; she didn’t blame her for that, because Bell would have reacted the same way herself at that age, in response to a meddlesome stranger who claimed to have her best interests at heart. But the stakes were higher now. Lindy and her father—one or both of them—might very well be in danger. Until her talk with Voorhees, such as it was, Bell was unsure; now, the peril seemed more plausible. Voorhees wasn’t the kind of man who wasted his time on trifles.

  Bell knocked three more times, waiting a long time between each attempt. Maybe Lindy was asleep. Or reading in the kitchen. There had to be a back door, right? She left the porch and rounded the house, parting the high weeds with both hands and stepping carefully over sharp piles of broken bricks and flung-down lumber.

  To her surprise, the back door hung three-quarters-of-the-way open on its rusted red-orange hinges. She hesitated. Before she did anything else, Bell called out, “Hello?” She’d lived a lot of her life in this region and well understood that—open door or not—you didn’t just wander into someone’s house without announcing yourself, unless you had a hankering for a bellyful of buckshot.

  “Hello?” she said again.

  She pushed at the door with two fingers. The resulting creak was the kind that might be produced by a sound effects specialist for a horror movie; it was a stretched-out yelp that rose and fell and rose again, tapering off just as Bell slipped through the slightly widened opening.

  Later, she would not be able to recall what the kitchen looked like. The smell would stay with her forever—a knock-you-back combination of spoiled food and galloping mildew and an accumulation of human wastes—but she would not remember the appearance of the sink or the stove, or what color the floor was. She had no recollection of the walls or the curtains in the dingy little room.

  Her attention was instantly commandeered by the gigantic old man who sat, hunched and muttering, over the dinette, his clothes little more than rags, a filthy blanket thrown over his shoulders, hands the size of cinder blocks dangling at his sides. His shaggy white head was bent so far forward that his forehead nearly bumped the tabletop. His massive bulk spilled over the edges of the chair; the span of his shoulders had the rough dimensions of a fireplace mantel.

  This, she thought, has to be Odell Crabtree.

  So startled was she
by his size—and his very presence—that it took Bell a second or so to note that his thick fingers were webbed with a sticky-looking substance, as if he’d just fought his way through a series of spiderwebs. His voice was a guttural chant. When he paused before taking another rattling, phlegmy breath, she heard moans from another source—It’s coming from the living room, Bell thought with alarm, someone’s hurt in there, hurt badly—and then her focus was pulled back to the old man. He was moving now, turning in the chair, his body shaking heavily, still chanting a rhythmic nonsensical chant.

  He lifted his huge head and swiveled it slowly, slowly, in Bell’s direction, and the blanket slid off his mammoth shoulders. He raised his hands, too, and held them out to her, palms up, and at that moment Bell realized what the substance was that covered them:. Blood. The old man’s hands were smeared with blood. Suddenly Bell was able to understand the chant, could translate his mutterings. Lindy-hurt-Lindy-Lindy-hurt, he said as he rocked back and forth in the narrow chair, nearly capsizing it with every clumsy lurch, holding up his hands as if he were asking forgiveness from someone, anyone.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Bell had told the story to Nick Fogelsong again and again. Three times now, and they hadn’t even finished their initial cups of coffee in the hospital cafeteria. It wasn’t that the sheriff doubted her; she told it multiple times for her own benefit, because by repeating exactly what she’d seen, precisely what she’d done, from the moment she found Lindy Crabtree until she arrived at the ER in her own car, having followed the ambulance and nearly matching its headlong speed, Bell hoped to recover more details. To nail down the narrative and make sure she had reported everything. Shock, she knew, could work like a soft clinging fog, obscuring things.

  “—and so I finally got hold of myself,” she said, “and left Odell Crabtree in the kitchen and ran into the living room.” She paused. This part was difficult. “Lindy was lying behind the front door. Clearly a significant head trauma.” Bell tried to drink from the cardboard coffee cup. She put the cup back down again without accomplishing that. “Nick, it was a terrible. There was a big bloody rock on the floor right next to her. I have to wonder if—”

  She paused. She wondered if Lindy would survive. She didn’t have to finish the sentence for Fogelsong to know what she was speculating about.

  The hospital cafeteria, a square room with a pale green tiled floor, long aluminum tables and chairs, and a row of vending machines for after-hours snacks, was almost empty. A woman and three small children sat at a table near the corner; the kids were eating cardboard cups of orange sherbet with tiny wooden paddles that served as spoons. Whatever had brought this family here tonight—a sick father, a suffering sibling, a declining grandparent—the mother had managed to keep the children happily oblivious. At another table, two women in blue scrubs and heavy white shoes sat across from each other, silently sharing a bag of Chili Cheese Fritos. They were clearly hospital employees, and they looked too exhausted to talk. Every few minutes, the PA system came alive, offering up an announcement that sounded mild and routine—too mild and routine. The nature of the emergency, Bell knew, was slyly embedded inside the mildness, interpretable only by those who knew the code words.

  “You called 911,” Nick said. He was guiding Bell back to the story. Back to the events as they unfolded. Trying to steady her. “They did a good job, Bell. You watched the paramedics work and so you know that. They got her here real quick. She’s alive. And that’s all we can ask for right now. That’s it.”

  Bell nodded. Rattled off what the ER doctor had told her. “Scalp lacerations. Skull fracture. Probably subdural hematoma. If they can reduce the brain swelling, and if she regains consciousness—”

  “Got to trust the doctors and nurses,” Nick cut in. “They know what they’re doing.”

  With a fingernail, Bell scratched at the side of the cardboard cup. “Any family members we should notify?”

  “Charlie Mathers checked with the HR office at Lester Oil. There’s a second cousin up near Morgantown. She’s willing to come, but can’t get away till morning. Not much family left, I guess. It was really just the girl and her father. Lindy and Odell Crabtree.”

  Hearing the old man’s name caused Bell to frown. “So he’s in custody?”

  “For the time being, yeah. Deputy Harrison handled it. We didn’t formally arrest him, but we took him in for questioning. Although from the look of him, that doesn’t sound too promising.” Fogelsong finished his coffee with a quick swig. “Not sure about this, Bell. Not sure about what actually happened out there. You think Odell Crabtree would attack his own daughter?”

  “Scene was pretty damned incriminating. Blood all over his hands, mumbling to her about forgiving him.”

  “Maybe the old man surprised the real assailant and ran him off,” the sheriff said. “We’ve had two murders this summer already. This might be part of the pattern. And it’s not out of the question that Odell scared off the attacker. The man’s as strong as an ox. Stands to reason—working all those years in the mines. He’s old, but I bet he’s quite a sight when he’s charging at you with a full head of steam, fists up, fire in his eye. Maybe he didn’t get an ID on the attacker, but he saved the girl’s life. Got the blood on his hands when he was tending to her. And the forgiveness part? The thing he was babbling about? Maybe he felt guilty about not protecting her better.”

  “So why didn’t he call for help?”

  “Not sure he’d be able to, Bell. To figure out what to do. You saw him.”

  “Then why wasn’t he with her in the living room? He was just sitting there, Nick. Sitting at the kitchen table like he didn’t know where the hell he was.”

  “Probably didn’t. There’s some serious mental incapacity going on with the man. No doubt about it. Fades in and out, most likely. That’s how it happens sometimes—you’ve got periods when you’re lucid and periods when you’re not. He obviously can’t handle his own affairs. His daughter’s been doing it all. Takes care of everything.” He shook his head. “Good God. What the hell? Two homicides. This could’ve made it three.”

  “Still might.” Bell’s voice was grim. “Lindy’s not out of the woods yet.”

  Fogelsong pushed his hat back from his forehead. “The killer or killers,” he said, “could’ve been lying in wait. Maybe they cased the Crabtree place for a few days. Knew when to break in and jump her. She works third shift. Regular schedule. Easy to know her comings and goings.”

  Bell looked across the cafeteria at the two hospital employees in the blue scrubs. They were rising now, returning to work; when they scooted their chairs back under the table—first one, then the other—the gestures ignited two short, sharp, overlapping squeals.

  “Did Crabtree say anything?” Bell asked.

  “Not so far. Doesn’t seem to know where he is. Just rocks back and forth and mutters to himself—and then he explodes, throwing himself against the wall and yelling and cursing.” Fogelsong stretched out his right leg and moved his booted foot up and down, then around in a tiny circle, trying to keep the circulation going. He didn’t like sitting. Made him antsy. “Can’t get over how strong that old man is. Sick as he is, it took Harrison and a couple of paramedics to get him in the squad car.”

  “He’s dangerous,” Bell muttered.

  “He’s a handful. Grant you that. But capable of assaulting his own flesh and blood?”

  Her answer came in a flash. “Hell, Nick. You know as well as I do that anybody’s capable of anything.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The call came shortly before 4 A.M. Bell was still awake and sitting in her chair, and answered before the end of the first ring. “Elkins,” she said. The caller was an ICU nurse; Bell had left her number at the desk, along with a request that she be notified if Lindy Crabtree regained consciousness. “She’s awake,” the woman said. “I wouldn’t have predicted it, but with brain injuries, you just never know. Sometimes it’s a three-month coma and permanent impairm
ent—and sometimes, they wake up with nothing but a bad headache, asking for butter pecan ice cream. This girl’s young and healthy. I’ll say that. Makes a big difference.”

  The hospital parking lot was black and empty at this hour, a ghostliness ground in by the fact that a majority of the streetlights ringing the space had been turned off for the night, leaving a lonely few to keep the vigil. Bell had her pick of parking spots. Hard to believe, she thought as she hurried toward the ER entrance—the nurse had instructed her to come in that way, because the main entrance was locked up tight when visiting hours concluded at nine each night—that just a week ago, this same expanse had been bristling with light and people and noise and sweaty chaos, when Riley Jessup came to town.

  “Hey,” Bell said.

  She’d approached the corner in which Lindy’s bed was situated as quietly as she could, not wanting to startle the young woman. The ICU was a long rectangle with separate areas for each patient, like a car-repair shop with bays for individual vehicles. It was a place undergirded by the densely woven hum and rhythmic swish of the workings of complicated monitors.

  Lindy was sitting up, sipping a cup of water through a bendy straw. She wore a hospital gown, white cotton printed with a pattern of small blue diamonds, and it was much too large for her, ballooning from her thin neck like a barber’s smock on a toddler getting her first haircut. The white sheet that covered her was tucked around her midsection. The wall behind the bed featured a variety of bright screens across which drifted green and yellow horizontal lines, lines that spiked now and again.

  The young woman looked at Bell with a blank expression. The wallet-sized bandage on the side of her head had been secured with a circle of gauze that resembled a headband.