Summer of the Dead

by Julia Keller

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  “Jason?” Bell said. She repeated his name on every other tread. “Jason. You down there?”

  Even with the door ajar at the top of the stairs, the basement was frustratingly dim. She fingered the wall for a light switch as she descended, but didn’t find one. The cellars in a lot of these old country houses, Bell knew, weren’t wired for electricity; the owners sometimes would rig up a light, but usually it was controlled by a string hanging from a bare bulb in the basement itself. Nothing so up-to-date as a wall switch.

  “Jason?”

  She reached the bottom.

  The smell was horrifically foul. Her first instinct was to identify the constituent elements—feces, urine, mold, rancid food—but she stopped, wondering why the hell she would bother to do so. Naming the odors within the dank pervasive stink just made it worse. Better not to know. She felt herself growing dizzy from the rapid head-slaps of the smell. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about what you’re breathing in.

  Her eyes adjusted partially to the darkness and she could make out the mounds ranged across the floor, mysterious lumps of different sizes. She could also discern what seemed to be a gigantic tree branch lying on its side, spanning the width of the room; myriad smaller branches forked off from the trunk, reaching in all directions like skinny twisted fingers. Peering closer, she saw that some of the black shapes on the floor were boulders, while others were square; they were piled-up boxes and tables.

  “Jason?”

  She took a step. Her foot skidded briefly on what felt like a thick scattering of gravel. Pushing her foot forward another inch or so, she realized that the cellar floor was coated with small rocks and dirt. The air on her skin felt cool, no more than fifty degrees Fahrenheit. The constant temperature of an underground space—a cavern or a coal mine.

  “Mrs. Elkins! Look out—he’s right behind—!”

  The blow came at the same moment she heard Jason’s warning, and Bell felt a ferociously sharp pain on the side of her head. She staggered. She’d been hit with a large rock. It knocked her sideways. Swaying and groping for something to grasp, she fought not to pass out. Her right ear felt as if it had been half-severed by the chopping blow. She turned around. She realized that her assailant was getting ready to try again; the breeze rushing past her cheek came from the air displaced by the rock as he raised it once more. Higher this time. She managed to sway to one side, forcing him to recalibrate, and in that quarter-second of reprieve, as the blood from her wound moved down the side of her neck, hot against her clammy skin, she felt a wild surge of strength from an unknown source, and then instantly its origin was clear to her: rage. Rage as pure as flame. You fucking sonofabitch. You goddamned fucking sonofabitch. The anger that defined her, that had been a part of her life for as far back as she could remember, hidden behind a polite daily façade of please-and-thank-yous, simmering beneath the pressed clothes and the law degree but always there, reviving itself over and over again in the darkness at each day’s end, the ultimate renewable fuel source—flew through her body.

  Tucking her chin, she head-butted him in the chest. She had to guess at his approximate whereabouts but rammed him anyway, and she knew she’d guessed right from the resistance she met and from the Uhhhh of his expelled breath. She’d knocked the wind out of him. He didn’t drop the rock but he was disoriented for another precious second. She heard Jason yelling from a corner of the room—“Watch out, Mrs. Elkins, he’s about to—!”—and she wished like hell that she had a light, any kind of light, to guide her fighting and to enable her to get a glimpse of the man’s miserable fucking face, whoever he was, whatever he—

  I do.

  The tiny flashlight on her key chain.

  Shielding her face with an upraised arm, Bell sent her hand plunging into her pocket. She swung the small dot of illumination up, up, up—straight up at the large black rock clutched overhead by a man draped in a long garment, a man determined to crush her skull, and as the light shifted from the rock to his face she saw, to her shock and confusion, a nimbus of frizzy white hair and the twisted-up, livid, hate-filled features of Perry Crum. The postman.

  * * *

  She aimed the light directly in his eyes. That gave her a puncher’s chance. He scowled, and in that impossibly short interval she dropped the key chain to free up her hands. She slid to the right and came at him sideways, low and hard, head-butting him again, using her windmilling arms to gouge at his face. His long coat wasn’t a coat at all but some kind of poncho—a rain poncho, slick and thin and plastic—and there flashed across her mind a picture of Perry Crum making his rounds on rainy days, friendly and smiling despite the weather, pale blue poncho sprouting from his wrinkled neck.

  He fought her off with the big rock, pummeling her, slamming it repeatedly against her arms and her hands. She ducked and bobbed, protecting her head. She managed to get a fist past the thicket of his blows and without a second’s hesitation she slammed it into his nose, sharp and hard, and then she hooked her thumbs into his eyes, jabbing and pulling, and his screams bounced around the small cellar like something being tossed from corner to corner.

  Suddenly he was on the ground. Flat on his back, flailing. He’d flung away the rock in order to grab at his eyes and his nose, still screaming, and Bell immediately tackled him. Knees grinding into his chest, she groped in the dark until she found a rock, one she could get her fist around, and then another rock that she could get her other fist around, and then she smashed them down on his face, one after the other, alternating her fists in a rhythmic assault. She could see very little in the blacked-out cellar but in her mind’s eye she saw him clearly—yes, clear as day—only it wasn’t Perry Crum anymore. The face she saw was Donnie Dolan, her father, the man who had ruined her sister’s life and ruined her life, too, the bastard who destroyed them, destroyed any chance they had for happiness, for a normal life, even, and so she would erase him, she would grind his face into ugly pulp and then she would—

  “Mrs. Elkins. You’ll kill him. Please Please stop—”

  She stopped. Panting, breathing so hard and so fast that her body rocked and heaved with every raspy inhalation and exhalation, her arms were frozen in mid-arc, the arms that had been descending systematically on the torn face like the urgent swipes of a scythe, back and forth, back and forth. Whose voice? Who had called to her, breaking the spell, restoring her to herself?

  It was the kid. Jason Brinkerman.

  Her knees slid off the man’s chest. Didn’t matter anymore. She’d knocked the fight clean out of her opponent. Crum’s nose had been relocated to the wrong part of his face and the skin on his cheeks hung in bloody shreds; his whimpers sounded disgustingly weak.

  “Mrs. Elkins,” Jason said. “I’m here. Over here.”

  * * *

  She stood up and staggered to the other end of the basement. She retrieved the key chain with its miniature flashlight and used it to find Jason. As she untied him, he told her how he’d gotten there. Perry Crum had been hiding in the kitchen; Crum must have scurried out of the living room when he heard them enter the house. “Put a hand over my mouth,” Jason said, rubbing his wrists, hoarse and shaky from the adrenaline spikes still pelting his body, “and dragged me down here. Said he’d kill us both if I tried to holler and warn you.”

  She moved back to Crum. Stood over him as he writhed on the cellar floor, squealing and groaning. “Why?” she said. “Why, Perry?”

  At first he ignored her, cupping his smashed nose in one hand, using the other to scrabble at the loose folds of his poncho. Then he coughed, sputtered, and blurted, “Only wanted the best. For the girl.” His words were blunted and fogged by snot and tears. “That’s why I done it.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Lindy.” Crum turned his head, spit out a gob. “Shit—you broke my damned nose.”

  “Sue me,” Bell snapped back. “Okay, Perry. Don’t know what you mean, but if you satisfy my curiosity rig
ht here and now, I’ll make a note of your cooperation. Might help you at trial. No promises.” She gave him the world’s quickest reading of his Miranda rights. “There you go. This is your shot, Perry. You understand what I just said to you?”

  He moaned.

  “Can’t hear you,” Bell said. She started to swivel away from him and head for the stairs. She resisted the impulse to yelp in pain; every muscle in her body ached in a different way. Christ, she thought. I’m too old for this shit. She was already planning what she’d say to Nick Fogelsong the minute she saw him, to let him know she was okay: Hey, Sheriff—thought being a prosecutor was supposed to be a goddamned desk job.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Perry muttered.

  “Huh?”

  “I said yeah. I heard ’em. My rights’n all.”

  “So you’re going to tell me what the hell this was all about?”

  Crum rubbed the bottom edge of the poncho across his face to mop up the blood, then screamed from the pain the pressure caused him. “Hurts!” he bellowed. “Hurts bad.”

  Bell wanted to laugh. Why did every tough guy turn into a two-year-old when he got a taste of what he’d been dishing out?

  “Let’s hear it,” she said.

  Haltingly, between gasps of pain, he told her the story. Lindy Crabtree, he said, was special. “More special’n anybody else in this shit-ass county, tell you that,” Crum muttered. He’d been bringing her books for years now, boxes and boxes filled with books; he knew how smart she was. But she’d never leave. “Stuck right here in this damned house with a crazy old man,” he went on. “Working at a gas station. Didn’t make a lick of sense. Every time I tried to talk to her, tried to make her see how she’s better’n this place, loads and loads better, she’d just smile at me and tell me thanks for bringing the books in the house for her. Like that’s all I was. Just a friggin’ pack mule. Like nothing I had to say was worth a damn. Like I didn’t know what it felt like to give up your whole life for somebody else. Somebody who can’t even appreciate what you’re giving up.” He spit again, then shivered with a long spasm of wet coughing, groaning each time his body twisted and writhed. “Had to make her see. Make her see how scary it is out here in the middle of nowhere for a young girl all by herself—just her and that sick old sack of bones, Odell Crabtree.”

  “So you attacked her? To get her to listen? That was your master plan?”

  “Hell no.” Crum’s body shuddered. He could be going into shock, Bell saw, and she hoped he’d wind up his tale before passing out. “Wasn’t gonna touch her,” he insisted. “I went after Charlie Frank. Knew where he walked at night. Everybody knows. But I never meant to hurt him bad. Just scare him, okay? So word’d get out. So Lindy would see why she needed to leave. So she’d see what happens to folks out here on their own. I just got a little carried away, is all. Not my fault Charlie got himself killed. Damn fool fought back. I was just gonna cut him a little bit, but he fought back. So I had to get rough with him. Too rough. Who’d of thought he’d fight back? What’s he got to live for? But he fought, all right. I wore the poncho so’s there’d be no blood on my clothes.” He coughed and spit. “Going after Charlie Frank didn’t work—so I had to try something else. Had to scare her good ’n’ proper. Which is why I waited for her to come home from that shitty little gas station. Waited behind the door. Made sure I didn’t really hurt her.”

  “Charlie Frank,” Bell said grimly. “And before that, Freddie Arnett in his driveway.”

  “No. No way,” Crum muttered. “That weren’t me. Never touched Freddie.”

  “Like anybody’ll believe you now.”

  “Swear to God.”

  She wasn’t going to argue with him. “So why’d you come back here tonight?”

  “Gonna dump some stuff.” Crum’s voice was failing him now, growing fainter. “Charlie Frank’s boot. To make it look like her daddy done it. So’s she’d cut the old goat loose. Put him away somewheres. Where he belongs. Then she’d be free. Free to leave this worthless piece of crap that the rest of us call … home.…”

  Crum’s voice trailed off and his head fell to one side, chin hanging open, eyes going glassy.

  Bell looked at Jason. Swept a hand to indicate the rocks and the boxes and the overturned tables. “What the hell is all this?”

  “Best guess? It’s a coal mine,” Jason said. “Or as close to one as Lindy could rig up. Make her daddy feel comfortable. Place he knew best. Place he’d been happy.” He spotted an object on the floor, half hidden beneath a stack of branches, and he picked it up. “Dang,” Jason said. “Wish I’d had this a few minutes ago.” It was a wood-handled knife, used to hack at the massive felled tree. Odell Crabtree had tried to keep his path clear as best he could, just as he’d done in the mine for so many years.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Bell said. I’ll call the sheriff. He’ll come by with the EMTs and they can deal with this bastard. Now that he’s spilled his guts. Here—hand me that rope he used on you. Gotta make sure he doesn’t get out.”

  Next Bell tackled the cellar stairs. Jason was right behind her. She faltered twice; he steadied her, kept her going.

  “Hey,” Jason said. They had reached the top. The kitchen was dark. Not as dark as the cellar, but still dark. “You were yelling something while you beat the shit out of him.”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “Well, it sounded like you were saying ‘Daddy’ or some—”

  She cut him off. “Said I don’t remember.”

  * * *

  They headed for the Explorer, hurrying but watching their step; they stumbled, then righted themselves. The moon’s faint light was thwarted even further by a long train of clouds that had stalled out in front of it. Bell groped to find the door handle, missing twice before she secured it.

  The rain had slacked off but not stopped. It had the dour, relentless feel of a rain that frankly had no intention of ever stopping, not entirely. Bell switched on the wipers even before she turned on the headlights. As she backed out of the driveway she took a quick look at herself in the rearview mirror and winced—which made her wince again, this time with cause, because her face was deeply bruised. The cut on the top of her right ear might very well need stitches. Blood was drying in crusty lines along the lacerations on her arms and hands. The skin below one eye was swelling and turning a sickly shade of yellowish purple. She looked like hell. Felt like it, too.

  “Sure you’re okay to drive?” Jason asked. He asked it gingerly, having seen what a pissed-off Bell Elkins could be like.

  “Fine.”

  Without either one of them having to name it, both knew where they were going next and why: the Raythune County Medical Center—to find Lindy and relieve her anxiety.

  “What’s that?” Bell said. She took her eyes off the road for an instant. Jason had something balanced on his lap.

  It was the small tin box of letters. “Grabbed it when we went through the kitchen,” he said. “You told me it was important to her. We can take care of it until Lindy’s ready to go home.” He placed the box in the glove compartment.

  Bell didn’t waste time with a parking spot. She pulled up in front of the hospital’s main entrance. Ditched the Explorer right there.

  With Jason at her side, she moved rapidly past the front desk, waving away the receptionist’s prissy entreaty: “May I help you?” Bell wanted to get the news to Lindy as soon as possible. The father she loved had not caused her pain, or caused pain to others.

  A few yards beyond the double doors leading to the ICU, in a brilliantly lighted corridor down which she barreled with a speed that belied the soreness in her legs, Bell nearly collided with a short, worried-looking older woman in a pale blue nurse’s smock. The woman wore a name tag with SALLY FUGATE on one line and on the next line, in even bigger letters, this: NURSING SUPERVISOR.

  “Excuse me,” Bell said, “but we’re on our way to see—”

  “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Elkins,” Fugate said, interruptin
g her in a hushed, professionally sympathetic tone. Her hands were clasped. “So very, very sorry. I’m afraid I have to inform you that Lindy Crabtree died twenty minutes ago.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “No way.” Jason’s voice trembled, but it was emphatic. “No freakin’ way, lady.”

  Bell wasn’t yet able to speak. She fought against shock, beating it back the way she might beat back a wild animal charging at her. Emotion, she knew, wouldn’t do her a damned bit of good right now. The fury that had been so effective during a fistfight in a rock-clogged basement would mean nothing here—it would, in fact, work against her. Power in this realm was measured by the steely elegance of self-control. She needed to get answers. And to get them, she’d have to be calm and systematic with her questions. Not hard and ornery and demanding—which had been her first instinct. Always was.

  “Lindy was fine when I left here,” she said carefully. “What’s going on?”

  Fugate’s voice had a condescending lilt to it, as if she were trying to soothe an unruly toddler. “These things happen, Mrs. Elkins. It’s sad, I know, and it’s hard to accept, but sometimes, even when the doctors and the nurses have done their very best, nature decides to—”

  “No,” Bell snapped, interrupting her. “No way. She was fine. I talked to her. She couldn’t have died. It’s impossible.” To hell with calm and systematic.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not.” Fugate closed her eyes and shook her head. She opened them again when the grave theatrical waggle had run its proscribed course.

  Bell located her cell. She let her eyes slide over to meet Jason’s, and then she sent a quick text to Rhonda Lovejoy.

  “I’m afraid,” Fugate said, “I really do need to ask you to leave now. This is a health care facility and our staff is busy with their professional duties. We appreciate your concern, and we join you in your grief, but we’ll take care of contacting any family the girl might have had, and then we’ll—”