Winter's Mourn

by Mary Stone

  And anger.

  “Woo-woo powers?” Noah broke the silence with a snort.

  Winter didn’t take the bait. She held her hand out for the car keys instead.

  Noah handed them over, and she climbed into the driver’s seat, adjusting it for her shorter legs. Noah got in next to her, the car dipping a little with his weight. He buckled his seatbelt and leaned back comfortably.

  “So, you didn’t steal her lunch money? Beat her up by the flagpole after school?”

  “No.”

  Winter pulled out into traffic and headed for the hotel.

  “Try and steal her boyfriend?”

  He wasn’t going to let it go, she knew.

  “We’d been friends since preschool. I spent the night at her house the night my…” She cleared her throat. “That night. We fought over Tommy Benton, ironically. I told her I thought he liked me, and apparently, she’d been nursing a secret crush. Stupid kid’s stuff. Our friendship could have survived that, but after I came out of the hospital, moved into a rental house with my grandparents, I went back to school. She acted supportive and sympathetic at first, but I made the mistake of confiding in her.”

  “Confiding what?”

  The knuckles on her hands were growing white. “The weird brain stuff that was happening to me.”

  She felt his surprise but didn’t look his way. “Things were glowing red for you, even back then?”

  “No.” Winter sighed, feeling beatdown and not caring that she was giving more secrets away. What did it matter, anyway? “I came out of the coma with, like, heightened senses. Everything seemed to bombard me. I’d walk into a room and notice everything. Scents, sounds, details. I could recall them later too. I’d be able to tell you what each student in a class was wearing, who was hiding tater tots in their desk, that Cindy Slusher had gotten new contacts, how many pimples Mark Wiessburg had on the back of his neck, the name of the song Becky Smith was tapping out with her pencil on her desk, who was cheating on their math test, and that the science teacher, Mr. Williams, had started smoking again. He had a pack of Camels in his desk, and I could smell them.”

  “I can’t even remember who my teachers were in college, much less middle school. And you can remember all these details even now,” Noah said, his voice a picture of wonder.

  “I can.”

  “The detail thing. Is this still something you can do?”

  “Yeah. I can filter things out better, but back then…it was like I was walking around in a barrage every day. I constantly felt like my head was about to explode, and I had to tell someone. My grandparents had packed up their lives and moved to Harrisonburg so I could stay in the same school, in familiar surroundings. They were taking everything else so hard, I couldn’t share with them. I had a shrink, but he was always watching me like some kind of science experiment, him and the doctors, and I didn’t trust any of them. Aiden…” She risked a quick glance over at him but he was studiously looking out the front window. “Maybe I would have told him, but I didn’t know him well enough yet.”

  “Aiden? As in Aiden Parrish? Like, Aiden Parrish, SSA of the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Richmond?”

  “Back then, he was just Special Agent Parrish, but yeah.” She shot Noah a sidelong look. He was staring back at her blankly. She couldn’t blame him. She’d dropped a lot of info on him all at once. “Parrish was working The Preacher case. He kept in touch, even after the investigation turned into a dead end.”

  “That explains some things.”

  Winter let the cryptic remark slide. “I told Sam. When you’re a teenage girl, you figure you can trust your best friend with anything. Unfortunately, she told Tommy Benton, figuring rightly that his crush on me would pass quickly on finding out that I was a freak. That would have been okay, but word went around the school fast from there.”

  “So, your grandparents pulled you out of school and moved you to Raleigh,” he finished for her.

  “That’s about it.”

  It wasn’t, not really. There had been more. Kids following her around, calling her names. Knocking the lunch tray out of her hands in the cafeteria. Once, a couple of girls pushing her around in the bathroom. She’d lost her balance and hit the painted cinderblock wall. Her cheekbone had been bruised and swollen, and that’s when she finally had to tell Grandma and Grampa what was going on.

  Noah, thankfully, left it at that.

  “You want to come over to my place and watch TV?” he asked as they pulled into the hotel parking lot. “I’d say we’ve earned some R&R. I popped over to the convenience store across the street last night and stocked my mini-fridge with some Rolling Rock.”

  Honestly, she just wanted to crawl under the covers in her bed and sleep until she forgot all about the confrontation with Sam outside the restaurant. But there was no haven in her hotel room right now. Not with the picture of Justin still tucked between the mattress and box spring.

  “Yeah, TV sounds good. No Real Housewives, though.”

  To her amusement, his cheeks reddened. Noah was usually perfectly collected, affable, and laidback in any situation. Right now, he looked downright flustered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, Dalton,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Thin walls, and I sleep light. Does the rest of the team know about your shameful addiction?”

  “No. And if they found out, I’ll swear I was watching porn.” His green eyes narrowed dangerously. “I’ll not only deny Real Housewives to my dying breath…I’ll know who told them.”

  “You’ve been prying secrets out of me,” she pointed out as they climbed the metal stairs. “It’s only fair that I get some goods on you too.”

  He grumbled, unlocking his door. Winter glanced over at her room. The curtains were open, the room dark within. Housekeeping had likely been through. She wondered if there were any white envelopes on the floor, waiting for her.

  “I’ll be over in a sec,” she told Noah. “Going to change. Into sweatpants.” She stressed the last word, forestalling any flirtatious comments.

  “Not a bad idea.”

  She switched on the lamp as soon as she entered, opened her senses. Bed made. No envelope. Nothing felt out of the ordinary. She closed the curtains. Lifting the coverlet, she ran her fingers under the mattress to the place she’d stashed Justin’s picture. It was still there. She didn’t feel the need to pull it out and look at it again.

  But as she stood up, a faint reddish glow caught her eye. The painting on the wall above the TV, a badly done fall scene of the Smoky Mountains, had a faint but definite red cast to it. She lifted it carefully from the wall, conscious of the thin walls she’d mentioned earlier to Noah.

  There. A small camera mounted inside of a hollowed out piece of drywall. She shuddered. It pointed directly at her bed. She deliberately raised her middle finger, so anyone watching the feed would be sure to see, and mouthed the words, Fuck you.

  Staring at its black eye, she didn’t have to guess to know who would be watching her room. The question was, how had he gotten in? Had the camera been there last night? If so, why hadn’t she seen the red glow? Or was it some other perv entirely?

  So many questions and not a single damn answer to be found.

  Disgusted, she pulled the camera out, opened the back, and removed the battery. Tucking both the camera and the battery beneath the mattress, she gave the room another once-over, knowing she wouldn’t find anything.

  Unsettled now, she pulled a loose pair of sweatpants and a black t-shirt out of her bag and headed for the bathroom to change. She had a cold beer, some mindless television, and a good friend waiting for her in the room next door.

  Unfortunately, Winter still didn’t feel like she could trust Noah with this.

  She’d always known with a deep, gut-level certainty that this had always been something she would have to finish alone. If The Preacher was going to come after her, so be it. It felt inevitable that he would.

  6

  Winter and Noah had no
problem finding the start to the trail the following morning. A pickup truck, a Harrisonburg police SUV, and a few other county and state vehicles lined the road. It was still raining, the warm weather streak having broken, and the woods were misty-looking in the dim morning light.

  “This’ll be fun,” Noah muttered as they got out of the car.

  Winter eyed the steep trail, now a slippery slope of mud and wet leaves. “You bet.”

  Nerves were a tight ball in her stomach as they made the climb. Twice, she slipped and would have gone down on her face in the sloppy path, but Noah grabbed her by the back of the raincoat both times, saving her the indignity.

  “You climb like a goat.”

  “Naturally athletic,” he bragged. Seconds later, he lost his footing and slid backward a few feet. “At least I’m still upright.” He grinned, gripping a slim sapling for balance.

  Breathless, she finally reached the top. In the clearing ahead was a group of people, and a man with what looked like a bear on a leash. The knot in her belly tightened. If there was nothing else to be found here, she was going to look like an idiot in front of a decent-sized audience. But there were still red areas glowing around the clearing. Enough that Winter had to wonder if they’d be excavating remains for the next several months.

  “Mornin’.” Chief Miller had his coat collar turned up against the light rain, a clear rain cap cover over his hat. “Let me introduce you to the team.”

  He headed first to a woman who was directing the set-up of an awning and a table of tools. “This is Marilyn Fosner. She’s our forensic archaeologist, on loan with a few of her team members to us from Roanoke.”

  Marilyn nodded briskly. The woman was probably in her mid-thirties, with dark skin and beautiful green eyes. She was also busy handing out orders to what looked like a ragtag bunch of interns. They were chattering and too excited about being out in the woods during a downpour looking for dead bodies to be anything but newbies.

  “Robert, Jessica, Louis, Eric, and Pete. Student interns. Don’t bother trying to remember their names and tell them apart.” She narrowed her eyes at the grinning bunch, who apparently knew that Marilyn’s bark was worse than her bite. “I’m about to send them all home to their mommas if they don’t get their shit together.” She waved her hand toward another group. “William Penn, Rebecca Mayfield, and Derek White, CSI.”

  The Crime Scene Investigation team nodded and gave them curious looks over their steaming cups of coffee. Winter smiled back but wondered if Gary Miller had told them about the freakish FBI agent who insisted on a detection dog for no apparent reason and was prepared to throw a fit if she didn’t get one. She and Noah had decided to justify it to Max by pointing out that the victim had a gunshot wound to the back of the head. Bringing in a cadaver sniffer would rule out more victims.

  “And this is Jeff Dean, and the star of this particular show, Caesar. Droolius Caesar.”

  Jeff was a bookish-looking guy in his mid-forties and looked more suited to be an accountant than a search and rescue guy or a contractor. He had an angular face, glasses perched on the edge of a long nose, and a baseball cap to keep the rain off.

  “Nice to meet you both, Agent Black, Agent Dalton.” His handshake was firm, his fingers cold, and his smile friendly. “Droolius,” he said to the dog, a massive Saint Bernard, “introduce yourself.”

  The dog plopped his butt down on the ground and grinned up at them, lifting one massive paw, and barked once. True to his name, a string of slobber hung rakishly from the corner of his mouth.

  “You don’t actually have to shake with him,” Jeff warned. “He’s pretty filthy right now and bound to get worse here pretty soon.”

  Noah dropped to his haunches in front of the dog anyway and held out a hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Droolius,” he said, shaking the dog’s paw while his tail wagged wildly. “Winter? You going to be rude and leave this guy hanging?” He wiggled his muddy hand at her before wiping it on his pant leg.

  “Thanks, Noah, for pointing out my oversight.” Chief Miller snorted as Winter gingerly took the dog’s paw between two fingers and shook it once. He was dirty, but he was cute.

  “To be honest, I was expecting a bloodhound, not a Beethoven.” Noah gave the dog a scratch behind the ears that had him wiggling with joy. Well-trained, though, the leashed dog didn’t get up from his sitting position.

  Jeff laughed. “I don’t blame you. I have mostly Labradors that I train in SAR. Droolius here was supposed to be a family dog, but he’s smart and showed early aptitude, so I trained him with the rest of my SAR dogs. He’s got an incredible success rate.”

  “Will he have a tough time with the weather?” Winter asked. “Or the fact that the remains he’s looking for might be as much as thirty years old?”

  “Nah. We train in all kinds of conditions. Sometimes a rotting log will throw him, but not often. And he’s gotten human and animal remains mixed up a couple of times. But I once saw this dog alert in a basement where a body had been buried, dug up, and removed years before. He’s good.”

  “Well, I was waiting on Benton, but he’s late,” Chief Miller said with a slight frown. “Might as well let us see what your dog can do.”

  “If there’s anything to be found,” Jeff replied with a proud look at the huge canine, “Droolius will find it.”

  He knelt in front of the dog. “You ready, boy? Ready to do some work?” The dog wagged his tail in what looked like doggy joy, bouncing from foot to foot. As soon as Jeff put a hand on his leash, the dog stilled.

  Winter could almost sense the dog saying, Ready.

  Jeff unsnapped the leash and ordered, “Find.” The rest of the group had gathered around, and they all watched as the dog immediately put his nose to the ground.

  Winter was studying the dog intently, holding her breath, and jolted as Noah put a hand on her shoulder. Her tension eased, just a bit. Noah knew she was nervous, and his silent support helped.

  The dog started working in concentric circles. Small, at first, but then broadening. It was incredible to see an animal work so methodically. He came closer to the nearest red area, and she held her breath again. A second later, the dog stilled and lifted a paw, directly in the center of the spot.

  “He’s got something,” Jeff said, going to the dog and praising him. The woman with the CSI team planted a marker while the interns chattered excitedly in quiet voices.

  “Ready to go again, boy? Work?” Droolius barked once, as if in answer, and Jeff said, “Find.”

  The dog was off again, immediately. Within minutes, he alerted at another site. Winter’s breathing came a little easier. He was finding them.

  Twenty minutes later, he’d alerted at eight different sites. Eight small flags fluttered in the fitful, rainy breeze.

  The interns had gone from exuberant to quiet as the implication began to sink in.

  Chief Miller’s face was bleak, and for a moment, there was no sound in the clearing except for the panting of the dog. Jeff, looking a little shell-shocked himself, even though he ran SAR dogs for a living, busied himself with getting Droolius a dish of water and a rawhide chew toy.

  “Guess it’s our turn to perform,” Marilyn announced. Her strident voice sounded shaken. “CSI, go ahead and get your pictures first, and we’ll be ready to go in next.” She collected herself and started barking orders to her young team members again.

  Chief Miller looked over at Winter, a wealth of consideration in his gaze. “How’d you know?”

  “A hunch,” she replied, her throat tight.

  Tom Benton showed up after the CSI team had finished and the forensic excavator had begun on the first site. His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks scruffy. Judging by the light brown mud stains on his uniform pant legs, he’d run into a spot of bad luck on his way up the trail.

  He looked hungover, but the hate in his eyes was vibrant when he saw Noah and Winter in the clearing. They burned even hotter when he took in the scene around them, and the obvious ev
idence that more burial sites had been located.

  He didn’t get a chance to spill any venom, though. Chief Miller immediately cornered him and led him away from the scene. Benton’s shoulders hunched, and he seemed to get smaller with every word his boss said to him.

  “Wouldn’t want to be in his shoes right now,” Noah muttered. “The guy’s on a fast track to a pink slip.”

  “I’m surprised the chief hasn’t canned him already.” Winter winced when the chief shoved a finger in Benton’s face. The guy was an asshole, but the verbal beating he was getting was painful to watch. “On second thought, maybe he’s doing it right now.”

  They turned back to watch Marilyn work. She’d marked off the first site in a grid pattern and was already two hours into her painstaking excavation. Her team was working like a well-oiled machine now, taking turns sifting dirt and debris removed from the burial site, searching for evidence, labeling anything they found, and generally making sure Marilyn could focus on her work.

  “She’s good. She’ll have something for us soon.” Chief Miller made the comment from behind them. There was no sign of Benton. Noah raised an eyebrow in silent question. “He had the flu,” Miller said, sounding weary to the bone. “I sent him home.”

  “Guys,” Marilyn called out, wiping the back of her arm over her forehead. “I’ve got something here.”

  They gathered close, careful not to get within a close radius of her work but positioned so they could see. White bone was visible, poking out of the dirt. Winter could make out an eyehole, still mostly buried. Marilyn carefully revealed more of the skull, humming thoughtfully in her throat.

  “Did the handler say that dog sometimes got animal bones mixed up with human ones?”

  Winter’s tension came rolling back. The ground itself still looked red, almost pulsing with it, but the skull that Marilyn was uncovering wasn’t human. What if, after all this, the bones that the dog had alerted to weren’t human at all?