Disturbing the Dead

by Sandra Parshall

  Inside, he paused, his ears ringing from the noise, his nose and throat burning from the smoke that floated in the air like a cirrus cloud. Some of the smoke probably came from tobacco, but the sickly sweet odor of marijuana was what Tom smelled.

  Gradually all heads turned his way. He wasn’t in uniform, but everybody seemed to know who he was. People leaned together and exchanged whispers. Conversation died. Joints disappeared under tabletops. Rose Shackleford’s bulging eyes peered at him from her bloated face, and her mouth twisted in a sneer. Thunderous jukebox music made the floorboards vibrate under Tom’s feet.

  Troy Shackleford grinned at Tom. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the Clint Black song when he said, “Hey there, Captain. Come on in and have a seat.” He yelled toward the back of the room, “Somebody shut that thing off.”

  A second later the music died and the place was quiet as a cave.

  Aware of his audience, Tom took time to strip off his gloves and stuff them into his pockets before he ambled to the bar and claimed the stool next to Shackleford. Half a dozen other men at the bar apparently decided they’d be more comfortable in booths, and they shuffled across the aisle. Tom could see through an open door into the small back room, where Shackleford’s nephew lurked, a scowl on his face. Buddy’s gaze connected with Tom’s, swerved away.

  “What’ll you have, Captain?” Troy Shackleford asked. “Rose, get the man a drink.”

  The bulky woman lumbered over to stand across from Tom. Her eyes looked hard as marbles.

  “A beer,” he said. “Whatever you’ve got on tap.” He reached into his back pocket for his wallet.

  “Hey, forget it,” Shackleford said. “It’s on me.”

  Since Tom didn’t intend to drink the beer, he shoved his wallet back into his pocket and let the question of payment go. Rose plopped a green glass mug in front of him and some of the beer foam cascaded down the side. Tom smiled. “Thanks.”

  Rose grunted and moved away.

  “So what brings you to our little patch of the world?” Shackleford asked. “You workin’ undercover?” He grinned. “Or gettin’ in touch with your roots?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tom saw Rose ten feet away, quietly but quickly scooping up plastic bags from the counter behind the bar and stowing them in the gym bag. When she realized he was watching she went stiff as a statue.

  Tom shifted toward Shackleford. “I’d like to know where you were around one-thirty this afternoon. You and your nephew both.”

  Shackleford paused with his mug halfway to his mouth. He set it down. “If you’re askin’ me if one of us took a shot at the lady vet’s car, you’re way off base.”

  “How do you know about it?”

  “Aw, you know how word gets around. Especially about a shootin’.”

  “Where were you?” Tom asked.

  “One-thirty? My mother’s house. Both of us. Go ask her.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure she’d back you up, so I think it’d be a wasted trip.”

  A grin snaked across Shackleford’s face. “You callin’ my mama a liar, Captain?”

  “Was anybody else there? Besides relatives. Did any of the neighbors see you? You speak to any of them, wave at them when you drove by?”

  “Well now, let me see.” Shackleford wrinkled his brow in mock concentration. “By golly, I don’t believe I saw another soul.” He grew serious again. “But I didn’t shoot at a car that had my daughter in it, I can promise you that. Whoever did it was personally insultin’ me, and when I find out—”

  “What were you up to on Main Street today?” Tom glanced toward the back room and saw Buddy straighten his shoulders defiantly. Tough guy, in his black leather jacket, black shirt, black jeans. He was good-looking enough to have a bunch of girls running after him, and Tom could imagine how he treated them.

  Troy Shackleford lifted his beer and swallowed half of it. When he set the mug down, he answered, “Just tryin’ to get a little time with my daughter. I don’t see her nearly enough these days.”

  “What accounts for this sudden interest in Holly?”

  “Nothin’ sudden about it. She’s been my daughter all her life.”

  “And you’ve ignored her all her life. What’s so important that you had to talk to her today? Are you trying to shut her up about something?”

  Shackleford ran his tongue around the inside of his lower lip. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Stay away from her. She doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

  Assuming a sorrowful expression, Shackleford shook his head. “It’s a downright shame when folks try to turn a child against her own flesh and blood.”

  “I want you to steer clear of Mrs. Turner, too.” Shackleford opened his mouth, but Tom went on before he could speak. “When was the last time you saw Rudy O’Dell?”

  Shackleford sipped his beer again. Everybody in the room was silent, watching and listening. “He’s not come to me for help, if that’s what you want to know. I’d be flat-out amazed if he did.”

  “You got any idea where he could be?”

  “Not a clue. Try turnin’ over some big rocks, you might find him that way.”

  Giggles burst from the two women in a nearby booth. Their male companions growled orders to shut up.

  “You know any reason why O’Dell would try to kill Holly?” Tom asked.

  Shackleford swiveled to face Tom. “You sayin’ it was Rudy that shot at her?”

  The man’s surprise seemed genuine, which could mean a couple of things. Tom decided to feed Shackleford a little information to see what reaction it provoked. “The bullets could have come from his rifle. Of course, plenty of rifles fire the same calibre. We’ll know more when we get the ballistics report.”

  Shackleford didn’t seem to hear the qualifiers. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he murmured, rubbing his chin and staring into space. “Now, Rudy doin’ that is somethin’ I don’t understand in the least.”

  Although Shackleford was a good bluffer, Tom didn’t think he was acting now. That meant Shackleford himself had nothing to do with the attack. Tom went on, “I hear O’Dell’s got some kind of fixation on Holly. Because she looks so much like Pauline.”

  Shackleford came out of his reverie. “Hmmph. Well, you know more than I do. I don’t keep up with him and his fixations.”

  “I’d think you’d want to keep close tabs on O’Dell,” Tom said.

  “And why would I want to do that?”

  “In case he decided to reminisce about the past.”

  Shackleford shot a sideways glance at Tom, and for a fleeting moment Tom saw confusion and apprehension in his face. “He’s got nothin’ to say that’s gonna bother me.”

  “I think he knows what happened to Pauline,” Tom said.

  “Really.” Shackleford held up his mug, signalling Rose for a refill. She took the empty glass and put a full one in his hand.

  Tom let the silence drag out. Shackleford flexed his fingers and scrubbed them on his jeans legs, wiping off the beer they’d picked up from the sides of his mug. He drank. He cleared his throat. “You think Rudy killed Pauline? That’s what your daddy thought.”

  “No, my father thought Rudy and you killed her.”

  “Well, your daddy was wrong. He was tryin’ to pin it on the easiest targets. You oughta be askin’ yourself why.”

  Tom felt the pressure expand inside him, and his muscles tensed with the urge to strike out. He forced himself to relax. Or at least appear relaxed. “I think O’Dell was involved somehow but probably wasn’t the killer.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be real relieved to hear that.”

  “Oh, he’s going to jail, one way or another. But not for sinking an ax into Pauline’s brain.”

  Shackleford winced, the briefest betrayal of revulsion.

  Leaning closer, Tom said, “I wonder how it feels to have a memory like that in your head.”
>
  Shackleford pulled away from him.

  “I’ve got my own bad memories,” Tom went on softly, “and they’re tough enough to live with. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have that picture in the back of my mind all the time. Pauline’s head split open, her brains spilling out, her blood—”

  “Shut up!” Shackleford spun off his stool, his face red and knotted with fury.

  A rustle of startled movement swept through the onlookers.

  “I guess it’s not real pleasant to think about,” Tom said. “Too bad her bones were found and it’s all been dredged up again.”

  Tom could hear Shackleford’s rapid, shallow breaths. Finally an ugly little smile took shape on the man’s face. His voice came out low and insinuating. “You know what I think happened to Pauline? I think your sainted daddy killed her.”

  Tom sprang to his feet, grabbed the front of Shackleford’s jacket. The movement sent a jolt of pain through Tom’s wounded arm. “If I ever hear you say that again, you’re going to be riding in a wheelchair. Do you understand me?”

  Shackleford’s grin widened. “He went to see her one day and found Ed McClure in her bed, and they had a real knockdown drag-out, like two dogs fightin’ over a bitch. Maybe that kind of thing happened one time too many and your daddy couldn’t take it any more.”

  Tom’s fingers tightened on Shackleford’s jacket. “Are you telling me you saw that fight?”

  “Rudy saw it. He told me about it. If you don’t believe me, ask him. Oh, wait a minute. You can’t find Rudy, can you? Well, you’re in luck, ’cause that nigger housekeeper saw it too. Go ask her.”

  Tom shoved Shackleford and sent him stumbling backward across the aisle. He thudded into a table, windmilled his arms in a losing fight for balance, and dropped to the floor.

  With two strides, Tom stood over him. “Enjoy this little business you’ve got, because you’re not going to have it much longer. Enjoy your freedom, because you won’t have that much longer either. And if you go anywhere near Rachel Goddard or Holly again, I’ll bury you.”

  Tom turned away, his blood pounding in his temples. Behind him, Shackleford said, “Oooh, I’m scared, Deputy Dawg.”

  Tom whirled and landed a kick in Shackleford’s stomach. That shut him up.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  By three in the morning, Holly’s screaming nightmares had awakened the household twice, and Rachel’s own dreams made her afraid to close her eyes again. She went down to the kitchen and found Tom leaning against a counter and tossing a pill into his mouth.

  After he’d all but accused her of getting Holly and herself shot at, Rachel had decided to stay cool and aloof with him, but her resolve collapsed the instant she saw him. “Are you all right? Are you taking something for pain?”

  Tom followed the pill with a gulp of water. The fluorescent bulb over the sink, the only light on in the room, gave his olive complexion a sallow tinge. “Yeah. It seems to bother me most when I’m not busy. Just lying there trying to sleep.”

  Rachel was torn between wanting him to get relief from the pain and wishing he would stay clearheaded in case something happened.

  As if reading her mind, he said, “I only took half a pill. That’ll help, but any more would make me loopy.”

  Dressed in jeans and a wrinkled shirt, he looked the way he always did when out of uniform, as if he’d shed his natural skin and donned a disguise. Rachel was acutely aware of her own attire, a loose robe over a nightgown, as well as her disheveled hair. She pushed strands off her face, then clicked on the ceiling light and crossed to the cabinet next to the sink. “You need plenty of rest to heal properly.”

  “Don’t stand too close to the sink,” he said. “Somebody outside could see you.”

  She jumped back, staring at the thin curtains drawn across the window behind the sink. Anyone in the yard could have seen the outline of her body. She ran her tongue over dry lips as she remembered the noises outside her house the other night, her certainty someone had been spying on her. “I’m going to make hot chocolate,” she said, and heard the strain in her voice. “You want some? It might help you sleep.”

  “That and some earplugs. But yeah, thanks, I’ll take a cup.”

  Tom leaned against the counter and watched her measure cocoa, sugar and milk into a saucepan. Her hands shook and his scrutiny made the tremor worse.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Well, I have to admit it’s a little stressful to have somebody trying to kill Holly and me, on top of —” She broke off, annoyed that she’d almost told him about the threatening letter from Perry Nelson. Turning away from him, she placed the saucepan on the range.

  “On top of what?” Tom asked.

  “Nothing. I’m as okay as I can be under the circumstances. I wish I could say the same for Holly.”

  “Is she having nightmares about the shooting?”

  “No. She’s dreaming about her mother. She’s terrified her mother might be dead.” Rachel blamed herself for Holly’s emotional state. If she hadn’t goaded Tom about the possibility of the second skull being Jean’s, he wouldn’t have talked to Holly about it and the girl wouldn’t be battling an onslaught of nightmares about her mother’s skeleton rising before her eyes. “I hope you aren’t going to tell me again that I never should have gotten involved with her.”

  “I apologize for that. I realize how much it means to you to help her.”

  “Well, hallelujah.”

  He shrugged, but only with his right shoulder, on the uninjured side. “I’m hardheaded, not hopeless.”

  “Oh, there’s definitely hope for you.” Rachel felt him watching her as she stirred the chocolate. When it was just short of boiling, she poured it into mugs. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks. Come sit in the living room with me. I’ve still got the fire going.”

  Rachel hesitated, but the thought of returning to her bedroom and her bad dreams was a lot less appealing than sitting before a fire with Tom. They walked up the hall together. At the foot of the stairs she stopped to listen for sounds from Holly’s room, but she heard nothing.

  Tom scooped his blanket and pillow off the leather couch and Rachel sat at one end, figuring he wouldn’t crowd her if she left most of the space for him. After dropping the bedding onto a chair, he prowled the room, checking the drapes, making sure no potential shooter could get a peek at the human targets inside. Billy Bob, dozing on the hearth before the fire, would have made for a cozy scene if Tom’s big black pistol hadn’t been lying on the coffee table in Rachel’s line of vision. The shadowy room seemed to emphasize their isolation.

  She’d believed that having an armed deputy here overnight would make her feel safer. Even with the deputy in the same room, though, she felt shockingly vulnerable. God, it was so easy for one person to kill another. Give someone a motive and a will to commit murder and he could do it anywhere, anytime.

  No one in Mason County had a personal motive to kill her, but somebody wanted Holly out of the way. The same somebody probably believed that whatever Holly knew, Rachel would also know before long. And that was exactly what she was after. Somewhere in Holly’s head was hidden a secret worth killing to keep, and Rachel wanted to pry that deadly information out of the girl.

  Tom sat on the couch at a distance she found comfortable, and they drank their chocolate in silence for a minute, the crackle of the fire the only sound in the room. Then he asked again, “On top of what? Has something else happened that I don’t know about?”

  Rachel hesitated, tugged in one direction by the need to protect her privacy, keep Tom out of her life, but wondering if that might be foolish in the long run. “I guess the police here should be forewarned, just in case.”

  “Hey, now you’re worrying me. What are you talking about?”

  “The guy who shot me—did you know he was sent to a mental hospital instead of prison where he belongs?”

  “Yeah,” Tom s
aid. “Jurors can be idiots sometimes.”

  “He hates me because I turned him in for forging my name on a narcotic prescription. Then I did my best to get him convicted of attempted murder. The way he sees it, all his problems are my fault. If I hadn’t turned him in, he wouldn’t have gone through the trauma of being arrested and the agony of withdrawal. He wouldn’t have lost his job and his girlfriend. He wouldn’t have been so miserable that he just had to come after me with a gun to get even. If I got shot in the process, well, that was my own fault too.”

  Her throat tightened and a spasm of fury shook her when she thought about the night Perry Nelson had burst into her little world and blasted it to bits. Tom set down his mug, slid closer and placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “They had to remove him from the courtroom a couple of times while I was testifying because he kept shouting at me,” Rachel said. “He even tried to get at me once.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Tom squeezed her shoulder.

  His touch felt comforting and she didn’t pull away. “Then when the verdict came in, not guilty by reason of insanity, he looked around at me and laughed and gave me the finger. And he told me that when he got out of the hospital he’d come after me and finish what he started. I guess I thought I could hide in the country and be safe forever. But he knows where I am. I got a letter from him a few days ago. It wasn’t signed, and it didn’t have his fingerprints on it, but I know it came from him.”

  “He’s locked up, right?” Tom said. “He won’t be out anytime soon.”

  “He’s already trying to get unsupervised weekends outside the hospital, and his doctors are supporting him.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Tom said. “Just proves my theory that psychiatrists are the craziest people on the planet. But the court can stop it, Rachel. In cases like that, the doctors can’t act on their own.”

  She nodded. “He has a hearing on his petition in a couple of weeks. I’m going to be there to testify if the judge will allow it. I can’t let him get out.”

  “Listen,” Tom said. “Tomorrow I want you to write down all the information I need to keep tabs on this s.o.b.” He rubbed her back gently. “I won’t let him get anywhere near you.”