Legacy of Masks

by Sallie Bissell

  “I was cleaning upstairs when I heard Bethany’s sister leave that message on your answering machine.” Sylvia kept her weapon aimed at Deke. “It came on so loud, I couldn’t help but hear it. Anyway, after that, I figured it was time to come up here and stop him once and for all.”

  Mary remembered she’d seen the girl getting in her Jeep, alone, when she’d returned to her office, earlier that night. “So you heard that and figured you’d just come up here and shoot Deke Keener?”

  “No, ma’am,” Sylvia replied, her tone sardonic. “Mr. Keener and I go back a long, long way.”

  Suddenly Mary recalled her conversation with Sylvia about Bethany and the Keener Kat photo from which both little girls grinned. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “He did it to you, too, didn’t he?”

  Sylvia nodded. “Me and Bethany both, together, at the same time. Bought me the same pretty things he bought her. Then one day he stopped with me. Told me I’d grown tits and zits and that I wasn’t cute anymore. All those presents and pretty things just dried up like an old cow.”

  Mary said, “But what did that have to do with Bethany? I thought she was your friend.”

  “She was. She wanted to stop Coach Keener bad, before he took up with her little sister. She had these tapes of them together. She was going to give them to the sheriff, and then make me come and testify in court, about all that happened between the three of us.”

  “And you didn’t want to be embarrassed,” said Mary.

  “I could’ve stood that.” Sylvia’s eyes glittered with tears. “My daddy would have whipped me good, but I’d have gotten over it.”

  “Then what was it?” pressed Mary.

  “If Bethany had told, Ridge wouldn’t have cared. And even if he had, Bethany was thin and pretty. She was goin’ off to college. She could’ve gotten another boyfriend just by snapping her fingers. Ruben’s all I’ve got, Ms. Crow. He’s all I’ll ever have. If he ever found out about them tapes, he’d leave me in a heartbeat.”

  “So you sneaked into Bethany’s house and killed her?”

  “I had a key she’d given me way back in the seventh grade. I went there to give her a good talkin’ to. I tried to explain about me and Ruben, but she wouldn’t listen. She made me so mad, I done took that tomahawk from her bookshelf and hit her on the head.”

  Death from head trauma, caused by a single blow to the anterior fontanel by a blunt instrument. Mary exhaled the breath she’d been holding. In North Carolina mountain speak, Sylvia Goins had just confirmed Bethany Daws’ official autopsy report.

  “I never meant to kill her.” Sylvia’s voice trembled. “I just wanted to scare her . . . to make her forget about those tapes. I wanted . . .”

  The crack of a rifle cut the girl off in mid-sentence. Mary grabbed the child who was standing behind her, then watched, horrified, as Sylvia Goins’s knees buckled. The rifle dropped from the big girl’s hands and she crashed forward, her head thudding sickly on the rocky lip of the small cave. To her horror, Mary heard Deke laughing.

  “See, Mary? You’re not so smart after all. It’s just like I told you. I didn’t kill Bethany. The fatty did.”

  Mary turned to him, wanting to scream her outrage aloud, when an icy breeze gusted up. A low, throaty growl rattled around them and Deke’s face paled as a shadow fell over Mary and the little girl. She looked to see what was emerging from the forest, when she felt a rush of cold air. A dark shape, seemingly more noise than substance, roared past her. She pushed Avis to the ground and fell on top of her, tensing her body for the deadly report of Deke’s rifle. Instead, the clearing echoed with one long horrific scream. It sounded like someone having their heart torn from their body.

  Terrified, she forced herself to look up, to ready herself for what would certainly come next for her and the child. A huge, dark hulk was crouching over Keener. It lifted him up by his neck and shook him. Deke’s arms and legs hung loose, as if they were made of rags instead of flesh. Desperately Mary crawled toward her pistol. Trying to ignore the grunts of the creature as it dined on Deke, she snapped the safety off and took aim. She fired—once, twice, then a third time. For a moment the shadowy hulk remained on top of Deke, then, as if annoyed by a gnat, it lifted its head and looked straight at her.

  It was a bear. Not a small, brown, garbage-grubbing bear, but a monstrous, magnificent creature that was surely God’s own prototype for all bears. Its eyes gleamed like gold; its claws looked long enough to rake furrows in the land. Though bright blood dripped from its snout, it seemed to hold no malice toward her or the child.

  “It’s the mask!” Mary whispered as her gun hand began to shake. Frantically she tried again to pull the trigger, but her hand simply would not move. Twisting toward her, the creature rose on its hind legs. As it towered over her, she steeled herself for the lethal swipe of the claws that would kill her as surely as Deke’s bullet, but the beast just looked down at her. For a moment she felt that awesome gold gaze upon her face, then the bear lifted its head toward the sky. A single, ear-shattering roar came from its throat. Cringing, Mary closed her eyes, waiting for the beast to break her own bones, but nothing happened. When she opened her eyes a moment later, the bear was gone. Where a dark ursine shape had just seconds ago stood, she saw only a dark and luminous sky.

  For a moment, all she could do was lie there, shaking. At first she wondered if perhaps Deke had shot her seconds earlier and the bear had been some kind of totemic animal sent to take her into the afterlife. But she felt the Glock’s heavy, solid weight in her hand and realized she was still alive.

  “Stay here and don’t move,” she told the child, as she rushed over to where Sylvia Goins lay. She felt for a pulse in Sylvia’s neck, but she knew by the size of the hole in the middle of the girl’s chest that she would not find one. Already the gash in her head had quit bleeding as her eyes stared, unseeing. Mary shook her head. Though the ME would give Sylvia Goins and Bethany Daws very different causes of death, each had been killed by Deke Keener, years ago, when they were both just two little girls who hoped to have some fun on a softball team.

  She turned her attention to Deke. He lay unmoving, his arms and legs splayed like a doll’s. Though her senses told her that he’d been badly mauled by a bear, her brain balked at believing it. Monstrous bears with gold eyes simply didn’t appear from the woods, rip somebody to shreds, and then vanish without a trace.

  “He’s probably faking it,” she told herself aloud, her voice insubstantial and light. “God knows he fakes everything else.”

  She trained her gun on him and called to the little girl. “Avis? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” came a quivery little Southern drawl, polite even in distress. “I think so.”

  “If you can, honey, I want you to get up and come over here beside me.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Now I want you to grab on to my jacket and walk behind me. We’re going over to see what happened to Coach Keener. If he plays any tricks on us, I want you to run back into those woods and keep running, as fast as you can.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Thank God she’s calm, thought Mary. A hysterical child along with Deke and Sylvia and an imaginary bear would be more than I could handle. Slowly they inched forward. Part of her expected to find the worst gore imaginable—Keener’s chest ripped open, his throat torn out, a bloody, vicious death that would shock Hartsville to its core. Another part of her was equally convinced that the man would rise up, unharmed, and point his gun at them again. But, as they drew closer, Mary couldn’t believe what she saw. Keener’s clothes were not torn, his body bore not the slightest scratch, and he cradled his rifle in his arms tenderly, as a father might hold a child. Only the expression on his face denied the repose of his body. His eyes stared up into the night sky wild with naked fear, while his mouth twisted in a grimace of utter terror. It was an expression not meant for the living to see. Hastily she removed her blazer and covered Deke’s face before Avis had a chance to
look.

  “Did the bear kill him?” asked the little girl, accepting as only a child could the fact that a twelve-foot bear had killed Coach Keener without leaving a scratch on him.

  “I don’t know,” Mary told her shakily. “Come on, let’s have a look around.”

  Still clutching her pistol, Mary walked a slow, wide perimeter of the scene, Avis following behind her. For the sake of her own sanity, Mary needed to find some spoor of a bear: scat, a footprint, or bushes that a creature that size would have surely trampled in an attack. Instead, she found nothing beyond the neat single track she herself had made just a little while before. She shuddered. She’d tracked bear with Jonathan, had seen many bears penned up as sad little tourist attractions around Cherokee. Nothing indicated that one had been here tonight. As she stood, bewildered and thinking that there must be another explanation, Avis knelt beside Keener’s body.

  “Look at this!”

  The little girl was pointing at Deke’s chest. As Mary joined her to get a closer look, her heart skipped a beat. There was something caught in the fabric of his black sweater. She loosened it and held it in the palm of her hand. It was a bear claw, long as her finger, sharp as a razor, glittering like silver in the moonlight.

  “So did the bear kill him?” asked Avis again, her eyes wide and questioning.

  “I guess it did,” Mary whispered, looking in amazement at the lifeless body that bore not a scratch. Carefully she handed the bear claw to Avis. “You keep this. I have the feeling it will bring you very good luck.”

  Avis frowned. “But aren’t we disturbing a crime scene? Isn’t this evidence?”

  “It’s evidence, all right,” Mary replied, wanting to laugh at the little girl’s use of police lingo. “But I’m not sure what of.”

  Avis closed her hand around the claw, then looked solemnly up at her. “We probably shouldn’t talk about this, should we?”

  Mary started to agree that not speaking about the bear would be a good idea, then she realized that nobody would believe them anyway. They would think that Avis was just some goofy kid and she was a washed-up prosecutor whose one and only client had dropped dead on top of his own mountain. Hartsville excelled at believing the things they wanted to, and ignoring everything else. “You do what you think is best, Avis,” Mary said, as she holstered her gun. “I’ll leave it up to you.”

  44

  One Week Later

  “Hey, Mary! Wait up!”

  Mary Crow stood at the bottom of the hundred and five steps that led to the Pisgah County Courthouse, once again dressed in Deathwrap. A hot August sun beamed down upon her as a chorus of cicadas swelled, raspily presaging the beginning of autumn. As she turned to see who’d called her name, a familiar figure dodged a horde of sweating photographers also preparing to climb the courthouse steps.

  “Hi, Jerry. What’s up?” She noticed that Sheriff Cochran had dressed up today, exchanging his usual jeans and sport shirt for a coat and tie.

  He whisked up beside her and whispered in her ear. “Just got Keener’s report from Raleigh.”

  “And?”

  “They couldn’t find much more than Doc Kennedy. Deke’s heart was okay, but his cortisol levels were off the chart.”

  Mary frowned. For the past week Hartsville had been rocked by the deaths of Deke Keener and Sylvia Goins. Both Mary and Avis Martin had given statements to the fact that Sylvia had been killed by Keener, but everyone still speculated wildly about Keener’s death. His demise was attributed to everything from a heart attack to a Cherokee curse invoked by Mary herself. Even so, none of the wildest rumors came close to what she had privately told Jerry Cochran she’d witnessed that night. “Isn’t cortisol some kind of enzyme?”

  The sheriff nodded. “It floods your body when you’re under life-threatening stress.”

  “Like being eaten by a bear?” Mary recalled the shape that had mauled Keener like a rag doll.

  “Yeah. Of course being confronted at gunpoint with all your past sex crimes might spike your cortisol, too.”

  She smiled at the man who by all rights should be calling both her and Avis Martin insane, but who had not once raised a skeptical brow. “I guess it’s a toss-up, then. My bear or your Sylvia Goins.”

  “Whatever he saw, it scared him to death, although my money’s on the girl with a gun.”

  “But what about the bear claw?”

  Jerry shrugged. “Maybe Deke had it with him the whole time. Maybe it fell out of his pocket.”

  “His sweater had no pockets, Jerry,” she said for the hundredth time. “How could something have fallen out of his pants pocket and imbedded itself in the middle of his chest?”

  He looked at her, then started to laugh. “I don’t know, Ripley,” he said, using the nickname he’d given her after she’d given him her official, off-the-record report. “You’ll have to put it in your believe-it-or-not museum.”

  Mary sighed. Over the last week she and Jerry had pieced together what happened that night a dozen times. A police cruiser had responded to her 911 call, but had left after finding nobody home. Sylvia had driven her Jeep up one of the old logging roads on the north side of Deke’s mountain. She’d come to kill Keener; Keener was gunning for Avis Martin. All of it made a kind of warped sense until they got to the bear. They’d consulted forest rangers, the state game-and-fish commission, the head of the zoology department at nearby Western Carolina. Twelve-foot bears with golden eyes did not exist in the southern Appalachian mountains. Finally she’d given up and locked the whole incident away in the little “X” file inside her head. There was simply no explaining what had happened. “Let’s talk about something else,” she told Jerry, the memory of Deke’s final scream even now lifting the hairs on the back of her neck. “How come you’re so dressed up?”

  “Got to be ready to escort the prisoner one place or the other,” he replied. “Should the jury come back soon.”

  “God, I hope they do.”

  “You and Ravenel have done a hell of a job.”

  “I just hope we’ve done enough,” she said, twisting a button on her suit. “I’m feeling pretty edgy about this one.”

  They started trudging up the steps together. Although George Turpin had read both Mary’s and Avis’s statements about Sylvia Goins, the prosecutor had refused to alter or drop any of the charges against Ridge.

  “That boy’s been indicted,” Turpin told Ravenel. “That boy’s going to trial.”

  “But you have two sworn statements that another person committed the crime, plus Sylvia’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon,” argued Ravenel. “That’s prosecutorial misconduct.”

  “I’ve got a statement from opposing counsel and some little twit kid,” Turpin sneered. “It would be prosecutorial misconduct if I didn’t go to trial.”

  So three days ago, the trial had begun. After Ravenel’s motion to dismiss was denied, he shredded the state’s case with a brilliance that stunned her. Still, Mary had no real sense of which way the jury was leaning. Half seemed impressed by Ravenel’s reasoning, the other half just glowered at the handsome Cherokee boy who sat tall in his chair with his eyes straight ahead, his long ponytail brushing the shoulders of his elegant gray suit. Today Ravenel and Turpin were presenting their closing arguments. Soon the jury would decide Ridge’s fate.

  “So is it you or Ravenel today?” Jerry asked as they neared the Confederate statue.

  “It’s Ravenel’s case,” answered Mary. “I’m just the amateur sleuth. Just the same, though,” she said as more people rushed past them up the steps. “We’d better get going.”

  The house was, indeed, full. Both Ravenel and Turpin were already sitting at their desks; the courtroom was packed to the point that the sergeant-at-arms would admit no more spectators. Mary walked up the center aisle, smiling at Hugh Kavanagh, who’d come with young Turnipseed, nodding at Dana and Jen, who discreetly held hands in the fourth row. Bethany Daws’ parents sat behind Turpin; Avis Martin’s behind Ravenel. If R
idge had any relatives present, Mary did not see them. Opening the gate that allowed her on the other side of the bar, she took a seat between Ravenel and Ridge as the jury filed in.

  “How are you doing?” she whispered to the boy as they rose for Judge Wood.

  “I’m okay.” He looked at her with the same calmness he’d had ever since he’d walked out of Hugh’s barn. Though he’d lost weight in jail, his suit still fit his broad shoulders perfectly, and she’d noticed a number of women in the courtroom gazing at him with more than just his innocence or guilt in mind. “Will it be over soon?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Mary replied, again fighting a feeling of dread. “Very soon.”

  Barbara Wood took the bench; the trial resumed. George Turpin rose to present his closing arguments. Usually he played the back-slapping, tobacco-chewing country lawyer to the point of parody. Today was no different. He stood up, unbuttoned his coat to reveal red suspenders, and began rehashing his argument, point by point. Ridge Standingdeer had been Bethany Daws’ lover. Ridge’s fingerprints were in her room, his semen in her vagina. He sneaked into her bedroom, at night, on a regular basis. He wanted her to run away with him, but she wanted to go to college. When Bethany refused to do as he asked, Ridge flew into a rage and bashed her skull in with a tomahawk. If he couldn’t have her, nobody could. Turpin wound up with a high, emotional tone worthy of tent-revival preachers. “Now this young, sweet, beautiful girl lies in her grave, with only you to turn to. Not for spite. Not for revenge, but for the kind of justice her wretched, untimely death demands!”

  Mary’s heart sank as she watched jurors eleven and six wipe their eyes. Although Turpin had a case of dust and feathers, he’d done a hell of a job gluing it all together. Now it was up to Ravenel.

  “You ready?” she whispered to the man who sat beside her. She noticed that the only note he’d made about Turpin’s summation was a cartoon of a braying jackass, with “Turpin” lettered across his backside. She repressed a smile. Ravenel was one cocky bastard.