by DL Atha
How weak they were and how strong I was.
I dreamed of Joel and of blood. It dripped down his arms, hot and wet, and I lapped it up, shredding the skin from his body with my teeth, and it was only the rising of the sun that chased me from his carcass.
Chapter 7
Realization came slowly, I was disoriented at first. Then piece by piece, small sensations began to make sense. The velvety material under my cheek was my bedspread, the rhythmic creek and moan was the mantra of the aged ceiling fan. I flexed my feet and muscles ached in protest from the assault of my dreams.
The sun had reached the windowsill of my room and cast golden rays across my bed. Forcibly, I shut my eyes until I grew accustomed to its brightness and could stand to open them again.
I stumbled into the kitchen to escape the light, but the sun chased me. I didn’t mind so much once I’d found the coffee. Laying thankful hands on the coffeepot, the sounds of percolation reassured me that within a half-hour, I’d be feeling much better. The whiskey sat on the desk where I’d left it last night. I eyed it warily but I was grateful it had been here. I’d slept, at least a little.
The vampire was not with me now. I searched the insides of my mind, listening for the awful roar from last night, and could find no trace of him. I whispered his name aloud, focused and got nothing. It was as if he’d simply ceased to be. I was thankful for the reprieve, appreciative that he couldn’t reach me in the daylight.
Two cups of coffee and a warm shower later, my mom’s truck and I were twisting down the road. The sun was well into the morning sky by now, but on this side of the mountains, it was hard to tell. Mists still shrouded the small domed peaks that rose from the icy waters of Sitka Sound and reached long gray arms out across the expanse of water. Some of the gray misty fingertips reached the mainland and some didn’t.
The town of Sitka lay ahead, the harbor showing the most activity this morning as a few diehard men and women readied their boats for the day. In the winter, Sitka’s population decreased by nearly two thirds, and no cruise boats bobbed on their anchors. Not quite the ghost town like the other villages of southeast Alaska, enough hardy locals gathered in the restaurants around the square to keep them open year round.
I considered pulling in for another cup of coffee but decided against it. I was simply not in the mood to be stared at this morning. Word gets around in a small town, and I had no doubt that my history had been discussed and dissected until the rumors were far worse than the reality had been. Not that the reality hadn’t been bad enough, but still, speculation never makes a reputation any better.
Instead, I aimed the nose of the truck towards the police station. I’d skipped a visit yesterday and was now determined to get back to annoying the cops until Mom’s case was reopened. I was going to get justice for my mother the legal way, I had decided after last night’s run in with the vampire.
Pulling in a big breath of air for courage, I opened the door with an authority that I did not feel and walked up to the receptionist. Usually she behaved like a stone wall I had to bust through every time I came and the look on her face told me today wasn’t going to be any different. With a land-line phone in one hand and a cell phone in the other, I was a distraction she clearly didn’t want around. The glow of the social media page cast a frightening shade of pallor on her skin as I stopped in front of her desk.
“I’d like to speak to the detective please,” I said as resolutely as I knew how.
Not bothering to hide her irritation, she pointed towards a short row of chairs before punching a button on the desk phone. “She’s here…” Her voice undulated like the little girl’s in Poltergeist. Laughing momentarily at something from the other end of the phone, she tried to smooth the smile off her face but didn’t quite make it. “He’ll see you in a sec,” she said, none too politely.
I rolled my eyes, and thankfully, she went back to her cell phone. No doubt I’d just made a bunch of her online friends hit the ‘like’ buttons in a resounding applause of hilarity.
A round clock ticked the seconds off loudly as I searched for a tolerable position in a typically uncomfortable waiting room chair. After twenty minutes and twenty-three seconds of listening as my life was marked off, I found myself squeezing the bridge of my nose. The coffeepot tempted me from the corner, but I found it empty, the last few drops sizzling on the glass bottom. I started to make more, but the receptionist tsked me from her desk.
“Ma’am. The coffee’s for the police officers. Please take a seat. Detective Scott is working on something very important, but he said he’d take a break in a few minutes to talk to you—again.”
“You’re coff…” I started to point out that it was beginning to burn, but she cut me off again, pointing to the chairs. Like a scolded child, I resumed my waiting.
Nearly an hour of my life marched away to the rhythm of that blasted clock as I waited. Mentally, I prepared for another hour when the door to the detective’s office swung open, revealing a small, neat office on the other side. The detective, a former classmate of mine, motioned me in, his cell phone held to his ear by his shoulder. I took the offered seat as he finished up his conversation.
Kendrick Scott was as handsome as ever. And just as arrogant. He’d been that way as long as I could remember. Some people would say it was for good reason. Track star, football star, basketball star… I could go on, but what’d be the point?
Naturally, Kendrick could have gone anywhere and done anything with his classically all-American looks. Tall, fair-haired with a smile that could light up a room from the doorway, he was as handsome as he was successful. But what made him the town hero is that all though he could have gone anywhere and done anything, Kendrick had stayed right here in Sitka to protect and serve the town that had loved him from the beginning.
I guess I could see his charm. If I looked real hard.
“Tamara, how are you?” he asked, clicking his phone shut as I perched precariously on the lip of one of his office chairs. He smiled broadly at me, and if I didn’t know him better, I would have at least considered that the grin was genuine. Wow, he was good.
“Well, I’m okay, I guess. I’m sure you know why I’m here. I wanted to check on Mom’s case again.”
He sighed, leaning forward heavily on his elbows. “Tamara, you know I closed the case. I’ve told you every time you’ve stopped by that I found nothing out of the ordinary.”
“I know, Kendrick, but I read the report again the day before yesterday, and I keep thinking about that set of extra footprints one of the officers mentioned in his report. I hadn’t seen that particular officer’s report before, and I’ve seen several reports with Mom’s footprints mentioned, but the other set they found near the point of her fall was new information to me. I just wanted to see what you thought about those since we hadn’t specifically talked about them.”
I watched him carefully as he shook his head ever so slightly. I might not have noticed the movement if I hadn’t been so hyper vigilant. He was thinking of the best way to placate me. He’d never once entertained the idea that there could have been foul play.
Rubbing his short hair backwards, he leaned back, crossing his arms behind his head. “I really didn’t think much about those footprints at all. This is Alaska. People fly in from every part of the globe to hike in these mountains. There are thousands of footprints up there. Do you want me to trace them all?” He smiled to lighten the harshness of his words. It didn’t help.
“Mom was a good hiker. I just can’t see her falling. She knew the terrain and she was so careful…”
He waved me down before I could really get started. “Your mom was getting older. You hadn’t seen her in years, Tam,” he said, calling me by my junior-high nickname.
A few tears welled up in my eyes quicker than I could recover, and even as I looked away, I knew he’d seen them.
He took a deep breath, raising his hands in the air and pressing them towards me as if he could force my sadness back
into my chest. “Look, I’m not trying to pull a guilt card or anything, but, Tam, she really was starting to age. She didn’t get around like she did when you left. I’m sure she was looking for herbs or something, you know, like that and got a little too close to the edge.”
“I understand that she was getting older, Kendrick, but the footsteps were right behind hers. My ex-husband is a violent man. Couldn’t you at least consider the possibility that there might’ve been foul play?”
He waved me off again, indicating that he was tired of the conversation. His patience got thinner each time I stopped in. “We did. Of course we did. We looked at it from every angle,” he answered. “You’re going to have to get past this, Tamara. Let it go.”
He tugged at one of his nails, polishing it on his jeans before he picked up his cell phone, obviously bored and hoping I’d take the hint to leave.
“The footprints were right behind hers!” I was angry and the words ripped from my throat.
Silence hung in the air, and I considered that he might tell me to get out. I could tell he was considering the same thing.
Calmer, I began again. “The report said that there were skid marks before she ever got to the point of fall. They wrote it off that she was trying to catch herself. The footprints behind hers had a wider stance. I think the skid marks mean she was being pushed, and the wider stance was because that person was pushing her.”
“That’s a good theory, and I guess you think we weren’t smart enough to think about that. But we did. There were no witnesses, and her body was there for a couple of days. Lots of hikers probably walked right past her and didn’t even know she was down there. There’s probably a picture out there somewhere of some hiker smiling from the place of her fall. You know, they’re waving ‘hi’ to someone back home while her body is right below them. Her footprints obviously matched the shoes she had on her feet. But the other footprints matched back to shoeprints from the most common discount store in the country. Meaning everyone’s got some. I’ve got nothing to go on, even if I did believe it.” Holding up one finger in the air, he continued, “Which I don’t.”
“You could check Joel’s shoes?” I ventured.
“No probable cause. No judge in their right mind would give us a search warrant. Tam…” He paused, his lips still pursed together, for what seemed like an eternity, while he decided whether or not to finish what he had started to say. “Besides, his ferry ticket proves he didn’t arrive until two days ago.”
Sensing something bad was coming by the look on his face, I stiffened. “What?”
Drawing in a deep breath, he looked at me firmly in the eyes. “About Joel, he dropped in a couple of days ago. Said he was moving here because he’d fallen in love, not just with you, but with Sitka and wanted to come back. He hopes he can fix things with you someday so he just wanted to drop in and make sure I knew he was here. He came in on the ferry two days back, and as it turns out, he’s already got a job on the mountain clearing logs. He starts tomorrow and he said…”
Squirming before he ever got the words out, I cut him off. “And you don’t see anything odd about that? He always said he’d kill me and anyone I loved if I left, Kendrick! Now he’s here to try to ‘win me back.’ Yeah, right! Don’t you see a pattern in all of this?”
“I see a man who came here voluntarily to say he was afraid there might be trouble. I see a man who wanted to let me know he had a history with you. Tam, lots of people say things when they’re angry. I bet you’ve said some pretty incriminating crap yourself in the past. I know you two go way back, but he’s got no criminal record. A few domestic dispute calls, where I might add, you insisted to the cops that you were fine, but that’s it. I’ve done my homework on him. So unless you can tell me something that I don’t already know, this case will remain closed.”
“What I see is a first-class manipulator and a cop too damn stupid to notice. And why the hell didn’t you mention to me before now that you knew Joel was here? You would think you could’ve shown me the common courtesy of letting me know that the man I’ve been running from for eight months was here. As it was, I found out when he called me last night and scared the hell out of me.” My chair slid backwards as I flew up to my feet.
“Hey, Tam…”
His voice held that subtle hint of sarcasm mingled with righteous indignation. You can’t learn to talk that way; you have to be born with the ability. I hesitated, my purse still oscillating on my shoulder from where I’d turned away from him.
“I’ll be watching Joel. And I’ll be watching you too,” he said to my backside. “Just so you know.”
I hated the way he said my nickname. I’d hated it ten years ago, and I hated it now.
“Well, I guess you can watch me die, Kendrick, because that’s what’s going to happen as long as dumbasses like you are the ones protecting me. And by the way, don’t call me ‘Tam.’ We’re not friends.”
Without looking back, I pulled his door shut, smiled my best “I’m not flustered” smile to his secretary. “You might want to get that coffeepot off. It’s still burning, you know,” I said as I walked past the sizzling machine.
I bolted once I was out of the building, my legs pumping furiously as I rushed from the downtown and up the side streets. I’d made this same run a thousand times as a kid. I didn’t have to think at all, my mind tracing the well-known course. My lungs were on fire and my muscles trembling by the time I reached the old Russian cemetery that sat just a few blocks from downtown.
It was on oasis, a magical place almost, sitting a stone’s throw from civilization and yet so isolated as to feel remote. I’d never failed to walk in the gate and not feel as though I had crossed into some other world or another time.
The cemetery crested the pinnacle of a hill, and inside the gates, the land rose and fell with numerous smaller valleys and summits. Intertwining trails of green moss wound their way through tombstones whose age could only be guessed so worn were the inscriptions. The graveyard fencing was twisted topsy-turvy from the tumultuous tremblings of the ground and barely managed to stay upright. Stone angels guarded the grounds silently, their faces eroded with time and rain. I passed several as I entered, smiling at each one in turn. I’d named most of them at one point and I remembered them almost as fondly as my childhood friends.
Above me, the Sitka spruce trees rose a hundred feet into the air, their limbs stretching out to eclipse the light that sifted downwards. The deep green of forest ferns sheltered my feet as I walked, working in concert with the moss to subdue my footsteps. I followed a trail that twisted its way around both new graves and old until I came to my father’s.
Burial sites don’t hold up well in Alaska; the ground heaves and twists, pushing upwards unevenly, making it difficult to tell the old from the new. The stones crack and fall apart, creating their own kind of artwork as the jade moss and vinery overtake the broken pieces. That was part of the cemetery’s magic. Here the past and present intertwined together so that my dad’s grave blended into the mystery of the landscape, appearing neither old nor new. Instead, Dad seemed to change with time, to breathe through the earth that encased him, pushing it up in waves all throughout the cemetery.
It had been a comfort as a child as though he were with me still. I paused to whisper a hello to him. I didn’t stay long, pressing my fingers to my lips and placing them to his weathered stone. We’d made peace years ago.
My grandmother’s plot rested over the next rise, right next to my mother’s. In the ten years I’d been gone, the northern slope of grand-mom’s grave had risen nearly four inches above the southern slope. Moss was encroaching on her headstone, and the Orthodox cross at the head of her grave was leaning dangerously, as most around the cemetery were. I knew Mom’s would be looking the same soon. She wouldn’t mind; she’d appreciate the beauty of blending into the surroundings.
I settled down onto the small bench I’d placed here from my meager funds when I’d returned home. It’d been my first pu
rchase. Resting in the quietness of the cemetery with no one watching, I let the fear that had threatened to control me at the police station reach the rest of my body. While my heart palpitated, my hands trembled, and although I cried slightly, I bit my lip. This place of rest was too beautiful to disturb with my tears.
I’d like to say that I’d become fearless in the days since my amazing escape into the Seattle night, but that would be a complete lie. Joel scared the living crap out of me. I couldn’t be angry with the police really. Joel could lie to the devil himself. Combine tall, dark and handsome with charm, add an overwhelming dollop of badness, and you got Joel.
I was dissecting Kendrick’s words when a voice disturbed my reverie. Looking up as my name was called, I saw Peter coming towards me. He climbed a small hill, quickly, and then crisscrossed another trail to reach my mom’s resting spot, walking through the rotting foliage of summer rather than sticking to the trail.
“Tam, I thought I saw you racing up the street. Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m okay,” I lied, wiping an errant tear from my cheek. Graciously, he looked away to give me some privacy. “Just some… um… unfinished business with the police about Mom. And some groceries. Thought I’d kill two birds with one stone, and then I ended up here.” I smiled, pretending nothing was wrong.
“I assume it wasn’t the produce that sent you careening up here. Something go wrong with the police?”
I shrugged. “Our great classmate, the cop, is a serious screw-up,” I muttered.
“Come on, Tam. That’s not fair,” Peter admonished gently.
I nodded, knowing he was right, but I refused to take back the words.
“So you really do think Lena was murdered. You were serious about Joel last night,,” he stated quietly.
I sighed, my eyes closing to squeeze out a few more tears before I responded. “I know most everyone thinks I’m insane.” I looked down at the ground. It was embarrassing being the town crazy. I’m not sure how my grandmother dealt with it all those years.