“Nobody out here to see her who hasn’t already seen it all.” Buck didn’t look back at the car. “Look, we’re going to have to drive out of here to get a signal to call this in.”
“You go. I’ll stay here to secure the scene.” Michael fished his house key out of his pocket and handed it to Buck. “You can go in my house and call on my landline if you can’t pick up a signal on your cell phone. Or you can use the radio in my cruiser. Better tell Betty Jean to call Justin.”
“His hearse won’t get through that road,” Buck said.
“Right. Guess you’ll have to wait and let him ride down here with you in your truck.”
“My truck?” Buck swallowed hard, realizing what that meant. The body was going to have to be carried out some way. “We should have come down in your old rust bucket.”
“The keys are in it.” Michael shrugged. “I haven’t driven it for a few days, but if you can get it started, you can drive it down here if you want.”
“What’ll I tell old cameraman? He sees Justin, we won’t be able to keep him away.”
“He won’t want to take a picture of this.”
“That man would take a picture of anything,” Buck grumbled as he got in his truck and slammed the door extra hard. He turned around and was gone up the rough road.
The sound of the truck faded away and left nothing but the buzzing of flies in Michael’s ears. He studied the ground as he walked in half circles behind the car. Jasper seemed to know it wasn’t the time to chase squirrels or dig for moles and followed close behind him.
Michael doubted he’d find anything, but he needed to be moving. Doing something. He couldn’t bear the thought of Julie Lynne in that car. Because of him.
He’d made his fourth sweep of the area without finding anything more interesting than a garter snake slipping out of sight in the weeds when he heard someone coming. Walking. He wasn’t surprised when Hank came around the curve into sight. Michael stopped and waited.
Rivulets of sweat were running down Hank’s face and his shirt was plastered to his back. “It’s hotter than blue blazes out here.” He stopped in front of Michael and pulled his shirttail up to wipe his face. It took him a minute to find a spot dry enough. “And a lot farther back here than Buck said.”
“He tell you to walk in?”
“Yeah.” Hank dabbed at his face again, but he couldn’t keep ahead of the sweat. “Said you’d found Jackson’s car and that it wasn’t far. A stroll in the park, he said. Buck has a great sense of humor.” Hank looked toward the car. “What is that awful smell?”
“Julie Lynne Hoskins.”
All the color drained out of the editor’s face and his eyes rolled back in his head. He made a strange noise as he wobbled up and back on his feet like one of those round-bottomed kids’ toys.
“Easy, Hank.” Michael grabbed the man’s arms, but no way could he keep him on his feet. He lowered him to a sitting position on the ground. He wished for the smelling salts in his emergency kit back in his cruiser, but he’d have to make do without them. “Put your head down between your knees and breathe in and out. You better not be having a heart attack.”
Hank did as he was told. After a few minutes of slow breaths, he raised his head. Color had flooded back to his face. “I’m all right, Michael. It’s just . . .” Hank peeped toward the car and went pale again. “It’s just that I can’t keep from thinking that could be Rebecca Ann.”
“But it’s not.” Michael made his voice firm. “Rebecca Ann is safe, away from it all. So get hold of yourself.”
“You’re right, Michael. Sorry.” Hank fingered the camera strap around his neck. “I guess I should take some pictures.”
“Not until we get the body covered.”
Hank didn’t argue. He stayed where he was on the ground and looked around. “Do you think Jackson walked out of here?”
“I don’t know. I’m guessing he did.”
“All the way out to the road?” Hank frowned. “Then what? He thumb a ride with some local yokel? And why would he pick this place? You think he knew you lived down here?”
“Yeah, I think he did.” Michael didn’t bother answering Hank’s other questions, but he had to believe if Jackson walked out of here back to the highway, somebody would have seen him. Could be he had tied a boat up somewhere before bringing the car down to the lake. The man seemed fast and organized.
“Do you think he’s got somebody helping him?” Hank went on with his questions. “It just seems like all this gets weirder and weirder. I know that Eagleton detective didn’t think Rebecca Ann knew what she was talking about when she said the man who gave her the pictures didn’t look like the picture of Jackson in the paper, but the girl is a lot like me. She notices things and remembers faces.”
“Whitt will be here. You can tell him what you think, but psycho killers are generally loners.”
Hank didn’t act as if he heard him. Instead he kept talking as though trying to figure it all out. “And now he had to get out of here and it’s a long walk back to civilization. Somebody would have seen him.”
“Maybe he had a canoe or kayak tied on top of the car.”
“The Jackson we saw on the bridge?” Hank turned disbelieving eyes on Michael. “You think that guy would even fit in a kayak?”
“Who knows? The man is full of surprises.” Michael looked back at the lake as if it might reveal some unseen clue. “He didn’t look like somebody who could kill three women and take those posed pictures either.”
“That’s the truth. And then figure out how to get those pictures into the hands of a newspaperman.” Hank wiped the sweat off his forehead. “It’s like we’re talking about two different people or maybe a half-dozen different people. You think this Jackson has a multiple personality? That Dr. Colson said something about that when he called me.”
“That might explain it.” Michael dropped down beside Hank. Jasper shoved up against him. He’d taken a dip in the lake, and Michael welcomed his wet dog smell. He looked over at Hank. “Do you really hate dogs?”
“Sometimes I wonder about you, Mike.” Hank frowned at him. “What difference does it make whether I like dogs or not?”
“None. None at all. Just curious.”
“But better than talking about dead women, I guess.” Hank blew out a long breath. “So if you want to talk dogs, we can talk about dogs.”
“I like dogs.” Michael ran his hand down Jasper’s back.
“You must have never got bit.” Hank didn’t wait for Michael to say anything. “Well, I have. Used to get bit all the time when I delivered papers for my granddaddy back when I was a kid. Anyway, this one little dog lay in wait for me every time and then did his best to grab the back of my leg. I wanted to quit taking the paper to that house, but Granddad said it was just a little dog and all I had to do was kick it a few times and it wouldn’t bother me anymore.”
“Did it work?”
“I almost threw my leg out of joint kicking at that dog, but he was a quick little rascal. I never landed the first kick.” Hank was silent for a minute before he went on. “Then one day I got there and somebody had run over the dog. Flattened him right out in front of the gate to his yard. You’d have thought I’d be glad, but it was a funny thing. Instead, I got all teary-eyed and wished the scoundrel was biting my ankle. People are weird, aren’t they?”
“Can’t argue with that.”
Hank was quiet as he plucked some grass blades. “You asked your question. Now I get to ask mine.”
“Fair enough.”
The editor shifted on the ground like a stick had started poking his rear. He kept his gaze on the ground. “You go to church, Mike. You even sort of date a preacher woman. Tell me.” Hank looked over at Michael and then quickly back at the grass in his hand. “You think God does this kind of thing to punish us? You know, because we skip church to go to a ballgame or whatever. Or get too busy to pray and give the Big Guy enough credit for the good things in our lives.”
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br /> “No.”
Hank looked at him again. “Is that all you’ve got to say? No. I need more than that.”
“I’m no theologian, Hank. You’d do better asking Karen.”
“Karen’s not here. You are.” Hank pointed toward the car. “And she is. Very dead maybe because I put her name in the paper.”
“Or because I pulled a jumper back from the brink.”
“So has God got something against us? You and me.”
Michael wanted to just say no again. Leave it at that. Some things couldn’t be explained, but Hank was staring at him, expecting more. More than Michael knew to give. “I don’t think so, Hank. Bad things happen. Sometimes because they just happen. And sometimes like this.” Michael motioned toward the car. “Because of somebody evil. Some kind of monster.”
“Who’d have ever thought we’d have to worry about that kind of monster here in Hidden Springs?”
“Not me.”
“But God could stop it, couldn’t he?”
“Maybe he’s depending on us to do that. To stop it. Good over evil.”
“You think we’re good enough?” Hank picked up a rock and scraped out a little hole in the ground beside them.
“With the Lord’s help, maybe. At least I hope so. I sincerely hope so.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Hank gave the rock a pitch. “Me too.”
They sat there then without saying anything as bees buzzed past them and a mockingbird ran through his songs in a tree behind them. The sun climbed higher in the sky and waves of heat rose up off the car. Michael thought he should go check for marks that might indicate a canoe had been tied on top of the car, but he didn’t get up. He stayed there between Hank and Jasper and took shallow breaths that kept the smell from being as bad.
After a long time, Hank spoke. “Where do you think he sent the pictures?”
27
The sun was straight up when Buck brought Justin in. He took a quick look through the window at the body and agreed with Buck and Michael they should wait for the Eagleton homicide people to get there. Once would be enough to open that door.
“It’s not like there’s any question as to cause of death,” Justin said. “Gunshot to the head. Death instantaneous.”
“How long ago?” Michael asked.
“Hard to say,” Justin hedged.
Michael didn’t know why he asked. The fact was, Justin would have no idea. The only reason he was coroner was because he was the local funeral director. The people of Hidden Springs thought it logical to vote him in as coroner since he’d be the one collecting the bodies for the funeral home anyway. Plus, they figured he was the only man in town who didn’t mind looking at dead people, but Michael knew better. He’d been beside Justin at enough accident scenes to know the only time the man didn’t mind being coroner was when he could say a person died of natural causes in his or her sleep.
People who died of unnatural causes made Justin nervous, and poor Julie Lynne’s very unnatural death made him very nervous. While they waited for Whitt to show up, the tall, thin man wore a path in the grass and weeds in front of the tree where Hank and Michael slouched in the shade. Buck had gone back out to the highway to usher in the Eagleton troops. It was his truck, and he wasn’t about to stay anywhere close to that car if he could come up with a reason not to.
Michael slapped at a mosquito and wondered if drinking lake water really made a person as sick as the health people warned. He asked Hank what he thought.
Hank kept his eyes shut and didn’t act as if he heard him. Michael studied Hank’s chest. His breathing didn’t appear labored, but something was wrong with the man. Asking questions about God and not once pulling out his little notebook and pen to jot down any details for next week’s Gazette. He hadn’t even taken a picture of the car.
Justin stopped pacing in front of them to look at Hank. “Is he all right?”
“Right as rain.” Hank spoke without opening his eyes. “And they say it’ll make you puke your guts out.”
“What is he talking about?” Justin frowned.
“Lake water,” Michael said. “It makes you wonder how Civil War soldiers made it. They drank anything wet wherever they could find it. Ponds. Rivers. Puddles.”
“They didn’t all make it. They died like flies. History books say more from disease than cannon fire.” Justin glanced at Michael and then back at Hank. “He doesn’t look right as rain, but who could be right as anything with what’s been happening around here lately?”
Justin started in on how Hidden Springs had changed as he took off pacing in circles again. He never used to have to worry about putting people in body bags. He just laid them out on a stretcher with a cover over them and carried them to the funeral home. People died the way they were supposed to, from heart attacks or pneumonia. Nobody went around shooting anybody else unless it was a hunting accident or something. Accidents happened. That was for sure. He’d seen his share of bad things, of course, but those tragedies weren’t something a person needed to dwell on. At any rate, there wasn’t all this crime.
Didn’t Michael think he should do something about it? After all, he was the sheriff’s right-hand man, wasn’t he? Everybody knew, Justin grumbled, that Alvin didn’t have any experience with this sort of thing. He had started out as sheriff not long after Justin took over as coroner. And anyway, how could this car get past Michael’s house without Michael noticing it? Weren’t law officers trained to notice things?
The questions circled with Justin, and it seemed natural when the buzzards appeared overhead to drift in wide, looping circles above their head and then float in a lazy eight on the wind to fly over Michael’s place. That made Michael remember the dead animal or fish he needed to locate and get out of his yard.
Justin went on walking and talking. Hank sat with his eyes closed. Michael had never seen him quiet for so long. But then, wasn’t he sitting there like a lump, doing nothing too? Maybe he should try to come up with answers to some of the questions, whether Justin’s or his own, and start acting like a policeman instead of cowering in his patch of shade as if he’d never seen a dead person. Even in Hidden Springs, dead people weren’t all that uncommon, in spite of what Justin was saying.
Hadn’t Michael been there when they found Ernest Callahan in his shack of a house after the mailman finally reported the old man hadn’t collected his mail for days? Justin had been there too, but that must be one of those things the coroner didn’t like to dwell on. Death visited Hidden Springs the same as any other place, and Michael looked in its face all the time. He took pictures of traffic fatalities for the insurance companies, usually victims he knew. Murder had even come to call on Hidden Springs last year.
But Michael had never felt as if the person was dead because of him. Julie Lynne was dead because Michael took those ladies to her play. Plain and simple. Or maybe not so simple.
He had never been a person to dance away from the truth. He didn’t now, and there was no reason for him to shy away from his duties as a law officer. He should have at least brought his camera with him to take pictures of the scene for the report he’d have to file.
He poked the man beside him. “Hank, can I use your camera?”
Without opening his eyes, Hank pulled the camera loop from around his neck and handed the camera to Michael. “Have at it. I can’t focus on that car right now.”
“I’ll get the county to buy you a new memory card.”
“In our lifetime?”
“Not sure about that, but maybe you can leave it to your heirs.” At least the editor was showing some signs of his old self. “Why don’t you walk on back to your car and go home? You need to get some sleep.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing all afternoon? You don’t think I’ve been keeping my eyes closed because I’m too chicken to look, do you?”
“No, not at all.”
Hank eased open one eye to look at Michael. “It’s my job to be here, Michael, the same as it is yours.”
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“Neither one of us doing much of a job then, are we?” Michael pushed up off the ground.
“Shut up and go take pictures.” When Michael started away, he added, “Hold the camera still or they’ll all be fuzzy.”
Michael tried not to see Julie Lynne as he focused the shots. It wasn’t all that hard, since the body in the car bore little resemblance to the woman he’d seen last week.
He was focusing in on the lake water licking the front tires of the car when Buck’s truck burst out of the bushes into the little clearing. Buck braked to a sudden stop, bouncing Whitt and Chekowski forward on the seat beside him. Michael stayed where he was and looked back at the lake.
The water was a lighter blue now than earlier, as if the bright afternoon sun had faded its color. A bird flew down to kiss the surface of the lake a couple of times before it rose back up into the sky. Michael raised the camera up and focused on the water touching against the white blue of the sky on the horizon. He clicked the shutter a few times, then slipped the memory card out and into his shirt pocket. Hank would be out of luck if he didn’t carry another memory card with him.
He pulled in a breath and squared his shoulders. Time to go hear what Whitt had to say.
“I think we are officially in the boondocks, Chekowski.” Whitt put his hands on his hips and looked around.
“It’s definitely country, sir.” Chekowski took a peek toward the car as the color drained from her face.
“Well, let’s look at what you’ve got, Deputy.” Whitt acknowledged Michael’s presence for the first time. The detective moved toward the car and peered in the window for a long minute. “Not a pretty sight.”
Michael watched him without saying anything. Instead he kept his eye on Chekowski, who had gone even paler. She looked ready to faint.
Whitt straightened up. “You or any of these other country bumpkins touch the car, Keane?”
“No. We thought you might want to bring in techs.”
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