“Oh, that?” He lifted bony shoulders to shrug off the incident with his dad. “That was nothing. It’s all good.”
“Is it OK for you to be here right now?”
His eyes shot sparks. “Great Scott! Are you worried about me?”
“I'm not. And don't call me that.” I hadn’t carried the last name Scott for long, but it was a joke I’d heard too much.
Reed laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself, Morgan. It's just a common expression. It has nothing to do with you.”
Sure.
Reed loped along beside me. “It's just that I have to check in with my mom every day during vacations. If I don’t, she flips out and threatens to call Social Services for a child welfare check. Then the social services lady has to drive out from Montrose, and she hates it here. She says Birchardville is like a town God forgot, which is silly because God doesn't forget anything.”
“He forgets sin,” I pointed out.
Reed skidded to a stop. “Great Scott!” He exclaimed. “You know your theology.”
Why was I encouraging this kid?
“Smart, pretty, successful, and theologically sound.” He hopped from foot to foot. “Uncle Levi will be so impressed when I tell him.”
Again with the Uncle Levi. “Your mother’s brother or your dad’s?”
“My mom’s.” He jammed his hands into his pockets and bounced in place, most likely to keep warm.
A point in Uncle Levi’s favor that he wasn’t actually related by blood to the mustachioed man. Not that you could help who your siblings were. Or so I’d been told.
Reed jammed his hands further into his pockets and resumed forward momentum. “My mom hates your show. She says it reminds her too much of when—” He broke off and cleared his throat. “Anyway, Mom won’t come back to Birchardville anymore. Not since she split with Dad. But I come back here for holidays and stuff, and it’s great. I love Christmases here. We do a big Christmas Eve service at the church and then a party after at the Birchardville Store. On Christmas morning, Uncle Levi drives me down to the city and we spend the rest of the day with Mom.” He heaved a sigh. “I hate the city.”
“What city?”
He gaped down at me. “The City. New York City.”
Oh. No wonder he hadn't felt the need to clarify. “How can you hate New York City?”
He snorted. “Have you ever been?”
I shook my head. I’d always wanted to go. In the movies, New York always looked amazing at Christmas. Bustling sidewalks, street carolers, twinkle lights.
Reed glowered. “If you'd been, you’d understand.”
We had reached the top of the rise, and he veered left, skidding down a snow-powdered trail. “It's this way.”
I was glad he was with me. The path cut sharply back and to the left, meaning you really had to know where it was. I followed him down one slope and then up another. He pulled his sleeves over his palms and moved blackberry brambles out of the path, urging me to follow close behind. The snow made hiking treacherous, so I stepped directly in his booted footprints. “This is all overgrown because nobody really comes up here much. Of course, if I'd known you would be coming, I would have cleared all this out last week.”
I stared at the back of his fluffy head. Twenty-four hours ago, I hadn't known this kid existed. And yet if he’d known I was coming, he would have been out here in the cold cutting brambles.
The blind devotion of fans was both odd and deeply touching. Growing up, I’d felt invisible. Now I had a following of strangers who loved me devotedly and snapped up every scrap of information they could get their hands on. Some of them probably knew me better than my own neighbors did.
I doubt my actual neighbors knew my name. Though that wasn’t entirely their fault. I kept to myself; and because of my schedule, I didn’t often leave the house during daylight hours. They probably thought I was a vampire.
We’d reached a creek. Though partially crusted over with ice, it was still flowing toward the center. Reed stepped to a stone in the middle and straddled the creek on the far side. He pushed a hand out of his sleeve and extended it to me. Ignoring the hand, I hopped the stream and scrambled up the opposite bank.
Reed whistled through his teeth. “Smart, pretty, successful, theologically sound, and athletic.”
I stood at the top of the bank, my breaths rising in front of my face. Beyond the mist stood the old Roth homestead.
Ironically, unlike the clearing on Birchardville Hill, this actually looked like a murder site. The homestead was only two stories high, but it perched at the top of a knoll, looming above the surrounding clearing. A once-tall chimney crumbled into a partially caved-in roof. Windows, bare of panes, gazed with blank malevolence. The wooden siding somehow looked both soft and slick, as if it were in a constant state between wet and dry. What remained of the door leaned on its hinges.
This spot chilled me in a way the clearing on Birchardville Hill had not. The Roth Homestead had witnessed years of family horror leading up to one appalling afternoon when Ezra and Silas Roth had chased their father down the lane, through the graveyard, past the church, and up Birchardville Hill.
Axes gripped in sweat-slicked palms, they’d run him down as they would have tracked a wounded deer. By all accounts, they’d worked in wordless tandem to hack their father to death. This done, they stuffed him into a hollow tree and lit out for Boston.
The body hadn't been found for days.
A delicious shiver worked its way up my spine.
I stepped forward, my boots crunching against a thin layer of ice-crusted snow. Not until I was close to the house did the smell hit me—dank and moldering and wet. It must be unbearable in summer. I switched to mouth breathing. It didn’t help.
Reed hung back, shoulders hunched. He bounced on his toes—whether from cold or nervousness, I couldn’t tell. “You're not going in there, are you?”
I stepped onto the porch. The boards sloped under my boots. I eased back to the ground.
“Not today.” I tilted my head back. Skeletal tree branches clawed the crumbling eaves. The woods were in the process of reclaiming their own. “Have you ever been inside?”
Reed shifted uncomfortably. “All the kids in Birchardville go in at some point—on dares and stuff. Grant Conwell says he went upstairs and saw a skeleton smoking a pipe, but none of us believed him.”
“About going upstairs or about seeing a skeleton?”
“Both.” Reed stepped back. “Uncle Levi says it’s not safe. He says the house has lost its structural integrity and that nobody should go inside.”
Wise words. I’d like to meet this Uncle Levi. Unlikely, considering I'd only be here a few more days. Just long enough to get through the Johnson verdict and past Christmas.
Treading back to the edge of the clearing, I snapped a few pictures for the blog. Reed waited, bouncing on his toes. Annoyingly, my phone took longer than normal to accomplish these simple tasks, the screen displaying the spinning circle of doom.
This was silly. My phone wasn’t even that old. I slipped it into my pocket and inclined my head, calling Reed to heel.
His eyes lit up and he bounded ahead, tugging his sleeves over his hands and thrusting brambles out of the way. “Careful, Cap. It’s icy near the crick.”
“Cap?” I tilted an eyebrow at him. “As in Captain Morgan?” That was worse than Great Scott.
“Of course not.” He blinked, the picture of innocence.
“Sure.”
He bristled. “I mean Captain Scott as in Captain Robert Falcon Scott!”
I laughed, my breath rising in puffs. “Does that make you Lawrence Oates?”
Reed paused mid-stride, letting go of blackberry brambles and whipping his head around. He pulled himself to his full height. “Tom Crean,” he reported in dignified tones. “Tom Crean or nothing.”
I scoffed. “So you're saying you'd make it back from the South Pole alive.”
He bounced on his toes and whistled through his t
eeth. “Captain Morgan, you’re too good to be true. Smart, pretty, theologically sound, athletic, and well-versed in the Polar Explorers.”
I stepped around him. “I think knowing the Polar Explorers goes along with smart,” I said, annoyed that he’d put me on Scott’s expedition rather than Amundsen’s—or Shackleton’s, for that matter.
Reed skipped to catch up just as I released a handful of brambles. He swerved to avoid them, but they still caught against his jeans. He plucked gingerly and moved them aside, talking all the while. “The way I see it, the problem with Scott’s expedition wasn't improper preparation—”
“He tried to take horses to the South Pole.”
“They were Manchurian ponies, and hear me out. Scott’s main problem wasn't preparation, it was hubris.”
Hubris. Not a word you hear often in conversation, but one I used often on my show. I shouldn't be surprised to hear this kid spouting it. He was right too. “At least Amundsen and his men knew how to handle real cold. I mean, they’d grown up in Norway. Scott and his Brits were in over their heads.” I knew how they felt. Bobble hat or no bobble hat, I'd overestimated the amount of time I could be outdoors without feeling as though I might suffer the fate of my famous namesake and his doomed friends. Not that I was in danger of starving to death after eating my own boots, but I felt fairly certain that if I didn't get someplace warm soon, I'd likely freeze.
My second entrance to the Birchardville Store was heralded with even less fanfare than the first. Not only had the strip of jingle bells not been reattached, but the store itself was completely empty. No diners nursed coffees at the tables, and no one staffed the counter.
Reed let himself behind the bar and made me a cup of hot tea. I didn't remove my gloves until he set it in front of me. I wrapped my aching fingers around the mug and sighed as warmth seeped into my chilled bones. My hands shook as I lifted the mug. The liquid scorched my throat. I thought of those poor explorers who had died alone and cold in their tents without enough oil left to melt snow for a last hot drink.
My phone vibrated, reminding me that I'd entered a wireless hot spot. I pulled it from my pocket and discovered an e-mail from Leah containing summaries of the day’s correspondence. She added a brief line at the end informing me that the jury at the Johnson trial had been dismissed to deliberate.
My stomach swooped.
At his first trial, Johnson’s jury had deliberated for almost a week. I didn't think this second group would take that long. Not with Christmas looming. Within scant hours, the fresh verdict would be rendered. Johnson would return to death row, the media furor would die down, and all would return to normal. Or whatever counted as normal when a deranged murderer who’d read your book about his crimes hated you for writing it. A murderer who held grudges and threatened your life and, in concert with your crazed Internet stalker, pestered you until you hired a complete stranger to liaise with the police so you wouldn't have to think about it every single day.
I should have become a librarian.
Reed leaned across the counter. “Checking on the trial?”
It was pointless to ask how he knew. He listened to the show. He'd read my book. He knew all about the Johnson case. He likely knew as much about the first trial as I did.
Not this trial, though—no one knew this outcome yet. Not that I was worried. Johnson had definitely done it. His fingerprints were all over the crime, both literally and figuratively.
I shut off my phone and laid it between my hands, palm-flat on the counter. “I don't want to talk about the trial.”
Reed said nothing. Even in the short amount of time I'd known him, I found this uncharacteristic. I lifted my eyes to find him watching me silently.
“What?”
He shook his head. His hair swayed like stalks of wheat on a summer breeze. “I was just trying to imagine what it would feel like to have someone hate me as much as Johnson hates you.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that why you're up here right now? Did you come to get away from him, you know, just in case—”
“He won’t get released.”
“I hope not! But as you say on the show, justice is tricky.”
He was right. Shivering again, I wrapped my hands around the mug, hoping Reed didn’t notice the moist slicks of sweat they’d left behind on the counter.
This was exactly the sort of conversation I'd been eager to avoid. It was the reason I'd put Leah in charge of my correspondence during the trial and traveled over a thousand miles to spend Christmas in the Endless Mountains.
That and the fact that I couldn't handle another holiday in an empty house. At least here, I'd have Pat Martin to share Christmas with, and nobody would be talking to me about the Johnson verdict.
At least in theory.
Reed jammed his hands through his fluffy hair. “Listen, I'm sorry. If you don't want to talk about it, we don't have to talk about it.”
I nodded, slipped some bills onto the counter to pay for the tea, and told him to keep the change. I pulled on my gloves and adjusted my bobble hat. His shoulders drooped. Even his hair seemed to deflate.
My heart squeezed up.
Why did I care? This kid wasn’t my responsibility. He was an awkward teenage boy with the personality of a Labrador puppy. If he wanted to mope as if someone had kicked him, that wasn’t my problem.
Yet when I turned to walk away, I felt that I was leaving him in a place more chilled than the frozen wasteland where the polar explorers had met their doom.
The walk from the Birchardville Store to Pat Martin’s StayAway wasn't long, but along the way, the wind cut through my flimsy coat and layers of pathetically thin Florida clothes. By the time I reached her doorstep, I was shaking so badly I could barely stomp the snow off my boots. I braced my hand against the doorframe to give my feet one last good stomp, and that’s when I saw it.
The dead crow on the doormat.
It had been placed there deliberately, wings partially fanned and tacked down so that it looked as if it had been caught mid-flight. The dead eyes, empty and glassy, reflected the glow of the white twinkle lights.
Definitely real.
Definitely dead.
Definitely meant for me.
10
I fought the urge to kick the crow into the bushes and forget about it. After all, I knew who this was from. I knew what it meant. Besides, I’d only be here a few more days. The idea of taking the time to report this to the local police didn’t appeal to me.
Unfortunately, Pat Martin shuffled up behind me at that moment, her cane clacking against the stone steps. “What’s the hold up?”
I sensed the moment she spied the crow. She went still. Then, stepping up beside me, she lowered her head to peer down through her goggle glasses. She pulled in her lips and sucked her teeth. “That's not natural.”
“It's not,” I agreed. There was no getting around it now. “I have something to tell you.”
Pat sat across from me at her tiny kitchen table, gentle steam rising from the cups of tea between us. “So your stalker’s a woman.” She seemed stuck on this point. I understood her confusion. Initially, Bev Pickett had confused me, too.
“I promise she's harmless. We think. Anyway, she’s agoraphobic. Because she never leaves her house, the police in Virginia have no trouble keeping tabs on her. Which means she was never actually here.” Probably.
Pat grunted. She lifted her tea and blew on it through wrinkled lips. “So where’d the bird come from?”
I sighed. This whole situation was so stupid. “Typically, she uses Internet message boards and websites to ask people to help her ‘prank her friend’ or whatever. Only we’re not friends, and they’re not pranks. I’m not sure what’s wrong with her or why she’s fixated on me, but the local police back home coordinate with the officers where she lives, and they've confirmed that she hasn't left her house in years.”
She did have Inte
rnet, though. She had it with a vengeance.
I’d been afraid Pat might kick me out of the StayAway for this, but apparently it wasn't against the rules to have a stalker. And it was a good thing, too. My flight home wasn't until the day after Christmas, and I didn't think Birchardville had any other accommodations.
It was hard for me to imagine that a local resident of a close-knit community like this would have agreed to put a dead bird on Pat Martin’s doorstep at the behest of a stranger on a message board. Didn't everyone here know each other? Maybe someone had driven in from another town. Montrose, perhaps.
This was so annoying. The whole process was much easier since I had Leah, though. She’d taken over forwarding information to the cyber-crimes unit back home, saving me hassle. My local crew knew the whole history of Beverly Mae Pickett and her weird obsession. Was it even worth it to open that can of worms up here while I was on my vacation?
I said as much to Pat, feeling her out. If she wanted me to report the dead bird, I would. If not, I'd let it go. I'd only be here a few days, and I didn't want anyone else knowing that I had an Internet stalker. It wasn't something I'd made public on The Usual Suspects.
Heaven only knows how Reed would react.
Pat leaned back in her chair and tapped her hand against the table. “Well, even if you called dispatch now, it could be an hour or two before they get a unit out here.” She studied me over the rim of her glasses.
“That long?”
“Birchardville doesn’t have local police,” she explained. “We’re under state jurisdiction. They always have a few units out patrolling, but they could be anywhere in Susquehanna County right now, so who knows how long that would take. Then by the time they get here, you'll have to rehash the whole thing, and it'll be midnight.” She waved a hand. “I'd call them in the morning, if at all.”
“So you're not scared?”
She cackled and stabbed a gnarled finger toward a family photo hanging over the microwave. “I raised six sons. Cops, soldiers, coal miners, truckers. They got their grit somewhere, and it wasn't from their dad.”
I nodded, relieved. So we wouldn't call the police—at least, not immediately. I could continue with my activities as planned. I had little enough time here to research the Roth murders.
Murder on Birchardville Hill Page 4