Damage

by Mark Feggeler

  "I missed the turn," Billy said, more to himself than to Ray.

  A gap in the trees along the left side of the road presented itself. Billy shifted gear and turned onto the dirt drive that led off into the woods. The community sign was obscured by the fog, but Ray knew they were riding along the main road leading to the luxury horse farms of Wilkston Creek. They passed five driveways adorned with ornate lamp posts before coming to the one they were looking for. Not so much a driveway as two winding ruts worn into the red mud, the path took them under a canopy of tall pines with branches mingling far over their heads to block out any direct light. Not even the fog seemed able to penetrate the trees. Ray could clearly see deep into the lush green of the undergrowth on either side of the vehicle. A smattering of white and pink dogwood blooms accented the canvas. After a final twist to the left, the deep grooves of the driveway poured them out into an expansive clearing. Directly ahead of them and partially obscured by a blanket of mist stood a wide barn long enough to house half a dozen horses. Straight ahead of them, to the right of the barn, was an enclosed pasture that stretched into the hazy distance. A solitary, misshapen pine tree stood tall in the center of the pasture. Farther to the right, facing the barn, stood the massive house. From the immaculately appointed grounds, to the craftsman architectural details of the siding and trim work, to the three garage doors that played off the style of the barn across the clearing, the enormous structure screamed money. Ray wasn't a real estate expert, but he figured the house had to be at least six-thousand square feet, possibly more depending on the layout of the second story and whether there was a basement.

  Billy turned onto the crushed stone driveway in front of the garage. They could hear music as soon as he turned off the engine. Ray wondered since what hour of the night neighbors had been putting up with the racket that reverberated through the pasture, bouncing back at them off the tree line at the far edge of the clearing.

  "I think it's coming from in there," Ray called to Billy over the roof of the cruiser. He pointed through the fog to the barn. Billy nodded, secured his vehicle, and motioned for Ray to follow him. Popping the lens cap off the digital camera, Ray snapped several quick pictures of his deputy cousin walking off toward the open barn door.

  Horses brayed nervously and scuffled around in their stalls when the two men entered the barn. It had been a long time since Ray had been around horses. The pungent odors of fresh manure and hay filled the stable.

  Parked in the center of the building, doors propped open and radio cranked to full volume, was a red Spider, or maybe a Miata. Ray didn't care much about cars, so he never developed the ability to identify them by make and model. It was a red, two-seater sports car that a man on his salary could never afford and that was all he needed to know about it. The song presently playing tested the bass of the car speakers, causing the entire vehicle to vibrate every time the bass boomed in rhythm to the beat. Billy squatted next to the driver side and poked his head inside the car. He reached in and pressed the button to turn off the radio. The horses immediately settled down amid the resounding silence, though they kept a close watch on the two strangers.

  A quick search of the barn turned up nothing extraordinary, except for the car which might normally have been parked there by the owners of the house. After checking out the last of three vacant stalls, Ray turned to ask what they should do next, only to find Billy had left the barn and was halfway to the house. He cursed under his breath and hurried to catch up.

  Rustic landscaping played to the Craftsman style of the tremendous house. Clusters of young shrubs and decorative trees spotted the expanse between the house and barn. The most elaborate of these areas had knock out roses and camellias backing four benches made of rough hewn boughs and logs that formed a circle around a dormant and unpruned crepe myrtle.

  A front porch large enough to service a fifty-person cocktail party led to dark-stained double doors that dwarfed Billy in height and width, which was no mean feat. One of the doors sat open, light escaping from the painted white porch. Billy disappeared through the open front door without calling or knocking. Ray snapped several picture of the massive house and bounded up the porch steps and into a well lit foyer.

  "Watch your feet!"

  The order came just in time. His first step over the threshold missed by a few inches, but his second step would have landed in a dried puddle of what looked like dirty motor oil. When he raised his eyes again, he found himself in a small foyer that formed a T-intersection, forcing guests to veer right or left around a high dividing wall. The dark stain on the pale wood flooring appeared to have come from whatever room lay beyond to the right.

  An odor lingered, equally unpleasant as the manure in the barn, but different. It reminded Ray of the time he threw raw chicken in his kitchen trash and then left for the weekend. When he returned, his entire apartment hung heavy with the stench of rotting meat.

  At eye level on the dividing wall was an impressive painting in an ornate wood frame depicting four happy people in a traditional family pose. Ray's attention was immediately drawn to the perfect teeth and immaculately groomed hair of the handsome father smiling down at him. The man held on his lap a blond-haired girl maybe two or three years old. She had his eyes and his mouth. To their left stood another blonde-haired girl, this one not far off her tenth birthday. She stood behind her mother, whom she favored, her hand resting on the woman's shoulder. Through its attention to detail, the painting perfectly captured the simple, natural beauty of Correen Wallace's face. The only difference between the woman in the painting and the woman Ray had spoken to the day before at the groundbreaking was the color of the dress. Yesterday it had been red, but in the portrait it was black.

  He moved slowly to the right around the dividing wall, stepping over and around the stain on the floor, and entered a great room that stretched at least fifty feet back from the foyer and ran thirty feet wide the entire length. Thick wood beams carried the style of the house all the way up into the high ceilings. A mixture of rich brown leather sofas, dark-stained tables, lamps made from narrow woven vines, and rustic chairs gave the room the look and feel of a mountain lodge. A massive fireplace in the far wall big enough for a pig roast completed the decor.

  Impressive a distraction as the room proved to be, it proved far less interesting than the thing to which Billy called his attention on the floor behind a leather sofa that backed up to a second, smaller fireplace on the opposite side of the wall that divided the great room from the foyer. He walked closer to see the long body of a slender man face down and draped awkwardly across a corner of the raised stone hearth. A small, circular blood stain marred the man's white shirt in the very center of his back. Blood had run from the body down the side of the hearth and along the floor into the foyer. Waves of brown hair fell about the corpse's head.

  Ray knew little about the medical sciences, and he was certainly no expert on crime scenes, but it didn't take much deductive intellect to figure out someone had murdered Evan Wallace.

  Monday, Part III

  Attempting to distract himself from the lurching of his stomach, Ray absentmindedly snapped several pictures before realizing Becky would never publish such graphic photos. It was the first thought he was consciously aware of having since seeing the body. It had been only a minute, maybe two, but it seemed much longer. His second thought was of Correen Wallace. If the husband lay dead in their living room, then where was she? Sweat beaded on Ray's upper lip. The room felt hot despite having been left open to the cool night air for who knew how long.

  Billy canvassed the room, peaking behind and under the furniture, even leaving Ray alone in the room for several minutes while he wandered through the rest of the house.

  "What are you looking for?" Ray asked when Billy had completed his search of the main floor and headed across the room toward the staircase leading to the second story. Billy didn't answer. He motioned to Ray to stay in the great room and disappeared up the steps.

  R
ay turned his attention back to the body. He couldn't reconcile the dead man on the hearth, lying there like a fallen tree, with the boyishly energetic businessman who less than twenty-four hours earlier had addressed the crowd gathered for the groundbreaking. He stepped slowly closer and squatted next to the corpse to get a better look. From the lower vantage point, he could see Wallace's face peering out at him from under his tousled hair.

  Thank God his eyes are closed, thought Ray.

  Wallace's lips hung open like he was struck dead in the middle of another speech. Just then, as he was about to stand, Ray heard a moaning breath escape from the man's mouth. Falling backward into the sofa and knocking over a small table, Ray scrambled to get away from the body. He panicked even more when Billy grabbed him under the arms and lifted him to his feet.

  "What the hell is the matter with you?" Billy barked.

  Ray stammered, pointing at Wallace. "He's... He's breathing!"

  Billy leaned over the body and pushed his hand up under Wallace's hair at the nape of the neck. After a few seconds, he placed his mouth close to Wallace's ear.

  "Mr. Wallace. You alive yet, or are you still dead?" Billy straightened up, not taking his eyes off Wallace. "He ain't gonna get much more dead, Ray. You probably just heard gas escaping. Don't let it freak you out if he farts. He might even move a little, too."

  "What?!"

  "Rigor mortis," Billy calmly explained. "The muscles contract, then they release again." He grabbed Wallace's shoulder and gently lifted it several inches. The entire body rose like a plank of wood. "He's stiff as a board now, but he'll probably loosen up pretty soon."

  The sudden rush of adrenaline had calmed Ray's stomach, but now he could feel his blood sugar plummeting and a mild light headedness washing over him. He wasn't in fear of falling away into a dead faint; he just needed to eat something. Then he remembered the other half of bear claw wrapped in a paper towel in Billy's cruiser outside.

  "I'll be right back," he said. Billy was off searching cushions again and either didn't hear him or didn't care.

  The fog had lifted considerably while they were in the house. From the porch, Ray could see clearly to the barn and woods beyond. Shafts of warm light broke through the haze at random points in the pasture off to his right where the lone pine tree, it's lowest branches far from the ground, stood solitary watch over the grounds. Leaving the massive oak door propped open behind him, he descended to the crushed stone path that led circuitously around decorative plantings to the driveway. He followed it to the cruiser only to find the doors locked. Through the passenger window he could see the pastry had fallen to the floor of the car and, in doing so, liberated itself from its wrappings. So much for sustenance...

  Making his way back along the path to the house, Ray lifted the camera to review the pictures he had taken so far. He was just about to climb the porch steps when he noticed something sparkling in the grass ahead of him.

  As he neared the far corner of the porch, he saw several large shards of glass glistening in the neatly trimmed grass. Closer inspection revealed more glass fragments of different shapes and sizes littering the lawn in a recessed area where the house dropped some twenty feet back from the front porch. He could feel and hear the glass crunching under his work boots as he made his way to one of the larger shards that was approximately six inches long and three inches across. He snapped a picture of it, though he doubted it would come out. He glanced up the many windows facing into the small courtyard. They all appeared intact.

  At the very top of the house, no longer hidden by the dissipating fog, Ray noticed a protruding dormer that didn't seem quite right. He extended the camera's zoom lens to its full extent, using the two-inch screen on the back of the camera to locate the damaged window. The window frame dangled precariously from its mangled track high above tightly planted shrubberies that obscured much of the fieldstone foundation. Not giving any thought to the possibility he might be disturbing the scene of a crime, Ray advanced closer to the base of the wall below the broken window. The sun rising behind the house cast the entire recessed area into shadow. Even so, he could make out an unconformity in the bushes lining the foundation wall directly beneath the dormer. He snapped a few pictures. Then he saw an arm sticking out from under the most severely misshapen of the camellias.

  He hurried to the place where Correen Wallace lay deathly still. Her outstretched fingers were dug into the soft soil of the flowerbed. Her bare arm, protruding from the torn remains of the elegant red cocktail dress from the day before, was cold to the touch as Ray squatted to examine the body. She was on her stomach, as though she had performed a fatal belly flop from the third floor. He lifted the lower branches of the camellia bush to find the lower half of Correen's body pressed tightly against the cold fieldstone foundation. Her left leg was bent upward at an unnatural angle that threw Ray's stomach into a second upheaval. He let the branches drop again so he wouldn't have to see it. Although dried blood and matted hair stuck to her face, he could still make out her delicate features. From her outstretched arm and the way in which her head was turned, he surmised she must have been alive long enough after hitting the ground to have attempted crawling to safety. When he reached to pluck away a fragment of glass from above her eye, the newly familiar yet disturbing sound of a corpse exhaling shocked him. He quickly stood and backed away from the body.

  "Dammit!" he said, more to himself than to her. Adrenaline coursed through him again as his heart raced. A shiver ran the entire length of his body. He tried to shake it off. "I really wish you dead people wouldn't do that."

  Then he heard it again, only barely. A cold fear gripped him. Ray stooped to get closer to Correen Wallace's face. He couldn't be sure he heard anything. He watched her back. It didn't appear to be moving. He cautiously reached out to touch her arm again. Yes, it was deathly cold, but the skin also was supple. She exhaled a third time, this time an unmistakably shallow effort, followed by the weakest sputtering attempt to draw a breath. In his panic to react, Ray stumbled backward and caught himself on his open hands. Immediately, stinging pain from tiny shards of glass cutting into his palms and fingers shot him upright.

  "Billy!" he screamed, stopping short in his run to the front door when he realized his cousin was perched above him at the porch railing. "Call for an ambulance! She's still alive!"

  The deputy walked to the steps and met him halfway. He wore a doubtful expression and shook his head at Ray as he approached. Ray bounced around like a dog eager for his master to take him for a walk.

  "What the hell are you waiting for? Call nine-one-one!"

  Billy sauntered slowly toward the fallen woman, never taking his eyes off her, until he stood several feet away looking down at her from his full height. He exhaled slowly, then turned to Ray. "I told you," he said. "It's just gas escaping from the body. There's no way she could have taken a fall like that and lived to tell about it."

  "Listen to her!" Ray demanded. "I'm telling you she's breathing. Fine! If you won't call for help, I will."

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and fumbled to find the button to unlock the screen.

  "Ray," Billy warned. But, before he could take a step, a faint moan softer than the cooing of a dove caused him to spin him around and take a step away from the house. The two men stood silent and motionless, breathlessly waiting for the next sign of life. This time, the discernible sound of a woman's voice rose up to them. Correen Wallace was trying to say something. Ray approached and knelt by her side, lowering himself cautiously so as not to drive bits of glass into his knees. He gently brushed her blood-crusted hair away from her mouth and leaned in close.

  Her left eye fluttered open. She stared at Ray through the swollen skin around the socket. Her lips trembled as she struggled to draw enough air into her lungs to speak.

  "Help me," she said with a clarity that should not have been possible given her condition.

  For a moment, Ray couldn't tell who was in worse shape, Mrs. Wallace
or Billy. At the sound of her call for help, all color drained from Billy's face. He began to sway like a tall, thick tree in the wind. Seeing his cousin dumbstruck prompted Ray to once again attempt unlocking his phone. He eventually succeeded, spreading blood from his diced hands on the screen as he pressed at numbers on the virtual keypad.

  To snap Billy out of his reverie, Ray sent him into the house to retrieve damp rags or paper towels, anything he could use to wash away the dirt and blood from Mrs. Wallace's face. His jacket already covered her upper body. He wanted to cover her legs, as well, but he couldn't stand the thought of touching her misshapen limbs and risking further damage to them.

  Ray waited by her side, smiling weakly whenever she managed to look up at him, until the ambulance arrived.

  Monday, Part IV

  It took exactly eleven minutes for the whining sirens to make themselves heard in the distance and another three before the ambulance wound along the long dirt drive through the Wilkston Creek community and crunched to a halt on the gravel parking area in front of the Wallace's garage. Time dragged during the wait. Ray was certain he would watch Correen Wallace die right there in front of him while they waited. He forced himself to remain calm for the sake of the injured woman.

  The ambulance had blue lettering that declared it had come from Tramway Regional Medical Center, the only hospital in the county and not a bad one by rural North Carolina standards. The ever growing retiree population meant a constant influx of potential donors to fund expansions and attract physicians, although many of the doctors were more interested in tee times at the twenty-seven local golf courses than they were in keeping on schedule with their patients' appointments. This particular ambulance was part of a recent upgrade Ray had written a feature article on a few months back after attending a dedication ceremony in which hospital administrators and board members christened five new vehicles with bottles of champagne. While the ambulance offered the latest in portable medical technology, the team manning it that morning did not inspire confidence.