Eyeshot

by Lynn Hightower

  Sonora tilted her head to one side. “You wrote letters?”

  He nodded.

  “Where’d you send them? Not to the house, is my guess.”

  Barber shifted in his chair. “She had a post office box,” he said. Matter-of-factly.

  “Let me get that address off you,” Sonora said. Matter-of-factly.

  13

  Sonora was working from home, which was not always a good idea, because it meant she could watch the kids while working, a possible oxymoron. It did allow her to wear sweatpants and not comb her hair.

  From the kitchen came the clink of Heather’s spoon against a cereal bowl. The rustle of cellophane. Clampett, asleep on the couch behind Sonora, was suddenly awake.

  “Let her eat,” Sonora said to the dog.

  Clampett yawned. Stretched and stepped down from the couch on top of the map she had opened out onto the floor. He was a big dog, in excess of a hundred pounds, thick coat, blond, three-legged. He’d shown up on their back porch years ago, hair thick with mats, burrs, and ticks spread liberally about his person, stomach running on empty. The kids liked to make up stories about his shady past.

  The current fiction involved Cuba and political asylum, mainly because of Clampett’s interest in a fake plastic cigar the kids had stashed in the dress-up box in the laundry room.

  Clampett licked Sonora’s wrist, and tasted her pen. A stream of saliva dripped from the dog’s mouth and landed somewhere in southeast Ohio. Sonora shoved him sideways, and he padded into the kitchen.

  Sonora squinted at the map, looking for where she’d traced I-75 with the pen. Red, she decided, was not the color to have used. The map was already full of red lines, and hers was lost in the shuffle. She frowned and wondered what color she should use. The map was a rainbow, no color noticeably missing.

  “Clampett, no.” Heather’s voice, from the kitchen.

  She found the line she’d traced just under a hole from one of Clampett’s toenails, followed it to where the map left off in northern Kentucky.

  “Dammit.”

  She snatched up the map, turned it over. Ohio, Indiana, northern Kentucky. Everything but Tennessee, which was what she needed. She folded the map, wondering if she had a map of Tennessee in the glove compartment of her car. The map did not want to go back into the original accordion folds. Sonora unfurled it and tried again.

  “Clampett, stop.”

  A bowl clattered against the kitchen floor. The map bunched when it should have folded and Sonora wadded it into a large ball, and threw it across the room.

  The doorbell rang.

  Sonora looked at her watch: 11 A.M. Sunday morning. Seventh Day Adventists?

  She got to her feet slowly, the small of her back stiff and achy. Boy were these guys in for it. She ran down the stairs, opened the front door. The heat and humidity hit her like a glove in the face. She could almost feel the air-conditioning being sucked away, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

  Sam stood on the front porch, glancing over his shoulder at a pickup truck pulling a maroon fishing boat.

  “That hurts,” he said, grimacing, turned to Sonora and screamed.

  “Oh shut up. I don’t look that bad.”

  “If you say so.”

  Sonora noticed that he looked good. Freshly showered. Khaki pants and a denim shirt.

  “You’re going to burn up in that shirt,” she told him.

  “I’ll roll up the sleeves and show my biceps.” Sam followed her in through the door. “You got anything I can eat while you get a shower?”

  “We going somewhere?”

  “To work, girl. Talked to the Clinton, Tennessee sheriff’s department.” He checked his watch. “Something like an hour ago. Julia Winchell’s turned up.”

  Sonora paused on the steps. Sheriff’s department. So Julia Winchell was dead. She hadn’t realized she’d been hoping. “Where’d they find her?”

  “Some of her. Head, hands, and feet, bound up in a plastic trash bag. Snagged on somebody’s trotline in the Clinch River. Guy went out and checked it early this morning.”

  “Positive ID?”

  “Not confirmed, but the sheriff there seemed pretty sure. Gar had gotten into the bag, but there was the long hair and the widow’s peak.”

  “She had a widow’s peak?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t you notice, in the pictures?”

  “I guess.”

  “Anyway, we’ve been invited to go down for a look, and I said we’d be on our way.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “Line’s busy.”

  “Use the business one.”

  “That one’s busy too.”

  Sonora headed into the kitchen. “You dialed it wrong, Sam, nobody’s been on the phone all day. Heather just got up, and the boy never stirs till late afternoon.” She glanced at the kitchen extension, saw two blinking red lights. “Well hell.”

  “Hi, Heather,” Sam said.

  Sonora glanced at her daughter, absently pulled the long dark hair off her shoulders and out of the cereal bowl. “Heather, give Sam some Lucky Charms while I go kill your brother.”

  Tim was still in bed. The room was thick with dust and an electric guitar was parked on the floor next to a practice amp. Sonora stepped over a pile of clothes that emitted an odor that would do a locker room proud.

  “Mom, do you mind not just barging into my room?”

  Tim’s hair, short and spiky, stuck up from where he’d been sleeping on it. His face had broken out along the chin. The sheets of his bed were wadded along the side and he had clearly been sleeping on bare mattress.

  “Off the phone,” Sonora said.

  “But, Mom—”

  “And then you explain why you’re on my business line.”

  His eyes widened. “I thought it would be okay, because it’s Sunday.”

  “It’s never okay. I’m a cop, Tim. People get murdered on the weekends too. Consider yourself a prime candidate.”

  He glared. Mothers rarely amused fourteen year olds. “You don’t have to yell.”

  “This, I promise you, is not yelling. Why are you talking to two people at once?”

  “I’m doing a conference call.”

  Sonora looked at her son and wondered if teenagers went through phases so you wouldn’t miss them when they moved out.

  “You have one minute to get off. Sam’s here. I have to go to work. They found—”

  “Something horrible, I don’t want to hear it. Mom, everybody’s going to Kenneth’s to swim. Can you drop me on your way?”

  “What about Heather?”

  “I have to baby-sit?”.

  Sonora backed out of the bedroom. Shut the door hard.

  Sam wandered into the hallway, cramming a handful of dry cereal into his mouth. “What’s with the phone?”

  “He’s fourteen years old and he’s having a conference call.”

  “If that boy’s got a girl on each line, I’m going in there to shake his hand.”

  Sonora rubbed the back of her neck. “What was it that led me to procreate in the first place?”

  “Probably too much to drink.” Sam picked up the map, tossing it up and catching it. “Have a moment with maps, did you, Sonora?”

  14

  The sheriff’s office was in a cinderblock building next to the Farmer’s Co-Op. Sonora opened the door of the Blazer and let Heather and Clampett out. Too hot to leave them in the car.

  She looked at Sam. “You know, if you die and go to hell, you could wind up here.”

  “Speak up, Sonora. Make sure we get off on the right foot with the locals.” He opened the door.

  “Hang on to Clampett’s leash,” Sonora said, glancing at her daughter. She could use some cleaning up. Her pale blue shorts were loose around her thin, tan legs, and her white tank top was smeared with grape from a cup of Hawaiian shaved ice they’d stopped for on the way down. She wore plastic sandals with silk daisies on the front. Her toenails needed trimming. Her shoulders wer
e pink with sunburn, arms broken out in goose bumps from the chill inside the police station.

  Clampett’s toenails clicked against the worn yellow linoleum, and he zigged and zagged through the small lobby, sniffing. Heather held tight to the leash, along for the ride.

  “That dog taking you for a walk?” The woman behind the desk was tiny and thin, hair cut short, dyed white blonde. Her eyes were thickly circled with eyeliner, expertly applied. She had a deep tan that gave her young skin the patina of alligator hide, cigarette husk in her voice.

  Sonora put her ID on the woman’s desk. “Detectives Blair and Delarosa, Cincinnati. Homicide. I think Sheriff Sizemore is expecting us.”

  The girl looked at Sonora curiously, then glanced at Sam. The nameplate on her desk said Sylvia Lovely.

  Good name for a porn star, Sonora thought.

  “It’s that Julia Winchell thing,” Sam said. “You didn’t happen to know her?”

  The girl shook her head. Her neck was long and pretty. Her earrings dropped all the way to her shoulders. She glanced at Sam’s left hand, noticing the wedding ring.

  “No, I didn’t know her.” She leaned over her desk, picked up the phone, punched a button. “Monte? You got those folks from Cincinnati here waiting.” She looked up. “Said to tell you he’s real sorry for the wait, and he’ll be off the phone in just a minute.” She nodded her head toward the couch. “Y’all can take a seat if you like, shouldn’t be but a minute. Can I get anybody a pop? We got coffee made up, too.”

  Old coffee, Sonora thought, judging from the smell.

  Clampett was licking the bottom of a blue can of Cherry Coke when a door opened and Sheriff Monte Sizemore walked into the room.

  He was taller than Sonora, which wasn’t saying much. His hair was brown, cut short in the way of state troopers and marines, gray-flecked at the temples and across the top. His uniform was well pressed and had likely been spotless when he’d put it on that morning. The bottoms of his shoes were mud-crusted, and the cuffs of his pants had been drenched, then dried into mud-stained wrinkles. There was a large round stain over his left knee and his shoes squeaked.

  He shook hands with Sam and Sonora, bent down to say hello to Heather and Clampett.

  “How long you been on the case?” he asked Heather.

  She smiled and dipped her head, pushed her glasses back up on her nose and leaned against Clampett, who drooled down her leg.

  “I think your puppy wants his own Coke,” Sizemore said.

  Heather tilted her chin. “I already gave him a drink of mine.”

  Sonora grimaced, wondering if Clampett had gotten his drink before or after she’d gotten hers.

  Sizemore patted Heather’s shoulder. “I got a granddaughter about your size. She loves to draw horses. How about if Sylvia gives you a pad of paper and a pen and you draw me a horse while I talk to your Mama?”

  Heather frowned. “I don’t know how to draw horses.”

  “Then draw something else,” Sonora said.

  15

  Sizemore led them to the break room, shut the door. He limped, just barely. The door creaked as he closed it.

  “Need to oil that,” he muttered, heading across the floor.

  Sonora stood close to Sam, spoke under her breath. “Tell me he’s not heading for that old refrigerator.”

  “Probably next to his lunch.”

  The refrigerator was harvest yellow, one of the double-wide models, and it hummed. An erratic trail of water snaked out the left side, staining the shiny linoleum. Grill shelves were stacked against the wall. Sonora remembered when harvest yellow had been all the rage for kitchen appliances. Now everything was black and white. The new black and white. The old black and white wouldn’t cut it.

  Smallwood took a fork off the top of the refrigerator, wedged it into the latch, and opened the door.

  Sonora, standing close, felt a cold breath of air, smelled the dark ominous odor. She took a step closer.

  Bottles of 7-Up and Orange Crush lined the inside door, held in place by a bowed and scratched band of aluminum that was working loose near the door hinge. Sonora looked over her shoulder and caught Sizemore’s eye.

  “I needed some place quick, Detective. We got your little girl’s drink out of the machine.”

  She nodded.

  The shelves had been removed to make room for a Coleman cooler that sat on the bottom over the crisper bins. The cooler was faded red, scratched across the front, as if someone had gotten malicious with a key.

  Sizemore bent forward to pick up the cooler, and Sam stepped forward and took one end, guiding the cooler to the floor.

  The smell gathered strength.

  Sizemore straightened up, groaned and touched the small of his back. He wiped sweat from his forehead with a neatly folded handkerchief.

  “Y’all want a look, I guess.”

  Sonora leaned down and opened the lid, tilting it back on its hinges.

  She was immediately engulfed in a whangy miasma that hit with the force of a ripe garbage dump—a fetid mix of fish, rotting meat, and blood.

  The bag was a Hefty cinch-top, drawn tight and double secured at the neck with a worm-like strand of fishing line. It was shiny black and damp, sweating beads of condensed water.

  “Is this the original bag?” Sonora said. It looked to be in too good a shape.

  Sizemore spoke through his handkerchief. “No, that bag was ripped open, and fish had been into it. The original’s in there, though. What’s left of it. I double-bagged it just to keep … anything from falling out.”

  Like when you buy canned goods at the grocery, Sonora thought. She reached for her purse, and a pair of latex gloves.

  Sam fished a tiny pocketknife out of his blazer and cut the fishing line.

  “Let me put some newspapers down,” Sizemore said, moving quickly. He slid a thick wide padding of newspapers on the floor, and Sonora removed the bag from the cooler.

  A thick splat of water stained the front page of the Clinton Register right over the article about trouble at the Main Street McDonald’s. Sonora held her breath, taking air in nasty shallow snorts. Water streamed down one side of the bag as she rolled the top away.

  Plastic garbage bags had long been a boon to criminals and homeowners alike, storage being a problem in many lines of work.

  A small foot bulged through a ragged tear heel first, meat sagging, bone exposed along the top of the foot. Long black hair was twisted through the toes. The interior bag was battered brown plastic, stained and smeared with things uncomfortable to imagine. It was open at the top, revealing more black hair. Sonora pushed the shredded plastic to one side, and began to unpack.

  The tally included one severed head, face hidden by heavy black strands of hair. In her mind’s eye, Sonora saw the picture of Julia Winchell with her two little girls gathered into her lap. She held the image, trying to match it to the head that dripped onto the pad of plastic and newsprint.

  She reached back into the bag, removed two hands and two feet, the right one taken off at the ankle, the left severed well over the joint. Sonora gently peeled and unwound the long black hair that stuck to Julia’s face like cellophane against an iced cupcake.

  The face was swollen pale and unrecognizable. The mouth was open and Sonora took the flashlight Sam handed her and pointed it inside. The meat of the tongue was gone, eaten back to the nub. The woman had small white teeth and no cavities, a tiny delicate mouth, turning black with rot.

  The right eye was a gnawed, empty socket, thick with unhatched fly larvae.

  “She’s been outside some,” Sonora said.

  Sizemore was nodding. “Boy who found her left her out in his minnow bucket while he decided what to do. Brought all this up on his trotline, first thing this morning.”

  “His minnow bucket,” Sonora said softly, with a sigh. The left eye was still intact, small blood vessels swollen and burst. She looked up at Sam.

  “Strangled?” he asked.

  “Looks like
. Petechial hemorrhaging, so strangled or hung.”

  Sam grunted as he stretched the latex gloves over his thick hands. One size fit all—which meant they hung over the edges of Sonora’s fingers, and went with difficulty over Sam’s.

  “Go slow,” Sonora said. “These have been in the water awhile.”

  “Slippage?” Sam asked.

  “Looks like.”

  He picked the right hand up carefully. Bits of flesh had been nipped away, and what was left was pale white around the midnight blue mottling of rot. The flesh was swollen, giving it a thick, glove-like look, and it had been in the water long enough that the pelt of skin was pulling loose from the structure of bone.

  She had small hands, even swollen with gas and bloated with water, and they looked tiny and fragile in Sam’s thick long fingers. The index finger was gone on the right hand, just above the knuckle joint, and Sonora thought of torture and hungry fish, and wondered which it was.

  “Any defense wounds?” she asked.

  Sam turned the hand palm up and shoved it in her direction. “I don’t see anything. What do you think about the chop?” He turned the edge up, for better viewing.

  Sonora turned her head to one side, squinted.

  Clean severing, leaving the fine-tooth grain of a serrated cutting edge.

  “Some kind of saw,” Sonora said.

  “Chain saw?” Sizemore asked.

  Sonora shook her head. “Too fine for that.”

  “Hacksaw,” Sam said, glancing over his shoulder at Sizemore. “Don’t you think?”

  The sheriff swallowed but stepped forward. Took a hard look.

  Sonora knew he wanted to leave them to it, and wished that he would, but he was too polite to go, and she was too polite to ask.

  “I’ve used a hacksaw a time or two,” the sheriff said, voice deep and tight. “I’d say could well have been, though tell you the truth, I don’t have my reading glasses on, and I’m not much used to this end of the job.” He looked at the stub of index finger. “I’d say a gar got hold of that right there.”

  “Excuse me,” Sonora said. “What the hell is a gar?”