The Body Farm ks-5

by Patricia Cornwell

  "Where does he live?"

  "Off Montreal Road, up there in Rainbow Mountain."

  "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with where that is."

  "When you get to the Montreal gate, it's the road going up the mountain to the right. Used to be only mountain folk up there, what you'd probably call hillbillies. But during the last twenty years a lot of them has gone on to other places or passed on and folk like Creed's moved in." He paused for a minute, his expression distant and thoughtful.

  "You can see his place from down below on the road. He's got an old washing machine on the porch and pitches most his trash out the back door into the woods." He sighed.

  "The plain fact is. Creed wasn't gifted with smarts."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning he's scared of what he don't understand, and he can't understand something like what's going on around here."

  "Meaning you also don't think he's involved in the Steiner girl's death," I said. Detective Mote closed his eyes as the monitor over his bed registered a steady pulse of 66. He looked very tired.

  "No ma'am, I don't for a minute. But there's a reason he's running, you ask me, and I can't get that out of my mind."

  "You said he was scared. That seems reason enough."

  "I just have this feeling there's something else. But I guess there's no point in my stewing over it. Not a darn thing I can do. Not unless all of 'em want to line up outside my door and let me ask'em whatever I want, and that sure isn't likely to happen."

  I did not want to ask him about Marino, but I felt I must.

  "What about Captain Marino? Have you heard much from him?" Mote looked straight at me.

  "He came on in the other day with a fifth of Wild Turkey. It's in my closet over there." He raised an arm off the covers and pointed. We both sat silently for a moment.

  "} know I'm not supposed to be drinking," he added.

  "I want you to listen to your doctors. Lieutenant Mote. You've got to live with this, and that means not doing any of those things that got you into trouble."

  "I know I got to quit smoking."

  "It can be done. I never thought I could."

  "You still miss it?"

  "I don't miss the way it made me feel."

  "I don't like the way any bad habit makes me feel, but that's got nothing to do with it." I smiled.

  "Yes, I miss it. But it does get easier."

  "I told Pete I don't want to see him ending up in here like me. Dr. Scarpetta. But he's a hardhead."

  I was unsettled by the memory of Mote turning blue on the floor as I tried to save his life, and I believed it was simply a matter of time before Marino suffered a similar experience. I thought of the fried steak lunch, his new clothes and car and strange behavior. It almost seemed he had decided he did not want to know me anymore, and the only way to bring that about was to change into someone I did not recognize.

  "Certainly Marino has gotten very involved. The case is terribly consuming," I lamely said.

  "Mrs. Steiner can't think of much else, not that I blame her a bit. If it was me, I reckon I'd put everything I got into it, too."

  "What has she put into it?" I said.

  "She's got a lot of money," Mote said.

  "I wondered about that. " I thought of her car.

  "She's done a lot to help in this investigation."

  "Help?" I asked.

  "In what way, exactly?"

  "Cars. Like the one Pete's driving, for example. Someone's got to pay for all that."

  "I thought those things were donated by area merchants."

  "Now, I will have to say that what Mrs. Steiner's done has inspired others to pitch in. She's got this whole area thinking about this case and feeling for her, and not a soul wants someone else's child to suffer the same thing.

  "It's really like nothing I've ever seen in my twenty- two years of police work. But then, I have to say I've never seen a case like this to begin with."

  "Did she actually pay for the car I'm driving?" It required great restraint on my part not to raise my voice or seem anything but calm.

  "She donated both cars and some other business people have kicked in the other things. Lights, radios, scanners."

  "Detective Mote," I said, "how much money has Mrs. Steiner given to your department?"

  "I reckon close to fifty."

  "Fifty?" I looked at him in disbelief.

  "Fifty thousand dollars?"

  "That's right."

  "And no one has a problem with that?"

  "Far as I'm concerned, it's no different than the power company donating a car to us some years back because there's a transformer they want us to keep an eye on. And the Quick Stops and 7-Elevens give us coffee so we'll come in all hours. It's all about people helping us to help them. It works fine as long as nobody tries to take advantage." His eyes were steady on me, his hands still on top of the covers. "} guess in a big city like Richmond you got more rules."

  "Any gift to the Richmond Police Department that is over twenty-five hundred dollars has to be approved by an O and R," I said.

  "I don't know what that is."

  "An Ordinance and Resolution, which has to be brought before the city council."

  "Sounds mighty complicated."

  "And it should be, for obvious reasons."

  "Well, sure," Mote said, and mainly he just sounded weary and worn down by the revelation that his body was not to be trusted anymore.

  "Can you tell me just what this fifty thousand dollars is to be used for, besides acquiring several additional cars?" I asked.

  "We need a chief of police. I was pretty much the whole enchilada, and it don't look too good for me at this point, to be honest. And even if I can go back to some sort of light duty, it's time the town has someone with experience in charge. Things aren't the way they used to be."

  "I see," I commented, and the reality of what was happening was clarifying in a very disturbing way.

  "I should let you get some rest."

  "I'm mighty glad you came by." He squeezed my hand so hard I was in pain, and I sensed a deep despair he probably could not have explained were he completely conscious of it. To almost die is to know that one day you will, and to never again feel the same about anything.

  Before I returned to the Travel-Eze, I drove to the Montreal gate, went through it, and turned around. I went back out the other side as I tried to think what to do. There was very little traffic, and when I pulled off on the shoulder and stopped for a bit, people passing me probably assumed I was but one more tourist who was lost or looking for Billy Graham's house. From where I was parked, I had a perfect view of Creed Lindsey's neighborhood. In fact, I could see his house and its old boxy white washing machine on the porch.

  Rainbow Mountain must have been named on an October afternoon like this one. Leaves were varying intensities of red, orange, and yellow that were fiery in the sun and rich in the shade, and shadows crept deeper into clefts and valleys as the sun settled lower. In another hour light would be gone. I might not have decided to drive up that dirt road had I not detected wisps of smoke drifting from Creed's leaning stone chimney.

  Pulling back out on the pavement, I crossed to the other side and turned onto a dirt road that was narrow and rutted. Red dust boiled up from the rear of my car as I climbed closer to a neighborhood that was about as unwelcoming as any I had ever seen. It appeared that the road went to the top of the mountain and quit. Scattered along it were a series of old humpbacked trailers and dilapidated homes built of unpainted boards or logs. Some had tar paper roofs while others were tin, and the few vehicles I saw were old pickup trucks and a station wagon painted a strange creme de menthe green.

  Creed Lindsey's place had an empty patch of dirt beneath trees where I could tell he usually parked, and I pulled in and cut the engine. For a time, I sat looking at his shack and its dilapidated, slanting porch. It seemed a light might have been on inside, or it could have been the way the window caught the low sun. As I thought about t
his man who sold red-hot toothpicks to children and had picked wildflowers for Emily as he swept floors and emptied trash at their school, I debated the wisdom of what I was doing.

  My original intention, after all, had been to see where Creed Lindsey lived in relation to the Presbyterian church and Lake Tomahawk. Now that certain questions were answered, I had other ones. I could not just drive away from a fire on a hearth in a home where no one was supposed to be. I could not stop thinking about what Mote had said, and of course there were the Fireballs I had found. They really were the main reason I had to talk to this man called Creed.

  I knocked on the door for a long time, thinking I heard someone move around inside, and feeling watched. But no one came to let me in, and my verbal salutations went unanswered. The window to my left was dusty and had no screen. On the other side I could see a margin of dark wood flooring and part of a wooden chair illuminated by a small lamp on a table.

  Though I reasoned that a lamp on did not mean anyone was home, I smelled wood smoke and thought the stack of kindling on the porch was piled high and freshly split. I knocked again and the wooden door felt loose beneath my knuckles, as if it wouldn't take much to kick it in.

  "Hello?" I called.

  "Is anybody home?"

  I was answered by the sound of trees shaken by gusts of wind. The air was chilled in the shade and I detected the faint odor of things rotting, mildewing, and falling apart. In the woods on either side of this one- or two-room shack with its rusting roof and bent TV antenna was the trash of many years blessedly covered in part by leaves. Mostly I saw disintegrating paper, plastic milk jugs, and cola bottles that had been lying out there long enough for labels to be bleached.

  So I concluded that the lord of the manor had forsaken his unseemly way of pitching garbage out the door, since none of it looked recent. As I was momentarily lost in this observation, I became aware of a presence behind me. I felt eyes on my back so palpably that hair raised on my arms as I slowly turned around.

  The girl was a strange apparition on the road near the rear bumper of my car. She stood as motionless as a deer staring at me in the gathering dusk, dull brown hair limp around her narrow pale face, eyes slightly crossed. She held herself very still. I sensed in her long, lanky limbs that she would bound out of sight if I made any movement or sound the least bit startling. For the longest time, she continued to stare and I looked right back as if I accepted the necessity of this strange encounter. When she shifted her stance a little and seemed to breathe and blink again, I dared to speak.

  "I wonder if you can help me," I said gently without fear. She slipped bare hands in the pockets of a dark wool coat that was several sizes too small. She wore wrinkled khaki pants rolled up at the ankles, and scuffed tan leather boots. I thought she was in her early teens, but it was hard to say.

  "I'm from out of town," I tried again, "and it's very important that I locate Creed Lindsey. The man who lives here, or at least I think he lives in this house. Can you help me?"

  "Whadyou want thar fer?" Her voice was high- pitched and reminded me of banjo. strings. I knew I would have a hard time understanding a word of what she might have to say.

  "I need him to help me," I said very slowly. She moved several steps closer, her eyes never leaving mine. They were pale and crossed like a Siamese cat's.

  "I know he thinks there are people looking for him," I went on with deadly calm.

  "But I'm not one of them. I'm not one of. them at all.

  I'm not here to cause him harm in any way. "

  "What's thar name?"

  "My name is Dr. Kay Scarpetta," I answered her. She stared harder at me as if I had just told her the most curious secret. It occurred to me that if she knew what a doctor was, she might never have encountered one who was a woman.

  "Do you know what a medical doctor is?" I asked her. She stared at my car as if it contradicted what I had just said.

  "There are some doctors who help the police when people get hurt. That's what I do," I said.

  "I'm helping the police here. That's why I have a car like this. The police are letting me drive it while I'm here because I'm not from these parts. I'm from Richmond, Virginia." My voice trailed off as she looked silently at my car, and I had the disheartening feeling that I had said too much and all was lost. I would never find Creed Lindsey. It had been incredibly foolish to imagine for even a moment that I could communicate with a people I did not know and could not begin to understand.

  I was about to decide to return to my car and drive away when the girl suddenly approached. I was startled when she took my hand and without a word tugged me toward my car. She pointed through the window at my black medical bag on the passenger's seat.

  "That's my medical bag," I said.

  "Do you want me to get it?"

  "Yes, get thar," she said. Opening the door, I did. I wondered if she was merely curious, but then she was pulling me out onto the unpaved street where I had first seen her. Wordlessly, she led me up the hill, her hand rough and dry like corn husks as it continued to grasp mine firmly and with purpose.

  "Would you tell me your name?" I asked as we climbed at a brisk pace.

  "Deborah." Her teeth were bad, and she was gaunt and old before her time, typical in the cases of chronic malnutrition that I often saw in a society where food was not always the answer. I expected that Deborah's family, like many I encountered in inner cities, subsisted on all the high empty calories that food stamps could buy.

  "Deborah what?" I asked as we neared a tiny slab house. It appeared to have been built of trimmings from a sawmill and covered with tar paper, portions of which were supposed to look like brick.

  "Deborah Washbum."

  I followed her up rickety wooden steps leading to a weathered porch with nothing on it but firewood and a faded turquoise glider. She opened a door that hadn't seen paint in too long to remember its color, and pulled me inside, where the reason for this mission became instantly clear.

  Two tiny faces too old for their very young years looked up from a bare mattress on the floor where a man sat bleeding into rags in his lap as he tried to sew up a cut on his right thumb. On the floor nearby was a glass jar half filled with a clear liquid that I doubted was water, and he had managed to get a stitch or two in with a regular needle and thread. For a moment, we regarded each other in the glare of an overhead bare light bulb.

  "Thar's a doctor," Deborah said to him. He stared at me some more as blood dripped from his thumb, and I guessed he was in his late twenties or early thirties. His hair was long and black and in his eyes, his skin sickly pale, as if it had never seen the sun. Tall and thick through the middle, he stunk of old grease, sweat, and alcohol.

  "Where'd you get her from?" the man asked the child. The other children stared vacantly at the TV, which as best I could see was the only electrical object in the house besides the one light bulb.

  "Thar was looking for thar," Deborah said to him, and I realized with amazement that she used thar for every pronoun, and that the man must be Creed Lindsey.

  "Why'd you bring her?" He didn't seem particularly upset or afraid.

  "Thar hurt."

  "How did you cut yourself?" I asked him as I opened my bag.

  "On my knife."

  I looked closely. He had raised a substantial flap of skin.

  "Stitching's not going to be the best thing to do here," I said, and I got out topical antiseptic, Steristrips and Benzoin-glue.

  "When did you do this?"

  "This afternoon. I come in and tried to pry the lid off a can."

  "Do you remember the last time you had a tetanus shot?"

  "Naw."

  "You should go get one tomorrow. I'd do it but I don't have anything like that with me." He watched me as I looked around for paper towels. The kitchen was nothing but a woodstove, and water came from a pump in the sink. Rinsing my hands and shaking them dry as best I could, I knelt by him on the mattress and took hold of his hand. It was callused and musc
ular, with dirty, torn nails.

  "This is going to hurt a little," I said.

  "And I don't have anything to help with pain, so if you've got something, go ahead." I looked at the jar of clear fluid. He looked down at it, too, then reached for it with his good hand. He took a swallow and the white lightning or corn liquor or whatever the hell it was brought tears to his eyes. I waited until he took another swallow before cleaning his wound and holding the flap in place with glue and paper tapes. When I was finished he was relaxed. I wrapped his thumb with gauze and wished I had an Ace bandage.

  "Where's your mother?" I said to Deborah as I put wrappers and the needle inside my bag, since I didn't see a trash can.

  "Thar's at thar Burger Hut."

  "Is that where she works?" She nodded as one of her siblings got up to change channels.

  "Are you Creed Lindsey?" I matter-of-factly asked my patient.

  "Why're you asking?" He spoke with the same twang, and I did not think he was as mentally slow as Lieutenant Mote had indicated.

  "I need to speak to him."

  "What for?"

  "Because I don't think he had anything to do with what happened to Emily Steiner. But I think he knows something that might help us find who did." He reached for the jar of liquor.

  "What would he know?"

  "I guess I'd like to ask him that," I said.

  "I suspect he liked Emily and feels real upset about what happened. And I also suspect that when he feels upset he gets away from people like he's doing now, especially if he thinks he might be in any sort of trouble." He stared down at the jar, slowly swirling its contents.

  "He never did nothing to her that night."

  "That night?" I asked.

  "Do you mean the night she disappeared?"

  "He saw her walking with her guitar and slowed his truck to say hi. But he didn't do nothing. He didn't give her a ride or nothing. "

  "Did he ask to give her a ride?"

  "He wouldn't have 'cause he'd know she wouldn't have a-taken it."