Clarice scrawled a note designating the bunkhouse as the command post and stuck it to the kitchen door to direct the volunteers who would start trickling in at any moment. Then we piled into Walt’s pickup and Des’s Grand Cherokee for the bumpy ride to the boys’ main residence where the rest of them were waiting, probably worried out of their minds.
I sat beside a silent, tense Walt with Emmie pinned to my other side on the bench seat. The missing boys were all Emmie’s friends, the youngest group of foster boys under Walt’s care, and closest to her age. We needed every possible adult out searching. There was no one to task with watching her, so she was coming with me. I wouldn’t be letting go of her hand, ever.
At the bunkhouse, Clarice immediately set up a phalanx of coffee pots in the kitchen. She conscripted the younger boys, sending them on errands and instructing them about arranging the furniture in the schoolroom so it would accommodate a large number of people. Des was constantly on the phone, coordinating the cavalry, and Walt went to rummage for items of clothing belonging to the boys for the dogs to scent from.
Hank arrived. And Gus. And Etherea and Bob Titus. Maeve Berends, the county clerk, who’d traded in her pearls and twin set for canvas pants tucked into knee-high rubber boots. Tarq and Loretta came, looking fragile but determined. And then many others whom I didn’t know.
The oldest boys would join us, assigned to search parties headed by adults. Walt set the minimum age at fifteen, disappointing the rest of the boys. I drew Thomas, Jermaine, and Reese—teenagers sober with the gravity of the situation, and all of them physically larger than I was. I made sure the boys understood the location of our grid assignment, then we set out.
Tree trunks echoed our calls. Emmie hollered with all her might too, not letting her small stature hold her back. Flashlight beams bounced and flashed through the gaps in the underbrush. It almost appeared as though the woods were swarming with giant fireflies.
The phone in my pocket rang. When I pulled it out, the blue-lit screen formed an aura around Emmie and me.
“Where are you?” Matt asked. “Specifically. Violet’s on her way with a team.”
“I’m just north of the gully behind the burned calving shed,” I replied. “But the search is being coordinated out of the bunkhouse, so the team should start there.”
“You’re our number one priority.”
“Then you can help me by finding the boys,” I replied through gritted teeth. “You know this whole thing will backfire on you terribly if it comes out that you ignored five missing children to babysit me. Especially if it’s a vendetta,” I added in a low voice, not wanting Emmie to hear.
Matt was silent for a long moment, and I could hear him breathing. “Okay. But you call me every fifteen minutes. Sixteen minutes without hearing from you, and Violet will divert. Got it?”
An eerie baritone wail rose into the frigid air. It made the hairs on my arms prickle against my sleeves. Then another.
It was a bloodhound duet. Would it be fair to say the dogs sounded happy, exuberant even?
“Hang on,” I wheezed to Matt. Emmie and I were already running in the direction of the baying, trailing in the path Thomas, Jerome and Reese had broken for us. I left the phone on but dropped it into my pocket. I needed both hands—one for Emmie and one for holding the flashlight while bouncing off saplings as we stumbled onward.
CHAPTER 4
The boys were at the far edge of a large clearing. It was hard to see between and around the adults surrounding them, but I managed a quick head count of short people—all five. I felt like squeezing them all to death while lecturing them like mad.
Odell Clayborne, the smallest of the boys, held a long length of rope, the other end of which was tied around the neck of an incredibly insouciant goat. The Terminator was utterly unfazed by the swelling ruckus but kept himself occupied by gnawing on the woody stem of a dormant blackberry vine.
A ruckus which was mainly caused by the bloodhounds who were still going nuts—howling, straining on their leashes, rearing up on their stubby back legs, skin folds flopping in their eagerness. It was all a woman I assumed must be Trudy Dyer and Des could do to keep the animals under control.
I took this all in quickly while still on the run. The clearing wasn’t level or even gently rolling. It was marked with regular but unexpected indentations which wreaked havoc with my footing. Emmie nearly went down, and I steadied her.
“We can walk,” I huffed. “They’re okay, sweetheart. Everyone’s safe.” I stubbed my toe on a rocky bump, and the flashlight beam swept across a small metal plate affixed to it.
That fleeting image seared in my brain and made me turn around and retrace my hurried steps. Emmie tugged at the end of my arm.
“Just a minute.” I knelt and brushed dead weeds away from the lump. It wasn’t a rock—it was a concrete block, its edges chipped and eroded with age. I rubbed algae off the tin plate with my thumb and played with the angle of the light beam until I was able to read the stamped words.
Bonnie Jean Benson, d. 1905 aged 36 yrs 4 mos.
A woman who’d been several years my junior at death. I had no reason for complaints.
We were in the cemetery. I’d known there was one on the premises, but I hadn’t explored it yet. When property functioned as a poor farm for as long as Mayfield had, there were certain to have been deaths—many, many deaths—because the people who lived here had had difficult lives and were ill and malnourished, society’s outcasts. Buried in pauper’s graves that had been only cursorily marked when they were new.
An actual metal plate on a flat gravestone like this one was probably an anomaly, possibly a special arrangement because the occupant was a woman. I wouldn’t have been surprised if epidemics had rapidly increased the size of the cemetery in some years, making respectful identification of the dead next to impossible.
By the time Emmie and I trudged up to the group, it had grown in size—probably close to fifty people. After giving Emmie strict instructions to stay within my sight—meaning we could both clearly see each other’s eyeballs at all times—and getting a crooked grin in response, I let go of her hand so she could worm her way through the crush and greet her friends.
Des and Trudy had marshaled a huge response in terms of the number of volunteers. It was amazing, and I was overwhelmed with gratitude. And then we hadn’t really needed them—due to a couple brilliant dogs—although there had been no way to know that ahead of time.
I got the impression these volunteers loved to do search and rescue work, but they loved not needing to do that kind of work even more. There were a lot of happy voices, back slapping, and conversations going on as though these people hadn’t seen each other in years and were glad for the chance of catching up. The whole flavor of the gathering bordered on celebration versus the bristling, clawing intensity of earlier.
I drew a deep breath and let a smile sink in between my cheeks.
Clarice found me in the melee and linked her arm through mine. “We’re all right,” she muttered, nodding slowly. “All right.” Her words felt like a benediction.
Walt had his hands on the tops of Odell’s and Purcel’s heads while the other lost boys clustered around him. They were talking over the top of each other, no doubt itching to fill him in on their strategy and success in finding the Terminator.
But Walt’s gaze was locked on mine. There was a muscled set to his jaw and a new edge to his posture. Something still wasn’t right.
And then I noticed that Des and Gus and Bob Titus and Hank were herding the flock of volunteers out of the clearing, in the direction of the bunkhouse. Trudy had pulled her dogs to the side and was shushing them with treats from her pockets.
“Showtime,” Clarice grunted, and I knew she was calculating what she could feed all these good people—because a smörgåsbord of yummy desserts is quite possibly the most appreciated form of thank you on the planet. She quickly strode across the clearing, collecting Emmie on the way.
Des broke away from the group and waved me over.
“We have a problem.” The way he said it made my stomach drop. “We gotta do a corpse search.”
My jaw dropped too. “But the boys—I saw them all. Alive.”
“They found some human remains.”
At that point, I was pretty sure I was going to throw up. And then I remembered. “This is a cemetery.”
“With at least one fresh grave. Wild animals got to it and scattered the body. Your FBI friends coming?”
When I nodded, Des sighed. “Good. We’re going to need their equipment and manpower. I don’t like this going on in my county, Nora.”
I blinked back at him. I didn’t like it either. And this was my property.
oOo
There’s a lot of standing around at a crime scene. A lot of waiting. I was shivering so hard that my jaw hinge, at the spot right in front of my ears, ached.
Special Agent Violet Burns and her team knew exactly what to do. It wasn’t the first time they’d embarked on a major evidence collection project on Mayfield land. They set up a real search grid—as compared to our imaginary grid earlier—with flagged stakes and wires, over a broad area that included the farthest reaches of where Trudy’s dogs had located body parts. Huge banks of lights run off generators lit up the clearing like a Friday night high school football game.
The hounds were subdued now, watchful and patient. I’m sure they were perfectly aware of the meaning behind the difference between the missing boys’ scents and that of the dead body. They’d probably been terribly confused the moment they first barged into the clearing. It wasn’t quite the happy ending both the dogs and their handlers had been hoping for.
I found comfort in massaging the droopy, velvety folds on their necks and shoulders, although the dogs didn’t pay me much mind once they realized I didn’t have magical treat-producing pockets like Trudy did.
Trudy crouched next to me, the long leashes wrapped around her forearm. She was athletic and trim for being in her sixties, her graying blonde hair pulled in a ponytail through the hole in the back of her baseball cap.
“Your first dead body?” she asked.
I stared over at the pair of quads the FBI team had ridden to the site and used to shuttle equipment. I didn’t know when they’d branched out to four-wheeling, but it had been a smart move, all things considered.
But my attention was primarily on the tight knot of three people near the quads. Des and Tarq were carrying on a heated conversation while Loretta stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Tarq as though propping him up. He’d refused to leave with the rest of the volunteer searchers, and I knew it was because he took his role as my attorney very seriously.
“Um, yes,” I answered Trudy. I didn’t bother to explain that I’d found a small part—a finger—of a dead body earlier in my stay at Mayfield. That digit had been left in a plastic bag tied to the kitchen door handle as a message for me—loud and clear—but one I’d ignored anyway.
She blew out a big breath. “They sure don’t get easier.”
I cast a quick glance at the side of her face. “How many for you?”
She wiggled the fingers on her left hand as though she was going through a mental tally. “Fourteen. This is fifteen, or more.”
“More?” My voice croaked.
“If it’s only one, he sure is spread out,” Trudy replied. “I’d say the animals, probably a bear at first—maybe a mama and cubs—dug him up within a day or two of his being buried. Black bears around here don’t necessarily hibernate much because food is so plentiful.” She faced me with a tiny smile. “Unofficially, of course. I’m not the expert.”
“He?” Another croak.
Loretta was easing Tarq down onto a makeshift seat on a cooler. He clamped his hands around his knees as if to keep from toppling all the way over. The cooler was so big it was almost a two-seater. I hated to think why the FBI thought a cooler was essential equipment in this situation. The scene was too raw for Tarq, given his own proximity to death, but I also knew I wouldn’t prevail in an argument with him. His eyes glittered with a steely hardness above his droopy, yellowed lower lids.
Trudy’s tone sounded like a shrug. “Didn’t see anything that would tell me otherwise. The shoe is definitely a man’s. A little surprising, actually. Most of the time, it’s women’s bodies dumped in the woods. Don’t know why someone would go through the trouble of burying him out here. Didn’t want him to be found, I guess, although under normal circumstances there wouldn’t have been a good chance of that. The topsoil’s been borderline frozen for the past couple months, so the grave was shallow. Or maybe they were in a hurry.”
I tried to wrap my head around the type of life that would allow this practical, matter-of-fact sort of woman to spout off such grisly observations like a shopping list.
Des had obviously lost his battle with Tarq too, and was striding toward Trudy and me, skirting around the FBI’s markers. We rose to our feet.
“Trudy, you’re good to go.” Des stood with his hands on the gun belt slung over his hips, legs spread wide. It was his default posture, probably about as relaxed as he ever got while on duty. “FBI says they have all they need from you. Thanks a bunch. Five boys safe and a crime we didn’t know about exposed. Decent night’s work.”
“Crime? Not an accident?” I blurted, earning rather incredulous stares from both Des and Trudy. I knew that Trudy, in her informational description earlier, had been breaking it to me gently. But I wanted absolute confirmation. “Not a lost hiker? Suicide?”
Des blew out a big breath. “Skull’s one of the first parts we found. Bullet hole in the back of the head. Kinda hard to commit suicide that way and then bury your own body afterward.”
Trudy patted my shoulder and whistled softly to her dogs.
Des waited until she’d disappeared into the trees. She didn’t even use a flashlight, just let her dogs’ noses lead her back to her vehicle out on the main track.
“Violet has a hunch she wants you to confirm—or not,” Des said. “You up to it?”
“Does it involve looking at body parts?” I asked.
“Probably.” Des’s eyes were a shadowy moss color like just about everything else in the clearing.
“How much did the boys see?” I was going to have to face Walt later, and I needed to know just how much they’d been traumatized.
A little smile flickered across Des’s face. “They were full of tales and speculation and seemed to think tonight was one of the coolest experiences of their young lives. I don’t think any of them realized the remains are human. Eli was talking about a deer carcass, and he’s the only one with enough experience in the woods to be able to have close to an educated guess.”
But given the boys’ rough backgrounds, it was entirely possible they had been exposed to death before—gang shootings, drug overdoses, that kind of thing. Only Walt knew the details of the horribleness that had been in their lives before they came to the boys’ camp. But if Eli’s first assumption about what he’d seen was the natural death of an animal—even if it was caused by the claws and wrenching teeth of a cougar—it was a relief.
“Really?” I breathed.
Des squeezed my arm. “Really. They were proud of the traps they set for the goat, bursting at the seams with their success in catching that wily old ruffian. They’re okay.”
“Then lead the way.” I pointed toward Violet who was hunched next to another agent, her sleek blonde hair gleaming under the lights. She was dropping small items into padded paper evidence pouches. “I take it I’m going to need my lawyer present for this?”
Des chuckled as I fell into step with him. “You saw that, huh? You’re sure keeping him busy.” I stumbled, and he steadied me with a quick hand under my elbow. “But it’s exactly what he needs. Don’t worry. He’s tough as rawhide.”
As soon as Des said the word, I knew rawhide would be the first thing I thought of from then on whenever I looked at Tarq. The color and texture o
f his skin, the way it hung in folds on his now skinny frame, his fierce resilience in spite of the cancer—or maybe because of it—his acerbic personality. Yep, Des had nailed it.
Violet stood and brushed her hands together, but all she succeeded at was smearing mud around even more on the latex gloves. She grunted and snapped them off inside out in a practiced move, then stuffed them in her pockets.
Tarq and Loretta joined our huddle.
“You sure pick the spots.” Violet aimed her comment at me.
I wanted to point out that I’d had nothing to do with any of the events of the day—well, since the near collision anyway, even though that episode was none of her business. But Tarq’s meaningful glare made me shut my mouth. Maybe Violet was just complaining about my choice to live in a remote, rural environment. Would it have been easier to process a homicide scene in the middle of a city? Probably.
But the neighbors in an urban setting would have been far less concerned about our missing boys, wouldn’t have dropped everything to help search for them on a freezing February night. I’d take May County any day. At least Violet hadn’t complained about my neighbors and new friends tramping all over the crime scene before somebody realized exactly what it was.
“I want you to look at these,” Violet said, her voice trailing over her shoulder as she walked toward a stretch of clear plastic which formed a non-contaminating backdrop for a series of items laid out in neat rows, evenly spaced.
I squatted next to the plastic.
“Don’t touch,” Violet barked, and I held my hands up where she could see them.
Des, Tarq and Loretta gathered opposite me, also studying the display on the plastic sheet. They were silent in a strange way, as though they were holding their collective breath, as though the proffered items were dust and a whiff of misplaced breeze might cast them into oblivion.
The exhibits weren’t body parts, at least not yet, and for that I was grateful. They appeared to be clothing items—mud-caked, crumpled, slimy, and greenish despite what their original colors might have been.
Cash & Carry (Mayfield Cozy Mystery Book 4) Page 3