Too Close to Home

by Maureen Tan

  I stayed far enough back to avoid the dust and gravel thrown by the convoy. After a few more miles of winding road, the taillights of the van flashed as it slowed to turn at the green sign that pointed eastward toward Camp Cadiz. Five miles. I tapped my brakes, made the turn, flipped down the visor to shield my eyes from the sun that hung like liquid fire above the tree line. Not nearly noon and the temperature was already creeping above ninety.

  I pulled into the lot at Camp Cadiz and turned off the engine. Chad slid from his squad car, shrugged his shoulders to settle his bulletproof vest more comfortably around his chest, and adjusted his belt and holster to ride smoothly at his waist. I slipped from my vehicle and did the same. In the meantime, two men had emerged from the van. They introduced themselves and began unloading equipment.

  The crime-scene techs were a pair of fiftysomething-year-olds. Male. Both wearing Illinois State Police badges at their waists.

  One of the investigators was tall with broad shoulders, a scrawny neck, and thinning blond hair. He was dressed for a walk along city sidewalks in dark slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt and a conservative tie. Two minutes out in the sunny parking lot and he shed his sports jacket, throwing it into the front seat of the van.

  The other man, who was more practically attired in jeans and a short-sleeved double-knit shirt, called to mind a bulldog. Short and muscular with bowed legs and a deep chest, he had droopy jowls framing a mouth with small, uneven teeth and a distinct underbite.

  Even the shorter route to the crime scene—which, once we reached the bridge over the ravine, Chad had marked by sticking the wire ends of tiny orange flags into the ground—was a hot, uncomfortable hike. All of us were lugging heavy equipment. In the sun, the humidity made breathing almost difficult. In the shade, mosquitoes swarmed hungrily and bit despite the repellent I’d sprayed on all of us. Walking single-file with Chad in the lead and me bringing up the rear, we followed the makeshift trail that meandered its way between trees and avoided thickets of brush, but managed to stay within a dozen yards of the edge of the ravine.

  We didn’t talk much and we didn’t hurry.

  I kept an eye on the men in front of me, making sure that neither of the city boys strayed from the makeshift trail or collapsed from the heat. Which gave me plenty of time to recall the promise I’d made to Chad back when we were teenagers. Back when I’d wanted nothing more than to have the best search-and-rescue dog in the county.

  Back then, it had been Indian-summer weather—comfortably cool, dry and sunny. Chad, Highball and I had practiced together that morning. It had taken just over an hour for Highball and me to locate Chad, who had hidden himself among the thick branches of a fallen tree. After that, the three of us had hiked along the tree line to the top of a ragged bluff. While Highball napped in the shade, Chad and I had sprawled side by side on a sun-drenched outcropping of sandstone, our bellies warmed by the rock and filled by the sack lunch Aunt Lucy had fixed us, our chins propped on our elbows. From our vantage point, we’d looked out over miles of treetops burnished red and orange and gold.

  At some point, Chad began rubbing his cheek. Hard. I still remembered the loneliness I’d glimpsed when he’d finally turned his face toward me.

  “My momma’s buried out there,” he’d said. “Somewhere. She never liked the forest, y’know. She always said it was dark and gloomy. Even this time of year. It was too closed in. That’s what she always said. Momma loved sunshine and flowers. She’d want to be buried in a place like that little cemetery up on the hill in Golconda. You know the one. It’s planted with lilacs and black-eyed Susans and purple coneflowers. And, hell, you can see practically into the next county from there.”

  That’s when I—naive and overconfident—had promised that someday my dog and I would find her for him.

  Now, more than a decade later, maybe we had.

  When we arrived, the two techs skirted the scene, taking photos, before ducking beneath the yellow crime-scene tape that Chad and I had put up the night before. Then they stood a little back from the crumbling edge, peering downward.

  “Nasty,” the taller man observed.

  “Very nasty,” his jowly partner agreed as he used the back of his latex-gloved hand to brush a trickle of sweat from his forehead.

  They both insisted that processing the scene—even on a narrow ledge down inside a ravine—was their job. No offer of help that Chad or I made was going to change their minds. But neither turned his nose up at the safety harnesses Chad had brought with him or the quick lesson on rappelling I offered. Once down on the ledge, the taller man took photographs and the shorter took samples of soil.

  Then we gathered up the bones.

  With latex-gloved hands and more reverence than I’d expected, the techs removed the bones, one by one, from beneath the curtain of roots and passed each bone up to either Chad or me. We wore gloves, too, and carefully placed the bones in one of the boxes the investigators had brought with them. As routine as processing a crime scene must have been for the two men, they still seemed to feel sympathy for the victim. No matter that our victim was recently found rather than newly dead.

  They freed the rib cage by cutting the roots around it, so we placed almost as much tree as bones in some of the boxes. As I handled the bones, I tried to identify them, hoping that I might be able to glean something about the identity of the victim from ribs and vertebrae, from the tiny bones that the investigators sifted from the soil and I recognized as being pieces of hands and feet. But what little I knew about the identification of skeletal remains I’d learned during a short session at a weeks-long training course for rookie cops. On the campus of the University of Illinois, I’d sat in a modern classroom at the Police Training Institute among students—mostly male and all as green as I was—who’d traveled from all over Illinois to learn the basics of law enforcement. Regarding bones, we’d learned mostly that it was our job to preserve the scene for more skilled investigators. That we would never be as skilled as the Illinois State Police’s forensic lab rats. They, with their books and charts and mathematical tables, could determine height by measuring a leg bone and age by looking at the seams in a skull.

  For a couple of hours, and despite the blistering heat, the two techs worked methodically, communicating in the kind of verbal shorthand that longtime colleagues often developed. Chad and I didn’t talk much, either. We stayed busy passing equipment and evidence up and down as requested and simply watching the state investigators as they moved around the narrow outcroppings—the one on which I’d discovered the remains and the ledge below it, where I’d found Tina. We called out a warning whenever either man became so engrossed in his work that he forgot he was on the edge of a precipice. Safety harness or no, an unexpected fall could cause injury and was something to be avoided.

  Both ledges looked more hazardous by the light of day. Darkness had only suggested the depth of the ravine, but had left mostly unseen the jutting rocks, ragged dead branches and a rock-strewn stream far below. I realized how very fortunate Tina and I had been.

  Finally, Chad and I helped the state investigators back up to safe, solid ground. Then we all stood for a moment, surveying the boxes and bags that they’d collected.

  Bones, it seemed, were pretty much all that remained of the victim. Except for a small white button and a section of zipper, nature and animals had stripped away our victim’s clothing and scoured away clues.

  “No ring?” Chad asked, though it was obvious there wasn’t one. His mother had always worn her wedding band and, during questioning, his father had been upset because he’d forgotten to remove it.

  “An adulteress should not be allowed to defile such a sacred symbol of marriage,” he’d said.

  Chad’s hand had risen to his face and, when he asked about the ring, he was already working his fingers back and forth along his scarred jaw as he stared down at the contents of the box.

  “No,” the tall crime-scene technician said.

  “Are you sure?�
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  I expected the investigator to interpret Chad’s words as a challenge to his competence, to stiffen his body and snap out a response. But he didn’t. Chad was staring down into the box, so he didn’t see the flicker of sympathy that I saw on the tall tech’s face.

  “No ring,” he said, and no hint of sympathy colored his voice. “No jewelry of any kind. And we were thorough.”

  I was fairly certain that Chad hadn’t mentioned his suspicions about finding his mother’s remains to anyone but me. But cops were a gossipy brotherhood and I knew that this particular tale of duty and devotion had reached near-legendary status statewide. Although few were acquainted with the actual man or even the specific circumstances of the murder, the story of the young cop and his unrelenting search for his mother’s body was well-known. I’d heard the story several times and, each time, the facts had been just enough off that I could tell they weren’t based on first-or even secondhand information.

  Apparently the tale had traveled as far as the Illinois State Police crime lab. Or maybe, I told myself, Chad’s chief had simply made a call to the crime lab on behalf of one of his favorite deputies.

  “But it’s probably not a complete skeleton,” the stockier tech added as he began placing lids on top of the boxes of bones.

  I noticed nothing about his manner or tone suggesting that he’d heard the story.

  “I found a few bones on the second ledge,” he continued, “but I suspect some of the tiny bones from the hands and feet have been washed away by the rain. Or carried off by rodents. It’s surprising, really, that all the major bones are intact.”

  “We have enough to confirm the obvious,” his partner said. “And maybe eventually come up with a description of the victim.”

  The stockier man nodded, then lifted the skull from the last open box and held it upright in his palm.

  “Here’s what we can tell you now,” he said matter-of-factly, “which is probably nothing that you haven’t already figured out. GSW to the head.”

  He turned the skull to display the hole I’d noticed the night before above the bony ridge of the left eye.

  “Entry wound.”

  Then he rotated it to reveal a much larger hole at the back of the head.

  “Exit wound.”

  For a moment, he lifted his hand a little higher, briefly looked into what had once been a face.

  “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew h—”

  It was the kind of humor that Chad and I both understood, black humor that kept cops one step removed emotionally from the tragedies they investigated. But this time, at least one of the state investigators knew that the tragedy was personal. He interrupted his partner’s soliloquy.

  “Actually, our vic is a female,” he said quickly, his eyes flickering to Chad’s expressionless face.

  Taking the skull from the hands of his unresisting partner, the taller man hunkered down on one knee beside the box and placed the skull carefully inside. After putting the lid on the box, he rested his right hand on it for the briefest of moments.

  A benediction, I thought, though I couldn’t have proved it.

  “Yeah, definitely a woman,” he said as he stood, then concentrated on brushing soil and bits of vegetation from his knees. “Pelvis gave us that much. And based on the general conformation of the face, my bet’s Caucasian. Of course, the lab’ll have to confirm all that.”

  “Any idea about her age?” Chad asked.

  Both of the state guys shook their heads.

  “Adult,” the stocky tech said. “Lab guys will look at her teeth and pelvis more carefully, narrow it down for you. But you probably already know that your gal won’t get priority treatment. Lab’s already got a backlog of recent deaths to deal with. It may be weeks before you’ll get a formal report.”

  Chad nodded. So did I.

  “Whatever you can give us informally would be appreciated,” I said.

  “Yeah. No problem,” the tech said.

  “Any idea how long she’s been here?” Chad asked.

  The taller tech lifted his chin in the direction of his partner.

  “Nature boy,” he said, as if that explained something. And when his partner spoke, I realized it did.

  “This is just a good guess, understand? But it might just help you track down a few possibles before you get the official report. Figuring on the size of the roots that grew in and around the ribs and spine, I’d say—” he stopped, thought about it for a moment “—ten years. Give or take a couple of years on either side of that.”

  Chad nodded, and then his eyes met mine.

  Twelve years would be about the right time frame, I thought. But maybe the body had been there for as few as eight. And I was comforted to see more caution than optimism in Chad’s expression.

  “You didn’t find a bullet,” I said, hoping that somehow I’d missed them bagging one up.

  “No,” the stockier tech said. “And given this—”

  Briefly, he shook his head as the sweep of his hand took in the forest. Then he stepped to the edge of the ravine, looked downward, and shook his head again as he spoke.

  “What we’ve got here is a decade—more or less—of constant erosion, aggressive plant growth and exposure to the elements. Odds are, any physical evidence is long gone or so deeply buried that there’s no hope of finding it. Not even with dozens of people looking for it. And, frankly, this kind of case doesn’t warrant the manpower. So anything we find out about this gal is going to have come from her remains.”

  As his partner spoke, the taller blond technician had slowly turned in place, his thoughtful gaze taking in the entire area enclosed by the yellow plastic tape.

  “Hollow tree,” he murmured. And then he said more loudly: “We missed checking the tree trunk. The body was probably stuffed there first, so it’d be a good idea to take a look inside.”

  Years earlier, a murderer had judged the rotting hole at the base of the massive tree large enough to serve as the entrance to a makeshift tomb. But over those years, woody vines as thick as a man’s arm had snaked up and around the dying tree. Encouraged by the light sifting through the thinning canopy overhead, new growth had crowded the ragged opening. Neither the crime-scene investigators nor Chad looked enthused about flattening themselves on the ground and angling their bulky upper bodies into the cramped hole. And, in fact, I doubted that any of their shoulders were narrow enough to fit.

  The taller investigator pointed.

  “Is that poison ivy?” he asked. “What is it they say? Something about three leaves?”

  “Leaves of three, let it be,” Chad answered. “And yes, that is poison ivy.”

  “I suppose you could avoid it if you were careful,” the tech with the jowly face observed.

  I hadn’t been careful the night before, I thought as I stood listening, waiting for the men to work out the problem and reach the inevitable—and unwelcome—conclusion. Just lucky. I could still make out the impression of my elbows and knees in the humus-y soil next to the tree, and realized that I’d missed crawling through a patch of poison ivy by just a matter of inches. But then, I’d been concerned only that Tina might be inside.

  “Hole’s too small for a grown man to crawl into it,” the taller technician said. “We’ll have to enlarge the opening to get a good look inside. A chain saw would do the job. Probably easy enough to get our hands on one. Be messy, though. Faster and easier if one of us was small enough…”

  His voice trailed off about the time I noticed that the hole in the trunk was spun with tattered spiders’ webs. Only my pride and the three pairs of male eyes turned my way kept me from shuddering.

  “I’ll do it,” I said without enthusiasm.

  I waited for a moment, hoping that some valiant man would try to stop me. Would say that, in fact, the chain saw would be a better choice.

  Wishful thinking.

  Sighing, I slipped my billy club from my belt, then undid the buckle and wrapped the leather strap around my holster. I hand
ed the holster to Chad, stepped over to the tree and, trying not to think about what my uniform—already perspiration stained—was going to look like by the time I finished, I used the billy club to clear the webs and bits of loose, termite-infested wood from the narrow opening.

  I exchanged the billy club for a flashlight, turned the brown ball cap that was part of my uniform around so that its bill protected the back of my neck, then lay down on my right shoulder. Avoiding the patch of poison ivy and trying not to think too closely about the eight-legged residents that I might be dislodging, I pushed myself forward into the hollow trunk. I stopped when my head, shoulders and right arm were just inside the opening.

  Contrary to what is reported in children’s storybooks, there is nothing magical about being inside a tree. A couple feet in front of me was a gaping hole where daylight glimmered upward from the direction of the ravine. Above me, surrounded by the remaining trunk, was a damp honeycomb tunnel of rotting wood that narrowed until it appeared solid. Spindly black ants the size of dimes streamed up and down the interior carrying fat, round pupae the milky color of rotting flesh. That didn’t bother me. But the sight of countless daddy longlegs scuttling for cover did.

  For a moment, I panicked. I could feel my heart pounding, feel the air trapped in my throat, feel the building scream that would release it. Would release me from the frozen moment that preceded flight. I shoved my fist against my mouth, drove my index finger against my teeth, and bit down. Hard.

  The pain cleared my head and, for a heartbeat, refocused my thoughts away from the spiders. Long enough. I let my captive breath rush out around my hand. Then, though my nerves screamed their objection, I shut my eyes. Counted to ten. And ten again. Told myself that childhood had passed. That I had endured the terror back then. That I need not relive it now.

  Memory provided a flash of Katie’s hand holding mine. Warm and tight and strong. Her voice was strong, too, as she assured me that she’d killed the spider. That she would kill any spiders that dared to come anywhere near me. Because she was my big sister and it was her job to keep me safe.