Total Silence

by T. J. MacGregor

  The road between the cabin and the farmhouse still buzzed with activity. Powerful searchlights illuminated the falling snow and cops and forensics people moved through it like figures in a Kafkaesque nightmare. Mira had been gone now for between an hour and a half to three hours. The longer he stood here, waiting for someone to come in and tell him he was off the hook, the farther away Mira got and the harder she would be to track. He didn’t have any idea what the holdup on this end was about.

  He had given a lieutenant his badge number, his boss’s cell number, his partner’s cell number, and the number for the bureau’s Miami office. Annie had confirmed his story: they had been in town and the girls had gone rock climbing at a place across the street from the Laughing Seed, the vegetarian restaurant where they’d had a bite to eat, and then they’d gone to Malaprop’s Bookstore and bought a couple of books and videos. He’d shown the lieutenant the receipts, the merchandise. What the hell more did they want?

  Annie had been able to call 911 from the cabin phone, but otherwise it didn’t work and neither his cell nor Annie’s picked up a signal. But even if he could call out, who would he call and what would he say? Four people are dead and Mira ‘s gone.

  Gone where?

  The possibility that she had run into the woods when she’d heard the gunshots was clearly ludicrous, and she obviously hadn’t ridden out of here on any horse. If she’d been wounded, then it hadn’t happened in the cabin. He had searched the place for bloodstains and found nothing, nothing at all. In his heart he believed she was still alive, he felt that she was.

  But alive where?

  The cabin door opened and a man in jeans and a navy blue pea coat walked in, snow blowing in behind him. He had a buzz cut, a clean-shaven jaw, and, except for his clothes, looked like some businessman from Wall Street. He shut the door, glanced at Annie asleep on the couch, at the dog curled up in front of the stove, then at Sheppard and extended his hand.

  “Kyle King.” He spoke as quietly as he had shut the door. “No relation to Martin Luther or Stephen,” he added with a quick, winning smile. “I’m with the bureau in Charlotte.” A firm, businesslike handshake. “Your badge number and alibi check out.”

  “It took them an hour and a half to figure that out?”

  “Blame the mountains. At best, cell phones up here are erratic, and if you toss in a snowstorm, well, then the land lines don’t work very well, either. I was in Asheville and they asked me to run your badge number and check out your story. Fortunately, the phones at my hotel are still working.” He shrugged off his coat and fitted it over the back of a kitchen chair, then ran his hand over his buzz cut, brushing out the melting snow. He gestured at the pound of Cuban coffee on the kitchen table. “You mind if I make some of that? Christ, I haven’t had real Cuban coffee since I don’t know when. You look like you could use a cup, too.”

  “I need a search party,” Sheppard said. “Not coffee. My fiancée was taken by the person responsible for these killings.”

  “How do you know that? We’re still searching the woods. It’s possible she ran off.”

  The soft, even pace of his voice snapped Sheppard back into the here and now. This King guy was good, Sheppard thought. Very good. He knew the drill. Hi, I’m your buddy, I’m your friend, we’re bureau brothers, and we’re in this together Now tell me everything you know.

  He wasn’t doing this because he doubted Sheppard’s alibi, so there had to be something else at work here. Maybe he knew something about the killer’s MO or perhaps forensics had passed on some piece of vital information already. Whatever the reason, Sheppard didn’t have time for games.

  “Here’s the deal, Agent King. I came back here, the dog was howling before the car stopped, and I had a bad feeling. I told the kids to stay in the van and went into the house.” Sheppard went on from there, the abbreviated version, and ended up his story with the Mexican workman dying as he gripped the guy’s hand. “We’ve lost time here and the more time we lose, the harder it will be to find the killer and Mira.”

  The pot was now filled with Cuban coffee and King, who was in no apparent hurry, brought over two mugs, set them on the table. “You take anything in your coffee?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Then, please, sit down. We’re going to be here awhile. The snow has closed the interstates to the Georgia border and the perp can’t go west because the interstates there are closed, too. He won’t be getting far before sunrise.”

  Sheppard sat down reluctantly and suddenly his body felt as if it had been filled with cement.

  “A relative will be here by morning to pick up the Stevens girl and, hopefully, the horses, dogs, cats, chickens, and whatever else is here.” King filled the two mugs and pulled out the other chair. “I spoke to your boss, Baker Jernan, and to your partner, John Gutierrez. He’ll be up here as soon as he can get a flight out. He said to tell you he’ll be in touch with Nadine and that he’ll make sure your cat is fed.”

  Sheppard couldn’t help himself, he laughed at that. It was exactly something that “Goot” would say. It also meant that Goot was bringing Nadine, since she was the person presently feeding his cat, and that he would now be saddled with finding someone else to feed not only his cat, but Mira and Nadine’s cats as well.

  “Your boss said he’s ready to send as many people as we need up here.”

  Sheppard noticed the we. “I need forensics information.”

  “I’ve got some preliminary stuff. Very preliminary. What’s Mira’s blood type?”

  Mira. Her name rolled off King’s tongue with familiarity.

  “A Positive.”

  “Yours?”

  “Same.”

  King nodded, withdrew a Pocket PC from his shirt pocket, and tapped this information into it. “The Stevenses both had 0 Positive blood. The two men found in the barn both had AB Positive. There was also A Positive blood found. Not a lot of it, but enough to suggest that whoever it came from was wounded. And since you don’t look wounded, this could indicate that Mira was injured.”

  “The forensics people do the typing on-site?”

  “The mobile forensics unit is relatively new. Tell me about your relationship with the Stevenses.”

  Sheppard sipped at the coffee, set it down, sipped some more. He had known Jerry Stevens since they’d shared an apartment together when they were both college students more than twenty years ago. He had been Jerry’s best man at his wedding, when he’d married Ramona, and was technically Tess’s godfather. The friendship now amounted to male bonding through e-mail and Ma Bell and a reunion when the spirit moved them.

  “I understand your fiancée is allegedly psychic. Tell me about it.”

  “How would you know that?”

  “Internet.”

  “Then you know her background with law enforcement, so there’s not much to tell.”

  Silence. Sheppard finished his coffee and glanced toward the window, where the outside lights still illuminated the falling snow, then looked back at King as he spoke.

  “So the question is this. If Mira is as psychic as the stories I read seem to suggest, then isn’t it possible that she’ll attempt to communicate with you or her daughter in some way?”

  The question was so totally out of whack for an FBI agent that it threw Sheppard for a moment. Was this part of King’s game or was it an honest question? He decided to give King the benefit of the doubt, at least for the moment. “Yeah, it’s not only possible, it’s likely. But she was feeling sick when we went into town. She thought she was coming down with the flu or something. And when she’s sick, her abilities don’t work very well. And if she’s wounded on top of it. . .” His voice cracked with emotion and he shut up and looked quickly down at his empty mug.

  “Is her daughter psychic?” King asked.

  “Yes. But she’s also a kid. It’s erratic.”

  “What about Mira’s grandmother?”

  “Yes. But she’s in her eighties.”

  “So you�
�re saying that psychic abilities have age limitations.”

  Another out-of-whack question. Sheppard, irritated now, leaned forward. “I’m saying that I’ve known this woman more than five years, have seen her do amazing things, come up with astonishing information, and I’ve seen her daughter and her grandmother in the same light. But this ability isn’t something you conjure at will. This is the twilight zone, Mr. King, and Rod Serling isn’t here to give us the real-time scoop.”

  King raised his cup to his mouth, drank down the entire mug, set it down. “The snowfall should taper off by three or four. Tess’s relatives should be here by breakfast and the phones should be working by then. I’m going to bunk up at the farmhouse. Get some sleep, let’s see where things stand when the sun comes up.”

  With that, King pushed his chair back, stood, and shrugged on his pea coat again. “We’ll find her, Mr. Sheppard.”

  “Shep,” he said.

  “Kyle.”

  They shook hands again and when King opened the door to leave, Ricki lifted her head and gazed after him, then looked at Sheppard, who said, “It’s okay. You’re staying here with us. Go back to sleep.”

  Ricki lowered her head to the floor and shut her eyes, and Sheppard wandered back to the smaller bedroom, feeling as though his life had come unraveled at the seams.

  August 1989

  Tybee Island, Georgia

  1

  The noises of the marsh rise and fall around them, as immutable as the cycles of the tides, of light and darkness. They listen raptly, trying to identify every sound. She has been out here by herself plenty of times at night, sneaking out of the oppressive house to breathe the air of freedom. But she has never before listened so closely to the music of the marsh.

  “Frogs,” he says.

  “Fish jumping “Lia says.

  “Scared fish? “Dean asks.

  “Restless fish.”

  They are sitting at opposite ends of an old rowboat, their bare feet pressed together She loves the heat and pressure of his feet, the shape of them, the summer roughness. It’s late, way past midnight, and her parents believe she is asleep. She crept out of her bedroom window an hour ago, when she heard Dean’s whistle echoing across the marsh, and he picked her up at the dock that juts out from her backyard. Now they are deep in Tybee’s salt marsh, intruders stealing time together Now and then he drops the paddles into the water to steer them deeper into the tall reeds. But mostly, they drift.

  “Restless for what?” he asks. “What would make fish restless?” Lia shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe the same things that make people restless.’

  “Hunger?”

  She flexes her toes against the bottom of his feet. “Naw, they’re well-fed fish. There’s plenty of food in this marsh. I think they need a change of scenery. Maybe it’s the tug of the ocean tides that makes them jump.”

  “You mean, the marsh fish are tempted to head into the Atlantic?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds right.”

  He leans forward and runs his fingers over the tops of her toes. “You make me feel like that, Lia.”

  When he touches her, she feels a hunger so deep it scares her She is fifteen years old. She first saw Dean two months ago, in June, while walking on a Tybee beach at sunset, hoping she would spot a pod of dolphins just offshore, and he fell into step beside her.

  “Hey,” he said. “You live across the marsh from me.”

  She remembers that she looked over at him, that her breath hitched in her chest, and that for moments she felt so tongue-tied she said nothing at all.

  She recognized him, of course. Every teenage girl on Tybee knows who he is. He looks like an Olympian god, his father is a famous cancer researcher, he’s a rich kid from Miami. “Yeah, so?” she finally managed to say.

  “I’ve seen you out in the marsh late at night, “he said. “You always seem to be looking for something.”

  “Dolphins, “she told him. “They sometimes come into the marsh when the tide is high.”

  “And now?” he asked.

  “They sometimes swim along the shore at sunset.”

  And right then, she told herself that if they spotted a pod of dolphins, if she saw even a single dolphin, it would be a sign. A good sign. A moving-forward sort of sign.

  “I’m Dean, “he said.

  “Lia,”she replied, and he smiled and so did she, and yes, they saw a pod of dolphins and that was how it started.

  Now here she is. Here they are. It’s August, the air steams even at this hour. The moon is sliding down low in the sky, no one can see them. She wants him, he wants her, what could be simpler? It’s not the first time. It won’t be the last. His mouth presses against hers and she unzips his shorts and they slide down inside the old rowboat and the rest of the world goes away.

  They are careful. They are loving and lustful—but careful. He pulls out of her before he comes, and much later, as he is rowing back toward her dock, it occurs to her that pulling out isn’t safe enough to suit her “You know, maybe we should use condoms. Or birth control pills or something.”

  “Is this a safe time of the month for you?” he asks.

  Is it? She isn’t sure. Her mother, a religious woman who probably hasn’t had sex since Lia was conceived, has never talked to her about this sort of stuff. What she knows has come from books and friends, and right now, she can’t remember details. She can’t remember when she had her last period or when the next one is due.

  “I’ll have to check, “she replies.

  As they near her house, she begins to cry, she can’t help it. The tears simply leak from her eyes and roll down her cheeks and she says, “Listen, I don’t want some silly fucking thing out in the marsh, okay? If that’s what you’re looking Dean, then just go find someone else.”

  He brings the paddles into the boat. “Is that what you think this is?”

  “I don’t know what this is.”

  Dean sits forward, his face very close to hers, his fingers traveling up her arm, to her shoulder and down again, and then up her arm to her chin. “I love you.”

  He says the words softly, brings his mouth to hers, kisses her again. Already, she has a hickey on her neck and must remember to cover it up before she goes inside her house. Her mother notices everything. She pulls back. “I have plans. I have dreams. They don’t include this. You.”

  “Bullshit, “he says, and kisses her again.

  Lia’s arms tighten around his neck. She feels compelled to tell him about her silly, social-climbing mother, and her emotionally detached father She blurts how she is the only child and therefore has no reality other than a child of their creation. Then they are sliding down in the boat again, making love again, and she is terrified her parents will hear the shocking resonance of her body as she comes.

  2

  Dean’s sister is visiting. Allie the big shot, the brains of the Curry family fortune, that’s how she sees herself. She’ll be twenty-eight in November and is doing her residency in ER medicine. She thinks she knows everything, that she is smarter than their old man, smarter than God. He can’t stand being around her, can’t stand the grating sound of her voice as they sit around at dinner.

  Allie dominates the conversation, bragging about her residency, about her new husband, her new home, her wonderful life. Then she and their father get into one of their discussions about the cancer drug he pioneered. Dean already knows the history, the particulars, that the drug made the Currys rich. He’s pleased that the drug saves lives, and yes, having money is great, but the conversation bores him to death. He pushes away from the table—and conversation abruptly stops.

  “Where’re you going?” his mother asks.

  “Out.” To meet Lia on the beach. Lia, the sun in his universe. “But I just got here, “Allie says.

  “And you’ll be around for four days, “Dean replies, and picks up his dishes and carries them out into the kitchen.

  He hears the low, muted tone of their voices and knows they’re
discussing him. Sure enough, Allie comes out into the kitchen and leans against the counter, watching him. “So you’ve got a girlfriend.”

  She’s fishing for information. He recognizes the ruse. “I do?”

  “That must be it, for you to run off like this.”

  “I go out every night.”

  “But I rented a couple of movies for all of us to watch.”

  “Allie, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not twelve anymore. I don’t feel like watching movies with you and Mom and Dad.”

  “If Keith were here, you would.”

  “I doubt it. “He grabs his wallet and keys off the kitchen table. “See you tomorrow, “ he says, and escapes the house before she can say another word.

  His black Trans Am, parked in the driveway, is wedged between Allie ‘s car and his father’s. Trapped, he thinks, and knows it was deliberate on Allie’s part. This is the kind of shit she does. And now the front door opens and she comes outside.

  “Guess you’re not going anywhere so fast,” she says with a smirk on her face.

  “Move the car, Al.”

  She tosses him the keys. “You move it.”

  The inside of her car smells of perfume and leather It’s a BMW, spotless, not a speck of dust or a crumpled wrapper anywhere. He starts it up, revs the engine, and peels out of the driveway while Allie stands on the front steps, watching him. Then he slams the car into reverse and speeds back up the driveway, dust and gravel flying up, pinging against the sides of the car. He screeches to a stop inches from his father’s back fender, gets out.

  Allie marches over to him, her face like stone. “That gravel better not have dented the paint job, “she snaps.

  “Catch, Al. “He hurls the keys at her.

  She misses and they hit the ground. “Pick those up, “ she demands.

  “Fuck off. “As he strides past her, she grabs his arm and he wrenches around, jerking his arm free, and moves his head just in time to avoid the slap he knows is coming. He catches her forearm and grips it tightly. “Don’t you dare.”