Hounded to Death

by Rita Mae Brown

  Following her command, the field turned around, without waiting for the field master to lead. Instead, it was up to the last person to lead them back out, until the field master could come up front.

  Shaker followed the field while Sybil gratefully moved back into the woods.

  The bear sat down for a breather.

  The last person happened to be Lorraine Rasmussen, a novice, but she did her best to lead them out.

  Once into the small clearing, with little fire stars dotting the area brilliant red, Shaker brought hounds through, followed by Sister.

  The field waited as Shaker and Sister conferred.

  “Tally Yogi?” He laughed.

  “Better than ‘Tally bear.’ ” She grinned, then added, “Let’s lift. The temperature has already come up to the low seventies, I swear it.”

  “Okay, Boss.” Shaker felt this was the right decision.

  They turned toward the west. The Bancrofts had cut many paths through their farm over the decades, a godsend to the hunt staff.

  They emerged from the woods, three-quarters of a mile up from the hog’s back they’d jumped to get into After All farm. The jump in the fence line here, three large stacked and tied logs, looked formidable, but horses would rather take a solid obstacle than an airy one so over they went.

  Walking through the wildflower field, Jerusalem artichokes not yet opened, black-eyed Susans thinking about blooming, Queen Anne’s lace filling the field with white, the group was nearing the southernmost part of Hangman’s Ridge. A last finger of the glacier that created the Blue Ridge Mountains also piled up Hangman’s Ridge. The unusual top, smooth as glass, had slopes covered in creepers, thorns, and all manner of prickly bushes. The southern side looked as though it had been sheered off with a knife, but bushes grew out of the rocks and tiny little lichens gave a green-gray cast to the rocky terrain. A path from Soldier Road, which ran east of Hangman’s Ridge a mile from the ride, was the closest one could get to the top from this side, although smaller animals could zigzag up the face, depending on their agility.

  Tootie, scanning the southern rocks, had learned from Sister to read “everything.” By that Sister meant to read the wind, the temperature, the soils, the kinds of rocks and animals, the angle of the sun, the plants, the birds, and the tracks. Never stop experiencing nature, for one feels as much as one sees and hears.

  A faded blue baseball cap with an orange V in the center, hanging near the top, caught her eye. “How’d that get there?”

  Val, amused, looked up; then she and Tootie noticed at the same time.

  “Holy shit!” Val exclaimed, but there was no Felicity to collect a dollar this time. Felicity was only a week away from delivering her baby.

  Since there was room for her to do so without jostling, Tootie rode past the other people to Sister, where she whispered something.

  Sister, face suddenly ashen, turned to the field. “Gray, will you lead everyone back? I’ll be with you shortly.”

  Gray counted hound heads. He knew whatever this was did not involve picking up a lost hound.

  Then Sister quietly drew alongside Ben and they rode back to Val, whose exclamation had unfortunately drawn other eyes to the blue baseball cap with the V for Virginia on it.

  Although it was above them and so high they had to squint, people who looked hard could see a skull and some hair, sticking out from under the cap, wedged between the base of a slender bush and the rock. An old frying pan was also wedged in a rock outcropping.

  Sister told people to move along.

  Ben stopped below the point and stared up. “If this belongs to the foot, we might get an ID from the teeth. From here all of them look to be there.”

  “And grinning at us,” Sister added grimly.

  CHAPTER 22

  “How can these body parts show up when there’s no missing person’s report?” Back at Roughneck Farm, Val, ever logical, chatted as she cleaned tack.

  Working on the tack hanging from the other hook, Tootie said, “The sheriff checked for central Virginia.”

  “Someone is missing somewhere.” Val stated the obvious.

  “Like the Jimmy Buffett song, ‘It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere’?” Sister came in the back entrance of the barn after throwing hay for the horses.

  “Was kinda cool, wasn’t it?” Val tossed her blonde ponytail.

  “As long as you weren’t the head.” Sister entered the tack room as the girls stood in the aisle with the tack hooks, buckets in front of them full of water.

  “Gray,” Sister called out. Gray was walking across the peagravel walk from the kennels to the barn.

  “Yes, master,” he said teasingly.

  “Will you call your brother and find out if he knows if any of the street drunks are missing? I have a hunch, thanks to the frying pan, that the man under the cap lived rough.”

  “Good idea.” Gray checked his watch. “He’s still at work.” Flipping open his cell, Gray punched the speed dial button. “Sam.”

  On hearing the voice of his big brother, also his roommate, Sam replied, “What do you want me to pick up on the way home?”

  “Nothing. Do me a favor. Ask around to see if any of the street people are missing.”

  “They go missing a lot and usually turn up later after a colossal bender. But yeah, I’ll ask.” Sam knew his brother would give him details later, no need to talk overlong at work because Crawford might notice.

  That man noticed the smallest thing.

  “Crawford hunt his hounds today?” Gray’s voice carried a note of sarcasm.

  “Don’t ask.”

  “All right, tell me later, but if you hear anything before I get home call my cell.”

  “Must be important.”

  “Could be.” Gray flipped his cell shut. “He’ll get on it.”

  “Good.” Sister sank down in a worn chair.

  “Don’t you think the sheriff has asked the street people?” Val called from the center aisle.

  “Sure, but they’ll be more inclined to speak to one of their own—one of their former own, I should say—rather than to a badge. Dammit, I hate this,” Sister replied. “Sometimes street people get tired of being moved along by the cops, tired of being helped by the Salvation Army, so they head out into the country. Like I told Gray, it’s just a hunch.”

  The two young women looked at each other. They’d never heard Sister speak quite like that.

  “You hate not knowing.” Gray humored her.

  “That’s a fact. But have you considered that Hangman’s Ridge is my land? First a foot, now a skull and a frying pan. I want to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Me, too.” Gray put his arm around her.

  “Creepy,” Tootie said, as she cleaned the bit with fresh water. “The foot was bad enough, but the head—that really creeped me out.”

  “Way gross, but still we’ll be telling our grandchildren about the skull hunt.” Val did enjoy drama.

  Tootie giggled. “I can’t imagine you as a grandmother.”

  “I can’t either,” Val agreed. “Hey, let’s call Felicity when we’re done and tell her. Better: Let’s go over.”

  “If you go, I made a big casserole, since I figured we’d be eating together. You can take some to her. Will you be back for supper?”

  The two conferred. “I’ll take it to her, but we want to eat it with you,” Val said.

  “All right.”

  Two hours later, Sister was pulling weeds in her garden. The ability of weeds to thrive when perfectly beautiful flowers die never ceased to amaze and irritate her. Golly supervised. Raleigh and Rooster slept under the Japanese maple. The kids had driven over to see Felicity. Gray was in the den, cheering on Syracuse, his alma mater. There could never be enough football for Gray but especially Syracuse football. Sam had graduated from Harvard and spent a year at Michigan law before transferring to the Darden School at UVA. He was a rabid Michigan fan. The air at the old home place sometimes thickened with sulfur as the two
brothers discussed their teams.

  Gray’s phone rang. “Better be good,” Gray said. “Third quarter, Syracuse up by six.”

  “It is,” said Sam. “Jake Ingram hasn’t been seen since the end of March. Got to the point where he’d drink anything, even Sterno. Everyone figured he wandered off or died.”

  “No one reported it.”

  “Of course not. Sometimes people go back home or get smart and go into rehab. They don’t want to see any of the old gang. Makes sense, if you think about it.”

  “Did anyone go to wherever Jake lived?”

  “He lived on the street. Used to live down by the train station, but you can’t do that anymore, now they’ve built those apartments across the tracks. The guys hang around the parks or the Greyhound station or they move farther out. These days they move a lot.”

  Gray called Ben Sidell, who thanked him. Then he tore himself away from the game because he knew Sister would kill him if he didn’t tell her straightaway.

  After hearing the news, she looked up from under the straw cowboy hat. “Jake Ingram. Never heard of him. Well, Ben can track down his dental records. Might make for a fast matchup, but the name doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “If you don’t need me, I’ll go back to the game.”

  She waved him off—for Gray, football took precedence over everything else—and said to Golly, “I hope I never have a heart attack during a Syracuse game. He’d wait until after the game to call the ambulance.”

  “I’ll revive you.” Golly felt she had great powers.

  “Right.” Rooster opened one eye. “She’ll smell that tuna breath and gag.”

  Golly puffed up, shot out of the garden, raced to the Japanese maple, and hit Rooster with all four paws as she shouted, “Death to dogs!”

  Then she prudently climbed the graceful tree as Rooster threatened from below.

  Sister wiped her brow. “What in God’s name gets into her?”

  CHAPTER 23

  The name Jake Ingram rang a bell so loud for Mitch Fisher that he nearly went deaf.

  Ben Sidell sat across from the doctor in the living room at seven-thirty in the evening. Thanks to Sam Lorillard’s tip, Ben asked Larry Hund, one of the area’s leading dentists, if Ingram was a patient. He was not, but Larry remembered that Dr. Sandra Yarbrough often performed work on the indigent and victims of violence as a community service. Both she and her husband, Nelson, also a dentist, took care of the unfortunates with no fanfare. Sandra, home when Ben called, dropped everything, drove back to the office, and met him at the morgue within an hour of the call. The records matched up. Also, there was evidence of periodontal disease, not uncommon among alcoholics and especially among people hooked on crank.

  Lutrell, Mitch’s wife, looked in on them. Noticing Mitch’s ashen face, she left right after ascertaining no libations were needed.

  “How did he die?” Mitch had liked Jake as best as one can like a person in the grips of addiction.

  “We don’t know.”

  “If his head was severed from the body, it must have been horrible.”

  “No clean cut of the neck vertebra. His head was torn off by an animal. We haven’t found the rest of his body. Probably won’t, since he was somebody’s lunch.

  “When did you fire Jake?” Ben asked.

  “A year ago. Came in late and smelled of liquor—you know, sweating it out of his system.” Mitch folded and unfolded his hands, a nervous gesture. “I knew for years that he went on benders on the weekends, but until it affected his work it was none of my business.”

  “How many years did you work together?”

  “Four. He had good skills, and he was responsible. Lab techs, good ones, are hard to find.”

  “I can imagine. Was there an outstanding incident that forced you to fire him?” Ben asked.

  “Not so much that as an accumulation of late mornings, especially in the last six months that he worked for me. If I was operating, he was still good.”

  “Was he angry when you fired him?”

  “No. Defeated.”

  “I see.” Ben folded his hands together and leaned back in the cavernous club chair. “Did you ever see or hear of his having major problems with anyone?”

  “Hope Rogers.”

  “What happened?”

  “Sheriff, I only got this from Jake, so the story is highly colored, but he said she accosted him in the Food Lion parking lot and accused him of animal torture: stealing dogs and horses. According to Jake, she was one hysterical bitch.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Hope, does it?”

  Mitch shook his head. “No, but people get very emotional about animals. Children and animals. Possible. Not likely, though.”

  Ben looked Mitch directly in the eye. “How much did you pay for dogs?”

  Mitch hesitated, then replied. “Used to be five bucks a dog, but now it’s twenty-five. Or I should say that was what I last paid. Research using dogs shut down in this area four months ago, thanks to all the bad press. Public outrage built, and this year it finally hit the red zone.” He paused and removed his tortoiseshell glasses. “I understand the outrage, but many advances have come at the cost of the suffering of animals, to put it bluntly.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Ben remained noncommittal. “Were you shocked when you heard Hope Rogers shot herself ?”

  “I was.”

  “Was she your equine vet?”

  “No. She wouldn’t work for me because she was so adamantly opposed to research using animals, even rats. Again, I understood her position and it was not discussed between us.”

  “Certainly seems to have been discussed between her and Jake.”

  “Again, I took his version with a grain of salt. Jake wasn’t a confrontational guy but, as his deterioration accelerated, let’s just say there were copious misunderstandings.”

  “Did you think, after you’d fired him, that he might seek revenge in some way?”

  “No. He wasn’t unreasonable. When his mind was clear he knew he was a liability.”

  “But that’s it, isn’t it? His mind wasn’t clear. Did he ever threaten you?”

  “No.”

  Ben unclasped his hands, thinking, then said quietly, “Did you ever see him after you’d fired him?”

  “Once at the shopping center. That was—oh, Christmas. I remember it was snowing a bit. I was shocked at his appearance.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes. He was embarrassed to see me. I gave him fifty dollars. I guess that was stupid. He probably went right into the ABC store and loaded up on good liquor. I can’t imagine what he’d been drinking without money.”

  “Let’s just say folks can be imaginative in trying to extract liquor—even from Listerine.”

  Mitch grimaced. “He couldn’t beat it. Maybe he’s better off dead. That’s a terrible thing to say, I guess, but it’s what I think.”

  “Back to Hope Rogers for a moment. Did you get a feeling, even if fleeting, that Jake would get even with her?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’ve been helpful and I’m sorry to break the news to you. Even though you’d let him go, I can tell that you harbored some good feelings for the man.” Ben stood up to leave. “If you think of anything, anything at all, please call me.”

  “I will.” Mitch walked Ben to the front door, the hallway lined with nineteenth-century colored plates of military men from the English publication Vanity Fair.

  Ben walked slowly, admiring the prints. “Guess appearing in Vanity Fair in those days was like People today.”

  “Higher class of reader,” Mitch commented dryly.

  “Yes, I suppose.” As Mitch opened the door, Ben stepped out, turned, and said, “One more thing. Has anyone ever threatened you about your research?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “What is the research?”

  Mitch, hand still on the door latch, thought how to put this in simple English. “My work involves the amoun
t of fat surrounding major organs. One of the causes of death at the end of certain kinds of cancers, and a contributing factor to death in famine-cursed countries, is the lack of fat around organs. It’s fascinating, really. On the one hand, we have an obesity epidemic, and on the other, people can’t keep warm because they don’t have sufficient body fat.”

  “So you starved them, killed them, and then operated to study the organs.”

  Stunned at how quick Ben’s mind was, Mitch swallowed. “Yes.”

  “Again, thank you.” Ben left.

  As Ben drove out, he passed a tidy two-story dependency, taupe clapboard with maroon shutters. Stepping out into the cooling evening air was Barry Baker, all spiffed up. Barry waved.

  Ben stopped the car. “Going to be a long weekend here for you?”

  “Love it here. Just love it. Quite a hunt today.”

  “Yes, it was. No one will ever forget it.”

  “You and I have both seen the worst of human behavior,” said Barry. “I was in Korea, and I’ll tell you, Ben, individual crime is worse. War isn’t personal, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do. We found out who that skull used to be. It was a lab tech Mitch fired. Alcoholic.”

  “That’s a sad end. Ever see Hogarth’s drawing Gin Lane?”

  “Have.”

  “Accurate then. Accurate now.”

  “Sure is. Say, you look ready for action.”

  “You never know. It’s the vest, isn’t it?”

  Judge Baker wore a handsome tweed herringbone jacket, a red vest, and a white shirt with a forest green tie embroidered with foxes. Pinwale tan cords and expensive handmade calf shoes completed his attire. Of course, he wore his platinum watch.

  “I’d be chicken to wear a red vest. I’ve got to hand it to you.”

  “Take a lesson from an old man: Women notice clothes. In fact, women notice everything; they can recall a pinstripe shirt you wore three years ago at a cocktail party. Money spent on good clothing is never wasted. Of course”—he smiled rakishly—“time spent with women is never wasted either.”

  “I’ll remember that.” Ben waved and drove off.