Faye pulled into the Nails’ driveway and parked her car outside the project trailer.
“Do you need to go in the trailer, or have you got everything you need?” Oka Hofobi asked.
Faye pointed to a small day pack on her back seat. “I’ve got a couple of maps and a compass in there, in case we get lost. That’d be hard to do, since we’ll be in sight of the creek the whole time. We might want to get a long-range perspective on the earthworks, so I put in a set of binoculars. I never go anywhere without a trowel. There’s a couple of flashlights in there, just in case, and a camera. I also packed a couple of bottles of water and some trail mix. Oh, and some apples.”
Oka Hofobi looked at the pack as if he couldn’t figure out how she crammed so much into such a small space. “How long are you two planning on being gone? Even if you walked all the way from here to Philadelphia without food, you still wouldn’t starve to death. It’s not like we’re setting out to hike the Appalachian Trail.”
“I figure we’ll be out there a couple of hours. Besides, a man Joe’s size needs plenty of fuel.”
This was not true. When he was hunting, Joe could crouch for hours, quiet and still, waiting for just the right shot. He didn’t waste motion with something so simple as eating. Faye, at five-foot-nothing and a hundred pounds, was the one with the metabolism of a hummingbird. If she missed a meal—or even a snack—she got cold, tired, and cranky. Very cranky.
“Since you packed for a safari, we don’t need any food. I would like to get my cell phone, though.”
Faye and Joe waited in the car, but the open door gave them an unobstructed view into the trailer. Chuck was at his desk, and Oka Hofobi nodded and spoke as he passed through Chuck’s office on the way to his own. Not only did Chuck refuse to acknowledge the greeting, he never even looked up from his work.
While Oka Hofobi was fetching his cell phone, Faye’s own phone began to ring. She would have let her voice mail take a message, but habit made her glance at the caller’s number. It was Sallie Judd.
Faye wanted to kick herself. She had meant to check on Sallie long before now. She’d planned to call the hospital and check on Mr. Judd by now, too, but she’d been too wrapped up in her fascination with Toneisha’s little pot. She answered the phone.
“Faye, dear, I wanted to let you know that Lawrence is feeling better. I can tell that he’s feeling better because he’s finally starting to make sense.”
“Oh, that’s good news. What does the doctor say?”
“The doctor on duty today still can’t explain why Lawrence can’t stay out of the hospital for two days running. He says there’s nothing wrong with his heart, which is a blessing.”
“It sure is.”
“He wants to take a good hard look at his medications, in case there’s some kind of drug interaction going on.”
Faye remembered the orderly box full of pills. According to Mr. Judd, his wife was meticulous about loading it every week. If anybody could get his medication back on an even keel, it was Sallie Judd.
“He thinks maybe the beta-blocker dosage is too high. I’ve been trying to sort out the bottles in our medicine cabinet, but my eyes are so weak these days that I can’t even tell which one he’s talking about. I’m pretty sure the beige one is a beta-blocker. It’s actually yellow, but it’s a beigey-yellow and that’s how I remember which one it is. Beige. Beta. Blocker. All Bs. Except he wants to cut the dose back to 200 milligrams. If I squint, I can almost read that label, and I could swear it says 150 milligrams. That doesn’t make a bit of sense. How can he cut that pill back to a dose higher than Lawrence was already taking? I’m waiting for a doctor to call me back. I don’t know which one—he’s had so many. I know you’re busy, but could you call me the next time you’re over at the hospital? Maybe if you and his doctor—well, one of his doctors—were in the same room and I could talk to you both…”
“Of course I can do that. I’m working until dark, but I was already planning to go straight to the hospital after that. You should definitely call right now, though, and talk to a doctor or a nurse or somebody, if you’ve got any question at all about the dosage of his drugs. And you do. If he’s been taking 150 milligrams of a drug that keeps his blood pressure down, we can’t let them start giving him even more. Not when his blood pressure keeps dropping so low that he can’t even stand up.”
“You’re right. I knew that all along, but this is all so confusing. I’ll call them right away. I’ll let you go now, and I promise not to bother you until you call me from the hospital, so—”
“Mrs. Judd!” Faye cringed as she violated her mother’s rule about interrupting people, but she didn’t want to let the older woman break the connection. There was something strange about this conversation, and she’d just figured out what it was.
“Yes, dear?”
“What beige pill? All the pills I saw in your husband’s pill box were white. They were different shapes and sizes, but they were all white. I’m certain of it.”
“Do you think he might have run out of the beta-blocker? Maybe that’s what made him sick? Oh, that doesn’t make a bit of sense. The doctor wants to decrease that dose, because it’s doing too good a job of keeping his pressure down. If he wasn’t taking his beige pill, then his pressure would be too high.”
Not if Preston Silver gave him the wrong pill, Faye thought. She didn’t dare say it out loud to Sallie Judd, who might have a coronary herself if she thought her husband had been poisoned by a licensed pharmacist. But who would be better able to kill someone with a legal drug than a pharmacist?
Why would Silver want to kill Mr. Judd? Out of sheer racial prejudice? It was possible, but far-fetched. He could poison anyone of any color who walked into his store, at any time. This had the feel of a personal crime. Perhaps Silver resented Judd’s success or violently disagreed with his political leanings. Or maybe his hatred stretched all the way back to 1965.
The possibility that Preston Silver had been Lawrence Judd’s long-ago attacker seemed increasingly likely. Until this week, only three people had known about Judd’s beating—his attacker, his rescuer, and Judd himself. Now the whole world knew, and the person who did the crime would be desperate to keep it quiet. If Preston Silver had tried to kill Mr. Judd, then logic said that he was the attacker. Why would the rescuer want to keep his good deed quiet?
The sheriff needed to know about Mr. Judd’s beige beta-blockers.
“Mrs. Judd—this is what you need to do. It’s important. When you call the hospital, tell them what you’ve just told me about your husband’s pills. If anybody knows what color his pills are supposed to be, it’s the doctors and nurses taking care of him. They can start trying to untangle this mess. I promise I’ll go over there as soon as I can, so that I can help them any way I can. Everything’s going to be fine. Okay?”
Mrs. Judd’s voice was as weak as ever, but it sounded firmer because of the decisiveness with which she spoke. “Of course. If anybody can help those doctors make my husband well, it’s two hardheaded women like you and me.”
Oka Hofobi settled himself in the back seat and closed the car door. Faye waved hello, but didn’t speak. She was too busy thumbing through her phone’s menu, looking for “Recent Calls.” With a touch of a button, she could reach Neely Rutland without looking for a hardcopy phone book. She didn’t even have to remember to put a number in her phone’s address book. It just remembered any number she’d called lately, on the off chance she might need it again.
Faye loved technology. Owning such a kind and considerate cell phone was almost like having a butler. Except it didn’t bring her hot tea in bed every morning.
The sheriff’s receptionist gave Faye the sheriff’s cell phone number, since she was still at the hospital with Mr. Judd. Having that closely held number made Faye feel very important. Neely had been slow to take Faye’s concerns seriously. She hadn’t thought that the marijuana field was such an important clue to Mr. Judd’s beating, and she hadn’t been all t
hat excited over the prospect of taking a look at the cemetery mound. It was Faye’s impression that the sheriff had her eye on Preston Silver, either as a suspect in Mr. Calhoun’s murder or as Mr. Judd’s attacker. Maybe Neely thought he’d done both. If so, she should be happy with the information Faye was about to give her.
“Neely, I think I may have something on Preston Silver.”
“You’re not calling to tell me more about his discriminatory business practices, are you? Faye, I know he’s a racist. Everybody does.”
“No. I’m calling to tell you that I think he poisoned Mr. Judd. No, that’s not what I mean. I think he’s poisoning Mr. Judd.”
No sound came out of Faye’s cell phone. She plowed ahead without waiting for Neely to answer. “Didn’t you notice that he got better in the hospital, then got sick again before he’d even been out twenty-four hours?”
“People have relapses…”
“Yes, they do. But Mr. Judd’s wife tells me that she’s absolutely confused over the dosages of his medicines. His doctor wants to lower the dosage of his beta-blocker, but to a level that’s higher than what he takes now. And something’s wrong about the color of his pills. His beta-blocker’s usually beige, but now it’s white. I think Preston Silver saw an opportunity when you filled that prescription. My guess is that he wanted to eliminate the last witness to his crime.”
“You mean the crime of kidnapping and beating Lawrence Judd? There was another witness—the man who saved him.”
“Not if that man was Carroll Calhoun. Didn’t you tell me that Preston Silver collected stone tools? That he was obsessed enough with them that he might have stolen one from your father?”
“I’ll have him brought in for questioning right this minute.” Neely’s words were clipped and her voice was rough. Law enforcement was a tough job for a woman, but this woman seemed up to it. “I’ll stay here at the hospital until I get to the bottom of Mr. Judd’s problems. Can you meet me here?”
“I’m…working,” Faye said, feeling like the sheriff could handle this problem without her help. Why did she feel like the whole world was trying to stop her from taking this expedition? Couldn’t anybody get along for two hours without her help? “I can’t get away before dark. Do you want me to check in with you then?”
“Please do. I hope I have some solid information before then, but you seem very good at ferreting out secrets. I’d like to bounce a few things off you. I can’t afford to miss anything that might let a killer go free, and it looks like I might already have. If Preston put poison into my hands and let me pass it to that man…well, I won’t have to make him pay. The law is fully capable of doing that. Thanks for your help, Faye.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Finally, finally, Faye let herself melt into the dark and overgrown vegetation that covers every square foot of unplowed ground in Mississippi. Ample—way more than ample—rainfall tends to encourage rampant plant life. When those plants have their feet in deep, fertile soil, their growth can hardly be checked. Oka Hofobi, Faye, and Joe were crowded into a single file by lush undergrowth as they plunged deeper into the wilderness. The path where Oka Hofobi led them had been trampled for enough years that nothing grew on its hardpacked surface, but that didn’t stop the branches and underbrush from reaching out to impede their progress.
Joe brought up the rear, instinctively putting Faye in the protected position between two men. He didn’t look nervous—Joe never looked nervous—but he looked acutely alert. In civilized territory, Joe often seemed overwhelmed with the constant input of human-generated sights and sounds and smells. In nature, he understood every message his senses brought him. Faye had no doubt that his sharp eyes had already located enough game to feed them dinner, if need be. He had also probably cataloged several mortal dangers and shepherded Faye and Oka Hofobi past them without their ever knowing it. Deep, dangerous pits. Poisonous plants. Unfriendly creatures. If they were around, Joe had spotted them.
With every step, it seemed that another vine’s corkscrew tendrils wound themselves into Faye’s hair. It bothered her to be so dependent on someone else’s navigation skills. She liked to take care of herself. “Glad we’ve got a local guide,” she said. “I’d never have known this trail was here. I never could have followed it. And I never would have known that it would get me where I want to go. I’m counting on you to get us out of here.”
“Go ahead,” Oka Hofobi said. “Tell me how impressed you were with the place we stashed the car.”
“Most impressive. What a blessing for us that your family doesn’t keep pigs any more.”
It had been so easy, with Oka Hofobi’s help, to trespass deeply into Mrs. Calhoun’s property with almost no risk of detection. A quarter-mile down the road, out of sight of both the Calhoun house and the Nail house, was a gated drive that led to the remnants of the Nails’ former pig-raising operation. A pen, a shed, a gate—that’s about all there was to see. Faye had parked her car behind the shed, then the three of them had simply walked across the road onto Calhoun land. They hadn’t even had to wait until traffic died down. There wasn’t a car in sight.
Oka Hofobi assured them that this trail would lead directly to the wider drive that Mr. Calhoun had used to move his farming equipment from field to field. It was the same drive that the sheriff had used to get her forensic equipment to Calhoun’s murder scene, but Faye didn’t like to think about that. From there, they’d actually have some choices. They could follow the farm road deeper into the property, planning to cut across toward the creek when they thought they were near the cemetery mound. It would be easier walking, but would require some guesswork and maybe some backtracking if they guessed wrong.
Probably a better choice would be to cut across the marijuana field to the creek. They would have a choice of routes from there to their destination, in the creek or on the bank. Faye had already taken the creek route, when she was trying to stay within the law. Now that they were openly flouting Mrs. Calhoun’s property rights, she preferred to keep her feet dry. Oka Hofobi and Joe had wholeheartedly agreed.
Faye, with her tendency toward single-mindedness, had not considered how she’d feel upon revisiting the murder site. She wasn’t creeped out until they had penetrated deep into the tall marijuana plants, which obviously enjoyed Mississippi’s copious sun, ample rain, and fertile soils just as much as the woodland plants did. A quick glance around showed her the campfire where Carroll Calhoun had sat until his killer arrived. His corpse had rested mere steps away. She remembered the color of the blood, vivid even when lit by flashlight. Other details had dimmed, but she would never forget the blood.
Joe had seen the corpse and the blood and the bloody weapon, too, but he seemed completely unperturbed. How did he do it? Had he absorbed a little cannabis juice where the pot plants touched his skin? Nah. Joe didn’t need illegal drugs. He probably knew how to manufacture hallucinogens out of woodland flowers, so he didn’t have to break any laws. Faye suspected that even tobacco, in Joe’s hands, had a mind-altering power. Not to mention the noxious weeds he brewed into his traditional Black Drink.
Faye didn’t have access to any calming chemicals, except those her body made for itself. She picked up her pace, eager to reach the creek and hoping for an endorphin rush. The stream’s clear liquid sound would wash thoughts of murder from her mind. The bank was shallow here, and someone had clearly walked down to the water’s edge many times. Well, of course. Why else would the marijuana be planted in just this spot? Because it had nearby access to water, in case of drought.
Oka Hofobi continued to lead the way, and Joe continued to guard their rear. Oka Hofobi considerately honored her choice to take the dry route down the creek, but there were times when Faye thought it would have been easier to just get wet. Wading had been a direct route to their destination, and no pesky trees and bushes had stood in their way. Traveling atop the creek bluffs was an uncertain proposition. Sometimes the bank rose eight or ten feet above the creek, overhanging the
water so far that Faye urged her companions to stay back. She didn’t want to see either man go down in a miniature avalanche when the ground beneath him failed.
At other times, the growth on the bank was so rank that the damp creekside below looked far more attractive. Every time that happened, they scrambled down to walk along the sandbars lining the waterway for a while. Just when Faye thought there was no hope of getting any further without wading up to her hips in the creek, the familiar, flat-topped mound rose in front of her.
She was the first one to reach the top.
There were no headstones. No marble or granite monuments. No stone at all. Still, Faye had no doubt that this had been a place of burial. There was no mistaking the four shallow depressions sunken into the top of the mound, or the old garden roses gone wild where their headstones had been. The graves were about six feet long and three feet wide, and they were clustered in a family group, side-by-side and parallel. If they had ever had markers, someone had taken them, but it was possible that they’d left the people—the corpses—behind.
She reached into her day pack and pulled out her trowel. Oka Hofobi, who had recognized the graves as quickly as she had, was aghast, and Joe didn’t look much happier.
Oka Hofobi was the first one to speak. “Surely you don’t intend to…”
“No, I’m not going to exhume four bodies all by myself. But we’re going to need proof, gentlemen. Don’t you understand why the grave markers and the fence are gone? Isn’t it obvious what’s going on here?”
Apparently not, since both men continued to look at her like she was a ghoul.
She enlightened them. “The highway department is planning to build a road through here, and soon. These projects don’t just come out of nowhere. Years of planning happen before contracts go out. People know about this road. In fact, our client told us they did. Remember? He called it ‘a very popular project.’”
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