Liam waited for the man to say more, to elaborate on what he meant, about how a perfectly healthy 16-year-old girl could suddenly die from a heart attack, but it quickly became evident that no answer was forthcoming. He looked to Deputy Porter next, but unlike Liam, the man couldn’t seem to draw his eyes away from Patty Smith’s corpse.
“Dwight? You gonna be okay?”
When Dwight didn’t reply or even so much as move, Liam reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.
The man literally jumped, but he finally did turn to face Liam with round eyes and eyebrows pushed up in the center.
“What’s that now?” he croaked.
“I asked if you are gonna be okay,” Liam repeated.
It took a while, but Dwight eventually nodded.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll be okay. What happened to her?”
Liam shook his head in confusion, then turned back to Dr. Larringer.
“Yeah, doc, what would cause a 16-year-old girl,” Liam’s eyes flicked down briefly to the body, “a healthy looking 16-year-old girl to go and have a heart attack?”
Dr. Larringer chewed the inside of his lip for a moment, and Liam knew that what he was about to say would make him glad that Ginger Smith was no longer in the room.
“Tough to say, but it could be a number of factors. As I alluded to before, it could be a genetic condition, a bicuspid valve that went undiagnosed, or it could be something else… could be drugs. She could’ve taken a whole whack of amphetamines mixed with a little bit of Red Bull and some vodka that the body just rejected. Cocaine is another possibility; some people can die from the very first use if they have an adverse reaction—the stress can overload the heart and the muscle can just fail.”
Liam found himself nodding at this, even though Dr. Larringer’s tone implied that he wasn’t sure that any of these were the actual cause of death.
“Any evidence of any of these things? Of drug use?” Liam asked.
“No, not as far as I can tell,” Dr. Larringer answered quickly. “Like I said, we can send some samples out for testing; I’ve got a buddy in Batesburg that can help us out with that, but I’m going to be honest with you, I’m going to level with you Sheriff Lancaster—”
“Just call me Liam, please.”
“Okay then, I’m going to level with you Liam. I don’t think any of those things caused her death. I mean, come on, a preacher’s daughter? Into drugs? It’s not impossible, but I just don’t see it. My own daughter is about her age, and she got into some trouble in her youth. She’s not here anymore—I mean, she’s still alive, but moved to Alaska with her mother—but she always said that Patty Smith was a model student. Sure, she got into some trouble just like all the kids do at her age, sneaking a drink—”
Liam cut off the doctor’s ramblings.
“Yeah, that’s fine, doc, thanks. And send the samples out to your colleague in Batesburg and see what he says. Right now, I don’t want to rule anything out.”
Liam looked down at the body again.
“What about these marks? These cuts? Any idea what caused them?”
I hint of a smile formed on Dr. Larringer’s thin lips.
“Well now, that is something I can help you with.” The man turned around and retrieved a small specimen container and held it up to one of the bright lights that shone down on Patty Smith’s body. Liam squinted at the object in the container, but he couldn’t readily make out what it was.
“It’s a piece of bark,” the doctor said. “It appears as if all of these marks have been made by pieces of bark; sharpened pieces of oak bark, to be exact.”
Liam’s eyes bulged.
Bark? She was cut by bark?
“You can’t be serious,” he said.
Dr. Larringer nodded.
“’Fraid so. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s oak bark—it’s bark for sure, and it has markings like those on an oak tree, you know? I can send these out just to be sure, but given the proximity to Stumphole swamp…” Dr. Larringer let his sentence trail off, and Liam’s mind started whirring again.
So, Patty Smith heads out to the swamp where she is cut a hundred times by pieces of oak bark and then manages to walk the two hours from the swamp all the way back to her house in the middle of the day without being seen. All this before collapsing and dying of a heart attack in her backyard.
If things were confusing following his conversation with Father Smith, then they made zero sense to Liam now.
The Sheriff lowered his eyes to the body again and he found himself unconsciously searching for those two initials that Father Smith had mentioned. But while he saw some of the scratches that might’ve been construed as letters, three of them making an E perhaps, he didn’t see the capital B and H that Father Smith had described.
“Dr. Larringer?”
The doctor nodded.
“Mmm, hmm?”
“I’m going ask you something, and it’s gonna sound weird, all right?”
Dr. Larringer nodded again.
“This stays just between us,” Liam looked over at Dwight again as he said this, but he wasn’t sure the man was listening or paying attention to anything that was happening; the deputy had gone back to staring at Patty Smith’s body again, a look of sheer horror on his round face. Liam shook his head. “Yeah?”
“Yes, of course, Sheriff.”
“Did you see any… initials?”
One of Dr. Larringer’s dark eyebrows rose up his forehead.
“Initials?”
Liam Lancaster nodded.
“Yeah, initials… did you see a B and an H anywhere on Patty Smith’s skin?”
Chapter 10
“What the heck is going on here, boss?” Deputy Porter asked from the passenger seat of Sheriff Lancaster’s cruiser. Not only was Deputy Porter friends with the paramedic, but he had also gotten a ride from her, which made Liam think that perhaps they had been together before the incident had been called in. Which, in turn, made him think that they were more than just friends.
“What do I think? I think we’ve got a murder to solve here, Dwight.”
Quiet fell over the two of them as both of their minds started to search for answers.
“Do you remember the last time there was a murder in Elloree?” Dwight asked at last, breaking the silence.
Liam shook his head.
A couple of years back they had a drifter come through town, a man with a sordid past, followed by rumors that he was on the run from the law. But Liam kept a close eye on the man, and after putting back a few beers at the local pub, he had passed on through. That was the closest they came to excitement in Elloree.
As far as Liam knew, there hadn’t been a murder in Elloree during his entire tenure as a Sheriff, which was going on 28 years now. This was something that Liam was proud of, something that he had hoped to hang his hat on one day when he finally retired.
He often pictured headlines in the local Elloree Harold: Sheriff Liam Lancaster retires with dignity after keeping Elloree free of murder for his entire 30-year term.
It didn’t really have a good ring to it, no panache, but Liam was no writer. But now it seemed that the headline might be quite different when he finally hung them up.
A thought occurred to him then, something that had happened back at the station before Father Smith barged in.
“Hey Dwight, is the computer up and working at the station? The new software thingy?”
Dwight looked over at him, surprised by the question.
“Software thingy?”
“You know what I mean; you need your help on something, something unrelated something…”
…to look into after Patty Smith’s killer was behind bars.
Only Liam didn’t finish the thought; he was again struck by the idea that the missing children and Patty Smith’s death were related. He had no idea how, but…
“Yeah, it’s working. If you take me back to the station—”
Liam shook his head.
<
br /> “No, that’s for later. I want you to go to the high school, see if you can find out what Patty was doing out in the swamp—if that’s where she really was—and anything else about her that might make someone want to murder her.”
Liam considered if Stevie would be better suited for this task, but quickly decided against it. Stevie would be apt to blab about the girl’s injuries to anyone who’d listen.
“Yeah, go speak to the school, but please, Dwight, use some tact, would you? Keep the details to yourself. Better still, see if you can’t get information without letting everyone know that Patty’s dead.”
Dwight nodded, and neither of them spoke again until they drove by the same fender bender that Sheriff Lancaster had passed on the way to the hospital.
Mrs. Pincourt waved frantically at them as they drove by, but Liam didn’t slow. They had more important things to worry about now.
Dwight didn’t even seem to notice.
They had just pulled into the police station, and Dwight was about to get out of the car and into his own cruiser, when he turned back to face the Sheriff.
“Hey, Liam?”
“Yeah?”
“What was that business about initials? Did you really see some initials on her skin? Did someone carve their name into her?”
Sheriff Lancaster’s hand hovered over his own door handle for a moment, recalling father Smith’s haunting words.
“It was nothing. Don’t mention it.”
With that, Sheriff Lancaster opened the door to his cruiser and stepped out into the sun.
***
“How’s the priest doing?” Liam said quietly to Stevie who was once again behind his desk.
Stevie looked up at him with his lopsided eyes.
“He’s… he’s not doing so hot, boss.”
Liam nodded.
“Is he still with Sylvie?”
“Yeah, she’s doing her best to keep them calm, but I don’t think it’s working. He keeps talking about the damn letters, and the witch in the swamp. Sorry—the witch’s children. This is crazy stuff, ain’t it boss?”
“Sure is,” Liam said absently. “Hey Stevie, I want you to head out and pick up Ginger Smith—she’s at the hospital with the paramedic… what’s her name, the one with the—”
“The one Dwight’s fuckin’?”
Liam shook his head in distaste.
Ah, ye of no filter.
“—the female one.”
Liam was grateful that Sylvie wasn’t present; she would’ve had a field day with Stevie’s previous comment.
“Yeah, Susan… Susan Bauer. What about her?”
“She’s at the hospital with Ginger Smith. Go grab them both and bring them back here to make some formal statements.”
Stevie nodded and stood.
“I looked at these photos that you gave me,” he said, placing a hand on the four images that were still spread out across his desk. “And I think they’re related. I mean, I don’t have Dwight’s computer skills, but I can Google some shit. And I did. It looks like these people, well, they’ve all got a history with Elloree and Stumphole swamp.”
Liam looked around quickly, remembering that Patty’s wounds had been inflicted by oak bark, likely from Stumphole.
“Keep your voice down, Stevie. For fuck’s sake, keep your voice down.”
Stevie shrugged and looked over to Sylvie and Father Smith who were sitting inside the interrogation room with the door closed.
“Doesn’t matter; when we put in the new interrogation room, they made the walls double thick, even threw in some of that green drywall? You know the drywall that keeps the sound out, or in I suppose. I doubt they can—”
“Stevie, just keep your voice down, all right?” Liam implored, his eyes narrowing.
“Okay, boss. But I think there’s something to these cases. When we get done here…”
“Our first priority is Patty Smith’s murder, alright? And then we can move onto these missing people, got it?”
“Sure thing, boss, but there’s something you should know about the swamp.”
Liam raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah? What about it? I know some kids go out there to have some drinks or maybe smoke a little dope—I’ve heard the rumors. I’m not new around here, Stevie, I know all about the swamp.”
Stevie shook his head.
“No, I don’t think you do; you see there’s something about that place, something that happened a long, long time—”
For the second time that day, the door to the police station swung wide, and Liam leaped to his feet.
And then his jaw dropped once again.
Chapter 11
Officer Dwight Porter was 38 years old, five-foot-nine, two-hundred and forty-seven and a half pounds, and was having one hell of a good day until EMT Susan Bauer had gotten the emergency call from the preacher’s wife. To make things worse, he had left his car at the station for some stupid reason, and when he had arrived at Father Smith’s place, the scene of the crime, he had to do so riding shotgun in the ambulance. Which also meant that he had gone to the hospital with Susan, making a painfully obvious to his boss, Sheriff Liam Lancaster, that he had been doing his…extracurriculars during company time.
And although Liam hadn’t mentioned anything on the drive back to the station, he knew from the man’s expression that he’d figured it out. Dwight’s only saving grace was the fact that as of late, Liam was preoccupied with tiptoeing around Sylvie Sinclair, and of course now with Patty’s death.
An image of the poor girl’s naked corpse flashed in his mind.
Dwight had never seen a dead body before today.
He had worked as a deputy in Elloree since he was 26 years old, but in all of his time as a police officer, he had never actually seen a dead body. He wasn’t sure if Liam was just protecting him, but it always seemed that the big man took those calls, the ones where a police officer had to come out and make sure that Mr. O’Leary’s heart attack was actually a heart attack and no foul play was involved. And it suited Dwight just fine. He was not of the macabre, not a curious type, and maybe he was just a little too superstitious for his own good.
He didn’t need to see a dead body.
Dwight could’ve gone his whole life without seeing a dead body and been perfectly happy about it. His parents were still alive, and while his grandparents on both sides had long since passed, he was too young to remember their funerals and, besides, he assumed they had closed caskets anyways.
In any event, Dwight was not prepared for the scene that he had wandered into in Father Smith’s backyard.
A shudder ran through him as he pulled up to the modest high school.
Her skin… it was sliced everywhere. Who could do that to a person? Who in Elloree could do that to another human being?
He had heard what Dr. Larringer had said about the bark, and although Liam instructed him numerous times in the past not to let his mind go off the rails as it was prone to do, not to think of the fantastical when the mundane was usually the case in a place such as Elloree—Occam’s razor and all that bullshit—he couldn’t help it.
What if… what if there’s a serial killer out in the woods? A hermit, a man haunted by demons that would make Charles Manson look like a Boy Scout. What if he was out there, living off foul, stinking swamp water and lizard heads, waiting for an unsuspecting camper that he can trap only to slice them up and eat them while they’re still alive?
The shudder that ran up Dwight’s spine this time was more of them baby mal seizure than an uncomfortable sensation.
“Calm down, Dwight. Keep it together.”
With a deep breath, Dwight stepped from his vehicle. The air was hot, and despite being in short sleeves, his uniform felt uncomfortable against his skin. He had told Liam multiple times that he needed a larger shirt, as XL wasn’t cutting it anymore, but the answer was always the same: there was no room in the budget for uniform upgrades.
Upgrades, shit, like I want a bul
letproof vest or, God forbid, sweat-wicking fabric.
Dwight hurried across the parking lot, knowing that the bell would soon ring and then it would be impossible to corral the high school kids that he needed to speak to.
After pulling the large blue doors to the school wide, he quickly made his way down the hallway, relishing the cool air-conditioned air against his skin. But this drying sensation also caused chafing between his legs, and he regretted not showering after being with Susan Bauer.
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