by Rose Beecham
“Tell me something,” Lone allowed herself the question that had bugged her ever since they’d embarked on the search, “why do you care?”
Debbie’s bright hazel eyes widened with shock, then she frowned as if she’d been asked a trick question. Finally a sunny contentment settled on her features. “Because I’m part of the human race, and we’re all in this together.”
Lone thought about that as another diver went in, risking his health, and possibly his life, to search for the body of a child he didn’t know. She stared around at the crowds, not the media but the people. Deputies. FBI agents. Police. SAR teams. Volunteers who’d now spent three days combing a vast area, enduring extreme conditions, on the slim chance of finding this child.
They must all feel that way, she thought. Why didn’t she?
Gazing into Debbie’s eyes, she lost herself for a moment in the tranquil forest hues, then asked, “Do you hate anybody, Debbie? Really hate them?”
Debbie considered the question with obvious unease. “No. I guess I don’t hate anyone that much. Do you?”
Lone wanted to answer truthfully, but she knew Debbie would find the honest answer disturbing. She really did hate some people, so much that she wanted to watch them die. And she felt completely neutral about everyone else except Debbie. She wished others no ill, but she did not share Debbie’s sense of connection to strangers. She had once, but that seemed so long ago she could no longer recapture the emotion. Even if she could, it had no place to reside.
Noticing her lover had started to shiver, Lone drew her close, holding her from behind. Debbie rested back against her with a happy murmur.
In her ear, Lone said, “I love you, Debbie doll.”
Debbie wriggled so she could look up at her. “I love you, too,”
Lone could not resist stealing a quick, daring kiss. She needn’t have worried about anyone noticing this reckless public lesbianism. At the very moment her lips found Debbie’s, the crowd surged forward and shouts went up. Like a huge, self-cloning, armored centipede, the media crawled all over the banks of the reservoir, sunlight gleaming off cameras and tripods.
Everyone stared, transfixed, as a tow truck slowly hoisted a mesh basket from the murky water. Lone could make out a sledgehammer peeping through the webbing and what might be a black trash bag. A bloodhound standing on the bank emitted a long, low howl and lay down on its haunches next to its handler.
Debbie said, “That’s the dog we met, remember.”
How could Lone forget? Debbie had seemed enchanted by the K-9 handler, making Lone worry briefly that she’d fallen for a woman with bisexual tendencies. After a while, she understood that Debbie had seen something feminine in the deputy, and that’s what she’d reacted to. The man was ridiculously good-looking and oozed an innocent country-boy charm that made him impossible to dislike.
But that night as soon as she held Debbie in her arms once more, Lone knew she had nothing to worry about in that department. She’d found the perfect woman. Sweet and gentle, kind, honest, passionate, and loyal.
Once she’d completed her mission, she planned to take Debbie somewhere far away and build them a house where they would live happily ever after. She owned a hundred acres on a lake in Canada and had a large trailer on the property. No one would come looking for her there.
“It must be him,” Debbie said as the police herded the crowd back behind the barricades erected earlier, and an elegant blond woman was ushered through. Debbie seemed excited to see her, announcing, “That’s Dr. Mercy Westmoreland from Court TV.”
Sheriff Pratt then climbed onto a portable platform and read a statement he’d obviously prepared in advance, thanking the searchers and law enforcement professionals and asking everyone to go home. “I can confirm that we have located the body of a child,” he said. “But until formal identification is carried out, that’s all I can say, folks.”
Lone released Debbie as people started moving around them. “It’s over,” she said. “Let’s leave the experts to do their job.”
“Okay.” Debbie fell in step next to her and they started the long walk back to the parking area.
After a few minutes of silence, Lone asked, “Are you okay, baby?”
Debbie turned her head just enough so that Lone could see tears pouring down her face. “Why do people do these things?” she sobbed. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course, you don’t. How could you?” Lone reached for her and rocked her in a tight embrace.
Waiting for the weeping to subside, she thought about Canada some more. There was extra planning to do now that she had Debbie to take care of. Lone had already set up a second false identity for herself and even had a bank account in Toronto. She would need to do the same for Debbie. It was probably wise to take her across the border ahead of time.
Lone wondered how she was going to explain all that without disclosing sensitive information. It wasn’t as if Debbie would be leaving anything important behind. She wasn’t close with her family and she was in a go-nowhere job. They would pack up the cats and Debbie’s personal effects, and Lone would rent a van. If everything went according to plan, this time next year, they would be sitting on a patio overlooking a pristine wilderness and the FBI Director would be appearing in front of Congress to explain how come no one saw the assassination coming.
Chapter Sixteen
The death of children made no sense. Accidents happened. Lives were snuffed out as if the Fates demanded daily sacrifices and spun a roulette wheel to determine who would make them. Parents paid a terrible price for a moment’s carelessness or distraction, dooming themselves to an eternity of self-blame if they lost their child as a consequence.
Murder was something else. To kill a child was to steal so much future, to destroy so many dreams and hopes, to end innocence in the cruelest way. Every child’s body she saw filled Jude with despair, and the bodies of murdered children corroded her spirit in ways she could not fully comprehend. To weep for them was never enough; she had discovered that a long time ago. Revenge, the capturing of their killers, brought an end of sorts, yet no resolution. Justice was never done.
Jude knew survivors who had gone to executions believing the gnawing at their souls would end once they saw the death grimace of a man who’d killed their loved one. But they still awoke each day to a world haunted by the person their child could have been, by the unborn grandchildren they might have had, of infinite possibilities extinguished. Jude supposed she understood their pain better than most because of Ben.
Her brother had vanished when he was twelve. One day he was there and everything was normal; the next day he was gone and she was evicted from her world, never to return. From that day on, she’d occupied a new and different normality. Over the years, especially when she saw the remains of a child, Jude longed for Ben’s body to be found. At least with the finality of death came the legitimacy of formal grieving. A funeral. A place to go and leave flowers. A name inscribed on stone to wear over time, as she would.
Jude wanted bones to touch. She wanted to see eyes closed forever to this world and tell herself they were open to another, the better place people talked about. The problem with dead children was the utter senselessness of a life given, only to be taken before it could bear fruit.
She lifted the evidence sheet that covered the body of Corban Foley. There was no point fighting it, so she allowed her tears to fall. Soon, anger would come and displace this helplessness. Once more she would focus on the mechanics of the investigation, the goal of seeing a man in handcuffs awaiting the verdict of his peers, as if a child killer had peers among ordinary citizens who led ordinary, honorable lives. But in this moment all she could think about was how cold and alone Corban Foley was. Neatly arranged on the steel gurney, wrapped in the sheet, he looked like a forlorn gray doll.
Strangely, she could almost feel him in her arms, alive and warm, heavy with sleep and trust. She could smell freshly washed hair, milk, and baby skin. These were the earlies
t smells she could remember, the scent of her baby brother on their mother’s lap. She could still feel the curl of his tiny fingers and see his dark startled eyes, gray-blue like a storm on a lake.
Ben had been small for his age and Jude was tall. The last time she’d held him, she was ten and he’d fallen off his bike. She picked him up and carried him to the nearest patch of grass. It was weird—she’d thought then that it would be the last time she ever carried him, and she was right. His increasing size and boyish dignity meant he never let her baby him again after that day. Then he was gone.
Jude refastened the robe she was wearing and stretched latex gloves over her hands. She lifted a strand of hair from Corban’s right cheek and stared down at the wound it had clung to. There was blotchy bruising and loss of skin below the eye across the cheekbone. Someone had struck the child.
“Ready, Detective?”
Jude heard the swinging doors open, but she didn’t turn around. She had hoped the Montezuma County coroner would assign a pathologist from Durango to conduct the autopsy, but he’d been out at the site of a small plane crash when Corban’s body was discovered, and Sheriff Pratt had called the Grand Junction M.E.’s office for help. They could have sent someone whose voice would not make Jude’s heart beat faster, but instead they sent Mercy.
“Not in Canada yet?” Jude remarked. She had no idea why she said it. Mercy had told her she wasn’t going right away.
“I said I’d wait for that body.” As usual, Mercy could make scrubs and rubber gloves look sexy. “Besides, we’re not in any rush.”
“You seemed to be the last time we spoke.” Jude wanted the remark to sound flippant and good-humored. Instead her voice shook just enough for Mercy to direct a long, hard look at her.
“I wanted to tell you before you heard it from anyone else, that’s all,” she said. “I think I owed you that.”
Jude didn’t answer. All she could see of Mercy’s expression was an untroubled brow and a pair of arresting blue eyes gazing at her without a trace of languid sensuality. In the worst way, she wanted to drag Mercy out of the room and shake her. Kisses. She wanted those, and Mercy’s sounds and smells and reckless full-tilt surrender. Where had she gone?
The woman a few feet from her was not her lover; she was a stranger. It was as if they’d never touched, as if they knew little more than each other’s names. Was this how it would be? Jude suppressed the urge to yell Look at me! Remember how it was.
Didn’t Mercy miss her at all? She hunted for a sign, a softening of that cool gaze, a hint of the throaty tone that spoke desire, the subtle unnecessary brush of her body. Nothing.
Mercy glanced past her toward the diener, a lanky African-American man who worked in expressionless silence. He wheeled the gurney closer, drew the sheet back, and removed the bags from Corban’s hands. Mercy gave Jude a look of resignation and slowly paced around the body taking photographs.
Corban wore a pair of pajamas. His killer had put him into a black trash bag and dumped it in the reservoir weighed down with a sledgehammer.
Mercy glanced up at Jude and said, “Someone dressed him in the pajamas postmortem.”
She removed the garments, taking close-ups as she went. The diener bagged and tagged these and placed them on a nearby table. He then assisted Mercy as she took hair and nail samples, and they continued the painstaking collection of external evidence under an ultraviolet light. All the while Mercy spoke crisply into her voice recorder.
As they hovered like birds intent over their young, Jude stared up at the Latin inscription on the plaque above the door. Taceant colloquia. Effugiat risus. Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae. Let idle talk cease. Let laughter depart. This is the place where death delights to help the living. The same maxim, or part of it, was to be found in almost every autopsy room she’d ever seen.
Eventually Corban’s body was x-rayed, weighed, measured, washed, and transferred to the autopsy table. Only then did Jude see that his right arm was splinted and bandaged from wrist to elbow and his body was covered with bruises. Corban Foley’s life had ended painfully and violently.
“It wasn’t a knife,” she noted flatly.
“No.” Mercy lifted his head a little and turned it away from Jude. The base of his skull seemed to have a hole in it. “It’s too soon to determine cause of death conclusively, but this is a fatal head injury. Fracture of the right occipital bone, extending medially into the foramen magnum.”
“That’s where the spinal cord goes?”
“Yes.” Mercy repositioned the body. “From the X-rays, it looks like he was beaten severely. The right arm is fractured in a couple of places, likewise several ribs. No callus formation. There’s extensive bruising to the trunk. In a child that age, there would have been internal bleeding. The skull fracture would have been associated with significant brain injury.”
Mercy’s attempt to put into laymen’s terms the nature of Corban’s injuries somehow failed to capture their true horror. Wanting to confirm her initial observations, Jude asked, “How would he have sustained injuries like these? An adult couldn’t do this with his bare hands, could he?”
“No. The nature and site of the head injury could only be caused by a direct blow. Probably a blunt instrument. I’ll be able to make some suggestions once we’re done here.”
“He suffered, then?”
Mercy stiffened as if the question jarred her from her clinical detachment. After a short pause, her brow was smooth once more and her voice even. “The bones of his forearm would have moved against each other and caused extreme pain. The splinting was the work of an amateur. Completely pointless for such a fracture.”
“A doctor didn’t do it?”
“Certainly not.”
Jude met her eyes. “I have to nail this monster. Do you understand?”
“You’ll have my report on your desk tonight. Allow a few days for toxicology, fiber, and DNA, as usual.”
Mercy picked up her scalpel, and the diener placed a small rubber body block beneath Corban’s back. His fragile chest lifted and his arms and head fell limply away from his body, as if an invisible thread had just tightened high above him, connected directly to his heart. In a moment he would be opened out like a book, for the story of his death to be read in his flesh.
Jude left the room before the Y-cut was made. She wanted to remember him exactly like that, like an angel had just plucked his soul from his body and would not let go until they reached the sweet hereafter.
*
People magazine paid for Corban’s funeral. In exchange for a premium burial package and impressive stone-angel monument, they had received exclusive print-media rights and a reserved area at the front of the church and next to the graveside so they could capture every compelling moment.
They’d also paid for the new outfits Tonya and her sister wore, and both women had received a makeover so they would look their best in the close shots. This had transformed the color of Tonya’s hair to albino white, and she was wearing it shorter and dead straight. Amberlee had gone with a radiant strawberry blond, in the same straight, layered style.
“CNN is in on the deal, too,” Dan Foley told Jude. He was out on bail and seeing a psychiatrist as a condition of his release. “They’ve got something going with People.”
“You’re not planning to do anything unwise, are you?”
“So long as I’m there when you guys put the handcuffs on that scum-sucker, I can behave myself. Just promise me you’re gonna wipe that shit-eating grin right off his face if you can’t shoot his balls off. While you’re at it, see if you can break every bone in his body.”
Jude said mildly, “I’m the law, not the Terminator.”
They both looked toward the doors of the Montezuma Valley Presbyterian Church where Wade Miller, in a rented suit, was accepting condolences like a grieving parent. Next to him, Tonya stood with her head down and a gold-embossed white prayer book clutched in her hands. The dress wasn’t what Jude would have ch
osen for a funeral. Close fitting, it was midthigh length and had a plunging V-neckline. Her sister had gone with a scoop necked, long-sleeved Gothic style velvet gown. She had tiny white rosebuds in her hair.
These were a theme.
For the viewing, Corban’s casket had lain several inches deep in them. As funeral service attendees filed in to the church, each was handed one to pin on a lapel. Corban’s face was printed on the ribbon that was used to fasten them. Tonya had her rosebuds artfully arranged around the wide-brimmed hat she was wearing. A filmy black veil hung from this, which seemed to annoy her. She couldn’t stop lifting it and glancing at herself in the huge polished brass urn on a pedestal by the door.
“Amberlee says they’re going to be in a TV movie about the case,” Dan said. “Can you believe it?”
“What else is she saying?”
Jude had sent Dan in to check out the lay of the land with Tonya’s sister, who seemed less than happy that she was not the center of attention in this media circus. Rekindling the tender feelings he and Amberlee had once shared, he’d proven very useful. Hearsay wouldn’t be much help in a trial, but it was good to know exactly what was going on in Tonya’s private life, and Jude needed to keep track of Wade Miller’s ever-changing versions of events.
“They hired the same lawyer Gums Thompson’s using.”
“Who’s paying for that?” Jude asked.
“Old man McAllister from the building depot. Heather Roache got him to hire the guy to clear Matt’s name.”
“Seems like there’s a conflict of interest.”
“Not any more. After Matt and Gums went on TV he got them another lawyer. He’s not charging Tonya and Wade a dime.”
Jude wasn’t surprised. Griffin Mahanes was a big-time criminal defense attorney from Denver. He would have arranged the People magazine deal and taken a piece of the action. No doubt he was content to wait and see what happened, poised to claim center stage if Miller ended up in a media-event trial.
“The funeral home did a good job fixing up Corban’s face,” Dan said.