by John Lutz
Doc Amis came into the waiting room, gray, erect and noble. Wintone often thought that many a politician would give up his graft to look like the doctor.
Wintone nodded to him. “Claude Borne,” he said.
Doc Amis slipped the fingertips of his right hand into a vest pocket. “He died of massive internal hemorrhaging. He was broken up inside, Billy.”
“Outside, too,” Wintone said.
“Either way it’s loss of blood, loss of life.”
“Was Claude one of your patients, Doc?”
Doc Amis nodded, keeping his gray eyes fixed on Wintone. “Most everyone in these parts is, one time or another.”
“What was wrong with him?”
Doc Amis seemed to consider answering for a moment. “Cirrhosis of the liver, almost to the serious stage.”
“How were you treating him?”
“High-protein, high-carbohydrate diet supplemented by vitamin-B complex and liver extract.”
“What about alcohol?”
“I prohibited it.”
“How long ago?”
The doctor walked to a file cabinet, pulled open a drawer and checked inside a yellow folder. “Almost a year,” he said. “Borne had shown some improvement, too.” He replaced the folder and shoved the long drawer shut, shaking his head. “Hell, I should have let him drink and enjoy himself.”
“You shoulda told him not to go fishin’.”
“Everything’s a lot simpler lookin’ back on it,” Sarah said, fixing her gaze on Wintone, then looking down and rearranging some envelopes on her desk.
“Was there any alcohol content in Claude’s blood?” Wintone asked the doctor.
“None whatsoever. He wasn’t drunk, Billy.”
“Bad as he was hurt, could he have been … rational when he told me what happened to him?”
Doc Amis chewed on his lower lip, shrugged. “I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. If his speech was normal, coherent—in other words, if he seemed rational—he might well have been rational. I don’t say that you can assume he was.”
“Have you told the newspapers any of this, Doc?”
“Nothing but cause of death. I try to avoid those reporters; they have a way of twisting your meaning. Some of them, mind you, not all.”
Wintone thanked him, said good-bye to Sarah and left.
Claude Borne hadn’t been drinking; there was plenty of proof on that count. Let Mayor Boemer and the rest of them yammer all they wanted. If they tried to give Wintone trouble or tell the newspapers that Borne was drunk the night of his death, Wintone would release the news of the autopsy report, the jug of sweet cider and Helen Borne’s statement.
In a way Wintone wished that Borne had been drinking. But he hadn’t been, and he had seemed rational just before his death, when he gave his account of what happened to him. That part of it bothered Wintone. About the only thing in the whole business that didn’t bother him was the knowledge that people were packing up and leaving the Colver area. The fewer remaining, the fewer he had to worry about. All the way back to his office, Wintone couldn’t help thinking of how rational Claude Borne had seemed.
SIXTEEN
CHERYL PETERSON STOOD LOOKING out the wide window of a room at the Starvue Motel, looking out past the trees at the edge of the graveled lot to the dual-lane highway. She wished now she hadn’t agreed to her husband’s idea of a last idyllic Ozark fishing trip.
“I don’t care for this place,” she said without turning.
“It was the best I could do,” her husband explained. His voice was even, without any hint of irritation, as if he didn’t want to upset her.
“They got different channels on the TV,” Melanie said, her words punctuated by a series of loud clicks as she punished the channel selector.
“The forest fire was bigger than I thought,” Peterson said. “All that’s left, really, is the south part of the lake, and when I phoned for reservations every place was booked up. This is as close as we could get.”
Cheryl stood still at the window, bright light penetrating her professionally fluffed hair. “It looks to me like everybody on the highway’s going the other way.”
Peterson told Melanie to pick a channel, then leave the TV alone. He sat on the edge of the bed. It was a soft bed, and the room was large, newly carpeted and clean. The lake was only a ten-minute drive away. He didn’t know what Cheryl was bitching about. He’d done the best he could, and still she bitched.
“It’s getting hot out there,” Cheryl said to him. “You can tell just by looking that it’s hot.”
“While it’s still early, let’s get out of here and get some breakfast, then we can go explore Colver.”
“On the map it doesn’t look like there’s much to explore.”
“How about the motel restaurant for breakfast?” Peterson asked.
Cheryl turned away from the window. “It doesn’t matter.”
Peterson was getting tired of listening to her say that things didn’t matter. Her attitude suggested that she was involved in some sort of minor ordeal that had to be endured.
“Will they have pancakes?” Melanie asked.
“Sure they will,” Peterson said.
As they walked across the gravel lot toward the restaurant, he noticed several cars laden with luggage and camping equipment passing on the highway, going north. Only a single car passed headed south. Maybe there would be some vacancies now closer to the lake.
Alan Greer and his wife Kelly found a place to stay very close to the lake. Ten minutes after they’d checked in at Higgin’s Motel, Alan pulled his wife down onto the double bed with him. Kelly’s resistance softened, was displaced by eagerness. Still drained by the outside heat, they made love with an easy, slow rhythm, his fingers inserted like pitchfork prongs in the mass of her dark hair. Together they worked to make it last a long time.
Alan watched her afterward as she quietly rose to go into the shower, a lithe and beautiful girl with elegant legs and something of the feline to her movements, each step unconsciously precise. Despite serious, dark eyes there was a perpetual good humor about her full lips, as if she couldn’t resist enjoying life.
The abrupt thunder of the shower running in its metal stall roared through the tiny cabin. Alan raised himself on one elbow, then effortlessly shifted his weight and stood. He stepped into his jockey shorts, then without knowing why smoothed the worn bedspread. Short, but well-muscled and flat-stomached, he was twenty-six, two years older than Kelly. There was a curved scar near the small of his back from a motorcycle accident three summers ago. After a few more rides to convince himself that he’d exorcised his fear, he no longer rode motorcycles.
Alan walked across the threadbare carpet to where the largest of the suitcases lay near the long dresser. He unlocked and opened the suitcase carefully and examined his photography equipment, working the zippers on the leather cases with practiced ease. He’d forgotten nothing, and everything was in order. With a brief smile he ran a hand through reddish brown, curly hair that grew in bright defiance straight out from his head.
This was an opportunity, to be in on the birth of an Ozark legend, while it was current news. If he could somehow get a photograph of Bonegrinder it would advance his photography career by a long step. He didn’t really expect to be that lucky, but even the lush green and hilly wildness of the Ozark country would make a superb subject for a color spread in one of the leading specialty magazines. And the right sort of shot would be in demand by the major newspapers.
Alan picked up the leather case containing his thirty-five millimeter Honeywell Pentax, hefted the expensive camera and case in his hand, then replaced everything in the padded suitcase. After spinning the combination lock on the closed suitcase, it occurred to him that there could only be so much hot water and he joined Kelly in the thundering shower.
When they had toweled dry and were getting dressed, she said, “This is a homey cabin. Everything’s a little worn but comfortable.”
“Ju
st like home, only everything works,” Alan said, buttoning his shirt.
Kelly crossed the room barefoot and began brushing her long, damp hair before the dresser mirror. Alan was glad to see her smile at him. She hadn’t wanted to come here, thought the Bonegrinder idea was a bad one and maybe a dangerous one. But he had explained to her the possibilities in the venture, and at least the likely sale of some Ozark shots to the travel magazines to help pay for the trip. And they weren’t that far away, so reluctantly she had left Kansas City with him early this morning in their five-year-old Volkswagen, and here they were. Alan was determined that if he did nothing else he would relieve her of her apprehension. He thought he’d made a pretty good start.
Alan slipped his boots on and sat quietly until Kelly finished brushing her hair.
“What now?” she asked. “Dinner?”
“There still good light out there,” Alan said, glancing at the window. “Let’s walk around awhile and look things over.”
Kelly tied a narrow red bandana about her brushed hair, giving her dark features a faintly Indian look knocked out of kilter by her slightly upturned nose. She waited at the door automatically while Alan got his camera.
He was pleased that she was impressed with the beauty of the country, though she said there was more of a wildness to it than farther north, where they had vacationed several years ago. That wildness of sun and deep shadow appealed to Alan’s camera eye.
They walked to the lake road, then through a clearing to the lake itself, and there the primitive wildness that Kelly had felt, had almost scented, was stronger. The barely rippling water was brackish and carpeted with patches of darkly luminous green, and the tall reeds stretching out from shore seemed to form patterns of unnaturally deep shadows. The stench of decay was here, subtle movement on the fungus-laden surface of a fallen limb that seemed to be grasping at the water with crooked, leafless branches.
“It’s shallow here,” Alan said. “Most of the southern part of the lake is shallow near the shore. It’s not exactly prime resort area.”
Kelly picked up a damp broken branch, tossed it to the side. It landed almost silently in the brush near the bank. They heard a frog leap and hit the water with a solid, plunking splash.
“I wish we hadn’t come,” Kelly said.
“Don’t decide too quickly,” Alan told her, unable to restrain the irritation in his voice. “This is a particularly gloomy spot, but so what?”
“So let’s leave it.”
“A few shots first,” Alan said, removing the Pentax from its case.
Kelly craned her neck to look up at the tall trees on either side of them. The trees seemed to arch over her, bending long limbs toward her rather than toward each other. She turned to look with relief at the open, graying sky above the wide lake.
But the lake itself seemed ominous, its flat surface dull and possessive. Glimmers of light on the lazily rising and falling expanses of water seemed to suggest movement below. There was nothing visible on the lake’s surface, not a boat or floating debris of any sort, as if everything had somehow been claimed from below, drawn irretrievably down into darkness. Kelly was surprised to find herself wishing she could see a rusty beer can floating out there, anything. Almost anything.
“This is near where the fisherman, Claude Borne, was killed,” Alan said, replacing his camera in its case.
“Cheering.”
“I want some shots of where the other one was killed, the first one, the boy.”
“Does it have to be this evening?”
“No, the light’s failing.”
They turned away and walked along the barely discernible path through the clearing, back toward the narrow road. Alan knew that Kelly felt the same uneasiness he was feeling with their backs to the lake, the same unreasonable urge to walk faster. He placed a hand on her shoulder, pulled her toward him so that they walked close together. She smiled up at him and he kissed her forehead, which was cool and damp. He realized that he was perspiring heavily himself. The heat hadn’t fallen with the sun.
“We haven’t seen anyone, Alan. Where are they?”
“Frightened away by the second death, the woman at the motel office said.” He knew he wasn’t reassuring Kelly, but she deserved the truth. “There’s still a lot of superstition down here, but no reason to let it affect you.”
“I’m suspicious of anyone who uses ‘superstition’ and ‘reason’ in the same sentence,” Kelly said.
Alan laughed, welding her body against his side with a spasmodic tension of his arm. The camera swung rhythmically on its strap against his chest. He knew he shouldn’t have brought Kelly with him to Borne’s death site, but he’d gone there on impulse after leaving the motel cabin. Kelly, more reluctant about this trip than he’d realized, was behaving unlike herself; he would have to be careful.
Ahead of them, above where the thick line of trees broke for the road’s passage, a hawk circled high in the darkening sky as if watching the road below. The hawk seemed to luxuriate in the rush of wind, disdaining the heat rising from the earth. Even from this distance Alan could see that since he’d been watching it, the soaring hawk hadn’t once beat its outstretched wings. As Alan felt a bead of perspiration roll down his back, he envied the hawk. Alan had always longed for freedom of a sort.
“Let’s go into Colver tonight,” he said to Kelly, “see if there’s a restaurant.”
“I don’t mind fixing us something in the cabin.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I thought we were counting pennies.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t spend a few. Anyway, I doubt if we’ll wander into the Ritz. We ought to be able to get a hamburger somewhere in town.”
After returning to their cabin Alan stood outside and waited while Kelly sat on the bed and picked burrs from her socks and denim pants legs. There was far from enough light now, but as he looked at the cabins he made up his mind to get some shots of the motel before they left. No two cabins were alike in detail, though they were all of the same basic design and obviously had been constructed at the same time. But they were old, and through the years each cabin had acquired a character of its own. A different-colored shingle had been used on one of the peaked roofs here, metal awnings had been added there, this cabin had been covered with asbestos siding, that one simply painted. On the steep roofs of some of the cabins, metal weather vanes turned slowly in the warm air as if seeking direction rather than pointing it out. And there was a kept-up but ramshackle air about all of the cabins. Native color, Alan thought, real native color.
Kelly came out of the cabin and shut the door firmly behind her, testing it to be sure the lock had caught. They got into their dusty white Volkswagen and headed for town.
Colver was less than they’d expected. The buildings were old, some of them dark red and dusty brick, but many of them frame and in need of paint, and some of the streets were unpaved. Alan dropped the Volkswagen into second and slowed to under twenty. He saw a small grocery store, a liquor store, a tavern … There were a few people on the streets. Two middle-aged men in bib overalls crossed in front of Alan with slow, hobbled gaits. He turned a corner, passed a general merchandise store, a sheriff’s office. When he’d driven a bit farther he came to a wood-fronted building with wide windows that were decorated with artificial ferns and marked by a wide, half-worn-away border design that looked like a decal. Turper’s Grill.
“Good enough for you?” Alan asked, pulling the Volkswagen to the side and braking.
“It looks cheap enough,” Kelly said, “and clean as we’re likely to find.”
Alan turned off the clattering engine. They left the windows down in the car and went inside.
Alan and Kelly took a booth along the wall and were served by a henna-haired waitress with a stiff but sincere smile. The place seemed clean enough, with rough-plastered walls and a scent of fried food that whetted the appetite. They soon found that Turper’s Grill served a better than passable hamburger a
nd greasy but good French fries.
One other customer was in the restaurant, a lean old man seated at the counter sipping a cup of coffee. Occasionally he’d glance at them from the corner of his eye, and finally he turned on his stool to face them.
“You folks is new here?” His voice rose in question.
“Just arrived this afternoon,” Alan said, sprinkling salt on his French fries.
“Ain’t many comin’ to these parts now, what with Bonegrinder an’ all.”
“So I’ve been told. I find it hard to imagine so many people so scared.”
The old man had bright blue eyes that picked up the light. “Oh, you wouldn’t find it hard to believe if you was here, if you seen some of the things I seen.”
“Do you know a lot about it?” Kelly asked.
Stooped but nimble, the old man slipped from his stool and crossed the scuffed tile floor of the restaurant toward them. “I’m the man what found the body,” he said, “the first one was killed. An’ I seen the big print in the mud on the bank an’ reported it.” He pulled up a chair, sat at the end of the booth’s table. “Bonifield’s my name.”
As the old man talked, Alan could tell that Kelly was becoming more apprehensive. But Alan was becoming more interested. He was sure now that the reward would be worth the risk.
When Alan and Kelly left the restaurant, they saw a canvas-topped Jeep parked behind the Volkswagen and they stepped aside to make way for a tall, slender man who smoked a pipe and gave them a friendly smile and nod as he passed.
SEVENTEEN
THE TALL MAN STANDING inside the door to Wintone’s office said, “I’ve talked to Mr. Bonifield.”
“That’s some unusual,” Wintone said. “Mostly folks have to just listen.”
The man smiled. He was underweight but broad-shouldered, wearing faded tan slacks, scuffed boots made for hiking and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. There were marks on the bridge of his nose from the sunglasses now protruding from his shirt pocket. Wintone guessed him to be in his early forties.