by Molly Macrae
Chapter 2
I hadn’t known how sad sheep’s eyes could look. Debbie’s flock stood like woolly mourners around two bodies at the base of the beech tree. Debbie, good shepherdess that she was, checked first to see if any of the animals were hurt. Then, when she was sure they were uninjured, she reacted.
“Oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God.” She stared at the dead man who’d been cradling the dead woman in his arms. “Oh my God, what’s he doing here?”
“You know him?”
She nodded, couldn’t speak, started to shoo the sheep out of the way.
I stopped her. “Leave them if they’ll stay. They make a good screen so the others back at the fence can’t see.”
She looked back toward the road, wide-eyed. “Oh my God.”
“Do you have your phone? Can you call 911? Debbie!”
She whimpered but pulled her phone out. Then stopped and stared again. “Are you sure they’re dead?”
How could they not be? The woman, young and pretty and fallen sideways from the man’s arms, had two wet red blossoms in the middle of her chest. The man, not much older, his head fallen forward, had drying strands of blood from the corner of his mouth and his nose and a terrible hole in his right temple. A gun lay on the ground near his right hand.
“Make the call, Debbie, and stay here. I’ll see if there’s anything, any—”
I pushed between two of the sheep and knelt beside the bodies in the hope of finding a pulse. I reached toward the woman, stopped, then made myself touch her wrist and push aside the blond hair to feel the side of her neck. Cold. Cold. She was gone. He was gone, too.
But when my hand fell away from him, it brushed against his sweater and an immediate twist of love and unbearable sorrow jolted me. I looked at my hand as though it should somehow be glowing. Of course it wasn’t. Tentatively, I laid the tips of my fingers on his sleeve again. How could they feel what they were feeling? I moved my fingertips to the woman’s pullover and a rush of terror knocked me back on my heels.
I worked hard to swallow a scream, control my breathing. Worked to explain away the transferred emotions. It was delayed shock. It was my overactive imagination. It was the incongruence of finding violent death in this field of buttercups and new lambs. It was not, could not, be what my beloved and possibly delusional grandmother wrote in the letter she left for me to read after her death. It wasn’t any kind of special talent or ability or anything to do with hidden secrets. It wasn’t.
“They’re coming.”
I looked up. Debbie pointed at her phone. I stood up, rubbed both hands on my jeans, scrubbing all sensation from my fingertips. Pushing the memories of love, sorrow, and fear into what I hoped was an unreachable corner of my mind. “What did they say we should do?”
Debbie stood staring, arms hanging at her sides. She’d let her phone slip from her hand. I picked it up. “Are we supposed to stay here? Debbie?” I looked at the phone. She’d shut it off. I looked at her. She was shutting off, too. “Okay, come on. Let’s go back to the road.” I started to take her by the elbow but pulled my hand back before I touched her. “Come on.”
She started walking with me but turned to look back at the tree and stumbled.
That time I did grab her elbow and was relieved when I didn’t feel anything more than her trembling arm. We stood for a moment and I continued holding on to her, but I was afraid I was losing her.
“Debbie, did you warn the dispatcher about the sheep?”
“What?”
“About how big they are and about how the sheriff’s people need to be careful and not let them step on their toes?”
Debbie shook her head as though she didn’t quite believe how foolish the words coming out of a city girl’s mouth could be. She didn’t answer me, though, and looked back toward the tree again.
“Or what if the sheep are startled by the uniforms or the shiny badges and charge at the cops? Because, you know, those sheep really are big.” I didn’t need to see Debbie’s face that time to know I did sound idiotic, but at least I’d prodded her mind in another direction.
“They’ll be fine.”
“The sheep, too?”
She made an impatient noise.
“Well, good, so come on, we can go back to the road and the sheep will be okay and the police will be okay. But are you going to be okay? The guy—was he a friend? Who is he?”
She turned and started across the field toward the road again. The sheep, their vigil disturbed, followed us in single file.
“I know both of them,” she said. “His name is Will. Will Embree.” Tears ran down her cheeks, but her voice was steady. “And, Kath…that’s Shannon Goforth.”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t think I know who either of them is.”
“You must have heard of Will Embree. Or, I don’t know, maybe you haven’t. There was some stuff happening at Victory Paper a couple of years ago that he got mixed up in and blamed for. There were protests and he was one of the protesters and it got real ugly.”
I remembered reading about it. Ugly was right. And deadly. Granny had sent me the articles from the Blue Plum Bugle, but it made the national news, too. Victory Paper International ran a pulp and wood product mill on the Little Buck, farther up in the mountains above Blue Plum, near the North Carolina border. The company had been accused numerous times over the years of causing massive fish kills in the river. The company always denied responsibility, pointing to reports from its own and from state and national inspectors. It had also denied responsibility for the odiferous brown foam that floated down the river from time to time. There wasn’t anything unusual, as far as I could remember, about the back-and-forth of accusations and denials. The concerns for the river were reasonable and the corporate responses typical.
What I’d enjoyed reading about in the Bugle articles were the odd misfortunes that befell Victory Paper. One involved graffiti depicting dead fish—hundreds of bloated, belly-up fish painted on the outside walls and windows of the mill and on just about anything else within range of a can of spray paint, including dozens of fish on each of the company vehicles. The artwork had taken a lot of time and a whole lot of paint. In a festive touch, the empty spray paint cans were hung like ornaments from a tree inside the security fence surrounding the plant. The pictures in the Bugle were great.
Another misfortune involved a quantity of brown organic matter of unspecified but hinted-at origins. It was left on company doorsteps. Once or twice a week. For months.
But then there’d been another fish kill and local environmental groups staged a raucous protest, surrounding the mill on all sides, with people up in trees and on the river in canoes and kayaks, and in the river, too, in wet suits and fishing waders. It was the kind of thing I’d like to have witnessed and maybe taken part in. Had Granny been younger, I think she would have been one of the first up a tree or in the water.
“Some guy died, right?”
Debbie nodded. “Terry Widener.”
“He drowned?” But it wasn’t an accident and the guy the authorities were sure did it had taken off into the mountains and no one had seen him in the two years since. It was a sad story for everyone involved. “I’d forgotten all about that.”
“Will didn’t kill Terry,” Debbie said, her face tight.
“Wait, you mean that’s him? That’s the Will Embree back there? Good Lord. What’s he doing here?” I realized I’d echoed Debbie’s words from when she first saw him. Except her words sounded different somehow. “That guy didn’t look like someone who’s been hiding out in the national forest for two years.” He didn’t. He was clean shaven with trimmed hair. His jeans were worn and his sweater pilled and faded, but he had on new-looking running shoes. He looked more like a poor graduate student than a mountain man on the run. And when had I noticed all those details? “How did you recognize him?”
She didn’t answer, slowed our already slow pace, then stopped. “We’re going to have to tell the others
and I don’t think I can. No, I know I can’t. I can’t. No. Oh my God oh my God.” Her voice had started low and urgent but ended in that string of rising babble. Before it reached hysteria, I squeezed her elbow. Maybe too hard, but squeezing it was less obvious than a slap on her cheek and just as effective. She closed her mouth and yanked her arm away.
“Sorry, Debbie. But it’s going to be okay. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll tell the others there was an accident and we’re waiting for the police. That’s all they need to know and they’ll be okay. And then the workshop will be good for everyone, don’t you think? It’ll be color therapy. Is everything set up? What colors have you got for us? Aw, and look at that”—I pointed at the sheep—“the lambs are following us to school. So come on.” I took her elbow again and urged her toward the fence and the other women.
I was practically babbling by then. Of course we weren’t going to continue with the workshop. And if Debbie had set out pots of red dye for us, she’d probably throw up when she looked at them. But I hoped my yammer would act as a dampener to drown out her own thoughts. It didn’t, though.
“You don’t understand.” She pulled away from me. “That’s Shannon Goforth back there.” Again she said the name as though it should mean something to me. “Bonny Goforth’s daughter.”
“Bonny Goforth’s daughter,” I repeated, shaking my head, still clueless.
A couple of the older lambs pranced past us and up closer to the fence. Thea hung over the top rail with a handful of grass. Ernestine reached between the rails with her own handful. Bonny had climbed right over and into the pasture. And then the name clanged into place.
“Bonny’s daughter? Oh my God.”
Chapter 3
If by rooting ourselves out in that field Debbie and I could have kept the terrible news from the others—from Bonny—we would have. But as our ears picked up a siren and its wailing grew louder, what we’d seen under the tree became too painful for Debbie to keep inside, and she had to tell Bonny.
Bonny stood, uncomprehending, until the siren whooped to a stop and we saw the deputy climb out of the car. Then she looked across the field at the tree. She started toward it. I reached for her, caught her sleeve, and she turned and crumpled in my arms. As soon as I touched Bonny, I wanted to let go. The surge of emotion from her rocked me, made me gasp. It wasn’t raw grief or anguish I felt, though. It was pure, violent hate.
We stayed with Bonny, intending to surround her and cocoon her, while more police arrived and took over the far end of the field. She sat with her head on Ernestine’s shoulder, breathing hard and shuddering. Ernestine stroked and patted her back. Thea and Debbie sat facing them. No one seemed to care about the damp grass anymore. I sat apart from the group, slightly behind Thea.
When Bonny became coherent, she wanted to follow the police, to be with Shannon, but she listened when Ernestine told her to wait there with us. She didn’t agree to wait quietly, though.
“You knew him,” she said, lifting her head from Ernestine’s shoulder and jabbing her chin at Debbie. “You were in school together.” Debbie nodded and blew her nose. “Then you know he wasn’t worth the sheep shit in your field.”
“Don’t,” Debbie said. “Please don’t start that now, Bonny. Not now. You’re right. I knew Will. I knew Shannon, too, and I am so sorry. You had a lot to be proud of in her. But I know Will could never kill anyone, and Shannon knew that, too.”
Bonny bowed her head, biting at her lip. She became fascinated with a cocklebur seed twisted in her sock. “And how well did you know Will?” she asked. “There’s no way he eluded the authorities all this time without help. That’s another well-known fact. So who helped him? Got any answers to that?” She looked at Debbie again, but Ernestine answered.
“I thought there was a whole network of environmental folks helping him,” Ernestine said, “stashing camping gear in caves and tucking canned goods into hollow trees and what have you. That was in the paper, wasn’t it?”
“And I think people and the Internet have Will Embree confused with those Appalachian yetis you sometimes read about or maybe the Keebler elves, or any number of other silly theories floating around out there,” Thea said. “We need to keep this real. Not blow it up into some kind of conspiracy. Will Embree was a human being and now he’s gone. Whatever he did or didn’t do, let’s show the man some respect.”
“Thank you,” Debbie said.
“My daughter deserves respect,” Bonny said.
“Yes, she does,” said Thea. “She surely does. She was as smart and pretty as they come.”
“And more,” Bonny said.
“Yes, she was.”
“And Will Embree deserved a prison cell. Will Embree was out to kill Victory Paper. He was responsible for Terry Widener’s death two years ago and my daughter wouldn’t be shot to death out there now, in some sheep pasture, if it wasn’t for something else Will Embree must have been up to.”
“Bonny, you can’t blame him for this,” Debbie said. “You don’t know what happened and you didn’t see them out there.”
“Oh, and you do know? What do you know? Exactly what do you know about what happened?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Debbie said quietly.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
Debbie shook her head.
“Kath, you were out there,” Bonny said. “You saw. You’re the impartial witness. You tell me what happened.”
I’d hoped to stay out of it by staying mostly out of view behind Thea, but Thea hitched over so I could be part of the group. As I reluctantly scooted forward, it occurred to me we were now arranged very nearly the way the sheep had been standing around the bodies, but without their silent, sad-eyed contemplation.
“I don’t know what happened,” I said.
Bonny pounced on my careful phrasing. “But you’ve got eyes and you saw something, so tell me what you guess.”
I saw the need burning in her eyes and heard the grief in her voice. But the hate I’d felt when I held her was still there, too, and the irrationality that can follow a terrible shock. None of that seemed to be anything she could help, and certainly no one could blame her for an entire maelstrom of emotions. But my guesses based on the wounds, the location, the gun lying by his hand, and Shannon in Will’s arms—none of that needed to be the catalyst for the storm taking over Bonny’s life.
“No.” I shook my head. “I can’t. Guesses aren’t—” I hesitated. “Guesses wouldn’t be respectful of your daughter. They wouldn’t be respectful of either of them.”
“She’s right, Ms. Goforth,” a familiar voice said behind me. “It’s best not to speculate at this point. Ma’am, may I say how sorry I am for your terrible loss? And if you don’t mind, you should come with me now.”
The owner of the voice, Deputy Cole Dunbar, was not my favorite law enforcement officer, and it was unlikely he ever would be. Not because of his meticulous behavior in a situation such as this—he was at his grave best speaking to Bonny. And not because of his looks. There was no flab on his large frame and he was always neatly turned out in his perpetually starched and stiff uniform. It was more his whole personality and approach to life. He was prissy, pissy, and perpetually superior and had a contradictory dash of boorishness that vacillated between being an undertone and being a really annoying overtone. He irked me and he seemed to take pleasure in knowing he did.
My private name for the irritating Deputy Cole Dunbar was Clod. I tried to be careful, though, and never referred to him by that name to anyone else and never called him Clod to his face. After all, he did carry a gun.
But at that particular moment I was happy to hear Clod Dunbar agree with me about guesses and respect, and it didn’t even make me jump out of my skin to find him standing behind me. Maybe Bonny shared some of my ambivalence toward him, though. Her only acknowledgment of his presence or his request was a flicking glance. Then she leaned forward toward me.
“Okay, no guessing,”
she said, low and urgent, “but you can find out for me. You know what it’s like when people start making up stories. And I heard how you beat these clowns to the answer a few months ago.”
Deputy Dunbar coughed behind me, and that time I did jump. I moved aside, too, but he chose to walk around our small circle to reach Bonny rather than step into the middle of it.
“Come on with me now, Ms. Goforth. I’ll take you to see your daughter.”
He took Bonny gently by the arm and helped her up. He told the rest of us we could go on home after answering a few questions from one of his colleagues and that he’d have a deputy take Bonny and her car home later. I might have imagined the hard look he gave me when Bonny grabbed my arm and said she was counting on me.
We took turns answering questions for one of Dunbar’s colleagues. I went last. The questions were simple: Name, contact information. How close had I gotten to the scene? Had I touched or moved anything? When I rejoined the others, Debbie was looking and sounding as though she shouldn’t be left alone, either. She was stuck in a loop, alternately apologizing for the dye workshop that never got started and staring at the ground.
“Why don’t we see if your neighbor brought the spare key and then we’ll help you put everything away?” I said. “And we can reschedule the workshop. That’s no problem.”
“You could do it, Kath,” Debbie said, still staring at the ground.
“Well, sure, we’ll all be happy to,” Thea said.
“I mean she could find out what happened. Like Bonny said. You could do it, Kath, and we could help. Like last time.”
I took a chance and put my arm around her. She was taut, brittle. She didn’t flinch, though, and neither did I, thank goodness. No errant emotions buzzed between us. I held her that way until she relaxed a fraction; then I spoke quietly in her ear. “We saw the same things out there, didn’t we? Don’t you think maybe we already know what happened?”
She didn’t just flinch then; she yanked herself away.