Stone Maidens

by Lloyd Devereux Richards

  A few hours later, Christine was awakened by the racing of her heart. There was little she could do to stop the uncomfortable metabolic sensation, a manifestation of her chronic anxiety. She slapped the bed table in the dark searching for her pills and swallowed two Xanax. She pulled off her nightshirt soaked in sweat. Trembling in the cold, dark room, she wrapped a blanket tightly around her shoulders, knelt between the twin beds, and rocked back and forth to steady her nerves. She checked her pulse—rapid—and scrubbed clammy fingers through her hair. She crept toward the bathroom in the dark, knocking over the chair piled with her clothes. She sat on the toilet seat, forcing herself to take deep breaths to slow her redlining heart.

  Christine had a crazy thought to call Sheriff McFaron but knew that wouldn’t be right. What would she say to him? Would you please come and hold my hand while I wait for my drugs to kick in? She located her phone under the clothes heap and dialed 411. A few minutes later the call went through to a twenty-four-hour hotline. A pleasant young woman’s voice said her name was Amy. “Mine’s Christine…I can’t sleep…my heart’s racing…I’m shivering…nearly passed out in the bathroom a moment ago. Look, I just need someone to talk to. Will you stay on the phone with me awhile?” She stood up and made her way to the outside door in search of fresh air, then slipped off the security chain and opened it.

  “No, Amy, I’m not high on drugs. Only my prescription…in the prescribed amount. Please stop with the routine questions and just listen.”

  But Amy had her list to check off and kept asking anyway. “Yes, I took two antianxiety tablets a few minutes ago. No, this just happens. Yes, I’ve seen a doctor. Yes, my work is stressful.”

  Christine tuned out Amy’s words and focused on her soothing voice. It was soothing in its calm, measured professionalism. A few moments later she realized that Amy was waiting for another answer.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear your question.”

  “Are you having thoughts about hurting yourself?”

  The idea was so funny Christine almost laughed. Instead, she rolled her eyes, which made her realize she was feeling a little better. The drug must be taking hold. “Actually, Amy, my thoughts are about other people who are inflicting damage. I’m not worried about myself in that way at all. But I do thank you for your concern.” She reassured Amy that she felt better now and ended the call.

  She paced the small room, waiting for the drug’s full effect. An evanescence of moldy rot pervaded the space, matching her festering mood. She finished off a Snickers bar, supplying herself with much-needed glucose, which her overactive adrenals had depleted. To keep focused, she cataloged the day’s events. The Heath girl crime scene had yielded some fresh though minor clues. Paint particles found on the corpse were similar to those found on the Blackie victim, and the thick canvas thread coated with more paint that she had discovered had possibly come from a workman’s tarp. The dried blood on the rock by the creek didn’t appear to be from a deer kill. The murderer hadn’t been as careful this time.

  She picked up the collecting vial containing the broken charm stone from the night table. What could a New Guinea artifact possibly mean to a killer rampaging in the Indiana forests, gutting bodies as deliberately as a Ga-Bong clansman would, depositing stones in them afterward? Had the Ga-Bong’s spirit infused some escaped lunatic? Of course not.

  Prusik tried to stay focused on what she knew. What she could verify. She had long studied cannibalism as a ritual among New Guinea tribes and the neighboring peoples of Melanesia and Micronesia. It had been practiced for hundreds if not thousands of years. Sipping the fluids of the dead was believed to bring male and female into balance and keep those on earth vitally connected to their past so that they might live again inside the next generation. It was worship of the highest order.

  Could the same be said for the beast committing these horrendous acts? Prusik didn’t think so. The victims were all haphazardly struck down, the only connection among the three being opportunity. Each had been alone, and that had played into the killer’s hands. It was likely each had been taken without much of a struggle, lured in some cunning way, probably. There was one eyewitness who had not actually seen a victim—only what he thought was suspicious activity and possibly blood spatter on a frightening stranger’s face and clothing. The killer had merely adopted the habit of implanting the charm stone, she surmised, because the museum exhibit appealed to him, was in some way related to his own twisted life. He had ritualized the stone into his own persona. Reinvented himself. The urine found mixed in with the blood scraped off the sidewalk on Old Shed Road, where Julie Heath presumably was abducted, spoke not of ancestor worship but of deep-seated feelings of persecution and humiliation.

  She went back to the bed and flicked on the TV with the remote control; at last the drugs were working at full force. When the trill of her cell phone roused her, it was nearly midnight. Eisen was on the other end.

  “Brian?” Hearing her own voice helped restore her alertness. “Why the late call?”

  “I was going to wait till morning, Christine.” There was excitement in his voice.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Using the Lucis program, I was able to enhance the coroner’s black and whites of Betsy Ryan’s head and mouth.” Christine heard Eisen’s pencil tapping his teeth and smiled.

  “You made a positive identification?”

  “Hold on. You will recall that there were distinct abrasions on Ryan’s lips, inside her mouth, and down her throat—grit particles common to the locality. The same mineral grade and composition as gravel used in city lots. I’ve concluded the killer had tried to shove a coarse stone down her throat. Not carved chert, more like stone you’d find at a construction site.”

  A punch of old pain hammered up through her beleaguered brain. The museum thefts had been discovered during the third week of March. Betsy Ryan was last seen alive on March 30. If the killer had had the museum stones when he’d killed Betsy Ryan, why hadn’t he used one of them?

  “You there, boss?”

  “I’m here, Brian. You’re sure that the stone in Betsy Ryan’s throat would have been coarse?”

  “I can’t be sure of anything, Christine. But, yes, that would be my conclusion.”

  Prusik closed her eyes and considered.

  “You going to tell me what’s spinning around in that brain of yours right now?”

  “Good work, Brian. And, no, there’s nothing to tell yet.” But her own fear was signaling her loud and clear that there was.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The early morning sun shone through the cab’s rear window, projecting a shadow of the pickup on the road ahead. Things had been getting worse, his agitation increasing. Missing that girl two days ago had been a setback. He rolled down the window and stared out over the molting field of last year’s yellowed cornstalks.

  He tapped his fingers rapidly on the dash, leaning the undersides of his wrists over the top of the steering wheel. Sweat and dank midsummer air burned his eyes. The church bell ringing lifted his head. The Sunday sunrise service was finally letting out. Through the rearview mirror he watched people dressed in their best spill out the doors. They were chattering and milling about in the parking lot. Car doors were opening and closing as families dispersed. He deliberately turned his head toward the fallow field out his driver’s side window as cars began filing past him, going home or out for Sunday breakfast. A few people walked back toward town, in the opposite direction.

  He’d spotted the girl easy as pie. She was holding her navy flats in one hand, walking barefoot toward him—away from town and people—along the sandy edge beside the tarmac, her bonnet’s blue ribbons matching her knee-length silky-smooth dress. She had well-developed breasts already. Her black waist belt tugged nicely down.

  He wiped his brow with his sleeve. Processes inside him were already beginning. A growing sense of ease, like the release from that first beer after a long, hard day, was subduing things nicely. Unde
rcurrents of the pitiful anguish that he’d experienced only a few moments before were nearly forgotten as she and her billowing blue dress took up more and more room in the rearview mirror.

  She stopped to talk to a young woman holding the hands of two little blonde girls. The girls were wearing matching bonnets with matching yellow ribbons and bows tied exactly alike.

  The blue-ribbon girl knelt in front of the two little ones and gave them each a hug. Even with his window closed, he could hear their laughter and giggling. It set his nerves on edge.

  Soon enough, the little girls and their mother got in their car, and the older girl continued on her way. He watched her approach in the rearview mirror, then walk right by him and out in front of him. The way she sashayed, hips moving back and forth like that, was a definite invitation. She hadn’t acknowledged him when she’d sauntered past him, or even glanced at his truck, but with a walk like that, he knew she’d seen him.

  The silk ribbons that trailed out from her bonnet in the breeze were teasing him. Taunting him. He slowly shoved the truck in gear and followed down the same secluded lane the blue ribbons had taken.

  The girl was only ten yards ahead of him. Forty or fifty yards past her was a sharp bend. A tall stand of trees hid the road beyond. Small towns in the southern part of the state ended abruptly and the forests began. It was perfect. He couldn’t have planned it better.

  He motored past the girl, snaking his head back for a second look. She hadn’t looked up, hadn’t acknowledged him. Right before reaching the bend, he turned off the motor and glided to a halt under the lower story of hemlock boughs. He leaned back his head against the front seat and waited. The sweet smell of soap wafted in through the open window, and he nearly cried out from the seat. Containing himself was more than he could stand. He glared into the rearview mirror, and like a magic pill, it worked. She saw the face of a madman and took off at a full run. The chase was on.

  Sunlight suddenly flooded the forest, bathing wet bark in wine-colored light. Everything began to glow, a prismatic rainbow, as if the whole dell was dimly wired with his infernal juice. He got out of the truck and checked both ways, then sprinted around the bend that the ribbons had floated around moments earlier. He was desperate to put her back into view. In anticipation, his fingers fluttered and his chest did, too. He picked up speed and followed the sharp curve of the road, then stopped suddenly. The forest had come to an end. There was a great opening in the sky above him and huge expectant tracts of farmland seeded with new corn. His eyes narrowed, training on the girl, far ahead of him now and way out of range. She was still running and had almost reached a farmhouse.

  How had he misjudged things? How had he not seen it coming? He staggered back to the truck, not taking in the great repeating lines of dark tilled soil drawn right up to the edges on both sides of the road. A terrible confusion beset him. He hadn’t expected to lose her so cruelly. He hadn’t prepared himself at all for that.

  Deputy Richard Owens of the Weaversville Police Department chewed his Doublemint gum very slowly, concentrating on the figure stooped halfway down the steep-sided ravine. It was a heavily eroded area, where reams of stones had washed out from the culvert that ran under the road.

  “What’s he doing down there?” said his partner, Deputy Jim Boles, who sat behind the steering wheel of the cruiser, sweating in the midmorning sun. “I say we go bring him up now. Sure looked like he was driving drunk to me, swerving like that.”

  Owens stopped chewing and told Boles to shut up, then went back to gazing through the police-issue Swift 10 x 40 wide-angle lenses. He watched the man lever up a large rock with a stick, then drop to his hands and knees, partially out of sight.

  “He’s hunting for something, that’s for sure.” Deputy Owens’s tone of voice escalated. “Go check the license tag to that truck, Jim. Run a check on the guy. See who we’re dealing with here.”

  Five minutes later Boles climbed in behind the wheel of the cruiser, having heard back the tag information over the police radio.

  “It’s registered to a David Claremont,” Boles said. The field glasses were still glued to his partner’s face. “What’s going on? You seeing something?”

  Owens exited the passenger side, hunched low, signaling his partner to do the same. They approached the pickup quietly.

  Claremont reached the pickup truck a few minutes later, out of breath, clay caked to his boots. Holding on to the vehicle’s bed for support, he knocked off the clods, then spotted the two deputies. They both wore Ray-Bans and stood by the driver’s side of his truck, hands resting on their gun belts.

  “Hello, Officers.”

  “Your name is David Claremont, right?” The officer noticed the legs of the man’s jeans were spattered with reddish-brown paint. So were his long-sleeved shirt and the tops of both his hands.

  Claremont nodded, squinting in the sun.

  “You’ve been painting recently?” Deputy Boles said.

  “Well, staining, actually. The barn on a neighbor’s farm.”

  “May I ask what you were doing down there, Mr. Claremont?” Owens said.

  “Nothing, I guess,” he said, hunching his shoulders as he spoke.

  “Nothing, huh? Forty-five minutes is a lot of nothing.” Owens noticed Claremont fingering something in his front jeans pocket. “What you got there in your pocket?”

  Claremont removed his fist and opened his palm. “Just a few stones I picked up.” To him the jasper mineral was a perfect shape, and the pale-red translucence made it ideal for carving.

  Deputy Boles muttered something into his partner’s ear, handing the deputy a folded paper from his jacket. Owens eyed the police sketch, then Claremont. The drawing had the eyebrows right, the sunken hollows of the man’s eyes, too, and the mouth. It wasn’t an exact likeness, but it was pretty darn close.

  “Let me see your license, Mr. Claremont.”

  Claremont took his wallet out of his back pocket. A ticket stub fell out. Deputy Boles stooped and collected it, read aloud, “Chicago Museum of Natural History. You been there lately, Mr. Claremont?”

  “No.”

  “No? It’s date-stamped here Tuesday, August twenty-first. I’d say two weeks ago counts as lately. What were you doing way up there?”

  “It’s open to the public. Nothing’s wrong with that.” Claremont handed the deputy his license but wouldn’t meet his eye.

  The police officer flicked it a few times on his palm and then handed it back. “Mr. Claremont, I’m going to ask you to follow us back to the station to answer a few questions, if you don’t mind.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Well, I do mind. Am I under arrest? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t say you have,” Owens said. “Just some routine questions. We’d appreciate it if you’d come voluntarily.”

  Claremont frowned, then nodded. “I guess I’ll follow you.” He looked over toward his truck.

  Owens judged the man’s demeanor. He appeared calm. Not a flight risk. “All right then.”

  Claremont pocketed the keepers and got into his truck, grimacing.

  The cruiser led the way. Deputy Owens notified the dispatcher to contact the state police special crimes unit to say they were bringing in a possible suspect for questioning regarding the murder of Julie Heath.

  “All I’m saying is,” Deputy Boles said, checking the rearview mirror, “we should have taken him in the cruiser on account of reckless driving, not to even mention the fact that he could be a goddamn killer.”

  Owens leaned his arm over the seat back and looked over his shoulder at Claremont following them in his truck. “First off, he ain’t drunk. His breath didn’t smell of alcohol. And where’s he going to go?” The deputy flicked the arm of his partner with the back of his hand. “If we got the killer dead to rights, he ain’t going nowheres.” He patted his holstered sidearm. “Believe you me. Nowheres.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The sheriff pulled off the road a
bove the crime scene, eyeing his rearview mirror as the traveling lab crept around a bend and then rocked unsteadily over the ruts to a halt. Static interference on the two-way radio signaled an incoming call from his office. Mary had Rodney Cox, a retired trooper from the state police post, on the line. Cox lived in Parker, a twenty-minute drive from Crosshaven.

  A federal agent in aviator-style dark glasses hopped out of the RV’s front passenger side and slowly approached the Bronco. A photo ID hung from a lanyard around his neck.

  “Patch him through, Mary,” McFaron said into the mike, eyeing the agent in the side mirror. The man’s hands drifted to his hips in a deliberately nonchalant gesture, waiting for McFaron to get out. The sheriff grinned. No wonder Christine didn’t like Howard, assuming this was Howard. McFaron didn’t like him, either, and he hadn’t even met him yet.

  “Rodney, what’s going on there?”

  “Ezra North and his girl Sarah are sitting here in my living room, Sheriff. They got something to talk to you about.”

  Outside, the muffled voices of technicians climbing out of the RV intruded. They gathered beside the forest, busy with equipment. One tested a luminous light instrument against the bark of a white pine.

  “I’m kind of occupied at the moment, Rodney. Can I get back to you? Over.”

  “It’s that man in your sketch she saw,” Cox said point blank.

  McFaron straightened up. “Say what?”

  Mr. Cool was now standing beside the sheriff’s door. McFaron rolled down his window.

  “Give us a minute.” The sheriff tipped his hat and closed the window.

  Without a word, the FBI agent sauntered back to his crew.