by Layton Green
And he was the cautious one.
“I’m sorry,” she said, once they had settled into a faux red leather booth at the Happy Buddha, a Chinese restaurant just off Main Street. She was wearing a long black skirt, matching boots, and a forest green sweater with lacy sleeves.
“For what?” After all these months, he couldn’t stop looking at her face. Like her smoky dark eyes and expressive mouth, both of which hinted at layers unpeeled, Ari possessed a combination of innocence and world-weary insouciance that drew him in like an explorer discovering a lost city.
“For working all the time,” she said.
His eyes lingered on the silver bangles sitting loosely on her left wrist. Thin by nature, Ari looked almost gaunt these days from her late nights and stressful career.
“Do you like it?” he asked her. “The job?”
She started to open the menu, then paused. “I feel like it’s where I need to be. At least for now.”
“It can take time to be sure.”
“It’s hard,” she said, with a rueful, self-effacing chuckle.“Harder than I thought it would be.”
“Really? I think most people understand that being a trial attorney is a difficult job.”
“I thought law school was hard. This,” she waved a hand through the air, “is hard in a different way. C’mon, let’s order.”
After a moment, as she perused the menu, he said, “There are lives at stake now.”
Her eyes lifted to meet his gaze.
“What you do matters,” he continued in a quiet voice. “The pressure makes it hard to sleep at night, and your decisions can haunt you. It’s real now.”
She pursed her lips, digesting his words, and nodded.
He reached over the table and squeezed her hand as the waiter approached.
Two hours later, deliriously full of dumplings and Dan Dan noodles and Tsingtao beer, Preach took Ari in his arms once they returned to his house. “What are you reading these days?” he asked, kissing her neck as he removed her cropped denim jacket.
“Legal briefs.”
“Besides that” he said, lifting off her sweater and then his own.
She pressed against him, running her nails down his broad back, her flesh like warm caramel on his skin. “The Triangle Business Journal. Law blogs. Police reports. Sexy stuff, huh?”
He scooped her in his arms and laid her down on the couch, as easy for him as lifting a jug of milk. “I know you’ve got a book hiding somewhere at work. In your purse or your briefcase or a desk drawer. No way you get through the day without one.”
“You know me that well, do you?” she purred, as he wedged in beside her and unhooked her bra.“I’m a career woman now. Those carefree days of meeting you on your breaks at the nearest coffee shop are gone forever.”
He leaned on an elbow. “Forever’s a long time for a wandering soul like you. So which one is it?” he asked, cupping a hand over her breast.
She gasped, arching in pleasure at the gentle massage. “What ?”
“Which book is it?”
She gripped his hair as he eased his weight down on her. They kissed and intertwined their legs, hips grinding on the couch like teenagers.
“Ghana Must Go,” she whispered in his ear. “I listen to the audiobook when I walk to work.”
“Oh yeah? What else ?”
As he pushed her skirt up, she unhooked his belt, and the two of them giggled as they worked to remove his jeans without losing contact. “The latest Murakami is on my nightstand.”
His fingers curled into the edges of her silk panties. “And? Confession is good for the soul.”
“A little Jane Austen when I cook. Her letters. That’s it, I swear. Joe ?” she said, breathless, as his hands slid into the divots below her pelvis, gently probing.
“Yeah?” he said, his voice husky.
“Why don’t we do this more often? Like, five times a day?”
“Good question.” As her legs locked around his hips, a vibration from the coffee table broke the spell. Both their gazes slid to the table, coming to rest on his work phone. “One sec,” he muttered. “I have to check.”
She lifted her hands over her head, stretching in pleasure as he bent over the phone. “Should we move to the loft?” she murmured. “Bring some wine ?”
He knew the optimism in her voice, despite the call from work, was reflective of the fact that Creekville rarely had the sort of situation that would result in Preach having to report in while off duty. Violent crimes were rare, and there hadn’t been a homicide since the terrible events of the year before.
“I’d love to,” he said slowly, staring at the message and then easing off her, sitting up on the edge of the couch. He turned to meet her gaze. “But there’s a body in the woods.”
Preach veered off the old country road and into a gravel parking lot, the lights of his cruiser strobing the side of the abandoned mill. The old brick wall seemed to swallow the flashing light. Despite the weeds and broken windows, the mill had stood for a century and would stand for countless more, a remnant of a time when everything manufactured did not seem fleeting and ephemeral.
No reporters yet. Just a few police cars parked at odd angles and a cluster of officers standing beside the mill. The forest loomed a few yards away.
The mill was just inside the Creekville city limits, less than a mile from the county line. As Preach walked over, he saw the postures of the other officers straighten, hands fidget, conversations cease. They still didn’t know what to do with him. Though born and raised in Creekville, he had left town far too long ago—right after high school— to still be considered a local. He worked the same beat as the rest of them, but he had years of hard-nosed, white-knuckled homicide experience in Atlanta under his belt.
It wasn’t just the job. Over the water cooler, he discussed novels with the administrative staff instead of telling jokes or swapping hunting stories. While most of the officers kept sports memorabilia and family photos on their desks, Preach had a Purple Heart from the Atlanta PD and a framed quote from Kierkegaard.
Which was okay. When a bad one hit, the Creekville police department didn’t need a drinking buddy. They needed a leader.
“Where’s the body?” he asked.
Officer Terry Haskins stepped forward, pointing out a footpath behind where they were standing. “At the edge of a sump, a hundred feet inside the woods. I’ll take you in.”
Among the gathered officers, Preach considered Terry the most promising, though Bill Wright had the most experience. Bill was nearing retirement and had long since lost that drive that caused officers to go the extra mile for a case, if he ever had it to begin with. Terry was young, had mouths to feed, and possessed a moral code that ensured he always gave his best effort. He was untested in battle, though. Preach didn’t think he had ever fired his gun in the line of duty.
“Forensics is en route,” Terry said.
After pulling on a pair of blue surgical gloves, Preach flicked on his flashlight and aimed it at the dirt path snaking through the trees. “Who called it in?”
“Animal control, believe it or not.”
“What?”
Terry turned to point at a house across the road. It was an old, rundown country manor with a wraparound porch and a pair of pickups parked in the grass. “Around dusk, the neighbors heard a god-awful racket in the woods. It got so bad they called it in, thinking it was a pack of pit bulls on the loose. Animal control showed up and heard it too. Said it was coyotes. They fired off a few times, went to investigate, and saw a body chewed up on the side of the water. Animal control said they’ve gotten bad in recent years. Global warming, humans encroaching on their territory and all that.”
“Wait—the coyotes killed someone in the woods?” Preach asked in disbelief.
“Oh. No. Sorry, I didn’t say that right. The vic has two gunshot wounds. The water must have lowered to expose the body, and the coyotes dragged it out.”
To ward off the chill, Pre
ach buttoned his double-breasted, forest green overcoat, the same one he had worn his entire career. Ari teased him about it, but the musty smell kept him grounded. Connected to all the cases that had shaped him as an officer, for better and for worse.
“Lead the way,” he said, as the forensics van pulled into the parking lot.
Looking unsure for a moment, Officer Wright fell in behind them. The others stayed behind to help the forensics team, manage the reporters once they arrived, and preserve the integrity of the crime scene.
Preach walked slowly down the path, waving his flashlight around, absorbing the crime scene on a visceral level. Tall pines creaked in the wind. The insects sang a primeval chorus, and every few feet something unseen rustled in the underbrush. A few times he almost tripped on a root or a large rock jutting out of the ground.
Less than a hundred yards in, the smell of death hit him, rancid and familiar. Terry put a cloth to his mouth, but Preach breathed it in slowly, adjusting, overcompensating with his other senses. The earth had turned spongy, and his light revealed a sunken area off to the left of the path, at the bottom of a slope. A small pool of water glistened in the moonlight like oil on asphalt. They shooed away the rodents, and Preach grimaced as he viewed the waterlogged corpse. Two bullet holes, one in the stomach and one in the head, left no question as to the cause of death.
His boots sank in the muck as he stepped off the path. The stench of fetid water commingled with the decomposing corpse made his stomach tighten. He focused on breathing through his mouth and, as was his custom, squatted on the ground beside the body to stare into the victim’s eyes. Though the coyotes had taken chunks of flesh from the legs and the torso was a mess, the face was bloated but intact.
The victim was a teenage boy with a strong jaw and good cheekbones. Sandy blond hair cut close to the scalp, wide shoulders, long limbs, dressed in jeans and a form-fitting gray sweater. Shoes too muddy to identify. No apparent rings or jewelry. Calloused palms that Preach recognized as the product of gripping a barbell.
An athlete, then.
After a time, he pushed to his feet. “I know it looks bad, but that body’s a few days old at most. Swamp water takes a rapid toll.”
“It’s two days old,” Bill said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
When Preach glanced back, surprised at the certainty in the older officer’s voice, Terry said, “You don’t recognize him? Oh—you’ve been off the last few shifts, haven’t you? We passed his photo around the morning briefing yesterday. Kid’s name is David Stratton.”
“I heard about a missing kid,” Preach said, though Terry was looking at him like he should know the name. Preach held up a palm. “Is he famous or something?”
“Around here he is. He’s Creekville High’s star quarterback.”
“Is that right ?” The detective’s gaze slipped back to the body. It was not often, even in the big city, that popular kids with preppy clothes showed up dead in the woods.
“His parents split a while back, but he lives with his mom. You might even know her. I think she was around in your day.”
“Yeah?” Preach said in a distracted voice.
“Claire Lourdis, class of ‘99. That’s around your time, isn’t it?”
The name caused Preach to suck in a breath and give the junior officer a sharp glance.
“Tall and thin, good tan?” Terry added. “Still a real looker, judging by the photos. Like a model or something. You know her?”
The question recalled a vivid memory of long brown hair and designer sunglasses, toned calves and crossed thighs that seemed to go on forever, a coy smile tossed his way at the after-game parties. For a moment, he went back in time to one of those humid summer nights with Wade Fee, top down and a case of beer in the trunk, trolling the town’s hangouts for a glimpse of feminine perfection.
In Preach’s day, Claire Lourdis was the girl in school everyone wanted but no one could ever have. Despite having flirted with him a few times, she only went for college guys and was the one girl who had rebuffed his advances. She was smart and beautiful and cool, talented and ambitious. A year older than him, her plan was to head to Hollywood after graduation, until an unexpected pregnancy changed all of that. After she married the father, Preach lost track of her, though he still remembered how besotted he was with her as a junior.
To young Joe Everson, the Creekville High bad boy and heart- breaker of his day, Claire Lourdis had been the one who got away.
“Yeah” he said, staring down at the corpse and feeling unbalanced, flooded by memories as well as empathy for a mother whose world was about to implode. “I know her.”
3
Preach forced away thoughts of Claire Lourdis and concentrated on the crime scene. With the steady hand of a surgeon, he moved the flashlight slowly over the body and across the top of the water. The sump was about twenty feet wide and smelled like a sewer. He walked the perimeter, stopping to examine the impressions in the mud, poking the light into the trees and clumps of undergrowth.
No sign of a weapon. No evidence of a struggle.
Just the looming presence of the forest, thick and dark, secrets lurking like ghosts.
Bill started walking toward him. Preach held out a hand. “One of us is enough. I want forensics to check for shoe prints.”
“All I see is animal tracks.”
“Me too,” Preach said. “Which is why I want forensics. The kid didn’t fly in here, and neither did the perp.”
“The path we came in on looked clean,” Terry said. “Think someone swept it?”
“That, or they came in another way. I don’t see another path. But we’ll have to check where these woods lead in the daylight.”
“Any first impressions ?”
As he thought, Preach blew into his hands to warm them. “Two shots, close in, small caliber weapon. One in the gut, the second in the right temple. A kill shot.”
“You mean, like a professional?”
Preach shook his head. “Too messy for a pro. If you’re in that close, why not just go for the head ? No scratches or bruises on the face, either.” He looked down at the body. “If I had to guess, I’d say it was someone he knew. Or at least knew well enough to get in close.”
“Drug deal gone bad?” Terry asked.
“As good a guess as any, at this stage.”
Bill crossed his fleshy arms and peered into the water. “What were
they doing out here, anyway?” he muttered. “It smells like shit.”
“I don’t think anyone was doing anything,” Preach said, “besides dumping a body. There’s no sign of blood on the trail or anywhere else. I suppose the kid could’ve been standing in the water when he was shot, but that doesn’t ring true. As you said, there’s nothing here. That kid was tossed.”
“Makes more sense,” Terry agreed, but Preach had already moved on. He could hear forensics lugging their equipment down the trail, and he wanted another moment alone with the body. A barred owl hooted in the distance as the detective knelt again beside Claire Lour- dis’s son, studying his face, trying to read his story before the floodlights came on and forensics treated the body as the lifeless husk it was.
David Stratton, star quarterback. Town golden boy. A demigod in his insular little world.
What had brought him to this foul, rotten, mud-soaked conclusion to a promising young life ?
Who had looked into his eyes and pulled the trigger? What had happened between them?
What dreams and thoughts and regrets had passed through David’s mind between the first shot and the second, knowing he was about to die?
When Preach turned back, vaguely aware of the commotion behind him but lost in his reverie, he saw a handful of new faces in the clearing, dressed in blue nylon jackets and hovering over a pile of equipment.
Lela Jimenez, the new deputy chief of forensics, met Preach’s gaze. “Okay to proceed, detective ?”
“Yeah,” he said, with a final glance at the body. “Do your thing. Make
sure to drag the water for a phone.”
Lela flicked a switch and a flare of white light lit the clearing.
Later that night, when he had finished with the crime scene, Preach left the woods and returned to his car. So far, forensics had uncovered nothing new. He hoped the full report would add some color.
He started the engine and sat with the heater blowing, knowing what he had to do. More than anything, he wanted to go back home, climb in bed with Ari, and dream away the memory of the boy’s sightless eyes. The last thing he wanted to do was face the mother’s grief. It was the worst part of the job, or one of the worst, but Preach wasn’t about to hand it off to anyone else. Not when he was the only officer with any real homicide experience. Not when he knew the mother personally.
Nor was he willing to wait until the morning. It wasn’t his place to judge whether Claire’s suffering for her missing son was worse before she knew the truth, or after.
At 4:00 a.m., the town of Creekville was as quiet as an ocean bottom, the night a burden of dark water pressing down on the detective as the empty streets whisked by, bringing him closer and closer to Claire Lourdis’s house.
He drove down the oak-lined sidewalks and expansive lawns of Hillsdale Street, then through the tiny resting heart of downtown, a few blocks of shops and restaurants centered around the repurposed cotton mill. The closer he drew, the more it felt as if he were journeying back in time, pushing through some kind of reverse womb where death awaited on the other side, instead of life.
The worst death of all.
The death of a child.
Soon after passing the Wandering Muse bookstore, Ari’s former employer, he turned left onto Highline Street, a busy two-lane road that linked up with an old state highway. A mile down Highline was the first of three entrances to Wild Oaks, one of Creekville’s more desirable neighborhoods. After glancing at the GPS, he turned into the second entrance, past a series of houses with front-yard gardens enclosed with chicken wire to keep out the deer. Most of the residents had accented the pine needles covering the ground with boulders and locally sourced wood chips. This neighborhood was built when he was a kid, and he remembered how his mother had once scoffed at the new construction and labeled the new owners as hopelessly bourgeois. Now, the quaint bungalows and wooded tracts of common space were the very definition of Creekville, and flat grassy lawns that reeked of normalcy were frowned upon.