by Gayle Wilson
15
R ay had asked her to stay late today to catch up on some correspondence. Although Blythe was grateful for the extra money, she now worried whenever she was away from Maddie, despite her grandmother’s solemn promise to keep the doors locked during the day.
She had resisted the thought of Smoke Hollow ever since Cade had suggested taking Maddie there. Still, the location had been in the back of her mind during the last two days, especially when she drove past the path everyone had always used to get to the creek. This afternoon the pull was too strong to ignore.
Despite Cade’s words about the beauty of the spot, she needed to see for herself what the place was like now. Her childhood memories didn’t include anything that could be classified as beautiful. Of course, she couldn’t remember ever setting foot there after the murder. Whatever the reality had been, her impressions would have been clouded by the snatches of conversation she’d overheard about Sarah Comstock’s death.
She got out of the car and closed the door, for some reason taking care not to slam it. Maybe because of the absolute silence emanating from the forest.
She held her breath, listening for the creek that had, during her childhood visits, tumbled noisily along its rock-strewn bed. Long before swimming pools and community centers, that stream had lured the town’s children out here to wade during the heat of south Alabama summers.
She could hear the water now, but more faintly than she’d remembered. Perhaps with the growth in population in Davis County—although nothing compared to other areas of the state—much of its flow had been diverted somewhere upstream.
Before leaving the car, she glanced up and down the highway. The blacktop was empty as far as the eye could see, increasing the sense of loneliness the silence had fostered. Still, even within the hollow, she would be only a few hundred yards from one of the county’s main thoroughfares. And despite the lowering clouds, it was still mid-afternoon.
Maybe Cade was right. Maybe she’d become obsessed with the decades-old murder. Seeing, hearing and fearing things that didn’t exist. All she wanted was a quick look at the crime scene. If for nothing else, to prove to herself that Cade had been telling the truth when he’d said there was nothing there now that would evoke the tragedy that had occurred here.
Denying her uneasiness, she moved forward, walking around in front of her car. Hand on the right fender for balance, she stepped across the narrow ditch that edged the two-lane. Without giving herself time for second thoughts, she moved purposefully across the right of way, heading toward the path she had followed dozens of times as a child.
As soon as she entered the line of trees, it grew dim. What little sun escaped the clouds seeped weakly through the branches of the pines, dappling the ground before her, but not really illuminating it to any degree.
The farther she went into the woods, the louder the noise of the stream grew. Only when she reached the source of that sound did she understand what Cade had meant about beauty. In spite of the season, water ran over algae-covered rocks and between the reaching fronds of a dozen different varieties of fern.
She stood a moment, looking down on the water. Despite the green of the vegetation surrounding it, she knew it would be ice cold. She took a step nearer the creek bed before she bent, reaching out to lower her fingers into the swift-moving current. The water’s temperature was first shocking and then numbing.
She looked around, trying to orient herself. Although she had felt a sense of familiarity when she’d studied the black-and-white news photos, she wasn’t certain now that she was in the right spot. The banks had seemed higher in those pictures. Maybe if she walked farther along the stream…
She pushed to her feet, wiping her fingers on her pants. She put her hands into her pockets, huddling inside the jacket that had been warm enough for running from the house to the car and then into the office. The chill out here seemed to cut through the wool as if she were wearing nothing.
Cade had been right about one thing, she decided as she followed the stream deeper and deeper into the woods. There was nothing frightening here. Nothing anyone should react to—not unless they knew the story. And Maddie couldn’t, of course.
The terrain had gradually risen as she’d walked. The creek bed now lay well below the level of the ground, creating banks that were perhaps three feet high, matching those in the photographs. She stopped, her gaze scanning the area where she was standing, as she tried to correlate her memory of those pictures with her surroundings.
For the first time since she’d entered the woods, she was again conscious of the stillness. It was as if time had been suspended. As if the outside world had disappeared, leaving only the patterns of broken light and shadow and the sound of the stream. She shivered in reaction.
She wasn’t sure she had reached the spot where Sarah Comstock’s body had been found, but she’d seen enough. Whether a desire for the truth or morbid curiosity had brought her here, it was time to leave.
Her initial instinct had been right. This was not a place where she wanted to bring Maddie. If the little girl was somehow attuned to Sarah, the eeriness here would affect her. Just as it was affecting Blythe.
That or your overactive imagination.
Which was exactly what Cade had suggested Maddie had. Was it possible that Blythe had communicated to her daughter her own childhood fears about Sarah’s murder?
Except she hadn’t thought about Sarah in a dozen or more years. Not even when she’d moved back. And she hadn’t read about the murder until after the tapping and the nightmares had begun. In any case—
She turned, intending to head back to the car and then to the warmth of her grandmother’s house. A man stood in the path between her and that intended destination.
He wore overalls over a flannel shirt, but no jacket, and his work boots were caked with mud. Combed back from his face, his dark hair was liberally streaked with gray. His skin was stained with patches of red that ran along his cheekbones. She couldn’t decide if his high color was the result of the temperature or some emotion.
His eyes, when she met them, were the color of mud. And as cold as the water that had numbed her fingers a few minutes before. For what seemed endless seconds they stared at one another before he broke the silence.
“This here’s my property.”
That had not been the case during her childhood, when everyone had come here for picnics and to wade in a vain attempt to escape the heat. This land, and the pine trees on it, had belonged to one of the large paper companies.
Of course, after all these years that could have changed. Even if it hadn’t, she wasn’t inclined to argue with someone who seemed so…menacing.
He did, she realized. As if he were taking pleasure in threatening her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this had changed ownership. I used to come here as a child. We all did.”
“Well, you’re trespassing now. And you ain’t welcome. None of you.”
“I didn’t know,” Blythe said again. She took a step toward the man, but he didn’t move.
His eyes had narrowed, and he appeared to be studying her face. “I know you. You’re Ruth Mitchell’s granddaughter. The one that just come back from up North.”
The fact that he knew her grandmother should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. With the stories circulating in town about her intent to solve Sarah’s murder, she wasn’t sure that being recognized out here was a good thing.
“You come to see where she died?”
That was exactly why she’d come, but the urge to deny it was strong. Even if she did, she knew he wouldn’t believe her.
“Well, this ain’t it,” he went on without waiting for an answer. “It’s on up the hollow. I can show you.”
“I really need to be getting home. My grandmother’s expecting me. Probably wondering what happened to me.”
She wanted him to be aware that someone was waiting for her. Someone who’d be concerned if she didn’t show up soon.
“Won’t take but a couple ’a minutes. It’s what you come for. Since you’re here, you might as well get what you want.”
The last thing she wanted was to go deeper into these woods with some strange man. And in this case, the adjective didn’t just denote a lack of familiarity.
“I appreciate the offer, but—”
“It’s thataway.” His chin jerked, indicating the area behind her.
As if compelled by the gesture, Blythe turned, looking in that direction. The woods seemed darker there than where she was standing. More threatening.
“I really have to go,” she said, turning again to face him. “They’re waiting for me at home.”
Head down so that she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes as she told the lie, she began walking toward him. There was enough room to skirt beside the path he was blocking. She just needed to get the hell out of here.
As she came nearer to where he stood, she could smell him. A combination of stale sweat and dirty clothes, with an undernote of something alcoholic. Bourbon or whiskey. Or maybe, since this was still a dry county, it was moonshine.
She stepped off the path, preparing to edge by him. Like a snake striking, he reached out, hard fingers grasping her forearm. When she tried to pull away, his grip tightened.
“They say you’re aiming to find out who killed her. That right?”
Blythe’s eyes had automatically focused on the flat, spatulate fingers wrapped around her sleeve. Their reddened knuckles were so chapped they had cracked. Her senses acutely on edge now, she could see the pores in the weathered skin on the back of his hand.
“No,” she said, raising her eyes to his. There was an intensity in them that had not been there before.
“They said you’re gonna write a book about it.”
“No,” she said again, shaking her head.
“Somebody needs to. Somebody needs to find that bastard, so she can finally rest in peace.”
The words paralleled her own thinking. If Sarah Comstock was reaching out to Maddie, it had to be because of the manner of her dying. And because her murderer had never been brought to justice.
Blythe, however, wasn’t the one to do that. She was only a mother trying to protect her own child.
“I can’t do that. Believe me, I wish I could.”
“You told Ada you was.”
She shook her head again, not sure she would be able to push words past the tightness in her throat.
“You need to see where she died. Everybody needs to see it. They all done forgot. All of ’em except me.”
Was that why he’d bought this land? Because he had some connection to the girl who’d been murdered here?
“Why haven’t you forgotten?”
“’Cause she was mine.”
“You’re Sarah’s father.”
The man many believed had slaughtered his own child.
The coldness in his eyes had been replaced by a fervor understandable in a grieving father. Blythe could see why people suspected he’d played a role in Sarah’s death. There was something unsettling about them. As if the mind that functioned behind them was out of tune with reality.
“I know what they told you,” he said. “That I kilt her. Could you kill your young’un? Could anybody you know kill their own child?”
But people did. All the time. The newspapers and the courtrooms were full of those cases.
“No,” Blythe said, compelled to answer by the tinge of madness she saw in his eyes.
“That lie had as much to do with killing her mama as losing Sarah did. That everybody believed I’d done it. That they all thought she’d married a monster who could cut up his own baby just like slaughtering a hog.”
Bile rose in the back of Blythe’s throat. She swallowed against the urge to be sick. To physically spew out the horror his words created.
“Even if you’d ’a kilt her by accident, could you have cut up your baby that way, Miz Mitchell?”
Even if you’d ’a kilt her by accident…
Was that what had happened? Had this man beaten his daughter to death for some imagined infraction? Or had he hit her too hard in a fit of drunken rage? If not, then why would he introduce that idea into this conversation?
“I asked you a question. Could you ’a done that to your girl?”
“No,” she whispered again. “No.”
“I told ’em that. Told anybody who’d listen. But they never did. Nobody but Hoyt.”
“Sheriff Lee believed you?”
“Only reason I wasn’t took to court. He knew I couldn’t ’a kilt my own baby.”
It was said that the reason Hoyt Lee was such a good lawman was that he understood human nature. Could he tell a lie from the truth by looking into a murderer’s eyes?
“Then who did?” Blythe asked.
Maybe he was drunk enough to tell her something. It wouldn’t change what had happened to his child, but it might protect hers.
“Don’t you think if I knew, I’d ’a done somethin’ about it? Don’t you think I’d ’a made them pay for what they done?”
“You have no idea?”
“Somebody she trusted. That much I know.”
“How do you know?”
“’Cause he didn’t break in my house and take my girl. I’m the one who got up that morning and found her gone. I’m the one who searched that room and then the house and then the woods. The latch on hers and Rachel’s window was turned. Unlocked from the inside. Whoever did that to her, she let ’em in.”
“Maybe she just forgot to lock it before she went to bed. Sometimes—”
“I locked it. She asked me to. Had to run ’em to bed, the two of them. They was huddled up by the fire, but the next day was school. Told ’em to skeedaddle to bed, or I’d whup ’em both. Rachel went on, but Sarah…Sarah hung back, pulling on my sleeve. ‘Daddy, come and check our windows.’ I didn’t let my young’uns tell me what to do, you understand, but there was somethin’ about the way she was beggin’…” He stopped, closing his mouth to swallow, the whiskers on his trembling chin moving with the effort at control. “That’s the last thing she ever said to me. Last thing she ever asked me to do. Praise the Lord He give me sense enough to do it. It’s been hard all these years. Knowing what folks thought. If I hadn’t ’a gone in and checked that lock…”
Blythe couldn’t know what Abel Comstock had told the sheriff all those years ago, but if it had been conveyed with this same emotion, she understood why Hoyt believed him. No matter what the people of Crenshaw whispered behind their hands all these years.
“Her or Rachel unlocked that window. And Rachel swore to me till the day she died she didn’t do it.”
“She knew him.” Blythe breathed the acknowledgment.
“She knew him,” Abel repeated. “And trusted him. Least ways enough to open that window.”
“But you still don’t have any idea—” She stopped because that had been asked and answered. And because she believed what he’d told her.
There was no doubt in her mind she was capable of killing anyone who would ever hurt Maddie. If Abel Comstock had had even a suspicion that one of his neighbors was guilty of the murder of his daughter, Davis County wouldn’t have needed a trial to ensure justice for her killer. It would have been meted out without one.
“I’ll take you to where he kilt her. It ain’t far.”
Blythe realized that her mouth was still parted on that broken sentence. She closed it, thinking of the warmth and safety of her grandmother’s house. Of Maddie—
Of Maddie. Who had had someone tapping on her window. And who screamed in terror as she slept.
“All right.”
“You mean you’re coming?”
Why wouldn’t her agreement surprise him? Most of the town believed he’d murdered his daughter.
Blythe was no closer to an answer to what was going on with Maddie than she had been before, but she now knew, with as much certainty as she was capable of bringing to her search
, that whoever had killed Sarah Comstock, it hadn’t been her father.
16
W hen Blythe made it downstairs the following morning, Ruth was teaching Maddie to cross-stitch. They were sitting at the kitchen table, a profusion of brightly colored embroidery thread spread over its surface.
Maddie didn’t even look up when Blythe entered the room. The little girl’s tongue, caught between her teeth, protruded from her mouth as she guided an outsized needle up and across one of the blue markings.
“Very good,” Ruth said, arthritic fingers sorting through the piles of thread. She was separating various shades of green on one side and the blues on the other.
Without speaking, Blythe crossed the room to look over her daughter’s shoulder. A stamped pattern of leaves and flowers trailed along the edge of a white pillowcase.
“When you finish that, I’ll teach you how to crochet some lace to go on the edge. You can put ’em in your hope chest.”
“What’s a hope chest?” Maddie asked, lifting her eyes from her project.
“It’s where you keep all the things you’ll need when you get married,” Ruth said.
“Or when you get your first apartment,” Blythe broke in.
“Look what I’m doing, Mama.”
“I see. And a very good job you’re making of it, too.”
“It’s gonna be cases for some pillows.”
“They’ll be very beautiful ones, I know.”
Blythe bent to press a kiss against the razor-straight part in her daughter’s hair. That, too, would have been Ruth’s work, of course. That and the hot-pink plastic clasps that held what had been Maddie’s bangs back on each side.
“They’re for her hope chest.” Her grandmother’s tone said, And I don’t want to hear any more on the subject.
“Or maybe she’ll want to sleep on them now.” Perversely, despite all that she owed her grandmother for taking them in and caring so diligently for Maddie, Blythe couldn’t seem to help challenging Ruth’s growing influence over her daughter.
“Can I, Miz Ruth?” the little girl begged. “Could they be mine to sleep on now?”