Crossroad

by W. H. Cameron

  “So tell me again.”

  I’m trapped like a bug in a jar. All I can do is summarize the fateful day, starting from when I transported the first body and finishing when Pride and I opened Trae Fowler’s empty drawer.

  “And then you did what?”

  I embarrassed myself in front of Pride is what. “This is not happening,” I’d said, yanking open the other drawers. “This is not happening.” Pride had kept his cool and called 911.

  “Mrs. Crandall’s body was unmolested?”

  Not the word I would choose. “Untouched, yes.”

  “And you had no other bodies at that time.”

  “No.”

  “Maybe someone Quince brought in?”

  “Quince doesn’t transport without me. Besides, our fridge only has four drawers, and I needed all of them. I’d have noticed a double-booking.” There’s a three-drawer portable unit in the storage room, but it was unplugged and empty. “Why are you asking all this?”

  “We’ve completed our preliminary examination of the cremated remains.”

  My muscles clench. His tone has taken on a troubling note.

  “Imagine our surprise when we found fragments of a fourth skull.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve sent everything to the state crime lab for more detailed analysis, but we also found two spare femurs, a lower mandible—you name it.”

  Our crematory is roomy, but it would have been tough maneuvering three bodies at once in the retort. With four, it’s a wonder the gas jets didn’t get blocked. I shudder. It would have to be someone small—or young. Another teenager?

  The photo in Pride’s car. The baby in the desert. Jesus.

  “It was a girl, wasn’t it?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  The sheriff leans forward as if he expects a revelation, but I can only speculate.

  “Maybe Nathan and Trae had someone with them. The mother.”

  He nods as if the thought already occurred to him. “Where was she when we were scraping bodies off the pavement?”

  In the fourth car? If Pride hasn’t mentioned his theory about a fourth car to the sheriff, he must have his reasons. I feel the weight of a secret I didn’t ask for. This is my chance to unburden myself. Give the cops someone else to fix on—and leave me the hell alone.

  “The cremated remains of the stolen bodies aren’t the only thing you sent to the state crime lab.”

  It’s a clumsy attempt to change the subject. He raises an eyebrow. “And how would you know that?”

  I hope I haven’t gotten Danae in trouble. “No secrets in Samuelton, Sheriff.”

  His eyes go sharp. “This isn’t a matter of public record, Melisende.”

  Not Mellie, not Mel.

  Melisende.

  Phlegm collects at the back of my throat. It’s another secret, but one I need to hear. Diffident, I attempt a bland smile. “Who would I tell?”

  “Your math teacher friend, for one.”

  He has me there. I start to make a promise I won’t keep, but he cuts me off.

  “Dr. Varney pulled a bullet out of Nathan Harper’s back.”

  The cab of the Expedition seems to grow painfully cold. A bullet means Nathan Harper wasn’t fleeing some ordinary motor vehicle collision. So who was doing the shooting? The men from the Eldorado? Or whoever was in Pride’s mystery car?

  “You gonna tell him, little sister?”

  A siren wails from the road to our right. Light bar flashing, a patrol car blasts past, heading for Crestview. At once, the sheriff’s cell phone rings. He gives me an unreadable look as he snatches the phone from its cradle.

  “Turnbull.”

  He listens, then lets out a low whistle. “You’re sure? … Okay, where?” He nods, then adds, “Tsokapo Gorge, got it.” His eyes steal my way, unreadable. “Be there in five.”

  He plunks the phone back in its cradle. “Got a situation.”

  The last week has been one endless situation. I need time to think. “I’ll walk back to town.” I reach for the door handle.

  “Oh no, Mellie.” He activates his light bar, throws the SUV into gear, and hits the gas. “We’re not done yet.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Cerise Creek Trail

  My first New Year’s Day in Barlow County, a married couple from Portland went missing while cross-country skiing on Lost Brother Butte. They were experienced hikers and skiers with an intimate knowledge of the region, so friends were surprised when they didn’t appear for dinner at the lodge that night. Fearing the worst, Fire and Rescue was called out, but a winter storm interrupted the search almost before it began. By the time the weather cleared, the high country had received twenty inches of snow. For all their experience, the couple hadn’t carried a locator beacon, nor had they told anyone their planned route.

  By May, most had forgotten about the missing couple. Then some fifth-graders from Eugene, visiting for outdoor school, found a ski boot near the Salt Creek trail. The foot was still inside. A search for additional remains was led by a wildlife expert and a state forensic anthropologist. They turned up skis, pieces of a down jacket, and bones—including two partially denuded skulls. Within a day, investigators confirmed the remains belonged to the missing couple. The best guess was that they’d become disoriented when the storm closed in, and presumably had died of exposure.

  Though not involved in the recovery of the remains, Uncle Rémy brought me out to the site to observe. I’ll never forget seeing the woman’s decomposed torso pulled from a rocky hollow under a cliff. Much of the flesh and organs had been stripped away by scavengers. What remained seemed less a person than a prop from a cheesy horror flick. But as the team moved the torso to a body bag, something glinted and fell from the ribcage. I drew a sharp breath when the crew member picked up a blown-glass pendant in the shape of a hummingbird.

  Uncle Rémy noticed my reaction but misjudged its cause. “This sort of thing is always a possibility,” he said. “In our business, you need to be ready for anything.” He spoke in the same sincere tone he used to tell the bereaved he was sorry for their loss.

  I’d nodded, but I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about a glass hummingbird I’d bought at an arts fair in Provincetown—a gift for Helene. I never gave it to her, afraid she’d think it silly or sentimental. I suppose my parents sold it, along with the rest of my meager belongings, to pay my back rent after I was evicted from my apartment.

  As Sheriff Turnbull pulls out onto Wayette Highway, a heavy foreboding settles over me. I find myself thinking about the dead woman’s pendant. The sheriff isn’t bringing me along because he enjoys my company. Something has happened. In our business, you need to be ready for anything.

  He tears down the winding road, indifferent when I grab the handle over my door. Within seconds we pass the turn-off for the Hensley School, and then we’re through Crestview in the space of a breath. Trees whip by in a gray-green blur until we cross a bridge, then make a sharp turn onto a paved ramp. The sheriff coasts back toward the bridge for a few hundred feet, before stopping beside a Barlow County Fire and Rescue ambulance and two department patrol cars. Dr. Varney’s silver-gray Escalade is one of several other vehicles in the gravel lot.

  The sheriff kills the engine and opens his door. “Come on, Mel.”

  “I can wait.”

  “I said come on.” He slides out with unexpected agility. “That wasn’t a request.”

  At least he called me Mel.

  Worry shadows me like a cloud as I follow. Behind a row of pruned junipers, a small, shady clearing overlooks the gorge under the bridge. There are a couple of picnic tables, a hitching rail next to a trough and spigot, and a cinderblock latrine. The Forest Service kiosk informs me we’re at the Tsokapo Gorge Wayside on the Cerise Creek Trail—another section of the same trail I fled down not so long ago. Here, the path hugs the lip of the gorge, climbing through trees to my left, dipping under the bridge to my right. The easterly wind smells of sand an
d pine, as well as something acrid and unpleasant.

  Deputy Ariana Roldán waits with a tan, dark-haired young girl—maybe eight or nine—at one of the picnic tables. Tears streak the trail dust on her cheeks. Her mother sits with her, one hand stroking her neck. The gesture stirs an ancient memory in me of a time before Fitz died, before my mother became merely Cricket Dulac. A pink-faced man nearby rounds out the family. He rubs his face, then reaches out to his wife. His hand hangs in the space between them as if grasping for something in the dark. Head bowed over her daughter, the woman doesn’t seem to notice. They’re dressed for the trail—boots, cargo shorts, and blousy cotton shirts. A large day pack lies on the table beside three insulated water bottles. Uncle Rémy would approve.

  Deputy Roldán speaks to the couple, then goes to huddle with the sheriff, away from both the family and me. I listen to the wind in the gorge, to birds squawking in the trees. I peer up at the arches of the bridge, at the high blue sky. I don’t need to hear what the sheriff and his lone female deputy are saying. I don’t need a formal callout to tell me what’s going on.

  “Aren’t you still on suspension, little sister?”

  “I’m not here to remove a body.” I don’t care if anyone hears. “The sheriff wants to see how I react to one.”

  * * *

  Sheriff Turnbull leaves Deputy Roldán with the family and leads me beneath the bridge. A stream winds among boulders and fallen tree trunks in the bottom of the gorge, twenty feet below the trail’s edge. Beer bottles and other trash have collected at the high-water mark halfway up the gorge walls. The unpleasant odor grows stronger.

  We pass the Fire and Rescue volunteers, standing to one side of the trail, smoking and talking with Dr. Varney. Jeremy is with them. The doctor nods a greeting, but I hurry past, uninterested in chitchat.

  Tsokapo Gorge slices through basalt and welded ash threaded with ancient magma intrusions. At its bottom runs a stream, ankle deep and calm. Cliff swallows emerge from mud nests on the gorge wall to feed on flies buzzing above the water’s surface, squeaking and churring as they swoop.

  Below the bridge, the stream falls down a steep decline to a blue-green pool fifty or sixty feet below. During the spring snowmelt, this must be an impressive waterfall, but in high summer it’s a gentle burble. The trail descends beside the falls via hewn-rock steps and a series of natural terraces, with walls on either side. At the bottom, the trail curls around the pool, then crosses a wooden bridge and continues into the pine forest.

  At the top of the falls, Turnbull gestures toward a puddle of vomit on a rock ledge jutting out from the bridge embankment—the source of the stench.

  “The father puked when he came to see what upset his daughter.”

  Ten feet below, a body lies facedown on the first terraced ledge, arms splayed at his sides, palms up. My foreboding hardens into a numb certainty. I know it’s Pride without seeing his face. Tall and lean, hair the color of ripe barley. I recognize his shirt with its epaulets, his khaki pants, and the Rockports he was wearing this morning at the Mercantile.

  “No wallet,” the sheriff says. “We haven’t moved him, and it may not help when we do. We’re pretty sure who it is, but you saw him last.”

  “It’s Kendrick Pride.” Behind his right knee, his pants are dark with blood, the lower leg bent at an unlikely angle. “The little girl found him?”

  The sheriff’s eyes are hollow. “The family is staying at Brother Drop, visiting the fish hatchery, doing vacation stuff. They were hiking the trail loop and passed this spot about an hour ago. He wasn’t here then. But the little girl wanted to come back, wade in the pool and chase salamanders.” He inhales sharply. “She was so excited, she ran ahead.”

  “Jesus.” A small dark pool of congealing blood surrounds Pride’s head, a grim corona.

  “Poor kid was scared out of her mind.”

  Anyone would be. Yet the scene is inexplicably tranquil—the buff gorge walls, the murmuring stream, the blue sky above. Though half-closed eyes, you might just convince yourself the prone figure is resting. But I’ve seen it too often. Not resting. Not even a man, not anymore. Remains—what’s left when our animating spark fades.

  I wonder about Pride’s family and whether he’s made his funeral wishes known. Open casket is out of the question. The distance from the bridge is tough to gauge, but Pride is lying facedown. His facial bones would have shattered on impact.

  The rest of the damage may be manageable. Carrie and Aunt Elodie would know. As I study the purplish blue skin on his palms and the exposed skin on the backs of the arms, something Carrie once said tugs at me, something about another body. I reach for it, but the memory flees as a raven lands near the body. The bird’s croak jerks me from my reverie. Its head pivots side to side, sizing up Pride’s scalp. With another rumbling croak, it bounces toward him.

  Without thinking, I jump down the wide, uneven steps. The sheriff shouts, and from the corner of my eye I see him reach out to stop me. I dodge his grasp, skirting wide of the blood haloing Pride’s head, and throw a kick at the huge black bird.

  “Git! Shoo!”

  The raven aims its thick beak at my foot, striking the steel toe without effect. I holler again and clap furiously. The raven launches into the air at my face. With a shriek, I throw my arms up, feel wings beat my scalp. I duck sideways and catch myself on the gorge wall. When I look up, the raven is already banking in the open air beneath the bridge. It croaks one last time, then glides toward the forest downstream.

  Heart in my throat, I lean against the rough stone to catch my breath. A thread of silver catches my eye. Hanging from the fine chain caught in the cracked rock is a gleaming oval pendant.

  The last time I saw Pride, he blanched at the sight of this very chain. The locket wasn’t just any piece of jewelry. I should tell the sheriff it’s here, where it came from. But then what? Pride could have shared his speculations with the sheriff, but didn’t. He was a lawyer on sabbatical, representing the interests of Trae Fowler’s family and perhaps Nathan Harper’s—yet from the start he’d acted like he was working a criminal investigation.

  “What in hell are you thinking?”

  The sheriff’s voice makes me nearly jump out of my skin. I twist as his shadow falls over me. He looms at the top of the trail, hands on his hips.

  “Well?”

  Pride’s law firm bio described him as a husband, a father. If the locket was important to him, wouldn’t it be important to those he left behind? And if I alert the sheriff, might it simply disappear into the evidence locker in the Barlow Building, to be ignored or forgotten?

  I try to smile. “I didn’t want the bird to disturb the remains.”

  Casually, I drop my hands, snagging the silver chain and slipping it into my jeans pocket as I move away from the wall.

  “You didn’t touch anything, did you?”

  The locket feels hot enough to burn a hole through my skin. “I’m not an idiot.”

  He studies me. “No, you’re not.” If only he knew. The glare fades, replaced by a faint smile. “You have something of your Aunt Elodie in you, don’t you.”

  I listen for the reproach in his tone, but there’s none. I flush and look away.

  “Now, please, Mel, get back up here.”

  The sheriff has never said please to me, let alone offered any praise. An unexpected sensation floods through me, one I associate with Uncle Rémy and Aunt Elodie. But just as quickly, it dissolves into a disquieting guilt. Aunt Elodie might defend the dead from a scavenger, but she would never pilfer their belongings.

  I join the sheriff and the others under the bridge. Jeremy frowns as if he knows I’m hiding something. The others straighten up and stub out their cigarettes, attentive vassals in the presence of their lord. If it were up to me, I’d keep walking. Back to the rest area, up the ramp to the highway. Stick out my thumb, accept the first ride offered. To Reno, Tijuana. Timbuktu. Anywhere but here.

  But just like that night at the crossroad,
I’m stuck.

  THIRTY

  Ass to the Wind

  The sheriff asks the Fire and Rescue volunteers to wait with their ambulance until he’s ready for them to transport the body. They shuffle past me, avoiding eye contact. Everyone knows why I’m not on the job.

  “We’ll need to make an official identification,” the sheriff says when they’re gone, “but Melisende agrees the dead man is Kendrick Pride. The evidence tech is on her way, though the situation seems clear enough.” My hand steals into my pocket to finger the oval locket. The sheriff turns to Dr. Varney. “Our witnesses give us a window for time of death. What are your thoughts?”

  “I think he fell off the bridge.” Varney stretches a pair of nitrile gloves between his hands. “Long way down.”

  “Died on impact?”

  “At the very least we can assume massive brain trauma. If not instantaneous, it was quick enough.” He shrugs. “I’ll run a tox screen to see if he was impaired and do a more thorough visual at the morgue, but I see no reason to cut him.”

  “You’re thinking accident?”

  “From up top, the gorge is something else.”

  Jeremy nods. “It’s a wonder this hasn’t happened before. I’ve lost count of the hikers I’ve caught sitting on the guardrail up there, ass to the wind, admiring the view. As if the bridge doesn’t shake like a mofo when trucks go by.”

  “The lack of a wallet has to be considered.”

  “Robbery?”

  Everyone looks at Varney, who raises his hands uncertainly. “There’s no obvious defensive wounds or contusions, but I’ll know more after I get him back to the morgue.” He peers up at the bridge. “Anything up there?”

  The sheriff looks at Jeremy, who shakes his head. “No watch, but no tan line to indicate he wore one,” he says. “His keys and phone were in his pockets, along with about forty bucks. Phone’s busted all to hell.” Jeremy holds up a plastic evidence bag. No bullet casings. The phone looks like it was hit with a hammer. “As for his wallet, some guys stick it in the console when they’re driving. Maybe he forgot it.”