Bad Moon On The Rise (7 page)

“
What in god’s name is
that?” I asked him.

He glanced at it. “Oh, that thing?
It’s a...”

“
Ahem.” Our visitor
clamped her lips in a very tight line, letting me know that I
needed to deal with her now. The giant fiberglass hot dog would
have to wait.

“
My office,” I suggested.
“Coffee?”

“
No thanks.” She stared at
Bobby wolfing down his second burrito. “I’m not thirsty. Or hungry.
Or even in the mood to breathe.”

Hmm... maybe she had a sense of
humor?

Alas, she did not, nor did she have a
heart, apparently. As soon as she entered my glorified closet of an
office, she removed her cashmere coat, looked around for a place to
hang it, then sat down primly in my visitor’s chair, draped it over
her lap, and got right to the point. “I understand my mother hired
you to look for my sister,” she said.

“
Not really. She hired me
to look for her grandson. There’s a difference.”

“
My mother is old,” the
woman said, not missing a beat. “And sentimental. Her desires are
misguided. We have our family to think of. I’m here to convince you
to drop the case.”

I wondered what pack of wolves had
raised her. “I can understand your feelings, but I work for your
mother and can not be influenced in what I do on this case by
anyone but her.”

“
Do you have any idea what
it has been like having Tonya in the family?” the woman asked. I
noticed that her right hand was trembling with the effort of
staying in control. She saw me looking and hid it under her
coat.

“
I can imagine,” I said.
“But that’s all the more reason to find Trey.”

“
Tonya has nearly
destroyed our family,” the women plowed onward. “Not to mention my
career, my parent’s happiness, everything she has
touched.”

Hoo boy. I don’t like to throw stones.
And I know what it’s like to have a lying, scheming, bloodsucking
drug addict siphoning the money and goodwill out of the family
tree. But somewhere down the line, this woman and Tonya Blackburn
had been sisters. They had played dolls together, broken bread
together, maybe even shared a bedroom together. Surely this woman,
with all of her material riches, had a spark of humanity left in
her for her sister?

“
The best thing this
family could possibly do right now is to walk away from Tonya and
anyone connected to her,” my visitor said when I did not respond.
“She’s stolen enough money and energy from my mother as it
is.”

Scratch the spark of humanity theory.
“I know it’s hard,” I said, trying to be sympathetic.

“
No, you don’t know.” Her
teeth were so tightly clenched I could barely understand her. “Do
you have any idea what it’s like for your sister to barge into your
office time and again, in front of clients and staff, dirty,
ragged, smelling of urine, stinking of the streets, begging you for
money, hair all wild and ratted, not caring about anything but that
I give her enough for her next pipe of crack?”

“
Meth,” I said. “Not
crack. You know? Speed, crank, crystal, tweak, ice. I think that’s
what she’s probably on.”

“
Thank you for that lesson
in drug terminology,” the woman snapped. “Now answer my question.
Do you know what it’s like?”

“
No, I don’t,” I admitted.
“But I’m guessing you kept giving her money just to get rid of her
and that’s why she kept coming back for more.”

“
What choice did I have
when she would approach me in front of everyone? I had to get her
out the door.”

“
And now that she’s
finally gone, hopefully for good, you want her to stay
away?”

“
Yes. And I don’t
apologize for it.”

I had seen it before. And a big part
of me didn’t blame her. Trying to help a drug addict can leave you
feeling abused and very angry once you’ve been manipulated one time
too often. And drug addicts always push it to that point. But this
woman had gotten stuck in the anger phase and I could not afford
for her emotions to interfere with my case.

“
You know what I think?” I
asked.

“
What?” she said
warily.

I stood up from my chair. “I think
your mother is dying and she wants to see her grandson again before
she goes. And I think if you had pulled your head out of your ass,
you might have seen it before I did.”

Okay, sometimes I’m mean.

She froze. “Why do you say that?” she
asked.

I shrugged. “It’s time for you to talk
to your mother, not me. I have another appointment now, so I’ll see
you out.”

She rose. “You don’t know what it’s
been like,” she said, her voice trembling.

I suddenly felt sorry for her. All the
perfect outfits in the world, all the latest model cars, all the
houses with too many rooms—none of them were going to stave off the
sorrow she would feel when she lost her own flesh and blood. And I
wasn't talking about losing her mother. I was talking about when
the day came that she would lose her sister. Here was a woman,
driven by whatever forces drove her, to build a life that seemed
perfect from the outside looking in, trying desperately to convince
herself that her life had nothing to do with her sister’s, that her
sister didn’t matter, that when the drugs finally got to her
sister—and they would—and all life was gone, that it wouldn’t
matter to her.

Well, I knew it would matter. You
can’t preempt that kind of sorrow.  And when this woman
finally realized that, it would be a pitiful sight.

“
I’m sorry,” I said as
kindly as I could. “I wish I could help you, but I
can’t.”

She didn’t say anything as she put on
her coat and left. She just marched past Bobby D. and slipped out
the door.

“
What was that all about?”
Bobby asked.

“
You don’t want to know,”
I searched the debris on his desk. “Got any doughnuts?”

“
Sorry. I ate them
all.”

“
You gonna eat that, too?”
I pointed to the giant fiberglass hot dog behind his desk.
“Explain.”

He explained. When he was done, I
couldn’t stop laughing.

It was the last opportunity I would
have to laugh for a long, long time.

The Yahoo! map I was consulting had
absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with reality. It was as if I
was staring at a map of the other Perry County, the one on
Mars.  It would be tough, though, for anyone to keep up with
the changing nature of these country roads, especially when a lot
of them wound through private property or were rendered impassable
by overflowing creeks and rivers. Perry County had seen some heavy
flooding in recent years. Roads tended to disappear and appear far
faster than anyone could keep up with the changes.

It took awhile, but I finally found
Beaver Dam Road. It was little more than a trail that led deep into
the woods. There was nothing I could do but pray for my suspension
and turn onto it. About half a mile in, the road curved to the
right to run alongside a manmade channel about twelve feet wide
created to help alleviate flooding from the nearby New River. Brown
water ran in a muddy stream through it toward some unknown larger
body of water. I saw where the road had gotten its name. Remnants
of beaver dams marked the sluggish water at intervals, telling me
that someone was at war with the beavers. They put up a dam, man
knocked it down. They put up a new dam, man knocked that one down
as well.

I knew the beavers would win out in
the end. They always do. Mostly because it’s against state law to
kill a beaver in North Carolina, although I do admit that an awful
lot of beavers seem to be accidentally run over in driveways out in
the hinterlands. Despite this mysterious phenomenon, the beaver
population thrived.

As small as the road was, crude
driveways led off the main trail at intervals, leading to isolated
homes. I followed each driveway faithfully, discovering two log
cabins, a hippy teepee still going strong after what must have been
thirty years or more, one grungy modular home the size of a
doublewide trailer and a partially built house that had been
abandoned right after the foundation had been poured. Multiple
cracks in the concrete showed why.

When I finally found Tonya Blackburn’s
trailer, I had a bad feeling right away. It was a rusted shell with
a sagging awning. Bits of red paint barely clung to a rusted
exterior. There were curtains on the windows and the front door was
shut, but I could see that the back door was open ever so slightly—
and not in a good way. It swung in the wind nonchalantly, as if man
did not exist in this particular clearing. I stepped from my car,
scared enough to retrieve my Colt from the glove compartment.
Something rustled through the underbrush as I approached the
trailer—it sounded large. I beat my palm against the trailer side a
few times, the metal reverberating beneath my touch as my sharp
slaps echoed inside. No answer. Suddenly, a dark shape darted out
the back door, jumped off the ledge over two concrete block steps,
soared past my head and scurried off through the tall grass. It was
either a very fast possum or a very tanned raccoon.

Definitely not a good sign.

I knocked repeatedly on the side of
the trailer, calling out Tonya’s name. Still no answer. Wrapping my
jacket sleeve around my hand so I wouldn’t leave prints, I pushed
against the back door. It swung wide, releasing a sweet, deeply
decayed odor that I recognized at once. Shit. Something had died
inside. Something that was a hell of a lot bigger than a
mouse.

Please don’t let it be the boy, I said
to myself. Just don’t let it be the boy.

In part to put off the inevitable grim
discovery—and partly to cover my ass—I pulled a pair of surgical
gloves from my knapsack and put them on. It’s not like I make a
habit of breaking and entering. But it’s not like they take up a
lot of room to carry, either. Besides, I’d searched way too many
places wearing potholders on my hands. A death scene called for
finesse.

I had a pack of watermelon bubble gum
on me. Each piece had enough fake flavoring in it to fell a hippo,
but at least it would mask the fetid sweetness of putrid flesh. I
chewed a quick square, plugged half of each nostril with a tiny
pink wad and popped another piece into my mouth. It’s called
improvisation.

I took a deep breath of fresh air and
entered.

Something had torn through that
trailer like a tornado. The furniture, what little there was, had
been kicked over. Even the cheap couch was tipped on its side, its
cushions ripped open so that tufts of cotton stuffing burst out
like drifts of snow. Kitchen cabinet doors hung open and a counter
full of bowls, pots and pans had been leveled with what looked like
a single sweep of the arm, sending the contents crashing to the
floor. Chairs had been turned over and cabinet drawers pulled out
and dumped upside down.

I moved through the kitchen, past the
wrecked living room and into a cramped hallway. How the hell did
all those obese trailer residents you see screaming obscenities at
each other on Jerry Springer even fit through these things? No
wonder they were so grumpy. My butt was no prize, but it didn’t
need its own zip code yet either and I was barely squeezing
through.

A tiny bedroom jutted off to the left.
Reluctantly, I glanced inside, knowing from the overpowering odor
that the source of the smell had to be in there.

Tonya Blackburn was laying face up on
a bare mattress. She wore a torn blue nightgown that had slipped
indifferently from her undernourished body. She was staring up at
the ceiling through a face swollen with decay, the eyes milky and
unseeing. The smell in the room was unbearable. She’d been dead for
at least five days, I gauged. Inside her body, her organs had
turned to soup. If it had been summer, I would never have been able
to even recognize her. But cool nights and an open back door had
preserved her just enough to convince me it was Tonya. One thin arm
sprawled off the mattress and flopped toward the door, exposing an
expanse of brown skin dotted with scabs and scars. Her other arm
was curled against her chest. A dirty rag had been tied around the
upper half of it and a needle dangled listlessly from the
pockmarked skin.

Live by the sword. Die by the
sword.

And, yet, there was something staged
about her pose. The way the arm was cradled against her chest, and
the knot so neatly tied off on her right arm. Was she left handed
or had she been in the Navy? Because the knot seemed so... precise.
I didn’t like the looks of it. Maybe she’d been helped along by
someone?

I knelt near her body, pulling my tee
shirt up over my mouth to mask the smell. Something else was off.
Her arms were pocked with track marks, but they were old scars, all
except for a few.

I examined her body more closely and
discovered a series of small bruises ringing her neck in an
irregular line. Normal tissue decomposition or post-mortem bruises
bearing testament to a strangling? I was no coroner, but I had
watched one on TV plenty of times and, damn it, I had my
suspicions.

It made me mad. After all the effort
she had made to get clean, Tonya hadn’t fallen off the wagon on her
own—she had been pushed and then thrown under the wheels. But who
would want to harm her and why?