Blood Relations (11 page)

In the silence, I thought I heard something. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“Sounded like somebody moaning,” I said.

We both stood completely still, holding our breath, waiting to hear the sound again. When you're trying to hear something in particular, you end up hearing all the things that you never really paid attention to any other time. Like the lapping of the water on the bank, the dog on the next street over barking like mad, the clanking of Charity's gate in the yard across the street.

“Look,” she said, pointing downriver. “I think it was just that tugboat.”

I looked down the river, and way in the distance was a light on a vessel coming upriver. “No, that's too far away,” I said. “That's not a tugboat anyway. That's a barge.”

“How can you tell?”

“I can tell by how high the light sits from the river.”

“Good Lord, you
do
need to get out of this town. Come up to St. Louis with me,” she said. “We'll eat exotic foods.”

“And I'll get indigestion.”

“We'll go hear some reggae.”

“And I'll have an asthma attack from those clove cigarettes everybody smokes at reggae shows.”

“Drink some Jaegermeister…”

“Oh, and I'll end up getting killed. Last time I drank that stuff, I was chasing cars in the street.”

“I know,” she squealed. “That was so much fun.”

“Collette,” I said. “Stop. I make it up to St. Louis to see the symphony a couple of times a year, and I go to every play of the Shakespeare Company's summer season. We usually go up for Mardi Gras festivities in Soulard. I get out plenty. Just not as often as you.”

There was that sound again.

“Did you hear it this time?” I asked, the hair prickling on my arms.

“Yeah,” she said, wide-eyed. “I did.”

“It's coming from down that way.”

“Down by the wreckage,” she said.

“Yeah. Come on.”

I was four steps away from her when I realized that she wasn't walking with me. “What?” I asked, turning back to her.

“You sure we should go down there?” she asked.

“Oh,
now
you don't want to go down there,” I said. “Come on, loosen up.
It'll be fun.
”

“You know, you can be a real bitch sometimes,” said Collette.

“So can you,” I replied, taking a few steps. “Come on.” Reluctantly, she followed behind me.

“Watch your step,” I said.

“Don't worry. These shoes are Italian.”

“You wouldn't happen to have a flashlight in your purse, would you?”

“No,” she said. “Should have known I'd need a flashlight. What about you? Don't you carry a flashlight?”

“My purse is in the car.”

“I was joking,” Collette said. “You really carry a flashlight?”

“Shh,” I said as we crept closer. The crime-scene tape that the sheriff had put up on Wednesday was still there, flapping in the wind. We were about ten yards from it when I remembered something.

“Hey, give me your keys.”

“What? What do you want with my keys?”

“Just give them here.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she said. “Standing on the bank of the river in the freezing snow and she wants my stupid keys. Here!”

On Collette's key chain was one of those little minilights so that you can find a keyhole in the dark. It wasn't big enough to put off any light from this distance. But up close, it might come in handy.

“Shouldn't I go call nine one one?”

“And leave me here alone? I think not,” I said.

We stepped over the crime-scene tape and walked toward the wreckage. “Crap,” I said.

“What?”

“There're footprints here in the snow.”

“So?”

“So that means somebody is down here. Or was recently.”

Just then, the barge came up close to us and flashed its light around in a circle. When it did, I caught a glimpse of something lying over the side of the visible wreckage. “Double crap,” I said.

“Hey, where are you going?” Collette called after me.

I took off at a pretty good speed and slid a little as I got to the wreckage. In the darkness, I saw what looked like a body. It
was
a body. About five feet from the bank, lying over the wreckage, somebody was splayed out on his back, his knees and feet hanging loosely in the water. I took Collette's little key-chain light and flashed it on the body. I was still too far away to be able to identify anything.

I stepped a little closer.

“Torie, you crazy woman. What are you doing?” Collette called.

“It's a body!”

“A body,” she said. “Then get the hell away from there.”

The only way I could get close enough to see it was to step in the water. Oh well, my shoes were just ten-dollar Wal-Mart beauties anyway. It wasn't as if they were
Italian.
I stepped into the water and gasped at how cold it was. I flashed the little bitty light at the man's head and it illuminated the features enough for me to see that it was Jacob Lahrs. A dark red stain ran down the side of his face—blood, I assumed.

“It's Jacob Lahrs!” I said.

“Is he alive?” she asked.

“I'd have to touch him to find out.”

“Well, you gotta do what you gotta do,” Collette said.

“Mr. Lahrs,” I said. “Mr. Lahrs, it's Torie O'Shea.”

No response. He was either unconscious or dead. And judging by how still he seemed, I'd say he was dead. I stepped a little closer, and when I did, I must have stepped on part of the wreckage. My foot sank into it, and I felt wood scraping my skin. A creaking noise was the only warning I got, and not soon enough for me to move. The whole thing tipped and Jacob Lahrs just sort of spilled on top of me.

My foot was trapped in the wreckage and I had a bleeding corpse lying on top of me. I screamed.

Then Collette screamed.

Okay, calm down, I thought. If he was indeed dead, he'd only been dead a few minutes. Somehow, a recently dead body pinning me to the snow wasn't as disgusting as a day-old corpse pinning me to the snow. I had just heard him moaning not five minutes ago, so he had probably died as Collette and I stood up on the bank talking about Jaegermeister and the Shakespeare Company. Rigor had not set in yet, and he was still … fairly warm. Oh God. I was going to puke.

No, I couldn't puke. I was lying on my back, and if I puked, I'd choke and die. And wouldn't that be difficult to explain to my husband. Well, Mr. O'Shea, your wife died when she choked on her own vomit, pinned by a bloody corpse in the snow. Yeah, that would be really stupid of me. I began struggling and moving around, trying to get out from underneath Professor Lahrs. I had to concentrate on the fact that I needed to get free of the wreckage, rather than needing to get free of a corpse. “Collette! Go get the sheriff!”

“What?” she shrieked. “I can't leave you here alone.”

“Then get down here and get this body off of me.”

“Okay,” she said. “I'll be right back.”

Thirteen

“Colin! Am I glad to see you,” I said. His flashlight shone brightly down in my eyes, and in the blinding light, he appeared taller than usual. Of course, that could have been because I was lying on the ground and he was standing over me with one hand on his hip, perilously close to his pistol. I had managed to wiggle out from under Jacob Lahrs, but he was still lying right next to me, because I had yet to free my foot from the wreckage. It had gone through the wood easily enough, but something had caught it, and I could not twist it in the right position to get free.

“What the hell? No, I'm not going to ask that question,” he said. “I've learned with you that if I don't really want to hear the explanation, I should just not ask
the damn question!
” he yelled.

“I can explain all of this,” I said. “If you could please just help me get my foot free.”

“Oh, I can't do that,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked, panic rising in my chest.

“This is a crime scene. I can't disturb anything until the CSU gets here.”

“Oh, you can't be serious,” I said.

He knelt down then and deliberately put the flashlight under his face. He smiled a wicked smile, reminding me of the Joker from
Batman.
“Oh, believe me. I am dead serious.”

“Colin! Look, the crime scene is all screwed up anyway. Mr. Lahrs was up there, and then he was here on top of me, and now he's over there. He's been more places dead than most people have been alive. And … and … my footprints are everywhere. So please help me get my foot out. It's bleeding. And
my ass is freezing!
”

He stood up then and walked back toward River Point Road. I thought for a moment with a sinking sensation that he was just going to leave me there in the snow. I wasn't joking about my butt being frozen. In fact, I was wearing just a normal pair of underwear and a pair of jeans, no thermal underwear or anything. Since my bottom half was in the water, it was getting to the point where I couldn't even feel my butt any longer. I was becoming numb from the waist down. He stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head back and forth. I could see people starting to gather up on the road.

How embarrassing.

“I thought I told you to stay away from down here. Not that it matters. I should have known better. I tell you to stay away from all sorts of places and you still go there. It's like you navigate to the very places I tell you to stay away from. Hey, Torie,” he said, turning around. “Don't you ever go to the North Pole. Not ever. Make sure you stay away from the North Pole. Now with any luck, you'll go to the damn North Pole, and I'll be rid of you!”

“Colin, please. My foot is getting infected as we speak, and I think I may be getting frostbite. Or … hypothermia. That's it. I'm getting hypothermia. Collette and I came down here because we heard Mr. Lahrs moaning. That's it. That's the only reason. I haven't set foot down here since I was here with you on Wednesday.”

“You didn't think to call nine one one first?”

“Well, Collette did, but I—”

“Well, at least we know which one of Laurel and Hardy has the brains.”

“If you'd just let me finish, Colin. I thought that in the time it would take to call nine one one, whoever was moaning could die. I mean, I didn't know. I thought somebody could be drowning. So I just thought I'd see first, and then if it wasn't something I could handle, I'd send Collette to call nine one one. I thought time was of the essence,” I said.

He stood there a moment. I couldn't judge his expression, because it was dark and the light from New Kassel was behind him. “I swear, Colin, my first thought was to help whoever it was.”

“You swear you have not been down here any other time?”

“I swear, cross my heart, and all that garbage. Please, just help me get my foot out of the wreckage. If I scoot down any closer, then my whole body will be soaking wet,” I said.

He hesitated a moment, but he finally came forward and pointed the light at the hole where my foot had slipped through. He grabbed hold of my foot and twisted. “Here, if you just turn your foot—”

“Ouch! Jeez, if I could have turned it in that position, I would have gotten free. I don't think feet are meant to turn in that direction.”

He played the flashlight across the snow-covered ground. The light fell across Jacob Lahrs, who was now lying facedown in the snow. Then he found a big rock a few feet away. He stood up and walked close to the river, obviously trying to disturb the snow as little as possible. He came back with the rock and smashed the wood around the area of my foot.

“So, what did you see?” he asked. “When you found him.”

“Uh … well, it all happened so fast. Basically, he was lying up over the wreckage and there was a whole lot of blood running down his face. My guess is, somebody smashed his head in.”

“How do you know it wasn't self-inflicted?” he asked, giving one final blow to the wood. It crumbled all around and he reached down inside and moved aside a piece of metal that my foot had gotten hung up on.

“Well, if he fell, I wouldn't think he'd be laid out on the wreckage like he was. Anyway, I couldn't really see who it was, so I was stepping in the water to get a closer look, and I ended up stepping on the wreckage. It shifted and Mr. Lahrs fell on top of me.”

My foot was finally free, and I jumped up to get as far away from Mr. Lahrs as possible. I shivered, and it wasn't from the cold. I looked down on my coat and saw the blood on it. “Oh, gross,” I said, and took off my coat. I threw it in the snow, as if it were some sort of live organism trying to eat me.

“What?”

“It's Mr. Lahrs's blood,” I said, shaking my hands. “Do I have any more on me?”

He flashed the light up and down my body. I found it difficult to stand on my left foot. Little hot flashes of pain shot up my ankle into my shin. “Yeah, you got some on your neck.”

“Oh, oh, oh God. I'm gonna be sick.”

“Just calm down,” he said. “You've seen blood before.”

“Yeah, but I've never had somebody else's blood on me, for crying out loud!”

“Just breathe,” he said. “Put your head between your knees.”

I did as he instructed, and I felt better. I had better things to worry about than puking. Like having frostbite and getting gangrene. Sheriff Brooke flashed his light on the ground. “Walk around this way,” he said. “Go up to the Murdoch Inn and tell Eleanore to run you a bath. As soon as you're cleaned up and have on fresh clothes, have Collette take you to Wisteria General. You're gonna need a tetanus shot. Plus, you probably sprained your ankle really good.”

“Why can't I just go home?”