Deep Down (I) (27 page)

She darted off the path. But in a splotch of sun, a massive shadow loomed over her, covered her. No way was this monster going to cut her, kill her! Avoiding tree trunks, bouncing off saplings, she kept putting foot before foot, but she was weakening now.

Oh, she saw her mother again—no, she was her mother. She’d fallen over a tree root and scrambled up, on hands and knees at first, then running, running. It was coming after her in wide strides at a jogging pace, breaking tree limbs, hitting the bone spade against tree trunks. She was sweating but shivering. Stark fear shredded her stamina, her courage. But she knew at the last moment that her mother had been proud of her. She’d regretted giving her away, sending her away…yes, she heard her mother whisper that to her even now.

Jessie saw the shadow of the spade in the air. It whirred
at her again, catching her on her good shoulder. Trying to break her fall, she screamed as she hit the leafy turf faceup to keep the ground from crushing her arm. Huge feet pressed against her hips as The Thing towered over her. Then it sat on her, pressing her down under its weight, putting the long wooden handle of the crude bone spade across her throat, pressing just enough to keep her immobile and nearly breathless.

What in hell was all this tape blocking off the old logging road? Drew wondered. At least, Jess’s car was here. But there was no sign of Buford.

He drove right through the tape barrier, yanking it all down behind the Cherokee. Cursing the fact he couldn’t drive all the way into the forest, he actually wished the road had been extended here. Then, off to the right, like a gift from God, he saw the entry to a new, narrow service road Buford must have cut through the trees. How deep into the woods did it go? And, if he took it, would he miss Jess and Cassie, since they’d probably taken the usual hiking path in?

Two roads, two ways, always choices. Please, God, let it be the right choice, in case Jess and Cassie were in danger. At least they were together. Safety in numbers. Mariah and Beth had to face their murderer alone.

27

W aves of pain ripped through Jessie’s arm and her entire body. With the weight of The Thing on her, she gasped for air, but it was polluted by his smell. He had brown eyes. It could be Peter or even Seth, but she still thought it was Ryan, however he’d managed to get out here so fast. Her head spun; her captor and clouds above her rotated faster, faster.

“Finally, you’ve stopped fighting me,” The Thing said, in a muffled voice as his horrid visage leaned close to her. “And you can stop lying to me. My two-way radio doesn’t carry from here, so yours doesn’t, either—if you even have one on you. So I don’t think you have rescuers coming, unless someone else read my note. Compared to the other two—even the power woman—” he said with a snicker “—you’ve put up a good fight.”

My note! Seth? No, it couldn’t be Seth.

The stench of him was not just from the badger fur; he’d deliberately doused himself with something else—mothballs? “I’ve got to hand it to you, before we end all this,” he went on, still out of breath. “I admire your cleverness and courage. Wish I’d stumbled on to you instead of Cassandra, because you and I would have made one hell of a
team.” It—he—Ryan—snickered again. “You might even have known about birth control.”

She tried to follow his words. Some way—there must be some way out of this. But he’d forged that note from Seth, so no one else knew she was here.

His tone went from taunting to irate. “But how did you know it was me?” he demanded.

It was Ryan Buford! Her head cleared. She knew his voice now, no longer a growl, no longer disguised. Which, meant, of course, he intended to kill her, as if there had been any doubt about that.

“I just guessed at the lowest of the low,” she gritted out.

“I thought you went for everything I said,” he insisted with a slight shake of his head. “Want to know my deep, dark motive before it’s lights out? You’re a bright lady—I owe you that. I do regret the fact the world is going to lose a cancer researcher. My grandmother died of breast cancer, and she’s the only one who really gave a damn about me in my entire family.”

“Oh, yeah,” she dared, more furious than afraid again. She couldn’t help herself. She was absolutely outraged that this smug moron had killed her mother. “Being hurt as a kid’s a perfect reason to become a serial killer.”

“Shut up! That’s not why!” he shouted, ripping off his huge hat and hood. Ryan Buford in the flesh, red-faced, sweating. If this monster was Pearl’s father, how could she be so sweet? “It’s because this stupid ‘sang’ is ruining everything I’ve worked for,” he raged, his face contorted with fury. “Some very important people in D.C. had to pull me from getting this area logged once because of your sang—a stupid root stupid people think has power. A hillbilly plant that the commie Chinese
venerate! How about good old American wood being the big crop here?”

“Oh, I see. You’re a patriot,” she choked out, her voice dripping sarcasm.

“I said, shut up. I just want you to know you didn’t outsmart me, even with your big deal education hiding your ties here. Maybe I can save Pearl if I get her out of here in time, away from Cassandra and Deep Down. I’ll be sitting pretty when we close this deal. Cut and get out, that’s my motto. With this area stripped of trees—which people will accept, with a low ginseng count—at least for this year with your mother and you gone—”

“And Beth Brazzo,” she wheezed and started a coughing fit.

“Yeah, Ms. Promote-ginseng-to-the-entire-country Brazzo.”

“Why the outfit?”

“You know, I thought it would cause general chaos, detract from how much I was surveying. But the sheriff sat on the picture I managed to pose for. Even the photographer did.”

“As if a series of murdered women wouldn’t cause chaos, too!”

“Let people think there’s a curse on people harvesting wild things in the woods!”

“It may take awhile, but the sheriff will find you.”

“I tried to set up Cherokee Seth, but when that fell through, I fingered Vern. As for this outfit, I’ve used a Swamp Ape suit down south for some laughs, too. Besides, you know about costume parties, don’t you?” he said, bending so close to her face that she could smell his breath—mint—mingled with mothballs. “People in a mask do things they might not do otherwise, and…”

He kept rambling, but she couldn’t follow him. Leaning forward against her stomach, he was cutting off her air again. Excruciating pain wracked both shoulders, her broken arm—and her hopes for rescue.

Drew jumped out of his vehicle. He’d scratched it up even more by careening down the crude, narrow service road evidently meant for Buford’s truck. That vehicle was parked just ahead near Bear Creek, a natural dead end. Dead end, he thought. Dead end.

He got out, grabbed his shotgun and tore along the creek. He could see no one was up ahead at the grandfather tree. Damn, no one in sight anywhere! Why had he been so certain the women would have come after Buford here? If they were back somewhere in the forest, he might have made a fatal error driving in, especially if Buford turned dangerous when Cassie confronted him.

Just as surely as Jess had her visions of her mother’s fear and flight, facing down her killer, he felt certain Jess was in danger now. Maybe not from Buford, but where was Vern? And Peter might not be in Lexington at all.

Should he get back in his vehicle or run the path into the forest back the other way? Holding his shotgun before him, he ran.

Jessie knew she was going to pass out. But before she did and this murderer finished her the way he had her mother, she tried to shut out his words…tried to hold on to the very best things of her life, like memories to take with her.

Mother and Dad, the beauty of Deep Down. Drew, dear Drew, so young and lost when she first reached out to him and loved him and then they were torn apart. Now
they’d found a second chance but too much…too much went wrong…

Cassie, so different, but so special. Pearl, sweet, elfin Pearl, had come from this fiend who was ranting about being rich and taking his child to live in the very heart of their nation, the very heart….

Jessie struggled to shut him out again, his words, his face. Elinor, her second mother, was reading her poems…“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…Of the forest primeval, the murmuring…the murmuring”…of Deep Down life slipping away, leaving forever…Poor Drew when he found her body. Dear Drew, it wasn’t your fault…

She felt the crushing weight of being buried in the churchyard, but then it left her. She sucked in a breath and partly came to, but she knew it was too late. Through tear-filled eyes, she saw the nightmare of a man stand and lift his bone spade, not to dig a root but to smash her skull.

Jessie closed her eyes but tried to shift away. He dripped water in her face. It brought her back when she wanted to drift away. Caught, her hips caught still between his sopping wet feet to hold her here.

Then she heard her skull crack. No, a gunshot. The Thing that was a man still swung his spade, but missed her as he crashed headlong across her, a bright crimson flower blooming in the middle of his head. Lying close to her, he made a gurgling sound, then didn’t move.

Startled, Jessie stared up at the patch of sky where he had towered over her. Someone scrambling closer. Dizzy, still breathless, she tried to turn her head.

Cassie! Cassie stood over her with an old gun in her
hands. Then, ignoring the dead man, her friend fell to her knees and hugged her. The pain was staggering, but that didn’t matter now.

The sound of a single gunshot crazed Drew, but at least he knew where someone else was now. He cut off the path into the trees, running hard, trying to protect his eyes from twigs and limbs.

None of the murders had been by a gun. It could be some local hunter or poacher. It had sounded like an old hunting rifle. Cassie hated guns, and he didn’t think Jess had one. Most women around here could shoot, but guns were pretty much a man’s world.

He burst into a small clearing. His entire life flashed before his eyes as if he were dying. Jess on the ground; Cassie hovering. And, from the looks of the man in a monster suit—Ryan Buford, deader than dead.

Cassie cried out until she saw who he was. “Jessie, Drew’s here,” she said, as he knelt over Jess next to Cassie, trying to assess if she was hurt. Cassie looked dazed and Jessie like she was in shock, white as a ghost, shivering, obviously in pain.

“Drew’s always here,” Jess whispered, not looking at him, but beyond at the sky. “Here in my heart, even if his father throws him out again.”

“She’s out of her head,” Cassie whispered. “I killed him, Drew. He was going to smash her head, and I—”

“It’s all going to be all right. I know it’s going to hurt her, but I’m going to carry her to the Cherokee and drive her to Highboro instead of waiting to get a squad way out here. He’ll keep. Bring both guns. Come on.”

“I think she fainted.”

He felt for her pulse. Rhythmic but weak. It wasn’t until he blinked and tears flew that he realized he was crying.

While the emergency room doctor and a nurse set her arm and put her shoulder in an elastic wrap connected to a sling, Drew never left her side. At least she thought so, but she was so doped up, so out-of-it that she had even thought she’d seen him crying.

When she woke in a hospital bed, he was still there, pacing the small room. Cassie sat on a chair at the foot of her bed. When they saw she was awake, they both jumped up to hover over her.

“Did all that happen?” she asked. Her voice was a raspy whisper. She tried to clear her throat.

“Damaged larynx,” Cassie explained, “but they said it will heal. We’ve all got to heal.”

“How did you know where I was?” she asked them, despite her raw throat. It helped to whisper. Maybe she’d just talk like this the rest of her days—it sounded sexy, but her shoulder-to-wrist cast and other wrappings made her look like a mummy from a horror show. A horror show—was the nightmare of murders over now?

Cassie was talking. Jessie tried to focus on the words. “I wasn’t trying to find you, but him.”

“She saved your life, Jess,” Drew said, bending over the bed and gently stroking her left cheek with the back of his fingers. At least, Jessie thought, Buford didn’t have time to cut her the way he had her mother—at least not that cheek. But what about the other? She was suddenly afraid to ask. “When I saw Vern’s store was closed, I came looking for both of you,” Drew explained. “But I would have been too late.”

“Never too late,” she whispered. “We are getting a late start but not too late.”

He nodded as Cassie said, “I think that’s my cue to take a little walk to the waiting room. Tyler’s there with Pearl, but he’s got to fly out to Beth’s funeral. I’ll go tell them you’re doing fine—and about to be finer. Is—is it okay if I go, Drew?”

“Sure. I’m not worried about you skipping bail.”

Cassie bent to kiss Jessie’s forehead and, with a little wave, went out.

“Don’t talk if it hurts,” Drew insisted.

“Nothing hurts anymore. But—Cassie isn’t under arrest, is she?”

“No, but I imagine there will be a grand jury convened to consider an indictment for her shooting her former lover.”

“But she did it to save me. Otherwise, she never would have…” She stopped talking, not only because her throat hurt, but because she remembered those poison herbs Cassie grew and stored. She’d admitted she’d gone looking for Ryan, and she just happened to have a gun with her, although she hated guns. “Are you sure she’ll be all right?” she choked out, then took a sip from the water glass Drew held to her lips.

“With both of us testifying for her and the fact she feared for her life in those woods—which is where we’ll use Tyler’s photo and testimony—I’d bet on it.”

“Drew, I thought the murderer was Vern. That’s why I locked him in his storeroom. I hope he’ll forgive me.”

“A customer finally heard him shouting and got his manager from the store next door to let him out. With that costume he had in his closet—which he said he
needed to take to Highboro to get dry-cleaned before Tyler took his photos—he says he understands. But I’d try working for him for free for a while, if I were you. He admitted he lied about how he parted from your mother, too. It’s been eating at him. Besides, the illustrious sheriff of the county was convinced that Peter Sung was to blame. I came that close,” he said, holding his thumb and finger an inch apart, “to having him arrested in Lexington, and I don’t think he would have been quite as forgiving as Vern.”

“If you’d known he’d put one of those tracker dog collars in my purse, you would have nabbed him for sure.”

“Did he? I’m tempted to report his attempted bribes. But that’s small potatoes next to the big lumber industry lobbying scandal that’s about to hit the fan. Still, it will be worth it to get rid of the ‘cut and get out’ scheme Buford had set up, with him getting a huge cut of their profits.”

“A huge cut,” she echoed, again trying to put her right hand up to be sure her face wasn’t cut, but she was tethered to IVs.

“Your face is beautiful—and uncut,” he added, as if he could read her mind. “I see Mariah in you. Listen, Cassie’s going to finish the sang count you had planned. Depending on your other professional plans, you can get your ginseng leaf lab going in Deep Down, and she can do the counts in the future—or maybe both of you together—if we can convince you to stay. I know you’d be giving up a lot, but—”