infinities (31 page)

"But they're extinct up here."

"One of them college professors down at Westridge believes mountain lions are making their way back to these parts."

Littlefield resumed rubbing his scalp. He'd just had it trimmed at Ray's, a good clipper job that let the wind and sun get right to the scalp. The department thought he wore the short style to give himself a ramrod appearance, but the truth was, he kind of liked the shape of his skull. And his hat fit better when he went to the Borderline Tavern to kick up his heels to some Friday-night country music. Boonie used to dance at the Borderline, too. Back when he still had feet.

The two men stood quietly and looked at the church for a moment. "Never been many happy times here," Hoyle said.

Littlefield didn't rise to the bait. He was annoyed that Hoyle would fish those waters. Some things were for nothing but forgetting. He hardened his face against the past as easily as if he'd slipped on a plastic superhero mask.

"Who found the body?" Hoyle hurriedly asked.

"Couple of kids who live down the road. They were walking home from school this afternoon."

"Must have bothered them something awful."

"Hell, it's bothering
me
, and you know I've seen a few ripe ones."

"What did they tell you?"

"The older one, he's about thirteen, fell running home and busted his face up. He'll be all right, but for some reason it got to him worse than it did the little one. Kept mumbling 'the red church' over and over again."

"How old's the little one?"

"Nine. Said he saw some stuff laying in the graveyard and went through the bushes to have a look. He said he saw a cap and a flashlight and a bottle of liquor, but he didn't touch any of it. Ronnie, the thirteen-year-old, came back to see what was taking so long, and that's when the victim must have dragged himself out from the bushes and grabbed ahold of Ronnie."

Littlefield didn't like calling Boonie Houck a victim. Boonie was a good fellow. A little bit creepy and plenty lazy, but he was in church of a Sunday morning and was known to vote Republican. Nobody deserved to die this way.

Hoyle looked like he could use a cup of coffee, maybe with a few drops of brandy in it. "He lived a lot longer than he should have with those kinds of wounds. My guess is he was attacked sometime in the early morning, between midnight and sunup."

Littlefield's stomach rolled a little. How did Boonie feel lying in the weeds, wondering about the wound between his legs, knowing that whatever had ripped him up was somewhere out there in the dark? "You going to send him to the state ME's office?"

"Reckon I ought to. They can do a better job of guessing than I can." Hoyle pulled a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped the sweat from his bald head. "The press is going to want to know something."

"Wonderful."

"Plus, if it is a wild animal, might be some rabies going around. That could make an animal go nuts and do something like this."

"We haven't had that up here in a long time, either."

"Times change."

The sheriff nodded.
You used to have hair, and I used to be worth a damn. Boonie used to be alive, and the red church used to be white.

"Let me know when you're ready to drive him down," Littlefield said. "We'll get the pieces together."

He didn't envy Hoyle. The drive to Chapel Hill took about four hours. Boonie would be kicking up a mean stench by the time the trip was over. But Littlefield decided he ought to save his pity. Unlike Boonie, at least Hoyle would be coming back.

Littlefield patted the medical examiner on the shoulder and went to examine the articles lying on the grass in clear plastic bags. He bent over the bag that held a porn magazine. He fought an odd urge to flip through the pages.A camera flash went off. "Could you please move to one side, Sheriff?"

He looked up. Detective Sgt. Sheila Storie waved her arm. She was taking photos of the crime scene.

No, not a CRIME scene
, Littlefield had to remind himself.
An accident. A tragic, violent, unexplained ACCIDENT.

The kind of thing that happened too often in Whispering Pines. But Littlefield was relieved that a psycho with a set of Ginsu knives wasn't on the loose in his jurisdiction. They'd had one of those down the mountain in Shady Valley a few years back, and the case was never solved.
Damned inept city cops
.

He already knew he was going to put Storie in charge of the investigation. When they arrived and found the mess, she hadn't even blinked, just got out her clipboard and tape measure and went to work. She was too young to be so unmoved by death, in Littlefield's opinion. But maybe she was a little bit like him. Maybe it was the kind of thing that made them cops.

Got to keep yourself outside of it all. Don't let them get to you. No matter what they do, no matter what the world takes from you.

"What do you make of it?" he asked Storie.

Her eyes were blue enough to hide everything, as unrevealing as her camera lens. "Extensive trauma. Death probably due to exsanguination."

Storie's educated flatland accent always surprised him, even though he should have been used to it by now. Most people took her for a local until they heard her speak. "That's what Hoyle says. Only he calls it 'bled to death.'"

"Unless shock got him first. Same to the subject either way. I haven't seen this much blood since those driver's ed films they show in high school." She took two steps to her right and snapped another picture, then let the camera hang by its strap over her chest.

"Must have taken a while. You looked over in the bushes where he crawled after the attack?"

"Yes, sir. He left a few scraps."

Littlefield swallowed a knot of nausea.

"Footprints go from this grave marker here, where the boys said they found the stuff. They're deep, see?" She pointed to the pressed grass. The smaller prints of the boys were visible as well. But Boonie's were clearly marked by the thick treads of his boots.

"That means he was running, right?"

"He must have seen or heard whatever it was and gotten scared. He was probably attacked just before he started running."

"Why do you say that?"

"Blood here is coagulated almost to powder. The blood over there- "-she waved to the slick trail of slime where Boonie had crawled out of the bushes- "-isn't as oxidized."

Littlefield nodded and passed his hand over his scalp. The breeze shifted and he could smell Boonie now. A person never got used to the odor of death. The detective didn't even wrinkle her nose.

"Hoyle thinks it's a mountain lion," Littlefield said.

She shook her head. Her brown hair was a couple of inches past regulation and swished over her shoulders. "Wild animals typically go for the throat if they're treating something as prey. There are a few wounds around the eyes, but those are no more devastating than the other injuries. And it doesn't look like the subject had an animal cornered so that it would be forced to defend itself."

Littlefield was constantly amazed by the level of instruction that new officers received. A college degree in Criminal Justice, for starters. Then state training, not to mention extra seminars along the way. Littlefield had long since quit going to those things, at least the ones that didn't help him politically.

Or maybe Storie was a little too educated for her own good. Frank knew that as a female in a rural department, she had to be twice as smart and icy and sarcastic as everybody else. She couldn't go out for after-shift beers.

Pay attention, damn it. In case you're going senile and need a reminder, one of your constituents is gathering flies long before his natural time.

"So you don't necessarily hold to the wild animal attack theory?" he asked.

"I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that if it
was
an animal, its behavior was unnatural." She looked across the stretch of tombstones to where the cemetery ended near the forest. Her brow furrowed.

"What is it?" Littlefield asked.

"The thing that bothers me the most."

If STORIE'S bothered ...
A small chill wended its way up Littlefield's spinal column and settled in the base of his neck.

"No animal tracks," she said.

The sheriff's jaw tightened. So
that
was what had been bothering him ever since he'd first walked the scene. An animal's claws would have ripped chunks out of the ground, especially if it were attacking.

"Damn," he whispered.

"No tracks means no easy answers." She almost sounded pleased. "There are no other human footprints, either."

Storie had cracked a big case last year, when an ex-cop had hauled a body up to the mountains for disposal. Perp was a big goofy guy who went around bragging about how he'd never get caught. Well, Storie set her nose on his trail and nailed him so hard that his lawyers had to recite scripture in the courtroom to save him from a lethal injection. The conviction got statewide coverage, and Storie's picture was in both the local papers.

This looked like it might be another of those high-profile mysteries that, if she solved it, would make her a legitimate candidate for sheriff. If she ever ran against him, she'd have him beat all to hell on looks. Her accent would hurt her some, though.

"Tell me, Sergeant. What do you think did it?" he asked.

"I can honestly say I have no idea, sir." She folded her arms over the camera.

"Any chance that somebody did it with a sharp weapon, without leaving footprints that we could see?"

"The pattern of the wounds seems random at first glance. But what bugs me is the ritualistic nature of the injured areas."

Areas?
Littlefield wanted to remind Storie that those body parts were once near and dear to Boonie Houck. But he only nodded at her to continue.

"Look at the major wounds. First, there's the eyes."

"We haven't found them yet."

"Exactly. That's an inconvenient spot for a rampaging animal to reach. In any event, it's unlikely that a claw would take both eyes."

"Unless they were shining, and somehow attracted the animal's attention. The moon was over half full last night."

"Okay. Let's go on to the hand. Seems like an animal would have started gnawing at a softer spot."

"Maybe it did."

"That brings us to the fatal wound."

"Now, that's not been determined yet." Littlefield felt the tingle of blood rushing to his cheeks.

"I saw the rip in the front of his pants." She lifted the camera. "I took pictures, remember?"

"Guess so." His tongue felt thick.

"With the loss of that much blood, I'm amazed he survived as long as he did."

"You said the wounds were ritualistic. What's that got to do with his ... er . . ."

"Penis, Sheriff. You can say it in the company of a woman these days."

"Of course." His face grew warmer with embarrassment. He looked across the mountains. He would love to be walking a stream right now, flicking a hand-tied fly across the silver currents, the smell of wet stone and rotted loam in his nostrils. Alone. Anywhere but here with blood and the red church and Sheila Storie. "So what does it mean?"

"It may mean nothing. Or it may mean we have a deviant personality on the loose." The flash of her eyes gave away her belief in the latter. Or maybe she was only hopeful.

"Is it because we haven't found the ... other part, either?"

"I don't know yet."

"Think we ought to call in the state boys?" Littlefield knew Storie would bristle at turning the case over to the State Bureau of Investigation. She would want a shot first.

"That's your decision, Sheriff."

"I suppose we'll have to wait for the state medical examiner's report. Hoyle's sending him down to Chapel Hill."

"Good."

Littlefield tried to read her expression. But the sun was in her face, so her half-closed eyes didn't give away anything. He knew she thought Perry Hoyle had about as much forensic sophistication as a hog butcher. The whole department was probably a joke to her. Well, she was a flatlander, anyway. "Hoyle doesn't think the wounds were made by a weapon."

"You asked for my opinion, sir."

Littlefield looked up the hill at the church. Suddenly he felt as if someone had reached an icy hand down his throat and squeezed his heart. His brother Samuel was on the roof of the church, waving and smiling.

His dead brother Samuel.

Littlefield blinked, then saw that the illusion was only a mossy patch on the shingles.

He sighed. "I'm putting you in charge of the investigation."

Storie almost smiled. "I'll do my best, sir."

Littlefield nodded and stepped over the strings that marked off grids at the scene. He knelt by the toppled monument. "What do you make of this?"

"The boys' footprints lead over here. I'd guess vandalism. Tipping tombstones is an old favorite. Maybe they were messing around when the subject heard them and tried to crawl out of the weeds."

"Seems like they would have heard Boonie yelling." He stopped himself. Boonie wouldn't have called out, at least in nothing more articulate than a groan. Boonie's tongue had been taken, too.

Hoyle rescued him from his embarrassment. "We're ready over here, Sheriff," the ME called. Littlefield winced and started to turn.

"I'll handle it, sir," Storie said. "It's my case, remember? I might see something I missed the first two times."

She was right. Littlefield's shoulders slumped a little in relief. He hoped Storie hadn't noticed, but she didn't miss much. She had detective's eyes, even if they were easier to look at than look through. "Go ahead."

Littlefield headed across the cemetery and up the hill toward the red church. He glanced at the markers as he passed, some so worn he could barely make out the names. Some were nothing more than stumps of broken granite. Other graves were probably forgotten altogether, just the silent powder of bones under a skin of grass.

The ground was soft under his feet- good mountain soil, as black as coal dust. Almost a shame to waste it on a graveyard. But people had to be buried somewhere, and to the dead, maybe the most fertile soil in the world wasn't comfort enough. Maybe his kid brother Samuel had yet to settle into eternal rest.