Revenant (6 page)

S
tanding in the shadows, I leaned against the rail and listened to the water. Out here, away from the beach, it was calmer. A boat bobbed about a half mile offshore, the lights swaying with the gentle swells. I took some deep breaths and conjured up a mental image of the humiliation I'd suffer if I fainted or threw up. I'd seen death wear a number of faces, but this girl was so young. Her body bore the beginning of a summer tan. Bikini tan lines. A pretty blue-eyed blonde. Somebody's baby girl.

The breeze off the water was steady, and it lifted the gossamer veil in lazy drafts. Lace fluttered against her pale face. It was a beautiful veil with a band of seed pearls forming the delicate headpiece.

The police officers were busy setting up portable lights. No doubt Avery was watching me, but I moved a little closer. When the floodlights came on, I was able to check the girl's left hand. The ring finger had been severed. I turned away, horrified by what I finally understood.

Mitch arrived. He talked to the policeman working the sign-up sheet for all law-enforcement officers on the scene. He moved on to Avery, talking in a terse whisper. At last he came to me, his face registering only annoyance.

“How the hell did you get here?”

“I followed the squad cars. They hadn't set up the perimeter yet.”

“Carson, this is strictly off-limits.” In the glare of the lighting two policemen had rigged, I could see the white around the corners of his mouth and nose.

His anger stabilized me. “Take it easy, Mitch. I couldn't write anything until Sunday's edition even if I wanted to. I'm not going to jeopardize your investigation. I want this person caught as badly as you do.”

“As you so succinctly put it, you don't have control over what's printed. Brandon Prescott rules that paper, and he doesn't give a damn about this investigation.”

I couldn't argue that. “I don't tell Brandon everything and you know it. As long as I'm kept in the loop.” It wasn't a threat; it was just a statement of fact. I'd worked well with the Miami PD. I often knew more than I printed, until the time was right. “I've figured out the hair combs,” I told him. “Bridal veils. They attached the veils to the victims' hair. Those five dead bodies were buried with bridal veils.”

“I can't believe this is happening.” He turned so that his profile was to me.

I noticed then that Mitch was sweating, and his pasty color had nothing to do with anger. He was deeply affected by the murder. “But why would someone kill four, probably five, women in 1981, stop for twenty-four years and then start killing again?” I spoke more to myself than Mitch, but my words made him look at me. “It's because we found the bodies.” I saw that Mitch thought the same thing.

“We have to stop him,” he said.

“You're assuming it's a man, or do you have evidence?”

He hesitated. “That was an assumption.”

“An easy one to jump to,” I agreed. Women killed other women, but not often with the trappings of nudity and a bridal veil. Also, the killer would have had to be pretty strong to restrain a young woman and slice her throat so deeply with one stroke. I wasn't a forensics expert, but it certainly looked like a clean stroke to me.

“The ring finger's missing,” I said. “Jack says he's a trophy taker.”

“Jack's not a forensic profiler. I wouldn't print that,” Mitch snapped.

“Okay,” I said. “I won't print it. But what are the cops thinking?”

“We
thought
we were working a crime that was twenty-four years old,” Mitch said with a hint of bitterness. “Carson, I'd like to keep you in the loop, but I need to know that you'll work with us. Even when it means holding out details.”

Brandon would skin me alive. That wasn't so bad, but there were ethical considerations. Brandon paid me to do a job that included digging up facts that no one else had. A story that the police were looking at a killer who took fingers as trophies—and this killer was current, not some cold case from another century—was a big deal. I had to figure out my obligations. “There are people's lives at risk here. My job is to keep the public informed.”

He took a long breath. “I know that, but panicking the public won't protect anyone. In fact, printing too much detail could screw up our chances of catching this guy.”

“I don't intend to do that.” There was a fine line to walk between informing the public and damaging an investigation, and it was a boundary that had to be redrawn with every case. The problem was that both the police and the newspaper wanted to be the one to draw it.

“And what does Brandon intend?”

It was a good question because we both knew the answer. A panic would be right up Brandon's alley, especially if the
Morning Sun
was leading the charge. I didn't say anything.

“If Brandon gets hold of the words
serial killer, trophy taker
or anything similar, it will be blown way out of proportion, and you know it.”

I wasn't certain that the facts could be distorted to seem worse than they were. In all truth, however, I couldn't argue Brandon's reliability, or lack thereof. I shifted the topic. “Do you think this is a copycat killer or the original?”

He took another breath. “If I talk to you freely, will you promise to work with me?”

I nodded. “We're off the record, until I say otherwise.”

“The detail of the missing fingers on the five corpses was never released to the other media. If this is a copycat, that person had privileged information.”

“Either the original killer, a police officer or—”

“You,” he said. There was no hint of teasing in his face. “See how easily facts can lead to an illogical conclusion?”

“I have to go to Leakesville tomorrow.” I wrote my cell phone and my parents' phone number on a slip of paper that I dug from my purse. “Call me by five o'clock. I have to have my story by six for the Sunday paper. And I have to tell Brandon about this girl. I won't mention the finger.” I looked out at the dark water. “I'll wait until daylight to tell him. I'm not responsible for what he does from there. What about the television station?”

Mitch thought over my offer. “I'll call you,” he promised. “You know the television cameras will be here any moment. They'll know that a girl has been murdered. Nothing else.”

I nodded. “Was there any identification on the girl?”

“Nothing. Just that damn bridal veil.”

“Do you
think
it's the same killer?”

“I can't draw a solid conclusion and I'm not willing to speculate. Talk to Avery later on, when he isn't so busy. He's a smart man, and he'll be as honest with you as you let him.”

“Okay.” It was tenuous footing for establishing a relationship with the detective. I was working in the shadow of Brandon Prescott and I understood that.

“Now leave,” he said. “We've got to bag the body and take her some place where we can help her.”

He spoke with such tenderness that I blinked back the sting of tears. The help he offered was in capturing the person who'd killed her. Cold comfort, I knew from personal experience.

I walked down the pier, thinking it was so much longer than when I'd first walked up it. When my feet touched sand, I turned and looked back. There was a halo of bright light and the movement of bodies. Had I not known better, I might have thought it was a party.

 

The population of Leakesville hadn't changed in the past fifty years. Folks died, children were born, some moved away and others moved back. The county itself had fewer than twenty thousand residents, the city about three thousand. The courthouse centered the town, a common enough configuration, except in Leakesville there was the sense that time had stopped.

I drove around the square, looking for evidence that it was 2005, not 1970. Two old men whittled beneath a magnolia tree. They wore bib overalls and spit tobacco on the grass. Crows, brazen in the warm sun, walked over the courthouse lawn, acting as if they owned it. Across the street, Bexley Mercantile was doing a good business. A man with an excited young boy was picking out a bicycle. Birthday, probably. I remembered the thrill of examining the bicycles at Christmas, telling Dad which one I wanted Santa Claus to bring. I'd loved the Bexley and Mr. Clancy, the owner. Everything a girl ever needed could be found in that store.

My dad's pharmacy was on Main Street, a corner store that sold hairspray, deodorant, makeup, fire-ant poison, dog collars, a few Parker Brothers games for the occasional birthday present, greeting cards, Russell Stover candies, rubbers and prescriptions. There was also a soda fountain and a spinning bookrack that held everything from Harlequins to John Irving. I'd grown up working the soda fountain. When business was slow, I'd sit at the counter, drink a cherry Coke and read. I'd developed broad literary tastes and a voracious appetite for fiction.

When I pushed open the door, a bell jangled and Gertrude Mason let out a happy bark of laughter. “Look what the dogs dragged up,” she said, coming out from behind the counter to give me a hug. “What about a Coke float?”

I'd found another source of sugar in my vodka, but I didn't want to hurt her feelings. “Sure. That sounds great.”

“Carson's here!” she sang out to my dad. He was in the back of the store, typing away on an old computer. Gertrude was the only alarm system Dad had when the store was open, and it worried me. Folks would kill over a handful of Xanax or Oxycotin. I walked to the back and took the step up to where the pharmacist worked on an elevated platform. He could survey the whole store from his perch.

“Carson, I'm glad you're here. You're not sick, are you?”

I shook my head. “Just came to say hi.” That was a lie. Mitch Rayburn and the deal I'd made were troubling me.

Gertrude brought my drink. “Here you are,” she said, handing me the concoction in a real glass with a long-handled spoon.

I took a bite of the ice cream and sipped the Coke through a straw. “Just as good as I remember,” I said, and it was.

My father poured yellow capsules into a blue pill counter and counted them out, five at a time. I watched his hands work with speed and efficiency. “Dad, have you ever made a deal that seemed good but might not be?”

“We're not talking about marriage, are we?” He arched his eyebrows, and I was caught by a gut punch of pain as I realized how white his black eyebrows had become.

“Nothing like that.” I studied his face. The firm cheeks that I'd once loved to touch before he shaved were sagging. There were dark pouches under his eyes. My father was seventy-two, and for the first time since I could remember, he looked his age.

“I've made some bad deals. I swallowed the losses. But that's not what you're talking about, is it? This isn't financial.” He frowned.

“No, it isn't financial.” I didn't want to talk about it anymore. My father was a man of pure ethics. He didn't make deals. He would tell me what I already knew—that I'd compromised my professionalism. “Never mind,” I said.

“What are you up to, Carson?” Dad asked.

“I'll bet you've never asked Dorry that question once in her life,” I said, aware too late of the bitterness in my voice.

“I never needed to,” my father answered, and instead of bitter, he was sad.

 

Mariah had given up her favorite pastime of jerking the reins out of my hand and jumping fallen trees, ditches, pieces of farm machinery or anything that happened to be in her path. In her golden years, she was a more sedate—and safer—mount. In her youth, she'd been a firebrand of action. Though Dorry was the better rider, Mariah was the bolder horse. She loved to jump. Once, she'd jumped out of the arena in a flat class and gone through the warm-up field taking the jumps. I probably could have stopped her if I'd tried harder, but she loved it so.

It was a warm afternoon, perfect for a ride, and I let her amble through the woods that went down to the Leaf River. The trail was overgrown now, the sun dappling through the leaves of water oaks and red oaks, the white blossoms of the dogwood giving it all a magical feel. Wildflowers bloomed in purple and yellow abundance along the sandy path, and it was too early for the deer flies that made life a torment for man and beast during the hot summer months.

For a brief time, I was sixteen again, a child of sunshine and lazy afternoons. Mariah and I made our way to the river, a brown ribbon that had once been the main thoroughfare through virgin forests. Mariah stood on a sandbar, the slow current lapping at her fetlocks. When I went back, I would be Carson the adult again, the childless mother, the alcoholic, the failed wife. It was with great reluctance that I set Mariah on the trail home.

“P
ass the corn bread, please, Mother,” Dorry said. “No matter how I follow your recipe, mine isn't the same. Tommy says so, too.”

“Dorry, your corn bread is perfectly fine, and stop trying to flatter me,” Hannah Lynch, my mother, said, but a tiny pink blossom of pleasure crept into her cheeks.

“It is the best,” I said, drawing three pairs of eyes my way. It was just the four of us for a five-thirty dinner at my mother's antique cherry table. Even though my father was an upper-middle-class pharmacist, my family had always kept the same hours as the community. We ate dinner on farm time, as if the family had worked hard in the fields all afternoon and needed sustenance.

“Mine is nothing like that flat corn bread your husband liked,” Mama said to me. “I think it was made with water instead of milk.”

I looked down at my plate. I'd been divorced from Daniel for a year. My parents had never liked him, had never allowed themselves to know him. He was too different. They'd never been able to see beyond his Latin appearance and different mannerisms to
who
he was, I think because he'd taken me away. Had we stayed in Mississippi, they might have grown to love him. Instead, he would always be an interloper and the guy who stole their daughter, the man who'd kept them from really knowing their granddaughter, a man with his heart in a foreign continent and culture.

“Mother, the pork chops are delicious, too.” Dorry struggled to push the conversation over the bump. “I don't know how you keep cooking like you do.”

“I like to have you both here. My children.” Her voice faded.

There had been another child. My brother, Billy. I remembered him as a tall, lanky boy who drove the tractor and was always followed around by at least six big dogs. The dogs would smell him, then follow him slavishly for the rest of their lives. Billy was ten years older than me, and he was killed in Vietnam. The loss of a child should have brought my mother and me closer together, but it didn't. She blamed Dad for Billy and me for Annabelle.

“I'll put some coffee on,” Dorry said. “Maybe Carson will tell us about the killings on the coast. I saw it on the late news yesterday. They found five bodies in a mass grave last Thursday, and then last night a girl was killed on a pier, right, Carson?”

Dorry meant well, but I could cheerfully have cut out her tongue.

“Five bodies in one grave and a girl murdered!” Mama put her hands on the table. “What is this world coming to?”

“The five bodies are almost twenty-five years old,” I said.

“And you're writing about this?” Mama's voice was suddenly strident. She hated what I did for a living. She thought it was ghoulish and adversarial. She called it “making trouble” for folks or “poking into other people's business.”

“Yes,” I said, rising from the table. “I'll help Dorry with the coffee.” The cell phone in my purse rang. “Excuse me.” I grabbed my purse and went into the bedroom that had been mine.

I closed the door, walked across the polished pine floor and the handwoven rag rug and sat on the chenille bedspread patterned with a smiling sun. I was momentarily taken aback by the black-and-white photographs on the wall. They were my first attempts at photography.

“Lynch,” I said, because it could be nothing other than business.

“We identified the girl. Pamela Sparks. She has a four-year-old daughter.” Avery Boudreaux's voice was flat. “Mitch told me I was supposed to call before six,” he said.

“Shit.” I was digging through my purse for a pen and paper. “Just a minute.”

I took down the particulars as I asked Avery for details. He answered grudgingly, and I didn't blame him. He also confirmed the identity of four of the five bodies in the grave of the Gold Rush parking lot. As I'd thought, they were the girls who'd gone missing in '81. There still wasn't a line on the fifth body.

I hung up, dashed down some thoughts on my pad and called the newspaper. It was past the six-o'clock deadline for Sunday's paper, but I knew they were saving room for me on the front page. I'd talked with the weekend editor, and he knew the gist of what my story would be. The television had scooped us Saturday evening with the story on the murdered girl, but we'd have the big story, identifying Pamela Sparks and tying the five bodies to the Bridal Veil Killer. I also had the identities of four of those girls confirmed. It was going to be a story that would have some of the larger tabloids hovering on our doorsteps.

“My dad's got a computer. I could write the story and e-mail it to you,” I told the editor. That would allow me at least a chance to polish it.

“You've got half an hour,” Clive said. “Make it tight.”

I went to the dining room, where everyone looked up. Mother was clearly aggravated that the meal had been disturbed by my work. Dorry was worried, and my father was sad. “I have to write a story. Can I borrow your computer, Dad?”

“Sure,” he said. When Mom started to protest, he waved her to silence. “She's working, Hannah. She's taking her job seriously. Can't you let that be enough for right now?”

I wanted to thank him, but it would only have made for a scene. Instead, I went into his study and wrote the story and e-mailed it in, then called to confirm that Clive had it. When I returned to the dining room, they were finishing their coffee and an Italian cream cake that Dorry had made that morning. She loved to cook, and she was a fabulous pastry chef. She could do it professionally if she chose.

“Cake?” Mama asked.

“No, thank you.”

“You're too thin. Cake would be good for you,” she insisted, cutting a slice and putting it on the bone china that had been her mother's.

I took the saucer and put it down at my place. She passed me coffee.

“Was the call about the murdered girl?” Dorry asked.

I frowned at her. “Yes.” I took a forkful of the cake I didn't want and put it in my mouth. Alcoholics seldom eat sweets. That's why my mother had insisted. I swallowed.

“Well?” Dorry leaned forward.

I started not to answer, but it seemed pointless. They'd read it in the paper the next day. I told them about seeing the girl on the dock, about the bridal veil, about the other girls and who they were and what little I knew about their deaths.

“That is the most gruesome thing I've heard,” Mom said. She folded her napkin and pushed back her chair. “For the life of me, I don't understand why you want to live your life in that environment. It's ghoulish.”

The cake on my saucer was a small mound of crumbs. I pushed them around with my fork, stopping when I realized how juvenile it was. She couldn't force me to eat it. I looked up. “I'm sorry you feel that way, Mom. It's my job.”

“You could have been anything. A vet. A doctor. You were plenty smart.”

“If you think journalism is gruesome, you should hear Tommy talk about some of the things he cuts out of people,” Dorry said. “Last week he was removing this guy's gall bladder. It had ruptured, and he found gangrene all in his stomach. Now, that's gruesome.”

Instead of a reprimand, Mom turned to Dorry. “Tommy sure is working hard. I worry for him. He has this compulsion to save everyone, and it's wearing him down.”

I was glad the conversation had turned to Saint Tommy. If Dorry never did another thing in her life, it was enough that she'd snared Tommy Prichard, surgeon extraordinaire, breeder of magnificent specimens of children, witty conversationalist, humanitarian and, most important of all, Mississippi boy.

The courtship had been hotly contested. Tommy was born in McLain, a small town on the Chickasawhay River. He had “I'm getting out” written all over him. He was a superb athlete, a baseball player who could hit and catch. He played shortstop on the high school team, which was where Dorry met him when he was a senior. McLain played Leakesville, and on one sultry spring afternoon, Dorry and I went to watch the game.

Tommy got a scholarship to the University of Southern Mississippi, where Dorry decided she was going. She tried out for the college dance squad, the Dixie Darlings, and ensured herself a place in Tommy's line of sight. But there was another girl with the same idea. Lucinda Baker knew a good thing when she saw it, too.

Never one to act in haste, Tommy vacillated between the two girls for most of his college career. He'd date Dorry, until she got too demanding, then he'd switch to Lucinda for a while. When she disagreed with him or began to expect a certain kind of treatment, he dumped her and went back to Dorry.

As Tommy's college days at USM drew to a close, and it was certain he'd go to medical school in nearby Mobile, Alabama, on a very nice scholarship, Dorry gave up. She started dating a young man from Hattiesburg. Tommy proposed instantly. They were married within a semester of Dorry graduating from college. Instead of a college degree, she got pregnant with her first child.

“Tommy loves his work. He operates almost every day now in Mobile. There's no one else who can perform the delicate surgeries that he does.”

I drifted back into the conversation as Dorry gathered up the cake saucers, sweeping mine away before Mother could comment. “I thought he was opening a clinic here in Leakesville so he could spend more time with the kids.”

“He's going to, as soon as he can find time,” Dorry said, a hint of defensiveness in her tone.

“Tommy doesn't have the kind of career he can just drop,” my mother said.

“What about some music, Dorry?” Dad asked. “The two of you. It's been a long time since I heard you play together.”

The blood must have drained from my face. “I don't think Carson's up to it,” Dorry said quickly.

“I haven't played…in a while.” Not since Annabelle died. We'd played duets together, just as Dorry and I had done when we were children.

I stood up. “I'm really tired. I think I'll lie down for a while. Strange will be here early in the morning to trim the horses' hooves.” I knew Strange Yoder didn't like to work on Sundays. He did it for my dad, who'd been good to his sick mother. Sundays were the days Strange liked to fill his ice chest with beer, get some luncheon meat and go to the river to fish in solitude.

“Good night,” Dad said, effectively releasing me.

“Do you need Emily to help in the morning?” Dorry offered.

“No, I can handle it. I'd welcome the company if she's up.”

“If she comes home from Susie's tonight, I'll tell her.” Dorry went into the kitchen to help Mother wash up after the meal. Such an action exemplified her status as the perfect daughter. I went to my room and picked up an old paperback that I'd bought more than twenty-five years before. I couldn't believe Mom kept all my junk. I held the book and thought that at the time I was reading it, five girls were still alive on the Gulf Coast. Five women were probably dreaming the same dreams that I'd once had, of a future with a happy family and career. I'd tucked into my bed in Leakesville with a book, and they'd gone out for an errand or to meet a friend or to a party. They'd died. The randomness of life was inconceivably cruel.