Stone Maidens (18 page)

“Be delighted to,” David said, reaching up.

The wire end had uncoiled and become entangled with the next roll. He focused on the task. As David worked the roll loose, her perfume—sweet honeysuckle—wafted up his nostrils. He swiftly gave the wire a jerk, and the roll came unstuck.

“Wow! Aren’t you strong,” she said, removing one glove and extending her hand. “Thanks. My name’s Josephine.”

David shook her warm hand. “I’d be happy to carry that out to your car, if you’d like? My name’s...David.”

“Thank you for offering, David. How can I refuse?”

Her voice was sweet and melodious, just like he’d known it would be; he felt calmer just hearing it. He lifted the roll to his shoulder and drafted in her shadow, mesmerized by her lovely gait, the steady stream of her perfume washing over him, her soft white hand shaking his. Mostly David basked in an unaccustomed sense of serenity.

They walked around the outside of the co-op building, a shorter way to reach her car.

David’s visual field suddenly narrowed—like a buggy horse wearing blinders. A sensation of staring out of eye cutouts grew. At Halloween when he was ten he’d stared through holes like that in a brown paper bag on which he’d scribbled a crude resemblance of Frankenstein’s monster.

His breathing became labored. The nice woman hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong, but she was getting farther ahead.

Increasing uneasiness stopped him dead in his tracks. David sucked air through his open mouth, unable to get enough. His heart hammered, demanded more. He weaved unsteadily toward the car, urging himself,
Just get the roll into her trunk! Quickly!

The woman was standing behind her car now, opening the trunk. “Let me help you with that,” she said in a lovely disembodied voice.

The wire roll tumbled out of his hands. David wasn’t seeing the woman where she should be standing. His field of vision had been devoured by a girl running through a deep wood, her elbows pendulums opposite to her stride in a mesmerizing pattern—the lovely white legs pumping in unison under a pleated skirt in a perfect motion.

“David, are you OK?” The woman’s voice interrupted again, this time from David’s side, punching a hole through a forest of oaks coming straight at him. He felt small hands touch his back—hers. He forced a smile. He liked her face; he would have followed her anywhere. But the trees wouldn’t stop. He was seeing scattered oak trunks across a steep forest. They fused tighter together. Spiraling grids and swirls chopped his visual field. His heartbeats pulsed against his shirt—an impenetrable wall of confining oaks closed in, choking him. He was not at the farmer’s co-op. At least some of him wasn’t.

A scream etched the underside of his skull. David landed hard on his side.

“Get off of me!” The woman’s panicked voice startled him. In and out of swirling dots of light David could see someone holding the lovely woman, pinning her by the shoulders, staring down at her from above.

“Let me go this instant!” Her sharper words stung him. A fingernail gouged his cheek. A knee slammed into his groin, and David recoiled, groaning on his side.

“Hey you, hold it right there!” A man’s boot fell hard against David’s hip, making him wince. The mechanics of a rifle bolt action clicked forward. The heavyset man with his boot pressed against David pointed the barrel of the gun at him.

“I...don’t mean...harm...just...trying to help...” His ankle throbbed mercilessly.

The woman was speaking calmly now, coaxing the man to put down the gun, reassuring him that everything was OK. She was fine.

David closed his eyes hearing her words: she was fine. She was protecting him. He’d see her again. Feel her soft palm in his. There was reason for hope.

A few minutes later a smear of dust came funneling out behind a fast-moving truck. It turned into the parking lot. Its tires made a crunching sound, sliding to a stop. The driver’s side door swung wide. David instantly recognized the white hair, silvery in places, and the reddened flesh accentuating where fine blood lines etched the diaphanous tissue of the old man’s cheeks. His mouth was drawn tight, his lips made crumply from years of his pulling them tightly closed. His father was not inclined to a lot of loose talk.

“David! You there?” His father’s voice sounded irritated. “What’s with that tickle bug of a brain of yours, huh? You hear me?”

A second plume of dust ballooned in the parking lot behind a police cruiser that came to a screeching halt. Two cops jumped out and approached quickly.

On the ground, David’s hip throbbed mercilessly. He squinted up at the sun, nearly directly overhead and shining through a break in the clouds. Besides the woman, it was the only good thing. He felt it was nearly blinding him, but he didn’t care. It warmed him, soothed him. He waited for his punishment.

Henegar took a cell phone out of his coat pocket and punched in McFaron’s number. “Joe, Doc here. Uh-huh. We’re on the way over right now.” He nodded. “I’ll tell her.”

Henegar beeped off the phone. “Amazing little gadgets. Sheriff’s beat us to the crime scene.”

“He’s what?” Her sharp tone surprised Prusik as much as the doctor.

He took his foot off the gas. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Never mind, never mind.” She waved the back of her hand. “I hope you don’t find me too critical, Doctor. It’s a frustrating business when all we have to go on are a precious few pieces of evidence.”

“Sheriff and I did the best we could preserving the site,” Henegar said warily. “It’s hard this time of year with the leaves down, the rain and all. Oh—I nearly forgot to say—a Mr. Howard called Sheriff McFaron’s office about an hour ago. Something about a flat tire north of Indianapolis.”

A wry smirk parted Prusik’s lips. “A flat tire? The poor thing.”

“Is he one of yours?”

“Yup.” Howard had her cell number yet had chosen to call the sheriff’s office instead.

“You don’t sound too fond of him.”

“Just between you and me, Doctor, he’s a subordinate with a real talent for getting under my skin.” Prusik tried to suppress a smile as she visualized the ponderous forensic RV broken down on the side of the road, Howard stamping back and forth, waiting for a wrecker.

A forest appeared ahead. Henegar slowed the car and turned in. “The body was found about a quarter mile from the road. Down a ravine near a creek. These woods are pretty steep sided, with exposed limestone shelves in places. You don’t notice the slope till you walk in a ways. Twisting an ankle is easy enough to do if you’re not careful.”

“Don’t worry about me, Doctor. I wore my hiking shoes.” Prusik slung her camera over one shoulder. “Now, shall we get to it?”

“Absolutely.” Henegar joined her, insisting on taking her forensic case, and the two made their way into the woods.

Sheriff McFaron wore a pair of deerskin gloves. Sunlight bored through a stand of tall trees, projecting millions of particles in its luminous shafts. Wet leaves brushed his pant cuffs as he reconnoitered the area around the yellow police tape he’d previously yoked between two trees, marking the shallow grave of Julie Heath.

McFaron looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps. A striking woman with shining chestnut hair came toward him, holding Doc Henegar’s hand for support.

“You must be Sheriff McFaron,” she said, catching her breath. “Special Agent Christine Prusik, nice to meet you. Deerskin gloves from your hunting closet?”

McFaron immediately realized his error but didn’t know what to do about it. “Beg pardon?”

“I’d appreciate it, Sheriff, if you’d remove yourself from inside the perimeter.” Her eyebrows rose clear to her short-cut brown bangs. “And put on some latex gloves.”

Doc Henegar held out a pair. “Here, Joe, I’ve got some extras. Better put them on.”

McFaron lifted the police tape and stepped out. The three of them slipped on the gloves. Prusik carefully skirted the taped-off area, examining the depression in the leaves where the body had been found.

“Have you recovered anything, Sheriff?” she asked without looking up. “Gloved or otherwise?”

“Nothing,” he said, irked by her unnecessarily holier-than-thou attitude. “Except for the blood we collected up by the road.”

Without further conversation, Prusik examined the scene, carefully studying the nearby tree trunks with her notepad out. One oak stood larger than the rest at the head of the leafy grave site. She opened her attaché and took out the portable recorder.

She didn’t ask him anything more, and he got the distinct impression that his presence was unwanted. “I can see that I won’t be needed here any longer,” he said curtly, then turned to leave.

Prusik looked up, startled. “Oh, Sheriff, please, I’m sorry. Forgive me for sounding so...”

McFaron waited. A line of sweat raced down his cheek.

“...abrupt,” she said. “Just so we understand each other, you are not the only one here under the gun.”

“I’m not questioning your authority to run the investigation.” McFaron’s hat fell inside the perimeter. He quickly squatted and retrieved it. It was awkward footing in the deep leaves covering the steeply angled wooded slope.

“Good. Then we’ll get along just fine.” She eyed McFaron, who silently stared back. “Look at it this way, Sheriff. At least you’ll have someone to place the blame on besides yourself. The FBI does pretty well as a scapegoat, I’ve found.”

“Well, I’m sure glad I introduced you two,” the doctor blurted. “Now that we’ve covered the niceties, would anyone like to check the crime scene for anything else we might have missed?”

Prusik lowered her pad. “I’d prefer you stay, Sheriff. You’re a long-standing member of this community and widely respected, from what the doctor tells me. I imagine I can use your help.”

McFaron nodded. “So what would you like to know, Special Agent?”

She glanced down at the log leaning at an angle from the taped-off site. “I understand you and the doctor moved this log off the victim’s body. Did you do it bare-handed?”

“I might have.” McFaron became flustered again. “To get to the body. We pivoted the branch by one end so we wouldn’t leave our fingerprints or smear any latent prints that might be lifted later,” he added. “Then we both gloved up to remove the body. Followed police procedure to a T. Look, ma’am, this is my first murder investigation. I protected the scene as best I could as soon as it was reported. No one has tampered with it, I’m sure.”

Prusik retrieved her Nikon digital camera and flashed a few shots of the burial site, listening to McFaron as she worked.

“For your information, Sheriff, this looks like the third victim of the same killer. We’ll need to do more than follow police procedure to a T to catch him, I’m afraid,” she said, snapping another picture. “Look,” she said, softening, “I’m fully aware that you probably had to deliver the terrible news about this poor girl’s death to parents you likely know well enough to call family. I’m not trying to be a jerk.”

“You’re right. I should have worn gloves from the get-go,” McFaron relented, his voice less strained. “Law and order of this magnitude I’ve not had to deal with in my fifteen years as sheriff of Crosshaven, Agent.”

“Christine, call me Christine.” She held out her hand.

“The name’s Joe.” McFaron shook her hand. It felt warm. Sun highlighted reddish streaks in her hair. “I...I can’t tell you how much this girl’s death has kept me up all hours of the night. Anything I can do to help find the killer, count me in.” McFaron removed his hat, wiping the sweat from his brow on his jacket sleeve.

“Let’s see what we can discover here that might nail the bastard,” she said. Her voice was steely, yet she was smiling at him.

The three of them searched the perimeter, careful not to unnecessarily stir the scene. Important clues could easily be hidden from view under the leafy forest floor.

McFaron pointed to something fuzzy snagged on the bough that had rested over the victim’s body. Prusik retrieved thin forceps from a zippered pouch around her waist and carefully extracted the filament. She held it close to her face—a green linen fiber.

“See that whitish substance, like there’s paint stuck to it?” She tapped the fiber into a clean vial. “Here, take a look.” She handed the vial to McFaron. Dr. Henegar stepped closer to observe.