The Rosewood Casket (23 page)

She nodded, still looking away. She sat very still, but her clasped hands twisted in her lap. Spencer waited a moment for her to go on. In his years as a peace officer, he had learned that silence works better than questions with some folks. The guilty ones, who are anxious anyway, rush into speech to justify themselves, and invariably say too much. Nora Bonesteel did not seem to mind the silence.

Finally he said, “I need to know who these bones belonged to, and where you got them.”

“I can’t tell you that,” she said.

He managed to smile. “I know this must be a scary conversation to be having with a lawman, Miz Bonesteel, but we’ve known each other a long time. Let me see if I can put your mind at ease. Now I know these bones have been—wherever they’ve been—for a long time. We’ve had no missing children in this county in my lifetime. I checked our case records before I came. Didn’t need to, but I looked anyhow, just to make sure. Whatever happened to this child took place a long time ago, and it’s more than likely too late to do anything about it.”

Nora Bonesteel was listening passively.

When she did not reply he went on. “Now, I’ll tell you something that I hope never becomes public knowledge. It’s not the kind of thing a sheriff enjoys admitting, but it’s the truth. I think you can tell I’m being honest with you, ma’am. The fact is, I’ve looked at those bones, and there’s no obvious cause of death. No smashed skull, no bullet hole, no nicks from a knife blade. No way of knowing the cause of death. And there sure aren’t any witnesses. So, what I’m trying to tell you is that I need some testimony to close out this case, and whatever you say, I’m going to believe it. Maybe this child wandered off in the woods and froze to death, or he ate poison berries and died alone on the mountain, and you came upon the remains. Just tell me something, Miz Bonesteel, and I’ll write it down, and then I’ll leave you alone.”

The old woman’s eyes were dark with sorrow. “Those things would not be true, Sheriff,” she said.

“Tell me the truth, then,” said Spencer, not sure he wanted to hear it.

“No.”

CHAPTER TEN

A man needs only three things to be happy: a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

—DANIEL BOONE

The bare oak that stood alone on the top of the ridge looked as if it had borne black fruit, so thick were its branches clustered with dark, bulbous shapes. Now and then one black form would detach itself from a limb and drift out on the wind, inscribing a lazy circle of the hill before floating back to its perch. Sometimes one would disappear into the forest, and two others would spiral in to jostle for space on the sagging branches. All of them faced the two people who watched them from the pasture fence, staring back with two hundred pitiless eyes.

“There they are,” said Dovey Stallard. She shivered and pulled her sheepskin coat more tightly around her. “They make my skin crawl.”

Clayt nodded, keeping his eye on the tree, some fifty yards in the distance. “That’s a feeling you probably share with most of creation. Those old boys are death with a capital D. When you said you were worried about birds attacking your stock, I was expecting turkey buzzards, which these are not, and maybe a dozen strong—not this grisly air force. Must be a hundred of them.”

“The feathers on their necks look like monks’ cowls.” She clutched at his arm. “Is that one coming at us?”

“Just doing a little reconnaissance. Checking us out. Guess we look healthy enough. See, he’s gone back to the tree now. Keep your voice down, Dovey. You’ll scare them.”

“Scare them! I wish I knew what it would take to scare them. When I found the lamb, I ran screaming at them, flapping my arms like a wild woman, and they just drifted a few yards away, and sat down staring at me, as if to say,
You’re next, Lady.
”

Clayt looked from the tree to the pasture below, where the Stallards’ speckle-faced sheep grazed. It was a small flock of Kerry Hills, but they were a rare breed imported from Britain, and given the year the Stallards had had, they could ill afford to lose one. Clayt thought, though, that Dovey was more horrified by what had happened to the lamb than upset by the financial loss. Insurance wouldn’t cover the lamb. He wondered if she knew that yet.

Clayt squatted down against the fencepost, ducking the wind, and motioned for Dovey to follow. “They’re
coragyps atratus,
black vultures,” he said. “Turkey buzzards have red heads and uniformly dark wings. These boys are gray-headed, and they have little white patches on their wings. See that one flapping? Did you see that flash of white?”

“I don’t care,” said Dovey. “This isn’t a bird walk. I hate them.”

“Well, they are more aggressive than turkey vultures, but you have to give them their due: they get rid of a lot of messy roadkill, and all those other bodies that Nature leaves strewn around all over creation. Would you rather wait for the maggots?”

She took a deep breath. “What a hell of a day this had been. First I found my Majorca rooster dead in the coop—nothing but blood and feathers—and then some creep from a real estate office came out here nosing around. I guess I’ll have to worry about him pretty soon, too.”

Something in her tone made him uneasy. “Is anything the matter, Dovey?”

Dovey shook her head. “Nothing you can help with, Clayt, unless you win the lottery. That realtor was a two-legged vulture, if I ever saw one though. Anyhow, while Daddy was getting rid of him, I came out here to check on the ewes, and I found a newborn lamb, off by itself in the pasture, surrounded by black vultures. They were taking turns pulling at it. Its eyes were gone. But it wasn’t dead yet.” She turned away so that he wouldn’t see her tears. “Yesterday when I was driving home, I saw a swarm of them go after a calf in a field up the road. I thought vultures ate dead things. What’s happening here?”

From force of habit, Clayt looked out across the distant valley, to make sure that no smoke was rising from the valley to mingle with the wreath of clouds that gave these mountains their name: the Smokies. He saw no sign of fire. It was still early days yet for campers along the trails. The trees were not yet leafed out, and he could see the red-tipped branches of budding maples and the silver limbs of birches, as insubstantial as cobwebs against the far hills. He scanned the sky, but the golden eagles and the lesser hawks he sought were not to be found.

At last he said, “I’ve heard stories from the old-timers of attacks by black vultures. Never saw it myself, though. They’re migrating, and they’re starving. I guess they ran out of carrion to feed on.” He looked back at the bare oak, their roost. “That’s a big flock. At least a hundred, I’d say. They weigh about four pounds apiece. They’d need a lot of meat to sustain themselves.”

“What can I do about them, Clayt? I can’t post a twenty-four-hour guard on my lambs.” One of the black shapes swooped low over the pasture, and Dovey threw a rock at it. She missed, and the vulture drifted away, unconcerned by the futile attack. “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I want those birds dead. I don’t think I could bring myself to shoot them, but I could put out some poisoned meat.”

“You can’t do it, Dovey.” He held up his hand to stem her protests. “I’m not going to give you the naturalist’s lecture about not interfering with environmental processes, because I know you’re in no mood to listen to it. And it’s not as if you were one of these people who builds a house in a woodland habitat and then wants to shoot the deer for spoiling the garden, and poison the raccoons for getting in the garbage. I know that.”

“So why can’t I kill these damned vultures, Clayt? They’re a nuisance, and they’re on our land.”

“Because they’re federally protected. Vultures may be mean and ugly, according to our lights, but they are also migratory birds, and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1936 protects them just as surely as it protects a pretty red cardinal on your bird feeder. If you kill them, the feds can get you for $5,000 and six months in jail per bird. Now, with upwards of a hundred vultures roosting in that old tree, I’d say that was a pretty expensive act of revenge, even in exchange for an imported Kerry Hill lamb.”

“What can I do? Daddy and I can’t afford to lose any more of our stock. We’re bad off as it is. Can we contact the department of agriculture or whoever decides these things, and get special permission? Or will the government come and trap them and take them away?”

Clayt shook his head. “You’d probably get back a form letter. The only thing I can suggest is that you might make yourself more of a nuisance to them than they are to you.”

“In what way?”

“Well, they’re not big on noise,” said Clayt. “If it was me, I’d tell your dad to get his chain saw and spend a couple of hours a day cutting firewood and brush within a close proximity of their roosting tree. Be sure you do it in the early mornings or at twilight. They stay gone most of the day—on carrion patrol. If that doesn’t work, then a transistor radio with a sufficiently loud volume, tuned to the right rock radio station ought to spoil the ambiance for them.”

“Our sheep won’t like it, either,” said Dovey.

“Well, it’s still pretty early in the season, and they are migrants. Maybe they’ll head on north when the weather warms up.”

“I hope so. They’re evil. Look, they’re staring at us now, like they’re waiting for something.”

Clayt Stargill smiled. “You haven’t heard bells when they fly over, have you?” he said.

She turned to stare at him. “Bells? No. Why?”

“Why, it’s an old mountain legend. In the old days folks said that when somebody important was fixing to die up in these hills, a big old buzzard would fly over the area, with a bell tolling in his wake, to warn of the coming bereavement.”

Momentarily distracted, she smiled. “You’re making that up, Clayt. That’s just more of the moonshine you try to pass off on unsuspecting outlanders, like the story about the catfish monster in Watauga Lake.”

“There’s people that believe that one, too,” said Clayt solemnly. “But I’m not making up the story about the death buzzard. It’s an authentic legend from frontier America. When
we
were the frontier, that is. Maybe he’s an inelegant variation of Mr. Poe’s raven, or a folk memory of the Irish banshee transported to the Colonies. I don’t know. He only comes for prominent folks, though, and so I’m not surprised he hasn’t been seen around these parts lately.”

Dovey Stallard stared at the tree, dark with silent, watching vultures, and shivered. “Nothing special about this bunch,” she whispered. “They just signify common, everyday death. Ugly, ignoble, and quite ordinary—death.”

*   *   *

Spencer Arrowood was back at his desk, scowling at the scattering of bones across his desk, while an iridescent film formed over the untasted coffee in his mug. His deputy, Joe LeDonne, had pulled the other chair up to the desk, and he looked from the evidence to the sheriff, without comment.

“You know Nora Bonesteel,” the sheriff said at last. It wasn’t a question, and LeDonne didn’t answer it. He had not grown up in the county as Spencer had, but after nearly ten years in Wake County he had at least heard of almost everyone. Law officers tend to see the same folks over and over, as detainees for a series of petty crimes or domestic disputes. Good citizens make the law’s acquaintance when they become victims. LeDonne had not encountered Nora Bonesteel in either capacity, but people talked about her every now and then, usually in hushed voices, or with a little laugh that prefaced a remark like, “Of course, I don’t believe in such things as a rule, but…”

“She’s over seventy,” the sheriff was saying. “Friend of my mother. Taught me in Sunday school. My lord, I can still do the sword drill in record time.” He laughed. “Fastest draw in the pulpit!”

“Sword drill?” said LeDonne. “In Sunday school?”

“It’s a colorful Baptist expression. No weapons involved, except the Good Book. It’s a competition to locate Bible verses faster than your opponents. Your teacher calls out, ‘Galatians I:12,’ and you—”

“I get it,” said LeDonne. “Sweet old lady.”

“Tougher than a Marine drill sergeant. Little boys don’t come willingly to Bible study, you know. Come to think of it, she was going through her Bible when I talked to her today. You see, she showed up at Randall Stargill’s farm with this box of bones.” He explained Garrett Stargill’s visit to the office, his version of the events on the farm that morning, and his own attempt to question Nora Bonesteel.

“So you want me to take the evidence to the crime lab to see if they can determine cause of death.”

Spencer Arrowood frowned. “No, I don’t
want
you to. I don’t see that we have any choice in the matter, though. I wish to God that Nora Bonesteel had just left those bones where they were, if she’s going to be so secretive about it. It’s one thing to give this child a decent burial, but I don’t need to be dragging old folks into court for things that most likely happened way before we were born.”

LeDonne shrugged. “No statute of limitations on murder.”

“You just don’t see shades of gray, do you, LeDonne?” sighed Spencer Arrowood. “I am not letting a child killer get off. I went ahead with the Harkryder case, didn’t I? And I sure felt sorry for that little girl. But this child”—he indicated the yellowed heap of bones—“is probably older than we are.”

LeDonne was unmoved. “That’s an S-W-A-G,” he said.

“A scientific wild-ass guess? Sure, it is. I’ll bet I’m not far off the mark, though. Still, there’s no point in arguing with you, because we have to investigate this matter, like it or not, and the bones have to be sent for analysis.”

“You’re not detaining Miss Bonesteel, then?”

“You mean pay board for her to go sit in a jail in Erwin? I think she’s more in solitary in that house of hers on Ashe Mountain. A lot of folks wonder how she stands it alone up there. Besides, we don’t even have a cause of death for this individual, much less evidence of a crime. Being in possession of old bones, and asking that they receive a decent burial, is not against the law. I will agree with you that it is odd as hell, but that’s not illegal either. So, I’d say that detaining Nora Bonesteel is not an option, even if I were inclined to do it, which, Lord knows, I’m not.”