Virgo's Vice (14 page)

Chapter 23

I’m hot and tired of going around yelling for Eve. It seems like we’ve been out there half the day, but it was probably more like two or two and half hours. We trudge back to camp and drink water. Rodriguez stares at us with raised eyebrows.

“Nothing,” Stretch says.

“Not anything to show she was ever out there,” Maria adds as she slides onto a log.

“That was sweet. You can see for miles up there,” Jared says when he and Billy arrive almost an hour later, breathing hard. “There are animals out that way, behind those hills.” He points.

“Yeah. It’s probably the same herd you and I saw last night,” Billy says to me. “No sign of Eve?”

“Nothing,” Stretch says with a sigh.

“I bet she’ll wander into camp and get pissed off when we yell at her,” Billy says.

“Yeah,” Jared agrees. “And she’ll act like we’re the dummies.”

“So, could something have taken her?” Jared says.

“I don’t see how,” I say. “She was at the end of the shelter.” I point. “At the very inside of the shelter, against the back walls.”

“Who was on watch?” Stretch asks.

Billy wrinkles his brow. “Trip?”

Everyone agrees.

“Unless he got someone else to take over from him,” Faith offers.

“It wasn’t any of us, obviously,” Jared says. “Doubtful it was Lela, unless she sat here with those skimpy little panties on.”

“No, she was still in bed when I got up,” I say.

“Maybe Sam, then?”

I blow out air. My stomach rumbles. What I wouldn’t give for a burger. Or anything.

“Wouldn’t she have said something?” Faith says.

Trip and the other three arrive back. Trip dumps the black bag on the ground and wipes his sweaty face with his shirt sleeve.

Mark sets his camera down and heads for the water.

“Trip,” Billy says, “you were on watch last night, weren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “I haven’t slept yet.”

“Then you must have seen Eve leaving,” Jared accuses.

“She still not back?” Sam says.

“No. We’ve searched around and called for her. Billy and me even climbed up that hill, but no sign.” Jared stands facing Trip and cocks an eyebrow.

“I didn’t see anything,” he says. “I may have dozed off a few times in front of the fire, though, I used the latrine one time too.”

“Then maybe she’s with Kelli and Andy.” Mark sits beside me and takes a long drink of water from his mug.

“No. I saw them leave. Eve wasn’t with them,” Faith says.

“Or,” Trip says, “maybe a leopard took her.”

My heart jumps. “They can do that?” My voice comes out as a squeak.

“You would have heard it,” Billy says.

“Maybe. But if she was in the latrine I might not have,” Trip says.

“Surely you would know if she was up?” I snort.

“Like I said, I may have dozed off,” he says. “And leopards are real sneaky and they can be so quiet you wouldn’t know they’re there.”

“Wouldn’t she have screamed or at least made some sort of noise?” Jared asks.

“Not with a leopard,” Trip says. “It would go straight for her throat. She wouldn’t have a chance.”

I’m suddenly shaking all over. “I’m never going to the can at night,” I say.

Billy stares at me, shakes his head, and chuckles.

“What are we gonna do the rest of the day? Do we have anything to eat?” Faith asks, scanning my face.

“We brought some leaves that you can cook as a vegetable,” Lela says.

Billy stands up and stretches. “Vegetables. I’ll pass on those, even though I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. I think I’ll go see if Andy and Kelli got any fish. I need protein. Maybe I can help them if they haven’t caught any.”

Jared stands up. “I’ll go with you.”

Mark raises an eyebrow at me.

“Yeah, I’ll go with them.” I sure as hell am not staying in camp anywhere near Trip.

“Why don’t we all go?” Lela surprises me. “I mean, except for Rafael here.” She waves an arm at Rodriguez. “We should all know where the water is.”

“I hate to say this,” Rodriguez says, “but shouldn’t we really move our camp closer to the good water? I mean, isn’t that a lot more sensible? It’s what, four, five miles down to there?”

Everyone mumbles. “I think we should wait until the Old Man—Allan Dockery gets here,” Mark says. “He may have some totally different plan for you guys.”

He glances across at me. I nod, but in truth I’m beginning to get really worried about the way things are. I mean, what if he doesn’t come back? I tell myself that’s foolish. Of course he’ll be back. This is how he makes his money and from the talk in the studio before we left, and what Jared says, he really needs a successful show. He needs it bad. His last two have been dropped by the networks.

“Actually, we might not have to eat fish tonight,” Rodriguez says.

“Oh yeah?” Jared says.

“Yeah. I made some bird traps with the dental floss you gave me. I’m hoping I’ll catch something.”

“You’ll have to show us how, later,” Jared says.

I follow Billy and Jared down the trail toward the creek. Jake trots by my side as usual. It’s amazing how little energy I have, which I know must be due to the lack of food. Billy’s right, too. Protein is what I’m craving.

We’ve only gone a few hundred yards from camp. A blood-curdling scream turns my blood to ice.

I freeze.

Billy charges past me, back toward the camp. Jared runs with him. My legs are weak and I can hardly breathe, but I follow as fast as I can.

When I get there, Rodriguez has his arm around Maria, who is sobbing wildly and shaking her head. I focus beyond them and see Billy and Jared staring up into a tree beyond where we keep the water. Mark stands in the way and puts up both hands to stop me.

“Don’t go over there,” he says. “I mean it.” He’s staring directly at me. “It’s not pretty.” He sucks in a ragged breath, and my heart thumps even faster. His face is whiter than I’ve ever seen it.

“What is it?”

He stares at the ground. He almost looks like he’s fighting back tears. Now I’m really scared. My stomach turns.

“It’s Eve.” Mark takes another deep breath. “She’s up in that tree, wedged into the branches.”

“So . . . she’s hurt?”

Mark shakes his head. “Dead.”

“What?” Lela emerges from the shelter. “What nonsense is that?” She forces her way past Mark and heads over to the others.

My knees are too shaky to hold me up. I sink down onto the ground. I’m thinking some wild animal has gotten a hold of her and eaten her.

Or a monster.
The
monster.

How can she be up in the tree? What would do that? Trip said it would probably be a leopard. What about a lion? I haven’t heard any lions. I’m sure we would have heard them. Don’t lions roar? We did see those eyes glowing in the dark.

I hear Lela’s loud cries when she reaches the tree. Sam and Faith head toward her and Mark shrugs and puts his hand on my shoulder. “You gonna be okay?” he asks.

“N-N-No,” I stammer.

“I’m thinking I should film the . . . the body. In case the authorities need it, you know.”

“Authorities?” I swing my gaze around us.

He sighs and picks up his camera. “There will be an inquiry. Her family members will want to know, too.” His voice is shaky. I’ve never heard him like this. He heads toward the others, who are all huddled round in a group. It sounds like everyone is talking at once and Maria is still crying.

I sit there on the ground for a while and bile rises into my throat. I can sense an attack coming on and I can’t control my breathing. I hug my knees to my chest and try to swallow but my mouth is too dry. I rock backwards and forwards. I need my medication. If only I had it here.

Billy directs a concerned glance at me. He says something to Mark and then hurries toward me. I cover my face with my hands. I’m still rocking.

“Lexie,” Billy says in such a kind voice I burst into tears. He touches me lightly on my shoulder and crouches down beside me. “Hey. It’s okay, Lex. Please don’t do this. Here, let me hold you. Stop rocking like that.” He pulls me into his shoulder and I bury my face in his shirt and sob uncontrollably. He holds me until the tears start to dry up. I lift my head. I see concern in his eyes. He takes his bandana off his neck and dabs my eyes with it. I take a few deep breaths and sniff.

“Come on,” he says.

I haul myself up. My legs don’t want to support me. I step hesitantly toward the group. I won’t look, I tell myself. I don’t want to, but my eyes won’t obey.

“Oh, my God,” I gasp. “It wasn’t an animal.”

Chapter 24

My shock is reflected in everyone else’s faces.

Eve is draped over a forked branch with her head and hands and legs dangling down. Blood is all smeared over her neck and has run down the tree trunk.

“Someone killed her,” Billy says. “Slit her throat.”

“But . . . who?” Faith asks the question on everyone’s mind.

“There could be a tribesperson living someplace nearby,” Jared suggests. “He snuck in at night and took her. Maybe when she went to use the latrine.”

“You were supposed to be on watch,” Rodriguez says to Trip. “What were you doing?”

“I told you before, I may have dozed off part of the time. Anyhow, I still think a leopard could do that. They have been known to stash their kill in a tree.”

“That’s crazy,” Jared says. “It’s all crazy. I can’t imagine a leopard or any animal killing her then leaving her here, in a tree. She must have weighed, like, more than a hundred pounds. And that wound is real clean like a knife mark.”

It all sounds like it’s far away. My head is spinning and I feel sick. I’m gonna throw up. I sink to my knees and retch.

Billy squats down beside me and stares into my face. I’m still breathing hard and swallowing. I take a breath then another, and another. Jake licks my face. I stroke his head, and he wags his tail.

“You’ll be okay now.” I see the relief in Billy’s face. “Here.” He holds out his hand. I take it, and he helps me up. I’m glad for the support when he puts his arm around my shoulder. I bury my face in his chest.

“Jake would have barked if a stranger or an animal came into our camp,” Mark says.

“Right,” Billy says. “And teeth don’t cut clean like that.”

“A human then,” Sam says. “The monster? I don’t buy that there would be some lone psychopath living out in the bush someplace nearby. I just don’t buy it.” She turns and stares at Jake. “I think Mark’s right. That dog would have barked.”

“Then who was it?” Rodriguez asks. “One of us?”

There’s a long silence.

“We have to get her down and bury her,” Mark says.

Stretch pushes his way through them. “Whoever did this, why did they put her up in this tree? And how did they get her up here? I’m the only one who’s tall enough to reach and she must weigh more than a hundred pounds.”

Everyone stares at him in silence. “And I can assure you I didn’t put her up here,” he says.

“Maybe they made her climb into the tree,” Sam says.

“And she agreed? All she had to do was scream, and one of us would have helped her.” Mark turns off his camera and sets it down.

“Mark’s right,” Stretch says.

We stand there talking about it for a while, until Billy says, “We have to bury her.”

“And someone will have to say some words over her,” Mark adds.

“I have my Bible with me,” Maria says.

“Where are we gonna bury her?” Stretch asks.

Everyone is silent for a few moments.

“I guess over there,” Trip says. “There aren’t as many boulders sticking out of the ground, so hopefully it won’t be too rocky.” He picks up a shovel and makes his way toward the place he indicated. Once there, he kicks some weeds out of the way with his boot heels and stomps on the grass, and starts to dig.

It all seems so surreal. Jared and Billy make their way over and stand close to him, ready to take their turn.

“We have to make a marker,” Lela says.

“I’ll do that.” Sam picks up the axe and moves away purposefully.

I call out to her, but my voice doesn’t want to work and it comes out as a whisper. “Don’t go on your own.”

“I’m gonna go find Andy and Kelli,” Mark says. “They should be warned there’s a killer on the loose.”

“Wait,” I yell. “You can’t go alone. What if it . . . it . . . he gets you?”

“What if it’s already gotten them?” Lela echoes.

“I’ll go with you,” I say, even though I’m scared and my legs are still wobbly. I want to sit by the fire and hug myself, and hope this is all a bad dream and I’ll wake up soon. I remember the candies in my pocket and I slip four into my mouth. I’m so hungry I want to eat them all, but I might need them again. My blood sugar is always down after an attack. “Where’s the knife?”

We’ve taken to leaving it on the ‘table’ beside the candle. Lela brings it out of the shelter and hands it to me. I stare down at it. It has something like blood on it. Mark starts walking and I follow him, but I’m still staring at the knife.

“Mark.”

“Yeah?” He keeps walking.

“You should see this.”

He stops and turns back toward me. “What?”

I hand him the knife. He stares at it. I know he can see the blood and now he’s thinking the same as me. He shakes his head. “It can’t be. No way.”

“If it is, what does that mean?”

He turns and keeps walking without answering me. It’s the first time I’ve seen him without his camera since we got here. While we’re walking I’m thinking how could someone have taken her from her bed on the inside of the shelter and got her into that tree? And more to the point, how did this knife get blood on it? I know Billy washed it because I was there when he did it.

Trip. He was on watch. What if Eve overheard us arguing and got too nosy about it? What if she put two and two together and told him what she suspected? He didn’t care about my feelings when I was a child, and the things he did to me were monstrous and cruel. Trip was accused of killing that other girl, but it was never proven. He had already disappeared at the time. I shudder and take a few deep breaths.

I think about Billy’s spell in juvie. What did he do to get there? Would I have heard him if he had gotten up in the night? I’m not sure. He was the last one I saw with the knife. And he was skilled enough to kill someone. He told me he hunts, and skins deer and other animals. But does he have it in him to commit murder? He seems so nice, but what if he also had bad things happen to him when he was a kid? Sometimes it makes people angry and crazy and they become psychopaths. I’ve never seen a dead body before and I’m still nauseous. I can’t believe she’s dead.

I watch my feet as I walk. We seem to be trudging along forever but Mark stops and when I scan the surroundings I realize we’re already at the fishing hole.

I hear a giggle ahead.

Jake lopes toward the sound.

Mark coughs, like he’s clearing his throat.

Kelli’s head appears above the long grass. She and Andy struggle to their feet. Their hair is all messed up and Kelli’s buttons are undone.

“Catch anything?” Mark asks.

I detect a bit of annoyance in his tone.

“Yeah, we caught a couple of small ones. I figured Billy and Jared would come join us and help,” Andy says. “Glad you brought the knife, though. It means we can gut them here.” He holds out his hand for it.

I hesitate. “You should probably wash it first,” I say, keeping it close to me.

“Sure,” Andy still has his hand out.

“There’s been a . . . a problem,” Mark says. “Eve’s dead.”

The look of disbelief on both of their faces makes me feel like I’m suffocating again.

I suck in air. “This knife has blood on it,” I say, handing it to Andy.

“I’ll wash it,” he says and starts clambering down the bank. Then he stops and stares at it. “You don’t mean . . . This isn’t . . . What happened?”

“Someone cut her throat,” Mark says.

Kelli lets out a yelp. “No,” she says.

“And that knife has blood on it,” I add.

“This blood on the knife . . . It couldn’t be?” Andy is thinking what we thought.

I glance over at Mark, and he stares at me.

“You don’t mean . . . Who?” Kelli says.

Mark sighs. “The theory is that some tribesman—a.k.a.
the monster
—snuck into our shelter and took her, killed her, and stuffed her in the tree. And nobody woke up or heard a thing, not even Jake.”

“Tree?” Andy tilts his head.

“Yeah. She was up in a tree.”

“I didn’t even notice she was missing when we left,” Kelli says.

“This dog would have barked if it was some stranger,” Andy says, patting Jake.

“We know,” I say. “Trip was on watch.”

“And he didn’t see anything?” Andy dips the knife into the water and rubs it while he talks.

“Did you get water?” I stare into Kelli’s face. Her lips are red and bruised. That doesn’t surprise me. It’s her eyes. There’s something off about them. Her pupils are big and dark. I wonder where I’ve seen that before.

“Yeah. It’s in the shade in the condoms. We can fill the pot now and put the cleaned fish in the water for stew.” She giggles. Doesn’t she understand? Eve is dead. Someone murdered her. And then I remember.

Drugs. She looks like she’s taken some kind of drug. That’s what’s made her eyes so weird. When Andy comes back up I make a point of scanning his eyes and they’re also weird, but he’s better at hiding it.

I don’t talk much on the hike back to camp. I vaguely hear what the others are saying, but I think about Eve and the knife. Trip is a monster, and he may have killed that little girl, but why would he kill Eve? Why? I go back to the possibility that she uncovered something about his past. Did he kill her to stop her from talking? Then why did he put her in a tree? Did he think we would believe it was a leopard? And why put the knife back in the shelter? No. He may be an asshole, but he’s not a fool. Then who? Or what? Whoever it was must have wanted us to see the blood on it. I shiver although it isn’t cold.

When we get back, the others are all standing at the graveside watching Sam, who is busy sticking a crude cross into the dirt at one end of it.

Billy beckons me with his hand, then puts his arm around my shoulders. “You okay?” he asks, staring into my eyes.

“Sure,” I say. I’m not, but I don’t think anyone is okay. I mean, this is too strange. I move away. His arm is suffocating me. I know he’s staring at me, and he’s wondering why I don’t want him to touch me all of a sudden. I know he’s not a killer, but everything is so screwed up I don’t know what I want.

Once the cross is firmly buried, Sam stands up and dusts her hands off on her shorts. She stares at it.

“Good job,” someone says.

Maria pages through her bible until she finds the place she wants. She stares around at the faces of all of us, and then clears her throat. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” she begins.

We all bow our heads. Me and some of the others join in. I don’t know all the words, but I know enough.

“Amen,” most of us say.

“I guess that’s it,” Stretch says. “At least with that marker her family will be able to get her remains and do whatever they want with them.”

Billy slides his arm around my shoulder and drops a kiss on the top of my head. I move further away from him. Remains. Yesterday, Eve was a living human being, like all of us. Now she’s just ‘remains.’

“Come on.” Billy almost takes my hand but he pulls back and settles for walking beside me and Mark.

Trip has gone back to camp before us and is smoking his pipe again. He stares at me with a hungry look on his face and my already upset stomach churns.

I can’t forget that look.

I will never forget that look.

Suddenly I’m cold again.

That night the mood is somber. There isn’t enough fish to make a difference, but Faith has cooked a lot of rice again, and it helps to add some bulk to our meal. I’m so hungry I wolf it down and wish I could have more. I know everyone else must feel the same way.

“We have to get more protein,” Trip says. “We didn’t find anything today, but tomorrow we’ll go in that direction.” He points. “I think I can see signs of previous human habitation over there.”

“I’m sure I’ll catch some birds tomorrow, too,” Rodriguez says. “If my traps don’t work I might be able to do something else.”

“The Old Man should get here tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Mark says. “Old Man Dockery will be here tomorrow sometime. You’ll all get some instructions and you’ll finally know how the game’s gonna work.”

“But, don’t you think he’ll cancel the show after what happened to Eve?” Stretch asks.

Mark shrugs.

“He needs the money. He has to have a success,” I say then glance at Jared. I know Stretch is right.