A Rumor of Bones: A Lindsay Chamberlain Mystery (21 page)

Lindsay looked at the map the sheriff laid out on
the hood of his car and noted that the place where the
skeletons of the little girls were found was just five
miles through the woods.

The sheriff marked off the map into quadrants and
assigned teams to the quadrants.

"This is a big area," he said. "This neighborhood
borders on about three thousand acres of wilderness.
The terrain gets rough around a thousand feet into the
woods. We won't be able to cover the entire area
before dark, so everybody come back before sundown. It is near impossible to find your way out of the woods
at night, and I don't want to have to search for anyone
else."

Lindsay checked her compass before she started
into her assigned section of woods. Derrick was
twenty yards to her right, Brian about the same distance to her left, but he was hidden by thick brush.
She examined the ground, trees, and bushes for signs
of previous passage, making sure she maintained a
relatively straight line of travel through the heavy
growth. As she progressed deeper into the woods, the
undergrowth grew more dense and she lost sight of
Derrick. Occasionally, in the distance she heard
Jenna's name called out by another searcher.

Lindsay entered a heavily eroded area where water
had cut deep gullies through the earth. The terrain was
forested over, and Lindsay looked down into a gully
thick with trees, vines, ferns, and an abundance of
other plant life. It looked dark and forbidding now that
she was searching for a lost child, but Lindsay remembered that as a little girl she loved places like this. To
her right she could see a monadnock rising as a rocky
hillock dotted with small trees and shrubs. She saw
Derrick climbing among the rocks, searching. She
wanted to signal her position, but he was too far to call
to, so she gathered up stones and made a cairn on the
edge of the gully. After scratching her initials in the
dirt next to the cairn, she descended, holding onto the
ropy vines with her gloved hands to keep from falling.

The overhanging trees screened out most of the
light, but Lindsay could see the winding passage the
gully cut through layers of sedimentary strata. A
small stream about a foot wide and just a few inches deep flowed through the bottom of the gully. Lindsay
made another mound of marker stones by the creek
and walked downstream away from the rise.

The roots of trees that grew on the edge of the
gully were eroded from the earth so that they made
gnarly, snaky appendages in front of small caves in
the side of the gully. Lindsay shined her light into the
holes, and sometimes the glow of animal eyes shone
back at her. Along the way she built small cairns to
show her passage.

It was growing darker, and Lindsay guessed the
searchers had already started back. She tried to remember the map the sheriff showed them and how far
the gully continued before it emptied into the riverat least two miles, too far to continue to the end. The
creek was becoming wider and deeper.

"Jenna," she called softly. Nothing. Lindsay was
loath to give up. She decided to go a little further
before starting back.

Around a bend, Lindsay thought she heard a muffled sob. She stopped and listened and heard it again.
"Jenna, is that you? Your mother is looking for you"
Again she heard the soft sobs. She searched the brush
with the light from her flashlight, and the patch of
canes growing on the other side of the creek seemed
to move. Lindsay stepped through the small stream
and shined her light in among the foliage. A small,
dirty, tear-stained face peered back at her and began
whimpering.

"It's all right, Jenna sweetheart. You're safe now.
My name is Lindsay, and I'm going to take you back
to your mother." As Lindsay stepped forward, Jenna
shrank back.

"Would you like to take my flashlight and have a
look at me?" Lindsay lay the light near Jenna and
stepped back. After several moments, Jenna hesitantly
grasped the light and shined it at Lindsay.

"Let me take you home," Lindsay said.

Jenna sobbed, and Lindsay stepped forward again.
This time the little girl didn't shrink back, and Lindsay took her in her arms and held her.

"It will be all right." Lindsay took the flashlight
and stood up with Jenna, who now held to her tightly.

Carrying the child, Lindsay retraced her steps back
along the creek through the winding gully. It was
dark, and she needed the flashlight to find her way
through the vines and heavy growth. She stopped to
rearrange Jenna so she could walk more easily.

"Don't let the bad man get me," Jenna whimpered.

Lindsay went cold. "What bad man, sweetheart?"

"The bad man that chased me."

Lindsay held Jenna tighter. "No bad man is going
to get you." Her words were firm and sure, but a wave
of fear swept over her. The bad man would be one of
the searchers, she was sure. Wasn't that a pattern:
the perpetrator joining the search for his victim?
Lindsay turned off the flashlight and stood for a
moment to accustom her eyes to the darkness before
she continued.

As she walked, Lindsay thought she saw a point of
light in the distance. She stopped and watched. The
light was coming closer. Lindsay looked around for
cover, but she was standing in an exposed area with
only tall ferns and leafy vines hanging from the bank.
She hid Jenna among the ferns and told her to be very
quiet. Lindsay took her knife from its scabbard and waited in the shadow of the foliage. Soon she heard
the sound of someone walking along the creek, but she
couldn't make out a shape because of the bright flashlight. Her hands were sweating and her heart raced.

"Lindsay," a voice called out.

"Derrick," Lindsay sighed heavily. She replaced her
knife and picked up Jenna, who started to cry.

"You found her!" exclaimed Derrick.

"Yes, and I'm so glad you found us. I've never
been so glad to see anyone in my life."

"I just followed your markers."

"Someone chased Jenna into the woods."

I see," Derrick quietly said.

"Jenna, this is a friend of mine. His name is Derrick. He is a good man"

Jenna held onto Lindsay's neck with one arm. She
had her other fist in her mouth, sobbing and hiccuping. Lindsay shined her light on Derrick so Jenna
could see him. She rocked her in her arms.

"He's like you." Jenna pointed to his hair.

"Yes, he's like me, and we are going to take you to
your mother."

Derrick led the way to the place where they had
entered the gully. He tried to take Jenna so that Lindsay could climb out, but the little girl clung fast to
Lindsay's neck.

"I can make it," Lindsay said. "You go first and
give me a little help."

Derrick climbed part way up the embankment.
Holding onto a vine, he reached out for Lindsay. She
held tightly to Jenna with one arm and gave Derrick
her other hand.

There was more light at the top of the gully and glimpses of red sky left by the setting sun showed
through the trees. "We need to convince her to let me
carry her," said Derrick. "You must be tired."

"It's all right. I would prefer that you have your
hands free."

Derrick eyed her a moment, then scanned the darkening forest. He gave her a reassuring smile and led
the way back toward Jenna's house. It seemed to
Lindsay that the walk out of the woods was much
longer than the walk into the woods. Her arms were
tired, and she stopped frequently to shift Jenna.

"I'll take her," Derrick said the last time she
stopped.

"I'm fine. We're almost there. I can see lights
through the trees"

They emerged from the woods amid a storm of
camera flashes, shouts from reporters, and screams
from Jenna's mother, relatives, and friends. Mrs. Venable ran up and grabbed her daughter from Lindsay's
arms. "Oh, God, my baby, you're all right. You're all
right. Thank God, you're all right." She hugged Jenna
as people gathered around. Jenna began to cry.

"Good work." The sheriff beamed at them with
obvious relief.

Derrick and Lindsay answered a few questions
from reporters, then ducked away, pulling the sheriff
with them. "Someone chased her into the woods,"
whispered Lindsay.

The sheriff stared at her for several moments as if
not understanding what she had said. "No," he whispered finally. "No. Did she know who?"

"We didn't question her."

"What did she say?"

"When I found her, she asked me not to let the bad
man get her."

"Damn," said the sheriff, then lowered his voice
before he attracted the press still gathered around
Jenna and her mother. "You two did good."

"I'm glad we found her before someone else did,"
Derrick said.

"Yeah," the sheriff agreed. "Jenna is one lucky little
girl."

Suddenly, a flash went off in their faces and they
all looked up to see Mickey Lawson grinning at them.
"Great job, folks," he said. He had snapped their picture. Lindsay was glad the picture would not show the
look of horror on her face at seeing him.

"He sometimes takes pictures for the newspaper,"
the sheriff said after Mickey moved on.

"Still ..." said Lindsay.

"The newspaper would want pictures. They would
send one of their best photographers," said the sheriff. "Why don't the two of you go back to the site
and get some sleep. Come down to my office tomorrow and make out a statement about finding Jenna."

"Good idea," urged Derrick. "Come on, Lindsay.
You could use a good night's sleep."

They left the crowd of searchers, reporters, and
onlookers and started back to the site, but Lindsay
still felt a profound uneasiness.

"Pretty good night's work, Lindsay," Derrick said
as they drove along the highway. He reached over,
took her hand, and squeezed it.

"I was relieved that you came along when you
did," she said. "I was afraid it might be..."

" 1 know. I'm glad it was me, too."

Lindsay went to the hospital early in the morning to
take Jenna a teddy bear. It was a large brown bear, and
Lindsay told her it would watch over her. Jenna's
mother apologized to Lindsay and Derrick for not
thanking them when they brought Jenna out of the
woods.

"It was very chaotic," Lindsay said.

"I can't tell you how thankful I am. We are going to
visit my mother for a few weeks, aren't we, Jenna?"

Jenna nodded, holding on to her bear. "They said
you're an arc ... arc ... arc'olgist," Jenna said. "What
is that?"

"I dig up places where people used to live long ago
to find out what they did there"

"That's what I want to be."

Lindsay smiled. "It's a fun thing to be"

The sheriff was also there when Lindsay arrived.
He had come to the hospital to get more information
about the man who had chased Jenna into the woods.
He told Lindsay and Derrick that Jenna had been
playing in the far corner of her backyard when a man
approached her and offered her candy if she would
come with him. The only description they got from
Jenna was that he had a big moustache. The sheriff
suspected that he may have been disguised. Jenna
said she ran from him, and he chased her into the
thick woods where she hid in the bushes. Afraid that
he would find her, she ran deeper into the woods and
down into the gully, a place where she had played
previously but unknown to her mother, and hid where
Lindsay had found her. Again, like most of the other
clues, nothing pointed to anyone. The sheriff had someone checking out all the stores that might have
sold the disguise, but he held out little hope of finding
anything helpful. Lindsay and Derrick left the hospital and followed the sheriff to his office.

After they wrote up and signed their statements for
the sheriff, Derrick reminded the sheriff that he
needed to finish examining the artifacts that he and
his crew had retrieved from the crime scene.

"Good idea. I'd like to send the whole lot to the
crime lab in Atlanta to see what they make of it."

Derrick laid all the plastic bags filled with crime
scene artifacts on the table in the back room of the
sheriff's department. Lindsay wrote down the description of each object beside its number as Derrick made
the identification. He already had looked at much of
the debris, but he examined each with a hand lens,
hoping to find some minute but useful clue.

The yield consisted mostly of old pull tabs and
bottle tops, beer cans, and old soft drink bottles. They
had also found ten rusted nails, pieces of a barrel
hoop, a two-foot length of rusted chain, three-and-ahalf feet of barbed wire, three rusted hinges, two
small weathered pieces of cardboard that had once
been tightly wrapped into a stick, the bones of one
rabbit, and parts of two mice.

"Not much help," Lindsay commented as she
wrote down the identifications.

"This might help," Derrick said. "It looks like the
pan lock from a tripod."