Judas Burning (28 page)

The deputy hadn’t brought Dixon back with him, but J.D. did not fault him. She was not a woman who could easily be pressed easily. She had said she would come, and she would. But the coroner, watching him and the corpse with the sharp eyes of a rattler, wanted to collect the body, deliver it to the morgue, and get on with his job as a used car salesman.

J.D. looked down the road again, hoping to see Dixon. Instead, Beatrice Smart rounded the curve. He felt a profound sense of relief. He had not thought to call her, but she might be able to reach Camille. He mentally gave Waymon a gold star for having the sense to let her through.

He stepped away from the body, hoping to avert Beatrice’s attention, but he was too late. She halted and then staggered. Through Beatrice’s eyes he saw anew the horror, the decaying body, the burned flesh, the fluttering of the once white sheet. Camille had told him that she’d seen the body on fire, had awakened Eustace, who had rushed out of the house and doused the flames with water. In places the sheet still clung to the body.

He strode across the distance and caught the minister’s arm, holding her steady as he blocked her view.

“Reverend,” he said, supporting her. “Bea?”

“I thought I was prepared.”

“Nothing can prepare you for this. Nothing.” Man’s brutality against his own kind was beyond comprehension.

“Calvin asked me to speak to Camille,” she said, her gaze directed at J.D.’s shirt.

“I’m glad you came. Camille is in the house.” He led her past the body.

“How is she?”

In her voice, he could hear Beatrice reaching for control.

“Not good. She’s withdrawn. She’s been sitting in a chair in the den, but a moment ago I saw her at the window, so at least she’s moving around.” J.D. was concerned that Camille could slip into a catatonic state, a mental limbo land from which she might never emerge. Her voice, when she’d called him at six A.M., had been dead.

“And Eustace?” Beatrice asked.

“He’s pretty shaken up.”

“Will he talk with me?”

“I don’t know,” J.D. answered softly. “I hope so.”

J.D. heard Vivian’s voice again. He heard Beth Salter, too, breathing fire and threatening lawsuits against everyone in sight.

J.D. glanced up at the camp’s large window. “You want me to go in with you?” he asked.

“No, I think it would be better if I went alone. Besides, it sounds like you’re about to have a riot on your hands with Vivian stirring everyone up.”

He let her arm go. She took a breath, nodded, and walked toward the camp.

The commotion at the head of the drive increased. Waymon was holding back angry men and women who were worried that a violent killer was free. Everyone felt vulnerable, even those who normally buffered themselves with money and power. J.D. knew he should get up there before things got out of hand, but he couldn’t leave the body until Dixon had photographed it.

He saw her headed down the drive and crossed the clearing, moving upwind of the body. Her gaze met his and slid away. He wondered why. Dixon had never failed to bore directly into him. It was one of the things he liked about her.

“I made it as fast as I could.” She spoke to her cameras and there was a challenge in her voice. Her hands shook, and she dropped a lens. Cursing, she picked it up and bent to snap it onto the camera body.

J.D. noted her red eyes and thought she’d been drinking.

“Thanks for coming.” He reached out to touch her shoulder and stopped himself, suddenly self-conscious.

Dixon lifted the camera and went to work. She repeated the sequence of photos she’d done on Trisha Webster, and when J.D. lifted the sheet to show the carving in Angie’s thigh, he saw that Dixon’s face was covered in sweat. Her hands trembled as she clicked the camera, but she didn’t complain, and she worked with quick efficiency, shooting both color and black-and-white.

She was finished in fifteen minutes. J.D. waved to the coroner, who’d remained in the shade of an oak, drinking orange sodas, one after another. J.D. touched Dixon’s back and guided her away. She flinched at the zip of the body bag and the rattle of the stretcher wheels against the rocks.

The macabre humor that sometimes accompanied body collection was missing. The only sound was the rough intake of air as they struggled against the odor and the growing volume of discontent at the road.

“My God,” Dixon said as the coroner rolled the body toward an old ambulance. “Who found her?”

“Camille.”

Dixon looked at him. “Is she okay?”

“Beatrice Smart is with her,” J.D. answered.

Her expression changed, and he knew she’d noticed Eustace. She watched him for a long moment.

“What are you going to do about the crowd?” She tilted her head toward the road, where the mob was growing louder and angrier.

“Send Beth Salter home with an escort and wait for the others to disband.”

“What about Chavez?” Dixon asked.

“Two national guard units are on the way. The roads are blocked, and men are posted at every timber trail and path that comes out of the swamps. We’ll bring him in.”

“Dead or alive?” Dixon asked.

He nodded. “Dead or alive.”

“I heard the men at the roadblock. They intend to kill him in the swamps,” she said.

He knew that the men who’d volunteered to help him might attempt to take justice into their own hands. “Not if I can help it,” he said.

“What does Eustace say?” she asked.

J.D. looked over at his friend. “Nothing.”

Eustace waited until J.D. left. He watched the lawman stop on the driveway, pull out his cell phone, and begin to talk. The reporter kept going. She walked as if she were in a daze. Eustace just wanted all of them gone—everyone off his property so that he could talk to Camille. The preacher woman was in the camp now, but he knew that Beatrice Smart had no words that could reach Camille. He’d seen Camille’s face as she’d watched the body burn, twisting at the end of the rope. A rope from the boat Chavez had stolen, now floating gently among the others.

Chavez had returned the boat and the body, as if he were fulfilling a pact, a connection he’d made with Camille. But Eustace realized that he’d been wrong in what he thought about Camille’s involvement. He’d been wrong about a lot.

He looked up and caught a brief glimpse of Vivian, rabble-rousing and demanding blood. His blood. He almost wished that one of the deputies would shoot him and put him out of his misery. He’d believed that Camille was capable of terrible things. But in the end, he was the one who’d done them. He’d shot the Mexican. He’d been willing to let Angie Salter die in the woods. He’d lost all trace of humanity because he could not live without Camille.

There were things he should have told J.D. but hadn’t. Someone had picked up Chavez after he’d brought the body to the camp. Someone was helping him, but it wasn’t Camille.

Eustace knew the man’s route away from the camp because he’d erased the trail to the road, where it had ended. The man had bled into the sand. The compulsion to hang and burn Angie Salter must have outweighed even the pain of his gunshot wound.

Eustace looked down at the fish. All of his life he’d viewed them as a means to an end. He harvested them for survival. He’d never considered it from their side. Now, though, he understood something of what they must feel as they rushed from one end of the vat to the other. The cement wall blocked them. They were trapped, waiting for fate to net them and pull them into death.

If he managed to survive with Camille still at his side, he was going to free the fish. All of them. He would never kill another living creature.

He got up and walked to the house. The steps seemed insurmountable. Camille was up there, waiting for him. Maybe needing him. He started up, his bad leg dragging. When he entered the house, Camille was in a rocker, holding a mug of tea. The minister sat across from her, leaning forward. “Sometimes we can’t understand the workings of God,” she told Camille.

Camille stared at her. “What kind of god is that then?”

The minister slowly shook her head. “Faith is the ability to believe, even when there’s no rational explanation, Camille.”

“I believe,” Camille answered. “I believe in the trees and the animals. I believe in the wind and the river, and that love can heal.”

“Even the animals commit acts of violence.”

Camille shook her head. “Not like this. Not so … sick.” The last word was a whisper.

Eustace went to her. He took the mug of tea and put it on the table, then pulled her into his arms. At first she resisted, but then she fell against him. He felt her shaking. When the sobs came, they sounded as if her throat were being torn out.

The minister picked up the mugs and went to the kitchen. Eustace could hear her running water and putting things away while he patted Camille’s back and made soothing sounds.

Camille gradually stopped crying, then pushed back from him and wiped her face with her shirt sleeve.

“He was my friend,” she said. “He was my friend, and he did this terrible thing again. Even after he promised he wouldn’t.”

Eustace froze. He stared into the minister’s eyes across the kitchen counter. She looked as horrified as he felt. He wanted to beg her not to say anything. But that would only give more weight to Camille’s words. He had to minimize the damage.

“Camille, why don’t you lie down and rest,” he said, angling her toward the bedroom. He looked over his shoulder. “Reverend, could you put on a pot of coffee? I think J.D. could use a cup. Everything is right there on the counter.” He closed the bedroom door behind him and helped Camille to the bed.

“Just rest,” he said. “Once all these folks are gone, we’ll drive over to the kiln site. I think we should start on it right away. This afternoon.”

“This afternoon?” Her eyes questioned him.

He didn’t meet her gaze. “I was thinking that after this mess with those girls, it would be good to create your pottery in the woods. I’m no expert on nature or the spirits, but it seems to me that would please them.”

“Eustace,” she said, kissing his cheek. “You surprise me sometimes. And all along I thought that you thought I was crazy.”

His chest ached. “No, Camille. I never thought that. Not ever.

He covered her with a light spread and turned the air conditioner on high. The drone blocked the noise from outside. When the blinds were adjusted to darken the room he left her, closing the door behind him.

He walked toward the minister, waiting in the kitchen.

“Camille is resting. She’s been under such pressure.”

“She said she was friends with that man, Chavez.”

He shook his head. “Reverend Smart, I have to be honest with you. This business with those girls has troubled Camille greatly. It’s been on her mind, waking and sleeping. She’s … absorbed it, for want of a better word, and in her own mind she’s woven herself into the story. See what I mean?”

“Are you saying she’s hallucinated herself into the murders?”

“That’s taking it a little too far. She wanted to help. She wanted to save Angie. In her mind, she believes she talked to Chavez. That doesn’t mean it happened in reality.”

The coffeepot hissed and sputtered. Eustace went to the cabinet and got a large Styrofoam cup. He poured it full. “I’ll take this to J.D.”

“Is it possible Camille actually talked to Chavez?” the minister asked.

He waited, not wanting to seem to rush into an answer. “Anything is possible, Reverend, but I don’t see how she could have. I’ve locked up the boats. The only way she could talk to him would be on the road to Jexville or here at the camp.”

The minister leaned against the counter. “Yes, and we know that Chavez knows how to find his way here.”

Eustace looked down to hide his anger. She was aptly named. Nothing much got past the Reverend Smart.

“Vivian has spoken to me about having Camille committed. She feels her daughter isn’t capable of making decisions about her own safety. I have to say, Mr. Mills, if Camille is running around with a man who may be a double murderer, Vivian has a point.”

Eustace felt as if he were balanced on a narrow ledge far above pavement. “If Vivian and Calvin had been as interested in raising a healthy daughter as they are in controlling Camille, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

To his surprise, the minister smiled. “Well put.”

“Vivian doesn’t care whether Camille is happy or not. She only cares that she has the ultimate say-so. I love Camille. I would do anything for her, even let her go.”

The minister walked up to him and held out her hand for the coffee. “Your love for Camille has never been in question. I’ll take that to J.D. I need to talk to him anyway.”

Dixon walked up the long, twisting drive toward the main road. The sun had come on strong, bouncing through the oak limbs to create lacy patterns of shadow on the white sandy path. She could hear shouting. J.D. had a volatile situation, and Vivian Holbert was doing everything she could to push the spectators into a mob.

Dixon pictured Angie Salter, an overly made-up girl with naked ambition in her blue eyes. She’d dreamt of becoming a model, but she died instead. And she’d taken Trisha Webster with her. Orie Webster had set up a college fund for her daughter. Trisha had wanted to be an elementary teacher. She had followed Angie to the river for a day of mischief and had paid with her life.