Judas Burning (7 page)

“In that old sycamore tree. I felt sorry for him. I thought we could take him some food.” She pointed to the bridge. “What’s going on?”

He knew better than to press her. She’d withdraw, thinking he disapproved or found fault with her. “I don’t know. That’s more cars than I’ve seen on that bridge in fifteen years.”

“What are they doing?”

“I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.”

“Come inside. I’m going to make some breakfast.”

Eustace rose and walked beside her. Some days she forgot to eat, so he took it as a good sign when she thought of breakfast. Whatever she decided to cook would be fine. If she asked him to eat nails, he’d do it.

The old iron bridge that spanned the Pascagoula River moaned beneath the weight of the caravan. From her seat in the back of J.D.’s Ford Explorer, Dixon examined the iron structure that had played such a prominent role in her family’s past. As the truck lumbered slowly over the rutted, dangerous span, she stared at the river that looked as if it had fallen asleep and forgotten to flow on to the Mississippi Sound. The river’s appearance was deceiving. The current was both strong and treacherous.

One of her relatives, Alfred Dunagan, had been involved in the controversial plan to build the Fitler Bridge back in the early 1900s. He and his wife had drowned when the ferry capsized crossing the river during a storm; the story was family legend. Neither Dunagan nor his partner, Jacob Senseney, had lived to see their dreams sculpted into concrete and iron.

The state legislature had recently promised a flood of state and federal money into Chickasaw County to preserve the old structure. The Fitler Bridge, unwanted and damned a century earlier, was now a historic landmark.

The caravan halted on the single-lane bridge when the lead car dropped through a pothole and came to rest on its rear axle. Dixon heard car doors slamming, voices, even a few snorts of laughter as the men clustered around the crippled car. Ranging in age from early twenties to sixties and dressed in jeans that bagged at the knees or army camouflage, they were tribal. Their relationship with the land and the river—a relationship she wasn’t willing to designate as love because of the harsh usage they gave both—bound them together more tightly than marriage vows or lust. She remembered Linda’s story of the man who had surprised a robber in his home. “Take anything you want,” he’d said. “Take it all. You can even have my wife as long as you leave my huntin’ dog.”

Climbing out of the Explorer, Dixon stretched, her body stiff from the beating she’d taken over ten miles of washboard road. The lead car, a 1992 Grand Prix, was so deep in the hole that the rear wheel spun free in empty air. J.D. Horton knelt beside it.

He’d shown neither surprise nor dismay when she appeared at the courthouse ready for the search. Clear blue
eyes
had given back only her own reflection, and he’d assigned her a seat in the Explorer, not giving her a chance to ask any questions.

Horton was examining the stuck car’s axle. Among the men, he adopted a good-ole-boy attitude, but it wasn’t his natural mode. Or if it was, world travel and a twenty-year stint in the marines had given him polish. She wanted the answer to the question everyone in Jexville had asked—why had J.D. come back to Chickasaw County? He didn’t fit in any more than she did. He could have made a lot more money almost anywhere else. He wasn’t married. He had no children. Why Chickasaw County?

Speaking of not fitting in, the tall man she’d seen at the day care fiasco stuck out like a sore thumb. He seemed less interested in her today, but she noticed a notebook tucked into his back pocket.

She walked to the rail and watched the river. It sneaked past the bridge without a hair of discernable movement. A small log surfaced, wallowing up as if to gasp air before being sucked back under and away. It was a chilling giveaway that the current was at work. If the girls had drowned, there was no telling where the bodies would eventually float up. She just might have let herself in for a very long, hot, uncomfortable day. And Tucker had wanted this story.

“You okay?” Deputy Waymon Semmes looked amused as he came up. “You look like you might jump. I thought maybe you were gettin spooked.” He laughed. “I told J.D. this wasn’t no place for a girl. Them swamps are haunted.”

“Next time I do a poll on a woman’s place, I’ll be sure and give you a call.”

Waymon grinned. “I’d like that. When do you think you might do that story? Will you use my picture?”

Dixon managed not to smile. “Sure, a mug shot. We’ll do it soon. Real soon.” She turned and pointed west. “Is that the tip of the sandbar?” She could see, nearly a mile away, where the Leaf and Chickasawhay Rivers flowed together into the broader, murkier Pascagoula. Right at the fork, on the west bank of the river, a pristine sandbar humped out of the water and disappeared around a bend.

“There’s a path that cuts through the woods, but it’s a walk. I hope you brought some mosquito repellant.” He swatted at his neck.

“I’ll be fine.” She smiled. “Who’s the guy over there?”

“Him? Name of Robert Medino.” Waymon tried for nonchalant. “He’s a writer from a big-city magazine. He’s staying in town, working on some kinda story. He was in yesterday, talking to the sheriff and all. J.D. said it was a top-secret story.”

Dixon wanted to ask what kind of story, but she didn’t. She focused instead on J.D. as he took a position midway in the caravan.

“Okay, men, Ms. Sinclair, Joe’s staying here with the cars until the wrecker can come and get him out of the hole. Then he’ll move the other cars down off the bridge, so be sure you leave your keys. We’re going on to search. Waymon will take some of you south. I’ll take Ms. Sinclair, Jay, and Cooney. We’ll search the sandbar and the woods—”

“What about me?” Medino asked. “I want to help.”

J.D. didn’t move. Dixon felt the tension between the two men.

“You come with me,” J.D. finally said. “I want to be sure you don’t get yourself killed in the swamp.”

The men broke up, tossing their keys to the owner of the stranded car, taunting him good-naturedly as they passed. Their footsteps echoed on the old bridge. The span was level with the tops of the trees that grew along the banks, and Dixon recognized sweet gums, willows, pines, cedars, scrub oaks, and the live oaks that dominated with their grace and beauty. The trees were draped with the lacy fringes of Spanish moss, a beautiful parasite. It was not so different from the Pearl River that looped and wiggled around Jackson, where she’d grown up.

At the foot of the bridge, the men separated. She followed J.D. down a pig trail into the woods. Medino followed her, making no effort to talk, though she felt his gaze. Cooney and Jay brought up the rear; she knew that J.D. had arranged things so that she and Medino could both be watched. He didn’t trust their wilderness skills.

Dixon realized that the woods were much denser than they appeared from the bridge. Stepping beneath the canopy of tree branches, she felt the temperature drop at least ten degrees.

J.D. set a brisk pace. The trail was narrow but clear. In places the thick vines and leafy trees closed over them. Where the sunlight filtered through, it was dappled, but many areas were in constant gloom, the ground thick with rotted leaves that hushed their footsteps. Dixon tried not to think of past assignments where tragedy had lurked beneath a layer of leaves and branches.

The two faces in the school photos floated before her. Angie Salter was pretty and hard; it showed in her lipsticked pout. Trisha Webster had the look of a timid rabbit. They were a recipe for trouble.

“Keep your ears open.” J.D. spoke softly. “There are wild boars out here, and they can be mean if you ‘rouse them. Especially if they’ve got a litter.” He moved on, barely rustling a leaf with his passage.

“Sheriff?” It was Medino.

“What?”

“How did the girls get to this sandbar? There wasn’t a vehicle around. Have you found the person who gave them a ride?”

The question and its tone, just short of sarcastic, hung unanswered in the air.

By the time they reached an opening in the heavy curtain of trees, Dixon was panting with exertion and heat. She’d once been athletic, but the years of anxiety and drinking had taken a toll. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down the small of her back.

J.D. turned to look at his search team. “Okay, now fan out. I’ll take the position by the water, Ms. Sinclair beside me, Medino at the edge of the woods. The sandbar is half a mile wide in places. Cooney, Jay, you take the north trail back and then start down the road.” He checked his watch. “If you haven’t found anything, head back to the bridge at ten.” He glanced at each of them. “Be careful not to destroy any evidence. Look for anything. Footprints, beer cans, potato chip sacks—anything to indicate how those girls spent their time. If you see something, put it in these.” He handed out evidence bags. “Be sure you don’t touch it. Latent prints can be on any surface. Use those rubber gloves. Okay, let’s go.”

The men headed out, and Dixon was interested to see that Medino did as he was told without comment. J.D. studied the sand in front of him, and she studied him. After a moment, he asked, “You sure you’re up for this?”

Dixon had no choice but to nod. She’d asked to come along.

He went to the water’s edge and signaled her to keep pace with him as she covered the center of the sand bar.

From the bridge the beach had looked pristine. Walking along it, Dixon found the remains of a hundred camp outs, evidence of old fires and parties. Glass and aluminum were everywhere.

About a hundred yards away, She saw the sheriff closing in on a blue ice chest. Beside it a circle of silver cans winked in the sun. Vibrant red and black lettering told of their recent deposit on the white sand.

Dixon’s hands went to the camera that dangled around her neck. She lifted it, began to shoot, then walked over to J.D.

Using a handkerchief from his pocket, J.D. opened the chest. Three full beers bobbed in the melted ice water that gave a breath of cool to Dixon’s face as she leaned over it. She clicked off a shot.

J.D.’s voice was hardly more than a whisper. “Dammit it all to hell. When I get my hands on Waymon I’m going to break his neck.”

“What did he do?” Dixon hadn’t noticed the deputy doing anything untoward. He wasn’t even in sight.

“It’s what he didn’t do,” Horton said under his breath. He spoke louder. “Sometimes he just doesn’t think of the consequences.”

Dixon focused on the sand, which had been dimpled by early-morning dew. Prints of bare feet, small and high-arched, were still visible. There were also bigger footprints from hard-soled shoes, possibly work boots, not the athletic style she would expect from a young boy. The prints made a chaotic pattern around the ice chest and disappeared at the water’s edge.

“Cooney!” J.D. called in a voice that bounced off the water. “Cooney! Can you hear me?”

“Yo!” The answer came back muffled by the thick stand of trees.

“Go back to the patrol car and get some plaster molds!” He looked at Dixon, and for a moment she saw regret in the angle of his mouth.

“You think something has happened to the girls?” She was surprised at her feeling of dread. For so long, she’d been numb to the ramifications of the stories she covered. Then again, for so long she’d been drunk.

J.D. was studying the sand where a girl’s prints, one foot bare and the other in a shoe, went into the water and didn’t return. She snapped a photo and heard J.D. sigh as he reached into the river and pulled something out.

“What is it?” she asked.

“A sandal.” He looked toward the river. “Looks like she walked right off into the water and disappeared. Waymon should have had sense enough not to leave those girls stranded.”

“What did he have to do with this?”

“The kid who owned the truck called and reported his vehicle missing. He told Waymon the story, I guess about three o’clock. The kid suspected the girls had come here to the river, and he got Waymon to ride him out here. They found the truck, and the kid used his key to drive it off. He was pissed, said he was going to get fired from work because of Angie taking his truck. Waymon followed him back to town.”

“Your deputy didn’t check on the girls? Did he or the boy see them from the bridge?”

J.D. shook his head. “No. And they didn’t look. They thought it was a big joke to leave them stranded out here on the sandbar. Of course, Waymon didn’t bother to tell me this until three o’clock this morning, when he got a call from Beth Salter and realized the girls didn’t go home. Which is why we’re searching now.”

Dixon eyed Horton. The tracks had obviously told the sheriff a more detailed story than she could read. “Do you think the girls went in the river and drowned?”

J.D. rubbed his mouth with the bank of his hand. “We’re going to be out here a while.”

Dixon rested against the trunk of a sweet gum and tried not to let her imagination get the better of her. Trisha Webster and Angie Salter were not on the sandbar or in the nearby woods. The slender evidence they’d found didn’t make a lot of sense. It appeared that the girls had simply vanished, possibly beneath the muddy water.

The sheriff had ordered the river dragged. So far the draglines had found a battered trunk, several trees, fishing nets, a sack of garbage weighted with bricks, part of an old cement mixer, three tires, and a sunken boat that was on the verge of complete disintegration.

Laughter caught her ear, and she turned to the bridge, which was lined with spectators who had come to see if the river would give up a body. There was almost a festive air, and Dixon wondered again at the callousness of the human animal. She had seen the same reaction time and time again, folks stopping to examine the carnage of a wreck or watch a neighbor’s house burn. So far no television crews had arrived. She caught a glimpse of copper skin. The young man she’d seen outside the newspaper office stared at her, then vanished into the crowd. A moment later, she saw him on a bicycle peddling across the bridge. She watched him until he disappeared into the trees.