Judas Burning (9 page)

“He’s one of them folks like to come in and stir folks up.” Waymon frowned. They bounced off the bridge and onto the dirt road.

“That’s a journalist’s job, to make people think and see different sides of things.”

“Don’t need none of that in Chickasaw County,” Waymon insisted.

“I disagree, Waymon. Chickasaw County needs a good bit of stirring up.” Dixon saw Waymon frown. The deputy wasn’t as dumb as he liked to pretend. “Mr. Medino has a theory on the disappearance of the girls and why he believes this psycho has taken them.”

“Did Medino elucidate his theory?” Horton asked.

Horton might not have gone to Harvard, but he could toss around some ten-dollar words. “It had to do with Mexico, a fallen Catholic, a man who is conflicted with his image of women and his lust for them. Medino says the man has taken the girls because he thinks he wants to save them. Then he feels sexual desire for them, and once he’s had them, he’ll have to kill them.”

J.D. pulled the SUV to the side of the road. “Waymon, find Ms. Sinclair and yourself a ride to town in another vehicle. I have something I need to do.”

Dixon got out and stood in the hot sun. Horton didn’t look back at her. He drove off, thick dust churning from beneath his wheels.

Jouncing over potholes, J.D. turned down the rutted lane that led to Eustace Mills’s bait shop and fish camp. Live oaks older than the state shaded the grassless yard. He parked and got out of the SUV, his face turned up to the camp. The tranquility of it always struck him anew. Some twenty feet up on pilings, the cypress structure looked like a strange airborne church nestled in the gnarled arms of the oaks. J.D. had a sense of coming home.

He wanted to talk to his old friend. Eustace was a man of logic. The two of them would sit under the oaks and drink a few beers and talk through the disappearance of the two girls.

J.D. walked through the trees. The place was quiet. Camille’s car was by the house, and he could see Eustace’s boat at the landing and his old truck parked behind a shed. Eustace had to be there.

“Lots of excitement, J.D.” Eustace’s voice came from the direction of a lightning-blasted tree trunk.

“How’s it going, Eustace?” he said when the fisherman walked out from behind the tree. Blood covered Eustace’s oversized hands. A glistening hunk of blood-soaked skin hung from the pliers he carried.

“Did you find the bodies?”

J.D. didn’t answer immediately. “So you think they’re dead?”

“That’s the talk all along the river. Two girls missing. Have the draglines brought anything up?” Eustace looked up toward the camp, where Camille walked out, sat down on the top step, and lit a cigarette.

“Not yet.” J.D. concentrated on Eustace’s face as his friend watched Camille.

Eustace wiped one hand on his filthy shirt. “Any idea what happened?”

J.D. noticed the bruises and scraped knuckles on Eustace’s right hand as he leaned a hip against the SUV. Since Camille Holbert had driven her Mercedes SL500 out of her rich daddy’s driveway and into the swamp and parked it beside Eustace’s camp, the fisherman hadn’t invited him inside. Today would be no different. “Like you said, some folks think they drowned.” Eustace knew the swamps better than any man alive; he was up and down the river several times a day, and he was observant. “You didn’t see the girls, did your

“No.” Eustace motioned for the sheriff to follow him. “You want to talk, I’ve got to finish this fish. A man’s comin’ by for thirty pounds, cleaned and skinned.”

J.D. followed him, noting that his limp was more pronounced than usual. J.D. looked back at the redhead smoking on the steps. She was a good thirty-five, maybe forty, years younger than Eustace. She looked like a child.

There had been wild talk about Camille. Her name had been linked with a host of younger men, boys really, but as far as J.D. knew, none of them had ever confirmed the gossip. When she left a man, she sealed his lips, and that was a talent in a town where counting notches was a public competition.

Eustace pointed to a picnic table with benches beneath an open-air shed. J.D. took a seat while Eustace finished pulling the skin off a five-pound catfish he’d nailed to a board. J.D. looked away at the sound of the skin tearing free.

“Have you seen anything unusual on the river?” he asked.

Eustace shook his head. “I was up the Chickasawhay almost to Leakesville. Anybody coulda come and gone.” He paused to wipe his sweaty forehead with his arm. “I’m not surprised they’re gone. My bet is, if they aren’t dead, they ran off with somebody. They’ll be home when they finish scratching their itch.”

Eustace picked up a net and went to the vat where the artesian water bubbled. Struggling briefly, he pulled up another catfish. The creature thrashed coming out of the water, its gray sides slick, scaleless. Eustace lowered it to the concrete floor beside J.D.’s boot. Stepping on the net to pin the fish in place, he lifted a baseball bat and brought it down with a smack on the fish’s head. The fish stilled.

Careful not to touch the whiskers, Eustace freed the fish from the net and picked it up. Selecting a huge nail, he drove it through the fish’s head and hung it on the board.

Eustace worked smoothly, quickly, with an efficiency of movement that J.D. admired. The knife flicked below the head, and Eustace began to peel the skin off with pliers.

When he finally spoke, it was to ask a question. “Why didn’t those girls’ folks start hunting before now? If it’d been my girls, I’d have been out on the river yesterday.”

J.D. looked at the dusty toes of his boots. “Angie Salter has been known to get into a little trouble and then come home with her tail tucked between her legs. It wasn’t until I found out her boyfriend retrieved his truck and left the girls stranded in the woods that I got worried.”

“So the boy was there.” Eustace looked at J.D. “What about him?”

“Jimmy Franklin’s got an air-tight alibi. He was in class all day, and my deputy was with him when he ‘repossessed’ his truck. Jimmy drove straight to work at Delchamp’s. The manager vouched for him. Didn’t leave the store.”

“Maybe the girls hitched a ride,” Eustace suggested.

J.D. recalled the set of prints, one foot bare, that led into the water. “No prints leading off the sandbar.”

“So you’re thinking if they left, dead or alive, they left by water.” Eustace netted another fish. “It’s hard to say about the boats. I hear motors. Some are distinctive. Others …” He shrugged. “I haven’t seen anyone on the water that made me stop and think about ‘em. Truth of the matter is, since I put in the air conditioner for Camille, we turn it up at night and I don’t hear things like I used to.”

“Anybody unusual in Fitler?” J.D.’s gaze drifted to the artesian vats, which were cold as ice and where Eustace kept beer chilling. It had been a long, discouraging day.

“Nobody I took notice of. There’s some beer down in the vat if you want one.”

“No, not right now.” J.D. worried the edge of the table where some animal had chewed. “I found a place. Sort of strange. Some boards fitted across blocks with a cloth on it, some candles. An altar.” He waited.

Eustace lowered the pliers and turned to look at him. “Folks don’t just happen through Fitler any more. Especially not someone holding religious services in the woods. Where was this?” He nudged the net with his foot. “Catch me another fish.”

J.D. picked up the net and went to the vat. Beneath the clear water the fish swam in a frenzy. He wondered if, isolated in water, they heard the terrible silence that preceded their death. “About half a mile off the sandbar, up a hill. Dense woods.” He lowered the net, scooped out a two-pounder and took it back to Eustace. He described the cloth and candles in more detail as Eustace skinned.

“I can’t help you there,” Eustace said, not looking up from his work.

J.D. walked to the SUV and came back with the plastic bag holding the long cloth he’d taken from the altar. He unbagged it and held it up. “Does this look familiar?”

“Nope.” Eustace bent to his work.

Something moved near the house, and J.D. turned. Camille was running toward him, her eyes excited.

“J.D., where’d you get that?” She reached for the cloth, her cheeks flushed and her breath coming quickly. “Eustace said someone stole it off the clothesline.”

J.D. felt the beat of his heart, as if his chest had suddenly grown hollow. He’d been thirteen when he first met Eustace, and it was Eustace more than anyone else who’d saved him from the path of self-destruction on which he’d been bent. In all of those years, he’d never known Eustace to lie to him. Never. Until now. He looked into Eustace’s eyes. “Stolen off the clothesline, huh?”

Eustace didn’t say anything.

“Someone’s been slipping around here,” Camille said. “They’ve taken a sheet and some pants and a shirt.” She took the cloth out of J.D’s hand. “I’m sure glad to get this back. I use it to lay out my tarot cards.” She looked up from the cloth. “And the thief took some food and beer. And a pair of Eustace’s boots.” She smiled. “But he doesn’t mean any harm. He’s just scared and hungry.”

J.D. held Eustace’s gaze. “I guess this doesn’t qualify as unusual?”

Eustace didn’t look away. “I figured it was some kids sneaking around, jerking my chain since I can’t hear ‘em because of the air conditioner. Truth is, I forgot about it. Camille, he’s got to take that cloth with him. It could be evidence.”

“You need to give me a list of everything that’s missing. Everything.” J.D. dropped all expression from his face. He held the evidence bag open so Camille could drop the cloth in.

Eustace shook his head, the furrows in his brow deepening. “You know as well as I do that anybody could have come down the river, or up. They could have come in from 57 or 98. If someone took those girls, they could be halfway to China by now.”

“What girls?” Camille asked. “I saw all those cars and trucks on the bridge. What’s wrong?” She looked to Eustace for an answer.

“Two girls are missing. They may have drowned.”

She shook her head. “That’s terrible. The river is dangerous. Eustace says I can’t ever go swimming unless he’s right with me.

“That’s good advice,” J.D. said. It was time to go. “Eustace, sometime tomorrow do you think you could go over a map and point out some of the deeper holes on the Pascagoula? And maybe a few places where if you wanted to hide, it might be a good place?”

Eustace took his arm and began to move him gently down the drive. When they were out of Camille’s earshot, Eustace said, “Don’t put no bad pictures in her head. She has nightmares.”

“Eustace, something has happened to those girls. I’d keep Camille out of the woods if I were you.”

“That’s not easy to do. She likes to go by herself. She says the spirits of the Indians come there to talk to her.”

Camille had been institutionalized in an expensive private clinic in Louisiana. Visiting with Indian spirits didn’t seem to be a good sign. They both turned at the sound of a vehicle approaching. Eustace spoke first. “I think they’re looking for you.”

“I’ll get rid of them.” J.D. walked forward to meet the white minivan that pulled toward the camp. The peacock on the side indicated that it was the NBC affiliate out of Mobile.

J.D. turned around and watched Eustace walk back to his camp. Camille saw him and waved. J.D. was chilled by the gesture. It was as if her arm floated up in water.

Long ago, Dixon had learned that a good editorial page in a newspaper served as a voice of reason, but according to her father, it was also a carrot and a stick. The letters-to-the-editor section should churn with dissenting opinions. An editorial could praise the actions of a public official or damn him. Ray Sinclair had prided himself on editorials with teeth.

She sat at her typewriter, wondering if an editorial on the state sunshine law were the best choice. Although Big Jim Welford, with his high-handed tactics, had aggravated her, the secret school board meetings were not the story that weighed most heavily on her mind.

Seven days had passed since Trisha Webster and Angie Salter had disappeared. The only evidence that the two girls had been on the sandbar were a few beers, some footprints, and the bikini that Mrs. Webster had identified as Trisha’s. Dixon knew that an editorial about the missing girls would sound like blame.

Willard Jones was one week closer to his execution. Doubt about his guilt ate at her, and the morality of the death penalty would make a knock-down editorial. But Jones’s crime, if he’d committed it, was in the middle of the state. He held no interest for readers of the
Independent
.

That left the school board’s penchant for secret meetings. The board had held another secret meeting, and Tommy Hayes had been reinstated. Dixon had heard that Hayes had hired a Gulfport lawyer. The young teacher had not gone quietly, and the school board, facing more legal problems over the disappearance of the two girls, had backed off. In essence, Hayes had been charged, hung, and resuscitated without ever having a trial.

Dixon picked up the photographs of Trisha and Angie. Since the river search a week ago, there had been five others, with dogs, horses, four-wheelers, jeeps, and a psychic whom Beth Salter had brought from Pensacola. God, Beth Salter was a nightmare. She’d ranted and accused and laid the blame for Angle’s disappearance everywhere except at her own doorstep. She was more interested in lawsuits and laying blame than in finding her daughter.