On the Run (12 page)

“But it isn’t as if it’s a crime scene,” I pointed out. Silent question at the end of that statement: or is it?

Sgt. Dole hesitated a minute longer. “Just don’t go near the house. And tell Frank Northcutt to get in touch with us immediately when he arrives. I tried to call his home number but didn’t get any answer, so he must be on the road.”

It wasn’t actually
permission
, and it didn’t specifically answer my crime-scene question, but he wasn’t kicking us out.

The car zipped off to catch up with the other vehicles. Abilene and I put the lawn chairs away, collected Koop from under the bush, and drove back down to the house. I parked the motor home under a big oak. It would have been nice if we had some place to plug into electricity, but we could manage without it. Though I’d have to find some place soon to dump the holding tanks.

No strips of yellow plastic marked the house as a crime scene, which I assumed meant that the medical examiner agreed the Northcutts’ deaths were what they appeared, a suicide pact. Although, technically, there was a crime, of course. Jock Northcutt had killed his wife. Did their complicity in the pact, and his immediately taking his own life, kind of cancel out the crime element?

One of the emus appeared to be walking with a limp, and Abilene, bolder than I, went into the fenced-in area with them and inspected the foot. Toe. Claw. Whatever. All the other emus crowded around to watch. She found a pebble trapped under a toenail and removed it. The bright-eyed emu pecked curiously at her shoelaces. Abilene scratched her/him/it under the chin, and it stretched out its neck in what I took to be emu ecstasy.

I fixed chicken stir-fry for dinner, and we ate outside by the motor home. In spite of the violent deaths, the place seemed peaceful now. Following Sgt. Dole’s orders, we didn’t go near the house, but Abilene wandered around, checking out the other buildings, all of which, except the somewhat tumbledown old barn, were securely locked. She had a curiosity gene of her own, I realized, plus a youthful boldness that took her places I probably wouldn’t venture.

One of which was out in the woods. She disappeared long enough to give me mild alarm, but returned to ask if I had a flashlight.

“Why do you need a flashlight?” The evening was into dusky shadows, along with a few mosquitoes, but it wasn’t dark yet. I could still see my watch.

“It’s darker out in the woods, and I saw something I want to check out.”

“Can’t it wait until morning?”

“You don’t need to come.”

Which meant, of course, that after I located the flashlight, there was no way I was going to be left behind.

12

We didn’t need the flashlight immediately. It was darker in the underbrush and trees, but a trail of sorts wound through the tangle. About every three steps I had to stop and disengage my hair or clothes from some clutching branch or bush. Once Abilene turned the flashlight on to help me get untangled, and I jumped when the beam hit a blob of red on a tree beside me.

“Is that blood?” I gasped, afraid we were about to stumble on more bodies.

“I don’t think so. I’m not sure what it is, maybe some kind of paint, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t blood. There are some blue and pink blobs too.”

“I wonder what it’s for?”

“Maybe they were marking the trees for some reason.”

Although that seemed unlikely, considering that I also got whapped with a thorny bush blotched with red streaks, and then I started seeing these odd little things on the ground that looked like colorful bits of broken eggshell.

A few hundred feet beyond the clearing around the house, the ground sloped downward, quite steeply in places, and I had to grab bushy branches to keep my feet from sliding out from under me. The air felt cooler and damper, with a faint scent of soggy earth and rotting vegetation. At the bottom of the slope the ground was not quite puddled but definitely squishy. Several times we had to step over trees that had fallen and were in various stages of decay. Once, something unseen crashed through the brush.

“Probably a deer,” Abilene said.

Yeah. Probably.

Another dozen feet and Abilene stopped short. She turned on the flashlight. “There.”

I peered around her. The beam of light gleamed on patches of dark, swampy water separated by virulent-looking islands of green scum. Unfamiliar, large-leafed plants pushed through the stagnant surface like malignant growths. An enormous spider web hung between two of them. The kind of place where you half expect something of the Jurassic Park variety, with bared claws and too many teeth, to leap out at you.

Nothing toothy rose up, but in the dark mud at the edge of the water I saw what Abilene was targeting with the flashlight. A footprint.

A
bare
footprint.

A
large
, bare footprint.

“That’s the only one?” I asked.

“That’s it. One footprint.” She tittered uneasily. “I looked around for a large-footed, one-legged skulker, but I haven’t spotted anyone yet.”

“You thought you saw something moving out in the woods earlier. Maybe it was this same person,” I said. “Perhaps we can’t see other footprints because they’re down in the water.”

A reasonable possibility, but the lone footprint here in the mud felt eerily disembodied. It looked as if it may have been made within the last few minutes . . . or been hidden in these shadowy woods since the dawn of time.

“So what was he doing out here? Where did he come from? Where did he go?” Abilene asked.

“Watching us” was the obvious and not reassuring answer to her first question. As for the others . . .

Something rustled, and Abilene arced the beam of light into the branches above us.

Nothing.

Or at least nothing we could see. But I couldn’t help remembering that tawny skin with an oversupply of claws draped over the railing in the house. Which had once upon a time undoubtedly prowled out here, live and predatory.

Abilene swiveled the beam of light back to the footprint. “Do you think we should tell anyone?”

“I doubt Sgt. Dole would be interested. It’s probably just some nosy neighbor snooping around. Or maybe some kids playing back in here. Wouldn’t you have liked to play in a creepy place like this when you were a kid?”

Abilene didn’t argue with that practical theory, and it was a fine theory, I thought as we started back to the house. Except for the fact that the gravel road ended at the Northcutts’ driveway, and I hadn’t seen another house for several miles back. What “neighbor” could have been snooping? And, while this footprint wasn’t oversized enough to suggest something of the Bigfoot variety, it was no youngster’s footprint.

I ran the generator for a while to build up the battery that operates the lights and TV in the motor home, but the picture was too blurry to watch. Abilene went out to check on the emus again, I read a few more chapters in Romans, and then we went to bed. We really had to get Abilene more clothes, I realized. She couldn’t keep wearing what she had on indefinitely.

I worried that the barefoot prowler might come around in the night, but if he did come I didn’t hear him. I didn’t even hear the sound of a car, but a blue SUV was parked near the house the next morning. I started bacon and pancakes while Abilene was feeding the emus. We’d just finished eating breakfast at the little dinette table when a man appeared at the screen door.

“Hi. I’m Frank Northcutt. You must be the people I talked to yesterday?”

I pushed the screen door open. I guessed midforties at first glance, then decided that worry lines and thinning hair made him appear older than he actually was. He had a short, stocky build, with wire-rimmed glasses over pale blue eyes. His sparse, light brown hair had begun to retreat from a high forehead, and he was already doing a rather awkward comb-over. His light blue shorts revealed sturdy, sandy-haired legs.

“Yes. I’m the one who talked to you, Ivy Malone. And this is Abilene Tyler. She’s already fed the emus.”

He glanced at the birds but didn’t bother to comment on their IQ today.

“You had a long trip?” I asked.

“We live in Pewter, down southwest of Dallas. I’d have been here a lot earlier, but the alternator on the SUV conked out, and I had to stop and get it fixed. So I didn’t pull in until about 1:00 a.m., and I didn’t see any reason to wake you then.” He glanced toward the house. “Apparently someone has already been here to take care of the . . . bodies?”

“Yes. Several officers from the county sheriff’s department were here, as well as the medical examiner.” I could tell that he was about to start questioning me about details, and I hastily added, “Sgt. Dole asked that you come in to see him as soon as you arrived. I believe they need you to make positive identification.”

“I’d better do that, then.”

Still, he made no move to go, just stood there looking out over the clearing surrounded by woods. “I guess I’m feeling kind of . . . overwhelmed. The deaths . . . this place . . . those stupid birds.” He shot the emus a venomous look, as if they were to blame for everything. “Did the deputies say anything about possible suspects in the shooting?”

“Well, uh, no. But Sgt. Dole wanted to talk to you right away,” I repeated.

“I’d better clue him in about ol’ Ute then. It wouldn’t surprise me if the guy had a record a mile long. I tried to get my folks to run a background check on him, but they wouldn’t do it. I always figured he could be into anything from drugs to illegal guns to terrorist activities.”

“I wonder why they didn’t want to check up on him?”

Frank snorted. “Probably because they distrusted the police even more than they did Ute.”

Interesting people, these Northcutts.

“Will your wife be arriving later?”

“I don’t know. I told you she was at a cosmetologist convention, didn’t I? I wasn’t able to get hold of her before I left home. The kids are staying with some neighbors.”

“If there’s anything we can do to help—”

“The first thing I’m going to do is get that bloody sofa out of the house.” He sounded angry and resentful, as if someone should have been more considerate about making such a mess.

I doubted we could help with the sofa. It looked like a job for a couple of muscular moving guys. I also wondered if getting rid of the sofa was a good idea. Maybe it held important clues.

Then I reminded myself that this wasn’t a crime that needed clues or solving. It couldn’t have been any more clear who’d done what to whom—Jock had shot Jessie and then himself—than if they’d left a video of the event. Unless someone was very good at making a scene look like something it wasn’t . . .

“I still can’t believe they’re gone.” Frank shook his head. “I talked to Jock just a few days ago.”

I wanted to ask, “Did he sound depressed? Did he give any hint that he and your mother were about to do something so drastic? Or did he sound nervous and afraid? Did he mention threats? Or perhaps a barefoot skulker in the woods?”

Yet it was not my place to get into any of this before he’d talked to the officers and medical examiner. They were the proper authorities to tell him what had happened here, not me.

So all I said was, “Sgt. Dole is really anxious to talk to you. Although I’m afraid I didn’t think to ask where you could locate him. Perhaps the sheriff’s department has an office in Dulcy?”

“I’ll find out. I appreciate your sticking around. It’s very generous of you.”

“No problem. We aren’t in any big hurry, so we’ll be glad to stay longer if we can be of any help.”

“That’s right, you said you’d come looking for jobs, didn’t you?” He gave us both appraising looks but headed for the SUV without further comment.

13

I expected Frank Northcutt to be back from seeing Sgt. Dole by noon, but by 3:00 he still hadn’t showed up. Abilene pooper-scooped around the feeding troughs in the emu’s pen. I found a hose and refilled the water tank on the motor home, worried about the gauges showing the holding tanks were almost full, and kept a sharp eye out for barefoot prowlers.

I assumed, when I heard a vehicle coming up the driveway, that it was Frank, but I was mistaken. An old brown pickup with one green fender and the hood anchored down with a wire pulled into the yard. Three large crates filled most of the pickup bed.

An older man got out of the car. He had a surprisingly buff physique under a taut T-shirt emblazoned with the picture of a snarling pit bull and the somewhat contradictory statement “Dogs Are a Man’s Best Friend.” I was holding the hose and watering some bushes in the backyard, and he walked toward me with an old-cowboy roll of hips. At odds with the imposing physique was a loose-skinned face with sagging jowls and droopy folds around the eyes.

“Missus Northcutt?”

“No . . .” How to explain? Well, I could give the basic facts without details. “No, I’m sorry, but both Mr. and Mrs. Northcutt unexpectedly passed away. I’m just—”

“What d’yuh mean, ‘passed away’?” he demanded. “Somebody killed ’em?”

That
murder
was his first assumption startled me. This had never been my first question when I heard someone had passed away. “Why would you think that?”

“They must have had some reason for needin’ what I brought to show ’em.” He jerked his head toward the pickup. Wrinkled folds of skin armed with the gray stubble of a buzz cut rolled out from under his faded green cap, and a strong aroma of old cigarette smoke hung around him like an invisible fog. Good thing Koop was off taking care of cat business, I thought, because he tends to express his critical opinion of such scents with hisses and snarls. And woe to any smoker who tries to pick him up.

I eyed the crates warily. “You’d have to discuss that with their son. He’s in town right now, but he should be back shortly. You’re welcome to stay and wait for him.” I wasn’t particularly eager for him and whatever he had in his crates to hang around, but I motioned vaguely toward the lawn chairs on the deck.

“Does the son live here?”

“No. He came because of his parents’ deaths.”

“You live here?”

Uncertain whether Frank Northcutt was going to hire us for caretaking, I hedged with, “Ummm, well . . .”