Stone Maidens (5 page)

Standing in the middle of the room, she clasped her hands as if in prayer, touching her fingertips to her lips, her eyes shut, envisioning it in an almost trancelike state. Then she looked up.

“Make no mistake, gentlemen. Our killer exploits human frailty. Cunning always does. He is gaining their trust. There is no better, more efficient way for a stranger to do that with a child than through the art of deception—by projecting something that looks like tenderness, anything that appeals to a young mind, something irresistible. They must fall for it—the affection, kindness, or an enticement of some kind.”

Prusik dug down hard on her pinkie. “The point is these girls are very likely walking off the road willingly, without a struggle that would draw unwanted attention to our killer. He selects well and then fools them. A vulnerable target is necessarily alone.”

Prusik paused. “If there are no further questions, gentlemen, let’s get back to work. I don’t need to remind you that the pressure is on, and I imagine it will get worse before it gets better.”

She left the lecture room and returned to her office, fantasizing about carving backstrokes through warm water in the dimly lit aquamarine lap pool at her club, her nostrils invaded by the sharp smell of the chlorine, her body relaxed by the nice buzz the swim would yield afterward.

A knock came at the door. Margaret’s head poked in. “Bruce Howard’s on line one. He says it’s important.” She rolled her eyes.

Prusik took a breath, picked up the phone, and forced good nature into her voice. “Hi, Bruce. What can I do for you?”

He tucked in behind a Dumpster at the Wilksboro Clinic and switched off the truck’s ignition. The southern Indiana air smelled sweet after a week of soaking rains. The clinic was on the outskirts of Weaversville, the county seat located in the so-called toe of the state of Indiana, near the confluence of the great Ohio and Wabash Rivers, and equidistant between St. Louis and Chicago—a traveler could reach either of those cities in less than three hours’ driving time.

David Claremont’s scheduled appointment was at seven o’clock. He had skipped dinner with his parents, his appetite decidedly off. He took a breath and knocked on an office door with a plaque: I
RWIN
W
ALSTEIN
, MD.

The doctor greeted Claremont and motioned him to sit down in a cushioned chair in front of the large mahogany desk. Dr. Walstein opened a folder. “So, has the prescription been helping you to sleep any better?”

“Yes. But I wake up so late. I don’t even hear my alarm. My mother has to pound on my door and she gets mad.”

“OK, try taking only one of the fifty-milligram Mellaril tablets a half hour before bedtime. See how that works. Keep up with the amitriptyline, one tab before each meal.”

Claremont noticed a strange little painting on the shelf behind the psychiatrist’s desk he hadn’t seen before, an abstract of a darkened face looking down. The face in the painting wasn’t complete. Not all the way filled in. It made the young man uncomfortable.

Walstein came around to the front of the desk and sat opposite Claremont in a leather armchair. “What about the daydreams? Any more of them since...July fourth, was it?”

“No. Nothing to speak of, really.” He started wiggling his leg.

Claremont uncapped a tube of ChapStick and smeared it across his lips. More than three weeks had passed since the sun had borne down on his shoulders as he weeded a row of tomatoes in his mother’s garden. Three weeks since that indescribable moment when the raised hoe he was holding froze in position on the upswing while he stared down at clumps of earth, the dirt moving as if invisibly sculpted. One damp tip of compacted soil had protruded upward—a tongue sticking partway out, with the rest of the face fast forming, resembling someone. Just thinking about the strange transformation sent his heart pounding. There he was again, transported to a ravine filled with oaks and the nutty smell of last year’s leaves. A ravine like that carved down through the woods beyond his father’s planting fields outside Weaversville. All at once he saw her—the dirt had configured itself into a face that let go a scream—a girl’s—and wrenching upward out of the dirt came her large doe eyes, growing wider, deer panic in them, and the sensation of his teeth bouncing against hers, his hand probing her ribs lower down.

“You seem apprehensive.” Walstein picked up a gold ballpoint, rotating it between finger and thumb. “What’s on your mind, David? We didn’t talk much about July fourth last time.”

“No, we didn’t.” Claremont swallowed hard and did his best to wrench himself out of the dreadful vision.

“Talk to me, David. Talk can’t hurt. Only silence kills.”

“It might not hurt, but does it really help?” Claremont made brief eye contact with the doctor before glancing back at the portrait on the shelf. He shrugged. “It didn’t help that woman who just left.”

“I see.” Walstein smiled slightly, nodding. “Now you’re a mind reader.”

“Whatever. She sure as hell didn’t look cured.”

He quickly scanned the small room again: the desk, the floor, the carpet. Checking and rechecking, familiarizing himself with the truth of the office—that it existed separate from him and that whatever simmered in his head did not somehow lie waiting in the shadows behind Dr. Walstein’s desk to sabotage him. But checking didn’t bring any comfort. If the earth in his mother’s garden could move, so could the furniture, the rugs, and even the walls.

“So.” The doctor clapped his palms on his thighs. “The medicine seems to be working—the bad daydreams seem to have stopped for now. That’s a good start. Sounds like you’re making progress.”

“It means nothing. Nothing. It will keep happening. Like it did in March. Like I told you the last time.” Claremont looked down and noticed his foot was tapping a rapid beat.

“OK then, David. Help me to understand better. I can’t help if you aren’t willing to discuss what’s terrifying you. Everyone has dreams and daydreams. Yours are very important.” Walstein leaned forward. “Dreams are as much a part of us as, say, driving a car is, or having a baby, or going to work. Even more, dreams say something unique about each one of us, and if we can decode their language, they can give us valuable information.”

Claremont closed his eyes. He didn’t want to make the doctor mad. He wanted the doctor’s
help
. He’d always been a private person, but lately he’d been longing for companionship. Only trouble was he feared his suffering would peg him as unstable, too weird for any girl to want to go out with or take seriously. He especially longed for the affections of Bonnie Morton, the lovely neighbor’s daughter he used to chase with such glee as a child, playing hide-and-seek. Bonnie’s recognizing him in downtown Weaversville the week before, saying hi and waving, flashing him her big smile, had given him something to hang on to. Hope. For days he had mentally reviewed their brief encounter, pretending her little hi and wave had meant something more, that she really did like him and wanted him to call on her.

“Hello?” Walstein was gently tapping his leg. “David? You’re daydreaming again.”

“Sorry.” Claremont straightened in his chair. “I sort of was.”

“Ever hear the expression ‘It’s only a dream’?” Walstein’s eyes were kindly, but his words didn’t make David feel any better.

“But even in daytime?” Claremont fired back, forgetting the momentary image of Bonnie waving. “What if I’m driving a car, and then all of a sudden...it’s as if I’m not?” He studied the floor. “Be barely able to pull over and stop the truck even.”

The doctor nodded. “That must be hard.”

“I smell things—actual things, awful things—the real deal, Doctor. You’ve got to believe me. You’ve got to help me.”

Walstein ruminated over Claremont’s words, rotating the tip of the gold ballpoint between his teeth. “That seems vivid. I can see that it is very upsetting to you.” The doctor leaned forward and touched David’s knee. “Can you share with me what exactly it is that you see and smell, David?”

“I couldn’t have,” Claremont said in a raspy voice not clear enough for the doctor to know whether it was a question or an admission. “There’s no way I would ever...”

“What’s that you say?” Walstein said, training his eyes on Claremont. “What is it exactly that you are imagining, David?”

Claremont nodded vaguely, transported to some remote forest floor, the rush of water filling his ears.

The Simplex electric on the doctor’s office wall read eight o’clock. They’d gone ten minutes over, and he’d be late picking up his ten-year-old daughter at his ex-wife’s house. Was Claremont in any immediate danger? Hard to say. He didn’t think so. “I’m sorry, David,” he said, “but this will have to be our stopping point. Let’s save this for next time?”

Walstein removed a small calendar scheduler from his shirt breast pocket. “I think it would be a good idea for you to come in again later this week. How about, say, Thursday, seven o’clock?”

“What if I can’t make it to Thursday?” The troubled man’s head hung lower. “What if—”

“Absolutely call me sooner if you have to, David. I’ll be here.” Walstein wrote down his cell phone number on his business card and handed it to him. “If you have any more upsetting visions, call my cell number anytime, day or night, and I’ll get right back to you. See you Thursday at seven.”

The town of Crosshaven was situated dead center in southern Indiana’s hill district. The limestone caves honeycombed the forested ravines and kept an even fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit throughout the year, cool enough to store meat for days. A break in the July heat wave had brought a mass of unseasonably mild air down from Canada and, with it, an exhilarating drop in the humidity.

Julie Heath’s sandals slapped down her friend Daisy Rhinelander’s steep driveway onto the sidewalk of Old Shed Road. The fourteen-year-old had spent most of the afternoon lazing around her friend’s bedroom listening to a Taylor Swift CD.

It was Thursday, which meant her younger sister, Maddy, had Brownies. Their mother would be driving her, and the house would be empty when Julie got home. She considered taking the shortcut through the woods. The weather was perfect for it. At the bottom of the ravine the sandy creek eventually led to an area below her house. She cut across the road and into the fringe of forest. A branch poked through her sandal, hurting the arch of her foot. She reconsidered and crossed back to the sidewalk, content to walk along the road.

A cool breeze blew Julie’s frizzy blonde hair into her mouth and lifted her neon-green skirt, exposing her knobby knees. With the Taylor Swift tune “You Belong with Me” stuck in her head for company, Julie half walked, half danced down the sidewalk.

“I’m the one who makes you laugh when you know you’re ’bout to cry...”

Around the bend an old truck was pulled over sloppily, abandoned as if it had broken down. Instinctively she glanced around and then resumed humming the melody more softly as she passed by the vehicle.

She heard a voice and stopped singing. There was someone close by. At the foot of a large oak not fifty feet away, a young man was kneeling, bathed in a shaft of sunlight. The stranger had on a one-piece coverall, the kind garagemen wear. He was holding something cupped in his hands close to his face, talking to it, crooning. He didn’t seem to have noticed her.

Julie rested her cheek against a smooth-barked beech for a better look. The man was gently petting the thing in his hand, talking in a soothing voice. How sweet, she thought. The truck must be his. Maybe he had stopped suddenly for a baby animal crossing the road. Squirrels and rabbits were always making mad dashes in front of cars. How many times had her mother slammed on the brakes, muttering to herself? But she’d never gotten out and comforted a poor creature like this guy was doing—stopping to save it from harm, walking it into the woods to set it safely free.

The man brought his cupped hands close to his chest, tenderly nestling the frightened creature.

“Excuse me, mister?” She cleared her throat and spoke a little louder. “What are you holding?” She stepped through ankle-deep leaves a few feet closer. “Is it hurt?”

He pivoted his head her way, smiled pleasantly. Julie walked closer.

“What have you got there?” A small turtle, Julie could see it now. She liked turtles, especially the way they stretched their necks out to check if the coast was clear before trundling off.

“Was it crossing the road?” she said, guessing what had happened.

He held up his palm, nodding. “You can say that again. Nearly a goner, this one was. The guy in front of me swerved on purpose. Know what I mean? Shocking, man’s cruelty to animals. We’re all God’s children. Am I right?”

Julie nodded, feeling more at ease by his mentioning God. Raised a Baptist, she and her family went to church most Sundays.

“He’s lost his way.” The man examined the turtle at eye level. “I believe he’s got a brother down near that creek.” He motioned with his head farther down the wooded ravine.

Julie noticed the man’s clothes were heavily stained, spattered with layers of paint.

“My name’s Julie. Julie Heath,” she said, stopping ten feet from him.

“This here’s Snappy.” He held the turtle close to his face again, marveling. “Because he ain’t told me his real name yet.”

Julie could see the creature had a steeply ridged shell. “Oh, it’s a baby snapping turtle,” she said with a smile.

“Yeah, I guess that’d be right, a young whippersnapper.” The man glanced up at her, then returned his full attention to the reptile.

Julie cut the distance between them in half, more slowly this time. “Is that why you stopped your truck all crooked, to save it?”

“She’s got a head on them shoulders,” he said to the turtle. “Makes you feel good, don’t it, Snappy, when someone else cares so much?” He showcased the turtle on his upturned palm. “Would you like this nice girl to hold you some? Take you for a sip of nice water? You would?”

The man didn’t look up at Julie this time. He kept his eyes glued on the turtle. When he finally did glance, the girl was standing an arm’s length away.