Summer of the Dead (23 page)

“How about the hitchhiker that Deputy Harrison interviewed?” she said. “The one who saw somebody in the woods along Godown Road at the relevant hour?”

“Didn't pan out. Turns out our witness was pretty drunk.” Disgust burned in the sheriff's voice. “Yeah, he claims he spotted somebody in a long coat out there. And the timing's right. But a witness back in Swanville reported that he'd had six PBRs that night and woulda barely been able to wobble in and out of the woods to take a piss. Won't help us a lick.”

She waited. She knew better than to offer false consolation.

“Okay,” she said. “Let me know if you need any help with the investigation.”

“You've got your own job to deal with. Don't intend to saddle you with mine, too. Especially not with you being shorthanded and all.”

Bell's secretary, Lee Ann Frickie, had left for vacation the day before. Lee Ann took two weeks each summer to visit her son, Lance, in Clemson, South Carolina. She had offered to cancel her trip this year—she didn't feel right about leaving while two unsolved homicides had the town on edge—but Bell insisted:
Go
. Lee Ann needed a break.
Hell,
Bell had silently amended that.
We all do
. Not much chance of getting it, though, while the violent deaths of Freddie Arnett and Charlie Frank were open cases.

Bell started to say something to Nick, but put it aside for later. Perry Crum had ambled up to their table. He was on his way to the front to pay his bill. Big-faced, droopy-eyed, with hair the color of ginger ale that had lost its fizz, Crum had delivered mail in Raythune County for forty-two years, a fact to which his posture gave painful-looking testimony. Sweat had wrecked the crease in his government-issue pale blue shirt and gray shorts.

“Hey, Sheriff,” Perry said. He knuckled the dirty-white pith helmet farther back on his head. “Ain't there some kind of law against this heat?”

“Oughta be. You tell me how to enforce it, Perry, and I'll be happy to do so.”

Perry pumped his eyebrows up and down a few times, by way of agreement. He turned to Bell. “How're you, Mrs. Elkins?”

“Doing fine, thanks.” She looked at Perry's stooped shoulders, wondering what it felt like to hoist a heavy mailbag in and out of his truck in this heat. Not to mention the long, jarring drives into and out of the hollows in his boxlike, butt-ugly government van.

That vision gave rise to another one: Perry out on the country roads, all by himself. Vulnerable. An easy target.

“Listen,” she added, trying to keep her voice casual. “You be careful, Perry. I know you've heard about the assaults. Just keep your eyes open, okay?”

Perry tried to sop up some of the sweat on his neck with a handkerchief, first on one side, then the other. “Appreciate the concern, Mrs. Elkins.” He smiled.

She knew a bit about his personal life—Rhonda Lovejoy had filled her in on the situation a few years ago, and nothing ever changed for people like Perry—and so Bell felt compelled to add a coda: “Your sister, Ellie. She doesn't go out by herself, does she? Especially not at night?”

“No, ma'am. Kind of you to ask, though. Ellie never leaves the house. She needs me to take care of her. Always will. Things've been that way since she was born. Promised my folks I'd look out for her and I do.” Perry stuffed the handkerchief in his back pocket. That was enough about that. “Don't suppose you all are making any headway.” He read the answer right off their faces. “Well,” Perry said, “you'll get to the bottom of it. No doubt. Nice afternoon, you two.”

He moved along. Bell picked up her water glass and took a long reflective swallow. “I've been thinking, Nick. Summer's a funny season. People relax too much. When it gets dark, it's still nice and warm out. So people forget. Let their guard down. They leave their windows wide open and their doors unlocked. I've done it myself. Stayed up till two, three, four in the morning sometimes, sitting on the front porch. Never give it a second thought. Truth is—a lot of bad things can happen once the sun goes down. Even in the summer.”

The sheriff's expression was grim. “That's for damned sure.” He swiped at a runaway bead of sweat rolling down the right side of his face. “I've been getting the serial killer question everywhere I go, just like you predicted. Really wish the folks around here watched a little less TV, you know? You sit yourself down in front of enough of those crime shows—and pretty soon, you think you're seeing a serial killer every time you push your cart through the produce section of Lymon's Market.” He wiped his wet finger on a pant leg. “I guess I can understand their concern. I mean, both attacks happened at night. No obvious motive like robbery or revenge.”

“But there are some pretty significant differences, too.”

“Two different weapons,” he agreed. “Sledgehammer and a knife.”

“Yes. But something seems—well, a little off.” Fogelsong looked at her, waiting for her to go on. “The attack on Freddie Arnett was pretty straightforward,” Bell said. “Three blows to the back of the head. All of generally equal—and equally deadly—force.”

“Okay.”

“But the stab wounds on Charlie Frank were different. I read Buster's report and then I called him to ask about it, to make sure I was interpreting his findings correctly. There were five wounds in the shoulder area—two on one side, three on the other—and those were fairly shallow. Didn't require much force. By themselves, they probably wouldn't have killed him. The lethal blows came after that. Eight very deep and very powerful thrusts into the chest and abdomen. One severed the aorta. He didn't have a chance.”

“What are you thinking?.”

“Maybe the initial blows weren't intended to be fatal. And if that's the case, then—”

Fogelsong cleared his throat. Bell stopped talking. He had spotted Wanda heading their way, order pad in one hand, pen in the other.

The waitress was a large-boned, middle-aged woman with wavy brown hair that was gradually giving up its fight against gray. Her eyes had a tendency to squint, even when she wasn't straining to see something, and her left cheek still bore the broad, claw-like scars of a childhood car accident. Her father, Norbert Moore, had been taking Wanda and her younger brother, Cassius, for ice cream when Norbert crossed the centerline and smashed head-on into a coal truck. Norbert was drunk, and so the deaths of two people—the truck driver and three-year-old Cassius—meant that Norbert, only slightly injured, was sentenced to fifteen years in the state penitentiary in Fayette County. When he finally came back home, he met Wanda on the street and said, “I'd know you anywheres, girlie, on account of that scar you got there. Better'n a name tag.”

Wanda looked at the pad, not at them, as she said, “Whaddayall want?”

“Cheeseburger,” Fogelsong declared. “No pickle, but everything else.”

“Fries?” Wanda said.

“You gotta ask?”

That made her smile. It also caused her to look up from the pad. “Now, Nick Fogelsong, don't you be getting smart-alecky. I'm too busy today to keep you in line. Mrs. Elkins?”

“Chicken salad sounds good.”

“You got it.”

They waited for the waitress to hurry away before resuming their conversation. “Okay,” the sheriff said. “What about the knife wounds?”

Bell didn't want to overplay her hand. “Well, Buster said the variety in depths probably wasn't significant. Could be attributed to a lot of factors.”

“Then I suggest,” he said, “that we talk about something else until our food gets here. To make sure we're able to enjoy it. What do you say?”

“Agreed. Got to keep our strength up.”

So far Nick had avoided any substantive discussion of his leave of absence. Bell understood—he'd returned to a town that had suffered two grievous losses and looked to him to fix things—but she was curious. She was just about to break her rule about personal questions and ask him, when he beat her to it.

“Okay,” he said. Had he read her mind? Maybe. They'd known each other a very long time. “Figure you'd like an update about Mary Sue. More of one, anyway, than I've given you so far.”

“No,” Bell replied. “Not an ‘update.' She's a person, not a weather report. And listen. I have my own relationship with Mary Sue. I can ask her myself how she's doing, and I will. What I'd like to deal with right now is you.”

“Me.”

“Yeah. You.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Come on. You know what I mean. Before you left, you were questioning your whole life and what you've done with it. You weren't even sure you wanted to run for reelection next year, remember? Then you get back here and—Jesus Christ. Two dead bodies. And no leads.” Bell's voice was bleak. “So—what now? What's your next move? And just this once, I'm not referring to open cases, okay?”

He didn't answer right away, so Bell went on. “You can tell me to go to hell. It's really none of my damned business. I know that. I just—” She stopped. She didn't know how to phrase it without sounding weak and needy. Without sounding like the ten-year-old girl she'd been when she first met Nick Fogelsong. On a terrible night. A night that still spilled repeatedly out of her memory unless she kept the lid screwed down tight. A night whose horror had been alleviated, ever so slightly but crucially, by the kindness of a big man in a deputy sheriff's uniform.

The same man sat across from her now, three decades older and a great deal grayer and heavier, having ascended to the sheriff's job himself in that long interval, and having done it through dint of skill and diligence—instead of through politics, the usual route for such a rise.

“Forget it,” Bell muttered. They were in a public place. And what could she really say, anyway? He wasn't her father or her brother or her lover. She had no rights here. No claim on him. If she'd been able to speak the truth, if she could've somehow moved past the embarrassment and the fear of looking foolish, she would have said:
You don't owe me a thing. But I owe you my life
. Even the idea of saying those words, however, caused her to recoil inwardly, as if her thoughts themselves had touched a hot stove. She could no more say that to Nick Foeglsong than she could say it to her sister. And both Nick and Shirley had, in their own ways, rescued her.

“Belfa,” he said. The casual tone was gone. “When I figure this out, I'll tell you, okay? Everything. Soon as I know myself. Won't keep it from you. My word on that.”

“Sure, Nick, but—”

Wanda suddenly was back in their field of vision, plates in hand. “Anything else?” the waitress said dutifully, strain visible on her face, her meaning plain:
Please don't need anything else. I'm already getting run right off my damned feet here.

“We're good,” Bell said. Nick nodded. The arrival of their food was fortuitous, and not just because they were hungry; it broke the spell, changing the emotional dynamic when things were getting intense, unsettling them both. Funny how they could talk about criminal cases with no hesitation, with boldness and candor, but a personal topic turned them into mute cowards.

Bell looked around the restaurant. It was more crowded now than when they'd first come in, having filled up quickly with townspeople and with strangers, too. Tourists, most likely, the brave ones willing to reject the Burger King out on the interstate to take a chance on a local eatery.

She looked over at the cash register, where Jackie LeFevre was running a customer's credit card. Jackie's black hair fell straight as a plank down her back; her black eyes were set in a flat, polished-looking face that hinted at Native American ancestry, and she displayed a calm and centered demeanor at all times. Jackie was still a bit of a mystery to people in Acker's Gap, a mystery they'd not had time yet to tackle. For now, it was enough that the new restaurant she ran featured reasonably priced and decent—if sometimes inexplicably exotic—food.

“Hey,” Fogelsong said. He knocked on the tabletop with two knuckles, to snatch back her attention. “Did I lose you?”

Bell turned to him. Mild smile. “Never,” she said.

*   *   *

They finished their lunch in twelve minutes. Not ideal for digestion—but necessary, Bell told herself, when a violent criminal or criminals still threatened the area. And plenty of other cases, too.

The sheriff walked to the door right behind her, nodding to a number of his constituents on the way, barely slowing his gait as he replied to the repetition of inquires if today was, indeed, hot enough for him.

“Sure is,” he'd say, as patient and amiable as if he'd never been asked that question before on a summer day.

Bell and Fogelsong stood beneath the red and white awning that shaded the entrance to JP's. He settled the big brown sheriff's hat back on his head.

“So when's Carla getting here?” he said. “Thought I might be seeing her around town by this time.”

Bell hadn't told him—hell, she'd barely acknowledged the reality to herself—about Carla's whereabouts. Well, it was time. Past time.

“Yeah, well, Sam got her an internship in London. Last-minute thing. She's thrilled. Already on her way over there.” Bell looped her purse strap around her right shoulder.

She saw Nick's mouth open and close, as he started to speak and then didn't. He wasn't fooled by her matter-of-fact demeanor. He knew how much she'd been looking forward to Carla's visit this summer. But he was taking his cues from her; if she wanted to be breezy about it, if she wanted to pretend it was all just fine, he'd go along. He respected her enough to let her talk when she was ready to.
Maybe I could take few lessons from Nick,
she thought.
Maybe I ought to stop pushing everybody all the damned time, like some fat-assed schoolyard bully
.
Getting in everybody's business.
Maybe if she stopped doing that, things might go a little better with Shirley. Bell had hurt her sister, wounded her, and Shirley hadn't come home last night. Again.