The Blood Ballad (5 page)

My arms were flaying all about and everything was turning sort of white around the edges. About the third time she slammed me into the tree, my breath came back to me. Big gasps of air filled my lungs and for about twenty seconds I just drank in as much sweet air as I could get.

“Eleanore, stop!” I yelled finally. “Can we run? You can beat me up later.”

“I oughta—”

“Run, that's what you oughta do!”

I started running down toward the river, toward the railroad tracks, but Eleanore was not behind me. I turned and saw her messing with the tree. Somehow, her binoculars had gotten entangled in the branches, and she was determined not to leave them behind. “Eleanore!” She ignored me.

I ran back up the part of the hill I'd just descended. When I reached her, I yanked on her arm. “Let's go!”

“These binoculars cost me three hundred dollars. I am not leaving them!”

“You can get them tomorrow!” I said. A bullet whizzed by my ear. I broke out in a cold sweat. “Fine, I'm leaving you here!”

“Torie! Torie!” she exclaimed as I started running down the hill. But I couldn't leave her. As much as I should have left her, I just couldn't.

“I'll buy you a new pair!” I called up the hill.

“You promise?”

“Yes, God bless it. Now let's go!”

Finally, with the promise of new binoculars, she came bounding down the hill. We took off running through the dim light of dusk, dodging around trees, jumping over bushes, and sliding down rocks. Tree limbs smacked me in the face, and I had no idea where I was actually running to. I just knew that the river ran south and we were south of town. So all I had to do was follow the railroad tracks and the river north, and I'd end up in New Kassel within a mile or two. The thought of running a couple of miles at full speed was pretty daunting, considering I was fairly out of shape and didn't really run anywhere, ever.

Eleanore cried out from behind me. “I have to stop.” She gasped for breath, half-bent over, and clutched at her chest.

“Eleanore, we have to go.” I flipped open my cell phone and dialed Sheriff Mort Joachim.

She held her hand up. “Wait. I don't hear anybody anymore. Maybe they just thought I was a big old deer stuck up in the tree. Now that we're down here, they can see I'm not a deer anymore.”

I listened for a second. I heard nothing but the river and Eleanore's breathing.

“God help us all, Eleanore, if we give gun permits to idiots who think a deer can climb trees.”

“Whoever it was couldn't hit the broad side of a barn,” she said, laughing.

This was true. As the phone kept ringing, I glanced nervously around the woods. Stopping to call him any sooner would have been stupid. I was only worried about getting away from the bullets. Now that we appeared to be safe, I felt like I could stop long enough to talk on the phone.

“It's the only reason we're still alive.” She laughed harder now. I think she was hysterical.

A voice answered on the other end. “Mort,” I said.

“Torie?”

“Listen, Eleanore and I are about two miles south of town on the railroad tracks. Some hunters just tried to shoot us.”

“What?” he said. “That area is supposed to be cleared.”

“Yes, I know. Look, it was probably just some stupid kids who are new to this whole hunting thing, but I'd feel better if you sent somebody after us.”

“All right,” he said.

“We'll be on the tracks.”

“Okay, but if you hear any more shots, find a safe place and stay there.”

“Mort, there are no safe places!”

“All right, we're on our way.”

“Eleanore,” I said. “We should keep moving.”

“I can't run anymore,” she replied, still laughing. Pretty soon, she was in full-fledged, all-out, hysterical laughter. Tears ran down her face. I thought, Gee, if we
were
the intended target of those guns, with as much noise as she's making, they'll find us for sure.

“Eleanore.”

Her laughter came from the gut, and then she took a deep breath and whooped even louder with the laugh ending in a deep spasm. Finally, I just slapped her.

She stopped and stared at me. “You slapped me.”

“Yes. It was a matter of survival. Can we go now?”

“You
slapped
me!”

“I'm leaving, Eleanore. We don't have to run anymore. We can walk, but I'm walking up there where there's a little more cover. I don't like being in the open like this.”

“You don't think…” she said, rubbing her cheek where I'd smacked her.

“I don't know what to think, Eleanore, but I'm not taking any chances. Mort's on his way.”

I made my way up the hill a few yards and began walking in the same northerly direction, keeping the river to my right but making sure I was under the cover of bushes and trees at least. A road ran to my left way up on top of the ridge. Sometimes the road was a quarter of a mile away from the ridge, and other times it edged right up to where the cliff dropped off. A small picnic area at a scenic overlook was just above us now, and I thought about just climbing the hill straight up, but I doubted that Eleanore would make it. Not only that, I wasn't exactly sure how steep the incline was at the top, nor was I sure how secure those rocks were. All I'd need would be to grab hold of a loose rock and go tumbling down. Besides, Mort expected us to be on the tracks. No, I'd keep following the river until it leveled out with New Kassel or Mort intercepted us, whichever came first.

Eleanore's breathing came in ragged puffs now, and so I decided to stop. She was right about one thing: Whoever it was hadn't followed us. Maybe it was a bunch of hunters who had mistaken Eleanore for a deer. Darkness was just about completely on us now, and I didn't want to surprise any more hunters. I wanted to get back to civilization as quickly as I could, but Eleanore needed to catch her breath. Not that I wouldn't benefit from resting, too. My legs burned and my heart was still thumping harder than it ever had in my whole life.

“Let's stop for a moment,” I said.

She stopped and sat down on a rock. I heard something rustle in the bushes, and both of us screeched. It was a skunk. I could tell because the white stripe down its back was the only thing illuminated in the purple-gray of dusk. “Be very still,” I said. All we'd need would be to scare the skunk.

About that time, I saw headlights at the top of the ridge. Somebody had just pulled into the overlook. Maybe it was the sheriff, although I would have thought he'd just head to the train depot in New Kassel and then follow the tracks to meet with us, rather than descend down a two- or three-hundred-foot cliff.

“You think they can help us?” Eleanore said.

I glanced at the skunk and back to the ridge. “It can't be more than a mile to New Kassel, and Mort's on his way,” I said. “And I'm not going to scream for help with that skunk sitting right there.”

Just then, we heard a crash. I glanced up at the ridge in time to see something big come flying over the edge of the cliff. It crashed on the rocks above, scaring the hell out of the skunk, which sprayed Eleanore and me with all its might. But that was the least of our worries: Whatever had just been tossed over the edge was still coming down the hill—straight at us.

“Oh crap,” I said.

“Mother of God!” Eleanore cried. I pulled on her arm and she came right up off the rock. The thing was still crashing and clanking all the way down the hill, breaking tree limbs and sending rocks flying in all different directions. Finally, whatever it was hit the tree right above us and stopped.

Stinky as we were, Eleanore and I clutched each other, crying and gasping for air. Above us, precariously nestled in the tree, was a big chest or trunk of some sort. The car at the top of the ridge left. Eleanore and I looked at each other and back at the trunk.

“Torie,” she said, shaking. “I think I peed my pants.”

Then the lid on the trunk flew open and out popped a body, which landed at our feet. After my heart started beating again and I was finished screaming, yet again, I grabbed the flashlight that was clipped to Eleanore's belt and focused it on the body. Whoever he was, he was covered in blood.

Five

“Jesus, what stinks?” Mort said as he made his way toward us.

“What's the matter, Sheriff, you never smell a skunk before?” Of course Mort had smelled a skunk before. He was a regular Daniel Boone, at one with the wild. He spent the majority of his spare time at his cabin, holed up away from the real world. Shoot, he probably ate skunk on the weekends. I suppose it was just natural to comment on the odor.

I, for one, didn't think the stench was that bad, but Deputy Miller quickly assured me that I'd just gotten used to it. Guess that was a built-in defense mechanism so that I wouldn't gag all night.

“Are you guys all right?” Mort asked, flashing his light in our faces.

“No!” Eleanore cried. “We are not all right. First, first we get shot at, then I leave behind my perfectly good three-hundred-dollar binoculars, then we run for what seems like miles and miles, then we get sprayed by a skunk, and then somebody throws a dead body over the cliff at us!
Does it sound like we're all right?”

Mort and Deputy Miller stood very still. “What about a dead body?” Mort asked.

“Right there,” I said, and guided his flashlight to the dead man at our feet. “He was in that trunk. Somebody threw it and him off the cliff. We just happened to be here when he landed.”

“Oh … that's grand,” he said. “Miller, call this in. Get the CSU and the coroner out here.”

Just then, I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel and a voice in the distance. “Hey? You guys all right?”

It was Colin, my stepfather.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “You are not sheriff anymore. How come you just show up at all the crime scenes anyway?”

“Wait,” he said. “This is a crime scene? Did you guys get hurt?”

Even in the dark, I could see his concern. “No, we're fine, but he's not.”

Mort shined his flashlight so that Colin could see.

“Oh, wow,” he said. “And let me guess. You found the body?”

“Don't start, Colin. All right?” I said.

“She didn't find the body, Colin. It was thrown at us,” Eleanore said. “You wouldn't have believed how awful it was! I swear, if I hadn't been here…”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, I'm not so sure you would have made it down that hill alive without me.”

“Eleanore!”

“I was the driving force behind you, and you know it.”

“Yeah, because you were trying to catch up with me!”

“Can somebody cover up this body?” Mort said. “Jesus, you think you two could have some respect?”

“Of course, Sheriff,” Eleanore said and cast her eyes at me as though I'd started the whole thing.

“Your mother is never going to believe this,” Colin said.

“Yes she will. She'll believe it because … well, it's me,” I admitted.

“Gosh, you haven't found a body in awhile,” he said. “What's it been—who was the last one, Maddie?”

“Hey, she was alive. I haven't actually found a dead one in a few years now. And you can't count the one Rachel found!”

“I'm beginning to think you have some sort of corpse-detecting software built into your brain,” he said. “It allows you to zero in on dead bodies with virtually no effort.”

“My mother sent you, didn't she?”

“No,” he said. “Elmer and I were just north of town. We'd just seen a barn owl when I heard Deputy Swanson's radio squawk. Mort said that you two had been shot at. So, did the guy shoot at you before he launched himself off of the cliff?”

“No, that was somebody else,” I said.

“Ah,” he said. “But you're fine now?”

“I'm fine.”

“Well, I'm not,” Eleanore said. “Torie, you're cursed.”

Colin laughed and said, “I've been trying to get people to believe that for years.”

“Fine, laugh all you want,” I said. “But you know, there is a dead person lying here. Could we have some respect?”

“I could have sworn I just said that,” Mort said. “Colin, I think maybe you should head back to whatever it was you were doing.”

It was suddenly very quiet on the riverbank. Had Mort just kicked Colin off his crime scene? After a moment, Colin cleared his throat. “Oh, sure, Sheriff,” he said. “Let me know if I can be of any assistance.”

Colin turned to leave, and I really wanted to stick my tongue out at him, but I refrained.

“So, what did the car look like? Could you tell?” Mort asked.

“No,” I said. “It was nearly dark. I just saw the headlights and that was it.”

“Well, after you clean up, I want you to come down to the station and look at some photographs of headlights. People tend to think they're all the same, but they're not. Maybe you could at least narrow that down for us.”

“Well, okay,” I said. Although I doubted it seriously. I hadn't been paying that much attention to the car, and it had been pretty far away.

“So, where did the shots come from?” he asked.

“They came from the south.” I pointed downriver, even though he couldn't see my hand in the blackness.

“You think you can show me where you guys were when it happened?”

“Not in the dark. If we come back tomorrow, yes.”

“All right,” he said. He shone his light on the dead man's face one last time. “Do you know him?”

“It's hard to tell,” I said. “He's sort of bloody.”

“Take a good look,” he said.

I looked closer but couldn't really see any facial features. All I could see was the blood, and the cuts and the bruising. My stomach lurched and I swallowed quickly. This man had been beaten before he was sent over the cliff. All I could definitely tell was that he was older. Over sixty for sure.