The Rosewood Casket (35 page)

“Directly,” her grandmother replied. “You played out in the woods all day? All by yourself?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Come out to the garden with me a minute, Nora.”

“But it’s dinnertime.”

“We’ll pick a few more tomatoes. Won’t take long.” The old woman walked out to the garden, keeping her steps slow, and waiting for the reluctant child to catch up with her. She knelt by the tomato plants and began to examine the fruit, choosing the ripest ones. Nora stood up straight, holding out the skirt of her calico dress for her grandmother to fill with ripe tomatoes. They did not speak.

After a silence that seemed to stretch on forever, Grandma Flossie said, “You’ve seen the little girl out in the woods.”

It was not a question, just a statement of fact, made without any emotion, except perhaps a touch of disappointment. Nora hung her head, blushing at having been caught in a lie.

“And you’ve been playing with her out there all day? And other days, too?”

“Yes’m. We don’t do nothing bad or go near no snakes. We just hide’n seek, mostly.” She looked down at her dirt-streaked dress. “I try not to get dirty.”

Grandma Flossie put her hand on Nora’s shoulder. “Your clothes are not what troubles me, child,” she said. “It’s you I’m worried about. Yes, and that poor lost child out there on the mountain, too. You know she’s dead, don’t you, Nora?”

Nora’s jaw tightened, and she looked away. “She’s my friend.”

“I know that, child. I know she is. And I wish she had come to know you in—in better times, but things didn’t work out that way. Poor thing. It’s too late for her to have you for a friend, because—well, she’s lost right now, and bewildered. She’s wandering, looking for a haven. She doesn’t know it, Nora, but she has someplace to go, and you’re holding her back.”

“She’s not wandering,” said Nora. “She’s always out there in the woods. She just wants somebody to play with, ’cause she’s all by herself.”

“She needs to let go of this world, Nora, and go on to where she’s going, but she can’t do that if you keep her tied to this world with your love.”

“She’s very sad, Grandma. Bad things happened to her. She needs a friend.”

“No, Nora. She needs to go on.” The old woman put her hands on the child’s frail shoulders. “It’s dangerous for you to be with her. Now promise me you won’t go back to see her again.”

Nora’s mother called just then from the porch, shouting that supper was getting cold on the table. Nora flashed a grateful look at her and ran toward the house, the promise left unmade.

Perhaps it had been too late, though, even then.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

My footsteps have often been marked with blood.

—DANIEL BOONE

Joe LeDonne was crouching behind an oak tree at the edge of the clearing, out of the line of fire. He was willing himself to be calm. Hours of shock, stress, and the intensity of the hunt had made his breathing shallow and his muscles tense. Now, when overdrive was beginning to feel like a normal pace to him, he had to force himself to slow down.

Dovey Stallard was in the cave. Garrett Stargill had been right on his third guess about where his old playmate might go. Once the searchers knew where to look, they located broken twigs, and finally footprints near the bank of a small stream. The forces were now concentrated around the cave, quiet, out of sight, but ready, in case anyone or anything moved at the opening.

Now the game was to wait. To do that, he must not be in a hurry. Time was on their side. As much as Joe LeDonne had wanted a firefight, and although his nerves sang with rage, he knew that he must avoid a violent confrontation if he possibly could. That poor young woman in there didn’t need killing just because she was trying to defend her land, and he couldn’t risk the lives of the officers with him just to satisfy his own need for revenge. Spencer would want this incident concluded peacefully. Even if the sheriff died as the result of the wounds she had given him, he wouldn’t want her to die to avenge him.

LeDonne knew that the best chance of coming out of this confrontation without fatalities lay in doing nothing for as long as possible. When the crime was committed, the suspect was angry, acting on adrenaline and outrage, but that was hours ago. Now she would be tired, cold, and hungry. She was trapped in a dark cave with a gun, probably not many bullets, and unlimited silence in which to reflect over her actions.

LeDonne wanted her to have lots of time to think. He wanted her to ponder the possible outcomes of a firefight: her own death, a murder charge if she succeeded in killing a police officer. The more time Dovey Stallard was given to think, the less likely a gun battle became. He hoped she knew how many guns there were trained on the entrance to the cave. There was a sniper on the hill above the opening, too. He had told them not to shoot, but he knew that if Dovey Stallard fired first, nothing could stop these men from returning fire. He wished he had requested the SWAT team—the Special Operation Squad, they called them now—from Knoxville. But he hadn’t wanted to lose control of the situation. The SOS takes over, and you do it their way, or else they go home. LeDonne wanted the decisions to be his. Spencer Arrowood would hold him accountable for whatever happened on the mountain, and he wanted to be able to say that he had done all he could.

He motioned for one of the deputies to come forward. “Did you check on the possibility of getting the father up here?” he asked.

“We sent Stansberry to the minister’s house to ask. The word is that he’s in a bad way—sedated—his only daughter and all. The local doctor forbids him to come out here.”

“It might save that woman’s life,” said LeDonne. “Somebody needs to talk to her now. Somebody who won’t make her feel threatened.”

The deputy thought it over. “What about Stargill? The neighbor who led us here.”

“I’m going to try to talk to her first. If she starts shooting, it might as well be me she’s aiming at. Then I guess we could try Mr. Stargill, but in case that doesn’t work, has anybody got a percussion grenade?”

“There’s a kid in there, though, right?”

“I’ll try to defuse this situation without hurting either of them, but if it doesn’t work, we’re going to use the grenade. The kid might lose an eardrum, but at least she’ll be alive. Understood?”

The officer shrugged. “It’s your show, Mr. LeDonne.”

“Right. Anybody got a can of soda? I’ll take a canteen of water if I have to, but Coke is friendlier.” LeDonne figured he needed all the help he could get. People just naturally trusted Spencer Arrowood, but there was a distance, a coolness in Joe LeDonne that made people wary of him. He waited while the other deputy went off in search of a soft drink, turning over the phrases in his mind. He must be reassuring, but not so upbeat that she’d think he was lying. And he must be careful, because when he approached her to negotiate, she could blow him away in a heartbeat.

The deputy returned, holding out a warm, dented can of Mountain Dew. “This is all I could find,” he said. “It’ll probably explode when she opens it, fizz all over the place.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said LeDonne. “It’s a peace offering. If she takes it I’ll warn her that it’s going to bubble over when she opens it. That might help, too.” He took the soft drink can, and began to edge toward the base of the hillside. “Cover me. Don’t shoot unless you have to.”

LeDonne took a deep breath, and stepped forward. “Dovey!” he called out.
Use her first name. Try to make her forget that you’re The Law.
LeDonne had taken a course in SWAT team negotiation, but even the instructor agreed that he didn’t have the knack for it. He had to try now, though. “We know where you are, Dovey. You’re hiding out in the cave, and I need to talk to you. It’s not a trick. I’m not coming after you. I just want to talk. To see if you and I between us can stop this thing.”

He waited, shivering in the wind that seemed to blow colder now that he was out of the trees. Or perhaps it was the ice water in the pit of his stomach that chilled him. He was looking into darkness. He could be dead in seconds. All was silent.

“Dovey, are you all right? I know you’ve been in these woods all day, and you’re probably hungry and thirsty.” A pause. “I know I am. Anyhow, I brought you a can of Mountain Dew. It’s kind of shaken up from being hauled around half the night, but I’m going to send it in there to you anyhow. I’m going to roll it. See? I’m putting it on the ground and I’m going to roll it toward the entrance. I don’t know how good my aim is in the dark.”

“You throw anything this way, and I’ll blow your head off.” Her voice was quiet and even, not shrill. Maybe that was good. She wasn’t going to get hysterical and shoot him in a panic, but she didn’t sound like someone who could be easily persuaded, either. And at least he had her talking. That was a start.

He held up his hands, palms out. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. It really is a Mountain Dew, Dovey, and if you don’t want to drink it, maybe the little girl wants some. Can I talk to her?”

Another long silence. Finally she said, “I let her go. And I don’t want your damned soda.”

LeDonne tried to sound cheerful. “Then I sure do,” he said. He held the can away from his body, and popped the metal tab on the lid. A jet of yellow liquid shot into the air, and froth ran down the sides of the can. “Hardly worth it, was it?” he said loudly, taking a swig. “Not enough left to wet my whistle.”

He hoped that she would laugh at his discomfort, but there was no response.
You had her
, he told himself.
Get her back.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ll talk seriously to you now. You’ve let the little girl”—
Don’t say hostage
—“little Kayla go. That’s good. That’s very much in your favor.” Something else occurred to him. “Where is she, Dovey? I’ve got people all over the place out here, and we haven’t seen her. Is she wandering around the woods all by herself?”

“Why don’t you send your people out looking for her while we talk?” She sounded amused.

He clenched his teeth.
Stay calm for now. The child may still be inside the cave.
He took a deep breath, and tried to sound encouraging. “I sure am glad you let her go, Dovey. Now there’s somebody else you need to think about. Your daddy is worried about you. He’s about collapsed and needing a doctor, fretting about all that happened today. Don’t make it any worse on him, Dovey. He’s an old man. If you were to get yourself hurt, I reckon it would just about kill him.”

“He’s used to it. He lost his son. That was the government’s fault, too.”

Her brother had been killed in Vietnam. He remembered hearing that somewhere.
Use it.
“I was in Vietnam, too, Dovey,” LeDonne called out. “And I didn’t like it when I came home, and people called me a bad guy. I’ll bet your brother wouldn’t have liked it, either. Don’t make me a bad guy tonight, Dovey. I’m trying my level best to help you.”

A sound. Perhaps a snort of disbelief.
Keep talking.

“The sheriff is going to be all right, Dovey. They got him to the hospital in time, and he made it through surgery. So listen up: you haven’t done anything yet that we can’t put right. Believe me. I know about the eviction business. I know you were upset. I can’t say I blame you for it, either. And you reacted in anger—not premeditated. We’re talking simple assault here, Dovey. And no permanent injury inflicted. The sheriff isn’t paralyzed. He didn’t lose a kidney, or anything. He just took a hit in the side. No big deal.” He hoped he sounded convincing, and that none of the listening officers would chime in. One snicker could stop the dialogue forever.

“Dovey, you say the word, and I’ll get a bail bondsman out here right now. Let you talk to him. And I will personally talk the judge into giving you an affordable bail. You can be out tonight. Go see your daddy.”

“You’re going to let me go home, huh?” He heard the mockery in her voice. “Except that I haven’t got a home, remember?”

He lost his patience then. He could hear the edge in his voice. “I can’t fix everything, dammit!” he said. “I can keep you from getting killed out here. And I can arrange for your punishment for shooting a peace officer to be less severe, if you’ll cooperate and quit this grandstanding. Give yourself up. Then maybe you can address your grievances. You can’t do it from the penitentiary, and you damn sure can’t do it
dead.
”

After nearly a minute of silence, broken only by the rustle of leaves as his men angled for position, LeDonne called out, “Come on, Dovey! What’s it going to be? You have no food or water. You aren’t going anywhere. Make it easy on us, and come out now. These good people out here want to go home.”

He waited again: three, four, five of the longest minutes in his life. He heard no sounds from the cave, and nothing moved. LeDonne turned back toward the trees, wondering if his failure was a personal one, or if nobody could have talked her out of there, not even Spencer Arrowood.

*   *   *

Clayt was carrying Kayla on his shoulders. She was so tired from her ordeal that she was out on her feet. He wanted to run, but she wasn’t up to it. He had got Kayla safely away from the cave. His plan now was to get her back to the farm and to her mother as quickly as possible and then to come back. He had to get Dovey out of that cave before the trackers found her. If it hadn’t been for Kayla, he would have stayed. He would have tried his best to help her escape, if that’s what she wanted. He didn’t think he could stand to lose the land and Dovey, too.

The moon was high now, and he could pick his way along an overgrown trail. He had left the flashlight with Dovey. Maybe it was safer to travel without it. He knew this path by heart; as children, the Stargills and the Stallards had used it when they went to play in the woods. He remembered it well, but still he had to go slowly. Fallen tree limbs from last winter’s ice storms might block the path in some places.

He hoped for Kayla’s sake that if anyone saw him, they wouldn’t mistake him for Dovey. He had to get the child home safely.

He thought she must have fallen asleep. She had been groggy from exhaustion when he found her, and she had not spoken now for several minutes. Her body lolled against his neck, warm and nearly weightless. He was glad that she’d gone to sleep. The sound of their voices might attract the attention of the searchers. Silence was better. He wished he could make less noise when he walked, but the burden of Kayla made it difficult for him to tread carefully through the leaves.