“Hello!” She reassured Le Pouf with a gentle rub on the withers. “Hello!” she called again. Rachel waited below a hollowed-out tree. The old locust was dead from within. A rotted branch hung over her head, like a benediction.
Dave turned and marched back up the dry creek. “Slivovitz smells something. Hold him while I check it out.” He leapt off his horse, handed her the reins and kissed her, then headed down the bank, scattering last fall’s rotting acorns.
Rachel dismounted and stood between the two grays, tickling their noses to keep them entertained. The last thing she needed was to be squashed between two irate stallions on a trail only wide enough for one. When a brown blaze, probably a sick buck, had darted by, filthy with mud, putrid with infection, she flinched.
On any other day in her life, she might have liked this spot. Found the white oak trees reaching upward peaceful, chapel-like, and meditative.
Her stomach growled. All she’d had to eat today were Oreos, mini Mr. Goodbars, and coffee.
If only she had the sensitivity of a horse in combination with her brainpower—that would help in their all-out effort to catch a killer. Horses could feel the tremors on the surface of the earth created by the tread of animals or man. Vibrations were transmitted through hooves, the soft parts of their feet, up their legs and into the large sound boxes in their skulls. The ears of Le Pouf and Slivovitz were now swiveling in every direction. Detecting vibrations denied to Rachel’s ears, but deep in her bones, she felt their coursing rhythm.
“Rachel,” Dave called. He sounded far away. “I need you. Quick!” If only she had the sensitivity of a horse.
“Rachel!” He called again. “Come here.”
She snapped out of her revelry. Heart beating loudly, she led the horses over the bank and down into the dry creek bed as quickly as she could. She first saw Dave’s back to her, standing motionless. Then, George Creed, on his knees in the dry riverbed, striped by shadow.
“I’m shot,” said Creed, his face a sickly yellow, his wide-brimmed leather hat lying on a rock beside him, discarded rifle on top of it. He wore jeans, a flannel shirt, and a plaid wool jacket. Dave was standing above him, stunned, shading his eyes with a hand.
Shot, thought Rachel. Creed’s face reflected relief at seeing a doctor, but also a curious dispassion. Her head ached, the sudden brightness of the open sky over the creek bed made her eyes burn. Her face prickled with sweat. Her stomach churned with the hollowness of hunger she often confused with dread. Plus, she had cramps. And Dave was being an idiot, she thought, looming over Creed as if there weren’t probably a killer still in the woods drawing a bead on his head.
“I think I shot myself.” Creed tried to grin. He pressed both hands to his side. Blood oozed between the fingers.
Rachel felt shame and relief—mostly relief. She was dazed, as if she’d been punched in the stomach. That must be why she was so slow to lend a hand. She was the doctor, but it was Dave who squatted to support the swaying Creed with an arm around his shoulder. With his free hand he opened Creed’s shirt.
Rachel steadied her gaze and bent to examine the long shallow laceration that raked the man’s rib. She flexed her fingers to restore blood flow to the tips. The wound was bloody but not serious.
“I shot myself,” he repeated, wonderingly.
“We thought we heard a shots,” said Rachel.
“Jesus Christ,” said Dave.
Maybe Creed was delusional. Maybe he only thought he’d shot himself, but instead, had only cut his side on a tree limb. Felled maples bisected the straight path of the riverbed. Boughs of pitch pine crossed like spilled fireplace matchsticks. Rachel imagined them swept into hex signs by contrary winds.
“I’ll need to position you better to get a good look,” she told him. “Let’s get you back and clean this up.” The throbbing glare baked her eyes, but when she glanced up, squinting, heavy clouds were approaching like a tide coming in.
“Hmm. Wound needs cleaning and suturing.” She tensed, leaning forward, against gravity. “Let’s get you back to the house.”
Dave peeled off his sweater and undershirt, then tore the thin ribbed tee into long strips and wrapped them around Creed’s rib cage. “All right, Little Big Man,” said Dave. “Lie back and rest.”
“I’m all right,” said Creed, between gulps of air. He waited on his knees, groaning, while Dave secured the edges of the dressing with square knots.
“This is more serious than you think, George. You sure you shot yourself?” Rachel tested her patient’s reflexes, his corneal and gag responses, then snapped her fingers in front of his eyes.
“Why do you believe you did it?”
“Oh, I did it,” said Creed.
“What’s your birth date?”
“May 25, 1969.”
“Today’s date?” she fired back.
“April…um.”
“The year, George.”
“2015”
“Who’s president?”
“Obama,” said George. “Okay, I passed. I’m telling you, I did it myself.”
“Goddamn it!” said Rachel. “Not with a rifle. Impossible.”
He smiled and waved off her hand. “On my way to your house…to help out,” said Creed. “Check the empties.”
Dave backed away from his wife and her patient and picked up the gun that lay across the leather hat and a shiny brass shell peeking from a mound of pine shats.
“It’s been fired.” Dave’s voice held the same relief Rachel felt. Then his eyes narrowed. “But how the hell did you shoot yourself with your own damn rifle, George?”
“Aiming at something else,” Creed said. “Must’ve ricocheted. I know—it doesn’t seem possible. No boulders out here, only trees and brush. Besides, I’m sure I hit the damn thing. It was charging straight at me trying to bite me or stomp me, and I fired point blank.”
A chill penetrated Rachel’s neck, then raced to the base of her spine. For a vertiginous moment, she felt the nausea of a sudden descent on a roller coaster.
“It looked like that dead horse you buried a couple years ago.” Creed’s face was dark, two days of shadow growing into a salt and pepper beard. He let out a chuckle—the kind teenage boys make when they do Beavis and Butthead imitations. “You know—Aristino? Maybe the bullet ricocheted from its heart.”
“You’re delirious.” His commentary seemed to confirm the last several hours had been the worst in her life. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I guess I do,” said Creed, tiny hands fisting up. “Maybe not its heart, but some bone mighty close to it. That, or I missed.”
“Well, you obviously missed.” Patients often lied to save face. “That just doesn’t happen,” she said.
“Could’a,” said Creed.
“Don’t talk to me like that,” Rachel said. “Not even as a joke.”
“It’s not a joke.”
“Shut up,” Rachel said, before she could stop herself. She backed away from Creed as he rose to his feet, blood still oozing between the fingers pressed to his side. He let go with one hand, pointed at the gun, then waved once, signaling for Dave to give the rifle back. Dave handed it to him, stock first.
“Guess I really pissed you off. Sorry.” She stared back with empty eyes, trying to fit a thin veneer of glacial blandness over her anger. “Actually, I’m just as confused as you are.”
“Why don’t you get on my horse and I’ll lead you back,” said Dave.
“I can walk.” Creed staggered up the creek bed. “We’d better get to the house before I bleed to death.”
All five foot two inches of George Creed lay stretched out on a sheet on the dining room table with inches to spare. He wore hunting boots about size eight—boys. Above him, the electrical entrails that had fallen out of the gaping hole where the chandelier hung hours before were wound and secured with a rubber bungee cord.
“What happened?” he said. “Looks like that big old dinosaur was too much for the plaster.”
“All the fixtures were original. No cracks in the ceiling. No reason for it to fall,” said Dave, shaking his head. “But it did. Sheriff Wise has been up there to measure it. The plaster around it is completely intact.” Dave was emptying his pockets out on a dining room chair: wallet, knife, Leatherman tool, mini-Mag flashlight, lighter, two peppermints. He flipped the switch of his flashlight on and off to see if it was in working order. “It’s about the same size as the hole in Mr. Ewell’s floor.”
“Interesting,” said Creed. “The size of a man?”
Rachel cocked her head and looked into Creed’s eyes. He was often at the question-asking side of a dialogue. The “spy academy” type, minus the phone in the shoe and the bullet-proof tuxedo.
Dave left. The oak floors creaked under his brisk steps.
“Let’s see what we have here.” Rachel pulled open the flap from a new box of rubber gloves. She slid a floor lamp next to Creed, switched it on and aimed its beam at the wound. Dave returned, having changed into Levi’s, stuffing equipment back into his pockets. Rachel pulled on a pair of rubber gloves with a snap and unbuttoned Creed’s shirt.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s bleeding.” She paused for effect. “A lot. But there’s not much to it.”
She looked at his hands. Small, narrow palms. Long, dainty fingers. The hands of a dancer, or musician. The fingers of a girl. Uncalloused and smooth.
“I’ll just take a nap while you do your stitching, Dr. Shelton.” Creed closed his eyes. “No need for the hospital.”
“No need,” agreed Rachel. A smile twitched one corner of her mouth. She couldn’t take Creed to the hospital. She was indispensable at home. So was Dave. And it's better to have Sheriff Wise and his deputies on site.
“We could call an ambulance,” Rachel said. She knew well enough Creed wouldn’t set foot in a hospital unless shipped there unconscious. A middle-aged tough guy—overjoyed to be the only neighbor that hadn’t fled Zebulon. He liked to carry weapons and, presumably, to use them. He also liked solitude, she was sure.
Creed passed himself off as a farmer when it suited him, and as a cartographer when it didn’t. Until the murders, he’d been the town’s biggest mystery. His wife was a scion of a Zebulon society family—something of a joke in itself—but Creed himself was unfathomable. A quiet man who took innumerable business trips. Some speculated that he drew salary from the CIA. He was so handy with rifles, handguns, even crossbows.
“Undo that.” She pointed to his large belt buckle. “Or I can unhook it.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and felt for the plate of jeweler’s bronze, then slid the prong out of the hole with a groan. Rachel wondered what the buckle set was hiding—perhaps a .22 short mini-revolver? A fastener peeked from the inside of a belt loop, tucked behind his jeans. She studied the waist of his pants, thinking everything he wore was some sort of contraption for carrying tools—or weapons. His camera vest, fanny pack, odd straps on his clothes. Even pockets seemed to possess too much carrying capacity for such a small person. She suspected the object clipped onto the inside of his jeans held a knife-sheath. She, too, was convinced Creed was a spy.
“Where’s your wife?” The man on the table held his breath while she injected lidocaine into the skin around the gash on his bottom rib, just above the liver. She squirted some straight out of the needle onto the ragged flesh.
“Libba’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, eyes still closed. She popped a surgical sponge out of its plastic sleeve, looked at the ill-timed grandfather clock in the foyer and shook her head, then started to prep the wound. She was too busy now to think about the horse. Creed winced, then relaxed and resumed the slow, deep breathing of a martial artist.
Zack and Leo walked into the dining room—Zack only to walk right out again. Rachel heard the rusty hinge of the door on the landing, then the latch snapped. The floor creaked under the settee as Leo sat down.
“Can I sew it up?” Leo Said.
“Back up to your room,” Dave said. “You’ll get in the way.”
“I’ll be quiet.” He stood still as a post, blond hair freshly combed, nine-year-old face assuming a studied calm. “Can’t I just watch? What’s that white stuff?” He pointed at the shiny gristle, the torn meat casting a green and pink rainbow sheen like silverside roast beef.
“You have math homework,” Dave said. “Go upstairs and do it. And tell Zack to get off the sofa on the landing. He can go to his own bed to take a nap.”
Leo said nothing, only stared at his father for a moment, folding his fingers into tight fists. Then he left the room.
• • • •
Dave muttered to himself, mood darkening. Rain streaked the windows. Now he had a bleeding man on his dining room table. Besides that, he had two children, one of them fathered by someone else, both poised for rebellion. And on the worst day of his life. He believed Creed’s story about seeing a horse and shooting it, even if Rachel didn’t. He also believed that a horse smelling of rot had galloped by Le Pouf and Slivovitz, perhaps too quickly to be seen. The more he thought about it, the more scared he felt.
The bullet could’ve bounced off a breastbone. He paced between the dining room and the foyer. Or passed through the horse and hit a rock or piece of metal in the creek bed.
“I need your help, Dave.” Rachel hovered over Creed. “Get me the trash can, and something empty, like a bottle.”
She continued sewing, making perfect little knots all lined up like a narrow blue caterpillar. Then smeared antibiotic cream on the mended gash and bandaged the sutures with a gauze pad dressing.
Dave admired her dexterity, her intensity. Her face framed by waves of dark auburn was like that of a pre-Raphaelite heroine, Beata or Ophelia, or one of the three fates, made anachronistic by the wielding of her needle driver and suture scissors. He wanted to paint her reclining in the claw-footed bathtub, surrounded by floating rose petals, under-lit by candles. Would he ever get to do so? Tomorrow. Maybe.
From the bed, Beatricia telephoned her old friend, Gladys Quinn, who lived in the neighboring town of Hope.
“Hi, Gladys, darling.” She cleared her throat. “Beatricia here.”
“Bea!” said Gladys, ebullient and charming as usual. A Liverpudlian by birth, she’d studied history at Oxford and through many years of schooling had acquired the Queen’s English. Her master’s thesis had been on the bubonic plague. “To what do I owe this wondrous occasion? How long has it been, Bea?”
“Two years. The last time we played cards was after the garden tour.” Beatricia coughed again. “Gladys, darling, I’ve called to make an amends.”
“Not necessary, my dear Bea.”
Maybe Gladys had forgotten because the players had been in such a pleasant haze of inebriation.
“Gladys, I cheated at bridge the last time we played, and I’m sorry. Just wanted you to know. In fact, I’ve often cheated. More often than not. Depending on the game. And the competition.”
“Well, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“You’ve always been stiff competition, Gladys.” Beatricia heard ice cubes dropping into a glass in the background. “Still seeing the Reverend Trask?”
“Yes, Bea. Tango lessons on Friday nights. His day off from the rectory.”
“He was always so dreamy. So tranquil and quietly masculine.”
Gladys’ voice faded to a whisper. “I heard Zebulon’s deserted because of the killer. That everyone else is gone. Is it true, Bea?”
“The mayor headed north this morning in a Winnebago.”
“It all sounds frightful!” Gladys sneezed a tiny lady-like snort, like a Bijon-Frisé. “I’ve heard there’re cold spots all through the town. That the place is severely haunted.”
“Nonsense.” Beatricia shuddered, but felt a spark of excitement. “You know, Gladys, truth is I’ve been in bed with killers for almost a year now. Heart attacks, now neuropathy. So death is less than a stranger. Something of a friend. I’m not afraid of this
Zebulon menace.” Beatricia rather welcomed it. Here, at last, was something she could combat without medicines or scalpels.
“You’ve always been so thick-skinned, Bea.” Gladys slurped her drink through a straw. “I’ve heard it’s a meticulous killer. Murdering in strange ways, obsessive about the way it rearranges furniture in the houses of the dead. I bet the authorities know something. I mean, it’s a cover-up, isn’t it?”
“I think it’s looking for something. And only dangerous if you try to stop it. But don’t worry. I’m a true believer. Nothing can really happen to me.”
Gladys sighed. Slurped again. “I suppose you’re right.”
There was no possibility this entity was fully human. She already knew about the cold spots rumored to be following her friend, Phil Wise. News of apparitions had not been needed. Spirits wandered the halls of both the houses of the murder victims and the Sheltons’ house. Beatricia knew it, without being told, even if no one had yet seen them.
“Let’s get together soon for Mah Jong,” said Gladys.
“I’d say that’d be terrific.”
“I’ll ring next week. The Reverend Trask will be here soon.” Gladys tittered. “I’ve got to run along now, primp a bit. Best of luck, darling.”
“Bye.”
Apparitions were made possible by the animal magnetism of the living or the restless dead. It was such a cheery thought. When a human being expended energy in a sealed space, it condensed into an organized field that spirits from the other side could tap into and use to materialize themselves and/or animate matter.
“Power to the people,” Beatricia muttered. “Dead people, that is. Too bad some spirits misuse it.”
No ghost could exist among the living without using the force of thought or emotion of a person who had struggled when alive—or, so she theorized. But then, again, she could be wrong, which wouldn’t matter much. She’d find out the truth, sooner or later. After all, there wasn’t much time left. Still, she was curious, and the day would pass quicker if she roused from her bed and did a little work with the disembodied. She might be able to save the lives of those she loved. That settled the matter. She liked Dave well enough. Loved Rachel. And, though she’d spent very little time with her grandchildren, she wasn’t about to let them be destroyed by what would probably turn out to be a second-rate entity.
Passover Page 10
