I turned and strode toward the door.
“You have a nice day, ma'am.”
I heard the flip of a magazine page, the jangle of a bracelet.
Gunning the engine, I raced from the lot, sped up the highway, and pulled onto the shoulder fifty yards north. If I knew human nature, curiosity would drive Stover to Primrose's room. And he would go there immediately.
Hurriedly locking the car, I sprinted back to the Riverbank turnoff and cut into the woods. Then I picked my way forward, paralleling the gravel road, until I had a clear view of the motel.
My intuition was right on. Ralph was just arriving at unit four. He checked to his left, then his right, unlocked the door, and slipped inside.
Minutes passed. Five. Ten. My breathing slowed to normal. The sky darkened and the wind picked up. Overhead, pines arched and dipped, like ballerinas doing arm positions sur les pointes.
I thought about Primrose. Though we'd known each other for years, I knew very little about the woman. She had married, divorced, had a son somewhere. Beyond that, her life was a blank. Why was that? Had she been unwilling to share, or had I never bothered to ask? Had I treated Primrose like one of the many who pass time with us, delivering our mail, typing our reports, cleaning our houses, while we pursue our own interests, oblivious to theirs?
Perhaps. But I knew Primrose Hobbs well enough to be certain of one thing: She would never willingly leave a job unfinished.
I waited. Lightning streaked from an eggplant cloud, illuminating its interior like a million-watt artery. Thunder rumbled. The storm was not far off.
Finally, Stover emerged, pulled the door shut and jiggled the knob, then hurried up the sidewalk. When he was safely inside the office, I began circling, keeping my distance and using the trees for cover. The back of the inn stretched ahead of me on one side, the river on the other, trees between them. I moved through the trees to a point I estimated was opposite unit four, then paused to listen.
Water boiling over rocks. Boughs swishing in the wind. A train whistle. Valves slamming inside my chest. Thunder, louder now. Quicker.
I crept to the edge of the tree line and peeked out.
A row of wooden porches projected from the back of the motel, each with a black wrought-iron numeral nailed to its railing. My instincts had been good again. Only five yards of grass separated me from unit four.
I took a deep breath, darted across the gap, and double-stepped the four risers. Dashing across the porch, I reached out and yanked the screen door. It opened with a grating squeak. The wind had suddenly calmed, and the sound seemed to shatter the heavy air. I froze.
Stillness.
Sliding between the screen and inner door, I leaned close and peered through the glass. Green-and-white gingham blocked my view. I tried the knob. No go.
I eased the screen door closed, moved to the window, and tried again. More gingham.
Noticing a gap where the lower border met the sill, I placed my palms on the window frame and pushed up. Tiny white flakes fluttered down around my fingers.
I pushed again, and the window jogged upward an inch. Again I froze. In my mind I heard an alarm, saw Ralph burst from the office with a Smith & Wesson.
Turning palms up, I wriggled my fingers into the gap.
What I was doing was illegal. I knew that. Breaking into Primrose's room was precisely the wrong move given my present situation. But I needed to assure myself that she was all right. Later, if it turned out that she wasn't, I needed to know that I had done what I could to help her.
And, to be honest, I needed to do this for myself. I had to find out what had happened to that foot. I had to track Primrose down and show that panel of men that they were wrong.
I spread my feet and pushed. The window opened another inch.
I heard the first patta-patta-pat as fat drops slapped the floorboards. Dime-sized blotches multiplied and merged around my boots.
I manipulated the window another two inches.
It was then that the storm broke. Lightning streaked, thunder cracked, and rain fell in torrents, turning the porch into a shimmering rink.
I abandoned the window and pressed my body to the wall, hoping for protection from the overhang. Within seconds water soaked my hair and dripped from my ears and nose. My clothes molded to me like papier-mâché on a wire frame.
Millions of drops cascaded off the roof and the porch. They bit into the lawn, met up, and coursed in channels between the blades of grass. They formed a river in the gutter above my head. Wind slapped leaves against the wall and my legs, sent others twirling across the ground. It carried the scent of wet earth and wood, of numberless creatures hunkered into burrows and nests.
Shivering, I waited it out, my back against the stucco, hands under armpits. I watched drops bead a spiderweb, build, then bow the fibers. Its maker watched too, a small brown bundle on an outer filament.
Islands were born. Continental plates shifted. A score of species disappeared from the planet forever.
Suddenly my cell phone shrilled, the sound so unexpected I almost jumped from the porch.
I clicked on.
“No comment!” I shrieked, expecting another reporter.
Lightning shot straight to the treetops. Thunder snapped.
“Where the hell are you?” said Lucy Crowe.
“The storm came up quickly.”
“You're outside?”
“Are you back in Bryson City?”
“I'm still out at Fontana Lake. Do you want to ring me when you've gotten inside?”
“That could be a while.” I had no intention of telling her why.
Crowe spoke to someone else, came back on the line.
“Afraid I've got more bad news for you.”
I heard voices in the background, then the crackle of a police radio.
“Looks like we've found Primrose Hobbs.”
WHILE I WAS MEETING WITH OUR ESTEEMED LIEUTENANT GOVERnor and friends, the owners of a marina were finding a body.
As was their custom, Glenn and Irene Boynton rose at dawn and dealt with the morning rush, renting equipment, selling bait, filling coolers with ice, sandwiches, and canned drinks. When Irene went to check on a bass boat returned late the previous day, an odd rippling drew her to the end of the dock. Peering into the water, the woman was terrified to see two lidless eyes staring back.
Following Crowe's directions, I found Fontana Lake, then the narrow dirt track leading to the marina. The rain had tapered off, though the leaves overhead were still dripping. I wound through puddles toward the lake, my tires throwing up a spray of mud and water.
As the marina came into view, I saw a wrecker, an ambulance, and a pair of police cruisers bathing a parking area in oscillating red, blue, and yellow light. The marina stretched along the shore on the lot's far side. It consisted of a dilapidated rental office–gas station–general store, with narrow wooden piers jutting into the water at both ends. A wind sock fluttered from a corner of the building, its bright colors jauntily snapping in the breeze, jarringly at odds with the grim scene on the ground below.
A deputy was interviewing a couple in jean shorts and windbreakers on the southernmost pier. Their bodies were tense, their faces the color of pale putty.
Crowe stood on the office steps talking to Tommy Albright, a hospital pathologist who occasionally did autopsies for the medical examiner. Albright was wrinkled and scrawny, with sparse white hair combed straight across his crown. He'd been making Y-incisions since the Precambrian, but I'd never worked with him.
Albright watched me approach then held out a hand.
We shook. I nodded to Crowe.
“I understand you knew the victim.”
Albright tipped his head in the direction of the ambulance. The doors stood open, revealing a shiny white pouch lying on a collapsible gurney. Bulges told me the body bag was already occupied.
“We pulled her out just before the storm broke. Are you willing to try a quick visual?”
“Yes.”
<
br /> No! I didn't want to do this. Didn't want to be here. Didn't want to identify Primrose Hobbs's lifeless body.
We walked to the ambulance and climbed in back. Even with the doors open the smell was noticeable. I swallowed hard.
Albright unzipped the bag and the odor rolled over us, a nauseating cocktail of stagnant mud, seaweed, lake creatures, and putrefying tissue.
“I'd guess she was in the water two or three days. She's not scavenged too badly.”
Holding my breath, I looked into the bag.
It was Primrose Hobbs, but it wasn't. Her face was bloated, her lips swollen like those of a tropical fish in an aquarium. The dark skin had sloughed in patches, revealing the pale underside of her epidermis, and giving her body a mottled appearance. Fish or eels had devoured her eyelids, and nibbled her forehead, cheeks, and nose.
“Won't be too much problem with cause,” said Albright. “Course, Tyrell will want a full autopsy.”
Primrose's wrists were wrapped with electrical tape, and I could see a thin wire embedded in her neck.
I tasted bile, swallowed hard.
“Garroted?”
He nodded. “Bastard wrapped the line around her throat, then tightened it in back with some kind of tool. Very effective in cutting off the windpipe.”
I placed a hand over my nose and mouth and leaned in. Jagged lines scored the flesh on one side of Primrose's neck, scratched by her nails as she clawed for life with her bound hands.
“It's her,” I said, lunging from the ambulance. I needed air. Miles and oceans of fresh air.
Hurrying to the far end of the unoccupied pier, I stood a moment, arms wrapped around my middle. A boat whined in the distance, grew loud, receded. Waves lapped below my feet. Frogs croaked from the weeds lining the shore. Life continued, oblivious to the death of one of its creatures.
I thought about Primrose, pictured her hobbling out to our final meeting in the morgue parking lot. A sixty-two-year-old black woman with a nursing degree, a weight problem, proficiency at cards, and a fondness for rhubarb crumble. There. I did know something about my friend.
My chest gave a series of heaves.
Steady.
I pulled a ragged breath.
Think.
What could Primrose have done, known, or seen that could have brought such violence down on her? Was she killed because of her involvement with me?
Another tremor. I gulped air.
Or was I magnifying my own role? Was her death random? We Americans are the world's leading producers of homicide. Was Primrose Hobbs bound and strangled for nothing more than her car? That made no sense. Not the garroting and the duct tape. This was a planned murder and she was the intended victim. But why?
Hearing doors slam, I turned. The attendants were climbing into the front of the ambulance. Seconds later, the engine revved, and the vehicle crawled up the dirt road.
Good-bye, old friend. If I brought you to this, please, please, forgive me. My lower lip trembled, and I bit down hard.
You will not cry. But why not? Why hold back tears of mourning for a good and gentle person?
I looked out across the lake. The sky was clearing, and the pines on the far shore stood out blue-black against the first pink rays of dusk. I recalled something else.
Primrose Hobbs loved sunsets. I gazed at the sunset and wept until I felt angry. Beyond angry. I felt a hot, red rage burning inside me.
Bridle it, Brennan. Use it.
Vowing to find answers, I drew a deep breath and walked up the pier to rejoin Crowe and Albright.
“What did she drive?” I asked.
Crowe consulted a spiral pad.
“Blue Honda Civic. Ninety-four. North Carolina plates.”
“It's not parked at the Riverbank Inn.”
Crowe looked at me strangely.
“Car could be on its way to Saudi Arabia by now,” said Albright.
“I told you that the victim was helping me with my investigation.”
“I'll want to talk to you about that.” Crowe.
“Find anything here?” I asked.
“We're still looking.”
“Tire tracks? Footprints?” I knew it was stupid as soon as I said it. The rain would have obliterated such impressions.
Crowe shook her head.
I scanned the pickups and SUVs left behind by fishermen and pleasure boaters. Two sixteen-foot aluminum outboards bobbed in their slips.
“Any permanent tie-ups at the marina?”
“It's strictly a rental business.”
“That means a lot of people coming and going every day. Pretty busy spot for a body dump.”
“Rentals are due back by eight P.M. Apparently things quiet down after that.”
I indicated the couple with the putty faces. They were alone on the dock now, hands in their pockets, unsure what they were supposed to do next.
“Are those the owners?”
“Glenn and Irene Boynton. They say they're here every night until eleven, return around six in the morning. They live up the road.”
Crowe indicated the dirt track.
“They claim to notice cars at night. Worry about kids messing with their boats. Neither one heard or saw a thing over the past three days. For what that's worth. A perp wouldn't exactly advertise that he was using your dock to off-load a corpse.”
The celery eyes appraised the scene, came back to me.
“But you're right. This would be an odd choice. There's a small road kisses the shore about a half mile up from here. We're thinking that was the toss-in point.”
“Two, three days seems a little long for the currents to carry her here,” added Albright. “Body may have deadheaded awhile.”
“Deadheaded?” I snapped, furious at his callousness.
“Sorry. Old logging term. Refers to snagged timber.”
I was almost afraid to ask the next question.
“Was she sexually assaulted?”
“Clothing's on, underwear's in place. I'll test for semen, but I doubt it.”
We stood silent in the gathering dusk. Behind us, the docks creaked and settled against the waves. A cold breeze blew off the water, carrying the scent of fish and gasoline.
“Why would someone garrote an old lady?” Though I spoke aloud, the question was really for me, not my companions.
“Why do these sick bastards do any of the things they do?” Albright replied.
I left them and walked toward Ryan's car. The ambulance and wrecker were gone, but the cruisers remained, pulsing blue light across the muddy lot. I sat a moment, staring at the hundreds of prints left by the feet of ambulance attendants, wrecker operators, police, the pathologist, and myself. Primrose's last disaster scene.
I turned the key and headed back toward Bryson City, tears coursing down my cheeks.
When I checked my messages later that evening, I found one from Lucy Crowe. I returned her call and told her everything I knew about Primrose Hobbs, ending with our Sunday-morning rendezvous at the morgue.
“And that foot and all its paperwork are now missing?”
“So I was told. Primrose was probably the last person to see the stuff.”
“Parker Davenport told you she signed it out. Did she sign it back in?”
“Good question.”
“Tell me about security.”
“All DMORT and ME personnel have IDs, as do the people from your department and the Bryson City PD who work security. A guard checks IDs at the perimeter fence, and there's a sign in/sign out sheet inside the morgue. A color-coded dot goes on your badge each day.”
“Why?”
“In case someone manages to duplicate the ID, they'd have no way of knowing that day's color.”
“What about after hours?”
“By now there's probably a smaller crew left at the morgue, mostly records and computer staff, some medical personnel. There'd be no one there at night except your deputy or a Bryson City cop.”
I pictured the lieutenant g
overnor with his videocasette.
“There is a surveillance camera on the gate.”
“What about the computers?”
“Every VIP user has a password, and only a limited number of people can enter or delete data.”
“Assuming Hobbs returned it, where would that foot have been?”
“At the end of the day everything goes into reefer trucks marked ‘unprocessed,’ ‘in process,’ or ‘identified.’ Cases are located with a computer tracking system.”
“How hard would it be to break in?”
“High school kids have hacked the Pentagon.”
I heard distant conversation, like voices drifting through a wormhole in space.
“Sheriff, I think Primrose Hobbs was murdered because of that foot.”
“Or the thing could be a biological specimen.”
“A woman examines an object which is the subject of controversy, that object disappears, and the woman turns up dead three days later. If there's no link it's one hell of a coincidence.”
“We're looking at every angle.”
“Have you learned why no one reported her missing?”
“Apparently, parts of the operation are shifting to Charlotte. When Hobbs failed to show at the morgue on Monday, her coworkers figured she had gone there. Folks in Charlotte assumed she was still in Bryson City. She was in the habit of phoning her son on Saturdays, so he had no clue that anything was amiss.”
I wondered about Primrose's son. Was he married? A father? In the army? Gay? Were mother and child close? Occasionally my work casts me as the bearer of life's most terrible news. In one visit, families are shattered, lives forever altered. Pete had said that most marine officers in Vietnam days would rather engage the enemy than visit a home in middle America to deliver a message of death. I wholeheartedly shared those sentiments.
I imagined the son's face, blank at first, confused. Then, with comprehension, agony, grief, the pain of an open wound. I closed my eyes, sharing at that moment his crushing despair.
“I dropped in at the Riverbank Inn.”
Crowe's voice brought me back.
“After the marina, I swung by for a chat with Ralph and Brenda,” she said. “They admitted they hadn't seen Hobbs since Sunday, but didn't consider it odd. She'd left without explanation twice during her stay, so they assumed she'd gone off again.”
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