by Lakota Grace
A half-person kitchen completed one end of the living room and the single bedroom opened directly off the living room with only a three-quarters wall for privacy. The apartment lacked a smoke detector although the bracket for one still hung on the wall. Smells of bleach and old grease made the air heavy and dense.
A moment later Janny returned from the other room. “I fed the baby with some snacks at the store. Not good for her, I know, but what can you do?” Her eyes held a tired look. “Can I offer you some refreshments, Ms. Quincy?”
While the water boiled for instant coffee, she opened the dormitory-sized refrigerator and pulled out a quart of milk and two shriveled apples. She reached into a drawer for a paring knife, cut the apples into precise slices and arranged them on a plate.
Janny’s voice held that faint hint of an Appalachian twang that her brother’s had, and hill country hospitality dictated that whatever you had, you offered to guests. I recognized it because I’d been raised in eastern Tennessee where anything less would be considered ill manners.
Janny filled two mugs with hot water and instant coffee and poured in a dollop of milk. Then she put the fingers of one hand through the two mug handles, lifted the plate with the other, and set everything down on a TV tray in front of the couch without spilling a drop.
I was impressed. I’d tried waitressing once, and flubbed up on everything. I’d only lasted a week before they fired me. “You had experience in the restaurant trade?” I asked.
“That's my weekend job, cocktail waitress at Rainbow's Folly.”
“That means you’re working seven days a week. When do you get time off?”
“Don’t. Can’t afford to. You saw my baby’s hand. Got a doctor wants to take it on. He’ll operate dirt cheap, for a bone doc anyway. That still means a ton of money, but we’ll manage. Momma watches Aurora while I work. And I make good tips.”
I took another sip of the coffee. “Having your car out of operation must make it tough. Bad flat?”
“It's one of the regulars down at the bar,” she explained. “He's been after me to move in with him. Won't. So he lets the air out of my tire.”
“You want me to go talk to him? Be glad to do that for you.”
She shook her head. “I'll put air in it tomorrow before I go to work. Neighbor next door has a bicycle pump that I borrow.” She seemed to accept the fact as an ongoing condition of existence. Then, “You said you talked to Brother Howard. How is he?”
“Says you won't speak to him.”
“Haven't, for years.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“He was there when the whiskey still exploded and Aurora was hurt. Instead of helping, Howard just ran. Maybe she wouldn't be crippled if he'd stayed.” She took another apple slice, looked at it blankly as though her mind was in another time and place.
“Howard came to go hunting with your father, but says he didn't show.”
Janny laughed harshly. “Liar. Howard is scared of guns. He'd never go hunting with Daddy, not in a thousand years. He's just sniffing around the money.”
“Money?”
“Green gold, Momma calls it. Developers want to turn our land into a golf course development for all those retirees from Phoenix. They offered a million dollars, but Daddy turned 'em down. Said the property was worth two. All that money for a piece of swampy land.” She sighed.
“Seen your father recently?”
Janny stiffened and her voice chilled. “No, I haven’t.”
Interesting. Some tension there. I wondered what she wasn’t saying. I opened my mouth to ask her when she stood up and gave an exaggerated yawn.
“Time I was getting to bed. Early day tomorrow. Say hi to Howard-the-coward for me.” She escorted me out the door with the skill of a bouncer ejecting an unwanted customer.
I stood on the landing for a moment, hesitating, then walked down the stairs. Let the poor woman get her rest. She deserved it. She and that poor child.
As I reached the pickup, a shaft of light gleamed from the neighbor’s half-opened door. I wasn’t the only one taking notes.
I sat in the truck for a moment still feeling the hostility that crackled in the air when Janny Nettle said goodbye. Three things were clear: she was uncomfortable talking about her father, she felt the need to end the conversation right then, and she all but booted me out of her apartment in direct contradiction to her old-country ways.
On the other hand, if no one had broken the law, it wasn’t my business. I’d done what I promised. The inquiry into the Nettle family had hit a dead end, and I intended to call Howard in the morning to tell him so.
That was before we discovered the dead body floating in Tavasci Marsh.
Dead Body in the Swamp
2
SHEPHERD TOOK THE CALL the next morning. He rapped on our adjourning window and beckoned me into his office. “That was Robert Miller, ranger at the Tuzigoot Indian Ruins. He spotted a floater in the swamp.”
We hurried to the parking lot and jumped into the SUV. “Buckle up,” Shepherd ordered, switching on the light bar and siren.
We bounced off the curb onto the road and barreled down the switchbacks toward the valley below us. The SUV sped through the roundabout at the Cement Plant entrance, rammed through Clarkdale, slid right on Broadway, and then skidded left on the road to Tuzigoot Ruins.
Shepherd turned off the siren as we coasted to a stop in front of the ranger station. He checked his watch, smiling. That trip usually took twenty minutes, but he made it in ten.
“Watch and learn,” he instructed as we marched up the front steps.
Ranger Miller waited for us at the top. “Glad you could make it so soon. Just a little nervous about this, I can tell you.” Miller was a skinny guy with fine blond hair thinning on either side of a high forehead. Tortoise-shell rimmed glasses made his eyes look even larger.
Shepherd stepped in front of me to shake his hand. “Deputy Malone, here. This is my subordinate, Peg Quincy.”
His subordinate! What was Shepherd pulling? I worked for the sheriff, not for him.
Miller accepted the statement without comment and led us into the Visitors Center. The central room was filled with artifacts taken from the Indian ruins. A group of tourists circled a docent lecturing about the Ancestral Pueblan peoples who had lived here hundreds of years ago.
Miller gave the tour group a nervous look. “Let’s go into my office where we can talk undisturbed. I’d just as soon keep this whole business private. When I was in Yellowstone, the press got wind of a climbing accident there and we were swamped with looky-loos for weeks.” He unhooked a half-door and we followed him behind the counter and down a hall.
The desk and chairs in his compact office were puke-green government issue, but the Hopi Kachina figure behind his desk was not. Protected by a glass case, the figure had outstretched feather-covered arms and stood more than two feet tall. An eagle dancer, with what looked to be authentic feathers.
Miller gestured to it as he sat down behind his desk. “Beautiful, isn't it. The tribe had to get special dispensation to collect the eagle feathers. And it’s made by a woman. Usually, only the men carve the Kachinas out of those cottonwood roots. I've got her name around here someplace.”
Shepherd didn’t seem impressed. “Nice,” he grunted.
Whether his lack of enthusiasm was for the carved statue itself or the gender of its creator, neither bode well for our relationship: I was a woman and I happened to like Native American art.
There were two mismatched chairs in front of the ranger’s desk. Shepherd dropped into the most comfortable seat. I shuffled behind him to fold my tall frame into the small chair next to the wall.
“Where's the dead body?” he asked.
“Middle of the marsh,” said Miller. “An ultra-lite pilot from the Cottonwood airport spotted it as he flew over.”
Shepherd turned to me. “You getting all this down?”
I hastily retrieved my notebook and scribbled away.
“You said a marsh?” I asked.
Shepherd cut me a sharp glance.
“Tavasci Marsh,” Miller said, “was formed by an oxbow in the Verde River. It is filled with rushes and cattails, creating good habitat for migrating waterfowl. Birders from all over the world—”
Shepherd interrupted the ranger’s practiced tourist lecture. “You investigate the body?”
I kept my head down. Note taker, that's me.
“Of course not! I watch CSI. I know the rules.”
He smiled like it was a joke, but I got the feeling it wasn’t for him. Some folks take their television seriously.
“I've got one of my interns blocking tourists from entry to the murder site,” Miller said.
“Might not be a murder,” Shepherd replied. “Could be an accident. Let's take a look.”
We followed Miller out a side door onto a pathway that circled Tuzigoot Indian Ruins. The Ruins had been a pile of rocks on the oval hilltop until Work Progress Administration workers rebuilt the walls in the thirties, uncovering more than one hundred rooms in the dwelling. Some of the lower rooms even contained burial sites. Still fuming at Shepherd’s arrogance, I mentally banished his presence to one of the deepest ones.
Then taking a deep breath of fall air to clear my mind of such nasty thoughts, I focused on enjoying the warm day. We'd had a spell of balmy weather, followed by a dusting of snow on Black Mountain. Now it was almost summer hot again. Nature was teasing us, but real winter would arrive soon enough.
“Turn left here.” Miller led the way down steps from the ruins to Tavasci Marsh. The park intern squatted on the ground next to a shallow landing, staring into the brackish water. He jumped to his feet at our approach and pulled a moored rowboat half onto the shore.
Shepherd hesitated for a moment, looking at the boat. “Hard to get in and out of those things with my trick knee.” He patted his leg. “I'll secure the perimeter. Peg, you go with Ranger Miller. Call and tell me what we got.” He settled on a boulder to watch.
Interesting, his sudden delegation. The snarky side of me wondered if it was fear of the water or just plain laziness.
The marsh was shallow here, no more than a foot in depth, but Miller said it deepened to ten feet in places. No way that we could wade out there to investigate. He held the boat as I stepped in. I steadied for a moment and moved to the front bar. Miller climbed in after me and settled on the back bar while the intern pushed the boat off the shore. Dropping the oars into the oarlocks, Miller angled the boat with a practiced stroke and glided into the marsh.
“Can't use a motor here because the weeds tangle in propeller blades.” He handed me a GPS. “I've programmed in the general location. You keep us on track.”
We pushed through cattails now brown and crisp with autumn dryness. Their roots merged into the brown water below, sending up a miasma of rotting vegetation.
“How far to the body?”
“I'd say maybe five hundred feet give or take.”
“That’s not very far,” I observed.
“Not on dry land, maybe. This marsh is about a hundred acres, end to end, but narrow at this point, and filled with reeds and tangles. How we doing on direction?”
I glanced at the GPS. “Edge a little to the left.”
He maneuvered the rowboat with one paddle. Something plopped into the water next to the boat, and I started.
Miller chuckled at my alarm. “Bullfrog, probably. The early settlers introduced them to the marsh. Going to make a cash crop out of them. Didn’t work out. You ever eat frog legs?”
“No, thanks.” Not on your life would I touch those slimy things—enough to turn me vegetarian.
“Watch your head,” he cautioned. “It's going to get tight here.” The rushes closed in on the boat and sunlight disappeared for a moment. Then a dark shape appeared ahead of us in a clearing. The dead body.
I'd been dreading this moment. I'd seen dead people before, but never a floater. The instructors at the Police Academy tormented us with images of fragile flesh slipping off fingers like a glove. They described ravaged faces, lips and eyes eaten by crabs. My stomach clenched as we drew close.
The corpse floated face down in about six feet of water, the head hanging below the surface. The body looked to be male, wearing bib coveralls with crisscrossed back straps. One pant leg caught on a sharp branch protruding from a nearby beaver lodge, and the hands waved idly in the boat’s wake.
I pulled my phone from my pocket, snapped some quick photos and sent them to Shepherd. I glanced back at Miller. He had one hand clasped over his mouth and his eyes were huge. I wasn't feeling too hot myself. “Back us off and take some deep breaths.”
He did so with alacrity.
I thumbed Shepherd’s number on the redial. “Get the photos? Want me to contact the sheriff's office?”
“No, I'll do that,” he said quickly. “Send Miller back with the boat and you secure the scene.”
My jaw tightened. Making brownie points with the sheriff over my discovery. And how the heck could I “secure the scene” when it was all water? I didn't have gills.
I could have protested, but I was too stubborn. Secure the scene? Fine, I could do that. The only dry land was the beaver lodge in front of me. It would serve.
At least I could arrange to sit where I didn’t have to look at the corpse. Nobody could approach this watery scene without my hearing them. “Move the boat wide and circle to the other side of the beaver lodge,” I said.
When we reached the opposite side, Miller grabbed a branch cemented into the rock-hard dried mud to steady the boat while I clambered up.
Oar splashes receded as he left, and the marsh noises resumed. A red-wing blackbird gave a liquid cry and two coots set up a chorus. I ducked as a Cooper’s hawk swooped over the reeds. Finally, all was silent.
To get better traction, I took off my mud-stained shoes and socks, rolled up my pants. The marsh winds dried my sweaty toes and I climbed higher on the lodge. I sneaked a look over the top.
Yeah, the man was still there, one water-soaked arm bumping against the lodge. I ducked back down again. He wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was I. Sticks poked my backside and I wedged my arm around a knot of wood trying to get comfortable.
My thoughts returned to the corpse floating on the other side of the rough hillock. Could the dead man be Howard Nettle’s missing father? If so, how did he get here? With an effort, I shut out the image of that close and unwelcome companion floating on the other side of the beaver lodge. The water recovery team would be here soon.
Underwater Recovery
3
BY THE TIME the underwater recovery team appeared, the weather turned colder and all sensation had left my feet. The two men in the boat wore black wet suits, zipped open at the neck with the hoods folded back. I waved to them as they approached the beaver lodge
They tossed me a mooring rope. “Tie this around something, will you?” one of them asked. “You can be our tender.”
They reached over to shake hands and introduce themselves. James Glen was the tall one. He had shaggy brown hair and a mustache to match. Rory Stevens was a runty little guy with curly black hair, younger than my own twenty-nine years.
“The underwater team members are all volunteers,” James said. “We're sworn deputies, on regular duty in Prescott. Got the call and came over the mountain to join the fun.”
Rory peered at me. “Who-eee. You're tall.”
“And you're short,” I said, irritated.
“Then we'd make a good couple. Ever date anybody my size?”
Was he hitting on me? Here, dressed in a wet suit and prepared to retrieve a dead body?
“Sorry,” I said, “I'm going with somebody.” Well, not exactly. Flint Tanner hadn't spoken to me since that new lady banker came to town. I encountered them one morning bending heads over café coffee. I resisted the urge, just barely, to plunge a stake through his heart. But Rory Stevens didn't need to know that.
“Maybe another time,” I said.
He frowned and turned away.
I wanted to tell him it wasn't his size. Or maybe it was, but I could see he was embarrassed at my response. I'd had enough razzing over my own height. I knew how it felt. “Hey, I'll call you the next time I'm in Prescott,” I said. “Maybe we can take in a movie.”
He rewarded me with a grin. “It's a date. Let's take a look at the present you have for us.” I held the boat steady while they suited up with metal air tanks and scuba gear, testing the air lines, wetting face plates. Then, they slid over the side of the boat to investigate.
I climbed up the mound to watch. Soon both surfaced, one on either side of the corpse. James shoved his mask to the top of his head and shouted to me. “In the boat, you'll find a rolled-up body bag.”
I climbed over the sticks and branches of the beaver lodge, grabbed the bag, and crawled around the side of the mound to hand it to him.
“We always bag a body like this in the water, away from possible family members on shore,” Rory explained. “Seeing a person turned into a bloated corpse traumatizes survivors. Doing it this way frustrates aggressive picture takers, too. It stops photos of a dead loved one showing up on the Internet.”
I shuddered. I couldn’t imagine anything more awful than to open Facebook and have such a photo waiting for me.
Opened, the water-recovery body bag looked like a sleeping bag with a top of opaque plastic, a mesh bottom to drain water out, and graspable handles on all four sides. Rory laid it on top of the water, parallel to the body and pulled the top portion of the bag away from the corpse.
Quickly and efficiently he and James pulled the bag under the corpse and gently cradled the dead man, careful to include all limbs and clothing within the bag, Then they zipped it closed, their actions quiet and respectful. When the body was secure, Rory held it while James ducked under the water to plant a marker buoy where the corpse had been.
“We'll be back as soon as we get him loaded in a Stokes rescue basket for the ride to the morgue,” Rory said. The two men glided through the water toward the landing at Tuzigoot Ruins towing the bag between them.
