Disturbing the Dead

by Sandra Parshall

  “This is gonna kill her,” Holly said, choking up again. “I oughta go too.”

  Rachel opened her mouth to protest, but thought better of it. She wasn’t going to tell Holly what to do. But if Holly went over there, and her wily fox of a grandmother played on her sympathy and guilt—

  “I’m afraid I can’t take you with me,” Tom said. “I really need to speak to your grandmother alone.”

  Rachel was relieved when Holly accepted Tom’s decision without protest.

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I’m going to arrest your father, Holly.”

  “When?” Brandon asked, his face alight with eagerness. “Any chance I could—”

  “I’ll get back to you about it,” Tom said. “I want to do it tonight.”

  A jolt of alarm shot through Rachel. Troy Shackleford was a murderer. He’d tried to shoot his own daughter. He wouldn’t meekly allow himself to be arrested. “Please be careful,” Rachel said, and instantly regretted it. She had to believe he knew what he was doing, trust him not to take reckless chances.

  Tom didn’t seem to mind her solicitousness. His eyes warmed when they met hers, and a faint smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I will.” He went on, speaking to Holly, “If we get to the point of a trial, we’ll need you to testify to what he told you about your mother and Pauline. Are you willing?”

  Rachel thought Tom was asking too much of Holly, pushing her to shed a lifelong terror of her father in an instant. But Holly’s face, blotched and puffy with heartbreak and anger, no longer showed a trace of fear. “Yes, sir,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Tom wiped all expression from his face before he knocked at Mrs. Turner’s door. He didn’t want her to see right away that he’d brought bad news. He hoped to surprise her—or, rather, find out whether Jean’s death came as a surprise to her.

  “Oh, it’s you.” Mrs. Turner had opened the main door, but not the screen. Her two dogs, flanking her, wagged their tails and seemed happier to see Tom than their mistress was. The little one gave a cheerful yip.

  “I need to talk to you.” Without waiting for an invitation, Tom tried to pull open the screen door, but it resisted.

  For a moment Mrs. Turner regarded the latch thoughtfully, as if keeping Tom outside might be the better choice. In the end she hooked a finger under the latch and released it. Turning her back on Tom, she walked into her living room.

  He followed her with the dogs romping around him. The old woman stood by the cold fireplace, whispering to her daughter Bonnie. Both shot wary looks at Tom as he advanced with his canine escorts.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Watford,” Tom said to Bonnie. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Mrs. Turner clapped her hands twice, startling Tom. At this wordless command, the dogs trotted toward the kitchen. Mrs. Turner lifted an orange cat from an easy chair and sat down with the animal in her lap. Bonnie, her doleful eyes watching Tom, sat on the arm of the chair.

  He took a seat on the couch before he spoke. “Your daughter Jean is dead. We’ve found her remains.”

  Mrs. Turner received the news with a blank look, as if she couldn’t grasp his meaning. Bonnie was the one who reacted, pressing both hands to her mouth, eyes staring in shock.

  “Jeannie?” Mrs. Turner, her face a picture of stupefaction, looked up at Bonnie, back at Tom. “Somethin’s happened to Jeannie?”

  “Oh, dear lord,” Bonnie cried. Tears filled her eyes. She clutched her mother’s shoulders. “Oh, Mama. Jeannie!”

  Apparently they’d both believed Jean was alive. But how was that possible? “She may have been killed when Pauline was,” Tom said. “We found her remains in the same area as Pauline’s.”

  Mrs. Turner shook her head and looked at Bonnie again. “Jeannie too?”

  Bonnie got to her feet and stumbled away from them. Her shoulders trembled but she cried without making a sound.

  Determined not to give them time to recover and formulate careful answers, Tom barreled on. “Mrs. Turner, I know Mary Lee’s been sending you money. Why did you tell Holly it was coming from Jean?”

  Mrs. Turner’s gnarled fingers stroked the cat she held, but the action seemed automatic. Her face said she was struggling to shift her beliefs to fit a shocking new reality. “She— I— The girl needed her mother. So I let her think…” Her voice faded to a whisper as tears puddled in her eyes and overflowed. “Jeannie was my baby. I know it ain’t right, but I always loved her the best.”

  Bonnie wheeled around to gape at her mother. She made a guttural sound, but whatever angry retort she’d had in mind died on her tongue. Erupting in fresh tears, she collapsed into an armchair and buried her face in her hands.

  Far from being moved by this display, Tom felt a growing irritation. “I don’t know how you could go all these years without wondering what happened to her.”

  “I thought she was hidin’ from him,” Mrs. Turner said.

  “From who? Troy Shackleford?”

  Mrs. Turner averted her eyes and didn’t answer.

  Tom was out of patience. “Look, somebody murdered two of your daughters. If you want the killer punished, you have to start being honest with me. Do you know something that can help me put Shackleford away? Has he threatened you?”

  “Leave my mother alone!” Bonnie jumped up and rushed to Mrs. Turner’s side. “Can’t you see she’s all broke up about Jeannie?”

  “I’m tired of listening to you people lie to me,” Tom said. “If you think he killed Pauline and Jean, why in God’s name are you protecting him? What about your own daughter, Mrs. Watford? Were those Amy’s bones we found on the mountain with Pauline’s? Have you been trying to fool everybody into believing Amy’s alive?”

  “She is alive! My daughter’s not dead.”

  “Then why can’t we find her?”

  “You stay away from her. She’s got a good life and you’re not gonna drag her into all this.”

  “If she’s alive, then where is she?” Tom said. “Why can’t we find Amy and Darrell Wood in South Carolina?”

  “Because Wood’s not their real last name,” Mrs. Turner said. Calmer now, she met Tom’s eyes. “It’s made-up. There’s people she don’t want findin’ her.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you want to.” Mrs. Turner stood, gently laid the cat on the chair, and put an arm around Bonnie’s shoulders. “Now we got nothin’ else to tell you. Go on and let us do our grievin’ in private.”

  “The truth is going to come out,” Tom said as he rose. “If you don’t want to end up in jail as accessories, you’d better make up your minds whose side you’re on.”

  The only answer he got from the old woman was a stubborn look that mixed defiance and sorrow and fear.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Tom and Brandon sat in a parked cruiser half a mile from Rose Shackleford’s diner. Too tense to talk. Freezing without the heater on. Staring into the darkness and waiting.

  Tom had missed having Brandon at his side, and he was glad he’d been able to free him for the raid. Grady Duncan, who had no taste for excitement, had taken over guard duty at Joanna McKendrick’s house.

  Tom’s handheld radio crackled and Deputy Charlie Foster’s voice came through, the words fading in and out as the signal made its way up the winding road. “Checkpoint Charlie to Mason One. Blackbird’s flying right at you.”

  “Ten-four,” Tom answered.

  “Oh, man,” Brandon said. “I am looking forward to this. This is gonna be sweet.” Tom heard, but couldn’t see, Brandon rubbing his gloved hands together in anticipation.

  A lot could go wrong tonight. If even one person in the diner had a gun, if the crowd panicked— But the raid could go off without a hitch. Whatever happened, good or bad, was Tom’s responsibility. His heavy Kevlar vest squeezed his chest with each breath he took. They’d borrowed the body armor from the State Police, and it p
robably felt as strange and uncomfortable to the other men as it did to him. A reminder that they might be out of their depth, trying to pull off this raid without outside help.

  He keyed the radio and said, “B and B, take your positions and stand by.”

  The Blackwood twins were on foot, lurking on the wooded hill behind the diner. At Tom’s command, they would move closer to the back door, ready to pounce if anybody fled through the rear when the raid got under way.

  “Here it comes, here it comes,” Brandon said.

  Troy Shackleford’s black Bronco was no more than a shadow pulled by streams of light when it zoomed past the concealed cruiser. Tom started the car and eased out of the brush. He didn’t take to the road until the SUV disappeared around a curve. After he’d also rounded the bend, Tom tried his radio to see if the signal would carry to the two deputies waiting up the road on the far side of the diner.

  “Mason Three, do you read?”

  “Ten-four,” came the faint reply, mixed with static.

  “Blackbird’s on the wing. Take it slow.” The less said the better, in case Shackleford had a scanner in his vehicle.

  “Ten-four.”

  Charlie Foster quickly caught up with Tom and Brandon in the van he was lending for transport of prisoners. When the diner came into view, Tom doused his lights and pulled to the side of the road. Charlie did the same. They had to give Troy and his nephew Buddy time to park, go inside, hand the gym bag containing drugs to Rose, who would unpack the plastic baggies and start selling. Dennis Murray, in the woods across the road from the diner, was snapping pictures with his favorite toy, a digital camera with a telephoto lens.

  In the darkened vehicle, Brandon’s breathing was audible, quick and shallow. Tom drew deep, calming breaths, but his heart hammered his ribs and the familiar silence of the mountain night suddenly seemed alien and threatening.

  At last he keyed the radio with cold-numbed fingers. “It’s time.”

  “Ten-four,” from Charlie.

  “Ten-four,” from the third car.

  “B and B, on alert,” Tom said into his radio.

  A quiet answer, “Ten-four.”

  Tom repeated the message to Dennis.

  The two Sheriff’s Department cars and the van coasted to the outer edges of the diner’s parking lot. Although nobody inside could have heard them above the throbbing beat of jukebox music, the five deputies emerged from their vehicles silently. Dennis trotted across the road with his precious camera cradled against his chest. He stashed the telephoto lens in the trunk of Tom’s car. He would take the camera into the diner.

  Tom drew his pistol.

  His mouth had gone dry and the vest seemed to be choking the breath out of him. “Let’s go.”

  In the lead, he burst through the diner’s door with his gun sweeping the room from side to side. “Hands up, everybody,” he shouted. “Stay where you are and nobody’ll get hurt.”

  Two dozen customers scrambled like cockroaches toward the exit. Deputies shoved them back at gunpoint. Buddy Shackleford vaulted the bar and crashed through a door into the storage room, headed for the rear. Tom let him go. The twins would nab him.

  Troy Shackleford slid off his stool and stood motionless in the pandemonium, his malevolent gaze fixed on Tom. Behind the bar, Rose scooped up plastic bags and dumped them down the front of her dress. Her mammoth bosom swelled with new bulges.

  “Get your hands up,” Tom yelled at her above the racket of the jukebox and the frantic customers. “And get out here where I can see you.”

  Her lips twisted in a sneer, Rose slowly raised her hands and waddled out from behind the bar.

  Her bulk narrowed the aisle between bar and booths. The deputies herded customers to the open space around the jukebox and started taking names and addresses before searching them for drugs. Dennis Murray had been assigned to receive and tag evidence. A deputy pulled the plug on the jukebox, and the air became thick with the mutterings and groans of people caught red-handed with no way out.

  Tom returned his attention to Troy Shackleford, who hadn’t moved. The guy had the cold, flat eyes and ominous stillness of a viper on the verge of striking. “You’re under arrest for distribution of illegal and controlled substances,” Tom said. “You have the right to—”

  “You got nothin’ on me,” Shackleford interrupted. “Whatever goes on here is Rose’s business. I’m just a customer.”

  A deep, furious red mottled Rose’s face. Glaring at Shackleford, she opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again but couldn’t find words. She looked like a hooked fish drowning in air.

  Tom leaned across the bar and snagged two plastic bags of marijuana. Dangling them from one hand, he said, “Your cousin telling the truth, Rose? You’re the one dealing drugs, and he just stopped in for a beer?”

  She shot a poisonous look at Shackleford, then turned it on Tom and added a smirk. “All you’ve got in your hand’s a misdemeanor charge. I’ll pay a fine and be out in a day.”

  “I think we can upgrade the charge after we see what you dumped down the front of your dress.”

  Her smirk broadened to a challenging grin. “You gonna search me, big guy?” She spread her arms and her green dress billowed around her body. “Go right ahead. No, wait a minute. I think I’d rather have that pretty boy run his hands over my curves.” With a flick of a pudgy finger, she indicated Brandon.

  Brandon’s cheeks reddened and he threw a wide-eyed, pleading look at Tom. “Boss?” he croaked.

  While Tom tried to suppress a laugh, a soft plop made him look down. At Rose’s feet lay a sandwich bag containing about a tablespoon of brownish-white chunks. Crystal meth.

  Rose clutched her bosom and frantically struggled to hold onto the cargo, but a second bag escaped and landed on the floor. And a third. Rose clamped her right foot atop one bag and tried to push the others together and cover them with her left foot.

  “Idiot woman,” Shackleford muttered.

  “Who the hell you callin’ names?” she yelled. “I ain’t one of your flunkies.”

  “Shut up, both of you,” Tom said. “And move your feet.” He advanced on Rose, but she didn’t budge. He stooped and grabbed a corner of one bag sticking out from under her shoe. When he tugged, the plastic tore and the crystals, now crushed to powder, spilled out.

  “Oh, shit,” Rose cried. She stepped back, exposing all the bags, and stared at the powder on the filthy floor. “Now look what you done.”

  Maybe she believed she was going to get the stuff back at some point and wanted the merchandise in salable condition. “Hey, Denny,” Tom called. “Bring your camera here.”

  When Dennis started shooting pictures, Rose tried to back away from the evidence, but the bar and three deputies boxed her in.

  Tom gathered the bags and handed them to Dennis. “Find the gym bag. We’ll need to have it tested for residue. Who carried it in?”

  Dennis jerked a thumb at Troy Shackleford. “And I got some great pictures.”

  Shackleford swore under his breath.

  To Rose, Tom said, “You’re under arrest for possession and sale of controlled and illegal substances. Brandon, cuff her.”

  “No!” she shouted. “You’re not—”

  Brandon yanked her arms behind her back—a little roughly, to Tom’s eye, although he wouldn’t have been any gentler. Tom recited her rights while she spouted a stream of obscenities. He didn’t know whether she would turn on her cousin in exchange for leniency, but the dawning alarm on Troy Shackleford’s face told him the man didn’t trust Rose’s loyalty.

  Tom was unhooking his handcuffs from his belt, preparing to cuff Shackleford, when a gunshot sounded outside. He raced around the bar and dashed through the storage room. When he shoved open the rear door, the streak of interior light fell on Keith and Kevin Blackwood, wrestling in the snow with Buddy Shackleford. Buddy’s right arm was straight up in the air and he clutched a pistol in his hand. One of
the twins leaned a knee into Buddy’s stomach while the other bent his wrist back until Tom expected to hear bones snap. Buddy let out a moan of pain, his fingers opened, and the gun dropped into the snow. Tom snatched it up, shook off the snow, and stuck the pistol into his waistband.

  Kevin and Keith hauled Buddy to his feet. “Man!” Kevin exclaimed, while Keith fastened cuffs around Buddy’s wrists. “He took off toward the hill like a hound after a coon.”

  Peering around Buddy’s shoulder, Keith grinned at Tom. “We tackled him, though. Our old football coach’ll be proud of us when he hears about it.”

  “I’m not exactly ashamed of you myself,” Tom said. He shook his head at Buddy. “Resisting arrest, threatening police officers with a firearm. You’re not helping yourself, Buddy.”

  “Go to hell, motherfucker.” Buddy spat and a wad of saliva landed in the snow by Tom’s left boot.

  What a pleasure it would be to slam a fist into Buddy’s insolent face. Another time, maybe. “Lock him in one of our cars,” he told the Blackwoods.

  As soon as Tom emerged from the storage room into the diner, he realized Troy Shackleford was no longer there. “What the hell?” he shouted. “Where’d he go?”

  The three harried deputies working the crowd of customers at one end of the room looked around in bewilderment. Rose cackled a laugh.

  Brandon was gone too. Tom hustled out to the parking lot. Shackleford sat behind the wheel of his Bronco and Brandon tugged the handle of the locked door. The engine started. The headlights came on.

  Shouldering Brandon aside, Tom rapped on the window with his pistol and yelled, “Cut the engine and step out, or I’ll shoot.”

  Shackleford stared back, his defiant face painted red by the diner’s fluorescent sign.

  Tom leveled the pistol at the window. Shackleford gunned the engine and the Bronco shot backward out of the parking space and swung around. It crashed into a car, then lurched toward the road.

  Tom jumped in front of the Bronco but Shackleford kept coming.

  “Captain!” Brandon screamed. “He’ll run you down!”