“Who’s ‘we’?”
He shrugged. “Eddie and me, a few others.”
“Like the mayor’s boy, Hatch?”
Nevan sneered. “Are you serious? Like he needs money.”
“Jacob Fisher?”
“He wanted in, but we said no.”
“Why?”
“I don’t trust the guy.”
“Was Maura in on it?”
“Yeah. She helped us with the front money.”
“Cash from the diner.”
He nodded. “She takes a cut, Winnie too.”
Maura, Winnie, Eddie, and Nevan all in Addy’s business. Why not Jacob?
“Why don’t you trust Jacob?”
“I did at first. We’d all go out to his place and party, you know. Then . . . he’s . . . Something’s not right with him. He’s . . . I don’t know. Weird.”
“Why do you say that?”
Nevan leveled a gloating glare at me, like a terrorist I once saw tracked into a corner who turned to open his shirt, revealing the bombs rigged to his chest. “You need to take a look in his barn. There’s this room in there where they used to kill the pigs. There’s a grate in the floor. Look under it.”
I sat back. “Why? What am I going to find? Occult stuff?”
Nevan’s face froze over. Whether with fear or hate, I couldn’t tell which. “A body.”
CHAPTER 34
The week of my First Holy Communion, I saw a hog slaughtered.
I’d hidden in the thicket by the clearing, eager and anxious. I wasn’t supposed to be there. It was forbidden, which is why I was so curious. But nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day.
The animal’s squeals, like nails on a chalkboard, made my ears curl and my skin shiver. He excreted twice as they forced him from the back of Uncle Bart’s trailer. The smell of putrid shit reached my nose and coated the back of my throat, thick and dark and foul-tasting. A fire was started under a barrel of water and a crosslike brace crudely fashioned from fallen tree limbs. Preparations for the slaughter.
I knew it, and so did the pig.
His cries became louder, more intense. To my child’s ears, the squeals turned to pleas of mercy. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. But no one else seemed to hear.
The menu is set. The pig must die.
They forced him to the ground, two men holding him down, while Gramps rammed an ice pick into his jugular. Blood and liquid spurted from the hole like a fountain and formed a foamy puddle around his body. He twisted and turned, his legs frantically treading the air as his fatty back made suction-like sounds against the pooling blood. I wanted to turn away, run, but I didn’t. I stood rooted in shock. I said nothing and felt less human for doing so.
* * *
“Are you just going to stand there, Callahan?” Harris’s voice cut through my memories. He’d pulled back the heavy grate over the drain room and was staring into a large pit. Three heavy hooks swung overhead. A table of crude killing devices hung on a nearby wall.
I turned to him. “This is a slaughterhouse.”
“Uh . . . right. They killed pigs here. You eat bacon, don’t ya?”
An ugly feeling swirled in my stomach. “Not since I was eight.”
Harris scrunched his face and shook his head. This chick’s so weird. He gave me a nudge. “Come on, Callahan. We don’t have all day.”
Others stood off at a distance, techs, scene photographers, other officers, all keeping a respectful distance to avoid contaminating the scene. We knew there was something down there. As soon as I arrived on the scene, Wilco bolted for the barn, not stopping, not dipping his nose, until he got to the old wood structure where he alerted immediately. I realized that he’d probably gotten a whiff of decay in our first visit to the farm, which is why he’d behaved so badly at the time.
Harris shifted impatiently and pointed into the drain pit. “Ladies first.”
Jackasses second.
I flipped on my flashlight, turned, and descended a rusted metal rung ladder. The pit was nothing more than a cold concrete hole in the ground that smelled of must and old blood, sharp and metallic. The walls were stained, a dark, linear mark about a third of the way up, a bloody tideline.
A low table, covered with a quilt, was crammed against the back wall. “There.” I pointed my flashlight beam.
Harris jerked back, then started forward. “What the . . . ?”
We approached, kicking up tiny balls of fuzzy material that littered the ground around the table. Nesting material. Mice had ravished holes in the quilt.
Harris breathed hard.
I pinched a corner of material and lifted it to reveal just one edge: strings of gray/blond hair, pink chiffon and lace on bony protrusions, dried skin shriveled over maybe a forearm, a clump of brown flowers. A child’s teddy bear tucked in the crook of an arm. “I think it’s the mother.”
* * *
I slept late the next morning, lingering in my sweat-soaked sheets. Remnants of a nightmare hovered in my mind: Maura, naked, her blood-drenched hair falling in long strings against her breasts, blue veins stretched thinly over a baby-swollen belly. She reached out for me, pale lips quivering. “Jezebel,” she whispered.
I squeezed my eyes shut, wiped the moisture from my upper lip, and tried to shake the image. It remained.
Wilco’s incessant pawing finally drew me from bed. I padded from my room, straight to the back door, opened it, and watched as he hobbled down the steps for a quick pee. A chill swept up my bare legs and swirled under my damp T-shirt. I huddled, and waited for Wilco to finish his business. I was barely going to have enough time to shower and eat before I needed to be back into work. We had all three of the Fisher boys in holding. Besides the dead mother, Wilco’s nose had found a piece of damning evidence linking Jacob Fisher to Maura’s murder—the picking knife. Or at least one that matched Maura’s wound types. It was found hanging with other tools in the slaughterhouse. Wiped clean and hung back in plain sight. But once blood leaves the body, it starts to decompose, making it trackable by Wilco’s nose. Closer inspection of the knife showed traces of blood at the base of the handle. Initial testing showed it was human blood and a type match to Maura’s blood. We were waiting for the rest of the report, but as far as Pusser was concerned, we had Jacob Fisher nailed for first-degree murder. His interview was first thing this morning. I looked forward to it. My work as a military cop didn’t require much interrogating—the dead don’t talk much—so suspect interrogations, to me, were like a fun game of cat and mouse: calculated pursuit, near captures, repeated escapes, and then . . . the final pounce.
But as it turned out, I didn’t get invited to the game that morning.
I was in the break room waiting for coffee to drip into my mug when Harris intercepted me, all smuglike and gloating. “Sheriff wants to see you,” he said, and ushered me down the hall and into our extremely blah interrogation room, with a dented metal table and snot-green walls. I knew what was coming. I sat in a chair bolted to the floor and pondered my future. And my past. Neither gave me much consolation.
Wilco, sensing my mood, never strayed more than a foot from me, his eyes, warm and mellow, watching my every move. I bent down, ran my hand over his back in long, smooth strokes. “It’s going to be okay, boy. I promise.” It didn’t matter that he couldn’t hear me; I spoke the words, anyway. I needed to hear them.
Twenty minutes later, Pusser came in, followed by the mayor and another uniformed cop. An official IPRA—Independent Police Review Authority—report was read. I’d failed my drug test. I handed in my gun, filled out a couple forms, and was sent on my way. That was it.
I left the department, drove straight to the McCreary Diner, and slunk into the corner booth, Wilco settling at my feet. I felt angry and stupid and unable to decide if I was wrong, or if I’d been wronged. The only thing I knew for sure was that my job meant more to me than I realized.
Coffee came and the waitress took my order, red-lipstick clogged lin
es stretching outward from her mouth as she chomped on a wad of gum. “Darlin’ ” this and “Darlin’ ” that. Did I want my grits buttered or smothered? The moment she left, I couldn’t remember how I’d answered.
In a couple hours, the diner would be packed with folks coming from as far as Johnson City for the fried-catfish lunch special. I was there for a quick bite before heading into the backwoods. I didn’t know how long my search would take, but I wanted to start with a full stomach. I also needed time to absorb what had happened this morning. Temporary suspension without pay pending drug counseling and a cleared drug test.
Suspended, not exactly fired, I told myself. Well, just not quite fired yet. Counseling? A cleared test? Like either of those is going to happen.
I shifted, rubbed my neck muscles, stiff vinyl crackled under my weight. The clanking of dishes, the low murmur of voices, the clink, clink of silverware, it all seemed so distant, like I was watching and listening through a thick, hazy windowpane. A table of local ladies glanced my way, eyed my dog, bent their heads to speak in hushed tones. Harshly whispered words floating on air: another girl, body, gypsy cop, murder, murder, murder . . .
A thin-haired man, with a hawkish nose, stared at me over the rim of his mug, his eyes sliding out to my station wagon with its dented panels and duct-taped cardboard windows waving in the breeze. White trash, he thought. White gypsy trash. I’d been called that all my life. Now I fulfilled the stereotype. Soon to add “unemployed” to the list of damning adjectives.
I shifted in my seat, pulled out my phone, and busied myself scrolling through my most recent text thread with Parks. I remembered Gran once saying that I could never let a question go unanswered. Questions had haunted my childhood: my birth, my mother and father, my abandonment, did my mother love me? A continuous litany, some of which I’d been able to answer since returning to Bone Gap. Some still lingered, just out of reach, unresolved. A constant pecking away at my sanity.
I couldn’t stand to be locked out of this case. Not now. The Fisher boys were being questioned. I wanted to be a part of that, be able to help put in the final pieces of the puzzle.
I sent a text off to Parks: Were you in on Fisher kid’s interrogation?
Her response came right away: Yes. But I can’t give you any information. Pusser would can me.
Pretty please?
Sorry . . .
Crap. When did Parks get to be such a rule follower?
I thought of something else and sent another text: Autopsy on body found in the slaughterhouse?
There was a long pause. Finally: Mother. Died as a result of cancerous tumor.
Nothing suspicious?
You mean like she was left to rot in a slaughterhouse drain room?
Parks had a point. I clicked off, and a chill ran through me, something was off. When Nevan told us about the barn and a body, when we arrived and Wilco strained to the edge of that pit to alert, and when we found the decayed remains, it all seemed clear. But now . . .
His mother died, apparently of natural causes, leaving him and his brothers subject to the state. Without any other family to step up, they might have been split up between foster homes. Jacob had to hide his mother’s body to keep her death a secret. So the flowers, the teddy bear, the careful treatment of her body—that drain room in the slaughterhouse wasn’t a cover-up for some heinous crime, but a shrine to a beloved mother. Jacob was doing everything in his power to take care of his brothers and keep the family together.
That didn’t sound like a killer to me.
CHAPTER 35
On the way out of town, I stopped by Southside Package, picked up a bottle, and tucked it into my pack for later. In another fifteen minutes, I was parked on the trailhead above the cave where Doogan had dumped Dublin Costello’s body.
HRD dogs sniff out more than just whole bodies. They detect multiple levels of bodily decomposition, which means that they can find body parts, bones, tissue, and blood. The gun Gran used to kill Dublin Costello was likely splattered with minuscule droplets of blood and body tissue, since Gran was in such close range when she pulled the trigger to defend herself. If so, it would be easily detected by Wilco’s trained nose.
Wilco and I would start at the cave and spread outward. Doogan had estimated that he’d travelled a mile from the site before tossing the gun by a tree trunk that had been split by lightning. Not such an exact description, but I was hopeful that Wilco’s nose would find the gun. So we headed downhill, Wilco off lead and sniffing at random. I walked a good twenty yards behind him, keeping a watchful eye, but not interfering. The cold spell had finally broken, the sun was out and the sky a crisp cerulean, with cotton candy clouds. I lifted my face upward, took a deep breath, and let the sun warm my cheeks. My tension melted away. Out here, in nature, with my dog, doing what we loved most, I felt content. Happy, even.
But Pusser’s words crept back into my mind. Addiction counseling. What a bunch of bullcrap. I wasn’t an addict. I could quit at any time. I’d proved that this week. Almost four days without booze or my meds.
I shifted my pack to relieve my shoulder. The bottle clinked.
I’d have to go back to work at the Sleep Sleazy. I couldn’t do that. Didn’t want to do that. At least Gran would be happy to hear I’d lost my job. No more shame or embarrassment over her granddaughter the cop. To her mind it was cleaner to scrub vomit from toilets than help muskers catch criminals.
I kept moving, focusing on my dog and willing away the dark mood that’d crept over me. Thirty minutes later, I spotted a tree with a large limb, about twenty feet up, hanging precariously. One strong wind would bring it crashing down. Anyone standing under it would be instantly crushed. The widow-maker Doogan told me about it. I waved to get Wilco’s attention and led him to that area.
He ran his nose along the forest floor, scooping up scents as he went. Ears pricked, nose twitching, tail high and bushy. Then suddenly he switched back on himself, then back again, and his tail went rigid, almost parallel to the ground.
He was onto a scent.
I waited patiently while he worked, back and forth, his nose pressed to the ground. A snort, then a sneezing fit to clear his snowpacked nostrils, and back to sniffing. I stood stock-still, taking in his every move, feeling every twitch, every ripple of his muscles. We were close. I could feel it.
I waited. And watched. On and on, he went, showing an interest, but no alert. I went to the area and searched the ground. No gun. I kicked around at the ground. Nothing, but a flash of green caught my eye. I bent down for a closer look, wiped away a couple layers of snow, revealed a corner of fabric, scraped some more, and unearthed a green silk scarf. My fingers flew to my neck, my mind zooming in on an image of Katie Doogan standing in the doorway of her home.
It was her scarf.
CHAPTER 36
I went home and started drinking.
Wilco curled by my legs with his head resting on my lap, both of us on the sofa, watching the cardboard over the front window flap in the wind. The green silk scarf was crumpled on the coffee table. Gran leaving, my job, and now this. I stared at my cell phone, disappointment and betrayal burned inside me. How could Doogan do this to me? And why? He knew how much I wanted that gun. And he’d gone back out to the woods and taken it. I pushed his number.
Katie answered Doogan’s phone. Her voice was high and brittle, as if she’d crack and break at any moment. “I knew you’d call. You won’t leave him alone, will you?”
Does Doogan know she has his phone? “That’s not why I’m calling. Is he there?”
“You can’t talk to him.”
“It’s important.”
“I don’t know what he saw in you.”
“Your husband has something of mine.”
A thin and haughty tone now: “Did you find my scarf? The green one? It’s my prettiest scarf. I left it for you. A gift.”
“A gift?”
“You need it more than me.”
I rubbed a finger over the
rough ridges on my neck. “You have the gun?”
“Yes. And I know who it killed.”
“Katie, I don’t think you understand everything—”
“Shut up! I know what happened. He told me. He told me everything. He was upset over his sister’s death. Away from me. I wasn’t there to comfort him, and you took advantage of that.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“He said touching you was like touching charred meat. But you kept throwing yourself at him.”
Charred meat. My scar sprang to life, the nerves awakening under the surface like a thousand hot, needling pins.
“He didn’t want to be with you. He was just lonely and upset. He thinks you’re ugly, repulsive.”
Repulsive. I squeezed my eyes shut. Get a grip. “Do you still have the gun, Katie?”
“Oh yeah. I have the gun. The gun your grandmother used to kill Dublin Costello.”
My heart raced. “I need it.”
“I’ve hidden it somewhere safe.”
“What do you want? Money?”
“Money?” She chuckled. “No. I don’t want money.”
“What then?”
“Retribution.” She hung up.
* * *
A shot of anger ripped through me, a sharp pang in the depths of numbness. It would never be over. The fear, the worry . . . I’d never find peace.
Peace. I’d heard Colm talk about peace many times. But I knew only one type of peace.... I retrieved another bottle from the kitchen and went to my room, undressing in front of the dresser mirror, peeling away my jeans and my T-shirt, then my socks, leaving just my bra and panties. The loops of our shag carpet snagged my toes as I turned to study my body. Wilco lay on the floor next to my feet, hovering near me, his head cocked and brown eyes worrying.
I took a long drag on the bottle, put it back on the dresser, and stepped back until my whole body filled the mirror. I lowered my panties next and ran my hands over the skin of my thighs, up past the black triangle between my legs and over my hip bones. I focused there, on the smooth skin, soft and pink like a summer peach. Unmarred skin. Not hideous. Then I worked my hands up my waist, over my rib cage, to my back and the clasp of my bra. I undid it, watched it fall to the floor, then raised my eyes. Charred meat. Red, raw steak thrown on the grill. The sound still resonated in my mind: a hissing high-pitched sizzle of my searing skin. The sickening, sweet smell of burning flesh coating the hairs of my nostrils where it lingered. Even now, if I took a deep sniff, I could smell it.
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