by W. H. Clark
He heaves himself to his feet, shifting the weight of the boy to one arm so that he can lever with his other. He sees the flashlight on the ground but doesn’t bend down to pick it up. He walks twenty more yards up the track and then he’s off it again, blundering through thickening undergrowth and crowding trees, steering the boy’s body between obstructions, threading and ducking in an ever more desperate but diminishing stride. He has to stop when a huge freshly fallen tree limb, ivory-colored sinews still showing, blocks his way. He goes deeper into the forest to skirt it and it becomes night again briefly. He hears the gentle footfall of two deer but doesn’t see them as they catch his scent and tunnel into the remaining darkness.
He begins to talk to the boy, speaking of things they will do in the future, of hopes and dreams he holds for him. Of a future that only exists in the past. The dreams of a caring grandfather who knows now that he hasn’t done enough. And how he wants to be punished. How he wants to pay for his silence. And he knows that one day he will. And he looks forward to that day.
And he curses his weakness.
21
“Time of death?” Ward said.
Packham said, “I’d say early hours of this morning. After midnight. Up to three a.m.”
Ward said to nobody, “That means he died after O’Donnell. So Brookline’s killer didn’t take any morphine from here to kill O’Donnell. Could’ve been the other way around, though. We need that inventory from Sunny Glade.”
McNeely stood up as Newton squatted down, trying to relieve the pain in his back and make it look like he was searching for evidence. Ward spotted it and was going to put a hand on Newton’s shoulder but decided against it. He just said, “I think we’re just about done here. If you want to wait in the car I’ll help McNeely finish up.”
Newton accepted the pity, and the look on his face told Ward he hated himself for it, but the pain was obviously too much. He waved away Ward’s offer of help to stand and grimaced as he straightened.
“Hey, wait up, Adam,” the medical examiner said, closing his bag. “I’ll walk out with you.”
“I’m feeling a sense of déjà vu here. This look too clean to you?” Ward’s eyes followed Newton and the medical examiner out of the room, and then he focused on McNeely.
“It looks like a shithole but I see what you mean. We ain’t collected a whole lot that looks like a whole lot. Assuming this is a homicide and not a simple OD, we’re looking at someone who knows not to leave anything behind. Someone who is clean in his work. A professional?”
“Let’s not make that assumption yet. Let’s just say he was very careful not to leave any trace.”
“Same killer, you think?”
“Well, the first scene was clean, but then the old man’s room had been cleaned by the staff at the nursing home. So any scrap of evidence he might have left was scrubbed up by the cleaning lady. Assuming he left any, and my feeling is that he didn’t.”
“Mine too. So we are working with one killer here,” McNeely said.
“If the good doctor was murdered, I think so. The only obvious difference is the prints we found on the windowsill in the first victim’s room. But why would a killer who is so meticulous leave so many prints at that scene?”
“You don’t think the prints guy is our guy?”
“I would say it doesn’t look likely,” Ward said.
“So who is the guy who left the prints?”
“I don’t know. But I would love to talk to him. And if that isn’t our guy then the killer just walked into the nursing home unchallenged. I guess the security video will give us some clues.”
“Could it be that the killer was already there? A member of the staff?”
Ward lifted his hat and rubbed a hand across his head. He didn’t answer.
“No signs of a struggle here,” McNeely said, trying to re-engage Ward, who had drifted off into his own thoughts. “Was the killer invited in? Was the victim too stoned to fight back? Did he just accept his fate? His life wasn’t exactly worth a whole deal to himself by the look of things.”
Ward stood there like a statue.
“Or maybe it was a self-inflicted OD after all,” she added. “Don’t need another homicide on the board.”
Ward thawed and shrugged. “We’ll follow the evidence. All we can do.”
Newton was staring into the meager light of the overcast winter midday. He had listened to Packham talking about his new golf handicap but hadn’t heard him. He only nodded occasionally and forced a laugh in the space where he intuitively thought it belonged. The medical examiner sensed distance and finally made it geographical, jumping into his sports car and zipping up the street like a youngster. His last words were “take care of yourself,” and they were the only ones Newton really registered.
He was left to his thoughts as he froze in the car, which didn’t have the engine running as Ward had the key. He knew that the murders of the two men and the disappearance of the boy had to be linked but he couldn’t see why. The old man had mentioned a confession before he was killed himself. Newton was convinced that the confession related to the disappearance of the boy. The history that he carried around with him crowded out any other rational thought and created a tunnel which he struggled to look beyond. And that troubled him greatly. He knew what everybody down at the station thought of him. Knew what the new guy Ward thought. Thought he was old and past his best. But now and forever the ghost of Ryan Novak sat on his shoulder.
And then there he was across the road, no more than ten to fifteen yards away. A man wearing a checked, padded lumberjack jacket and a hat with earflaps, standing and looking toward the doctor’s house. A few days’ beard growth couldn’t hide the familiar O’Donnell features, the large eyes of his late mother. And then there was the engineered jaw and tumbling brow of his late father. He knew that face. He knew that family so well. But he stared at this apparition and knew his eyes were playing tricks on him. It couldn’t be him, of course not. A gasp escaped him as a small inexplicable panic gripped his heart and stabbed adrenaline into his bloodstream, and he feared he was losing it. Meanwhile, the man still stared at the house, his hands fidgeting in his pockets and a nervousness twitching under his clothes. And then he noticed Newton looking at him and immediately he turned away and started to walk quickly up the street. Newton tried to roll down the window but the electrics weren’t engaged because Ward had the damn key and his shout of “hey, stop” only bounced around inside the car. By the time he opened the door and climbed out, his back only allowing slow movement, the man had begun to run. Newton tried his shout again but the man kept running, and Newton froze and couldn’t give chase. He cursed himself and climbed back into the car, and in his confusion he simply pressed the horn and didn’t let go.
It was Ward who was first out of the house and the screen door almost tore off its fractured hinges as he descended the few steps in one leap and made it to the car in seconds.
“What is it?” Ward asked as he tore open the driver’s door and followed Newton’s gape up the street.
Newton let go of the horn and looked up at Ward almost stupidly, his face drained of life. For a moment he was silent and then he said, “I’m sorry, I thought I saw someone. It was no one. He just ran, that’s all, but I think he was just keeping warm.”
Ward regarded him with a concerned and slightly annoyed look. “You saw someone? Maybe a witness? Someone more interesting? He ran, you say?”
“No, it was just… he’s gone anyway. It was nothing really. I was just trying to get his attention is all.” And Newton sensed Ward’s irritation and he sensed his own sanity creaking. It was happening again. He was seeing ghosts. Damn it. He was seeing ghosts again.
Ward looked at Newton but Newton just stared straight ahead. “Give me two minutes,” Ward said. “We’re finished here.” He tossed the car key into Newton’s lap and slammed the door.
22
Alice White’s time-wearied fingers knew only dainty movement here. Ho
use chores had become a struggle, but she still knew how to dress a baby with the most intricate care. They called her the Baby Dresser, the name as natural to her now as her baptized one, and she was revered in the small town where people regarded her with wonder for what she did. The tight-knit black community that centered on the gospel church considered her an angel.
The baby girl’s right arm was caressed into the tiny pink cotton bodysuit that her parents had handed over. And then she threaded the left arm in. She snapped the five fasteners. And then Alice White’s hands smoothed out unwanted wrinkles and folds and adjusted the garment, a hand sliding under the baby and nipping a deep pleat into the back of it to draw it into a more natural fit at the front, the side that people would see. The side with the embroidered smiling bear on it. The bodysuit was too large, as was usual for a baby this early, but she had the skill to always make them appear a perfect fit. Maria was the baby’s name and she had lived three days. Her insides were all messed up and the doctors couldn’t save her. But they had likely saved her from an almost certain future of pain and too many operations. She had been baptized on her second day of life while still in intensive care and had stopped crying briefly as the chaplain had spoken her name. And then she started up again and didn’t stop until she fell asleep for the last time.
Alice hummed a gospel hymn, “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling,” her voice achieving a low timbre that could have been a note on a distant church organ. The viewing room that was adjacent to the hospital chapel was where she worked, and the sparse interior offered a fitting acoustic effect. There was one chair which was only used once the job was done and Alice sat there and said a prayer for the little soul and shed a tear. She always cried.
She had been a nurse for over thirty years and, although that career had ended, this career carried on and, really, it was her only true vocation. Her God-given gift. And with every baby she dressed, she knew in the deepest part of her heart that she was doing His work.
She dressed the very early premature ones in dolls’ clothes as they were the only ones that would fit, and she worked extra hard to give some recognizable human form to these so that the parents could recognize them as a baby. They would bring their cameras and take photographs and weep and wail and Alice would be in the chapel next door muttering a prayer for them, asking God to deliver their baby to heaven and to mend the parents’ broken hearts as quickly as possible.
She reached for her makeup box and searched for something to put some life color into the baby Maria’s lovely little cheeks.
23
Newton jumped as Ward opened the car door. The engine was running and Newton had whacked up the heat so that it was stiflingly hot. Ward immediately rolled down a window and finally found the perfect temperature. He didn’t speak. Newton did as they pulled away and headed back to the station.
“Back there. It was nothing. Don’t be getting the wrong idea about me. I don’t spook easily or nothing.”
“No problem.”
When they arrived back at the station McNeely waved them straight over. She had gotten back just before Ward and Newton and she slurped a coffee and looked down at her computer and some papers on her desk. She picked some up and threw them back down onto the desk one by one.
“We ain’t got shit from the first scene,” she said.
Ward said, “How’s that?”
“No DNA hits other than that of the victim. We have no fingerprint hits. We got the second blood analysis back and it confirms the first: morphine poisoning. But hear this. The security tapes.” She said it as a question. “There aren’t any.”
“There aren’t what?” Ward said.
Greg Poynter appeared by her side. “Went up there to collect it. Nothing doing. Been out of order for weeks. I checked it myself.”
Newton looked at Ward and Ward said, “Goddamn it. So what do we have?”
“I brought back the guestbook.” Poynter handed it to Ward, who didn’t take it but nodded over at Newton, who did. “And all the statements we collected.”
“It’s a start. Okay, we check the book for previous visitors to the victim. We go over the statements to check for any irregularities, anything unusual or out of place. How’s the evidence looking from the second scene?” He directed that question at McNeely.
“That will take some processing, detective. On the face of it we don’t have a great deal. We’ll run some prints, one or two clothing fibers. The ME will take a few hours or so on the body. Honestly, we don’t have a whole lot.”
“Statements from neighbors?”
“Still being collected,” Poynter said.
“There is one thing,” McNeely said. “The doctor had been served with a foreclosure notice. Looks like he didn’t keep up the loan repayments. Maybe that’s a reason for him taking his own life?”
Ward said, “Okay. Well, we have what we have. Keep working it.” He gestured with his head at Newton. “I guess we go back to the first scene, see if there’s anything we’re missing. How about we go pay a visit to the owners of the nursing home? Anybody talked to them?”
“James Kenny,” Newton said. “Owns most of the damn town. You see any construction works going on around here, you can bet a dollar to a dime it’s Kenny Construction. He’s an old-timer himself but money keeps you going like some elixir from the fountain of youth. Damn sure it does.”
24
The massive dawn sun has already broken the horizon.
Bill O’Donnell cries dry tears now, from two sources of pain. He had considered dragging the boy’s body but couldn’t bear for any more damage to be done to him. Instead, he continues to carry him and the weight of his guilt seems to add another fifty pounds to the little boy.
He leaves another track that would have borne lumber-dragging horses and later trucks, those days merely a sepia memory, and now he’s climbing to a small ridge where he knows that two miles beyond is his destination. He has to keep stopping to take in air and to straighten his cramping arms, but now he knows that the race against the sunrise is lost but the race against anybody else pursuing him is probably won. If there was anybody following they wouldn’t know the woods like him.
He had lived here, had mapped the woods in his mind over forty-odd years, tracking whitetail and elk and fishing trout over in Blackfoot River. He knew hundreds of trees, peculiar by their bark patterns or branch formations, knew every turn in the rivers, and they acted like signposts to him.
He thinks of his daughter and dead wife and he feels like he’s bringing the boy home for a burial in his spirit land. And that gives him a small piece of comfort and he yearns for peace for the boy and for himself.
He reaches the top of the ridge and on the other side a steep drop appears to have sheared away the trees. In their place tumble sparse patches of mountain heathers and grouseberry. At the steepest part there are only rocks. He knows there is a long way down and a short way down, and instinct tells him to take the long route, which skirts the ridge as it falls away gently to the north, an ancient track that elk follow and probably created, carving an easygoing trail. That route would add an extra half hour to the journey but Bill O’Donnell doesn’t feel he has that time, doesn’t want this to take any longer than it needs to. He decides to take the short route.
He gently lowers the boy to the ground and lays him down. The body has stiffened. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a length of thin nylon rope. He picks the boy up again and hitches him onto his back so that the boy’s head rests on his own right shoulder. He bends forward so the boy doesn’t slip, and then he takes one end of the rope and, with his right hand, he throws it over his left shoulder, the boy’s too. He pulls the rope tight and fastens a knot at his chest, securing the boy to his back. He doesn’t stand up, though, because he knows the boy will be dislodged. He throws the end of the rope over his right shoulder now and grabs it by his left hip, forming a crisscross over the boy’s back. He pulls tight and, for the next few minutes, repeats this until
he is able to stand without the boy working loose.
He takes the steepest part backwards as if climbing down a fire escape and he finds purchase in the rocks where he expects to. Only once does he nearly lose his footing on a thin seam of shale. Once the slope becomes shallower he can turn around and carefully pick his way down, his footing never quite sure under legs that want to go to sleep. And when rocks and sparse vegetation give way once more to lodgepole pines he falls to his knees. He can see the water through the trees, the lake created by loggers a hundred years earlier, and on seeing that he allows himself five minutes of rest. He unties the rope and gently lets the boy lie down, and then he sits and closes his eyes. And for a few moments he is asleep and he dreams and in his dream the boy is alive again.
25
Ward had called ahead to the office of James Kenny but he wasn’t there. The customarily obstructive personal assistant eventually yielded and told Ward that Kenny was on-site at the planned development of the new science and technology wing at the Meriwether Elementary School.
When they pulled up at the school Ward knew straight away which one was Kenny. He had the calm demeanor of a man who was so in control he probably thought he could affect the weather. And despite his short stature, he towered over the men he was with and they were clearly intimidated by his presence.
Ward made no move to get out of the car. He stared at the man called James Kenny, property developer, multimillionaire. “Why do I get a prickly feeling about this guy?”
“Let’s go say hello.”
