The Backwoods

by Edward Lee

  “And what?”

  “I’m scared, and Sutter was looking at me funny earlier today when I left the office. I’m about to shit my pants worrying what Ricky might say.”

  “Ricky’s in as deep as us.”

  “He don’t care! He thinks the Squatters killed Junior with some sorta hocus-pocus!”

  “In other words, you think Ricky might be a liability now?”

  “Damn right. He starts running his mouth to save his ass, you and I’re both gonna be neck-deep in shit.”

  Another pause. The solution was obvious, though he would’ve preferred not to clarify it over a phone line. “Rectify the problem, for both our sakes. Use your position to your advantage. It’ll be easy once you think about it. . . . Am I clear?”

  “It’ll cost.”

  “I’ll pay. Rectify the problem. Do it quickly.”

  He hung up.

  His hand retreated back into the dark.

  (III)

  I don’t believe it, Patricia thought. She looked up the hill, lit by morning sun, and saw what appeared to be a Squatter family leaving the Point. A ragtag man and woman, plus a child, trudged up the hill toward the main road out of town, carrying sacks of clothes and beaten suitcases.

  They’re leaving town. . . .

  At the end of the trail she spotted a figure coming her way, a toolbox at the end of one strong arm. She scarcely had a minute to contemplate the idea that Squatters were actually moving away out of fear, and now more of this distraction.

  Oh, no, not again.

  It was Ernie who headed toward her. He smiled and waved.

  Patricia had hoped for a nice, leisurely walk by herself, to clear her head. But the instant she saw him . . .

  All that sexual tension returned.

  Damn it.

  He wended up the rest of the trail, the Stanherd house looming in the background.

  “Mornin’,” he greeted her.

  “Where have you been?”

  “I just come from the Stanherd house. Last week Everd asked to borrow my tools to replace some missing shingles, so I thought I’d drop ’em off with Marthe for when he comes back from the boats.” He set the toolbox down, suddenly looking confused. “But he ain’t there.”

  “He works the crabbing boats every morning, I thought. He’s probably on the water.”

  “His boat’s still tied up at the dock, and so are half a’ the others. What I mean is Everd and his wife are gone. They left town’s, what the men at the pier told me.”

  “They . . .” Then Patricia looked farther up the trail and saw yet another Squatter family trudging away. “It looks like quite a few clan people are leaving.”

  “Things change. I guess it was bound to happen.” Ernie’s face looked deflated.

  “I guess if I had a family, and drugs started popping up in the neighborhood, I’d move too,” Patricia reasoned.

  “The others are sayin’ that ain’t the real reason,” Ernie said. “I just talked to some a’ the men at the docks, said a lot of clan are leavin’ ’cos they’re just plain scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Well, it’s like we were talkin’ the other day. Rumors everywhere—ya never really find out what the true story is. But some a’ the clan are sayin’ that this whole drug business is a setup, and that somebody murdered the Hilds and the Ealds to scare the bejesus out of the rest a’ the Squatters, to get ’em to clear out.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Patricia replied. “Nobody wants the Squatters to leave. . . .” But then the rest of her sentence trailed off as she considered her words.

  “Uh-hmm,” Ernie edged in. “That Felps fella would love for the Squats to leave. With nobody to run the crabbing business, Judy’d be much more tempted to just say to hell with it and sell the land.”

  “To Felps, you’re right.” A breeze ran through her red hair. “He’s already made offers. But that’s still crazy. I don’t believe for a minute that Gordon Felps is murdering Squatters for the sake of his condo development.”

  “Neither do I, but ya gotta admit the coincidence.” Ernie pointed to one of the shanties, where a man hauled a suitcase out the front door. “Looks like a lot of ‘em are figurin’ they’d be safer somewhere else. They don’t wanna wind up like the Hilds ‘n’ the Ealds.”

  Like a chain reaction, Patricia thought. The murder of the Hilds, plus the fire, has started a mass exodus. Ernie’s suspicion of Gordon Felps was an overreaction; nevertheless, she wondered how long it would be before he came back to Judy with another offer to purchase the property.

  “Let’s just go ask someone,” she said off the top of her head.

  “Huh?”

  “Come on. . . .”

  He followed her back down the trail. High grass on either side shimmered in sunlight, while lone cicadas buzzed clumsily through the air. Patricia wasn’t sure what lured her down the hill; perhaps she just wanted to see more directly for herself. They approached one larger shack made of roofing metal. Outside was a chicken-wire pen that caged, of all things, several seagulls.

  “Seagulls as pets?” she questioned.

  “Not quite,” Ernie said. “The Squatters use gull fat to make candles, and they eat the meat. Roasted gull tastes just like—”

  “Let me guess. Chicken.”

  “Naw, tastes like mallard duck.”

  Patricia shook her head. “I’ve never heard of anyone eating seagull. They’re like pigeons, I thought. Don’t taste good.”

  “They pen ‘em for two weeks, and feed ’em nothin’ but corn. Just wait till the clan banquet tomorrow. You’ll have to try some.”

  Patricia doubted she would. “I’d be surprised if they even had this banquet. With four of their own killed in a couple of days . . . that’s not exactly a festive occasion.”

  “That ain’t how the Squatters see it. Every day they’re alive they consider a gift from God.”

  Patricia appreciated the positive philosophy. Eat, drink, and be merry, she thought, for tomorrow you may die? But she honestly wondered how many of them believed the others had been murdered as a scare tactic.

  A little Squatter girl—about ten—moseyed about the pen. She wore a frayed and obviously handmade sun-dress, and had a mop of black hair.

  “Hi, there,” Patricia greeted her. “Are these your birds?”

  The little girl looked up despondently and nodded. She looked on the verge of tears. Then she opened the makeshift door of the pen and began shooing the gulls out with a branch.

  “Why are you letting them go?”

  In a rush, all of the hefty birds scampered out of the pen and flew off at once. “Cain’t take ’em with us, my daddy said,” the little girl told them.

  “Where are you goin’?” Ernie asked.

  The girl’s accent warbled from her small mouth. “Someplace called Norfolk, ‘cos my daddy says he might git a job on the big crab boats. But we cain’t stay here, ’cos someone might kill us.” And then the little girl ran back into the shed.

  “That’s so sad,” Patricia said.

  “Yeah, but like I said . . .”

  Patricia tried to unclutter her mind as they meandered back toward her sister’s house. She frowned to herself when Ernie turned his back to her.

  It was that same distraction again—raging, fraying her sexual nerves. Whenever she tried to focus on something else, his aura kept dragging her eyes back to his unknowing body: the long flow of his hair, the strong legs in tight workman’s jeans, the strong back. What if I weren’t married; what if I weren’t. . . ? Her thoughts kept betraying her.

  Just remember what Dr. Sallee said. Women my age experience their actual sexual peak. It’s normal for me to feel this way . . . as long as I don’t act on those feelings.

  His boots crunched up the trail before her, and that alternate voice kept asking her: What if I weren’t married?

  It didn’t matter.

  “Well, how do ya like that?”

  Patricia reclaimed her
attention; Ernie had stopped on the incline of the trail, looking up toward the main road.

  “What are you . . .” But then she spotted the vehicle herself, a new large pickup truck parked at the shoulder. Even at this considerable distance she could see the man sitting in the driver’s seat peering down into the center of Squatterville, as though he were actually watching the clan families trudging away from their homes in order to leave town.

  The man in the pickup truck was Gordon Felps.

  Ten

  (I)

  Less than a twenty-minute drive took Patricia to Luntville and the rather drab county hospital. She knew it was her imagination, yet it bothered her the way two clerks at the information kiosk gave her the eye when she asked directions to the morgue. The basement, of course. They were always in the basement.

  The downstairs unnerved her; it was dark and dead silent. Her footsteps clattered about her head as she made her way to the yellowish glass-windowed door that read, OFFICE OF THE COUNTY CORONER.

  Let’s see how much pull my boss really has, she thought. Getting a morgue to release recent records was usually akin to pulling the teeth out of a ferret. When she entered, she expected more odd looks from the personnel here and was nearly shocked to find herself standing before a human dichotomy: an utterly striking blonde in tight jeans and an open lab coat that revealed a haltered bosom and a perfect bare abdomen. She had the kind of body that spurred jealousy even from the most extraordinarily attractive women.

  Her body’s ten times better than mine! Patricia thought. I’m pissed! “Hi,” she began, and got out her driver’s license. “I’m—”

  “Patricia White, right?” A sexy Southern accent preceded the blond woman when she hurried around the registration desk. She spoke very quickly. “The governor’s office called this morning, and I’d just like you to know that we’ll do whatever we can to accommodate you.” Then she pulled out a folder. “You wanted to see the post records for a decedent named Dwayne Parker?”

  That’s what I call the red-carpet treatment, Patricia thought, amused. Tim’s brother lit a fire under somebody’s butt. “Yes, and I’m sorry it was such short notice. I’m the attorney for the decedent’s wife, and I won’t be in town long, so I didn’t really have time to file a FOIA request.”

  “Oh, well, there’s no reason to do that”—the beautiful woman kept speaking very quickly—“because, after all, we’re a branch of the government that exists to serve the taxpayers’ needs.”

  Now she’s absolutely kissing my ass, Patricia realized. The coroner’s office for a rural county like this probably didn’t keep the best records anyway. The last thing they’d want is a government inspection. But it was working, and that all Patricia cared about “Are you the receptionist? I was hoping to talk to the county coroner himself.”

  “Herself, and you are, ma’am,” the blonde corrected, and gestured to the nametag on her lab coat. It read c. BAKER, RUSSELL COUNTY CORONER. “And I’d be happy to answer any questions you have, since the postmortem report might be . . . confusing to you.”

  Patricia opened the folder and scanned the top sheet: Anomalous death—COD, it read. Decapitation via smooth Transection of levator scapulae muscular process and #5 & 6 cervical vertebrae. Mode of transection as yet undetermined and curious. She blinked, looked back up at Baker, and admitted, “I’m only good with legalese, not medical tech talk. I guess this means that the manner in which Dwayne Parker lost his head . . . that’s what they’re calling ‘undetermined and curious’?”

  The coroner nodded curtly, but she was obviously curtailing something. “It’s just kind of odd, and its difficult to explain in any way that makes sense. But every now and then any medical examiner’s office will get a cause of death that simply can never be determined.”

  Patricia frowned at the sheet. This was much less than she’d hoped for. “How was his head cut off, is what I want to be able to tell the family. Was it cut off, shot off? Was it knocked off in some sort of freak accident?”

  Another curt look from the pretty coroner. “It was . . . none of those things, and that’s about the only thing we do know. No blade striations, no evidence of severe impact to the body, no evidence of firearm discharge.”

  “But the head was never recovered—that’s what I heard from the locals, anyway. Is that true?”

  “Quite true, ma’am.”

  This was frustrating. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it.”

  “Look on the next page, Ms. White.”

  Patricia followed the instruction and immediately fell silent.

  What she looked at now was the most macabre photograph she’d ever seen in her life. . . .

  The clarity of the bright digital picture—Dwayne’s autopsy photo—seemed to shout at her. “This . . . can’t be real, can it?”

  “Oh, it’s real, ma’am. I took the picture myself. It hasn’t been altered, and there weren’t any defects in the film or processing. I took several with several different cameras.”

  The photograph framed Dwayne’s chest and shoulders, as well as the area of space that his head would occupy, if he’d had a head. Patricia expected a clot-caked stump or some other kind of ragged wound to indicate the decapitation. But there was nothing.

  There was just skin.

  “There’s not even a—”

  “Not even a neck,” Baker finished. “And the osteo X-rays actually show a round—not a severed—cervical vertebra. There’s actually no clinical evidence of a decapitation—which I know is silly, because he’s got no head. But the picture looks like he’d never had one. Look at the next picture.”

  Patricia, with some trepidation, turned to the next sheet: a close-up of where the “stump” should be.

  “This,” she started, shaking her head, “this . . .” She tried to frame words. “This looks like there’s just skin grown over the place where his neck should be.”

  “Um-hmm.”

  Patricia looked up again, grateful to take her eyes off the creepy photograph. “You’re the coroner. How do you account for this?”

  “I really can’t. It happens in this business, and I realize that’s not an acceptable answer, but it’s all I can give you. It’s just one of those rare deaths that’s a big question mark.”

  “And you’re sure this is Dwayne Parker? You’re sure it’s not some elaborate stage dummy or something, some kind of joke?”

  “It’s no dummy, Ms. White. I personally performed the Y-section and a clinical evisceration. I weighed every organ in that man’s body. There are pictures of that too, if you’d like to—”

  “No, no, that won’t be necessary,” Patricia hastened to say.

  “The Bureau of Prisons verified the fingerprints, along with two five-probe DNA profiles. And the body that I autopsied had tattoos that matched the county corrections inductee log of distinguishing marks. The body in the photograph is Dwayne Parker, and I’m very sorry I can’t give you any useful information regarding his decapitation. One of the dermatologists at the hospital suggested that maybe some kind of mold or fungus grew over the transection area—”

  “Is that possible?”

  “In my opinion, no.” The coroner shrugged, just as frustrated now as Patricia. “That’s why we call this kind of death undetermined and curious.”

  You can say that again. . . . Patricia passed back the folder. She was glad not to have it in her hands anymore. What am I going to tell Judy? She struggled with the thought.

  Nothing, I guess. I just won’t tell her anything.

  “What’s stranger,” Baker said, “is the fact that Dwayne Parker was a resident of Agan’s Point, the crabbing town out on the water.”

  “Why is that strange?” Patricia asked.

  “Because it really is a quiet little place. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a decedent from Agan’s Point who didn’t die from old age. Then all of a sudden, in little more than a week we get Dwayne Parker, plus two brutal mutilations and two people burned to death.”


  The Hilds and the Ealds, Patricia knew. “All from Agan’s Point. Did you find any evidence of drugs in any of the bodies?”

  Baker shook her head. “The narcotics unit and the Agan’s Point police chief both asked me for full tox screens—something about crystal methamphetamine. There was nothing in any of them, no CDS of any kind, no marijuana, not even any trace alcohol. But that’s not even what I was going to mention. That’s not the strange part.”

  “What is?”

  “The body that came in this morning.”

  Patricia’s brow furrowed. “Not another Agan’s Point resident . . .”

  “I’m afraid so. The sixth one now.”

  “Who?”

  “Forty-five-year-old male Caucasian named Robert Caudill, aka Junior.”

  The name rang a bell. “I remember when I was a kid, he and his twin brother were the neighborhood bullies.” Patricia pinched her chin. “And he was murdered?”

  “Don’t know,” Baker replied. “I don’t see how it could be a homicide, but . . .” She sighed, blowing a tress of blond hair. “Since the governor’s office told me to open all doors to you . . . I guess I can show you. You want to see?”

  She’s asking me if I want to see a fat redneck’s corpse. Patricia told herself. She gritted her teeth and said, “Yes, please.”

  Whatever it is, it can’t be any weirder than the picture of Dwayne.

  Patricia was quite wrong about that, which she would discern in a moment. She followed the attractive coroner through the front office and into a door that read, SUITE 1—DO NOT ENTER. At once a strong scent accosted her nostrils. “It’s formalin; you’ll get used to it,” Baker said. “All-purpose preservative.” Overhead fluorescent tubes threw the ghastliest tint about the room; Patricia supposed it was just her imagination—she was in a morgue—but somehow that tint made her feel unnaturally close to death. Ranks of storage shelves behind them sat heavy with big smoke-colored glass bottles: JORE’S, ZENKER’S SOLUTION, PHENOL 20 PERCENT. A tin tray marked AMYLOID/FAT NECROSIS PREP held several bottles of iodine and copper sulphate. A large sink and heat-sealing iron hung on the same wall. Basically the room could’ve passed for any high school biology lab, save for one fact: high school biology labs didn’t have a covered dead body sitting in the middle of them.