by Jaime Maddox
Jess was delighted and excited and nervous all at the same time, looking forward to her evening with Wendy more than anything since she’d come to the mountains. Yet she had to tell Ward. Somehow, the dates with Emory and John the accountant didn’t seem like cheating, but going out with another woman did. Jess needed to be sure Ward understood her, because she didn’t need any more guilt where Ward was concerned. She already felt like shit because of their breakup, because of the way she’d treated Ward, even though Ward’s binge had precipitated it.
Moving her computer’s mouse, Jess clicked on the appropriate box and Ward’s file appeared. Before her the screen lit up with the results of the spinal-fluid analysis for toxins. No cocaine was in her system, nor marijuana or any other of the typical drugs of abuse. The alcohol level was minimal. Not what Jess had expected. Even more shocking, though, was the positive result for flunitrazepam, more commonly known as Rohypnol, the date-rape drug.
Roofies typically rendered women comatose and vulnerable, but like most drugs, sometimes people had strange reactions to them. Intense violence after use of Rohypnol had been reported, and Jess suspected that was just what had happened in Ward’s case. It explained everything. Yet it explained nothing.
Why the fuck did she even order the test? She’d wanted answers, not more questions when she’d asked Dave in the lab to run the tox screen on Ward’s spinal fluid. She’d always felt uncomfortable about that night. First, Ward’s totally uncharacteristic violence. Then, George’s hesitance in answering the question about her alcohol intake. Finally, the quick and easy solution her father and Em had concocted to solve the problem. She’d gone with it, and she was ashamed to admit that getting Ward out of her hair had been what she wanted. Yet she suspected she’d betrayed Ward just to solve her own problems, and that guilt had eaten at her since. So much so she’d ordered the testing. Now that she had the answer, what did she do?
Jess closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. What the fuck was this about? It made no sense. How did that get into her system? Why? According to what they’d told her, George and Emory had been the only ones at the bar that night. Rohypnol was quick acting; someone had to have slipped it into Ward’s drink at the bar. If George and Em were the only ones at the bar, one of them had done it. But why? Neither had a motive for drugging Ward. What would they have done with her? Snuck her out of the bar under their coats to have their way with her, hoping the other didn’t notice? And no way were they in on this together. Emory and George weren’t even friends, let alone partners in crime. Besides that, George was a teddy bear, an older, happily married man who surely wouldn’t do something like this. And while Emory might have despised Ward, why would he want to rape her? It was Jess he liked.
Jess leaned back in her chair, eyes still closed, and considered the possibilities. It didn’t seem likely that rape was the motive. Robbery? Ward carried little cash—although most people wouldn’t have known that—but neither man needed money. George made a good living at the bar, and Emory’s landscaping business was flourishing. Then another idea came to her, and Jess’s breath caught in her throat.
Murder. What if Emory wanted Jess so badly he was willing to murder Ward to get her out of the way? He would drug her, lure her out of the bar, and drag her into his car, and Ward would never be seen again. Or he’d run over her in the parking lot when she was too confused to jump out of the way.
A chill came over her, and she rubbed both arms to chase it. She should have been happy to have this news. It exonerated Ward. At the same time, though, it put someone else—probably Emory, and possibly her father—in a whole lot of trouble.
What should she do now? Jess knew Ward was concerned about that night. She knew she should tell her. But if she did, Ward would pursue the truth. She’d pursue Jess, trying to convince her she was worthy of another chance.
Jess couldn’t deal with any of that. She clicked the printer icon on her computer screen, and instantly Ward’s labs were permanently recorded on paper. She folded the copy several times and placed it in her coat pocket for safekeeping, until she made a decision. The one thing she knew with certainty was she couldn’t share the lab results with Ward. Maybe eventually, but not yet. Jess wasn’t ready. She needed to tell Ward about her date with Wendy, though. She picked up the phone and dialed her number.
Chapter Eleven
Foreign Bodies
Ward pulled her car to the side of the road and slapped the steering wheel. She was so overwhelmingly frustrated. Her GPS was useless. Gazing to her right through a break in the trees, she studied the weed-infested trail that led deep into a mature forest. On either side of this grassy lane, trees stood watch, and from the looks of things, they were successful in keeping out stray vehicles. She detected no hint of life or the lake that was supposed to be just off the main road. Glancing first down at her map and then at her car’s odometer, she puffed out her cheeks in frustration and leaned her head against the headrest for a moment of peace.
What had started off well had turned into a miserable day. She’d worked the Friday overnight shift in the ER and managed to snag five hours of sleep. When the staff called her at six in the morning to see a patient, she ran into Melvin, the ER security guard, who invited Ward to go fishing on this first day of the season. It seemed like a perfect way to spend the few hours she had off before her night shift, and so she accepted his invitation. He’d drawn a map on a hand towel and told her he’d meet her there later in the day. Ward had been looking forward to the outing until just a few minutes earlier, when her phone rang. Actually, she was fine when it rang, but not so good by the time she disconnected the call from Jess.
Calls from Jess had been scarce in the past months, and Ward was always excited when she saw Jess’s smiling face on her phone’s screen. She kept hoping Jess would call to tell her she wanted to patch things up or try again. To talk about their relationship. But Jess didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t want to talk about anything.
Ward had pressed the green icon to accept the call and promptly made a wrong turn. After a moment of small talk, Jess told her she was planning to start dating again, and Ward’s world had been spinning in the wrong direction ever since. After hanging up the phone, Ward realized she was lost, and she’d spent the past thirty minutes trying to find her destination. After driving the same road a half dozen times, the local police pulled her over for speeding, and the officer was ready to ticket her until he realized she was the new ER doc. As happy as she was to be spared the ticket, she was pissed off, too. The news would be all over town by the time she made it back for her night shift. And now, frustration washed over her as she tried to decipher Melvin’s map. He’d drawn a line depicting a dirt road “three miles or so” from the last major intersection. Melvin would never make it as a cartographer, that was for sure. Was this grassy lane considered a dirt road? It didn’t look like it. But she’d traveled more than four miles from the intersection, doubled back twice, and it was the only road she’d come upon.
Could weeds wrap around car tires and destroy the car’s engine? Or its transmission? Or some other important part? She knew little about automobiles, but she didn’t think a car, even an SUV like hers, was designed to go down that road. It was meant for Hummers with drug runners hanging from the windows, not for exploration by mild-mannered physicians. She put her car in drive and forged ahead anyway.
Ward was tossed around in her seat until she slowed her car to a crawl. Thank God for four-wheel-drive, she thought as the wheels struggled for traction. Beneath all the grassy cover, the ground was wet. And scarring trees on both sides of the road, every hundred yards or so, Ward read signs. Keep Out. Turn Back. No Trespassing. Private Property. Guard Dog on Duty. No Hunting. No Fishing. No Timbering. They were all hand painted in white, on planks of wood that had been nailed at odd angles. Ward shook her head. The way her day was going, some mountain man with a gun was likely to pop up in the road and shoot her.
After a bumpy mile, she saw
the mirrored surface of the lake glistening through the trees. She didn’t see any place to pull over and room for only one car along this thoroughfare. How was she going to turn around to get out? Backing up that distance wouldn’t be much fun, and she didn’t think she could make a K turn on the narrow road. Maybe she’d just keep driving forward until she ran out of gas, or into a tree, or a ravine, or found some other good excuse for calling AAA. And then, when she called them, she’d have no idea how to tell them where the hell she was, because Melvin’s map sucked.
Stopping the car, she took another moment to lean against the headrest, and before she knew they were coming, tears were flowing freely down her cheeks, her chest heaving in great sobs that shook her body. What the fuck had happened to her life? A year before she was a successful emergency physician with a cushy job at a teaching hospital. She guided young residents, taught them the skills they needed to save lives, hobnobbed with learned colleagues and administrators at committee meetings. She was paid well to do it! And at the end of her days, she went home to a beautiful woman who loved her.
When that beautiful woman asked her to give up her career—or at least to put it on hold, Ward hadn’t hesitated. Because, truthfully, she wasn’t that ambitious. She had a good many commas after her name, but when Jess had asked her to sacrifice them for a year in Garden, working as a staff physician, she did it, not because of her own ambitions, but because of her feelings for Jess. Jess was what mattered most, not her career. Lately Ward had started to wonder if she’d somehow failed to let Jess know that, to tell her not only how much she was loved, but respected and appreciated.
Now it was too late, anyway. Jess was almost unapproachable, and it seemed ridiculous to speak of those things now. Ward thought herself pathetic. She’d spent the past months begging for attention from a woman who no longer wanted her, a woman who’d moved on and was now dating the local coroner. It had been bad enough to know she’d gone to a Valentine’s dinner with Emory, but deep inside, Ward knew he wasn’t a threat. Sure, it bothered her that the woman she loved was going out with a man, but if she needed to try dating a man, then Ward had to give her that freedom. Jess was gay and no man stood a chance.
The coroner, though, was a different story. The coroner was a sexy little dyke and just Jess’s type. If Jess wanted to date her, it meant only one thing. She didn’t love Ward anymore. She’d never said it—in fact, she’d reassured Ward of her love dozens of times in the past months. She’d used the words confused and scared and drifting and sad, but she’d also told Ward she still loved her. How could she date another woman if that was true?
It was all so strange. Jess was once the most decisive person Ward knew. She didn’t ask, she demanded. She knew what she wanted—whether it was a specific medication for a patient, or a vacation destination, or a date with Ward. Ward always thought Jess was the perfect complement for her. She tended to be quieter and to let others make plans about restaurants and travel and other nonsense. She had enough responsibility at work, so why stress about the trivialities? She let Jess make those decisions, and manage their money, and organize their lives. It made them both happy. It had, anyway. Neither of them was happy now. And this Jess who didn’t know what she wanted was a little scary. Ward didn’t know how to deal with her.
“Arrgh!” Ward yelled, then opened her eyes. The sun was shining, and in spite of her personal emotional storms, the day was beautiful. The lake was visible through the trees, and the image was picturesque. Perfect. Taking a few deep breaths, she hummed a few exhalations and put herself into a kinder, gentler reality. A few minutes of meditation did the trick. Ward wiped her tears and vowed to enjoy her afternoon in the woods.
Should she wait for Melvin or begin without him? Deciding she needed a distraction, she hopped out of her car.
Jeans and sneakers were the attire of the day, and in spite of the bright skies, Ward needed them. Here, in the shade, it wasn’t going to reach the seventy degrees the forecasters had promised. Her Phillies sweatshirt would probably not come off, and she’d brought a windbreaker, too. Just in case.
At the back of the car she pulled out her tackle box and her official fishing hat. Her license was attached, just as Zeke had taught her years before. The little box containing her portable fishing pole—another gift from Zeke—fit easily in her other hand. After stashing her valuables in the cargo bay, Ward closed the hatch and locked the car, then picked her way through branches and brush to the side of the lake.
Once in the clearing, Ward took a moment to just look. To listen. To smell. In thirty seconds her troubles were forgotten as she saw a bird—she had no idea what kind—swoop down toward the shimmering surface of the lake, then pull up, gliding back around and disappearing into the trees. All around the lake sentinel trees watched, their arms branching over the water, the lowest limbs flirting with its surface. To her left a patch of blueberry bushes hugged the shoreline, and beyond them, lily pads littered the lake’s surface. Ward tended to measure everything in golf terms, and the lake was big. Wider across than two par fives, perhaps a thousand yards. She couldn’t determine its length from where she stood—it disappeared around a bend to the right, five hundred yards from where she stood.
She was impressed that such a large body of water remained undeveloped, but Melvin had told her his family had owned it since they settled here in the mountains two hundred years earlier. The family vowed to keep the land whole, and Ward suddenly felt privileged for her invitation. She thought of Towering Pines and how wise Jess’s grandfather and his friends had been to preserve that area for this generation.
She stood gazing, her arms resting on a low-hanging tree branch, relaxing for the first time in days. This had been a good idea, the fishing. She only threw her catches back, but it wasn’t about hooking the fish. It was about the tranquility of the woods and the beauty of a silver-topped lake.
A ratchety-clicking noise, one she’d heard many times in the mountains, caused Ward to freeze. She’d been just about to bend down and begin assembling her rod, but instead she raised her hands in the air and turned slowly toward the sound.
The shotgun was expected. That ratcheting noise was unmistakable. But it was the woman holding the gun that stunned her. She was tall, with leathery skin battered by the sun and a shock of white hair. Intense blue eyes peeked out from behind prescription eyeglasses. She wore a loose, button-up work shirt, jeans, and fishing waders. A fishing hat dangled on its cord behind her head. Ward guessed she was in her seventies, but the gun she had pointed at Ward made her seem much younger.
“You speak English?” the woman demanded.
Ward couldn’t find her voice. What the fuck?
“Habla spanol?”
Ward shook her head.
“Oh, Christ Jesus! Spreken dutch?”
Ward didn’t move.
“Per lay voo friend chase?”
Ward cleared her throat, looked at her shaking hands, and willed them to stop. “I speak English,” she said at last.
“Well, can’t you read it? There are twenty-five signs posted along that road, missy, and all of them say ‘stay out.’”
“I…I…I’m a friend of the owner. He’s supposed to meet me here.”
The woman cocked her head and looked at Ward through squinty eyes. “What owner? Who the hell are you?” she asked, turning her head but keeping the gun trained on Ward.
“My name is Ward Thrasher. I have my driver’s license in the car, over there.” Ward gestured with her head. “I’m supposed to meet Melvin here.”
At the mention of that name, the woman looked heavenward and then shook her head. More importantly, she lowered the gun. “Why the hell does that old bugger do this to me? Can’t he just pick up the telephone and call? Tell me he’s sending a guest over?”
Why does he do this to her? You should be me, Ward thought. “I don’t know. Sorry,” Ward said, her vocal cords more relaxed now that she wasn’t in the crosshairs.
The woman approached
and held out her hand. She shook Ward’s enthusiastically, as if she hadn’t been aiming to shoot her a few seconds earlier. “I’m Frieda Henderfield. Melvin’s sister. It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Thrasher. I’ve heard good things about you. All the town says you’re doin’ a good job over at the hospital, so it’s a pleasure to welcome you to my lake.”
It didn’t surprise Ward that Frieda knew her. Not anymore. Having a new doctor in town was kind of like having a celebrity. Someone special, and even with a shotgun in her hand, Frieda managed to make Ward feel welcome. “Thanks. Those are kind words.”
“So you fish, do you?”
“A little,” Ward confessed.
“Well then, follow me. You’re not going to catch much over here.”
Frieda bent and picked up Ward’s equipment. All of it. Then she turned and began walking, pushing aside low branches and high bushes as she wove her way silently along the bank of the lake. Ward had no choice but to follow. A fleeting thought caused her to pause—will they ever find my body if I follow this woman deeper into the woods?—but she pushed it aside and decided it didn’t matter. Her day couldn’t get much worse.
There was no way for her to tell how far they’d walked when they reached their destination. They’d turned toward a mountain and climbed a bit, through densely packed trees and across a shallow stream, then headed back toward the lake and into the woods again before coming to the clearing where Frieda finally stopped. The vegetation had given up, and bare soil and rocks covered the ground here, at the edge of a quiet cove lined by more blueberry bushes and fallen trees.
Frieda sat on an old, overturned wooden crate and motioned toward a rowboat pulled into the woods. “Sit in there, if you want.”
Opting for a socially appropriate response, Ward retrieved a crate for herself and positioned it a few feet from her hostess. “Will Melvin find us here? I figured he’d look for me near my car,” Ward asked.
