As he stood over the body, he tried to sort his feelings, wondered if he felt anything at all. What was done was done. And the hesitation, well, it was something only he would know about, something that would claw at his conscience for the rest of his days.
He leaned the rifle against a nearby tree. His other rifle, a .22 caliber and a decoy on this occasion, he propped against a different tree, one he would pass on his way toward home. It was still October, and deer season was another month away, but it wasn’t unheard of for hunters to be in the woods, tracking their prey, building their deer stands with hopes of scoring a trophy buck. If John happened to pass one of these fellows who dreamed of a twelve-point deer mount hanging in his man cave, well, he wanted to make sure he was armed.
The sun started its ascent on the mountain, casting long shadows on the ground amid the blood and autumn leaves. He was running out of time.
He tossed his camouflage jacket and the leather cut he wore underneath to the side and rolled up his sleeves. After pulling on a pair of nitrile gloves, he crouched between the animal’s legs, because that was how he chose to see the man—as an animal, a deer, a young buck—the one with a bullet hole in his chest, a barbed wire tattoo around his bicep, a piercing above his left eyebrow. He tried not to think about how young this buck was.
He stripped the body of its clothes, his mind tricking him into believing it was just another skinning. It wasn’t, of course, and he felt the truth of it deep inside his bones. But he wasn’t willing to let the guys in the club down. He’d given them his word. He’d do what they’d asked of him, what they needed from him, a brutality even they had feared.
More and more lately, John was finding it harder and harder to live up to this false younger version of himself. Age had a way of softening him. The things he’d been interested in at one time, macho things like motorcycles, barroom fights, and strippers, now seemed like nothing but a waste of time. He’d even lost interest in much of the club’s business. They’d been dealing in arms for so long, at least two decades, it had become routine, hiding weapons in haylofts and underground root cellars on the farms in and around Portland. Besides, the younger club members ran most of the shipments nowadays. And just recently, John had entertained the idea of going nomad, not being tied to one club but a member free to come and go at will.
Until the animal in front of him had done the one thing John couldn’t forgive, the one thing that had cost the young buck his life.
It should’ve put his mind at ease, securing his commitment to the club and its members, pushing away any doubts he was having about his place, his chosen way of life. But it didn’t. Maybe he really was too old for this shit. He pulled the hunting knife from its sheath.
He hesitated again. Dammit. It was just another field dressing. He’d done a hundred of them on deer and rabbits and, once in Montana, elk and moose. Maybe he’d take another trip out West, take his motorcycle on the open road, visit old friends in the Montana chapter. A few weeks of hunting, a change of scenery, was just the thing he needed. He’d spent his whole life in this small town, secure in his ways. His problem was that he was too comfortable here. And a comfortable man let his guard down, making him vulnerable, making him weak.
He stuck the tip of the blade near the genitals, slicing through the skin and making his way upward toward the sternum, careful not to puncture the gut sack, the smell of which would be really bad. Only once had he punctured the gut sack of a deer, and that had been when he was a young boy. Russell, his old man, had told him to finish the job, although the meat had been spoiled not only from the fluids but also from John’s vomit. It had been a lesson well learned. A mistake he’d never made again. Russell had had no patience for mistakes and no tolerance for the cowardly.
John held the stomach away from the ribs, cutting the diaphragm from the rib cage wall until the guts flopped out. Then he severed the windpipe and ran the blade along the thin membrane around the heart and lungs, removing the organs along with the liver before tossing the whole mess aside.
“Something for the wolves,” he told his old man, talking to him as though he were still by his side, walking the earth.
When he finished, he stuffed the clothes into a sack, all of which would be burned later. He stood, his knees protesting, and picked up the rifle, slung it over his shoulder. Then he grabbed hold of the animal’s ankles. It was a short walk downhill to the river, the twigs and dry leaves crackling as he dragged the body behind him. The sound was much too loud for the silence in the woods, the dead quiet that had fallen soon after the first and only shot had rung out. But the closer he got to the river, the more the sound of the rushing rapids drowned all other noise.
He entered the water, the cold rushing to his thighs, soaking his pants, prickling his skin like icicles. He released his burden, letting the rapids take it where they may. There was no point in weighing the body down. The club wanted it found. They were sending a message.
He tossed the hunting knife and rifle into the river. He was about to turn around and head up the bank when he saw her. If he thought about it, which he would later, he would say she was right on time, running the trail on the other side of the river. He couldn’t have planned it any better, although he was convinced he hadn’t planned it all, at least not consciously.
He stood and watched her as he’d done on other occasions from this same spot over the last few years. He was certain she knew he was watching her, although she’d always pretended she hadn’t. He was okay with this. It was how it had to be. She was Clint’s daughter. Clint had once been the chief of police of Portland, retired now, and he was also a stepbrother to John’s old man, Russell. John had no claim on her outside of being distant family. But he’d watched her grow up and at one time had seen her as something akin to a younger sister. He didn’t have any other siblings, nor did he have any children of his own. His late wife, Beth, had been barren, her ovaries giving birth to nothing but cancerous tumors.
He expected her to continue on the trail like all the other times before, only glancing in his direction while making the turn that would lead her farther into the woods and out of his line of view. But this morning she stopped unexpectedly and stared back at him. To say he was surprised was to downplay the hammering inside his chest. He couldn’t move. His only thought was how fitting it was for her to be here with him. Like it or not, they were connected. He had no other explanation for it.
She hollered something. The river was loud, and he couldn’t make out what she’d said. He waited for her to speak again, staying rooted to his spot, staring back at her. Suddenly, he became aware of time slipping by, the danger they were both now in. He couldn’t wait any longer for her to repeat whatever it was she’d wanted to say. He turned and headed back toward the woods, believing her presence wasn’t a threat to him.
He hoped he wasn’t wrong.
He peeled off the nitrile gloves and stuffed them into the sack with the clothes. Then he slipped on his cut, the patches with the motorcycle club’s name scrawled across his shoulder blades, and reached for the camouflage jacket to cover his identity. He grabbed the sack and the .22 and left the small clearing where the animal had gone down and where the guts lay.
With the rising sun on his back and the rifle in his hand, he made his way out of the woods, walking as though he were just another woodsman returning from a morning of tracking. Hap, the oldest member in the club and his old man’s best friend, joined up with him about fifty yards from where he’d chased the young buck in the direction of John’s deer stand. Of course, he used the word chased loosely since Hap was seventy years old, although a spry seventy.
“Didn’t take long,” Hap said, searching John’s face, looking for him to meet his eyes.
John nodded, looked dead ahead as they walked on.
“You didn’t have to be the one to do this, you know,” Hap said. “I could’ve gotten one of the others to handle it. Sooner or later one of them is going to have to step up anyway.”
>
He stopped and faced the old man. “This was personal.”
Hap nodded. “That it was,” he said. They walked a few more steps before he asked, “Was it done the same way as the other one?”
“Yes,” John said. “Exactly the same.”
CHAPTER THREE
Matt lay on the bed with the towel wrapped around his waist. He slung his arm over his face, covered his eyes. Becca got up. Romy inched her way across the duvet and curled against Matt’s side. He scratched behind the dog’s ears.
Becca left them alone and went into the bathroom, locked the door. She stripped off her sweaty running clothes and stepped into the shower. She leaned her forehead against the tile, letting the hot water run down her back. What had she expected from him? He was only human. Was it somehow her fault?
There were two other attorneys in Matt’s firm who had managed his most recent client before the file had been turned over to him. He was the go-to guy once a case actually saw the inside of a courtroom. He had a commanding presence, a certain charm that even hostile witnesses warmed to. He had the gift of persuasion.
He’d been preparing for weeks, circling their living room, practicing his opening and closing statements. As the court date approached, the meetings with his client had become more frequent, keeping him out until all hours of the night. The tension of the pending trial, prepping his client for the stand, and then late yesterday when the judge had ruled in their favor, it all had been terribly exciting, overwhelming, so he’d said. His client’s patent, some kind of applicator in the cosmetic industry, the details of which his partner had handled, had been packaged and sold without permission or payment. The cosmetic company’s infringement, worth millions, would have to be paid. It had been the biggest win of Matt’s career. Could he help it if he’d gone out afterward and celebrated?
It wasn’t his fault that his client happened to be a six-foot-tall brunette with legs so long they touched her ears. He’d confessed she’d enjoyed flashing her cleavage in his face, wearing low-cut blouses, leaning over him to look at files, touching his shoulder, brushing up against him whenever she’d had the chance. It had been building for weeks, the stress of the case, and then the big win.
Becca slapped the wet tile with her palm. She would not cry. She would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her weak.
The phone started ringing. It was the landline Matt had installed when he and Becca had first moved into the condo. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had actually rung them up on it. Most everyone they knew called their cell phones.
She turned off the shower, listened to the sound of Matt’s muffled voice, then the click as he hung up the phone. In the next minute, she emerged from the bathroom wearing a white cotton robe. It was too big for her petite frame, drowning her small chest and narrow hips in the bulky material. Her dark hair was short, a pixie cut, making her look young and boyish rather than like the thirty-year-old woman she was. She was nothing like the typical girls Matt had dated in the past. The other women in Matt’s life had been models, beauty queens. Becca had seen all the pictures, all his previous conquests. These other women looked a lot like Matt’s latest client.
Becca wasn’t beautiful in the traditional sense, and she certainly wasn’t a bombshell like the leggy brunette. But none of this had ever seemed to matter to Matt. He’d said it was Becca’s gray eyes that he’d gotten lost in, eyes that were sharp, intelligent, kind. He’d whispered in her ear, his voice deep and sultry, confessing how her eyes held him captive, how they turned black as pitch when she was angry and lusty gray when they made love. But mostly, he’d said, he liked who he was in her eyes. He liked how she saw the best in him, the goodness, rather than all the other crap that made up who he was.
But now when Becca looked at him, he wouldn’t meet her gaze. He looked away.
She walked past him on her way to the dresser. He reached out from where he sat on the edge of the mattress and grabbed her wrist, pulling her to him until she was standing in front of him. He buried his face in her cotton robe, his hands roaming the angles of her body.
“I’m in a hurry,” she said. “I’m already late for my first appointment.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist, nudging the robe open with his nose, kissing her. She didn’t push him away.
Maybe she was wrong, and last night had been what he’d said, a celebration and nothing more. “I’m still mad at you.” Her body relaxed in his arms, responding to his touch and in a sense betraying her.
“I know,” he said.
She closed her eyes, wanting to give herself over to him. But she had to be strong. It was too soon to give in. She struggled to keep her arms at her sides, resisted running her fingers through his silky hair. “Who was on the phone?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
“Who was on the phone?” she mumbled as he kissed her stomach.
He hesitated, pulling away slightly, glancing up at her. “I don’t know. He just kept coughing. I couldn’t understand him.”
Becca scrambled out of Matt’s arms. “Coughing? Like someone-who-is-sick kind of coughing?” She yanked the cotton robe tight around her waist, her hand clutching the collar at her neck.
“Yeah. But it was probably just a wrong number.” Matt closed the bath towel around his waist. He still couldn’t look at her. He was purposefully avoiding meeting her eyes, but it didn’t matter because it was all over his face, the guilty look of a child who had done something wrong. Her head told her all of this, but her heart refused to listen.
“Was it a Pennsylvania number?”
“Yes,” Matt said. “How did you know? What’s going on?”
Becca’s cell phone went off. It was the clinic. The results of the ultrasound for Maggie, the three-year-old golden retriever she’d treated late yesterday afternoon, confirmed the dog had in fact swallowed a large portion of a tennis ball. She didn’t want to have to cut the dog and remove it from the gastrointestinal tract if it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Surgery was the last option; the belief was that no matter how minor the procedure, there was always a risk something could go wrong. Maggie had been Becca’s patient since she’d been a pup, and it pained Becca to see the dog in discomfort. She couldn’t put it off any longer. She had to get to the clinic.
“I have to go,” she said. “It’s Maggie.”
“Who’s Maggie?” he asked.
“Never mind.” He didn’t know because she had never gotten around to telling him about the dog because he hadn’t come home last night. “I’ll tell you later,” she said, dressing quickly before racing out the door.
The veterinary clinic was a few miles from the condo on the outskirts of town. The town itself was small and largely unincorporated. One of its biggest attractions was the flea market that was open year-round. Most of the land was farmland. In this regard, it resembled Becca’s hometown of Portland, another small, rural community alongside the Delaware River. The major difference between the two was that Becca hadn’t grown up here. Here she wasn’t known solely as the police chief’s daughter.
The townspeople of Columbia knew her as one of the four veterinarians at the clinic who cared for their pets. They knew if their cat or dog or rabbit needed surgery, Becca was the vet to do it. She was the pet surgeon. That was all. And that was the point.
Her colleagues had their own preferences and specialties; one worked exclusively on large animals, another preferred reptiles and snakes, and one specialized in eye exams. But Becca performed the surgeries. She was the one who went in with her hands and fixed whatever was wrong. She took great pleasure in this, the tangible way of repairing the broken parts on beloved pets, something she wasn’t able to do with the people in her life, where she failed at the intangibles, the flaws in personalities that were too big to stitch.
She pulled into the clinic’s parking lot. The dogs in the kennel were awake, barking, waiting for their owners to collect them, take them home. Becca made a mental note to stop and let s
ome of the more companionable pooches out for exercise later in the day. They were operating with half the staff most days, the sign of a struggling economy. She hated to think about all of the yearly physicals that had been canceled recently.
She entered the building through the side door, slipped on her white lab coat. “Hey,” she said to Vicky. Vicky had a special kind of softness, a gentleness the animals sensed and found soothing. Becca’s own unique quality was the smoothness of her voice, the confidence in her touch, her way of saying to the animal, “I won’t hurt you. I’m here to take care of you.”
“Is Maggie’s owner here yet?” she asked.
“She’s up front waiting for you.”
“Okay. I’m going to check on Maggie first before I talk with her.” Becca pulled the dog’s chart, reviewed the ultrasound, confirmed the obstruction. She headed for the boarding room. Vicky followed. She’d been assisting Becca since her first day at the clinic. They were close in age, three years apart, with Vicky the younger of the two. She was the closest thing to a girlfriend Becca had if she didn’t count the four-legged kind.
“How are you feeling?” Becca asked Maggie, stroked the top of the dog’s head. She lifted the dog’s eyelids to look at her pupils. With the stethoscope, she listened to the dog’s heart, stomach. “We’re going to help you with that bellyache, okay?” She patted Maggie’s head again. Maggie responded with a thump of her tail.
“Let me talk with the owner, and then you can get Maggie prepped,” she said to Vicky.
Vicky nodded. “Sure thing.” She paused, searching Becca’s face. “You okay?”
Becca waved her off. “It’s nothing.”
“What did Matt do this time?” Vicky asked and tightened the ponytail at the base of her neck. Inked on the underside of her forearm was the face of Toto, her pet schnauzer that had passed two years ago.
“Why do you automatically jump to the conclusion it has something to do with Matt?”
River Bodies (Northampton County Book 1) Page 2
