Maiden Rock

by Mary Logue

  A moment later, a head popped out from under the bed. Davy crawled out and stared up at Jared.

  ***

  6:35 a.m.

  Rich got out of his car. He heard a shriek coming from below the bluff line, past the Maiden Rock. He had heard such a noise come out of a rabbit carried off by a hawk—a high-pitched keening sound.

  Claire’s squad car was parked next to the Jorgenson’s car. He recognized their old Taurus from seeing it on the road for so many years. The car was just barely held together by duct tape.

  He checked both vehicles quickly, then jogged to the edge of the bluff. He knew there was a path that went down to the road, but he had never explored it. On the north side of the rock, a thick wall of brambles and gooseberries looked impenetrable. He checked the other side of the Maiden Rock and just when he was about to give up, he saw an opening, a slight break in the bushes at the edge of the clearing. As he got closer, he saw it was the beginning of a path down the bluff.

  He jumped down onto the dirt path and stood still for a few moments, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Again, he thought he heard something move below him, toward the river.

  Cupping his hands around his mouth, he tilted his head back and yelled, “Claire, where are you?”

  His voice sounded like a clap off the front of the limestone bluff and rolled down the hillside.

  A whistle sailed up to him. He knew it was Claire. One of the skills she was most proud of, that she had learned at the police academy, was how to do a two-fingered whistle that carried miles.

  He trotted down the dirt path, watching for roots and branches that might trip him up. As he came around the bottom

  of the limestone outcropping that was the Maiden Rock, he saw someone running up the path.

  Claire charged right into him, burrowing her head into his chest, and saying, “It’s not her.”

  “Who’s not her?”

  “It’s not Meg. I thought it was.” She lifted her face up to his and he could see she was fighting tears and losing. “What’d you find?”

  “I thought it was a deer at first. I didn’t want you to see her until I told you. It’s not Meg. It’s Krista.”

  He felt the air explode out of his body and wanted to sit down, but Claire was pulling him down the path with her.

  “Is she all right?”

  Claire stopped, shook her dark hair, and stifled another sob. “No, she’s not all right. Rich, I think she broke her neck.”

  “She’s dead?” He couldn’t believe he was asking that question.

  Claire nodded. “Yes. I think she’s been dead for a while. I checked her out. Nothing. No pulse, no hope. I think rigor is setting in already. Probably because of the cold.”

  They ran together until she pulled him off the path and he followed her through the forest. He could make out a light mound, like a pile of straw on the forest floor. And then he was standing over the girl.

  Krista Jorgenson. Sixteen years old. Her head bent at an odd angle. Her hands outstretched. Long blond hair. Eyes slitted open. Not a bruise on her as far as he could tell. But there was no question that she was dead and that it had happened a while ago. Something about the silence that hovered around her said her life force was long gone.

  Rich looked up. The trajectory was right. This might be where she would have landed if she jumped from the Maiden Rock. But he didn’t think this is where she would have landed if she had simply fallen. It was hard to tell and he hated to think that she had jumped. However, it would explain what they were seeing.

  Krista was dressed in an Indian costume that looked a lot like the one that Meg had worn.

  As if she had read his mind, Claire looked at him and said, “Meg didn’t tell me they both dressed like Indians.”

  “So where is Meg?” Rich asked.

  CHAPTER 7

  6:37 a.m.

  Wisps of smoke were starting to leak under the edge of the door. Jared leaned over as far as he could into the room. He didn’t want to climb through the window; there wasn’t enough time. He needed to get the kid out of there pronto. “Davy, come here,” Jared commanded. The little boy had crawled out from beneath the bed. He looked over at Jared and cowered.

  “Davy,” Jared yelled and stretched down his arms into the room, hoping to lure the boy within reach. Davy stood still, too scared to move. Jared had to make him move. The fire would bust through the door any second. What could he say to get him to come to him?

  “Piggyback,” Jared yelled. It was a game they played. “Come on, buddy, piggyback time.”

  Davy responded to the word and came running to him.

  Jared’s arms tightened around the boy. The kid was so light he hardly weighed anything. He lifted him up and out the window. Then they both fell back, off the wheelbarrow, and landed on the ground.

  Jared knew they needed to get away from the trailer. He scrambled to his feet and pulled Davy with him. They ran around the side of the trailer and out into the yard, away from the heat of the blaze.

  No sign of Letty. The trailer was burning brightly now, flames licked at the underside of the trees. There was no way he could go back in to the trailer to find her. She might have come out of the trailer while Jared was around the back, but he had a bad feeling about Letty.

  Jared kept Davy’s hand in his and walked the little boy to his car. Davy climbed into the passenger side as Jared started the car.

  In the rear view mirror, he saw the whole trailer burst into flames. It blew up in one big blast, black smoke and yellow flames erupting. He hoped Letty wasn’t in there. He wondered what she had run back in the trailer to get—her boy or some taste of the meth they were making.

  It was time to go home. His mom would know what to do.

  ***

  8:15 a.m.

  “Easier to take her down to the road,” Todd Morgan, an EMT, said to Claire. He wore a flannel shirt, jeans and a red plaid cap.

  They were standing on the path about ten feet from Krista Jorgenson’s body. In an earlier phone consultation, Claire and Sheriff Talbert had decided that the death should be treated as

  a crime. So deputies were taking photos and scouring the area for any traces of what had happened.

  Claire knew the EMTs wanted to remove the body and go home. It was a Saturday. Many of them had chores to do. “It doesn’t matter which way you take her. But we’re not ready to let go of the body. We’ve still got work to do here. It might be a couple more hours.”

  “The ambulance is parked in the wayside rest. We’ll bring up the stretcher and take her down that way.”

  Claire wondered if he was even listening. “Let’s let Billy finish taking photos before we think of moving her.”

  “Mind if I smoke?”

  She looked around the woods. “Don’t think it’s against the law to smoke outside yet.”

  He lit up a cigarette and carefully blew smoke away from her. “What do you think happened here?”

  “Too soon to say.”

  “She jump?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to guess.” She felt like punching the nice, friendly EMT. He was musing on what might have caused the death of a teenaged girl. Claire was desperate to find her own daughter alive. She hated to think what might have happened to Krista.

  But Claire had wondered too. As soon as another deputy had arrived, she had climbed back up the path and examined the Maiden Rock carefully.

  The early morning sun had been full upon the rough golden limestone surface which was pockmarked with tufts of grass and dandelions. She walked over every inch of its surface, bent so that her face was close to the ground. There had been nothing to notice, not a thread, no blade of grass

  broken, not a scrape mark. Yet Claire was certain that Krista had been up on that rock last night and somehow had sailed off of it. She wondered if Meg had been there with her.

  Meg. She could hardly stand to think about her daughter. She was staying with Krista’s body until the Chief Deputy Sheriff s
howed up, and then she was going to join in the hunt for her daughter and Curt Olsen. Rich had gone off with two deputies to scout the woods close by the Maiden Rock. Two other deputies were up top on the bluff, going door to door, talking to farmers, searching their fields and farm roads.

  Claire felt tied to her useless vigil over Krista, guarding her when she was already gone.

  Up the path she saw Chief Deputy Sheriff Steward Swanson cautiously descending. He walked lightly for all the weight he was carrying, but his mouth was open and he was breathing heavily. His color was poor, had been for some time. Last thing she needed was him to get in trouble out in the woods.

  “Claire,” he nodded, glancing toward the crime scene. The photographer was finishing up his photos and two deputies were going over the scene.

  “Stewy,” she responded.

  He looked right at her. “Terrible thing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your girl?”

  “We don’t know where she is yet.”

  He shook his head and lowered his eyes. “How can we protect these kids?”

  “I guess, we can’t always.”

  “Nope, I guess not. What’d you think happened here?”

  “I’m not ready to guess.”

  Stewy looked back up the path, then higher to the Maiden Rock. “You know in the poem the Indian maiden lands in the river.”

  “The poem?”

  “The poem about Winona jumping from the rock. We learned it in school when we were kids. We had to memorize it. But I always wondered about that—how could she land in the river? It never made sense. I knew the river was too far away unless she could fly.”

  Claire had to cut short his school reverie. “I need to go tell the family.”

  “Really?” Stewy stepped closer to Claire. “Are you sure you want to do it?”

  “I feel like I should do it.” Claire held back tears. There was no way she was going to cry in front of the Deputy Sheriff.

  “It’s not your job. But you certainly can take it on. No one better.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  Again he nodded toward the crime scene. “You finding anything here?”

  “Nothing by the body, nothing up top. It’s like she fell out of the sky.”

  ***

  8:20 a.m.

  The first thing Meg saw when she opened her eyes was an eye looking back at her. Then she smelled him. His own scent

  of bark and salt. She had come to know it well and thought she would be able to recognize it anywhere.

  She sat up in the car and pushed back her hair. “What’re you doing?”

  Curt laughed. “Just watching you sleep.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Fascinating.”

  “I do it every night. I’m really good at it.” “Tell me more.”

  Then his face got closer and he kissed her gently on the lips. She felt sore there. Sore from kissing. She didn’t know you could overuse those muscles. But they had done a lot of kissing last night.

  “What time is it?”

  The sun’s up.”

  She looked at her watch and was shocked. “I need to get to the Jorgenson’s. I don’t think Krista will be up yet, but I don’t want them to worry.”

  “How’re you going to get into the house without her parents seeing you?”

  “There’s a secret way. Krista showed me. You can lift the screen off her window and climb in.” “Do you think she’ll still be mad?”

  Meg had no doubt. “Oh, yeah. But I’d rather face her wrath now and have her get it out of her system.”

  Curt started the car. “Are you sure this is what you want to do? I could drive you home.”

  “No, I want to talk to her before any more time passes. It’s better to face the hard stuff as soon as possible.”

  She watched him. She felt like she could watch him all day long and never get bored. His dark hair hung around

  his face. He had soft splotches of freckles on his nose and his eyes were rimmed with ridiculously long lashes. She even liked the small pimple he had near his nose, like an errant beauty mark.

  Curt touched her hand. “I’m glad we did this.”

  She knew what he meant by this. That they declared themselves, that they told Krista last night that they liked each other. Krista had taken it harder than Meg had thought she would. Meg wouldn’t have even thought of liking Curt except Krista had sounded like she was getting bored with him.

  But at the party, when they finally told her, Krista had yelled and created a scene, just when everyone was leaving. Then she jumped in her car and roared off, leaving Meg stranded. But at least they had done it. The hard part was over. Now she just had to persuade Krista they could still be friends.

  After the party, Curt had offered to drive her home, then somehow they found their way over to a farm road not far from his house and sat in the warmth of the car, turning the heater on when they needed it, and talked.

  They talked about everything: their favorite music, their favorite books, even their favorite food—he loved beets, she hated them. She told him how she wanted to be a veterinarian. He confessed that he hoped to be a philosopher or a rock star. He couldn’t sing and didn’t know how to play guitar so, at the moment, he was leaning toward philosophy.

  “How do philosophers earn money?” she asked him.

  “I dunno. Maybe by writing books about what they think, about how they see the world. I’m not sure. Maybe they just end up teaching, but that wouldn’t be so bad. I just like thinking

  about everything: why we’re here, where we’re going, what it all means. The things no one talks about in school.”

  “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” she asked.

  “At the moment, optimist.” He looked at her and smiled. “Usually somewhere in between.”

  After talking for about three hours, there had been a long silence. Then Curt had leaned close and kissed her.

  They hadn’t said much for a while, trying to find all the ways their mouths could come together, a puzzle they turned this way and that to find the best fit. Other than gently touching her breasts through her shirt, he hadn’t tried anything else. She was glad he hadn’t; she wasn’t sure she could have resisted him. With him, her body seemed to have a mind of its own.

  Toward morning Meg had curled up in his arms and fallen asleep. She thought he had slept too.

  “Did you sleep?”

  “Not much. Too busy thinking.”

  “That’s your job, philosopher,” she teased him, then turned serious. “Are you going to get in trouble?”

  “What? You mean about staying out all night long? Naw.” “Your parents don’t care.”

  “Not really. They’re too busy to care. They’ve probably both already gone to work and might not even realize I didn’t come home. They’d notice the car was gone. I think they figure I’m incorrigible.” Then he laughed.

  That was one of the things Meg loved about him—his laugh. It was a deep laugh that pulled her into the joke. She could hardly hear it without breaking out laughing herself. Intoxicating. She realized she felt hungover though she had only drunk half a beer at the party.

  Meg laughed as he started the car. “You’re lucky. My mom would kill me if she knew.”

  CHAPTER 8

  8:32 a.m.

  When Claire and Rich stepped into the Jorgensons’ kitchen, Roger Jorgenson was hunched over the newspaper at the large wooden table with a cup of coffee in his hand and the remnants of scrambled eggs in front of him. Emily Jorgenson was standing at the sink, putting dishes in the open dishwasher. She turned slowly to face them when they walked in the door.

  Emily knew immediately. Claire could read it on her face, the way her eyes dropped, then filled, the way her mouth quivered, the way she wiped her hands as if to rid them of some horrible grime.

  Roger might have known, but was not allowing it in. He scrunched the paper down and looked angry at the intrusion, mad that his daughter’s misbehavi
or was continuing to ruin his day.

  “I need to get to work,” he barked.

  “I’m so sorry to have to tell you …” Claire started, but her words were arrested by a low intake of breath, close to a growl coming from Roger. Emily bent over the sink so precipitously it looked like she was trying to throw herself into the dishwater.

  Roger stood. The newspaper fell out of his hands, drifting to the floor like a faint shadow, what the world had been before. Claire began again. “Bad news .”

  Claire felt Rich’s arm on her waist. “I’m so sorry, but Krista has been found .” She was having trouble getting the words out. But they had to hear it, the quicker the better. “Krista’s dead. We found her below the Maiden Rock.”

  Roger asked, “The Maiden Rock?” Something safe to focus on, puzzle over, the site of the accident.

  “My baby,” Emily collapsed, holding her stomach, leaning into the cabinet doors beneath the sink. “Not my baby. Oh, God, why?”

  “What happened?” Roger was still standing by the table, making no move to go to his wife. He asked the question gruffly as if he needed something concrete to understand, to grasp.

  “We’re not sure yet. It isn’t clear. Somehow she fell. It looks like she broke her neck. It would have been instantaneous. No pain.” Although Claire wasn’t sure about all this, she hoped it would comfort them. How could anyone tell how quickly death came? But Krista looked like she hadn’t moved after her fall.

  “Somehow? What do you mean?” His voice rose and he turned to look at Claire and Rich.

  “We’re not sure how it happened. We might never know.”

  “That’s impossible. You tell us our daughter’s dead and we might never know how she died.” His voice was filled with rage.

  Rich stepped in front of Claire. He said, “Roger. We’re so sorry.”

  “You’re sorry. Hell. What do you know? What do you know?” Roger slammed his chair into the table and then stomped out of the room.