by Nevada Barr
Normally she would have found it mildly annoying to sit passively by while someone spoon-fed her information she could absorb faster reading herself. Today she was content to wait. It was more than just enjoying the warmth of a dry car and the scent of manly perfume, it was the essence of sharing Davidson exuded. He prepared not to give, edit, spoon-feed, but to share information.
That’s how women tended to work. Women and very clever men.
“Death due to blunt trauma to the back of the neck. The fourth cervical vertebra was broken and the spinal cord severed. No cuts or abrasions in that area. The trauma caused by a flat smooth object. Shape suggests a boot heel, worn smooth.”
“The blow to the forehead didn’t kill her?”
“Apparently not. She may have fallen backward when struck and hit something else that killed her.”
“What? That forest is soft as oatmeal. Jesus. She was stomped. Like a snake.”
“I’m guessing the killer struck her twice to make sure.”
“Ish,” Anna said, using her sister’s fiancé’s favorite expletive. Her own choice of words would have been too caustic for so small a space.
“Okay. Where was I? Blow to the right frontal lobe of the brain causing external hemorrhaging. That blow was from an edged weapon.” He looked over the top of his glasses at Anna. “Not a knife or an axe. The medical examiner’s thinking a shovel, a gas can, a toolbox—some—thing heavy and probably made of metal. There weren’t any bits of anything she’d expect to find if a wooden implement was used, or a brick, or something along those lines. Just something with a hard straight edge.”
“Scalp was cut?”
“And the bone cracked.”
He went back to his folder. “Looks like you were right about the rope. The marks on the neck occurred after death. The killer had to be making some kind of point.”
“The kind of mind that would stomp a young girl might be the kind of mind that would have a ‘point’ that makes no sense to anyone else,” Anna said.
“True,” the sheriff agreed. “But it’s a start—KKK angle—the start of what, I don’t even like to think about. Cuts and contusions to hands and arms and the legs, consistent with running through the brush. No defensive injuries. No sign of collateral damage during the assault Miss Posey had had sexual intercourse prior to her death but no signs of forcible rape. Her blood alcohol level was point two three. Her blood didn’t test positive for any other drugs.”
“Two three is awfully high. Unless she was already a seasoned alcoholic, she must have been blind, stumbling drunk,” Anna said.
“Knee-walking drunk,” Paul Davidson drawled. “Sixteen years old, drunk, dressed in a handkerchief, sexually active and out at two in the morning. Was that your idea of a Saturday night date when you were in high school?”
“The Sisters of Mercy would have frowned on that,” Anna said. “When we were at the height of our wickedness, we’d smoke cigarettes out back of the dorm, and the nuns would pretend they didn’t smell it on us.”
“Catholic?”
“No. My folks sent me there because it was a good school. I’m nothing.”
“That’s too bad.”
Anna let it pass. “Did you meet Danielle’s parents?”
“Just when he ID’d the body. I didn’t keep him too long. He said he needed to get back to his wife. Lonny’s going to go by this afternoon.”
“Your deputy?”
“Yes. Lonny Restin.”
“The young black man?”
The sheriff took off his reading glasses, the better to read her face. “Why?”
Anna told him the story of Barth’s lack of information and Cindy Posey’s remarks. Talking of racism in the North was easy. Down here Anna felt awkward and uncomfortable and wondered why. Maybe because hypocrisy, though it existed everywhere, wasn’t an agreed-upon thing in the South. People still spoke their minds even when those minds were small and nasty and scared. Respect for sixties Southern liberals flowered in Anna. In Minnesota it didn’t cost much to be a bleeding heart. Down here it would have been a siege mentality. No wonder they were reputed to drink quantities of bourbon.
Paul Davidson sat quietly, mulling over Anna’s revelations. “I’m of two minds,” he said at length. “Lonny’s well able to fend for himself and is an impressive young man. He’s pried open more than one closed mind in the year we’ve worked together. On the other hand, I hate to make him go through it if there’s nothing to be gained. You saw Mrs. Posey. Is it true she’s a little off the beam?”
“She struck me as out of touch,” Anna told him. “How deep her split with reality I couldn’t say, but I doubt we’ll get much use out of her. And I don’t think she’ll talk with Lonny.” That she might set the dogs on the young deputy was a possibility, but Anna didn’t like to tell of her own fear. Officer Safety sparked in her mind, and she swallowed her pride.
“She might set the dogs on him,” she said.
“That bad?”
“Maybe.”
Anna waited while the sheriff radioed his deputy and told him to talk only with Mr. Posey and to call before coming.
“Not going to tell him why?” Anna asked when he was done.
“Lonny’ll know why. Mississippi has spent the last forty years trying to live down the Cindy Poseys. Educate them. Pray for them. Argue with them. One day they’ll die out, but racism’s got a half-life that’s virtually nuclear. It persists from generation to generation, just in a less virulent form. You’re a Yankee. Make sure racism’s not all you look for. If it is, it’s all you’ll find. But it’s nowhere near all there is.” Sermon delivered, Davidson replaced his reading glasses on his nose and continued with the autopsy report. “Miss Posey died around one-thirty A.M. She’d had shrimp and lobster tails for dinner. Not pregnant. Healthy but for being dead.”
“Legs scratched. We saw that,” Anna added. “There should be tracks, but I couldn’t find any. You guys don’t have any dirt down here. Just plants.”
“If there were tracks, they’re gone now,” the sheriff said, watching the rain sheet on the windshield.
“Maybe not.” Anna was thinking of the square high heels. “She was carried. Chased, hence the scratches, then killed or knocked unconscious—thus no defensive wounds, then carried—so no tracks from those heeled sandals. Then dumped and abandoned. Where was she carried from?”
“The Old Trace, there where the bank was tracked up?”
“Maybe, but we obliterated any sign there, and I didn’t see the heel marks on the way to the campground.”
“Other tracks?”
“Sure. Dozens.”
“Right. It’s a trail.” He went back to the report. “The postmortem marks on the neck were minimal. Looks as though the noose wasn’t tight and it was not used to drag her. Just window dressing.”
For a bit they sat without speaking, listening to the hypnotic thrum of rain on the car’s roof.
“Where would they have carried her from?” Anna wasn’t so much asking again as still wondering.
“Kill her in the campground and carry her across the creek, through the kudzu, down the Old Trace, up over the bank and into the woods. That’s a ways to carry a hundred and eight pounds of dead weight,” Davidson said.
“The campground’s about the most public area around. Doesn’t make sense to choose it for the murder.”
“Kill her on the road or bring her from wherever by car and carry the body in cross-country?” Davidson tried.
“Hard work,” Anna said. “Why not just dump her in a river? There’s plenty to choose from.”
“Well, from what the kids told you, Rocky was the party place. We better figure Danielle was already there before she was killed.”
“Why take her so far off the beaten path? To hide the body?” Anna said.
“Why hide it after going to all the trouble to make a costume that’s steeped in racial fears and hatred?” Davidson countered.
“A white girl, dead, in a faux KK
K outfit—black on white as in a taste of one’s own poison?”
“White on white wanting it to look as if it’s black on white?”
“White on white as in the Klan punishing one who betrays?” Anna took it one step farther.
“Not much Klan here anymore. Oh, there’s isolated pockets of malcontents that drag out the sheets and pointy hoods once in a while, mostly to impress each other and feel powerful for an evening, but not an organization like it once was. I’ve been here most of my life and I’ve only seen it spark once. A cross burning just off I-55 down near Crystal Springs. Nobody ever did figure out what the point of the gesture was. Maybe Danni’s shroud had nothing to do with KKK imagery. Maybe it was just a sheet with eyeholes meaning something else.”
“Could they lift any prints off the girl’s skin?” Anna asked.
“She’d been to a dance, there were dozens of partials and smears and overlays. During the chase, sweat obliterated most. There was one fairly clear print of a forefinger, but my guess is it’ll turn out to be yours. It was checking the pulse point.”
They weren’t getting anywhere. The rain ran down the windshield, the water parting here and there to accommodate the pureed remains of hapless insects.
“Mrs. Cindy Posey,” Sheriff Davidson said after a while. “Racist. Mentally unstable. Possibly violent if you’re right about the dogs.”
Anna thought about that for a while. “She’s a farm wife; you can bet she’s got sheets,” she said.
“It wouldn’t take much strength to hit somebody that hard—just a weapon with some heft.”
“No struggle—someone Danni knew? Trusted?”
“She’d been chased, remember.”
“Oh. Right.” A question occurred to Anna. one that didn’t fit with that sequence of events. “Read me the stuff about the blow. Could the medical examiner tell angle of delivery, that sort of thing?”
Davidson methodically went back through the pages, his blunt, square-tipped forefinger running down each sheet of paper. His nails were clean and clipped. Anna noted a raw place where he’d worried at the cuticle with his teeth.
“Here we go,” he said. “The blow was most probably delivered from right to left and down. The weapon appears to have struck the girl above the right eye with the greatest force. The edge of the weapon is estimated at six to eight inches, or at least as much of it as impacted the skull area. The assailant was most likely right-handed.”
“So.” Anna tried to draw the picture out in her mind. “Danielle is hit on the right front quadrant of the skull with the trajectory of the blow coming from above her and to her left. Therefore, she was facing the killer, he did not strike her down from behind. They’re face-to-face. He raises the weapon in his right hand and swings it down in an arc,” she said.
“If she was running away, why wasn’t she struck from behind?”
“Stopped and turned?” Anna guessed.
“Got cornered?” Every line of logic was falling apart. The rain was unceasing. Anna felt as if her brain was beginning to mildew. It was because Danielle was a child. A child of sixteen, but to the ways of the world, a child.
And there was no good reason to kill a child but pure stinking mindless evil, an evil so base it was hard for real people to fathom.
★ 8 ★
The day continued in its meteorological misery. Crying skies filled the two bayous between Anna’s home at Rocky and the ranger station at Port Gibson. Water stood in the fields in the Valley of the Moon. Horses gathered beneath the trees and hung their heads.
Anna spent the afternoon working on her list, stocking her patrol car with flashlight, spare battery for her handheld radio and the numbers and radio frequencies of local law enforcement and Fisheries and Wildlife. By day’s end, she was glad to retreat to Rocky Springs and Taco and Piedmont.
Rain had driven away most of the campers, and she looked forward to a peaceful night eating Marie Callender’s frozen fettuccine and watching whatever came on either of the two channels her aging thirteen-inch portable television could pick up.
Three messages waited on her answering machine: Steve Stilwell asking how the investigation was going, Sheriff Davidson saying he had some interesting tidbits from the Poseys. And the last, from Anna’s sister, Molly.
Business could wait till proper business hours. For half a minute she stood staring at the phone, thinking she should call her sister and wondering why she didn’t want to.
She and Molly had been alone together for nearly twelve years. Alone in the sense that neither had husbands, children or family. They were family. Just the two of them. Professional women of middling years who knew they were not alone because there were two. They shared history and love.
And now there was Frederick, the fiancé. Anna’s ex and Molly’s love. Was that it? Jealousy? Sour grapes? Not only did Anna not want to believe that about herself, she was ninety-three percent sure it wasn’t true. She reveled in Molly’s happiness, enjoyed relief that her sister had someone to love and support her. But it was different now. The chemistry was changed. Whether for better or worse, Anna didn’t know. Probably both. At the moment, though, calling Molly would add to the sense of isolation with which this country of deep-fried kindness and cotton-mouthed hostilities imbued her. In another lifetime, Anna would have turned off the phones and unplugged the machine. That was a luxury rangers were not allowed.
Having opened the casement windows at the bottom near the floor on the living room’s east side to better hear the hypnotic beat of the rain, she dimmed the lights. With a glass on the table next to her father’s old Morris chair, she sat to await Piedmont’s inevitable arrival.
Along with the groceries, Anna had purchased wine: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and what promised to be a raw Beaujolais. Periodically, she swore off the stuff. Occasionally she admitted she might just possibly have a problem. Tonight she wanted a drink and a cat on her lap.
Dreams of cars, aborted laughter and stealthy voices abraded Anna’s sleep. At forty-three minutes after one A.M. the ringing of the telephone ended it. Long practice had trained her out of that bemused state between waking and sleeping. Unpleasantly alert by the time she put the receiver to her ear, she answered: “Rocky Springs.”
Crackling met her, the kind cheap cellular phones make. Behind it she could barely discern a murmur of hushed or distant voices, then a smothered laugh. “Hello?” she said sharply.
“I’d like to report an accident.” Again the strangled sounds in the background. Either this was a crank call or there was interference on whatever waves transmitted cellular calls.
“Where?” Anna asked.
“Uh. Just outside of Rocky Springs campground.” Another pause. “It looks real bad.”
“North or south of Rocky?” Anna asked. Already she was pulling on her pants, the phone receiver clamped between shoulder and ear.
“Uh. North.”
Before Anna could ask any more, the connection was broken. Reports of accidents and incidents by cellular phone had become the rule instead of the exception over the past few years. The method of the call wasn’t what bothered her; it was the mode. The strange tight voice, the laughter stopped abruptly, the muttering in the background smacked of a prank, kids calling asking, “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?” Except false report of a crime or accident was against the law.
Regardless of misgivings, the report could not be ignored.
Anna donned her wristwatch: quarter of two. Dispatch was shut down for the night. A common system for officer safety in parks without twenty-four-hour dispatch was to phone another ranger before leaving. They then stayed awake and monitored their radios in case backup was needed. If that wasn’t the accepted protocol in the Port Gibson District, it soon would be.
Randy Thigpen lived closest, west of Port Gibson toward the Mississippi River. Anna dialed his number. On the eighth ring he answered.
“It’s Anna,” she said without preamble. “I got an accident report north of Ro
cky Springs. I need you to stay on the radio till I see what’s up.”
“Barth and I usually just cover those alone, but then we’ve been at it a lot longer. We’ve never bothered to keep somebody up on the radio. Sure, I can help you out if you’re not comfortable on your own.”
Son of a bitch lacks subtlety, Anna thought as sharp retorts racketed around in her brain. Pissing contests were for those penilely inclined. “I’ll call if I need you,” she said and hung up. Life on the Trace was going to be hell if she didn’t either win those boys over or think of some way to kill them and get away with it.
The rain had let up but had not stopped. It was what the Navajo called a female rain: gentle and nurturing. Anna closed the front door on Taco’s intended escape and clicked on her flashlight. If there was a switch that turned on a light in the carport, she had yet to find it. The walk was uneven. Puddles formed in the low spots. She hop-scotched toward the drive in the vain hope of keeping her feet dry.
The inside of the carport was darker than even the rain-drenched woods. Anna closed her mind against the possibility of spiders dangling at collar level and plunged in.
She was reaching for the door handle when a blow smashed into her ankle with the force of a ball bat swung at close quarters. Pain and fear exploded, brain-numbing shocks coming one after the other: acute pain in her left ankle, a crack as she fell onto her side, elbow striking the concrete, skittering light as her flashlight rolled away, the gust of air knocked from her lungs. The Posey girl’s skull crushed by a blunt instrument flashed behind the immediate images.
An instant, no more, of paralysis gripped Anna. Then she heard someone crawling beneath the Crown Vic.
“Stay back,” she yelled. The Sig-Sauer was in her right hand. She pushed back to a sitting position against the rear wall of the three-sided carport. The heavy leather of her cowboy boot absorbed some of the impact, but her ankle throbbed and she wondered if it was broken. Spiders were forgotten. The flashlight had rolled to the far side of the car. Anna could see the spray of the beam rocking on the wall. “Come out slowly. Hands first. Let me see your hands.”
