‘Yeah,’ Dennis said, ‘I asked him about it a few meetings ago. He said it was his grandfather’s – that he’d picked it up out west, maybe in Arizona or someplace like that.’
We followed in the direction indicated by the ring and walked a narrow path through even denser undergrowth. The trail seemed about to close in on itself but then it opened up into an area that appeared to be an overgrown clearing similar to the one surrounding Frannie’s shack. To our left, the remains of an old stone chimney and foundation indicated that someone once lived in this spot. To our right, was a flat area devoid of large trees as if it were once cultivated – the ground lay in the undulating curves of land once tilled. The sun shone full and bright on that section, almost blinding after the gloominess of the light in the denser woods.
We walked through the one-time settlement in silence and caught a whiff of something putrid in the air. ‘Is that skunk?’ Gary said. ‘I’ve never smelled skunk before. It’s really bad.’
I knew better. I’d smelled skunk on many occasions out on the farm. I’d also smelled dead cow in the field. This stink definitely reminded me of the latter. ‘Something’s dead around here,’ I whispered.
Without a word, our motley crew clumped closer together. Although I knew that it was natural for many creatures to die from old age, disease and injury, and decompose in the open, I still worried that it was death from predation. Did a mountain lion take down a deer? And was it watching us right now, waiting to cull the weak from our herd? An uglier question kept knocking for admittance but I fought against acknowledging the possibility: did the clinging, oily odor mean we just found Marvin?
If that was the answer, I didn’t really want to know. Still, I kept putting one foot forward after another, my eyes scanning across my field of vision from side-to-side. I spotted an anomaly up ahead – something seemed pressed into the trunk of a large arboreal oak. I took a few steps toward it and realized that pressed was not the right word at all – it was tied with rope, three loops of it, wrapped around the girth of the tree. I could not make myself take another step. I knew it had to be Marvin. I knew his death had to have been hard and ugly and long. I turned my back to the sight.
Teddy was right behind me, staring past my shoulder to the tree. ‘Is that what I think it is?’ Teddy asked.
‘I think it is, Teddy,’ I said.
He wrapped his arms around me and we just stood still. I imagined that he was feeling the same numbness that seeped through my body taking possession of my limbs and my throat, wrapping tendrils of fog around my ability to think and act.
I barely registered the others gather round us. I heard the susurration of their voices but could not distinguish their words. One by one, they quieted, too, as their gazes turned toward the tree. We stood there as if enchanted and turned to stone.
Then, Tom cast off the spell and moved toward the tree, picking up speed as he crossed the distance. Gregg, roused by Tom’s actions, shouted, ‘Stop!’
Tom cast a glance back over his shoulder and said, ‘What if he is still alive?’
‘The smell alone means that’s impossible,’ Gregg said. ‘Back away. You could destroy evidence. We need to contact the authorities.’
‘What authorities, Gregg? The military? Our local police force? I think we are off reservation property. What county are we in? Which authority do we tell? Who will believe that we had nothing to do with this?’
‘Yeah,’ Gary joined in. ‘Why don’t we just get out of here and head back to civilization? It was creepy enough before we found a dead body.’
‘Shut up!’ Tom snapped.
Gregg looked at Gary with a disgusted curl on his mouth. ‘Dead body, Gary? We didn’t just find some dead body. That’s Marvin. He’s one of us.’
‘But, Gregg,’ Tom continued in a less combative tone, ‘we may think that’s Marvin, we may believe he is dead, but we don’t really know that it’s him from this distance and we cannot be certain that the smell is emanating from him without a closer examination. And we need to know what happened to him when he was tied to that tree. Was he left to die? Was he murdered outright? We’re scientists. We need to respond like scientists, not like a group of scared little schoolgirls.’
‘We’re chemists, Tom, not coroners or doctors or pathologists or even biologists,’ Gregg objected. ‘We can’t rush in and stomp all over the area like a bunch of well-meaning but misguided English majors.’
I’d heard enough. ‘Tom is right,’ I said. ‘We need to confirm our assumptions before we even discuss when we report and to whom we report. And, Gary, if you want to go back, go ahead – it’s fine. You helped us get this far and that’s enough.’
‘Go back? Through the woods? By myself?’ Gary sputtered. ‘You can’t make me do that.’
I bristled at his reaction to my suggestion and had a childish urge to snap at him and call him names. ‘That wasn’t an order, Gary. This is not the military,’ I said. ‘I would ask all of you to stand back while Tom and I approach the tree and assess the situation.’
‘Libby, no, you can’t!’ Teddy objected.
Is he trying to tell me what to do? I stared at Teddy until he looked away and swept an arm toward the tree as if inviting me forward.
The stench intensified exponentially with every step Tom and I took toward the slumped body. I battled my biological urge, forcing a suppression of my gag reflex, wishing my sense of smell would shut down in protest. Tom handed me a handkerchief he pulled from his back pocket and pulled his shirt tail up and across his mouth and nose. I placed the cloth in front of my face as he had done; it helped but only in a relative sense. The acid in my stomach continued to churn and my knees objected to every bend.
When we stood next to the body, I felt light-headed and repulsed. Tom bent down to look up into the face. ‘It’s Marvin,’ he whispered. ‘There’s some blood and his eyes and nose look swollen. I don’t know if that is an artifact of decomposition or if he was punched. Can you tell the difference?’
That question enabled me to shift my very human repugnance to a compartment and shut the door. I was here for fact-finding and that was what I would do. ‘I doubt it, Tom. I have seen a lot of dead livestock and wild animals but very few deceased people,’ I said as I bent over to observe. I shook my head. ‘No, but look at his legs. They’re bent at odd angles.’ I reached down and ran a hand lightly down his pants leg. ‘I feel a protruding bone.’
‘And look at his fingers,’ Tom added. ‘Someone has bent them in directions they shouldn’t go.’
‘But what killed him?’ I asked. ‘There’s some blood on the ground but not enough to cause his death.’
‘That is a question that’s totally beyond my field of expertise. However, I would say it was obvious that he was tortured before he died – and probably for information.’
‘About the project? Or about Frannie?’ I wondered aloud. ‘By the spies, the military, some federal agency?’
‘It had to be the spies, didn’t it?’
‘I want to believe that the spies did this to Marvin. But, Tom, in times of war, governments – even our government – have done much worse.’
‘Including what we are probably working on down there in the lab,’ Tom said through clenched teeth.
‘Let’s not get bogged down with philosophical and moral questions right now, Tom. We have to stay focused on this problem – Marvin is dead but a young woman’s life is at stake, too.’
FOURTEEN
We sat down, forming a horseshoe-shape, as we perched on the jutting stones of the old foundation. The seats were uncomfortable but so was the conversation. The smell threw a putrid blanket over it all. Gregg suggested reconvening some distance away but to some of us, leaving Marvin’s body behind to the vagaries of nature and the teeth and claws of predators felt too much like abandonment in a time of need.
I tried not to breathe too deeply as we talked. It took a little while but we rejected the ideas of doing nothing, of making an anonym
ous tip, or burying him on the spot. The next point of contention was which authority we needed to contact. After arguing about whether or not we were in Roane or Anderson County, we ruled out the locals. The next divisive point was whether to go to the military or the Tennessee Highway Patrol. The military proponents all feared we’d lose our jobs if we talked to outsiders, the other felt that unless we went to someone beyond the control of the reservation, Marvin’s death would be covered up. I opted for a conversation with Lieutenant Colonel Crenshaw. I didn’t particularly trust him, though, making me willing to be persuaded to the other side. The biggest issue of all was the timing.
Dennis summed up the ‘what-are-we-waiting-for’ faction best. ‘Have none of you read any detective fiction? You ignore a body and everybody thinks you are responsible for the death. If we don’t hurry to report our discovery, we will be blamed for it.’
‘Yeah, but what about the possibility that the body would be moved while we are doing that? We’ve seen that happen in real life,’ Rudy said, resurrecting the ghost of Irene Nance, the young woman whose murder we had investigated last winter.
‘Somebody is going to have to stand watch and make sure that doesn’t happen,’ Dennis countered.
Gregg stepped in and said, ‘If this is what we decide to do, we need to leave more than one person here. If we report to Crenshaw and someone attempted to move him after that, we’ll know the military killed him.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Tom said. ‘There is the possibility of coincidence or someone out there waiting for us to leave.’
‘Which is why we can’t leave someone here alone. A second person – or even a third one – increases the possibility that we’ll get a report back.’
‘We’re forgetting something – someone – very important here,’ Teddy shouted over the ensuing discussion about who should go and who should stay. ‘Frannie Snowden. What about her? If Marvin was tortured to reveal her location, her safety should be of paramount importance to us. We plunged into this fraught situation to assist Marvin in clearing his cousin. Now that he’s dead, are we just going to forget about her?’
Like the rest of the group, my attention had been diverted away from our promises to Marvin: find out everything we can to enable Frannie to come out of hiding. ‘They could be going for her now,’ I whispered, barely realizing I said it out loud.
Tom cleared his throat. ‘She could be dead now, too.’
The heat generated by our animated discussion dissipated in a flash. I felt chills run up and down my arms despite the warm, muggy day. ‘We need to check on her before we do anything else. And we need to figure out how to get her out of here without being detected.’
‘She knows you and Teddy,’ Gregg said. ‘Why don’t you go check on her while we stay here?’
‘Do I tell her what happened to Marvin?’ I asked. For a beat, no one said anything. Then there was a cacophony of divergent opinions. Some felt we had a responsibility to be honest with her. Others said we shouldn’t tell her now while she was out here on her own. And once again, we were arguing about timing. For a moment I just listened and then I said, ‘I, for one, think it would be cruel to tell her until we get her to someplace safe. She’s already frightened and she has a lot of time on her hands. If we feed her fear, it will grow too big to contain and she’s apt to do something foolish.’
Joe finally broke his silence. ‘Bring her back, Libby.’
‘Back here? You want her to see and smell her cousin’s decomposing body?’
‘No, no, no,’ said Joe with a vigorous shake of his head. ‘Hear me out. We can’t let her see him. We can’t make her panic before she’s secure. Don’t bring her all the way back here. Just to the cut off to this trail. On the way, tell her there’s a dead, rotting deer carcass near where you’re taking her. With that idea planted, she won’t suspect anything else. While you and Teddy go to get her, we’ll have to come up with a plan for where to hide her next.’
Grumbles of protest bounced around our horseshoe of plotters. ‘Oh, come on. You know every one of us operates better under pressure. We can do this. When we put together a plan, half of us will stay here to watch over Marvin – the other half will meet you at the trail fork.’
‘We don’t have time to go through all the details,’ Tom objected. ‘We’ll have a half-baked, sloppy course of action, full of risk.’
‘The biggest risk, I think, is to leave her out here,’ I said.
Gregg cut to the chase: ‘Do we need any further discussion? Do we need a vote?’
‘Even I can’t find any fault with Clark’s statement,’ Tom said.
I looked over Tom’s face and his eyes met mine and they were clear and sharp, with no indication of mockery or irony.
‘It’s settled then?’ Gregg said and after a pause added, ‘all right, let’s do what we have to do.’
Walking out of that clearing and back to the trail took a lot less time than entering it since we weren’t stooped over examining rocks, trees and debris the whole way. After we reached the trail, Teddy asked, ‘What will we do if she’s dead, too?’
We stopped and looked at each other. ‘One of us will have to stay with her. The other will need to go get the others.’
‘I’ll stay there,’ Teddy said. ‘I would have an easier time scaring off any intruder. Oh, but wait. What if someone is waiting for us to separate and they follow you?’
‘Then, they could just as easily pounce on me if I stay behind and you left. There’s just two of us. We have to do what we have to do. Just hope she’s still alive when we get there. Come on, we need to move.’
This time, I managed to get us both to the shack without any wrong turns. Frannie’s face appeared in a crack in the door before she shoved it open. ‘Did you find Marvin?’
‘We sure did,’ Teddy said in a breezy, off-hand manner.
I swallowed hard at his brazenness, but was equally surprised by Frannie’s reaction.
Her eyes narrowed and took on a suspicious cast. ‘Why didn’t he come with you?’
‘He drew the short straw,’ Ted said with a shrug. ‘He’s all tied up while the rest of us finally got out of the lab for a day.’
A smile crossed Frannie’s face and she nodded. I tried not to let my jaw drop at his audacity and talent for subtle deception.
‘When am I going to get out of here?’
Teddy and I looked at each other. ‘Today,’ I said with as much cheerfulness as I could muster.
‘Have I been cleared?’ Frannie said – the sound of hope in her voice was very nearly a tangible thing.
‘Not yet,’ Teddy said. ‘Didn’t Marvin tell you this hideout was only temporary? I thought he said you knew you’d be moving soon.’
‘I did? Oh, okay. Will I be able to see Marvin?’
A lump formed low and heavy in my throat. ‘Not just now, Frannie. It’s more likely that he’s being watched than any of us.’
‘Okay. But I need to tell Hannah I’m leaving or she’ll worry when I don’t show up.’
‘We’ll take care of that, Frannie. We really need to go.’
‘Can I take my magazines?’
‘Of course, you can,’ I said as I realized anew the depth and fragility of her innocence and vulnerability. No wonder Marvin felt an intense need to protect her. I was now the custodian of her fate.
FIFTEEN
Frannie changed into the clean underwear and dress I’d brought out for her and I put the pajamas and another change of clothes into a paper grocery sack Marvin had left there on one of his visits. Before we could leave, Frannie fretted about returning the potato chip can to Hannah. ‘She has nothing in that little hut – nothing. I’m sure she could put it to good use.’
She frustrated our attempts to get her moving by continuing to fuss about the chip can. Finally, Teddy ended the debate. ‘Listen, Frannie, I think Hannah can get another one from the cafeteria if she wants it. If not, I promise you that I will come back out here and get this one to her.’
‘Promise?’ she asked.
‘Cross my heart and hope to die,’ he said while sketching an X on the left side of his chest. Pacified, Frannie relented. She headed down the trail, chattering with near-giddy excitement as she related the stories she read about in the magazines I’d brought to her. I found all the gossip and lurid tales rather annoying, but they served an important function: they distracted her attention from the perils she now faced. If the full weight of it all descended on her shoulders, I doubt she could have walked without assistance. At some point, I’d have to tell her about Marvin and that inevitability filled me with dread.
Teddy brought up the rear of our little group and he spent so much of his time looking back, I worried that he’d run into a tree or stumble over a vine. The tension in his posture was extreme and his eyes never stopped moving.
I was equally alert for anything suspicious in the path ahead. My biggest concern was any hiding place where dangerous strangers could lurk waiting to catch us unaware. I belatedly realized that I should have carefully scouted for those possibilities on the way to Frannie’s shack.
Gregg, Joe and Rudy were waiting for us when we got to the cut-off. Gregg pulled me to the back of the group heading down the trail and asked about calling the next-of-kin Marvin listed on the pass-around.
‘We have to talk to Crenshaw first and then tell Frannie – she might want to be the one to call the family.’
‘Makes sense,’ Gregg said and went on to explain their plan for moving forward. The others would stay out here until Teddy and I spoke to Lieutenant Colonel Crenshaw and led him or some of his men out to the location of Marvin’s body. Gregg, Rudy, and Joe would lead Frannie out of the woods onto a highway beyond the fence. Gregg would hide himself and Frannie in a concealed location while Joe and Rudy headed toward my house. Rudy would wait there while Joe drove my car to pick up Gregg and Frannie.
The next step necessitated a bit of finesse on my part because I had to convince Frannie to play a major role and I needed her to do it well. And I had to be persuasive without telling her about Marvin.
Treason in the Secret City Page 7
