Judas Burning

by Carolyn Haines

  Dixon eyed Horton. The tracks had obviously told the sheriff a more detailed story than she could read. “Do you think the girls went in the river and drowned?”

  J.D. rubbed his mouth with the bank of his hand. “We’re going to be out here a while.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dixon rested against the trunk of a sweet gum and tried not to let her imagination get the better of her. Trisha Webster and Angie Salter were not on the sandbar or in the nearby woods. The slender evidence they’d found didn’t make a lot of sense. It appeared that the girls had simply vanished, possibly beneath the muddy water.

  The sheriff had ordered the river dragged. So far the draglines had found a battered trunk, several trees, fishing nets, a sack of garbage weighted with bricks, part of an old cement mixer, three tires, and a sunken boat that was on the verge of complete disintegration.

  Laughter caught her ear, and she turned to the bridge, which was lined with spectators who had come to see if the river would give up a body. There was almost a festive air, and Dixon wondered again at the callousness of the human animal. She had seen the same reaction time and time again, folks stopping to examine the carnage of a wreck or watch a neighbor’s house burn. So far no television crews had arrived. She caught a glimpse of copper skin. The young man she’d seen outside the newspaper office stared at her, then vanished into the crowd. A moment later, she saw him on a bicycle peddling across the bridge. She watched him until he disappeared into the trees.

  With a flick of her wrist, Dixon used her notebook to splatter a blood-fattened mosquito on her thigh. West Nile, a mosquito-borne virus, flitted through her mind. Movement on the sandbar caught her eye, and she looked up to see several of the searchers converge on the sheriff, whispering urgently. The volunteers ignored her and Robert Medino as long as they stayed out of the way. Medino ignored her, too. He remained aloof, scuffing through the sand or writing in his notebook. He was handsome in a dark, unkempt way, the exact opposite of Horton, who was blond and well groomed.

  She gingerly shifted her weight. Her bladder was about to burst. There was no help for it; she was going to have to walk into the woods and pee. Remembering that a tiny side trail cut north, she started out for it. Winding deeper and deeper into the woods, she almost passed the trail, which sloped down to the site of underground springs.

  The swamp fell silent as she stepped off the path and into the layers of leaves. In real urgency now, she hurried down a slope, then stopped at the vista before her. Bream darted among the tree roots in dark pools ringed by cypress knees. It was a place of wild beauty.

  She turned left to avoid a bog. The trees closed around her, a thicket of huckleberry, palmetto, and scrub oak. She looked in all directions but saw only trees and leaves, patterns of light and dark. She unzipped her pants and squatted, concerned momentarily that she’d held it for so long that she couldn’t go.

  A slip of white paper, stuck in a briar next to her caught her eye. It was a receipt from Circuit City for $149.93. The fresh crispness of the paper so deep in the woods intrigued her. She slipped it into the pocket of her jeans.

  It was hot as hell, and not even a breeze stirred a leaf. She thought of the icy beer floating in the chest and wondered if J.D. considered it evidence. She could only imagine his face if she were to ask if she could drink it. He wouldn’t be amused.

  She started back the way she’d come, stopping for a moment at the spring-fed pools. They looked like something out of a fairy tale, but chances were the water contained more than one moccasin.

  “Hey! Sinclair! Where in hell are you?” J.D.’s voice sounded close.

  She hesitated. The woods were thick, and it would be more sensible to go back the way she’d come. But that was the longest way, and the sheriff sounded so close. “Horton?”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m coming.”

  “We don’t have time to start a search for another person.” He sounded angry.

  She tripped on a root but regained her balance. Using her hands she pushed through the undergrowth. Directly in front of her was a wall of bullace vines laden with the delicious grapes. She picked a handful and popped them into her mouth, expertly sucking out and discarding the seeds and thick skin as she hunted a way through vines. At ground level she found a break and began to crawl. On the other side, she looked up into a dark, cool haven.

  It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, but her nose was quicker. The ripe smell of the bullaces gave an exotic scent, sun-heated with a hint of fermentation. It was a faintly sexual odor, filled with promise. The vines had grown up and over the lower branches of a huge oak. The result was a tentlike room, high-domed, created out of lacy vines and leaves. Sunlight filtered through the dense vegetation, giving a wash of dim green illumination. She stepped deeper into the enclosure.

  Beside the oak tree was a wooden bench. She walked toward it, her hand automatically reaching for the camera that dangled at her waist. She whispered softly, “Holy shit,” and started snapping photos.

  A rough altar constructed of cement blocks and boards was covered with an embroidered white cloth. Even in the dim light the colors were radiant. Dixon recognized the extraordinary labor that had created the tableau. Stubs of candles melted into the bases of tin cans adorned either end of the altar, and an offering of withered flowers formed a centerpiece. Beside that was a worn rosary and a rough imitation of a crucifix whittled from a cypress knee. Next to the beads was a pink-and-purple bikini top. Dixon stared at it, unable to think of a single explanation for it. A single good explanation. She backed away.

  “Sinclair! Goddammit!” J.D. wasn’t far away.

  Dixon stumbled across the enclosure. “Wait!” Her fingers searched the vines for a place she could force through, but the web was impenetrable. “Horton!” She waited five seconds. “Horton!”

  “By God, Sinclair, if I have to come in there after you, I’m going to arrest you.”

  She concentrated on his voice. She tore at the vines, at last finding a place where they yielded. “Horton,” she called.

  As she ducked through the opening something snagged her foot. She kicked to free herself and felt it give. She stumbled backward with it dangling on her shoe. Even in the dim light of the vine room, the pink-and-purple fabric was still bright, only a little dirty. She picked it up. A bikini bottom. Bright, sassy beachwear. Scraps of fabric tied together at each hip. She held the cloth with the tips of her fingers. There appeared to be a stain on it, maybe mud or blood.

  Dixon swallowed. “Horton, you’d better come in here.”

  “I don’t have time for this.” J.D.’s words were accompanied by the snapping of tree limbs as he plowed through them. “I can’t baby-sit the damn press and manage a search. I can’t …” His tirade faded when he saw her, half hidden by the vines, the bikini bottom in her hand.

  “What is it?” But the knowledge was in his voice, his eyes locked onto the material. He held out an evidence bag, and she released the suit into it.

  “It hung on my foot when I was trying to get through the vines. In there.” She lifted the vines to allow him entrance. “You need to see this. The top is in there, too.”

  J.D. pulled a flashlight from his belt and swung it side to side as he ducked beneath the vines. A dozen empty cans that had once held beans and Spam and potted meat were scattered in the clearing. When the light struck the altar, he held it there. Then he shifted the light and looked at Dixon’s face. “Are you okay?”

  She pushed the light down. “Yeah.” She looked at the evidence bag. “I’m okay.”

  She heard the rustling of leaves. When she looked up, she expected to see Waymon. Instead, Robert Medino pushed through the vines. His sharp gaze took in everything.

  “You need to leave,” J.D. said.

  “I was right.” Medino was excited. “He’s here. And he’s got those girls. Two of them. I knew he’d progress to the real thing. I warned you.”

  J.D. grabbed his shirt. “This ma
y be a reason for celebration for you, but if those girls are dead, it’s going to be a tragedy for their family and friends. I suggest you keep that in mind.”

  Medino pushed the sheriff’s hand away. “You should keep in mind that I’m not some local you can push around.” He smoothed his shirt. “I’m not glad the girls are dead. And you should look at this as an opportunity. You can catch a killer. You’ll be doing interviews on 20/20.”

  “You really think a television interview equals the lives of these two girls?” J.D.’s fists clenched at his side.

  Dixon put a hand on J.D.’s arm, lightly restraining him. The gesture was automatic. She realized that after only two weeks in Jexville, she, too, viewed Medino as an outsider, but an altercation with him wouldn’t help a thing.

  “Let’s go back to the beach,” she said.

  Medino pulled out his notebook. “I’ve been tracking this man. The sheriff scoffed at my idea, and now he has two dead girls on his hands.”

  “They aren’t dead until we find the bodies,” J.D. said.

  “They’re dead,” Medino said. “They’re dead, and we all know it. Look at this stuff.” His hand swept toward the altar where the sunlight sifting through the vines caught the crude crucifix. “He’s a psycho, just like I said. Those girls are dead because no one would listen to me.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  J.D. stood on the spit of land where one bare footprint led into the river and disappeared beneath waters now golden orange in the slant of the afternoon sun. He looked upriver at the circling boats. More than thirty hours had passed since the girls were last seen. He stared out at the water, keenly aware of the quiet that surrounded him.

  He knew the hush that had fallen over this section of the twisty river. He’d heard it before—the presence of death.

  In a dense jungle filled with a green so intense it blistered the back of his retinas, he’d heard the silence that preceded death’s appearance. It had been a day as hot as anything Mississippi could deliver. Marines all around him cursed as they made their way up a hill. Without a hint of warning, the day lost volume. His buddies stumbled and cursed, their faces tired and furious at the upper-level betrayal that had put them in a country where no official war had been declared, where the troops they’d been sent to help were murdering women and children, even nuns. Around them the tropical forest was alive with birds and the quick, elusive creatures of Central America. Then the birds hushed. Death drained all sound, sucking it away before rising up out of the lush vegetation, exploding with a vengeance that cut J.D.’s friends into ribbons. Sound returned with the screams and cries of the injured and dying.

  That had been the first time.

  J.D. had heard the hush of death again in a dark El Salvador City alley, where he stood with a drunken buddy, a black kid from Chicago who argued in his flat, clipped speech. “You can’t sell a ten-year-old girl,” Mike had insisted to a dead-eyed man with the facial features of the Mayans.

  “Come on, Mike,” J.D. had told his friend, pulling him along by the uniform sleeve. “We can’t do anything here. Not now.” They were being watched by El Salvadorian soldiers, men with guns who didn’t care who they killed.

  His friend had tugged free, walked back to the pimp, and grabbed him by his shirt, lifting him against the wall. “I’ll be back,” he said, “and when I do, I’m going to cut your gizzard out, you piece of shit.”

  The noise of a city in the throes of night had suddenly disappeared. For two seconds there had been total silence, then the click of the knife blade and Mike’s soft grunt of surprise. J.D. had known in that split-second vacuum that his friend would die. Nothing he did or said could stop it. Mike was a dead man, and there was no turning away from it. Even as J.D. leaped forward, the noise came back in a hot rush. The pimp screamed a curse and fled as Mike sank to his knees, his brown eyes still disbelieving, his big, calloused hands holding in his guts.

  J.D. looked out at the river, aware that sound had returned. He heard the murmur of Dixon’s voice as she spoke with Medino, and he heard his deputy approach.

  “The volunteers are ready to go back to town,” Waymon said.

  J.D. nodded. He’d called technicians from the state lab to work the scene around the altar and had a call in to Parchman Penitentiary for some tracking dogs.

  “Looks like the national reporter is trying to make time with the local press,” Waymon said.

  J.D. turned to look at the sandbar, where Dixon chatted with Medino. Her hair was damp with sweat, and he could see the outline of her breasts beneath the clinging sleeveless cotton shirt.

  “She’s not hard on the eyes,” Waymon said. “Too bad she’s a reporter.”

  “Yeah,” J.D. said. “Let’s go. We’ll come back tomorrow with the dogs.”

  From the back seat of the Explorer, Dixon watched the sheriff’s head. J.D. Horton was not typical of her experience with law enforcement. Linda, who knew the ins and outs of everyone in Chickasaw County, said that loss and the sheriff’s experience in Central America had changed him.

  How could it not? People unaffected by violence were the ones sitting on death row—at least the ones who had been caught.

  One man now on death row, Willard Jones, had been there for eleven years, ever since his conviction for the murder of Ray Sinclair. Even in the blistering heat, Dixon felt a chill. She had visited Jones at Parchman, and she had begun to doubt the verdict. Doubt was guilt’s partner in the destruction of happiness, and Dixon suffered. Jones’s execution was only four weeks away. He’d exhausted every appeal. Dixon understood that it was her waffling belief in Jones’s guilt rather than her visits to him that upset her mother. When a man was to be executed in an act of Biblical justice, there was no room for doubt from the family, who were supposed to feel vindicated.

  “Sinclair, I’d watch out for Medino.”

  Horton’s advice was unexpected, and she didn’t respond. She studied his neatly cropped hair. Thick and fine. Even driving, he had the upright posture of a military man.

  The press and law enforcement often ended up at odds with each other. Both were bonded to tragedy. Both sought justice, and Ray Sinclair had believed that newspapering was the greater weight in the scale of justice.

  “Miss Sinclair.” Waymon turned around in the front seat so he could see her. “What do you think about that reporter man:

  “He’s got some impressive credentials,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “He’s educated at Harvard. He works for one of the most prestigious magazines in the world, with heavy emphasis on culture and politics. He won a Pulitzer for a story he did on abortions in Mexico—”

  “He’s one of them folks like to come in and stir folks up.” Waymon frowned. They bounced off the bridge and onto the dirt road.

  “That’s a journalist’s job, to make people think and see different sides of things.”

  “Don’t need none of that in Chickasaw County,” Waymon insisted.

  “I disagree, Waymon. Chickasaw County needs a good bit of stirring up.” Dixon saw Waymon frown. The deputy wasn’t as dumb as he liked to pretend. “Mr. Medino has a theory on the disappearance of the girls and why he believes this psycho has taken them.”

  “Did Medino elucidate his theory?” Horton asked.

  Horton might not have gone to Harvard, but he could toss around some ten-dollar words. “It had to do with Mexico, a fallen Catholic, a man who is conflicted with his image of women and his lust for them. Medino says the man has taken the girls because he thinks he wants to save them. Then he feels sexual desire for them, and once he’s had them, he’ll have to kill them.”

  J.D. pulled the SUV to the side of the road. “Waymon, find Ms. Sinclair and yourself a ride to town in another vehicle. I have something I need to do.”

  Dixon got out and stood in the hot sun. Horton didn’t look back at her. He drove off, thick dust churning from beneath his wheels.

  Jouncing over potholes, J.D. turned down the rutted
lane that led to Eustace Mills’s bait shop and fish camp. Live oaks older than the state shaded the grassless yard. He parked and got out of the SUV, his face turned up to the camp. The tranquility of it always struck him anew. Some twenty feet up on pilings, the cypress structure looked like a strange airborne church nestled in the gnarled arms of the oaks. J.D. had a sense of coming home.

  He wanted to talk to his old friend. Eustace was a man of logic. The two of them would sit under the oaks and drink a few beers and talk through the disappearance of the two girls.

  J.D. walked through the trees. The place was quiet. Camille’s car was by the house, and he could see Eustace’s boat at the landing and his old truck parked behind a shed. Eustace had to be there.

  “Lots of excitement, J.D.” Eustace’s voice came from the direction of a lightning-blasted tree trunk.

  “How’s it going, Eustace?” he said when the fisherman walked out from behind the tree. Blood covered Eustace’s oversized hands. A glistening hunk of blood-soaked skin hung from the pliers he carried.

  “Did you find the bodies?”

  J.D. didn’t answer immediately. “So you think they’re dead?”

  “That’s the talk all along the river. Two girls missing. Have the draglines brought anything up?” Eustace looked up toward the camp, where Camille walked out, sat down on the top step, and lit a cigarette.

  “Not yet.” J.D. concentrated on Eustace’s face as his friend watched Camille.

  Eustace wiped one hand on his filthy shirt. “Any idea what happened?”

  J.D. noticed the bruises and scraped knuckles on Eustace’s right hand as he leaned a hip against the SUV. Since Camille Holbert had driven her Mercedes SL500 out of her rich daddy’s driveway and into the swamp and parked it beside Eustace’s camp, the fisherman hadn’t invited him inside. Today would be no different. “Like you said, some folks think they drowned.” Eustace knew the swamps better than any man alive; he was up and down the river several times a day, and he was observant. “You didn’t see the girls, did your