Читать книгу Sleep Softly - Gwen Hunter - Страница 9

I stayed behind the two old oaks when we arrived; Jim stood at the edge of the grave site only a few feet away, hands on his hips while cops ran crime-scene tape from tree to tree at the sheriff’s direction. Though the scene was far from pristine, Jim obviously wasn’t going to add tracks or evidence to it until the photos were finished. Skye and Steven, another deputy, set up cameras and began to take digital and 35mm shots. Steven was giant, an African American with a shaved head and biceps as big as my thighs. Well, almost as big as my thighs.

“Ramsey?” Skye said almost instantly. “Headstones. I count three, lying flat.”

“Where?” he demanded.

“With this marker as six, we got one at two o’clock, one between ten and eleven, and a broken stone that looks as if it’s been moved recently at five and eight.”

I looked where she pointed, my gut tightening.

“Got it. Keep your eyes open for any other signs of grave markers,” Jim said. “Ash says this is nearly three hundred years old. A plot like this might have some uncarved markers, too, or some carved stone that’s so old it’s not easily recognizable as a grave marker.”

She nodded and began removing equipment from the cases they had toted in.

After the shots, Skye passed out protective clothing, paper shoes and coats that shed no fibers. Then she handed out gloves, evidence bags, small cans of orange paint, a one-hundred-foot tape measure for marking a grid and string to run from one spot to another, indicating straight lines. Together, working like a precision team, she and Steven measured the circumference and diameter of the space between the trees, marking off specific intervals around the vaguely circular area. They mapped it out on a pad, creating a visual grid to prevent the crime-scene guys from tripping, adding measurements and other indicators. Skye took more photographs while Steven recorded the dimensions into a tape recorder and on a separate spiral pad.

I had seen cops mark a grid on television using spray paint, and in class we had been lectured extensively on the proper way to handle a scene, but I had never seen one detailed in person. It was very clean and geometrical. I noticed that Skye and Steven walked carefully, studying the ground before putting down a bootie-clad foot. They avoided the center of the area, where clothing peeked from the makeshift grave. The alleged makeshift grave.

I knew that, until they saw human remains, it would be only a suspected grave. All this effort and we didn’t even know for certain if there was a body or if it was human. The toe could have come from somewhere else. This grave could be a dog, buried in a pile of rags. Not a child. It could be anything. I wanted it to be anything, anything but a little girl.

All the cops seemed to have a job except the sheriff. Gaskins stood back and looked important. Jim was out in the trees, walking a course around the site in a spiral, marking things on the ground with painted circles. A quiet hour passed during which I found I could disassociate myself from the meaning of the scene and watch. Perhaps that was part of my nursing training, being able to put away normal human feelings and simply do a job. The cops moved in slow, studied precision, touching nothing, recording everything on the detailed evidence map that would be one result of today.

Into the silence that followed I said, “Cheeks buried his face in that strip of cloth right there. There’ll be drool and hair on it. And I think my other two dogs—” I paused, breathless as the meaning of my words slammed into me. I licked lips that felt dry and cracked. “I think they actually dug up the body and rolled in it. You’ll want to take samples from each dog, I’m sure.” The cops were looking at me. I thought I might throw up. I pressed my hand to my stomach. “Johnny Ray has Big Dog and Cherry both locked up in the barn.”

The cops went back to work without a word. Gaskins called in my information to one of the investigators driving in from Ford County and told him to take care of the dog samples before coming out to the site. No one said anything much after that.

The preliminaries over, Jim donned fresh gloves and booties and tossed several evidence bags into a larger bag he marked with black ink. With the digital camera slung over his shoulder on its long back cord, he followed a straight line he referred to as CLEAR. Walking slowly from the two oaks into the center of the small clearing, back hunched, eyes on the ground, he marked evidence as he moved but left each item in place, a paper bag beside it. When he reached the scrap of cloth that Cheeks had drooled on, Jim looked up at me with a question on his face and I nodded. “That’s the one.”

He photographed the scrap of cloth where it lay and took another shot in relation to the total scene. “Document contaminant information,” he said to Steven, “with the year, case number and item.”

“Got it,” Steven said.

Jim marked the photo with the same numbers and continued his slow methodical pace to the center of the circle. Taking several shots, he backed out the same way he’d gone in, and handed the photos and camera off to Skye. “You the acting coroner today, too?”

“I have that pleasure,” she said, her tone belying the words. It was common in poor counties for law-enforcement officers to be trained in several different fields. Skye was a trained crime-scene investigator and also worked as part-time county coroner. She moved closer to the edge of the clearing. “What do we have?”

“Protruding from sandy-type soil, I see part of a small skull,” Jim said, “presumptive human, part of what looks like a femur and lower leg bones, and clothing.”

“Ah, hell,” Steven said.

Skye’s expression didn’t change. Stone-faced, she stepped to the denim bag I had noticed earlier on the passenger seat of the county van and removed a folder marked Blank Coroner Forms. “Could it be from the 1700s?” she asked.

“No,” Jim said. “Connective tissue is still in place. In this kind of soil, well draining but under a canopy of trees, I’d guess it’s not more than a year old.”

Something turned over in my belly, a slow, sickening somersault of horror. Silently, I walked away, along the length of the old riverbed, back out of the shadows. When I reached the pile of boulders, a single shaft of noontime sunlight found a way past the foliage, falling on the topmost stone. Without thinking, I climbed up the pile, pushing off with booted feet against the slick rock until I was perched on top, my arms wrapped around my knees.

There was a body buried in the woods near my house. The body of a child, taken by someone intent on evil and buried in the shadows, alone and isolated. I had discovered it…. Most likely a little girl. I had discovered her.

My family would be questioned by the police, possibly by the FBI. My house and grounds would be overrun by cops. And I had nothing to tell them that would explain how the body had ended up on Chadwick Farms property. Nothing to tell the parents, if I ever met them. Nothing to tell her family or mine.

I was trained to gather forensic evidence but my forte was nursing, gathering evidence on living human bodies, evidence that police would need in later investigations and trials. Such evidence was often lost during medical procedures, especially during emergency medical treatment where dousing the victim with warmed saline or Betadine scrub washed away vital clues to the perpetrator, and cleaning skin for IV sites, bandages, or application of fingertip epidermal monitors hid defensive wounds and damage—evidence that should have been preserved for standard and genetic testing.

I wasn’t trained to work a crime scene where the victim was dead.

A child. Dead in my ancestors’ family plot. And my dogs had surely rolled in her grave. I put my head on my knees and cried, trying to keep my sobs silent. An early mosquito was attracted to my position and I killed it as it punctured the back of my hand for a blood meal. A squirrel chittered at me from a low branch. Long, painful minutes passed. Finally, I took a deep breath.

I heard the sound of vehicles and voices in the distance and knew that the other investigators had arrived. Sheriff Gaskins had been keeping in touch with the men and they would know already that there was a body. They didn’t need help to follow the trail, and I didn’t especially want to be caught sitting on top of a pile of big rocks crying my eyes out, so I wiped my face, slid back to the ground and returned to the site.

Jim met me partway, his eyes tired, face drawn, his paper clothing left at the site to reveal the dress shirt, tie and slacks, his entire lanky frame speaking of exhaustion. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m lovely. Just hunky-dory. You?”

His smile was crooked. “I’ve had better days. But I need your help.”

“What for?”

“I need you to tell me about that homestead and grave plot.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured would happen.” I turned my back, shoulders stiff and angry. “You’re going to have to question all my family, aren’t you? My nana, my daughter. All the help.”

“Like I said. Better days.” I could hear the strain in his voice, but I still didn’t turn around, even when he put a hand on my shoulder, the first comfort he’d offered. “But not me. I’m too close to you.” His tone softened, as if to both warn and console me at once. “It’ll be one of the other agents. It needs to be thorough to rule out your family, so it won’t be pleasant.”

I wiped my eyes again, fighting tears that were half selfish, half for the child buried in the sand just ahead. “That’s just great. Do you have any idea how many Chadwicks know about this site, either by family history or by actually coming out here to see it? Do you know how big an investigation you’re talking about?”

“Tell me.”

I looked up at him. He wavered in a watery pattern of tears. “At the last family reunion back in 2005, over 225 people attended. Lots more couldn’t make it. My family is scattered all over the nation. We’re two races and all ages, from the late nineties to not yet born. We started on a family genealogy chart last year, and it points to dozens of other family members—dozens, Jim—that are lost or missing. Hundreds of us live in this state alone.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding? You’re going to have to talk to all of them, aren’t you? And before you ask, yes, we’ve had our share of spotted sheep.”

“Don’t you mean black sheep?” he said, amused.

“Not with my family’s ethnic mix. And some of our spotted sheep have done jail time.”

Jim swore, his amusement gone.

“Don’t let my aunt Mosetta hear you swear. She won’t care if you’re a cop or not, you say that in her presence and she’ll wash out your mouth with good lye soap. Why concentrate on just the Chadwicks? Anyone could locate this place.”

“Not likely.”

“Yes, likely.” I swiped at my face with the flannel cuffs. “You said the last body was buried in a Confederate graveyard. Was it easy to find?”

“A lot easier to find than this one.” The comforting tone was gone from his voice. That hadn’t lasted long.

“Well, this one’s not impossible to detect either.”

“Ash—” Jim stopped himself from whatever he was about to say and took a deep breath. “Why don’t you tell me how anyone outside of your family would know about this burial plot.”

I jerked my head at the grave site just ahead. “The South Carolina State Library has information on graveyards across the state. The information is available online at the library’s Web site, and also in the South Carolina reference room. I know, because at that family reunion I mentioned, we looked it up one rainy day for fun. You can click on ‘counties’ and find any graveyard thus far discovered in any county.” The whole time I talked, tears fell, dripping off my chin in dual steady streams. My nose was clogging.

“The Chadwick plot is registered with the state in historical records. It’s listed in county records, on some old county maps, and frankly anyone who wanted to find it could, with a little work. Any teacher, student, historian, politician, librarian or professor could pinpoint it on MapQuest. Anyone looking for genealogy information. Anyone doing research for any purpose could find it. It’s easy. Just as easy as finding the Chadwick family Web site.”

Jim looked at me thoughtfully. “Your family has its own Web site?” I just looked at him. “What is it, www.Chadwicks.com?”

Grudgingly I said, “Chadwick family. org.”

“So we may not be dealing with a history buff. Just someone who can use the Internet,” he said tiredly.

“That narrows it down for you a lot, I guess. Only eighty-something percent of the citizens in South Carolina have Internet access. Even my nana uses the Internet these days, to get the best prices on her crops.”

“But the problem with the farm and your family is this—the perpetrator would have to get here somehow, carrying a body and digging implements. He had to drive straight through your family farm.”

“Hilldale Hills is closer than Chadwick Farms. A lot closer. In fact, if I’d known where the body was in the first place, I’d have driven over and walked in. It’s no more than a quarter mile thatta way.” I pointed. “There’s another farm about a mile thatta way.” I pointed off toward the Iredells’ llama farm. “Have you even figured out what direction the perpetrator came from? Have you found a trail? Have you asked me any questions to determine the most likely ingress and egress? No.” I sniffed. I decided to give up fighting the tears. I couldn’t seem to stop them.

“You’re not channeling your mother anymore.”

“Josephine doesn’t cry. It ruins her makeup. Causes lines in her skin and dehydrates the horny layer of her epidermis. Or maybe it negatively affects the acid mantle or something. I don’t remember exactly.”

Jim chuckled. “Horny layer?”

“I’m not kidding. Josey is a youth obsessed, skin-treatment-aholic. A plastic surgeon’s professional financial sleep-induced orgasmic pleasure.” The more I talked, the more I cried and the more Jim laughed. At least someone was happy.

“Would that be a wet dream?” Jim’s tone was half-disbelieving.

“Not in front of my family, it wouldn’t.”

“I have to meet this woman.”

“You will.” I scuffed at my cheeks. “She’ll be a suspect, remember? Maybe you can drag her to an interrogation room and visit for a while.”

“Well, hell.” Jim’s laughter was gone.

I looked at him and my eyes ached, tears flowing as if I had opened a faucet. “And I wasn’t joking about my aunt Mosetta. The worst thing you better say in her presence is dang or dantucket. Even my nana is careful about her language in front of Aunt Moses, and Nana could cuss the bark off an oak in her younger days.”

“I thought it was Mosetta,” he said, his tone half laughter.

I shrugged. “Mosetta, Moses, she goes by either. The old ones mostly call her Moses.”

“Please stop crying, Ash.” That tone was back in his voice again, the tone that said he was my boyfriend-sort-of-maybe and didn’t want me to cry.

Boyfriend. I was facing fifty in a few years and I had a boyfriend. What in heck was I going to do with a boyfriend? It made me cry harder, and the sobs felt as if they were raking my throat with claws. “I can’t…I can’t seem to stop crying.”

“Why not?” He put his arms around me and pulled me close.

I had the feeling that most cops didn’t hug most suspects. I snuggled my face into his dress shirt and wrapped my arms around him. I hadn’t known how badly I needed a hug until he tightened his arms. “Why not?” I repeated. “There’s a dead child buried about twenty yards ahead, a huge group of investigators and crime-scene people behind me, my entire family’s a suspect in a murder case and I haven’t slept in over thirty-six hours.”

“That sounds like a good group of reasons. You worked last night?”

I nodded, my face against the starched fabric. It smelled of laundry detergent and man-sweat, an altogether satisfying scent. Amazingly, my tears slowed. I pressed into Jim’s shoulder with my aching face, my skin feeling burned and salty. If she saw me, my mother would drag me to Charlotte to her aesthetician for an emergency session, probably screaming that my epidermis and lipid layer were permanently damaged. She’d done it before. I sighed into Jim’s shoulder, the sound muffled.

“Feel better?”

“Yes. Thank you. Now all I want is a nap.”

“Me, too. Feel better, I mean. I needed this.” His arms tightened a moment and we stood in a shadow, birds tweeting nearby, and a squirrel scampering through dry leaves. Jim released me, easing me away. “Company’s coming.” He brushed a strand of my hair back from my face. “I need to get back to the site.”

I took a breath that still burned down my throat and dropped my hands away from him. “Okay. Thanks for the hug.”

“There’s water in one of the bags at the site.” A half smile raised his lips on one side. “Wash your face so your horny layer does whatever a horny layer is supposed to do.”

“Prurient epidermal thoughts, Agent Ramsey?”

“Thoughts of skin have been known to give me sleep-induced orgasmic pleasure.”

I laughed softly, the sound almost normal as we walked back to the two old oaks and the body buried beyond.

“So. Tell me about Hoddermier Hilldale Jr. and his gentleman friend.”

I sighed. I had a feeling that my neighbors were going to be as abused as my own family.

I considered Hoddy Jr., a slight, delicate man who listened to classical music, wore cashmere in winter and silk blends in summer, and offered cooking classes through the Episcopal church. He looked as if he couldn’t hurt a fly. Could Hoddy be the killer? Surely not.

But how many other friends and neighbors would the cops target? And would they find the killer among them?