Читать книгу Too Close To Home - Maureen Tan - Страница 12

There was nothing to do but wait.

Too hazardous by far to carry Tina out, risking the narrow ledge that Possum had followed down into the ravine. Foolish and probably impossible to climb back the way I’d climbed down. Chad, I knew, was already on his way. And I admitted to myself that that was a comforting thought.

I looked at the luminous numbers on my watch, saw that Possum and I had been in the woods for just under two hours. Chad and his people, using my markers to find their way, would probably only take half that long to reach us. Though the nighttime temperature was probably still in the mid-eighties, the face of the ravine and the limestone outcropping were damp and cold. So I settled Tina onto my lap and wrapped my shirt around her. Possum curled in beside me and I was grateful for the additional warmth.

As I checked Tina for injuries, we chatted about teddy bears and big trees and missing bedtime and adventures in the woods. By the time I’d determined that Tina’s tumble down to the ledge had miraculously cost her nothing but a few scrapes and bruises, I’d learned most of what I needed to know. Maxi, it seemed, had gotten hungry, so he and Tina had gone into the woods looking for a honey tree. Just like in Winnie the Pooh. It had gotten dark. They’d walked and walked. And then they’d fallen down. Now Tina and Maxi were really, really hungry.

There was no honey for her that night, but the granola bar and lime-flavored sports drink I shared with Tina seemed to do the trick. We offered Maxi and Possum crumbs, which Possum ate with tail-wagging enthusiasm. Tina announced that her teddy bear judged the snack yummy. Then, with Maxi wrapped in her arms, she fell asleep.

I was tired, physically and mentally tired. But I stayed awake anyway, irrationally alert to the presence of predatory spiders on the ledge where we sat. More rationally intent on protecting Tina and listening for the sounds of approaching rescuers. When I heard them, I would aim my flashlight’s beam into the sky to mark our exact location.

In the meantime, I waited.

Time passed slowly in the dark. I held Tina, embracing her warm, soft weight and listening to her breathing. And though it seemed inappropriate to think anything but bright and beautiful thoughts with a successfully rescued child in my arms, my mind quickly drifted to the dark, dirty business of the skeletal remains on the ledge just above me.

“Did you walk into the woods with your murderer?” I murmured under my breath.

Possible, I thought, but it didn’t seem reasonable for a murderer to lure or force a potential victim very far from a road or a trail. Why travel all the way to the ridge when the forest offered adequate, plentiful and more convenient places?

I considered another scenario.

“Were you killed somewhere else, then carried here?”

I shook my head, immediately dismissing the idea. A body is awkward and heavy to carry. My mind veered away from the reason I knew that, and I focused on the idea that no one carries that kind of weight any farther than they have to.

Killing someone in this place made no sense, I told myself. Unless the murderer had chosen the particular spot, the particular tree, for reasons that only a disturbed mind could fathom. But after nearly a year in law enforcement, I had great faith in the human impulse to do things the easy way.

Then it hit me. The ridge simply wasn’t as inconvenient as it seemed. Unless you were searching for a lost child, there was no reason to approach it from the Fishers’ backyard, to crash through the underbrush or walk along deer paths that were easy only for a child as small as Tina to follow. It was an indication of how exhausted I was that I hadn’t immediately considered that the murderer could approach the ridge from other directions.

I shifted slightly, settled Tina more comfortably into my lap, then pressed my eyes shut, picturing the map that Chad had laid out on the Fisher’s front porch. I thought about it, working to recall each of the roads and formal trails that crisscrossed the area. Then I visualized the route Possum and I had followed and estimated the distance we’d traveled.

Camp Cadiz, I realized, was actually much closer to us than to the Fishers’ house. Park a vehicle at Camp Cadiz, walk into the forest along the well-marked River-to-River Trail and cross the footbridge that spanned the ravine. After that, I figured the spot where Tina and I waited was no more than a quarter of a mile along the ravine from the bridge.

At gunpoint, a living victim could be forced to walk to this very place. And, if one was strong and determined enough, a body could be carried from the parking lot at Camp Cadiz to the place where I’d found the bones.

The campground—the most primitive of all the campgrounds in the Shawnee National Forest—was remote and only occasionally used by backpackers making the days-long river-to-river trek between the Ohio and the Mississippi. It was the kind of place where a murder could easily go unwitnessed.

I’d visited Camp Cadiz. Once. Eight years earlier. And I hadn’t been hiking. I’d been driving Gran, Katie and the woman we had just rescued to the safety of the Cherokee Rose. The detour to Camp Cadiz had been brief and unexpected, but the events of that night had seared the campground’s layout into my memory.

I cuddled Tina closer—comfort for her, comfort for me—as I remembered.

Gran had to pee.

Like many such urges, it presented itself at a most inconvenient moment. We were about thirty minutes away from Maryville. And that, as Gran was fond of saying, put us exactly at the hind end of nowhere. Certainly, we were an uncomfortably long way from the nearest public restroom.

The road, lit only by the headlights of the boxy, blue passenger van I drove, cut through a densely wooded and virtually unpopulated section of the Shawnee National Forest. As we slowed to round curves, our lights skimmed undergrowth that, from the van, looked impenetrable. Given Gran’s poor night vision and the city suit she was wearing, it probably was.

Gran was as outdoorsy as I was. Lean and athletic, she was an amateur naturalist who had spent most of her life exploring the forest, hiking alone for hours. But no matter that she’d willingly spend hours in a bog or scramble up a rocky slope in search of a medicinal plant or climb high into the branches of a tree to glimpse some endangered species, Gran wasn’t the kind of person who would relieve herself in public. And—no matter how unlikely it was that anyone would see her—she considered the side of the road as definitely public.

I mulled over the problem, but before I could come up with an alternative, Gran offered one.

“The turnoff for Camp Cadiz should be close,” she said.

We’d gone less than a quarter of a mile when I spotted the small, reflective green sign pointing the way to Camp Cadiz with white letters. A quick turn down a gravel road and we were there.

Seven decades earlier, when F.D.R. had been president and long before southern Illinois bothered itself with concerns about tourism, Camp Cadiz had been a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. The shadowy remains of half a dozen old barracks still dotted the campground. River-stone foundations and clumps of trees and brush provided privacy between a dozen primitive campsites. Along the camp’s perimeter, thick foliage joined with the night to create a wall of darkness beneath a starry sky.

The outhouse was at the far edge of the campground.

Missy was curled up sleeping on the bench seat at the very rear of the van. She straightened when I turned into the rutted lot and shifted into Park. I looked over my shoulder in time to see her confused and panicked look as her eyes darted around the interior.

Gran, who sat just behind me, turned her head and spoke before I could.

“It’s all right, honey,” she said, her tone as soothing as the slow, soft syllables that marked her speech and belied her energetic personality. “You’re safe. We’re just stopping so that I can use the facilities.”

“We’ll be at the Cherokee Rose in under an hour,” I added. “Where there’s a nice, clean bathroom. With a toilet that flushes. But if you can’t wait…”

Missy shook her head and managed a weak, exhausted smile. Then she turned to rest her forehead against the side window and stared out at the darkness.

Katie was beside me in the front seat, still snoring softly.

Even half-asleep, my sister was beautiful—petite and curvy with pale yellow hair, hazel eyes flecked with gold and a peaches-and-cream complexion. An angel, people were always saying. And I agreed, not only because she was pretty but because she’d been my guardian angel during the earliest years of our childhood. Maybe that’s why I’d stood up for her that morning when she’d stripped off her apron, come running from the kitchen and unexpectedly climbed into the van.

“I’m going, too,” she’d announced breathlessly.

Gran shook her head.

“You and I have talked about this before, Katie. You have to accept that there are things that you simply can’t manage.”

I hated it when Gran used that tone with Katie. Katie’s asthma, according to Aunt Lucy, was the only reason her involvement with the Underground was limited to playing hostess and cooking—something she already did for the paying guests at the Cherokee Rose. But there was more to it than that.

“She’s not like Brooke,” I’d once overheard Gran tell Aunt Lucy. “Katie’s not strong emotionally. You’ve seen it yourself. Tears one moment, anger the next. Face it, Lucy. She’s never gotten over her mother abandoning her. Or the abuse.”

As I looked at my sister, I saw uncharacteristic determination in the way she lifted her dimpled chin. Just a couple months short of her eighteenth birthday, Katie was my senior by a year and a half. But over the past couple of years, she’d grown so timid and unsure of herself that I’d begun to think of her as much younger than me.

Now I wondered if the root of that problem was not our mother, but Gran. Although she pushed me to be independent, to take on challenges and pursue my ambitions, she still made most of Katie’s decisions for her. And encouraged Katie to stay close to home. Where it was safe. Usually, Katie seemed content to do whatever Gran wanted.

But not today.

“Go back inside, Katie,” Gran was saying, and her tone made it sound as if she were speaking to a child. “Like a good girl.”

Though twin red blotches were already standing out against her pale cheeks and she’d started wheezing, Katie didn’t move from the backseat. Nothing about her expression changed as she dug in a pocket, took out the inhaler she always carried and gave herself a puff of medicine before tucking it away again.

In that one quick action she reminded me that she was fragile, at least physically. I opened my mouth, ready to suggest to Katie that she’d be more useful if she stayed at home, when she did something she’d never done before. She leaned forward and stretched out her hand to clasp my shoulder.

“Please, Brooke. Don’t leave me behind. I can help, if you’ll let me. I want to make Gran and Aunt Lucy proud of me, just like they are of you. I’m a good driver. When you and Gran go to the house, I’ll sit with the engine running. In case we have to leave fast.”

Maybe it was Katie’s courage that inspired me. Or maybe it was the yearning I heard in my sister’s voice. But it prompted me to do something I’d never done before. I told Gran that Katie was brave and helpful and that she was going with us. I was surprised when Gran hadn’t protested.

Now, I nudged Katie’s shoulder.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

Katie yawned, stretched her arms upward until they touched the van’s ceiling, then yawned again as she turned her head slowly, blinking the sleep from her eyes as she looked around.

“Pit stop at Camp Cadiz,” I said. “You interested?”

“Ugh,” she muttered. “An outhouse. No way.”

She snuggled back down into the seat and put her arm across her face.

I turned off the engine and the radio, but left the headlights on, aimed in the direction of the outhouse.

I’d planned to sit and wait for Gran. But I shifted in my seat just in time to see her step out and nearly fall headlong into a pothole that she hadn’t noticed in the dark. And it occurred to me that the stretch of weedy meadow between her and the outhouse would present similar hazards, without benefit of the van’s door to grab onto.

I scooted out from behind the wheel and met Gran as she was carefully stepping over one of the logs that kept cars from driving into the campground. I took her arm and held it tight. We walked across Camp Cadiz together, our bodies throwing long shadows in the headlight beams.

Tina kicked and cried out in her sleep.

“Mommy! Daddy!”

I tightened my hold on her.

“Soon, little one. You’ll see them soon.”

I dug through memory, came up with the lullaby that Aunt Lucy had sung to Katie and me when she’d first brought us home to the massive, redbrick hotel. Our great-grandfather had built the Cherokee Rose back when Maryville had been a center of river commerce and no one had thought the swampy northern Illinois town of Chicago would ever amount to much. Gran had grown up there, as had Aunt Lucy and our mother, Lydia. It would be our home, too.

I began singing softly to Tina.

Soon, her body relaxed and her breathing grew deeper and more regular. Asleep again, I thought, allowing my voice to trail off.

I began thinking again about the skeleton that lay on the ledge above us. If nature hadn’t undermined the makeshift grave and eventually deposited the remains onto the ledge below and if I hadn’t been desperately searching for Tina, I would never have found the body. And someone’s guilty secret would have remained hidden forever.

I wondered suddenly, horribly, if my own secret might someday be exposed in just that way. By accident. It was too easy to imagine Missy’s bloated corpse somehow escaping its tomb of steel, floating to the surface within sight of human eyes.

I shook my head, tried to clear away the flood of grim memories by focusing on Tina. I pressed my face down against her sleep-dampened curls and listened to the deep rhythm of her breathing as I inhaled her odd, slightly sweet baby scent. An innocent kind of smell. Perspiration and talcum powder, I thought. Or maybe baby shampoo. The kind that doesn’t sting eyes.

I’d rescued her, I reminded myself. Rescued an innocent. The way I’d rescued so many others in the years since Missy’s death. I’d preserved the Underground and, over the past eight years, helped many dozens of helpless women escape to new, better lives. And I’d given up the only man I’d ever loved because I couldn’t tolerate lying to him and I dared not tell him the truth. Wasn’t that enough to make up for breaking the law, for abusing in death someone who’d been so badly abused by life?

I couldn’t convince myself that it was.

The rescue, with enough people and the right equipment, was quick and safe. Tina, Possum and I left the ravine at a place several yards distant from the exposed root system of the massive tree. I handed Tina over to a paramedic and then, with Possum by my side, followed the tree line to the yellow-taped perimeter that Chad was creating several yards back from the ravine. The tape was a standard item in my pack. Chad always seemed to have it with him, too. And I wondered briefly what that said about our expectations.

Chad paused in his work and reached down to ruffle the fur on Possum’s head.

“Good job, Possum,” he said. “I’m going to get you a big rawhide chew. And maybe a tube of new tennis balls.”

Possum responded as he would to anyone whose voice was so full of praise. He wiggled most of the back half of his shaggy black-and-tan body.

Then Chad straightened and turned toward me. His body blocked the glare from a high-powered lantern that was set up nearby, but there was still enough light to see the dark patches of perspiration staining his uniform shirt and the long, bloody gouge that some branch had carved beneath his right eye. It nearly intersected the puckered, white line that paralleled his strong jaw—a scar that Chad’s daddy had put there more than a decade earlier.

“Thank you,” he said. “You’re fabulous.”

I felt my cheeks redden and my pulse quicken in response to the admiration I heard in his voice, and I knew without doubt that I wouldn’t have reacted that way to just anyone. Only Chad.

Quickly, I focused my attention on Possum, who was butting Chad’s hand with his broad head in an attempt to get more petting. I ordered him to lie down and stay—probably more firmly than I should have—and waited until his body was sprawled comfortably on the ground. Then I helped Chad finish tying off the tape. I took my end all the way back to the dangerous edge, finally wrapping it around a sapling that was about fifteen feet from the cottonwood tree where I’d found the bones. After rejoining Chad beneath the lantern and taking a moment to survey our work, I turned and looked him squarely in the eyes.

“Okay, now let me take a look at your face.”

He shook his head. “No big deal,” he began. “We need to—”

“No,” I said, cutting him off midsentence and probably midthought. “Before we do another thing, you let me take care of that cheek.”

From long experience, I knew just how stubborn he could be. So I didn’t wait for his reply. Or his permission. I grabbed his chin, tipped his injured cheek in my direction and peered at the wound.

“It’s only a scratch,” he said.

“Bull. Shit. Hold. Still.”

I gave his chin a quick pinch to make my point.

One way or another, I’d been dealing with Chad’s stubbornness and patching him up for years. The first time was just after he’d come to live with a family that took in foster kids. Their house was down the hill from the Cherokee Rose. Even though Chad had been a boy—and, at twelve, I’d written off the opposite sex as pretty much useless—I’d been predisposed to like him. His family situation had distracted most of Maryville from their ongoing gossip about ours. Our mother was merely a runaway and a thief, who’d abandoned her children in a crack house in Los Angeles. Chad’s father had murdered his wife, attempted to slash his son’s throat and then had claimed that God had told him to do it.

The wound on Chad’s cheek was ragged and deep. I pulled an antiseptic pad from my emergency pack and began gently washing blood and bits of debris away from it.

“It doesn’t look as if you’ll need stitches,” I said when the cheek was clean.

“Oh, good,” he said, self-mockery evident in his voice. “I was real worried that another scar would ruin my ruggedly handsome good looks.”

“It’d take a heck of a lot more than that,” I muttered, contradicting him as I always did, knowing that when he looked in the mirror all he saw was a face with a scar. And maybe felt again, just for a heartbeat, the hatred that had put it there.

But, as he always did, he shrugged.

Stupid man, I thought. Why can’t he see that despite the scarring along his jaw, or maybe because of it, he was utterly desirable?

Too desirable.

At almost nineteen, when he’d joined the military and gone away to fight in the Middle East, he hadn’t been at all desirable. At least, not as far as I’d been concerned. I’d watched him grow from a scrawny, carrot-topped boy to a rangy acne-prone adolescent male. I missed him only because he was my best buddy and the boy next door, never anticipating that a few years away would transform him into a six-foot-tall hunk with green eyes and copper hair. I hadn’t expected that old friendship would eventually evolve into new intimacy. Or that in a matter of months, our enthusiastic lust would abruptly transform itself into troublesome love. But that’s exactly what had happened.

Get over it, I told myself.

I looked away from his expressive eyes and back at his bloody cheek.

He did a good job of pretending that he didn’t feel anything when I smoothed a layer of antibiotic cream over the wound. Then, as gently as I could, I used several butterfly closures to pull together the edges along the deepest part of the wound.

He flinched.

“Sorry,” I murmured.

“Doesn’t hurt,” he lied.

“Have I ever accused you of being accident prone?”

“Often,” he said, flashing me a smile.

Halfheartedly, I scolded him for moving as I grinned back. It was an old joke and a good memory. We’d met when he’d crashed in front of the Cherokee Rose while attempting a skateboard stunt involving empty wooden peach crates and a plywood ramp.

Chad’s expression grew serious, though he was careful not to frown.

“You and I have a jurisdictional issue to resolve,” he said. “Fact is, you’d need a surveyor to figure out whether we’re standing on county land or if this is still Maryville Township.”

I made a sound that was more acknowledgment than an answer as I concentrated on anchoring a square of gauze across his cheek with a final strip of tape. Then I used another antiseptic pad to wipe away the blood that had smeared across his face. Finally, I stepped back to survey my work.

“That should hold you for a while,” I said.

Chad slanted his green eyes in the direction of his cheek as his fingers sought the gauze pad and briefly explored that side of his face.

“Thanks,” he murmured “Now about jurisdiction…”

When I attended the statewide police training institute, I’d heard a lot of talk about interdepartmental politics and jurisdictional disputes. Boiled down to its testosterone-spiked essence, the unwritten rule was You Don’t Piss on My Turf; I Won’t Piss on Yours. But in southern Illinois—where a mile-long stretch of roadway might cross federal, state, county and local jurisdictions—cooperation between law-enforcement agencies was not only customary but essential. So there was no reason, besides the personal, that Chad and I shouldn’t work together.

“A shared investigation would keep you from screwing up,” I said.

“Might keep the rookie out of trouble, too,” he retorted.

A couple hours later, I headed for home.