“What’s that glow in the sky?” she said, craning her neck toward the windshield and pointing. “Could it be a forest fire? It’s over to the north a bit, not near my place, but it could spread.”
As they turned the corner into Slate Creek Hollow, where they could see that Jessie’s house was fine, they both shouted at once, “Seth’s!”
Cassie cried, “Let’s go back out to the road, then drive down to Seth’s from the highway! It’ll be faster.”
“Not faster than running along the creek. Besides, we’ve got to get help. You and Pearl go inside—here’s the key,”
she said, digging in her purse for it. “Call Emmy and tell her to get the fire volunteers. Drew will be back at the office soon, so he and some others should be able to come right out.”
“Wait! What about you?” Cassie shouted as Jessie got out and slammed the truck door.
“I’m going along the creek to be sure Seth’s okay—that he’s out of the house. Send help, fast!”
“But Drew told me to be sure you were in your house before I left so…” her friend shouted as Jessie tore through her backyard and along the creek into the darkening forest.
Her things in her purse bounced as she jogged along. Could Seth have accidentally set off a fire with the gasoline he kept around for his chain saw? He heated with gas, but she’d heard no explosion. What really scared her was that someone might have turned mutterings, prejudice and blame against the old man into actions, burning him out. As long as Seth and, years ago, his wife, Anna, had lived here, he’d been a loner who didn’t agree with many things. Had someone used the excuse of her mother’s murder to drive him out?
Why couldn’t she smell smoke? The wind must not be right. The strongest odor in the air was musty, almost like mothballs. Maybe that smell was from fungus in the carpet of wet leaves.
As she ran, she had never been more convinced that Seth had been wronged in this whole thing. He would never have harmed her mother, no matter what the circumstances screamed. Besides, he would have to be crazy to leave evidence that pointed to him, but who could be trying to make him a scapegoat? Tyler was the one who had cleverly come up with that nonsense about Cherokee skillies.
She was surprised it was so dark in the forest, but the thick canopy of leaves blocked the setting sun as well as the red fire glow. If it wasn’t put out soon, would it spread to the woods, to her house? Would the poplar stand of Seth’s, where she’d wanted to count sang tomorrow morning, burn?
As if she’d passed through a gray curtain, she suddenly saw and smelled smoke. It burned her eyes and bit deep into her lungs. Panting, with a sharp stitch in her side, she made herself slow down a bit. She was sweating, but a cool breeze snaked shivers up her spine.
Then something cracked close behind her.
As she stretched her strides, she looked back. What had that been? Just a dead limb falling? Someone stepping on a branch? She knew the normal forest sounds and scents, but that heavy smell, fetid and yeasty, seemed to enclose her.
Her brain flashed back to the night they’d found her mother’s body, the night she’d run from the glowing eyes and heard the trudge or shuffle of heavy steps…
The scrim of blowing smoke made this deeper part of the woods between Seth’s property and hers seem even darker, more threatening. Yes, she smelled smoke now. It curled around her, seemed to reach for her…
They are like smoke that floats through the woods… Drew had read today from Tyler’s research on skillies. Their basic power is one of fear, dark, primal fear.
She felt it now, felt something near, watching her, stalking her. Terror gnawed at her courage, ready to devour her. Turning her head again, she tried to pierce the narrow, smoke-hazed shafts of sun stabbing almost horizontal between the tree trunks. The vast, dense forest pressed in on her.
Someone was out here close, something waiting to lunge.
She ran faster. Had Beth Brazzo fled like this from a pursuer? Her nostrils flared; hair prickled on the nape of her neck. Fire or not, Seth or not, she should never have come out here alone. She tasted not just floating ash but bitter, raw terror. Her breath rasped in her throat. A roar sounded in her ears. Was it just her memories from the sound of Indian Falls? No high whine intermingled with the sound. This muted roar reminded her of Bear Falls, near where they’d found her mother. It was as if she were near Bear Creek, and she had fallen, lost her pack. She carried that very pack of her mother’s, using it for a purse. Footsteps behind her, faster, faster. She remembered that she’d scrambled up and fled again from someone coming, someone swinging a long, silver thing at her head.
Refusing to let the image come closer, she forced the nightmare away. Yet horror filled her, smoky and roiling, suffocating her, trying to possess her.
She burst into Seth’s clearing, gasping for breath but only sucked in smoke. Nothing emerged from the forest behind her. She heard only the crackle of flames and her own ragged breathing. Here was real danger as scarlet heat cloaked in gray smoke reached for her.
From her raw throat, she screamed, “Seth! Seth, where are you?”
21
I t seemed an eternity that Jessie paced the clearing alone, waiting for help. She shouted for Seth, alternating horrified looks at the flames with glances over her shoulder at the woods. The crackle of flames obscured all other sounds. Nothing leapt at her from the forest. She must have spooked herself.
Seth’s truck was parked in the clearing, and that scared her, too, not only because it could be devoured by the fire, but because it could mean he might be home, trapped inside. The blackened roof had partly collapsed; heat had blown the windows out. Fire must have ravaged the interior.
Finally, the ladder truck—the only truck of the Deep Down Volunteer Fire Department, mostly funded by Vern Tarver—rolled down the lane. Four volunteer firefighters jumped out and began pumping water from the truck’s tank. Because they wore big boots, heavy coats and helmets, she couldn’t tell who they were for sure, except for Vern. She knew Drew was a volunteer, too, but he wasn’t here.
Cassie parked down the lane. Holding Pearl’s hand, she came to stand beside Jessie with their arms around each
other and Pearl pressed between. A small crowd, including Tyler, showed up to gawk. He shot photos from several angles, needing no strobes to light the night.
After parking down the road, Drew arrived. In the dimming light of dancing flames, his eyes met Jessie’s. He gave her a quick nod before he hurried to the fire truck, yanked on a coat and helmet and raced to help.
“Where’s Seth?” she heard him ask the other volunteers.
“If he’s trapped inside, he’s gone,” one of the other men shouted. “Been too hot to go in. Ask Mariah’s girl—she got here first.”
Drew strode over to her.
“I never saw Seth,” she told him as he pulled her a short distance away from Cassie and Pearl. Jessie was surprised how raspy her voice sounded, as if it weren’t her own. “I shouted for him, but it was an inferno when I got here. It might be a gasoline fire.”
“Yeah, but, once again, not an accident. Next to his chain saw, there’s a gasoline can, but it’s been tipped and emptied. The windows are all blown outward except for the one near the can, where the arsonist evidently threw something in.”
“Oh, no!”
“That’s just at a first glance. Not a very subtle arson job.”
Behind him, a fireman was suiting up in heavier gear, maybe getting ready to search inside now that the flames were under control. Another volunteer trained his light on the front door they had just hacked in.
Jessie grabbed Drew’s arm as he turned to head back. “You said once again it was not an accident. Do you think Beth’s death wasn’t, either?”
“Clayton Merriman hasn’t had time to rule on it, but he says the blood under her head came from a lateral blow.”
“Which could be from her fall onto the rock ledge.”
“He thinks it’s from a blunt force instrument—weapon. But how did you get here first when Cassie called the fire in from your house?”
“I ran through the forest.”
“Alone?” he shouted.
“It wasn’t dark yet. I knew it was the fastest way.”
“Damn it, Jess. It probably wasn’t dark when someone killed your mother or maybe Beth, either! Whoever’s doing this is brazen as hell.”
“I was worried about Seth.”
“Yeah, me, too.”
He trudged back to the others. The man in the heavy suit took a light and went in. It seemed he was inside for an eternity. When he came back out, still breathing through his mask with his helmet hiding his face, he shrugged and lifted both hands to indicate he hadn’t found Seth.
Jessie sighed in relief. At least he wasn’t trapped inside. Since his truck sat here, surely he hadn’t literally burned his bridges behind him and left the area because he was guilty of the murder some suspected him of.
Vern continued to spray water on the south side of the house; Drew and two others dragged charred, sodden debris away from the dwelling with long hooks. It began to rain, not hard, but enough to allow Vern to stop pouring water on the embers. Even if it had rained earlier, it would not have been enough to douse fierce flames. The thick tree canopy kept the onlookers dry, and the firemen seemed to welcome the extra water.
But then, as if he’d materialized from the last wisps of smoke, Seth emerged from the forest into the clearing,
staring agape at the ruin of his house. The old man’s legs buckled; he sank to the ground.
Drew went to him, bent over him. As Drew spoke, Seth kept nodding, nodding, then just sat unmoving, maybe whispering something to Drew. Even from here, Jessie could see that he had another necklace of animal claws around his neck and wore a crude cape made of some sort of animal pelt covering one shoulder and his back. His face was smeared with paint or berry juice.
A strange hush descended as everyone turned and stared at Seth. It was, Jessie thought, like a freeze-frame in a movie. Then Drew straightened and said, “Seth’s been out in the woods all day. He’s grateful for your help.”
Everyone moved again, the firemen walking around to be certain the remnants of the flames were out, the onlookers drifting away but for Cassie, Pearl, Tyler and Jessie. Still Seth sat as if carved from one of the tree stumps that remained in front of the ruins of his home.
Drew spoke to him from time to time, then came back over to Jessie. In his fire gear, he was almost unrecognizable. It wasn’t just that the soot on his face made the whites of his eyes seemed to glow in the darkness. The helmet made him look as if he were taller and had a bigger, misshapen head; the coat bulked up his already big silhouette; the long-handled huge hook he carried caught a flash of light as Tyler took another photo. An instinctive shudder wracked her. She was desperate to make herself stop seeing that thing in Tyler’s picture everywhere she looked. As she’d run through the trees, it was as if The Thing had been in her memory, in her mind.
“Seth won’t leave the site, won’t go stay in my apartment, even for the night,” Drew told her. He took her arm
and pulled her a little ways from Cassie and Pearl. “He says he’ll sleep in his truck, but he refuses to take it over to your house. Can you and Cassie drive to your place, get some blankets, water and some food to bring back for him? I’ll stay here at least until then.”
“Yes, of course.”
“It will be a lot later than I’d planned when I get there. I’m going to stake out Junior’s house. Maybe Cassie and Pearl can stay with you for the night.”
“Tell Seth, if he changes his mind, he’s welcome to come over to eat with us. What else did he say? What’s with the face paint and animal skin?”
“I’m not sure. I think he’s in shock. He did tell me he hasn’t been here all day. He went back to Bear Creek to look for more evidence about your mother’s murder—despite the fact that Vern Tarver had told him if he didn’t keep out of it, something bad might happen to him.”
“Are you going to question Vern again?”
“Since I only got him to clam up before, I thought my deputy might do that, when she reports into work for him. Maybe it should take priority over starting your sang count tomorrow. I wish I had a wanted poster to put up in his store, but I’d be laughed out of town if it was the one Tyler took of The Thing. I’m trusting you to finesse something out of Vern that will give me a reason to question him again. Peter said he’d be at Vern’s tomorrow, so you could keep an eye on him, too.”
“Yes, good. I’d love to do something to really help. I’ll bring Seth breakfast and see if he’ll let me count sang at his poplar stand first thing tomorrow, then I’ll go see Vern.”
“Even to count Seth’s sang, can you take Cassie along? If not, I’ll go with you.”
Remembering her panic in the forest tonight, which surely was just because she was so upset about Beth’s death and the fire, she nodded. “I promise, I won’t count sang alone. But we’ve got to find out why Seth’s wearing that claw necklace and animal fur.”
“I can tell it’s not badger fur. I think it was a way to honor your mother’s spirit. Gotta go. See you either late tonight or tomorrow morning.”
He walked over to Cassie, evidently to ask her to stay with Jessie for the night, because her friend glanced at her and nodded. Jessie started for Cassie’s truck, thinking how the soot and ash on Drew’s face made him look like a coal miner emerging from the depths of a cave. It was only when she glanced at her own face in Cassie’s rearview mirror that she realized she looked gray-faced, too. She had not realized that she’d cried, but she had white tear tracks running down her cheeks like pale stripes of paint—or ghostly claw marks.
The next morning, Jessie drove to Seth’s with Cassie and Pearl following in their truck. He had accepted the blankets and food last night; today she had a cooler of food and drinks to get him through the day. Drew, exhausted from a long, fruitless stakeout at Junior Semple’s, had gone into Highboro to confer with the coroner. When Jessie had phoned Vern this morning, he’d been only too happy to have her come in this morning to “learn the ropes” of grading and buying sang.
It was still raining, but, with Seth’s permission, she managed to count his sang back in the poplar stand. Today the woods seemed welcoming, not frightening, alive with leaves dancing from the plop of rain on them. Seth even
went along with her, Cassie and Pearl, the three females under umbrellas, Seth ignoring the rain. At least he’d washed the paint from his face. He still wasn’t saying much, but, without asking directly, Jessie was trying to get something out of him about her mother’s mention of him in her sang count notes.
“Is this where you cut the sang for my mother’s funeral vases?” she asked him, after she’d done a thorough count of the plants and recorded her findings.
He nodded.
“I appreciate your letting me count it, because I know you never approved of her doing that for the government.”
“In a way, maybe the count will protect the sang. If it’s low.”
“I saw in her notes that she had written ‘poplar stand with Seth.’ Were you going to count it with her?”
He nodded. Praying she wasn’t pushing her luck with him, she asked, “Were you going to any other sites with her? I don’t have her complete notes, so I’m looking for any help I can get.”
“No. Just here. Only here.”
“I appreciate your returning to the area where she died to look for evidence and honor her yesterday—that’s what Drew said.”
“He also said you are going to work for Vern Tarver at the Fur and Sang.”
“Yes. Most sellers will be bringing in last year’s sang as well as this year’s, but I thought it might give me an idea of what’s out there. In this rain, I’d rather not be out in the woods all day.”
“Better there than at the Trader. If the woods are dangerous, I say that place is, too. I thank you for your
kindness. Even here in what is called civilization, be careful. More rain with lightning coming,” he added so quietly she could hardly hear him as he turned and started away.
Immediately, the wind whipped up. She and Cassie fought their umbrellas as they followed Seth back to the ruins of his house. He’d told Drew he was going to knock it down to its foundations, then build another with his own hands. What else had he told Drew?
Jessie saw Pearl wave to the old man as Cassie pulled out in her truck, heading for home, while Jessie headed for Vern’s Fur and Sang Trader with Seth Bearclaws’s warning ringing in her ears.
“Bethany Brazzo was killed by a blow to the side of her head,” Clayton Merriman told Drew, stripping off his latex gloves as he emerged from the back room of the mortuary that served as his morgue. “And not one from falling on that ledge.”
Drew’s head jerked up. As tired as he was from his fruitless all-night stakeout at Junior Semple’s, his mind and body snapped to attention. A second homicide. He could feel his heartbeat pick up.
“A stellate skull fracture—star shaped,” Merriman went on, drawing it in the air. “I’d expect a simply linear fracture from a fall. She was probably beyond help when she went over the cliff. But the blood under her head indicates her heart pumped for a little while after she hit the rock.”
As if he recited such horrors on a daily basis, Merriman shoved the door behind him open with one shoulder and threw his gloves into a waste can. The smell from the room bit deep into Drew’s lungs; on an autopsy table in the
middle of the room, he glimpsed Beth’s form, partly draped by a sheet. His stomach roiled; he fought to keep his focus.
“And the weapon?” he asked. “Was it shaped like whatever smashed Mariah’s skull?”
“Not definitive yet,” the coroner said as the door swung shut behind him again. “A different pattern could be attributed to a different weapon, or the same one hitting the skull at a different angle. Unlike Mariah Lockwood, Bethany Brazzo had defensive wounds on her hands and arms. I was just going to do fingernail scrapings when you knocked.”
“The defensive wounds indicate she fought her attacker? They weren’t just wounds she’d get from a fall or a tumble to that ledge?”
“Forearms and wrist bruises on the ulnar side of her arms—the little finger side—where she probably lifted her arms to protect herself. Struck with some sort of long, thin pole or shaft, I’d guess. One bone broken in two places. Also bruised buttocks and a broken coccyx from where she may have fallen down in her flight or struggle.”