Stone Maidens (6 page)

He offered the turtle. “Here, you hold him.” Only the end of the small snapper’s snout protruded.

“Thank you,” Julie said in a hushed voice.

The man craned his hand over to meet hers. Julie carefully lifted the turtle by the top of its shell. Its head, legs, and tail stayed neatly tucked in.

The man got quickly to his feet and started down the slope without another word. Julie stood still, watching him go. He descended the sheer bank until all she could see was the top of his head. She started down, watching her footing as she went. The bank quickly became steeper. She checked behind her but couldn’t see the road anymore. She wiped her brow with the back of her wrist.

The turtle poked its head out. Its eyes glistened. When Julie looked up again, the man was stooped in front of her with his hands braced on his knees, waiting. She hesitated, caught by a crosscurrent of feelings. The turtle could make it fine if she let it go here. It didn’t need to be put down beside the creek. Turtles knew how to find water on their own. She could faintly make out a trickling sound. The creek was nearby.

A crawling sensation—the creature nearly scrambled out of her hand. She curled her fingers around its shell and whispered, “It’s OK. I’m going to let you go. Don’t you want some water?” Her own throat was dry; she craved a drink in the late summer heat.

The man ambled ahead, wading through leaves with his hands in his pockets. Julie followed slowly over the leaves that crunched below her feet, not wanting to upset the turtle. For fun, she and Maddy would often jump into the deep leaf piles—as cushioning as comforters—in the woods behind their house.

The stranger ranged farther ahead. Julie could glimpse the sparkle of water. Then suddenly the man was gone. Nothing but a ravine riddled with tree trunks and an ocean of leaves lay between her and the creek. The turtle frantically clawed at her hand.

A swarm of grackles rushed overhead. The frenzy of their calls and whistles filled a nearby tree. Her throat felt grainy. She turned uphill back toward the road. An amphitheater of pillared
oaks surrounded her. She rotated full circle, her eyes darting from tree to tree to tree.

Where is he?

Her eyes locked on some quivering feathers that stuck out from behind a large oak at head height, directly in front of her. She squinted in disbelief. Through two holes in the feathers, two dark irises were riveted on her. “Peekaboo,” he said, his voice suddenly changed.

The sight of him made her drop the turtle. Julie charged back up the hill. She heard him close behind her and gaining, trampling through the leaves and calling out her name. Her own heavy breathing filled her ears, and then his did, too, and then she was twelve feet from safety at the top of the hill, eight feet, six feet.

He grabbed her ankle and pulled her to the ground, chuckling. “I was just toyin’ with you, Julie honey,” he said softly. “You didn’t really think I was going to let you get away, did ya? Nah.” He gripped her ankle so tightly she cried out in pain. Movement out of the corner of her eye—the turtle crossing into view. It stopped, drew its neck full out, staring her way. It blinked once and then hurried away over the forest leaves.

He pulled himself on top of her and grasped her jaw. “I got other plans for you, little Julie. Special plans.”

She focused on the ridged shell of the turtle, her eyes blurry with tears. She couldn’t scream; she couldn’t move. All she could do was watch as the creature noiselessly made a clean getaway.

An hour after Julie Heath had walked alone down Old Shed Road, Joey Templeton was riding home from summer band practice on his shiny blue Schwinn. The unwieldy trombone case strapped to his back shifted from side to side, making the bike’s front tire wobble. The boy was small for his age, shorter than most of the kids in the sixth grade, and his thick glasses magnified two eyes
staring out at a big scary world. The weight of his lenses caused him to constantly shove them back into place.

He rounded a steep curve then stopped pedaling when he spotted the crookedly parked pickup truck. The boy swerved, nearly colliding with the opposite curb. A strange man was leaning into the back of the truck, stuffing something into it. The man straightened up quickly, staring at Joey. His coveralls were filthy and stained.

Coasting by, Joey gawked uneasily at the stranger, whose eyes were too deep set to see clearly. The man’s sullen face suddenly broke into a wide smile and he nodded and waved. But Joey wasn’t buying it—the man had not been happy to see him. And seeing someone unfamiliar so unexpectedly on the loneliest stretch of road between band practice and home unnerved him. It wasn’t the way taken by most other kids leaving band, either. Joey always pedaled hardest through this forested area.

Joey reached home all out of breath. “Gran, Gran!” he yelled, racing into the kitchen. No Gran. That was what he called his grandfather, Elmer Templeton, who, four years earlier, had come to live with Joey and his older brother, Mike. It happened after the boys’ parents had been caught in a deluge and had driven onto an unmarked railroad crossing as a freight train sped through, killing them both instantly.

A truck door slammed. Joey bounded off the porch and ran pell-mell around to the side yard. At the turn of the hedgerow, there he was—the kindest man in the universe—Gran, shuffling slowly on stiff legs toward the boy.

Joey grabbed Elmer’s leathery hand, nearly toppling the old man. He drew his grandfather’s hand close to his cheek, smelling the nutty residue of the Corn Huskers that had spilled out of the large square bottle the night before. Elmer had rubbed the excess goo on Joey’s soft white hands.

“What’s with you, son?” The old man stooped down in his faded denim bib overalls. Clean shaven, Elmer had a thin build like Joey’s.

“Gran, all right, I know how you think I go around blabbing all the time. And I know Mike does,” Joey said. “But I saw this really strange man, I mean he was weird. What he was doing in a creepy old truck like that God only knows. He wasn’t from around here, no way.” Joey stopped to take a breath, his chest heaving. “He gave me a mean look, Gran, real mean, then smiled right after so I wouldn’t think anything was wrong about his creepy face. He didn’t fool me one bit. I’m not biking home that way anymore!”

“Slow down. What are you talking about?” Elmer cupped the boy’s shoulder. “Did someone bother you? Was the man minding his own business?” Joey’s grandfather was used to his grandson’s tendency to exaggerate, but the lad’s pained face seemed more serious than usual. Together they walked up the porch steps to sit on the glider. Elmer dearly wanted to see the boy overcome his fears, to get over the awful dread his life had been full of ever since that day on the railroad tracks when his parents had been crushed to death.

“You got to believe me, Gran. Honest, he was up to no good. He had an old truck, real rough, way badder than yours, parked all crooked by the woods, nowhere near anyplace. You know that long way I sometimes bike?” Joey crinkled his forehead, staring into Elmer’s watery eyes. “Where there aren’t any houses for a long ways? Old Shed Road?”

Elmer nodded. “I know it.”

“He was there covering something in the back of his truck. He didn’t want me to see. But I did see, Gran.”

“What’d you see?”

“It was...” Joey studied the porch floor as if spotting something creeping toward him. “Something he was trying to hide.” Joey looked up at the old man. “He didn’t want me to see it. That’s for sure. It ticked him off that I did.”

Elmer bobbed his head, assessing things. “I think what we need to do is go collect Mike and get something to eat at Shermie’s Diner.”

“The truck was parked real crooked,” Joey repeated himself, the flesh on his forehead bunched with worry. “And his clothes were real dirty, like he’d been digging or something in the woods. Now why would he be doing that? Why, Gran?” The boy shuddered, seeing the man’s hostile glare again in his mind’s eye. “Something was wrong, Gran, something really, really bad.”

“It’s a steep wood. Her body was nowhere near the road. I’d estimate a good quarter mile and maybe three hundred feet vertically below the highway grade. Victim placement was literally drowning in downed leaves, nearly impossible to discern much of anything around the grave site.” Bruce Howard’s end-of-day call reporting in to Prusik was strictly factual. “We’ve scooped thirty-seven bags of environmental sampling surrounding the grave site. That’s pretty much it. No forensics to speak of really.”

Prusik stood up from her desk, examining an eight-by-ten blowup of the victim in situ. Tentatively, the Jane Doe was believed to be nineteen-year-old Missy Hooper, the local who had gone missing about a month ago.

“So the locals didn’t corrupt things too much?” Prusik made an effort to match Howard’s level tone, although her mind raced. It was hard to remain patient when it appeared that no clues were to be forthcoming.

“It’s hard to tell, Christine. Like I said, difficult terrain. It’s easy to stumble on a damn root hidden beneath the leaves,” Howard said as if he had done just that. “I’m sure it wasn’t easy removing the body. Hard to imagine there wasn’t some contamination by the locals. Tough break, huh?”

She mulled over the crime scene conditions—the chaotic trampling by local enforcement, and now Howard and his team stumbling over hidden roots. All of which could only obfuscate
matters further and make it even less likely that she might find another piece of the puzzle. All of which conspired against the remains of whatever cordiality she could muster with Howard over the phone.

“Can you at least confirm that the body is protected, Bruce?” Howard’s cell phone had an irritating echo, feeding back Prusik’s own voice each time she spoke. “You’ve been to the coroner’s office?”

“I wouldn’t exactly describe it as a coroner’s office, not in any normal—”

“Yes, I get it. But is she properly bagged and in a cooler?”

“Look here, Christine, I’ve got a field unit on site. My orders are to secure the crime scene and collect evidence,” he responded crisply. “I assumed you’d be inspecting the body, personally. After all, that is your expertise.”

Christine’s jaw dropped at her subordinate’s reply. She forced herself to take a breath. “You’re absolutely right, Special Agent. I will be. And I’m sure I needn’t remind you this operation
does
require teamwork—in the lab and in the field.” The snap in her voice doubled back through her phone with a metallic reverb. “What’s with your phone, Bruce? Did it fall in the creek?” She clicked off, not waiting for his response, and unbuttoned the top of her shirt collar.

Bruce Howard had transferred in from the Boston office only four months earlier. A front-office man, he was good with a handshake in a gathering of troopers, a real man’s man—something there was no shortage of at the bureau. She had already witnessed Howard’s natural inclination to go directly to Thorne instead of following the chain of command through her—very likely Howard was unaccustomed to reporting to a woman—and she had noticed that Thorne hadn’t made a point of discouraging that behavior.

Prusik took a breath, relaxed her fist, and considered whether or not she might have handled things differently on the phone. Howard’s team had not recovered any physical evidence unless
inadvertently gathered inside one of the sampling bags. The intactness of the victim’s body was of paramount importance, and the concern she expressed with Howard
was
correct. She had been right to ask him about it. And the urgency in her voice had been appropriate, and the snap, too. This was their first assignment working together and already it was becoming a turf war, with Howard looking at his individual piece of the puzzle only and not seeing the larger whole. His ego and pride were unmistakable. Even with the poor quality of the cell reception, it was clear that Howard displayed not a single straw’s worth of team spirit, nor did he recognize the fact she was in charge, like it or not. But she couldn’t allow her frustration with him to cloud the larger issue: it was essential that they uncover more information about the killer. Soon. Immediately.

Her desk phone rang.

“Christine?”

“Well, who else?” She combed her fingers through her short hair. “Sorry, Brian, don’t mind me. What have you got?”

“I think you had better come down to the lab and see for yourself.”

She barely took the time to say “I’ll be right there” before racing out of her office.

Prusik took the elevator three floors down and passed her CASI identity card through the lab door’s magnetic reader. Eisen was stooped over a large stainless-steel examination table. He wore protective lenses over his eyeglasses.

“Christine.” Eisen gave her a big grin, carefully showcasing a large curved piece of glass between his gloved forefinger and thumb. “We’ve recovered a partial thumbprint.”

“From?”

“Remember we did a drift analysis for Betsy Ryan to locate the crime scene?”

Since the actual location of Ryan’s murder was never discovered, Prusik had acquiesced to Eisen’s using a math whiz friend
to see whether a time and movement study could establish the corpse’s origination point, factoring in the current and local weather conditions, to help target the crime scene. But nothing had been discovered.