"Hey, Uncle Will," she whispered, though the honorific was purely one of affection.
"Got some news for you," said the old man.
"Good or bad?"
"Bad, in the short run. A little while ago, Andrew Rusk made one of my guys and turned rabbit."
"Oh, shit. How did he lose one of your guys?"
"Bastard took that four-wheel-drive Porsche down to the Pearl River and drove slap
into
the mud. My guy was in a Crown Victoria—supercharged, but that don't do you much good in the mud. And I don't think Rusk was doing it for fun. I think he was headed somewhere important. Otherwise, why go to the trouble?"
"Damn it."
"I told you we needed more cars. But you said—"
"I know what I said," Alex snapped, furious that she lacked the money to pay for the kind of surveillance this case required.
Penny-wise, pound-foolish,
her father whispered from the grave. Now all the surveillance she'd paid for up to now was wasted. Rusk was gone, and she could do nothing about it until he chose to show up again.
Thirty yards away, Thora Shepard shook hands with the man she was talking to, then crossed Commerce Street and turned right. Alex followed.
"I'm sorry, Will. This is completely my fault. I hamstrung you."
Labored breathing came down the line. Kilmer was seventy, and he had more than a touch of emphysema. "What you want me to do now, hon?"
"Put someone out at Rusk's house, if you can. He has to come home eventually, right?"
"Sure. He'll be home tonight for sure."
"Unless we really spooked him."
Will said nothing.
"You think a guy like that would blow town because of this?"
"No, I don't. Rusk is dug in. He's got a high-dollar job, a wife, a big house, kids."
"His kids don't live with him," Alex pointed out.
"Take it easy. Rusk is a rich lawyer, not a CIA field agent. He'll be home."
She forced herself to calm down. Thora had almost reached the Thai restaurant.
"I'll send somebody out there," Will said. "And if I don't have anybody free, I'll go myself."
"You don't have to do—" Alex froze in midsentence. Thora had stopped dead on the sidewalk to answer a cell call. Now she was backing against the wall of a building with the phone held close to her ear.
"God, I wish you were here," Alex breathed.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. I've got to go. Call me."
As she hit END, Thora leaned out from the wall and looked obliquely through the window of the Thai restaurant. Apparently satisfied, she nodded, then put the phone back into her pocket and reversed direction, moving quickly back toward Main Street.
Straight toward Alex.
Alex darted into the nearest shop, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink place, filled from wall to wall with antique furniture, framed mirrors, prints, woven baskets, and trays of pecan pralines for sale. When Thora passed the shop, her features were set in an expression of severe concentration. Alex counted to fifteen, then walked out of the shop and followed Thora toward her Mercedes.
Something was about to happen.
CHAPTER 14
Andrew Rusk checked the Porsche's odometer once more, then started searching the trees for the turn. He'd left I-55 forty minutes ago, and after twenty miles he'd turned onto a narrow gravel road. Somewhere along this road was the turn for the Chickamauga Hunting Camp. Rusk had been a member of the elite camp for fifteen years, buying his way in after his father-in-law opted out, and the membership had proved useful in many ways beyond providing recreation in the fall.
Rusk saw the turn at last, marked by a sign over the entrance road. He swung his wheel and stopped before the steel gate blocking his way, then punched a combination into the keypad on the post beside his vehicle. When the gate swung back, he drove slowly through. He still had a half mile of gravel to cover, and he did this slowly. Despite the vast wealth of the club's members, this road was poorly maintained. He wondered if they left it that way to preserve the illusion of primitive conditions. Because illusion was all it was.
Though the camp buildings appeared to be log cabins, they contained hotel-style rooms with private baths, central air and heat, and satellite TV in the common room. For serious hunters, the expense was justified. There were more whitetail deer per acre in this area than in any other part of the United States. And they were
big.
The largest trophy buck ever taken had been shot in Mississippi. Whitetail loved the deep underbrush of second-growth woods, and the virgin forests around this part of the state had been logged out almost 200 years ago. This was deer heaven, and hunters from around the country paid premium prices for hunting leases here. The prices were even higher to the southwest, right around Natchez.
That
was deer heaven.
As Rusk drove up to the main cabin and parked, he scanned the clearing for Eldon Tarver. He saw no one. Climbing out of the Cayenne, he checked the main cabin's door but found it locked. That made sense, because Eldon Tarver was not a member of the club and thus had no key. But Tarver did have the combination to the front gate, courtesy of Andrew Rusk. That was the arrangement they had made long ago, in case of emergency. They chose Chickamauga because they had planned their first joint venture here. Their acquaintance predated that meeting by two years, but there had been almost no physical contact in the interim. Any further meetings had been kept to less than two minutes, and at a place so public that no one would even call their contact a meeting.
Despite the emptiness of the clearing, Rusk was certain that Dr. Tarver was already here. He would have hidden his vehicle, in case any other members happened to be here—an unlikely event out of season, but you never knew. The question was, where would Tarver wait for him?
Rusk closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the forest. He heard the wind first, the rustling dance of a billion spring leaves. Then the birds: sparrows, jays, martins. A lone bobwhite. The erratic
pop-pop-pop
of a woodpecker. Beneath all this, the low hum of distant trucks on Highway 28. But nothing in the varied symphony gave him a clue to the presence of another human.
Then he smelled fire.
Somewhere out to his left, wood was burning. He set off in that direction, moving with long, sure-footed strides through the trees. The farther he walked upwind, the more intense grew the smell of smoke. And
meat.
Someone was cooking out here! That made him doubt it was Tarver, but he had to make sure.
A moment later he found himself in a small clearing, at the center of which sat Eldon Tarver. The big pathologist was tending a cast-iron skillet over a small fire, and the sound of sizzling meat filled the clearing. Hanging on a wire beside Dr. Tarver was a dead fawn, freshly skinned but only partly butchered.
"Take a seat," Tarver said in his deep baritone. "I'm cooking the tenderloin. It's sinfully good, Andrew."
By killing the fawn, the pathologist had broken a sacred rule of the camp. By killing it out of season, he had broken several state and federal laws. But Rusk wasn't going to say anything about that. He had bigger problems to deal with, and whatever rules and laws Dr. Tarver had broken, he had done so with full knowledge and intent. Tarver speared a shaving of tenderloin with a pocketknife and held it out in the air. Rusk took the knife and ate the meat as a sign of their bond.
"It's good," he said. "Damn good."
"As fresh as it comes, this side of raw."
"Have you ever eaten it raw?"
A bemused look crossed the pathologist's face. "Oh my, yes. When I was a boy…but that's another story."
I'd like to hear that story sometime,
Rusk thought.
When I have more time. I'd like to know what could turn a boy into a character like this.
He knew a little of Dr. Tarver's history, but not enough to explain the man's odd behavior and interests. But today was not the day to tease out that kind of thing.
"We have a problem," Rusk said bluntly.
"I'm here, am I not?"
"Two problems, really."
"Don't rush things," Tarver said. "Sit down. Have some more venison."
Rusk pretended to look down at the fire. He saw no rifle near Dr. Tarver, not even a handgun. There was a Nike duffel bag near his feet, which might contain a pistol, or even a submachine gun. He'd have to keep an eye on that. "I'm not really hungry," he said.
"You'd prefer to move straight to business?"
Rusk nodded.
"Then we should get the formalities out of the way first."
"Formalities?"
"Take off your clothes, Andrew."
Adrenaline blasted through Rusk's vascular system.
Would he tell me to strip if he wanted to kill me? To save himself the trouble of stripping my corpse? No. What would be the point out here?
"Do you think I'm wearing a wire, Doctor?"
Tarver smiled disarmingly. "You said we have an emergency. Stress makes people do things they might not ordinarily do."
"Are
you
going to strip?"
"I don't have to. You called this meeting."
That made sense. And if Rusk knew Tarver, nothing substantive was going to be said unless he complied with the doctor's order. Thanking God he had left his own pistol in the Porsche, he bent and untied his Cole Haans, then unsnapped his pants and stepped out of them. Next he removed his Ralph Lauren button-down, which left only his shorts and socks. Tarver seemed to be watching the campfire, not him.
"Is this far enough?" Rusk asked.
"Everything, please," Tarver said in a disinterested voice.
Rusk swallowed a curse and pulled off his shorts. He felt an odd and surprising shyness at this point, and it disturbed him. He had stripped in front of men hundreds of times at the health club, and he'd spent his whole youth doing the same in locker rooms around the state. He certainly had nothing to be ashamed of, not by the standard measure, and several women had commented that he was well-hung. But this was different. This was stripping naked in front of a guy with God only knew what sexual perversions, and a pathologist to boot—a man who had coldly stared at a thousand corpses, sizing up every anatomical flaw. It was creepy. And Dr. Tarver wasn't making it any easier. He was now staring at Rusk's body like an entomologist studying an insect mating.
"You've been working on those latissimi dorsi," Tarver observed.
It was true. Lisa had commented that age was taking a toll on his back, so Rusk had been putting in extra time on the Nautilus at the club to remedy the alleged deficiency. But how the hell Tarver knew that from a single glance—
"You should spend more time on your legs," the pathologist added. "Weight lifters are obsessed with their upper bodies, but underdeveloped legs ruin the whole effect. Symmetry is the thing, Andrew. Balance."
"I'll remember that," the lawyer said with a trace of bitterness. Rusk knew he had skinny legs, but they had been good enough in college. Besides, he had more to worry about every day than working out. And who the hell was Tarver to talk? The guy was big, sure, but what kind of tone did he have? Rusk suspected that underneath the unseasonable flannel shirt was a jellied wall of beer fat.
"Get dressed," Dr. Tarver said. "You look like a turtle without its shell."
Rusk pulled on his shorts and pants, then sat down to put on his shoes. "The last time we were here," he said, "you told me you hated the woods."
The doctor chuckled softly. "Sometimes I do."
"What does that mean?"
"You know so little about me, Andrew. Even if I told you…my experience is wholly outside your frame of reference."
Rusk tried to read this as arrogance, but it hadn't been intended that way. Tarver seemed to be saying,
You're from a different tribe than I am—perhaps even a different species.
And this was true. However Dr. Tarver felt about the woods, he was certainly no stranger to them. On that last trip—five years ago now—he had come to Chickamauga as the guest of an orthopedic surgeon from Jackson. For two days he had killed nothing, to the increasing amusement of the other members, who were killing record numbers of deer that year, albeit mostly does, and on the smallish side. But all anyone talked about that weekend was the Ghost, a wise and scarred old twelve-point buck who'd managed to evade the best hunters in the camp for almost ten years. After two seasons of invisibility, the Ghost had been sighted the previous week, and everyone was gunning for him, man and boy alike. Each night, Tarver had listened in silence as the members told Ghost stories by firelight—some true, others apocryphal—and each morning he'd vanished into the woods before dawn.
On the third day—a Sunday, Rusk recalled—Eldon Tarver had marched back into camp carrying the 220-pound carcass of the Ghost across his shoulders. He upset quite a few club members by killing their near-mythical beast, but what could they say? Tarver hadn't shot the Ghost from a tree stand, the way most of them hunted now, waiting in relative comfort for a deer to walk right under them—a tactic that regularly allowed eight-year-olds to bag a deer their first time out. Dr. Tarver had gone out and stalked the Ghost in the old way: the Indian way. He stalked the big buck for three days across the length and breadth of the camp, a damned tough slog through thick underbrush and rainy-autumn mud. Tarver had never revealed more than that (he seemed to cling to the ancient superstition that telling a thing lessened its power), but eventually the members had pieced together a legend. Those hunting from tree stands reported hearing odd sounds just after dawn on the day of the kill—mating calls, fighting grunts—sounds that could only have been mimicked by a master hunter. Then had come a single rifle blast, a perfect spine shot that would have dropped the Ghost right where he stood. It was as close to a painless death as the big buck could ever have hoped for—no running miles through the brush with half his heart blown out or his stomach filling up with blood—just instant paralysis and death.