No Good Deed (11 page)

‘No, farmers do that all the time.'

‘Leave keys in the truck?'

‘Sure.' Sam pulled his head out of the cab, moved along the side. ‘Set up for a goose-neck horse trailer,' he said.

‘What's that mean?'

‘Connects to the thing here in the truck bed, instead of a ball hitch on the bumper. Carries some serious weight.'

‘What you think he did with the horse trailer, Sam?'

‘What you think he did with the horse?'

Sonora did not like to imagine such things. They went through the barn and out the back, blinking in the light. Sonora saw movement, caught sight of Helen leaning against the fence line where it turned to wire mesh, diamond shapes framed by dark black posts. She waved an arm at Sonora. Bella sat at her feet, planted in front of a composted manure pile that rose over Helen's head.

Sonora looked across the field, at the way the land sloped and dipped to the right. There would be a pond just over that hill, and a little knot of trees and brush.

‘Sam. This is the Kidgwick Place, isn't it, Halcyon Farm?

He stopped, took the pitchfork and shovel off his shoulder. ‘That's what it is. I thought it looked familiar. I never got out here, but I saw the crime scene photos.'

‘You, me and everyone else in the country.'

Sam nodded. The crime scene photos had been leaked to the press. One of the secretaries had been fired – taking the fall for someone whose name was whispered, but never said out loud.

‘That was what, seven, eight years ago?'

‘Somewhere around there. It was right before I went with Homicide. You work that case?'

Sam grimaced. ‘We all worked that case. There's a pond over the hill, that's where they found the boy, half in and half out of the water. Ben Randolph. Sixteen years old, killed by his buddies for a 1973 Chevy Impala he bought used and rusty with money he saved bagging groceries all summer.'

‘He was killed by his buddies.'

‘Two so-called friends, got him here to pick up Tammy Kidgwick, daughter of the house. Her parents were gone for the day – church retreat. The boys bashed his head in and when that didn't do the trick, one stood on his back while the other stepped on his neck and held him under water till he drowned.'

Sonora remembered the crime scene photos. The back of the house. The pond. A shot of the boy, face down in the mud, then another with him rolled on to his back, skin purplish-white, lips blue, body stiff with rigor. They'd torn his back pocket when they'd taken his wallet and keys – Andy Rivett and Malcolm Sweetwater. Andy one year older than Ben, Malcolm eight months younger. Running with the crowd that attended classes sporadically, smoked pot, but stayed out of major trouble until they went straight to brutal murder along an unpredictable path that their peers, parents, teachers and psychologists studied in detail, looking in vain for the warning signs of homicidal tendencies.

No one had a theory any more sophisticated than shit happens.

The boy, friendly and trusting, had not had too many friends. It was a scenario that brought chills to any parent with children heading for the teen years.

‘Sweetwater got out, shock probation,' Sam said.

‘He was the younger one.'

‘Yeah, but a real sociopath. I hear they're looking for him in Houston and North Carolina.'

‘What about the other two?'

‘Andy Rivett is still in jail, and will be for another twenty years. They measured his IQ around eighty-five or six.'

‘The girl was cleared, wasn't she?'

‘Not completely. Bristol was working Juvie then, and he was pretty hard on her, but she co-operated and swore she didn't know what was in the works. She just didn't stop it. Died in a car accident two years after it happened. There was some suspicion of vehicular suicide, but the insurance company paid up.'

Sonora glanced back up at the house. The porch had been painted in the last four weeks. Everything else looked worn, neglected, like the farm had been in stasis for several years. Now there was paint and a barn addition.

New owner, she wondered, or the healing power of time? It would be nice to see someone on the recovery end.

She took a look toward the pond, thinking they'd end up dragging or draining it. She followed Sam, felt soothed by his voice as he greeted Helen, talked to the dog. There was something comforting about the rhythms of his speech – maybe it was the Southern thing.

She thought of Joelle's fine young face, round and unformed. Tried not to think.

Chapter Twenty

There were cows close to the diamond-mesh fence, attending to cow business, grazing. One lifted its head, looked in their direction. Sonora wondered if the cow had seen the killer. Cows as witness.

The compost pile had been there a while, clumps of manure mixed with straw bedding. It was inoffensive, smelling faintly of horse and ammonia, grass and weeds growing over the top, as if to convey respectability. A pitchfork lay on one side, tines face down.

Bella sat near the edge of the pile, paws smeared with dirt, toenails crusty, tongue hanging from the side of her mouth. Her muzzle was flecked with white foam, her chest streaked with drool and dirt.

Helen murmured ‘Good girl, good girl', patted the dog's head. She smoothed a palm over the droopy, fur-wrinkled cheeks, looked sideways at Sam and Sonora. ‘I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think we maybe found your girl.'

‘You called CSU?' Sonora took the shovel from Sam.

Helen shook her head. ‘What if I'm wrong, and after that fiasco last night? Makes the dog look bad. Then some jerk calls an ambulance and sends me home and I look bad. This time, if I'm wrong, me and Bella going to keep on looking, and I don't want interference.'

‘Teal-green pickup in the barn,' Sonora said, inclining her head. ‘Your credibility's intact.'

‘Yeah, I took a quick look. No trailer attached. You think it's the one?'

‘It's a Dually. Fits the description.'

Sam squeezed Sonora's shoulder. Handed her the pitchfork and kept the shovel. ‘Go at it easy, Sonora, small clumps of dirt in thin layers. Helen, get me that blue plastic tarp over there, will you? Put the dirt there, Sonora.'

‘This be the spot, I take it?' She pointed to the left-hand side of the mound. Raw compost with no vegetation in a four-by-three hump, dirt darker than the rest, newly crumbled, unsettled, aromatic.

‘Yeah.' He pointed. ‘You work that end, I'll take this.'

Sonora had never used a pitchfork before, except a red plastic one she'd had with a Hallowe'en costume when she was five. As she remembered, she'd chased her brother from one end of the house to the other, till her mother had taken the pitchfork away.

She took a quick look at the sky. More rain today?

Enough had fallen the night before to make the manure heavy and hard to move. She poked it carefully. Underneath the top layer, packed tight by the rain, the manure crumbled like fine ash.

‘Composted,' Sam said, wiping a hand across his forehead.

‘Nature at work.'

‘Don't you get it? If the stuff we're digging is composted right here at the top, then we're dealing with stuff that came from deep in the center of the pile. As in recently dug up.'

‘Then say recently dug up, don't get complicated.'

Sonora adjusted the pitchfork in her hands. The wooden handle was smooth, annoyingly loose in the rusting metal joint that held it to the black crusty tines. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Sam handle the shovel like he'd been born with one in his hands, moving half-scoops of dirt on to the tarp at a rate that made her own efforts look pitiful.

She glanced back at the house. Still no one. Maybe they were at work. Did they have a regular schedule of leaving the farm every day? Had the killer known he was safe here?

If so, that would most likely make him a local boy.

Sam stopped shoveling, went to his knees and reached into the dirt.

Sonora leaned on the wood handle of the pitchfork. Took a quick look at her palms, hot and pink, with gritty lines of sweat. She was raising blisters. ‘Something, Sam?'

‘Rock, maybe.'

Sam scooped dirt with the palms of his hands, brushed a clod of manure and straw to one side. Squinted. Looked over his shoulder at Sonora.

She had always liked the laugh lines that creased the corners of his eyes. Today they looked like grief. There was a smudge on his forehead and a look in his eyes she had seen before.

‘See it?'

The toe of the riding boot was well camouflaged by the compost beneath Sam's blunt fingertips. Black leather, like the one they'd found in the dust and blood at Delaney's place.

Sonora squatted behind Sam. They got their rhythm almost immediately, one scooping dirt, one dumping dirt, back and forth, moving quickly. In her heart, she knew there was no need to rush. She hurried anyway, hands weirdly padded by the white, water-filled blisters rising on the reddened flesh of her palms. She was sweating, a tiny film along her spine.

Visible beneath the dirt was a riding boot, toes up, and the lower part of a bluejean-clad leg. Dirt caked the bootlaces, settling deep into the metal grommets and eyelets of the speed laces. The hem of an old green blanket covered the corpse to the knees. She could hear Helen, several feet away, talking softly to the dog, a calf bawling – scared? Hungry? Looking for its mom?

Sonora touched the back of the leg, along the calf muscles, over the loose black boot. Found it firm, like frozen meat.

‘Rigor?' Sam asked.

‘Advanced. I would have guessed she's been dead a minimum of twenty-four hours, except she didn't go missing till yesterday around three-thirty.'

‘So they say. I wonder if she was actually at school.'

‘Something to check.'

‘Y'all got something?' Helen. Bella whined and Helen murmured something comforting under her breath. She moved toward them slowly, fingers twined in the dog's loopy ears. She was smiling a little, but it was a smile Sonora had seen on the face of other detectives, a smile because the awful but expected was coming true, and you could smile or laugh or cry. It meant nothing more than a release of tense expectations.

Sonora stood up, spit on the sweat- and dirt-stained blisters, rubbed her hands on the belly of her shirt. ‘Looks like Bella was right.'

‘I'll call Crick,' Sam said. ‘Get CSU down here.'

The dog sat on her haunches, jowls hanging, eyebrows arching as she looked at each of them in turn.

‘Good girl,' Sonora said, touching a long silky ear.

Chapter Twenty-One

The curtain had twitched once or twice in the house up the road.

‘They're home,' Sonora said.

‘Who?'

Sonora inclined her head. ‘The people who live here, Sam.'

‘It'll be a while before Mickey gets his butt in gear. Now might be a good time for a talk.'

‘It's their truck.'

Sam, walking toward the house, threw a look at her over his left shoulder. ‘You think they're involved?'

Sonora shrugged. ‘I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around the kind of person who would commit a murder and bury the body in their backyard.'

‘It's the fast-food generation. Backyard's convenient.'

‘And park the getaway truck in the barn?'

Sam shrugged. ‘We got to ask.'

‘Whoever pulled this thing off knew about that truck.'

Sam arched his back and stretched. ‘Know what I think?'

‘No. What do you think?'

‘I think this place is bad luck.'

Sam was a back-door person, so they went up the newly whitewashed porch. The concrete base had been painted a thick coat of slate blue, which made Sonora think of her grandmother's front porch.

The wood door was shredding and splintered and it opened before they knocked. The trim had been painted halfway up. A work in progress.

The woman who stood in the doorway was tall and thin and had reddish blond hair that hung thick down her back. She wore slim-fit jeans and a long sleeved T-shirt with Calvin & Hobbs on the front.

Sonora could hear music coming from the kitchen – bells and chimes and trickly noises that she recognized as a lead into a seriously tedious New Age CD. She had noticed, in her career, that people who listened to New Age music were often people who seriously needed to feel better.

The Kidgwicks certainly had a legitimate need.

Sonora flashed her ID. ‘Detectives Blair and Delarosa, Cincinnati PD.'

Mrs Kidgwick walked on to the porch, smiling, as if she had heard Sonora but her mind was a beat or two behind in processing the words. She looked at the porch swing, and Sonora had the distinct feeling the woman was going to invite them to have a seat.

She took a quick look down the road. The crime scene unit and a coroner's van would be coming soon, but there was nothing in sight now, except fields, and sunlight on the water-filled ruts that gouged the gravel drive.

Mrs Kidgwick kept smiling, but her face took on a set, mask-like tautness. The public face. She motioned toward the door.

‘Did you want to come in?' Her voice was low and scratchy-sounding – you would love it or hate it. She had the slimness and muscle tone of a woman who took her gym membership seriously. Her face was still nicely brown, tanning-bed perfect, but even the careful makeup could not cover the seams and pouches around her eyes. She would look tired for the rest of her life.

Sam glanced at Sonora. Wiped his feet on a rubber mat that had a red jumping horse etched into the black center.

‘We won't keep you too long,' he promised, waving the woman ahead.

She slid inside quickly, feet soft. ‘Van. It's the police.' The restraint in her voice brought tension into the room like a match to gasoline.

‘Is there a problem?' He was with them immediately, breathless, though Sonora did not think he had done anything more than walk a step or two. The voice was young and did not match the ancient weariness in his eyes.