Deep South (17 page)

That's a ways to carry a hundred and eight pounds of dead weight," Davidson said. "The campground's about the most public area around.

Doesn't make sense to choose it for the murdel"

"Kill her on the road or bring her from wherever by car and carry the body in cross-country?" Davidson tried. "Hard work," Anna said. "Why not just dump her in a river? There's plenty to choose from."

"Well, from what the kids told you, Rocky was the party place. We better figure Danielle was already there before she was killed."

"Why take her so far off the beaten path? To hide the body?" Anna said. it Why hide it after going to all the trouble to make a costume that's steeped in racial fears and hatred?" Davidson countered. "A white girl, dead, in a faux KKK outfit-black on white as in a taste of one's own poison?"

"White on white wanting it to look as if it's black on white?"

"White on white as in the Klan punishing one who betrays?" Anna took it one step farther. "Not much Klan here anymore. Oh, there's isolated pockets of malcontents that drag out the sheets and pointy hoods once in a while, mostly to impress each other and feel powerful for an evening, but not an organization like it once was.

I've been here most of my life and I've only seen it spark once, A cross burning just off 1-down near Crystal Springs. Nobody ever did figure out what the point of the gesture was.

Maybe Danni's shroud had nothing to do with KKK imagery. Maybe it was just a sheet with eyeballs meaning something else."

"Could they lift any prints off the girl's skin?" Anna asked. "She'd been to a dance, there were dozens of partials and smears and overlays.

During the chase, sweat obliterated most. There was one fairly clear print of a forefinger, but my guess is it'll turn out to be yours. It was checking the pulse point." They weren't getting anywhere. The rain ran down the windshield, the water parting here and there to accommodate the pureed remains of hapless insects. "Mrs. Cindy Posey," Sheriff Davidson said after a while. "Racist, Mentally unstable. Possibly violent if you're right about the dogs." Anna thought about that for a while. "She's a farm wife; you can bet she's got sheets," she said. "It wouldn't take much strength to hit somebody that hard-just a weapon with some heft."

"No struggle-someone Danni knew? Trusted?"

"She'd been chased, remember."

"Oh. Right." A question occurred to Anna, one that didn't fit with that sequence of events. "Read me the stuff about the blow. Could the medical examiner tell angle of delivery, that sort of thing?" Davidson methodically went back through the pages, his blunt, square-tipped forefinger running down each sheet of paper. His nails were clean and clipped. Anna noted a raw place where he'd worried at the cuticle with his teeth. "Here we go," he said. "The blow was most probably delivered from right to left and down. The weapon appears to have struck the girl above the right eye with the greatest force. The edge of the weapon is estimated at six to eight inches, or at least as much of it as impacted the skull area. The assailant was most likely right-handed."

"So." Anna tried to draw the picture out in her mind. "Danielle is hit on the right front quadrant of the skull with the trajectory of the blow coming from above her and to her left. Therefore, she was facing the killer, he did not strike her down from behind. They're face-to-face. He raises the weapon in his right hand and swings it down in an arc," she said.

"If she was running away, why wasn't she struck from behind?"

"Stopped and turned?" Anna guessed. "Got cornered?" Every line of logic was falling apart. The rain was unceasing. Anna felt as if her brain was beginning to mildew. It was because Danielle was a child. A child of seventeen, but to the ways of the world, a child.

And there was no good reason to kill a child but pure stinking mindless evil, an evil so base it was hard for real people to fathom.

The day continued in its meteorological misery. Crying skies filled he two bayous between Anna's home at Rocky and the ranger station at Port Gibson. Water stood in the fields in the Valley of the Moon. Horses gathered beneath the trees and hung their beads.

Anna spent the afternoon working on her list, stocking her patrol car with flashlight, spare battery for her handheld radio and the numbers and radio frequencies of local law enforcement and Fisheries and Wildlife. By day's end, she was glad to retreat to Rocky Springs and Taco and Piedmont.

Rain had driven away most of the campers, and she looked forward to a peaceful night eating Marie Callender's frozen fettuccine and watching whatever came on either of the two channels her aging thirteen-inch portable television could pick up.

Three messages waited on her answering machine: Steve Stilwell asking how the investigation was going, Sheriff Davidson saying he had some interesting tidbits from the Poseys. And the last, from Anna's sister, Molly.

Business could wait till proper business hours. For half a minute she stood staring at the phone, thinking she should call her sister and wondering why she didn't want to.

She and Molly had been alone together for nearly twelve years.

Alone in the sense that neither had husbands, children or family.

They were family. Just the two of them. Professional women of middling years who knew they were not alone because there were two.

They shared history and love.

And now there was Frederick, the fiance. Anna's ex and Molly's love. Was that it? Jealousy? Sour grapes? Not only did Anna not want to believe that about herself, she was ninety-three percent sure it wasn't true, She reveled in Molly's happiness, enjoyed relief that her sister had someone to love and support her. But it was different now. The chemistry was changed. Whether for better or worse, Anna didn't know. Probably both. At the moment, though, calling Molly would add to the sense of isolation with which this country of deep-fried kindness and cottonmouthed hostilities imbued her. In another lifetime, Anna would have turned off the phones and unplugged the machine. That was a luxury rangers were not allowed.

Having opened the casement windows at the bottom near the floor on the living room Is east side to better hear the hypnotic beat of the rain, she dimmed the lights. With a glass on the table next to her father's old Morris chair, she sat to await Piedmont's inevitable arrival.

Along with the groceries, Anna had purchased wine: Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and what promised to be a raw Beaujolais.

Periodically, she swore off the stuff. Occasionally she admitted she might just possibly have a problem. Tonight she wanted a drink and a cat on her lap. reams of cars, aborted laughter and stealthy voices abraded Anna's sleep. At forty-three minutes after one A.M. the ringing of the telephone ended it. Long practice bad trained her out of that bemused state between waking and sleeping. Unpleasantly alert by the time she put the receiver to her ear, she answered: "Rocky Springs." Crackling met her, the kind cheap cellular phones make. Behind it she could barely discern a murmur of hushed or distant voices, then a smothered laugh.

"Hello?" she said sharply. "I'd like to report an accident." Again the strangled sounds in the background. Either this was a crank call or there was interference on whatever waves transmitted cellular calls.

"Where?" Anna asked.

"Uh. Just outside of Rocky Springs campground." Another pause. "It looks real bad."

"North or south of Rocky?" Anna asked. Already she was pulling on her pants, the phone receiver clamped between shoulder and ear.

"Uh. North." Before Anna could ask anymore, the connection was broken.

Reports of accidents and incidents by cellular phone had become the rule instead of the exception over the past few years. The method of the call wasn't what bothered her; it was the mode. The strange tight voice, the laughter stopped abruptly, the muttering in the background smacked of a prank, kids calling asking, "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?" Except false report of a crime or accident was against the law.

Regardless of misgivings, the report could not be ignored. Anna donned her wristwatch: quarter of two. Dispatch was shut down for the night. A common system for officer safety in parks without twenty-four-hour dispatch was to phone another ranger before leaving. They then stayed awake and monitored their radios in case backup was needed. If that wasn't the accepted protocol in the Port Gibson District, it soon would be.

Randy Thigpen lived closest, west of Port Gibson toward the Mississippi River. Anna dialed his number. On the eighth ring he answered. "It's Anna," she said without preamble. "I got an accident report north of Rocky Springs. I need you to stay on the radio till I see what's UP.

"Barth and I usually just cover those alone, but then we've been at it a lot longer. We've never bothered to keep somebody up on the radio.

Sure, I can help you out if you're not comfortable on your own." Son of a bitch lacks subtlety, Anna thought as sharp retorts racketed around in her brain. Pissing contests were for those penilely inclined. "I'll call if I need you," she said and hung up.

Life on the Trace was going to be hell if she didn't either win those boys over or think of some way to kill them and get away with it.

The rain had let up but had not stopped. It was what the Navajo called a female rain: gentle and nurturing. Anna closed the front door on Taco's intended escape and clicked on her flashlight. If there was a switch that turned on a light in the carport, she had yet to find it. The walk was uneven. Puddles formed in the low spots. She hopscotched toward the drive in the vain hope of keeping her feet dry.

The inside of the carport was darker than even the rain-drenched Woods.

Anna closed her mind against the possibility of spiders dangling at collar level and plunged in.

She was reaching for the door handle when a blow smashed into her ankle with the force of a ball bat swung at close quarters. Pain and fear exploded, brain-numbing shocks coming one after the other: acute pain in her left ankle, a crack as she fell onto her side, elbow striking the concrete, skittering light as her flashlight rolled away, the gust of air knocked from her lungs. The Posey girl's skull crushed by a blunt instrument flashed behind the immediate images.

An instant, no more, of paralysis gripped Anna. Then she heard someone crawling beneath the Crown Vic. "Stay back," she yelled.

The Sig-Sauer was in her right hand. She pushed back to a sitting position against the rear wall of the three-sided carport. The heavy leather of her cowboy boot absorbed some of the impact, but her ankle throbbed and she wondered if it was broken.

Spiders were forgotten. The flashlight had rolled to the far side of the car. Anna could see the spray of the beam rocking on the wall. "Come out slowly. Hands first. Let me see your hands." From the darkness beneath the car she heard movement, a heavy drag across the concrete as if her assailant jockeyed for position on elbows and knees.

From inside the house came wild barking. Taco going ballistic. Anna realized she must have screamed when she fell. "Out," she commanded.

"Hands first." Her own hands were shaking. The crack to her elbow had robbed her arm of strength, Whoever was under the car said nothing, and she swallowed the desire to empty the magazine into the darkness.

A kid. Who but a kid would crawl under a parked patrol car? She could see the headlines now: "Lady Ranger Shoots Local Boy Thirteen Times." Bracing the Sig-Sauer with her knee, Anna freed her band and wrestled the radio from her belt. Three calls, no answers. She hated handhelds.

They only worked when they weren't needed. That or Randy Thigpen had rolled over and gone back to sleep. You under the car," Anna tried.

"You're beginning to scare me.

I get seared, I shoot. Neither of us wants that. Come on out now." Nothing. Then a thrashing sound and the disturbing note of nails scratching on cement. Fragmented pictures from a childhood filled with campfire stories about escaped lunatics with hooks for hands flickered through her mind.

Anna eased to her feet. Her left ankle hurt but it wasn't broken; it would hold. Taco was going mad. His barks had escalated into a frenzy, and she could hear thumping. He was hurling himself against the screen.

She'd never known a pet dog to go after anyone like that. What triggered him, she didn't know, but it made the hairs on the nape of her neck stiffen.

The carport was narrow. With the Crown Victoria in it, there was just room on either side to open the doors. Anna didn't relish walking that close to whoever was underneath, but she couldn't stay trapped in the back in darkness. If the assailant was armed, he could easily move close to the wheels and kill her. Dying in a carport in Mississippi was not appealing. In a sudden leap, Anna made the hood of the Crown Vic and scrambled to the top of the cab.

A wrench of metal and a crash came from the house. Barking as if he was possessed by the ghost of Cujo, Taco came around the corner hackles raised, lips pulled back. He had lost any resemblance to the goofy house pet Anna inherited when Frieda died. Snarling, he rushed at the end of the car, his glossy coat shiny in the beam of the flashlight on the floor.

So fast Anna scarcely saw it, something shot from beneath the undercarriage and she heard a loud snap. Taco screamed, and Anna screamed. Gray-green scales rushed through the narrow beam of the flashlight. Taco cried, high and desperate, then was snatched beneath the car.