Deep South (11 page)

Backtracking could wait. She turned again to the green pocket holding the body. The feet looked so tiny and pathetic in their silly shoes. The patent leather of the sandals was specked with mud and the rhinestone-studded strap over the ankle of the left foot had been broken. Runs scarred the hose on both legs and smears of mud discolored the knees. This child had been chased, and not in fun. She had run hard enough and through rough enough country that she must have been terribly frightened.

Considering the end she had met, the fear wasn't unfounded. One of her hands was hidden beneath the folds of the sheet that had become her shroud but the other lay palm up, sad and white on the rich drop-cloth of green. The nails were neatly painted, none broken or discolored. A few scratches crosshatched her forearms but they were thin, shallow; she'd probably gotten them from branches hitting her as she fled.

From the looks of it, she had run, but she had not fought. Young ladies were not taught to fight. Not for the first time, Anna thought that was a crying shame. Especially in a world where young girls, like baby ducklings, were at the bottom of the food chain.

From where she stood, Anna could see the rest of the rope that formed the noose. Partially hidden in the grass and weeds, it snaked up from where it was tied around the neck to vanish into the undergrowth. Moving with care, she continued to circumnavigate the scene until she stood above the sheeted corpse, opposite the fungus-covered log. The rope was pulled this direction, pulled taut then dropped. The line of yellow nylon ran straight for about three yards, then the remainder lay all in a heap. Had the girl been dragged, half blinded by the sheet, a rope around her neck like an animal? Tears and bile mixed in Anna's throat.

Swearing softly, she turned away. She'd never given much thought to the hierarchies of murder, the good, the bad, the brutal. But this was the stuff of nightmares. This was why the NPS kept all those shrinks on tap to work with rangers after an ugly event. Anna'd always hated those sessions. Maybe this time it wouldn't be such a bad idea.

The sound of voices cut into her thoughts. She reminded herself she was a grown-up, a district ranger for Christ's sake, glad to see them but not too glad. Then she hollered, "Over here." A county sheriff had never looked so good, but Anna congratulated herself on handling it well. The only slip was she did step forward to shake the man's hand just as if she'd not done the same thing when she met him several hours earlier, Thigpen arrived in the sheriff's wake. He was wringing wet with sweat and huge with pompous proclamations about waiting for the arrival of the chief ranger, about his strong suspicion that the body would be found just precisely here. Other than to tell him not to smoke or in any other way risk contaminating the crime scene, Anna pretty much ignored him.

Davidson stood on the edge of the depression that held the girl, letting Ranger Thigpen's ongoing advice wash over him.

Self-discipline or Southern manners kept him from demanding the silence the death of a child and the mind of a policeman required.

Under his breath, he whistled a tune Anna'd heard once before, a long time ago, but couldn't place. Comfortable in her skin again, she waited, letting him think. Finally he said, "You look around some?" The question was an open-ended invitation. Anna accepted it and began listing the observations she had made while waiting. Thigpen stepped forward and in a loud voice began countering her observations with those of his own.

"The kid was hung. The rope must've broken. This is where she fell." Rather than waste breath arguing the obvious, Anna made an cxccutive decision she knew she'd pay for later but, hell, in for a penny... "Randy," she cut him off. "I need you to go back to the ranger station.

Get a measuring tape, 35mm camera, pens, paper, envelopes." She went on to list all the things in the evidence collection kit that he hadn't bothered to bring. Its absence didn't make her think worse of him.

Murder in the parks, any crime that required intricate collection of trace evidence for that matter, was rare. Rangers were trained in it, but without cause to use those skills, most lost them. Anna had. She'd no more faith in herself to lift an important fingerprint or make casting of a boot print than she would to sing an aria. To do these things well required practice.

What made her already low opinion of her erstwhile subordinate drop another notch was that he'd not had the respect-or the spine-to tell her he had no kit.

When she finished, Randy pursed his lips, nodded and said, "Barth can get 'em."

"I'd like you to," Anna said. "You've seen the situation firsthand.

You might think of something I've forgotten. Also, I need you to be there when the district ranger from Ridgeland arrives. Show him where we are.

Thigpen spent a moment or two thinking. Anna guessed he was weighing how far be dared to openly flout her orders. Being in on something big in the parks gave a ranger status, bragging rights.

Whether he wanted to work or not, Randy Thigpen didn't want to miss out.

A conclusion was reached, and he got in his parting shot. "Good point about Stilwell." He named the district ranger to the north.

"A good man to have on the job. He knows what he's doing." Anna let it pass. Many years had elapsed since her skin had been so thin a dart as meager as that could penetrate. Davidson was not so well armored. He shot the big ranger a look that was equal parts anger and contempt. Anna allowed herself one small smile as she watched Randy struggle, knowing he couldn't apologize to the sheriff without committing himself to open warfare with his new boss.

He settled for telling Anna, "There is a better way than you bad us come," and forged off through the woods at an oblique angle to the path they'd followed from the graveyard. According to Anna's brochure map, he was heading toward the fragment of sunken trace that ran just this side of Little Sand Creek. "Where were we?" Davidson asked as the sound of Thigpen's progress faded. Anna finished her litany of suspected evils.

The sheriff had a camera in an olive-drab sack he carried. After taking photographs of the scene from various angles, he asked Anna to go through her list once more and meticulously photographed each item she mentioned-the shoes and feet, the fungus, the roping, the hands-three shots each to bracket the light.

That done, they stopped by mutual unspoken accord and stared at the sheeted body "I guess it's time to unwrap her," Anna said at last.

"I guess." Neither moved to do it. "You do a lot of this?" he asked.

"No. You?"

"It seems like a lot to me but I guess it isn't. This is my first kid, believe it or not. You know-that wasn't a car accident or something."

"Mine too," Anna said, made free by his confession. "It changes it. And I don't even much like kids." She was wishing she hadn't added that last-it sounded so heartless given the circumstances-but Davidson laughed and she was, if not exonerated, then forgiven. "Let's get to it," she said.

Having donned latex gloves from her first aid kit, she carefully removed the noose from around the sheet-draped neck and slid it over the head.

As she worked, the sheriff took photographs: the knot, the creases the rope left in the fabric of the sheet.

Anna'd forgotten how much a human head weighs. Slipping the noose free, she let the head fall a couple of inches and flinched when it thudded into the ground. Starting at the ragged hem, she folded the sheet up around the girl's thighs so any loose trace evidence there might be would be contained rather than shaken loose and lost.

The sheet was old, worn soft and thin. Guessing by the size, it came from a baby's crib or a cot. Faint dark lines ran across one corner and again up near the noose, stains that looked as if they'd been there through a number of launderings. All this Anna noted aloud, speaking into the tape recorder in the breast pocket of her uniform shirt. She preferred written notes but her hands were otherwise occupied.

The victim wore a little black dress, not quite so revealing as Heather's but nearly so, with a spider-web design in rhinestones across the chest. The girl was slight but full-breasted. The flimsy gown had fallen off her shoulders, exposing a black satin strapless Wonderbra with its carefully engineered up-thrust. Times had changed. When Anna was in high school, girls had to make do with gym socks shoved into the Playtex. Not to mention what the nuns would have done had any girl at Mercy High showed up in such an abbreviated confection. "I'm getting old," Anna said to Davidson to make the image of this little girl, alive, excited, dressing up for her date, go away.

In a way, she thought, it must be harder for a man to see such a thing.

Not only were they trained-at least the good ones-to protect women, but such a display of girlish flesh must cause, if not mixed signals from the body, at least the uncomfortable knowledge that such a thing was possible. "Baby women," Anna said, apropos of nothing. "I see them all the time," he said. "Some friends of mine and I were down on the Gulf, and I saw this girl in a tiny bathing suit. I turned to my buddy and told him to take a look. The kid came closer. It was his daughter. I've known her since she was in diapers. I'd been telling my pal to leer at his own daughter. I'd been leering. I was half sick for a week." Who was this guy, Anna wondered, telling her things like that. "Do you still leer?" she asked just to have something to say. "On special occasions, but only if the leer-ee is clearly over forty."

"Not twenty-one?"

"Carding them prior to leering takes the fun out of it." Neither of them could carry the conversation further with the dead between them. Holding her breath though the body had yet to get really ripe, Anna began peeling the sheet off the girl's neck and face. Abrasions discolored the throat but there was no bruising, and no ligature marks. She'd not been hanged. Odds were the rope bad been put around her neck after death.

The sheet came away from the left side of the face easily, exposing a girl in her early-to-mid-teens who had been pretty. Now the bugs had found her and she showed a nightmare countenance. Blood matting the hair, the skin and the cotton fibers of the makeshift hood stuck the sheet to the right side of her face. "I don't want to jerk this off," Anna told Davidson. "I'm afraid I'll screw up any trace evidence in the wound or the hair." Davidson took some close-ups of the girl's face while Anna finished her observations. Trace evidence would be sent to the Mississippi Crime Lab in Jackson. "Looks like a severe blow to the right side of the head." That was it.

A blunt and ugly truth. "Do you want to tell the parents or sball V' Anna asked. "I'll do it. If this is Danielle Posey-and we've got no reason to think otherwise at this point-I know her father to talk to. I worked a fender-bender on the Trace near 1-there out of Clinton. A drunk hit him, an old black man in a pickup truck. Mr. Posey was not happy He wanted that old man drawn and quartered, legally speaking.

There wasn't much I could do. The old guy bad no money, no insurance and taking away his driver's license was a moot point, since he'd never bothered to get one. When I asked him why he said, "I never needed one till now.

Anna laughed. Davidson finished the photos, and she was grateful to let the sheet drop back over the child's face, hiding the fester of ants that marked where the eyes had been. "Can't blame Posey a whole heck of a lot," the sheriff went on as they picked their way back to the side of what they'd deemed the crime scene area. "He's got an older boy that's nothing but trouble and Danielle, a farm that can't clear more than twenty or thirty grand a Year, and a wife that's in and out of mental hospitals all the time. That'd be enough to fray anybody's nerves.

Anyway, I'll get him down to ID the body. Poor guy. What could be worse?

Asked to come see if a dead girl's your daughter and it is." The deep and apparently genuine compassion in the sheriff's voice touched Anna.

With that touch, the human tragedy of the situation came home and she felt sadness as a physical weight across the back of her neck. Paul Davidson began whistling again. This time Anna remembered the song.

She'd heard it on Cumberland Island: "Jesus Met the Woman."

"You'll meet Posey," Davidson said. "I believe he cases some of his land from the Trace. Cotton or soybeans." There wasn't much else to say, and they stood side by side, Taco at their feet, staring at the ruined child.

The sound of voices approaching from the northeast, the direction of the sunken Trace, Little Sand Creek and Rocky Springs campground brought the two of them out of whatever hole their thoughts were taking them down.

"Jesus Christ," Anna growled. "It sounds like a herd of elephants. If there was anything on Miss. Posey's trail to find they'll have smashed it all to hell." The damage was done. It was too late to do anything but fume and Anna watched sourly as three men tramped out of the woods.

Ranger Thigpen was in the lead, a cigarette in his hand that he only flicked away after making sure Anna had seen it. Behind him, trim and neat in NPS green and gray, was a ranger Anna'd not met.

Trailing was a deputy in the crisp uniform of the Claiborne County Sheriff's Department. The deputy was first to speak. He was young and fit, the short walk not even causing him to break a sweat. He was a couple of shades darker than Anna's ranger, Barth Dinkin, and about forty pounds lighter. Showing his mama had raised him right, he took off his Stetson, nodded at Paul, then Anna. "Sheriff.

Ma'am." Amenities taken care of, he turned to his boss. "The coroner's waiting at Rocky. Says he'll take your word she's dead."