Deep South (29 page)

Frieda, Christine, Lynette-the women in Anna's life had taught her the rudiments. At their uncorporal urgings, it crossed her mind to summon up her courage, take the wet wailing girl into her arms and mutter, "There, there." The prospect was too alarming so she stood, leaning against the Crown Vic, arms crossed, watching the celebration of light on the azaleas till Heather subsided to the gasping, snorting stage. "You about done?" Anna asked kindly. "Yes, ma'am. Do you have a hankie?"

"I don't carry one. Hang on." Anna got a brand-new red oil rag from the trunk of the car. "It's clean," she promised.

Heather fixed that. Anna was amazed one small girl could have so much liquid in her. Nose blown, Heather looked up with watery red eyes. "She had no right," she said, starting over.

"She had no choice. It's the law," Anna lied. "What did she tell you?" Recovered somewhat, Heather was getting cagey.

Anna decided to go on the offensive before Heather called her bluff.

"Brandon Deforest can ruin your chances. That's why you've been less than forthcoming, isn't it?" Heather folded the oil rag into a smaller and smaller square and said nothing. "Chances for what?" Nothing. "He said if you didn't keep quiet he'd do it. That's blackmail. Blackmail's illegal." Nothing. Exasperated, Anna went back to the shimmer of flowers beneath the eaves until her desire to shake Heather till her teeth rattled subsided. "Can I go now?" Heather asked in the voice of a little girl. "Nope." A fat gray squirrel ventured partway across the lawn to study them. "Here it is," Anna said finally. "I have got to find out who killed Danni. I don't necessarily have to screw up your life in the process, but I don't mind much if I do. There's bits and pieces of information you're holding back. They may be of use to me. They may not.

But I've got to have them."

"You can't make me talk. I want a lawyer. You can't ask any more questions after I ask for a lawyer." Heather Id seen plenty of cop shows on television.

"Sure I can," Anna said. "You're not under arrest. You're not a suspect.

I want you to tell me about Brandon, Danni, prom night-anything you can remember. If you don't, I'll tell Brandon you told me everything. I'll let on you're working with me." A veil of innocence fell from Heather's face, leaving it looking indefinably older. Anna was sorry she'd been the one to make it so.

"Why, you're no better than he is!" Heather exclaimed.

Anna was in no position to argue that one. "No guarantees," she said.

"But I can promise that I will do my utmost to keep your secret-unless it's dangerous or illegal-and to see to it that the Deforest kid does too."

"It's not dangerous or anything. He's just got-he's got this thing and if he shows it to somebody he can-I won't get something I want." Eyes down, words vague, color up: Anna guessed Heather was awash with shame.

Guilt, anger and resentment didn't drag down the corners of one's eyes, bow one's neck the way shame could.

Sixteen, not illegal, not dangerous-Brandon could have proof she'd cheated at school. That would cost her a grade or a reward, maybe even college. He could have proof of an indiscretion that would cause her parents to revoke some coveted privilege.

Anna studied her face, streaked now, tears rendering the pageant queen a sad-faced little clown.

That was it. "Brandon has something that could keep you out of the Junior Miss. pageant, or make sure you don't win it." I wouldn't even have a chance." Heather's voice was rising to a wall. Waterworks threatened. "Take it easy," Anna ordered. "That's my last clean rag.

Tell me what he's got. I'll see what I can do."

"Can Shandra Lea come back out?"

"Sure. Barth!" Anna hollered. "Here." She was startled to hear his voice so close. The man had faded back, out of her line of sight, and had been standing stock-still in the shadow of a red-tipped fotina that edged the yard.

Effectively gone, reassuringly near. "Hey," Anna said, smiling at him because she felt like it. ig Could you get Shandra Lea?" The other girl came outside before Barth was halfway up the walk.

She'd been watching from one of the windows and noted a change in the action. "You had no right-" Heather started the litany. "Come on, Heather, this is real," Shandra Lea said dismissively. Heather quieted.

It was easy to see who the leader was in this twosome. Anna expected it.

Heather Barnes was one of those very biddable young women, the sort blown easily by the winds of fashion, popularity and trends.

Anna took over. "Heather's told us Brandon Deforest has been blackmailing her. Is that right?" Shandra Lea looked at her friend for permission to rat, but Heather had her head down, acquiescent. "That's right," the black girl said. "He's got a picture He's been threatening to show around that would spoil Heather's chances at the Junior Miss. title."

"Pornographic picture?" Anna asked. "Yes," Heather mumbled, and her head drooped further. "Oh, give it a rest," Shandra Lea snapped.

"You don't know porn, girl. It's this silly-ass snapshot Brandon took at a swim party when Danni and Heather flashed him." She mimed pulling up her top and showing her breasts for Anna's edification.

"You're kidding," Anna said. "They'd throw you out of the junior Miss. for that?"

"Maybe not throw me out," Heather said, talking to the pavement between her feet.

"But they won't go giving you no rhinestone tiara if they got a picture of you flashing your tittles for the camera." Shandra Lea was a pragmatist. "I'll see if I can get your picture back for you," Anna said. "Tell me about prom night." After twenty minutes poking and prodding, Anna was able to piece together a better picture of what had happened. Heather had gone to the dance with Matt, Danni with Brandon Deforest. Both couples had been fighting. Danni was "in a mood" and dropping hints about her college boyfriend. Heather left the dance to join Danni, Brandon and his two cohorts, Lyle Sanders and Thad Meyerhoff, in the parking lot to drink. Matt followed, offered to take her home. When she refused, he left. Brandon got drunk and abusive, calling Danni a slut and threatening to kill her and her new boyfriend.

Danni ran to the car and said she'd been with a "real man" before Brandon picked her up, and she was going to him, and she'd just used Brandon to get out of the house. Heather iumped in Deforest's car with Danni, and they left. Brandon, Lyle and Thad followed them in Thad's car. On the Trace, they kept trying to run Danni and Heather off the road. Heather found a fifth of some kind of booze under the seat, and she and Danni passed it back and forth.

That was where the story ended and the blackout began. No matter from which direction Anna came at it, Heather couldn't remember anything else.

At five-thirty, Anna let the girls go. She'd seen Heather late on prom 4night, and believed that she had lost the end of the evening Lo alcohol.

"Do we go see the Deforest boy?" Barth asked when they were back in the Crown Vic, threading their way out of the neighborhood. "Let's talk to Sheriff Davidson first," Anna said. "See what he wants to do with it." Bullying children had given her a headache. It felt good to lean back against vinyl cooled by air-conditioning and let Barth keep the car on the road.

"Sounds like Deforest to me," Barth said. "Drunk. Mad. Showing off for his buddies. Things got out of hand."

"Sounds like," Anna said absently. "I wonder who she was going to meet, where she was meeting him. Maybe she had a rendezvous set up at Rocky before she even left the dance with Deforest."

"Sounds more to me like she was running to boyfriend number two because she was scared of boyfriend number one," Barth said obstinately.

Boyfriend number two was black. Barth sincerely didn't want a black man to be the killer. Anna could understand that. "She said she'd used Deforest to get out of the house. That suggests to me she might've had a plan to meet number two from the get-go."

"Steal number one's car and drag girlfriend Heather along?" Barth said. "Doesn't sound like much of a plan to me." Danni could have stolen the car to meet her lover because she was drunk or angry, or wanted Deforest to meet the Other Man. Who knew?

Maybe she wanted them to fight over her. And bringing Heather along---same story, wanting an audience to her popularity. Or maybe Heather was uninvited and just jumped into the getaway car. Still Anna conceded the point to him. Arguing suppositions was a waste of energy.

Barth steered smoothly off 1-20 and up onto the Natchez Trace Parkway.

To the north the road ended at a battered barricade, indicating a gap in the ambitious plan to run the Trace from Natchez to Nashville. This was a ten-mile stretch of road between where the Trace ended at Clinton and where it began again in the city of Ridgeland, a northern suburb of Jackson, At present the section was under construction. Secretly, Anna hoped to be gone from the Trace before it opened, bringing with it urban crime gathered as it passed through the capital city.

Barth turned south. Though the concept of wilderness was an illusion on the Trace, a narrow strip of well-manicured gardens crowded on both sides by homes and farming concerns, Anna felt relieved to be free of the towns, to rest her eyes not on the smeared faces of baby beauty queens, but upon the ten thousand shades of green that bedecked the woodlands. Green was a soothing color. Green was the color of the walls in sanitariums, the color of the NPS uniform.

Far less authoritarian and menacing than the blacks and blues favored by the police.

Several hundred yards down the Trace from 1-20 was a pullout. Near as Anna knew, it bad no historical significance but was a rest area with a picnic table. Three cars were parked there and a pickup with the ubiquitous rebel flag on its bumper. A lone man sat behind the wheel of a late-model Oldsmobile. No one else was in evidence.

"What's with all the cars?" Anna asked, just to speak of a subject other than murder. "Clinton pullout's kind of a problem area," Barth said with disgust. Peeling off the two-lane road, he cruised behind the cars.

"Hinds County plates. They're from around here. So why use a pullout?" The question was rhetorical and Anna waited obediently for the answer.

It was not forthcoming.

Barth's demeanor was undergoing rapid changes. As Anna watched, she saw the disgust being tempered by confusion, which melted into alarm, then resolved itself into the pain of an innocent-a child discovering there is no Santa Claus. "Joggers," he said abruptly.

"Just folks leaving their cars here while they run." Before Anna could speak, Barth pulled out of the turnout and put his foot on the accelerator. A quick glance at the speedometer: he'd nearly floored the Crown Vic. The needle was easing up on seventy-five.

Another time, Anna might have amused herself by trying to ferret out the reason for her companion's peculiarities. At the moment, she was content to let it be. Tonight, the vet had promised, she could retrieve Taco. A three-legged dog, a disgruntled cat and a bottle of good wine were all she wanted to think about.

Taco was ecstatic. So was David Christianson. Both were grinning widely when Anna arrived. Mrs. Christianson's prayers-a and Anna's, had she admitted to being the praying kind-had been answered. The black lab, his left haunch swathed in bandages, was a great deal more healthy and exuberant than anyone had dared to hope.

When Taco saw her, he struggled to stand, fell on the legless hip and whined at the sudden pain. Anna's eyes stung as he dragged and scooted across the linoleum, willing to endure the unendurable for the privilege of washing her feet with doggie devotions.

Anna met him more than halfway and sat on the floor letting him lick her face and snort dog breath up her nose without recrimination. To the vet she said: "Every law enforcement officer should have a dog. That way you're guaranteed at least one somebody will be glad to see you." Christianson laughed long enough to let Anna rid herself of the lump in her throat. A good doctor for animals and people,

"He'll learn to get around," the vet promised. "In a month he'll be his old self. Till then you'll want to work on your upper body strength.

He's a big boy." With that the vet easily lifted the mass of wriggling dog flesh and, at Anna's instruction, deposited Taco on the nest of blankets she'd prepared for him on the front seat of the Rambler.

Christianson had stayed late at his clinic so Anna could be reunited with her dog. Southern hospitality. Having thanked him with deplorable Yankee reserve, she drove into the long and gentle twilight of Mississippi's spring. Though the sun had been down more than half an hour, the temperature was still in the high sixties and the air soft and fragrant. Humidity held life close to the earth, retaining heat and scent, cloaking it close around the body, Anna loved the scouring air of the high desert, the and winds that stripped the day from skin and soil, but ears full of frog music and senses alive to the richness of this new place, she began to suspect she would come to love this too. A vague sensation of being somehow traitorous to the Southwest plagued her for a moment. She banished it by telling Taco of the adventures he'd missed since his runin with the alligator. Anna wasn't talking to him as though he could understand or give her good counsel-he wasn't a cat, after all-but because she wanted to talk and Taco wanted to listen.

In peaceful conversation, everybody happy with their role, Anna drove the three miles on Clinton Raymond Road to 1-120 and then onto the Trace. As she coasted up the on ramp to the parkway, she reached the part in her narrative where Barth had gotten squirrelly and sped away from the Clinton pullout. As she told the tale to the dog, it occurred to her that it was more than Barth's sudden decision to head home that bothered her. Four empty cars, one man. Joggers, Barth said, and it made sense at the time. Except there hadn't been any joggers. The Trace, at least on the Clinton end, had no trails, no dirt lanes. The road was bordered by overgrown, weedy, boggy terrain and very little of that. joggers would have to run along the one, the only road. Anna and Barth had driven it together for forty miles, and she'd not seen a single runner.