Dew Drop Dead (8 page)

A gust of wind got the evergreens to whispering
and Sebastian listened and wondered,
was
there a murder? If there was, maybe the answer was there—in the woods.

“Let's come back tomorrow,” he heard himself saying. “After school. Okay?”

“Okay!”

Sebastian and David picked up their bicycles from where they'd let them fall ten minutes earlier. It was getting dark now—and colder. The wind had picked up. And the air was full of whispers.

RAYMOND ELVERI
brushed his gray-streaked hair each morning and made sure his fingernails were always clean and trimmed. “I still have my pride,” Corrie had heard him telling the scruffy, sad-eyed Marcus the previous evening.

“Pride in
what?”
Marcus had snorted.

“Pride in my humanity” had been Raymond Elveri's answer.

Corrie had noticed that Raymond read the Bible a lot. He was not pompous about it, rarely quoted it, but it was clearly a source of solace to him. He looked up from time to time as he read, and Corrie could almost see his face grow younger and less troubled each time he did. She wondered about Raymond Elveri; she couldn't figure out what he was doing here. His clothes were worn but not tattered, his face clean-shaven, his rough hands those of a man who has known honest work.

When he saw Corrie come through the door of the social hall on Monday afternoon, Raymond smiled. He was sweeping the floor—“earning my
keep,” he told her—and the first thing he asked her was what it was like out.

“Cold,” she said. “Don't tell me you've been inside all day.”

“I know what you're thinking,” he said. “It's not right for a grown man to be holed up like an animal in its den, hibernating, hiding from the world. I should go out; but I guess I just figure when I get out there, all I'll want to do is go back in. So I stay indoors and save myself the trouble. I polished the collection plates and altar rails this morning. I asked the Reverend, and he said that would be fine.” Corrie wondered what John, the custodian, thought of it.

“You don't have to do all this work,” she said.

“A man has to earn his keep,” Raymond repeated. “Work is the natural order of things. Keeping busy is just keeping busy, but work is keeping busy with a purpose. Don't you agree?”

“I've never really thought about it,” Corrie answered, sorry to disappoint him. She wanted to ask, “Why aren't you working then? Why don't you get a job?” But she couldn't bring herself to do that. She remembered his words: “I still have my pride.”

Raymond, sensing her discomfort, resumed sweeping. Corrie took the opportunity to look around. In one corner of the room, Marcus sat straddling a chair turned backward, his head resting on his crossed arms, his eyes liquid and dreamy. She
noticed that he was barefoot. It was after three. Had he even bothered to put on shoes today? In the other corner, Abraham lay on his cot, facing the wall. Even though the room was quite warm, he was wrapped in several blankets. She wondered if he were ill, then recalled that she had seen him like this once before. He must be cold-blooded, she thought. Or warm-blooded. She could never remember which was which.

Estelle Barker's bed was unmade but empty. She had taken her children, Corrie learned later, to “walk the mall,” an activity that apparently occupied most of her days. The woman with the bad feet had left on Sunday morning and not returned.

“Where are your friends?” Raymond Elveri asked. He was dumping the contents of a dustpan into the large plastic garbage pail by the kitchen door.

“Janis has student council,” Corrie said. She knew the friends Raymond meant, but since she didn't like what they were doing, she didn't want to have to talk about where they were.

“No, no, I mean the others,” said Raymond. “That tall one is your boyfriend, I'll bet.”

Embarrassed, Corrie shrugged. “I don't know,” she said. “I guess. Kind of.”

Raymond chuckled. “You're young,” he said. “How old are you? Let me guess. Fifteen?”

“Not quite,” Corrie said, pleased that he imagined her so much older than she was. “I'm thirteen.”

Raymond seemed as pleased as she. “Thirteen!” he exclaimed. “My daughter—” He stopped speaking and turned away.

“Oh, you have a daughter?”

Raymond walked slowly to the supply closet and put away the broom. With his back to Corrie, he said in a voice so soft she wasn't sure she heard, “Two daughters. And a son.”

Raymond Elveri had a family. What was he doing here?

“Where are they?” she asked.

Raymond's cot was the one next to Abraham's. He went to it now, sat on its edge, and pulled a Bible out from under his pillow. He didn't open it, just held it in his lap.

“They don't live in this state,” he answered at last. The way he was bent over, he looked almost broken. What had become of his pride?

“Do they know you're here?” Corrie asked.

“Let's say they know I'm not there.” Raymond looked up at her and for the first time his eyes looked as sad as Marcus's. “Corrie,” he said, “you're thirteen, a long way from understanding the world and what it does to people. I wish you might never know, but that would be a waste of a wish. So what can I wish for you instead?” He thought for a moment, then said, “You look athletic. Are you a runner?”

“Yes.”

“Then let me wish for you that you always run
toward
something, never away.”

Corrie wanted Raymond Elveri to tell her what he was running away from. But she didn't want to ask. And she knew it wasn't any of her business, really.

She was trying to think of something else to say, something that would bring his smile back, make him forget whatever it was he had succeeded in forgetting but for her reminding him. She took her mind back to school, thinking there might be something in her day to interest him.

Before she'd found anything, the man called Abraham rolled over on his cot and cast a disdainful eye on Raymond's hunched back.

“The sins of the father,” he said.

Raymond lifted the Bible to his heart and gripped it tightly.

“YOU REALIZE
we're looking for a needle in a haystack,” Sebastian said as the boys moved their search deeper into the woods.

“Yeah,” said David, “a needle dipped in blood.”

“Give me a break,” Sebastian said. “You're beginning to sound as melodramatic as—”

“As you used to?”

Sebastian frowned. “I was going to say your sister.”

“Do you want to give up?”

“No way. Do you?”

David shook his head.

The wind didn't stir. The evergreens had ceased their whispering. No secrets, it seemed, would be revealed on this still and stillborn day.

Then Sebastian heard something. “Listen,” he said.

David felt his pulse quicken, but he heard nothing. What was he listening for? Voices? Footsteps? What did danger sound like?

He tried again, but still he heard nothing.

Seeing his puzzled look, Sebastian said, “Water. There's a creek nearby.”

“What are we, Indian scouts?” David asked. “I can't believe you got me all psyched just to tell me about a stupid babbling brook. I mean, it's poetic but—”

“The point is,” said Sebastian, interrupting, “that the bed of a creek
might
have footprints. We sure aren't going to find any here.”

David smiled meekly. “Right,” he said. “I was just going to say the same thing.”

The boys followed the creek for fifteen minutes, searching for footprints and finding none. When they came to a pool of water and what looked like the end of the creek, David said, “Do you have any idea where we are?”

“Nope,” said Sebastian. “And it's getting dark. Maybe we should head back.”

“Okay. But can we rest for a minute? These new sneakers are killing me.”

“Strangled ankles?”

David grunted. “Feels like it. I brought an apple. You want half?”

“Sure,” Sebastian said, resting on a rotted log that gave way under him. David laughed, then settled himself on a rock nearby, and the two boys fell silent.

Each held half an apple in his open hand, neither eating nor biting into it—not wanting, perhaps, to disturb this perfectly soundless universe in which they'd suddenly found themselves. The air was so still, the woods so devoid of any noise save their own breathing, that Sebastian said, although he thought he was only thinking it, “Fall's a kind of lonely time, isn't it?”

Then he glanced up and saw something. “There!” he shouted. “Look over there!”

A footprint, or three-quarters of one, wasn't ten feet away. They ran to it, careful not to get so close they'd smudge it, and bent down to take a look. But before either of them could say, “It might mean nothing; it's only a footprint,” David reached out his hand and picked up a small object lying nearby. It was a book, whose worn, brown leather cover had perfectly camouflaged it from their sight.

Both boys were smiling. “I think we hit the jackpot,” Sebastian said. “Hurry up and open it.”

“Easier said than done,” said David. “It's all wet—the pages are stuck. Wait, I think I've got it.”

But before he could say another word, Sebastian's fingers grabbed his arm. “Ow!” David yelled. “What's the matter with you?”

“We were right!” said Sebastian. His face grew pale, the color of the wind if the wind had a color. “We were right,” he repeated. “We were right.”

David didn't have to ask what he meant. He was almost afraid to look. When he finally dared, he no longer wanted to see. For there in a thicket of dark green trees, just a few feet behind the log where Sebastian had been sitting moments earlier, lay a body half-covered with leaves.

“I CAN'T BELIEVE
you found it,” Corrie said not much more than an hour later. Sebastian and David had practically dragged her from her dinner table to tell her the news. Now she was squeezed between the two of them on the front steps of her house. “It gives me chills just imagining it.”

“It gives
you
chills?” David said. “I don't even want to think about trying to sleep tonight. Nightmare city.”

“Tell me everything,” said Corrie eagerly.

David clutched his throat as if strangling himself. “The face was all blue and the tongue was sticking out like this and—”

“Well, maybe not
everything.
What happened after you found it?”

“We went right to the police station,” Sebastian told her. “I don't think Alex believed us at first. But it didn't take long to convince him.”

“Did he let you go with him to look for it?”

“Sure,” said David. “What do you think?
We
were the ones who found it. We knew where it was.”

It occurred to Sebastian that they were all referring to the body as “it.” He guessed it was easier that way.

“It was dark by the time we got back there,” he said.

“Who went?”

“Alex, Rebecca, and a couple other cops, I forget their names. They used these big, heavy-duty flashlights, and when they found it, they threw a light on its face and Alex asked, Is this the same person you saw lying on the bed at the inn?'”

“Oh, gross,” said Corrie. “They made you
look
at it?”

“Just for a minute.”

David said, “We told him, ‘Yeah, that's the guy,' you know, like they do in the movies.”

“But then we weren't sure. He wasn't wearing that red-and-black shirt.”

“He wasn't?”

Sebastian shook his head. “And we never really got such a good look at the guy's face—I mean the one at the inn. So we told Alex we
thought
it was the same person.”

“Then what happened? Did you watch them, you know ...”

“Take away the body?” Sebastian asked. Corrie nodded. “Uh-uh. Alex said we should go back with Rebecca and she'd drive us home.”

“What did your parents say?” Corrie asked, trying to imagine how her parents would have reacted. Not happily, she thought.

“Oh, they were okay,” Sebastian said with a shrug of the shoulders. “They kept wanting to know if I was all right. I think they were worried I'd suffered some sort of trauma or something.”

“Not my dad,” said David. “He kept milking me for details. That's the thing with writers: Everything is research.”

“Now aren't you sorry you didn't go with us this afternoon?” Sebastian asked.

For the first time, Corrie smiled. “Are you kidding? I wouldn't have wanted to be there for
anything.
Besides, I had a good—well, interesting—time at the church. You want to walk over with me? I promised Mr. Elveri I'd come back tonight and show him some pictures.”

“Pictures, what do you mean?”

“We got to talking about our families. And I was telling him about the vacation we took last summer, and he said he'd like to see pictures of it. You want to go with me?”

David looked doubtful, but Sebastian said, “Sure, why not? Looking at snapshots of Disney World will be a relief after the afternoon
we
had.”

“Wait here. I'll get them and be right back.”

WHEN HE SAW Corrie enter with her friends, Raymond Elveri raised his eyes from his Bible and smiled warmly. “You remembered,” he said.

“Of course I did,” said Corrie. Looking to the next bed, she asked, “How are you tonight, Abraham?”

“I am within my body and my body is protected from the storm in this safe harbor.”

“Good,” said Corrie, seeming to know what he meant. David bit the inside of his cheek to keep from giggling. “Would you like to look at the pictures with us? I mean, is that okay with you, Mr. Elveri?”