In Shadows (7 page)

Mandi laughed first.
“Getting
crotchety? And by all means, bring your friend!” she said, giving Cramer another squeeze and leaning close to keep her voice down. “Barbara claims she made films back in the fifties, but no one seems to have ever seen one.”

“What were you guys talking about, earlier?” asked Pam, slipping between them and giving Mandi a reproachful grin. “You looked thicker than thieves.”

“Old times,” said Jake, frowning.

“Whispered voices,” said Mandi quickly, smiling at Cramer. “Cramer heard them in the woods.”

But Pam didn’t echo Mandi’s smile.

“It’s a weird coincidence, I guess,” continued Mandi, “but a few minutes ago Pierce told me that he heard something, too.”

“Pierce?” said Pam.

Mandi shrugged. “When we entered the church Pierce said he was
listening
to something. He’s been acting weird for a couple of days. He says he’s heard something at his window. I don’t know what’s going on with him . . . Maybe it’s the Crowley curse. Remember how your mother used to tell us bogeyman stories about the valley?”

Jake was silent.

“Curses are like baggage,” muttered Cramer, staring at his partner.

Jake frowned and turned away.

AKE SPOTTED
E
RNIE TALKING TO
V
IRGIL
M
ILCHE
near the front of the church, and he and Cramer made their way through the crowd. Jake could tell Ernie was alarmed as he waved his arms, calling for people’s attention.

“Sheriff Milche has an announcement!”

Virgil took a deep breath, glancing at Jake and nodding. “Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no easy way to put this, and I hate to have to bring it up here, but we’ve had another homicide.”

Murmurs filled the air. Cramer bumped Jake’s arm, and Jake noticed an evil grin on his partner’s face.

“I knew this was gonna be a good trip,” Cramer whispered.

“We’ve got a positive
ID
,” said Virgil, glancing around at the crowd. “Girl was a runaway from North Carolina, and we think she was probably hitchhiking. I don’t believe my going into the details right now is necessary. We just need to know if any of you here saw anyone hanging around the old
school bus stop on the highway recently. No? Well, she was wearing jeans and a tie-dye shirt.”

Mandi gasped.

“You saw her?” Jake asked, as Virgil stepped alongside.

She nodded. “It must have been her. Work was slow, and my boss let me out early. I came up here to the church before going home, thinking I’d get a jump on preparations for tonight. When I pulled out on the road again I spotted her, coming from somewhere up near the old Crowley house.”

“When was that, Mandi?” asked Virgil.

She frowned. “Yesterday. Around three maybe.”

“See where she went?”

“No. I started to ask her if she wanted a ride. But . . . I don’t know . . . we waved and she seemed okay . . . and I wanted to get home to Pierce. Maybe if I’d picked her up, offered her a place to stay—”

Virg shook his head. “You can kill yourself with maybes, Mandi. There’s just no way of knowing. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Are you sure about the time?”

She nodded. “Pretty close.”

Virgil was silent for a moment.

“Well,” he said at last, “if anyone thinks of anything, you all know where to contact me. Something that seems trivial to you might make all the difference.”

He patted Mandi on the shoulder, turning to Jake. “You picked a heck of a week to come home. Sorry about your uncle Albert. You staying?”

“Just visiting. My partner and I needed a break,” said Jake, introducing Cramer.

“Big-city law enforcement getting you down?” said Virgil, giving Jake the once-over.

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m a cop.”

Jake laughed, but his face clouded when Virgil nudged him out of the crowd.

“I want you to take a look at something, Jake,” said Virgil, slipping a Polaroid photo out of his jacket.

Jake stared at what appeared to be two crystal candlesticks resting atop a canvas pack. The sticks were cut into a swirling diamond pattern, larger at the top than the base. They looked ungainly, possibly unstable, and terribly familiar.

“The girl had these on her?” he asked, shaken.

Virgil nodded. “I thought I recognized them. They’re the ones from the mantel in your parents’ house, aren’t they?”

Jake nodded. “Unless there’s another pair like that in town.”

“Not likely.”

“All right, then. Tell me more.”

“You’re on vacation.”

“Apparently she broke into
my
house.”

“Nothing more to tell, yet. She was beaten up pretty good, but it didn’t look like it was bad enough to kill her. Don’t know if she was raped yet, although I expect so. I’m waiting for the medical examiner’s report.”

He looked at Jake as though waiting for him to add something.

“Anything new on Albert’s murder?” Jake asked.

“No. But whoever did it is crazier than a mule on whiskey sodas. It wasn’t pretty, Jake. Way I figure, it had to be strangers. Nobody around here is that crazy. It wasn’t a robbery gone bad. Not a damned thing was taken that we could see. Seems like some loony just ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. I hate to admit it, but you know how it is. More than likely the case will never get solved without some real luck.”

Jake frowned. “You want some assistance?”

Virgil eyed him as though weighing the idea.

“No,” he said at last. “You got no jurisdiction here. And you made it pretty clear years ago you didn’t want any part of the sheriff’s department. Besides, Albert was family.”

Jake shrugged. “Cramer and I might be helpful.”

Virgil nodded. “You might at that. And you might muddy up my chain of evidence and let the guilty parties slip through the court system. You know what defense lawyers are like.”

“We’ve both had training you haven’t,” said Jake. “And you could be wrong. Two murders in Crowley in a month? Both beatings? Don’t you think they just might be related?”

A couple of Ernie’s congregation had casually edged close enough to listen in, but Virgil shooed them off with his eyes. “The two murders probably
aren’t
related. The girl’s killing could be just a rape gone bad.”

“Albert’s body was found upright against the kitchen table. What was the crime scene like for the girl?”

Virgil frowned. “How do you know that, Jake?”

Jake shrugged. “Cramer got hold of the report.” When Virgil gave Cramer a surprised look, Jake smiled. “He’s resourceful.”

“Well,
she
was lying facedown. Fully clothed. Blue jeans, T-shirt, hiking boots. It was almost like the killer didn’t want her to look at him.”

“That happens,” said Jake. “A disorganized killer might feel remorse. He’ll dress the victim or cover her. Sometimes it’s a signature, other times it’s just something the guy feels like doing. But Albert was sitting up.”

“So no signature there,” said Virgil.

“They were both beaten,” said Jake.

“Yeah.” Virgil grimaced. “But the girl was nothing like Albert. In fact it looked like she might have done a lot of the damage to herself, running through the woods.”

“It would be odd for a second victim to be less brutalized than the first, though,” mused Cramer. “Usually a killer
progresses.”

Virgil studied both Jake and Cramer. “I’m heading for the autopsy from here,” he said, frowning. “My boys will be going door to door in the valley and up and down the highway again tomorrow. If anyone saw anything, we’ll hear about it.”

“Good luck,” said Jake as Virgil headed out the door. “Nice seeing you again.”

Virgil didn’t look back.

Cramer glanced at Jake. “What’s going on?”

Jake frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Why the bad feelings between you and the sheriff?”

Jake shrugged.

Cramer shook his head, glancing back at the crowd. “Guess I’m supposed to find out the old-fashioned way, eh?”

“Pierce wasn’t born with a limp,” said Pam, handing Jake a cup of punch and a sandwich.

“What happened?”

“Mandi thinks Rich did it, but that Pierce’s afraid to tell. But Rich claims he’s innocent and Claude, Rich’s cousin, swears that Rich was with him at the time. So there were never any charges.”

“Rich and Mandi had already split?”

“They separated when Pierce was only three. But Rich kept . . . going back. Until Mandi finally got a restraining order.”

“Where’s Rich now?”

“He lives up along the old Burnout road in a trailer with your second cousin Carly.”

“Carly and Rich?”

“Carly comes from the really rotten side of the Crowley family, that’s for sure.”

“That’s not a Christian attitude, is it?” said Jake, smiling.

“A slut’s a slut,” said Pam, shaking her head and looking quickly around the church. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You know, you look at Mandi just the way you did fourteen years ago. It breaks my heart to see the two of you so close and yet apart.”

Jake stared into his punch, but there was no escape in the paper cup. “Mandi and I just didn’t work out.”

“You mean because you had to get out of the valley.”

He nodded.

“You know, Jake, family and friends are to
share
troubles, not to hide them from.”

“What about protecting family and friends?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes we don’t want to be protected.”

“Mandi and I were a long time ago.”

“I guess old girlfriends are trouble,” said Pam, eyeing him.

“You’re trouble,” said Jake.

Pierce pretended to pay attention to Pastor Ernie as he spelled out silly questions.

How’s things been going?

Good.

What you been reading?

Lord of the Rings.

But Pierce was preoccupied with the vibration of the crowd walking, the movement of the air around him, and more than that by the feeling that the
presence
he had sensed in front of his window was close by. Finally Ernie let him go, and Pierce sniffed the air.

Many people he recognized by their smell. Occasionally
someone would place their hand on his shoulder, and he’d grip it. Others he’d pull toward him until he could run his fingers over their face. Then he’d smile, take their hand under his, and slowly spell out their names in their palms by way of greeting. His mother must have noticed that something was still wrong because she tried to divert him by taking his hand and signing for other people as they came up to say hi. But he didn’t want to be distracted. He shook her hand hard to accent his need.

I don’t know what’s happening, honey
, she signed back.
Maybe we should see the doctor.

Pierce shrugged. Dr. Burton was okay, but what was she going to know about something he was
hearing
inside his head? Because that was what it was, not hearing like other people did it. He knew that. He imagined it might be the way they would
remember
a sound. But he didn’t have any memories of sounds. Not until now.

Cramer heard something weird, too
, she spelled.
Out in the woods today.

Pierce’s head popped up. Anyone who didn’t know him might have thought he was searching the crowd.
Really?

He said he did.

Probably just wanted to make me feel better
, spelled Pierce, shaking his head.

He told me before I told him about you.

Pierce paused.
It felt really bad.

Bad how?

Like sometimes when I have nightmares.

She squeezed his arm, then signed slowly.
Nothing bad’s here. And nothing bad’s going to happen to you. Not ever again.

He nodded, really wanting to believe her. She had always taken care of him, protected him—except that once, and that wasn’t her fault—and she never lied to him. Never. But this
time he knew she was stretching things just a little. Something was really bothering her.

What are you afraid of, then?
he signed.

Her grip tightened almost imperceptibly, and he sensed the minute hesitation before she replied.

Someone else was killed.

Here?

No. Down by the highway. A teenage girl.

Pierce nodded slowly.

It doesn’t have anything to do with what you’ve been . . . hearing
, signed Mandi.
You don’t believe that, do you?

This time it was his turn to hesitate.

I don’t know.

She slipped her hand out from under his, and he sensed her moving away. His end of the building felt suddenly empty. The crowd had milled away. He could still detect aftershave, deodorant, tuna fish salad, coffee, and other odors that lingered even though their original owners had wafted away. But when his mother told him to stay in one place, Pierce stayed. He’d learned that lesson the hard way.

When he was a toddler he had always had the entire bottom floor of their house to be independent in, but he was not allowed upstairs. By the time he was five he’d explored every inch of the first level and even the yard outside in minute detail, and then—one day while his mother was at work and the baby-sitter was sleeping soundly on the back porch—he’d climbed the mountainous stairs. He’d rummaged inch by inch through his mother’s sleeping loft, fingering the soft wool blanket on the bed, sniffing every bottle of perfume and nail polish. Every drawer was inspected, every item of clothing, every piece of liner paper. He discovered two windows whose existence he had suspected due to drafts through the house, finding his way to them by the smell of pine on the breeze and the warmth of the sun.

Finally, growing bored and hungry, he had wound his way back to the stairs, careful to approach along the wall, his fingers playing across it like spider feet, his toes tapping rhythmically ahead. When he reached the first step he started to squat and slide down on his butt. Suddenly powerful fingers gripped his shoulders, lifting him off the floor. He flailed for balance but found nothing solid with his hands or his feet, and then he was flung like a piece of wadded wastepaper into the air. For the merest instant he was afraid he’d been thrown into some even deeper darkness, where there was nothing to touch and nothing to smell or taste, forever.