Jude Devine Mystery Series (65 page)

Today’s juicy installment, the breathlessly anticipated discovery of a battered child’s body, was exactly the kind of spectacle that would send old-hat news stories packing. Who would want to know about Iraq, Katrina, or Dafur when they could wring their hands over an event that had everything going for it: no wider social consequences, no important lessons to teach, and no meaningful impact on anyone but the few players involved.

The Corban Foley Tragedy would occupy a thousand percent more airtime than the not-civil war in Iraq. After all, who gave a damn if Islamic fundamentalists would probably end up controlling the untapped Iraqi oil reserves that were earmarked to become America’s filling station in the coming oil crunch—the 2010 oil crunch the public wasn’t meant to hear about.

More to the point, who would buy advertising if news shows were reduced to discussing serious issues that involved numbers and politics and other such channel-surfing prompts? It would be the end of news broadcasting, and all those overpaid anchors would have to become reality-TV producers, which was, after all, what their skill sets equipped them for.

Lone didn’t have a problem with that idea. No one would know any less about the convergence of events that would soon send the American economy into free fall—a disaster wasn’t news until after it happened. Ask anyone if they knew how much of the world’s fast-diminishing oil reserves the Iraqis were sitting on. They had no idea and were usually amazed when Lone told them most of Iraq’s oil was still in the ground.

Of course, that didn’t mean anything unless you knew Iraqi oil represented fifty years of production and five trillion dollars in company profits. Annually, that was more than the biggest five oil companies made right now, combined. A motivation for invasion? Not according to evil-alliance propaganda.

Lone thought invasion priorities had to be fairly obvious when troops weren’t dispatched to the National Museum to secure the priceless artifacts of the cradle of civilization. Hell, the first building U.S. soldiers occupied was the Iraqi Oil Ministry, the place with the thousands of seismic maps that showed where Iraq’s oil was. It made perfect sense when you understood that the war had nothing to do with freedom or WMDs. Given that only twenty percent of Iraq’s oil wells had been drilled at all, and the big oil men had already agreed on how the concessions were going to be carved up between them, it was kind of important that they knew where the undrilled eighty percent were at—duh.

Lone sometimes thought everything would have been so much better if the evil alliance had simply told the truth. She, and most every soldier she knew, would still have followed orders from their commander in chief. If her superiors had said the mission in Iraq was to convert the nation into an American military base sitting on top of the world’s biggest oil reserves, she would have seen the sense in that.

She might have had a come-to-Jesus over whether it was worth dying so that a few oil billionaires could get richer, but orders were orders. She would have done her duty. But she knew Brandon Ewart would not have joined up for that. Brandon wanted to fight a noble fight that was about freedom for oppressed people and candy for grateful children. He was willing to die for his high ideals, and he was betrayed by men who had no ideals at all.

Once Madeline had realized that, she couldn’t live with it.

Lone jumped slightly as a hand touched her cheek.

“You look so sad,” Debbie said.

Lone focused on a diver emerging from the freezing water. They had to limit their immersion times so they weren’t exposed to hypothermia. Organizing her thoughts, she said, “I wish the world was a better place.”

Debbie’s small, trusting face lifted to hers, sweetly framed with chestnut brown waves. “You make my world a better place.” Her voice was husky with emotion.

“That’s what I’m here for.” Lone smiled tenderly at her and rearranged the muffler that protected her throat.

“I wonder if they’ll find him.” Debbie consulted the heavens. “It’s warming up and the snow is melting. That should make it easier.”

“Tell me something,” Lone allowed herself the question that had bugged her ever since they’d embarked on the search, “why do you care?”

Debbie’s bright hazel eyes widened with shock, then she frowned as if she’d been asked a trick question. Finally a sunny contentment settled on her features. “Because I’m part of the human race, and we’re all in this together.”

Lone thought about that as another diver went in, risking his health, and possibly his life, to search for the body of a child he didn’t know. She stared around at the crowds, not the media but the people. Deputies. FBI agents. Police. SAR teams. Volunteers who’d now spent three days combing a vast area, enduring extreme conditions, on the slim chance of finding this child.

They must all feel that way, she thought. Why didn’t she?

Gazing into Debbie’s eyes, she lost herself for a moment in the tranquil forest hues, then asked, “Do you hate anybody, Debbie? Really hate them?”

Debbie considered the question with obvious unease. “No. I guess I don’t hate anyone that much. Do you?”

Lone wanted to answer truthfully, but she knew Debbie would find the honest answer disturbing. She really did hate some people, so much that she wanted to watch them die. And she felt completely neutral about everyone else except Debbie. She wished others no ill, but she did not share Debbie’s sense of connection to strangers. She had once, but that seemed so long ago she could no longer recapture the emotion. Even if she could, it had no place to reside.

Noticing her lover had started to shiver, Lone drew her close, holding her from behind. Debbie rested back against her with a happy murmur.

In her ear, Lone said, “I love you, Debbie doll.”

Debbie wriggled so she could look up at her. “I love you, too,”

Lone could not resist stealing a quick, daring kiss. She needn’t have worried about anyone noticing this reckless public lesbianism. At the very moment her lips found Debbie’s, the crowd surged forward and shouts went up. Like a huge, self-cloning, armored centipede, the media crawled all over the banks of the reservoir, sunlight gleaming off cameras and tripods.

Everyone stared, transfixed, as a tow truck slowly hoisted a mesh basket from the murky water. Lone could make out a sledgehammer peeping through the webbing and what might be a black trash bag. A bloodhound standing on the bank emitted a long, low howl and lay down on its haunches next to its handler.

Debbie said, “That’s the dog we met, remember.”

How could Lone forget? Debbie had seemed enchanted by the K-9 handler, making Lone worry briefly that she’d fallen for a woman with bisexual tendencies. After a while, she understood that Debbie had seen something feminine in the deputy, and that’s what she’d reacted to. The man was ridiculously good-looking and oozed an innocent country-boy charm that made him impossible to dislike.

But that night as soon as she held Debbie in her arms once more, Lone knew she had nothing to worry about in that department. She’d found the perfect woman. Sweet and gentle, kind, honest, passionate, and loyal.

Once she’d completed her mission, she planned to take Debbie somewhere far away and build them a house where they would live happily ever after. She owned a hundred acres on a lake in Canada and had a large trailer on the property. No one would come looking for her there.

“It must be him,” Debbie said as the police herded the crowd back behind the barricades erected earlier, and an elegant blond woman was ushered through. Debbie seemed excited to see her, announcing, “That’s Dr. Mercy Westmoreland from
Court TV
.”

Sheriff Pratt then climbed onto a portable platform and read a statement he’d obviously prepared in advance, thanking the searchers and law enforcement professionals and asking everyone to go home. “I can confirm that we have located the body of a child,” he said. “But until formal identification is carried out, that’s all I can say, folks.”

Lone released Debbie as people started moving around them. “It’s over,” she said. “Let’s leave the experts to do their job.”

“Okay.” Debbie fell in step next to her and they started the long walk back to the parking area.

After a few minutes of silence, Lone asked, “Are you okay, baby?”

Debbie turned her head just enough so that Lone could see tears pouring down her face. “Why do people do these things?” she sobbed. “I don’t understand.”

“Of course, you don’t. How could you?” Lone reached for her and rocked her in a tight embrace.

Waiting for the weeping to subside, she thought about Canada some more. There was extra planning to do now that she had Debbie to take care of. Lone had already set up a second false identity for herself and even had a bank account in Toronto. She would need to do the same for Debbie. It was probably wise to take her across the border ahead of time.

Lone wondered how she was going to explain all that without disclosing sensitive information. It wasn’t as if Debbie would be leaving anything important behind. She wasn’t close with her family and she was in a go-nowhere job. They would pack up the cats and Debbie’s personal effects, and Lone would rent a van. If everything went according to plan, this time next year, they would be sitting on a patio overlooking a pristine wilderness and the FBI Director would be appearing in front of Congress to explain how come no one saw the assassination coming.

Chapter Sixteen

The death of children made no sense. Accidents happened. Lives were snuffed out as if the Fates demanded daily sacrifices and spun a roulette wheel to determine who would make them. Parents paid a terrible price for a moment’s carelessness or distraction, dooming themselves to an eternity of self-blame if they lost their child as a consequence.

Murder was something else. To kill a child was to steal so much future, to destroy so many dreams and hopes, to end innocence in the cruelest way. Every child’s body she saw filled Jude with despair, and the bodies of murdered children corroded her spirit in ways she could not fully comprehend. To weep for them was never enough; she had discovered that a long time ago. Revenge, the capturing of their killers, brought an end of sorts, yet no resolution. Justice was never done.

Jude knew survivors who had gone to executions believing the gnawing at their souls would end once they saw the death grimace of a man who’d killed their loved one. But they still awoke each day to a world haunted by the person their child could have been, by the unborn grandchildren they might have had, of infinite possibilities extinguished. Jude supposed she understood their pain better than most because of Ben.

Her brother had vanished when he was twelve. One day he was there and everything was normal; the next day he was gone and she was evicted from her world, never to return. From that day on, she’d occupied a new and different normality. Over the years, especially when she saw the remains of a child, Jude longed for Ben’s body to be found. At least with the finality of death came the legitimacy of formal grieving. A funeral. A place to go and leave flowers. A name inscribed on stone to wear over time, as she would.

Jude wanted bones to touch. She wanted to see eyes closed forever to this world and tell herself they were open to another, the better place people talked about. The problem with dead children was the utter senselessness of a life given, only to be taken before it could bear fruit.

She lifted the evidence sheet that covered the body of Corban Foley. There was no point fighting it, so she allowed her tears to fall. Soon, anger would come and displace this helplessness. Once more she would focus on the mechanics of the investigation, the goal of seeing a man in handcuffs awaiting the verdict of his peers, as if a child killer had peers among ordinary citizens who led ordinary, honorable lives. But in this moment all she could think about was how cold and alone Corban Foley was. Neatly arranged on the steel gurney, wrapped in the sheet, he looked like a forlorn gray doll.

Strangely, she could almost feel him in her arms, alive and warm, heavy with sleep and trust. She could smell freshly washed hair, milk, and baby skin. These were the earliest smells she could remember, the scent of her baby brother on their mother’s lap. She could still feel the curl of his tiny fingers and see his dark startled eyes, gray-blue like a storm on a lake.

Ben had been small for his age and Jude was tall. The last time she’d held him, she was ten and he’d fallen off his bike. She picked him up and carried him to the nearest patch of grass. It was weird—she’d thought then that it would be the last time she ever carried him, and she was right. His increasing size and boyish dignity meant he never let her baby him again after that day. Then he was gone.

Jude refastened the robe she was wearing and stretched latex gloves over her hands. She lifted a strand of hair from Corban’s right cheek and stared down at the wound it had clung to. There was blotchy bruising and loss of skin below the eye across the cheekbone. Someone had struck the child.

“Ready, Detective?”

Jude heard the swinging doors open, but she didn’t turn around. She had hoped the Montezuma County coroner would assign a pathologist from Durango to conduct the autopsy, but he’d been out at the site of a small plane crash when Corban’s body was discovered, and Sheriff Pratt had called the Grand Junction M.E.’s office for help. They could have sent someone whose voice would not make Jude’s heart beat faster, but instead they sent Mercy.