Maiden Rock (6 page)

And that’s when she saw the fawn-colored mound under a big oak.

At first she thought it was a deer that had been hit by a car and clambered this far up the bluff before it was felled by its injuries.

Then Claire remembered Meg’s Indian costume, that same fawn color. Her heart froze. Her breath pulled deep into her body. She didn’t want to go into the forest to find out what it was.

And then it was the only thing she wanted to do. Claire dove into the bushes, pushed through the low-hanging tree branches. Her pants got snagged by brambles, her feet slipped on the wet leaves. She scrambled frantically forward.

As she got closer, she could see it wasn’t a deer. No matter how hard she tried to make it something else, it was clearly a person.

Claire pulled up for a second when she could make out the fringe on the Indian costume. She heard a cry as she ran foward and realized it came out of her mouth.

***

He had left Davy locked in his room. The thought hit Jared like a landslide. The little boy was trapped in the burning trailer. The front of the trailer was burning, flames licking along the top edge like red frosting on a white cake.

If Letty had gone in after him, she wouldn’t know Jared had locked the door. It wasn’t an easy latch to undo. He waited to see if she’d emerge, but she didn’t come out again.

He ran to the door of the trailer, shouting Letty’s name. He tried to peer inside the doorway, but the smoke filled his eyes and he couldn’t see. He couldn’t even keep his eyes open. Coughing in the burning air, he backed up, gasping.

As Jared turned away from the trailer to catch his breath, he saw Hitch mounting his motorcycle. Jared thought of running after him, but then Hitch gunned the bike, kicking up gravel, and shot down the driveway.

Jared had to do something to help Davy, but he couldn’t make himself go back into that inferno. Davy’s room was on the other side of the trailer. Maybe he could get him out that way.

Jared ran around to the back of the trailer. He could tell which window was Davy’s because it had a picture of an airplane stuck to it. He had given that to Davy for his birthday. The window was too high for him to reach, but there was an old wheelbarrow leaning against the trailer with a flat tire. He pushed that over to the window and stood on it. The wheelbarrow wobbled, then tipped him out.

Wedging the wheelbarrow more firmly against the side of the trailer, he climbed back into it, balancing himself. He could see into Davy’s room, but couldn’t see the little boy. Maybe the kid was hiding under the bed. He had done that sometimes when he was staying at Jared’s house. Davy claimed it made him feel safer. Jared thought it was weird at the time. How scary does your life have to be for the shadows under the bed to be welcoming?

Jared pounded on the frame of the window, pushing inward in the middle of the glass. The pane cracked but didn’t break.

Jared pounded harder. Cheap-ass construction, the window snapped in the middle, then pushed right in, coming off its track. It crashed to the floor and shattered.

A moment later, a head popped out from under the bed. Davy crawled out and stared up at Jared.

***

Rich got out of his car. He heard a shriek coming from below the bluff line, past the Maiden Rock. He had heard such a noise come out of a rabbit carried off by a hawk—a high-pitched keening sound.

Claire’s squad car was parked next to the Jorgenson’s car. He recognized their old Taurus from seeing it on the road for so many years. The car was just barely held together by duct tape.

He checked both vehicles quickly, then jogged to the edge of the bluff. He knew there was a path that went down to the road, but he had never explored it. On the north side of the rock, a thick wall of brambles and gooseberries looked impenetrable. He checked the other side of the Maiden Rock and just when he was about to give up, he saw an opening, a slight break in the bushes at the edge of the clearing. As he got closer, he saw it was the beginning of a path down the bluff.

He jumped down onto the dirt path and stood still for a few moments, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. Again, he thought he heard something move below him, toward the river.

Cupping his hands around his mouth, he tilted his head back and yelled, “Claire, where are you?”

His voice sounded like a clap off the front of the limestone bluff and rolled down the hillside.

A whistle sailed up to him. He knew it was Claire. One of the skills she was most proud of, that she had learned at the police academy, was how to do a two-fingered whistle that carried miles.

He trotted down the dirt path, watching for roots and branches that might trip him up. As he came around the bottom

of the limestone outcropping that was the Maiden Rock, he saw someone running up the path.

Claire charged right into him, burrowing her head into his chest, and saying, “It’s not her.”

“Who’s not her?”

“It’s not Meg. I thought it was.” She lifted her face up to his and he could see she was fighting tears and losing. “What’d you find?”

“I thought it was a deer at first. I didn’t want you to see her until I told you. It’s not Meg. It’s Krista.”

He felt the air explode out of his body and wanted to sit down, but Claire was pulling him down the path with her.

“Is she all right?”

Claire stopped, shook her dark hair, and stifled another sob. “No, she’s not all right. Rich, I think she broke her neck.”

“She’s dead?” He couldn’t believe he was asking that question.

Claire nodded. “Yes. I think she’s been dead for a while. I checked her out. Nothing. No pulse, no hope. I think rigor is setting in already. Probably because of the cold.”

They ran together until she pulled him off the path and he followed her through the forest. He could make out a light mound, like a pile of straw on the forest floor. And then he was standing over the girl.

Krista Jorgenson. Sixteen years old. Her head bent at an odd angle. Her hands outstretched. Long blond hair. Eyes slitted open. Not a bruise on her as far as he could tell. But there was no question that she was dead and that it had happened a while ago. Something about the silence that hovered around her said her life force was long gone.

Rich looked up. The trajectory was right. This might be where she would have landed if she jumped from the Maiden Rock. But he didn’t think this is where she would have landed if she had simply fallen. It was hard to tell and he hated to think that she had jumped. However, it would explain what they were seeing.

Krista was dressed in an Indian costume that looked a lot like the one that Meg had worn.

As if she had read his mind, Claire looked at him and said, “Meg didn’t tell me they both dressed like Indians.”

“So where is Meg?” Rich asked.

W
isps of smoke were starting to leak under the edge of the door. Jared leaned over as far as he could into the room. He didn’t want to climb through the window; there wasn’t enough time. He needed to get the kid out of there pronto. “Davy, come here,” Jared commanded. The little boy had crawled out from beneath the bed. He looked over at Jared and cowered.

“Davy,” Jared yelled and stretched down his arms into the room, hoping to lure the boy within reach. Davy stood still, too scared to move. Jared had to make him move. The fire would bust through the door any second. What could he say to get him to come to him?

“Piggyback,” Jared yelled. It was a game they played. “Come on, buddy, piggyback time.”

Davy responded to the word and came running to him.

Jared’s arms tightened around the boy. The kid was so light he hardly weighed anything. He lifted him up and out the window. Then they both fell back, off the wheelbarrow, and landed on the ground.

Jared knew they needed to get away from the trailer. He scrambled to his feet and pulled Davy with him. They ran around the side of the trailer and out into the yard, away from the heat of the blaze.

No sign of Letty. The trailer was burning brightly now, flames licked at the underside of the trees. There was no way he could go back in to the trailer to find her. She might have come out of the trailer while Jared was around the back, but he had a bad feeling about Letty.

Jared kept Davy’s hand in his and walked the little boy to his car. Davy climbed into the passenger side as Jared started the car.

In the rear view mirror, he saw the whole trailer burst into flames. It blew up in one big blast, black smoke and yellow flames erupting. He hoped Letty wasn’t in there. He wondered what she had run back in the trailer to get—her boy or some taste of the meth they were making.

It was time to go home. His mom would know what to do.

***

“Easier to take her down to the road,” Todd Morgan, an EMT, said to Claire. He wore a flannel shirt, jeans and a red plaid cap.

They were standing on the path about ten feet from Krista Jorgenson’s body. In an earlier phone consultation, Claire and Sheriff Talbert had decided that the death should be treated as

a crime. So deputies were taking photos and scouring the area for any traces of what had happened.

Claire knew the EMTs wanted to remove the body and go home. It was a Saturday. Many of them had chores to do. “It doesn’t matter which way you take her. But we’re not ready to let go of the body. We’ve still got work to do here. It might be a couple more hours.”

“The ambulance is parked in the wayside rest. We’ll bring up the stretcher and take her down that way.”

Claire wondered if he was even listening. “Let’s let Billy finish taking photos before we think of moving her.”

“Mind if I smoke?”

She looked around the woods. “Don’t think it’s against the law to smoke outside yet.”

He lit up a cigarette and carefully blew smoke away from her. “What do you think happened here?”

“Too soon to say.”

“She jump?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to guess.” She felt like punching the nice, friendly EMT. He was musing on what might have caused the death of a teenaged girl. Claire was desperate to find her own daughter alive. She hated to think what might have happened to Krista.

But Claire had wondered too. As soon as another deputy had arrived, she had climbed back up the path and examined the Maiden Rock carefully.

The early morning sun had been full upon the rough golden limestone surface which was pockmarked with tufts of grass and dandelions. She walked over every inch of its surface, bent so that her face was close to the ground. There had been nothing to notice, not a thread, no blade of grass

broken, not a scrape mark. Yet Claire was certain that Krista had been up on that rock last night and somehow had sailed off of it. She wondered if Meg had been there with her.

Meg. She could hardly stand to think about her daughter. She was staying with Krista’s body until the Chief Deputy Sheriff showed up, and then she was going to join in the hunt for her daughter and Curt Olsen. Rich had gone off with two deputies to scout the woods close by the Maiden Rock. Two other deputies were up top on the bluff, going door to door, talking to farmers, searching their fields and farm roads.

Claire felt tied to her useless vigil over Krista, guarding her when she was already gone.

Up the path she saw Chief Deputy Sheriff Steward Swanson cautiously descending. He walked lightly for all the weight he was carrying, but his mouth was open and he was breathing heavily. His color was poor, had been for some time. Last thing she needed was him to get in trouble out in the woods.

“Claire,” he nodded, glancing toward the crime scene. The photographer was finishing up his photos and two deputies were going over the scene.

“Stewy,” she responded.

He looked right at her. “Terrible thing.”

“Yes.”

“Your girl?”

“We don’t know where she is yet.”

He shook his head and lowered his eyes. “How can we protect these kids?”

“I guess, we can’t always.”

“Nope, I guess not. What’d you think happened here?”

“I’m not ready to guess.”

Stewy looked back up the path, then higher to the Maiden Rock. “You know in the poem the Indian maiden lands in the river.”

“The poem?”

“The poem about Winona jumping from the rock. We learned it in school when we were kids. We had to memorize it. But I always wondered about that—how could she land in the river? It never made sense. I knew the river was too far away unless she could fly.”

Claire had to cut short his school reverie. “I need to go tell the family.”

“Really?” Stewy stepped closer to Claire. “Are you sure you want to do it?”

“I feel like I should do it.” Claire held back tears. There was no way she was going to cry in front of the Deputy Sheriff.

“It’s not your job. But you certainly can take it on. No one better.”

“Thanks, sir.”

Again he nodded toward the crime scene. “You finding anything here?”

“Nothing by the body, nothing up top. It’s like she fell out of the sky.”

***

The first thing Meg saw when she opened her eyes was an eye looking back at her. Then she smelled him. His own scent

of bark and salt. She had come to know it well and thought she would be able to recognize it anywhere.

She sat up in the car and pushed back her hair. “What’re you doing?”

Curt laughed. “Just watching you sleep.”

“Interesting?”

“Fascinating.”

“I do it every night. I’m really good at it.” “Tell me more.”

Then his face got closer and he kissed her gently on the lips. She felt sore there. Sore from kissing. She didn’t know you could overuse those muscles. But they had done a lot of kissing last night.

“What time is it?”

The sun’s up.”

She looked at her watch and was shocked. “I need to get to the Jorgenson’s. I don’t think Krista will be up yet, but I don’t want them to worry.”

“How’re you going to get into the house without her parents seeing you?”

“There’s a secret way. Krista showed me. You can lift the screen off her window and climb in.” “Do you think she’ll still be mad?”