Roots of Murder (14 page)

It had become one of the covenants of their relationship, Nell often made the first move, but Thom rarely said no. She was safe being bold and showing her desire. It was a secret they kept from the world. Out there, she was practical, mundane; he was the talker, the social person. To see them together, few people might guess how they would change behind closed doors. Thom, leaving aside the burden of leading, allowing Nell to change from mundane to wanton, a woman who took her passion. It was a comfort and release for both of them, this reversal of roles; it increased the possibilities of who they could be.

Like that night, with Nell changing from soft cuddling to hard desire. Thom's response had been quick, a testimony to Nell's experience of his body. She alternated light teasing touches with sudden hard strokes until she was ready. Then she slid back up his body, straddling and slowly lowering herself onto him. Again, the reaction she wanted and anticipated. Thom gasped as her weight lowered and his hips began a hard rocking motion, his hands pushing under her
T-shirt
to find her breasts.

His explosion came quickly. He wrapped his arms around Nell in the fierce, possessive way he often did after they made love, as if to say he would never let her go. Remembering, she knew it would be one of the things she would miss most desperately, the tightness, the feeling of forever, in his arms.

He had murmured a soft apology, then confessed that instead of reading the magazine, he had been watching her undress, lingering on her breasts as she removed her bra. “They're quite lovely and I'm the only guy that gets to have my way with them,” he had whispered.

After another deep breath he said, “Roll over, woman, I've got something important to take care of.” He was always enough of a gentleman to make sure her pleasure equaled his. Like her, he was familiar with her body, knew just where to kiss and touch to take her both slowly, as if time were nothing and this moment was to be stayed in as long as possible, and inexorably over the edge.

Again, his arms wrapped around her, this time added to by his weight on top of her, another moment of the fleeting sense of forever. Then he had softly kissed and caressed her until she noticed that he had become aroused again. Sometimes once was enough, but other times, like a delicious gift, they just kept going.

Nell couldn't remember if they said anything. She knew she had spread her legs wide, opening herself to him. She had wanted it as much as he did. She remembered this second time had followed the usual pattern for them. He was slower and she, as if their first love making had primed her body, responded more quickly, holding him tightly, even digging her nails into his back, passionately kissing his neck, his face, his mouth, her hips thrusting, urging him on. Her orgasm had come first, her gasping and writhing had triggered his. Then they had lain together for a long time, not talking, just holding each other.

The bedroom suddenly became unbearably lonely, everything still here, still in place, only Thom missing, irrevocably gone. Nell grabbed a pillow and held it over her face, to muffle the moaning sob she couldn't contain.

Then she flung herself across the bed, face down, still hiding the sobs in the pillow. They racked through her body, the shudders of grief replacing the remembered shudders of passion.

Finally the tears subsided, and the anguish settled into a rage. A rage at herself for being weak and sneaking drinks to get through the night—and knowing she might easily do it again tomorrow. A rage at the absurd randomness that had torn apart her life. Just a few seconds would have made all the difference. To that rage, she added a fury that J.J. and his brothers would try anything, including attack her son, to avoid suffering consequences from his drunken stupidity. Another rage piled on that, at the murderers who had callously left three bodies hidden in the woods, men who had escaped justice. Those rages blended.

Nell slowly sat up. She again caught a flash of her face reflected in the dark glass of a window. It was still pale,
ghost-like
. But even the wavering image reflected the fury, the grim set of her lips, the furrow at her brow.

They might win, Nell thought, but it will be a fight.

She got up to wash her face, to dry away the tears and leave only the anger.

eight

Josh insisted on going
to school, even hurrying Lizzie so there was time to get his bike. Nell had to rush Josh through his inspection but allowed him to lock his bike in the bike rack at school. She would pick him up in the afternoon, but this way he could take more time with it at lunch. The bruises and scrape looked ugly, but Josh seemed okay, even oddly proud of his injuries, as if they were proof he could take it. With a final reminder she would be by to pick them up right after school, Nell headed for the office of the Crier.

As usual on school mornings, she was the first one there. But unlike usual, she locked the door behind her.

She had made her decision last night. The front page of this week's paper would be about the bones left in the woods. She used the quiet time to work on a first draft. She wanted to call Kate and get the final report on the dig but felt it was too early for long, probing questions. She would also call the morgue and the sheriff's office. They would adhere to harsh morning hours, but she wanted to have Kate's information before calling them. The more she knew, the more she would know to ask.

A little before nine, Nell heard the first set of keys in the lock. She got up and looked out of her office, both to see who it was and to let them know she was here.

“Oh! You startled me,” Ina Claire said as she noticed Nell. Part of the startle might have been having the boss catch her with a half-
eaten doughnut in hand.

“I'm sorry,” Nell said. “I got here early and didn't want to be alone in the office with an unlocked door.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” Ina Claire said, not commenting on it being a significant change. She moved away from the door just as both Dolan and Pam came through it, the doughnut hastily wrapped in a napkin and stuffed in her purse.

Nell started to retreat to her office but decided to tell her staff about Josh. She wanted her outrage shared, but also to warn them. Someone might attack the paper.

“I have some disturbing news to report,” she said, wishing she didn't sound so stiff. “Last evening someone threw a broom handle into the spokes of Josh's bicycle, causing him to wreck. They shouted that it was a message for me. I suspect the Jones brothers are behind it, but it could be related to the story about the skeletons in the woods.”

For a moment, there was silence. Then Dolan said, as if he were the group's voice, “Attacked Josh? That's outrageous! Is he okay?”

“He's okay, a bit bruised and scraped up, but okay,” Nell answered.

“You think they might come here?” Dolan asked, clearly seeing where Nell's thoughts were going.

“It's possible,” Nell said. “But they might be too cowardly to do anything during the day and when they don't vastly outnumber their target.”

“I swear I'm going to bring my daddy's ten gauge and keep it at my desk,” Pam muttered.

Dolan managed to say “Only if you promise not to shoot any of us with it” before Nell launched into a serious no guns speech. Thom would have easily understood that Pam wasn't really going to bring a shotgun to the office; why couldn't she? Because we don't know each other well enough, Nell realized. I'm still Thom's wife, they're still Thom's employees, and we haven't gotten to Nell McGraw and her employees.

“Well, then Ina Claire is going to have to give me one of her wicked hat pins,” Pam said.

“I'll even give Dolan one, if he wants,” Ina Claire rejoined.

“I know it's hard to think something might happen in this perfect little town,” Nell said, “but until this settles down, if you're here alone, lock the front door. Don't go by yourself to the parking lot, go in pairs. They were driving a red, dusty truck, so be on the lookout for that.” She wondered if she should mention that the law might not be on their side. But she didn't know how to say it and make it credible.

“You've told the sheriff?” Ina Claire asked.

Nell noticed that she didn't mention Whiz Brown. “No, not yet. I did report it at the police station. One of the young officers said he would look into it.”

There seemed to be an unspoken agreement the chief was useless. Nell wondered if it was just his
well-known
general lassitude or if there was some undercurrent she didn't know about.

Jacko came in then. “I've got a great tip from someone I know at the morgue! Those three skeletons from the woods? Every one of them was murdered.”

Nell recognized the excitement in his voice. It was the lure of the story, although it could easily be seen as excitement at the mayhem and misfortune of others.

“Good work. How'd you get that?” Nell asked. “Anything on the record?”

“Just a friend of a friend,” Jacko said. “Doesn't want her name out. Not on the record yet. But the sheriff should have something late this afternoon. Right after deadline,” he added.

“Damn,” Nell said softly, although it wasn't surprising. She wondered if it was just the sheriff's usual “don't upset the people” mode or if there was more in his burying the story after her deadline and into the weekend. “I can get something from the site people; there were enough grad students around there that someone can talk. Okay, do a quick outline of the stuff from the morgue, use it to call the sheriff's office and ask some questions. I've got a rough of the story and I'll incorporate whatever you can add to it. I'll query the people who were working the site. Jacko, do a quick and dirty, because I need you to make a photo list from the pictures I took at the site.”

“On my way,” he said as he spun into his desk and grabbed the phone.

To the rest of the office, Nell said, “We're going to put the story of the skeletons on the front page. It may ruffle a few feathers. These people were murdered. Their bodies were hidden on land that belonged to Hubert Pickings' family at the time they were killed.”

“A few feathers?” Dolan said. “Kill the whole damn bird.” But he had a grin on his face, as if saying full speed ahead. “Ina, give me your cooking column to look over, so our
Editor-in
-Chief can do the big story.”

Nell nodded thanks and went back to her office. Ina Claire was a great cook but couldn't write her way out of a mixing bowl. She seemed to feel no umbrage at how rewritten she always was, took it as one of the rhythms of the paper. The task usually fell to Nell, including translating Ina Claire's dollops and dashes into useful measurements. It was very kind of Dolan, who tended to hold to traditional male spheres, to take on that task. Perhaps he also knew a paper without Ina Claire's cooking column would get more that its usual share of phone calls.

She now judged it late enough in the morning to call Kate Ryan. “Kate, this is Nell McGraw,” she said as the phone was picked up on the first ring.

“Nell. How's Josh? Is he okay?”

Nell felt a prick of guilt. She hadn't really thought of Josh since dropping him off safely at school this morning. She'd left Kate worried at the dig. Nell veered close to venal sin in thinking she could have called Kate at the crack of dawn on the pretext of telling her Josh was okay. “Nothing was broken, thank goodness. Some ugly scrapes and bruises. But he insisted on going off to school today. So, all's well that ends well.”

“If it's ended,” Kate said.

Nell was both grateful and annoyed that Kate went beyond the polite veneer. “I don't like people attacking my children,” she said, a hard rage suddenly in her voice. “He's okay now. I need to keep him okay.”

“Any leads on who did it?”

“Probably the Jones boys to protest J.J. being in jail. Fucking assholes.” She was finally able to put those words to use.

“Fucking slimeball assholes,” Kate seconded. “Any chance it has something to do with what we pulled out of the ground?”

“Maybe,” Nell admitted uneasily. “But why me? I'm not the expert who proves these people were murdered.”

“But you're the one who will report it. Ellen is essentially working for the sheriff's department. She writes a report and gives it to them. They can bury it, if they choose. The only person who can put it on the front page is you.”

“Maybe. But I can only put it on the front page of the
Pelican Bay Crier
. It won't take much for a story like this to break big. One leak from one grad student and it's all over the wire. They'd need to shut up a lot more people than me.”

“True. But they may not be smart enough to think of that.”

“That's a pleasant thought,” Nell said.

“I'll help look after Josh. He can always hang out at the bike shop.”

“Thanks, Kate. I do appreciate it. Be warned I'll probably take you up on that. And I might have to include Lizzie.”

“The offer stands.”

“What can you tell me about the bones? I'll quote you only as a source close to the investigation and not use your name,” Nell said.

“I'll be glad to answer questions, but Ellen is here and she might do a better job,” Kate said. Then, as if she needed to explain: “Most of the students drove back, but the morgue let us have a space to work, so Ellen spent the night here.” Kate added, “On the couch.”

As Kate went to get her, Nell considered how Ellen had struck her as a
no-nonsense
, practical woman; no makeup, her hair short. She was either the working mother of three children or a lesbian. Nell wondered if Kate's last remark was aimed at the latter supposition. Then she wondered if she was overanalyzing.

“So I get to be the anonymous source?” Ellen came on the phone.

Nell stopped wondering about Ellen's sexuality. For the questions she wanted answered, it didn't matter. “Unless you'd like to go on the record.”

“Let me hide behind the cloak of anonymity. They'll know you talked to me, but I'd prefer to be able to act like I played by the rules.”

“We go to press this afternoon,” Nell explained. “The paper will be on everyone's doorstep tomorrow morning. I plan to make this the front page story.”

“Okay, here's your scoop. There were three bodies, buried on top of each other, so whoever did this only had to dig one grave. Lazy bastards, but it made our work easier.”

“How sure can you be that it was the only grave?” Nell cut in.

“Did we stumble onto a killing field? I doubt it. I had the grad students check out the area for other possible burials. Without burial vaults or coffins, the ground will usually sink in as the body decomposes. Especially three bodies. The tree probably covered up the resulting depression. I didn't see anything that made me suspect others had been buried there, but that's at best an educated guess. They were in the ground a long time and that obscures things.”

“Okay, so tell me what you did find.”

“Three bodies, all likely murdered. One was male, two were female. The male was the one with chains on his wrists and he was shot in the base of the skull. We found a bullet; it was a .22. They often don't have the velocity to exit the skull. That's probably what killed him, although it may have taken awhile. Both his legs were also broken.”

“Damn,” Nell muttered.

“Yeah, damn,” Ellen echoed. “Usually a bullet to the back of the head is about as kind and gentle a murder as you can get, but I think we can rule that out. One of the women was strangled; we managed to find the fractured hyoid bone, which is a small bone in the throat that's usually the
tell-tale
sign of strangulation. The other woman … ”

She paused long enough for Nell to prompt her. “The other woman?”

“Not quite sure how she died. Her pelvis was fractured. That sometimes happens in cases of violent sexual assault. But … by this point there's not enough evidence to prove that one way or another. Just a guess, a feeling, really on my part.”

“What's your feeling from?”

“The other two were
African-American
. She was Caucasian. A lot of this is just … well, instinct, or my bias or whatever. Clearly these three people were together and forty years ago, white women didn't go anywhere with black men. They killed him. And punished her.”

“By violently raping her.”

“Or assaulting her in the groin area, maybe repeated kicking, a baseball bat.”

“Gang rape,” Nell said. “You think there was more than one murderer?”

“Again, just guessing. But yes, probably a lynch mob.”

“And no one talked,” Nell said harshly.

“Oh, I'm sure they talked, just not to anyone who would have or could have done anything about it. They may well have parties where they bragged about what they did. Like those men who bombed the church in Birmingham. That was some of the strongest evidence against them, the people they bragged to.”

They were both silent, and then Ellen continued. “They were all fairly young, early to
mid-twenties
at most. Between the coins found in the site, the age of the tree, and the characteristics of the bones, I'd say they were killed about forty to sixty years ago, call it fifty. But like most things, that's just an educated guess. For this climate and soil conditions, they had to be in the ground at least ten years.”

“Any clue who they were?”

“Three people who died at an early age. Other than that, no, not a clue. Someone had to miss them.”

“It'll take research to find out. Going through paper archives can be
time-consuming
work. And after fifty years, even those might be hard to find,” Nell said. “It's possible they were brought here from somewhere else. That whatever dusty file holds the key to their identity is hundreds or even thousands of miles from here.”

“Think we'll find out who they are?”

“I'll do my damnedest,” Nell replied. “People leave trails. Three young people didn't just disappear. Someone reported them missing. Perhaps someone still misses them.”