The red church (5 page)

"What is it?" Littlefield asked.

"The thing that bothers me the most."

If Storie's bothered
... A small chill wended its way up Littlefield's spinal column and settled in the base of his neck.

"No animal tracks," she said.

The sheriffs jaw tightened. So that was what had been bothering him ever since he'd first walked the scene. An animal's claws would have ripped chunks out of the ground, especially if it were attacking.

"Damn," he whispered.

"No tracks means no easy answers." She almost sounded pleased. "There are no other human foot-prints, either."

Storie had cracked a big case last year, when an ex-cop had hauled a body up to the mountains for disposal. Perp was a big goofy guy who went around bragging about how he'd never get caught. Well, Sto-rie set her nose on his trail and nailed him so hard that his lawyers had to recite scripture in the court-room to save him from a lethal injection. The con-viction got statewide coverage, and Storie's picture was in both the local papers.

This looked like it might be another of those high-profile mysteries that, if she solved it, would make her a legitimate candidate for sheriff. If she ever ran against him, she'd have him beat all to hell on looks. Her accent would hurt her some, though.

"Tell me, Sergeant. What do you think did it?" he asked.

"I can honestly say I have no idea, sir." She folded her arms over the camera.

"Any chance that somebody did it with a sharp weapon, without leaving footprints that we could see?"

"The pattern of the wounds seems random at first glance. But what bugs me is the ritualistic nature of the injured areas."

Areas?
Littlefield wanted to remind Storie that those body parts were once near and dear to Boonie Houck. But he only nodded at her to continue.

"Look at the major wounds. First, there's the eyes."

"We haven't found them yet."

"Exactly. That's an inconvenient spot for a ram-paging animal to reach. In any event, it's unlikely that a claw would take both eyes."

"Unless they were shining
,
and somehow attracted the animal's attention. The moon was over half-full last night."

"Okay. Let's go on to the hand. Seems like an ani-mal would have started gnawing at a softer spot."

"Maybe it did."

"That brings us to the fatal wound."

"Now, that's not been determined yet." Littlefield felt the tingle of blood rushing to his cheeks.

"I saw the rip in the front of his pants." She lifted the camera. "I took pictures, remember?"

"Guess so." His tongue felt thick.

"With the loss of that much blood, I'm amazed he survived as long as he did."

"You said the wounds were ritualistic. What's that got to do with his . . . er . . ."

"Penis, Sheriff. You can say it in the company of a woman these days."

"Of course." His face grew warmer with embar-rassment. He looked across the mountains. He would love to be walking a stream right now, flicking a hand-tied fly across the silver currents, the smell of wet stone and rotted loam in his nostrils. Alone. Any-where but here with blood and the red church and Sheila Storie. "So what does it mean?"

"It may mean nothing. Or it may mean we have a deviant personality on the loose." The flash of her eyes gave away her belief in the latter. Or maybe she was only hopeful.

"Is it because we haven't found the . . . other part, either?"

"I don't know yet."

"Think we ought to call in the state boys?" Little-field knew Storie would bristle at turning the case over to the State Bureau of Investigation. She would want a shot first.

"That's your decision, Sheriff."

"I suppose we'll have to wait for the state medical examiner's report. Hoyle's sending him down to Chapel Hill."

"Good."

Littlefield tried to read her expression. But the sun was in her face, so her half-closed eyes didn't give away anything. He knew she thought Perry Hoyle had about as much forensic sophistication as a hog butcher. The whole department was probably a joke to her. Well, she was a flatlander, anyway. "Hoyle doesn't think the wounds were made by a weapon."

"You asked for my opinion, sir."

Littlefield looked up the hill at the church. Sud-denly he felt as if someone had reached an icy hand down his throat and squeezed his heart. His brother Samuel was on the roof of the church, waving and smiling. His dead brother Samuel.

Littlefield blinked, then saw that the illusion was only a mossy patch on the shingles. He sighed. "I'm putting you in charge of the in-vestigation."

Storie almost smiled. "I'll do my best, sir."

Littlefield nodded and stepped over the strings that marked off grids at the scene. He knelt by the toppled monument. "What do you make of this?"

"The boys' footprints lead over here. I'd guess van-dalism. Tipping tombstones is an old favorite. Maybe they were messing around when the subject heard them and tried to crawl out of the weeds."

"Seems like they would have heard Boonie yell-ing." He stopped himself. Boonie wouldn't have called out, at least in nothing more articulate than a groan. Boonie's tongue had been taken, too. Hoyle rescued him from his embarrassment. "We're ready over here, Sheriff," the ME called. Lit-tlefield winced and started to turn.

"I'll handle it, sir," Storie said. "It's my case, re-member? I might see something I missed the first two times."

She was right. Littlefield's shoulders slumped a lit-tle in relief. He hoped Storie hadn't noticed, but she didn't miss much. She had detective's eyes, even if they were easier to look at than look through. "Go ahead."

Littlefield headed across the cemetery and up the hill toward the red church. He glanced at the mark-ers as he passed, some so worn he could barely make out the names. Some were nothing more than stumps of broken granite. Other graves were probably forgotten altogether, just the silent powder of bones under a skin of grass.

The ground was soft under his feet—good moun-tain soil, as black as coal dust. Almost a shame to waste it on a graveyard. But people had to be buried somewhere, and to the dead, maybe the most fertile soil in the world wasn't comfort enough. Maybe his kid brother Samuel had yet to settle into eternal rest. The names on the markers read like a Who's Who history of this end of the county. Potter. Matheson. Absher. Buchanan. McFall. Gregg. More Picketts than you could shake a stick at. And three Littlefields off by themselves.

He knelt by two familiar graves. His mother and father shared a single wide monument. He looked from the gray marble to a smaller marker, which had a bas-relief of a lamb chiseled in its center. Its letters were scarcely worn, and the fingerlike shadows of tree branches chilled the stone. Littlefield read the damning words without moving his lips.

Here Lies Samuel Riley Littlefield. 1968-1979. May God Protect and Keep Him.
His heart burned in his chest and he hurried away, his eyes frantic for a distraction. He stopped by the dogwood. The thing looked like it was dying. But it had looked that way for the last forty years, and every spring it managed to poke a few more blossoms out of the top branches. A memory stirred and crawled from the shadows before he could beat it back.

The red church. Halloween. The night he'd seen the Hung Preacher.

The night Samuel had died.

He shuddered and the memory fell away again, safely buried. The sun was warm on his face. Down the slope, Hoyle and Storie were hauling Boonie's body to the back of the overgrown station wagon that served as the county's nonemergency ambulance.

Littlefield moved away from the tree and put a foot on the bottom of four steps that led into the church foyer. The door was large and made of solid wooden planks. The cracks between the planks were barely distinguishable due to the buildup of paint layers. Over the door was a small strip of colored glass, two deep blue rectangular planes separated b
y
an amber pane. Those had survived the onslaught of juvenile delinquents' rocks.

The sheriff climbed the rest of the steps. The top one was a wider landing, scarred from the tailgate of Lester Matheson's truck. Littlefield examined the thick hinges and the door lock. There was a lift latch in addition to the du
ll
brass handle. Littlefield put his hand on the cool metal.
Wonder if I need a warrant to open it?
he thought.
Naw. Lester won't mind if I have a peek.
There was a small chance that if Boonie had been murdered, some evidence might be hidden inside. Or the door might be locked
,
but he didn't think Lester would bother keeping up with a key just to protect a hundred bales of hay. People didn't steal out in these parts. The thieves and B&E
addicts kept to Barkersville
,
where the rich folks had their sum-mer homes.

Littlefield turned the knob and the catch clicked back into the cylinder. He nudged the latch up with his other hand, and as the door creaked open and the rich dust of hay hit his nostrils, he realized he hadn't set foot inside since shortly after Samuel's fu-neral.

Please, God, just let it be a plain old ordinary murderer. Some drunk who got mad because
Boonie took two swigs before passing the bottle instead of one. A Mexican Christ-mas tree worker
with a grudge. I'll even take a crazy if you got one.

His palms were sweating, the way they had when he was seventeen and he'd first heard the laughter in the belfry.

The door opened onto a short, windowless foyer. A shaft of light pierced the ceiling from the belfry above.

Where the bell rope used to hang.

The bell rang in his memory, a thunderclap of angry bronze, an echo of the night Samuel died. The plank floor creaked as Littlefield crossed the foyer. Golden motes of dust spiraled in the draft. What must it have been like a century ago? The worn wood had endured a hundred thousand crossings. Trembling and red-faced virgin brides with their best dresses dragging on the pine, solemn cousins come to pay their respects to a dear departed, women in bonnets and long swirling skirts gathering for Jubi-lee. Littlefield could almost see the preacher at the steps, shaking the hands of the menfolk, bowing to the women, patting the heads of the children.

The sheriff peered up through the tiny rope hole, an opening barely large enough for a child to scram-ble through. The hollow interior of the bell was full of black shadow. But that would tell him nothing. He returned to scanning the floor for signs of blood.

The foyer opened onto the main sanctuary. The chill crawled up his spine again. He didn't know whether it was caused by childhood legends, or the chance of finding a killer hiding among the bales of hay. For a frantic moment, he almost wished he wore a firearm.

The bales were stacked to each side, forming a crooked aisle down the center of the church sanctuary. Lester had left the altar undisturbed, probably because lifting hay over the railing was too much work. The altar itself was small, the pulpit hardly more than a rectangular crate with a slanted top. A set of six wormy chestnut beams, hand-hewn, crossed the open A-frame overhead. The interior walls were unpainted chestnut as well. In the dim light, the woodwork had a rich, deep brown cast. The bales were packed too tightly against the walls to afford hiding places.

Unless somebody had removed a few bales and made a hollow space inside the stacks. He'd done that in his family's barn, when he wanted to hide out on an autumn day, or when he and his brother played hide-and-seek or army. But few hours could be stolen back then. Crops, livestock, firewood, fence mending—a long list of chores was waiting at six every morning that never got finished before dark. But back then, Littlefield had slept in dreams and not bad memories.

Nothing stirred amid the hay. The church was si-lent
,
as if waiting for a congregation to again fill it with life. Littlefield walked to the dais. The chill deepened even though the air was stuffy. A small wooden cross was attached to the top of the pulpit. Like the cross on the church steeple, it was missing a section of the crosspiece.

Littlefield leaned over the waist-high railing and looked into the corners of the altar. The small vestry off to the side held nothing but bare shelves and cobwebs. He didn't know what he expected to see. Maybe he was just trying to ease his own mind, to reassure himself that old rumors and long-ago strangeness were put to rest. Boonie was dead, and that had nothing to do with the red church or Sam-uel or the Hung Preacher. As he was turning to leave, he noticed a dark stain on the dais floor. It was the kind made by a
spill. Maybe Lester had stored building materials in here once. At any rate, the rust-brown stain was far too old to have been made by whatever had killed Boonie.

But something about it held his attention. The shape seemed familiar. He tilted his head, as if stumped by an inkblot in a Rorschach test. When he realized where he had seen the form before, he drew in a dusty gasp of air.

The dark shape in the belfry, that long-ago Hal-loween.

Littlefield strode back through the church, sud-denly anxious to be in the sunshine. He was going to go with the animal theory for now. If Storie wanted to play her forensic games, that was fine. But he wouldn't allow himself to believe that something masquerading as human had ripped apart good old Boonie Houck. Not in Pickett County. Not on God's ground. Not on his watch.