Close to the Broken Hearted (13 page)

“I think you'll find they ain't so much ghosts as imaginary monsters that are hauntin' you,” Ethan said.

“Same thing.”

“Not really.”

Leah started to get up out of her chair. “Sorry for yellin' at you.”

“It's okay,” Ethan said. “Wouldn't feel like work if you didn't yell at me from time to time. But don't go so fast. Sit down for another minute or two.” Pushing his mug out of the way, he pulled a file folder from a stack of papers he had on the top of his desk while Leah settled back into her chair.

Opening the folder, Ethan pulled out a few pages that were stapled together and flipped through them. “Am I to understand you asked for an autopsy for a
cat
last week?”

Oh Christ,
Leah thought.
Here we go. Now I'm gonna get in trouble for wasting the department's resources.
“Yeah, I did, but I can explain. It was because Miss Sylvie was so—”

Ethan held up his palm again and Leah went quiet. “I'm not askin' you to explain. I just wanted to tell you the results are in. Thought you might like to know what caused the demise of your little kitty.”

Leah tried not to look too surprised at this response. “Okay,” she said. “What was it?”

“Well, first off let me read the note Norman attached to the front of his results here. It says, ‘Thank you for giving me something other than heart attack victims to work on. This was quite refreshing.' ” Ethan looked up at Leah. “I think that man needs to get out more.”

Leah laughed.

Ethan flipped to the next page. “There was no physical signs of death, as you and Chris discerned at the crime scene, so our Mr. Crabtree did a pump of the animal's stomach as well as a toxicology analysis. It turns out your cat ingested common off-the-shelf brodifacoum. In other words, rat poison. What's surprising is the amount of poison Norm found in the animal's system. According to our coroner, there was enough to kill an elephant, or so it says here, although I reckon he may be exaggeratin' a mite.” Ethan looked back up. “Norm figures there should be evidence of the cat bein' sick around the area. Find anythin' like that?”

Leah shook her head. “We searched the property pretty well, too.”

“Any idea where that cat would find that amount of poison around Miss Sylvie's house? He couldn't have gone too far after consumin' it. Norm figures thirty minutes to an hour at most before he'd be dead. Probably sooner.”

Again Leah shook her head. All she could think of was how dangerous it would be for the baby to have rat poison lying around. She hoped Sylvie wasn't that stupid. As far as Leah knew, Sylvie didn't have a rat problem, so why would she have brodifacoum lying around?

“Something about this is ringin' familiar to me,” Leah said.

Ethan leaned forward and started playing with his mug again. “What's that?”

“Remember when Sylvie's ma was found in the barn?”

“Yeah, you investigated her death. Ruled it accidental.”

“I did. With the help of some experts out of Mobile. It wasn't just my call.”

“Right. What's your point?”

“She died from ingestin' brodifacoum, too,” Leah said.

Ethan hesitated. “You're sayin' you reckon this cat's death and the death of Miss Sylvie's ma seven years ago are linked? Please tell me that's not what you're thinkin', because that's crazy talk. Besides, we caught the person behind Mrs. Carson's death. I should say
you
caught him. James Richard Cobbler. Crazier than a shit-house rat, that one. And I know
he's
gone. I watched him die. Up at Holman, in Atmore.”

Leah remembered the look in Cobbler's eyes the last time she saw him on death row before his execution and shivered. That man had no emotion, just a cold, icy stare that pricked the bottom of her backbone and caused an electric shock to wind its way up. “I'm just sayin',” she said, “the whole thing has a familiar ring to it. Coincidence is all.” Leah found herself lost in thought for a moment.

Ethan narrowed his eyes at her. “Coincidence
is
all. And don't you forget that.
Do not
try to link the death of a cat with the murder of someone seven years ago by one of Eli Brown's radical congregation members and turn them both into open murder cases. You'll have this entire department laughed out of town.”

“What do I look like to you, Ethan?”

“It's not what you look like that's got me concerned,” he said. “It's the way your mind works that
I'm
worried 'bout.”

T
he weird coincidence of Sylvie's cat dying from ingesting rat poison and Sylvie's ma going the same way settled itself into Leah's mind in a manner that wouldn't let itself go as Leah got into her car and headed for home. Only Police Chief Montgomery didn't have to worry, she wasn't thinking the cases were linked, but she did start thinking back about the investigation all them years ago when Sylvie's ma died. The court had decided James Richard Cobbler acted on his own volition and Eli Brown had no link to Mrs. Carson's murder. But what if that wasn't true? What if Preacher Eli's role in his land dispute hadn't ended with him going to jail? Everyone just assumed that had put an end to the whole contentious situation, but what if he kept connections with people on the outside and the whole thing had kept going? How much did the police and the courts really know about the land dispute, anyway?

Back when Eli Brown shot little Caleb, Leah's pa, Joe Fowler, had still been on the Alvin police force and he had been the lead on the case. Leah hadn't ever looked over her pa's files, so she didn't really know much about it other than what had been in the news since and local gossip. She had been the investigator for the death of both of Sylvie's parents ten years later, so she knew all about
those
cases, but she'd never pushed the idea that the murder of Sylvie's ma might be linked to the earlier case her pa had handled involving Preacher Eli.

Now she couldn't help but wonder if it was.

So it turned out Ethan Montgomery did know Leah all too well. Her mind liked to make connections, only it wasn't the cat he had to worry about, but the digging up of old bones from the far-flung past. That's where Leah's brain was making links.

She decided it was time to review the old case files her pa had worked on and maybe pay a visit to the records office that was part of the Alvin Courthouse. Between the two of them, she might be able to come up with something pointing its way toward Sylvie Carson maybe not being quite so crazy after all. Because, like it or not, part of Leah was starting to believe the girl's calls weren't all false alarms. There were just too many things going on. Sure, some—probably even most—of her calls into the station were just cases of shadow jumping, but something in Leah's gut told her not to write Sylvie off as fast as everyone else had. Like she'd told herself a hundred times before, her daddy and Ethan had drilled it into Leah's head that she should listen to her gut. It was her biggest asset. And if she was perfectly honest with herself, she actually wasn't that comfortable calling the death of Snowflake accidental. It just seemed so odd that the cat would show up poisoned after all this time when she'd been going in and out of that house since the day Sylvie brought her home. And Ethan had raised a perfectly good question to which Leah didn't have an answer: Where did that cat find so much rat poison, anyway?

One thing being a detective had taught Leah was to not like unanswered questions. They never sat well in her stomach or any other part of her, for that matter.

Checking the clock on her dash, she realized she wouldn't be able to go to the records office until tomorrow. They likely closed at five and it was already half past. She would try to drop by work first thing in the morning even though she wasn't supposed to be on duty tomorrow. After looking through her daddy's old files about Preacher Eli and the Carson family (which she figured would make for some pretty interesting reading), she'd head on over to the courthouse and pay a visit to the records office.

But tonight she was going straight home for a nice relaxing bubble bath.

Or so she thought.

All too often, such thoughts turn out to be too good to be true. This turned out to be one of those times because, right at that instant, she got a call on her radio from the station. It was Chris telling her Miss Sylvie had just called in again with another disturbance. This time, he said, she'd seemed almost as frantic on the phone as she had when she'd found her cat lying dead on her back porch.

“What was she callin' 'bout now?” Leah asked.

“Hell if I know,” Chris said uselessly. “She was so upset, I could barely understand a word that girl was sayin'. I finally just told her you'd be by as soon as you could get there.”

Leah ground her teeth. She hated the fact that she'd become part of the protocol when it came to handling Sylvie. It pissed her off that nobody else would pick up the ball. She even found herself somewhat hoping it
did
turn out that her calls weren't completely benign just so everyone else would feel stupid. But that was a horrible way of thinking. She really didn't want it to turn out that Sylvie was in any actual danger.

“She said somethin' 'bout some door bein' open or somethin', I reckon,” Chris said, after much prodding. “I'm not sure what door, or why it was open.”

“You do know I was on my way home for the night, right?” Leah asked him. “I was off duty a half hour ago.”

There was a long pause, then Chris said, “So you're not gonna show up?”

She wondered if Chris would go if she didn't. If he did, he wouldn't take anything Sylvie said seriously, so there'd be no point in him being there. He'd be as useless as udders on a Brahman bull. “No, Chris, I'll go. My kids can go hungry a little while longer. They're pretty well getting used to it.”

This was a little white lie. Leah had started getting the kids to make their own meals on her workdays almost a year ago. She just figured that was fair. The last thing she ever felt like doing when she got home was cooking. On the odd day, she would break the rule by taking them out for a burger or something when she got home, but, for the most part, on workdays it was everyone for themselves. The rule hadn't worked out quite so bad, other than the fact that Abe seemed to eat a lot more macaroni and cheese than was probably healthy for a twelve-year-old boy to consume.

Leah could almost hear Chris sigh with relief on the other end of the phone. It just annoyed her. For the past month, there'd been really nothing else crime-wise going on in Alvin except Sylvie Carson's calls, and so he'd just sat behind his desk doing nothing while she worked unpaid overtime covering for his inability to be sympathetic.

“Okay, that's great,” he said. “I appreciate ya doin' that. Montgomery said you would.”

Oh
, Leah thought.
That figures. He probably thinks I want to go investigate more of the cat murder scene, too
. “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “Y'all better get me somethin' nice at the office Christmas party this year.”

“We always do, don't we?”

“Chris, last year you got me nothin' and Ethan gave me a bottle of eight-dollar wine. I know hobos who drink better than that.”

“Oh. Well, we'll try to do better this year.”

“You got five months to think 'bout it.”

“So, you're goin' to Miss Sylvie's now?”

“Yes, Chris,” Leah said. “I've already turned my car round and I'm headin' back up Main Street. I'll be passin' the shop in 'bout two minutes. If she calls back, tell her I'll be there in less than ten.”

“You're the best.”

“I know it.”

She hung up her radio, not bothering with the siren. She'd get to Sylvie's quick enough following traffic. Main Street cut an angle to Old Mill Road, making it less than a couple miles to her place.

On either side of Leah's vehicle, the shops along Main Street went by. Some were closing up for the night; others, like the restaurants, were just getting ready for the dinner crowd. Not that anything ever got that crowded in Alvin. Except maybe church.

She'd already gone back past the station. Now she came to a stop behind a Honda that was trying to parallel park in front of PJ Party Pizza. Outside her window were the two most popular stores with local farmers, Superfeed and K's Bait & Tack—both of which were owned by rancher Jacob Tyne. Superfeed was already closed and Pete was taking the sign for K's in from the sidewalk, so it was shutting its doors for the night, too. A broad sassafras tree stood between them, its canopy of gray-green leaves extended from thick brown boughs that touched the sides of either building.

The Honda managed to make it to the curb and Leah continued driving, hoping Sylvie wouldn't be too agitated when she arrived.

She made it up past the courthouse, which pretty much marked the east end of Main Street. Most of the buildings and shops were flanked by the courthouse at this end and the library at the other, although the city had been doing recent development down past the library: mainly a small strip mall called Brookside that Carry and her friends hung out at. It was convenient because before it went in, Leah had to drive all the way into Satsuma to do most of her shopping.

Main Street didn't officially end until you continued past the courthouse and came to Hawk Tail Crossing where the road transformed into an iron bridge that went over the Old Mill River. After the bridge, Main Street became a highway that took you out of Alvin.

Leah drove over the bridge, hearing it rattle beneath her wheels. Under the bridge, the river ran low and slow. There hadn't been much rain lately. Some days, that river could be high and so fast you'd think it was going to wipe out everything in its path.

Right after Hawk Tail Crossing was the turn for Old Mill Road that led the short distance north up to Sylvie's place. Nobody lived between the turnoff and Sylvie's house—the area was just filled with forest on either side of the road. Mostly it was tall old oaks that cast the road in shadow. But among the oaks were lots of birch and maple, plus the odd elm and cedar. The woods broke tightly against the road, and if you stared into that dense forest you saw the trees quickly constricted and became closed very fast. They became full of thick, dark trunks wrapped with lichen. The boughs of most of the trees were covered in Spanish moss that hung like wild demon hair. Strangler fig and ivy wrapped around the bases of trees, and, in places, climbed up near the tops, choking everything off.

Leah didn't think the state of the woods probably helped much with Sylvie's mind—the way she was—living way out here by herself with just the baby to keep her company. Those woods conjured up all sorts of nightmarish images in Leah's mind even in the afternoon daylight. Once the sun went down, if you weren't careful, your brain could get away on you about it, Leah was sure.

 

The baby was lying in its bassinet, sound asleep when Leah arrived. She was glad to see that. She figured whatever emotional state Sylvie was in had to rub off on the child in some way, so if that baby was sleeping, things couldn't be that bad.

But she soon reassessed this idea. Sylvie seemed awfully upset as she escorted Leah outside to the backyard to show her what she found.

“Someone's been out here again,” Sylvie said.

“Now what's happened?”

“Look.”

Beneath Sylvie's house was a cellar, although to call it a cellar was really giving it more credit than it deserved. It was more like a crawl space. There couldn't have been more than two feet of room between the ground and the floor of the house.

It was enclosed, and to access it you had to enter through two tiny wooden doors that were made of what looked like tongue-and-groove cedar boards. They were constructed at an angle set between concrete sides. The doors weren't very large, maybe a little more than three-feet square each. A wooden block was attached to the center front of one door that swiveled through a notch built into the frame of the other to keep them closed. There was no other lock.

The left one was wide open. The right one (the one with the swivel-block attached to it) was closed.

“This is how I found 'em,” Sylvie said shakily.

“Open, like this?” Leah asked.

Sylvie just nodded her head.

“Sylvie,” Leah said. “This little piece of wood ain't much holdin' these shut. The wind could've blown this open, or even an animal could've swiveled that block of wood loose.” Leah scanned the backyard, wondering where the brodifacoum that killed Snowflake might have come from. She also had her eyes out for any indication of where the cat may have gotten sick that she and Chris might've missed. “It's been pretty windy lately. I don't think this is any indication that anyone's been in your backyard.”

Leah could hear the panic rise in Sylvie's voice. “They ain't never blown open before. Besides, that little piece of wood would've had to blow around off the other door. I don't think that's possible, do you? I think someone's been here.”

Squatting down, Leah closed the open door and swiveled the block back into place. It was a pretty tight fit, she had to admit to herself. She wasn't about to say that to Sylvie. “Anythin's possible,” she said instead. “I don't think anyone's been in your backyard. It's either the wind or some other simple explanation. Maybe you left it not quite closed all the way and all it took was a bit of wind to do the rest?”

“I ain't never been in that cellar in my life,” Sylvie said adamantly. “I'm scared to death of what might be down there.”

Leah looked up at her. “What you mean?”

“I dunno. It's just so . . . dark.”

“Sylvie, there ain't nothin' in your crawl space 'cept maybe some mud.” She opened the door back up again, took her pocket flashlight from her small-item pack, and shined it around inside the immediate area. It had a dirt floor that was pretty much level. She couldn't see anything other than dirt going back as far as her flashlight would allow her to see. “There's nothin' in here.” She really should've probably gone under the house and taken a proper look, but truth be told, Leah had two fears in this life that she didn't tell nobody about. One of 'em happened to involve being stuck in tight, enclosed, dark spaces and the other was an irrational fear of spiders. Looking into this crawl space, even from outside, Leah was quite sure it fit both criteria all too well. It was dark and confining and probably the home of more than one spider. She didn't even like the view from the cellar doors. It gave her the creeps. She thought about Sylvie.
We all have our own monsters. Some of us just hide them better than others.