Deep Down (I) (13 page)

“Pay me no mind. I just heard Pearl fussing, that’s all,” she said and hurried out.

Jessie dropped back on her pillow, blinking back tears that speckled her face and tracked down into her hairline and ears. She shouldn’t have been carrying on so when Cassie, too, needed her sleep, but she was sure Pearl hadn’t been fussing. Still, that was the thing about mothers: they could tell when their kids needed them before they even called.

She rolled onto her side and curled up in a fetal position. She needed her mother so bad now, so bad, but she was on her own.

Drew was surprised Jess looked as good as she did—she emanated an angry calm—when he picked her up the next morning at Cassie’s. He told Cassie they knew nothing yet, and they waved to her as they pulled away. But when he looked at Jess this close, he saw her eyes were blood
shot from crying or lack of sleep. He hadn’t been to bed last night, but she said she had.

“Really? Nothing yet from the coroner?” she asked as she fastened her seatbelt.

“The autopsy itself will be done this morning, but Clayton Merriman did some photos of the external cuts on her.”

“But—those cuts didn’t cause all that blood in her hair, did they? I was hoping—praying, she was already dead of a broken neck when she was cut. But dead people don’t bleed.”

Her knowledge surprised him. Most people who had seen TV or the movies or even Italian operas thought corpses bled dramatically all over the place. He turned to look at her, then immediately back to his driving.

“It looked like her neck was broken,” he said, “but that wouldn’t cause the bleeding either. On first examination, Merriman said she’d evidently been struck hard on the back of the head, some sort of skull fracture.”

Jessie sucked in a quick breath and gripped her hands tightly together.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You wanted the truth, so—”

“It isn’t that. For one second, it was as if I saw and felt it—but not from afar. It was as if, as if…I don’t know. As if I were going to relive that hallucination I had in Hong Kong I told you about. That feeling I had to run, run, because someone’s chasing me. But I think I was just reliving the terror I felt last night when I thought someone was chasing me in the woods and it turned out to be Tyler Finch.”

“Jess, I don’t go much for the ESP, psychic stuff, but I know some pretty smart people do. Maybe when you get this flashback feeling, you should go with it, not fight it. Maybe it’s as simple as something you’ve buried in your
relationship with your mother that might give us some insight into who would hurt her.”

She turned to face him. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not even sure. Maybe she said something about Vern or Seth or someone else in passing to you that will give us a clue about a motive. Hell, I don’t know.”

To his dismay she reached for the brown envelope he had stuck between his seat and the central console. “Are they here?” she asked. “The initial coroner’s photos? The scratches on her are etched in my brain, but a closer look—”

“Jess, other than examining your own memories, you are not on this case!” he insisted, seizing her wrist with his right hand to stop her from seeing the photos. “Besides, they’re hard to look at.”

“They can’t be worse than finding her like that, or was she cut places other than her face?”

“No.”

“Was she assaulted—raped?”

He was shocked she sounded so matter-of-fact and that she was thinking clearly and like a police officer or investigator. “They don’t think so,” he told her, “but today’s autopsy will tell.”

“I’m going to see her body later anyway, Drew. I can do this. I’m a trained scientist, which is more than I can say for our Lowe County coroner, I don’t care how many dead bodies he’s seen. I can look at facts and be objective. And I am on this case—not officially, I know. But don’t think I won’t be looking at everyone at the wake and the funeral. Don’t think I don’t mean to keep an eye on Vern Tarver. And I’m not putting the house up for sale—not yet, anyway. I’m going to bring some lab work here and ask Vern if he’ll hire me at the Fur and Sang Trader.”

He heaved a huge sigh and loosed her wrist so she could look at the photos. It surprised him how happy he was that she intended to stay for a while, despite the fact he was afraid she’d get in the way of the investigation. Worse, that she’d get hurt. He wouldn’t mind her uncovering some inside information on Vern, but no way was he going to let her be bait to flush out whatever human animal had killed her mother.

And then, of course, there was the wild card possibility that this was a random slaying by some lunatic, who had just stumbled on a lone woman in the woods.

The envelope crinkled loudly as Jess pulled the photos out. “Did Tyler take these?” she asked.

“No, the coroner at the morgue. You okay?” he asked, glancing away from the road at her. She had gone pale and bit her lower lip. “Do I need to stop the car?”

“Neither of us is stopping until we find out who did this,” she said, her voice strong and color coming back into her cheeks. “Maybe the killer wants us to think these claw marks are from a bear. You know that necklace Seth wears around his neck? What if those claws match this?”

“I’ve thought of that, and, no, you’re not coming with me to question him. You stay put at home.”

“I’m going to phone the funeral home in Highboro and then drive in to meet with them and choose a casket. I’d ask Cassie to go with me but Pearl’s still feeling nauseous. Are you going to show Seth these?” she asked, evidently unwilling to be distracted by anything. She tapped a finger on the top photo, then shuffled through them a second time. “The cuts look like the exact pattern of the sang berries laid out at the three sites.”

“If I have to show them to Seth, I will. I’m not sure how that will go.”

“This all points to him so far, but I don’t think he’d hurt her.”

“I agree, because he’d so obviously be pointing at himself if he left all those clues, especially that bear face at the last sang site. But I have to start with him, then maybe move on to persons of interest who might want to blame him.”

“People who hated Seth, not necessarily my mother? Who set him up and she was just the means to that end? And what about that photo Tyler and Cassie have seen? If that turns out to be a real bear, surely she wasn’t killed by the animal? The slash marks are too perfect. Then to have her laid out and unmauled like that, when bears usually go for the soft belly parts—”

Looking as if she’d puke again, she amazed him by sliding the pictures back in the envelope. Tears trembled on her lashes, but she sat erect, looking, as she’d said last night, devastated but determined. He’d seen his mother react like that with strength and courage when his dad had beaten her. She’d stayed with the bastard for his and his brothers’ sakes, because the whole area was poor and she had nowhere to go. Beaten down, yet never bowed or even bent—that’s why Drew had dared to fight his father for her. Now, though he desperately wanted to protect Jess, his feelings for her had nothing to do with the way he’d loved his mother.

13

“N ow you just come on in anytime after one this afternoon,” Etta Merriman, the coroner’s wife, told Jessie on the phone when she called the Merriman Funeral Home in Highboro to see when the autopsy would be completed. “I’m so very sorry for your loss, my dear, but we’ll take good care of her and you can pick out a lovely casket here. Such a tragedy.”

“A traditional casket,” Jessie told her. “All wood, quite plain.”

“Why, that sounds lovely. I’m sure that will suit her. I must tell you, Miss Lockwood, the newspaper people have been calling, but we always tell them no comment and, in this case, to contact Sheriff Akers or Sheriff Webb. I surely hope that will spare you some troubles.”

Spare her some troubles, Jessie thought. On top of everything else, now outsiders would be asking questions and getting in the way. Mrs. Merriman assured her that, yes, she could talk to Mr. Merriman when she came in.

Jessie showered and dressed, putting on one of her mother’s long denim skirts and jackets. She paced the house, seeing her everywhere, hearing her voice. Strange
how she pictured her, not as she had looked in these later years, not as she looked all huddled up in that hollow tree smothered with sang, but younger. Somehow, Mariah had never aged for her. Those memories of when they lived here together haunted Jessie with bittersweet longing.

But she had things to do. She’d promised Drew she’d check Tyler Finch out online, so she got out her laptop and searched for him. A bio related to a professional organization he belonged to came up. That linked to some of his photographs—beautiful, evocative—mostly ones on the Web site of his New York City employers, Bailey and Keller. We will help you build your brand…We will help you tell your story, the Web site promised future clients. That sounded great, but at what price, she wondered.

“What’s the real story of what happened to you?” she asked aloud, as if her mother were in the house with her. She stared at the tree trunk Seth had carved for her, which Drew had helped her tip upright at the corner of the hearth. Then she added, “I’m going to find out, Mother. With or without Drew, I’m going to find out.”

She had a lot of e-mail to read, but she merely skimmed it. Almost all were professional messages or newsletters to download. It would have to wait. Everything would have to wait now.

She planned to stay in Deep Down after the funeral to help Drew; she would bring some of her work here. She put her laptop away, then paced the house again, trying to decide where to put a temporary, makeshift lab. She’d need countertop space for her microscopes, test tubes and centrifuge, good light and a refrigerator to keep the cancer cells and isolated ginsenosides stored properly. She’d need room for bins to store the ginseng plants. Drew and Sheriff
Akers had said, after they’d combed through it all, she could have the sang that had covered her mother in her forest grave. The next time he went back to the hollow tree, Drew had said he’d be bringing the plants out, and she planned to harvest more from the nearby sang sites. The great hope for her research was that she could use the leaves without harming the precious, protected roots.

Jessie decided the back sunporch where her mother had always dried or processed her herbs and other forest treasures would work best. The eight-by-twelve room had counters and storage, though it would need a good scrubbing, and she’d have to buy a space heater for the coming cold weather. The porch was entirely glassed in so the light would be good, though she’d put up some kind of better ceiling lights and install vertical blinds so she could work at night and not feel someone outside in the dark was watching her—watching her…

Jessie stood for a moment in the center of the sunporch and stared out through the hollow toward the forest, then looked toward Slate Creek that connected her mother’s—now her—land to Seth Bearclaws’s. Could there have been some relationship between Seth and her mother, besides being neighbors or longtime friends? When her mother went out with Vern, could Seth have been angry or jealous?

“Damn, Jessie,” she scolded herself aloud, “you’re not writing a soap opera script. Get real.”

But everything seemed unreal. To clear her head, she stepped out the back door to see how the sun porch looked from the outside. Windows might need caulking, cracks, too, from the autumn and winter winds.

“Dr. Lockwood,” came a smooth voice behind her that made her jump. She gasped and turned. She had not heard
a car, but one sat in front of the house. The black Cadillac must have arrived before she stepped outside. Much closer to her, as if he’d approached on silent feet, stood the Chinese ginseng agent, Peter Sung, with a huge bouquet of white chrysanthemums in his hands.

The roughly hewn tree trunk chair he sat in hurt Drew’s butt and back, though Seth Bearclaws seemed quite at ease in an identical one. They faced each other across a plank table that had carved faces of deer and bear staring up at him from under a thick slab of glass. Jess was right; this place gave him the creeps with its snakeskins and array of skulls displayed on plank shelves or nailed to the walls. Worse, on the wall behind him, Seth displayed his various knives, chisels and hatchets, which, depending on how the conversation continued, Drew intended to have confiscated and checked for blood and DNA.

“Say it, then, Sheriff,” the old man told him, frowning so his bronze forehead wrinkled in sharp furrows. “I told you, I was carving that whole day she disappeared—carving the tree trunk for Mariah you have seen. Yet you keep asking me questions. I am cut deep for her loss, but I did not cause that loss. But if you do not believe me, say so.”

Drew shifted uneasily. It was strange that he said he was “cut deep,” but that just sounded like Seth. He would hardly have worded it that way if he’d been the one who cut her, would he? Drew wished he didn’t admire this man. He hadn’t hesitated to go for Vern Tarver’s jugular in an interrogation, but he was wavering on this. Seth—who had seemed as ancient as the hills, even when he was growing up—had been a fascinating character to him and his brothers. Never once had they pulled a prank on Seth or Anna Bearclaws.

“Mr. Bearclaws, in three patches surrounding Mariah’s body, sang berries were laid out in the shape of arrows, pointing toward where we found her.”

“And the arrows link to me because I am Indian? I used to hunt with bow and arrow, but not for years.”

“No, it’s not the arrows that point to you, Mr. Bearcl—”

“Call me Seth. You are not a bad boy anymore but a good man. So you will believe what I tell you.”

Their eyes met and held. The old man’s were deepest mahogany, as if carved from that hardwood and polished to a high sheen.

“I want to,” Drew said, “but sang berries outlining a bear head were found at one of the sites. That’s not all. I’m going to show you photos of Mariah’s face after someone left his marks on her.”

As he’d told Jess, he wasn’t sure he’d share these, but he’d talked himself into a corner. Despite how nervous the guy made him feel, for the past fifteen minutes he’d been here, Drew had the gut feeling he was telling the truth.

He pulled the four photos out and slid them silently across the table. Seth stared at them, picked them up to look closer, frowning and shaking his head. Below, where he’d rolled up his flannel shirt, the muscles in his lower arms seemed to contract and bulge, making the bear tattoos there move. The stoic old man blinked back tears, before lifting his gaze to stare at Drew again.

“I did not do this, would not. You think these are bear claw marks I put on her?”

Drew shrugged. Wouldn’t Seth have pretended he didn’t get the connection if he had anything to do with this?

“Take me out to the forest where someone killed her,” Seth said. “Let my eyes look with yours to see what we can
find from who did this. And,” he said, rising and pulling his bear claw necklace over his head and tossing it on the table where it clattered to a stop, almost touching Drew’s hands, “tell the coroner to try to match these to her marks, because they will not fit.”

“But other bear claws could have been used, not necessarily that neckl—”

“No,” he said, dropping the pictures on the table, then thumping them with his index finger. “Those are claw marks of a badger, not a bear. I will prove it to you,” he said, walking toward the wall where his knives glistened, even in the dim light.

Drew put his hand to his pistol, but Seth reached for a leather thong of claws hanging over a nail and tossed them on the table, too. “Badger claws from a dead body in the woods—a badger body.” As Drew slid the bear claw necklace and the badger claws into the envelope without handling them, he watched closely as the man started back toward his weapons.

“Hold it, Seth,” Drew said, standing with his hand on his pistol. “Here’s the deal. I take you out in the woods with me, but not with your knives.”

“Weapons, Sheriff?” he challenged, turning to stare at Drew.

“I’ll level with you. I may need to confiscate those, but let’s leave them where they are right now. Just from looking at the pictures you can tell it was done with badger claws? But a badger attack—or someone running around with its claws, other than you—doesn’t make sense.”

“Nor does blaming me for killing a fine woman I would never harm, even if she counts the sang for a government that thinks it can control everything.” His voice was bitter,
but it was not news to Drew that Seth, maybe more than most around here, hated any sort of government control.

As if he had accepted the bargain, Seth moved into his open kitchen area and, evidently, prepared for their excursion. Drew moved closer to be sure he wasn’t pocketing a kitchen knife. Though it was risky to go with Seth into the woods, Drew planned to be heavily armed. He could use the old man’s sharp eyes and woods wisdom out there. Besides, the cunning Cherokee could help him with one other thing.

“Seth, a photographer friend of Cassie Keenan’s took a picture of what may be some sort of strange creature in the woods yesterday, not far from where we found Mariah. I’m going to have him send the photo to my laptop, and I’ll enlarge it as best I can. Maybe we can find that spot and look around there while we’re in the area.”

Seth nodded. Drew was surprised he did not react further, but then the man had always been stoic. Maybe the old Indian just figured Drew was too ignorant to recognize a particular animal from a distance. He watched Seth carefully as he took from his refrigerator what appeared to be beef jerky; he filled a canteen with tap water. “Got sick drinking from Bear Creek last year,” he muttered as if to himself. “Used to be pure as the land, but now it’s polluted, just like everything else.”

“I’ll drive us up to where we can hike in, but I’ve got to phone the photographer first, then my office and Jessie. You haven’t asked how she is.”

“I know how she is. Strong, like her mother. And not going to sit still for this outrage.”

Here Jessie was wondering, Drew thought, if she’d inherited the mountain women’s sixth sense, when Seth seemed
to have it in spades. Drew called Cassie on Seth’s phone to see if she knew where Tyler was. She did—and handed the phone to him, so Drew asked if he could e-mail the photo.

“I’ve got my laptop with me today,” Tyler said. “I’ve enhanced the photo a bit, but it’s still not definitive.”

“I’m taking Seth Bearclaws into the woods to find the spot and look around, so I need it ASAP.”

“Cassie told me about him. How about if I bring you the one I’ve printed out? It’s a lot clearer. Then I can go along with you. The three of us can surely locate the spot, and I’ll take photos again if you find anything.”

When Drew hesitated, he added, “I’ll just consider that payment for the photos I took last night.”

“If I take you along, I’ll expect that any crime scene area photos—last night or today—become my property, not yours, in writing. I don’t need those falling into the hands of the newspapers, which have been calling.”

“Sure. I understand and agree.”

“And, Tyler,” he added, speaking low so the waiting Seth wouldn’t hear, “I appreciated your help, but don’t even point a camera in Seth’s direction, at least not now.”

“I think we understand each other. When will you be at the old logging road?”

“As soon as I make two more phone calls.”

He called Emmy at the office to tell her where he was going, then called Jessie’s number. She didn’t answer, but then she’d said she was going into Highboro. Just as well. If he had driven by, he might have ended up with her along, too, and he didn’t want that. He’d been nuts to let her walk out of the woods last night, but he’d seen no other way.

As Seth got in the Cherokee—which he’d refused to ride in before—Drew wondered if he’d made a mess of this in
terrogation. New information, at least, but no confession, no arrest. Rather, two new deputies of sorts, the one sitting next to him, whom he wasn’t certain he could trust, and then Jess, who he was getting emotionally involved with, which was not only tricky but taboo on such a case. Now he’d have Tyler tagging along with a photo that might just as well be of an alien from Mars. But what he couldn’t get out of his head was that his boyhood buddies used to claim that Seth Bearclaws, a full-blooded Cherokee, could call up huge, half human, half animal beings to do his bidding.

Peter Sung’s arrival surprised and scared Jessie. He was one of Drew’s so-called persons of interest. He’d told her not to talk to him, but she was caught now—besides, she didn’t intend to pass up this chance to find out where he’d been lately. She recalled Cassie’s suggestion, You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.