Saving Cecil (2 page)

The trees began to thin out and I could almost make out the pasture I was looking for through the trees. The clanking sounds of metal on metal and occasional laughter let me know the drill crew couldn't be far away. I picked up my pace, feeling somewhat like Dorothy upon seeing the Emerald City.

The trail broadened and here and there saplings stretched their branches over it. Unfortunately, these branches also made perfect anchoring points for orb spiders to spin their webs, leaving them at just the right height to catch me in the face. I ducked under one of their sticky homes, sending its occupant scurrying for cover, and rose to my second jaw-dropping sight of the morning.

There, lying facedown on the trail in front of me, was the body of a man. A bright neon-green arrow stuck straight up from his back. I heard the startled intake of my own breath. Dropping to my knees beside him, I quickly palpated his neck for a pulse. He was still warm, but I felt no bumping of life through his jugular.

I wanted to place my ear on his back but the arrow was in the way. It had gone in a few inches to the right of his spine. Thinking maybe his pulse was just faint, I shook him gently, hoping he'd give me some sign that he was still alive.

He didn't.

Panicked, I jumped up and sprinted a few feet in the direction of the drill crew. Then sanity kicked in and I stopped, pulled out my iPhone, and called 911. I told them what I'd found and gave them directions to the drill site. Next, I hit the number for the drill foreman. I'd stored it this morning as soon as I'd met him.

“Yo!” said Jackie Floyd, a Pennsylvanian who'd been drilling holes for Schmid & Medlin since their inception in 1980. I quickly explained the situation and my location. “I know right about where you are,” Jackie said. “We're on the way!”

“Be sure to leave someone at the site and someone at the edge of the woods to direct the EMTs,” I said.

“10-4!”

I turned back to the camo-clad body. It looked like that of a young man but now days hairstyles aren't definitive. Moreover, his face was turned away from me. I stepped to his far side and knelt in the pine straw and leaf litter. Gingerly, I brushed aside auburn curls, revealing the face of a handsome young man. There was also an angry red wheal on the side of his neck, but that was the least of his worries. Still not convinced he was dead, I inspected him further, but the more I did, the more hopeless I felt.

Blood, which had run from his nose and mouth, was beginning to congeal and his eyes held a fixed, dull gaze. The fact that the blood was no longer oozing let me know his heart had probably stopped pumping. Still, I couldn't stop myself, I pulled his arm from against his body and placed my ear against his rib cage, hoping to hear a beating heart, however faint.

I heard something! A bumping, fluttering sound.

I reached across his back, careful not to touch the arrow, and pulled him closer, pressing my ear tighter to his side. The bumping got louder.

“Holy crap!” exclaimed one of the drill crew, sliding to a stop beside me. Disappointment flooded over me when I realized the sound I'd been hearing was only the drill crew's footfalls as they ran to my aid.

“What the hell?” said Jackie, stepping around his crewman. He looked at me, then knelt at the body and went through pretty much the same attempts to detect life as I had. Finally, he sat back on his heels. “Don't think we're gonna need medical help,” he said softly.

“I'm afraid you're right,” I said, looking closer at the man's face. “Looks young. Early twenties maybe, and apparently a hunter.”

Jackie nodded, then stood. He studied our immediate surroundings and said, “'Cept for one thing … where's his gun?”

“Good point,” I said, joining him. “For that matter, where's his ammo pack?”

“Could've just had them in an easy-access pocket. That's what I do.”

I considered checking his pockets, then said, “I would look, but I don't think we should disturb the body any further.”

“I agree,” he said. Jackie was in his mid-fifties and was a few inches shorter than me. He lifted his white, plastic hard hat, scrubbed his mostly bald head with a calloused paw, then replaced it with a thunk. At this gesture of finality, we all moved a discrete distance from the sad sight.

Within minutes we heard the far-away pulsing of the siren on an emergency vehicle. Like I said, the outskirts of the small town of Sanford was only a few miles away and no doubt most of its residents knew where the Lauderbach Dairy was located. It was one of the oldest businesses in the area. They were probably one of the larger employers as well.

Unfortunately, Jackie and I were correct in our diagnosis. The poor soul was as dead as the proverbial doornail. We stayed out of the way until the EMTs confirmed the death in their call to the Lee County Sheriff's Department. Then we followed their van as it pulled up a small hill that rose gently from the edge of the woods to the leveled area where our rig sat.

The van continued across the pasture to the far gate where they met cars carrying sheriff's deputies and the coroner's van. The lead deputy car and the EMTs pulled aside each other, exchanging information, I imagined. Then the caravan resumed its short journey to where one of Jackie's crew waited at the edge of the woods. He directed them to the body, then joined us at back at the rig where we all tried to get back on track.

Tried
being the operative word. The crew might have been working on the casing head, but their chatter was of nothing but the body, what he might have been hunting, where his gun was, how another hunter could have made such a dumb mistake, and on and on. I hoped their distracted state didn't end in a smashed finger or worse.

Jackie and I had gone straight to the doghouse—a small travel trailer provided by the operator for the wellsite geologist. Everything needed to conduct my job, from a table for studying maps to a small testing lab for samples, was available there. It even had a bathroom, a mini-fridge, and a cot for catnaps or for when wells came in during the dead of night as they often do. “It's stuffy in here,” I said as I picked up my topographic map of the farm and a copy of the drill plan and moved to a small wooden stoop outside and into the fresh air.

Jackie followed, expressing his concerns for keeping to Schmid & Medlin's tight schedule. Just as we started going over our plans, another van and a sedan came over the crest of a far hill and through the gate.

“Good thing Mr. Lauderbach moved his cows,” I said as we watched them bump down the slope toward the deputy who was motioning at the edge of the woods.

“Huh?” Jackie grunted as another deputy car pulled up to the gate.

“Yeah,” I concurred. “Interesting. Detectives and a van full of crime scene techs for a hunting accident?”

Jackie squinted his eyes, tracking their progress. “Guess somebody had the same questions we did.”

“Guess so,” I said, directing my attention once again to the information before me in an effort to bring the day back on course. From the moment I'd seen the dead man, a sick feeling, like a deep depression, threatened to move in and take over. I shook my head, rubbed my temples, and tried to forge on.

“You feeling okay?” Jackie asked.

“Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Just a little headache is all,” I said, flattening the rolled map again. “Let's make sure I flagged Lauderbach #2 where the company man wants it.” I was referring to Mr. Ben Overmire, Greenlite's top executive on this job. From time to time, he'd drop by to make sure the well was being drilled according to his design.

Jackie was noting my flag on the map when the sound of another car engine robbed us of normalcy yet again. This time, it was a shiny new Ford Police Interceptor, and instead of driving to what was now becoming an ant hill of activity, it pulled up in front of us. That's when the course of the day suddenly left my control and headed off on its own with me as a passenger on a ride I didn't want to take.

A ride back in time.

TWO

The Lee County Sheriff
unfolded himself from the Interceptor, took a few steps in our direction, then stopped. His head seemed to snap back as he lifted his shades. His jaw dropped for a second, but he was quick to regain his composure. Casually, he sauntered to the bottom of the stoop. With one hand on the railing and one booted foot resting on the bottom riser, he said, “Well, well, as I live and breathe, if it ain't Pete Margot's little girl, Cleo.”

I, too, ditched my gape and now managed a polite response. “I'm surprised you remember after all these years.” I wanted to say I was also surprised he was still sheriff. He had seemed old back in the dark days when I first knew him. But back then, anyone over the age of thirty seemed old.

Sheriff Clyde Stuckey and I stared at each other. I sensed he was trying to judge whether I was still holding a grudge.

I was.

“How long has it been now?” he asked.

“A little over 25 years.”

“How is Pete?”

“Fine, I guess. I don't see him much.”
Thanks to you.

“Last I heard he was working in Africa or one of them dark, dangerous countries doing some kind of deep-sea work.”

The fact th
at you keep up with him is pretty sick
. “Dad's an underwater welder,” I replied stiffly. “Because he's one of only a handful with his level of experience, he travels all over the world.” I was ready to end this conversation or at the very
least change it. I didn't have to though. The good sheriff did it for me.

“Wow. What are the odds?” he said, giving the railing a smack. “You're back working in my county and bam! Another body turns up! And you find him too. Just like last time … ”

I let a pregnant pause take full effect before asking, “Was there a point in there?”

“Not really. I'm just saying is all.” Sheriff Stuckey straightened up, snapped the lapels on his sports jacket and hitched well-worn jeans up on his lanky frame. “Speaking of experience, I imagine you remember the routine, missy, but just to refresh … I'll need to speak with you and probably these men, too, before I leave. Right now, I'm needed at the scene.”

My long-dormant hatred for this man was awakening at an alarming rate. Moreover, I needed somehow to show him that he wasn't dealing with the same young girl he'd known before. I rustled up my sternest professional manner, molded my facial expression to match, and said, “It would be better for us if we could get this over right now. We've had enough interruptions for one day and Mr. Floyd and I have a tight schedule to keep.”

Stuckey pulled a toothpick from his jacket pocket, placed it between his teeth and flicked it rapidly up and down. Then, with a sarcastic snort, he angled himself back into the car and headed down the hill.

Jackie blew out a long, low whistle. “He sure don't like you none and what was that about you finding a body befor
e this one?”

“It'd be pretty fair to say Sheriff Stuckey doesn't like anyone, and about the other … don't give it a second thought.”

“No problem,” Jackie said with a smart nod of his head. “And about him interrupting us again later, don't you worry none, I can keep them knuckleheads of mine on track.”

I could tell Jackie and I were going to get along real good.

True to his word, Sheriff Stuckey did return. And true to my memory of him, his interview dragged out way longer than necessary given the fact that none of us knew much of anything. Well, I did mention the fact that I'd seen a wild boar on down the game trail a ways. I even took him to the spot, explaining I'd stopped there to answer my iPhone.

Seemed pointless to add all that extraneous information about being treed. No sense sounding all girly. I just pointed to the tracks under the tree, identifying them as belonging to a feral hog and noted that it's open season on them all year long in North Carolina. To my mind, these facts added weight to the theory that the young man was the victim of a hunting accident. I mean, how else do you end up in camos, dead on a game trail with an arrow in your back?

Sheriff Stuckey had brought a detective with him and stood by, as though supervising, while he asked us questions and took notes. The first thing that stood out about Detective Sergeant Chris Bryant—he was a pretty boy with startlingly bright blue eyes. He looked to be in his early thirties, his dark brown hair neatly trimmed on the sides, longer on top with a charming cowlick on the right side. He, too, wore jeans and a sports jacket. He was at least four inches taller than my five-foot-nine frame and had a buffed-up physique and a friendly smile.

Every time he would try to wrap things up, Stuckey would ask some irrelevant question to engage the crew in hunting or fishing stories. It was obvious the detective wanted to tell him to take a hike but was too polite. He might not have known what was going on but I did. Stuckey was just showing me he was in control, he could take as much of my time as he wanted.

Also, I got the feeling that he was trying to get at something—I couldn't put my finger on it—that the detective was ignorant of. I wanted to ask if Stuckey knew the victim; almost seemed like he did. I refrai
ned. Given my past with Stuckey, seemed best to stay out of things. Finally, just in case it wasn't obvious to everyone who was in charge, he turned to his detective and said, “Finish up here, Bryant, and make sure you see me in my office before you leave today.”

Detective Bryant's face flushed red, but he answered with a crisp, “Yes, sir, will do.”

I kinda felt sorry for the guy.

Just before leaving the site for the day, I informed Jackie that for the next two days, I'd be in Washington, DC, finishing a project I'd been working on for Martin Marietta Aggregates. My last task before heading to my house in Raleigh forty-five minutes away, was a quick stop by the Lauderbach home.

As I pulled up the drive the stately old white farmhouse was inviting, glowing rosy gold in the mellow light of late afternoon. I trotted up
the brick steps and wondered how old they were and if they'd been mined from one of the clay pits prevalent in the area. Not finding a doorbell, I used the knocker. The door opened wide, revealing a portly lady with a round, brown face. “Yes?” she inquired.

“Hi,” I said. “I'm Cleo Cooper and I was hoping to meet with the Lauderbachs. Are they home?”

“No, ma'am,” she said, her manner nervous and distracted. “Not at the moment. They've, uh … they … .”

“Is there a problem?” I asked.

“Well, there was an accident here on the farm early this afternoon. A hunting accident. The police have been here and talked to them and to me. It was terribly distressing,” she said, clutching her ample bosom. “Since then, they've found out it was a close friend. Why, that child has played here with their children since they was little bitty kids. He worked here in the summers in the dairy too. They've gone into town to meet with the family.”

“I'm so sorry,” I said sadly, explaining that I knew about the accident—without mentioning I'd found him—and why I was there.

“Well, I'm Ruby,” she said, wiping her hands on her apron. “I'll tell them you came by. Would you like me to let them know when you'll be back?”

“Yes,” I said. “Tell them I'll drop back by in a few days.”

Later that evening in my kitchen, Tulip was finishing her dinner. Her tags made comforting little clinking sounds on her stainless steel bowl. Bud was making his own clinking noises, chopping cole
slaw. He was also trying to draw me into a conversation about our upcoming nuptials. We'd planned our wedding for Saturday, November 9th. Bora Bora is spectacular that time of year. The rains haven't set in yet, it's plenty warm, and there are less tourists.

“So what did you think of the pictures of wedding cakes Henri brought over?” Bud asked as I stirred an egg into my cornbread batter. To say that Henri, my daughter, and Will, my son, ages 26 and 28 respectively, were elated about Bud and I remarrying would have been an understatement. When Bud had told the kids he wanted it to be a big, splashy affair, they'd practically floated off the ground. When he'd turned them loose with the wedding planner to do anything they wanted, they'd shot straight to the stratosphere! They were of the age when most any occasion was an excuse for a party.

I poured the batter into my mom's old cast iron frying pan and slid it into the oven. I flopped in a chair to go through the mail that was waiting for me on the kitchen table. Tulip curled at my feet and licked leftover chow from her muzzle as I shuffled through envelopes and sipped wine. Then I remembered Bud had asked me a question.

“Huh?” I said.

“The wedding cakes,” he reminded me. “I asked you about the wedding cakes.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “They were really … lovely.”

“Henri's putting a lot into this,” Bud said. “She's visited bakers, been to tastings, and looked through stacks of wedding
magazines. That's where she got those pictures. She tore out ones she said were ‘you.' So which one are you leaning towards?”

Finding the envelope I'd been looking for, the one from the Smithsonian Institute, I slit it open, adding, “Uh, you know, the one I … uh, already said I liked.” I removed the enclosed documents.

“You mean, the one with the naked cupids spiraling up the layers and the bright red heart on top?”

“Yeah, that's the one,” I said, pocketing the enclosed staff pass and tossing the envelope and junk mail in the trash.

Bud smacked the bowl of coleslaw down in front of me. “Naked cupids, indeed! You haven't heard a word I've said!”

“Huh?” I startled, sloshing wine on my hand. “I have too!”

“Describe the cake. The one you say you like.”

“Uh … ” I looked up at him and sucked wine from my fingers—a time-tested diversionary tactic.

“Nice try. Maybe later,” Bud said, refilling my wine glass before guiding me to an oversized lounge chair in the den where he gathered me onto his lap. “Tell me what's wrong and don't give me your usual ‘everything's fine' crap. Clearly it isn't. Is it the wedding or your new consulting job?”

“Both, kind of … .”

“Explain.”

“Wel
l, about the wedding, we've been over this and over it for a year now. I don't want this circus you and the kids are planning, and now, since you put them in charge and they're so excited, I can't stop it. They'd be crushed. I feel out of control here, Bud!” Tulip, sensing my anxiety, trotted to us and sat in front of me. I rubbed her silky ears to let her know all was fine and she left to take care of her business, exiting the house through her doggie door.

“That's the idea,” Bud said. “You and I have demanding jobs and don't need to be in control. The kids are doing a fine job and they have the wedding planner, too, don't forget. Besides, they're having a grand time and I can afford it. What's the problem?”

I should explain that Bud is a very wealthy entrepreneur from a long line of wealthy entrepreneurs starting back before the Revolutionary War, growing cotton and rice in the Deep South. He's the first of his family, however, to bring them into the 21st century, diversifying the company and moving into other ventures, including everything from oil and gas investments to rocket parts.

“It … it's just that … ”

“Look. The kids and I have tried for a long, long time to put us back together. I think they deserve this celebration of family. I know I do. It's beginning to worry me that you are so against it.”

Great. Make me feel like a world-class heel
.
“I do feel like celebrating. Just not with two-thirds of the world's population. I wanted it to be something of a more, you know, intimate nature.”

“That's what honeymoons are for. And just a heads up: Henri's convinced you haven't actually ordered a dress like you've told her you have. She's on the warpath so maybe you should do something to remedy the situation.”

“Like what?”

“Simple. Choose a dress. Now, before we move on to what's bothering you about your new consulting job, have you talked to your dad yet about coming to the wedding?”

Feeling I'd lost this wedding battle, but mig
ht still have some effect on the overall war—the size and scope of things—I retreated to fight again another day. I said, “No, that's another thing. As a general rule, I can never get him on the first try, but I've calle
d him repeatedly and he hasn't gotten back to me. I know he's getting my messages.”

“You worry too much. He's probably on a job without much reception. Now tell me about the new job.”

“Well, there
is
the matter of finding a body not far from our drill site today.”

Bud was momentarily struck speechless. Then he found just the right words to sum up my feelings perfectly.

“I guess that was déjà vu all over again, huh?”

“Yes, and except for the fact that this was obviously a hunting accident, it gets even more ‘déjà vu,' as you put it, than that.” Bud waited quietly but I could feel him tense. “Guess who the Lee County sheriff is now?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“The same one that arrested Dad all those years ago and threw him in jail for something he didn't do. The same one that, if it hadn't been for you, would have succeeded in having him convicted for murder one! The same one that … ”

Bud hugged me tight against his chest. “Cleo, stop. You're working yourself into a state now. The past is the past. And, yes, the old bastard is … well, a bastard, but he's definitely not worth getting upset about, especially after all these years. Speaking of which, isn't he a little long in the tooth for the job of sheriff?”