The Cypress House (26 page)

    He
didn't answer.

    "If
you'd like me to go, I will," she said. "But do you really want me to
?"

    He
did not.

    The
wind changed early the next afternoon. It had been blowing in hot gusts out of
the west for the better part of two days, but now it swung around to the
southeast and the water in the inlet rippled beneath it. The change brought a
touch of cool, and they were grateful for it down on the dock, until they
noticed the smell.

    It
was coming from farther up the inlet, somewhere back in the mangrove trees.
Paul twisted his face in a grimace of disgust and said, "What
is
that?"

    "Dunno,"
Arlen said, but he was facing into the wind and thinking that he knew very well
indeed.

    "You
mean you don't smell that stench?"

    "I
can smell it."

    "It's
awful. You ever smelled anything so awful, Arlen?"

    "A
time or two."

    They
got back to work then, and the sun moved west and shone down on the inlet,
unbroken by cloud. The smell intensified—a fetid, rotting stink. Arlen saw
vultures coming and going from a spot in the marsh grass just up the creek from
them, maybe three hundred yards away. They flicked through the trees as silent
shadows, but there were many of them.

    "Something
died back there," Paul said. "Wonder what it was."

    Who,
Arlen thought.
You wonder
who
it was.

    Of
course, it could be an animal. One of the boars they had out in these woods. Or
perhaps someone's hound had gotten loose and found its way down to the inlet
and ran afoul of a snake. There were any number of possibilities.

    An
hour passed before Paul went up to the inn and came back with a rake in his
hand, a thing with a mean-looking array of wide metal tines.

    "The
hell you think you're doing?" Arlen said.

    "We
better check that out. Arlen, it smells like death."

    "Could
be an animal."

    "Could
be." Paul gave him a long, steady look, and Arlen sighed and swore under
his breath and dropped his saw to the ground, gathered an ax.

    "All
right. We'll have a look."

    It
was remarkable how fast the beach gave way to forest in this part of the state.
Or to jungle, rather. It was more like that than any forest Arlen had ever
known, choked with thick green undergrowth and snarling vines and soil that
squished under your boots. They picked their way through the mud and the brush
until they were walking beneath the trees — scrub pine nearest the dock and
mangroves farther inland. The woods were a litter of torn leaves and branches,
and it seemed half the trees had been sheared or uprooted completely during the
hurricane. The vultures ahead of them watched their approach and flapped their
wings, creating an eerie background as they walked deeper into the shadows.

    "Go
on," Arlen shouted at the birds. "Go on!" He reached out and
grabbed hold of a large banyan leaf and gave it a vigorous shake. A few of the
birds took to the air then, but others stayed. Arlen could see now that the
object of the scavenging was actually down in the water, which was why the
vultures were perched in the trees instead of clustered around the find; they
had to make quick passes and snatches with their beaks because the carcass was
floating and they weren't waterbirds. Just death birds.

    "Arlen,"
Paul said, "that looks like . . ."

    "Yeah,"
Arlen said.

    The
carcass was on their side of the creek but still thirty feet away and mostly
underwater. Even from here, though, a stretch of fabric was visible. It was
covered with mud and water, but even so you could see that it was a pale
yellow.

    "Give
me that rake," Arlen said, and the words didn't come easily. Paul traded
him the rake for the ax, and Arlen ran his tongue over dry lips and then
stepped forward. The boy hung back, watching. Arlen had his eyes locked on the
floating object and didn't see the snake in his path until he'd nearly stepped
on it. There was a flourish of motion that froze him with one foot hanging in
the air, and then the water parted almost soundlessly and the snake slid off.
Arlen stared after it for a moment and then continued on.

    When
he got closer, he yelled again and banged the rake through the leaves and sent
the remaining vultures into the air. They didn't go far, though. Only to a tree
on the opposite side of the creek, where they could monitor their prize.

    He
knew by then what he'd suspected since the wind shifted and began to carry the
smell to them. The vultures and the fish and the heat had combined to do
dastardly things to this remnant of human life, and when he stood over the body
he felt his stomach clench and had to take a quick glance at the treetops to
steady himself. The stench was hideous, and he'd pulled his shirt up over his
nose with the hand that didn't hold the rake.

    She
floated upside down, and he could see one hand just beneath the surface of the
water, some of the flesh picked clean, bone remaining. He remembered the way
she'd traced his palm with her fingers.

    
It's
happened now, hasn't it?
she'd said, watching his face after her own had
gone from flesh to bone in the darkness.
He's told them. It's done.

    Arlen
had let her go. He'd seen death on her and he'd let her go and now her remains
floated in the marsh, picked upon by forest creatures and vultures. Yes,
there'd been armed men inside, but he'd let her go, he'd let them take her.

    
They'll
find me,
she had said
.
And it will end the same for me, only it
will also be bad for you and the boy. And for Rebecca. I won't initiate such
things
.

    "Arlen,"
Paul called. "Is that —"

    "Shut
up!" Arlen shouted, and his voice nearly broke. The boy fell into a
stunned silence.

    
You
can't run from them,
she'd said
.
I hope you understand that
.

    You're
going to need to. There will be no running from what lies ahead.

    Now
he reached out with the rake, leaning off the bank and extending it as far as
he could, and hooked one of the tines into the dead woman's dress.

    It
took four tries to drag her all the way over. Her flesh was so decomposed that
the rake went through it like soft butter, so Arlen had to keep catching the
dress as best as he could. The clothes had held up better than the body.

    He
dragged her back, out of the dark waters of the creek and toward the bank. He
bit down, squeezing his teeth together and tightening his lips, and then he
held his breath and used the rake to turn the body over. More flesh slid off
the bones when he did it, and a burst of putrid gases rose. The dead woman's
head rolled crookedly, turning to face Arlen. Only traces of skin remained, and
they were swollen and discolored. Not even the dearest loved one would be able
to look at this face and recognize it. Arlen felt his stomach clench again and
his throat burn warningly, and he pulled the rake free and turned from the
body, heard it slide down into the water. He walked back to Paul, cold rage in
his veins.

    "That's
a woman," Paul said softly. "Isn't it? That's a dead woman."

    "Yes."

    "Where'd
she come from? How'd she die?"

    Arlen
looked away. "She's been in the water for a time. Probably dumped in
upstream and drifted down and snagged here."

    "The
body wouldn't have sunk? They float?"

    "Yes,"
Arlen said. "They float."

    Paul
stared at him. "Who was it?"

    "Too
late to tell," Arlen said, and that was almost the truth.

    Arlen
told them they'd have to call for the sheriff, and both Rebecca and Paul stared
at him as if he'd lost his mind.

    "He'll
likely want to arrest us for it," Paul said nervously.

    "You'd
let her sit there?" Arlen said. "Pretend we never found her?"

    "No,"
Paul said, but he still looked uneasy, and Rebecca was watching Arlen with
confusion and wariness, reading something in him that the boy did not. He
turned from her so she could no longer stare into his eyes. There was another
reason Arlen wanted Tolliver down here, all right. He wanted to watch the man
face the corpse. To see her as she was now, and remember her as she had been.
He wanted to see if it made any impact, if the man would feel the weight of
murder or if that ability was gone from him. Arlen had an idea that it was.

    They
got in the truck and headed out just as they had so many days earlier, when
Sorenson's body still smoldered in his twelve-cylinder Auburn and Arlen
expected to be gone from the Cypress House by sundown.

    Back
to the same store, and this time they all went inside. The little shop was
jammed with rows of shelves, and a dark-skinned, dark-haired girl stood behind
a counter lined with jars of penny candy. She was an Indian, Arlen realized
when she looked up at them, an absolutely beautiful girl.

    "Hello,
Sarah," Rebecca said. "We're going to need the phone."

    Before
the girl could answer, a door behind the counter opened and Thomas Barrett
stepped into the room, his face flushed and damp with sweat. Behind him Arlen
could see a litter of tools and the panel delivery van.

    "The
whole gang," Barrett said, grinning at them. "Y'all need that many
cigarettes?"

    "We
need to call the sheriff," Rebecca said.

    Barrett's
smile faded. "Everything all right?"

    "There's
a body in the inlet. A dead woman."

    Barrett
looked at Arlen and then back at Rebecca, and he moved toward the girl at the
counter, slipped his arm around her waist. It was a protective gesture. As if
the three from the Cypress House carried danger.

    "First
that guy blowing up in his car," he said, "and now this ? What in the
hell's going on out there?"

    Nobody
had an answer.

    Tolliver
and the redheaded deputy brought a truck with an open bed out along with the
sheriff's car, and they carried a wide canvas tarpaulin down to the creek with
them. The deputy said something under his breath and covered his mouth and nose
with his hand, but Tolliver stood on the bank with his hands hooked in his belt
and looked down at the rotting remains as if he were staring at a flat tire or
some such minor nuisance.

    "I've
seen prettier women," he said.

    Arlen
looked at him and found himself recalling the fields of France, the Springfield
rifle bucking in his arms, plumes of blood bursting from strange men. He longed
for it now, hungered for killing in a way he had not in the war.

    The
body's decomposition was advanced by now. Nothing accelerated that process like
heat, and the water in the inlet had to be damn near eighty degrees. Rebecca
and Paul remained forty feet away, covering their faces. The day's rising sun
and the fact that Arlen had pulled the body most of the way out of the water
had conspired to worsen an already hideous smell. Arlen could tolerate it,
after the war. You grew an extra layer around yourself during something like
the Belleau Wood. Or maybe growth wasn't the right way to think of it. No, it
was more shrinking than growing. A part of you that was there at the start got
a little smaller. The part that viewed human life as something strong and
difficult to remove from this world. Yeah, that part could get mighty small
over time.

    Tolliver
spit into the water near the dead woman's head and said, "Well, shit, we
best get to it."

    He
and the deputy pulled on thick work gloves and wrapped scarves over their faces
before attempting to retrieve the body. They'd hardly cleared it from the water
before Tolliver shouted at Rebecca to bring a bottle of whiskey down. When she
returned, Tolliver added a liberal splash to his scarf and the deputy's. Before
he wrapped the scarf around his face again, he took a long belt of the whiskey,
his Adam's apple bobbing.