Another Man's Ground--A Mystery, page 7
Hank followed the referee to his reserved seat next to Maggie at the left of the podium. Tucker sat on the right. And Gallagher took his place behind the microphone.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Branson Valley Rotary Club monthly luncheon. I am Henry Gallagher, and I am quite honored to be your newly elected president.”
Hank stifled a groan as the audience applauded.
“Today, we are pleased to have with us the two candidates for sheriff of Branson County. Gerald Tucker”—Gallagher waved toward him—“is a lifelong county resident and has been with the sheriff’s department for twenty-one years. Hank Worth,” he said with no accompanying wave, “was appointed to the sheriff’s position nine months ago when our beloved Darrell Gibbons was elected to the state senate. Both gentlemen will share with you their views of law enforcement and what they each plan to do for our beautiful Ozark county if elected.
“But before we get to that, I wanted to highlight some of the activities and initiatives that Rotary has planned for the coming year…”
People dug into their lunches as Gallagher droned on. The clinking of glass and silverware muffled the buzz of Hank’s cell phone. He discreetly pulled it out of his pocket and laid it on his thigh. He made a show of arranging his napkin on his lap as he read the text from Sheila.
At John Doe site in the woods. CSU just found another one.
He pretended to drop his napkin and texted her back as he bent to retrieve it.
Another what?
He straightened and waited for her response.
Body. It’s a kid.
CHAPTER
10
Hank threw his napkin on the table and pushed back his chair. Maggie looked at him, startled. He leaned toward her so that Darcy, seated on Maggie’s left, could hear him as well.
“There’s been a development in a case,” he whispered. “I have to go.”
Maggie looked aghast. Darcy looked livid.
“You’re about to give a speech,” Maggie said, a bit unnecessarily.
Darcy scooted back her own chair and leaned behind Maggie for cover, gesturing for Hank to do the same. He stayed put. He didn’t want to be any closer to Darcy than he had to be at the moment.
“You are not going anywhere,” she hissed. “This is one of the most important appearances of the campaign.”
What terms would Darcy understand? He reluctantly leaned behind Maggie’s chair. “There is another dead person,” he spat out. “Possibly a murdered person. I have to get out there.”
“You can wait one goddamn hour. If you don’t, you’ll ruin your chances. Your already slim chances. And I’ll … I’ll quit,” she said.
“So you’re telling me that because I’m doing my job, you’re going to bail like a total—”
“You. Are. Staying. Put.”
Both Hank and Darcy froze. Maggie was still facing the audience, but her whisper came through loud and clear to the two people hiding behind her. Darcy shot him a large dose of smug before she straightened and resumed eating her lunch as if nothing had happened. Hank slowly hitched his chair back up to the table and stared out into the crowd. He did not look at his wife.
She leaned over and handed him his napkin. Then she whispered in his ear.
“This is our future. Our family’s. We all need you to win this election. I know you want to go racing off. I know you want to be anywhere else but here. But this is it. So suck it up.”
Suck it up. It was a skill he had never acquired, and she knew it. He smoothed his napkin over his lap and contemplated making a break for it. He could be out that door behind the drink station before anybody noticed him missing. Yeah, and while he was at it, maybe he should take a bunch of the silverware, too. He sighed. He hated feeling trapped. He hated not being personally in charge of an important crime scene. He hated campaigning. He hated wearing a suit and tie. He hated the chicken entrée in front of him (rubbery, just as predicted). He hated speeches, both giving and sitting through. He hated—no, he didn’t. But he did avoid looking at her. Especially when she squeezed his knee during the coin toss to see who would speak first.
He won. Fantastic.
He stepped up to the podium and looked out at the audience. Then at his notes. Then back to the crowd. Someone a few tables to the right cleared his throat. If only he were out in the woods with a dead body. Then, from the very back table, he saw a mass of gray curls and a lively wave.
So he took a deep breath and began. He talked about his plans to increase community policing and decrease deputy response times. He talked about why his newcomer status made for a fresh perspective. He even told the joke Darcy had inserted midway through the speech. No one laughed. He was perversely pleased.
Finally, it was over. Or he was done. Whichever. He sat down to a decent amount of polite applause. Maggie squeezed his knee again. Then the referee introduced Tucker. The insolent GOB, who had been sitting next to Gallagher, picked up a sheaf of notes and his phone and took the two steps to the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I can’t thank you enough for the opportunity to speak to you all today.” More polite applause. Hank tried not to roll his eyes.
“I had planned to speak to you about the future of your Branson County Sheriff’s Department,” he said, holding up his notes. “But”—he stopped and raised his phone—“something much more urgent has come to my attention. The body of a child—a poor, defenseless child—has been found deep in the woods north of here. I apologize to you all, but I must go.”
* * *
The crowd erupted. Gasps and mutters and even a little shriek from a lady in the middle of the room. Then they rose and formed an aisle through the sea of tables for Tucker to walk through on his way to the door. Some even slapped him on the back.
And Hank sat there. Frozen until the door closed on the sight of Tucker striding off into the sunlight, going to bring justice to a murdered child. Then he rose and turned, not to his left, but to his right and the referee. He didn’t even try to spin it.
“I need to go, too,” he said.
And then he fled out the door behind the drink station.
* * *
How had that fat bastard known? Who tipped him off? He rounded the corner of the community center and jogged across the grass toward his car. Then he smelled smoke. He slowed to a walk, but not before Tucker saw him and let out a loud chuckle.
“In a hurry, Worth?”
Hank desperately wanted to ram that cigarette up his nose. Instead, he muttered “electable, electable” to himself and turned away. Then Tucker laughed again. And “electable” went out the window.
“You’re not even assigned to the investigation,” Hank snapped as he whipped around and came back toward his deputy. “You had no reason to leave.”
Tucker smiled, the kind that tugged up only one side of his lips and managed to convey condescension and smugness all at the same time. He must have been taking lessons from Gallagher.
“I know that. But they don’t know that. So who’s the one that cares about justice now? The guy that was willing to sacrifice a campaign appearance to go catch a murderer? Or the guy that was more interested in sticking around and blow-jobbing a bunch of businessmen for their votes?”
Hank stopped himself just before he grabbed Tucker by his nice, new lapels. He gently reached in and straightened the asshole’s silk tie instead.
“Nice outfit,” he said. “Did Daddy take you shopping?”
He left the community center less of a candidate than he had been going in, with a vow to never listen to anyone’s orders ever again.
CHAPTER
11
“What the hell took you so long?”
Sheila stood near the solid side of the fissure, snapping her surgical gloves impatiently.
“Don’t. Ask.”
The look on his face must have reinforced the anger in his voice, because she took a step back and dropped the reprimand.
“Alice was down there, just cleaning up, making sure there weren’t any plastic evidence bags or tape or anything that could cause a bird to choke, or whatever.” Sheila did not roll her eyes, although her tone implied that she wanted to. “Anyway, she shifted some of the dirt. It was covered with a layer of soil that had been undisturbed for quite a while, and also some of the surface dirt that slid into the crack when the illegal fell in.”
“It” lay in the bottom of the fissure in an almost-fetal curl. Delicate, cream-colored bones just emerging from the Ozark loam. Alice knelt on the bottom with a camel hair brush in one hand and a small metal pick in the other.
“I’m so sorry. I broke the fibula. I stepped on it. I had no idea,” she said, not looking up at Hank perched on the edge of the gap.
He stared down at his crime-scene tech and felt the vise around his chest loosen. This was what was real. The emotional well-being of his employees. And the death of a child. Probably out here all alone in the woods. The anger and the frustration and the Rotary all faded away, and the fragile bones seemed to glow in the low light of the narrow rift in the rock.
“It’s okay, Alice,” he said. “Everything’s all right. If it hadn’t been for you, we wouldn’t have found it at all. Now we have. And we can start to figure out what happened.”
She nodded slowly and resettled herself on the small patch of ground where she was wedged between the wall and the skeleton.
“Where’s Kurt?”
“Went back to the van for more gear,” Sheila said. “And Bill Ramsdell went back to the station for floodlights, ’cause we’re going to be here a hell of a long time, and some tarps, ’cause the forecast says it might rain.”
Wonderful.
At least they hadn’t yet taken down the pulley-and-rope contraptions they’d used to get the first body out of the hole. He was starting to make sure they were still solidly braced when the sound of sniffling drifted up from below.
“How long has she been down there?” he asked Sheila.
She stopped jotting on her clipboard and thought. “I think they got out here about twelve hundred hours. They called it in at”—she consulted the clipboard—“twelve thirty-six. Then I notified you at twelve thirty-nine.”
And it was now 2:45. Too long for someone who just expected a quick stop so she could do something nice for the birds. He stuck his head over the side.
“Alice, why don’t you come on up here for a bit? Take a break.”
She nodded without looking up at him, then stood and sat herself in the rope sling hanging next to her. She stayed silent as Hank hoisted her to the surface. He dug around in her gear bag until he found the bottle of water he knew she always carried. He pressed it into her hands and led her away from the ravine and over to a hickory tree. He sat her down and left her whispering the Hail Mary to herself.
* * *
They heard Kurt long before they saw him. Although, in fairness, it wasn’t just him crashing through the woods. Bill Ramsdell was with him, and between them they seemed to have brought the entire contents of the crime-scene van.
“Here … you … go,” Kurt puffed as he dropped the gear bags and then himself on the ground about twenty feet from the hole. He dug a handkerchief out of his pocket and sponged off his face. “Man. That’s some hike.”
Ramsdell, who hadn’t even broken a sweat, set down his load and set to work stringing up more crime-scene tape. Hank began to help Kurt unpack the rest of the gear. Everyone worked quietly for a while, until Sheila couldn’t take it anymore.
“How long are we going to wait?” She nodded in Alice’s direction.
“You are a hard heart, you know that?”
She sighed. “I’m not. Really. I just see the rain clouds coming.”
She pointed toward the west.“For all we know, that hole fills with water when it rains. We need to at least get down there and get some more pictures taken.”
A gathering storm. He’d have to make Alice go back down there. God, he hated this job. Why, why was he fighting for it? He headed over to the hickory tree, pausing to let her finish.
“… now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” She looked up and met his gaze for the first time that day. “Hi.”
He squatted down in front of her. “Hi. How you doing?”
“I’m better now.” She unclasped her hands. “I think.”
“It’s okay, you know. To get upset. Especially about a child.”
She shook her head and her hands came together again, probably without her even realizing it.
“No, it’s not okay. We are all God’s creatures.”
“Yes…” Hank said, confused. “That’s why there’s nothing wrong with it upsetting you.”
She ducked his gaze.
“But I wasn’t that upset about the other one. You know why? Because I figured that one’s got to be some junkie meth-head who got killed during a drug deal or something.”
All of this made perfect sense to Hank. He nodded and reached out a hand to help her up, but instead of taking it, she gestured toward the crevice.
“But this one isn’t like the other one.” She paused. “I don’t know anything at all about either one of them, but I think this one is worth more than that one. This person is worth more than the first one.”
Oh.
“And that’s wrong,” she said. “We’re all God’s creatures. I should’ve been just as upset about the first one.”
Behind him, Hank could feel the storm clouds rolling in and hear Sheila snapping her gloves. He ignored them both.
“No, you should not have been. Any decent human being would be more upset about a child. And that skeleton is—was—obviously a child, who obviously should not be out here in the middle of the woods.”
“But we are all created equal.”
“Well, yes…” He thought for a moment. “And there you go. Created equal. That means at the beginning. How you choose to live from then on does have an effect on your worth, don’t you think?”
She stared at him with a furrowed brow.
“Say you sat and didn’t do anything at all,” he said. “Didn’t contribute to society, weren’t nice to little old ladies, didn’t … didn’t do anything. You’d be worth less than someone who worked hard, volunteered their time, who took care of their kids, who contributed to the world in some way. Right? Your decisions and choices as you go through life can maybe have an effect on your worth.”
She stared at him with the same look that Maribel gave him when he insisted that early bedtimes were good for her.
“So some CEO is worth more than me? Because he does more, because he affects more people? What about the—”
Crap. He had made himself a sinkhole before the rain even got here.
“No, no. That’s … I didn’t mean that. I just meant that—hell, Alice, I don’t know.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I see what you’re saying, and you’re right. Everybody is somebody’s child. And deserves respect. But do you see what I mean? You’re human. You’re going to be upset. And sometimes, you can’t control when that happens and when it doesn’t. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”
“It doesn’t make me a good Christian.”
A raindrop landed on his cheek.
“Did you do your best work with the first body?”
“Of course.”
“You didn’t shortcut anything?”
“No.” Now she was getting offended.
“Do you plan to do a good job with this one?”
She spat out an affirmative.
“Okay,” he said. “So you’re going to treat them both the same. That counts for something, doesn’t it?”
She thought on that one. Hank said his own prayer as she sat there. Then she pressed her lips together and got to her feet. Thank God.
* * *
The rain fell slow and fat, landing with individual splats on the tenting they had rigged over the excavation to keep Alice and Little Doe dry. She had crouched into a ball and wedged against the rock wall to give herself as much access as possible. Kurt sat like a teetering boulder on the edge, plotting the scene below onto graph paper and calling nonsensical encouragements to his partner.
Hank felt horrible that he’d had to send her back down there, but no one else was small enough. The longer he stood there, the worse the churning in his gut. He spun around and walked off into the woods.
The rain fell more softly there, pattering on leaves instead of smacking against waterproof tarp. He wandered farther in, among the scattered undergrowth of vines and bright green, shin-high flowering plants. Eventually they got so thick on the ground, he felt like he was wading through a sea of broad leaves and delicate little purple blossoms. He finally took shelter under another hickory tree. He stared at the sky and then at the ground. Neither made anything more clear. He leaned against the rough bark of the tree, but it did not seem to ease the weight on his shoulders. The only thing that did when he felt this way was a plan. What next?
He started a list.
Pull all unsolved cases involving missing or runaway children.
Get a hold of a forensic anthropologist—maybe at Missouri State or Mizzou? That weird Whittaker in Springfield doesn’t know a damn thing about old bones.
Make sure Alice gets some time off after this.
Fire Darcy.
He stopped. That one had popped into his head unbidden. But yes, he would do that. Good grief, was his campaign in trouble. He had no idea how to salvage it, but it was quite clear that woman didn’t, either. He’d be lucky now to just lose the election and not be run out of town by an angry crowd with pitchforks.
He mopped his increasingly wet face with his tie and looked up, but he couldn’t tell whether the rain was tapering off or getting worse. He moved away from the tree’s canopy to get a better look at the clouds.
His neck started to hurt, and as he brought his gaze back down, levelheadedness returned. What the hell was he doing? He was avoiding his real problems, that’s what he was doing. Divining patterns in trees instead of investigating a murder. Or facing angry voters. He gave himself a mental shake and stomped off back to the crime scene.
