Sybil Teague was staring at me with an extraordinary expression on her face. She didn't know whether to praise me or be disgusted by me. But at least I believed her son Dell had not committed suicide. She ran her hands over her golden-brown pants suit, over and over, smoothing the front of the light jacket, then the material over her thighs.
"Call Hollis," the sheriff said into his intercom, and we sat in frozen silence until a man in a deputy's uniform came in. He was in his late twenties, sturdy and blond and blue-eyed and curious as hell about what had been going on in the sheriff's office. He gave Tolliver and me a comprehensive stare. He'd know us again. He looked pretty good in the uniform.
"Ms. Connelly," the sheriff said. "You go out with Hollis here, show him where the body is."
Hollis looked startled as he took in the sense of what was more an order than a request.
"Which one?" I asked, and his eyes widened.
"I'll go," Tolliver said. "Harper needs to rest."
"No, Ms. Connelly is the one who found her, she needs to go."
Tolliver glared at the sheriff and he glared right back. I was betting the sheriff wanted to make sure I earned every penny of my fee. I made myself stir. "I'll go," I said. I put my hand on Tolliver's arm. "It'll be okay." My fingers curled around the material of his jacket, holding on to him for a long moment. Then I let go. I jerked my head at the blond deputy. "He'll bring me right back," I said over my shoulder, because I wanted Tolliver to stay there while I was gone. He nodded, and the door closed behind me, and I lost sight of him.
The deputy led the way out to his patrol car. "My name is Hollis Boxleitner," he said, by way of introduction.
"Harper Connelly," I said.
"That your husband in there?"
"My brother. Tolliver Lang."
"Different names."
"Yeah."
"Where we goin'?"
"Drive out Highway 19, going northwest."
"Out where—"
"The boy was shot," I said.
"Killed himself," Hollis Boxleitner corrected, but with little conviction.
"Hmmph," I said contemptuously.
"How do you find them?" he asked.
"The sheriff tell you I was coming?"
"I overheard him on the phone. He thought Sybil was crazy for asking you to come. He was mad at Terry Vale for telling her what he'd heard about you."
"I got struck by lightning," I said. "When I was about fifteen."
He seemed to be groping for questions to ask. "Were you at your house?"
"Yes," I said. "Me, and Tolliver, and my sister Cameron... we were at home alone. My two younger half-sisters were singing in some special program. My mother actually went to the pre-school to watch." The state my mother was in by that time, it was amazing she remembered she had children. "And the storm come up, about four in the afternoon. I was in the bathroom. The sink was next to the window, and the window was open. I was standing at the sink so I could look in the mirror while I used my electric hair curler. It came in the window. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor looking up at the ceiling, and my hair was smoking, and my shoes were off my feet. Tolliver gave me CPR. Then the ambulance came."
This was babbling, for me. I decided to shut up.
Hollis Boxleitner didn't seem to have any more questions, which was wonderful and puzzling. For most people, that would just have scratched the surface of what they wanted to know. I hugged my jacket to my chest, imagining how good it would be when I could get in the bed at the motel. I would pile on the covers. I would have hot soup for supper. I closed my eyes for a few minutes. When I opened them, I felt better. We were close to the site.
I instructed the deputy to pull over when I calculated, by the pull I felt, that we were at the bit of road closest to the body. Now that I knew where she was, the body was easier to locate on my mental map. We got out for the hike downhill, a much easier one than our earlier descent to the death site of the boy. As we moved carefully downslope, Boxleitner said, "So now you find dead people for your living."
"Yep," I said. "That's what I do." I also had very bad headaches, shaky hands, and a strange spiderweb pattern on my right leg, which was weaker than my left. Though I run regularly to keep the muscles strong, making my way up and down steep slopes today had made that leg feel wobbly. I leaned against a tree as I pointed to the pile of debris that concealed what was left of Teenie Hopkins.
After he looked under the branches, Boxleitner threw up. He seemed embarrassed by that, but I thought nothing of it. You have to see that kind of thing real often to be unimpressed by the havoc time and nature can wreck on our bodies. I had a feeling small town policemen didn't see old bodies very often. And he'd probably known the girl.
"It's worst when they're in-between," I offered.
He understood what I meant, and he nodded vehemently. I started back to the patrol car, leaving him alone to collect himself and do whatever official stuff he had to do.
I was leaning against the car door when Hollis Boxleitner struggled up the slope, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. To mark the spot, he tied an orange strip of plastic to the tree nearest the road and the car. He gestured toward the car door, indicating I should get in, and he drove back to the town in grim silence. "Teenie Hopkins was my sister-in-law," he said as we parked.
There wasn't anything for me to say.
I let him precede me into the police station. We had only been gone forty-five minutes or so, and the crew was still assembled. The tightness in Tolliver's jaw told me that they'd been grilling him about me—maybe about my success rate—and he'd had to do some explaining. He hated that.
All the faces turned toward us, questioning: the mayor's looked only curious, the lawyer's cautious, the sheriff's angry. Tolliver was relieved. Sybil Teague was tense and miserable.
"Body's there," Hollis said briefly.
"You're sure it's Teenie?" Mrs. Teague sounded... somewhere between stunned and grief-stricken.
"No, ma'am," Boxleitner said. "No, ma'am, I'm not sure at all. The dentist will be able to tell us. I'll give Dr. Kerry a call. That'll be good enough for an unofficial identification. We'll have to send the remains to Little Rock."
I was sure the body was Teenie Hopkins, of course, but Sybil Teague wouldn't thank me for saying so again. In fact, she was looking at me with some distaste. It was an attitude I'd run across many times before. She'd hired me, and she would pay me a very tidy sum of money, but she didn't want to believe me. She'd actually be happy if I was wrong. And I certainly wasn't her favorite person, though I'd brought her the information for which she'd asked... the information she'd gone to so much trouble to bring me to Sarne to deliver.
Maybe, when I'd first started out in my business, I was able to sympathize with this perverse attitude: but I couldn't any longer. It just made me feel tired.
two
NO one wanted to talk to us, or needed to talk to us, any longer. In fact, the very sight of me was giving Mayor Terry Vale a serious case of the cold creepies. He was the least connected to the case, and in fact I couldn't figure out his continued presence, but the others appeared to be worried about his peace of mind, so Tolliver and I took our leave.
A series of phone calls had revealed that Teenie's dentist, Dr. Kerry, was out of town for the next four days. The body could only be identified in Little Rock. Sheriff Branscom had called the state crime lab, and they'd said as soon as they got the body they'd confirm the identification first thing, before they did their full work-up. Since the Arkansas crime lab is notoriously behind, that was a good concession. Branscom had a copy of Teenie's dental records to send down with the body.