The back room, an avalanche of packing materials, greeted them.
“I didn’t know there were that many plastic peanuts in the world,” Susan observed.
Harry made a beeline for Maude’s rolltop desk in the front room.
“What if someone sees you there?”
“They can report me for breaking and entering.” Harry snatched the mail, which was kept in boxes on the desk. “Found it!” She quickly flipped over the postcard. “Well, there goes that theory.”
“What’s it say?”
“Come here and read it. No one’s going to arrest us.”
Susan joined her.“‘Wish you were here.’ ” She then noticed the postmark. “Oh.” It read Asheville, North Carolina.
Harry slid open the center drawer. A huge ledger book, pencils, erasers, and a ruler rattled. She reached for the ledger book. Sometimes accounting columns tell a story.
Footsteps on the sidewalk made her freeze. She closed the drawer.
“Let’s get out of here,” Susan whispered.
When Harry returned to the post office and relieved Dr. Johnson, she called BoomBoom and asked her to look at the postcard. It was marked PARIS, REPUBLIC OF FRANCE.
Baffled, Harry put down the receiver. Okay, the postmarks confused her. Still, she wasn’t giving up. Those postcards were important. Whoever the killer was, he or she had a sense of humor, maybe even a sense of the absurd. Even the disposition of the corpses was macabre and trashy.
She racked her brain to think of who had a sharp sense of humor: everybody in Crozet except for Mrs. Hogendobber.
The shroud of mortality drew closer. Who could be next? Was she in danger? If only she could discover the link between Kelly and Maude, maybe she’d know that her friends would be safe. But if she discovered that link, she wouldn’t be safe.
13
Harry was taken aback by the number of people milling about the railroad track. Getting there wasn’t easy. People had to drive out to 691 and then cut right on 690. Bob Berryman, Josiah, Market, and Dr. Hayden McIntire glumly stared at the tracks.
When Mrs. Murphy and Tucker sped into the brush, Harry barely noticed.
Harry joined the men. She cast her eyes downward and saw blood spattered everywhere. Flies buzzed on the ground, feasting on what hadn’t soaked up. Even the creosote odor of the railroad ties didn’t blot out the sweltering odor of blood.
Josiah grimaced.“I had no idea that it could be so bad.”
“Considering how many pints of blood are in the human body—” Hayden spoke like a physician.
Berryman, sweating profusely, cut him off.“I don’t want to know.” He backed away to his four-wheel-drive Jeep. Ozzie howled inside, furious that he couldn’t get out. Berryman roared out of there, tearing hunks of earth as he went.
“I didn’t mean to upset him,” Hayden apologized.
“Don’t worry about it.” Market pinched his nose. “Damn, are we ghouls or what?”
“Of course not!” Josiah snapped. “Maybe we’ll find something the police didn’t. How much faith do you have in Rick Shaw? When he reads, his lips move.”
“He’s not that bad,” Harry protested.
“Well, he’s not that good.” Hayden stuck up for Josiah.
Harry swept her eyes along the tracks. The cat and dog rummaged in the high weeds and then burst onto the tracks about one hundred yards west of where she was standing. At least they’re happy, she thought.
“We know one thing,” Harry stated.
“What?” Market pinched his nose again.
“She walked here.”
“How do you know that?” Josiah peered intently at her features.
“Because there’s no sign that the grasses are beaten down. If she’d been dragged there’d be a path even though it rained. A human’s body is literally dead weight.” The smell was getting to Harry and she moved away from the track.
“She could have been carried.” Josiah joined her.
“Have to be a strong man.” Hayden moved off the track too. “Don’t know if the killer is male or female, although men commit over ninety percent of the murders in this country, statistically.”
Josiah replied,“Not exactly. The women are too smart to get caught.”
Market, the last to leave even though the stench turned his stomach, doubted that.“Maude was a good five feet ten inches. The road’s back a stretch. The strongest among us was Kelly. The next strongest is Fair. No one else could have carried her, other than Jim Sanburne, and he has a bum back.”
“A four-wheel-drive could have come up here.” Josiah watched the animals as they moved closer.
“Cooper said no tire tracks,” Market volunteered.
“She walked? So what?” Josiah thrust his hands into his pockets.
“Where was Fair last night?” Hayden asked, none too innocently.
“Ask him,” Harry shot back.
“She walked out here in the middle of the night?” Market was thinking out loud. “Why?”
“She liked her jogging and usually ran along the track,” Harry told them.
“Damn good jogger to get all the way out to Greenwood,” Market said.
“In the middle of the night?” Hayden rubbed his chin.
“Beat the heat,” Josiah offered. “Hey, how about Berryman getting squeamish like that?”
“He wasn’t squeamish in school,” Market recalled. “Hell, I saw the trainer stick a needle in his knee once during a football game. Took a bad hit, you know. Twisted his knee a bit. Anyway, Kooter Ashcomb—”
“I remember him!” Harry smiled.
Kooter was an old man by the time Harry attended Crozet High.
“Yeah, well, Kooter stuck a hypodermic needle right in his knee and drew out the fluid. Played the rest of the game, too.”
“We win?” Harry wondered.
“You bet.” Market folded his arms across his chest. Market liked remembering playing fullback a lot more than he liked the present.
“Back to Maude.” One line of perspiration rolled down the side of Harry’s face. “Did she come out here alone? Did she come out here to meet someone? Did she come out here with someone?”
“I had no idea you were so logical, Harry,” Josiah observed.
“Obvious questions and I’m sure Rick Shaw and company have asked them too.” Harry wiped away the sweat.
“Wish we could find some tracks.” Hayden, not being a hunting man, wouldn’t even know how to look.
In the distance, the finger of a dark thundercloud hooked over the Blue Ridge.
“No tracks if you walk on the train bed.” Harry felt bad. The reality of Maude’s death, the blood, began to press on her head. She felt a throbbing at her temples.
“There’s nothing here”—Josiah’s voice dropped—“except that.” He pointed up to the stained site.
“But there is! There is!” Tucker barked.
Mrs. Murphy and Tucker swarmed over the site of the murder. Harry mistook this for attraction to the blood.
“Get out of there!” she shouted.
“Don’t be mad at them, Harry. They’re only animals,” Market chided her.
“There’s something here! That same smell is here!” Tucker barked.
Harry ran up to the dog and collared her.“You come with me right now!”
Mrs. Murphy ran alongside Harry.“Don’t do that! Come back. Come back and sniff!”
Harry couldn’t go back and it was just as well, because if she’d gotten down on her hands and knees to catch the scent she would also have seen a few strands of Maude’s blood-soaked hair missed by the Sheriff’s Department. That would have done her in.
Tucker and Mrs. Murphy had thoroughly investigated the area around the murder location. Not until they examined the exact site did they catch the faint amphibian odor. No track, no line. But again it was in one place, although this time there was more of it than a dot. There were a few dots, fading fast.
But no one would listen to them and they rode home in disgrace with Harry, who thought the worst of her best friends.
Later that evening the thunderstorm lashed Crozet. Marilyn Sanburne was put out because the power failed and she had a souffl? in the oven. Jim, just back from his business trip, said the hell with it. They could eat sandwiches. He was also being driven wild by the telephone ringing. As the mayor of murder hamlet, as one reporter called it, Jim was expected to say something. He did. He told them to “fuck off,” and Mim screamed, “I hate the ‘f’ word.” She would have left to go visit one of her cronies, but the storm was too intense. Instead, she flounced into her room and slammed the door.