Джон Коннолли - The Dirty South

McKenzie had only just commenced work when Jurel Cade returned and instructed him to get the fuck away from the body. Cade also ordered him to hand over any film from his camera, but Tucker McKenzie was too old and ornery to play that game, and a standoff occurred. Finally, though, McKenzie was forced to surrender the film to Cade, partly because he was not on the scene in any official capacity, and in theory the pictures might prove useful to Cade in his own inquiries; but mostly, Evan Griffin now believed, because McKenzie had discreetly taken a series of snaps of Hartley’s body with an instant camera, copies of which were now in the possession of the prisoner named Parker.

‘She needs to be sent to Little Rock for autopsy,’ McKenzie had told Cade, as he prepared to depart – if, he assumed, only temporarily.

‘No,’ said Cade, ‘she doesn’t.’

‘You want to explain why?’

Cade looked to the coroner.

‘Tell him, Loyd.’

‘I believe it’s an accidental death,’ said Holt.

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ said McKenzie. ‘That girl has one stick jammed in her mouth and another in her vagina. This is a killing.’

‘You the coroner now, Tucker?’ said Cade. ‘Last time I checked, Loyd had the honor of holding that position.’

‘She stumbled and fell down that slope behind,’ said Holt. ‘Lot of sticks and stones on the ground here.’

But he wouldn’t look at McKenzie as he spoke.

‘This is wrong,’ said McKenzie.

‘It’s Loyd’s decision to make,’ said Cade. ‘And mine,’ he added, ‘as chief investigator for the county. I can’t afford to waste resources on an accidental death.’

McKenzie wanted to say more, but he held his tongue. He saw what was happening, and why. This was about the future of Burdon County, and the fortunes of the Cade family.

This was about money.

Much of this McKenzie later shared with Griffin over a beer at Boyd’s. It was McKenzie’s opinion, based admittedly on only a brief sight of the body, that Patricia Hartley had suffered an injury to the base of her skull, just below the bump known as the inion. It looked as though a blade might have caused it, but McKenzie couldn’t be certain because a puncture from a sharp stone might equally have been responsible. The effect had been to sever the brain from the brain stem, shutting down her nervous system. Death would have been almost instantaneous.

And now here was another naked dead girl, with what might be a similar wound to her head, but with more injuries to her body than Patricia Hartley had suffered.

‘I can see no signs of disturbance,’ said McKenzie, ‘not like there was with Patricia Hartley. Whoever she is, she hasn’t been kicked around. Where she’s resting, that’s where her killer wanted her to be found.’

‘Anything else?’

‘She’s missing two fingernails from her right hand. The ME will be able to tell for sure, but I’d say it looks like they weren’t removed, but broke off, possibly during a struggle. The hands are real clean. I’d suggest they were washed before her body was dumped, which means she may have clawed her killer. Finally, for now, you surely noticed the marks on the decedent’s wrists. They’re rope burns, and they’re deep. The skin is broken, which means the victim attempted to free herself. It also means that we should be able to pull fragments of the binding material from the wounds. They’ll be useful if you ever get as far as a prosecution, and can find the original rope.’

Griffin finished writing down everything he’d learned. He would have no trouble remembering what McKenzie had said, but he was a meticulous man. If this was to be handled right, it had to begin now. He wasn’t about to let this girl go the way of Patricia Hartley.

A sorry sun was scattering sickly light through pallid cloud, but it wasn’t making much difference to the temperature. And there was, as Loyd Holt had noted, a dampness to the air: Griffin could feel it penetrating his clothing, digging deep.

‘How long are you going to need?’ he asked McKenzie.

‘A couple of hours, but I’ll aim for less. What are you going to do about Loyd in the meantime, apart from sabotaging his vehicle? I sense his spine may be weakening, and it was made of Jell-O to begin with.’

‘I may have to be more forceful with him. I’m not sure his loyalties lie where they should.’

‘If Cade comes, he could try to seize the evidence.’

‘I know that,’ said Griffin.

He considered raising the subject of the pictures in Parker’s file before deciding to leave it for another time. He didn’t want to risk alienating McKenzie. They needed him on their side.

‘So?’

‘So get moving, Tucker.’

Tucker McKenzie got moving.

14

Parker finished his coffee before dozing as the sky grew lighter. It sometimes came on him this way: a restless night would be followed by exhaustion, and he would sleep until late in the morning or into the afternoon. He tried to fight it as best he could, because he feared a time when he might be reluctant to leave his bed at all, but he was a man unmoored and his obligations were few. They could, in fact, be boiled down to one: to find the man who had taken his wife and child from this world and tear him apart.

Sometimes he dreamed, and in his dreams he was permitted to view Susan and Jennifer, but only at one remove. They passed through vistas detached from the reality of their previous existence, and their movements were the slow, final struggles of drowning victims. On occasion, his dead family assumed other forms, the essence of them inhabiting new bodies, as though seeking to remain connected to a realm that would, in the end, erase them entirely from its cognizance. He would hold on to them as long as he could. He would hold on to them until death came for him, too.

But even now, barely months after their murders, he was struggling to keep all those memories intact. With each day that passed, he seemed to lose one more. He could almost feel them fading, the details of faces and gestures, of words spoken, of touches given and received, falling away, color draining from them like photographic images too long exposed to light.

I want to be with you again. I do not want to live in this world without you.

But I have to stay.

I will find him, the one who did this, and when I am done with him, I will search for you both. I will leave this place, and I will travel to where you are.

Wait for me.

Listen for me.

I will come.

15

Loyd Holt might have been a poor excuse for a coroner, but he wasn’t a total dullard. A puncture to one tire might have been regarded as unlucky, but damage to two, including the spare that had sat unused in the trunk for so long, smacked to him of a conspiracy. This impression was reinforced when nobody would give him a ride back to town, make a call over the radio for someone to come out and pick him up, or even provide or secure a replacement tire. It was confirmed when he started walking, only to find Evan Griffin blocking his path.

‘I know what you’re doing,’ said Holt. ‘You’re keeping me here because you think I’m going to call Jurel.’

‘No,’ said Griffin, ‘I’m keeping you here because I know you’re going to call Jurel. I need more time, Loyd. Tucker’s not a man to rush, which is only right.’

‘And I need this job, Evan.’

‘Then do it properly.’

‘Don’t talk to me like that. I’ve always performed my task to the best of my abilities.’

Which was, in Griffin’s view, part of the problem, Loyd Holt’s best being the very definition of bare adequacy.