Killing Grounds Part 15

Johnny shook his head violently. "No. I couldn'tI touched her and she was all cold and stiff. I just couldn't."

Kate got to her feet. "Show us."

The reason Kate and the trooper hadn't seen the body on the way up was because it was lying in a bend of the creek where a small brook had cut a smaller backwater into the bank, leaving a crescent-shaped sliver of beach and a prime fis.h.i.+ng hole. They must have pa.s.sed Johnny on the way, the rush of the creek and the noise of the kicker drowning out his pa.s.sage.

They grounded the skiff and climbed out. "I spotted the hole on our way up on Wednesday," Johnny said, in dry clothes, wet hair tousled from a hasty finger-combing. "There were fish jumping everywhere."

"Oh there were, were there?" his father said with a determined attempt at flippancy. "And didn't think to share 'em with your old man, I suppose?"

Johnny gave a ghost of a smile. "Guess I forgot."

His father snorted.

The repartee, if not easy, eased the tension among the four of them, and made it easier for Johnny to point to the dark shape lying half in, half out of the water. "I didn't see her at first, II must have walked right by her. See, you can get to the beach across that fallen tree." He swallowed hard. "Then the hook got caught, and I walked the pole around the beach trying to free it up, andwell, that's when I saw her."

"Did you touch anything?" Jack said.

"Of course not!" Johnny retained enough spirit to be indignant at the very suggestion of such a thing. "You always tell me you're not supposed to touch anything, that the crime scene is as important to the investigation as the corpse, and sometimes even more."

"So I do." By way of apology, Jack removed his Mariners cap (signed personally by Ken Griffey, Jr.) for the sole purpose of putting it on Johnny's head and tugging it down over his eyes. "Daa-ad." Johnny's protest was halfhearted. He resettled the cap so he could see, and then turned his back to stare determinedly creekward as the others went to look.

The bank had been cut away by the eroding force of rus.h.i.+ng water, and the resulting strip of land was mostly gravel at this point. Sand would have been better for tracks. The gravel was churned up, but that could have been as much by spring runoff and fis.h.i.+ng bears as by any human pa.s.sage. Cotton-wood and alder and some currant bushes grew right out to the edge of the overhanging bank, and one spruce tree had had the roots washed out from beneath it and had fallen over, bridging the brook.

Branches had been broken from the top-facing surface of the fallen tree and the bark had worn away, but that could as easily be from exposure to weather as from traffic. The traffic didn't necessarily have to be human, either, as witness the porcupine chewing peacefully on an alder branch, who rattled his quills at the trooper in his own demonstration of civil disobedience and trundled off unhurriedly.

The body was lying facedown, head toward the brook, feet toward the creek, limbs sprawled out, blond hair darkened by the water spread out around her head in a swirling halo. Jack pointed, and Kate and Jim nodded. They could all see the darker patch on the left side of the back of her head.

"Let's get her out," Jim said, his voice curt.

Rigor was well established and the body flopped over like a starfish. The skin of the face was dark with lividity. The eyes, mercifully, were closed.

The trooper hunkered down on his knees and with one hand investigated the back of her head. "One blow. Her skull feels like mush back here."

"Probably didn't know what hit her," Jack said.

"No," the trooper agreed, his even tone belied by the fury in his eyes.

Kate stared down at the youthful face, and said to Jack, "Was Auntie Joy at fish camp last night?"

He looked at her with a good deal of understanding, and something else, something she was too caught up in her own concerns to notice or to interpret. "Yes."

"All night? You're sure?"

"Yes." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "My son the venture capitalist was whupping our a.s.ses at Monopoly until midnight. We're sleeping outside. I would have woken up if anyone had left the cabin during the night."

"All right," she said, unable to repress the wave of relief that swept over her, and immediately ashamed of it. To Jim she said, "This is Dani Meany."

Jim jerked erect. "Cal Meany's daughter?"

She nodded. If Dani Meany's murder was connected to Cal Meany's, as seemed likely, if they had been killed by the same person, which seemed even more likely, and if Auntie Joy had an unshakable alibi for the previous night, which Jack had just provided her, then Auntie Joy was in the clear.

The trooper read her mind. "She's still got to tell me where she went with Meany the night of the Fourth, Kate."

Her eyes met his in complete understanding. "She will,'' she said firmly. If I have to pry it out of her with a crowbar, she thought.

The trooper rose to his feet and thumbed up the brim of his hat. He stood staring down at the body with a brooding look on his face, and said out loud what they were all thinking. "It's gotta be connected." He raised his head. "Let's look around for a weapon."

"Could be anything," Kate objected.

"Handy," Jack pointed out. "If the killer just used a rock or something he grabbed up, we can't prove premeditation.

"I could give a s.h.i.+t about degrees here, I want the p.r.i.c.k that would bash a teenage girl over the head and leave her. Jim said, and started casting about for a blunt instrument.

In the end Kate found it, a smooth, three-foot length or driftwood caught in the snarl of dead root at the opposite end of the fallen spruce. Balancing on the spruce's trunk, she very carefully knelt, one knee at a time, clutched a branch whose needles had rusted, and leaned down. The wound to her head throbbed painfully with the sudden rush of blood, but it was worth it when her groping hand grabbed the length of wood. She brought it back up and looked at the dark patch on the thick end that caught her eye. Could just be mud from the bottom of the brook, but she didn't think so.

She rose just as carefully to her feet, and stepped quickly down the trunk to the expanse of gravel. Mutely, she held the makes.h.i.+ft club out to Jim. He held it in his fingertips and scrutinized it carefully. The same thing that had caught Kate's attention caught his as well, a smudge of something at the thick end. "Could just be mud," he said, echoing her thought for the second time that day.

"Could be. But look." She stood facing the downed spruce. "Suppose the victim is about to step on the trunk to cross the brook to the bank. Suppose the killer is right behind her, and s.n.a.t.c.hes up the driftwood."

"Pow, he brings it down on the victim's head" Jim said.

"Right-handed, then," Jack said. "And then, when the victim falls face forward into the creekdoesn't matter if she's unconscious or dead, because if she's unconscious she'll drown pretty shortlythen the killer climbs up on the trunk, crosses to the bank, tosses his club in the water, he thinks to float away or at least to be washed clean, and goes on his merry way." He took the club from Jim and examined it. "Just dumb luck it fell wrong side down for the killer and right side up for us."

"And cold water always delays rigor," Jim added, "so the time of death is confused."

"If he knew that," Kate said.

"If he cared," Jack said. He took a deep breath, and raised his voice. "Johnny?"

Johnny turned reluctantly. "Yeah, Dad?"

"Need you to take a look."

The color, only just returned to the boy's face, washed out again.

"Jack," Kate said.

The trooper, sensing something off, said nothing.

"Come on," Jack said, beckoning.

Johnny came with laggard steps, his eyes on the ground. He stopped just out of his father's reach.

"Come on, kid," Jack said, his voice gentling. "Just take a look. Is she the girl you saw the night of the Fourth?"

"What?" Kate said.

Unwilling, irresolute, Johnny looked anyway. He didn't gasp or stumble backwards, but Kate got the feeling it was only because of pride. His voice was thin and shaky. "How come her face is so dark?"

"She's been lying facedown for maybe twelve hours," his father told him. "Blood pools in the down side of the body after death. Is it her?"

The boy swallowed hard, and nodded. "It's her."

Kate stepped between the body and the boy. "What the h.e.l.l's going on here, Morgan?"

Again, Jack took in a big breath. When he spoke there was a quality to his voice that Kate hadn't heard before, a mixture of embarra.s.sment and pugnacity. "Johnny has something to tell you. Something he should have told you yesterday. Something I should have made him tell you." He squeezed Johnny's shoulder. "Go ahead."

Johnny looked up at Kate, and then away. When he spoke his voice was low, and she had to concentrate to hear his words.

The gist of the story seemed to be that the evening of the Fourth, the aunties had sprung Johnny from his fish camp duties (they had become duties his first day on sh.o.r.e) and he had gone for a hike down the creek, scouting likely locations for fis.h.i.+ng with a rod and reel. He'd taken his father's .30-06 in case he met up with a bear with att.i.tude, and, as Jack said, "The only way he can get backwoods experience is to go out into the backwoods."

Involuntarily Kate remembered her father and the deer hunt. Jack mistook the quality of her silence and said defensively, "He wanted to go alone. The bears are mostly after fish now, anyway, Kate. I didn't think he'd come to any harm." He added, "And he didn't."

"I didn't either," she said, "and I was six when my father turned me loose with a twenty-two. It's all right, Jack, I do understand. That part of it, anyway. Go ahead, Johnny. Tell us the rest."

Johnny cleared his throat and resumed his story. "It was getting late, and I'd run out of Jelly Bellys so I was thinking about turning around and heading back to fish camp for some dinner, when I heard somebody scream. It sounded like a girl, and it sounded close by, so I went to take a look." A slow flush climbed painfully up into his face. "I saw them across the creek. Right here, actually, on this beach. It was a girl, and she was with somebody. They, ah, they had all their clothes off, and they were, well, you know, they were doing it."

By now Johnny's face was as red as his s.h.i.+rt, but he struggled to get the story out nonetheless. "I was curious," he said, trying to meet Kate's eyes and not having much luck with it. "So I watched."

"They didn't see you, or hear you?"

If possible, his face became even redder. "No. They wereumnoisy. Especially her."

"This is her?" He nodded. "What happened next?"

He squirmed. "Well, theythey finished, is all. And after, they got dressed and left."

"How?"

He nodded over their heads. "They walked across that tree trunk and went into the woods."

"You ever see the guy before?" He shook his head. "What did he look like?"

"Uhskinny, dark hair." He floundered. He hadn't been watching the guy.

Kate rescued him. "That's it?"

Her matter-of-fact tone seemed to hearten him. He squared his shoulders. "That's it. What do we do now?"

She was up on the trunk and halfway across before the trooper caught up with her. The trunk shook beneath his added weight, and then shook again when Jack and Johnny mounted it.

It wasn't simple erosion, others had walked that trunk before her, and not just Johnny. Once on the bank, she could see a faint but clearly discernible trail leading through the brush, a trail which appeared to parallel the direction of Amartuq Creek. Could be a game trail, she thought. Certainly could have started out as one, and been used by the occasional sport fisherman.

Not to mention the occasional murderer.

A hand grabbed her arm. "Hold it, Kate," Jim said. "We can't leave her for the critters to eat on."

"They left her alone overnight, didn't they?" she said impatiently.

"So we got lucky," he said. "Come on."

"You go, you bring her out in the skiff. I'll meet you on the beach, at the Meanys' setnet site."

"You take the body, I'll take the trail."

She snorted. "Yeah, right," she said, and was gone.

Before Jim could stop them, Jack and Johnny had shoved past and vanished in her wake. He swore once, and then, realizing he was alone with a body that would only ripen with the day, taking any forensic revelations it had with it, he turned back to the grim task of removing both it and himself from four-legged temptation.

The undergrowth was still wet from the rain, and they were soon soaked through to the skin. No one complained, not even Kate.

"I'm sorry," Jack said, cras.h.i.+ng through the brush behind her. "Johnny should have told you what he saw."

"Why didn't he?"

"I told him not to."

"I see." The trail turned sharply and she pa.s.sed beneath a low-lying branch without giving warning of its existence. She was pleased with the resulting crack of wood on bone, followed by a yelp of pain and a curse.

"You okay, Dad?"

"I'm all right," Jack muttered, and raised his voice. "I know it was stupid, Kate. I know it was interfering. h.e.l.l, it was probably obstruction of justice. I just" They came to a dry creek bed with steep sides. The trail led down into it and up again, and without hesitation Kate bent her knees and slid down it and up the opposite side.

Breathless behind her, Jack continued, "From your descriptions of the Meany family, I figured it was the daughter and the summer hire. But I didn't think it had anything to do with Meany's murder." She glanced briefly over her shoulder. "Okay, okay, everything has to do with murder." He quick-stepped over the gnarled root of a very old Sitka spruce. "I just didn't want Johnny involved. Not in any of it, not even peripherally. I'm sorry," he repeated, like a mantra, or a magic charm powerful enough to exonerate himself. "I"

"Don't be an idiot," was her comforting reply, and his head snapped up to see her stopped on the trail, smiling at him. "You're supposed to be overprotective, you're his father. It's in the job description."

He stared at her for a moment. Then in a movement so quick she didn't have time to dodge back out of the way, his hand whipped out and caught the back of her neck.

Johnny, who had fallen a little behind, came panting up from the rear. "Jeez, you guys!" He pushed through the bushes to get around them and was off up the trail like a hare in front of the hounds.

Confession, absolution and a Mariners cap and Johnny was ready once again to take on the world. Boys of thirteen believe they are strong and true and immortal and invincible, and drawing attention to the fact that they are only aspiring heroes with a long apprentices.h.i.+p ahead of them is tactless in the extreme. Kate didn't try, merely fell in behind.

Jack, cras.h.i.+ng along in their rear, said, "Who looks good to you for this one?"

"It has to be the same person who killed Meany."

He agreed, but played devil's advocate anyway, a routine they'd performed a thousand times before. "Why?"

"He made it back to Alaganik after all, and somebody finished him off there, not Cordova, like I thought."

"You thought he'd been killed in Cordova, and his body brought back to Alaganik?"

"Yes. Gull saw Meany trying to tie up his drifter at ten o'clock. Said Meany rammed the slip and stripped the gears."