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My sneakers made small squeaky noises on the worn blacktop as I crossed the road. Deep in the woods to the west, I heard a bobwhite sound its cry. Not a car was in sight.
After a second's hesitation I entered the woods, following the unmarked road. It hardly deserved the name.
It was really two bare tracks with grass growing up between them, some old gravel pressed down into the ground marking where the last load had been leveled years before. My progress was quiet, but not silent, and I slowed involuntarily. The path curved slightly to the right, and as I rounded that curve I saw the source of the flash of color.
It was a car—a Taurus—parked facing away from Farm Hill Road.
Someone was sitting in the front seat. I could see a head outlined on the driver's side. I stopped dead in my tracks. My skin rose in goose bumps up and down my arms. If I'd been apprehensive before, now I was truly frightened. Somehow, that unexpected glimpse of another human being was more shocking than the discovery that a car was parked out here in the woods where it had no business parking.
"Hello?" I said quietly.
But the person in the front seat of the red Taurus did not move.
Suddenly I found I was too scared to say anything else. The woods seemed to close in around me. The silence had taken on an oppressive life of its own. "Bob— white!" shrieked the bird, and I nearly leapt out of my skin.
I stood stock-still and fought a fierce internal battle. More than anything, I wanted to walk away from this car with its silent occupant—wanted to forget I'd ever been here.
I couldn't.
Despising my indecision, I marched up to the car and bent to look in.
For a moment I was distracted by her nakedness, by the bareness of breasts and thighs, by the alien protrusion between her legs. But when I looked into the face of the woman in the car, I had to bite my lower lip to keep from crying out. Deedra's eyes were halfway open, but they weren't returning my gaze.
I made myself acknowledge what I was seeing and smelling—the deadness of her—and then I let myself snap back up straight and move a step away from the car. I stood gasping until I felt steadier, thinking of what I should do next.
Another alien color, not natural to these greening woods, caught the corner of my eye and I began to look around me, trying not to move. In fact, I was hardly breathing in my effort to make no imprint on the scene around me.
The biggest patch of color was a cream-colored blouse tossed over a thorny vine that had woven itself between two trees. A few feet from that was a black skirt, cut narrow and short. It was on the ground, and it was as crumpled as the blouse. A pair of pantyhose and—what was that? I leaned over to see more clearly, making an effort to satisfy my curiosity without moving my feet. Deedra's pearls. The pantyhose and pearls were festooned over a low branch. I was missing the bra, which I eventually located hanging from a bush, and the shoes, which had been thrown separately some feet farther down the trail. Black leather pumps. That left the purse. I almost leaned over again to see if it was in the car, but instead I replayed the scene in my mind. The purse wasn't in the front seat of Deedra's car; she would've been carrying the little black leather shoulder-strap bag she usually used with the pumps. You don't work for someone as long as I'd worked for Deedra without knowing her clothes and her habits.
So I wouldn't have to decide what to do about this for a few more seconds, I looked hard for the purse, but I didn't spot it. Either it had been tossed farther than her clothes, or the person in the woods with her had taken it with him.
With Deedra it was always a "him."
I took a deep breath and braced myself, knowing what I had to do and admitting it to myself. I had to call the sheriff's department. I took one more look around, feeling the shock of the scene all over again, and patted my cheeks. But there were no tears.
Deedra was not someone you cried over, I realized as I walked swiftly out of the woods to the road. Deedra's was a shake-your-head death—not entirely unanticipated, within the realm of possibility. Since Deedra had been in her twenties, the mere fact that she was dead should have been shocking, but there again ... it wasn't.
As I punched the number for the sheriff's department (the cell phone had been a Christmas surprise from Jack Leeds) I felt regret about my lack of amazement. The death of anyone young and healthy should be outrageous. But I knew, as I told the dispatcher where I was—right outside the Shakespeare city limit, in fact I could see the sign from where I stood—that very few people would truly be stu
Of all the people in the world, I would be the last one to blame the victim for the crime. But it was simply undeniable that Deedra had thrown herself into the victim pool with vigor, even eagerness. She must have considered her family's money and social position life jacket enough.
After tossing the cell phone back into my car through the open window, I leaned against the hood and wondered what situation had led to Deedra's death. When a woman has many sexual partners, the chance of her falling foul of one of them escalates, and I was assuming that was what had happened. I mulled over that assumption. If Deedra had worked in a factory that employed mostly men, would she be more likely to die than a woman who worked in a factory that employed mostly women? I had no idea. I wondered if a promiscuous man was more likely to be murdered than a chaste man.
I was actually happy to see the sheriff's car rounding the corner. I hadn't met the new sheriff, though I'd seen her around town. As Marta Schuster emerged from her official car, I crossed the road once again.
We shook hands, and she gave me the silent eyes-up-and-down evaluation that was supposed to prove to me that she was tough and impartial.
I took the opportunity to scan her, too.
Marta's father, Marty Schuster, had been elected county sheriff for many terms. When he'd died on the job last year, Marta had been appointed to fill in the remainder of his term of office. Marty had been a genuinely tough little bantamweight of a man, but his wife must have been made of sterner and more majestic stuff. Marta was a Valkyrie of a woman. She was robust, blond, and very fair complexioned, like many people in this area. Shakespeare had been founded by a literature-loving, homesick Englishman, but in the late eighteen hundreds the little town had had an influx of German immigrants.
The sheriff was small-bosomed and somewhat thick-waisted, which the uniform blouse and skirt did nothing but accentuate. Marta Schuster was somewhere in her mid-thirties, about my age.
"You're Lily Bard, who called in the death?"
"Yes."
"The body is ... ?"
"In there." I pointed toward the little track.
Another sheriff's department car pulled in behind Marta Schuster's. The man who got out was tall, really tall, maybe six-four or more. I wondered if the sheriff's department had height restrictions, and if so how this man had gotten in. He looked like a brick wall in his uniform, and he was as fair-ski
"Stay here," Marta Schuster told me brusquely. She pointed to the bumper of her official vehicle. She went to the trunk, unlocked it, and pulled out a pair of sneakers. She slipped off her pumps and put on the sneakers. She wasn't happy about being in a skirt, I could tell; she hadn't known when she got to work that morning that she'd be called on to tromp around in the woods. The sheriff got a few more items out of her car and went to the edge of the trees. Marta Schuster was visibly bracing herself to remember every lesson she'd ever learned about homicide investigation.