Deep South Read online

  “Hell of a country for equestrians,” Anna said as she extricated herself from such a place, scraping her shoe full of dirt in the process.

  “They ride though. Horsey types can’t help themselves. There’s an active group out of Vicksburg rides around here quite a bit,” Stilwell told her.

  To corroborate his point, they uncovered a bit of evidence in the form of dried road apples. They also found two of Thigpen’s Marlboro Lights butts but very little else. Perhaps grasses were crushed, twigs snapped, leaves stomped into the ground—signs that would speak of recent passage—but only in books and in the eyes of the few existing trackers with a genius for it could the difference between today’s pedestrians and those of the night before be told.

  The lack of the unique mark the girl’s rhinestone sandals would have left behind provided one scrap of information. Unless she’d come from another direction, she’d not walked but been carried to the place where she was found. Anna’s best guess was that she was dead or unconscious during the trip. Otherwise there would surely have been some marks of a struggle on the body.

  After thirty minutes of this largely fruitless search, Anna and Steve came to a trench. The sides were steep and twenty or thirty feet high, the bottom flat. It was six or seven yards bank to bank at the narrowest point and as much as twenty where the sides had been eroded back over the years. A foot path wandered down the center.

  “This is it?” Anna asked.

  “You’ve got about seven miles of it all told,” Stilwell said. “In bits and pieces. But this is a section of the Old Trace. Hard to believe it was cut so deep with anything less than a bulldozer, isn’t it?”

  Considering the havoc the passing of Thigpen, the sheriff and the deputy had caused, Anna believed it. Where they’d first climbed, then, burdened with the corpse, descended, the bank was deeply scored and broken at the lip. Looking up and down this short stretch of history, Anna saw more evidence of horseback riders, great gouts of soil where destructive hooves had been forced up the inclines. She started a new list in her head: Things That Would Be Different from Now On.

  Along the bottom of the banks more damage had been done, fresh digging.

  “Armadillos,” Stilwell informed her when she asked about it. “They have noses like army spoons. One of ’em can root up half an acre if the grub hunting is good.”

  “Ah,” she said. The park being their home, the armadillos could stay. The horse riders would have to be rerouted onto less sensitive terrain.

  Anna added to the damage by scrambling down the bank on fanny, heels and hands. She and Steve searched the floor of the Old Trace for forty yards in each direction. None of the skidding slides down the bank appeared to have been made recently. The edges of the tracks were rounded, dried and crumbling. Either the murderer entered precisely where Thigpen had obliterated all possibility of finding tracks or he had not entered the woods from the sunken Trace. Anna figured it was the former. If the murder had occurred at or near the campground, or even on the new, paved Natchez Trace where it ran by Rocky, this would have been the most direct route to where the girl was found. At night, in the woods, carrying a hundred pounds of dead weight, one would tend not to take the scenic route.

  The ruination of the back trail was a severe loss. Anna thought about that for a while.

  Randy Thigpen had destroyed evidence, tried to contaminate the crime scene with ashes and butts, and attempted to lead Sheriff Davidson astray by misinterpreting the observations Anna was making.

  “What do you know about Randy Thigpen?” she asked abruptly as they walked back to Rocky, still looking but no longer with any expectation of finding.

  “Well ...” Steve thought for a moment, then smiled, his small teeth glittering in his beard. “I know I’m really, really glad he’s yours and not mine.” .

  “How so?”

  “In the four months I was acting district ranger down here—in addition, I might add, to my heavy load of responsibilities in Ridgeland—”

  Anna smiled to show she was a fun kind of gal.

  “—Randy went on disability for a soft tissue injury to the neck that can’t be medically proved or disproved. Interfered with his ability to draw his weapon was the deal. Then sued on grounds of age discrimination to get back on patrol when it turned out John wasn’t going to give him an indefinite vacation but merely a change of duties where the gun arm was not a factor. What else? Good with machinery. Lots of local contacts. Good at dealing with lessees. Fries catfish in some kind of batter that Chez Paul would die for. Married to a nice little woman from Crystal Springs who he’s been philandering on with a gal in Bovina for years.”

  “Any connection with the Poseys?”

  Walking just ahead of Anna through an infestation of kudzu that smelled disconcertingly like grape Nehi, Stilwell said: “He’d’ve had contact with the Poseys when renewing their lease, I guess. Other than that I can’t say. Why? Hoping to pin a bit of homicide on him?”

  Anna laughed. “It crossed my mind.” She wasn’t precisely compiling a list of suspects, but Thigpen was an irresistible target. Like a needle to True North, her suspicions turned to sexists and sloths. Wishful thinking. Most sexists and sloths lacked the intellectual acuity or energy to commit crimes of much intricacy.

  Lost in thought, Anna hadn’t realized she was no longer walking till Stilwell’s voice cut through the fog.

  “You don’t want to stop here,” he warned.

  The possibility of danger brought her back into the three dimensional world. “Why not?” Automatically her eyes and ears probed for predators. Nothing but deep, fragrant, leafy vines in every direction, so thick she couldn’t see the path at her feet and so aggressive they’d climbed a dozen trees, smothered them till dead and now cloaked the lifeless limbs with a parody of the original foliage. So dense six hundred fifty water moccasins could be lounging on their snaky little bellies within inches of her toes and she’d never know it till she waded into the middle of them.

  “Why not?” she repeated with more urgency.

  “You stand still too long in this stuff and it’ll grow right up your leg. Who knows which of those green shapes were once trees and which were slow hikers. Kudzu grows up to eighteen inches a day in the summer.” Stilwell combed his hair back off his face with his fingers. The movement was provocative but totally ingrained, as if twenty-five years ago he’d taken to doing it because it was sexy and somewhere along the line it had become habit.

  Anna laughed and began moving. The idea of snakes didn’t stray too far from mind. Most snakes, deadly or not, were beautiful animals. Not so the cottonmouth. Not to Anna’s way of thinking. They were fat, like garden slugs, the color of mud and so nearsighted it made them mean.

  Taco, piously leashed in honor of the chief ranger’s impending arrival, minced along at her heels as if the same thing was on his mind.

  Stepping where Stilwell stepped, Anna was haunted by the South. Things were out of whack. The land refused to show you its skeleton. Sheriffs prayed openly for the souls of the departed. Children frolicked in cemeteries. Used-car salesmen captained armies of ghosts.

  In the South, it seemed, the dead, like the poor, were always with you.

  ★ 7 ★

  John Brown stayed through the time Anna had hoped for a belt of Stilwell’s single malt. The verdict was clear: she was to dedicate all time and resources to the murder case. In and of itself, the murder would have taken some precedence, though not too much. In areas of shared jurisdiction, the parks were happy to let local law enforcement or, because it was on federal lands, the FBI—with their greater expertise and connections in grisly matters—handle things. But this corpse was draped in a white sheet, a lynching rope tied around her neck, items unpleasantly reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan and the volatile racial history of the state of Mississippi.

  Anna left the meeting, held knee-to-knee in Rocky Springs’ tiny office, with a list of phone numbers and strict orders to report everything, every day, to Br
own and to take no action whatsoever before he was consulted. This last was a codicil higher management dearly loved to tack on the tail end of assignments. Trouble was, often action was required in such a manner that it was virtually impossible to say to the perpetrator “hold that thought. I’ve got to call my supervisor.”

  Still and all, Anna was satisfied. Brown was a good man and, unless the politics of the bureaucracy made it absolutely necessary for his survival, probably wouldn’t hang her out to dry.

  Davidson called in the afternoon to let her know Fred Posey had identified the body. It was his daughter, Danielle. She and Davidson split the chores. Anna would try and track down who was with Danni the night she died. The sheriff would see to the autopsy and coroner’s reports and take care of sending the rope, the sheet and the child’s clothes to forensics for possible trace evidence.

  As district ranger, Anna needed to find a way to include Barth and Randy, if only peripherally. They had the local contacts and seniority on the Trace. To exclude them would be an obvious slap in the face that boded ill for what already promised to be a rocky relationship. To Randy she gave the task of interviewing everyone in the campground who had been there the night before, when the girl was killed. He made it clear the job was beneath him without saying so right out. With an attitude like that, he’d slough through it. Anna would do it again when he’d finished to preserve what scraps of information there might be.

  She asked Barth Dinkin to talk with Danni’s parents. During the impromptu meeting after the body had been taken away, she found he’d known Mr. and Mrs. Posey for seven years. Nothing warm and personal, but he and not Randy had handled the annual renewal of their lease. The Poseys farmed forty-three acres of Trace land up near the city of Clinton on the northernmost end of Anna’s district. Posey grew corn and soybeans—part of the natural and agricultural look the Trace was dedicated to preserving. Familiarity went a long way. She hoped Barth would get more cooperation from the bereaved family than she might. Barth hadn’t seemed excited at the prospect, but there’d been no undercurrent of rebellion or insurrection.

  At the top of her own list was Heather Barnes. That worked well. Heather and her parents lived in Clinton, forty miles up the Trace. Anna had it on good authority that there were real grocery stores there. Her diet had consisted of granola bars and coffee with Cremora for the last day and a half. This morning a really serious issue had arisen; she was running low on cat food. The NPS frowned on rangers, in uniform, performing obviously personal chores on the taxpayers’ time. Keenly aware the new girl would be watched like a hawk by all and sundry, Anna scrupulously cleared the planned foraging with Chief Ranger Brown.

  The Trace between Rocky and I-20 was as beautiful as it had been the morning Anna arrived, but this morning she was better able to appreciate it. She played with the radar in her patrol car. Guadalupe, Isle Royale, Mesa Verde—none of the other parks she’d worked were automobile oriented. There’d been no need for radar. Now she zapped oncoming motorists with a childlike glee. Sixty-six, sixty-two, seventy-one, fifty-eight: everybody was speeding. Because this was a park, fifty miles per hour was the posted limit. Judging by the fact that even the sight of her patrol car failed to slow the visitors, Anna surmised Randy and Barth weren’t big on writing traffic citations. Cynicism pinched her thoughts as she noted her lack of surprise.

  Today the speeders were safe from the rigors of the new regime. She was otherwise engaged. Still, she did look forward to catching some: the pleasures of the hunt.

  Clinton was a pretty little town, with the main street paved in brick and a college that looked like a miniature version of Ivy League done in red brick instead of gray stone. The trees impressed Anna the most, great old oaks, feathery mimosa, stands of pine, elm, locust, crabapple in wild pink blossoms, Bradford pears in modest white. Their age and dignity reminded her that Mississippi had been settled long before most of the rest of the country.

  The high school was a relatively new building set on the edge of town, essentially in the country by the standards of more populated states. What struck Anna most forcefully as she drove in the long entry road were the cars. The place had a parking lot to rival that of a small shopping mall, and it was full. Didn’t anybody ride the bus down here?

  Anna parked the Crown Vic next to a shiny red Honda Acura with plates reading SWT16. A good percentage of the students’ cars were new models. There were a couple of Jags and one Corvette. Clinton had money.

  The school—light, airy, modern, with white pillars lining a two-story foyer, high ceilings and wide clean halls—gave Anna the willies. On the rare occasions she had to enter high schools, there was always that ubiquitous adolescent sense that boys in groups were snickering at her. She found herself walking more quickly, hoping to reach the principal’s office before the bell rang and the halls were flooded with teenagers.

  The principal was in Atlanta on business. The vice principal, Adele Mack, showed Anna into her office. Vice Principal Mack was in her mid-thirties, neatly dressed in hose and heels. The only thing that marred what would have been a fine face was a heavy mask of expertly applied makeup. From ten feet away, Ms. Mack displayed a mannequin’s beauty. Up close and personal, it was a little creepy.

  “Can I help you?” Ms. Mack asked when Anna’d been politely seated. Actually, she said: “Kin aye help yew?” but Anna was already getting accustomed to the accent. It grew on a person. There was a gentleness to it that was reassuring.

  Anna told her why she’d come and waited. In cases involving juveniles, she had learned to tread with utmost care. Though Heather was neither suspected nor accused of any crime, and Anna merely wanted to get what information she might have about Danielle, the night and the prom, she would go with the vice principal’s recommendation on how this interview was to take place.

  To Adele Mack’s credit, Anna was thoroughly grilled. No student was going to be unnecessarily bothered on Ms. Mack’s watch.

  Anna sat up straight as Sister Mary Corine had taught her and answered clearly and quietly, to appear as unthreatening as possible. In the end, the vice principal agreed to call Heather out of class. Anna could talk with her in the teachers’ conference room. Guessing that was where bad news, reprimands and other unpleasant exchanges between faculty and students took place, Anna asked if the gym was free. Kids tended to be more forthcoming with hardwood under their feet.

  Heather was duly fetched, and she and Anna walked together to the gymnasium. The girl looked much improved from the last time Anna had seen her but infinitely less accessible. Her flawless little face was hidden behind a coat of paint nearly as thick as that worn by Adele Mack, and there was a sullenness about her that Anna hadn’t noticed before.

  The gymnasium was sunk partway into the ground, with high windows for light and two banks of bleacher seats like those one would expect on a professional basketball court. The shining wood floor was emblazoned with a white arrow inside a big red C. An odd school mascot, but Anna didn’t dare ask about it for fear of appearing hopelessly out of it.

  Heather plunked down on the highest bench of the bleachers, and Anna slid in beside her, uncomfortably aware of the nine-millimeter dragging at her hip.

  “I can’t tell you anything,” Heather said, staring at manicured nails painted in pale blue glitter. “I was drunk, remember? The whole night’s one big blank.”

  The remark wasn’t a mere disclaimer. It was uttered with the finality of a closing door. And something else: fear. Anna’d been around enough frightened people in her life that she’d learned to sense the vibrations: a quivering of the breath, a skittering of the eyes, tension in the muscles of the face and neck. Not just a childish fear of authority. Heather was guarding something specific, hiding something from Anna.

  Interesting. Anna’s brain came into sharper focus. “I figured that,” she said easily. “The higher-ups just want some background, I guess.” Heather’s hunched shoulders relaxed fractionally.

  “Did you know Danielle
Posey?” Anna asked.

  Up went the shoulders.

  “I guess.” Heather tried for casual and missed. “I mean she goes to school here and all if that’s what you mean.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “I guess. I mean, you know, we weren’t like enemies or anything.”

  Poor kid, Anna thought without a crumb of compassion. She was too young to know that evasion to a law enforcement officer is like scuttling to a cat. It made their metaphorical tails twitch, brought out the instinct to pounce.

  “Were you with Danielle the night of the prom?”

  “There were a bunch of us kind of hanging out.”

  Anna took that as a yes. “Were you drinking?”

  “Not the ones driving,” she said with well-rehearsed promptness.

  Anna did not allow herself to smile. “Who was your date to the dance?” She tried another tack. Heather didn’t answer immediately. Even through the layers of makeup, Anna could see a struggle taking place. Heather wanted to lie but was rapidly coming to the conclusion Anna’d already reached. Clinton was a small town, maybe twenty or thirty thousand people. Who one’s date for the prom was would have been well advertised and easy to check.

  Heather was sullen and scared and young but she wasn’t a complete idiot. “Matt Dryer,” she said.

  “I saw two boys leaving the graveyard just before I found you. Was one of them Matt?”

  “I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. I was drunk, okay? Drunk.”

  “Did you go out to Rocky Springs with Matt?”

  “Why do you keep asking me stuff? I don’t remember anything after leaving the dance. You asking’s not going to make me remember so quit asking ... please.”