saw Chang directing some guy in a cherry picker from his standing position atop the shed. She lifted a perfunctory wave in his direction, seeing that he was staring back at her now. Her eyes then went to the lawn, where the unevenly cut grass had been trampled by officers from the county, ATF, and FBI. She saw men smoking cigarettes, leaning against trees, cowboy boots resting on black valises, men and women in ball caps and Stetsons, some in uniform, others in jackets pulled over white shirts and ties. The overall effect was of a bizarre Norman Rockwell painting: a crowd of picnickers stepping over a pair of corpses, the bodies acting as focal point in the composition. Other than gabbing and biting on pipes, cigars, and cigarettes, these people on the lawn and standing around the vehicles in the drive looked as if they were doing nothing. She guessed most were standing about discussing the weekend college ball games. These thoughts wafted through her head, when suddenly it struck her. She knew how Lauralie had killed Kemper.
The lay of the grass coming toward her, creating a near- imperceptible path, screamed in her head; the lawnmower had made this errant path down to the docks. The more she stared at it, the clearer the picture came into edgy focus. She now recognized the faint little dirt and mud trail along the pier boardwalk, a trail they'd managed to trample over-the evidence that the mower had been guided with Kemper still sitting astride the cushion, with her knife at his throat while she straddled the back.
She heard the unmistakable sound of the body bag zipper closing on Kemper, plunging the body into darkness. 'Hold on a minute.' She returned to the body and slipped the zipper down far enough to investigate the neck wounds once again, zeroing in on the more tentative jab that had aroused her curiosity; seeing it again, almost lost in the puckering folds of the larger tear, she knew what it meant.
She closed Kemper from her sight again. 'Okay, thanks. You can get that waiting van down here and put him aboard for the trip back to Houston.'
She walked out to the end of the pier and back, giving her theories time to percolate in her head. Once Lauralie had forced Kemper down to the pier, she had him flank the boat she'd come across the lake in. Once the mower was aligned alongside the boat, she slit his throat, and he bled out over the wheel of the mower. The pool of blood would be found on the floorboard of the same big red Toro that everyone had treated as an obstacle, stepping around it all morning long up at the house where Lauralie had left it beside the lawn truck.
Nielsen pictured the events in her mind. Lauralie didn't want to shoot the gardener, knowing she'd never be able to drag his body from sight, and she didn't have to leap from the bushes to take him by surprise. With the noise of the mower, she might easily have stalked up from behind and stabbed him in the back, but as it was, she had to completely reach around him to cut his throat from left to right, and besides, she wanted him to strip, she wanted his clothes. Of course, it was an easy matter to cut the hefty man's throat after charming him out of his pants and into giving her a ride on his great big red mower. She had simply presented herself to him in those same tight-fitting jeans and that low-cut blouse she'd died in, the same outfit that had perhaps charmed the Farnsworth boys into dropping their guard as well…maybe…
Lauralie had stepped up to Kemper as he was mowing the grass, introduced herself as someone visiting from across the lake, and seductively talked him into a ride into the trees, where she convinced him to make love to her. Once she'd gotten him to drop his uniform, she showed her true colors, likely pulling a gun on him, the one used at the cafe. She ordered him back onto his mower in the buff. Once at his rear, Kemper no longer enjoying his luck, she suddenly put the knife to his throat and dug it in deeply- the initial wound-making certain he knew she meant business. She then ordered him to drive down to the pier. When he hesitated, she pierced his skin even deeper with the first cut, drawing blood.
After this, Kemper played along, doing as instructed, pleading for his life perhaps, wondering what she wanted perhaps. On stopping the mower halfway down the pier as ordered, he had no idea what she wanted. She stood up on the back of the mower guard, and keeping the razor-sharp knife at his throat, with the extra strength that standing over him provided, Lauralie thrust the knife into his jugular and dragged it across his throat.
Kemper immediately slumped forward over the wheel, his blood flowing down into the mower well at his feet, much of it soaking into his toenails. It was no simple matter, but from there, she managed to push his body from its sitting position on the mower to roll onto the dock and into the boat-surely almost toppling it over given his size and girth. He landed faceup to the heavens, his surprised eyes open along with his mouth and the gaping wound in his throat.
Nielsen began peeling off the wet suit, garnering stares from the men again. As she did so, she watched the body of the hapless, unlucky gardener, who had succumbed to Lauralie's lies and wiles, being carried unceremoniously to the waiting coroner's van.
Lillian Weist, an evidence tech intern, had come bounding down from the house. 'I got some info on the guy in the boat.'
'Kemper, yeah,' replied Nielsen.
'How'd you know his name?' Lillian asked, clutching the form in her hand, all the blanks filled in. 'It took me all morning to get all these facts.'
'His truck. It's on his truck, Lil.'
She scrunched up her nose and face in the universal facial expression that asked others to agree with the idiocy of its owner. 'Duhhh,' she said. 'I got most of this from papers in his glove compartment, but didn't think to read the truck logo. Anyway…talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kemper normally arrived and did his work in the A.M., but yesterday he came in the P.M. He'd visited a family friend in hospital and had lunch with his wife at the hospital cafeteria before arriving here. Had he been on his usual schedule, he'd've been long gone before this lunatic's arrival.'
Nielsen began verbalizing her theory of precisely how Howard Kemper met his end, telling Lillian, but also gathering the interest of Bert and Al. Young Lillian and the two men listened to her story with skeptical silence, Lillian nodding and struggling to stay with her, while the nodding of the men implied a condescending unwillingness to believe she could possibly know such details.
Nielsen stared up the lawn toward the mower. She could prove her theory at the mower. There she would find the evidence of the man's blood in the well of the mower bed. Evidence only inches from one FBI man who this moment stood leaning up against the Toro, blissfully unaware of its importance.
'What about his clothes?' asked Bert.
'Yeah, what became of his clothes, Dr. Nielsen?' asked Al.
Lillian provided the answer, pointing to the form in her hand. 'Clothes were found beside the front exterior steps leading up to the Sanger home, discarded and bloody- particularly the lap area and the pants legs.'
Dr. Nielsen had their rapt attention as she detailed her theory, anxious to air it, to test its validity in her own ear. When she finished, Bert, busy putting his camera and lenses away, replied, 'All right, say you're right about the clothes, the mower ride onto the pier, dumping his body from mower direct to boat without tipping the damn thing over…' Al and the others leaned in to hear this. 'It still doesn't explain how the damn worms got into the freaking boat with him, does it?'
Al jumped in, still smarting from having been burned by her. 'Yeah, how do you explain the worms?'
She breathed deeply, shaking her head. 'I don't know yet.'
'They didn't just jump in on their own,' added Bert, snapping his camera case closed. 'Must've been hundreds of them,' he told Lillian.
'A thousand or more,' said Al to the intern. 'You had to see it to believe it. Feeding on his eyes and inside his wounds.'
'The worms were night crawlers, big reds,' said Bert. 'Good for fishing.'
Al agreed. 'Kind you buy at the bait and tackle.'
'That's it, bait,' said Dr. Nielsen. 'Explains the water at the bottom of the canoe too.'
'I don't follow you,' replied Lillian.
'Someone's cooler fuU of frozed worms,' she said, her accent showing doubly on the misspoken word for 'frozen.'
'Frozed? Frozed?' asked Al, poking Bert, and together they laughed.
Ignoring the men, Nielsen stepped to the boathouse door and scanned the interior. Lillian trailed curiously after. The two women had stepped inside just as the van carrying Kemper's body backed over the mower trail Nielsen had earlier photographed. She pointed out the wall of rods and reels hanging in the boathouse, and below it an empty Styrofoam cooler lying on its side, the lid inches away. A discarded blanket lay half in the water off the litde boardwalk. The motorboat that filled most of the space was up out of the water on davits.
