said, "No, I find it lucrative." But I know people find my earning method distasteful, and that would have been only partly the truth, anyway.
"It's a service I can perform for the dead," I said finally, and that was equally true.
Edwards nodded, as if I'd said something profound. He wanted all three of us to go in his Outback, but we took our own car. We always did. (This practice dates from the time a client left us in the woods nineteen miles from town, upset at my failure to find his brother's body. I'd been pretty sure the body lay somewhere to the west of the area he'd had me target, but he didn't want to pay for a longer search. It wasn't my fault his brother had lived long enough to stagger toward the stream. Anyway, it had been a long, long walk back into town.)
I let my mind go blank as we followed Edwards northwest, farther into the Ozarks. The foliage was beautiful this time of year, and that beauty drew a fair amount of tourists. The twisting, climbing road was dotted with stands for selling rocks and crystals—"genuine Ozark crafts"—and all sorts of homemade jellies and jams. All the stands touted some version of the hillbilly theme, a marketing strategy that I found incomprehensible. "We were sure ignorant and toothless and picturesque! Stop to see if we still are! "
I stared into the woods as we drove, into their chilly and brilliant depths. All along the way, I got "hits" of varying intensity.
There are dead people everywhere, of course. The older the death, the less of a buzz I get.
It's hard to describe the feeling—but of course, that's what everyone wants to know, what it feels like to sense a dead person. It's a little like hearing a bee droning inside your head, or maybe the pop of a Geiger counter—a persistent and irregular noise, increasing in strength the closer I get to the body. There's something electric about it, too; I can feel this buzzing all through my body. I guess that's not too surprising.
We passed three cemeteries (one quite small, very old) and one hidden Indian burial site, a mound or barrow that had been reshaped by time until it just resembled another rolling hill. That ancient site signaled very faintly; it was like hearing a cloud of mosquitoes, very far away.
I was tuned in to the forest and the earth by the time Paul Edwards pulled to the shoulder of the road. The woods encroached so nearly that there was hardly room to park the vehicles and still leave room for other cars to pass. I figured Tolliver had to be worried someone would come along too fast and clip the Malibu. But he didn't say anything.
"Tell me what happened," I said to the dark-haired man.
"Can't you just go look? Why do you need to know?" He was suspicious.
"If I have a little knowledge about the circumstances, I can look for her more intelligently," I said.
"Okay. Well. Last spring, Teenie came out here with Mrs. Teague's son, who was also Sheriff Branscom's nephew—Sybil and Harvey are brother and sister. Sybil's son was named Dell. Dell was Teenie's boyfriend, had been for two years, off and on. They were both seventeen. A hunter found Dell's body. He'd been shot, or he'd shot himself. They never found Teenie."
"How was their location discovered?" Tolliver asked, pointing at the patch of ground on which we stood.
"Car parked right where we're parked now. See that half-fallen pine? Supported by two other trees? Makes a good marker to remember the spot by. Dell'd been missing less than four hours when one of the families that live out this way gave Sybil a call about the car. There were folks out searching soon after that, but like I say, it was another few hours before Dell was found. Right after that, it started raining, and it rained for hours. Wiped out the tracking scent, so the bloodhounds weren't any use."
"Why wasn't anyone looking for Teenie?"
"No one knew Teenie was with Dell. Her mom didn't realize Teenie was missing for almost twenty hours, maybe longer. She didn't know about Dell, and she delayed calling the police."
"How long ago was this?"
"Maybe six months ago."
Hmm. Something fishy, here. "How come we're just being called out now? "
"Because half the town thinks that Teenie was killed and buried by Dell, and then he committed suicide. It's making Sybil crazy. Teenie's mom's hard up. Even if she thought of calling you in, she couldn't afford you. Sybil decided to fund this, after she heard about you through Terry, who went to some mayor's conference and talked to the head honcho of some little town in the Arklatex." I glanced over at Tolliver. "El Dorado," he murmured, and I nodded after a second, remembering. Paul Edwards said, "Sybil can't stand the shame of the suspicion. She liked Teenie, no matter how wild the girl was. Sybil really assumed she'd be part of their family some day."
"No Mister Teague?" I asked. "She's a widow, right?"
"Yes, Sybil's a fairly recent widow. She's got a daughter, too, Mary Nell, who's seventeen."
"So why were Teenie and Dell out here?"
He shrugged, with a half smile. "That's a question no one ever asked; I mean, hell, seventeen, in the woods in spring... I guess we all thought it was a little obvious."
"But they parked up by the road." That was what was obvious, but apparently not to Paul Edwards. "Kids wanting to have sex, they're going to hide their car better than that. Small town kids know how easy it is to be caught out."
Edwards looked surprised, his lean dark face shutting down on sudden and unwelcome thoughts. "Not much traffic out on this road," he said, but without much conviction.
I put on my dark glasses. Edwards again looked at me askance. It was an overcast day. I nodded to Tolliver.
"Lay on, Macduff," Tolliver said, to Paul Edwards's confusion. Edwards's high school must have done
It was steep going. Tolliver stayed by my side, as he always did; I was abstracted, and he knew I might fall. It had happened before.
After twenty minutes of careful, slow, downhill hiking, made even trickier by the slippery leaves and pine needles blanketing the steep slope, we came to a large fallen oak piled with leaves, branches, and other detritus. It was easy to see that a heavy rainfall would sweep debris downslope, to lodge against the tree.
"This is where Dell was found," Paul Edwards said. He pointed to the downslope side of the fallen oak. I wasn't surprised it had taken two days to find Dell Teague's body, even in the spring; but I was startled at the location of the corpse. I was glad I'd put on the dark glasses.
"On that side of the log?" I asked, pointing to make sure I had it right.
"Yes," Edwards said.
"And he had a gun? It was by his body? "
"Well, no."
"But the theory was that he'd shot himself? "
"Yeah, that's what the sheriff's office said."
"Obvious problem there."
"The sheriff thought maybe the gun could've been grabbed by a hunter who didn't report what he found. Or maybe one of the guys who actually did find Dell lifted the gun. After all, guns are expensive and almost everyone here uses firearms of some kind." Edwards shrugged. "Or, if Dell shot himself on the upslope side of the log and fell over it, the gun could have slid down the hill quite a distance, gotten hidden like that."
"So the wounds—how many were there?"
"Two. One, a graze to the side of his head, was counted as a... sort of a first try. Then, through the eye."
"So the two wounds were counted as suicide wounds, one unsuccessful and one not, and no gun was found. And he was on the downslope side of the log."
"Yes, ma'am." The lawyer took off his hat, slapped it against his leg.
This was all wrong. Well, maybe... "How was he lying? What position? "
"What, you want me to show you?"
"Yes. Did you see him? "
"Yes, ma'am, I sure did. I came out to identify him. Didn't want his mom to see him like that. Sybil and I have been friends for years."
"Then just humor me by assuming the position Dell was in, okay?"
Edwards looked as if he wished he were elsewhere. He knelt on the ground, reluctance in every line of his body. He was facing the fallen tree. Putting out a hand to steady himself, he sank down to the ground. His legs were bent at the knees and he was on his right side.
Tolliver moved behind me. "This ain't right," he whispered in my ear.
I nodded agreement. "Okay, thanks," I said out loud. Paul Edwards scrambled to his feet.
"I don't see why you needed to see where Dell was, anyway," he said, trying his best not to sound accusatory. "We're looking for Teenie."
"What's her last name?" Not that it mattered for search purposes, but I'd forgotten; and it showed respect, to know the name.
"Teenie Hopkins. Monteen Hopkins."
I was still upslope of the fallen tree, and I began making my way to the right. It felt appropriate, and it was as good a way to begin as any.
"You might as well go back up to your SUV," I heard Tolliver telling our reluctant escort.
"You might need help," Edwards said.
"We do, I'll come get you."
I didn't worry about us getting lost. Tolliver's job was to prevent that, and he'd never failed me; except for once, in the desert, and I'd teased him about that for so long that he'd about gone crazy. Of course, since we'd nearly died, it was a lesson worth reinforcing.
It was best if I could walk with my eyes closed, but on this terrain that would be dangerous. The dark glasses helped, blocking out some of the color and life around me.
For the first thirty minutes of struggling across the steep slope, all I felt were the faint
When I was convinced that no matter how stealthily he might be able to move, Paul Edwards could
