The Backwoods

daddy said,” the little girl told them.

“Where are you goin’?” Ernie asked.

The girl’s accent warbled from her small mouth. “Someplace called Norfolk, ‘cos my daddy says he might git a job on the big crab boats. But we cain’t stay here, ’cos someone might kill us.” And then the little girl ran back into the shed.

“That’s so sad,” Patricia said.

“Yeah, but like I said . . .”

Patricia tried to unclutter her mind as they meandered back toward her sister’s house. She frowned to herself when Ernie turned his back to her.

It was that same distraction again—raging, fraying her sexual nerves. Whenever she tried to focus on something else, his aura kept dragging her eyes back to his unknowing body: the long flow of his hair, the strong legs in tight workman’s jeans, the strong back. What if I weren’t married; what if I weren’t. . . ? Her thoughts kept betraying her.

Just remember what Dr. Sallee said. Women my age experience their actual sexual peak. It’s normal for me to feel this way . . . as long as I don’t act on those feelings.

His boots crunched up the trail before her, and that alternate voice kept asking her: What if I weren’t married?

It didn’t matter.

“Well, how do ya like that?”

Patricia reclaimed her attention; Ernie had stopped on the incline of the trail, looking up toward the main road.

“What are you . . .” But then she spotted the vehicle herself, a new large pickup truck parked at the shoulder. Even at this considerable distance she could see the man sitting in the driver’s seat peering down into the center of Squatterville, as though he were actually watching the clan families trudging away from their homes in order to leave town.

The man in the pickup truck was Gordon Felps.

(I)

Less than a twenty-minute drive took Patricia to Luntville and the rather drab county hospital. She knew it was her imagination, yet it bothered her the way two clerks at the information kiosk gave her the eye when she asked directions to the morgue. The basement, of course. They were always in the basement.

The downstairs unnerved her; it was dark and dead silent. Her footsteps clattered about her head as she made her way to the yellowish glass-windowed door that read, OFFICE OF THE COUNTY CORONER.

Let’s see how much pull my boss really has, she thought. Getting a morgue to release recent records was usually akin to pulling the teeth out of a ferret. When she entered, she expected more odd looks from the personnel here and was nearly shocked to find herself standing before a human dichotomy: an utterly striking blonde in tight jeans and an open lab coat that revealed a haltered bosom and a perfect bare abdomen. She had the kind of body that spurred jealousy even from the most extraordinarily attractive women.

Her body’s ten times better than mine! Patricia thought. I’m pissed! “Hi,” she began, and got out her driver’s license. “I’m—”

“Patricia White, right?” A sexy Southern accent preceded the blond woman when she hurried around the registration desk. She spoke very quickly. “The governor’s office called this morning, and I’d just like you to know that we’ll do whatever we can to accommodate you.” Then she pulled out a folder. “You wanted to see the post records for a decedent named Dwayne Parker?”

That’s what I call the red-carpet treatment, Patricia thought, amused. Tim’s brother lit a fire under somebody’s butt. “Yes, and I’m sorry it was such short notice. I’m the attorney for the decedent’s wife, and I won’t be in town long, so I didn’t really have time to file a FOIA request.”

“Oh, well, there’s no reason to do that”—the beautiful woman kept speaking very quickly—“because, after all, we’re a branch of the government that exists to serve the taxpayers’ needs.”

Now she’s absolutely kissing my ass, Patricia realized. The coroner’s office for a rural county like this probably didn’t keep the best records anyway. The last thing they’d want is a government inspection. But it was working, and that all Patricia cared about “Are you the receptionist? I was hoping to talk to the county coroner himself.”

“Herself, and you are, ma’am,” the blonde corrected, and gestured to the nametag on her lab coat. It read c. BAKER, RUSSELL COUNTY CORONER. “And I’d be happy to answer any questions you have, since the postmortem report might be . . . confusing to you.”

Patricia opened the folder and scanned the top sheet: Anomalous death— COD, it read. Decapitation via smooth Transection of levator scapulae muscular process and #5 & 6 cervical vertebrae. Mode of transection as yet undetermined and curious. She blinked, looked back up at Baker, and admitted, “I’m only good with legalese, not medical tech talk. I guess this means that the manner in which Dwayne Parker lost his head . . . that’s what they’re calling ‘undetermined and curious’?”

The coroner nodded curtly, but she was obviously curtailing something. “It’s just kind of odd, and its difficult to explain in any way that makes sense. But every now and then any medical examiner’s office will get a cause of death that simply can never be determined.”

Patricia frowned at the sheet. This was much less than she’d hoped for. “How was his head cut off, is what I want to be able to tell the family. Was it cut off, shot off? Was it knocked off in some sort of freak accident?”

Another curt look from the pretty coroner. “It was . . . none of those things, and that’s about the only thing we do know. No blade striations, no evidence of severe impact to the body, no evidence of firearm discharge.”

“But the head was never recovered—that’s what I heard from the locals, anyway. Is that true?”

“Quite true, ma’am.”

This was frustrating. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it.”

“Look on the next page, Ms. White.”

Patricia followed the instruction and immediately fell silent.

What she looked at now was the most macabre photograph she’d ever seen in her life. . . .

The clarity of the bright digital picture—Dwayne’s autopsy photo—seemed to shout at her. “This . . . can’t be real, can it?”

“Oh, it’s real, ma’am. I took the picture myself. It hasn’t been altered, and there weren’t any defects in the film or processing. I took several with several different cameras.”

The photograph framed Dwayne’s chest and shoulders, as well as the area of space that his head would occupy, if he’d had a head. Patricia expected a clot-caked stump or some other kind of ragged wound to indicate the decapitation. But there was nothing.

There was just skin.

“There’s not even a—”

“Not even a neck,” Baker finished. “And the osteo X-rays actually show a round—not a severed—cervical vertebra. There’s actually no clinical evidence of a decapitation—which I know is silly, because he’s got no head. But the picture looks like he’d never had one. Look at the next picture.”

Patricia, with some trepidation, turned to the next sheet: a close-up of where the “stump” should be.

“This,” she started, shaking her head, “this . . .” She tried to frame words. “This looks like there’s just skin grown over the place where his neck should be.”

“Um-hmm.”

Patricia looked up again, grateful to take her eyes off the creepy photograph. “You’re the coroner. How do you account for this?”

“I really can’t. It happens in this business, and I realize that’s not an acceptable answer, but it’s all I can give you. It’s just one of those rare deaths that’s a big question mark.”