I spread my feet and pushed. The window opened another inch.
I heard the first
I manipulated the window another two inches.
It was then that the storm broke. Lightning streaked, thunder cracked, and rain fell in torrents, turning the porch into a shimmering rink.
I abandoned the window and pressed my body to the wall, hoping for protection from the overhang. Within seconds water soaked my hair and dripped from my ears and nose. My clothes molded to me like papier-mache on a wire frame.
Millions of drops cascaded off the roof and the porch. They bit into the lawn, met up, and coursed in channels between the blades of grass. They formed a river in the gutter above my head. Wind slapped leaves against the wall and my legs, sent others twirling across the ground. It carried the scent of wet earth and wood, of numberless creatures hunkered into burrows and nests.
Shivering, I waited it out, my back against the stucco, hands under armpits. I watched drops bead a spiderweb, build, then bow the fibers. Its maker watched too, a small brown bundle on an outer filament.
Islands were born. Continental plates shifted. A score of species disappeared from the planet forever.
Suddenly my cell phone shrilled, the sound so unexpected I almost jumped from the porch.
I clicked on.
“No comment!” I shrieked, expecting another reporter.
Lightning shot straight to the treetops. Thunder snapped.
“Where the hell are you?” said Lucy Crowe.
“The storm came up quickly.”
“You're outside?”
“Are you back in Bryson City?”
“I'm still out at Fontana Lake. Do you want to ring me when you've gotten inside?”
“That could be a while.” I had no intention of telling her why.
Crowe spoke to someone else, came back on the line.
“Afraid I've got more bad news for you.”
I heard voices in the background, then the crackle of a police radio.
“Looks like we've found Primrose Hobbs.”
WHILE I WAS MEETING WITH OUR ESTEEMED LIEUTENANT GOVERnor and friends, the owners of a marina were finding a body.
As was their custom, Glenn and Irene Boynton rose at dawn and dealt with the morning rush, renting equipment, selling bait, filling coolers with ice, sandwiches, and canned drinks. When Irene went to check on a bass boat returned late the previous day, an odd rippling drew her to the end of the dock. Peering into the water, the woman was terrified to see two lidless eyes staring back.
Following Crowe's directions, I found Fontana Lake, then the narrow dirt track leading to the marina. The rain had tapered off, though the leaves overhead were still dripping. I wound through puddles toward the lake, my tires throwing up a spray of mud and water.
As the marina came into view, I saw a wrecker, an ambulance, and a pair of police cruisers bathing a parking area in oscillating red, blue, and yellow light. The marina stretched along the shore on the lot's far side. It consisted of a dilapidated rental office–gas station–general store, with narrow wooden piers jutting into the water at both ends. A wind sock fluttered from a corner of the building, its bright colors jauntily snapping in the breeze, jarringly at odds with the grim scene on the ground below.
A deputy was interviewing a couple in jean shorts and windbreakers on the southernmost pier. Their bodies were tense, their faces the color of pale putty.
Crowe stood on the office steps talking to Tommy Albright, a hospital pathologist who occasionally did autopsies for the medical examiner. Albright was wrinkled and scrawny, with sparse white hair combed straight across his crown. He'd been making Y-incisions since the Precambrian, but I'd never worked with him.
Albright watched me approach then held out a hand.
We shook. I nodded to Crowe.
“I understand you knew the victim.”
Albright tipped his head in the direction of the ambulance. The doors stood open, revealing a shiny white pouch lying on a collapsible gurney. Bulges told me the body bag was already occupied.
“We pulled her out just before the storm broke. Are you willing to try a quick visual?”
“Yes.”
No! I didn't want to do this. Didn't want to be here. Didn't want to identify Primrose Hobbs's lifeless body.
We walked to the ambulance and climbed in back. Even with the doors open the smell was noticeable. I swallowed hard.
