Sleep Softly

“Protruding from sandy-type soil, I see part of a small skull,” Jim said, “presumptive human, part of what looks like a femur and lower leg bones, and clothing.”

“Ah, hell,” Steven said.

Skye’s expression didn’t change. Stone-faced, she stepped to the denim bag I had noticed earlier on the passenger seat of the county van and removed a folder marked Blank Coroner Forms. “Could it be from the 1700s?” she asked.

“No,” Jim said. “Connective tissue is still in place. In this kind of soil, well draining but under a canopy of trees, I’d guess it’s not more than a year old.”

Something turned over in my belly, a slow, sickening somersault of horror. Silently, I walked away, along the length of the old riverbed, back out of the shadows. When I reached the pile of boulders, a single shaft of noontime sunlight found a way past the foliage, falling on the topmost stone. Without thinking, I climbed up the pile, pushing off with booted feet against the slick rock until I was perched on top, my arms wrapped around my knees.

There was a body buried in the woods near my house. The body of a child, taken by someone intent on evil and buried in the shadows, alone and isolated. I had discovered it…. Most likely a little girl. I had discovered her.

My family would be questioned by the police, possibly by the FBI. My house and grounds would be overrun by cops. And I had nothing to tell them that would explain how the body had ended up on Chadwick Farms property. Nothing to tell the parents, if I ever met them. Nothing to tell her family or mine.

I was trained to gather forensic evidence but my forte was nursing, gathering evidence on living human bodies, evidence that police would need in later investigations and trials. Such evidence was often lost during medical procedures, especially during emergency medical treatment where dousing the victim with warmed saline or Betadine scrub washed away vital clues to the perpetrator, and cleaning skin for IV sites, bandages, or application of fingertip epidermal monitors hid defensive wounds and damage—evidence that should have been preserved for standard and genetic testing.

I wasn’t trained to work a crime scene where the victim was dead.

A child. Dead in my ancestors’ family plot. And my dogs had surely rolled in her grave. I put my head on my knees and cried, trying to keep my sobs silent. An early mosquito was attracted to my position and I killed it as it punctured the back of my hand for a blood meal. A squirrel chittered at me from a low branch. Long, painful minutes passed. Finally, I took a deep breath.

I heard the sound of vehicles and voices in the distance and knew that the other investigators had arrived. Sheriff Gaskins had been keeping in touch with the men and they would know already that there was a body. They didn’t need help to follow the trail, and I didn’t especially want to be caught sitting on top of a pile of big rocks crying my eyes out, so I wiped my face, slid back to the ground and returned to the site.

Jim met me partway, his eyes tired, face drawn, his paper clothing left at the site to reveal the dress shirt, tie and slacks, his entire lanky frame speaking of exhaustion. “You okay?” he asked.

“I’m lovely. Just hunky-dory. You?”

His smile was crooked. “I’ve had better days. But I need your help.”

“What for?”

“I need you to tell me about that homestead and grave plot.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured would happen.” I turned my back, shoulders stiff and angry. “You’re going to have to question all my family, aren’t you? My nana, my daughter. All the help.”

“Like I said. Better days.” I could hear the strain in his voice, but I still didn’t turn around, even when he put a hand on my shoulder, the first comfort he’d offered. “But not me. I’m too close to you.” His tone softened, as if to both warn and console me at once. “It’ll be one of the other agents. It needs to be thorough to rule out your family, so it won’t be pleasant.”

I wiped my eyes again, fighting tears that were half selfish, half for the child buried in the sand just ahead. “That’s just great. Do you have any idea how many Chadwicks know about this site, either by family history or by actually coming out here to see it? Do you know how big an investigation you’re talking about?”

“Tell me.”

I looked up at him. He wavered in a watery pattern of tears. “At the last family reunion back in 2005, over 225 people attended. Lots more couldn’t make it. My family is scattered all over the nation. We’re two races and all ages, from the late nineties to not yet born. We started on a family genealogy chart last year, and it points to dozens of other family members—dozens, Jim—that are lost or missing. Hundreds of us live in this state alone.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding? You’re going to have to talk to all of them, aren’t you? And before you ask, yes, we’ve had our share of spotted sheep.”

“Don’t you mean black sheep?” he said, amused.

“Not with my family’s ethnic mix. And some of our spotted sheep have done jail time.”

Jim swore, his amusement gone.

“Don’t let my aunt Mosetta hear you swear. She won’t care if you’re a cop or not, you say that in her presence and she’ll wash out your mouth with good lye soap. Why concentrate on just the Chadwicks? Anyone could locate this place.”

“Not likely.”

“Yes, likely.” I swiped at my face with the flannel cuffs. “You said the last body was buried in a Confederate graveyard. Was it easy to find?”

“A lot easier to find than this one.” The comforting tone was gone from his voice. That hadn’t lasted long.

“Well, this one’s not impossible to detect either.”

“Ash—” Jim stopped himself from whatever he was about to say and took a deep breath. “Why don’t you tell me how anyone outside of your family would know about this burial plot.”

I jerked my head at the grave site just ahead. “The South Carolina State Library has information on graveyards across the state. The information is available online at the library’s Web site, and also in the South Carolina reference room. I know, because at that family reunion I mentioned, we looked it up one rainy day for fun. You can click on ‘counties’ and find any graveyard thus far discovered in any county.” The whole time I talked, tears fell, dripping off my chin in dual steady streams. My nose was clogging.

“The Chadwick plot is registered with the state in historical records. It’s listed in county records, on some old county maps, and frankly anyone who wanted to find it could, with a little work. Any teacher, student, historian, politician, librarian or professor could pinpoint it on MapQuest. Anyone looking for genealogy information. Anyone doing research for any purpose could find it. It’s easy. Just as easy as finding the Chadwick family Web site.”

Jim looked at me thoughtfully. “Your family has its own Web site?” I just looked at him. “What is it, www.Chadwicks.com?”

Grudgingly I said, “Chadwick family. org.”

“So we may not be dealing with a history buff. Just someone who can use the Internet,” he said tiredly.

“That narrows it down for you a lot, I guess. Only eighty-something percent of the citizens in South Carolina have Internet access. Even my nana uses the Internet these days, to get the best prices on her crops.”

“But the problem with the farm and your family is this—the perpetrator would have to get here somehow, carrying a body and digging implements. He had to drive straight through your family farm.”

“Hilldale Hills is closer than Chadwick Farms. A lot closer. In fact, if I’d known where the body was in the first place, I’d have driven over and walked in. It’s no more than a quarter mile thatta way.” I pointed. “There’s another farm about a mile thatta way.” I pointed off toward the Iredells’ llama farm. “Have you even figured out what direction the perpetrator came from? Have you found a trail? Have you asked me any questions to determine the most likely ingress and egress? No.” I sniffed. I decided to give up fighting the tears. I couldn’t seem to stop them.

“You’re not channeling your mother anymore.”

“Josephine doesn’t cry. It ruins her makeup. Causes lines in her skin and dehydrates the horny layer of her epidermis. Or maybe it negatively affects the acid mantle or something. I don’t remember exactly.”

Jim chuckled. “Horny layer?”

“I’m not kidding. Josey is a youth obsessed, skin-treatment-aholic. A plastic surgeon’s professional financial sleep-induced orgasmic pleasure.” The more I talked, the more I cried and the more Jim laughed. At least someone was happy.

“Would that be a wet dream?” Jim’s tone was half-disbelieving.

“Not in front of my family, it wouldn’t.”

“I have to meet this woman.”

“You will.” I scuffed at my cheeks. “She’ll be a suspect, remember? Maybe you can drag her to an interrogation room and visit for a while.”

“Well, hell.” Jim’s laughter was gone.

I looked at him and my eyes ached, tears flowing as if I had opened a faucet. “And I wasn’t joking about my aunt Mosetta. The worst thing you better say in her presence is dang or dantucket. Even my nana is careful about her language in front of Aunt Moses, and Nana could cuss the bark off an oak in her younger days.”

“I thought it was Mosetta,” he said, his tone half laughter.

I shrugged. “Mosetta, Moses, she goes by either. The old ones mostly call her Moses.”

“Please stop crying, Ash.” That tone was back in his voice again, the tone that said he was my boyfriend-sort-of-maybe and didn’t want me to cry.

Boyfriend. I was facing fifty in a few years and I had a boyfriend. What in heck was I going to do with a boyfriend? It made me cry harder, and the sobs felt as if they were raking my throat with claws. “I can’t…I can’t seem to stop crying.”

“Why not?” He put his arms around me and pulled me close.

I had the feeling that most cops didn’t hug most suspects. I snuggled my face into his dress shirt and wrapped my arms around him. I hadn’t known how badly I needed a hug until he tightened his arms. “Why not?” I repeated. “There’s a dead child buried about twenty yards ahead, a huge group of investigators and crime-scene people behind me, my entire family’s a suspect in a murder case and I haven’t slept in over thirty-six hours.”

“That sounds like a good group of reasons. You worked last night?”

I nodded, my face against the starched fabric. It smelled of laundry detergent and man-sweat, an altogether satisfying scent. Amazingly, my tears slowed. I pressed into Jim’s shoulder with my aching face, my skin feeling burned and salty. If she saw me, my mother would drag me to Charlotte to her aesthetician for an emergency session, probably screaming that my epidermis and lipid layer were permanently damaged. She’d done it before. I sighed into Jim’s shoulder, the sound muffled.

“Feel better?”

“Yes. Thank you. Now all I want is a nap.”

“Me, too. Feel better, I mean. I needed this.” His arms tightened a moment and we stood in a shadow, birds tweeting nearby, and a squirrel scampering through dry leaves. Jim released me, easing me away. “Company’s coming.” He brushed a strand of my hair back from my face. “I need to get back to the site.”

I took a breath that still burned down my throat and dropped my hands away from him. “Okay. Thanks for the hug.”

“There’s water in one of the bags at the site.” A half smile raised his lips on one side. “Wash your face so your horny layer does whatever a horny layer is supposed to do.”

“Prurient epidermal thoughts, Agent Ramsey?”

“Thoughts of skin have been known to give me sleep-induced orgasmic pleasure.”

I laughed softly, the sound almost normal as we walked back to the two old oaks and the body buried beyond.

“So. Tell me about Hoddermier Hilldale Jr. and his gentleman friend.”

I sighed. I had a feeling that my neighbors were going to be as abused as my own family.

I considered Hoddy Jr., a slight, delicate man who listened to classical music, wore cashmere in winter and silk blends in summer, and offered cooking classes through the Episcopal church. He looked as if he couldn’t hurt a fly. Could Hoddy be the killer? Surely not.

But how many other friends and neighbors would the cops target? And would they find the killer among them?

5

He entered the mega-store, whistling Vivaldi. The notes were classic and quick, spare and tripping. A good omen for today’s business. He trailed through the grocery aisles, buying things she liked. Blueberry yogurt, bagels, soft cheese in a wheel, pears, caramels, frozen pizza. Because he had to keep her healthy, he added baby spinach—organic, of course—and tomatoes, apples. Big, red, seedless grapes. For himself, he tossed in a bag of shrimp and a couple of thick steaks, baking potatoes. Sour cream. A bottle of merlot, an underappreciated label but a very good year. Surprising to find in a superstore.

Dawdling, enjoying himself, he pushed the buggy through the clothing section, picking up a pair of jeans, a few T-shirts in vibrant pinks and purples. Satiny nightclothes. The ones in her room were getting worn. He wasn’t sure what underwear size she had worn, so he added three packets in different sizes, each containing several pairs. Socks. There were athletic socks with pink stripes and fuzzy socks for sleeping. He selected a half-dozen packets. She had no need of shoes.

In the toy section, he picked through the dolls until he found a nine-inch-tall, plastic, teenage doll wearing a soccer outfit. He added casual clothes and dress clothes for the doll and a new lunch box with a picture of a girl kicking a soccer ball on the top. Perfect. She would love it.

A quick trip through the cosmetic department allowed him to replace the shampoo and bubble bath the other one had liked. This one was independent, outgoing. She’d probably like a fresh scent, not floral. He added a perfume with a sporty name.

And finally the jewelry section. He bought the bracelets. The rings and earrings had already been delivered from eBay. All he had to do was pick up the black velvet throw from the cleaners and he would be ready to begin. This time he had managed all the variables. This time it would work. He was quite certain.

Paying cash, he exited the store and stowed his purchases in the back of his Volvo, still whistling Vivaldi.

The afternoon wore away as all the surface evidence was collected in bags, labeled and stored. As the hours passed, my eyes grew heavy, gritty from lack of sleep, and my limbs seemed to take on a distant buzz, as if they had a current flowing through them. Exhaustion was setting in.

The numbers of federal investigators grew and diminished as the need arose and as Jim dispatched them to question neighbors. With the discovery of a human body, a child, this had officially become an FBI investigation. The locals were here because it was their turf, but everyone knew they were mostly errand boys, not the stars of the investigation. Jim disappeared once to question Hoddy Jr. and his significant other. Hoddy had been out shopping earlier, when a special agent had gone by, and the second attempt fell to Jim.

He left again to oversee the questioning of my nana and Aunt Moses. He was gone a lot longer that time but was back by the designated hour the grave was to be opened and the body recovered. I didn’t ask about the session with Nana. I knew she’d tell me soon enough and would want to know why I hadn’t warned her about the problem on her land. The fact that I was trying to protect her would not be an acceptable reason. Nana wanted her finger in every Chadwick Farm pie.

Around 4:00 p.m., they were ready to open the grave. I might have felt a spurt of excitement or fear except I was too tired to feel energy of any kind. Skye looked up from the ground in her position two feet from the body. Her knees were protected from contaminating the evidence by a layer of special paper and she had an open evidence kit beside her. She was gloved, her blond-streaked hair pulled back and secured. Across from the body knelt Steven, his pate glistening, though the heat of midday had passed.

It was warmer than usual for April, the temperature near eighty in the sunlight. Under the canopy of trees, leaves still not at their summertime fullness, it had reached the seventies. As the sun moved off to the west, it grew cooler fast, and I was glad of the flannel shirt I wore. On the damp earth, Skye shivered.

Using a brush that looked a lot like one I had under my sink to sweep up dry spills, she began pushing the sand away. Behind her squatted another cop, holding what looked like a huge sieve. As Skye moved the earth, he scraped it up and placed it in the sieve. When it was full, he handed it off to yet another cop, who took it to the sidelines, held it over a plastic mat and shook it till all the soil was gone.

Everything that remained after the dirt passed through the sieve was placed in an evidence bag marked with the square of grid from which it came, the depth, the date and time, and the initials of everyone who had touched it. Anything that looked interesting was mentioned and tagged for special attention. Paperwork in triplicate, the Chain of Custody forms were carefully filled out and proofread by one of the cops on the periphery.

It was remarkably like an archeological dig. The evidence collection seemed much more intensive and comprehensive than what the local cops were used to doing, the action choreographed by Jim and another FBI man named Oliver.

“Got something,” Skye said several times. Once it was a hair; once it was a fold of foil, the kind gum came wrapped in. Twice it was an unknown, something she shrugged over without identifying. After an hour, the loose soil around the child was gone, all of the earth that had been disturbed by the person who had buried her removed, sifted and set aside. An indentation remained around a small mound, far too small to be a human. Yet, clearly it was a child. One with blue-painted toenails.

The skull and left leg bones had been disarranged by whatever had dug her up—I assumed by my dogs, although the cops wouldn’t accept that without more evidence—but the rest of the body was positioned carefully, hands crossed on her chest, right leg straight. She was wearing a red sneaker on her right foot, a schoolgirl’s pleated skirt that might once have been blue, green and red, and a T-shirt. All the colors were darkened by death fluids and damp earth except the red in the skirt, which was still vibrant. Scraps of blond hair still clung to the skull. Her hands were folded around a book and other objects.

The buzzing along my nerves that marked an advanced case of exhaustion seemed to grow, becoming almost a sound, like bees in the distance, a hornets’ nest nearby when there was nothing. I sat down just outside the crime-scene tape, rubbery legs folding under me.

When the body was fully exposed, two dozen photographs were taken, some close-ups, some to document the remains in situ. Jim and the other cop, so slender he was almost emaciated and who dressed and moved like FBI—meaning expensive and as if he walked on water—stepped to the center of the site and knelt down on paper mats as well. They looked like pagan supplicants bowing before a little godling, hoping for enlightenment or worldly gifts.

I could hear some of the conversation between Jim and the other FBI guy. My exhaustion seemed to improve my hearing, the buzzing in my ears seeming a magnet for sound waves, drawing them in, clarifying words and phrases I might have missed were I more alert.

“Same positioning of hands and feet,” Jim murmured. “Same binding of the wrists.”

“But none of the missing girls were wearing this style of clothing.”

“We don’t know how long he keeps them. Maybe he buys them new clothes when he buys them the dolls.”

“What about the book? The other one didn’t have a book. And the clothes are ordinary—”

“The other one was wearing the leotard when she was taken from the dance rehearsal. What’s this?” Using tweezers, Jim lifted something off the body to get a better look at it and returned it to its place.

“Looks like a pointed stick. And maybe a melted candle on a tray?”

“I don’t see a wick. And why bury her with a candle?”

“Why the flute on the last one? She didn’t play the flute but was buried with one.”

“This one had schoolbooks when she was taken. There’s a book.” Jim tapped it.

“Can you see the title?”

“Too water damaged.”

“What about the paper?”

Jim bent over the body as if he would kiss the rounded skull and did something I couldn’t see. My hands twitched as if to stop him, before settling in my lap like broken twigs. The breath burned in my throat.

“Got something in the pocket. Folded and mashed. It could be paper.” Jim sat back on his heels.

“So we got positioning, graveyard burial, ethnicity, age and the folded paper. I think that’s enough. I’ll get a pair down from Quantico.”

Jim checked his watch. “If you book it with lights and siren, you can upload the digital photos and e-mail them, so the analysts can study them tonight and on the flight tomorrow.”

“Let’s get her to the medical examiner and get a postmortem and ID process started. See what the lab can do with the folded paper.”

“I’ll handle that. You get on back and see about upgrading us to full task-force level.”

“Who you want locally?”

Jim raised his voice only slightly, the tone too cold to be teasing. “Skye, you think Gaskins would give you part of the action?”

“Not me,” she said sotto voce. “First, I got the wrong kind of genitalia. Gaskins is only going to appoint a man to a task force. And second, honestly, I got a baby at home. A 24/7 thing isn’t what I’m after right now. Ask Ash. She wouldn’t cost the county diddly. She did a great job getting here, preserving all the evidence on the way, and she knows the local history, the local people, everyone in law enforcement in the county. And she’s trained as a forensic nurse, in case you get a splinter in your finger or find a live one as you go.”

“We need law enforcement,” the other cop said.

“Take Steven, too,” Skye said. “He’s up to take the detective test this fall.”

“Steven?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, trying to sound only half as interested as his shining eyes suggested. “If the sheriff approves.”

“Gaskins?” the other cop called out. “We need a local guy to liaise in Columbia with the task force. Steven’s willing.”

C.C.’s nose hair twitched in the lengthening shadows. “Long as you don’t ask for one of my investigators, you can have who you want. But I’m shorthanded starting in the second week of May. I need Steven back by then.”

“It’s not full-time we’re talking here. Only a few hours a week, unless more bodies show up in this county. The other one was in Calhoun County, so our killer’s not sticking close to home with them.”

“Even better,” Gaskins said.

“Ash, you willing to take part in this?”

I wanted to say no and even opened my mouth to say no. “Yes. I’ll do it.”

“Let’s get our vic out of here. Get everything we collected back to the lab by dark-thirty. I’ll schedule a meeting for noon tomorrow. That’ll give the NCAVC guys time to get to the local FBI office from the airport.

“Steven?” Jim asked.

“I’ll be there.”

“Ash?”

My hands twitched again and a cramp was starting in my foot. I would never make it back to the trucks. “I’ll be there, too. Someone will have to give me directions.”

“Get them from the agent who does your interview.” Jim’s expression was hard, a cop look that gave nothing away.

“Interview?” I asked stupidly.

“You’ll be interviewed later on today by a special agent.”

I blinked at him. Interviewed? That was a fancy word for questioned. I had to be questioned in the case. “Well. I hope he can question me while I sleep, ’cause I’m dead on my feet.”