"Do you still feel a body?" she asked when that was done. It took me a second to realize she was talking to me, I was so wrapped up in the tension of what had just happened, the fear that Tom Almand would charge someone again, the possibility of Manfred being critically injured. I didn't worry about Tom's arm wound at all. He might bleed out before the ambulance arrived, and that would be fine with me.
"Yes," I said. "There's a very fresh body. Can I show you where?"
"How close do you have to come to this man?"
"I have to go to the first stall."
"Okay, go."
I very carefully worked my way around the tableau of bleeding men and law enforcement to get to the opening to the stall. I stepped inside on the old straw and began kicking it aside. It kept falling back into its original position, so I began picking up handfuls and tossing them over the side of the stall. "Tolliver," I said. He was at my side immediately, helping. The shovel or the spade would have come in handy, but I knew better than to suggest it. "Isn't this a latch?" I asked.
Tolliver said, "I wish we had a flashlight," and one landed on the floor beside us. Sheriff Rockwell had had one on her belt. Tolliver turned it on and aimed it at the boards at our feet.
"Trapdoor here," Tolliver said, and the deputy cursed. I guessed he'd been one of the ones who'd searched the barn.
Tom laughed, and I looked out at the tense group of people in the barn. For about a dime, the deputy would have kicked him in the head. His body language spoke loud and clear. I could hear emergency vehicles approaching, and I wanted to open the trapdoor before they got here and there was even more confusion.
Tolliver found the latch quickly. It was very strong, I guess to hold out against battering from below.
We did need a shovel to open it, and without asking Tolliver went across the barn to take Manfred's. We stuck the spade in the little opening and pried. After Tolliver got it up a little, I held the spade with my good hand while Tolliver grasped the edge and swung back the trapdoor. It was very heavy, and we found out why—there was insulation liberally tacked on the underside, which would muffle any sounds from below.
I looked down into a kind of pit, maybe six by six. Probably eight feet deep, it was reachable by a steep wooden ladder. The dead body of Chuck Almand lay at the foot of the ladder. He was staring up at us. The boy had shot himself in the head. What drew the eye first was the terrible damage to Chuck's head.
Behind the corpse there was a naked boy chained to the wall. His mouth was duct-taped shut. He was whimpering behind it, and he was looking over his shoulder and up at us with an expression I never want to see again. He was spattered with Chuck's blood and I suppose some of his own. There were cuts on his body, and the blood there was crusted and black. The cuts were swollen and red with infection. He had no blanket, no jacket, nothing, and he'd been in the pit with the corpse all night.
I ran out of the barn and vomited. One of the ambulance drivers rushing in stopped to check on me, and I just waved my arm to indicate the interior of the barn.
After a few minutes, Tolliver came out. I was leaning against the peeling wood, wishing I were anywhere but here.
"He killed himself so you'd find him," Tolliver said. "So you'd find out what his father was doing."
"So I'd have a corpse to find," I said. "Oh, Jesus, he took such a chance. What if I hadn't come back?"
"What if Manfred hadn't decided he had to check the barn again?"
"Do you think Tom Almand's known where Chuck was all this time, since he reported him missing?"
"No, but I guess he didn't have a chance to come out here to check. That other counselor asking to see Chuck made Tom report him missing." Tolliver shuddered. "I never want to see anything like that again."
"He sacrificed himself," I said. I couldn't get my thoughts together. "And it was almost—almost—for nothing."
"He wasn't thinking good," Tolliver said in a massive understatement. "And he was just thirteen."
The stretchers went by, Manfred's first, his face white as death and his eyes open and blank.
"Manfred!" I called, just wanting him to know that someone who knew him was near, knew what he had done. But his face didn't change.
Tom Almand came out next, his eyes closed, his lips in a strange smile. He was now handcuffed to the stretcher by his good arm, and there was a bandage on the arm that had been shot. I hoped he'd been shot good, and I wondered if Sheriff Rockwell had been truly trying to hit his arm. It had been an alarming moment, but then, that was what law enforcement people trained for, right?
Maybe the arm was best. Maybe the people he'd wounded the most, or the survivors he'd wounded most, could get something out of his trial and conviction. Surely he'd be tried and convicted, wouldn't he? We could follow it in the national news. The media loves a serial killer trial, whether the killer being tried is gay or straight, black or white or brown. There's no discrimination in that field.
I realized I was thinking crazy, and I also realized we had no place here. But the two SBI agents were running across the back lane like the barn was on fire with a baby inside, and they weren't about to let us go. Stuart and Klavin weren't out of breath, because they were fit agents, and they stood right in front of us. "You're here again," Agent Stuart said. He had on proper gloves and an L.L. Bean heavy outdoor-guy coat, and gleaming boots that went halfway up his calves. If he didn't look like the little mountaineer! Klavin was a bit more downscale, with a battered waterproof coat that had seen several years of use and a knit cap that had earflaps.
"He killed himself," I told them. They would want to know.
"Who?" I thought Stuart was going to shake me, he was so anxious to know everything.
"Chuck Almand. He killed himself with a gun."
Klavin said, "Who was in the ambulance?"
"Tom Almand and Manfred Bernardo," Tolliver said.
They looked at each other blankly. "The kid's dad and the psychic's grandson," Tolliver said.
"She died last night," Stuart said.
"Yes, she did. And her grandson almost died today," I said.
"The last victim is alive," I said, and they were in the barn so fast you couldn't see them for the smoke.
"Why haven't they brought him out?" Tolliver leaned and looked in, but then he gave up. He didn't want to go in that barn again, and neither did I.
"Maybe they can't get him unlocked," I said. Tolliver nodded. That seemed reasonable.
"Wonder who he is," Tolliver said after a long moment. The weather might be much better than it had been, but it was still cold standing out there, and we had nothing to do.
I turned to Tolliver and hugged him. His arms slid around me, and we stood there in the bright cold day, clinging to each other. "We'll find out," I said, my lips against his neck. "It'll be in the papers, or on the news." The tortured body, slumped against the wall, the bloodstains everywhere. The poor dead boy on the floor of that miserable pit. Jesus, God. This is not what you intended people for.
I hadn't thought in Christian terms for a long time, and I was surprised to find myself thinking in them now. And I hadn't rebelled, either, hadn't had the "Why, God?" thoughts. Those were bad, those were pointless. Of course, I'd never found such atrocities, so closely linked, in adjacent graves.
"Chuck saved that boy's life," I said numbly. "He provided a dead body for me to find."
"Do you think he really cut up those animals?"