"We know," Kit said. "We know. Sometimes the Lord's ways are hidden from us until we are ready to understand and accept them." She guided her husband and Nikki back around toward the church, where Nikki could see the crowd continuing to build, then asked, "Nikki, Sam and I want to know, Kathy had the most beautiful face — an angel's face. Did the accident…? What I mean is…"
"Kit, she was beautiful at the end, too," Nikki said, willing away countless unpleasant images. "Two bones in her neck separated. That's why she died. Nothing else. Her face was completely spared."
"Thank God," Sam muttered. "She always insisted on cremation if'n anything ever happened ta her, so we felt we had ta do it."
Nikki accompanied Kathy's parents into the sanctuary and sat beside them during the service. They had asked her over the phone to speak at the service. Rather than deliver memories of her friend, which she simply wasn't sure she was strong enough to do, Nikki had chosen to read some of Kathy's poetry, along with the words to two songs whose melodies Kathy had not yet written. She had to stop several times to compose herself, but there was a strength and unabashed faith in the room that made anything she said or did feel right. The service lasted less than an hour and was so poignant, with hymns, readings, recollections, two cuts from Kathy's CDs, and a song by some friends and the band, that few eyes were dry by the time it was over.
The reception in the social hall adjacent to the church was much more of a celebration of Kathy's life and music than a memorial. With her band at the core, musicians came, played for a time, went, and came back again. Most of them were amateurs, yet all of them amazingly talented. Someone would name a tune or simply start playing, and instantly the others would join in. Nikki changed into jeans and sneakers, and brought her fiddle in from the car. She was still pretty much of a greenhorn by comparison to most of the others, but she managed to sit in on the jam for half an hour or so without disgracing herself, and played a lick in "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" that actually earned applause from the banjo player. Finally, mopping her brow with a handkerchief she kept in her case for just that purpose, she took a break and headed for the punch bowl.
"Here," a man said from her right. "Let me get you a cup. Alcohol-free or supercharged?"
He was somewhere in his forties and good-looking in a broad-shouldered, straitlaced sort of way, with razor-cut sandy hair, a muscular build, and dark gray eyes that were too small for Nikki's taste. He was wearing a white dress shirt and a black string tie with a large turquoise stone mounted on the slide. His mountain twang sounded far less pronounced than that of the others she had met, and his manner and speech had her guessing that he was college educated.
"Oh, no alcohol, please," she said. "I've got a long drive ahead of me this afternoon."
"In that case, I must absolutely insist you stay away from the high-test stuff. For one thing, I think I know whose still it was brewed in, and for another, I'm chief of police here in Belinda. Bill Grimes."
He extended his hand and Nikki took it. His grip was confident.
"Nikki Solari. Pleased to meet you."
"That was a very moving reading you did."
"Kathy was a wonderful writer. Her words are important to a lot of folks."
"Kit told me you're a doctor."
"I'm a pathologist by trade, but a musician by passion. Kathy was in the process of transforming me from a violinist into a fiddle player."
"I was listening. She's done a fine job of that."
"Thanks. I'm not in her class, but then again, not many are."
"I didn't grow up in these parts, but I heard her daddy taught her music, and that since she was a child people flocked to wherever she was playing. Folks around here sort of took it personally when she left."
Nikki smiled at the notion.
"I can believe that," she said.
"Her death shocked us all. Dr. Solari, if the whole thing is still too raw for you to talk about, I certainly understand, but as a cop, and a friend of the family, I'm curious to know as much as I can about how it happened."
"Talking about things helps me deal with them — even if they're very painful things like this. And it's fine to call me Nikki."
"Bill for me. I get 'Chief so much it's like taken over as my name."
The policeman had an easy, reassuring manner. Carrying their drinks they left the crowd and walked over to a solitary bench, set alongside a massive willow. The sun was beginning its move to the west, and off in the distance, the lush hills seemed phosphorescent. Nikki had never been much of a visual artist, but if she were, the colors of West Virginia would be Nirvana.
"So you're a pathologist," Grimes said when they had settled down at either end of the bench.
"I work for the ME's office."
"Interesting. Our ME was here at the service, but he left a while ago. Tall, thin, sort of dignified guy wearin' a grayish suit."
"I'm afraid I haven't been noticing much of anything today," Nikki said.
"That's understandable. Well, he's a pathologist just like you. Doc Sawyer's his name — Hal Sawyer. Nice guy. Real smart, too — not just concerning medical things, either. About Kathy?"
"Well, her death was actually handled by our office. My boss, Josef Keller, the chief medical examiner for the state, did the post."
"He find anything out of the ordinary? Drugs? Alcohol?"
"Nothing like that. How much do you know about what was going on with Kathy before her accident?"
Grimes shook his head.
"All I know is that she was run over by a car."
"It was a truck. She ran out of a bar and into the street. The poor driver never even had the chance to hit his brakes."
"But you said she wasn't drinking."
"Her blood alcohol level was zero. Toxic screen — at least the preliminary panel we've gotten back so far — was totally negative. She was insane, Bill. Absolutely insane. She had been slipping into a horrible paranoia for months before she died. Thought there were people out to kill her. I kept trying to get her help, but the more I tried, the further she withdrew from me."
"Did you speak with her family?"
"I called them once, about four weeks before Kathy was killed, but they were just bewildered and also sounded angry at Kathy for having drifted away from them. They couldn't understand what they could do to help her if I was a doctor and I couldn't do anything."
"The Wilsons are good people," Grimes said, "but simple and very set in their ways. Kathy was their only kid. They never thought she should have left."
"I know."
"So that was it? She just went crazy?"
"Just about. As I said, she was convinced at the end that men were after her, trying to kill her. I think she was trying to get away from them when she died."
"Is it possible she was right?"
"Not that I could see."
"So the autopsy your boss did didn't show anything else?"
"Nothing we weren't already aware of. There was one other thing that was pretty unusual about her, though. Something I didn't see any reason to share with her parents. Over a number of months before she died, coinciding to some extent with the development of her madness, her face was becoming disfigured by these lumps — neurofibromas, we call them."
"Neu-ro-fi-bro-mas." Grimes said the word slowly, as if committing it to his vocabulary. "Cause?"
"Unknown, except maybe bad genetics or a mutation, that sort of thing. Possibly a virus. By any chance, did you ever see the movie The Elephant Maw?"