Perhaps. But I knew Primrose Hobbs well enough to be certain of one thing: She would never willingly leave a job unfinished.
I waited. Lightning streaked from an eggplant cloud, illuminating its interior like a million-watt artery. Thunder rumbled. The storm was not far off.
Finally, Stover emerged, pulled the door shut and jiggled the knob, then hurried up the sidewalk. When he was safely inside the office, I began circling, keeping my distance and using the trees for cover. The back of the inn stretched ahead of me on one side, the river on the other, trees between them. I moved through the trees to a point I estimated was opposite unit four, then paused to listen.
Water boiling over rocks. Boughs swishing in the wind. A train whistle. Valves slamming inside my chest. Thunder, louder now. Quicker.
I crept to the edge of the tree line and peeked out.
A row of wooden porches projected from the back of the motel, each with a black wrought-iron numeral nailed to its railing. My instincts had been good again. Only five yards of grass separated me from unit four.
I took a deep breath, darted across the gap, and double-stepped the four risers. Dashing across the porch, I reached out and yanked the screen door. It opened with a grating squeak. The wind had suddenly calmed, and the sound seemed to shatter the heavy air. I froze.
Stillness.
Sliding between the screen and inner door, I leaned close and peered through the glass. Green-and-white gingham blocked my view. I tried the knob. No go.
I eased the screen door closed, moved to the window, and tried again. More gingham.
Noticing a gap where the lower border met the sill, I placed my palms on the window frame and pushed up. Tiny white flakes fluttered down around my fingers.
I pushed again, and the window jogged upward an inch. Again I froze. In my mind I heard an alarm, saw Ralph burst from the office with a Smith & Wesson.
Turning palms up, I wriggled my fingers into the gap.
What I was doing was illegal. I knew that. Breaking into Primrose's room was precisely the wrong move given my present situation. But I needed to assure myself that she was all right. Later, if it turned out that she wasn't, I needed to know that I had done what I could to help her.
And, to be honest, I needed to do this for myself. I had to find out what had happened to that foot. I had to track Primrose down and show that panel of men that they were wrong.
I spread my feet and pushed. The window opened another inch.
I heard the first patta-patta-pat as fat drops slapped the floorboards. Dime-sized blotches multiplied and merged around my boots.
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-mâché 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.
Albright unzipped the bag and the odor rolled over us, a nauseating cocktail of stagnant mud, seaweed, lake creatures, and putrefying tissue.
“I'd guess she was in the water two or three days. She's not scavenged too badly.”
Holding my breath, I looked into the bag.
It was Primrose Hobbs, but it wasn't. Her face was bloated, her lips swollen like those of a tropical fish in an aquarium. The dark skin had sloughed in patches, revealing the pale underside of her epidermis, and giving her body a mottled appearance. Fish or eels had devoured her eyelids, and nibbled her forehead, cheeks, and nose.
“Won't be too much problem with cause,” said Albright. “Course, Tyrell will want a full autopsy.”