Creed Lindsey's place had an empty patch of dirt beneath trees where I could tell he usually parked, and I pulled in and cut the engine. For a time, I sat looking at his shack and its dilapidated, slanting porch. It seemed a light might have been on inside, or it could have been the way the window caught the low sun. As I thought about this man who sold red-hot toothpicks to children and had picked wildflowers for Emily as he swept floors and emptied trash at their school, I debated the wisdom of what I was doing.
My original intention, after all, had been to see where Creed Lindsey lived in relation to the Presbyterian church and Lake Tomahawk. Now that certain questions were answered, I had other ones. I could not just drive away from a fire on a hearth in a home where no one was supposed to be. I could not stop thinking about what Mote had said, and of course there were the Fireballs I had found. They really were the main reason I had to talk to this man called Creed.
I knocked on the door for a long time, thinking I heard someone move around inside, and feeling watched. But no one came to let me in, and my verbal salutations went unanswered. The window to my left was dusty and had no screen. On the other side I could see a margin of dark wood flooring and part of a wooden chair illuminated by a small lamp on a table.
Though I reasoned that a lamp on did not mean anyone was home, I smelled wood smoke and thought the stack of kindling on the porch was piled high and freshly split. I knocked again and the wooden door felt loose beneath my knuckles, as if it wouldn't take much to kick it in.
"Hello?" I called.
"Is anybody home?"
I was answered by the sound of trees shaken by gusts of wind. The air was chilled in the shade and I detected the faint odor of things rotting, mildewing, and falling apart. In the woods on either side of this one- or two-room shack with its rusting roof and bent TV antenna was the trash of many years blessedly covered in part by leaves. Mostly I saw disintegrating paper, plastic milk jugs, and cola bottles that had been lying out there long enough for labels to be bleached.
So I concluded that the lord of the manor had forsaken his unseemly way of pitching garbage out the door, since none of it looked recent. As I was momentarily lost in this observation, I became aware of a presence behind me. I felt eyes on my back so palpably that hair raised on my arms as I slowly turned around.
The girl was a strange apparition on the road near the rear bumper of my car. She stood as motionless as a deer staring at me in the gathering dusk, dull brown hair limp around her narrow pale face, eyes slightly crossed. She held herself very still. I sensed in her long, lanky limbs that she would bound out of sight if I made any movement or sound the least bit startling. For the longest time, she continued to stare and I looked right back as if I accepted the necessity of this strange encounter. When she shifted her stance a little and seemed to breathe and blink again, I dared to speak.
"I wonder if you can help me," I said gently without fear. She slipped bare hands in the pockets of a dark wool coat that was several sizes too small. She wore wrinkled khaki pants rolled up at the ankles, and scuffed tan leather boots. I thought she was in her early teens, but it was hard to say.
"I'm from out of town," I tried again, "and it's very important that I locate Creed Lindsey. The man who lives here, or at least I think he lives in this house. Can you help me?"
"Whadyou want thar fer?" Her voice was high- pitched and reminded me of banjo. strings. I knew I would have a hard time understanding a word of what she might have to say.
"I need him to help me," I said very slowly. She moved several steps closer, her eyes never leaving mine. They were pale and crossed like a Siamese cat's.
"I know he thinks there are people looking for him," I went on with deadly calm.
"But I'm not one of them. I'm not one of. them at all.
I'm not here to cause him harm in any way. "
"What's thar name?"
"My name is Dr. Kay Scarpetta," I answered her. She stared harder at me as if I had just told her the most curious secret. It occurred to me that if she knew what a doctor was, she might never have encountered one who was a woman.
"Do you know what a medical doctor is?" I asked her. She stared at my car as if it contradicted what I had just said.
"There are some doctors who help the police when people get hurt. That's what I do," I said.
"I'm helping the police here. That's why I have a car like this. The police are letting me drive it while I'm here because I'm not from these parts. I'm from Richmond, Virginia." My voice trailed off as she looked silently at my car, and I had the disheartening feeling that I had said too much and all was lost. I would never find Creed Lindsey. It had been incredibly foolish to imagine for even a moment that I could communicate with a people I did not know and could not begin to understand.
I was about to decide to return to my car and drive away when the girl suddenly approached. I was startled when she took my hand and without a word tugged me toward my car. She pointed through the window at my black medical bag on the passenger's seat.
"That's my medical bag," I said.
"Do you want me to get it?"
"Yes, get thar," she said. Opening the door, I did. I wondered if she was merely curious, but then she was pulling me out onto the unpaved street where I had first seen her. Wordlessly, she led me up the hill, her hand rough and dry like corn husks as it continued to grasp mine firmly and with purpose.
"Would you tell me your name?" I asked as we climbed at a brisk pace.
"Deborah." Her teeth were bad, and she was gaunt and old before her time, typical in the cases of chronic malnutrition that I often saw in a society where food was not always the answer. I expected that Deborah's family, like many I encountered in inner cities, subsisted on all the high empty calories that food stamps could buy.
"Deborah what?" I asked as we neared a tiny slab house. It appeared to have been built of trimmings from a sawmill and covered with tar paper, portions of which were supposed to look like brick.
"Deborah Washbum."
I followed her up rickety wooden steps leading to a weathered porch with nothing on it but firewood and a faded turquoise glider. She opened a door that hadn't seen paint in too long to remember its color, and pulled me inside, where the reason for this mission became instantly clear.
Two tiny faces too old for their very young years looked up from a bare mattress on the floor where a man sat bleeding into rags in his lap as he tried to sew up a cut on his right thumb. On the floor nearby was a glass jar half filled with a clear liquid that I doubted was water, and he had managed to get a stitch or two in with a regular needle and thread. For a moment, we regarded each other in the glare of an overhead bare light bulb.
"Thar's a doctor," Deborah said to him. He stared at me some more as blood dripped from his thumb, and I guessed he was in his late twenties or early thirties. His hair was long and black and in his eyes, his skin sickly pale, as if it had never seen the sun. Tall and thick through the middle, he stunk of old grease, sweat, and alcohol.
"Where'd you get her from?" the man asked the child. The other children stared vacantly at the TV, which as best I could see was the only electrical object in the house besides the one light bulb.
"Thar was looking for thar," Deborah said to him, and I realized with amazement that she used thar for every pronoun, and that the man must be Creed Lindsey.
"Why'd you bring her?" He didn't seem particularly upset or afraid.
"Thar hurt."
"How did you cut yourself?" I asked him as I opened my bag.