“Could be.” Paul gave him a long, steady look, and Arlen sighed and swore under his breath and dropped his saw to the ground, gathered an ax.
“All right. We’ll have a look.”
It was remarkable how fast the beach gave way to forest in this part of the state. Or to jungle, rather. It was more like that than any forest Arlen had ever known, choked with thick green undergrowth and snarling vines and soil that squished under your boots. They picked their way through the mud and the brush until they were walking beneath the trees-scrub pine nearest the dock and mangroves farther inland. The woods were a litter of torn leaves and branches, and it seemed half the trees had been sheared or uprooted completely during the hurricane. The vultures ahead of them watched their approach and flapped their wings, creating an eerie background as they walked deeper into the shadows.
“Go on,” Arlen shouted at the birds. “Go on!” He reached out and grabbed hold of a large banyan leaf and gave it a vigorous shake. A few of the birds took to the air then, but others stayed. Arlen could see now that the object of the scavenging was actually down in the water, which was why the vultures were perched in the trees instead of clustered around the find; they had to make quick passes and snatches with their beaks because the carcass was floating and they weren’t waterbirds. Just death birds.
“Arlen,” Paul said, “that looks like…”
“Yeah,” Arlen said.
The carcass was on their side of the creek but still thirty feet away and mostly underwater. Even from here, though, a stretch of fabric was visible. It was covered with mud and water, but even so you could see that it was a pale yellow.
“Give me that rake,” Arlen said, and the words didn’t come easily. Paul traded him the rake for the ax, and Arlen ran his tongue over dry lips and then stepped forward. The boy hung back, watching. Arlen had his eyes locked on the floating object and didn’t see the snake in his path until he’d nearly stepped on it. There was a flourish of motion that froze him with one foot hanging in the air, and then the water parted almost soundlessly and the snake slid off. Arlen stared after it for a moment and then continued on.
When he got closer, he yelled again and banged the rake through the leaves and sent the remaining vultures into the air. They didn’t go far, though. Only to a tree on the opposite side of the creek, where they could monitor their prize.
He knew by then what he’d suspected since the wind shifted and began to carry the smell to them. The vultures and the fish and the heat had combined to do dastardly things to this remnant of human life, and when he stood over the body he felt his stomach clench and had to take a quick glance at the treetops to steady himself. The stench was hideous, and he’d pulled his shirt up over his nose with the hand that didn’t hold the rake.
She floated upside down, and he could see one hand just beneath the surface of the water, some of the flesh picked clean, bone remaining. He remembered the way she’d traced his palm with her fingers.
It’s happened now, hasn’t it? she’d said, watching his face after her own had gone from flesh to bone in the darkness. He’s told them. It’s done.
Arlen had let her go. He’d seen death on her and he’d let her go and now her remains floated in the marsh, picked upon by forest creatures and vultures. Yes, there’d been armed men inside, but he’d let her go, he’d let them take her.
They’ll find me, she had said. And it will end the same for me, only it will also be bad for you and the boy. And for Rebecca. I won’t initiate such things.
“Arlen,” Paul called. “Is that-”
“Shut up!” Arlen shouted, and his voice nearly broke. The boy fell into a stunned silence.
You can’t run from them, she’d said. I hope you understand that. You’re going to need to. There will be no running from what lies ahead.
Now he reached out with the rake, leaning off the bank and extending it as far as he could, and hooked one of the tines into the dead woman’s dress.
It took four tries to drag her all the way over. Her flesh was so decomposed that the rake went through it like soft butter, so Arlen had to keep catching the dress as best as he could. The clothes had held up better than the body.
He dragged her back, out of the dark waters of the creek and toward the bank. He bit down, squeezing his teeth together and tightening his lips, and then he held his breath and used the rake to turn the body over. More flesh slid off the bones when he did it, and a burst of putrid gases rose. The dead woman’s head rolled crookedly, turning to face Arlen. Only traces of skin remained, and they were swollen and discolored. Not even the dearest loved one would be able to look at this face and recognize it. Arlen felt his stomach clench again and his throat burn warningly, and he pulled the rake free and turned from the body, heard it slide down into the water. He walked back to Paul, cold rage in his veins.
“That’s a woman,” Paul said softly. “Isn’t it? That’s a dead woman.”
“Yes.”
“Where’d she come from? How’d she die?”
Arlen looked away. “She’s been in the water for a time. Probably dumped in upstream and drifted down and snagged here.”
“The body wouldn’t have sunk? They float?”
“Yes,” Arlen said. “They float.”
Paul stared at him. “Who was it?”
“Too late to tell,” Arlen said, and that was almost the truth.
27
ARLEN TOLD THEM they’d have to call for the sheriff, and both Rebecca and Paul stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“He’ll likely want to arrest us for it,” Paul said nervously.
“You’d let her sit there?” Arlen said. “Pretend we never found her?”
“No,” Paul said, but he still looked uneasy, and Rebecca was watching Arlen with confusion and wariness, reading something in him that the boy did not. He turned from her so she could no longer stare into his eyes. There was another reason Arlen wanted Tolliver down here, all right. He wanted to watch the man face the corpse. To see her as she was now, and remember her as she had been. He wanted to see if it made any impact, if the man would feel the weight of murder or if that ability was gone from him. Arlen had an idea that it was.
They got in the truck and headed out just as they had so many days earlier, when Sorenson’s body still smoldered in his twelve-cylinder Auburn and Arlen expected to be gone from the Cypress House by sundown.
Back to the same store, and this time they all went inside. The little shop was jammed with rows of shelves, and a dark-skinned, dark-haired girl stood behind a counter lined with jars of penny candy. She was an Indian, Arlen realized when she looked up at them, an absolutely beautiful girl.
“Hello, Sarah,” Rebecca said. “We’re going to need the phone.”
Before the girl could answer, a door behind the counter opened and Thomas Barrett stepped into the room, his face flushed and damp with sweat. Behind him Arlen could see a litter of tools and the panel delivery van.
“The whole gang,” Barrett said, grinning at them. “Y’all need that many cigarettes?”
“We need to call the sheriff,” Rebecca said.
Barrett’s smile faded. “Everything all right?”
“There’s a body in the inlet. A dead woman.”
Barrett looked at Arlen and then back at Rebecca, and he moved toward the girl at the counter, slipped his arm around her waist. It was a protective gesture. As if the three from the Cypress House carried danger.
“First that guy blowing up in his car,” he said, “and now this? What in the hell’s going on out there?”
Nobody had an answer.
Tolliver and the redheaded deputy brought a truck with an open bed out along with the sheriff’s car, and they carried a wide canvas tarpaulin down to the creek with them. The deputy said something under his breath and covered his mouth and nose with his hand, but Tolliver stood on the bank with his hands hooked in his belt and looked down at the rotting remains as if he were staring at a flat tire or some such minor nuisance.