Deep South (16 page)

Walking slowly, despite the rain, she crossed the gravel and Joined him in the shelter of the barn.

Mr. Posey was considerably more substantial than his wife, but to Anna he looked to be in poor health. His skin was sallow, his hair thin and lusterless. For a man probably not yet fifty, his shoulders were rounded down and his neck bowed. Too long carrying too much weight.

Anna had seen it before. People expected farmers to be robust and hearty types, but it was a hard life. It killed and crippled people young.

Those who were remembered were those who grew old at it.

They were tough as leather and nails.

"Been talking to Cindy?" he asked. There was a guarded sadness in his face that Anna thought she understood. "Mrs. Posey?"

"My wife." A challenge if Anna ever heard one. Fred would brook no disparagement, even in the form of sympathy, where his wife was concerned. Anna liked that in him and relaxed somewhat.

"We talked a little and had a Coke," Anna said. "You come to talk about Danni?" Anna nodded. "I didn't upset her, Mr. Posey."

"It's hard on a woman," he said. "You go ahead and ask me your questions." He sucked in cheeks grown loose over the years and craned his neck as if in pain, squeezing off the tears. Anna busied herself getting a notebook and pen out of her shirt pocket, giving him time to recover. Fred Posey struck her as the kind of man who might never forgive a woman for seeing him cry.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noted the whereabouts of Bubba and Rocket. The two of them had crawled under the hulk of some sort of many-bladed, wicked-looking piece of farm machinery. For the moment, they seemed content to let her live. "I'm sorry to make you deal with this stuff," Anna said. "But the sooner we can get leads, the better off we'll be." I understand," Mr. Posey said. "Ask away." He wasn't doing anything. Not leaning on a rake or holding a tool. His hands weren't in his pockets. He didn't fidget or shuffle his feet. Pale, bent, he just stood in the watery light, arms hanging at his sides. For some inexplicable reason, Anna was put in mind of Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird.

"Do you know who Danni's date was for the dance?" Heather's boyfriend Matt had given her a name, but she wanted to hear it again from another source.

I think she was going to go with Brandon Deforest, Colonel Deforest's boy. Her mom says they've been kind of sweet on each other for a while, They been squabbling, so maybe she went with some other boy."

"The boy didn't come to the house to pick her up?"

"Yes, I believe he did."

"Were you out at the time?" I was looking at TV" A silence followed that Anna didn't want to break. Wben he spoke again, his voice rattled at the outset as he forced it through sorrow or shame or maybe regret, "Her mom said Danni looked real pretty. I guess she'd gotten a special dress for the party."

"Can you tell me about her friends?" Anna asked.

Mr. Posey looked out into the rain, his eyes as colorless as the day.

"She was always running around with some little gal or other.

Her mom would know." Fred Posey knew little about his only daughter, not even what year she was in school. Her birthday was the twelfth or the fourteenth of June. Her mom said she was a good enough student. He guessed she was happy enough.

Anna thanked him and left him to his barn and his dogs and his rusting equipment. On the drive back to Airport Road, where she could get back on the Trace, Anna found herself feeling sorry for the murdered girl.

Her father had abdicated and her mother had gone crazy. Danni Posey must have been very lonely.

Ten miles south on the Trace, past the turnoff for the town of Raymond, just as she was beginning to dry out, Anna clocked an oncoming car at seventy-nine miles per hour. Too much over the speed limit to let go.

Being damp and in a racist's kitchen had made her crabby. There'd be no kindly warning today. They make an officer get out of a warm patrol car and stand in the rain; they by God get a ticket. Anna flipped on the blue lights and was startled when blue lights flashed in return.

No traffic but for two law enforcement officers, both exceeding the posted speed limit. Anna slowed to a stop and let the sheriff's car pull up beside her. Davidson rolled down his window and smiled.

Suddenly Anna felt the Poseys' farm had been an alien planet and now she was back on Earth.

"Hey," she said, lacking anything better with which to express her pleasure at seeing his officially rational countenance. "Hey, your ownself," he replied. "I'm glad I ran into you. Save one of us a trip. I got the autopsy report back on Danielle Posey. If you want, we can pull off somewhere and go over it. I'll get you copies of whatever you need, but it won't be till tomorrow probably."

"I'd like a look at them now if you're not in a big hurry."

"No hurry.

At least not at the present."

"I'll pull off," Anna said. "Better not. Too much rain. One of us is bound to get stuck and nothing looks sillier than America's finest digging around trying to pry their cars out of the muck. I'll turn around and follow you on down to Dean's Stand. It's not more than a mile or two." Vaguely, Anna remembered passing a tasteful brown NPS arrowhead sign with words to that effect. She led the way then turned left on a narrow tree-shrouded road. A quarter mile or less and it ended in a loop with a garbage can and a picnic table. Davidson parked next to her and leaned over to unlock the passenger door so she could slide in with only minimal exposure to the elements. "Dean's Stand," Anna said. "I've got to do my homework. There's nothing here."

"There's history," the sheriff returned. "There's history everywhere," Anna said, her humor not yet fully recovered. "That's the nature of the beast."

"Yes, but in the South we take note." She had no answer to that. "So.

What've we got?" she asked.

Davidson pulled a pair of half glasses from the pocket of his uniform shirt and slipped them on, adjusting them partway down his nose. That done, he leaned toward her to pluck a manila file folder from a battered brown leather briefcase. When he moved, Anna was aware of the warmth of his body and a faint pleasant odor of cologne. What kind, she couldn't hazard a guess. She'd not bought a man cologne or aftershave for ten years. Maybe not all grown-ups wore Old Spice anymore.

Normally she would have found it mildly annoying to sit passively by while someone spoon-fed her information she could absorb faster reading herself. Today she was content to wait. It was more than just anoying the warmth of a dry car the scent of manly perfume, it was the essence of sharing Davidson exuded. He prepared not to give, edit, spoon-feed, but to share information.

That's how women tended to work. Women and very clever men.

"Death due to blunt trauma to the back of the neck. The fourth cervical vertebra was broken and the spinal cord severed. No cuts or abrasions in that area. The trauma caused by a flat smooth object. Shape suggests a boot heel, worn smooth."

"The blow to the forehead didn't kill her?"

"Apparently not. She may have fallen backward when struck and hit something else that killed her."

"What? That forest is soft as oatmeal. Jesus. She was stomped. Like a snake."

"I'm guessing the killer struck her twice to make sure."

"Ish," Anna said, using her sister's fiance's favorite expletive. Her own choice of words would have been too caustic for so small a space.

"Okay. Where was I? Blow to the right frontal lobe of the brain causing external hemorrhaging. That blow was from an edged weapon." He looked over the top of his glasses at Anna. "Not a knife or an axe.

The medical examiner's thinking a shovel, a gas can, a tool box-something heavy and probably made of metal. There weren't any bits of anything she'd expect to find if a wooden implement was used, or a brick, or something along those lines. just something with a hard straight edge."

"Scalp was cut?"

"And the bone cracked." He went back to his folder.

"Looks like you were right about the rope. The marks on the neck occurred after death. The killer had to be making some kind of point."

"The kind of mind that would stomp a young girl might be the kind of mind that would have a 'point' that makes no sense to anyone else," Anna said. "True," the sheriff agreed. "But it's a start-KKK angle-the start of what, I don't even like to think about. Cuts and contusions to bands and arms and the legs, consistent with running through the brush.

No defensive injuries. No sign of collateral damage during the assault.

Miss. Posey bad had sexual intercourse prior to her death but no signs of forcible rape. Her blood alcohol level was point two three. Her blood didn't test positive for any other drugs."

"Two three is awfully high. Unless she was already a seasoned alcoholic, she must have been blind, stumbling drunk," Anna said. "Knee-walking drunk," Paul Davidson drawled. "Seventeen years old, drunk, dressed in a handkerchief, sexually active and out at two in the morning. Was that your idea of a Saturday night date when you were in high school?"

"The Sisters of Mercy would have frowned on that," Anna said. "When we were at the height of our wickedness, we'd smoke cigarettes out back of the dorm, and the nuns would pretend they didn't smell it on us.

"Catholic?"

"No. My folks sent me there because it was a good school. I'm nothing."

"That's too bad." Anna let it pass. "Did you meet Danielle's parents?"

"Just when he ID'd the body. I didn't keep him too long. He said he needed to get back to his wife. Lonny's going to go by this afternoon."

"Your deputy?"

"Yes. Lonny Restin."

"The young black man?" The sheriff took off his reading glasses, the better to read her face. @Vh Y? P?

Anna told him the story of Barth's lack of information and Cindy Posey's remarks. Talking of racism in the North was easy. Down here Anna felt awkward and uncomfortable and wondered why. Maybe because hypocrisy, though it existed everywhere, wasn't an agreed-upon thing in the South.

People still spoke their minds even when those minds were small and nasty and scared. Respect for sixties Southern liberals flowered in Anna. In Minnesota it didn't cost much to be a bleeding heart. Down here it would have been a siege mentality No wonder they were reputed to drink quantities of bourbon.

Paul Davidson sat quietly, mulling over Anna's revelations. "I'm of two minds," he said at length. "Lonny's well able to fend for himself and is an impressive young man. He's pried open more than one closed mind in the year we've worked together. On the other hand, I hate to make him go through it if there's nothing to be gained. You saw Mrs. Posey. Is it true she's a little off the beam?"

"She struck me as out of touch," Anna told him. "How deep her split with reality I couldn't say, but I doubt we'll get much use out of her.

And I don't think she'll talk with Lonny." That she might set the dogs on the young deputy was a possibility, but Anna didn't like to tell of her own fear. Officer Safety sparked in her mind, and she swallowed her pride. "She might set the dogs on him," she said.

"That bad?"

"Maybe." Anna waited while the sheriff radioed his deputy and told him to talk only with Mr. Posey and to call before coming. "Not going to tell him why?" Anna asked when he was done. "Lonny'll know why.

Mississippi has spent the last forty years trying to live down the Cindy Poseys. Educate them. Pray for them. Argue with them. One day they'll die out, but racism's got a half-life that's virtually nuclear. It persists from generation to generation, just in a less virulent form.

You're a Yankee. Make sure racism's not all you look for. If it is, it's all you'll find. But it's nowhere near all there is." Sermon delivered, Davidson replaced his reading glasses on his nose and continued with the autopsy report. "Miss. Posey died around one-thirty A.M.

She'd had shrimp and lobster tails for dinner. Not pregnant. Healthy but for being dead."

"Legs scratched. We saw that," Anna added. "There should be tracks, but I couldn't find any. You guys don't have any dirt down here. Just plants."

"If there were tracks, they're gone now," the sheriff said, watching the rain sheet on the windshield.

"Maybe not." Anna was thinking of the square high heels. "She was carried. Chased, hence the scratches, then killed or knocked unconscious-thus no defensive wounds, then carried-so no tracks from those heeled sandals. Then dumped and abandoned. Where was she carried from?"

"The Old Trace, there where the bank was tracked up?"

"Maybe, but we obliterated any sign there, and I didn't see the heel marks on the way to the campground." it Other tracks?"

"Sure. Dozens."

"Right. It's a trail." He went back to the report. "The postmortem marks on the neck were minimal. Looks as though the noose wasn't tight and it was not used to drag her. Just window dressing." For a bit they sat without speaking, listening to the hypnotic thrum of rain on the car's roof. "Where would they have carried her from?" Anna wasn't so much asking again as still wondering. "Kill her in the campground and carry her across the creek, through the kudzu, down the Old Trace, up over the bank and into the woods.