Deep South (20 page)

Danielle's dress was stained with mud and plant materials in accordance with where the body had been found. Fibers had been found on the dress that could have been from the seats of three different vehicles. Not surprising given the date motif. If necessary, the fibers could be matched to those of a suspect's vehicle. Except, at present, there were no suspects. The sheet she'd been draped in had trace evidence of grease, fibers, rust, mud, gasoline, paraffin, wool colored with vegetable dye in a process that hadn't been used in seventy years, and specks of rotted crumbling leather. The eyeholes had been cut recently and with a knife or scissors. The report was consistent with a piece of cloth that had probably been kept in the trunk of an automobile. In other words, a rag.

The dead girl's underpants had semen stains and stains from plant material.

Anna filed the report with the copy of the autopsy. The sheet had been a car rag. That suggested Danni had been killed near a vehicle, or had been transported by a vehicle after death, or her pursuer had carried the sheet with him for the express purpose for which it was used. Him.

Anna thought about that for a moment. Not as opposed to "her," though Anna did think of this murderer as male. A whack on the head could have been delivered by a woman-or another girl-but few women had the physical strength to carry one hundred eight pounds dead weight very far, especially not in the dark and over rough country. Anna was thinking of "him" as opposed to "them." This was, or had been made to look like, a hate crime, with the amateur KKK overtones added after death. Lynchings were crimes committed by mobs. Danielle could have been put to death by a group. That was more chilling somehow: the mindless rage of the pack, humanity lost.

B y the time Anna headed north, the mists had burned away and the sky was the deep blue she associated with autumn in the upper Midwest, cloudless and impossibly deep. After the wash of the rains, the green was so intense it looked unreal and everything sparkled with water droplets. As she drove the Trace, each curve revealing a scene rich with life and as picturesque as illustrations from a children's book, Anna was struck again by the beauty of the state. Over her years as a Yankee and a Westerner, she'd heard Mississippi described many ways.

Beautiful had never been one of them. Maybe, like her, others had gleaned their impressions of the Deep South secondhand.

Adele MacK, the vice principal at Clinton High, was not overly pleased to see her, but she hid it well. Anna appreciated that.

Business was business; good manners made it go more smoothly. Adele looked different from before, but Anna couldn't put her finger on it till Ms. MacK was talking into her telephone. The mask of cosmetics was exquisitely in place but the vice principal was experimenting with painting the lipstick just outside her lip line. From a distance it may have made her lips appear more full and luscious. Up close it gave her a disconcerting out-of-focus aspect.

When Anna told her she'd come to speak with Brandon Deforest, Adele cheered up a bit. "He'll be in chemistry," Miss. MacK said efficiently.

"I'll get him myself. You'll want to talk to him in the office. Brandon is easily distracted." As she walked out, careful to close the door behind her, Anna got the sense that if any of Adele's little charges had to be given up, young Brandon would be at the top of her list of sacrifices.

Ms. MacK left Anna and the boy alone in her office. Brandon eschewed the second visitor's chair and sat in Ms. MacK's place behind the desk, then smiled at Anna as if he'd scored a point.

She smiled. Once one knew the games of intimidation, they served only to highlight the other's insecurities. Deforest was fighting for high ground before a single shot had been fired. Anna wanted to know why.

Theoretically he was a handsome lad: well-built, with the muscular upper body and thick neck of a young athlete made to do neck bridges and sprints. His hair was honey-blond, worn long on top and shaved close to the head on the sides. Anna knew that was the fashion of the moment, but when she was of high school age it was the earmark of a new and cheap haircut. Brandon's features were regular, his ears small and close to the bead.

The qualifier "theoretically" came to mind because, though he'd photograph well and most people would see him as beautiful, in actuality there was something unappealing about him. A pimple in the corner of his mouth, an aggressiveness in his excessive eye contact, dishonesty in the pose he struck of exaggerated comfort. In the seconds it took her to make her appraisal, he tilted back in the vice principal's chair and put large sneakered feet on her desk, daring Anna to comment.

As she was dragged again into the realms of youth, an old taunt came to mind: Anybody who'll take a dare will suck eggs. "Take your feet off the desk," Anna said pleasantly, risking the egg.

Deforest looked at her. His eyes were blue, the color of new denim.

He was trying to read her, but he was a babe in the woods. She could read his thoughts the way an actor reads a Teleprompter, word for word: "And if I don't? Want to make me? You've got no say here," She waited.

In the end he said nothing, just procrastinated long enough to prove insolence but not so long as to be insubordinate, then put his feet on the floor.

"Do you know why I'm here?" Anna asked. "Ms. MacK said you had some questions." Anna waited, an open, friendly look on her face. She'd already questioned two of his classmates. There were few secrets in high school. With the possible exception of the teachers, everyone in the building had a pretty good idea why a National Park Ranger was on campus asking to see the team quarterback.

Brandon tried to outwait her but lasted less than thirty seconds.

"I guess you want to talk to me because I took Danni to the prom.

I don't know what Matt told you, but you can't go believing what Matt Dryer says. Ask anybody. Matt's a waste." Fifteen more seconds ticked by. Anna heard them faintly marked off by the wall clock. "Look." Brandon leaned forward, put his elbows on the desk, full of boyish earnestness and the desire to please.

"I cared about Danni, I really did, but she'd got wild. That's God's honest truth. She'd got to drinking and maybe into drugs, I don't know.

After the prom, I was going to break it off with her." Deforest considered his words then changed them. "I would've stuck with her. Got her some help, you know. D.A.R.E. or something." Tick. Tick. Tick. Anna sat. Oddly enough, it seemed the longer one lived, the more time one had. At eighteen, Deforest couldn't stand it. "Danni got to drinking at the dance. I didn't like it, and I left. End of story. If you're fixin' to arrest me, I want a lawyer." Anna wasn't fixing to do anything, so Miranda didn't come into play, After the dance," Anna said. "Who went out to Rocky. with you?"

"Nobody. We...  I didn't go out to the Trace. Me and some friends got some pizza, then went home. Maybe Danielle went out with somebody else."

"Who did you go out with after the dance?"

"Just some friends." V o?

"I don't remember."

"You don't remember who you went out for pizza with?" Brandon said nothing. Anna came around in a new direction: "Mazzio's?"

"Huh?"

"Is that where you went for pizza?" Nothing. "Pizza Hut? Papa John's?

Where?"

"It might have been Mazzio's."

"Might have been?"

"What difference does it make? Okay, it was Mazzio's.

We went to Mazzio's. Happy now?"

"Easy enough to check," Anna said.

Brandon pushed back from the desk. He looked considerably younger than when he'd come into the office. Gone was the pose of being at ease. Anna thought for a second he was going to bolt from the room.

"Do you have a cellular phone?" she asked, purposely jumping subjects. "A cell phone?" he said stupidly. "A cell phone."

"Dad does."

"Do any of your friends have one?"

"Thad, I think. Why?"

"What's Thad's last name?" Brandon didn't want to answer, but there was no real way out. "Meyerboff. What's this about?"

"Describe Thad."

"How do you mean? Like what does he look like?"

"Tell me what he looks like." I don't know. He's thin. Maybe six feet tall. I don't know. What do you want?" He was beginning to sound desperate. Anna liked that.

"Color of hair?"

"Brown, I guess."

"Long or short."

"Kind of short."

"Were you with Thad last night?" The pieces fell together. I was at an away game in Meridian. Ask the coach."

"What time did you get home?" I don't know."

"Before five? After midnight?"

"Ten, I guess."

"Then you were with Thad?"

"We might've hung out. I don't really remember. I mean it was just no big deal."

"Who went with you to Rocky Springs the night of the prom?" Anna asked.

"I didn't...  we took..." His mouth closed tightly, his lips a thin line.

Was one of the boys stocky, five-foot-ten or -eleven, dark hair, a football player and one a skinny guy, around six-foot, brown hair?

Thad Meyerhoff maybe?" Anna described what she could remember of the boys she'd seen in the graveyard shortly before she'd found Heather. "I want to talk to my dad," Brandon said. "That's okay." Anna got up, reached across the desk and shook hands with a now bewildered boy.

"You've been a terrific help. I'll let Ms. MacK know we're done. Thanks again." Anna smiled warmly and left quickly. She wanted to talk to Mr. Deforest before his son got to him.

A few inquiries led her to Brandon's father. He was the manager of the warehouse at the Sears in the Metro Center Mall on Highway 20 just inside the Jackson city limits. A helpful young man in khaki pants and shirt guided her through canyons of boxes to a small office with a picture window letting into the warehouse area.

Fred Posey had referred to Brandon's father as Colonel Deforest.

Subconsciously, Anna had been expecting a much older man. Men her age, Vietnam vets mostly, didn't tend to hang on to the title of their military rank after they left the service. She'd thought that was reserved for lifers, or men who fought in VVWII.

Mr. Deforest was probably Brandon's worst nightmare, if the boy was imaginative enough to be plagued by nightmares.

Once undoubtedly as good an athlete as his son and boasting as fine a physique, Mr. Deforest had seen his muscle turn to fat and congregate under his belt, all in front like a woman pregnant with twins, and yet Anna found him more attractive than his son. There was genuine concern in his voice when he expressed his shock over Danni's death. a r r They'd known Danni Posey for three years, ever since she and Brandon had begun dating steadily. Danni spent a lot of time at the Deforest house.

"Her mama had sick spells," Mr. Deforest explained delicately.

When he'd finished what he considered the necessary pleasantries to make Anna feel at home, he seated her in his claustrophobic office and said: "Now, what can I do for you, Mrs. Pigeon?" Anna didn't correct him. In this part of the world she assumed "Mrs." was a title of respect, and this kindly man was giving her the benefit of the doubt. "We are trying to talk with as many people as we can who might have been in or around Rocky Springs the night that Danni died in hopes somebody might have seen or heard anything that could help us.

"We'll sure do anything we can. What happened to Damn, that was just awful." Anna wondered who "we" was but didn't want to break his rhythm of helpful cooperation by asking. "I know some of the kids that were there," Anna said, "Heather Barnes and your son said Thad Meyerhoff was with them and another boy-oh what was his name? Stocky, dark hair, football player type?"

"That'd be Lyle Sanders," Mr. Deforest filled in helpfully. "Those boys are like the Three Musketeers."

"Did Brandon happen to mention to you or his mom anything he might have seen at Rocky the night of the prom?" Anna asked. "No. Not that sticks in my mind. The kids like to go out there. Makes the girls scared and needing protection is what the draw is, I guess.

"Or makes them pretend to be to get the boys to put their arms around them," Anna said, and Mr. Deforest laughed. They were just reminiscing about the motives of their own youth. Seniors in high school now had resolved the kiss-on-the-first-date controversy by the time they reached fifth grade. "I know the kids went out that way after the dance because Brandon was telling his mom you all had cut a bunch of pines out of the campground there and it's not near as pretty as it used to be." Anna'd seen the stumps and asked Barth about it. "A lot of the pines on the Trace are diseased," she said. "Ah. Anyway, I guess he and Danni had a falling-out. He didn't seem to want to talk much."

"Had they been quarreling?" For the first time it seemed to sink in that this call might not be quite as harmless as he'd thought. Mr. Deforest's face hardened.

Anna saw the underlying toughness that had gotten him to the rank of colonel. "These boy-girl things run hot and cold," he said carefully.

"Was it running cold?"

"I think they were growing apart.

Senior year. Applying to colleges. That sort of thing."

"But they'd been together, what? Three years? That's a long time at that age." Colonel Deforest looked down at his desk. His hair was thinning on top, a circle reminiscent of a monk's tonsure. When he looked up, the friendliness was gone. "I can see the direction you're going with this, Mrs. Pigeon, but it's the wrong direction. Kids don't kill each other because of girlfriend problems." Into the silence that followed came the memories of the high school shootings in the last half of the 1990s that had left children and teachers dead. Kids killing kids because of girlfriend problems.