The Taint (15 page)

Tuesday

FIFTY-TWO

“All right,” Jon said, holding his hands up for silence. “We’re going to break up into three groups, headed by Malloy, Earl and myself and we’ll be in radio contact at all times. You won’t want to get too far apart or you might get lost as well.”

“How about using whistles?” someone asked.

“The problem we have there is that Nora Samuels doesn’t want to be found, and if she hears you she might go further into the woods. There are plenty of places to hide and she’s lived here a long time, she probably knows them all.”

“What do we do then?” Calvin Price asked.

“Keep your eyes open and move as quietly as you can. No yelling back and forth.” He hesitated, looking at Malloy. “What complicates things is Dan Hudson. We think he might be injured. We can’t call out to him because if Nora is in the vicinity, she’ll take cover.”

“What if he’s yelling for help?”

“That’s what we’re hoping for. If he’s been making noise, chances are Nora won’t be anywhere around him.”

“Huh, you’d think she’d get help for him if she heard him hollering,” Calvin said.

“If I know Nora, she’d think it was a trap,” Earl put in.

“Anyway,” Jon continued, “the important thing is to not make any unnecessary noise. If you do locate either one of them, alert the closest co-searcher and he’ll get back-up for you.”

“Quietly?”

“At that point, our priority is to help whoever we find. There are two lives at stake here and there’s no need to endanger one by making presumptions about the other. If we find Hudson and he’s hurt, then we’ll have to do what’s best for him immediately.”

“Nora could be injured, too,” Earl said.

“That’s always been a possibility. Any questions?” He waited, surveying the group. “All right, then, let’s get started.”

He waited until the other two groups had taken off to their start points and then headed toward the lumber road, a trail of vehicles following behind. At the turn-off back into the woods, he pulled into a small clearing, signaling the others to park.

He checked his hand-held radio which was, for now, receiving, and turned to the waiting men.

“We’re going to fan out and work a line through the brush, but try to keep visual contact with the person next to you. If you do get separated, just backtrack.”

Just then a car turned into the road, slowing as it came upon them, the driver rolling down the window.

“Morning,” Tony Buono said, his eyes taking them in.

Jon looked in the car at the two passengers and back at the driver. “Where’re you headed?”

“Just going for a drive,” Tony answered and smiled guilelessly.

“We’re conducting a search,” Jon said. “You can drive through but I’d prefer if you didn’t go into the woods.” He watched as the driver exchanged a look with the young girl beside him. The girl noticed him watching and widened her eyes in innocence.

“That’s okay, I know another place.” She looked directly at Jon. “We’re doing a nature study project.”

“For school?”

“No . . .” Her face brightened suddenly. “It’s like an independent study. I want to be a botanist.”

Jon looked at the other girl whose face was flushed but she avoided meeting his eyes. He looked back at the driver. “All right, but please be careful: we already have two people missing.”

“Don’t worry,” Tony Buono said. “I’ll be very careful.” Then he smiled, rolled up the window and began to turn the car around in the clearing.

Jon could see the girl in the middle laughing as they drove off.

FIFTY-THREE

“I almost died,” Melissa said, looking back through the rear window as they pulled onto the main road. “The sheriff, no less.”

“I think I will die,” Jennifer moaned. “He’s gonna call my parents, I know it.”

“No he won’t. You heard him; they’re looking for somebody in the woods. He won’t have time to bother about you . . . and anyway, what makes you think he knows who you are?” She looked to Tony for agreement but he was concentrating on driving.

“He doesn’t, but how hard could it be to find out?” She slumped down in the seat. “My life is over. They’ll put me in a convent.”

“They don’t do that anymore. Don’t be silly. Anyway, it’s actually better. I know this place . . .” she leaned forward, peering at the road. “It’s almost overgrown with bushes, but there’s a dirt road that goes back to an abandoned cabin. I know it’s around here.”

“How do you know all these places,” Tony asked and glanced at her sideways.

“Nature study.” Her mouth twitched. “The one good thing that’s come of all these summer school classes.”

“A botanist,” Jennifer said and looked at her friend. “You’ve flunked every science class you’ve ever taken.”

“There are some things,” Melissa said slowly, placing her on Tony’s knee, “that are natural instincts.” She winked at Jennifer. “I just know I’m going to be good in . . . I mean at . . . the bushes.”

Jennifer stole a glance at Tony, who did not react to Melissa’s comment, and back at her friend. Then she turned to look out the window, confused at the turn of events. It didn’t look like they were going swimming after all.

“There it is,” Melissa squealed and pointed at a thickly overgrown road on the left.

Tony stopped in the middle of the road, looking at the turn. “It’s going to scratch the paint.”

“We can park on the side and walk in,” Melissa insisted. “Wait until you see the cabin. It’s got furniture and everything.”

Tony pulled the car off the road about a hundred yards up from the entrance, turned off the engine and looked at them. “Are you ready?”

“I can’t wait,” Melissa answered.

Jennifer just kept her eyes averted and reluctantly got out of the car, followed behind as they headed back to the dirt road.

“Didn’t I tell you.” Melissa stood, hands on her hips, facing the cabin.

It was almost hidden from view, built flat against a rock wall, flanked by trees and camouflaged by dark colored paint. The windows were shuttered and the total effect was of blending into the background.

“Nice,” Tony said and looked back the way they had come. Much of the road had been taken over by the weeds and bushes and there was nothing along the way to indicate that the cabin was there.

“Very secluded.” Melissa toyed with the buttons on her blouse, her eyes now following Tony.

“Let’s look inside,” he said and put an arm around Melissa as he passed. “Come on Jennifer.”

She hung behind but then the isolated silence threatened her fragile self-control and she ran to catch up.

Melissa found the key under a disintegrating floor mat and handed it to Tony. As he worked the key in the lock she smiled at Jennifer and winked again.

Jennifer returned the look without enthusiasm.

Inside, the cabin was remarkably clean. A fine layer of dust coated the wooden furnishings.

“You sure nobody’s living here?” Tony drew one finger across the large round table in the east corner of the room.

“I’m sure.” Melissa looked around. “It’s exactly the way I left it.” She went to a door in the rear of the room. “Look.” She swung the door open, revealing a small bedroom.

Jennifer turned and walked back toward the front door. “I’m going to get a little air—it’s stuffy in here.”

“Jennifer?”

She paused in the doorway but didn’t turn back. “What?”

Melissa giggled softly. “Knock before you come in, okay?”

She left without answering.

She stomped through the woods, angry.

“What did you expect?” she asked herself out loud, kicking at the dirt.

Melissa was going to do it. With Tony.

She sat on a big rock and forced herself to look at the beautiful countryside. It was very peaceful. And quiet.

Melissa was her best friend in the world, maybe her only friend, and that was the problem. She couldn’t even tell her what she thought about this whole thing without taking the chance of spending the rest of her school days as an outcast.

She understood about Melissa, and knew why they were friends. It was very simple; Melissa was pretty and she was not. She was not a threat to Melissa’s ego and when they were together around boys, they paid attention to Melissa. Except for Todd Lane, who Melissa professed to despise, no doubt for being guilty of liking Jennifer best.

She sort of liked Todd. He was shy and intelligent and had a nice dry sense of humor. He had a mild case of acne, but to hear Melissa tell it, his face was marked by craters. Still, she knew better than to defend him to Melissa. She even knew that all of the insults her friend directed toward him were meant to keep them apart. She could never admit that she liked a boy who was so soundly disliked by her best friend. And Melissa preferred it that way.

She might never have a boyfriend. Melissa got the cute ones, and the others weren’t good enough to be bothered with. Two categories of guys: cute and disgusting. She’d noticed, though, that as disgusting as Todd might not know he was, the last weeks of school he’d been seeing Debbie Smith.

Now this thing with Tony.

It had played in her mind. Tony would look at Melissa in disgust. “But you’re almost my daughter,” he’d say. And cruelly: “Besides, you’re a tease and you’re not very smart.”

Then he turned to face her, his face soft with love.

“But Jennifer is nice and bright and sweet. I know I’m older than you.” He would take her hand and bring it to his lips. “And I’m married, but I’ll give it all up . . . just say the word.”

“The word,” she’d say, and, Melissa forgotten, she would be wrapped in his arms.

But he respected her too much to expect her to go to bed with him before they were married. And when their wedding night came at last . . . the screen faded, like in the old movies.

As an afterthought, she’d come across Melissa five years later, on a street corner, where Melissa couldn’t even give it away.

It was a very satisfying dream.

Except that Melissa and Tony were together in the cabin. Alone. She’d made it easy for Melissa again.

She thought she heard the faint sound of laughter on the wind.

She looked at her watch. Two hours. What could they do that would take two hours?

It didn’t take much imagination to guess. Tony couldn’t get enough of Melissa’s little body. Or he couldn’t . . . at all. In which case Melissa would have been tearing the walls down by now, so it had to be the other.

She got up, rubbing her rear end, her eyes searching the woods.

Had something moved?

FIFTY-FOUR

Jon moved silently through the trees, his eyes scanning the area. Off to his right he could see one of the searchers, almost even with him. The road was up two hundred yards to the left.

It had been several hours and they’d seen nothing. No tracks; if there’d been any they were probably washed away by the rain. Still, it was almost impossible to move through the forest without leaving some sort of sign. Snapped twigs, upturned rocks, crushed leaves.

He had checked with both Malloy and Earl shortly before, and they had nothing to report. It did not look good.

He stopped and squinted, looking at a densely-packed growth of bushes. Sunlight streamed through the branches overhead and something was reflecting the light, if dimly.

Nearing, he could make out a structure of some kind. There were no signs of life, no movement, but he approached cautiously.

Aluminum siding.

He looked back toward the others and when the nearest one looked his way he waved an arm, signaling to come over. When he was sure they had seen he circled around and came up on the entrance of the shack.

Flies swarmed around the entrance, almost covering the canvas tarp that served as a door. He could smell it now; the unmistakable odor of death.

By the time the others had arrived he had already looked into the shack and stood waiting a few feet away.

“Whew!” one of the men said, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “Something dead in there?”

“Somebody. It’s not Nora or Hudson.”

“Another body?” They looked at each other nervously.

He nodded. “I’m going back up to my truck to drive it down here. Don’t let anyone go in there. I’m going to have to take pictures and I don’t want anything disturbed.”

“Nobody wants to go in there.” They all settled away from the shack.

They didn’t look like they had moved an inch when he got back. He carried the camera and some collection envelopes and began to take pictures of the outside of the dwelling.

“One of you go wait up by my truck. I’ve called Dr. Adams to come on out and take a look at this, maybe determine a preliminary cause of death.”

“Does it look like another murder?”

“I don’t know.” He took a deep breath, pushed the tarp aside and ducked through the opening.

The camera flashes began.

FIFTY-FIVE

“Tony, where are you going?” Melissa sat up on the bed, watching him pull on his pants.

“Just to have a cigarette.”

“You can do that here.”

“I’ll be back,” he said and left the room, closing the door behind him.

She brushed the hair back out of her face and lay back, a smile on her face.

So that was what it was all about. She arranged her blouse over her upper body, slightly chilled. She considered putting her pants back on but decided that she wasn’t ready to stop yet.

No wonder grown-ups don’t want us to do it, she thought. Afraid we’ll like it. Jealous, like her mother.

She’d read an article once which said that the lowest incidence of teen-age crime and delinquency was found in those cultures which allowed their young to engage in sex without making a big deal of it.

It was clear to her that her mother would rather have her turn into an ax murderess before consenting to this.

She smiled. Things were going to change around the house. Starting immediately.

Tony wouldn’t want her to tell and now he’d have to be on her side. He’d have to make her mother see that it wasn’t right to treat her like a child. He would have to make sure that she wasn’t hidden away like some snot-nosed brat at the summer school.

And this . . . this would continue.

She stretched, flexing even her toes. She felt good all over.

He was strangely quiet, though. He’d hardly spoken during the whole thing. It was probably something to do with her mother; she couldn’t imagine him saying the same things to them both while making love.

“Making love,” she said to the room. It even sounded good. She lifted one leg off the bed, extending it straight in the air, feeling the play of muscles in her thigh. Aching.

If nothing else, it was good exercise.

What was taking him so long? A cigarette took three minutes; she’d timed it once when she was in junior high school.

She got off the bed and slipped the blouse on, not buttoning it and letting it hang open to expose her breasts. She looked around for her panties but didn’t see them.

Footsteps in the other room.

She put her ear against the door and listened. He was moving around in the outer room. Had he put on his shoes? It sounded like . . .

He was coming toward the bedroom door.