“How?” he asks.
It is another question I can’t answer. His sister’s victimhood is my line to her, her abductor’s memories like leaves scattered on the breeze—but to explain would be to go into secrets that aren’t mine alone to share. Instead, I lay a hand over his on my arm and give him the truest, simplest answer I can. “Magic.”
24Autopsy
Of course, it is Regis who responds to Myrtle’s call. I feel childish for not having anticipated it and twice damned for the role I’ve played in this calculated drama. Somehow, it seems more sinister with him here, less straightforward. I can barely look him in the face, our stolen hours in the night still creeping over my skin like lingering kisses. But this is Sheriff Brooks, not the Regis of last night, and there is a wary tilt to his chin, a quiet reserve that says this may not go down as smoothly as we’d hoped.
I feel a fervent and misplaced hope that he won’t find the body. The proximity of Ed’s death to the one in the café is enough on its own to make any law enforcement officer do a double take. There is no way to explain that I killed Ed out of kindness. In the harsh glare of the morning sun, I realize my questionably good deed may not go unpunished.
He stands outside the café with stiff shoulders, hiding his assumptions behind the mirrored rounds of his inscrutable sunglasses, a hand resting on each side of his belt. “You say you tried calling?”
“His phone is dead,” Myrtle explains. She is presentable as ever, hair neatly plaited down her back, face scrubbed to a high shine. Even the whites of her eyes seem brighter, every inch of her polished. “It was still ringing last night. Maybe up until around midnight. I found Bart outside of my cabin this morning. That’s when I figured I better call you.”
“If he wasn’t answering as late as midnight, why didn’t you report this then?” he questions as I bite my lower lip. I resent that I can’t see his eyes, as if he is deliberately keeping them from me.
Myrtle lets loose a mocking laugh. “Come on, Sheriff. You know Ed as well as I do. Man could drink himself into a ditch at night and be up bright and early for coffee come morning. There hasn’t been a day that he didn’t turn up at these café doors for opening since that time I found him sweating out a fever in his cabin three years ago.”
I watch Regis press his lips together until the pink disappears. He believes her. Or at least he believes heshouldbelieve her, but something about it doesn’t sit well with him. There is an undercurrent of suspicion that ripples off him in waves like a bad smell. “Which one of you saw him last?”
“I did.” I step forward, hoping to ease Regis’s doubts. I want to believe that what exists between us when there is no one around will protect me. That a trust has formed like a ridge of bone, linking us together. “He said he was going to take care of some downed limbs yesterday.”
“Did you look for him in the woods?” He addresses this to Myrtle. The rebuff offends me, like spit in the face. I try to focus on the fact that the less I say, the better I feel.
“Wanted to,” she tells him. “But you had my niece detained till well after dark. Didn’t seem smart to wander out there on my own, what with this Strangler business going on.”
“No,” he agrees, checked. “Of course.” He scans the woodland behind us, the measured oscillation of his face the only giveaway. I wonder if he expects to spot Ed there on the brink, like one of those pictures where you have to find the hidden images—Do you see the mitten? The teapot?—as if he’s been there all along, just waiting for someone to bother looking. “Let me call in some help. We’ll get out there and take a look. Probably sleeping it off under a tree somewhere.”
Myrtle smiles, sweet as cream, as if she fully expects this to be true. “I’ll put the coffee on,” she says, throat raspy. “I’m sure he’ll need it by the time you drag him back.”
Regis heads toward his patrol car when Myrtle goes inside, leaving me standing there, a nonentity on the edge of their conversation. Impulsively, I reach out to stop him. “Wait.”
I don’t know what I intend to say. I can’t stand the thought of Ed’s body lying out there during this charade, as if he is refuse dropped on the ground, forgotten like last year’s leaf fall. I can’t tell Regis anything of substance, but maybe I can at least point him in the right direction. I also just want him to see me.
He stops, face still obscured by the sunglasses.
“Can you take those off?”
He slides them from his nose, and when his eyes meet mine, they are as apprehensive as a stray cat backed into a corner. I almost stumble over the unexpectedness of it. “You got something to add, Ms. Lee?”
I clear my throat, unsure of the words trying to fill it. “Regis?”It’s me,I want to say, but it’s not my voice he’s familiar with, it’s my body.
The edge of his gaze softens, and he drops it, as if he can’t bear to look at me as a man and not a cop. “I’m on duty, Acacia,” he says flatly.
“Right.” I take a step away, regroup. “I just… I saw him enter the forest there, beside that tamarack tree.” I point to the stubby conifer clad in its shaggy, yellowing coat of needles at the edge of the forest.
He follows my finger, a flicker of some unexpressed emotion glancing his jaw. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”
I watch him walk away to radio in for backup, wishing I could be anywhere but here when they haul Ed’s body out.
He waits in the car until two other officers arrive. They huddle on the pavement as he debriefs them, the occasional glimpse toward the café breaking their cloister. Eventually, they dismantleat some mysterious signal and move in unison toward the back of the property, vanishing into the thicket behind the cabins.
Myrtle ignores her cardinal rule and keeps Bart in the café for a change, where he lies under one of the tables, watching the door like Ed will step through it at any moment. I bus the tables and wipe the windows with protracted fastidiousness, squinting through bubbly streaks for some sign of what’s happening. When the glass is clean enough to disappear—a sure trap for the local birds—I turn my attention to refilling all the condiments and saltshakers, hands trembling the whole time, spilling more grains than I contain.
Myrtle is cooking breakfast as if nothing is happening—a sausage and egg casserole—as if she expects Ed to return, hungover and famished, with Terry and Amos in tow. She catches me flubbing the salt and admonishes, “Steady, Piers. It’s all downhill from here. Maybe leave the more dexterous tasks for another day, hmm?”
I have an abrupt desire to take up smoking or knitting, anything to keep my hands occupied. The sole guest from cabin seven comes in for coffee and a bit of toast, as does the old guy who runs the Drunken Moose—aBillsomebody. I don’t need the extra eyes—their presence makes me clumsier—but the distraction of a full crowd is sorely missed. When I run out of things to busy myself with in the café, I grab the caddy of cleaning supplies and head out to work in the bathroom. I’ve never been so preoccupied with porcelain.
About an hour later, Regis leans in the door. “Can you step outside for a minute?”
