Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
She came here to lay flowers at the place where the boy died and the girl was
kidnapped.
She came here because she was a heavy girl and had a pocked face and not many
friends.
She came because she was expected to.
She came because she wanted to.
Ungainly and sweating, twenty-six-year-old Lydia Johansson walked along the
dirt shoulder of Route 112, where she'd parked her Honda Accord, then stepped
carefully down the hill to the muddy bank where Blackwater Canal met the opaque
Paquenoke River.
She came here because she thought it was the right thing to do.
She came even though she was afraid.
It wasn't long after dawn but this August had been the hottest in years in
North Carolina and Lydia was already sweating through her nurse's whites by the
time she started toward the clearing on the riverbank, surrounded by willows and
tupelo gum and broad-leafed bay trees. She easily found the place she was
looking for; the yellow police tape was very evident through the haze.
Early morning sounds. Loons, an animal foraging in the thick brush nearby,
hot wind through sedge and swamp grass.
Lord, I'm scared, she thought. Flashing back vividly on the most gruesome
scenes from the Stephen King and Dean Koontz novels she read late at night with
her companion, a pint of Ben & Jerry's.
More noises in the brush. She hesitated, looked around. Then continued on.
"Hey," a man's voice said. Very near.
Lydia gasped and spun around. Nearly dropped the flowers. "Jesse, you scared
me."
"Sorry." Jesse Corn stood on the other side of a weeping willow, near the
clearing that was roped off. Lydia noticed that their eyes were fixed on the
same thing: a glistening white outline on the ground where the boy's body'd been
found. Surrounding the line indicating Billy's head was a dark stain that, as a
nurse, she recognized immediately as old blood.
"So that's where it happened," she whispered.
"It is, yep." Jesse wiped his forehead and rearranged the floppy hook of
blond hair. His uniform -- the beige outfit of the Paquenoke County Sheriff's
Department -- was wrinkled and dusty. Dark stains of sweat blossomed under his
arms. He was thirty and boyishly cute. "How long you been here?" she asked.
"I don't know. Since five maybe."
"I saw another car," she said. "Up the road. Is that Jim?"
"Nope. Ed Schaeffer. He's on the other side of the river." Jesse nodded at
the flowers. "Those're pretty."
After a moment Lydia looked down at the daisies in her hand. "Two forty-nine.
At Food Lion. Got 'em last night. I knew nothing'd be open this early. Well,
Dell's is but they don't sell flowers." She wondered why she was rambling. She
looked around again. "No idea where Mary Beth is?"
Jesse shook his head. "Not hide nor hair."
"Him neither, I guess that means."
"Him neither." Jesse looked at his watch. Then out over the dark water, dense
reeds and concealing grass, the rotting pier.
Lydia didn't like it that a county deputy, sporting a large pistol, seemed as
nervous as she was. Jesse started up the grassy hill to the highway. He paused,
glanced at the flowers. "Only two ninety-nine?"
"Forty-nine. Food Lion."
"That's a bargain," the young cop said, squinting toward a thick sea of
grass. He turned back to the hill. "I'll be up by the patrol car."
Lydia Johansson walked closer to the crime scene. She pictured Jesus, she
pictured angels and she prayed for a few minutes. She prayed for the soul of
Billy Stail, which had been released from his bloody body on this very spot just
yesterday morning. She prayed that the sorrow visiting Tanner's Corner would
soon be over.
She prayed for herself too.
More noise in the brush. Snapping, rustling.
The day was lighter now but the sun didn't do much to brighten up Blackwater
Landing. The river was deep here and fringed with messy black willows and thick
trunks of cedar and cypress -- some living, some not, and all choked with moss
and viny kudzu. To the northeast, not far, was the Great Dismal Swamp, and Lydia
Johansson, like every Girl Scout past and present in Paquenoke County, knew all
the legends about that place: the Lady of the Lake, the Headless Trainman....But
it wasn't those apparitions that bothered her; Blackwater Landing had its own
ghost -- the boy who'd kidnapped Mary Beth McConnell.
Lydia opened her purse and lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Felt a bit
calmer. She strolled along the shore. Stopped beside a stand of tall grass and
cattails, which bent in the scorching breeze.
On top of the hill she heard a car engine start. Jesse wasn't leaving, was
he? Lydia looked toward it, alarmed. But she saw the car hadn't moved. Just
getting the air-conditioning going, she supposed. When she looked back toward
the water she noticed the sedge and cattails and wild rice plants were still
bending, waving, rustling.
As if someone was there, moving closer to the yellow tape, staying low to the
ground.
But no, no, of course that wasn't the case. It's just the wind, she told
herself. And she reverently set the flowers in the crook of a gnarly black
willow not far from the eerie outline of the sprawled body, spattered with blood
dark as the river water. She began praying once more.
Across the Paquenoke River from the crime scene, Deputy Ed Schaeffer leaned
against an oak tree and ignored the early morning mosquitoes fluttering near his
arms in his short-sleeved uniform shirt. He shrank down to a crouch and scanned
the floor of the woods again for signs of the boy.
He had to steady himself against a branch; he was dizzy from exhaustion. Like
most of the deputies in the county sheriff's department he'd been awake for
nearly twenty-four hours, searching for Mary Beth McConnell and the boy who'd
kidnapped her. But while, one by one, the others had gone home to shower and eat
and get a few hours' sleep Ed had stayed with the search. He was the oldest
deputy on the force and the biggest (fifty-one years old and two hundred
sixty-four pounds of mostly unuseful weight) but fatigue, hunger and stiff
joints weren't going to stop him from continuing to look for the girl.
The deputy examined the ground again.
He pushed the transmit button of his radio. "Jesse, it's me. You there?"
"Go ahead."
He whispered, "I got footprints here. They're fresh. An hour old, tops."
"Him, you think?"
"Who else'd it be? This time of morning, this side of the Paquo?"
"You were right, looks like," Jesse Corn said. "I didn't believe it at first
but you hit this one on the head."
It had been Ed's theory that the boy would come back here. Not because of the
cliché -- about returning to the scene of the crime -- but because Blackwater
Landing had always been his stalking ground and whatever kind of trouble he'd
gotten himself into over the years he always came back here.
Ed looked around, fear now replacing exhaustion and discomfort as he gazed at
the infinite tangle of leaves and branches surrounding him. Jesus, the deputy
thought, the boy's here someplace. He said into his radio, "The tracks look to
be moving toward you but I can't tell for sure. He was walking mostly on leaves.
You keep an eye out. I'm going to see where he was coming from."
Knees creaking, Ed rose to his feet and, as quietly as a big man could,
followed the boy's footsteps back in the direction they'd come -- farther into
the woods, away from the river.
He followed the boy's trail about a hundred feet and saw it led to an old
hunting blind -- a gray shack big enough for three or four hunters. The gun
slots were dark and the place seemed to be deserted. Okay, he thought.
Okay...He's probably not in there. But still...
Breathing hard, Ed Schaeffer did something he hadn't done in nearly a year
and a half: unholstered his weapon. He gripped the revolver in a sweaty hand and
started forward, eyes flipping back and forth dizzily between the blind and the
ground, deciding where best to step to keep his approach silent.
Did the boy have a gun? he wondered, realizing that he was as exposed as a
soldier landing on a bald beachhead. He imagined a rifle barrel appearing fast
in one of the slots, aiming down on him. Ed felt an ill flush of panic and he
sprinted, in a crouch, the last ten feet to the side of the shack. He pressed
against the weathered wood as he caught his breath and listened carefully. He
heard nothing inside but the faint buzzing of insects.
Okay, he told himself. Take a look. Fast.
Before his courage broke, Ed rose and looked through a gun slot.
No one.
Then he squinted at the floor. His face broke into a smile at what he saw.
"Jesse," he called into his radio excitedly.
"Go ahead."
"I'm at a blind maybe a quarter mile north of the river. I think the kid
spent the night here. There's some empty food wrappers and water bottles. A roll
of duct tape too. And guess what? I see a map."
"A map?"
"Yeah. Looks to be of the area. Might show us where he's got Mary Beth. What
do you think about that?"
But Ed Schaeffer never found out his fellow deputy's reaction to this good
piece of police work; the woman's screaming filled the woods and Jesse Corn's
radio went silent.
Lydia Johansson stumbled backward and screamed again as the boy leapt from
the tall sedge and grabbed her arms with his pinching fingers.
"Oh, Jesus Lord, please don't hurt me!" she begged.
"Shut up," he raged in a whisper, looking around, jerking movements, malice
in his eyes. He was tall and skinny, like most sixteen-year-olds in small
Carolina towns, and very strong. His skin was red and welty -- from a run-in
with poison oak, it looked like -- and he had a sloppy crew cut that looked like
he'd done it himself.
"I just brought flowers...that's all! I didn't -- "
"Shhhh," he muttered.
But his long, dirty nails dug into her skin painfully and Lydia gave another
scream. Angrily he clamped a hand over her mouth. She felt him press against her
body, smelled his sour, unwashed odor.
She twisted her head away. "You're hurting me!" she said in a wail.
"Just shut up!" His voice snapped like ice-coated branches tapping and flecks
of spit dotted her face. He shook her furiously as if she were a disobedient
dog. One of his sneakers slipped off in the struggle but he paid no attention to
the loss and pressed his hand over her mouth again until she stopped fighting.
From the top of the hill Jesse Corn called, "Lydia? Where are you?"
"Shhhhh," the boy warned again, eyes wide and crazy. "You scream and you'll
get hurt bad. You understand? Do you understand?" He reached into his
pocket and showed her a knife.
She nodded.
He pulled her toward the river.
Oh, not there. Please, no, she thought to her guardian angel. Don't let him
take me there.
North of the Paquo...
Lydia glanced back and saw Jesse Corn standing by the roadside 100 yards
away, hand shading his eyes from the low sun, surveying the landscape. "Lydia?"
he called.
The boy pulled her faster. "Jesus Christ, come on!"
"Hey!" Jesse cried, seeing them at last. He started down the hill.
But they were already at the riverbank, where the boy'd hidden a small skiff
under some reeds and grass. He shoved Lydia into the boat and pushed off, rowing
hard to the far side of the river. He beached the boat and yanked her out. Then
dragged her into the woods.
"Where're we going?" she whispered.
"To see Mary Beth. You're going to be with her."
"Why?" Lydia whispered, sobbing now. "Why me?"
But he said nothing more, just clicked his nails together absently and pulled
her after him.
. . .
"Ed," came Jesse Corn's urgent transmission. "Oh, it's a mess. He's got
Lydia. I lost him."
"He's what?" Gasping from exertion, Ed Schaeffer stopped. He'd started
jogging toward the river when he'd heard the scream.
"Lydia Johansson. He's got her too."
"Shit," muttered the heavy deputy, who cursed about as frequently as he drew
his sidearm. "Why'd he do that?"
"He's crazy," Jesse said. "That's why. He's over the river and'll be headed
your way."
"Okay." Ed thought for a moment. "He'll probably be coming back here to get
the stuff in the blind. I'll hide inside, get him when he comes in. He have a
gun?"
"I couldn't see."
Ed sighed. "Okay, well....Get over here as soon as you can. Call Jim too."
"Already did."
Ed released the red transmit button and looked through the brush toward the
river. There was no sign of the boy and his new victim. Panting, Ed ran back to
the blind and found the door. He kicked it open. It swung inward with a crash
and Ed stepped inside fast, crouching in front of the gun slot.
He was so high on fear and excitement, concentrating so hard on what he was
going to do when the boy got here, that he didn't at first pay any attention to
the two or three little black-and-yellow dots that zipped in front of his face.
Or to the tickle that began at his neck and worked down his spine.
But then the tickling became detonations of fiery pain on his shoulders then
along his arms and under them. "Oh, God," he cried, gasping, leaping up and
staring in shock at the dozens of hornets -- vicious yellow jackets --
clustering on his skin. He brushed at them in a panic and the gesture infuriated
the insects even more. They stung his wrist, his palm, his fingertips. He
screamed. The pain was worse than any he'd felt -- worse than the broken leg,
worse than the time he'd picked up the cast-iron skillet not knowing Jean had
left the burner on.
Then the inside of the blind grew dim as the cloud of hornets streamed out of
the huge gray nest in the corner -- which had been crushed by the swinging door
when he kicked it in. Easily hundreds of the creatures were attacking him. They
zipped into his hair, seated themselves on his arms, in his ears, crawled into
his shirt and up his pant legs, as if they knew that stinging on cloth was
futile and sought his skin. He raced for the door, ripping his shirt off, and
saw with horror masses of the glossy crescents clinging to his huge belly and
chest. He gave up trying to brush them off and simply ran mindlessly into the
woods...