McFall Page 2

  “Don’t blame you,” the man said, smiling again and still speaking to Ronnie. “The river’s new every single second, so you don’t know what it will be like this time, right?”

  Ronnie had that sinking feeling of déjà-vu. He was sure he’d never seen the man before, but something about him was so familiar … something about his eyes, maybe.

  “You don’t know what’s in the river,” the man said. And then his eyes glinted red in the sun.

  Ronnie gasped and backpedaled, but there was nowhere for him to go except over the rail. He tumbled into space, away from the man and his red eyes and the past that should have long since been washed away. The moment of freedom was sweet and brief. His senses took in the trees whirring by, the saturated stones rimming the riverbank, the silvery sparkles of the sun off the surface.

  And then he was in the water, the river sheathing him in its numbing frigidity, the bubbles against his ears like laughter, the current tickling his skin, all while gravity pulled him down down down.…

  Where the dead things are.

  Suddenly he was certain they hadn’t moved on or been swept away. They had been down here waiting for him all these years. Now they had him.

  Ronnie kicked and clawed and slapped, but he couldn’t get any purchase. He couldn’t tell up from down, although he was pretty sure he’d landed feet-first, because the soles of his feet stung with an electric intensity. On previous dives, he’d barely been able to touch the bottom and give himself a nudge upward off the smooth, slick stones below.

  Of course, the river constantly shifted—different every second—and that was part of the dare, too. What if this was the year that the winter floods had tumbled a boulder into the diving hole? What if a jump resulted in a shattered spine? Would Melanie Ward go to the dance with some loser in a wheelchair?

  What if.…

  And then, almost miraculously, gravity freed him and other laws of physics took over, the oxygen in his lungs and stomach and bloodstream tugging him toward the glittering surface. He broke through with a whoop of exhilaration, both from surviving and escaping, while Dex and Bobby hooted and applauded from high above. As Ronnie rolled over into a backstroke, he could see his two friends dangling over the railing, Bobby shaking a triumphant fist in the air. The Lexus was gone.

  Easy breezy. Now Dex will keep his yap shut for at least a week. But that man.…

  Ronnie didn’t want to think about him. Probably some rich jerkwad from the development, that was all—a middle-aged guy who longed for a little of the youth and joy he’d traded in for a Lexus loaded with all the options. For him, jumping into the river was just another memory that had been swept along on the currents of time.

  His shoulder slid against an algae-skinned rock. He was nearing shore. He rolled to paddle the last few feet, and came face to face with a bloated, bug-eyed corpse.

  He screamed.

  Death wasn’t the end.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a horrible day for a funeral.

  Winter had held on a little too long in the Blue Ridge Mountains that year, and the late frost had given way to a cold week of rain that swelled the creeks and churned everyone’s hopes for spring into mud. The maples and poplars that had sent out tentative buds now seemed to be having second thoughts, shivering against the gray slopes. The rainfall drummed a weary rhythm against the canvas awning that covered a hole on the slight rise of meadow. The mourners crowded together more out of a desire to stay dry than shared sorrow.

  Sheriff Frank Littlefield knew most of the assembled. The guest of honor, Darnell Absher, had been a clawhammer banjo player, and most of the county had sat down with him at one time or another to pick a tune. While some folks drew hard lines between bluegrass and traditional mountain music, Darnell always said he just plucked the notes out of the air and didn’t care where they come from.

  Addie Mae Absher, the deceased’s estranged wife, claimed those notes came straight from the devil’s jack-in-the-box. But such sentiments hadn’t kept her away from his funeral and whatever inheritance she stood to collect. She was only a minor suspect in his death, after all. In her knit cap and matching cardigan sweater, she looked far too frail to have inflicted damage on anyone, let alone a full-grown man.

  “We offer Darnell up to the angels,” Preacher Staymore said in his querulous voice, hunched under the awning like a question mark in his black suit. “He’s got a bigger part to play now. Although he leaves sadness behind him on Earth, he’s bound for eternal joy above.”

  “Amen,” murmured a few of the two dozen mourners, barely audible above the steady rain.

  Littlefield scanned the crowd. Even after thirty years in law enforcement, more than half of them in his current position as sheriff, he wasn’t able to divine the guilty face of a murderer. He wasn’t even sure Darnell Absher had been murdered. But this was Pickett County, and it never hurt to assume the worst.

  Darnell’s corpse had been found beneath a bridge that spanned the Blackburn River, his body half in the water. His skull had suffered enough contusions and lacerations for it to leak out what few brains he had left after four decades of imbibing bottom-shelf bourbon. The medical examiner, Perry Hoyle, said it looked like a clear case of Darnell falling off the bridge while suffering from his usual near-toxic level of intoxication.

  Nobody really stood to gain from Darnell’s death. He lived in a rented camper trailer out back of an automotive garage, and aside from his musical instruments, he had little worth stealing. His wallet was missing, but Littlefield suspected that had been scavenged by the teenage boys who’d discovered the body. What worried Littlefield the most was where the body had been found: barely half a mile from the McFall property. Legends had swirled around the McFall family for generations, and they were blamed for every mystery and mishap imaginable. The last deaths on their land had happened years ago, and—with no one around to act as a reminder—the family had mostly been forgotten except for whispers around Halloween campfires. But since Littlefield had lost both a younger brother and a deputy to the McFall property, it still haunted him deep inside where he stored all his bad memories.

  Preacher Staymore was winding down his eulogy, keeping it on the short side. The brevity was more a testament to his advanced age and the lousy weather than an inability to spin gold from sorry thread. Like most Baptist preachers in the South, Staymore saw funerals as a marketing opportunity, a chance to bring folks into the flock before they suffered their own terrible demise and subsequent descent into the lake of fire.

  After the last “Amen” and just before old Stony Hampton tossed away his cigarette and started the diesel engine of his backhoe, Littlefield lowered the brim of his hat and braced himself for the fifty-yard walk down the gravel path to his Isuzu Trooper.

  “Sheriff?” someone called from behind him.

  He turned, annoyed by the water sprinkling down the back of his neck. But he managed a grim smile for Linda Day, whose chapped face peered out from the yellow hood of a rain slicker.

  “Hello, Linda,” he said. “How is the family?”

  Littlefield really meant How is Ronnie?

  Being the town’s sheriff meant maintaining a professional distance while still being polite. Littlefield had learned that even the most innocent socializing could end up revealing useful information. He didn’t have to worry about votes anymore, having already announced he was retiring when his term was up in December. He wondered if he’d made the decision eight years too late. Still, he was already looking forward to the transition from collecting facts to forgetting them, especially in Pickett County, where most of those facts doubled as impossibilities.

  “The boys are fine,” Linda said, squinting against the rain, accenting wrinkles she’d earned the hard way. “Work’s a little slow for David, but you know how things go in this economy.”

  “Ronnie said anything else about…?” Littlefield nodded toward the muddy brown rectangle that held Darnell Absher’s casket.

&nbs
p; “No, and I wouldn’t bring it up. The boy’s got enough on his mind.”

  A little distance away, under the massive gnarled tree that gave the cemetery its name, Oak Rest, the Absher family was receiving condolences. A well-dressed man shook the hand of the Absher matriarch, Miriam, giving her elbow a squeeze like a professional in the aftercare industry. The man looked familiar enough that the sheriff was disturbed not to have a name for him. “You know him?”

  Linda didn’t speak, didn’t even seem to hear him. She was too busy watching the newcomer, her mouth parted in a vacant reverie, a drop of water collecting on the tip of her nose.

  Littlefield gave the man a mental rundown, as if cataloging him for the write-up of a suspect’s description. Caucasian, mid-forties, six-three, dark-brown hair, hazel eyes, tanned complexion. Last seen wearing a charcoal-gray suit with a powder-blue tie.

  The tan was noteworthy because it marked the man as an outsider. People in Pickett County didn’t have tans in May, not after fighting six months of winter. Despite the hysteria over global warming, the early months of the year had seemed to grow more bitter and gray over the last decade, although Littlefield allowed that it might be his own personal perspective. He’d never had what they called a “sunny disposition,” but positivity didn’t get you a tan, and no local man would withstand the ridicule of renting a tanning bed down at Betty’s Brite Styles.

  The man gave Miriam Absher a final kind word and moved on, followed by an attractive, petite blonde woman carrying a black umbrella. She was dressed in funeral fashion, as if she’d shopped especially for the occasion. Her pleated black dress extended respectfully below the knee while still showing off graceful calves sheathed by dark hose. She managed a regal balance in her high heels despite the mushy, muddy ground. Like the man Littlefield assumed was her husband, she’d marked herself as an outsider—in her case, with her poorly chosen footwear.

  “It can’t be him,” Linda whispered.

  “Can’t be who?” Littlefield said, watching the couple hold hands as they walked down the gravel road to the cars parked along the highway at the cemetery’s entrance.

  “Archer McFall.”

  Littlefield frowned. That was a name that was no longer mentioned in Pickett County, by silent and mutual agreement. But Littlefield had noticed the family resemblance, too. “He’s gone for good.”

  Archer McFall was a preacher who’d revived services at the little red church his predecessors had built by the river. Several deaths and disappearances had followed in short order. Littlefield had good reason to know Archer was dead, but that wasn’t exactly the right word for the man, not in a place where the dead didn’t always stay that way. Officially, he was listed as a missing person, and everyone was eager to assume he had drowned. The McFall property that stretched for two hundred acres along the river was held in trust for dozens of McFall heirs scattered around the country. Littlefield had been all too happy to see the family abandon the area.

  But he didn’t like the coincidence now staring him in the face: A stranger shows up in Pickett County just after a local man meets a violent end.

  “When Ronnie settles down a little, I’d like to talk to him again,” he said to Linda. She bit her lip and nodded, still staring at the man.

  The sheriff headed down the hill, pausing under the tree to shake Miriam Absher’s trembling hand. “Sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

  “The worst thing is he never changed his papers,” she said. “That means she gets it all.”

  The old woman’s eyes glittered with fury around her cataracts as she glared at her former daughter-in-law, who was still under the awning with a couple of Darnell’s musician friends. Addie Mae Absher was in mighty fine spirits, considering the weather.

  “I was under the impression that Darnell didn’t have much,” the sheriff said cautiously. He didn’t want to insult the deceased’s mother by implying that she’d bred and raised a shiftless, no-account weasel.

  “Don’t matter,” Miriam Absher said. “She don’t deserve none of it, even if it’s nothing.”

  Littlefield gave her what he hoped was a respectful smile as he bowed. He hurried on, Miriam already venting her vexation to the next person in line. He wanted to learn more about the stranger, maybe even have a word with him. By the time he reached the edge of the cemetery service road, the rain had slacked off to a heavy drizzle.

  Two Buchanan men leaning against the hood of a Ford pickup stopped talking as the sheriff walked past. The odor of alcohol around them was strong, but Littlefield had no interest in disrupting the ceremony for a misdemeanor arrest. His quarry opened the passenger door of a new Lexus and helped his wife inside. Littlefield didn’t quite break into a jog, but he accelerated to draw up alongside the man as he circled the front of the Lexus.

  The sheriff tipped his hat. “Sorry for your loss, sir.”

  The man appeared surprised by the greeting. He met the sheriff’s gaze, the insignia on Littlefield’s hat provoking no reaction from him. “Thank you, but it wasn’t my loss.”

  “My apologies. A friend of mine thought you were a relative.”

  The man chuckled. “If I was an Absher, I certainly wouldn’t claim it, would you?”

  The ancient Romans had a saying: Speak nothing but good of the dead. Back in high school, Littlefield had known it in Latin, a language which itself was dead. Even though the phrase was outdated, the sentiment was sound. After all, Preacher Staymore’s eulogy had made Darnell Absher out to be one of the finest examples of Christian living that had ever walked the hills, despite all evidence to the contrary.

  “All the old families are related in one way or another,” Littlefield said. “I believe I have some Abshers for fifth cousins on my momma’s side.”

  “If that’s your circumspect way of finding out my name, I’ll save you the trouble,” the man said, extending his hand. “I’m Larkin McFall.”

  Littlefield forced his face to remain blank. Linda was close to right. As they shook hands, he shoved down the lid on the Pandora’s box of memories that threatened to burst open inside him. Larkin McFall’s grip was strong, firm, and cool, but it didn’t stray into the masculine competitiveness that some people displayed with a bigger man.

  “Did you know the deceased?” the sheriff asked.

  Larkin gave an easy laugh. “‘Deceased’? Are you asking as a sheriff or as a family member?”

  Littlefield shook his head. “This is my community. I don’t like to lose anybody.”

  “Even a bum like Darnell Absher?”

  “You must have heard a different sermon than I did.”

  “A man hears what he wants to hear. But that doesn’t change the truth of things.”

  “Do you always come to funerals of people you don’t know?”

  “Like you said, all the old families are related in one way or another.”

  A plaintive voice came from inside the Lexus. “Come on, honey, I want to change out of these wet clothes.”

  Larkin opened the driver’s-side door and gave a last glance up at the hill, where the heap of grave dirt ran with brown rivulets. The sheriff looked past him to the woman inside the car, who had the sun visor down and was fussing with her ringlets of blonde hair in the mirror. She was pretty in an ordinary way, lean almost to the point of being gaunt, her eyes made larger with make-up. She was the kind of woman who was expected to ride shotgun in a high-class car—the kind you couldn’t afford if you had to ask the price.

  “A pleasure meeting you, Sheriff,” Larkin McFall said as he slid into the driver’s seat.

  “Have a safe trip home.”

  Larkin grinned as if he were two moves ahead in a game of invisible chess. “I’m already home.”

  The door closed and Littlefield hunched down into the collar of his jacket. The Lexus started with a powerful but sedate rumble, and the vehicle pulled off the grass and onto the highway. The speed limit was thirty-five on the stretch along the cemetery, and the Lexus maintained what Littlef
ield judged to be a perfectly lawful speed.

  Too perfect.

  Perfect car, perfect wife, perfect handshake.

  And a perfect little rectangle of a hole left in the rearview mirror, soon to be filled.

  The voice came from so close behind him that he nearly jumped. “The McFalls are back,” Linda said.

  “Not for long,” the sheriff said. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Maybe they never left.”

  As Linda headed to her ragged Dodge van, pulling her slicker tight around her shoulders, the sheriff called after her. “Bring Ronnie down to see me.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I don’t want you in no trouble with the cops,” Elmer Eldreth said from his well-worn spot on the sofa. The Braves game was on, which meant there would be a row of empty Bud Light bottles on the coffee table. Of course, that was true of just about any show Bobby’s dad watched, from “Dancing with the Stars” to The Weather Channel.

  “I didn’t get in trouble,” Bobby said, pouring a glass of milk. The milk was on the edge of sour. “Don’t you listen to anything I say?”

  “Sure, I listen. And it’s mostly bitching and moaning. You don’t know how good you got it. Why, when I was in high school—”

  Bobby tuned out the rant about how Ronald Reagan just about put western civilization in the poorhouse, a speech so well rehearsed that even his dad barely listened to it. Then the crack of a bat sounded from the television, followed by the roar of the crowd. Elmer forgot all about the important life lesson he’d been imparting. He sat forward, squeaking a fart against the vinyl, and began yelling at the television instead of Bobby.

  Bobby carried his milk through the mobile home to his bedroom. Ordinarily he would have watched the game with his dad—it was one of their few common interests—but ever since Ronnie had found the body at the bridge, Bobby had kept to himself even more than usual.

  He pulled a wrinkled comic book from a stack on his desk. After six pages of Spiderman, he pushed it aside. Masked superheroes had been cool at one time, when the world seemed limitless, Vernon Ray was still around, and good always delivered the KO to evil, but now the whole idea just seemed silly.