The Cypress House(63)

“I’ve seen prettier women,” he said.

Arlen looked at him and found himself recalling the fields of France, the Springfield rifle bucking in his arms, plumes of blood bursting from strange men. He longed for it now, hungered for killing in a way he had not in the war.

The body’s decomposition was advanced by now. Nothing accelerated that process like heat, and the water in the inlet had to be damn near eighty degrees. Rebecca and Paul remained forty feet away, covering their faces. The day’s rising sun and the fact that Arlen had pulled the body most of the way out of the water had conspired to worsen an already hideous smell. Arlen could tolerate it, after the war. You grew an extra layer around yourself during something like the Belleau Wood. Or maybe growth wasn’t the right way to think of it. No, it was more shrinking than growing. A part of you that was there at the start got a little smaller. The part that viewed human life as something strong and difficult to remove from this world. Yeah, that part could get mighty small over time.

Tolliver spit into the water near the dead woman’s head and said, “Well, shit, we best get to it.”

He and the deputy pulled on thick work gloves and wrapped scarves over their faces before attempting to retrieve the body. They’d hardly cleared it from the water before Tolliver shouted at Rebecca to bring a bottle of whiskey down. When she returned, Tolliver added a liberal splash to his scarf and the deputy’s. Before he wrapped the scarf around his face again, he took a long belt of the whiskey, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

They wrestled the body into the tarpaulin and wrapped it as if they were folding a sail. Halfway through, the deputy straightened up as if someone had slipped a bayonet into his side, lifted a hand to his mouth, and then lurched sideways. He fell on his knees at the edge of the creek, splashing, and tore the scarf free just before he vomited.

Tolliver gave a sigh and leaned back and waited. The deputy purged and then stayed on his hands and knees above the creek, breathing in unsteady gasps.

“Come on,” Tolliver snapped, holding the scarf down from his mouth with one mud-streaked finger. “Let’s get it out of here before sundown.”

They finished wrapping the woman’s corpse and then carried it back through the woods and dropped it into the bed of the truck. Wet stains were showing through the canvas by the time they got it there.

“Enjoy your afternoon,” Tolliver said, wiping his hands on his trousers as he walked for the car, leaving the deputy to drive the truck. “You’ll see me again soon enough.”

He got into the car and drove away, and the three of them stood together in the yard and watched the truck with the corpse follow the sheriff through the dust and into the woods.

“Wasn’t what I expected from him,” Paul said. “I thought he’d have plenty of questions, like he did with Mr. Sorenson. Didn’t seem to have any at all with this one, though.”

“No,” Arlen said. “No, he didn’t.”





28


THEY DIDN’T HEAR ABOUT the body again until the next afternoon, when they had their first visitor from the water.

Paul and Arlen were on the dock, had fresh planking laid twenty feet out now. Paul was chest-deep in the water, hammering braces back into place, when they heard an engine. Arlen looked up toward the house automatically, thinking it was a car, but then he realized the sound was coming across the water, and when he turned around he could see the boat.

It was a motor sailer with one forward mast, sails furled, and a raised cabin making up the back third of the boat. Maybe thirty-five or forty feet long, and wide across the beam. A good-size craft, and one that had seen some weather—its white hull was pocked with nicks and gashes and streaks. Ran steady, though, the engine hitting smoothly as it came out of the Gulf and entered the inlet.

“Who’s this, I wonder?” Paul said, still in the water.

“Don’t know.”

The boat came up the center of the inlet with the confidence of a pilot who knew the waters—it wasn’t a wide stretch of water but evidently was plenty deep—and then the engine cut and the man at the wheel stepped back to the stern and let a windlass out, anchor chain hissing into the water. It was Tate McGrath.

Once the anchor was out, he straightened and stood at the stern and stared at them for a moment, then set to work lowering the small launch mounted on the stern. Coming ashore.

He got the launch into the water and then climbed down and rowed in. When he had the boat pulled up to shore, he walked past them without a word and headed up the trail to the inn.

Paul stood with the hammer in his hand and his eyes on the trail.