Destroying Angels (Leigh Girard Book 1) Read online

  “Yeah, I know that now. But I trusted that bastard. We were drinking buddies. He made it seem like he was doing me some favor, saving my ass.” He downed the two shots one after another. “Man, that’s almost better than sex,” he choked out.

  “Couldn’t you have sued him? Taken him to court?”

  “I got no proof. It woulda been his word against mine. It just seemed funny that soon’s he buys me out, that business started doing real good.”

  “So what are you doing now?”

  He raised a glass of beer. “Taking the slow train out of here. Trouble is, by morning, it always ends up back in the same damn place.”

  I moved the water glass in circles and watched the water rings blur.

  “Know what I got left?” He lowered his voice. “An old pickup truck, the clothes on my back, and the sign that hung over the entrance to the orchards. Woulff Orchards, it says. Big black letters, real smart like. I got it hung in the cab of my pickup, if you want to see.” He downed another glass of beer. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “No, I do. You’re thinking what everyone around here thinks. That I’m a moron and a loser. But the thing is, he took more than that money. We used to be buddies.” His eyes looked even more unfocused. “I gotta go.” He stood up quickly.

  “You’d better have some coffee first.”

  “No, I gotta go pee.” He stumbled away in the direction of the rest rooms.

  I sat and stared at Sarah’s mural. Although Woulff had motive enough to want Peck dead, he didn’t seem capable of doing it. If Carl Peck was murdered, the murderer had to have been clear headed and intelligent—neither of which applied to Woulff. On his way back from the toilet, he stopped at the bar and got another shot.

  “Here’s to lady reporters with great bods!” He lurched over me and downed his third shot. He pulled back his chair to sit down, missed the seat and fell on the floor. “Oops!” He was grinning as he dragged himself up. “Time to go. Want a ride in my pickup? There’s plenty room in the cab, if you know what I mean.” He leaned over me and put his hands over both my wrists.

  “I’m not interested, if you know what I mean.” I pulled my wrists out from under his hands.

  “So that’s the way, huh? Got what you came for, now you’re done with old Renn, tossing me away. Like I’m garbage, then.”

  I stood up and grabbed my coat from the back of my chair. I didn’t see Tony, so I threw a twenty down on the table. “Now we’re even.” I moved toward the door.

  “You can’t buy me off!” he yelled, following me out into the dark entranceway. “You owe me something.”

  I tried to open the outside door, but he pushed it shut from behind. He swung me around to face him. We were so close I could count the broken blood vessels in his bulbous nose. He pressed my shoulders against the wall and leaned down toward me. I turned my head away, but his mouth managed to slur across mine. I pushed at him hard, but couldn’t budge him. Then as if in slow motion, I watched his right hand grab at my left breast. With all my physical force, I shot my knee into his groin.

  He fell back, yelling and holding his crotch. “You meddling bitch!” he shouted at my retreating back.

  As I pulled away from the curb, I saw Woulff struggling with the door of his dark blue pickup truck. My bruised chest was throbbing. I wiped my mouth over and over with the back of my hand.

  16

  Thursday, November 9, Present day

  I took Stevens’s advice and called Sarah Peck at White Cliffs around six P.M. Wednesday. After my round of slam dancing with Woulff, I was ready for whatever Sarah had to dish out. But she refused to meet with me. Her exact words to my request were: “When you're in hell and it freezes over.”

  With the tox results concluded, Stevens was clamoring for my follow-up story on Peck. I told him there were a few loose ends I wanted to tie up. He’d given me his blue-eyed stare and a Monday deadline.

  After spending most of Thursday spinning my wheels tracking down anyone who’d ever known Carl Peck, I’d come up blank. Everyone expressed their surprise that he had mistakenly eaten a deadly poisonous mushroom. A few mentioned his drinking, "off the record, of course." But most said he was a nice guy who did great restoration work.

  By four P.M., I decided to pack it in and head home. I was feeling pent up, frustrated, and in need of some physical release. When I got home, I immediately changed into my navy sweatshirt, sweatpants, and hiking boots. Salinger was practically doing a dance when she saw me lace up the boots. She knew what that meant. A long walk someplace with fragrant scents. And I knew just the place: Peninsula State Park.

  It was dusk when I pulled into the Ephraim entrance and drove down the winding road through the heavily wooded forest. A streak of yellow light hugged the horizon as the trees thickened into blackness and closed in on me. Like a door firmly shut, the last remnants of light extinguished. Since the sun had set, I decided to park by Eagle Tower and take the Sentinel Trail, an easy hike down a meandering path through a pine and hardwood forest.

  Even with a half moon perched over the water, the park seemed unusually dark. But I had no difficulty seeing Eagle Tower. It loomed over the trees. In the dark, the leggy structure looked like a tenuous ascent to some ethereal world. It was that time of day when vision plays tricks on you.

  I reached over and stroked Salinger’s thick fur. A slight pain pulled across my left side, making me catch my breath for a second. Salinger turned her dark eyes toward me with concern. I was glad I’d decided to bring her.

  The nausea and dizziness had subsided that morning, but I hadn’t slept much. And I still felt shaky every time I thought about that bruise. I’d heard stories in my cancer survivors' group about injuries reactivating cancer. My doctors had dismissed them as old wives’ tales. But in my gut, I knew there were many things that the doctors couldn’t explain. Like why cancer had singled me out, when I had had none of the risk factors. The tumor had grown silently inside my breast like a black pearl.

  I pulled into the parking lot right next to the tower, my headlights illuminating the empty parking area. For a moment I looked at the monolithic giant, which probably afforded a great view of the Green Bay islands. As the dusk deepened, it took on the characteristics of a horror story metaphor in my imagination. Any minute I expected to see it move toward me.

  I turned off the engine and started gathering what I needed for my hike: gloves, hat, pepper spray, flashlight. As I bent over to retrieve my flashlight from the floor, headlights swept over the parking lot.

  I sat up, slowly stroking Salinger to keep her quiet. A truck parked on the far end of the lot, near Eagle Trail. To my surprise, Sarah Peck exited the truck, slamming the door hard. Either she didn’t see my truck or was in too much of hurry to take note, because she headed straight for the trail entrance without looking around. There was an urgency in her stride, as if she was late for an appointment.

  I waited until she disappeared down the trail, then went over to her truck. It was a black Dodge Ram. The passenger side’s door was dented, and I was fairly sure Martin had driven this same truck to my cottage yesterday.

  As I stood examining the truck, Salinger let loose with a series of howls capable of setting off car alarms in neighboring states. I went back and let her out. Before I could give her my usual lecture about staying by my side, she tore off in the direction of Eagle Trail.

  I quickly locked my truck door and ran toward the trail. When I reached the trailhead, I looked down the path searching for Salinger. She was nowhere to be seen. For a moment I hesitated. Eagle Trail was steep and rocky, with sharp ascent and descent points. Tom and I had hiked this trail many times in the summers. Even in full daylight, it was treacherous.

  I could just wait until Salinger made her way back to me, I reasoned. But who knows how long that would be? Then there was Sarah Peck and her dented truck. What was she doing all alone, at dusk, walking this trail? I decided to follow her at a
distance with the hope I’d also find my adventure dog along the way.

  The slope downward was as treacherous as I remembered. As I began descending, an owl’s eerie voice ruptured the rhythmic sound of the bay: not a promising sign. In the dappled moonlight, every once in awhile, I caught a glint from the silver studs of Sarah’s leather jacket. She was moving fast, trashing so loudly through the woods, there was no way she could hear me descending behind her.

  By the time I had reached the bottom of the slope, I’d lost sight of Sarah. I continued carefully making my way along the darkest part of the trail that skirted the bay. Following the water’s edge, the path flattened but grew more narrow. Even in summer, this was a shadowy place to hike. Now the pine trees blocked the frail moonlight. I stopped for a few minutes and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I didn’t want to turn on my flashlight and possibly alert Sarah to my presence. I wished Salinger would finish her meandering and find me. I reassured myself that the path would open up once I began the slow ascent toward the caves. But that thought did little to ease my growing sense of dread.

  I quickened my pace and tripped over a jutting rock. As I caught myself, a burning pain shot across my bruised chest. I stood still for a moment to let the pain pass, and concentrated on the sound of the water thumping against the rocks. It moved obsessively across the rocky beach in a mad searching for what can’t be found. I moved forward carefully.

  As the trail turned away from the water, the sharp odor of pine assaulted my nose. When I reached the trail section that ran in front of a group of caves, I saw Sarah. With some small twigs, she had started a small fire just inside one of the caves. The fire smelled like burning Christmas trees. And there was Salinger, sprawled beside the fire meticulously licking her paws.

  As I approached, Salinger stopped her grooming, ran at my feet and began circling them.

  “Okay, girl,” I said, bending over to give Salinger a few pats on her head to settle her down. Sarah didn’t seem surprised to see me. She was smoking a cigarette and staring into the fire.

  “What is this place?” I asked. I expected her to ream me a new one, but she just continued smoking and staring into the fire as if I wasn’t there. I caught the faint scent of alcohol coming from her.

  Quickly, I glanced around the cave walls, wondering if the bats had already left for their nocturnal hunt. No sign of bats. But someone had spray painted something on one of the walls. In the dim firelight, I made out the words, “South Heaven.”

  Sarah followed my glance. “Pretty ironic, huh?”

  “Maybe they didn’t know how to spell Haven?” I suggested, sitting down on the damp, hard floor near the fire, careful not to jostle my left side. The pain had subsided to a dull throbbing.

  “Maybe. But I like to think that’s what they meant. South Heaven, as if this was it for them. As if there was a North Heaven as well.”

  I was seeing a contemplative side of Sarah that I never suspected existed. Her hostility was gone for the moment. She crushed out her cigarette and threw it into the fire. From her coat pocket, she pulled out a quart bottle of whiskey.

  “Want some?” She offered the bottle to me.

  “No thanks, I’m driving.”

  “Funny,” she said taking a sip. “You’d better watch your dog. No telling what’s in those caves.”

  I turned and saw the white tip of Salinger’s tail disappear into the bowels of the cave.

  “She can take care of herself," I said, hopeful.

  Sarah rested the bottle between her feet and stared out into the wooded darkness. In the firelight, I could see that the bottle was half empty. I wasn’t going to push her. Something was on her mind.

  Just then a bird screeched over the trees. We both looked out.

  “Probably an owl,” she whispered. “They do their best hunting at night.” She took another swig from the bottle.

  “How can you be sure it’s an owl?” I felt I needed to keep her talking.

  “I know a lot about predators.” She dangled the bottle by its opening and watched the dark amber liquid swish back and forth. “You’d think I’d know better, wouldn’t you?”

  “Oblivion can be quite persuasive.”

  She turned toward me, her face flushed in the firelight. “What would you know about oblivion?”

  “I recognize pain when I see it.”

  “Do you also recognize courage?” She put the bottle down.

  For a moment, I considered telling her about the women in my cancer survival group, but immediately rejected the idea. Sarah would never appreciate their stories in her present intoxicated state, and I couldn’t bear her scorning them.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” she asked.

  “I wanted to talk to you about Tuesday night. Someone ran me off the road after the meeting at Lydia's.”

  “And you think it was me?” she snapped. “It had to be me, right? I was the one out of control. I was the one raving. I was the crazy one.” A sob caught in her throat. She took a breath. “So it couldn’t be anyone else.”

  I had been right not to confide in her. The alcohol was making her erratic. “You threatened me,” I reasoned, trying to calm her down.

  “I don’t want to talk anymore.” She drank the rest of the whiskey. “Why don’t you go away?”

  “I’m not leaving until you give me an answer. Did you run me off the road?”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she hissed. “It was me.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t intend to run you off the road. I got carried away.”

  “You left me unconscious in an open field.”

  She hesitated. “Well, you’re okay now. I mean, I checked on you before I left. You were breathing. Your truck was okay to drive.” The excuses sounded lame, even to her.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Why?”

  “So you’d leave me and my mother the hell alone.” She talked very slowly, as if she was struggling with the words. “It’s almost funny. If you’d known the pecker head, you’d stop this. You’d get it.”

  “Get what, Sarah?”

  She picked the bottle up and threw it into the darkness. The sound of glass breaking echoed through the trees.

  “Why do you hate your father so much? What did he do to you?”

  She stood up and began kicking dirt on the fire to put it out.

  “To me, to my mother, to . . .” She stopped herself. “Yeah, he did something. Ruined a lot of lives. I’m glad he’s dead. I'll always be glad he's dead."

  I watched her recede down the trail into the dark and toward the water. I sat for a moment and stared into the smoldering fire, thinking how its light shut out the trees, the animals, the woods surrounding me. How it erased night falsely, and separated me from the natural world. Carl Peck had ruined Sarah’s life. Whatever he had done, he had hurt her to the core. Even in death, his awful light encased her, shutting out everything else.

  Suddenly I heard a sound. I held my breath and listened. There it was again, a scratching sound. It was coming from behind me, from the depths of the cave. I turned slowly around and peered into the cave. I couldn’t see anything except a deep dark hole. Then I let out a deep breath. “Salinger,” I whispered.

  I called into the narrowed darkness, “Come on, girl. Time to go home.” But there was no sound except the echo of my words. The scratching had stopped.

  “Salinger. Come on.” I called again, this time in a stern voice. Still no response. Those fine hairs on the back of my neck started doing the lambada.

  “Don’t make me come in there after you!” The scratching sound started again, only more frantic. Salinger would be covered in dirt from snout to tail if I didn’t get her out of there.

  Grateful for my flashlight, I moved into the cave. Just in case some of the bats had decided to forego dinner, I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head. Within a few feet, the passage shrunk abruptly and I had to crawl on hands and knees. I slowly inched forward into a darkness that seemed abs
olute except for the flashlight’s narrow beam. Smells arose out of the dark—metallic wet smells, then the sharp scent of ammonia. Suddenly I sensed a presence move toward me.

  “Salinger?” I shined the light around the cave, “that better be you!”

  I felt something brush against my shoulder and heard a thud. I froze. Then I felt a wet tongue licking my face.

  “Salinger, you idiot,” I said with relief, reaching toward her. “Let’s get out of here.” She pulled away from me. I saw her paw at the dirt. Then she ran past me toward the cave’s entrance. I crawled quickly after her. By the time I reached the dwindling fire, Salinger was sitting with her paws crossed over something that she was carefully licking. I walked toward her to take a closer look, and she darted back into the cave.

  “Salinger, no!" But she was beyond reason.

  I crouched down on my heels to examine her treasure. It was small and narrow and shone white where Salinger had licked away the dirt. It looked like some kind of bone. By the time I had decided that it was probably a leg bone, Salinger had brought me another. By the time I had decided that the bones were probably from a dog, Salinger had brought me a skull.

  I stared in dumb amazement, not believing what I was looking at—a small skull, the crown caved in but beautifully rounded at the back, and with symmetrical eye sockets, nose hole, and toothless jaw. This was no animal skull. This was human.

  * * * * *

  It was past two A.M., and my head was aching again as well as my chest, with a dull throbbing near the base of my spine that I hoped wouldn’t make its way up my neck and band my head like the migraine adder. I’d taken four Duradrin, and they’d barely made a dent in my pain, which meant I hadn’t caught the migraine soon enough. I rubbed the back of my neck and climbed into bed, burrowing down under the covers. Even Salinger was unusually subdued and curled quietly at the foot of my bed.

  I knew sleep would elude me once again. I was still too stunned by the confirmation of Salinger’s discovery. I could still see the look of disbelief on the park ranger’s face as he asked me for the third time if I was sure that what I'd found was a human skull.