Beneath Still Waters Read online

  BENEATH

  STILL

  WATERS

  a novel by

  CYNTHIA A. GRAHAM

  Blank Slate Press

  Saint Louis, MO 63110

  Copyright © 2015 Cynthia A. Graham

  All rights reserved.

  Publisher’s Note: This book is a work of the imagination. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. While some of the characters and incidents portrayed here can be found in historical accounts, they have been altered and rearranged by the author to suit the strict purposes of storytelling. The book should be read solely as a work of fiction.

  For information, contact

  Blank Slate Press at 3963 Flora Place, Saint Louis, MO 63110.

  www.blankslatepress.com

  Blank Slate Press is an imprint of Amphora Publishing Group LLC.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Cover Design by Kristina Blank Makansi

  Cover Art: Shutterstock

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015934030

  ISBN: 9780991305841

  For my father, Lloyd Greenfield, who believed in magic.

  BENEATH

  STILL

  WATERS

  1

  Hick Blackburn pulled his hat over his eyes and squinted against the silver sun flickering and blinking on the surface of the slough’s black water. Mosquitoes and gnats buzzed around the brush that lined the shore as frogs began their night choruses. The trees, heavy with summer leafing, were suffocating in their density, and his chest felt tight and heavy, the closeness pressing in on him. He surveyed the murky pond once more, and then turned his attention back to Billy Ponder.

  “You say it was caught in the brush?” he asked.

  Billy nodded. His clothes hung damp from his skinny frame. He scratched a mosquito bite with his foot and told Hick, “Jimmy and me was commencing to string the wire across the slough, to keep the hogs from wandering off. We started on the other side and had just passed from the deep part to the western edge when he stepped on something.”

  “And it was the infant?”

  Billy’s face grew visibly pale. He licked his lips and his eyes darted to Jimmy Scott, inconsolable in the back of a pickup truck. “Yeah,” he answered. “It was the baby.”

  “You say it was on this end of the slough?”

  “Yes sir,” the boy answered. He cracked his knuckles and there was a tremor in his voice. “The water’s so dark you can’t see the bottom. He didn’t know what it was ‘til he brought it up.” Here his voice faltered and he shifted his glance, again, to his friend.

  The young boy in the truck bed sobbed, distracting Hick for a moment. “What time was it?”

  “Right around five o’clock. We been working all day and was just about done.”

  “And there were no clothes, nothing on the baby that could identify where it might have come from?”

  Billy shook his head. “No, sir. She was naked when he pulled her out of the water. Then he screamed and dropped it. At first, I thought it was a snappin’ turtle got him the way he was blubbering and carrying on. Then I seen her floating there and we got out of the water fast and ran to Jimmy’s house. His daddy pulled the baby out and then went and got Deputy Kinion.”

  Hick wrote this information on a pad of paper. Jesus, he thought, Roy Michaels was sheriff for forty years and never dealt with anything like this. Dusk began to smudge away the daylight, and he pushed his hat back and ran his hand across his eyes. Reading his notes over again, he decided the boy could offer no more help. He closed the barely used leather book with a snap.

  “Who do you think she is?” Billy asked in a small voice.

  Hick scanned the water, trying to make sense of where the child might have come from, but something in the boy’s voice made him pause. The magnitude of the day’s events washed over him. What a gruesome discovery for two fourteen-year-olds. Awkwardly, he patted Billy’s shoulder. “Unfortunately, we may never know. You guys gonna be okay?”

  Billy managed an unconvincing, “Yeah.”

  Cherokee Crossing’s doctor, Jake Prescott, made his way over to the edge of the slough, trudging through the thick, muddy grass. A short, heavy man, the heat did not agree with him. He paused to wipe the sweat from his neck with a handkerchief and removed a fat unlit cigar from his mouth. “Damned mess is what it is,” he grumbled as he and Hick walked toward the tent Adam and Wash, Hick’s deputies, had set up near the slough. “Son of a bitch, Hick, how long you been sheriff?”

  “A year this month.”

  Dr. Prescott stopped and looked up at him. “Been that long already?”

  “Days like this make it seem even longer.” At just twenty-two-years old, Andrew Jackson “Hick” Blackburn was the youngest sheriff ever elected in Cherokee Crossing, Arkansas. His name had been put on the ballot as a sort of joke, the other two deputies urging him on. But they had been deputies long enough that each had made enemies, and Hick was new, fresh with the novelty of just arriving home from World War II. It had been the closest election in years, and the outcome shocked the young man. Some days it still shocked him.

  Wash Metcalf and Adam Kinion were waiting in the tent. Wash had been deputy since Hick was a boy, and both deputies had worked for Sheriff Michaels. They were seasoned veterans. Most things didn’t bother them, but this wasn’t like most things.

  “I ain’t never seen the like,” Wash said. Hick had always known Wash and knew he and Sheriff Michaels had been good at their jobs. They had broken up hog stealing rings, closed down gambling joints, and confiscated moonshine stills, but in Cherokee Crossing, infants were buried, not tossed into the slough. Nothing like this had ever happened before. Wash took his handkerchief and ran it across his balding head with a trembling hand.

  Bracing himself, Hick moved to the examining table. On it laid the remains of a baby girl, badly decomposed and headless. His stomach turned queasy as the heat enveloped him. It rushed to his head at once and he closed his eyes, fighting to get his emotions under control. He had fought in Europe and had seen plenty of death, but this brought back images he wasn’t prepared to deal with. He rested his hand on the table to steady himself, and his eyes caught Jake’s concerned expression.

  “What can you tell me, Doc?” he asked with forced calmness.

  The doctor pulled out a clipboard and proceeded. “It is a female, Caucasian, with the umbilical cord still attached. Mind you, it’s very hard to make any kind of determination. The body is macerated; the skin is slipping.”

  “Exactly what is it you’re trying to determine?”

  Jake’s eyes met Hick’s over the clipboard. “There’s a good chance this child was a live birth.”

  “Son of a bitch.” Hick’s mind raced with the implications. “Is there any way to tell how she died?”

  “The good news is she was not decapitated.”

  That was a relief. For a brief moment, he thought they might be dealing with a maniac. “How do you know?”

  “See up here, around the neck,” the doctor said pointing his cigar at the place in question. Hick forced his eyes to follow the cigar, but his stomach flopped and he felt suffocated. He had never seen a headless body; it took all of his resolve to pay attention to the doctor. “That was not done with a knife or sharp object. It is rough and uneven. I believe the head was eaten off by turtles.”

  “The hell you say.” Adam turned away in disgust, wiping his mouth roughly with the back of his hand.

  “I do say,” the doctor returned.

  Hick glanced up at Adam. He had been deputy and his brother-in-law for a dozen years, and in all that time Hick could not recall Adam being s
haken by anything. But, above all, Adam was a family man. It would be impossible for him to remain detached with four little boys of his own at home. Hick turned his attention back to the child on the table. “Is there any way to determine how long she’s been here?”

  “Can’t really say for sure. The body bloats and decays more quickly in water. It could be anywhere from a week to a month.”

  “Anyone around town expecting during that time?”

  “Plenty,” the doctor answered. “Would you like me to check on the ones I know … see how they’re progressing?”

  “That would be a help.”

  “Well, then,” the doctor told him gathering his equipment and putting his light colored jacket back on. “I’ll let you know.”

  “There’ll be a coroner’s inquest on this tomorrow,” Hick said. “I know it’s a good drive to the county seat and it’s short notice, but they ain’t gonna want to wait with this one. Is that okay with you?”

  Jake’s eyes went back to the child. “I’ll be there … just say when.”

  The doctor turned to leave, with Adam and Wash close behind. Hick lingered behind in the tent and glanced back at the child. Impetuously, he touched the tiny hand. It was clenched in a fist, cold and perfect. He felt his eyes smart, and blinked, quickly looking away.

  “He’s here again,” Wash called into the tent.

  Hick looked up. “Murphy?”

  Wash nodded.

  Wayne Murphy, the town’s newspaperman, was a meddlesome pest. “Great. Every detail will be splattered all over the paper tomorrow. I want him the hell out of here. You tell him it’s a possible crime scene and he don’t need to be poking around.”

  Wash left and Hick covered the child with the sheet. He stepped out of the tent and joined the doctor in the chilly twilight that was descending on the slough. Dan Scott, Billy’s father, spoke with Adam as Billy climbed up to join Jimmy in the back of the pickup truck. Hick watched as the men shook hands, and then Dan drove off with the two boys staring out at the slough.

  “Poor bastards,” Hick said shaking his head.

  “It must have been a terrible shock,” the doctor agreed. “A damned shame about the child … and so senseless, too.”

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Hick cautioned. “I’ll send the baby to your office for the autopsy.”

  The doctor nodded, but added, “But if it was murder … why?”

  “Why indeed?” thought Hick as he drove home later that evening. Faint moonlight showed through the clouds, barely illuminating the rows and rows of cotton on each side of the dirt road. His nostrils flared as he sucked in the sweet smell of turned earth and impending rain wafting in through the open windows.

  He took his hat off, set it on the seat beside him, and ran his fingers through his hair. Why kill a baby? Perhaps it was just a stillborn that someone had buried on their own property and dogs had dug up. Certainly they should have notified him, but that wasn’t a crime. Maybe they didn’t even know. But one thing nagged at him. He hadn’t heard of anyone losing a baby, especially one near full term … it was a small town and things like that did not remain quiet. It appeared the slough was a secret grave, an intentional hiding place of some closely guarded shame.

  He stretched and undid his tie, unbuttoning the top button. It had been a long day and promised to be a long investigation, if the coroner deemed a crime had taken place. Such a tiny child to cause such a huge commotion.

  He found a cigarette and lit it. He only smoked when alone and troubled, and tonight he was both. Inhaling deeply, he let the smoke curl out slowly from the corner of his mouth while he kept his eyes fixed on the headlight beams illuminating the dusty road before him. The grinding of gravel under tires was as monotonous as the scenery, but the occasional loud clink and thunk of a rock flipped against the car kept his mind from wandering too far.

  A familiar sense of uncertainty swelled around him, and he shook his head and tossed the cigarette out the window. The rawness was unwelcome. The moments of self-doubt coming more often and darker, blacker than before. When he was younger, there was nothing he couldn’t do. That was before Belgium, before the marches in the rain with hundred pound packs, before the discovery of the dark farmhouse….

  He forced himself to put those thoughts aside. It does no good to dwell on the past, he told himself yet again. Besides, maybe the coroner would declare the death to be by natural causes and put the whole thing to rest. He put his hat back on, pulling it far over his eyes, knowing full well this was not a case he had the ability to solve. To find the killer of a child, a nameless, faceless infant … that would be impossible.

  2

  Squatting on his haunches, with his hands hanging languidly between his legs, Hick stared at the smooth, dark water of Jenny Slough. It was near dawn and a thin mist of vapor rose from the surface of the water into the cool morning air. He looked relaxed as he squatted, like a fisherman contemplating the day’s opportunities. But a close observer would know this was not the case.

  His eyes darted across the water, observant and alert. With meticulous care, he studied every square inch of dirt around the slough, trying to find any clue as to who might have stepped there. In the war he had learned a perfect stillness, a way to conduct himself without moving any part of his body, save his eyes. A false movement in battle could cost a man his life, and this stillness, this detachment, even from himself, had become habit. Years of being a soldier had ingrained lessons that could never be unlearned.

  Few people lived in the vicinity of the swamp and none at this end. The houses on the other end of the slough, those belonging to the Thompsons, the Scotts, and the Pringles, were too far from this point to offer much help. Witnesses would probably not be an option.

  The dim gray of the breaking dawn was moist and sticky, as its chill stuck to his skin, uncomfortable and damp. Though his muscles ached, he didn’t acknowledge them, instead waiting, watching, letting the sounds of the waking world surround him. Hick had grown to love the night, the nocturnal hush helping to ease his troubled soul. He’d been waiting for two hours, hoping first light would reveal some clue, elucidate something unseen. Might as well wait here as at home. Another sleepless night had caused his head to ache and his stomach to turn. The nightmares were easy compared with this utter lack of sleep.

  When his eyes closed, he was haunted by the image of the infant, sprawled on the table, headless, reminding him of the hens his mother would roast. It was one thing to kill a man in battle with his gun aimed at your head. But this killing of innocence, this was another thing altogether. He shuddered at a sudden unwelcome vision, one he had squelched since arriving home from the front.

  “I thought I might find you here.”

  Hick turned to see Jake Prescott making his way toward him. The doctor looked weary and troubled.

  “Morning, Doc,” Hick said in a tired voice. “You’re up early.”

  The doctor pulled a cigar out of his shirt pocket and lit it. “Had trouble sleeping. You?”

  “Same,” Hick replied, rising and lighting a cigarette. The two men stood silently for a moment, smoke hanging in the air around them.

  “It’s strange how some places on earth never seem to change,” Jake said after a while. “I can remember coming out here to fish with your daddy when we were boys. It was exactly the same as it is now.” Hick was wearing the flannel shirt he always wore to fish in, the one that had been his father’s. “You could be him standing here in that shirt.”

  Hick’s face darkened a little. “I could never be him.” He paused and took a drag from his cigarette. “You’re forgetting, he was the ‘magic man’.” He forced a thin smile.

  “Nonsense. Superstitious nonsense,” the doctor barked. “Your father hated that distinction. He was above it.”

  A small laugh escaped Hick. “He did hate it. The seventh son of a seventh son. People would bang on our doors at all hours thinking he could heal them. I remember women asking him to breathe i
n their baby’s mouths for the thrush. It was embarrassing.” After a pause, he added, “Didn’t do him much good in the end, anyway, now did it?”

  The doctor took the chewed cigar from his mouth. “No, it didn’t. No one lives forever, not even seventh sons of seventh sons.”

  It was a bitter pill for Hick to swallow…the first letter he received from home after arriving on the frozen battlefield. He was eighteen, alone in his tent, tears frozen on his face. He left the letter behind, crumpled and squashed into the snow.

  “Hick, I have to recommend an investigation into the infant’s death. I think it was a homicide.”

  Hick closed his eyes. He wasn’t surprised, but he’d hoped it wasn’t the case. “Why?”

  “Because I believe the child was perfectly healthy when it was born. The autopsy showed froth and sand in the airway, hypostasis around the heart muscle, the lungs were inflated and heavy with water. She even had sand in her stomach. There is too much evidence here to not do some sort of investigation.”

  Hick took a long drag from his cigarette. The sun was beginning to change the feel of the air, the comforting peace of darkness replaced with the harsh light of day. Without looking at the doctor, he asked, “I just wonder what good will come from an investigation.”

  Jake Prescott turned to him with a confused expression. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean if there is someone out there who didn’t want the child … some woman who was in a bind … what good will come out of locking her up?”

  The doctor said nothing and Hick took advantage of the pause. “Let’s say it was one of the girls at the high school. Do you really want to see her brought up on murder charges? Or some poor farmer’s wife? I just wonder … is this really something we want to do?”

  The bright red end of the doctor’s cigar stood out against the dusty morning light. Puffing thoughtfully, he finally said, “I understand your point, Hick. Let me ponder it. You gotta understand, though, I don’t tell you how to do your job and I don’t expect you to tell me how to do mine. I’ll consider what you said, but I want you to consider something. A life was taken here at this slough. Granted, she was a person nobody knew, there is no one mourning her, no one missing her. That doesn’t take away from the fact that a violent act occurred right where we’re standing. This could be infanticide. I see your point … you must see mine.”