Chapter 11 The Wicked Witch of Bayern County
The Wicked Witch of Bayern County
It took three cups of coffee to clear my head the next morning.
I walked down the beach at Sandpiper Run, dragonflies zinging around me.
The beach had been cleared, and yellow police tape was woven among the trees.
Dark leaves whispered overhead, and I smelled cloying honeysuckle.
As people drove by the parking lot, I could feel eyes boring into my back.
There would be pressure to open the beach soon.
I limped down the beach. The only shoe I’d been able to jam my swollen foot into was one of Nick’s tennis shoes, and I minded my footing. I’d put three pairs of socks on my healthy foot to wear the other shoe properly. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be involved in any foot chases today.
Someone had been here despite the lines of crime scene tape strung along the trees. Designs had been carved in the sand of the beach, unintelligible, over and over: The snake eating its own tail. The ouroboros. And the number seven. Seven days until the Fourth of July…
I took pictures. Likely, sneaky teenagers had crossed into the scene overnight and had been unnoticed by the deputy who was supposed to be guarding the scene.
He was on the beach now, but he likely parked by the road.
I’d have a word with him. This meant any evidence we gathered from the scene from here on out would be contaminated and inadmissible.
A splash sounded, and I turned to see Jasper wading out of the river. He waddled to the shore with his fins, then sat down heavily beside a pile of gear. He began stripping off his fins.
“Hey.” I sat down beside him. “What’s it look like down there?”
“Silty.” He showed me the camera he’d been using to take pictures. I saw very little on its screen, just dirt and fuzzy water.
“Any snakeheads or other creatures with teeth?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been searching since yesterday for the girl who was reported by the near-drowning victim. No sign of her. Nothing weird underwater, either. Saw a very nice water snake, though.”
He clicked the pictures forward and showed me one of a dark gray snake creating tiny ripples as it swam. It had a round head and a slightly derpy expression. Nothing that could kill a human.
“That’s a pretty snake,” I said.
“It was. My contact at DNR says they’ve had a few reports of what they call ‘suspicious aquatic encounters.’ ” Jasper made air quotes around the words.
“She’s skeptical, because most of the calls she gets about being bitten by something underwater wind up being about dumb stuff people have done, like messing with snakes. ”
“So it’s okay to just take pictures?” I teased him.
“Look, but don’t touch.” He lifted a brow. “You know, there’s a study an ER doctor conducted several years ago. The vast majority of ER admissions for snakebites are teen boys and men. Small children and women don’t get bit nearly as often.”
“Why is that?”
“Small kids and women have the sense to get away and leave snakes alone. Dudes gotta mess with wildlife and reap the consequences.” He grinned, and I grinned back.
“Makes sense.” I gestured to the beach, to the symbols carved in the sand. “What do you make of those? They’re the same as the symbol on the skull in the Sumners’ mailbox.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Looks kind of occult to me, honestly. Wouldn’t surprise me. The summer solstice was a couple days ago. Longest day of the year, and it’s a big deal at places where pagan folk gather, like Stonehenge. They have a live feed and everything when the sun rises and sets.”
“Sounds like you know about that stuff.”
“Not so much. But timing is important in the natural world. I just keep track of the summer solstice because the river tides are higher. Something about the angle of the sun. It happens every year, even this far inland.”
I sighed. “Forensics came up with nothing about that skull. No prints. A total dead end.”
“Ah, that sucks.”
“It just makes me think the cases are connected. And I’ve been researching the Dana Carson disappearance case. The numbers on the skull and the sand…It’s now seven days until the Fourth of July, the anniversary of her disappearance.”
“Think about the timing,” he said. “Somebody might have sat on this for twenty-five years, waiting for justice, and decided they were gonna take it into their own hands when it didn’t come.”
I rested my chin on my knees. “That makes more sense than any theory I’ve got right now. But why now, after so long?”
“When you think an injustice has been committed, there’s no time limit on anger,” Jasper said.
I looked at him.
“We all have cases like that.” He shrugged.
“Chief remembers,” I said. “I guess it’s not a stretch to think that Dana’s alive in someone else’s memory, too.”
“Chief’s a good man. Listen to him.”
I nodded.
“You’ll get it worked out, Koray. I know you will.”
He packed up his gear and left me on the beach. Jasper had confidence in me, but I wasn’t so sure I was any closer to figuring out who the perpetrator was than I was the night Mason drowned.
I heard a car engine above me, on the road. Near the caution tape, a black SUV idled. Jeff Sumner was staring down at the beach, his expression cold and unreadable behind his sunglasses.
Our gazes met, and he drove off.
I didn’t know why he was there. Concern? Curiosity? An attempt to control? It was hard to guess.
Water lapped at the edges of my sneakers. I frowned as I saw something shiny at my feet.
I reached down, into the silt, picked up something green. I stared at its iridescent surface.
A river pearl.
My gaze narrowed. I’d gone my whole life without finding a river pearl…and I’d seen two in three days.
I sifted through the sand, finding nothing else.
I stared at the palm of my hand. In defiance of the gathering summer heat, it felt like an ice cube.
In spite of myself, I shuddered.
—
I needed to get closer to Dana.
Her sister, Vivian, still lived in Bayern County, at their childhood address.
I coasted over ribbons of two-lane roads.
I found the address on a dented rural mailbox and followed a dirt driveway into a forest. After a quarter mile, the drive ended in a clearing where a farmhouse stood.
The house likely dated back a century, but it was in pretty decent repair—slate shingles were stained from acid rain, and the windows were still intact, but it looked as if there hadn’t been any updates in decades.
Gardens surrounded the house, a cottage riot of orange ditch lilies, catnip, and purple bee balm.
A garden studded with tomatoes and sunflowers sprawled out back.
A woman with jet-black hair sat on a porch swing. She was pale, with silver rings flashing on her fingers as she smoked a cigarette and watched me with narrowed eyes.
I climbed up onto the porch. “Hello. I’m Lt. Anna Koray with the Bayern County Sheriff’s Office. Are you Vivian Carson?”
She looked me up and down. “I’m Viv. And I’ve been expecting you.”
Viv leaned forward and gestured to a wicker chair and coffee table between us. There were two glasses of iced tea there, with fresh ice crackling in the heat.
“You were expecting me?” I blurted.
Vivian looked down at a potted plant on the porch. It looked like an ordinary Boston fern, but I saw something moving underneath it, the undulating scales of a black rat snake. A tongue flickered out in my direction.
“Is he a pet?” I’d spent a lot of time around snakes, and I knew this one wasn’t venomous.
“No. He’s an employee. Pest control.”
I eased myself into the chair and thanked her for the tea.
Despite the smoking, her face was remarkably unlined.
Probably a benefit of being goth, and shunning the sun.
She had to be in her forties by now, and she wore her age well, with no gray hair.
She was dressed in a black tank top and jeans, and she was barefoot.
Her arms were scarred up. Didn’t look like self-harm, though. They looked like animal scratches.
“I’m here to talk about your sister. Is this a good time?”
Vivian stubbed out her cigarette in a glass ashtray. “Always. Has the case been reopened?”
“It was never closed, and I’m looking into it now. You’re the only relative I could find an address for, and I wanted to ask what you remember.”
Her mouth turned down. “Yes. I would be the only one you could find.”
“Is your mom local?”
Her gaze flicked away. “Mom tried to kill herself six months after Dana vanished. She was institutionalized.”
“I’m so very sorry.” I leaned forward, pressing my elbows to my knees and clasping my hands before me.
Viv exhaled. “It was just the three of us after Dad left, when I was five. She couldn’t imagine living in a world in which her daughters didn’t outlive her.”
“She thought Dana was dead?”
“Yeah. There was no way Dana would’ve been gone from us that long if she were alive.”
“How did it happen?” I asked gently.
“I came home from school and found Mom in the bathtub.” Viv took a sip of iced tea. “My mom never wanted to make a mess, so she slit her wrists in the tub.”
“That had to be beyond terrible.”
“It was. I sat beside the bathtub, waiting for the paramedics. I didn’t know if she was alive or not. I just stared at that red water, hoping they could fix her.” Her gaze was unfocused, and then she looked up at me. “Would you like to see some pictures of her and Dana?”
“Yes, please.”
Viv stood and beckoned me into the house, opening the wooden screen door. Inside, the lights were out and a fan hummed. The place probably hadn’t changed much since Viv’s sister went missing. There was yellowing blue and white wallpaper, and a stopped clock on the wall.
Viv followed my gaze. “That clock stopped after Dana vanished. I never had the heart to change the batteries.”
I understood then. This place was a monument to Viv’s grief.
She led me to a sitting room containing a threadbare couch and overstuffed chairs. The place smelled like dust.