A Breath Away Read online

  Tate, the incompetent sheriff Grady had replaced a few months ago, folded his beefy body over a stool, glaring at him. Tate had bungled Darlene’s murder investigation years ago. Unfortunately, the man owned half the town and was now mayor, which meant Grady still had to work with him.

  Mavis Dobbins and her son, Dwayne, claimed their usual corner booth. Dwayne was in his thirties now, but he’d had some sort of accident at age fourteen that had triggered a psychotic break. If Grady remembered correctly, the doctors diagnosed him as bipolar. He still lived with his mama. Dwayne laid out three sugar packets for his coffee, then ordered his usual—three eggs, three biscuits, three slices of bacon.

  Grady pushed away the remaining pie, his stomach churning. Years ago, when Dwayne was sixteen, Grady’s dad had paid him to do yardwork. When Grady had noticed him watching Darlene, he’d threatened to beat him up if he touched her. He’d always wondered if Dwayne had something to do with Darlene’s disappearance.

  The lunch crowd drifted in slowly, and Grady caught a sharp look from Ross Wheeler. The minister’s son, Wheeler was a former teacher who’d lost his job because of complaints of sexual misconduct from female students at the high school. Wheeler had denied the charges, and they’d finally been dropped, but his reputation as an educator had been ruined. Grady had been shocked when Wheeler stayed in Crow’s Landing. He still hadn’t decided whether the man had been guilty or victimized.

  Grady tossed a few bills on the counter, nodding goodbye to Kerry as he walked to the door. Maybe he’d ride up and check out that rabid dog report. Not much else to do today.

  Tonight he’d look over the files on Darlene’s case. One more time.

  Outside, he noticed Laney Longhorse talking to his father. She turned in a huff, then gathered a group of Cherokee children into a circle. Her long gray braid swung around her shoulders as she spoke. “The power of the circle,” she said, crooked teeth shining. “Just as the sky is round, and the stars and the moon. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The seasons form a circle in their changing, always come back to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.”

  Grady nodded, accustomed to her aphorisms, but Tate and a few of the other locals protested her storytelling, especially when she shared Native American folklore with the Caucasian kids. His father was watching her, too, a frown on his face. Odd how some of the town and the natives mixed, while others let prejudices fester like old sores. As did his dad and Baker.

  Just as Grady reached his police car, the radio crackled. He pushed the respond button, but static rippled over the connection. He tapped the speaker, frustrated with the inadequate equipment. “Sheriff Monroe. Over.”

  “Monroe…” More static. “Jim Logan here.” His deputy’s voice sounded raspy, as if he’d been running.

  What’s up?”

  “I’m out at Briar Ridge. You’d better get over here.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Definitely.” Logan paused. “We found a dead body over the cliff.”

  * * *

  AS VIOLET ENTERED Strictly Southern, she steered her mind toward business. Thankfully, tourists already crowded the gift shop. Children shrieked over the cheap souvenirs, women were gushing over the Savannah cookies and pecans, and teenagers were choosing colorful T-shirts of River Street and scenes from the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

  “Am I glad to see you, dear,” Mrs. Guthrie chirped. “We’ve been busy as bees this morning. Just sold the last of those lovely notecards of yours.”

  “Good.” Violet removed more notecards of Savannah sights from her bag and arranged them on the display. That steady work, plus her commissioned sketches of the town and historical buildings, had earned her a decent income in Charleston, where she’d lived before. When she’d moved to Savannah, she’d supplied the store with the same type of merchandise, and two weeks ago had bought the gift shop herself.

  “These are wonderful,” Mrs. Guthrie exclaimed. “Would you paint a portrait of my granddaughter one day?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t paint people,” Violet said softly. Especially children. To draw faces right she had to delve inside people’s heads. It was too personal. Too painful. Especially when Darlene’s face flashed into her mind.

  “That’s too bad. I’m sure you’d do a beautiful job.” The woman fluttered a hand. “Damon sold the sketches you put in the art gallery. He said one customer wanted to talk to you about showing some of your pieces in Atlanta.”

  Nerves sputtered in Violet’s stomach. “What did you tell him?”

  “Don’t worry, hon. I know you like your privacy so I didn’t give him your address.” She removed a business card from her apron pocket. “He left this, though, and asked if you’d call him.”

  “Sure.” Stuffing it in her pocket, she headed to her office, where she spent the afternoon ordering new stock. Around five, she picked up a pack of her grandmother’s favorite hickory coffee and shortbread cookies, then walked to the market.

  A navy ship had docked on shore and dozens of tourists were lining up to take pictures of the seamen exiting. Violet breathed in the fresh, salty air, focusing on the children’s laughter from the park and the sounds of jazz music drifting from the riverbank.

  Someone had tacked flyers on lampposts and bulletin boards with the missing girl’s picture and a full description. Violet studied one. Amber Collins was twenty-five, originally from Memphis, Tennessee. She had light blond hair, green eyes, was five feet nine inches tall and weighed approximately one hundred thirty pounds. She’d been last seen leaving her dorm room at the college, heading toward the library. She’d been wearing jeans and a blue T-shirt.

  Violet hoped they found her alive. The coed was too young to die.

  Taking a flyer for her store, she cut across the square, keeping her distance as she passed the graveyard near the parking lot where she’d parked her Civic. She hated cemeteries, had ever since her father had taken her to visit her mother’s grave when she was three. It had been a cold winter day in the mountains, and a bristly wind had rustled the bare branches of the trees, heavy with ice from a recent hailstorm. She’d dropped rose petals on the slab of marble, not knowing how to feel as she tried to picture the faceless woman who had died giving birth to her.

  Although giant azaleas, neatly trimmed hedges and jonquils flanked the iron gates of this cemetery in Savannah, disguising the morbid interior, the hair on the back of Violet’s neck stood on end. Suddenly a whisper broke through the haze. “Help me.”

  Violet hesitated, wheeled around to stare at the tombstones. She could almost see the ghosts of the dead in the sea of monuments. And she could have sworn someone had just called to her. A woman’s voice…

  A storyteller from one of the walking ghost tours was spinning a tale for a group of tourists. Slowly, the faces and storyteller’s voice faded.

  Dizzy, Violet stumbled toward a park bench and dropped onto it. She yanked at the neckline of her shirt as the voice whispered to her again. Images played in her head like an old movie trailer….

  * * *

  HE WAS WATCHING HER, playing out his sick twisted game, dancing around the fact that he was going to kill her with platitudes in that singsongy voice that had grated on her nerves for hours. He enjoyed seeing the terror in her eyes.

  And she was helpless to stop from showing it.

  She did not want to die.

  His olive skin looked pale beneath the harsh fluorescent light. Bluish veins bulged in his arms as he stalked around her. She struggled against the bindings holding her down, but the drugs he’d given her were slowly paralyzing her limbs.

  “Your blood is rich and thick, and in some ways perfect,” he murmured. “But you aren’t the one.”

  His face loomed like some kind of distorted monster. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said in a soothing voice. “I wanted you to be it. I really did.”

  She moan
ed and tried to scream, fighting to escape. But a gag captured the sound, and her movements were stilted and slow, only token gestures of the will to survive.

  He brushed a tendril of her wiry, tear-soaked hair from her face. “You let me down.”

  She shook her head violently, silently pleading for him to spare her. But anger darkened his already poisonous-looking eyes.

  “It’s not my fault. Father needs you. But you can’t help us. Don’t you see that?” His voice grew edgier, his eyes like marbles cut from ice. “I’m doing it all for him. I shall pray for your soul, and the angels will carry you to heaven. We are all children under one blessed father.”

  He ran a steady finger over the sharp end of a piece of bone he’d carved earlier. Then he slid the blade of a pocketknife along the jagged edge, scraping and shaving off more brittle bone. The rhythmic sound crawled over her skin. He scraped and whittled, painstaking in his task. Perspiration rolled down her breastbone as he held the bone up to the light and tested its smoothness. Then he raised it to his lips and began to blow.

  “The tune of the bone whistle,” he said softly. “The song that tells the story of sacrifice. Pin peyeh obe, my sweetness. Then you must die.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  A MAN WAS DEAD. Was he a local or a tourist?

  Grady flipped on the siren, tore from the Redbud Café and headed toward the ridge. Cutting across town, he took all the side streets because he didn’t want any of the nosy townsfolk following. They might interfere with an investigation. If one was required.

  He doubted it. The victim was probably some unlucky vacationer who’d wandered too close to the edge and lost his balance.

  The Great Smoky Mountains rose in front of him as he veered from town onto Route 5. He sped past run-down chicken houses and deserted farmland, through the valley, then steered onto Three Forks Road to wind up the mountain. Sweat beaded his forehead and he cranked down the window of the squad car, cursing the stifling summer heat and his broken air conditioner. Thick pines and hardwoods dotted the horizon; blinding sunlight reflected off the steaming asphalt. The smell of manure and wet grass filled the air. He shoved his hand through his hair, his throat tightening as it always did when he passed Flatbelly Hollow, where his little sister’s body had been found.

  The Deer Crossing sign had been vandalized, he noticed, the stop sign from the side road leading to the fishing camp turned the wrong way. The latest graduating class’s graffiti defiled the rocky wall of the rising cliff. Moss flanked the embankment, icy water trickling down the rocks like a small waterfall. The air cooled as he navigated up the mountain, the curves so routine he could have driven them in his sleep. Shadows from the yellow pines cast a murky haze over the ground as he parked at Briar Ridge next to Logan’s squad car. Paramedics stood on the ledge, organizing the lift procedure.

  Logan stalked toward Grady, his sunglasses shading his eyes. “I’ve already photographed the body and surrounding area.”

  “Good.” Although Grady would take more photos as backup. He peered over the jagged ridge to assess the situation. The man’s body sprawled facedown on the ledge a few hundred feet below, his arms and legs twisted at awkward angles. Blood splattered the rocks around his head. He wore plain jeans and a ragged T-shirt, nothing outstanding to distinguish him from any other tourist or a local.

  “How did you find him?”

  “Hiker called in. He was taking pictures of the mountains and spotted him.”

  “He still around?”

  “Waiting in the car.” Logan cleared his throat. “Young kid. Poor guy’s pretty shook up.”

  “Did you question him already?”

  “Yeah, said he didn’t see any other cars around, hadn’t spotted a soul until he came to the ledge and found the body.”

  Grady nodded and gestured toward the dead man. “You recognized him?”

  “No.” Logan shoved an evidence bag holding a piece of paper toward Grady. “But I found this thumbtacked to that pine tree.”

  Grady pulled on gloves, then removed the note and unfolded it. The handwriting was scrawled, almost illegible, but he slowly managed to decipher the words.

  “Sorry. Killed her. Couldn’t live with the guilt anymore.”

  Killed who? Grady read further, his heart thundering in his chest at the name.

  Darlene.

  Unbelievable. His hands shook as he lowered the note to his side. His hopes for ending the mystery surrounding Darlene’s death had finally come true. Full circle, as Laney Longhorse would say.

  The dead man had confessed to killing his baby sister.

  * * *

  THE SPANISH MOSS of a giant live oak shrouded Violet in its haven, painting fingery shadows that resembled bones along the sidewalk. Disoriented, she clutched the wrought-iron rail surrounding the tombstones. Her imagination must be overactive. Savannah thrived on ghost stories about soldiers who’d died and hadn’t yet found peace. Ones who lingered between realms, tortured and lost, forever searching.

  But she had never heard voices from the grave before.

  Although this voice hadn’t called to her from the grave, she realized. The woman had still been alive. Had the voice belonged to Amber Collins, the missing coed? Had Violet heard her cry for help just before she was murdered?

  Had the evil gotten inside her again? Or had she envisioned the images and voice because of the flyer? Because Darlene’s murder was on her mind?

  Violet glanced at the crumpled paper in her hands and felt paralyzed. People had been reported missing, even murdered in Charleston where she and her grandmother had lived before, but she’d never experienced visions of them.

  Pin peyeh obe—what did the expression mean? It sounded like a Native American phrase. But she didn’t know any native words, so why would one come to her in her thoughts? And what kind of bone had the man held to his lips?

  Her mind spinning, she staggered to her car. Darkness descended as more storm clouds rolled in from the east. According to the weatherman, Hurricane Helena might hit tomorrow. Violet felt as if it had hit today.

  Hands trembling, she started the engine and turned onto the island road, wincing as she bounced over the old bridge. A pair of headlights appeared in her rearview mirror, steady but not too close. The car coasted nearer as she crossed the narrow bay bridge and veered onto the side street that led to her cottage.

  She clenched the steering wheel tighter, certain he was following her.

  * * *

  GRADY KNOTTED HIS HANDS. Everything had come full circle. Back to the beginning, back to the people in town, the ones they’d trusted. Memories of that grueling search crashed back. The long, endless night before they’d found Darlene. This man consoling Grady’s father when they’d finally discovered her small limp body.

  Grady turned to the paramedics. “Make sure the autopsy is thorough—tox screens, hair and fiber samples, the works.” He gathered the crime scene kit from the car, then snapped more pictures of the area and body, and videotaped the scene. The rescue team lowered a paramedic to the ledge to secure the corpse on a stretcher, prior to transporting him to the coroner’s office.

  “Why all the fuss over a suicide?” Logan’s voice was gravelly as he ran a hand over his sweat-streaked brow.

  Grady frowned as he knelt to study the landing. “The first rule of being a good cop—everything is suspicious.”

  “Right. Sounds like the bastard deserved it. He killed a defenseless child.”

  Grady cut his eyes toward his deputy, but he couldn’t read the man’s expression, not with those damn sunglasses he always wore. “What do you know about my sister’s death?”

  “Not much,” Logan said. “Just heard about it in town. I’d think you’d be glad he’s dead.”

  Grady glared at him. They had never talked about personal things before. In fact, once he’d asked Logan about his family, but the man had clammed up and stormed outside. And Grady had certainly never shared anything about his own life.

  B
ut Logan was right. He should be happy. Ecstatic. Ready to celebrate.

  Yet a nagging feeling plucked at the back of his mind, warning him things weren’t quite right. Was it something about the case file? The suicide note? The confession?

  Darlene’s innocent young face flashed in Grady’s head. Her knobby knees, missing front teeth, the strawberry curls he used to tease her about. He pictured her and that homely friend of hers tagging along behind him. Playing dress-up and skipping rope out by that old sweet gum tree. Darlene had always protected her friend. But who had protected her? No one.

  Had he really found her killer? It almost seemed too easy….

  Deep down he wanted it to be over. Closure meant he could move on with his life. Maybe his father could find his way out of the bottle, too.

  Grady fisted and unfisted his hands, blood pounding in his veins. He’d wanted to find Darlene’s killer alive so he could exact his own revenge. He hadn’t realized how much he’d craved that confrontation, how the urge to make her murderer suffer the way his little sister had suffered had driven him through the years. How much the idea of that revenge had thrilled him.

  Fighting for control, Grady scrutinized the ground for foot patterns.

  The deputy squatted, then leaned his elbows on his knees. “Find anything?”

  “Hard to tell,” Grady muttered. “Looks like someone might have moved the straw to cover a footprint or scuffle. Then again, the wind and rain last night could have readjusted the soil.” He shifted on the balls of his feet. “I want every inch combed. We’ll send the note and any other evidence to the crime lab in Nashville to be analyzed. Did you find his car?”

  “Yeah, run into the ditch over there.” Logan pointed to a thicket of trees. “Reeks of whiskey.”

  Grady nodded, then gestured toward the surrounding bushes. “Look for loose or torn bits of clothing. Footprints. Anything to indicate the man might not have been alone. And I want the car impounded and processed.” He stood. “I don’t want this confession leaked in town, either, not until I have a chance to investigate the case thoroughly.” Grady sighed. “For now, this is a suicide, but I’m leaving the case open.”