Chapter 14

14

August 2000

From her hiding spot in the field, Josie fought the urge to run. He could be lying in wait, poised to pounce the minute she moved. So Josie waited. She waited for something to happen, for someone to help, to come to find her. She kept willing her father or mother to push their way through the stalks, but they didn't appear.

The clouds evaporated, and the moon stared garishly down at her. Josie kept time by its slow crawl across the sky. She fought back nausea, afraid that if she vomited, the person with the gun would hear her retching and discover her location. She couldn't keep the tears from falling though, her body convulsed with silent sobs until her head pounded and jaw ached from forcing back the screams.

Josie shivered despite the heat of the night. The wound in her arm had stopped bleeding, but she could feel the nubby buckshot embedded in the fleshy part of her tricep.

She had stayed on her feet for as long as she could, but her muscles began to seize. The mosquitoes feasted on her bare skin, their bites like a thousand pinpricks. She finally crouched down, sat back on her heels, pulled her arms into her T-shirt and over her knees. The pain in her arm was a drumbeat. Miserable, Josie sat there like a plump corn flea beetle waiting for daylight.

With every soft rustle of the corn, her heart would boomerang from terror to hope. Someone had to have heard the gunshots. Sound traveled for miles through the countryside. Surely, someone would have heard the pop of gunfire, become alarmed and called the police. She half expected her father to appear, hold out his hand to help her up and take her home. But he never came. No one did.

Hours passed. The stars faded, and the sky above was slowly stripped of its nightclothes and replaced with gauzy veils of pink and tangerine. Josie's mouth was dry and her tongue heavy with thirst. Every time she moved, a jolt coursed through her arm, and she whimpered with pain.

She had broken her ankle once when she was ten. She and Becky were hopping across the maze of round hay bales in her field when she misjudged the distance to the next bale of hay and tumbled six feet to the hard-packed earth.

That pain was intense—but nothing compared to being shot. When Josie could no longer stand the fullness of her bladder, she unfolded herself from the cocoon of her T-shirt and stood. Using only one hand, she awkwardly pulled down her shorts and relieved herself, urging the unending stream of urine to hurry up.

Josie was so thirsty that she was tempted to step out of the field to get a drink of water but couldn't bring herself to leave the camouflage the corn provided. She tried to keep time by the movement of the shadows. She wanted to lie down and sleep but was afraid that the gunman would find her.

A dry, papery crackle moved through the field, and the corn shivered and swayed above her. Someone was coming. Panic clutched at her throat. She wouldn't be able to outrun him; she had no weapon, no protection. Josie braced herself for what was coming.

But instead of someone crashing through the crops, a large black cloud swept over her head and dipped and rose and fell and rose again. Red-winged blackbirds, thick as smoke, making their annual migration through the fields, gathered on the stalks above her.

Josie's father would be irritated to no end. It happened every year; the glossy black birds with red and yellow shoulder patches swooped through the fields to feast on their corn. She expected to hear the loud bangs of the propane exploders, a device that her father relied on, to scare away the pesky birds. The cracks never came, only the flapping of wings and the chatter of the redwings.

Josie couldn't stay hidden in the field forever. No one was coming to rescue her. She needed to save herself. Josie struggled to her feet, and the cloud of birds noisily rose and moved on to another section of the field. Her leg muscles screamed in protest, her arm pulsed and was swollen and hot to the touch. Another wave of nausea washed over her, and Josie closed her eyes and conjured up their farmyard at dawn.

It calmed her, the thought of the big red barn and her mom and dad drinking coffee at the kitchen table. The morning sun gliding up from behind the barn meant that if she headed in the opposite direction of the sun, she would come out of the field somewhere near the house.

Step by step, Josie made her way through the canopy of green, the hot morning sun burning the top of her head. She quickly found the path she took the night before. Stalks lay flat, leaving a crumpled, frenetic trail. Josie's heart hammered in her chest.

She was so close to home. She wanted to run toward the house, fling open the front door and find her parents, Ethan, and Becky sitting at the kitchen table, irritated because she made them late getting on the road to the fair, but Josie was too scared. Instead, she hovered on the edges of the field, peeking between the thick stems.

At first glance, everything looked just as it should. The yard and house looked the same as always. Her father's truck and her mother's car sat in the drive. Ruby-throated hummingbirds hovered above the bright orange butterfly weed next to the house. The copper weather vane rooster atop the barn spun in the hot breeze.

But still, Josie couldn't bring herself to step out into the open. The screen on the back door swung on its hinges. Maybe everyone overslept, Josie thought hopefully, though she knew it wasn't likely. The outdoor goat pen was empty, and humanlike cries came from the closed-up barn. Josie knew it was just hungry bleats coming from the goats, but their desperate calls caused the hair to stand up on her arms. Her father never forgot to feed and milk the goats.

She wanted to sprint to the house and find her family and Becky waiting for her, but the soles of her feet, chewed up by rocks and parched earth made it impossible. She cringed with each step.

The chickens in the coop clucked at her approach, harassing Josie to feed and water them. Please let everyone still be asleep, she begged silently.

Josie looked up at the house. She remembered the bangs and the flash of light she saw in her parents' bedroom window the night before. Nothing moved behind the curtains, but they were a bit askew, as if someone was peeking out from behind them.

It was just a bad dream, Josie told herself; she had been walking in her sleep. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense. She'd had an awful nightmare.

Once past the barn and the henhouse, the goats and chickens grew quiet. She passed the old shed where her mother kept her gardening tools and passed the trampoline where she and Becky had jumped with so much joy the night before. It felt like a million years ago.

Josie cocked her head in hopes of hearing her mother and father chatting at the kitchen table. All was quiet except the creak and bang of the screen door opening and closing with the hot breeze.

Josie caught the screen door midswing, stepped into the mudroom, and closed it behind her. She'd get a talking-to for leaving the door open all night too. Josie spotted her father's dusty work boots on the mudroom floor and another surge of anxiety rushed through her.

The kitchen was empty. There was the hum of the refrigerator, the whir of a ceiling fan. In the living room, a pair of Ethan's tennis shoes lay on the floor and the paperback book her mother had been reading lay open on the arm of the sofa.

Josie moved to the bottom of the stairs and looked up.

"Mom? Dad?" she called out. No answer. She couldn't lift her left hand to place it on the banister so she hugged the right side, her shoulder grazing the wall to steady herself.

She should have turned around and gone right back down the steps, but she couldn't stop her hand from pushing open her parents' bedroom door and stepping over the threshold. The room was dim, the sun diluted by the curtains that covered the windows. The air smelled out of place but familiar. A prickle of fear buzzed through her.

"Mom, Dad," Josie whispered, jiggling the bed. "It's time to get up." There was no answer. It was too quiet.

Her eyes drifted to the right where a sunburst of blood tattooed the wall next to the bed. She followed the scarlet spray downward to where a figure was slumped in the corner, eyes wide, a fist-sized hole in her chest. Josie couldn't tear her gaze from the horror in front of her. It vaguely resembled her mother, but how was that possible? The twisted grimace on her face was one out of a horror film. Her blood-soaked nightgown clung to her skin.

The cord to the powder blue telephone next to the bed was ripped from the wall and lay in a jumbled heap beside her mother.

A strange numbness spread through Josie's limbs and her ears filled with the thrum of her heartbeat. She stumbled from the room.

"Dad?" she cried out. "Daddy?" She careened toward her bedroom but stopped abruptly. On the floor, peeking from the doorway, was a hand, closed as if trying to make a half-hearted fist. Josie didn't want to see what that hand was attached to, but she knew. Her father. But she didn't want to see what he had become. Still, she moved forward. The glint of a gold wedding ring winked up at her.

Josie let out a tremulous breath and looked around the door frame. Her father's face was gone, replaced with an unrecognizable canvas of blood and bone and gray matter. A scream lodged in her throat, she turned, and in her hurry to get away, Josie felt the give of soft flesh as her bare foot struck her father's hand. In terror, she ran down the stairs, her feet barely touching the steps. She flung open the front door and stepped out into the unrelenting sunshine and started running.

At half past seven in the morning, Matthew Ellis was heading past his daughter and son-in-law's farm just a mile from theirs down on Meadow Rue. He was on his way to town to meet up with some of the other old-timers for coffee at the feed store.

Matthew saw it weaving back and forth across the road from about a hundred yards away. Behind the shimmer of heat rising from the asphalt, Matthew, at first glance, thought it was a deer that had gotten hit by a car.

As he drove closer, he realized that the battered, bloody figure was no animal, but a person, hunched over with pain careening from one side of the road to the other.

Matthew later told investigators that it was like coming across a zombie from one of those old movies. It was dead eyed and lurching, and my heart nearly stopped when I saw who it was.

If Josie was aware of the truck approaching, she gave no indication. Her grandfather pulled off to the side of the road and leaped from his truck.

"Josie?" he asked. "What happened? What are you doing?" Josie acted as if she didn't hear him, just kept walking. Not knowing what to do, Matthew finally grabbed Josie by the shoulders and forced her to look at him.

"Josie," he said, staring into her red, unfocused eyes. "What happened? Where are you going?"

"To your house," Josie managed to croak. It was an odd response, Matthew thought, since Josie was heading in the wrong direction. Josie's arm was swollen and caked with dried blood and her arms and legs were slashed with scratches that were too many to count. He led Josie to his truck and helped her inside.

"What happened, Shoo?" Matthew asked, using the nickname he had given Josie as a toddler when she would follow him around everywhere. "Shoo fly, shoo," he'd tease, and Josie would giggle and buzz after him. "What happened?" he asked in alarm. "Was there an accident?"

"I thought there must have been an accident at home," Matthew told the deputy when he arrived on the scene. "It was the only thing that made sense at that moment. They were leaving for the state fair early that morning. They should have been on the road already. I decided to take Josie back to her house. I never imagined I'd find what I did."

When Matthew and Josie pulled down the lane and parked behind two vehicles in the drive—his son-in-law's Chevy truck and the minivan that Lynne drove. The only vehicle missing was Ethan's truck.

This was where Matthew took another look at his granddaughter. A bright red rash feathered her cheeks, her hair was tangled and unbrushed, her eyes swollen and bloodshot as if she'd been crying. She was barefoot and dirty and it looked like someone took a switch to her legs. It was a closer look at Josie's arm that caused Matthew's throat to close up. He'd seen injuries like this before. "Josie, what happened to your arm," Matthew asked.

Next to him in the truck, Josie forced her eyes open and looked down. Her arm was bloody and swollen and dimpled like a golf ball where the buckshot had embedded her skin.

Despite the hot morning, Josie began to shiver.

"Where is everyone?" Matthew asked.

Josie looked out the window toward the second floor of the house.

"Up there?" Matthew asked, his voice filled with fear. Josie nodded. "Do I need to call for help?"

Josie nodded again and then turned her head away, resting it against the car window.

Matthew stepped from the truck. The yard was silent except for the insistent tick of the engine cooling down. "Stay here," he told her as he moved toward the back of the house.

Josie's grandfather entered the house through the screen door, which creaked and banged shut behind him. Josie remembered screwing her eyes shut as if this could protect her grandfather from what he was about to see.

And even though she covered her ears, Josie still heard his strangled cry, the thumping on the steps, and the crash of the back door being thrown open. She heard the gasp of her grandfather trying to draw air into his lungs and then the wretched sound of gagging and the rush of liquid hitting the ground.

Matthew's anguished cries filled the air and Josie pressed her hands more tightly against her ears to block out the sound, but it did no good.

Deb Cutter, who was in her yard, a mile away as the crow flies, reported she heard the cries. She looked up from her weeding when the shrieking didn't stop, and thinking it must be an injured animal, Deb wished to herself that someone would put the poor creature out of its misery. Frightened, Deb gathered up the sheets hanging from the clothesline and took them inside.

Gradually Matthew's cries turned to a soft keening and then to silence. Josie remembered hearing the screen door creak open again. He was going back inside? Why? she wondered. Why would he do that?

He wasn't inside for long. Josie heard the truck door opening and the soft snick of it closing again as her grandfather climbed back into the truck. She dared to take a peek at him. He sat slumped in the driver's seat with his head bent and his weathered, age-spotted hands gripping the steering wheel. They sat that way for what felt like a long time, the temperature in the truck rising as each second passed.

In the distance, a faint, persistent wail bloomed. Sirens. Help was coming.

"Shoo," Matthew croaked. "What happened here?" He raised his head and his red-rimmed eyes found Josie's.

"I think they're dead," Josie whispered. "Did you find Ethan and Becky?" she asked.

"No, just your..." He let out a shuddery breath. His hands wouldn't stop shaking.

"I let go of Becky's hand," Josie said as if in a daze. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to." The sirens were getting louder.

"It's time to get out," Matthew said as he opened the truck door. The blare of the sirens peaked and then abruptly stopped as two Blake County sheriff's cars turned into Josie's driveway and parked. "Stay behind me, Shoo," he said and Josie held on to his belt loop as two men climbed out of their police cars, guns drawn. Once out in the open, Matthew held his hands up.

"They're upstairs," Matthew said, nodding toward the house. "They've been shot."