20

Wesley dropped me off at the front steps of the field stone church a little early, but people were already arriving. I watched them get out of their cars and squint in the sun as they accounted for their children and doors thudded shut up and down the narrow street. I felt curious eyes on my back as I followed the stone walkway, veering off to the left toward the cemetery.

The morning was very cold, and though the sunlight was blinding, it felt thin, like a cool bed sheet against my skin. I pushed open the rusting wrought-iron gate that served no purpose, really, except to be respectful and ornamental. It would keep no one out and certainly there was no need to keep anybody in.

New markers of polished granite shone coldly, and very old ones tilted different ways like bloodless tongues speaking from the mouths of graves. The dead talked here, too. They spoke every time we remembered them. Frost crunched softly beneath my shoes as I walked to the corner where she was. Her grave was a raw, red clay scar from having been reopened and reclosed, and tears came to my eyes as I looked again at the monument with its sweet angel and sad epitaph.

There is no other in the World-

Mine was the only one.

But the line from Emily Dickinson held a different meaning for me now.

I read it with a new mind and a totally different awareness of the woman who had selected it. It was the word mine that jumped out at me. Mine. Emily had had no life of her own but had been an extension of a narcissistic, demented woman with an insatiable appetite for ego gratification.

To her mother, Emily was a pawn as all of us were pawns. We were Denesa's dolls to dress and undress, hug and rip apart, and I recalled the inside of her house, its fluffs and frills and little girl designs on fabric. Denesa was a little girl craving attention who had grown up knowing how to get it. She had destroyed every life she had ever touched, and each time wept in the warm bosom of a compassionate world. Poor, poor Denesa, everyone said of this murderous maternal creature with blood on her teeth.

Ice rose in slender columns from the red day on Emily's grave. I did not know the physics for a fact but concluded that when the moisture in the nonporous clay froze, it expanded as ice does and had nowhere to go but up. It was as if her spirit had gotten caught in the cold as it tried to rise from the ground, and she sparkled in the sun as pure crystal and water do. I realized with a wave of grief that I loved this little girl I knew only in death. She could have been Lucy, or Lucy could have been her. Both were not mothered well, and one had been sent back home, so far the other spared. I knelt and said a prayer, and with a deep breath turned back toward the church.

The organ was playing "Rock of Ages" as I walked in, because by now I was late and the congregation was singing the first hymn. I sat as inconspicuously in the back as I could but still caused glances and heads to turn. This was a church that would spot a stranger because it most likely had so few. The service moved on, and I blessed myself after prayer as a little boy in my pew stared while his sister drew on the bulletin.

Reverend Crow, with his sharp nose and black robe, looked like his name. His arms were wings as he gestured while he preached, and during more dramatic moments it almost seemed he might fly away. Stained-glass windows depicting the miracles of Jesus glowed like jewels, and field stone flecked with mica seemed dusted with gold.

We sang "Just As I Am" when it was time for communion, and I watched those around me to follow their lead. They did not file up to the front for the wafer and wine. Instead, ushers silently came down aisles with thimbles full of grape juice and small crusts of dry bread. I took what was passed to me, and everyone sang the doxology and benediction, and suddenly they were leaving. I took my time. I waited until the preacher was at the door alone, having greeted every parishioner; then I called him by name.

"Thank you for your meaningful sermon. Reverend Crow," I said.

"I have always loved the story of the importunate neighbor."

"There is so much we can learn from it. I tell it to my children a lot." He smiled as he gripped my hand.

"It's good for all of us to hear," I agreed.

"We're so glad to have you with us today. I believe you must be the FBI doctor I've been hearing about. Saw you the other day on the news, too."

"I'm Dr. Scarpetta," I said.

"And I'm wondering if you might point out Rob Kelsey? I hope he hasn't already left."

"Oh, no," the reverend said, as I had expected.

"Rob helped with communion. He's probably putting things away." He looked toward the sanctuary.

"Would you mind if I tried to find him?" I asked.

"Not a bit. And by the way" -his face got sad"-we sure do appreciate what you're trying to do around here. Not a one of us will ever be the same." He shook his head.

"Her poor, poor mother. Some folks would turn on God after all she's been through. But no ma'am. Not Denesa. She's here every Sunday, one of the finest Christians I've ever known. "

"She was here this morning?" I asked as a creepy feeling crawled up my spine.

"Singing in the choir like she always does."

I had not seen her. But there were at least two hundred people present and the choir had been in the balcony behind me. Rob Kelsey, Jr. " was in his fifties, a wiry man in a cheap blue pin-sthped suit collecting communion glasses from holders in the pews.

I introduced myself and was very worried I would alarm him, but he seemed the unflappable type. He sat next to me on a pew and thoughtfully tugged at an earlobe as I explained what I wanted.

"That's right," he said in a North Carolina drawl as thick as I'd heard yet.

"Papa worked at the mill his whole entire life. They gave him a mighty nice console color TV when he retired and a solid gold pin."

"He must have been a fine foreman," I said.

"Well, he wasn't that until he got up in years. Before that he was their top box inspector and before that he was just a boxer."

"What did he do exactly? As a boxer, for example?"

"He'd see to it the rolls of tape was boxed, and then eventually he supervised everybody else doing it to make sure it was right."

"I see. Do you ever remember the mill manufacturing a duct tape that was blaze orange?" Rob Kelsey, with his near crew cut and eyes dark brown, thought about the question. Recognition registered in the expression on his face.

"Why, sure. I remember that because it was an unusual tape. Never seen it before or since. Believe it was for a prison somewhere."

"It was," I said.

"But I'm wondering if a roll or two of it might have ended up local. You know, here."

"It wasn't supposed to. But these things happen because they get rejects and stuff like that. Rolls of tape that aren't just right."

I thought of the grease stains on the edges of the tape used to bind Mrs. Steiner and her daughter. Perhaps a run had gotten caught in a piece of machinery or had gotten greasy some other way.

"And generally, when you have items that don't pass inspection," I interpolated, "employees might take them or buy them for a bargain." Kelsey didn't say anything. He looked a little perplexed.

"Mr. Kelsey, do you know of anyone your father might have given a roll of that orange tape to?" I asked.

"Only one person I know of. Jake Wheeler. Now, he passed on a while back, but before that he owned the Laundromat near MacK's Five-and-Dime. As I recollect, he also owned the drugstore on the corner."

"Why would your father give him a roll of the tape?"

"Well, Jake liked to hunt. I remember my daddy saying Jake was so afraid of getting shot out there in the woods by someone mistaking him for a turkey that no one wanted to go out with him." I said nothing. I did not know where this was leading.