Carol O’Connell

Stone Angel

The fourth book in the Kathleen Mallory series, 1997

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dianne Burke, Search and Rescue Research, Tempe, AZ [email protected]

Yvonne Finley, Chief Civil Deputy, Tensas Sheriff’s Department, LA

Norman Herland, Computer Consultant, White Plains, NY [email protected]

Kitt Peak Observatory

Ellsworth Pilie, Jr. Hydraulics Branch of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

Bob Rholi, Ph.D. Climatologist, Southern Regional Climate Center, LSU, Baton Rouge, LA

PROGOLUE

In the idiot’s philosophy, a cloud could never be just a cloud. Seeking portent, he read much into the shapeshifting. This particular cloud was bereft of any wind to drive it. Thwarted in its forward movement, it billowed upward in a silent explosion of form, pluming high and angry, boiling over the face of the midday sun and killing its light.

Now the cloud was alone in the sky.

The town square flickered in and out of the dark as a succession of quick bright flashes of gaseous green lit the cloud from within. Then came a low rumble – prelude to the main event.

All dark now, like a stage.

It was coming; it was surely coming. He knew a jagged bolt of lightning would hit the earth, and soon, for the air was primed – electrified. The idiot’s flesh tingled. He felt an exquisite, unbearable tension as he waited for the strike.

And the cloud let him wait.

It loomed above him, massing higher and darker, as he counted off the seconds. One, two -

The young stranger came to town just past twelve noon.

Within an hour, the idiot had been assaulted, hands bloodied and broken; Deputy Travis suffered a massive stroke at the wheel of his patrol car; and Babe Laurie was found murdered.

The young stranger who had preceded all of these events was sitting in a jail cell.

Sheriff Jessop made out a receipt for the prisoner’s possessions, which were fewer than the average woman carried: one.357 Smith & Wesson revolver and one handed-down pocket watch. Inside the cover of the watch were the names of the generations: David Rubin Markowitz, Jonathan Rupert Markowitz, Louis Simon Markowitz and, last to inherit, Mallory – just Mallory.

CHAPTER 1

The rain had finally ended, and the sky was a noisy circus of life on the wing, birds getting off to a late start on the day. Every fish hawk was screaming after its supper, and the woman wondered if the fish could hear them coming.

One osprey flopped its catch onto the grass. The fish struggled under the bird’s talons; its silver scales were striped with watery blood. The fish hawk was so intent on tearing flesh from bone, he paid the woman no mind as she drew closer, smiling benignly on the creature and his bloody, living meal, nodding her approval of a good catch.

If reincarnated, Augusta knew she could depend on coming back to the earth with feathers, for she had the ruthless makings of a fine bird, and God was not one to waste talent.

A breeze off the river whipped the faded green cotton dress around her bare legs, and long waves of hair streamed back over her shoulders. The finer detail of cornflower-blue eyes would be lost from the distance of the town below, but any citizen of Dayborn would have recognized her tall and slender silhouette striding along the top of the levee, that great sloping barrier which was the high ground for the lands along the mighty Mississippi.

A sudden cloud break made her tresses into a brilliant flowing shock of white, wildly upstaging the few remaining strands of black hair. She winced at a twinge of bursitis in her left shoulder and shifted the weight of her grocery bag onto one hip as she moved down the steep incline of dirt and spotty clumps of Bermuda grass.

When she stepped onto level ground, she walked slowly toward her house perched behind distant trees. One dark window, round like an eye, could see and be seen through the choke of foliage. It watched her progress from the base of the levee to a narrow dirt road.

The mansion of forty-seven rooms had been standing for nearly a hundred and fifty years. She wished it would finally crumble back into the earth. Toward that end, she had made no repairs on the place in the half century since her father’s death. She had done nothing to abet her incarceration, nor anything to free herself. For the majority of her seventy years, she had been known by the titles of Miss Augusta Trebec, spinster of Dayborn and professional prisoner.

She paused in front of Henry Roth’s cottage, a small one-story affair of red brick walls and a fine slate roof. The garden was ablaze with exotic flowers growing in wavy bands of brilliant primary colors. She had always coveted this house for its simplicity of form and manageable space. If it had been hers, she would have let the garden go to a more natural state of untended wildflowers. But Henry was an artist who could not help but improve upon nature. Every day of his life, he improved blocks of stone with his chisel to create beautiful and most unnatural things.

A stranger was standing at Henry’s door, and a silver car was parked in the driveway. Augusta did not know the style of one car from another, but she could recognize a Mercedes hood ornament when she saw one. The license plate was obscured by shrubs and could not tell her where the man and his vehicle had come from.

Henry’s visitor was a tall one, well over six foot, and a good figure of a man by the back of him. As he turned away from the door, she was struck with admiration for his profile. That nose was a thing to behold, right formidable, nearly a weapon in its size and length.

The man turned around to face her. His eyes were large and heavy-lidded, with small blue irises. They put her in mind of a fairy-tale frog who had not quite completed the transition to a prince by way of a kiss from a beautiful maiden. Perhaps he had not been properly kissed, or maybe the maiden was flawed.

Augusta walked up the flagstone path to Henry’s door. The visitor nodded to her in the modern version of a gentleman’s bow.

Respectful – she liked that.

He was not a very young man, but there was no gray in the longish brown hair to help her fix his place in time. He might be in that awkward phase before the onset of middle age. She was near enough to note the fabric of his three-piece suit, and by that heavy material she made him a northerner from a colder state of autumn.

“Hello,” he said, with a smile that was at once loony and beguiling.

Augusta smiled back before she realized what she was doing. Now she pressed her lips together in a more dignified and noncommittal line. “Henry’s not expected back from New Orleans till early evening.”

“Thank you, I’ll come back later.” He handed her a white business card.

She was charmed by this small gesture. It reminded her of the gentleman’s calling card, a custom from her father’s generation.

He pointed to her grocery bag. “May I help you with that? It looks rather heavy.”

Apparently, he was from good family, or at least his mother had raised him right. By his accent, she narrowed his compass points to the northeastern corner of the country.

Augusta placed her brown paper sack in the crook of his arm, slyly reveling in his look of surprise as he realized how heavy the bag really was. She had carried greater weights. Beneath the light cotton dress was a well-toned body, kept in good order by spurning any form of transportation but her own good legs, and by carrying all her own burdens.