“Here.” Mother hurried up behind me with the two-by-four. I grabbed it from her.

  “Stand back.”

  “Let me…”

  “I’ve got it.” I lifted the two-by-four like a spear and drove it into the center of the sunburst. It broke through and a few more cracks formed, but the window itself didn’t break. I spent a minute trying to make the hole bigger, until I thought I could get my arm through.

  “Be careful,” Mother told me, as I carefully fed my hand and arm through the hole up to the elbow, and fumbled for the mechanism that would allow us to open the door. “Don’t cut yourself.”

  “Car glass is pretty harmless. It’s made to break in such a way where you don’t get hurt if you touch it.” I found the button and yanked it. “There. That should do it.”

  Mother twitched in place while I carefully maneuvered my arm back out through the hole in the window. Once I was clear, she grabbed the handle and yanked the door open. “Bob! … Oh, my God! Bob!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was indeed Bob, and I’d been right about the sleeping bags, too. Someone had tossed them on top of Bob, so most of his body was hidden under a pile of fabric.

  I scented deeply, but it was impossible to tell whether the smell of death was inside the truck, too, or just outside; it had penetrated so deeply into my nostrils that I felt like I’d probably not be able to draw a clean breath for days.

  “Bob!”

  Mom had tears running down her cheeks, but she made no move toward the bundle that was lying half across the truck seat, half on the floor. Bob’s long legs were folded beneath him, one knee on the floor, the other hooked on the gearshift. We could see his lower legs stick out on one end of the bundle of sleeping bags, and the top of his gray head stick out on the other side, but we could see nothing in-between.

  “Bob…!”

  Now that she’d found him, Mother seemed loath to go any closer. I didn’t want to, either, but I felt like someone should make sure that he was dead—or, since that came out sounding not right, someone should ascertain whether there was still hope, as they say in the books. I didn’t think there was much chance of that, to be honest, and that was partly why I didn’t want to do it. Dead bodies are icky, especially after they've dead a few days, and besides, I didn’t want to have to be the one to tell my mother that there was no hope.

  But someone had to do it. And here came a vulture swooping out of the treetops again, too, circling lower.

  “Run at it with the plank,” I told Mother, my voice practically unrecognizable. “Don’t let it land.”

  Mother gave me a tortured look, but she grabbed the two-by-four from where I’d tossed it, and ran at the big bird. “Shoo! Shoo!”

  The bird thought better of landing and circled out of reach, but not up again. Not yet. Instead, it circled to the other side of the car.

  “Get it,” I told Mother. “We have to hold them off until Rafe gets here.”

  And we had to call and tell Rafe what we’d found, I supposed. The details of it. But first I needed to make sure we were dealing with four bodies and not three.

  I drew in a deep breath, and regretted it immediately. “Gah!”

  Shallow breaths through the mouth was definitely the way to go. And while Mother ran frantically after the bird, waving the plank over her head, I leaned into the cab. “Bob? Can you hear me?”

  Nothing happened, of course. There was no movement from under the blankets.

  I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t have much hope for a happy ending here. The other three men were indubitably dead. No question about it. And if they were dead, Bob’s chances of being alive were not great.

  Granted, he was inside the car and not outside. That was a point in his favor. He wouldn’t have been assaulted by the vultures. But if he were to be, miraculously, alive, they wouldn’t have tried to eat him anyway.

  And it was hard to believe that whoever was responsible for this massacre, because that’s what it looked and felt like, would have left one of his victims alive. If this was what he had dragged Bob out here to see, this truck full of dead bodies—people that I assumed he himself (or she, to be fair) had killed—I didn’t think he’d have left Bob unless he was sure Bob was dead. Or at any rate very close to it.

  So I leaned into the cab with not much hope at all, just doing what I felt I had to do.

  The feet were on my side of the cab and the head on the other, so the first thing I did was find the edge of one of Bob’s jeans, and stick my hand underneath. There was his sock to deal with—a crew-type that reached halfway up his leg. Try as I might, I couldn’t get my fingers on actual skin. He didn’t feel cold, not through the fabric of sock or denim, but it must be 120˚ in the cab, and then there was the pile of sleeping bags, so he probably wouldn’t anyway, even if he were dead.

  I grabbed one of the bags and started hauling on it. It was all tangled up with the others, so they all moved in a bunch, and some of the bunch was stuck underneath Bob’s body. His legs moved when I started pulling, and my heart jumped in my chest, but it was probably just the fact that the fabric moved, not something Bob was doing. From the other side of the car, I could hear Mother’s increasingly hysterical shrieks. “Shoo! Shoo!”

  The wadded up bags finally let go, and I was able to push them behind me, through the door. The last one stuck, on a puddle—a pool, a lake—of blood that covered Bob’s chest and the car seat and had dripped onto the floor before drying in the heat.

  So. Much. Blood.

  My head started swimming, and I took another deep breath just because I was afraid I would pass out if I didn’t. Little flecks started dancing in front of my eyes, and I squeezed them shut and bore down. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. The last thing Mother needed now, was me in a dead faint on the ground, with vultures circling and three dead bodies on the truck bed.

  After ten seconds of breathing, I felt better—marginally—so I opened my eyes again and tried to take stock of what I saw. Lots of blood, check. What looked like a smallish hole in Bob’s T-shirt, which was stiff with blood. Bullet or small knife, most likely. Stiletto or something like that. But most likely a gun, since nobody uses a stiletto anymore when guns are easy to come by, especially in a rural area, and you can just shoot someone from a safe distance.

  The hole was roughly chest height, so this looked like a gunshot wound to the chest. Not an encouraging thing.

  Beyond the T-shirt, Bob’s face was grayish. His lips were parted, dry and cracked, and his eyes were closed. He looked like, if you’ll pardon the pun, death.

  But…

  I thought back to the corpses I’d seen. Altogether too many in the past almost two years. Brenda Puckett, dead on the floor of Rafe’s grandmother’s house, with her throat slit. Ethan Underwood, an old high school classmate, dead in his car outside our tenth class reunion. Jolynn, Todd’s ex-wife, dead in my bed. That pretty little redheaded prostitute that Hernandez had killed, also dead in my bed—but a different bed that time. Billy Scruggs, whom Ronnie Burke and Liz had killed, right here in the Colliers’ trailer in the Bog…

  All of them dead, and all of them with wide-open, cloudy eyes.

  “Bob!”

  I forgot about being careful, and about not disturbing the crime scene. I shoehorned myself into the truck between Bob’s legs and the glove compartment, and leaned forward. “Bob! Can you hear me?”

  His forehead definitely wasn’t cold. A bit clammy, maybe, which probably wasn’t a good sign when we were talking about June in Middle Tennessee. Then again, the mass quantity of blood on his chest wasn’t a good sign, either. But from everything I could tell…

  I fumbled for a pulse in his throat, but wasn’t able to find one. It might have been me. Please let it be me. So I peeled up one of his eyelids instead, and could have cheered when the pupil contracted as the light hit it.

  “Oh, my God. Bob…”

  “What?” Mother asked behind me. She must have chased away the vulture, because the two-by-four was hanging limp in her hand, and the bird was nowhere to be seen. Probably back up in a treetop, biding its time.

  “I think he’s alive.”

  Mother didn’t say anything, and while I hadn’t thought it would have been possible for her to turn any paler, somehow she managed.

  “But it looks like he’s been shot, and he’s lost a lot of blood. And it’s a crime scene, so I don’t want to spend too much time in here, just in case there are fingerprints or something, from whoever did this. There’s nothing we can do for him, anyway. If he’s survived this long on his own, I don’t think there’s anything you and I can do in the next ten minutes that’s going to make a difference. It’s probably better not to try to move him until the ambulance gets here…”

  I backed out of the cab and found my footing on the ground.

  Mother nodded, with tears running down her face. “Can I talk to him?”

  Her voice was unlike to tip him over the edge, I figured. “Sure. Just try not to touch anything in there if you can help it. I need to…”

  I needed to take another breath, which seared down through my chest. “I need to call Rafe. Tell him we need an ambulance.”

  Mother nodded. She’d already dropped the two-by-four and was on her way into the cab. “Bob,” I heard her say as I walked away, “oh, my God. Bob…”

  By then, Rafe’s voice was in my ear, too. “I’m getting there as fast as I can, Savannah.”

  “We found Bob,” I said.

  “Dead?” If he was surprised, it wasn’t possible to tell from his voice. If he was worried, it wasn’t possible to tell that, either.

  My voice, on the other hand, was shaking so hard it was difficult to get the words out. “As far as I can tell he’s alive. There’s a lot of blood, and I can’t get a pulse—it’s probably my own fault; my hands are shaking and I’m not used to this—but when I opened his eyelid, his pupil contracted. That means he’s alive, right?”

  “Oughta,” Rafe said. “I’m about ten minutes away. Did you call 9-1-1?”

  “I called you first.”

  “And I love you for it. Now call 9-1-1 and ask for an ambulance. Tell ‘em police is already on the way.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Keep the vultures away from my crime scene,” Rafe said, and hung up.

  I called 9-1-1 and requested an ambulance. And just to maybe get them moving a little faster, I told the dispatcher, “It’s the sheriff. He looks bad. Please come quickly.”

  “Where?”

  “The Bog,” I said. “Mallard Meadows. The old trailer park on the Pulaski Road, south of Sweetwater. I don’t know the street number, but there’s a sign. Or you can… um… look for the vultures.”

  “Dear me.” But it was all she said. “They’re on their way. You should hear the sirens in a few minutes. Stay on the line with me.”

  “I can’t,” I said apologetically, “I’m sorry. But my husband told me to keep the vultures away from his crime scene. They’re starting to circle again.”

  “Dear me. Who’s your husband?”

  I told her who I was, and who Rafe was. “I called him. He’s on his way. Should be here in a few minutes, as well. We’ll need several morgue cars. But I expect he’ll take care of that.”

  “I expect he will,” the dispatcher said. “Would you like me to call a wildlife service to come out there to deal with the vultures?”

  “I just have to keep them away from the bodies. Once the bodies are gone, the vultures will probably fly away, too.” And Rafe wasn’t likely to want anyone who wasn’t strictly necessary to compromise his crime scene.

  “I see.” She sounded nauseated, and it was hard to blame her. “All right, then. I’ll let you go so you can deal with the vultures.”

  Probably not something she had to say every day.

  “Thank you,” I said, and dropped the phone into my pocket before I hefted the two-by-four again, and brandished it threateningly at the two birds that had swooped out of the treetops and started to circle the truck. “Don’t you even think about it. Get away from them, you evil bird. Shoo! Shoo!”

  * * *

  The ambulance was first to arrive. It came from Sweetwater, from the firehouse there, so had a slightly shorter distance to cover than Rafe, who must have been farther north. They didn’t beat him by much. About two minutes after they’d driven into the clearing, came a squeal of brakes up on the road, and then Rafe’s unmarked tan Chevy, that he uses for getting around while he’s working, came rocketing down the track and stopped with a squeal of brakes and a spurt of dirt, behind the Volvo.

  My husband pushed open his door. “Savannah!”

  The vultures had all retreated to the treetops now that the ambulance was here, with its flashing lights and sirens. I had dropped the two-by-four and gone to stay with Mother, who had had to get out of the cab and move to a distance while the EMTs were working on getting Bob out of the truck. I hadn’t wanted to lean over him and open the driver’s side door, just in case there was some sort of forensic evidence on it that could point the way to the killer—fingerprints or DNA or something—but the paramedics’ first concern was saving Bob, so they hadn’t worried about that, but had opened the door and forensic evidence be damned. They were busy removing him from the truck when Rafe pulled up, and Mother and I were watching. I had checked on Carrie, and she had fallen asleep in her seat, so she was still inside the Volvo with the engine running and the AC set on recirculate. I couldn’t imagine that the air quality out here would be good for her, so I’d rather keep her inside.

  I went to meet him, and walked straight into his arms while Tucker got out of the Chevy on the opposite side. He gave us both a look—maybe he thought it unprofessional conduct, or maybe he thought it was nothing more than what was to be expected—but he didn’t say anything, just wandered over to the truck and peered into the bed.

  “You all right?” Rafe asked against my hair.

  I nodded. “I am now. I was pretty shaky there for a while.”

  “Can’t nobody blame you for that, darlin’. Can you give me a statement?”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” I said, pulling out of his arms and looking up at him. “It was your stupid comment about buzzards. And it turns out that Mother saw a program about vultures on the Nature channel last night. Why on earth she didn’t watch something soothing like HGTV or the Shopping Network instead…!”

  Rafe’s lips twitched, but he didn’t comment, and I yanked my thoughts back on track again. “We saw them circling when we were coming north. I don’t know whether they were there when we were going south, too. They might have been. I think the trees are little taller or a little denser from the other direction. It’s easier to see from the south."

  He nodded.

  “I got a bad feeling, so I pulled in. And then we saw the truck, and I called you. But Mother needed to see—insisted on seeing—whether it was Bob. So we chased the vultures off and looked in the bed. I could…”

  I swallowed. “I could tell by their clothes that it wasn’t Bob. That neither of them were Bob. But Mother wanted to check the cab, and there was something in there. Something that could have been a person. So we… we had to break the window. I’m sorry. I tried to stay away from the driver’s side, but the paramedics didn’t care about that, and if there was any forensic evidence there, it’s probably gone by now…”

  Rafe glanced over toward the truck, where Tucker was now standing in the open doorway. The paramedics had gotten Bob out and onto a gurney, and were in the process of moving it into the back of the ambulance. He was already hooked up to bags of blood and something else, something clear, that was probably a hydrating solution. If he’d been lying here since Saturday, and had lost all that blood, he was probably both severely dehydrated and in need of a lot of blood.

  “I can give blood,” I said.

  Rafe glanced at me, but didn’t say anything. “Tucker!” he yelled instead. “Get away from there!”

  Tucker shot him a look. “Fuck off, Collier. I’ve had this job longer than you’ve been alive.”

  Rafe rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything. Not to Tucker. To me, he said, “Then he oughta know not to mess around with a crime scene.”

  “You’re still not getting on well, I take it?”

  He shrugged. “We’re making it work. We both want the same thing.”

  To find Bob. “And now you’ve done it.”

  “You’ve done it. But we’ll take it from here. You can take your mama and Carrie home, and—”

  “I’m sure Mother will want to go to the hospital with Bob,” I said. “If they won’t take her there in the ambulance, I’ll do it. And we’ll call the family and let them know. Spread the word. You just work on figuring out who’s behind this.”

  “That’s the plan, darlin’.” He glanced up at the treetops, where the vultures were still hoping for their chance to come back down. “Sorry you had to deal with that.”

  “I’m just glad we were able to find them,” I said. “You’ll let Reena know?”

  “’Course, darlin’. You can spread the word in the family, though. Todd’d likely take it better from you, or your mama, or Dix, than he would from me.”

  “With this kind of news,” I told him, “I don’t think it matters who delivers it. He’ll just be happy to know that his father’s alive. Hopefully they can keep him that way.”

  “I better talk to ‘em before they take off. Get yourself and your mama off my crime scene, darlin’.”

  I told him I would, and then I watched him make his way over to the ambulance, where the two paramedics were just arguing with Mother about whether or not she could go to the hospital with Bob. The answer seemed to be no, and Rafe seemed to agree with them, because he told Mother a few words, and then she started making her way toward me, while he continued to speak to the EMTs. Over by the truck, Tucker was still studying the situation. By now, his entire upper body was inside the cab. I rolled my eyes and turned to Mother as she approached. “They won’t let you go with them?”