Where the Crawdads Sing(68)

“I never thought I’d see you again. I thought you were gone forever.”

“I’ll always be here, I promise. Whenever I move, I’ll send my new address. If you ever need me, you write or call, you hear?”

“I will. And come back for a visit whenever you can.”

“Kya, go find Tate. He’s a good man.”

He waved from the truck window all the way down the lane, as she watched, crying and laughing all at once. And when he turned onto the track, she could see his red pickup through the holes of the forest where a white scarf had once trailed away, his long arm waving until he was gone.





34.


    Search the Shack



1969

Well, again she’s not here,” Joe said, knocking on the frame of Kya’s screen door. Ed stood on the brick-’n’-board steps, cupping his hands on the mesh to see inside. Enormous limbs of the oak, hung with long strands of Spanish moss, cast shadows on the weathered boards and pointy roof of the shack. Only gray patches of sky blinked through the late November morning.

“Of course she’s not here. It doesn’t matter; we have a search warrant. Just go on in, bet it isn’t locked.”

Joe opened the door, calling out, “Anybody home? Sheriff here.” Inside, they stared at the shelves of her menagerie.

“Ed, lookit all this stuff. It keeps goin’ in the next room yonder, and on down the hall. Looks like she’s a bit off her rocker. Crazy as a three-eyed rat.”

“Maybe, but apparently she’s quite an expert on the marsh. You know she published those books. Let’s get busy. Okay, here’re the things to look for.” The sheriff read out loud from a short list. “Articles of red-wool clothing that might match the red fibers found on Chase’s jacket. A diary, calendar, or notes, something that might mention places and times of her whereabouts; the shell necklace; or stubs from those night buses. And let’s not mess up her stuff. No reason to do that. We can look under, around everything; don’t need to ruin any of this.”

“Yeah, I hear ya. Almost like a shrine in here. Half a’ me’s impressed, the other half’s got the heebie-jeebies.”

“It’s going to be tedious, that’s for sure,” the sheriff said as he carefully looked behind a row of bird nests. “I’ll start back in her bedroom.”

The men worked silently, pushing clothes around in drawers, poking in closet corners, shifting jars of snakeskins and sharks’ teeth in search of evidence.

After ten minutes, Joe called, “Come look at this.”

As Ed entered the porch, Joe said, “Did ya know that female birds only got one ovary?”

“What’re ya talking about?”

“See. These drawings and notes show that female birds only got one ovary.”

“Dang it, Joe. We’re not here for a biology lesson. Get back to work.”

“Wait a second. Look here. This is a male peacock feather, and the note says that over eons of time, the males’ feathers got larger and larger to attract females, till the point the males can barely lift off the ground. Can’t hardly fly anymore.”

“Are you finished? We have a job to do.”

“Well, it’s very interesting.”

Ed walked from the room. “Get to work, man.”



* * *



? ? ?

TEN MINUTES LATER, Joe called out again. As Ed walked out of the small bedroom, toward the sitting room, he said, “Let me guess. You found a stuffed mouse with three eyes.”

There was no reply, but when Ed walked into the room, Joe held up a red wool hat.

“Where’d you find that?”

“Right here, hangin’ on this row of hooks with these coats, other hats, and stuff.”

“In the open like that?”

“Right here like I said.”

From his pocket, Ed pulled out the plastic bag containing the red fibers taken from Chase’s denim jacket the night he died and held it against the red hat.

“They look exactly the same. Same color, same size and thickness,” Joe said as both men studied the hat and sample.

“They do. Both of them have fuzzy beige wool mixed in with the red.”

“Man, this could be it.”

“We’ll have to send the hat to the lab, of course. But if these fibers match, we’ll bring her in for questioning. Bag and label the hat.”

After four hours of searching, the men met in the kitchen.

Stretching his back, Ed said, “I reckon if there’s anything else, we would’ve found it by now. We can always come back. Call it a day.”

Maneuvering the ruts back to town, Joe said, “Seems like if she’s guilty of this thing, she woulda hidden the red cap. Not just hung it in the open like that.”

“She probably had no idea fibers would fall off the hat onto his jacket. Or that the lab could identify them. She just wouldn’t know something like that.”

“Well, she might not a’ known that, but I bet she knows a bunch. Those male peacocks struttin’ around, competin’ so much for sex, they can’t hardly fly. I ain’t sure what it all means, but it adds up to something.”





35.