Every Single Secret(70)

Less than a dozen yards into the woods, Cerny stopped. I did too, then covered my mouth. The body lay on the ground, partly covered by brush and leaves. I could see, even from where I stood, who it was. But only from what she wore, the same thing she’d been dressed in the other day at the creek—black yoga pants and top. The yellow baseball cap on the ground a couple of feet away. The breeze lifted strands of her hair. Her face was a waxy greenish blue, an unrecognizable, bloated mass.

I took one more step forward, caught a whiff of decay, then stopped, suppressing the automatic response of sick that rose in my throat.

“She was hanging up there,” Cerny said beside me, and automatically, I looked up at the oak tree. I wished I hadn’t. There was a length of rusted chain hanging from the lowest branch. It looked a lot like the chain that had been wound around the barn doors. “She must’ve hanged herself.”

I lurched back and vomited into the leaves. When I was done, I sat down, gasping and wiping tears and snot and vomit. When I stood again, I felt Heath’s hand on my shoulder, leaning on me for support.

“Are you okay?” he asked me in a low voice.

I nodded. “It’s her. It’s Glenys.”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, then pulled me back toward the car, a couple of yards away from Cerny and Glenys’s still form. I grasped his jacket, two fistfuls, and held on to him as tightly as I could.

“Do you think he killed her?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. But we have to get down to Dunfree. Report it to the police there.”

“The car is wrecked. My knee feels like a truck ran over it. We can’t walk down to Dunfree.”

My eyes cut to Cerny. “We could take his car. Or one of the others.”

Heath shook his head. “And let him get away? No fucking way. Let’s just get him back to the house and see that he’s . . . I don’t know, secured, I guess. He seems pretty distraught. Maybe if we just talk to him, he’ll stay put. I’ll get a bag of ice on my knee. We’ll call the police and then, when they show up, get the hell out of here.”

The temperature was falling, and I felt a few drops of rain hit me. It had gotten colder, just in the time we’d been out here. I felt myself begin to shiver uncontrollably.

“The whole thing is just wrong,” I said.

Heath glanced over at the doctor. “Agreed. The guy’s a kook—and, I don’t know, maybe he even had something to do with this whole . . . Glenys situation—but either way, we need to let the police handle it.”

He was right. I knew he was, but the last thing I wanted to do was go back to that house.

“Don’t worry.” Heath touched my face. “I may have a bum knee, but he’s old. If he tries anything . . . if he tries to hurt you, I’ll beat the ever-loving shit out of him.”

Heath gestured at Cerny to get his attention. “It’s going to take the police a good half hour to get up here,” he yelled. “We’ll go back to the house and wait there with you. It’s getting cold. And dark.”

“We can’t leave her. There are animals . . .” Cerny’s voice trailed off.

Oh my God.

Heath snapped at the doctor. “Cover her with your jacket, if you want.”

Cerny shucked off his tweed jacket and Heath hobbled through the leaves and draped it over the upper half of Glenys’s body. A makeshift shroud. Would that really keep the animals off her? I didn’t know how these things worked—these very basic, human events of life and death and nature. Other than Chantal in her nest of white satin, I’d never seen a dead person.

“Go get your car. Wait for us up at the road,” Heath said to Cerny, who nodded like an obedient child and lumbered away. I pulled open the door of the Nissan, scooped the knife out of the door pocket, and held it up.

“Okay,” Heath said dubiously.

“Just in case.” I slid the blade between my wool sock and boot, then pulled my jeans over the handle. I offered him an arm. “One of us should have a weapon.”

Cerny drove us back up to the house, disappeared into his office for several minutes, then rejoined us in the front hall. “Dunfree police are on the way.” He raked a hand through his wet hair.

I glanced at Heath. “Maybe we should call too.”

Cerny handed his phone to Heath, who limped into the library to make the call.

“I’m sorry for running out in the road,” Cerny said. “For behaving so . . . erratically. I was distraught. Not thinking straight.” He shook his head. “I didn’t expect to find her in that state.”

The image of Glenys flashed into my brain. Her body covered by Cerny’s tweed jacket, anointed by the freezing rain, slowly stiffening, cold under the low white clouds, the dampness soaking to her skin. The temperature would probably plunge tonight—the first drop of the fall—but it would be okay, the police would get to her before then. They would zip her up in one of those black bags, and she would be protected from the cold and wet.

I wanted to ask him who she really was and why she’d lied to me, but that would have to wait for when the police arrived. For now, I just wanted to make sure Heath was comfortable and keep this maniac as calm as possible.

The doctor sighed and scrubbed at his eyes. “I could use a drink. Join me?”

“Yeah, no,” I said with a twist of my lips. “No drink for me.”