River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(7)

“All set?” she asked.

Vicky nodded and handed Becca the scalpel.



Becca wiped her brow. The procedure had taken a little longer than expected, but overall, she was satisfied with the results. The piece of the tennis ball had been removed from the dog’s stomach. She’d been stitched, and now she was resting comfortably in recovery.

After Becca spoke with Stephanie on the phone, she made her way out the back exit of the building. The dogs in the kennel barked their greeting. As promised, she let them out to run.

For a while she watched as they sniffed one another, marked the corner wall with their scent, frolicked up and down the runway. Occasionally, Polly, the boxer-and-bulldog mix, would stop for a pat on the head.

She watched the dogs for several more minutes until her legs grew tired from standing. She slid down the brick wall, sat on the cold cement slab. The muscles in her back ached. She never could loosen up and relax during surgery, not like some of the other vets she’d worked with in the past. They had played the radio, chatted amicably, all the while slicing and stitching.

But the tension she was experiencing now, the knots between her shoulder blades, was coming from a different source, a different kind of pressure. She pulled out her cell phone. She couldn’t avoid him any longer. When the hacking cough subsided on the other end of the line, she said, “Dad, it’s me. It’s Becca.”



Eight-year-old Becca sat next to her father in his pickup truck as they made their way down the windy country road heading toward home. It was late July, and the sun had dropped behind the mountain, but the heat was still coming off the macadam in waves. Dusk took its time, yawning across the cornfields. The windows were rolled down, and the sticky air swirled in the breeze, offering little relief. Becca’s father pinched a homemade cigarette between his lips. He was forever rolling his own tobacco, rolling and smoking the cancer sticks like a never-ending assembly line. She turned her head away from the smell that lingered on his clothes, in his hair, on his breath.

“Aw, what the hell is this?” he asked, braking at the sight of a car that was half in the gutter, the other half blocking the lane. The hood was gnarled and bent.

Becca sat up straight in the seat, peered out the windshield.

He pulled to the side of the road and parked several feet behind the disabled car. “You wait here,” he said. “Don’t get out of the truck. Do you hear?”

She nodded, not looking at him, staring at the scene ahead, her heart pattering nervously inside her chest.

A woman scrambled out of the back seat as Becca’s father approached.

“Help me,” she said, flailing her arms, the fat of her triceps flapping back and forth. Sweat stained the collar of her shirt. “It’s my daughter. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” She clung to Becca’s father’s arm.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.” He took her hands off of him. He used his police chief’s voice, the one that sounded deeper, authoritative, in charge. Although he was off duty, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, in Becca’s eyes he could very well have been dressed in his chief’s uniform, the one that made everything about him feel bigger and stronger, more powerful than an ordinary man.

“I want you to tell me what happened,” he said and ducked his head into the back seat of the car while the woman flitted about, her words jumbled and unclear, but Becca distinctly heard her say deer.

Becca pulled herself farther up in the seat, hands on the dash, straining to see what he was doing. In one swift movement, he removed a small child, a little girl, maybe four years old, from her car seat. Her face was pale, her eyes wide. Her too-short bangs were sweaty and pasted to her forehead. Becca’s father turned so all Becca could see was his back, his large arms wrapped around the child’s torso. He made one quick motion, and the child coughed and started to cry.

“Your daughter was choking,” he said and handed the little girl to her mother as though it had been nothing.

“Thank you. Thank you. I don’t know how to thank you.” The woman with the fat arms clung to her daughter, kissed her daughter’s cheeks over and over again. The child continued sobbing on her mother’s shoulder.

Becca couldn’t take her eyes off her father, her chest swelling, expanding far and wide as though she’d swallowed the whole of a summer sky. Unable to stay in the pickup any longer for fear she’d burst, she jumped out of the truck as her father walked around to the front of the woman’s car. Becca came to stand next to him, close, so that his arm brushed hers as he reached under the hood.

“I thought I told you to stay in the truck,” he said.

She looked up at him, having to tilt her head way back to see his face.

“Ma’am,” he called, peering into the engine and ignoring Becca. “You’re going to need a tow.”

Becca watched him fiddle under the hood until something caught her attention out of the corner of her eye. She stared into the cornfield where the stalks had been flattened. She moved slowly toward it, lured by curiosity. Behind her, the woman rocked her child while Becca’s father talked about the engine, but Becca wasn’t listening to what he was saying. The blood-splattered leaves beckoned her farther and farther into the corn rows. She couldn’t stop herself; she had to know, to see the animal for herself. The deer, a doe, lay on its side, panting. Its eyes seemed to lock on to Becca as if it knew she wouldn’t hurt it, as though it trusted her to help.