The Black Coats(20)
Thea had looked away, knowing she was being ridiculous. But then as Natalie had turned back to the car and stretched out her lean body, Thea had felt a jolt go through her as her cousin’s shirt rose up. Natalie had a belly button ring. She hadn’t even told Thea about it. For some reason, seeing that winking jewel broke something inside her. Tears gathered in Thea’s eyes, uninvited and babyish. Her heart gave a painful twist at the knowledge that they didn’t know everything about each other anymore. Natalie had moved on.
“I’ll see you later, Thea,” she had said.
Thea had turned her head away. “Whatever.”
The last thing she had said to Natalie was “Whatever.”
Thea had headed home, and Natalie had taken off for her weekend in Sam Houston National Forest with her new friends.
A few days later, Thea was stretching her legs on the track, curly hair pressed up against her shins, when she heard a familiar voice. She looked up to see her mom standing next to Coach Vaughn. Her mom’s face was twisted in pain, and her coach was covering his mouth, his eyes leaking tears. When Thea started walking toward them, he turned away to give them privacy, and that was when she knew something was very wrong. A sob caught in her throat. “Mom! Is Dad okay?”
Her mom nodded once. “Dad’s okay. But . . .” Her mom pulled her aside and they sat down on the benches, the blindingly hot Texas sun simmering above them. Her mom stared at Thea for a long moment before she pulled her daughter close. “Thea, something happened to Natalie.”
Thea looked at her mom’s face, knowing the truth even before she asked it. “Is she going to be okay?”
Her mom shook her head, her voice so high-pitched that it was almost a wail. “No, baby, she’s not.” That’s when Thea broke, when the shell that was her happiness collapsed and exposed her raw to every shitty feeling a person could ever have.
Thea drifted through life in a fog for the next few days as details about her cousin’s death gradually emerged. They had found Natalie floating in a muddy creek seventy-two miles outside of Austin. Lying facedown beneath a cluster of cypress trees, the top half of her body was almost submerged under their rotted roots, her back coated with wet leaves. The official cause of death was ruled as asphyxiation, most likely involving strangulation, as evidenced by the contusions on her neck. The back of her head showed a large laceration and there were signs of blunt-force trauma as well as multiple bruises on her face. There was no evidence of sexual assault.
The police struggled to piece together what had happened. The investigation later revealed that Natalie had met some friends at a campsite in Sam Houston National Forest on August 6. They’d set up tents and spent the day drinking at the lake. By that evening they had ended up at a dive bar named Bitter Sand just outside the forest. Natalie had met a young man named Cabby Baptist at the bar. According to statements from numerous witnesses, the two of them sat talking and drinking for a long time.
“He looked,” reported her friend, who during their flirtation had been off in a corner with a conquest of her own, “like a surfer.” Natalie and Cabby had decided to leave together, and her friends had watched her go. Natalie had gotten into her own car and then followed his small white pickup truck out of the parking lot at around 11:00 p.m.
Then she had disappeared. When Natalie didn’t come back to the campsite the next day, her friends started calling around. Finally, late in the evening on August 7, they called Natalie’s parents, who reported her missing. The police didn’t get involved until the next day, but by then it was too late. That same day, an hour’s drive away from the bar, near San Antonio Prairie, an elderly rancher noticed his Australian shepherd digging at something near the bank of the creek. He thought it was maybe a snake. It was Natalie. The rancher had quickly called the authorities. Her car was found inside Sam Houston National Forest. It was processed by forensics and came up clean.
According to Cabby Baptist, he had taken Natalie to his parents’ cabin, where they ate, chatted, and made out for a few hours before he had walked her back to the car. He swore it was both innocent and consensual. Unfortunately, the evidence was on his side, as a hidden wildlife camera set up by the forest service captured Natalie’s car leaving his house around the time given in his statement. His DNA was found on her body, but there was no forensic evidence of his having been in or around her vehicle. The footprints next to the creek bank did not match his shoe size.
Cabby Baptist boasted a clean record. During his interview, it was noted that his hands showed no sign of a struggle. There was also the question of motive: Why would Cabby let her leave his house only to chase her down and murder her later? It made no sense. Everything had happened so late at night that there were no other witnesses to confirm or deny his claim. Cabby had not been ruled out as a suspect, but the evidence was not strong enough to bring charges. After an exhaustive search, the murder was still listed as unsolved. The once-hungry press quickly lost interest, as was sadly the case when a black girl was murdered.
Thea had seen Cabby once, at the police station, his dark eyes staring soullessly down the hallway, slumped over and looking distressed. But when he had walked past Thea with his lawyers, he had given her a knowing smile. It had to have been him. No one else had been with her. It was him; Thea could feel in her heart that he had gotten away with murder.
The week after she heard the news had passed in a dreadful, dark blur, where Thea wondered if she had been the one who died. Everything was a terrible dream that just kept on going: the funeral at a local Methodist church, the closed casket at the front of the aisle, the stench of yellow Asiatic lilies permeating the air, Thea’s father struggling with the casket on his shoulder, his sobs loud enough for everyone to hear. The dim church, everyone hugging Thea and telling her how sorry they were, the very fabric of her black dress making her feel like she wanted to peel off her skin. Thea had made it through the funeral before running away from the procession out of the sanctuary, her tears blinding her as she ran all the way home. Her mom had found her lying facedown on Natalie’s front porch and cradled her in her arms, both of them sobbing together, unabashed and ugly. Cathartic. Thea had focused only on making it through the week, not knowing that the wasteland of grief awaited her on the other side.