Harper Connelly Mysteries Quartet by Charlaine Harris

Author:Charlaine Harris
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US

Four

“SHE ever gonna wake up?” The speaker was Sandra Rockwell. I remembered her voice, but she sounded strange and strained.

“Harper?” my brother said. “Harper?”

I didn’t want to do this, but I had to.

“Okay,” I said, and it came out as wobbly as I felt. “You found them yet?”

“Tell me what to do,” Sheriff Rockwell said. She sounded as if she didn’t want to be there.

I had to open my eyes, and I had to look at the anxious brown eyes under the hat. Sheriff Rockwell was in a padded coat that made her look twice as large.

“They’re all there,” I said. “If you can wait a minute, I can tell you who’s where. And there are eight of them, not six.”

“How do you know that?”

I was sitting in the back seat of Twyla’s car, my head leaning against the cushion.

“Here, eat some sugar,” Tolliver said anxiously, working a piece of candy out of his jeans pocket. He unwrapped it for me, and popped it in my mouth. I knew from experience that I would feel better in a few minutes, especially if I had a Coke.

“You were willing to believe me before I did anything,” I said. “Have a little more faith. Dig for them.”

“If you’re lying, your ass will end up in jail,” she said.

“And I would deserve it.”

With a lot of effort, I turned my head to look out the car window. There were a couple of deputies standing on the site. Twyla was with them. The expression on her face would have made the most jaded con man weep—or maybe not. In our travels, in my line of work, we’ve met a few con men, and they almost all have no empathy. It’s just not in their emotional repertoire.

“Come show me,” Sheriff Rockwell said, and Tolliver helped me out of the car. Slowly we made our way to the place where I’d fainted, and though I was shaking all over because I would have to feel the death again, I stood on the spot where I’d sensed the most recent body.

“Here,” I said, pointing straight down. I knew who it was, too. This was the body of Jeff, Twyla’s grandson. Tolliver got out a spiral-bound notebook he had zipped in his jacket. He’d sketched a very rough outline of the site. “This is Jeff, Jeff McGraw,” I told Tolliver. “He was strangled.” Tolliver stuck a length of wire in the ground. The red flag flapped a little in the stiff breeze. He put his left arm around me and took my right hand in his. I nodded in the direction we should go, a little uphill and to the north, and I centered myself above another corpse. Tears began rolling down my cheeks…I’d never encountered such suffering. “Here,” I said. “Chester.” Two yards farther, we had a boy Sheriff Rockwell hadn’t mentioned. “This is someone named something like—Chad, Chad something that begins with a T.” The sheriff was scribbling in her own notebook. The deputies were listening, too, but they were completely skeptical and not a little angry.

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