The storm raged, the shadows shifted, darkened. She checked her watch; 1:00 a.m. Wylie hated these quiet moments. It felt like the entire world was asleep except for her. The moment the dove-colored light peeked between the edges of the curtains, she would relax. She would close her eyes, and for just a moment, she would be like everyone else.
Wylie awoke to the creak of floorboards. She blinked sleepily to find the child sitting on the floor next to the fire, his back to her.
Something fell from the boy’s fingers and fluttered to the floor. Photos of throats slit open, broken teeth, empty eye sockets. Oh, no, Wylie thought. He had found the crime scene photos. The boy stumbled to his feet and he ran from the room. Wylie jumped from the sofa to follow him. He barely made it to the bathroom before his stomach tilted and heaved and bile, hot and sour, erupted from his mouth.
The boy retched until there was nothing left in his stomach.
“You shouldn’t have seen those,” Wylie said from just outside the darkened bathroom. “I’m so sorry. They’re for my work. I’m a writer.”
The boy climbed into the small space between the wall and the toilet and covered his face with his hands.
Wylie lingered in the doorway for a moment, and when it was clear that the boy wasn’t going to come out of the bathroom, she returned to the living room.
How could Wylie adequately explain what those awful images were for? There were no words. He thought she was a monster, and any chances of getting the boy to trust her were now lost.
14
August 2000
From her hiding spot in the field, Josie fought the urge to run. He could be lying in wait, poised to pounce the minute she moved. So Josie waited. She waited for something to happen, for someone to help, to come to find her. She kept willing her father or mother to push their way through the stalks, but they didn’t appear.
The clouds evaporated, and the moon stared garishly down at her. Josie kept time by its slow crawl across the sky. She fought back nausea, afraid that if she vomited, the person with the gun would hear her retching and discover her location. She couldn’t keep the tears from falling though, her body convulsed with silent sobs until her head pounded and jaw ached from forcing back the screams.
Josie shivered despite the heat of the night. The wound in her arm had stopped bleeding, but she could feel the nubby buckshot embedded in the fleshy part of her tricep.
She had stayed on her feet for as long as she could, but her muscles began to seize. The mosquitoes feasted on her bare skin, their bites like a thousand pinpricks. She finally crouched down, sat back on her heels, pulled her arms into her T-shirt and over her knees. The pain in her arm was a drumbeat. Miserable, Josie sat there like a plump corn flea beetle waiting for daylight.
With every soft rustle of the corn, her heart would boomerang from terror to hope. Someone had to have heard the gunshots. Sound traveled for miles through the countryside. Surely, someone would have heard the pop of gunfire, become alarmed and called the police. She half expected her father to appear, hold out his hand to help her up and take her home. But he never came. No one did.
Hours passed. The stars faded, and the sky above was slowly stripped of its nightclothes and replaced with gauzy veils of pink and tangerine. Josie’s mouth was dry and her tongue heavy with thirst. Every time she moved, a jolt coursed through her arm, and she whimpered with pain.
She had broken her ankle once when she was ten. She and Becky were hopping across the maze of round hay bales in her field when she misjudged the distance to the next bale of hay and tumbled six feet to the hard-packed earth.
That pain was intense—but nothing compared to being shot. When Josie could no longer stand the fullness of her bladder, she unfolded herself from the cocoon of her T-shirt and stood. Using only one hand, she awkwardly pulled down her shorts and relieved herself, urging the unending stream of urine to hurry up.
Josie was so thirsty that she was tempted to step out of the field to get a drink of water but couldn’t bring herself to leave the camouflage the corn provided. She tried to keep time by the movement of the shadows. She wanted to lie down and sleep but was afraid that the gunman would find her.
A dry, papery crackle moved through the field, and the corn shivered and swayed above her. Someone was coming. Panic clutched at her throat. She wouldn’t be able to outrun him; she had no weapon, no protection. Josie braced herself for what was coming.
But instead of someone crashing through the crops, a large black cloud swept over her head and dipped and rose and fell and rose again. Red-winged blackbirds, thick as smoke, making their annual migration through the fields, gathered on the stalks above her.