Chapter Forty-Eight

Raven wasn’t finished with what Edmée would have called ‘the sneaking around’, but she wasn’t completely reckless. She called Stella and asked for an appointment to chat about the case. Raven told her that she had more questions about the process, piqued her interest by telling her that she needed to discuss a particular individual with her, something she couldn’t do over the phone. Stella responded that she would be delighted to speak with her, but not that evening. She had a previous commitment that would take her away from the farm that night. They would have their chat in the morning, when, Stella said, she would have a nice pot of tea waiting for her. The heavens had finally smiled down in Raven’s favor. No one would be at the farm that night but the sheep, and they wouldn’t tell.

She drove straight to Stella’s in what had now become a driving rain. She picked the lock to the farmhouse door in half the time it took her to pick Speck’s. Alone and without the distraction of Stevenson breathing down her neck, Raven walked into the living room. She wondered how she had missed it. There was the sofa covered in pink tea-roses, the ladder-back chair and the pot-bellied stove. The magazines on the wooden coffee table were alphabetized by title.

But it was those boots that sealed the woman’s guilt, there, drying in front of the stove, the same ones that Stella wore when she greeted Raven and Stevenson from the front porch days ago. Raven walked over to the boots, studied them carefully. They were Ariat, the same type of boot that left the print they found at the Memorial crime scene.

She strolled to the back of the house, where she assumed the bedrooms would be located, which indeed they were. Two of them. She cautiously called Noe’s name. Nothing but a queen-sized bed covered with an old quilt, and a lone nightstand in the first one. A framed Ansel Adams print hung above the bed. The other was a guest room with only a twin bed and a nightstand with a lone lamp. She walked back to the living room and then to the kitchen. Empty except for dinner dishes dripping on the drain board.

She left by the back door to be welcomed by the sheep bleating in the rain. Raven ran her flashlight over them as they huddled together for comfort. In the abattoir all the doors had been rolled down over the once-open wall, and the place was dark and eerie. The doors weren’t locked. Raven rolled them up and entered but didn’t find dead boys hanging from the black chains in the ceiling. And aside from being a place for slaughtering animals, it was as clean as a newly buffed floor.

Outside the rain poured down. Raven was beginning to wonder if she had once again been killing precious time when she remembered something on the first visit. That old wooden trunk along the side of the house. Stevenson had almost fallen face first in the mud when he tripped over it. When she had asked Morning about it, she said she didn’t use it but hadn’t gotten around to removing it. Raven wondered why a woman as organized as Stella would let an old farm box linger.

Raven walked around the house until she found the box. There it was, beneath the kitchen window. Raven kicked the latch with her feet. There didn’t appear to be a lock on it. She bent down, lifted the heavy lid. She thought she smelled something rotten before the rain drove it away. Running her flashlight inside, she bent to get a closer look.

As she inspected the box, she felt a blow to the back of her head. She tumbled into the box face first. She touched the back of her neck and came away with blood on her fingertips. She looked up. There stood Stella shining a flashlight down on Raven. “Nosey, nosey, pokey, pokey,” she said. “I’d love to gut you right now. I wouldn’t even stun you first. But it looks like I’ve got some cleanup to do. Stay there and be a good girl until I get back.”

“Wait!” Raven said, trying to stand, but Morning kicked her with an Ariat boot that she must have put on when Raven was poking around in the abattoir. Raven fell onto her back. Morning slammed the lid shut. With all her might, Raven tried to keep her eyes open, but much stronger than her was the darkness clamoring to claim her.