Read Online Deep South by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online Page A

recovered their voices and began again to sing.
    Music swelled until the night grew close with it, and Anna felt a twinge of claustrophobia.
    The bricks were high enough she couldn't see over. Hoping there was nothing unutterably vile on the far side, she hauled herself up and swung one leg over to straddle the wall. Secure on her perch, she surveyed the tangled interior.
    The enclosure was about fifteen feet square. Without light, Anna could make out nothing but an uneven mass of midnight. From the rich, slightly spicy smell, she guessed it was rank with weeds. A fine place to hide a body, dead or alive.
    Near the west-facing wall were two narrow pale marks in the undergrowth.
    Legs. Bare legs. Gingerly Anna lowered herself into the square. Plants crushed beneath her feet, and she smelled the scent of honey and licorice. Feathery tops reached to her armpits.
    High-stepping like a woman walking in deep mud, she moved through the vine-clogged morass of plants.
    The South was thick with life, crowded with it. There was a feel of sentience to the soil, the night, the forest, and now this corral of graveyard grass, as if, by a will neither good nor evil but merely indifferent to human life, these things could swallow a woman up.
    Closer did not mean clearer. The darkness was too absolute. Bending down Anna touched the white smudge. Warm skin. This was good.
    Her touch brought forth a moan. Another sign of life. The leg was smooth and shaved and coated with nylon. The stench of alcohol and the sour smell of vomit overlay the sweet sweat of youth and cheap hairspray. A young girl, Anna guessed, and began to talk. "My name's Anna. I'm a ranger here. Are you hurt?" Moaning was the only reply. Then even that stopped. Anna knelt in the weeds, feeling them close overhead tickling her neck and arms.
    Tickling. Ticks. Ticks and the South were inseparable. The thought was fleeting, and she kept her attention on the girl under her hands.
    There was no need to check for breathing. The girl had subsided into a deep and stentorian rhythm. "I'm going to touch you," Anna said, "to see if you're hurt, okay?" With the fleeing boys and the smell of booze, sexual assault was a real possibility. Quick and sure from practice, Anna palpated neck, skull and, finally, the face, legs, abdomen, back and arms. Though her patient was unresponsive, Anna kept talking, a soothing stream of information to let her know whose hands were all over her body and why.
    The girl didn't seem to have sustained any serious wounds. Anna detected no deformities of bone or wetness of blood. Injury to the head was always a possibility, a blow that produced swelling inside the skull rather than out, but drunk was Anna's professional assessment. Dead, sick drunk.
    The little inebriate was wearing a silly strappy little number that was barely long enough to cover her rear end if she didn't sit down.
    Pantyhose were intact, and she had on one shoe. Anna's mood lifted.
    Rapists of drunken children were not known for replacing undergarments.
    Relief brought with it the luxury of irritation. "Oh for Christ's sake," Anna muttered. "What am I supposed to do with you?" A hand punched her feebly in the stomach making her jump. In a voice raspy with vomiting and crying her patient croaked: "Danny.
    Running. Running." And something that sounded like: "Are you going to you're nice..." The rest was a mumbled slur. "That's right," Anna said. "I'm nice. And we're going to." Going to what?
    She couldn't leave the girl in the weeds and ticks and, had she been assaulted, alone with her fears or possibly her attacker.
    Consumed with checking the child for injury, Anna hadn't given much thought to danger. Careless. Had the boys in tuxedos injured this girl, there was no reason they couldn't circle back and do further damage. For a moment Anna tried for fear, a spurt of adrenaline to give her a boost, but couldn't manage it. Anger was there, at the boys for leaving, at the girl for being young and