On Emma's Bluff by Sara Elizabeth Rice, edited by davebccanada (audio ebook reader txt) 📕

The first day back at school had been rough. Classmates were still avoiding her. She had kind of expected this, but when she did feel some one's gaze upon her, she would turn only to find Bill's cold stare. He seemed unconcerned with Joy's presence or her complaints for that matter. All day he kept a close watch on Emma. In his own mind he was still unsure why he felt such a compulsion.

"No, he doesn't think that," Cindy had repeated time after time as Emma began to go on again.

"He said so."

"You must have misunderstood him."

"Do you think so," Emma would say and around they would go again.

"Don't be stupid Emma, how could he possibly think something like that.   It was in your dream. So, you performed some weird ritual in your bathroom by yourself. That means alone. And except for me, who happens to be your very best friend, there is no reason Bill or anyone else for that matter even knows about this. There is no reason anyone would have for blaming you."

"Except for Barbara Lee..." Em's voice was very soft.

"What the, you aren't making any sense."

"Barbara Lee would blame me."

"Fuck Barbara Lee," Cindy startled her own self with this outburst.   "Barbara Lee was not a nice person, Emma, and if she had lived she would have fed you to the dogs. She was determined to make her folks hate you.   You just feel guilt because she happened to die before she could do that.   Understandably you had been feeling a lot of anger toward her just before her death. Emma, some guilt is reasonable, it's just that now you are blowing it all out of proportion, that's all."

Her friend's word rang out as true. "You are probably right, Cindy. All of this seems like it happened to someone else, not me. It is like I am trying to look through a smoky bottle."

"Of course, Emma, you don't expect to snap back from such a shocker of death so easily, do you?"

"Arghhh, Cindy," she hollered so loud and so suddenly that Cindy jumped in her seat. "I need to get stoned." The familiar old words and tone sounded great after spending a week of brow beating.

"Well, why didn't you say so sooner?" Cindy laughed. She reached under her seat. "Why don't you roll, I'll drive."

The day Beth Riggins left the hospital in the company of her parents was the day that Harvey Johnson went to visit Lacey Caine. Harvey had pulled up in front of Lacey's house and was waiting when the mechanic got home from work. Swinging a six-pack, Lacey waved to the Marshall to come on in as he made a quick hop to the porch and searched his pocket for his key.

"How ya doing, Lacey?" Harvey hitched up his pants by his pant loops.

"Fine, and yourself?" Lacey swung the front door open and waited for Harvey to join him.

"Some would say fine and some would say not so fine." Harvey chuckled awkwardly to himself.

"Is that so?" Lacey followed the larger man into his own house and flipped on a light switch. The two men stood observing each other skeptically for a moment before Lacey broke away to put the beer in the fridge.

"You wanna beer?" he called from the kitchen.

"No thanks." The Marshall followed Lacey into the kitchen and filled the doorway as Lacey pulled his first can from the six-pack. "I really need some help."

"Still nothing, no clues?" Lacey remarked, wiping his mouth after taking his first chug.

"Well let's just say not enough." The truth was nothing. Except for the actual murders, there were no clues. No fingerprints, no clear-cut motives, no descriptions, there was nothing to follow. What could he tell his men? That the only witness saw a rotting corpse tear the head of a victim and toss it, this would never do. No there were not clues. Since Red had been killed so near Lacey's Harvey was hoping there was some clue over looked here. "I just thought I would take a look around your place again. That is if you don't mind?" he said vaguely.

"You wanna search the place?" Lacey asked helpfully.

"Yeah, if you don't mind." Harvey was slightly uncomfortable. "It's not like official or nothing. It's really more to refresh me. Maybe I will pick up on the scent that had Red watching this place, you know." Once Harvey got started he fumbled over his words. All the maps and studies and lab work had turned up nothing. Five people had been brutally murdered in Sunflower County and there just were no clues.

"Sure, look around all you like." Lacey gestured with the hand in which he held his beer. He drank with excessive gulps.

"At this rate he will be drunk before I leave here," Harvey observed, but to Lacey he only said, "Thanks, I appreciate your co-operation. If you can just show me the layout of the house..." Harvey had no idea what he was looking for.

"This is the kitchen," Lacey said dumbly and started on his second beer.

Harvey pivoting about noted the absence of a window curtain. "Can you see any part of the road from this window?" By the time he had asked this though he had already crossed to the window and observed that he could see no part of the road. "That just more woods over that ridge?"

"Yep." Lacey puckered his bottom lip and nodded.

Harvey dropped into a squatting position and opened the cabinet under the sink.

"I ain’t even looked under there in about three years," Lacey said. His second beer was increasing his wit. A rusty mound of what probably had once been scrub pads huddled under the sink drain. The back corner sported a pile of shredded paper.

"You got mice."

"No kidding.."

Harvey decided to skip the rest of the kitchen cabinets, surely they had been gone over well before and after Red's murder. He was more interested in the lay out of the house, hidden spaces/ rooms perhaps. What had Red been doing out here watching this place?

What was on to Red that had killed him? Harvey figured to do a rough walk through of the house and then go outside to the spot where Red's car had been found. Maybe from there he could see what Red had seen.

They walked quickly through the living room, Harvey's large form having a bit more difficulty maneuvering between the furniture than Lacey's wiry shape. The hall down the center of the house had the typical two doors to the left, two doors to the right.

The first door on the left was the small cramped bathroom. Its high small window faced the back yard. The first door on the right was the storage room or so it seemed. Crumpled boxes and clutter packed the room. Somewhere underneath the boxes Harvey made out what appeared to be a feather bed. Harvey's search of this room was only perfunctory. He was beginning to feel the senselessness of his whole idea.

"This here's my room." Lacey's voice split the air as he threw open the far left door. From the look on Lacey's face Harvey didn't know if he should compliment him or just look shocked.

"Nice room, " Harvey mumbled and the obvious ridiculousness of this statement flushed his ears a bright red. The room was simply tacky. A faded chenille bedspread was lumpy over on top of a bed that could only be considered 'modern' in the 1950's. Metal foil, missing in places, outlined the sliding bookcases on the headboard. Matching end tables flanked the side of the bed.

The side which Lacey used, Harvey stopped and realized he could think of no one who would want to occupy the other side, sported a gaudy oversized ceramic lamp with no shade. It had been cast to look like a topless hula girl. Assorted magazines, sport, mechanics, raunchy girlie ones, over flowed the end table. A hideous green chair, its back shaped like the letter 'C' perched crookedly in one corner. One of its long wooden legs angled unreliably beneath it. The dissoluteness of the room strongly depressed Harvey. He started to just leave the house and the deteriorating little man then and there, but something not unlike common courtesy forced him to go through the motion of completing the search.

"What's in here?" he asked Lacey who was now leaning in the doorway.

"Used to be Grandma' s room." Lacey answered flatly. "Not much to see in there." Lacey blocked Harvey's entrance into the room. "Sure you don't want to drop this and take me up on that offer for a brewski?"

Harvey pushed Lacey gently to the side and opened the door. The first thing that struck was the contrast between this fine old room, laden with rich, though dusty, antiques and the rest of the house. The second thing that struck him was the crumpled young body propped up against the side of the bedpost. The face was a swollen mass of flesh not really recognizable. Entrails had been pulled from the body cavity and draped grotesquely around the neck. Harvey Johnson snapped out of his suspended horror in time to see Lacey vomit into his own shoes...

Cindy had a hard time prying her hand from the phone. "I can not believe what he is saying," she thought "I must be missing something."

"Would you mind repeating that," she said.

"Cindy, I have been through this twice already."

"Jim, Please!"

"Fine, what ever. I said you know that Emma Lewis, right? I met her the night of the Halloween party. She’s a friend of yours, right?

"You know that, now go on." She was getting impatient.

"So I was sitting in the Pizza Hut in Yazoo with Karen Glass. And if you recall I did ask you out first."

"Jim!"

"Calm down, tiger." The rich bass tones of his voice rumbled when he laughed. "So we were sitting there when Bill and Joy came in. I guess since Joy and Karen immediately started awful screeching of hellos, like they hadn't seen each other in twenty years. Why do girls do that?"

"Jim you are dragging this out just to be cruel."

"Anyway they ended up sitting with us. I guess I am just dense because it didn't quite hit me at first how quiet Bill was being. But who could notice with those two girls talking up a storm. But then I noticed after the pizza came that he was sort of staring real hard right at me."

"Did Joy notice?"

"No, she is so used to him just being there with her she hardly looked at him. Still I bet she couldn't have been prepared for what he did next. Like see I was getting uncomfortable with his staring at me so I started to make conversation about school and things...you know real casually."

"Did he say anything then?"

"Not much just some nods and monosyllable replies. But then out of the blue he said, "I saw the way you were looking at Emma at the Halloween party." I actually heard Joy swallow her bite of pizza in one gulp. Then no one said anything for about a minute. I mean I didn't know what to say back to that. I never got a chance to say anything because then he leans over across the table and