She was just getting a grip on the rope when she froze. She had neither seen nor heard anything untoward, yet was conscious of the rapid beating of her heart, the tensing of the muscles in her legs, and the piloerection reflex as the tiny muscles at the base of each hair follicle contracted, covering her with goose bumps.
Fear, unlike any she had ever experienced before.
Kellett released the rope and reached for her gun, crossing her right hand over her left so beam and weapon moved in unison. As she did so, she retreated to the cover of the spruce nearest the hole, conscious that the flashlight made her an easier target if she remained in the open.
‘Sheriff’s deputy,’ she shouted. ‘This area is restricted. You’re trespassing on a crime scene.’
Kellett listened but received no response, only the sound of rain falling on leaf, branch, and dirt. She drew a deep breath, and tried to determine the source of the threat. She was facing back down the trail toward her vehicle, and could see no activity in that direction. She was relying entirely on atavistic instinct by now, but her best guess was that whatever had spooked her was to the south or west of her position, because it had been behind her when she was dealing with the guy line.
She risked a look round the trunk of the tree and saw a figure clearly silhouetted between two trees, on a rise to the south of the site. Despite the bulk of its outdoor clothing, and the distance involved, Kellett was certain she was looking at a woman. Then, seconds later, the figure turned and was gone.
Kellett released a breath. Just a rubbernecker. No one worth chasing. She’d make a note of it in her log, and warn Mel Wight when he arrived to relieve her, just so he’d know to keep an eye out.
She was putting her gun back in its holster when she heard a wet, sliding sound from behind, followed by a splash as something landed in the mud and water at the base of the grave. Only then did she notice her goose bumps had not disappeared, and her heartbeat had not slowed. She drew the gun again, and quietly shifted position, stepping softly around the tree until the gravesite was revealed to her.
The canvas continued to flap, and the rain fell, so her view of what lay beneath was partial and restricted. But she could detect movement in the dirt, as though some large animal were digging in an effort to conceal itself from the approach of a predator.
Flap.
And she could feel its fear, because it was so much like her own, and discern its shape, because this also resembled hers. It lay curled in the depression left by the body of the dead woman, and although the dimensions had been altered by the removal of the remains and the subsequent search for the child, still it seemed to fit the cavity with ease.
Flap.
And now it appeared to become aware of a threat more imminent than the one from which it had fled, and as it turned its face toward Kellett she discerned the rot of it, and the hollow concavities of its eyes, and its belly, both distended yet withered, and all it was and all it might once have been. Yet it was not a thing composed entirely of bone and old skin: Kellett saw wood and ivy, twigs and small animal bones, as though it had been forced to scavenge to complete itself. It opened its mouth as a beast might in order to shriek an alarm or growl a warning.
Flap.
And then it was moving again, digging deeper into the bank, exposing a hole either recently made or previously unknown, and into this it dragged itself, its body contorting with serpentine paroxysms, until all that remained visible was the sole of a foot, a spur of bone exposed at the heel, before this, too, was gone, and the mud and dirt slid down to fill the gap behind, so it was as if it had never been, its presence in this world no more than the conjuring of an unquiet mind, even as the consciousness that had imagined it, Kellett’s own, grew dim, and she fell back against the tree and let it support her as she dropped to the ground, where she sat, conscious yet unseeing, until the arrival of Mel Wight’s vehicle summoned her from her stupor, and she descended to meet him, but said nothing, beyond a distant figure glimpsed, of what she had witnessed.
45
The birth rate in Maine had been falling consistently over the previous decade, which still left Parker with almost thirteen thousand registered live births for the year in which the ‘Woman in the Woods’ had died. In the quiet of his home office, he opened a map of Piscataquis in his Maine Atlas and Gazetteer, marked the location of the gravesite, then placed the point of a compass on the dot and drew a circle with a generous radius of approximately fifteen miles. The circle did not break the borders of the county.
If he was correct in his assumption of local knowledge – and it seemed reasonable to begin with that and expand the search only if necessary – then he was now looking at just one hundred and sixty registered births during the year in question. This could be narrowed still further, Parker believed, thanks to his visit to the grave: the body had been buried three feet below ground, which was a considerable depth, and suggested the work of an individual operating with little or no fear of being disturbed. But digging a hole of that size and draft wouldn’t be possible during the deepest winter months as the ground would just be too hard, so he could probably exclude children registered in December and January. He was tempted to exclude February too, but decided to err on the side of caution: ground cold enough to preserve a body, then, yet not so cold as to be unworkable.
But in addition to births, more than two hundred legal adoptions of children were processed through the public child welfare agency in Maine for the same period, and many more using licensed private agencies. With the birth rate as a gauge, this meant registered legal adoptions in Piscataquis County probably didn’t amount to more than a handful, and he could rule out any children whose age at adoption was outside his parameters.
All of which presupposed that the person responsible for burying the mother had chosen to hide his or her tracks either by registering the birth under another woman’s name, or had come up with a story convincing enough to result in a formal adoption. Neither, Parker knew, would have been particularly difficult, but he decided to examine the simpler of the two options first, which was to register the birth.
Under the state’s revised statutes, one of four individuals was required to prepare and file a certificate for a birth occurring outside a hospital or institution: a physician or other person in attendance at the birth; the father; the mother; or the person in charge of the premises where the live birth took place, which could be anyone from a hotel proprietor to the guy who ran the local gas station. If the mother was not married at either conception or birth, the details of the putative father could not be entered on the certificate without both his written consent and that of the mother.