Read The Names of Our Tears for Free Online Page B

spread open on the ground beside her. Two Holmes County deputies stood back several paces, holding a collection of rakes, hoes, and shovels. There weren’t any other vehicles parked on the lane, so Niell concluded that all four attendants had come out with Taggert in her van.
    As the two assistants worked with Ruth Zook’s body, Taggert met Niell at the edge of the clearing and asked directly, “Ricky, did you get a chance to search for her finger?”
    “Not really, but we found a bullet and the casing.”
    They heard the finalizing rasp of a heavy zipper closing the body bag, and Niell and Taggert turned to look.
    With equal parts anger and frustration, Missy complained,“She’s very small, Ricky. Tiny. That horse must have broken every bone in her body.”
    Surprised by Taggert’s emotion, Niell said, “That doesn’t sound like you, Missy.”
    “She’s so young, Ricky. And small. It just tears me up to see young women like this. I need a vacation.”
    “The Zooks told me she was only nineteen,” Niell said. “She had gone down to Pinecraft for February and March. Her first Florida vacation. Worked in a little restaurant there.”
    Taggert’s assistants rolled a gurney into the clearing and loaded the body bag onto it. Then they rolled it to the back of Taggert’s truck, lifted it forward so that the legs folded against the bumper, and slid it on its rails into the back of the truck. When they had closed the doors, they stepped over to Niell and Taggert, and one of them asked, “Find the finger?”
    Missy nodded. “Start right where the body was lying, and work outward from there. It has to be here. Somewhere. Because the wound on her hand is fresh.” Then Missy sighed out frustration and added, “What I mean is, she hadn’t lost her finger earlier, so it still has to be here.”
    Thinking Taggert might say more, the assistants held to their place beside her on the lane. With uncharacteristic harshness, she waved them back to work. Eyeing Niell, they stepped away, took a hoe and a rake from the deputies, and began to work their way into the pulverized dirt and trampled weeds, where the horse had danced out its fright.
    Once they had started their search, Missy drew a cleansing breath, motioned Niell along, and said, “Let’s go talk with Pat.”
    Pat Lance finished her call as they approached. She flipped her cell phone closed and said, “That was Stan. Before he left the Zooks’, he stopped to ‘take a few samples.’ He’s on his way here, and he says he has something interesting.”
    “Like what, exactly?” Missy asked, sounding curt, almost disdainful.
    Niell arched an eyebrow, and Lance said, “He didn’t say.”
    Surprised again by Taggert’s display of emotion, Niell asked, “Are we finished with this buggy, Missy?”
    “For now,” Missy said, and rolled her shoulders to dump frustration. “We’ve been all through the thing, looking for her finger. Under the seat, in the back, floorboards and crevices, and it isn’t there.”
    “Can we have someone take it back to the Zooks’?” Niell asked.
    Taggert looked to Lance and back to Niell. She laughed unconvincingly, rubbed at her temples, and said, “Detective, I don’t think any of us knows how to drive a horse and buggy.”
    “I think I know someone who will help,” Niell said.
    “Mervin Byler?” Lance asked.
    Before Niell had answered, Stan Armbruster pulled in behind the buggy and got out holding a small Ziploc bag with a blue liquid inside. As he walked up beside the horse and buggy, he held out the bag and said, “On a hunch, I took some water samples. This last one came from almost a quarter mile downstream from the Zooks’ pond, but they all tested the same.”
    Taggert took the little test bag from Armbruster and gave it a shake. She recognized the classic color, a deep turquoise blue, and said, “That looks like a positive test for cocaine.”
    “It
is
cocaine,” Armbruster said. “It’s a very concentrated