A Judgment of Whispers by Sallie Bissell Page A

her?”
    â€œI think it’s a possibility.”
    â€œBut why would they come to Salola Street? And where would they keep her for a month?”
    â€œThat tree means a lot to the Cherokees,” said Jack. “It would be like a pilgrimage. Look at this.”
    He got up, grabbed two maps from his desk, and unrolled them on the floor. The top one was a detailed map of Salola Street and three miles of the surrounding country to the south. “Here’s their little neighborhood. All the back yards are thirty feet away from the Quallah Boundary line.” He rolled up that map and showed Cochran the one underneath it. “This is an aerial map of that part of Quallah. Mostly thick woods, but these little lines here”—he ran one finger along a line that ran east to west—“are trails. Used for centuries.”
    Cochran frowned at the map. “So you’re thinking some stranger saw her, killed her, and took her back up into these woods?”
    â€œThere are ten million places to hide a body up there,” said Wilkins. “You could turn a hundred cadaver dogs loose and still not find her. Here’s something else. You know that cigarette we found with the underpants?”
    Cochran nodded.
    â€œI’ve studied a bit on Indian culture. Tobacco is an offering to the Great Spirit. A peace offering, as it were.”
    Cochran was about to say something else when suddenly his cell phone chirped. He pulled it from his pocket, checked the screen, then looked at Jack. “Looks like we might need a bit more than a peace offering now, detective.”
    Jack frowned. “How so?”
    â€œThey just found DNA on those underpants.”

Ten
    Grace usually loved this time of day—daybreak, when the light was neither yellow nor blue but a soft, gentle gray. The various greens of trees emerged slowly from the shadows, and the birds began their chirping—little wrens raspy around the feeders and, hidden away, the flute-song of a wood thrush. As she sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee, she could also hear Zack’s snoring, deep and rhythmic. She sighed. This was the longest he’d slept since Whaley showed up. For the past two days he’d paced in an endless circuit of the house, locking and relocking all the doors and windows, then washing the “cop germs” off his hands. Last night, when she thought she might scream if she heard the water at the sink come on again, she’d given him two Trazadones, the largest dose she’d ever administered. Fifteen minutes later, he clutched his toy dog Smiley and collapsed on his bed, asleep.
    She, however, had not fared so well. While he had slept she lay awake, tortured by a thousand devils of possibility. What if the newspaper found out about all this Teresa Ewing business? What would the people at Hillview Haven say? What if everybody still thought Zack killed that child? What if Zack had killed that child? What if they put him in the criminal ward at Naughton Mental Hospital? He would understand so little of it—all he would do was cry and beg to come home.
    â€œThat won’t happen,” she’d told herself, fighting a moment of real panic. Mary Crow was supposed to be brilliant, and Cherokee as well. Mary wouldn’t let them take Zack away.
    But in the morning light Grace realized that not even Mary Crow could make a miracle. Sighing, she padded into the living room to make sure some bear hadn’t knocked over the bird feeder in the night. As two cardinals pecked at the safflower seed, she thought about how different her life would have been if Corrine Ewing had, that evening, simply taken the damn casserole over to Melanie Sharp herself. Teresa would still be alive. She and Mike and Zack might have made a go of it. The rest of her life would not have been just her and her son, convicted without trial, living in a penal colony for two.
    â€œOh stop it,” she whispered, disgusted