Ten Thousand Islands by Randy Wayne White Page B

Copeland didn’t look like a teenager. Innocence dissipates years. She looked younger, ageless, without fear or flaw.
    She wore a yellow dress with a collar of white lace. There was a thread of gold chain around her neck and a locket in the shape of a smiling full moon. Her hair was the color of Kansas wheat. It was fanned out halolike on the crepe pillow beneath her head. She wore white gloves with fingers interlaced, long and delicate as JoAnn had described them. It was as if the girl had dressed for church, but, instead, found a cozy meadow place to doze.
    There was something about the delicate facial structure that was heart-wrenching. Our bodies are composed mostly of water. The water was gone from hers. The soft angularity of nose and chin was emphasized beneath skin that was white and fragile as parchment, yet her cheeks were blushed with embalmer’s makeup like some China doll. The color added definition to lashes resting long over eyes that, it seemed, might flutter open in reaction to the offending sunlight. From what I heard, this was a tomboy girl who liked to explore and dig in the dirt. She’d been described as having an “extraordinary gift” for finding things. She’d been described as an old soul.
    But this was also a child; a child who’d sometimes worn lace and crinoline. This was a child who, playingdress-up, had been forever frozen, as if caught asleep on a frosted field.
    Seeing her produced in me sadness and a sense of loss far out of proportion to what I’d expected. I had not known this child. I’d never heard her voice. Now, though, I felt as if there were some inexplicable connection. She was here, right in front of me, yet she wasn’t. It touched me in a way that squeezed the heart.
    On Dorothy’s right cheek was a splotch of pollen-colored mold. I was tempted to brush it away. Instead, I touched a gloved index finger to the collar of her dress. The lace disintegrated at my touch, revealing the area of skin beneath her chin. The scar there was a band of discoloration, gray on white.
    Yes, there had been a rope. It had been knotted tightly enough around her neck to leave the skin forever marked. The scar was the residue of an unthinkable act, violence that was incongruous with the peaceful scene and angelic child before me.
    Something horrible had imposed itself on this young life.
    Why else would Dorothy Copeland hang herself?
    I’d been so intent on visual data that all sound vanished. Now, though, I became aware of a distant sobbing. I stepped back for a moment, listening.
    “It’s Della,” Tomlinson said gently. “She’s worried about what they’ve done to her little girl.”
    I looked into his face. The paranoid druggie had vanished, purged not by coffee, but out of regard for the circumstances. Here was the man I liked and respected. His expression was one of haunted sadness.
    I indicated the necklace. “There’s the locket, just likeDella told us. I don’t think they got the coffin open. They probably would’ve taken it.”
    “Perhaps. But that’s not what they were after.”
    I said, “Then let’s find out.”
    I lifted Dorothy’s hands very gently. They had the weight of air. Beneath her white gloves was a flat wooden carving that was as large as both her palms together. There was also a small Bible, white cover, Dorothy’s name imprinted in gold.
    Della had told Tomlinson that she’d slipped the Bible and the carving into her daughter’s casket just before they’d buried her. Said she did it privately, when no one was looking, because the Bible and the wooden carving were the only things that had given Dorothy comfort during the nightmares that preceded her suicide.
    During the worst of it, Dorothy had slept with both, clutching them to her chest.
    She slept with them still.
    Without disturbing the Bible, I removed the carving with my left hand and held it up to the light. It was heavy for its size, black as oiled mahogany or iron wood. It had the shape of