Free Gone to Ground by Brandilyn Collins Page A

ladies would be out here in a few days, pullin those weeds. If this was any kind of evidence at all, they'd take care of it.
    Easin closer to the shallow water, I peered into it. A dragonfly hovered above a rock, the creek a-shimmer in the sun. Nothin glinted in the light. No knife blade.
    Well, why should there be a knife here? The weapon was left in Erika's neck. Still, what if there'd been a second knife? Or . . . somethin else?
    My heart fluttered as I made my way down the creek, searchin for anything out of place. Anything that screamed my brother had been there. My blouse grew damp and my head pounded. By the time I reached the point where the creek went beyond cemetery property, I felt sick in my stomach. Not because I'd found anything. Because I even had to look .
    Eyes burnin, I slumped my way back up the creek and down the stone steps. The day had just begun, and I was exhausted. And I looked like the dickens. Checkin in my rearview mirror, I pushed bangs out of my eyes and wiped perspiration from my forehead.
    One thing I knew, as I drove toward Main Street. After I closed up shop for the day, and while Stevie was at work, I had to find a way to get into his trailer. Once upon a time I'd had a key. Maybe it was stuck in some junk drawer.
    I had to get that bloody uniform out of my brother's house.

http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2010-Feature-Writing
    2010 Pulitzer Prize
    Feature Writing
    The Jackson Bugle
    Gone to Ground
    What happens to a small, quiet Southern town when evil invades in the form of a serial killer?
    By: Trent Williams
    October 29, 2010
    (Excerpt)
    The apparition in Amaryllis's cemetery is not the only kind of ghost in Jasper County. Along Highway 528 and elsewhere in the area are the ghosts of numerous settlements, once bustling burgs and now little more than pine trees and a few scattered buildings.
    Amaryllis's history is much like that of its once neighboring towns—except for how it got its name. Founded in 1877 by Roland Marks, Amaryllis cut its acreage out of the longleaf yellow pine forests surrounding Highway 528—at that time a mere dirt and gravel road. The lumber business was booming in Mississippi, aided by the building of railroads. Marks, hard-working and entrepreneurial since his teens, thumbed his nose at the area's successful "Big Four" logging companies and built his own saw mill. Marks's wife, Lucinda, was an avid gardener, her favorite flower, the amaryllis, gracing their front yard in early spring. The blooms were no small feat, given the county's ubiquitous red clay dirt. Legend has it that as a birthday present Marks eventually allowed Lucinda to name the town, sure that she would dub it Marksville, or perhaps even Roland. Lucinda had other ideas. When she decided to call the town after her favorite flower Marks was livid, considering the moniker far too feminine for the home of his hard-scrabble business. But Lucinda stood her ground, and Amaryllis it became.
    Marks Mill continued until 1908 when, unable to compete with the Big Four, it stuttered to a halt. Still, Amaryllis managed to hang on while nearby settlements such as Acme, Waldrup, and Paulding faded away due to the lumber mills' eventual demise. Bradmeyer Plastics, the factory that today employs almost a fifth of the town's working citizens, wasn't built until the 1950s. In those lean in-between years, Amaryllis lost many people but clenched its teeth and hung on.
    It is that same tenacity and will to survive that has fueled its citizens in the past three years since the Closet Killings began.

Chapter 13
Cherrie Mae

    Thank heaven for Fridays—the one work day I give myself a two-hour lunch. After cleanin houses all week, my ol bones needed the rest. Especially after doin the big two-story McAllister house Friday mornin. It had been almost a year since I pulled the pink thong out from under the McAllisters' bed. Verna McAllister and I ain't spoke of it since. But tell you one thing—she give her