Free The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by Sharyn McCrumb Page B

the image of the tree-lined blacktop ringed by purple chicory flowers in the waist-high grass.
    Now, in the headlights, there was no trace of color in the landscape. Did the grass have a tinge of green, or did she will it to look that way by knowing how grass was supposed to look? There's rosemary, that's for remembrance. Maggie had intended to practice her part on the way home, but it was late now, and the road was difficult. Perhaps Mark would rehearse with her tomorrow out in the barn. Laertes and Ophelia: brother and sister. She thought that was why she had been given the part, because Mark was such a strong character that he must be Laertes; she had been given Ophelia for poetic justice. Or because she was pretty, with her waist-long dark hair, and her big dark eyes.

    They didn't seem to mind that her voice was inaudible. . . .
    Farther along, two red circles seemed to follow the slant of the road, taillights of a distant car—white and squarish, barely visible—an old car, Maggie thought. It seemed to pace itself, staying just beyond the flash of her lights, as if in light it would be no longer visible. It is my parents, Maggie thought. They are driving this road before I was born. Father's hands will be fists around the steering wheel, and Mother will be very quiet, looking away into the distance.
    The old car stopped at an unmarked crossroad. Its taillights winked at her for a moment, and then it slid silently up the road and into the trees. It had nearly disappeared from sight before Maggie remembered that there was no need to practice in the barn tomorrow. They could shout from the housetop, and no one would hear. Mother and Daddy were under the earth in Oakdale. The house would be dark and silent when they reached it. Unless the red taillights in the distance were Mother and Daddy and Simon and Joshua coming back home from Oakdale. Coming back to see their little Markie and Maggie-May.
    Maggie waited for long minutes at the crossroads, looking left and right into the darkness, until she thought it was safe to go on.
    The sheriff's office was officially closed for the night. At the dispatcher's table, the telephone had been set to forward calls to the next county, where a full-time staff of law enforcement peo-

    pie answered any late-night emergencies in Wake County. They were seldom summoned. An occasional wreck or a domestic squabble was the most trouble anybody made in Hamelin after midnight. Spencer Arrowood could have gone home hours ago, but he had lingered long after LeDonne and Martha left the office, turning down their invitation to a spaghetti supper with the ever-plausible plea of paperwork to be finished. He didn't want to spend an evening with them talking shop, rehashing the Underbill case. LeDonne wanted to talk about the dead rabbit they had found at the scene, but what did it matter? Josh Underhill was as dead as his victims. They would never really know why.
    Even with only part of his mind devoted to routine tasks, he had managed to finish all the pressing bureaucratic business by ten o'clock. Since then he had been attempting to write a letter.
    He sat in his office before a glowing computer monitor, his brow furrowed with the effort of concentration. This was very different from report writing, wherein he was required to report facts without any taint of personal feeling. Now this long-denied process of feeling was the only message he had to impart.
    Twice he had attempted to abandon the project, stomped around the office cursing his sensibilities, and twice he had gulped down a mug of half-life coffee and set to the task again.
    Dear Ms. Judd, he had typed at the top of the page. To the right of that he had tapped out 100

    Dear Mama Judd, and farther along the same line was the simple salutation Dear Naomi. It was hard to decide what to call her, this total stranger that he knew so well. How odd that she should know nothing of him.
    Hepatitis. He turned the word over in his mind, trying to