Jacob's Ladder Read online

  “Well, you’re right about that,” the older woman replied. “He’d be in this room licking the likes of both of you girls.” She smiled.

  “Really,” Rose said, trying to take the conversation to a more serious level. “I’ve never seen this dog. Did he have a collar on?” She turned to Ms. Lou Ellen.

  The older woman shrugged her shoulders. “I just gave him the bacon from my breakfast, dear. I did not handle him.”

  Rose opened the door and stepped out on the porch, moving over to the dog. She held out her hand and the animal sniffed it and then licked her palm. She held the dog’s head up and noticed a thin, narrow red band around his neck. She pulled the collar around, but there were no tags. She patted his head and rubbed him under his neck and across his shoulders. She noticed the stump that used to be a fourth leg. There were no apparent recent wounds or markings. It seemed to her to have been an old injury.

  “Looks like a mix of a Lab and maybe something else,” she said to her friends as she stood up and walked back into the office. “Funny that we’ve never seen him before.” She shut the door, reached over the counter, and got her coffee. “Wonder what happened to his hind leg.”

  “Well, if it is Mr. Lester Earl Perkins, he probably gnawed it off just to get my attention.”

  Mary rolled her eyes as she walked over to her desk behind the counter and sat down.

  “Ms. Lou Ellen, I highly doubt that mutt is your dead husband.” Rose sat at the table next to her friend.

  “Say what you will.” Ms. Lou Ellen smoothed her hair behind her ears, sounding particularly smug. “I just read in the Enquirer that Elvis roams over there across the river as an old white raccoon. And we all know the Enquirer reports truthfully.” She lifted her brow and raised her chin, awaiting a reply.

  There was none.

  “So I cannot think it’s impossible for Lester Earl to make his way from the other side, as well.” She took another sip of her coffee. “They probably came together.” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

  Rose shook her head. “Well, whether he’s your dead husband come back to haunt you or whether he’s just an old stray, you have to decide what we’re going to do about him.”

  “He stays,” she said, sounding as if she had already thought through the decision. “I’m not about to put Lester Earl in the West Memphis Animal Shelter. He’d have every female dog howling like a coyote if I stuck him there.” She turned her face toward the door and shouted, “Isn’t that right, Mr. Perkins?”

  The old dog jumped up from the corner and came to the door as if he had been called.

  “You shouldn’t play about spirits,” Mary said, watching the dog through the window. “Bad luck for campground.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake, Mary, we got so many ghosts hanging around this riverbank, one three-legged dog isn’t going to bring us extra harm.” Ms. Lou Ellen drank a few sips of her coffee.

  “Besides, Mr. Perkins is not the harming kind. He’s more of a lover than a fighter.” She winked at the other women.

  “Well, whatever he is, he’s going to need watching after. You really want a dog?” Rose asked.

  Ms. Lou Ellen shrugged her shoulders. “He’ll just lie around here until he’s bored. I expect he’ll go wandering before too long.” She drank some more from her mug.

  “He looks kind of poorly to me,” Rose said. “You want me to buy some food for him while we’re out today?”

  “Lovely idea, Rose. If I remember correctly, Mr. Perkins was particular to the shoulder roast, lean but tender. Maybe you could pick up a few pieces from the butcher shop in town.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a bag of dog chow.” Rose replied as she leaned back in her chair.

  “Dog chow?” Ms. Lou Ellen raised her voice. “Mr. Perkins, do you hear that? Dog chow?” she asked again, and the old mutt let out a whine. He was now sitting at the door watching.

  Ms. Lou Ellen smiled and lifted her cup to her lips.

  Rose shook her head. “Shoulder roast, lean but still tender.”

  Ms. Lou Ellen nodded. Then she stood up and slid her chair behind her. “Now, Rose dear, what time is my appointment with that good-looking bone doctor?”

  Rose looked at her watch. “Nine-thirty,” she replied. “You’ve got an hour to powder your nose and change into your fancy underwear.” She finished her coffee and set down the mug, then took in a deep breath and continued. “I think I’ll look around the park before we go, just to see if our late-night guest is still here.” She faced her friend. “Do you need assistance back to your cabin?” she asked as she stood up from the table.

  Ms. Lou Ellen waved her off. “I have my own companion, thank you, dear.” She reached over and grabbed her cane, placing it in front of her. Then she pulled her coat around her and moved toward the door. “And just for your information, all my underwear is fancy.”

  Rose walked over and opened the door for Ms. Lou Ellen. “Of course it is. I’ll pick you up a little after nine,” she added.

  “That’s fine, dear. Tootle-doo.” And she headed toward the porch and down the steps.

  The old mutt moved aside, waiting for the woman. After Ms. Lou Ellen passed him, he wagged his tail and followed closely behind her.

  Mary watched the two limp across the main campground entrance and over to the cabin where Ms. Lou Ellen lived. “That dog bring bad news,” Mary said, drinking the last of her coffee and shaking her head.

  “What makes you say that?” Rose asked. She had walked around the counter and was standing beside her friend.

  “Just so,” Mary replied. “I know missionary when I see him.”

  Rose looked puzzled. She thought for a moment. “I think you mean emissary.”

  “Whatever,” Mary replied. “He come for reason.”

  “So you think that old dog is Ms. Lou Ellen’s dead husband, too?” Rose asked, surprised at the other woman.

  Mary shook her head, looking very serious. “He not come from the other side, but he travel here for something. He bring bad news.”

  “Okay, Mary,” Rose said as she turned around and moved over to the coat tree and grabbed her coat. “A three-legged dog has brought us bad news.” She slid it on as she headed outside.

  “By the way, how many dead ex-husbands does Ms. Lou Ellen have?”

  Mary paused. She was thinking. “Five,” she said. “Counting that last one she never divorced.”

  “For heaven’s sake, we’ll have to build a kennel if they all decide to come back.” Rose shook her head and opened the door.

  “And meat locker,” Mary added.

  Rose laughed. “Right, filled with lean, tender roast.”

  Ms. Lou Ellen and the dog had made it to the cabin. The office fell silent.

  “Well, let me go and see about this mysterious one-dollar-bill camper,” Rose said as she turned back to face her friend. “Maybe he’ll give us more money and we can pay Lester Earl to take his troubles somewhere else.” She smiled and the door closed behind her.

  Rose made her way to the golf cart parked beside the office. She sat down and waved at Mary, who was watching out the window. She turned the key, popped the brake, and headed away from the office.

  She drove first along the back side of the property, the row of sites nestled in the grove of river oaks. Old Man Willie was out front, and Rose greeted him with a wave of her hand.

  The other two trailers that Lucas and Rhonda leased were in good shape, with no new rigs parked near them. She went past the pond where Thomas enjoyed fishing and glanced up the lane that meandered by the old quarry and out to his trailer. She smiled as she thought of her new lover.

  She thought about driving over to see him but then remembered that he’d left early that morning to ride with his cousin into Fort Smith to buy a tractor. He wouldn’t be home until the next day.

  She drove all the way down to the river and then turned right, moving slowly past the campers parked in the best spots. She noticed her Casita,
still on site number seventy-one, the same place she had been since she first made her way to Shady Grove Park almost six months earlier. The two sites beside her rig were empty, and then there was the large motor home with the couple from California, J. D. and Myrtle Hinshaw’s travel trailer next to that one, and then the three rigs from the group from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on their way south to Brownsville, Texas. One of the couples was just returning from a walk around the property, and Rose greeted them as she drove past them.

  It was cold and she wanted to return to the office, but she huddled down inside the cart, trying to get out of the wind. She went up and down the three roads that accessed all the sites near the Mississippi River but did not see any new camper, only the same vehicles that had been parked there the previous day.

  She turned down the river road again and was returning to the office when she noticed Ms. Lou Ellen’s dog standing in the center of the driveway that led to the part of the property that was closed to campers.

  Rose pulled the golf cart toward the dog, and as she got near him, he jumped up and turned, running down the drive. Without knowing what to expect, she decided to follow the old mutt. She stepped on the gas pedal and drove down the dirt drive. She didn’t see the truck and the Coachmen until she was right in front of them. She hit the brake and sat in the cart, staring at the rig, while the old dog stood at the sliding trailer steps and barked.

  Apparently, Rose thought, surprised to find the travel trailer in that section of the campground, Mr. Lester Earl Perkins had arrived at Shady Grove in a Coachmen. And he was not traveling alone.

  THREE

  Rose stepped out of the golf cart as the dog wagged his tail and barked.

  “What is it, old guy?” she said as she walked toward the camper. “This your home?”

  She headed toward the front steps, stopping to rub the dog on the head. “Whose idea was it to park over here?” she asked as she stood up, glanced around, and finally knocked on the door.

  “Hello,” she called out. “Anybody home?” There was no response except the whining of the dog.

  The camper had been backed into the small space. There were no tracks coming in from behind, just the ones in front of the rig, a wide curve to the right, and then a straight movement to the rear, stopping in the position in which it now rested.

  As she stood waiting at the steps, Rose did notice, however, another set of tracks following up the drive.

  At first, she thought that maybe the driver had pulled up and backed in a couple of times before getting his rig like he wanted it; that perhaps he or she had even realized that this was not part of the working campground and was going to exit. When she looked more closely, however, she realized that the other tracks were different. The tires were wider, a tighter tread. There were two vehicles that had driven into this area the previous night.

  Rose turned to examine the area behind her and could make out the departing tracks that returned to the drive and led out the main entry. She faced the door, puzzled at where the other vehicle was and how it had also entered and departed without anyone hearing it. She checked her watch, wondering if she was waking the traveler, shrugged her shoulders, and knocked again.

  “Hello, is anybody home?” she called out as politely as she could.

  She tried to peek through the window on the door, but she couldn’t see anything but a pale blue curtain that covered the glass completely. She waited and then knocked again. There was not a single noise coming from inside.

  She moved down the steps and walked around the rig. She could see that there had been no attempt to unhook the truck from the rig, that the driver had only backed in and then placed two large stones behind the rear tires, a temporary means to secure the camper.

  Even though the trailer and the truck appeared to be old, there was a good strong ball and hinge attachment on both vehicles that appeared relatively new. The silver finish was not rusted like the axle on the trailer and there were no chips or scratches to show age or wear. There was also an additional pin and fastener, found only on the newer models, so that Rose could see that the owner had updated the hauling features, apparently planning for a long trip.

  The safety chain was thick, at least four-inch links, and it wrapped around the hitch on the truck and under the extension that was bolted to the camper. It, too, looked new. It seemed that the latest Shady Grove tenant had taken extra care to travel safely from New Mexico all the way to West Memphis, Arkansas.

  Rose read the license plate on the truck. There was nothing significant about it. The bright yellow plate with the parallel red lines pointing in all four directions was dusty and bent. She saw that the sticker had expired at least four months earlier, but it was hard to read, since the paper had been torn and replaced.

  She knelt down and noticed a leak under the engine block, a small puddle near the front of the vehicle. The liquid was dark, black like oil, she thought. She wondered if it was the engine trouble that had led the campground guest to park where he did, thinking that he was making the attempt to be courteous and not stain the large concrete pads on the other sites. She certainly did not know any other reason for the camper to be in that location.

  As she stood up, she peered again around the empty lot. She considered that maybe the trailer owner had taken a walk or was down at the riverbank fishing, that maybe he had gone searching for the dog. She saw no one moving about on this side of the campground.

  She turned again to the trailer, and that was when she saw a small opening in the curtain in the rear window of the camper. She was hesitant at first, but then she moved over to it and gently knocked on it. She guessed that this would have been the window right above the bed, and again she hoped she was not waking anyone up.

  She pressed her face against the glass, cupping her hand around her eyes as she peeked in.

  It was dark inside and it took a minute before her eyes adjusted. When they did, what she saw immediately concerned her. Either the visitor at Shady Grove was the most cluttered person she had ever encountered or the trailer had been ransacked. Although she couldn’t see the entire interior space of the old Coachmen, what she could make out were household items—pots and pans, linens and clothes—all tossed around.

  The small kitchen table was overturned, as was the back bed. Sheets and pillows were thrown about. Cabinets were standing open and cookware and canned goods were strewn across the camper floor. It was a mess, and Rose, concerned that someone was inside and had been hurt, began rapping on the window.

  “Hello! Is there anybody in there?” she yelled. Then she pressed her face against the glass again. This time, she tried to see as much of the inside of the trailer as she could. And when her eyes panned around the second time, she noticed something sticking out from beneath the narrow table.

  It was an arm, thin and brown, the palm facing up. It extended from underneath the broken piece of furniture.

  “Oh Lord,” Rose screamed as she hurried away from the camper, falling against the rear of the truck. The dog had been standing at her feet, and in her gruesome discovery, she’d tripped over the three-legged mutt. She leaned against the truck to regain her balance.

  She ran around to the front steps and tried opening the door. It was locked. She pushed against it, without much luck of forcing it open. So she jumped down, ran back to the truck, and picked up one of the rocks at the rear tire. She hurried again to the front door and, using the stone, broke the window. She dropped the rock and quickly reached inside, turning the lock. Then she pushed the door and moved inside.

  It was worse than what she had thought. The place was destroyed inside. It was more than just clutter or things becoming unsettled from a bumpy ride. It was evident that this mess had been created, that someone had deliberately set about to cause damage.

  Once inside, walking about and making her way through the mess, she immediately knew that she was compromising the scene, something her father, a police captain, had constantly drilled into her head when he
was preaching to her about good police work.

  Rose, however, a nurse by profession, knew the most important thing at that moment was trying to find the person who belonged to the arm she had seen sticking out from underneath the table.

  She made her way through the pile of boxes and personal belongings to the small dining table and yanked it up, throwing it toward the rear of the camper. There was a bedsheet beneath it. She pulled that away, and there lay a man, older, maybe seventy or seventy-five, dead, she thought, for more than a few hours.

  Having worked in health care for all of her adult life, Rose quickly checked for a pulse, found none, and then tried to determine the nature of the camper’s injuries. She felt both his left wrist and then the carotid artery in his neck. There was nothing. And she could tell by the slight stiffness in his limbs and the blue tinge across his lips that he had arrived late at Shady Grove Park the previous evening and had died soon after. There was no way he could be revived.

  While she was trying to find a pulse at his neck, she noticed the marks circling just below his chin. Large welts, shaped like the tips of big fingers or thumbs, were raised and red; and there had been enough pressure placed on the old man’s windpipe that she was sure it was crushed. She assumed that a murderer had used his own hands as the weapons.

  Rose assessed the situation and surmised that the old man who had arrived at Shady Grove had been strangled to death by somebody he’d brought with him, or by somebody who was already there, or by somebody who had followed him to his campsite. She was alarmed, sad, and bewildered, and without hope of changing what had happened there in the empty, narrow landing at Shady Grove, she sat down beside the man while the dog that had probably come with him stood at his feet.

  She knew that there was nothing to do but return to the office and call the sheriff. She sat only a few minutes, considering the dead man’s life and death, wondering where he’d been going and who was waiting for him there. She thought of his family and loved ones, of their grief and loss, and of the evil that had lurked so near to her own tiny residence.