Sleep Softly

Four little girls--each blond, each on the verge of adolescence--stolen from their families.

Their bodies discovered months later in shallow graves, surrounded by trinkets they never owned, clutching a scrap of paper bearing a cryptic verse.

As a forensic nurse in rural South Carolina, Ashlee Davenport Chadwick acts as both caregiver and cop, gathering evidence from anyone who arrives in the local E.R. as the result of a crime. It's a tough job, both physically and emotionally draining, but deeply satisfying.

Then a child's red shoe is discovered on Davenport property. The evidence leads Ashlee to the body of a missing girl and her work suddenly invades every aspect of her life. As an expert and a witness, she must call upon all her resources. And when the killer's eye turns to her, she becomes intimately involved with a crime that tests her mind and her spirit...and the price of failure will be another child's life.

Monday Morning

Parking behind the house, I crawled out of the battered SUV, slung my canvas bag of forensic nursing supplies over a shoulder and blinked into the early morning light. Jas ran from the house and jogged over to me. Bending, she kissed me once on the forehead. "Bye, little mama. I haven't fed the dogs."

"You never feed the dogs anymore," I grumbled, feeling the age difference as she loped to her truck, looking lithe and nimble. And skinny in her size-five jeans. Waggling her fingers at me through the driver window, she gunned the motor of her new little GMC truck and spun out of the drive, heading to early class at the University of South Carolina. "And good morning to you, too. How was Sunday night at the hospital, Mama? It was lovely, Jasmine. Thank you for asking," I said to the trail of dust in her wake.

Thinking I was talking to them, Big Dog, Cheeks and Cherry yapped at my hips, thighs and knees according to their height, demanding attention, which I absently gave while I yawned, a pat here, an ear-scratch there. Abandoned dogs needing a home made the best pets, and I took in as many dogs as I could, even adopting some from the county, when K-9 dogs became too old to work. The well-behaved animals romped and writhed in delight as I trudged to the house. They reeked of something they had rolled in, probably dead rabbit or squirrel, and wanted me to play a game of fetch but the shoe they brought was stinky.

"Bring me a stick. That thing is nasty." I nudged it away with my white nurse's shoe.

Big Dog, my half moose, half monster protector nudged it back, his floppy ears dangling, long tail wagging. Cheeks stopped my progress, a wriggling clot of hound-dog muscle in front of me. Cherry bounced up and down on her front feet, still yapping her high-pitched bark. "Hush. Okay. One toss," I said, "then I bury this thing."

I bent and lifted the shoe. A smell gusted out, sickly, almost sweet. I knew that scent. The scent of old death. The world seemed to slow as I held the small red sneaker. It was no longer than my hand, filthy, laces snarled with leaves and twigs. Reeking of the grave.

A child's shoe.

Turning it over, I looked inside. Tissue. Something soft and rotten. A sycamore leaf twisted into the laces. A deep scuff along one rubber sole, some gummy substance ground into the uneven ridges. Decayed-meat smell. The early morning air shivered along my shoulders.

I returned to the SUV and opened the hatch, placing the shoe on the floor. This was dumb. This wasn't…

It couldn't be. I was too tired and not thinking straight. I moved the photocopies of the family genealogy charts to the side so I wouldn't dirty them or contaminate the evidence. If there was evidence.

I dumped out everything from the canvas tote I still carried and dropped the bag beside the spare tire attached to the sidewall. From the pile, I pulled a pair of blue non-latex gloves, tweezers, evidence bags, a tape measure and a sterile plastic sheet on which I set the shoe. I added a small handheld tape recorder and my new digital camera, part of the tools of the trade for a forensic nurse. I checked the time. Then I hesitated. I felt the chill air beneath my scrub shirt as I rested my hands on the rubberized ledge of the hatch. "This can't be what I think it is."

Big Dog huffed at my words and finally brought me a stick, sitting politely, with one paw raised. Though I called him part moose, he was part mongrel and part Great Pyrenees, and his head was higher than my waist. I tossed the stick once and the dogs ran, baying.

Should I call the cops? Stop right here and call the sheriff's office? If I contaminated evidence after graduating with honors from the forensic nursing course, I'd feel like a failure as well as an idiot.

I blew out a breath of air. Okay. I knew how to preserve evidence.

I was too tired to think and my feet hurt and my lower back ached. All I wanted to do was drop the shoe and go to bed. The smell from the shoe permeated the SUV as I stood there, hesitant, staring at the red sneaker.

What if I called the cops and it was just a shoe from the illegal dump near the new development at the back of the farm? And the tissue was an old half-rotten hamburger that had gotten shoved inside, or a dead mouse? I'd feel even more like an idiot. I didn't waste much effort on pride but I'd be embarrassed if I called law enforcement all the way out here to look at trash brought up by the dogs. The guys on the call would never let me live it down. I had worked as a volunteer for the Dawkins County Rescue Squad long enough to know I'd receive a new nickname and it wouldn't be flattering.

It was probably nothing. A mouse. The remains of someone's lunch. My chill subsided. I pulled on the gloves and dated, timed and initialed two evidence bags. I marked one bag FOLIAGE FROM LACES. Just in case. I snapped two shots with the digital camera and checked the viewer, making sure the sneaker would be visible, acceptable in a court of law. Not that I would need it. I was absolutely…I was almost sure.

Turning on the tape recorder, volume up high, I set it to the side, gave the time, date, my name, location and a short account of how I came into possession of the shoe. Extending the tape measure, I held it against the bottom of the shoe and took a photograph of the two together so the size could never be lost.

At the same time, I said the dimensions aloud for the recording and noted that it was a left shoe. Somehow that seemed important, though I was certain that was the mother in me reacting, not the forensic nurse.

With the tweezers, I pried apart the shoelaces, putting the leaves and twigs in the first paper bag. Using my fingers, I worked the snarled knot from the laces, gathering the material that fell out and adding it to the evidence bag, even small grains of dirt and grit and what looked like pale yellow sand. When the laces were unknotted, I pushed apart the stiff sides, exposing the tongue curled deep into the toe.

I snapped another photograph and labeled the second evidence bag CONTENTS: SHOE, TONGUE. Prying with the tweezers, I pulled on the cloth tongue, easing it out, gathering the scant granules and vegetable matter that escaped and put them into the second bag. The tongue twisted out, awkward and un-yielding, wrapped around something, and I stepped back, letting the early morning sun touch the thing I had exposed.

Painted a bright, iridescent blue, the nail was separated from the surrounding tissue by decomposition. A lively shade, bright as the Mediterranean Sea. Blackened tissue. It was a child's toe.

In the distance the dogs barked, a horse neighed, a door slammed. A crow called, the sound like mocking laughter, grating.

After a long moment, I found a breath, strident, harsh. The air ripping along my throat. My vision narrowed, darkening around the edges, focusing on the bright blue toenail. I leaned forward, catching my weight on the tailgate. I wanted to throw up. I sat down on the dirt at my feet, landing hard, jarring my spine.

The cool air now felt unexpectedly warm and I broke out in a hot sweat. My breath sped up, hyper-ventilating from shock. A mockingbird song I hadn't heard until now sounded too loud, too coarse. In the distance, a horse tossed her head and snorted. Cherry, the small terrier, nudged my leg and romped around the SUV, yapping. I hadn't been practicing forensic nursing a month yet, and here I had a toe in a shoe. Nothing I had studied told me what to do next.

Where had the dogs found the shoe?

There was no doubt. I had something important, something horrible, in my truck. A part of a little girl… I shuddered. A part of a little girl…

And I had tampered with evidence. "Well…" I said, wanting to say something stronger....