Beasts of the Field: The Pieces

Episode XI

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← In Episode X: The Blade, Judith fought for her life against an unexpected danger.

While Beasts of the Field can be read as a standalone story, you may appreciate the characters and their interactions more if you are familiar with Judith’s first adventure, Down in the Holler, in which she investigated a cold case in rural Kentucky. Click here to read Down in the Holler.

Judith woke to the quiet crackling of her kitchen stove and the savory scent of cooked eggs. She dragged herself into a sitting position, moving slowly as her ribs protested and her stitches tugged and her crusty, sticky bandages pulled on her skin. She was like Frankenstein’s monster, all thread and ragged flesh.

But she’d actually slept, at least a little bit. She hadn’t thought she’d ever be able to do that again.

Through winces and groans, Judith hurried through as much of her morning routine as she could without bending her back or lifting her left arm, and then, still cocooned in Tim’s overlarge sweatshirt, she slipped out of her room and into the hallway.

Judith paused at the arched kitchen doorway and shivered, her body prickling with the warning signs of the horrible shaking that had plagued her the night before. Her eyes bore into the corner, a bare little nook with a small shelf full of hand-me-down cookbooks she never used.

Clem had stood there, right there, clutching a knife in her hand as she waited in the dark.

“Morning.” Tim’s head popped around the corner, where he stood at the stove. “You didn’t have much in the fridge besides eggs, but I make a pretty good omelet. Did you sleep okay?”

Judith forced herself through the doorway, past the nook, and into the kitchen, then stifled a horrified gasp.

Somehow in the course of making eggs, Tim had destroyed her kitchen. Apparently, in searching for a bowl, pan, cutting board, and stirring utensil, he had seen the need to pull all the pots and pans out of the cabinets, set them on the kitchen counter, and leave them there until some undisclosed point in the future. How could he even work through normal thought processes when the counters were cluttered with unnecessary kitchen paraphernalia?

Realizing that Tim was staring at her, Judith scrambled for words but came up blank.

“Are you weird about your kitchen?” Tim said, a smile quirking the corner of his mouth.

“I’m – What? No. Thank you. For – making breakfast.” Judith took a breath, trying desperately to ignore the cluster of dishes and utensils crowding her kitchen counter. “I’m not weird about my kitchen. I just have a – a system.”

Tim, no longer even trying to conceal his smile, shrugged and turned back to the eggs. “My mom’s the same way. Except her system doesn’t make sense to anyone else.”

“My system makes perfect sense. The utensils are in the optimal drawer for unloading the dishwasher. My plates are organized by type and color. The pots and pans are organized by type and size to make the best use of lower cabinet space. The spice rack is alphabetized because it would be impossible for me to find what I need if spices were just thrown around willy-nilly –”

“I’ll put everything back. Just tell me your system, and everything will go back where it belongs. I just didn’t know where anything was, so I had to search around a little.”

“A little?

“I’ll clean up when it’s done.”

“You don’t clean until you’re completely finished?” Judith said.

Tim raised his eyebrows. “When do you clean?”

“I clean as I cook. Any time there’s a pausing point.”

“Huh,” Tim said, nodding. “That’s not a bad idea.”

“No, it’s a very good idea.”

“It’s ready.”

“What’s ready?”

“The omelet.”

Her fingers itching to remove the distracting mess from her kitchen, Judith started toward a stack of unused mixing bowls just as the doorbell rang, then rang again and again.

Stopping in her tracks, Judith looked at Tim. Only one person would ring the bell like that, and only when she was angry. “That’s Constance. I didn’t – Did you –?”

“Oh. Yeah, I texted her. Just to let her know what happened last night. It was before you were up. I figured I’d let you sleep.”

Fighting the tired soreness in her muscles and the sharp pain prodding various parts of her body, Judith rushed to the front door and opened it to Constance, who stood on the porch, bundled against the cold.

“You get stabbed,” Constance said, “and I don’t find out about it until your crush texts me the next morning?”

“Constance!” Judith squeaked, heat bursting up her neck and into her face as she glanced back to see if Tim was listening.

“You could have died. You could be dead right now. If you almost die, and you’re in the hospital in the middle of the night, you call me and wake me up. That is something I need to know.”

Constance flung her arms around Judith and squeezed her into a too-tight hug that pressed and pinched on all the most painful places on Judith’s back and arms. “Stop almost dying,” Constance said into Judith’s shoulder. “I forbid it. You’re not allowed to do it anymore.”

Clenching her teeth, Judith quickly returned her sister’s embrace, then slipped back, letting out a tight, pained breath.

“Oh, sorry,” Constance said. Holding Judith at arm’s length, she looked her up and down, assessing the bandages on her forearms, the white gauze peeking out from the collar of Tim’s sweatshirt. Her eyes roved over the sweatshirt, and she cocked her head.

She craned her neck around Judith’s shoulder just as Tim stepped through the doorway.

“Morning,” he said. Judith could hear the mischievous smirk in his voice, and the heat in her face bloomed hotter.

Narrowing her eyes, Constance gave a quick glance around the room, and her gaze zeroed in on the couch, where a sheet and blanket lay wadded up at one end. Her confused frown cracked into a smile as she turned back to Tim. “You almost got me.”

Tim laughed, and though Judith wasn’t completely confident in her ability to interpret subtext, she could piece together enough to ensure that her cheeks wouldn’t be returning to their normal color any time soon.

“I made enough for three,” Tim said. “Come eat it while it’s still warm.”

“She let you use her kitchen?” Constance said.

“Well, she wasn’t up yet.”

“You used her kitchen without permission, and you’re still alive?”

Judith pressed a hand to her forehead and stifled a groan as she followed Tim and Constance into the kitchen.

---

“So wait, Clem’s going back to McFerrin today?” Constance said, squeezing Judith’s hand. All through breakfast, every few minutes, Constance had reached over and touched Judith’s hand or shoulder or knee, as if to reassure herself that her sister was still there, still alive and well and solid. “Are you taking her?”

“No, the Marshals will transport her,” Tim said. “I need to head back there to help with the investigation, though. Since some of the crimes were in McFerrin proper and others were outside of town limits, it’s a joint investigation between my office and the police.”

Judith pushed her eggs around her plate, squirming to contain the raging conflict within her. The hot, knotted force of primal fear urged her to burrow deep, to never leave her home again, never pause too long by the shadowy nook, never lay eyes on Clem again; while a quiet, stubborn voice within her wanted to see Clem’s face, to understand how a woman who’d seemed so friendly, capable, likeable, could have laid in wait, then climbed on top of Judith amid a carpet of broken glass, ready to thrust a knife into her body. Her face had been fierce, but also bleak and grim. Clem wouldn’t have stabbed Judith to death merely to protect herself, of that Judith was sure. But to protect Leon?

“Can I come back with you to McFerrin?” she said, her words dropping like a rock into the conversation.

Tim stopped, his fork hovering over his plate. “What?”

Judith took a breath and squeezed her hands in her lap. “I can’t stay in this house, not until this case is solved. I can barely even walk down my hallway. And I need to see Clem.”

“I don’t know if that’s –”

“I don’t have to talk to her. I just need to see her.”

Tim reached for her hand, and a flutter of panic spritzed through Judith’s body. “Judith, you just got out of the hospital for the second time in a week.” As if suddenly self-conscious, Tim slipped his hand away, then looked toward Constance. “Do you think you might be able to stay here for a few nights?”

“I – I could,” she started.

“Wait,” Judith said. “You’re leaving, aren’t you? Your trip – what day is it? Aren’t you supposed to leave today?”

“We were packing up the car when I got your text,” Constance said, giving Tim an apologetic look. “We’re supposed to be visiting my in-laws this week. But I could send Steve and the boys, and I can stay here.”

“No, you need to go with them.” Judith turned to Tim. “I need to see Clem. And Noah and Leon. I need to understand what happened. And I think if I can just see them, or do a reading if I can, then I’ll understand.”

Constance squeezed Judith’s hand. “You want closure.”

“Well, that sounds –” Judith stopped short of saying trite and curbed her faint stirring of irritation. The only closure she needed was closure of the case, with all the guilty parties in prison. That would be enough for her. Whatever subjective closure Constance thought she needed was superfluous. “I can get a ride back to Lexington, so you won’t have to make an unnecessary trip.”

“That’s not an issue,” Tim said. “But you’re supposed to be healing, not driving all over Kentucky to solve a murder.”

“I’m not going to solve the murder; you are. I just need to see.”

“We don’t have enough evidence against Leon yet. We can bring him in for questioning, but until we either get the evidence we need or get a confession, we can’t arrest him. He’ll just be out there, and, no matter how many precautions we take, something could still happen.”

“Am I really safer here, alone, two hours away from you and everyone else who knows Leon, than I would be in a motel in McFerrin?”

Tim sighed. “I can’t put you in a position where you could get hurt again.”

“I don’t want to be in that position either,” Judith said. “Which is why I should go.”

---

Judith’s phone dinged as Tim’s car rolled into the Township of McFerrin Police Department. The sky was gray and heavy, the grass glittering with remnants of the night’s frost and the air wet and chilled with the threat of snow. Judith pulled out her phone to find a text from Constance.

He clearly has a hard time saying no to you.

Her face flushing, Judith slipped her phone back into her purse and turned her eyes to the parking lot. An SUV emblazoned with the star of the U.S. Marshals Service sat empty. Clem was already here, inside.

Tim unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to Judith. “Since you’re a victim, you won’t be able to watch the interrogation from the observation room.”

“I did with Noah.”

“That was just for a minute, as a private consultant, and I was – let’s say bending the rules a little bit. But this is different. I mean, she broke into your house, and –” Tim stopped, his face tense. “There’s no safer place you could be right now than a police station, but I don’t think I’ll be able to justify letting you in the observation room, not now.”

“So the plan is for me to…sit in a police station.”

“Yes. And not get murdered. I’ll keep you updated as much as I can.” Tim reached for the door handle, then paused. “I know it’s a small station, but just…try to stay clear of Bowen. If he says anything, just try to ignore him.”

“Do you two have a history?”

“What do you mean?”

“For a casual acquaintance, he seems very antagonistic.”

“I don’t know what his deal is,” Tim said, shaking his head. “I mean, like everyone else in this county within a few years of my age, we overlapped by a year or so in high school, but I don’t know what that could have to do with it. He just has a less-than-pleasant personality, I guess.”

“Less-than-pleasant is putting it mildly.”

Tim chuckled as he opened the door, letting in a rush of frigid air. “Well, there’s someone for everybody. Maybe he’ll meet somebody nice and stop making life difficult for the rest of us.”

“He’d have better luck if he moved to Lexington,” Judith said. “It has a significantly larger gene pool.”

“Hard to disagree with you there, but this town’s already bleeding young people. That’s what everyone does – move away to Lexington.”

---

The small police station was bustling with activity, but yet all was eerily quiet, as if everyone were listening, hoping to overhear a scrap of Clem’s interrogation through the thick walls.

Sitting on a chair in an unobtrusive corner, Judith waited. She listened to snippets of hushed conversation between officers and pulled out her laptop to answer a few work emails, though she was officially on sick leave for another week. Tim walked a circuit between the observation room and Chief Kelly’s office. Several times he called Duffy at the sheriff’s office, checking in and giving updates about the case.

Periodically he came to Judith’s corner and sat beside her, and, though she usually wasn’t self-conscious about other people’s opinions, her skin grew hot as the eyes of the entire McFerrin Police Department swiveled toward her.

“She’s confessing,” Tim said in a low voice. “She’s saying that she killed Samantha for trying to seduce Leon.”

“No.”

“I’m not saying I buy it. I’m just saying that’s what she told the detective.”

“I don’t think there’s any possibility that a young college girl would be interested in seducing an unkempt hillbilly who’s a decade older than she is.”

“She was blind.”

“Disgusting.”

“If I wrote crime shows,” Tim said, “and I had to come up with a story in which a woman like Clem killed a girl, that’s exactly the kind of melodramatic thing I’d come up with. Make Clem look like a crazed, possessive mother who’d rather kill than share her son’s affection with anyone.”

“But, up until she tried to –” Judith struggled for words as the image of a razor-tipped knife hovering over her chest flashed through her mind, “– to stab me, Clem had always seemed so down-to-earth. She was normal, pleasant to be around.”

“Which is why I’m skeptical. She also refuses to say how Samantha died. And she’s claiming that Noah ran you off the road and killed Heather on his own initiative, completely unrelated to this case.”

“Ridiculous.”

Tim paused, a concentrated frown breaking across his face. He stared at the floor and rubbed his face with his hand. “Noah demanded to speak to a lawyer when he was arrested, and he’s never done that before.”

“Do you think Clem coached him?”

“How long was she alone in the house with Noah before I got there?”

“A minute or two. But she really did seem intent on getting Willow out. She was furious.”

“Furious about him hurting Willow, or furious that he was dumb enough to get the cops called on him fifteen minutes after he committed the murder she ordered?”

“Oh. I don’t know.”

“Maybe both,” Tim said. “Maybe she really did want to get Willow out safely, but she also took the opportunity to lay into him for being an idiot and to coach him on how not to be such an idiot when the cops brought him in. She can multitask. But anyway, Noah’s up next for questioning. Let’s see how he takes it when he finds out Clem’s trying to pin your wreck and Heather’s death on him.”

Tim’s eyes moved toward the front of the station, and suddenly he stilled, his mouth tightening. Judith followed his gaze. Across the room, a tall middle-aged man with silver-flecked hair and red-rimmed eyes stood by the door, his eyes searching the station.

“Who is that?” Judith asked.

Tim let out a quiet sigh. “That’s Rob Tierney. Chief Kelly said he’s been coming by every day asking for updates about Heather’s case.”

Judith bit her lip and squeezed her hands together in her lap. Awful as it was, it had been easier, more comfortable, to hold Dr. Tierney’s death at arm’s length, to be objective and unemotional, when she had been only the beautiful, drug-addicted, lying medical examiner who’d once been Tim’s girlfriend.

But she was someone’s daughter. This man’s daughter, and he looked utterly broken.

“I’ve gotta go,” Tim said. He stood slowly, then made his way through the room toward Rob Tierney.

He held out his hand, and Mr. Tierney shook it. From across the station, Judith watched as Mr. Tierney’s shoulders slumped, then started to shake.

She watched as he pulled Tim into an embrace, and Tim stood with him, saying something in a low voice, until Chief Kelly arrived to lead Mr. Tierney to his office.

She watched as Tim’s eyes followed them back to the chief’s office, his shoulders heavy with the weight of another man’s grief.

---

There was a change in the air of the tiny police station, and Judith looked up from her laptop to see the half-dozen officers moving faster, their faces set and mouths tight as they made their way to a back room and came back with Kevlar vests and black helmets.

Judith stood up as Tim stepped out of the observation room. “What’s happening?”

Tim’s face was bleak and slightly pale. “Noah turned on them. The detective barely had to try. As soon as he got wind that Clem was pointing the finger at him, he started going off on how Leon killed Samantha, and Clem paid him to kill you and Heather to cover Leon’s tracks.”

“He said that even with his lawyer present?”

“The lawyer was loving it. He’s already trying to work out a plea deal. And the detectives had Judge Gordon on standby to sign the warrant, so they’re getting ready to go after Leon right now.”

“You got what you needed.”

“Yeah.” Tim’s gaze turned to the officers preparing to move outside to their cars. Bowen, who’d shot a few glowers in Judith and Tim’s direction over the course of the day but hadn’t spoken a word to either of them, already had his Kevlar on and a long rifle clutched in his hands. Tim shook his head. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

“Do you remember when you refused to take me seriously because you didn’t think my psychic readings were valid?” Judith said.

Tim turned to her, startled from his thoughts. “In my defense, I had only known you for, like, ten minutes.”

“I just feel the need to point out that you rely on ‘feelings’ as much or more than I do.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” Tim said with an eye roll and a smile. Then his face settled again, a storm passing over it. “They’re going in way too hot. I think Leon’s gonna panic, and somebody might get hurt. And we still don’t even know how he killed Samantha. If a firefight breaks out and he dies while we’re bringing him in, we may never know.”

“Are you going too?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there. You’re staying here, though.”

Twisting, suffocating worry crept through Judith, squeezing her chest as she struggled for breath. She crossed her arms like a barrier, a shield, and stared hard at Tim. “Wear your Kevlar.”

Tim gave her a faint smile. “Of course.”

“Don’t give it to any random bystanders. It’s your Kevlar. You wear it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Tim chuckled.

As Judith strained to quell the anxiety flooding her body and crushing her chest, a memory stirred in the shadowy recesses of her mind. “Wait.”

Pulling out her phone, she scrolled back through her photos, back to the previous day – had it really only been a day? – when she’d snapped a quick photo of Clem’s dormant plant, the one that weeks ago had smelled so divine in the warm autumn air.

There it was. In the photo, it was little more than a large, woody stem, but Judith remembered the huge, bright leaves, the long, spouting flowers tipped with color. It was in a pot, presumably so that it could be taken inside out of the approaching frost. Had Clem thought to take her plant inside before sneaking off to Lexington to murder Judith?

“What is it?” Tim peeked over her shoulder.

“Hold on. I need to think.” Judith did an image search, her phone scanning the internet for photos that matched the hibernating plant.

There, a match. Bright green leaves, long colorful flowers. She clicked on an informational page –

Judith took in a sharp breath, pressing her lips together.

She turned to Tim, handing him her phone. “I think I know how Samantha died.”

Tim scanned the page, his brow furrowed.

“Do you remember when I got sick that first time we went to Clem’s house?” Judith said. “You had a headache too, if you recall.”

“Yeah. I figured it was stress or allergies or something.”

“I think it may have been this.”

“Angel’s trumpet,” Tim said, as though testing the words against his memory. “It’s not native to Kentucky.”

“It’s a popular potted plant. Lots of people have it, including Clem.” Judith pulled Tim’s hand down so she could swipe through her phone to the photo she’d taken, then back to the webpage. “It’s a potent nightshade. Even smelling it for too long can cause negative side effects. Dizziness, nausea, headaches. I stopped in Clem’s garden because the flowers smelled so wonderful, almost lemony, but I think I was breathing in whatever this plant excretes. That’s why I got sick so suddenly.”

“Tea,” Tim said, his eyes widening as he read further. “It can be made into tea. It says here it’s hallucinogenic in small doses, so people use it as a drug. But larger doses can be fatal.” Tim took a breath, shaking his head. “I’d bet you anything that angel’s trumpet wouldn’t show up on a standard tox screening. That’s why the medical examiner from Lexington didn’t catch it either.”

“Is that it, then? Clem or Leon poisoned her with angel’s trumpet tea,” Judith said. “Then after you and your team searched the field, they moved her body there to obfuscate what really happened to her, and they convinced Dr. Tierney to lie on the autopsy. But what I still don’t understand is why. Why would they poison her? I don’t for a second believe that there was something going on between her and Leon.”

Tim dropped his hand that held the phone and frowned into space, his eyes distant.

“What is it?” Judith said.

For a minute, Tim said nothing, and Judith opened her mouth to repeat herself. Then suddenly he responded.

“One of my first calls when I was elected sheriff was a death,” Tim said. “He was a mean old criminal who smoked and drank and did drugs and probably could have died from any of the above, and the coroner – this was before we had a medical examiner – said the death was due to natural causes. All things considered, it was a good first death on the job for me, since there was nothing emotional about it, but it’s always stuck in my memory. The coroner, though, he couldn’t pinpoint what exactly had killed the guy, just that it was probably some combination of multiple substances and him being a nasty, abusive old man who didn’t take care of himself.”

Judith pressed her lips together, thinking. “What are you saying?”

“The man was Clem’s husband.”

The bustle of the station quieted, and Judith stared at Tim. “Are you saying she poisoned him too?”

“I don’t know, I just – If this is what killed Samantha, it opens up a whole other can of worms. We might have to exhume his body.” Tim let out a noisy breath. “Look, I gotta take this to Chief Kelly. Probably won’t change how they go about apprehending Leon, but at least we’ll know to search all the tea in the house and test it to see if there’s any that matches this angel’s trumpet plant.” Tim shook his head, pushing away the cloud of doubt and consternation, and flashed a smile at Judith. “You ever thought about becoming a cop? Or a sheriff’s deputy? Then I could pick your brain about all my cases without having to bend any rules.”

Judith wrinkled her nose. “I’ve seen how much paperwork you have to do. No thank you.”

“Fair enough,” Tim said with a laugh. With one last smile, he turned and headed toward the front door of the station, where Chief Kelly stood putting on his Kevlar vest.

Judith sat back down in her chair and gnawed on her lower lip. Something still felt out of place, a piece from a different puzzle trying to force its way in.

Why? Why would anyone kill Samantha? They still didn’t have a why, aside from Clem’s disgusting, melodramatic story about Samantha wanting to seduce Leon.

And Leon, he was the enigma at the center of the strange case, the murderer who’d been hiding quietly in the background, letting his mother clean up his mess and take the fall for him. What kind of man was he? Had he killed Samantha for sport?

Judith counted her breaths in and out. She could try, perhaps, to figure out the why. Quickly, just a small attempt. If it didn’t work, she wouldn’t push it. She’d just give it a try.

Closing her eyes, Judith let the clamor of the departing officers fade into the background. She reached out, trying to open herself the way she used to, before everything had gone wrong.

Leon?

White hot pain seared across Judith’s eyelids. With a gasp, she paused, then tried again. Just a little more. Maybe all she needed was a warm up. She could push just a little more. The pain burst again, blooming like a hot tulip bulb, sending roots into her eyes, her brain, her body.

Leon?

Judith clenched her hands, her nails digging into her palms. She reached further, forcing herself to open more, to listen, to see.

Leon?

Electricity shot like jagged lightning from Judith’s head to her fingertips, and a deluge of burning light flooded her for a brief, overpowering moment before the world went black.

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Thank you so much for taking time to read Beasts of the Field!

→ Keep reading! Episode XII: The Murderer

← Episode X: The Blade

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