Title: Trouble comes in Twos - Part 5

We're walking through the area where I found the body. Nora insists, and I completely agree with the reason. Not that I believe the local police would miss anything, however it's better to be thorough. And with a population of about a thousand, including those homes outside the city limits, Folsom's last suspicious death was over five years ago.

Nora alone has more experience with violent crime investigations in one year, than all of St. Tammany Parish's police force put together.

The tension between us is still there, but we're both trying to go beyond it and act like everything's normal. I can feel Darius' eyes on us from the back porch, following us as we move into the sunlit trees. The sun will be setting soon, but we've got time to look around.

"Here?" Nora asks as she squats down at the base of one of the oaks, looking over the imprint in the grass of what could have been a body.

"Yes. I found him here. Already dead but the body still warm. He couldn't have been dead too long," I stand behind her, my arms crossed.

"Cause of death?"

"Gunshot wound. From the back. No exit wound," I respond readily with a cops memory of past events. "I don't know what they found after they got here."

"There's way too much foot traffic here," she notes, ruffling through the grass with her fingers. "The imprint of the body is obvious... not much blood. He didn't have much time to bleed out before he died."

"Let's look for a blood trail," I suggest, hoping we have a good shot of finding one. If he wasn't killed here, he walked or ran. No drag trail means he wasn't brought here and dumped. "The victim was male and around 6'2". Big guy. 175 lbs. maybe. Dark hair, shoulder length and straight. I couldn't see much beyond that at first. I had to go back to the house to call it in, and I brought a flashlight out here after that. He was rather large for one person to carry all the way out here. There's only one road, straight to the house and he didn't come from the road."

Nora stands back up and steps back beside me. "What's that way?" she asks, pointing away from the house.

"The Little Tchefuncte River. It butts up right against part of the border of the property," I explain as we start to walk in the direction of the river. "There are houses up and down the river here. Most of them are larger properties, so they're pretty spaced apart."

Nora looks over at me intently for a moment before she turns back to looking at the ground as we walk, "What happened after the police got here?"

I sigh and step over another root. There are no paths here, the entire property is half-wild. I always loved that about this place, especially as a kid. It was my own magical kingdom, where every oak held a dryad and behind every bush lurked centaurs and other mysteries.

"They took me back inside and questioned me. They took my gun to send off to check the ballistics and they took the shotgun we keep here too. Then they took both of us down to the town police station." I'm not too thrilled about losing my gun, especially since it might take weeks to get back because they sent it off to Baton Rouge for processing, along with any other evidence they managed to find. "Right now that's all I have. They didn't share much with me, even though I had my badge and id handy."

She stops after a few more feet and leans down to get a good look at something on the ground. I try to get a good look without getting to close to her. I'm nervous around her now. I hate it, but I don't want to scare her away.

I want to smack myself up alongside the head at that thought. I'm the one who ran away after all. I'm the one who was scared away.

My eyes find what she's looking at and I point out the obvious, "Blood trail. Directional."

Nora nods and stands back up, stepping around the spot carefully and keeps going, "This way I think. Heavy brush out here, so there's only so many places he could have come through without leaving a path."

We keep going, stopping here and there when either of us spots another blood drop, Nora leading the way.

"It's beautiful here."

The comment comes out of left field for me, especially since she hasn't spoken for a few minutes. I'm oddly pleased that she loves the overgrown acres of land.

"It used to be Mama's, passed down through the generations. It was part of a larger plantation back before the Civil War, the trees were planted when the first house was built. The mansion burned down not too long after New Orleans fell and it was never rebuilt. Mama's family would sell off portions to pay taxes through the years, but they never sold the heart of it," I motion back towards the house we're staying at. "When Mama and Daddy married, they had the last house to be built here torn down and replaced with this. It was small, comfortable... Mama loved it. We used to come here every summer, until the accident."

Nora looks over at me with a bright smile, the first real one I've seen since she arrived. I've missed it. "And now?"

"Once in a while, I come here to get away from the city. It's a nice change of space. Quiet," I reply, smiling back sadly, the reason for coming here only a foot or two away from me.

"You didn't have to run away, Nikki," she says, her smile faltering, hurt echoing in her voice.

I can't meet her eyes anymore and look forward, changing the subject, "We're here. There's a small dock that's part of the property."

Nora follows me down the small embankment. Like most of the property, everything is overgrown, including up to the dock here.

"We do have a carpenter that comes down every summer to make sure any repairs on the house or the dock here are taken care of. It's safe," I say as I step out onto the weathered wood planks.

The river is slow and about fifty feet across here. Looking upstream and down river you can't see any other houses in the distance.

I stop about midway at a stain on the dock.

"Blood."

Nora squats down again to take a closer look. "The police officers didn't come down this way?"

"I have no way of knowing for sure, but just walking out here right now, there hasn't been much vegetation disturbed."

She nods and starts standing up again but this time a small grunt of discomfort escapes her. I reach out automatically and touch her shoulder, "How are your ribs? I should have asked..."

Nora looks at me with wryly, "You had other things on your mind."

The sun is low, the light a deep orange glow. At that moment all I see is the color of her hair and her eyes. Hidden emotions in the green depths.

"Not really. I've been only thinking about one thing for days," I reply, barely a whisper.

Her blonde locks sway as she turns away to walk back up the dock, "You ran away."

The tone in her voice stops me. The hurt still there, fresh. I can tell she's trying to control it, but she's having trouble because I can hear it still. It breaks my heart.

"Nora," I stop her with a hand to her elbow.

Turning reluctantly towards me, she tries to look anywhere but at me.

"Nora? Look at me, please?" My chest is hurting with the roil of emotion inside me. I step closer to her, releasing her elbow to tentatively cup her chin. My fingers are trembling as I gently tilt her face up to make her look at me. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

Nora's hand touches mine for a long, warm moment, then slowly pulls it away.

"And I didn't mean to ruin us," she says before letting my hand go and walking back towards the house.

TBC