Four
Deputy Sheriff Rex Hogan looked up from his paper
work in the back of the small, Brighton Hollow substation. Green light
flickered through the gloom from outside. An instant later, the mystery
was put on hold by a rack of flashing emergency lights pulling up in
front. By the time he reached the front door to uncover the nature of the
emergency at hand, it was clear that the driver behind the wheel of Biggs'
cruiser was neither Biggs nor one of the other county deputies.
"Caitlin says Connie Danielson's house is on fire!"
Vivian cried out from behind the wheel of the cruiser. "She says Connie
has been hurt!"
Rex turned to his own car parked nearby. "Go back
and wake up Leon!" he called over his shoulder.
"Rex, he's drunk!"
"He's never that drunk! I don't have backup here in
town!"
Rex set the car on a careening, tire-squalling course
through town, wondering why Vivian hadn't simply phoned. Regardless, he
had only a mile to drive. He held his breath most of the way, wondering
how Caitlin could have known about a fire at Connie's house. What had she
been doing out that way? What foolish thing had the girl gone and done
now?
A fire would have burned the house to the ground by
now. Connie would be dead. He broad-slid into the gravel drive and
struck the red Nissan a glancing blow, but saw no evidence of fire.
Something else had happened. Something worse.
Caitlin had reported a shooting star. Even he had
heard a dull explosion echo in the quiet afternoon. She had told the
truth after all. This was where it had hit.
He leaped from the car hoping Caitlin's report of
Connie being hurt was no more accurate than her report of a fire. He
shouldered his way through the front door, tearing it from its hinges in
his desperation to get inside.
Plaster dust caught in his throat and set him to
coughing. He glanced once into the kitchen, then ducked into the bedroom
and dropped to his knees the instant he spotted Connie sprawled on the
floor. The bed sheet thrown over her was all the evidence he needed that
Caitlin had been here after all.
He jammed his fingers against the carotid artery an
the side of Connie's neck. Most of his panic subsided with the throb of a
strong pulse. He yanked the bedspread aside and ran a hand over the
familiar curves of the woman's body in search of open wounds, then again
for the characteristic bruising of broken bones or blunt injury.
He found nothing evident to a superficial
examination, but resisted the temptation to turn her over for a more
thorough search. That was Doc Kaufman's job. He risked a gentle shake,
though, hoping she had been no worse than stunned by falling debris.
"Connie? Can you hear me?"
She murmured. She opened her eyes and stared
straight ahead, unblinking. He saw her pupils dilate evenly, assurance
that she hadn't sustained serious head injury.
He leaned closer. "Connie, can you tell me what
happened?"
"Get it away from me," she murmured. Her words were
slurred, renewing his concern that she had been struck by falling debris.
He glanced about the room, evaluating its structural integrity, then rose
to his feet to search more thoroughly for the fire Caitlin had reported.
He walked the circumference of the four ground floor rooms without
encountering the telltale odor of smoke. He circled the house outside
once for an exterior examination, then stopped at the car to call for
help.
He thumbed the mike several times and queried the
dispatcher in Orange City without a reply. Static flooded every available
channel. The communications black-out explained why neither Caitlin nor
Vivian had phoned ahead, and maybe why his shift had been so eerily quiet
for the past few hours.
He mulled over the wisdom of leaving Connie
unattended for the few minutes it would take to fetch Doc Kaufman in
person. He had no other choice. He hurried back to his car and began a
second high-speed, broad-sliding race back into town.
Doc conducted his practice in an office built onto
the side of his house. Rex went through the front door without knocking,
calling out as he went and conducting a fast, nonstop search of the house
until he caught Doc with his pants down in the most literal sense.
"Connie's been hurt," Rex said, stepping back outside
the bathroom and hoping his calm tone of voice would compensate for his
crass behavior. "She's at the house. I didn't want to move her."
"There is no rest for the wicked, of that I'm
absolutely certain," Doc murmured.
"Sorry. Phones are out."
Dr. Kaufman left the bathroom buckling his pants. At
age seventy-two, he looked as frail and worn as some of his eighty and
ninety-year-old patients. Emphysema had taken a good portion of his lung
capacity, and the mere effort to breath drained his energy. Regardless,
the mind in that ruined body was quick and agile by any standard, and Doc
was smarter and better educated than anyone in Brighton Hollow. Rex had
long since learned to rely on the old sage on matters both personal and
professional.
Doc brushed past to fetch his black bag from his
examination room. Rex met him at the front door and led the way to the
car.
Doc asked no questions during the short drive back to
the damaged house. "You've not going to believe this," Rex warned as he
turned into the drive.
"Hopefully," Doc murmured. "Anything to break the
monotony."
The car lurched to a stop. Doc studied the face of
the house. His lower jaw dropped open. "Well, I'll be damned."
Rex led the way inside. Connie hadn't moved from
where she lay on the bedroom floor. He stepped back to give Doc room to
kneel at her side and begin his examination.
"Caitlin said she saw a shooting star fall somewhere
in town. A green one at that. I didn't believe her."
Doc glanced up with a somber look. "I heard it, I
suspect.”
"I probably did, too." Rex looked about and saw
Caitlin's bare footprints in the thick coating of plaster dust covering
the rug. "Caitlin found her first. She told Vivian the house was on
fire."
Doc grinned. "Smart girl."
"Pain in the ass."
"It got you up off your butt quick enough, I'd say."
Connie groaned as Doc tugged and poked at her body.
Rex took the opportunity to look over the damaged bathroom more
thoroughly. His gaze settled on the split, yard-long shell. He shied in
revulsion from what looked like the internal organ of a slaughtered animal
lying between the halves. Spotting the broken talon or tooth of the
creature's snake-like appendage, he reassessed the cause of Connie's
stupor in an instant.
She had been bitten or stung by something venomous.
"Doc, you had better come here and take a look at
this."
Responding to Rex's monotone of dread, Doc stumbled
to his feet and quietly pressed in from behind. He stared at the organic
mass with an expression chiseled from stone. "Leon will have to call in
the state authorities to deal with this," the old man said.
"Are you thinking the same thing I am?"
Doc backed away to avoid a falling stream of plaster
from overhead. "Everything is speculation at this point. A green
shooting star, you say?"
Rex studied the hole in the ceiling. The encrusted
shell had punched a hole in both the roof and the ceiling, fracturing at
least one ceiling rafter before striking and shattering the cast iron
bathtub. The scene gave him a sinking sensation in his gut. Connie's
extraordinary brush with death was going to put Brighton Hollow on the
map.
Doc finished his preliminary examination, rose to his
feet, and stepped back. "Carry her to the car, please."
Rex considered covering her nudity with the dusty
bedspread, but decided it didn't matter. Doc had seen her naked the day
she was born and was perfectly aware of the nature of their relationship.
He scooped Connie's one hundred and twenty pounds into his arms and
carefully maneuvered her dangling legs and arms through the bedroom frame
and front door. "Your place or County General?" he asked on the way out.
"My office for starters."
Rex lay the woman on her side in the back seat of the
car and used both sets of seatbelts to secure her, one under and over her
legs and the other about her chest and shoulders. Doc rode shotgun in
front.
Rex drove back to town at a conservative pace. "What
did we see back there, Doc?"
Doc shook his head and looked pale and stressed.
"I'm not sure I want to know."
"It looks to me like she was bitten by that thing."
Doc glanced back at Connie. Rex could see her
stirring in his rear view mirror. "I concur, but she seems to be coming
around."
"Where the hell could it have come from?" The only
hypothesis that came to mind outraged him, that the slug-like animal had
been contained within the shell halves and buried within the carbon
shell. It had been the green shooting star Caitlin had seen.
Doc sighed wearily. "I have no idea, and it's too
early to make guesses."
Doc didn't have a drive-way leading up to the house.
Rex drove up the lawn, parked directly alongside the front door and
hurried Connie into the bowels of Doc's old and musty house before the
neighborhood had the opportunity to investigate the commotion. He lay
Connie at Doc's request on an examination table in a back room. Doc
switched on a brilliant overhead light. Connie's body glared brilliant
white with its coating of dust. Rex watched Doc conduct a second and more
thorough physical examination.
"Maybe I see evidence of a puncture wound on the
inside thigh," Doc said. "Concussion may still be an explanation for the
stupor. I can't afford to guess."
Doc covered the girl with a sheet, propped her head
with a pillow, and examined her scalp inch by inch for evidence of
bruising. He spoke to the woman from time to time. Rex had thought her
unconscious during the ride, but she murmured a response to Doc's
questioning, and the slur to her voice had subsided.
Doc finally had Rex carry the girl to his bedroom.
"Let her rest for now. Fetch her a fresh change of clothing. Let’s hope
she’s up and about soon."
Rex sat at Connie's side for a private word with the
woman. Doc closed the door behind him on the way out.
Connie blinked, trying to focus on him, but her eyes
kept rolling up into her head. "You saw it," she whispered. "It bit me."
Which confirmed his worst suspicion. "Don't worry
about it. It's dead. How are you feeling?"
"Like I've been fed a grain of morphine or two." She
smiled. "I broke my leg once when I was a kid, so I know what warm
fuzzies feel like. Whatever Doc gave me isn't helping matters any,
either."
"Sleep it off. I'll pick up a clean change of
clothes and bring them over a bit later."
"I like my house, Rex. Can you fix it for me?"
"We'll worry about that later."
"Call work for me. Tell them I won't be in."
Connie worked at a used car dealership in Orange
City. With the phones out, Orange City was on the other side of the
world. He gave the woman a reassuring squeeze of her hand, but she had
already drifted to sleep. Rex backed from the room and closed the door
gently behind him.
"Find out why the phones are not working," Doc said.
"I have elderly patients whose lives may depend upon a prompt emergency
call."
Rex drove back to the substation wondering how he was
expected to find out why the phones weren't working if he had no open line
to the phone company.
Sheriff Biggs' was at the substation when he
arrived. Vivian stood off to one side with a handkerchief held to the
side of her face, either to soak up tears or to soothe a blow to the
face. Either was a possibility. Sheriff Leon Biggs paced the isle
between the empty desks in an ugly mood. He glanced up at his deputy with
a rheumy-eyed glare of warning to keep his opinions and comments to
himself. Rex closed the outside door behind him and stood awaiting his
orders.
At sixty-two, Leon Biggs was squat and fat and
harbored an expression of perpetual disdain for the world. His
ill-concealed impatience had held the unsavory social elements of Brighton
County at bay for twenty long years, although he had been, at one time, a
surprisingly compassionate man. Both Leon's physical and emotional health
had deteriorated since the death of Caitlin's mother. His anger had
become dangerously unpredictable, and Rex avoided it at all cost. "What's
happening?" the man growled in a deceptively calm tone of voice.
Rex repeated the story of Caitlin's shooting star and
his discovery of the damaged house and Connie's injuries. "We found
something at the house you had better check into. Doc can fill you in
better than I can."
"The phones are out," Leon muttered.
"And the radios," Rex added.
Leon grunted acknowledgment. "It's gonna be a long
night ahead. You up to a double shift?"
"Whatever it takes."
"I'll take Vivian home and check on Caitlin. You run
over to Orange City and Cyprus Junction and get an update from deputies
Jenkins and Johnson face to face. There's only the four of us to run the
show in this neck of the woods, so tell them to stay put and deal with the
situation until someone from the state bothers to lend us a hand. While
you're gone, I'll check with Doc and help with any medical emergencies he
may have with his diabetics or whatever. Does that sound satisfactory to
you, son?"
"Yes, sir, it does."
Leon grasped Vivian by her arm and steered her
roughly out the door. Rex waited until they were gone, and then locked
the substation behind him and drove back to Connie's house. He located
two suitcases in the bedroom closet and filled them haphazardly with a
selection of clothing from the dressers. He surveyed the broken roof
before leaving, awed by the broken backbone of the house. How could he
hope to fix it? How could a living organism have survived an impact so
violent?
Returning to Doc's house, he knocked, but let himself
in without waiting for a response. With the aroma of fresh coffee
permeating the house, he went directly to the kitchen, set Connie's
suitcase in the middle of the room, and poured himself a mug.
Doc entered the kitchen from his back rooms wiping
his hands on a towel. "That was quick."
"How's she doing?"
"I'm satisfied that she has escaped serious injury.
Her pulse and respiration are strong."
Rex sat at the kitchen table and sipped his coffee in
gratitude. "I've got to check on Orville and Richard. Biggs will be over
in a bit to do what he can. I didn't give him any details on that
organism we saw. You'll have to show him before he'll believe you."
Doc slipped into a seat across from him. "I would
imagine so."
"Biggs is getting too old to be the badass he thinks
he is,” Rex said. “I thought you were going to talk to him about his
drinking."
"I have. I think it more appropriate that we talk
about your problems. I heard about that job of yours in Pittsburgh. You
should take it, you know. Biggs doesn't need help digging his own grave.
You have no obligation to stick around to clean up the mess when he's
gone. Nobody's going to thank you for it."
"So I've been told."
Doc ventured one of his rare smiles. "I take it your
option will be the lesser of two evils, a backwater county with no future
or a city a bit too big for comfort."
Doc had put his finger on his dilemma. Rex finished
his coffee and climbed to his feet. "Gotta run. It's been a wild
afternoon and I don't think it's over yet." He paused at the kitchen
entrance. "Why in hell are the phones out, do you think?"
"Beats me. You try to figure that one out while
you're out and about.”
“I’ve been thinking about the trouble this is going
to stir up. I don’t think we’re up to it, but I’m betting Biggs will try
to sweep it all under the rug."
Doc frowned. "I couldn't in good conscience allow
him to do that. If it wasn't for the phones being out, I'd go over Biggs’
head and advise quarantining the county until help arrives. Once the
state goes to the federal government with this, that's exactly what's
going to happen."
Rex shrugged his helplessness. "Which is the worst
case scenario, do you suppose, pissing off Biggs or spreading some kind of
an alien plague?"
Doc gave a nod of understanding and a final grim
smile. "The plague would be the lesser of two evils. I suppose you had
better do what the sheriff says."
