Two
The last of many sirens
echoing in the distance faded to silence. The silence lasted until
the solitary growl of a powerful engine pulled to the curb in front of the
house. The front porch creaked beneath the weight of Lori’s second
visitor for the night. Dim light reflecting from a brass badge cut short
any fear of an intruder. The sheriff was a gaunt man in his fifties she
had known on a first name basis since her marriage.
Lori went to the door, but left the screen door
closed between them. "Please, tell me what happened," she said.
His voice was a gentle bass. "Why did you leave the
Cornell residence?"
"Karen sent me away. I'm waiting to hear from my
husband." The pitch of her voice rose uncontrollably. "Please, tell me
what has happened!"
"Karen said you drove her to the Cornell farm.”
"Yes. We borrowed Carol's car."
"Karen doesn't have transportation of her own, I
understand."
Lori shook her head. "She can't afford a car. She
doesn't even have a license to drive."
The sheriff glanced at his watch and made silent
calculations. "I hear she works afternoons and evenings in Clayton."
"She found a job at the mall," Lori said too
hurriedly. "She's a cashier at a clothing store. One in the afternoon to
nine in the evening, but she takes off early on Fridays to go to that
Children's Defense League meeting of hers. Virginia has been taking her
during the past month or two. I used to, but the Volkswagen is broke, and
Dave won't fix it."
Sheriff Paul Danielson sighed heavily and stared off
down the street. Lori worked up the courage to ask the question that had
to be asked. The effort brought tears to her eyes. "Is she dead?"
Sheriff Danielson frowned with downcast eyes. "You
said you were waiting for your husband. Do you expect him home soon?"
"I guess he's working overtime again. I have no idea
when he'll be back."
"Maybe it'll be a good idea to keep the doors locked
until we have a better idea of what may have happened."
Keep the doors locked? With her two children
stranded out in the night and her husband five hours late in coming home
from work?
"I may have more questions for you in the morning.
Please don't talk about this to anyone."
The sheriff touched the rim of his cap and turned away. Lori watched him hurry to his car and drive off
with a chirp of the tires. Morbid curiosity and dark foreboding
churned inside her with ever increasing intensity.
She locked the doors and turn to the empty gloom of
the house, pacing restlessly, hungry for information with which to judge
the extent of the danger to herself and her children. The Clayton Gazette
would have the bare-bones story by morning, but she wanted the pertinent
details the sheriff had been reluctant to part with. Rumors would be
adrift about town. Only a fraction would prove accurate. Even so, the
phone lines would be jammed, and cell phones wouldn't work so far from
Clayton.
The blue and white patrol car had only just left when
Dave's pick-up turned noisily into the gravel alley and parked alongside
the house. Lori sighed with relief, although her mood turned sullen with
resentment. She left the house dark and went to the kitchen to confront
her husband of fifteen years.
Dave came in the back way as usual. His lunch pail
pounded the sink counter. "Why is it so quiet in here? Where the hell
are the kids?"
"Stranded in Clayton," she said with
mild, self-righteous
indignation. "Tonight was Fun Night at the school. Friday night? Seven
o'clock? You were supposed to pick them up hours ago."
Dave looked startled. "Lori, I'm sorry."
His guilty sigh sent alcoholic fumes wafting across
the kitchen. He wasn’t drunk, though. He had been doing more than
drinking since three-thirty in the afternoon. Lori had no direct proof of
another woman in his life, only the self-defensive huffing and puffing and
the constant coming and going at odd hours.
"They're spending the night with one of Wendy's
friends,” she said sullenly. “They'll be dropped off in the morning."
His eyes narrowed in sudden animosity. "What in hell
did the sheriff want?"
Lori was reluctant to confess her own involvement.
"Something happened to Virginia Cornell."
Dave turned too quickly away. "Holy Mary, Mother of
God,” he murmured. “What did he tell you?”
She edged apprehensively closer. "Not nearly
enough. Dave, do you know what happened? Have you heard something?"
"The deputies phoned the plant looking for Bill
Cornell,” Dave said. “She fell into the pig sty. The boars. They...
killed her."
Two entirely separate trains of thought tore her mind
in half. "Then you've been working late?"
Dave visibly shrunk in stature. "A few of us stopped
for a beer."
"You said they phoned the plant! You weren't at the
plant! You were in a bar!"
"They phoned the plant and someone relayed the call,
okay?"
"Dave, it's been five and a half hours!"
Her strident tone of voice would only provoke him,
but Lori couldn’t help herself. The manner of Virginia's death stirred to
life a rage and a rising panic. She had no way to deal with it.
The unutterable horror of struck a profound cord of
deja vu in her head. “She ought to be throttled and fed to the pigs.” Karen used the vile insult often, habitually, even
obsessively. Dave had heard her on many occasions.
And maybe Sheriff Danielson.
"It was an accident," Lori whispered, aware for the
first time of the danger Virginia's death posed for Karen.
"Lori, do you have to be so damned naïve?"
The dark kitchen turned colder than a door left open
to the dead of winter. "I am not naïve. I know what must have happened."
"Do you? Do you know what's left of her body is
scattered over the entire feed lot? Those goddamn animals ate her! They
tore her to pieces!"
Lori jammed her eyes closed, but she forced herself
to deal with the horror. If she expected to defend Karen against
inevitable accusations, she had to. Still, bile seared her throat. She
pushed Dave aside and fumbled with the dishes filling the sink to pour
herself a tepid glass of water.
Dave looks down upon her with a look of
determination. "It couldn't have been an accident."
She gulped tepid water tasting of dish soap. Her
breathing sounded ragged in the silence. "I don't care. It's just a
figure of speech. Karen never meant it literally. Virginia was her
friend."
"Tell that to Bill Cornell."
She spun around to face him spitefully. "It's just a
figure of speech, Dave!"
His hard gaze was unrelenting. "And Virginia was
just in the habit of wallowing with her husband's boars in the middle of
the night. No big mystery, right?"
She couldn’t think fast enough
to argue the point. He sighed in
disgust and turned away.
Lori followed him through the dark house, but was
stopped by the bedroom door slamming in her face. She stared helplessly
at the closed door for a time, then curled up in the recliner in the
living room with her legs tucked beneath her. Hopefully, he was home to
stay for the night. The recurring nightmare had been plaguing her in
recent weeks, and Dave's presence helped to hold it at bay.
But he showered and startled her when he emerged from
the bedroom dressed in his good clothes and smelling of cheap cologne.
She followed him to the back door in a rising panic. "Dave, please don't
leave. We should talk."
He gave her a nod of absent-minded acknowledgment.
"We'll talk." He went out the door regardless, and closed it softly
behind him.
"Dave, you bastard, don't leave me alone like this!"
The pickup roared, threw gravel against the side of
the house, and thundered off into the night. Lori brushed away her
useless tears in the silence that closed back in upon her. She had spent
many recent nights alone. Another wouldn't kill her. The cricket on the
porch tried again to chirp its rhythmic song to the unappreciative night.
It would be her own personal bodyguard for the hours of darkness. A
footstep would silence it and alert her to prowlers. Thus assured of fair
warning from a waking nightmare, Lori braced herself for the one lying in
ambush, the dream of the glass eye, should she dare fall asleep.
