Eighteen
Tuesday morning, John Hartman awoke to the sound of
chugging airbrakes. The rattling idle of a diesel kept him from drifting
back to sleep. Roy Rockingham had sobered and brought his rig back to the
house. Not that John felt any obligation to confront the man over Joyce's
disappearance. Gene would deal with it.
Roy's gruff voice filtered from outside. "Hey,
Hartman! Come on out here! I wanna talk to you!"
David's bare feet padded upstairs along the kitchen
floor. John arose with a groan of protest and threw on yesterday's
clothing. "David, you stay in the house!" he called up the stairs.
"I'm not going nowhere!" David called back. "No way,
José!”
John went up and out the rear patio door and rounded
the corner of the house zipping his pants. Roy waited on his property
line with his stubby legs spread wide and his clenched fists resting on
broad hips. "Where'd she go, Hartman? What did you do with her?"
John was aghast. "What did I do with her? Like
maybe I ate her for breakfast?"
"I ain't so stupid I can't guess what's been going on
between you two. Joyce hit you up for a little loving and protection from
the mean 'ol Roy Rockingham and you stuck your nose where it don't
belong. So, where'd you stash her? You put her up in town? That it?"
John couldn't resist a verbal jab. "How often do you
depend on your neighbors to baby-sit your women, Roy?"
Roy bristled with indignation. He jabbed a thumb
back toward his darkened and empty house. "How far do you think she got
without taking any of her stuff? She would've packed a few clothes, don't
you think?"
"I don't know where she's at," John said, choosing
his words carefully. "But I did notice you paid a return visit last night
and trashed the house."
Roy turned beet red. "She wasn't here. You got to
her first, you bastard."
John strolled a bit closer to the man, his curiosity
piqued.
"Touch me and I'll have your ass thrown in jail," Roy
said nervously. "I ain't drunk this time around, hot shot."
John spoke in as mild and reasonable a tone of voice
as he could manage. "I warned you that Joyce was looking for a way out.
It's none of my business if she found one. But I'm not part of it."
"You try bullshitting Sheriff Packerson." Roy jabbed
a finger over his shoulder in the general direction of town. "We'll see
if he believes you any more than I do."
Roy turned away and stormed back to his truck. He
glanced back once before driving away. John saw genuine fear in his eyes.
John went back inside the house feeling like hell.
He figured he looked like hell to boot. If it hadn't started drinking so
late, it would have been worse. A quarter of his way through the bottle,
he had fallen mercifully asleep.
He resisted the temptation to finish the bottle off.
He made coffee instead. Any more drinking would guarantee a belly landing
on the runway of life. David was in the middle of a crisis he did not
understand, and Jackie Kahl's disappearance was getting on his nerves. If
Joyce had vanished under conditions as mysterious as Roy claimed, he'd
have Packerson to contend with before the day was out.
"Something the matter, dad?"
John paused at the kitchen counter without looking
around. Now was as good a chance as any to get it over with. "Who were
you talking to last night in your room, son?"
David took a moment to reply. "I was pretending to
talk to Mom."
“Pretending.” John sighed. It was the one
explanation he had been hoping to hear. Dr. Varley's use of the word
'hallucination' had unnerved him.
"Roy sounded mad," David said. "Is Joyce gone?"
"I guess she is at that."
"I'm going to miss her."
"Me, too," John said. It surprised him that he meant
it. As troublesome as Joyce had become, she had held out some promise of
a return to normalcy in his life. In time, he would have given in to her
offer of companionship. Given time to adjust to circumstance, he
suspected that even David would have accepted the idea.
He finally glanced around at David. David beamed an
uncertain smile back at him.
"You got the computer going again, I see."
David's eyes widened in eagerness. "Yeah. Can we
stop in town and look at software sometime? I haven't looked at any of
the new games."
"We'll take a walk into town in the next day or two
and you can pick out anything you want, new computer included. No problem."
David bounced back down the hall to his room bubbling
with joy. John sat at the kitchen table with the first perked cup of
coffee. By the time he had finished it, he decided he'd have to try for
another two or three hours of sleep. Despite the dose of caffeine, his
head spun when he closed his eyes.
A car ground gravel alongside the house. Sheriff
Gene Packerson appeared at the patio door in due course and let himself
in.
"Is she here, John?"
"She's hanging by her thumbs from a rafter in the
basement, Gene."
Packerson ignored the sarcasm. "You’re drinking
coffee. Damn, what's this world coming to?" He circled around to the
counter and poured himself a cup.
"I advised her to look for help in Portland," John
said. "I thought she might have hit you up for a bus ticket."
"I haven't seen her."
"Roy's been beating on her," John said. "Someone
trashed the house last night. I checked on her, but she was gone."
Gene paced, sipped his coffee, and watched him
carefully with a frown etched on his face. "Roy's paid me a visit.
You're my first business for the day."
John eyed the man unhappily. "Better check the
house. It wouldn't be like her to just up and disappear. I don't think
she had anywhere to go, but I don't have her, Gene."
"You know, our missing pedophile left behind his
clothes and belongings. Unless he hitched a ride with passing traffic
with what he wore on his back, we have a total of three missing persons as
of this morning. I can buy a connection between the Kahl girl and Julian
Ackorage, but I don't know how to fit Joyce in. What's making me nervous,
John, is the apparent location of at least two of the disappearances.
It's where you're sitting, give or take a few square acres."
John sighed and gestured his helplessness.
"I just wanted to let you know. The public expects
me to do my job, so you can probably guess the identity of at least two
people who are going to be caught in the squeeze."
"You and me."
Gene set his empty cup on the table after a time. He
went out the same way he had arrived. After spending a half hour
inspecting the house next door, he returned to his car and drove away. When John's ears
readjusted to the silence of the morning, he could hear David still
talking in low tones in his room.
John closed his eyes. The world spun in circles
around him. He shoved himself to his feet and trudged his way to the
living room. David would judge a nap on the couch somewhat less offensive
than a drunken stupor in the den.
Hours later, more pounding at the door brought him
awake. David stood at his side when he awoke, eyes wide with concern.
"Ben and Jimmy are here."
Ben and Jimmy. Sheriff Deputies Benjamin Reeves and
Jimmy Langton. John sat up and eyed the two standing on the other side of
the screen door of the front entrance. Ben was the stockier of the two
with a round, pleasant face. Jim was taller, thinner, more severe looking
with a shock of auburn hair. John had worked closely with the two during
his three years with the sheriff's department. He called neither man
friend.
John pushed himself to his feet and tested his legs.
He slicked his hair back, but imagined that he looked as thoroughly
rheumy-eyed and disheveled as the alcoholic he was. He used furniture for
support on the way to the door. "Ben? Jim? What's the problem?"
Jim Langton opened the screen door and reached for
his arm. "Packerson wants to see you at the station."
The hard grip below the elbow startled him. He took
a single finger of Jim's hand and used it to pry the grip loose. Ben
Reeves lunged forward to aid his partner. John used the leverage on Jim
Langton's hand to swing the smaller man around to block Ben's way.
Alarmed, Jimmy went for his revolver with his free
hand. John swept the deputy's feet from beneath him. Jimmy fell and John
turned to Ben with the forefinger of his good hand held to the man's
face. "Pull your weapon on me, Ben, and I'll take it away from you
and be sorely tempted to shove it where the sun don't shine."
Behind him, Jim scampered to his feet and threw his
hands in the air. "No more! Damn, John!"
John backed away from the two. "Okay, so what's this
all about?"
"Packerson wants you at the substation," Jimmy said
glumly. "He said to bring the boy with."
John glanced around at where David stood shaking with
fear, then back at the deputy. "Am I under arrest?"
Jim's eyes narrowed. "Packerson has a few
questions."
"Jim, you two push too damned hard."
"Don't fuck with us," Jim said softly. "We can call
for backup if we have to. You can't take on the whole damned county."
"Take it easy," Ben said. "John, a woman is
missing."
"Joyce, I know..."
"Not Joyce. Another one."
John felt himself cave in on the inside. "Damn."
"There's more," Ben said. "But we don't discuss it
here. It's Gene's call."
John turned to where David was backing away down the
connecting hall to the kitchen. The boy had turned pasty white.
"David, it's okay."
David turned and bolted out the back way.
"David, wait!"
John went in pursuit. By the time he reached the
patio door, David had run off into the tall grass and dived for cover.
"Damn."
It happened over and over despite himself. He had
been caught drinking again. He garnered no respect from his old
associates, and none from his own son.
Ben followed him into the kitchen. "We'll come back
and look for the boy."
"You know he's sick."
"I know he's sick. And you know how Jim is. But we
got a job to do."
John glared at Jim for having panicked the boy.
"We'll take care of David," Jim said. "You had damned well better take
care of Packerson. He's really pissed."
John relented with a nod of agreement. A visit to
town wouldn't take long. David could fend for himself during that time.
He'd calm down. Ben and Jim weren't the enemy.
He sat alone in the back seat of the patrol car and
spent the ten minute drive to town wondering how he had managed to incur
Gene Packerson's wrath. Another missing woman, but who, and with what
connection to the Ridge?
The cruiser pulled in front of the substation in
downtown Eagle Junction. John got out alone and watched the squad car
make a U-turn in a squeal of tires and head back to the Ridge.
John went inside the building, bracing himself for
the gauntlet of curious glances from the women who managed the office and
switchboard. He had a name to go with the pretty new face at the
switchboard. She would be Sheila Davies, Gene's new carnal temptation.
Sheila was a petite angel with a heart-shaped face, the eyes of a doe, and
the ruby red lips of a Chinese princess. Gene was going to have to fire
her ass if he expected to retain his sanity. Since his wife's death, the
sheriff had languished for want of female companionship.
Gene saw him coming. He emerged from his
glass-enclosed cubicle and opened the door to the back store room used for
questioning. John followed him in. Gene gestured with a nod to a
cardboard box on a table centering the otherwise barren room. "Take a
look. Zeke found it in your trash barrel."
John survived the disclosure without showing his
surprise. He dumped the contents of the box onto the table surface and
separated two plastic bags of clothing with mounting perplexity, one
containing a child's pink dress, shoes and underwear, and the other a
similar assortment of men's clothing.
"Maybe you can guess who was wearing the pink dress,"
Gene said.
John felt cold and hollow dread. Jackie Kahl's
bloodied clothing spelled almost certain death for the girl. Her bag
contained everything a girl of ten would have been wearing at the time of
her disappearance.
"We've tentatively identified the man's clothing as
belonging to Julian Ackorage," Gene added.
John's already darkened mood began a long descend
into an abyss of sheer despondency. Opening the bag of Ackorage's
clothing, a smaller zip-top bag containing a partial denture plate and
some metal objects dropped onto the table.
He glanced at Gene with a stab of irritation. "What
the hell is this?"
"A surgical pin. Hardware that held together a bad
fracture, probably a femur."
"No shit?"
"My sentiments exactly."
"In my trash barrel?"
"The pink dress panicked poor Zeke. He suspected who
it belonged to. He was here bright and early with it. Jim and I
personally retrieved the rest of these items from the bed of the pickup.
They're headed for the state forensic lab as soon as we're done here."
John sat on a corner of the table and stuffed his
hands in his armpit rather than risk revealing a tremble. In his entire
life, he had never been as bald-faced frightened as he was in this moment
in time. "So what's the most likely scenario you have in mind? What are
you thinking?"
"I'm thinking it wouldn't make sense that you'd kill
two people and stuff their clothes in your own trash barrel," Packerson
said. "I don't know what else to think."
"Give Ben and Jim a call," John said. "David ran off
and they went back to the Ridge to look for him. Have them take a look
through the house while they're at it, top to bottom. We might as well
get it out of the way."
"I appreciate the cooperation, John. Are you sure?"
"Do whatever it takes to assure yourself that I had
nothing to do with this. You and I both know the mess it would take
to remove surgical hardware."
Packerson gave him a curt nod. "Wait here." He left
he room, closing the door behind him. He returned a few minutes later
looking grimly satisfied. "Done."
"Mention was made of another missing woman," John
said.
"Angel."
Pain took another stab at his gut. "Christ, not
Angel. What in God's name happened?"
"Mike, the cabby, gave us a call this morning. He
says he dropped Angel off on the blacktop directly below the Ridge at
about midnight."
"Ouch."
"He said she was acting crazy, like she was talking
to somebody in the back seat with her, except that she was alone."
"It can't be coincidental. Why the Ridge?”
"Granted, not
coincidental. But what sense does it make?"
John shook his head irritably, then eyed the
sheriff. "And if Angel’s clothes wind up in my trash barrel?"
"Somebody will have put them there, John. Some
specific individual is responsible for these people dropping off the face
of the earth. I don't care how mysterious the circumstance, we're dealing
with a felon or felons who took a piss this morning, scratched their hairy
balls, and put their pants on one leg at a time."
John cradled his throbbing right hand and stared at
the floor. In moments of stress, he thoughtlessly kept trying to use it.
Thoroughly banged-up finger joints were sore and inflamed. "We're dealing
with someone wily, Gene."
"I can handle wily. I can't handle the twilight zone
bullshit. I want a handle on these disappearances and I want it
yesterday."
"I don't have it."
"Find it. These disappearances haven't screwed with
your life yet, but we're not going to be dealing with rational citizens
when one man's daughter and another man's girlfriend is missing and likely
fucked over and dead."
"And Ackorage?" John
nodded to indicate the transparent bag containing the surgical pin and
dentures. "What's your thoughts on that?"
Gene sighed heavily and gave a
despondent nod. "The hardware is a sick touch. A body would have to be butchered
and bones crushed to remove the pin and screws. That's fine and dandy,
but why would it all be thrown in our faces without a drop of blood or an
ounce of flesh to be found?"
"There's blood on the girl's dress."
"I've got three reports of a nosebleed from your son
and his friends. I'm not too concerned with a few spots of blood on the
upper part of the dress."
John shook his head in abject helplessness. "Drop a
heavy anchor, Gene. I don't have a good feeling about this."
"I've survived worse. Just make sure your own ass is
squeaky clean in these matters. Whatever's happening is happening on the
Ridge. Scratch off the retirees and their wives and kids under puberty as
unlikely sources of trouble, and we have one man left without an alibi to
cover the approximate times of the disappearances of our four missing
persons."
"Does that mean I'm your prime suspect?"
"You'll be the public's prime suspect," Gene said.
"You'll be Orville Kahl and Roy Rockingham's prime suspect. One way or
another, sooner or later, details of our investigation will be leaked to
the press, and then you'll be everybody's prime suspect."
And failure to quickly pin a name and face to the
villain would reflect poorly on the sheriff's department. Gene's
reputation was on the line as well. Without a break, the state would move
in to take over and his career of three decades would wind up on a
political chopping block.
John yearned for a drink. He was worried sick about
David.
"Don't think of leaving town," Gene added. "But
given the opportunity, I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Give
this matter some deep brain-storming, John. You were good at it. I need
logic to apply to this nightmare before anyone else drops out of sight. I
need to know where to look for a solution."
John turned away lost in thought. He wandered from
the building and paused in the tranquil afternoon's sunlight with no
memory of having passed through the office. He wondered where to begin an
unofficial investigation and tried to avoid the nagging suspicion that it
would have to begin with the overactive imagination of a ten-year-old boy.
