The Ghostly Hideaway

by Doris Hale Sanders

  *

  It had been signed by Arthur Monahan, Sheriff, Stokes County, North Carolina.

  Sure enough, when Johnny picked up the piece of paper that had fluttered to the floor, it was a check made out to him in the amount of fifteen hundred dollars. Johnny was shocked as was everyone else.

  “Well, Chrissy, we need to go to town in the next day or two and open our joint checking account and this will be our first deposit." Chrissy blushed but she was genuinely proud of her courageous husband-to-be.

  When Johnny got home, it wasn’t long before he called Ed. “Hey, Ed, Bruce and Sean say, ‘Why can’t they come down and take care of things for you for a few days so you would be able to make the trip to North Carolina?’”

  “You’re sure they don’t mind, Johnny?”

  “It was their idea, Pop. Just tell them when you’re leaving." That was the first time Johnny had called Ed, ‘Pop’ or ‘Dad’ or anything similar to that. However, Ed liked it.

  “Thanks a lot, Johnny and thank them for us, too.”

  “Oh, by the way, they have the steps up at the trailer and the electricity is on and the water is hooked up. The septic system still lacks some but I thought we might have a ‘viewing’ tomorrow evening for the whole bunch of us. Chrissy and I want to see it again and we wanted all of you to see it, too.”

  “Wonderful. What time, Johnny?”

  “Maybe around seven? I think that should work. Okay?”

  “Sure. We’re anxious to look at it.”

  So, those plans were made.

  Plans were being made in North Carolina, too. But they were of the sinister type. Harry Denham was an unhappy man. He had never been the jolly sort but lately his frame of mind had been even worse. That son of a bitch had raped his baby girl. She was only fifteen—well, she was sixteen, now—but she was due any day now to have her own baby. She had not only been raped but she had got pregnant, too. That raping bastard, Norman Jones, didn’t deserve to live and now they were talking about letting him out on bail.

  Harry had begged and pleaded with Sally to have an abortion and Sally might have been persuaded, but Lynn had kept poking at her telling her it was a sin to have an abortion; telling her it was murder; convincing her that she should have the baby. Then it was too late for an abortion and she had no choice left. He had finally broken and ended up slapping his wife silly. He hadn’t actually injured her but she had a fat lip through which to spout her, what he considered, ‘fanaticism.’ He’d spent a night in jail and Lynn had sworn out a restraining order against him. Of course, he’d had to move. Now he was barely putting in his hours at the local auto repair shop and staying drunk most of the rest of the time. That is, until they had caught the man who had raped his little girl.

  At that point, he had straightened up his life. He drank some on weekends but he wanted to have a sure eye and steady hands, so that when the opportunity came, he’d be ready. And the chance would come; it had to; he didn’t think he could live with it otherwise. Sally was due any day now. In fact, it had already been a couple of weeks over nine months since she'd been raped. However, the doctor said the baby would get here when it was supposed to. He couldn’t deny he was anxious to see his first grandbaby. But it still wasn’t right that Sally would have to deal with it at the tender age of sixteen. Lynn would probably do most of the care giving, though, if he knew Sally.

  The phone rang. Harry picked it up. “Hello.”

  “Hello, Harry?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Lynn. I told you I’d call you when the baby came. We’re at the hospital. The doctor says it should be born within the next couple of hours.”

  “Thanks, Lynn. I appreciate that you called. Tell my baby girl I love her. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Harry would go to the hospital but he had some other business to take care of first. He had oiled it, cleaned it, and shined it up, especially the scope, and it was fully loaded. His Savage thirty-ought-six was ready and he was ready, too. He had decided. Norman Jones would take his last breath before the offspring of his raping loins took its first one. He realized he’d probably get caught and probably pay with his own life; but his little girl would be avenged and that was the main thing. He had convinced himself of that. He was no good to anybody anyhow so what did it matter? In fact, what did it matter? Raping her was bad enough but forcing her to have his child; that was unforgivable. And he would pay for that. He’d see to it.

  He put his deer-hunting rifle on the racks across the back window of his pickup where it stayed most of the time. It wasn’t concealed and that way, they couldn’t do a damn thing about its being there. Then he drove slowly toward the courthouse. He still had almost a half hour. Jones’ bail hearing wasn’t until one o’clock. He parked his old beat up pick up truck a scant block from the courthouse. The truck was easily spotted if anyone had had cause to be watching for it. He had put it together himself from parts gleaned from salvage yards. It had taken him almost five years to get it the way he wanted it. Of the two front fenders, one was gray and the other was red. The hood was a bright, school bus yellow. Both the driver and passenger doors were black but the frames around them were white on the left and green on the right. The bed on the truck was a bright blue and the tailgate was white with a generous sprinkling of rust spots not only on the tailgate but the entire body. It was what was under the hood, though, that Harry Denham was proud of. He had souped it up big-time. It had a double-barreled carburetor with dual exhausts. It had a push-button, electronic ignition system and he had put a first class supercharger in it. He had enhanced its suspension system, too. It’s ‘get up and go’ definitely ‘got up and went.’ He had bragged he could outrun any vehicle in the county if not the state.

  It was quite noticeable; but he knew nobody was looking for it—yet! He had parked the truck in the last space before the yellow line for the corner and he had crowded that some. He didn’t want anyone blocking him in. He got out and headed for the alley behind the stores facing the street that went past the courthouse. The buildings on this side of the street were all connected except one and there was about a three-foot walkway between two buildings about midway of the block. He climbed the communications tower that was fastened on the back of one of the buildings. It wasn’t easy carrying his rifle, but he managed it. He leapt across the walkway and landed on the building facing the courthouse. It was five minutes before one o’clock. By the time he got into position, the police car was pulling up out in front and the officers were taking Jones out of the car to walk him into the courthouse.

  Harry lay prone on the rooftop steadying his rifle on the foot high ledge that ran the full length of the front of the building. As Jones emerged from the police car, Harry took careful aim and pulled the trigger. Jones never knew what hit him. That was the one thing he regretted: Jones would never know that it was Harry Denham repaying Norman Jones for having raped and impregnated his daughter. He crumpled to the ground and the officers who had been in charge of him began to look around to try to see what had happened. About all they knew right then was that the back of Jones’ head was missing.

  Harry remained quiet for a few minutes knowing they had not yet determined that the single shot had come from three stories up rather than street level. Then Harry did the military crawl he had learned in the service where your seat end got hung on barbed wire if it stuck up too high. When he got back to the communications tower, he climbed back down carefully and strolled back around the corner, put his rifle into its rack across the back window and drove slowly away. It was twelve-thirty now and he hoped Sally had had the baby by now so he could see it before, well, before whatever was going to happen happened. He headed for the hospital and when he got there they had just finished cleaning up the baby boy, put a diaper on him and placed him in the little hospital bassinet. It looked sort of weird; a black baby in a white bassinet. But he was looking at the wrong baby. That couldn’t be Sally’s baby; it had all the distinctive features
of an African-American. Its nostrils were large and flared; its lips were thick and he had lots of woolly, curly, black hair. It was a cute little baby, but it couldn’t be Sally’s baby. He watched, though, as Lynn was escorted into the nursery and the nurse took the little black baby from the bassinet and put it in Lynn’s arms. But that was impossible! Norman Jones was a white man and he had impregnated his daughter when he raped her,—hadn’t he? If he wasn’t the father, that meant he had just assassinated a man who, he supposed, had raped his daughter but he certainly had not been the father of the baby she had been carrying. Maybe he had been completely innocent. Maybe Sally had made it up to account for having been pregnant.

  His mind was whirling fast enough that he was almost dizzy. He didn’t know what to think or believe and he certainly didn’t know what to do. It wouldn’t take the police long to figure out that he had done the shooting. His truck would have been recognized near the scene. He hadn’t thought to pick up the shell casing that had been ejected from the gun when he fired. It could be traced back to his gun in the long run. He knew if he stayed there, he was headed for jail and probably the electric chair. He had no choice; he had to run. He couldn’t have handled the fights with Lynn and Sally anyway. So he took off and headed south on Interstate Seventy-seven. He had no idea where he was going—just “away” and as fast as he dared. He knew he would call attention to himself if he drove as fast as that V8 would carry him. He set the cruise at eighty-two, knowing that state troopers usually gave motorists the benefit of the doubt for seven miles over the speed limit, which at the moment was seventy-five. He was almost to Rock Hill, South Carolina when he saw two state trooper vehicles coming up fast behind him. His first instinct was to press the accelerator to the floor and take off; but he resisted the impulse. They pulled up directly behind him and turned on the flashing blue and red lights. That was the moment he knew running was his only chance and then not a very good one. He had known when he decided to shoot Jones that he would probably be caught but he wasn’t going to death row without a fight. His speedometer registered one hundred fifty miles per hour and the needle was trembling at the edge of one hundred forty-five. He was rapidly outdistancing the troopers and he was feeling pretty good about his chances of getting away when he saw a road block set up ahead. Now what must he do? He could try to crash through it, go around it, or stop and be taken into custody. He thought about a U-turn but the other troopers were still back behind him. He was trapped. At that point, his choices were all taken from him. A tire blew out and, at that speed, he had no chance. The truck skidded, turned over, flipped seven or eight times, and burst into flame while sliding down the highway on its top.

  Bill Blass called Ed the following day when the story hit the news media. The pictures of the wreck were horrendous, he told Ed.. Harry Denham, who was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident, was believed to have been the perpetrator of a murder earlier in the day. His truck had been seen in the vicinity of the courthouse where accused rapist, Norman Jones, had been killed with one shot to his head. Jones was shot while exiting the police car on his way to a bail hearing. Harry Denham was the father of the alleged rape victim.

  Ed agreed with Bill that the whole set of circumstances was a sad situation. It was also reported that the alleged rape victim had given birth that same day to a child who had been supposed to be the result of the rape.

  At any rate, Ed’s thoughts of going back for the trial were no longer valid. Since he would see many of the folks they would want to visit with at Chrissy's wedding, going back just for a visit didn't seem really worthwhile. He wasn’t sure if he should go back for Norman’s funeral or not. He thought Norm’s mother was still living but whether Ed’s being there would mean anything to her or not, Ed had no idea. After talking it over with Penny, they decided to cancel or, at least postpone, their trip.

  It was almost as difficult to accept that Norman was dead as it was to understand all the bad things he had done. There was one thing for sure; he had paid dearly for his wrongdoings. He had paid with his life and that was the ultimate price.