Daddy's Little Girl

by Ed Gorman

  “Please.”

  “In addition to being a minister, Kevin’s also a psychologist.”

  So that explained the air of urbanity about the man.

  The sheriff went on, “So I decided maybe I’d like him to get kind of a, uh, well, professional judgment of you, as it were.”

  “Professional? To see if I was making it all up or something?”

  Wayman’s expression got tight again. “Well, something else, too.”

  “Such as what?”

  Wayman obviously decided to be blunt. No more sparing Carnes’s feelings.

  “To see, Mr. Carnes, if you struck Kevin as a man with something to hide.”

  Finally, Carnes caught on to what had been going on. He was both shocked and enraged at the same time.

  “You think I killed her?”

  “It’s a possibility, Mr. Carnes.”

  “Jesus God.”

  “As sheriff, I’ve got to allow for all kinds of things happening. It’s a very strange world, as we all know. You could have killed her, pretended that she’d just up and vanished and—”

  Wayman surprised Carnes by shaking his head. “It just isn’t a pretty world, Mr. Carnes.”

  Carnes made fists of his hands and came toward the big lawman. As if this night were not crazy enough—his daughter gone, his having spent two hours in deep woods and covered with chigger bites and a swampy smell as a result—now he was being accused of the worst crime of all, a parent killing his own child.

  “I don’t believe it,” Carnes said.

  “That’s how I was when I was your age,” Sheriff Wayman said. “I didn’t believe things like that either, I just couldn’t imagine how anybody could do things like that. The terrible thing is, they can. They do it all the time.”

  Raspily, Carnes said, “I didn’t kill her, Sheriff. She disappeared.” He felt as if he were fighting for his sanity. “Now you can waste your time on this stupid theory or you can help look for my daughter.”

  For the first time in ten minutes, Sheriff Wayman resembled the warm man Carnes had first met. “I’m sorry if I shocked you, Mr. Carnes. But I guess I owed it to you to tell you why I brought Kevin out here. I hope there are no hard feelings.”

  Carnes started to feel foolish. Paranoia was always an embarrassing spectacle.

  He felt that Sheriff Wayman was, in fact, trying to help him, just as the reverend had been.

  It was just being away from home—

  Your daughter missing—

  The unfamiliar surroundings of a small town—

  Carnes looked at the sheriff and offered something like a smile.

  “I just want to find my daughter,” Carnes said.

  “So do I,” the sheriff said.

  “You think we’ve got a chance?” Carnes asked.

  The sheriff shrugged. “I guess that’s exactly what we’ve got, Mr. Carnes. A chance.”

  2

  Beth Daye fished the bloody paper towels she’d used to wipe Richard’s hand clean of blood and examined them in the light of her office.

  Twenty minutes earlier, she had sent Richard on his way back to the church basement for sleep. She had been unable to get any kind of answer from him about where the blood had come from. Richard was like that sometimes. You just couldn’t communicate with him. He was like trying to unscramble a code without any key or guidelines. He just sat there and you played little word games with him and he didn’t cooperate in any way. Sometimes she wondered if he weren’t being perverse. But then she felt guilty. Richard didn’t know any better.

  The paper towels in the light shone with dried redness that was blood. Human blood? She wanted to be certain—and not make a fool of herself—before she called Sheriff Wayman. Like most men in Burton, the sheriff was skeptical about a woman running a newspaper. Any time the Sentinel ran anything remotely resembling hard news, the townspeople wondered if it were true. A woman just couldn’t be as dependable an editor or reporter as a man....

  There could be no doubt but what the red tinge was blood. Now the question was ... where had Richard encountered it? After a reasonably thorough examination of him, she could see that he hadn’t suffered any injuries or wounds.

  So ... the blood was someone else’s.

  But whose?

  Dawn was starting to tint the windows of her office. Beth slumped down in her chair next to the typewriter and put her head in her hands. When she went this long without sleep, she tended to get depressed, anyway. But with Richard and the mystery of the blood, her mood was worse than it would normally be after as many grinding hours. Ever since the death of Sam she had discovered that the world was not always the golden and glorious place she had once felt it was. Not at all.

  Her mind filled with images of Sam’s journal, of the peculiar words: the insatiable animal is born.

  Who or what was the “animal”?

  What had he meant by “insatiable”?

  Then there was the June 8, 1953 reference. What had happened on that date?

  Her husband’s death had been so sudden and unexpected that sometimes she still couldn’t believe he was gone. And now sometimes all she could think of was June 8, 1953 and wonder if that distant date had anything to do with her husband’s death.

  So many questions.

  And no answers.

  She reached for the phone and dialed the sheriff’s office, ready to ask what time Bill Wayman usually got in in the morning. She suspected early. Bill had been a farmer for twenty years. He was used to dawn hours.

  The night man, Deputy Hastings, answered the call.

  “He’s up already,” Hastings said after her question. “Something happened out at the motel last night.”

  Richard had walked past the motel last night, she thought.

  Richard and the blood on his hands...

  “What happened out at the motel last night?” Beth wanted to know.

  “A guy just traveling through, his daughter disappeared.” The young deputy’s voice dropped to a stage whisper. “Between you and me, I think Sheriff Wayman’s got some suspicions about the guy.”

  “You mean, that he might have done something to his daughter?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Where is Sheriff Wayman now?”

  “Out at the diner with the guy. His name is Carnes. Sheriff said he’s in real bad shape. He even had Reverend Heath go out there and look him over.”

  Reverend Heath, Beth thought disparagingly. Because the man had his degree in psychology, the entire town credited him with powers of understanding and insight that he simply didn’t possess. Beth had visited with him a few times after Sam’s death—at the reverend’s insistence—and had found him to be far more interested in talking about himself than his visitors.

  “So I could catch him out there?”

  “Sure,” the deputy said. He laughed. “If you’re nice to him, he’ll probably even buy you breakfast.”

  “I’m always nice to the sheriff,” Beth said. “He’s a good man.” With very few reservations, she meant exactly what she said.

  “Maybe he’ll have a good story waiting for you. Maybe this Carnes guy will already have confessed.”

  Beth shuddered. She had never seen a monster close up before, a man who’d kill his own daughter.

  She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

  3

  The door opened at dawn. A silhouetted figure stood in the streaming light pouring over the floor of the church basement. The figure was tall and angular in the light, its features completely obscured in shadows. It stood appraising the sleeping form of Richard huddled on the army cot.

  The figure glided across the floor with a gracefulness that did not seem to be quite human.

  It seemed out of place in the basement, which was piled high with folding chairs and blankets for flood relief victims and a hodge-podge of battered mundane objects collected over the years.

  As the figure moved, a huge knife, curved in the fashion of a Bowie knife, appeared i
n its right hand, so that the knife was completely exposed by the time it reached Richard there on the army cot.

  “Richard.”

  Nothing. No response whatever.

  “Richard.”

  Still nothing.

  The man slept as if he were on the dusk of death itself.

  This time the figure added prodding to his calling of Richard’s name.

  This time there was the faintest of stirrings.

  In two minutes Richard was sitting on the edge of the bed, reeking of sleep and sweat, pawing at his eyes with knuckly hands.

  He seemed unaware of the figure standing over him. He had not once looked up. Not once.

  “Richard.”

  This time, albeit slowly, Richard looked up. His bad teeth and matter-filled morning eyes appeared to be focusing on an apparition.

  Then the fear was on his face. Richard tried to scuttle over into the corner of the cot. He grabbed a pillow ineffectually for help.

  The figure slashed the pillow into wafting feathers with a single rip of the knife.

  Richard whimpered his animal noise.

  The figure moved closer, jerking Richard up to him by the shoulder, holding the tip of the knife to the middle of Richard’s throat.

  “You were out at the motel last night, weren’t you, Richard?”

  Richard shook his head no.

  Lying.

  The figure pressed the knife even harder against Richard’s throat.

  Richard’s pitiful eyes bulged. He squirmed beneath the feel of the knife. He whimpered again.

  “You were out at the motel last night, weren’t you, Richard? You saw me take the girl from the car, didn’t you, Richard?”

  This time Richard nodded. His face pleaded with the figure.

  The knife was withdrawn.

  The figure smiled. “Do you know what’s going to happen now, Richard?”

  Richard’s eyes followed the frightening figure as it paced around a bit, as if trying to decide what to do now.

  “Terrible things, Richard. Do you know how little puppies sound when you hurt them, how they scream, Richard?”

  Richard scuttled back up the cot again.

  The figure trapped Richard by grabbing his trouser leg.

  “That’s how you’re going to sound when I start cutting you, Richard. You’re going to sound like a little puppy.”

  Chapter Four

  1

  Vince Reeves sat in the sheriff’s office with his feet propped up on his desk. The deputy had been here, in almost this same position, for the past three hours, since storming out of the trailer where he lived with his wife, Donna.

  Another miserable performance as a lover, Vince thought bitterly. Where other men had talents or hobbies, Vince had only ever had one thing he could boast about—his prowess in the sack. Not that he did boast. He was not the kiss-and-tell type. Still, enough women had flattered him over the years that he knew he was a good lover, a man who genuinely cared about the woman’s pleasure as much as his own.

  But the last few weeks ...

  “Damn!” Vince snapped.

  He hadn’t noticed that the Winston Light he’d been holding had burned down to his fingers.

  He ground out the cigarette angrily.

  Then he began rubbing his face. He needed a shave. He needed sleep. He needed to feel good about himself sexually again.

  He needed—

  He needed to talk to somebody was what he needed.

  Talk to somebody about what he’d overheard one day about a month ago when he had been on his way to deliver a message to the sheriff out at the fishing lodge where a group of city council members often got together.

  Oh, Vince had gone out there all right. His tires had crunched up the gravel parkway right to the door. He’d gotten out and walked around the side to where the entrance was to the large cabin and then he’d overheard what was being said.

  Apparently nobody inside had noticed him.

  After hearing a few of the words being said, he’d peeked around the corner, into an open screened window, just to make sure who was speaking.

  When he’d seen, he’d been doubly shocked.

  Not only was what they were saying unbelievable, but the people who were saying it—the town elders, the most respected names in the community of Burton—

  And there in the middle of it all, taking his part in the proceedings, was none other than Sheriff Bill Wayman, the man Vince had always considered a mentor, a father-figure....

  What he’d heard that evening he could not repeat to anybody. First of all, who would believe him? Second of all, if anybody did believe him, what could they do about it?

  The helpless feeling had translated into headaches and finally into his miserable sexual performances.

  A few nights earlier he’d started to tell his wife Donna about what he’d heard, but at the last moment he’d drawn back—for her sake. He didn’t want to share such dangerous knowledge and put her in a position of jeopardy.

  The third thing against talking to anybody was that he wasn’t sure what the council members’ words had meant exactly. Sure, on the surface they made sense, but there were so many things he couldn’t figure out....

  “If I’m keeping you up, just say so,” Deputy Fred Shanks said, coming into the room where the deputies had their desks.

  Vince started. His feet dropped off the desk. His head jerked up, his eyes flying awake. He’d been dozing off, no doubt about that.

  “You trying to win the Barney Fife award, huh?” Shanks said, referring to the deputy on the old Andy Griffith Show.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Vince strained at sounding amused. But he was too embarrassed for humor.

  Shanks got ready for the day, taking his notebooks and other paperwork from his desk drawers and getting ready to transfer them to his patrol car. All the while his round face kept steady eyes on his partner deputy.

  Vince kept his own gaze on the floor. The lack of sleep for the past two weeks had made him punchy, was finally catching up to him.

  “You know somethin’?” Shanks said.

  “Huh-uh, what?” Vince muttered groggily.

  “Somethin’s wrong with you, buddy-boy.”

  A terrible alertness came into Vince’s eyes. Already he felt the blood rushing to his face. Had Donna been talking to Debbie, Shanks’s wife, about the problems Vince had been having in bed lately? Shanks was a gossip. If Donna had said anything, the story would be all over town in a matter of hours. No matter where Vince went people would be pointing at him. Probably sniggering, too. There goes old “Quick Draw.” He could just imagine all the names they’d invent for him.

  “I’ve been fine,” Vince lied.

  “Sure you have, buddy-boy.”

  Shanks came over, stood next to Vince.

  “Donna told Debbie she was real worried about you.”

  “She say anything else?”

  Shanks scrutinized his friend carefully. “She wasn’t talkin’ behind your back, if that’s what you mean. You got a good wife there, my friend.”

  Instantly, Vince felt ashamed of himself. Shanks was right. Donna was a good wife. A good friend. She wouldn’t gossip about him behind his back or share any information that would embarrass him.

  “Yeah, I sure do at that,” Vince said, happy for the respite from his problems, happy that he could spend some moments thinking about how good his life was in other ways—

  “’Course she ain’t the only one worried about you,” Shanks said.

  “Who else?” Vince asked, thinking the answer would be Shanks himself.

  “The sheriff.”

  “The sheriff?”

  “That’s what I said. He came up to me yesterday and asked me if everything was all right with you.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “Why’d he do that?” Shanks smiled miserably, as if he were addressing a lunatic. “You’ve been actin’ strange, buddy-boy. Real strange. People call your name and you don�
��t seem to hear ’em. You sit outside in your car half an hour at a time just starin’. That ain’t real normal behavior.”

  “I been all right, just tired,” Vince said. “The sheriff want to know anything else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, like if I said anything to anybody.”

  “About what?”

  “About what was bothering me, or was supposed to be bothering me anyway.”

  “Nope. Sheriff Wayman just likes you. He worries about you. Like a son.”

  “Yeah,” Vince said, standing up. “Like a son.”

  Shanks’s expression made it clear that he detected the slight note of sarcasm in Vince’s voice.

  “There somethin’ you don’t like about the sheriff?” Shanks asked.

  “You ever think maybe he’s not what he seems?”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning just that. That he’s not all he seems.”

  Shanks went back to staring at him as if he were insane. Now there was even a kind of pity in his eyes. “Maybe you need a rest, buddy-boy. Maybe you’ve been working too long without a break.”

  But by then Vince had left the room.

  Just walked clean out in the preoccupied way he’d been doing everything lately.

  Shanks looked at the empty doorway, then scratched his head. Suddenly, he leaned over and punched the intercom that fed into the sheriff’s office.

  “Elsie, is the sheriff back yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When he comes in, tell him I’d like an appointment with him, will you?”

  “Sure. Somethin’ wrong?”

  “Yeah,” Shanks said, looking at the empty doorway again, “yeah, I think there is.”

  2

  In the daylight Carnes could see how beautiful the countryside was here. Rolling hills, such as those you found in Grant Wood paintings, filled one section of the diner window, while the other was taken up by the woods where Sheriff Wayman and himself had walked last night.

  He put the coffee down and almost instantly a pot appeared to refill it.

  Sheriff Wayman came out of the bathroom, a toilet thundering behind him.