by John Grit
“Why?” a man standing nearby asked.
“To preserve the little girl’s tracks,” Mel answered. “Maybe we can track her.”
The man spit and slapped at a mosquito on the back of his neck. “Hell, she can’t be far away. Quickest way to find her is for everyone to spread out in a line and sweep these woods.”
Mel waited for Chesty or Nate to say something, when they didn’t speak up, he did. “If she’s not far away, a small team of trackers can find her just as quick. If she’s far into these woods, following her trail will be quicker. Depends on how many acres we have to search. But there won’t be any trail to track if it’s been stomped on by a large group wondering around lost.”
“I guess you know more about it than I do,” the man said. He raised his arms to get attention. “Hey, everyone back to the road. Let these guys do their job.”
Mel quipped, “I didn’t know this was my job.” He caught up with Chesty and Nate, who were already heading deeper into the woods, following the sound of Tyrone’s voice.
Nate kept walking and spoke without looking over his shoulder, his eyes constantly scanning the ground and brush. “You’re here to learn about the people of this town. This stressful situation is certainly a good way to do that. As you can see, they work together fairly well, considering that there are always a few assholes and idiots in every crowd.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Mel said. “But my stomach’s churning. I fear this is going to turn out to be a very bad day for all of us.”
“We don’t know that,” Chesty reminded him. “She could’ve just wandered off.”
Tyrone saw them coming and rushed to meet them. “I heard someone found a shirt.”
“Nate did,” Chesty said. “Looks like hers. Where’s the shoe?”
“Come on.” Tyrone turned and started walking.
When they got to the shoe, Nate didn’t stop. “I’m going to have to walk in ever wider semicircles until I find tracks that weren’t made by searchers.”
Mel followed. “I’ll ride shotgun for you, so you can keep your eyes on the ground. The bastard might be armed.”
Chesty stiffened. “We don’t know that someone took her.” He handed Mel his radio. “Call Tyrone if you find anything.”
“Yeah,” Mel said, and kept walking.
Tyrone and Chesty’s eyes locked for a second. They looked down at the small shoe. It was Tyrone who spoke first. “I couldn’t find any tracks around the shoe, and I was one of the first to get to it.”
“They won’t be able to tell much until they get past where the searchers have walked,” Chesty said, repeating what Nate had already stated.
Tyrone took a white handkerchief out of his pocket and tied it to a tree at eye level to mark the shoe’s location. “We might as well sit down on that windfall over there. It could be a long wait.”
It did seem like hours, but was in reality less than 90 minutes. Tyrone’s radio squelched and Mel’s voice came over the air, sounding flat and empty. “We found her. It’s not good. Keep the sun at your back and come on in. Make a lot of noise and I’ll lead you in by radio.”
Tyrone spoke into the mike, “Is Nate still with you?”
The radio squelched. “Nate has gone on alone. I couldn’t talk him out of it.”
Chesty swore. “I was afraid of that.”
Chapter 15
Mel had removed his uniform jacket. It covered the little girl’s body ten feet away. He spoke into the radio mike. “Come on guys, move it! I need to catch up with Nate. Tracking isn’t a one-man operation.”
Tyrone pushed through a patch of thick brush, his black face full of dread and dripping sweat, though it wasn’t that hot. Chesty followed not far behind.
As soon as the two men were close enough for them to see where he was pointing, Mel said, “She’s over there.” He took off on the run to find Nate.
When Chesty approached the body, he saw her little bare feet and ankles sticking out from under Mel’s jacket. He knelt and waited long enough to take a few breaths and reinforce his constitution before lifting it.
Tyrone stood beside him. “It never gets any easier.”
Chesty pulled his hand away, delaying the moment as long as possible. “Any easier? This is my first child murder. If anything serious happened in town, I always called in you guys at the Sheriff’s Department and stepped aside.”
Tyrone looked down at the jacket. “You’re the sheriff now.” He saw Chesty flinch. “But if you want, I’ll do it. This is probably the tenth child murder case I’ve dealt with. Of course, we patrol officers just did the preliminaries and the detectives did the real work on a murder case.”
“You should be sheriff. Come the election, you should run.” Chesty reached for the jacket and pulled it aside far enough to see her face. His breath caught. “He beat her first.”
“Strangled.” Tyrone bent down to more closely examine her neck. “I would bet he used his bare hands, no rope or anything. With her little neck, it was easy.”
Her half-open eyes were badly swollen. “There’s a lot of damage to her face,” Chesty said. “You think he did that with his bare hands?”
Tyrone had to look away for a moment. “A grown man using his fist on a little girl can do that much damage and more. This animal has an uncontrollable rage burning within him. Could be women he hates, but little girls are easier victims, so he goes for the most helpless.”
“Gutless.” Chesty stood. “I hate to ask you, but I’m already about to throw up.”
Tyrone put his big hand on Chesty’s shoulder for a second. “Okay, friend. Take a break.”
Chesty took ten steps and kept his back turned, while he blew his nose.
Three minutes later, Tyrone stood beside him. “Yeah, he raped her. If he beat her first, she was probably unconscious at the time. She may have been unconscious when he strangled her.”
Chesty looked up at the sky and watched a thunder cloud approaching from the northwest. “Thought I heard thunder a while back. Now it looks like we’re in for rain in a few minutes.” He looked at Tyrone. “I doubt Nate and Mel are going to be doing any tracking in the rain.”
Tyrone headed back to the body. “They have a small window of time left. Maybe they’ll catch up with the bastard before the rain comes. Why don’t you go on after them? I’ll take her to the road and call off the search.”
After thinking about what Tyrone said for a few seconds, Chesty shook his head. “It’ll be more productive if I go back with you. We can gather some men in trucks and circle around. We might get in front of him, while Nate and Mel drive him to us.”
Tyrone wrapped her in Mel’s jacket and lifted her. “We’ll do that. The trouble is she’s been dead a while. I expect the killer’s long gone.” He took off at a fast pace. “Just in case he isn’t, we need to hurry. There are dirt roads southeast of us. He could have a car waiting.”
A bolt of lightning struck less than a mile away, and rolling thunder shook the ground. Unimpeded by the weight of a dead girl’s body, Chesty ran on ahead. As he approached a few searchers who hadn’t gotten the word to return to the road and wait for further instructions, he yelled, “We found her! Everyone get back to the road.”
Word spread fast. She had been found, but was she alive. The woods echoed with excited voices. Then Tyrone broke out of the woods and into the street, where people could see the wrapped body. A wail rose up from the crowd. “No!”
Chesty tried to get their attention. “I need a dozen men in a couple pickups. Nate and Mel are tracking the killer. We’ll try to get ahead of him and cut him off.”
In five seconds, four pickups were loaded with armed, angry men.
Tyrone placed the body in the back seat of his cruiser. “If you catch him, you’ll play hell keeping this bunch from lynching him on the spot.”
Chesty nodded. “That’s what I was thinking. But, like you said, I’m the acting sheriff, and it’s my job to stop them.”
“I’ll back you.�
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“Someone has to take the body to the clinic and have a doctor examine it. If this guy’s taken alive and put on trial, we’ll need evidence.” Chesty mopped his forehead. “The doctors at the clinic is all we have in the way of collecting medical evidence.”
Tyrone gave him a strange smile. “This’ll never go to trial, even if he’s caught six months from now. If you think otherwise, you don’t know people as well as I do.”
“Even so, that poor little girl and her mother deserve as much of a formal process as we can possibly give them and as thorough an investigation as circumstances allow.”
Tyrone regarded the faces of a dozen people in the crowd and then looked over at the men in the pickups. “I agree, but I still think I should go with you.”
“No. You take the girl to the clinic,” Chesty said.
If Tyrone had wanted to argue his point further, he would have been arguing with himself, as Chesty jogged away without a word.
~~~
The wind blew with ever increasing strength, and the sky grew darker. Nate stopped long enough to check his compass. “He’s been heading generally southeast since he left the girl.”
Mel kept his eyes busy, scanning the woods. “We’ll lose his trail in the rain. When we do, we’ll push on ahead at a fast clip. Unless this coward’s smarter than I’m thinking he is, he’ll stay on the same course and not veer off.”
Nate didn’t need Mel’s words to know he understood what was on his mind. Besides his National Guard training, he knew Mel to be a competent woodsman and hunter. “That’s the idea, but he obviously has a compass. And that means he might not be as dumb as we’re thinking he is. The fact he’s insane and a child-murdering bastard doesn’t necessarily mean he’s stupid.”
Yeah.” Mel kept his eyes working as he spoke. “I’m afraid you may be right.”
Nate moved on, searching for the next partial track in the leaf-strewn soil.
Five minutes and only 30 yards later, the rain fell. It came in individual drops at first, and then it came down in windblown sheets. Nate rushed ahead to where trees would provide temporary protection from the rain and boot prints might survive a little longer. By going from tree to tree, he was able to find the trail here and there, in steppingstone fashion, until the rain had penetrated the heaviest tree cover and washed away all remaining sign of the killer’s passing. From then on, it was Nate’s compass that led them. They rushed through the stormy woods at a yard-eating gait, gaining on the killer, or so they hoped.
The storm cloud passed, and the rain stopped after only 35 minutes, but it had already washed away the killer’s trail. Nate and Mel pushed on through most of the afternoon, following the same course. Their hope was they were not far behind and could cut across his trail again, finding tracks he had made since the rain stopped. Those hopes vanished when they came to a dirt road and one of the searchers took a shot at them.
After diving for cover, Mel got on the radio. “Chesty, will you tell that idiot to stop shooting at us?”
Chesty had heard the shot and was already wondering who was shooting at who. “Just stay where you are and I’ll spread the word.” He jumped in his truck and sped off, blowing his horn. Five minutes later, he got back on the radio. “You can come on out now. If anyone shoots at you after I’ve told them not to, you have my permission to shoot back.”
Mel switched the radio off. “Shit.” He looked at Nate, who was ten feet away and ensconced behind a large pine tree, lying in a mud puddle. “Did you hear that? He thinks we need permission from him to shoot back.”
They both laughed, more to relieve the tension than because they thought it was funny.
Chesty’s voice came back over the radio. “Give me a marker to go by and I’ll come and get you.”
Mel peered out of the brush, staying out of sight. “There’s a tall lightning-killed pine tree across the road from us.”
The radio squelched. “I see it. Be there in less than a minute.”
Fifteen seconds later, Mel and Nate both heard Chesty’s truck rattling down the road at high speed. “Well, here goes nothing,” Mel said. They stepped out into the open with their hands raised.
Chesty raced up a hill and brought his pickup to a sudden halt next to them. He leaned over and yelled out of the passenger side window. “He didn’t cross here. I’ve had men watching along this road for two miles.”
Nate took his pack off and dumped it in the back of the pickup. “Well, that means he’s gotten away this time. His trail had to have been colder than we thought. It was over when the rain washed away his tracks.”
“Damn. I hate that,” Chesty said. He got out and walked around to their side of the pickup. “Any suggestions on how to proceed from here?”
Nate reached into the back of the pickup and took a canteen out of his pack. After taking his first drink in hours, he said, “There’s little chance of catching him today. The girl must have been dead longer than I thought, and the killer left long before we found her.”
Mel relieved himself of his pack and placed it beside Nate’s in the back of the pickup. “He’s right. The bastard has gotten away this time.”
Chesty kicked a rock, sending it flying down the road. “That means there’ll be another little girl killed by this animal sometime soon.” His face became rigid with impotent rage. It only lasted a few seconds before he was thinking again. “He must’ve had a vehicle parked on this road. Why else would he come this way?”
Nate had asked himself the same question before he even reached the road. “Still doesn’t make sense. I mean him walking into the woods instead of just going back to the street not far from where he left the body. He had to have entered the woods from that street, so why didn’t he leave his vehicle there, dump her, and go back to his vehicle?”
Mel snapped his fingers. “He left his ride in the woods, not on the street back there and not this road. He’s on a motorcycle.”
Chesty ran the fingers of his right hand through his hair, thinking. “How far back did you lose his trail?”
“Not long after it started raining, of course.” Nate thought for a moment. “We hadn’t walked far. Tracking is slow going.” The look on his face suddenly changed. “Mel’s idea is the only one that makes any sense. What we need to know is where he first took her. It may have been right there on that street. He probably waited until she came along, rushed out and grabbed her. He then carried her into the woods far enough no one would hear anything or happen on to them.”
“I don’t know,” Chesty said. “That street’s a long way from her home. Too far for a girl her age to walk.”
“Well, you’re the cop.” Nate swung the pickup door open before getting in. “I’ve done all I can for you today.”
Mel handed Chesty the radio. “The asshole’s gone. You’ll have to catch him another time.”
“Yeah.” Chesty looked totally beaten. He trudged to the driver side of the truck. “Just let me call off the search and send these people home. Then I’ll give you two a ride back to the clinic.” He got in and cranked the engine. “Another little girl’s going to die because I failed today.”
Nate thought about telling him he hadn’t failed anyone, but realized it would sound hollow, no matter how true. After all, he still blamed himself for the death of the little boy he ran over. “Parents are just going to have to keep an eye on their kids. The more difficult it is for him to grab another victim, the more likely he is to make a mistake.”
“And the more likely he is to move on to easier hunting grounds,” Mel added.
Chesty looked sick. “I was hoping to catch him before he killed again.” He started down the road. When two HUMVEEs appeared over the hill, he stopped and waited for them. “Maybe help has arrived. Better late than never.”
The HUMVEEs stopped. Deni got out of the lead vehicle. “I just found out about the missing girl. Why didn’t you coordinate with the Army? We’re here to help.”
Ignoring her question, Chesty s
aid, “The killer may have gotten away on a motorcycle. I was just about to call off the manhunt.”
Deni glared at all three men. “Damn it! You’ve left us in the dark on this, and we could’ve helped. Two dozen extra men and a chopper might’ve made the difference.” She took a breath to hold her temper. “So you found the girl dead?”
“Beaten, raped, and strangled.” Chesty looked down the road, rage surfacing on his face.
A soldier standing next to Deni spoke. “Just like the others.”
Chesty stared at him. “Others?”
“Might not be the same one,” Deni said. “But we had a similar problem in Georgia. Never did catch the freak.”
Nate broke into the conversation. “Before the plague, there were sex offenders in every neighborhood. Unfortunately, the disease wasn’t selective; it killed the good along with the bad and left some of the bad alive along with the good. Even if we caught this one, there are more out there and always will be.”
“Yeah, but this bastard is killing children in my town,” Chesty said. “And I’m going to get him.”
~~~
Brian did not want to tell Caroline about how their friends were killed while she was away, but she insisted. Her reaction caused him to regret it. He knew that when a woman like Caroline cried it meant she was really hurting. “Things have been rough around here,” he said. “But it’s been getting better lately.”
Caroline returned to her normal stoic self. “Yeah, that’s why you’re here recovering from being nearly beaten to death.” She looked at Samantha. “And why this little girl is an orphan. And why your father and half the town are looking for a lost girl.”
Brian examined Samantha’s face for any sign Caroline’s words had bothered her. “She has Deni now.”
Caroline forced a smile. “She has all of us.”
“Yeah,” Brian said, “all of Deni’s friends will help take care of you, Samantha. You’re not alone. Not only do you have Deni, you have all the rest of us, too.”
