RATTLEMAN: Praise for 18 Seconds 'Excellent! Stephen King

by George D. Shuman

  Rattleman

  by

  George D. Shuman

  ISBN 1484036085

  EAN 978-1484036082

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

  ‘Rattleman’ is published by George D. Shuman

  http://www.georgedshuman.com

  ‘Rattleman’ is the copyright of the author, George D. Shuman, 2012. All rights are reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters in the novel are fictional. Any similarity to anyone, living or dead, is coincidental.

  George D. Shuman can be contacted via his website at:

  http://georgedshuman.com

  As always to my children, Melissa and Daniel

  I was born in the Appalachian extension of the Allegheny Mountains in Southern Pennsylvania. My parents had a weekend cabin on the Pleasantville Mountain and I remember meeting, as a teenager, a local walking through the woods wearing an old revolver on his hip and carrying a gunnysack. He told me he was picking Ginseng.

  In 1964 a young girl, Peggy Anne Bradnick, was kidnapped near Shady Gap, Pennsylvania, two counties east of us, by a man who dragged her away from her siblings while she was walking home from a school bus stop and pulled her into the woods.

  The man who kidnapped Peggy Anne Bradnick turned out to be William Diller Hollenbaugh, AKA ‘Bicycle Pete’ or ‘Mountain Man’, as he was known in this rural mountainous area of southwest Pennsylvania. Hollenbaugh had been sentenced to twenty years for burglary in 1939 and served his time between prison and mental institutions. Upon release he committed local burglaries and shot and wounded two farmers in the days leading up to the kidnapping.

  For the next seven days Hollenbaugh would chain Peggy to a tree and hide her in a cave in the mountains.

  The story of Bicycle Pete and Peggy Anne Bradnick became a national affair, even by the news standard of 1964. My father had a business partner and good family friend who owned a summer cabin at the foot of the mountains near Shade Gap. I begged my father to let me take time out of school so we could go there (as we had many times before) and get us up close to all the action. My father considered it for a while, but then said no. I think it was my mother that pulled the plug.

  Hollenbaugh would eventually shoot and kill an FBI agent, then break into a summer cabin and shoot and wound a Sheriff’s Deputy named Sharpe. It was the very same summer cabin I had hoped we would be staying in.

  Hollenbaugh forced the gunshot Deputy to drive him and his hostage Peggy Anne out of the property, but there was a gate at the entrance of the lane to the cabin, and when Sharpe got out to open it, he bolted and alerted nearby troopers that Hollenbaugh and Peggy Anne Bradnick were in the vehicle.

  Hollengbaugh grabbed the girl and escaped to yet another farm on foot and it was there that he was fatally shot by a Pennsylvania State Trooper.

  Undoubtedly these childhood memories and stories were influential when more than two decades later I undertook to write ‘Rattleman’.

  George D. Shuman.

  Chapter 1

  Iron Mountain, West Virginia

  March

  Everywhere the Sheriff looked there was water. Water dripping, water gurgling, water trickling down the hillsides. It melted from the snow-covered rocks and ice-covered trees, from power lines and rooftops creating fissures beneath the packed snow. It gouged ruts through muddy roads, feeding brooks and creeks that formed gravity powered streams, plunging off the mountain to Silver River nearly four thousand feet below.

  The Sheriff sat in his Jeep, defroster on high, blowing warm breath into numb hands, ears prickling as if stuck with a thousand pins. Watching the road behind in the side mirror, he tugged wet socks from his feet and laid them over the vents on the dash. The windows were fogged and he wiped them with his elbow.

  Spring had come early to Kettle Hollow.

  The radio crackled.

  “331 … are you there?”

  Martin reached for the microphone and keyed it, interrupting the static. “331 go. Where’s the crime lab, Sam?”

  “… accident … Dilley’s … noon … Douglas … to raise you.”

  “I copy the crime lab for noon? Tell Chief Douglas I’ll call him tonight.”

  He tossed the microphone on the dash and massaged his feet with cold hands. He sneezed on the sleeve of his jacket and rummaged through the glove box for a bottle of aspirin, shook a few into his hand and chewed them dry.

  Kettle Hollow had once been a summer hunting camp for the Cherokee Indians. Then fur trappers muscled in, supplying London with America’s first great commodity. When the beavers were all decimated the loggers came for timber, and when the timber was all felled they bored holes into the earth to plunder coal. When the coal was all gone the survivors were left to farm the piteous soil, so they grew corn and potatoes and made moonshine for a living. They had become, by majority, a community of de facto outlaws.

  Winters were especially hard in Kettle Hollow, snow cutting the mountain off from civilization for weeks at a time. If someone died in the interim, they were packed on a rooftop to keep the animals from getting to them. Which was probably what Buc Thompson was thinking when he brought the lady’s head down from Lake Nawakwa.

  From his rear view mirror Martin Wayne squinted at the growing cloud of exhaust. The thermometer was rising fast and a thick ground fog was forming over the warming snow. On a hillside he could see the top half of a cow, the bottom shrouded by mist. An old woman walked past the Jeep carrying a bundle of wood; a man wearing a sack for a hat stopped to peek through the passenger side window. People stood in open doorways scratching fleas and puffing on cigarettes. Then there was movement in the mirror and a vehicle appeared, a dark Chevrolet Suburban with a light bar on the roof. Martin grabbed the damp socks from the dash and began to stretch them over his feet.

  The driver was Kirsten Berkley, not only a pretty brunette but a state police corporal and senior forensic technician. She opened the window and banged a radio microphone against the side of the vehicle. “How in the hell do you talk to anyone up here? Isn’t this still part of America?”

  Martin jerked his head toward the shanties. “Go ask someone who the President is.”

  She tossed the mike on the seat, nodding at the man sitting next to her. “Marty, this is Jeff Wittis. Jeff’s a Bluefield boy, former Jug-head like you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Or was that jar-head? I get confused.” She leaned back in her seat. “Jeff, this is Sheriff Wayne.”

  Marty leaned over to look at the young man. He wore a blue jumpsuit with the insignia of the West Virginia State Police. He smiled. “No such thing as a former,” he said, reaching past Kirsten to shake the man’s hand.

  She was wearing perfume, something intoxicatingly familiar. It was impossible to avoid looking at the open second button on her blouse.

  The rookie smiled back.

  “Hoo-ugh,” Kirsten said dryly.

  Kirsten Berkley was assigned to K Troop out of Pocahontas County. She was also the daughter of Superior Court Judge Adam Berkley, who presided over Superior Court in Marion, West Virginia.

  She unfastened her shoulder harness and let it snap away. “So what have you got here, anyhow?”

  “Jane Doe,” Marty said, pointing to the top of a building. “At least the head part of her.”

  Kirsten closed her eyes then opened them quickly and made a smiley face at he
r partner. “That girl is just everywhere,” she said, bobbing her head back and forth Valley-Girl-style. “And now she’s lost her head.”

  She opened the door. “Why don’t you introduce us?”

  Marty led them to a woodshed behind an old smokehouse. All traces of wood had long since been removed and the small enclosure was covered with snow, trampled by muddy boots and large paw prints. He nodded toward a ladder that looked less sturdy than the wall.

  “I left her like I found her, Kirsten.”

  The trooper wrinkled her nose and stepped across a pile of dog shit, climbed the ladder to the roof and bent over until the upper half of her body was out of sight. “How long has she been up here?”

  “About nine hours,” Marty said.

  “Looks like something from Creature Feature.” She put her hand behind her back and wiggled it. “Jeff, grab the bag with the yellow tag out of the truck.”

  The young man took off for the Suburban.

  “Farmer got pulled under the wheel of his tractor down in Dilley’s Mill,” she said. “The family was all in the field by the time we arrived. Cousins and little kiddies standing knee high in the snow, dead body under the tire, parents letting them hang out like they were at a circus. Why do they do that?”

  Marty shrugged.

  “So the boy that found her. Sam said he was ice fishing?”

  “Yep,” Marty said. “Saw her head caught in the flow along the shoreline. He had to break the ice away to remove it from the lake. Brought her here and put her on the roof so the dogs wouldn’t get to her.”

  She looked over the edge at another pile of dog shit then went back to what she was doing. “Pretty smart, I’d say. She’s in relatively good shape. You were up there yourself?”

  He nodded. “About two hours ago. I staked the hole where he found her and shot a dozen pictures around the shoreline. If my shoe size is sufficiently calibrated for your reports, you won’t have to slog a mile with your measuring tape.”

  Kirsten lifted a boot. “These little piggy’s are just fine with the size of your little piggy’s. In fact, you can’t imagine how thankful they are.” She glanced down to make sure her partner hadn’t returned. “You know, we should get them together some time.”

  Marty lifted his eyebrows.

  “He never saw the rest of her body?”

  “Nope,” Marty said, “but she could easily have been under there. Ice is a foot thick and piling up along the shore. Slabs as big as a refrigerator door.”

  Kirsten nodded and leaned close until her face was almost touching the woman’s head. “Ice expands with literally tons of pressure. Easy to separate a head from the body if it gets wedged in between.”

  She tugged out a pair of surgical gloves and snapped them over her wrists. “If she was caught in the ice she must have been in the lake before the water froze. Sometime early December I would think.”

  Marty nodded and sneezed.

  “God bless you,” she said. “I can tell you she’s not a local.” Kirsten lifted the ear lobes with her finger. “Five piercings in each. Hair cut too short and spiky and color came out of a bottle.” She turned the head sideways and put her flashlight on the mouth. “Cuts around the lips and gums. Nice set of teeth. There’ll be dental records if she was ever ID’d.”

  Kirsten straightened up and played the flashlight down on Marty’s face.

  “So when were you planning on calling me?”

  Marty put a hand up, squinting to block the light. “Did I say I was going to call you?”

  “Last month.”

  “Refresh my memory.” His eyes strayed to the back of her jumpsuit. Kirsten was all woman – uniform or no.

  “Almost Heaven, end of the bar, around midnight. I think there were at least a dozen witnesses.”

  “Drunksies don’t count, Kirs. And besides, you’re still married.” His eyes went to her wedding ring and he nodded toward it.

  “Oh, Marty. It comes off like everything else.” She used her free hand to unzip her jacket.

  “See?” She zipped it back up. “Besides, how will I know if I want to leave my husband if I don’t sleep with you first?”

  He laughed. “You’ve been sniffing too much formaldehyde, Kirs.”

  The rookie Wittis returned just then, gingerly climbing the ladder until he could reach her hand to transfer the bag.

  She removed a camera from it and strapped it over her neck. Then she took another and twisted off the lens cap.

  “Marty’s father,” she called down to the rookie, “was a cross between a cowboy and the last of the Mohicans. He could travel at night dead reckoning. No moon, no stars, no compass.”

  She blew warm breath into her hands to limber up the fingers.

  “Ever hear of Calvin Wynn Wayne?”

  The rookie shook his head.

  “Only the most famous lawman east of the Mississippi.” She put the lens cap between her teeth and fired off a volley of still shots. “All the sports magazines featured him in the sixties and seventies,” she said out of the side of her mouth, lens cap still clenched between her teeth. “Shot and killed a fugitive here in 1967.” She switched cameras and took a few pictures straight down at the head. “Just up the road past the general store, isn’t that right, Marty? Of course, there wasn’t a real road back then. Calvin had to come up on horseback, shoot the guy and then lash him to the saddle to take him back down. It took him all night, but the next morning he walked his horse up Main Street in Marion while the churches were letting out Easter morning. Can you picture all those little darlings in their white gloves and bonnets?” She spit the lens cap back into her hand. “Reins in one hand, dead man over the saddle, big black hole in his back where the bullet came out.” She shuddered, faking an orgasm. “Now that’s when cops had balls.”

  Wittis raised an eyebrow at Marty, who only shrugged.

  “Reporters just happened to be in town to write a piece on the hundredth anniversary of the coal mine massacres.” She lowered the large camera and the bag to Wittis. “Wait for me at the bottom,” she told him, pointing to where she wanted him to stand.

  Wittis backed down the last two rungs while she finished taking pictures. Then she tucked the smaller camera into a thigh pocket and picked up the woman’s head in her gloved hands.

  “A cameraman snapped a shot of Calvin tying his horse to a parking meter. It made the cover of TIME Magazine. Put a sheet of plastic down there, Jeff.” She nodded toward a spot the dogs hadn’t stepped on, looked over at Marty and said, “You don’t mind if I share your family history, do you? Mine’s not nearly as interesting.”

  Not waiting for his reply, she started carefully down the ladder with the head in both hands. “Anyhow, Calvin Wayne’s best friend was a full-blooded Cherokee. Toby’s still living up on Emmett’s Fork by you. Ain’t that right, Marty?”

  Marty sighed.

  Kirsten set foot on the ground and laid the head on the plastic sheet between the men. “So you see he was raised half cowboy and half Indian. Best of both worlds, huh?”

  Marty looked apologetically at the rookie.

  Kirsten was crouched over the woman’s head. “So she’s obviously been preserved by the cold.” She pressed a finger against the woman’s neck and the skin moved under her glove. “Eyelids are torn here. See those cuts on the lips I been talking about? One, two … third one here.”

  “Fish?” Marty noticed that the rookie Wittis was trying to busy himself with the equipment instead of looking at the head.

  Kirsten shrugged. “I don’t think so. Lines look too clean to be bites.” She leaned close to the face and shook her head. “Once again, I’m going with sharp ice. Jeff, how about bagging her up for me.” She came to her feet and peeled off the gloves.

  The rookie gathered the cameras and headed back to the Suburban. Marty thought the young man was looking less well by the minute.

  “Shall we call it … undetermined?” Marty asked.

  Kirsten nodded, reaching into
her jumpsuit for a notebook. “Yeah, I’ll get her under some lights tonight and we’ll send her off to the lab in Charleston. Are you coming over for the second half of my show?”

  Marty shook his head. “Have to catch the rerun, Kirs. I’m in court with your father in the morning.”

  “Then how about tomorrow night?”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “When you buy me a beer for all the fine work I did.”

  Marty smiled. “Kirsten, you really need to remember the last time we had a beer.”

  She tried to look innocent, which was wholly ridiculous on Kirsten. “What?”

  “We made damn fools of ourselves, is what.”

  “Oh, Marty. No one cares what we were doing.”

  The rookie came back wearing heavy rubber gloves. He was carrying a seven-foot body bag.

  “This?” he asked doubtfully.

  Kirsten nodded.

  He looked at both of them, then put the head in the bag and rolled up the remaining ends. Afterward he headed back to the Suburban.

  “And they were just jealous,” Kirsten said. “If you hadn’t been so sappy over Sarah, you might have gotten lucky in the parking lot.” She ran her tongue over her lips.

  Marty laughed and started for the Jeep, but Kirsten ran to catch up with him. By the time he reached the running board, she was at his shoulder and this time the smell of her perfume made him sad.

  “Of course, we could skip the beers and just go straight to your place, Marty.”

  Marty put his back to the door and sighed. “Kirsten, we are not going to go anywhere together. Not as long as you’re married. Got it?”

  “Seriously, Marty,” she put her hands together. “Things haven’t been that great between Rick and me. We’ve been having problems.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said earnestly, “really I am, but the answer is still no. Not in this town,” he lifted her hand, “and not while this is on your finger.”