by Ray Garton
Harker sniffed a few times. “I do believe that’s liquor I smell,” he said. “You been drinking?”
Brandon sighed. “A little, yeah.”
“Turn around.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Turn around, Brandon.”
Brandon turned around and put his wrists together behind his back. He knew the routine.
Harker took handcuffs from his belt, tucked the flashlight under his arm, and put the cuffs on Brandon’s wrists. “You’re not under arrest, this is just for – “
”My safety and yours,” Brandon said, “yeah, yeah, I know.”
Harker casually frisked the boy. “Turn around. Now tell me again what happened, and tell me the truth this time.”
“I told you the truth.”
“What did this animal look like?”
“I don’t know, it was dark, I didn’t get a good look at it.”
“What would you guess it was?”
Brandon sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know how this sounds, but it ... it ... “
”Come on, let’s hear it.”
“It had a lot of legs, these big, long legs. Like ... like a spider.”
Rodney exchanged a look with Heidi. She looked doubtful. Rodney wondered if Brandon had done anything besides the joint he’d been smoking earlier.
Harker stared at Brandon for a while before saying, “A spider. A spider. You on something, Brandon?”
“No, I’m telling you – “
”I hear what you’re telling me, and I’m telling you that if this is some kind of hoax, I’m going to make so much trouble for you, you’ll wish you hadn’t gotten up this morning, you understand?”
“This is not a hoax.”
“You’re telling me a spider carried Tiffany Huff down that bank?”
“I’m telling you it looked like a spider.”
Harker reached out and touched Brandon’s grey shirt. “Is this blood?”
“Yeah. Her blood splattered on me when that thing drove those big spikes into her. It had these four spikes on the front of its head, and all four of them – “
Harker stepped even closer to Brandon and said, “If you’ve done something to that girl, I’ll see you go away for a long time, I don’t care how old you are, you understand me?”
“I didn’t do anything to her.”
Harker waved Alan and Natalie over. They stood next to Rodney and Heidi. He faced the four of them and said, “I want you to tell me what you saw.”
Rodney said, “Well ... we didn’t see anything. We were in the car, and the, uh, windows were fogged up.”
“Yeah,” Alan said. “Same here.”
“Did you hear anything?” Harker asked.
Rodney and Heidi spoke at the same time – he said, “I heard Tiffany scream,” and she said, “She screamed.”
Alan and Natalie nodded and Alan said, “Yeah, we heard that, too.”
“Anything else?” Harker said.
“There was shouting just before that,” Heidi said.
“When we got out of the car,” Rodney said, “we didn’t see either of them. I heard Brandon calling her, and I went to the edge of the bank. He was down there in the bushes, calling for Tiffany.”
“So it sounded like they were fighting?” Harker said.
“Not fighting,” Rodney said, “but it sounded ... you know, like a disagreement.”
“When was the last time any of you saw Tiffany Huff?” Harker asked.
They all agreed they’d seen her just before they’d gotten back into their cars.
Harker turned to Brandon. “Didn’t I tell you I’d better not have anymore trouble with you, Brandon?”
“We weren’t fighting,” Brandon said, “we were just talking, and it kind of got ... heated, is all. Then that thing came up and – “
”I don’t want to hear anymore about some animal carrying her off,” Harker said. “You come clean with me right now. Where is she?”
“I don’t know!” Brandon shouted.
“Okay, come have a seat in the car,” Harker said. He put a hand on Brandon’s shoulder and led him to the cruiser, opened up the back door. Brandon sat on the seat in back, legs still outside the car.
Harker got in the front seat and got on the radio, spoke quietly.
“What the hell’s going on?” Natalie said.
Rodney said, “I don’t think the sheriff believes Brandon’s story.”
“What do you think happened to her?” Heidi said.
But no one answered.
Eight
Harker called out two deputies to give him a hand in the search, and in half an hour, he was searching the embankment with deputies Kramer and Hanscom. The beams of their flashlights passed over manzanita bushes, wild grapevines, clumps of tall weeds, and large rocks protruding from the embankment.
Helping them were the two teenage boys who’d been parked at the lookout, Rodney Lepke and Alan Burgess. The girls waited together in one of the cars.
Brandon Carr was still in handcuffs in the backseat of Harker’s cruiser.
A mile away, firemen had made some progress with the BioGenTech fire, but flames still raged.
The boys called Tiffany’s name repeatedly, but got no response.
Harker’s eyes followed his flashlight beam, looking for some sign of the girl, as he struggled to keep his footing on the steep slope. He didn’t trust Brandon Carr. The boy had been in trouble before, and Harker had always suspected it was only a matter of time before he did something serious. He had a feeling the boy had done just that. Maybe he’d knocked the girl down the slope, or maybe he’d beaten her until she went over the edge. He’d been drinking, that was obvious, and Harker knew Brandon had a nasty problem with anger. He’d seen the boy fly into a rage more than once. Whatever had happened to Tiffany Huff, he knew Brandon had done it, which is why the boy was still in cuffs in the back seat of the cruiser.
Harker’s flashlight beam came across something dark on a rock. He stopped and bent forward to get a better look.
It was blood.
Harker suspected the girl had come down the steep embankment the hard way, and probably had hit her head on the rock. He hoped she wasn’t too badly hurt. He didn’t know the girl well, but he was, of course, quite fond of her mother. He knew they would probably find her at the foot of the slope.
“Sheriff,” Kramer said a couple yards down the slope. “Come here.” He was holding his flashlight beam on something.
Harker’s feet slipped a little as he made his way down to where Kramer stood. “What?” he said as he approached.
“You need to see this,” Kramer said. He did not lift his head when he spoke, just continued to stare at something on the ground.
Harker went to his side, followed the flashlight beam with his eyes, and saw Tiffany Huff looking up at him with her mouth open.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Harker said with a groan.
Tiffany’s severed head rested against a rock, staring up at the night sky with dead eyes. Her face was badly slashed, as if someone had sliced a knife across it a few times.
Rodney joined them, followed by Allen.
Harker put a hand on the boy’s arm and tried to turn him around. “Go on back up, Rodney, you don’t want to see this.”
“Oh, shit,” Rodney whispered when he saw the head. He stumbled backward up the slope, tripped, and landed on his ass.
Harker turned to Kramer and said, “Come up with me, we’re going to search Brandon’s car for the weapon.”
“You ... you think Brandon did this?” Rodney said. He got to his feet clumsily.
“I know he did it,” Harker said.
“Then the weapon is somewhere around here,” Rodney said. “He didn’t have a weapon when I saw him come up from the slope, and he didn’t have a chance to go back to the car.”
Harker sighed. “All right, then, we’ll look for it here on the slope. Rodney, you go back up, you and your friend.”
“Alan.�
��
“Yeah, Alan. I’m going to want statements from all of you, so can you go from here to the station? I’ll call ahead and make sure someone is ready to take your statements, okay?”
Rodney nodded. “Yeah, we can do that.”
“Good. And I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have seen that.”
The boy looked at him with wide eyes, lips parted. “I ... I don’t understand why Brandon would ... do something like that.”
“Nobody understands that sort of thing, Rodney,” Harker said. “Nobody but the sick people who do it. You go on up now. Go down to the station.” As Rodney started back up the slope, Harker turned to Kramer again and said, “Start looking for a weapon.”
“What do you think he did it with?” Kramer said.
“I have no idea.” He looked down at the head again, the face white and bloodless, the bloody neck ragged and torn. “It wasn’t an easy job, whatever tool he used.”
“Where do you suppose the body is?” Kramer said.
“It might have rolled all the way down to the bottom of the slope.” He clenched his teeth and shook his head. “That sick son of a bitch. I’m going to have to tell Anna about this.” He took in a deep breath and let it out in a loud sigh. “Okay, let’s find that weapon.”
They searched the slope for the weapon. Twenty minutes passed.
Harker found lots of fast food containers and wrappers, an old license plate, a rusted tire iron, and mysteriously, an old battered tea kettle. But he found nothing that could have been used to cut off Tiffany Huff’s head.
“Sheriff!” Hanscom called. He was down the slope a good distance, maybe at the bottom.
“Yeah?” Harker shouted.
“Down here. I found her.”
Harker looked around and determined he was about halfway down the slope. He slid and stumbled the rest of the way down. A few yards away, Kramer was on his way down the slope, too. Before reaching the bottom, Harker spotted Hanscom’s flashlight beam beside a large, shelf-like boulder that stuck out from the embankment. He moved diagonally across the slope, toward Hanscom. Harker and Kramer reached the rock shelf at the same time.
“Jesus, this is bad,” Hanscom said, and his voice broke.
Harker went to his side and turned his flashlight on the same spot as Hanscom’s.
Tiffany Huff’s headless body lay beneath the rock shelf, which stuck out about four feet above the ground. She was badly twisted – the arms and legs, what was left of them, seemed to go in all directions. Her clothes were torn to ribbons. So was she.
“Shitfire,” Kramer said. “What’d he use to do this?”
Hanscom said, “Look at that – a lot of the flesh is just ... it’s gone. What do you suppose he did with it?”
It looked like someone had taken an ax to the body. The tissue from the torso and upper legs was gone, exposing raw bones that had been picked clean. Her abdomen had been opened up and it looked like her insides had been chewed up, eaten. Her ribs had been snapped as if someone had gone at them with a pair of bolt-cutters; their jagged ends stuck up like white spikes. Her left forearm had been severed and lay a couple of feet from the body. A thin silver bracelet sparkled on her wrist.
Hanscom said, “She looks like she’s been – “ He gulped. “ – partially eaten. She looks all chewed up.”
“You think he ... ate her?” Kramer said. “He’s gotta be one sick son of a bitch.”
Nausea churned in Harker’s stomach as he stared down at the mess, at the bone exposed by all the missing flesh.
“He couldn’t have done this,” Harker whispered.
“What’s that?” Hanscom said.
“Carr. He couldn’t have done this,” Harker said. “He didn’t have time to do all this damage. He’d be covered in blood if he’d done this. And to do this, he would’ve needed ... I don’t know ... power tools.”
Then this thing, it came up from the embankment and it was on her, just like that, Brandon had said.
“What could’ve done this?” Harker said, thinking out loud.
Hanscom shook his head and said, “It would have to be a big animal. A mountain lion or a bear.”
“Yeah, something big,” Kramer said. “It’d have to be.”
Harker stepped back and lowered his light. He looked up at the orange glow from the fire about a mile away, reflected in the dark smoke that hovered over it all in a thick cloud.
It had a lot of legs, these big, long legs, Brandon had said.
Whatever had killed Tiffany Huff, it was still out there. And he had no clue what it was.
Nine
Rodney sat next to Heidi in the uncomfortable brown wooden chairs lined up against the wall in the waiting area with Natalie seated on the other side of her. Alan was seated next to one of the four desks on the other side of the counter, being questioned by Deputy Ross, who had already talked to Natalie. The three of them huddled close and spoke in whispers.
“Good thing Alan had some Binaca in the car,” Natalie said.
“I had some Listerine Breath Strips,” Rodney said.
“Why do you think Brandon would kill her?” Heidi said.
“I don’t know,” Rodney said. “I mean, he’s always been in trouble, you know? But, jeez ... to cut off her head. That’s just ... sick.”
Alan came through the gate in the counter and said to Rodney, “It’s your turn.”
Rodney got up and went through the gate. As he made his way over to Ross, Sheriff Harker came in from the back door with Brandon, who was no longer wearing handcuffs.
“I want you to go into my office and wait for me, Brandon,” Harker said. “Right through that door. Just go in there and sit down.” As Brandon went into the office, Harker said to Ross, “Call Shelly and tell her to drop what she’s doing and get in here right now. She lives the closest.”
“Okay,” Ross said as Rodney sat down beside his desk. Ross picked up the phone and punched in a number.
As Ross made his call, Rodney watched the sheriff go to another desk, pick up the receiver and punch in a number. “Hello, Mark, this is Tony. Look, I need you to get down here right away, can you do that?” He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. “No, Anna’s fine, but I need you to get down here now. We’ll talk when you get here, okay? See you in a few.”
Ross finished his call and turned to Rodney. “Okay, I need your name and address.”
As Rodney gave Ross the information, the sheriff went into the dispatch room. He pulled a chair over beside Mrs. Huff. He said something, and she took off her headset, put it on the counter. He took her hand, leaned close and spoke to her very softly.
“What?” Mrs. Huff said, her voice high and quavering.
Harker said something else, and Mrs. Huff screamed. He took her in his arms as she began to sob.
Rodney answered the questions asked of him and told Ross what he’d heard and seen at Lovers’ Lookout. As he spoke, his stomach turned over inside him. The memory of Tiffany’s severed head lying on the ground was brutally vivid in his mind.
A few minutes later, Mr. Huff came in through the front entrance. Harker called him into the dispatch room. Mr. Huff was immediately concerned when he saw his wife crying. Harker said something to him.
“No,” Mr. Huff said loudly. “No, that can’t be.” Mrs. Huff stood and leaned against him heavily. He put his arms around her and they both sobbed.
A tall, slender woman came in through the back door. Harker went to her, said something quietly, then they went into the dispatch room together. Harker led the Huffs out of the room and through another open door, into a room with a round table in the center and vending machines against the wall.
The slender woman in the dispatch room seated herself at the console and put on a headset.
Harker went into his office, sat down at his desk and started talking to Brandon.
When Rodney was done, he left Ross’s desk and went back out to the waiting area, where he told Heidi, “Your turn.”
He dropped heavily into the chair, leaned forward, put his elbows on his thighs and his face in his hands. He felt as if he were in a dream, as if he would wake up any minute and find himself in his bed.
As Rodney sat up straight again, Sheriff Harker left his office and came out into the waiting area.
“It appears that Brandon Carr did not kill Tiffany Huff,” he said quietly. “We found her body, and what was done to it could not have been done by Brandon. It seems there’s some kind of dangerous animal running loose. What I want from you is your assurance that you’ll stay away from Lovers’ Lookout for a while, all right? Can you do that for me?”
They all nodded and agreed.
Harker said, “Now, if you see anything at all out of the ordinary, and especially if you see an animal that looks dangerous or rabid, I want you to report it. Will you do that?”
They agreed again.
“Okay. You drive safely tonight.” He turned and went back through the gate, back to his office.
Once again, they huddled and whispered.
“An animal?” Natalie said. “What kind of animal takes somebody’s head off?”
“Maybe it’s a bear, or something,” Alan said.
Rodney said nothing. He felt too sick and shaky to speak.
When Heidi returned, they all left.
As Rodney and Heidi walked to the Mustang, he told her what Sheriff Harker had said.
She took his hand. “You’re shaking,” she said.
“I don’t feel so good,” Rodney said.
“I can drive, if you’d like.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“Are you kidding? I love your car.”
One corner of Rodney’s mouth turned up in a half-smile. “My dad gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday. He’s a mechanic, he owns the garage in Hope Valley. He bought the Mustang a couple years ago for next to nothing. It was on its last legs and he fixed it up for me, rebuilt the engine, everything. I’m pretty proud of it.”
