Twilight Is Not Good for Maidens

by Lou Allin

  Inspector Crew came walking up, holding a paper bag. “Her clothes. The EMTs gave her an okay to ride back with me to the hospital and free up the ambulance for another call. My constable will take the girl’s car. She’s packing up now. If you can give her a hand, I’d appreciate it. A woman’s touch and all that. We need to get cracking in about ten minutes, so don’t waste words. As for your report, send it in tomorrow. We’ll use it to flesh out the basics.”

  At least he knew Maddie’s name now. Despite his condescending attitude, Holly took her minor assignment in stride. Boots on the ground counted. “Sure. I’ll check on her.”

  “I don’t have time to make the rounds, and some people aren’t even up yet. That weird little Reid took me over to the yurg, whatever it’s called. Nothing smacks me in the eye, not that I expected it at a scene like this. People have been in and out all summer. So you cover the campground and see if anyone saw or heard anything. Shouldn’t take that long with so few around.” His attitude read: And I have other things to do.

  “Understood. Thank you, sir.” She snapped a brisk salute for the practice. “Just one thing more.”

  His beaky frown had pushed up the annoyance factor, and he looked pointedly at his watch. “What’s that?”

  “Should we be contacting the media and making an announcement? Warning women not to camp alone?”

  He gave a snort of contempt. “What? You want to start a panic over what could be a prank or an isolated incident? Are you crazy or just inexperienced? Women.” After giving Shogun an odd look, he turned abruptly and left.

  When Holly arrived at the site a few hundred feet away, the tent was already down, the poles and pegs arranged, and Maddie was rolling up the bundle. Holly helped her stuff in the ground sheet. Unleashed for the moment, Shogun roamed the perimeter.

  “I always hated this part,” Holly said. “The tent comes out of the bag, but refuses to go back in. It defies the laws of science.”

  “Thanks,” Maddie said. She wore a sweatshirt, shorts, and a plastic poncho, likely all she had left to put on.

  “The inspector said to give you a hand.” She spoke with as little prejudice as possible. The title deserved respect, even if the man didn’t. “He’s … in a bit of a hurry to get back to the city.”

  “Me too. If I’d thought this would take so long, I might not have reported it. My study schedule’s going to take a hit.”

  Holly’s mouth made an O. “You can’t mean that about keeping quiet. What about someone else running into this guy?”

  “I guess. It seemed so weird that I can’t imagine it happening again. It’s really deserted around here.”

  Holly gestured around the campground. “Just those two groups? That’s all there were? The gate isn’t open yet, so no one has left.”

  “There were a few more Friday night, but it started to rain in the morning, so that put people off. It’s not that cold, but who wants to get wet and sit around when you can’t make a fire? It might be different if …”

  Healthy colour was returning to the girl’s friendly, heart-shaped face. Once the smile emerged, her flaws faded into the background. Perhaps small Timmins didn’t have a dermabrasion clinic or family money was short. Maddie had learned to live with her condition. Holly gave her credit for resisting the urge to slather on heavy makeup. “Yes? Go on.”

  Maddie looked off to sounds of laughter in the distance. Was she thinking about how much cozier it would be to have a partner to share the tent? “If I hadn’t … Oh, nothing. Forget it.”

  Surely Maddie wasn’t imagining that she had incited her own attack. Clearly the girl was no flirt. Her old Ford Focus looked empty except for the gear, a camera, pop cans, and a chip bag. On the picnic table was a Coleman lantern. A half-eaten, overripe banana on the table was the one sign of food. With that sore throat, not much would go down easily.

  They started loading the car. “Did anything else come to mind after our talk? Any details, no matter how small?”

  “One little kid was riding his bike. Making a racket, but you know kids. I had some stuff to read for my English test Monday.” She gave a rueful laugh. “I’ll have to hit the books until midnight, maybe even pull an all-nighter … if I can concentrate.”

  “You remind me of myself. A real keener, if they still use that word.”

  Maddie tucked away a couple of textbooks and looked around with an involuntary shiver. “I’m not sure that I want to come back here alone again.”

  One repercussion of a sexual assault was that the individual grew so timid and wary that life constricted to nothing. That was worse than being too confident and taking chances. Maddie had a tough shell. Or was it merely a façade that masked a shaky self-concept?

  “It was so different years ago,” Holly said, watching an ant vie for crumbs below the table. “I grew up around here and camped out year-round. September and even October can be the best months. But the island was a different place then. Half the population.”

  Holly’s watch registered that ten minutes had passed. She could imagine the inspector walking toward them with an annoyed look.

  Shogun was nosing near the banana, and Holly clipped him back on his leash.

  Brushing a lock of hair from her forehead, Maddie asked, “Do you think that you’ll catch him? How many cases like this have you had?”

  “Frankly, it’s my first. This kind of an attack is rare.” She wanted to reassure Maddie, but without being unrealistic. “As for catching him, the odds aren’t great. I’m being honest with you.”

  A trace of irony crept into Maddie’s young voice. “Unless it happens again. Right?”

  Holly felt a weight of truth in ugly percentages descend. “I won’t deny that. It’s a cruel irony. You’ve heard the word on television. M.O. Modus operandi, or method of operation. And this certainly is one distinctly different method. If I know the inspector, he’ll tell you to keep the details to yourself.”

  The last of the gear disappeared, and the girl shut the trunk, wiping her hands as if to put paid to the whole experience. “Don’t worry about me. I know when luck’s on my side. I could just as easily been raped or left for dead.” She looked out towards the ocean as if wishing to walk clear out of the scene.

  “You’ll be fine,” Holly said, wondering if she should suggest that the girl see a counsellor. Beyond her jurisdiction, probably. At the hospital there would be somebody tactful and sympathetic. But in a time of cutbacks, maybe not.

  Maddie tightened her lips and toed the ground with the top of her moccasin. “And what I said earlier, about being … Forget it. I was just feeling sorry for myself. I’m a jerk sometimes.”

  “No problem.” A stupid cliché, but they came so easily to the lips. She tried to erase her inanity with a warm smile. Often that helped as much as words.

  “Can your dog have this banana? I tried to eat, but …” She fingered her throat. The marks were beginning to fade, even after a few hours.

  Holly laughed in spite of herself. “He’ll be your friend for life.”

  Freshman year was tough, especially far from home. If Maddie had had the courage to come all that way alone, she had the guts to stay and graduate. The first semester was always the hardest. For all their bravado, teenagers still needed their moms. You never outgrew that.

  For one brief moment, always playing with possibilities, she entertained the far-fetched notion that Maddie might have staged her own assault. It wouldn’t be the first time. Men had been lynched on false charges in the old days. But French Beach? Why not on campus? Then again there was lonesome Paul. A bit too quick on the scene? And that Bible underlining. She wished she’d had the time and nerve to page through the other parts. But maybe it was a used copy marked by someone else.

  The inspector finally appeared, stopping short of tapping his watch. He clapped his hands together in a let’s-get-going gesture. “If I can have your keys, Ms. Mattoon, we’ll park your car in the hospital lot.” His constable walked behind him several fee
t in practiced Mandarin deference. The nuances were small but telling in this dance of order and power. She remembered how obnoxious one inspector had been when brought in to investigate a suspicious drowning. With his ego and assumptions, he’d been 100 percent wrong.

  When Maddie and Crew had left, Holly got out her notebook and headed for the other two inhabited sites. On occasion she was called out when men hoisted a few too many and got into what Chipper called a pissing contest. Roughing it might be a vacation, but it brought out the worst, even in close families. Tents that wouldn’t co-operate. Meals late. Food raw or burned. Damp sleeping bags. Crying kids. Complaining teenagers. Coming back from a three-day hike to find your car window smashed for the loonies in the cup holder or worse yet, a broken CD player.

  What were the odds that this person would hang around, making himself useful by giving the wrong information? What a Machiavellian she was becoming. Yet thinking like a criminal had its advantages. That was how the prey survived the predator, how a deer escaped the cougar’s sharp talons.

  Setting her cap, she headed down the park loop. At the first campsite to the right, an older couple in a VW van with a Support the Right to Arm Bears bumper sticker smiled at her. “Something wrong, officer? We heard a siren over by Seaside. Then you were over at that campsite with the girl. I hope you didn’t have bad news for her,” the man said, arranging a coffee pot on a grill over the fire. Three bowls held instant oatmeal sprinkled with brown sugar. Wearing a salt-and-pepper beard, camo pants and cap, and an Elton John T-shirt, he resembled an old hippie. During the Vietnam War, the island had been a magnet for draft dodgers. Welcomed by the more liberal country and eventually pardoned by Clinton, now they were in their sixties and seventies. The woman was a Joan Baez double, graceful in stature, with lustrous greying hair with a leather clasp. She wore colourful glass beads, an East-Indian print dress, and clunky Birkenstocks.

  “I’m afraid that there’s no easy way to say it. A young girl was assaulted here late last night.”

  The woman put a hand to her mouth. “In the park? My Goddess. Was she hurt?”

  Holly removed her cap to wipe her forehead. “Not to worry. She fought the assailant and he ran away. It was a very close call.” More than that, she didn’t want to reveal.

  Dave and June Larsen, from Duncan up-island, said that they had turned in around nine, and hadn’t heard a thing. “There was a bit of noise with the party down the way.” He pointed to a tent site a few hundred feet farther.

  Holly saw three young men standing around a small campfire. Dave grinned, forming a dimple on one cheek. “Hell, we all were young once. They piped down before I got up to ask them.”

  His wife nodded. “They seemed like nice young men. No girls, so maybe it was a case of boys’ night out. Their licence said Washington State.”

  A child about five years old rolled up on a bike with training wheels, making vroom vroom sounds as he rode. “Our grandson, Tyler,” the woman said, ruffling his short hair. With the bike, he might have been all around the area, at least before dark. This was probably the lad that Maddie mentioned.

  “Did you see anyone else around the campground last night?” she asked him, kneeling down to his level. Uniforms were scary for kids. “Other than those guys down there?”

  His eyes got wide as pie plates as he smiled broadly, revealing the family dimple. “Just a monster like in the movies,” he said, leaving them all laughing.

  His grandfather tousled his hair. “Tyler is into action figures.” The boy wore a Spiderman sweatshirt and jeans.

  “He had a big head and bright green eyes. Lasers maybe,” he insisted, making gestures to imitate pop-outs like the cartoons.

  Holly gave him a sceptical look, though she tried to conceal it. “When was this, son? Can you tell time?” She noticed a huge children’s watch on his wrist. Didn’t they all learn in kindergarten? Or was that the alphabet?

  “It was darrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrk,” he said, making more wooooooo sounds. “It was eleventy seven o’clock.”

  “You didn’t leave the tent after we went to bed, did you, little monkey? I told you to wake me up if you had to go,” the woman asked, eyes narrowed in grandmotherly suspicion. With a smirk, the boy picked up a Hulk figure from the table and ran around with it, making buzzing noises. “We just got him the watch yesterday. Kids. Quite the imagination, God bless them,” the woman said. “When do we lose that spontaneity?”

  After taking their contact information, Holly moved on. At the other site, a Mazda SUV with a Washington plate sat next to two tents. One young man about twenty in a tank top and board shorts sat on a picnic table with a can of beans, spooning them directly into his mouth. Another male rustled inside the tent, and a third fiddled with the car radio. Not much came in this far west except NPR, which would make them feel at home in the news and weather at least. She doubted if they liked classical music.

  “Hi, guys,” she said, flashing a friendly smile.

  “’Sup? Hey, that’s one weird police dog,” the man at the table said, putting down the can to squirt in some ketchup. An elaborate Ma¯ori-style tattoo ran around the top of his shoulder and down his arm. Holly could feel her stomach churning from so much coffee but no food. As soon as she got home, she was heading for a plate of bacon and eggs.

  Shrugging off his question about Shogun, she started her questions, but they looked puzzled. “Geez,” said the first, whose name was Barry, “it was deserted around here last night. Except for that chick down the way. We were gonna invite her over for some marshmallows, but she didn’t seem that friendly. Wouldn’t come over when I waved.”

  As she took their names, Ryan Warren and Sean Coates joined Barry Raines at the table, glancing from one to the other. Maybe they were in the right demographic for a sexual assault charge, but Holly doubted that they would have the nerve to attack someone on the grounds like a pack of beasts. Still, they didn’t seem that relaxed. Their eyes darted to the SUV. Other body language like shifting their stance and folding their arms made her suspicious. Acting casual, she got up and strolled over to the vehicle. There was a case of empty beer bottles in the back, partly covered by a towel.

  “Party time?” she asked with a straight face.

  Sean looked away into the bush. Ryan rubbed a hand on his weekend stubble. Jumping in first, Barry cleared his throat, but one corner of his mouth rose. “No way. We collected those cans by the roadside. Gonna take them back for recycling.”

  Odd that they were all Snowqualmie PGA brand in a neat cardboard box. Not available anywhere around here. Holly gave an internal shrug. They didn’t seem drunk or even hung over. Whatever they’d consumed was ancient history. Certainly alcohol was enjoyed privately in tents as long as no one reported it and the drinkers stayed discreet. As for soft drugs, even harder to prove except for the tell-tale aroma. Here was another question of knowing when to press the issue and when to back off.

  “What’s this about, officer? That family over there didn’t report us, did they? I mean we were up a bit late, but we weren’t exactly having a wild party,” Barry added.

  Time to cut to the chase. She’d turned a few screws on them as it was. Holly mentioned the attack on Maddie, watching their faces for reactions. All she saw was total surprise. Or they were super actors.

  “Poor kid. We weren’t even sure she was alone. We should have been keeping an eye on her. Right, guys?” Ryan smacked one ham-size hand into his palm. The others nodded.

  When she asked if they had seen anyone else around the park last night, two said no, but Ryan shook his head. “You guys remember that I left to go down to the crapper. Someone was in it, and I couldn’t wait, so I went over to the main parking lot where I knew there was another can. I saw a small car drive down through the main parking lot.”

  “And that was about …” Why would anyone be coming in after dark? Looking for trouble?

  He stroked his chin, where two days’ worth of beard bristled. “Nine maybe. Car cru
ised through. It parked. I heard a few clanks, doors closing. When I got finished, I flashed on the licence. Whoever had been in the vehicle had gotten out. I didn’t hang around.”

  “So you didn’t see anyone.”

  “No, but I have a good memory for numbers. Have to be since I’m in accounting.” He tapped his temple with a proud grin.

  “Show off,” Sean said, punching him on the shoulder. “You flunked it last semester.”

  “Good memory,” Holly said. It was amazing to find such a perfect witness. Was he making it up as he went along?

  “It was a B.C. plate. Dark little compact car. A Jetta. Corolla. I couldn’t say. The number was 549 JXC.”

  “Nice going, genius. There’s hope for you.” Sean gave him a high five.

  An unexpected lead. Or part of the “too good to be true” department. The boys were visiting from the University of Washington and had come over to surf at Jordan River. A car-top carrier had a couple of fancy boards. Low tides and serene seas had nixed that, so they were camping at French Beach instead, heading home that day. The van had a U of W decal on the back window and a bumper sticker: “Lacrosse Men Do It With Sticks.” Holly checked their vehicle registration. Little details made up the major steps of police work.

  “There’s a bottle depot in Sooke near the cemetery and grade school,” she added as she left, tongue in cheek. “It’s closed today, but you could leave them off. Unless you want to haul those back across the border.” As she left to manly shrugs and one self-conscious grunt, Holly smiled to herself.

  At the car with Shogun, she sipped from the water bottle. So much for her final tour. What more could she do? Contracting her brows, she decided to take one last look at the yurt. Ben Rogers, her mentor, had always said that checking twice never hurt. “Like carpentry. Measure twice. Cut once.” Then he’d died when a deaf boy shot him with a .22 that they’d thought was a BB gun. Ben was months from retirement, and he died in her arms. That had taught her an ugly lesson, but every time she had doubts about going the extra mile, she knew she owed him.