She looked at me. For the first time I appreciated her presence. She had to be as tall as I was. Six feet, broad shouldered, slim hipped, long legged. She wrapped her hands around the bars and rocked back and forth on her heels. She looked back at me. Big bright eyes lit up the expanse of her forehead. Below, the razor edge cheekbones, patrician nose, and thin lips would keep secrets well. Her eyes would say what her lips never could. “Isn’t this where one of us turns into the Incredible Hulk and gets us out of here?”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
She slid her hands through the bars. “I’m sorry you’re in this. I just can’t take that on for you. He said if I was convicted I’d only go to some county farm. I could risk that or being embarrassed down here, who cares. But I couldn’t take the chance of your going to prison for twenty years. Let’s just drop it and get out of here.” She banged her palm against the bars. “Damn! I’d like to kill them. Damn.”
“I’m really sorry. Sometimes the bad guys win, and this looks like one of those times, and it really shits.”
We waited for dogface to return. Jail time began; that amorphous muddy river of eternity drifting by without discernible current. You’re just there. Moving slower than you wish and stretching further than you can fear. That’s the first thing you lose in jail: time, manageable time. Slowly jail time coalesces around the daily rituals. The day and night cycles are reinvented. Like brackets or parentheses, you get activated to eat and exercise or work. Then you wait, knowing it won’t be forever and that a day is a day. We’d dropped out of time into limbo awaiting dogface’s whim. I figured we’d been here about a half an hour and I’d been booked at about 4:15. The day shift would come on about 8. I’d take my chances with his paranoid doper bullshit. If that flew they were training cops in seminaries these days. If this was as small a town as I thought, the day shift would notice us. At least Wendy would attract attention. We’d know by then if this was dogface’s scam or a regular township project.
“Let’s wait him out. If he’s not alone in this a few hours won’t hurt. But if he’s trying this all on his own, the longer we wait the harder it will be for him to pull it off.”
Wendy nodded and walked off to her cot and folded herself up on it, back against the wall. I don’t wait worth a shit and would’ve talked her ear off, but she didn’t seem to want to. The minutes dripped on like sweat off the end of your nose. Each one getting bigger and fatter ’til it can’t do anything but move on. I paced, counted bars, tiles, read graffiti, sat, stood, walked, leaned, and finally slept.
Chapter 13
My dreams were bad, but brief. I’d never learned to relax in captivity, and didn’t especially want to, so the first faint footfalls woke me. Two men in uniforms had their backs to me looking in Wendy’s cell. The uniforms were different than what I’d remembered of Dogface’s. State cops? Sheriffs? This was my chance. I rolled off my concrete bunk and came up behind the two cops. “Hey. Help us.” My voice startled them. They straightened up and turned toward me. “We’re being held …” They were smiling. Oh shit. It was Dutch and the RCA Dog from the bar. I was starting to feel like a Jew on opening day at Belsen. You have to do one full lap around hell before you can begin to plot your escape. You need to know its true dimensions. Right now the course was getting longer and there was no end in sight.
“Well, well. The Lone Ranger,” Dutch drawled. “No matter what happens here, I’m gonna get you for what you did to me, motherfucker. Believe it.”
I just stood there and let him run his mouth. I was in no position to aggravate anyone. I silently confirmed that their uniforms were different from Dogface’s. Their shoulder patches said they were in the reserves. That made sense. In high season on a weekend this town might swell up thirty to forty times its normal size. Engorged with vacationers, they’d need an auxiliary force just to handle the traffic. My last wisps of hope blew down the corridor.
They turned back to Wendy. The other guy pulled something out of his pocket, snaked his arm through the bars, and threw it at her. It hit her in the forehead, and her eyes popped open. “Hey missy, you lonely in there? Want some company? We ain’t done with you yet, sweetpea, not by a long shot. Sure hope you got your energy back, sugar.”
His laugh stiffened my spine like a spider’s feathery touch. I was right up against the bars, all eyes. My darkest hopes and wishes coiled behind my lids like a cobra in its basket. I remembered an alligator I knew in Florida. Every year I’d go visit him. Unmoving, day after day he’d just lie there in the sun, staring at the people who came to look at him, who threw pennies on his snout. I swear I never saw him move. Then one day, in a flash he just rose up and tore off a woman’s arm. I just hoped my day would come.
The prisoner entrance clicked open and wooshed shut. We all turned toward the sound. Dogface came in and pulled up short, obviously surprised to see the two men in the hall. “What the hell are you doin’ here?”
“We just thought we’d come by and refresh her memory ’bout what might happen to her, Elroy.”
“You idiots. I told you I’d handle it. Goddammit. Who’s idea was this? Bubba’s? You want to blow this all to hell? I got it fixed good. Just let me do it my way. I told Beau I’d handle it. Get the fuck outta here. You’re screwing everything up.”
“Excuse me, Elroy, but I’ve been looking over the incident cards and …” The dispatcher had come back from her desk. Her eyes took everyone in. Wide-eyed Wendy, angry Elroy, the two rapist reservists, and me. Her voice and her smile took the tiniest dips during that once-over, but she was perky at the finish. “I just need you to sign off on them, uh, whenever you can.” She waved to no one in particular and only I, from the corner of my cell, saw her face fall, settle, and then compose itself. Like a crash landing you walk away from. The door banged behind her.
Elroy turned back to the two men. “Get out of here. There can’t be any connection between DuWayne or Beau and me. I fixed it like that, and now you’re messing it up. Let me do this my way. Get out of here.”
The two guys looked at each other for permission to leave and once granted, scuttled hurriedly out the back door. Elroy looked real unhappy. He turned around once in the hallway, looking at Wendy and then me like unexpected in-laws on his doorstep. He mopped his brow, realigned his hat, and went up to see what the dispatcher wanted.
I looked over at Wendy. “Hot damn. I think someone just slammed the door on Elroy’s soufflé.”
She didn’t smile back or look even remotely reassured. The message these men delivered had gone all the way through her. She was sinking and I was rearranging the deck chairs.
A few hours later Elroy returned. He rattled the bars with his nightstick. “Get up, dammit.” I looked up at him trying to read him. “Look, I tried to reason with you, do this the easy way. You ain’t givin’ me no choice. You play hardball and you’ll find yourself so far up shit’s creek the sun won’t find you. I mean it. Even if you get bail. How long you think you’ll last out there? You can’t leave town and this ain’t your town, it’s theirs. You could have an accident, both of you. A bad accident.” Dogface was real upset. Maybe it was turning to shit on him. Or was this just another threat. I had the feeling the frame wasn’t going to stick. Maybe the day shift was in, and he couldn’t keep this hidden much longer.
The door opened up to the cell block, and we had company. Company was short and squat, encased in a too tight blue seersucker suit. He had no hair and no neck. Piggy eyes, an upturned snout, and a nasty cupid’s mouth. This wasn’t Porky Pig. This was a wild boar. He had a sheaf of papers in his hand. He smiled at Elroy and rolled over to him. “Hello Elroy, thought I’d stop by ’fore I leave town for that chief’s meeting. What we got here, Elroy?” He was all twinkly eyed and simper smiley.
“Well, Chief …”
“Well what, Elroy? I’ve got a report here says we’ve got an armed kidnapper and a psychotic masochistic whore over there. Goddam, Elroy. I’ve been a cop fourteen years, ain’t never
seen a case like this. Tell me about it. I admire good police work. You know that.” Porky was beginning to resemble a blood sausage.
“Well, I got this call.”
“Yeah, I read about that. You went out and interviewed all of the ‘witnesses’ at once. Took a composite statement. Hell, that’s efficient. Saves paper. Makes for good reading. Elroy, what is this I’m reading? You got seven cretins out there couldn’t agree on Jesus Christ’s first name and here they are singin’ sweet harmony like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Hell of a job. Hell of a job.” Leading with his chin and belly, the chief was herding Elroy back toward the corner of the cell block.
He waved the papers at Wendy. “Tell me about her, Elroy. Ain’t she the strangest woman you ever met? Regular Kookifornian, right? Tell me about her, Elroy. I’m interested in abnormal psychology. You know I preach the importance of motivation. I’m waiting.”
Elroy was a whipped dogface. Eyes down, shoulders hunched, looking for a way to escape. Elroy squeaked, “There was four hundred dollars in her wallet and her clothes were all neatly folded up when I got there.”
Nice try. They took the night’s receipts to make it look like she got paid.
“Jesus, Elroy. She was driving a BMW. It’s not stolen. It’s her father’s car. She’s driving a fifteen thousand dollar car and takes on a bar full of guys for four hundred bucks? She don’t need money. Why’d she do it? For kicks? For no reason she pulls over to a road house walks in and offers to pull a train? She must be crazy. A fuckin’ looney tune.
“Let me tell you about her. Elsie did her homework. Ran a PIN check on her after you booked her. Nothing Elroy. Nothing. Not even a traffic arrest. No DWIs, no priors for soliciting. What happened, Elroy? She just go batshit when she got to town? For no reason she thinks she’s Penn Station? Goddammit.” He shook his head. “Look at those injuries. That ain’t rough sex, that’s a beating. Rough sex you get torn nipples, bruised butts. Not broken noses. Christ, Elroy, what for? Your whole life’s down the toidy. For what?”
Elroy couldn’t face him.
“He’s a shit, Elroy. A fucking animal. If you’d done your job she’d a gotten over it. Now you’re both fucked. Who’s gonna take care of her now? Jesus man, did you fuckin’ blow it.”
The chief put his hand on Elroy’s shoulder and like a snake disarmed him with the other. “Gimme your badge, Elroy.”
He took it and fished out the keys and opened my cell. “Come on out. I’m very sorry, Mr. Haggerty, about all this.”
I passed Elroy in the doorway. Vestibule for the elevator of destiny. Going up?
The chief opened Wendy’s cell. “Miss Sullivan, I’m Chief Maxwell Hungerford, and I apologize to you for everything you’ve been put through. Please believe me this is not how my department is run, and we will do everything in our power to apprehend and help convict the men who assaulted you.” He held out his hand to help her over an invisible threshold. Hungerford showed us out of the cell block and asked us to sit in his office.
“Your cars are out of impoundment, and I’d like you to make sure all your property is accounted for. I’ve filed a ‘bad arrest’ report and all the records have been expunged. I want you to be assured that your records are clean.”
“Thank you,” we echoed.
“How’d you get involved, Chief Hungerford? I thought we were up the river.”
“Dumb luck. This is a small town. There’s less than 1,000 people here. I’m chief, and I’ve got three shifts with a dispatcher in the station and one or two officers on the road. Any emergencies come up, dispatcher calls me.
“Elroy got a personal call to him at the station. It must have been from the bar. He left to respond to it. Then your complaint came in. Elsie called Elroy. That’s when he showed up at the clinic. But everything was ass-backward. If he was arresting you all, where was the complaint? The only call to the station was the personal one to Elroy. If you’ve got an armed kidnapping, why not call the police? Let us coordinate with Morehead and the state troopers. It smelled to Elsie, so she called me. Even if he took DuWayne’s word over yours at the scene, the time it took to respond to a rape call was too damn long. That bothered Elsie. Elroy must a been working out the details at the bar. Then when Elsie wanted him to sign the incident card and she saw two of the guys on the complaint standing outside the cells, it smelled worse. It ain’t a holiday weekend approaching. The reserves wouldn’t be on duty. So she punched Miss Sullivan and the car on the computer. When everything came up squeaky clean she gave me a call.
“It smelled to me too, so I started doing some checking. If Elsie hadn’t called me, I was leaving for a three day police chief’s meeting in Charlotte with Elroy left in charge. He’d have had that long to try to get his cover-up in place.”
“What was that you were saying to Elroy? It sounded like you knew why he did it.”
“Yeah. I could figure it out. Beau Lundeen’s his brother-in-law. Elroy’s sister’s mildly retarded. She’s also pretty good lookin’, and frankly, she put out pretty easy. That’s why Lundeen married her. Elroy’s always looked after her. He probably figured it’d break her heart if that shit she married got sent away. She loves that bastard no matter what he does. She can’t see him for what he is. I guess he was tryin’ to protect her, ’cause he’s got no use for Lundeen. Damn fool just threw his whole life away. Hey, it’s sad about his sister, don’t misunderstand me. But you start running when you oughtta stand still, you wind up runnin’ smack dab into something worse, and a cop in prison is about as bad as you can get. Brenda’s gonna shed plenty of tears when this is all over.
“Look, this is my problem to deal with, not yours. I just want to apologize for this and let you know this office will prosecute those men responsible to the fullest extent of the law. I’ve got my other two officers out rounding them up right now. As I said, the arrest and all records pertaining to them will be completely expunged. Your records will both be clean. We’ll return all your property to you, except, of course, your gun, Mr Haggerty. You can claim that when you leave town.”
“Why?”
“Come on now. You’ve got no license to carry that thing here. The way things have been going anything can happen with that gun. I’d look like a damn fool giving it back to you. You already showed you aren’t reluctant to use it.”
“You expect I’m going to have a reason to?”
“No, not really. Those seven are pack animals. Not enough gumption among them to jaywalk alone. I’ll try like hell to keep’em detained, but Judge McCandless’ got a mind of his own. They’re all working men with families, kids. He might grant them bail. They’ve got records, but nothing of this magnitude. He might let them loose, but I don’t think you’ve got anything to fear. I’ll keep my eyes open. If they get released I’ll let them know that if either of you even gets a sunburn on the beach I’m gonna be all over them like flies at a picnic. But I’m down one man and those two ‘reservists.’ I’ve been trying to get those bastards off the force since I took over. This isn’t the way I wanted to do it though. I can’t put you under surveillance. Where are you staying? I’ll be sure we sweep there regularly.”
“I haven’t gotten a place yet. I’ll let you know when I do.”
“And you, miss?”
Wendy gave him her address.
“Oh yeah, on the ocean down near the state beach. Fine. After you’ve settled in, call me and arrange to come in and give us your statements.”
Hungerford put his palms down on his desk, and by unseen hydraulics we stood up from our seats. Wendy began to walk out. I had opened the door when Hungerford asked, “By the way, Haggerty, what are you doin’ in my town?”
I askd Wendy to wait outside for me and told Hungerford about Herb Saunders and Justin Randolph and that Sergeant DeVito would hopefully be coming down, or at least contacting him. As I listened to myself repeat the chain of connections, it occurred to me to ask it there’d ever been any crimes like the Saunders’ case in this area. Hungerfor
d said, “Not to my memory, but if your time frame is correct, Randolph’s been coming down here since before I’d become chief.”
“Are there records available?” I asked.
He said, “They’re at the county courthouse being programmed into the new computer system set to start up in the fall.”
Hungerford tapped his pen against his teeth and pushed his intercom button. “Elsie, we got any iced tea left in the kitchen?”
“Yes, Chief. You want some?”
“Yeah. And none of that no-sweet or whatever. Two lumps of sugar. Thank you.
“I don’t usually use her as a gofer, but sometimes I think she listens in on the intercom. Her nosiness saved your butt, but I’d rather she not hear what I’ve got to say next.
“Instead of going over to records, you ought to go see the guy who was chief before me, Clete Boswell. I took over after he resigned last year. I came here from a stint with the state over in Asheville. You’ll find Boswell down at the charter boat docks. He runs a Bertram 31 called Pot-O-Gold. How he got that boat’s part of why he’s not chief any more. Don’t tell him I sent you because I’m the other part of why he’s not chief, and we don’t get along. But he loves to tell stories about his glory days, and if there’s anything that happened here like you say went on in Virginia, he’ll remember it and embroider the facts all to hell. Somewhere in his bullshit there’ll be a fact or two you can use.
“One last thing, Haggerty. I wouldn’t worry about those hyenas, but the boy you caught red-handed …”
“DuWayne.” I strummed.
“Yeah. DuWayne Bascomb. He’s got a brother, Bobby Lee or Bubba. You can’t miss ’im. He’s big as a bear, twice as ugly, and three times as nasty. Most everybody in this town’s afraid of him. Once he beat a man to death right there on Main Street. By the time we got to trial, he was acquitted on self-defense. He’s why the scum in the bar try crap like this. I’ve lost more witnesses to more crimes, seen more guilty bastards walk in this town than I can shake a stick at. He’s got a hell of an imagination and no conscience. Whatever people claim the other jerks have done, he promises them something worse, custom designed, just for them. So they shut up and let it go. Petty theft, assaults, extortions, vandalism, cars crashed in joyrides, beer stolen. He just lays around like an old she-bear in the dark. The cubs are running amuck, but everybody steps light. This time they might have gone too far.
Embrace the Wolf Page 9
