by Phil Hamman
He stared her down before shaking his head in disgust. “Get back in the pickup.” His voice was flat or weary, Sandra wasn’t sure, and it was the continual uncertainty of the night that had beaten her down. She sneaked a glance at his watch in the brief moments that the dome light was on. It was 4:30 AM. She was exhausted, terrified, and on the brink of collapsing. Against the rhythmic thumping of the tires on blacktop, she fought to stay awake.
On several occasions that night, Sandra had lost track of time, and under the shroud of sleeplessness the events of the night had melded into a haze. Whenever she glanced at the Boss’s face, his eyes were narrowed and his mouth set in a tight clench. It appeared to Sandra that he was unsure of his actions. Each time she’d gotten in the truck that night, things had spun further out of control.
“Where do you live?” he asked unexpectedly.
The question caught Sandra off guard, and she hesitated. If she told him where she lived he might hurt her family.
“If you don’t tell me where you live, I can’t take you home. And if you tell anyone what I look like or what my partners look like, we will come and get you good.”
“Are you taking me home?” She allowed herself to hope. His voice sounded softer, and she found herself believing him.
“I’ll take you home, but if you tell anyone what happened I’d go to prison but only for five years because I’m a cop. When I got out you’d pay for it.” He shot her a determined look. “What’s your phone number?”
Sandra gave it to him, afraid he’d change his mind if she refused.
“If I’m ever back this way, I’ll call you and bring a little black book I keep that has all the people’s names in Sioux Falls that are dealing grass or have turned people in.” She didn’t know what he meant.
He slowed every so often and asked Sandra which way to go to get home. When they finally turned down the road to her house, and she caught sight of the front yard, Sandra almost cried. The Boss pulled over by the mailbox at the side of the road and let her out.
Chapter 22
Sandra didn’t wait for him to leave. She raced to the front door and bolted it shut behind her. The familiar scent of last night’s fried hamburger with onions still hung vaguely in the air. Had that just been last night? Less than twelve hours ago? She felt as if she’d aged years since then. Sandra pulled back the curtain in the front window and saw the taillights of the pickup fading into the distance. The only sound in the room was the quiet tick tick tick of the clock on the wall. It was five o’clock in the morning. Everyone was asleep.
The fear-induced adrenaline surging through her veins was tempered by the overwhelming need for sleep. She crept upstairs, choosing to wake her brother rather than her mom. She was still confused and unsure of how her mom would respond. “Bob, wake up. Wake up!” she whispered, shaking his shoulder until he was fully awake. As she rolled out the story, it was hard for her to believe the words coming from her own mouth.
“You’ve got to call the police because they don’t sound like real cops.”
“But what if they are and I turn them in?”
“Well, you’ve got to do something!”
“They know where I live! I gave them our phone number.”
“Go get some sleep and think about it.”
Sandra went to her room, propped her pillow against the headboard, and leaned against it, hugging the pillow tightly and letting its familiar scent fill her nostrils. She saw the clock change to six and then to seven. At some point, she drifted into a restless semi-sleep until she bolted awake at nine o’clock. The sun was up, and her mom was already gone.
Ring ring ring ring. Sandra tried calling Roger’s house over and over, but no one answered. Then she tried Debbie. No answer again. She called another friend and finally someone picked up the phone.
Sandra didn’t realize her voice had turned parched and croaky. “Can you come over? It’s really important.” She didn’t give any more details. Her brain was foggy, and she felt nauseated. She desperately needed someone to talk with to help her make decisions. Should she try to find Roger? Should she go to the police? Were they in trouble?
“I’ll come over after church.”
“Can you come now?”
“I wish, but my mom said I have to go today.”
Sandra hung up the phone and called Roger’s house again. After dozens of tries, his mom answered.
“Is Roger home?”
“Who’s calling?”
“Sandra.”
“He hasn’t come home all night. We don’t think he did because I went upstairs this morning to put some clothes in the boys’ room, and he wasn’t there.”
“Do you think he went somewhere? Maybe with Dana?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll check and see if he’s there right now.”
The sound of the receiver being set on a hard surface clanked in Sandra’s ear, and she could hear his mom shouting Roger’s name repeatedly in the background. Then she picked up the receiver again.
“No, he’s not home.”
“Has anybody called?”
“No.”
“If you hear anything, let me know because I’ll call back later.”
Roger had lived near many of his childhood friends who were so close they were more like brothers, so it wasn’t unlike them to spend the night at each other’s houses without even telling their parents.
A patch of sun streamed in the window, spreading its glow over a corner of the living room. Sandra sat in the warm light with her head resting on the cushiony arm of the couch, but sleep evaded her. Finally a loud knock at the door brought Sandra to her feet. It was her friend who was back from church. The story spilled out, and the friend agreed to help her any way she could. The two set out on foot for the interstate that led to Sioux Falls and on to Gitchie Manitou. Sandra wanted to return to the campsite to see if the boys were still there. Maybe if she went back out to the park, she’d find some answers to what had happened during the horrible night, her young mind rationalized. Sandra was desperate to find Roger, and with no ride the girls decided to hitchhike into Sioux Falls then out to Gitchie Manitou. They stood alongside the interstate with their thumbs out, and a lady in a beat-up car soon stopped and brought them as far as Sioux Falls, where she let them out at a phone booth on a busy street several miles from Roger’s house.
Sandra called Roger’s house again, praying he’d be the one to answer.
“Hello?” It was one of Roger’s brothers.
“This is Sandra. Has anyone heard from Roger yet?”
She kept desperately talking without even pausing to listen.
“I know what happened to him because I was with him at Gitchie Manitou last night.” Her mind was weary, and the words started rolling out of control. “These three guys came up and shot him and said they were cops and the bullets weren’t real that it was tranquilizers.” She paused for a breath.
“Sandra, slow down, I—”
“One of them raped me.”
He hesitated for just a moment. There was something she needed to know, but he couldn’t tell her over the phone. “Where are you? I’m coming to pick you up.”
What Roger’s brother hadn’t told her was that his family had already received the news that Roger was dead. Instead, he remained steadfast and brought the girls to the police station, where a detective wearing a dark suit directed Sandra and Roger’s brother into a cramped office.
“This is the girl who was with my brother,” he explained to the detective.
The detective’s steeled eyes exuded seriousness. He got right to the point. “There has been a homicide,” he said, looking at Sandra. “Do you know what a homicide is?” The way he asked the question indicated she should know. Sandra didn’t want to appear stupid so she answered yes even though she didn’t know. Her life experiences to this point could be wrapped up in what she’d learned from TV shows like The Brady Bunch and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Upon hearing that, the man close
d the door behind them and immediately began reading Sandra her rights.
The moment he heard this, Roger’s brother flew into a rage. “What the *&%$ is this? This girl was with those boys. She’s a victim, too!” With his long hair and strong voice, he reminded Sandra of an older version of Roger but never so much as now when he jumped to her defense, a girl he barely knew.
Sandra’s mind was straying into a strange zone of being wide awake yet yearning for sleep to wash away the horrid memories of the previous night. Her greatest comfort at the moment was that Roger’s brother had taken charge and defended her.
“Sir, this is standard police procedure, and I need to ask you to leave the room.” The detective’s sober face did nothing to ease the sick gnawing in Sandra’s stomach. After repeated attempts at persuading the detective to let him stay, Roger’s brother was eventually led out of the room, still protesting Sandra’s treatment.
Soon another policeman entered and herded Sandra down the hall for mug shots and then fingerprinting. Sandra bristled but she was light-headed from lack of sleep and nauseated from lack of food. After washing the dark-staining ink from her fingers, he guided her into a small bare room with a single table, fluorescent overhead lights, and an assortment of mildly comfortable chairs. It would have been a quietly nondescript place had it not been for the task before her. The investigators now needed her handwritten account of everything she could remember from the night of horrors.
“Include everything you can remember: colors, sounds, names. Sometimes it’s the small things that help us solve a case,” she was instructed. And write she did. The investigator sat by, silently composing his own report. By the time she was finished, a ten-page account lay fanned out on the table before them. He was impressed by her determination yet something was amiss. The problem was that her story just didn’t add up. There was no apparent motive according to her version, and the likelihood was pretty slim that three men would just appear out of nowhere and murder four strangers for no reason. Then there was the fact that she had not been murdered. To top it off, the detectives seemed to have the same gnawing question: why would a murderer drop her off at her house? The whole situation was highly suspicious. There had to be something she wasn’t telling them.
How was it that this girl, who had witnessed the murder of her boyfriend, could garner enough composure to write so determinedly without once breaking down? Wouldn’t the natural reaction to hearing about her boyfriend’s death be to break down and cry? He’d been stunned when she’d simply nodded silently at being told of the homicides. And now, here she sat, scribbling away without a hint of emotion, not a smile, not even a grimace. She was like a machine that didn’t stop. One word kept coming to his mind: cold.
The reality was that Sandra didn’t know what the word “homicide” meant. She had pieced enough information together to establish that it had to mean there had been a crime and perhaps it had something to do with drug raids. She had been informed that the three men from the previous night were not cops, and she was determined to use every last bit of strength to catch these criminals. Sandra pushed herself past her limit. She was so drained it took all her strength and concentration just to keep her eyes open. She found that if she wrote without stopping, her body resisted shutting down. When she paused, exhaustion overcame her, which is why she hadn’t stopped writing until the final detail left her pen. It was up to her to provide the information to catch these offenders.
By the time Sandra completed her handwritten report, a captain and lieutenant from the detective bureau had been assembled with two quick phone calls. They took over the investigation and began questioning Sandra about the previous night. Both read the detective’s initial report, their eyes settling on the word “cold.” They added the information to their folders, yet were prepared to explore all possibilities about the girl at this point as they’d been trained. The sheet of questions they held were carefully designed to not only glean information but would be used to eventually try to winnow out inconsistencies in her answers. First, though, they would just let her talk. Sandra didn’t know it at the time, but there had already been discussions throughout the police department that the girl who’d shown up as an unexpected witness probably had more to do with the case than she’d be willing to admit.
A dull pounding, exacerbated by fatigue, pulsed from the top of her head down to her neck. The two detectives, one much younger than the other, shuffled through important-looking folders, and one of them looked up at Sandra with suspicion. Another man entered the room; he introduced himself to her as Sheriff Craig Vinson, then leaned over and whispered something to a woman sitting at the table ready to take shorthand notes. They both glanced over at Sandra. Vinson introduced the woman to Sandra as the person who would record a written account of the interview. The woman nodded politely and returned to the notes on her clipboard. Sandra reeled at having been read her rights, and her guilt seemed to be the overwhelming consensus. She’d seen the suspicious looks and heard the accusatory tones. Yet, for the first time since arriving at the station, she felt a wisp of trust, and it hovered in the air between Sandra and Vinson. She’d immediately warmed to his soothing voice and good manners. Qualities that reminded her of Roger.
The three men pulled their chairs up around the table, and one of them turned on a tape recorder. It whirred to life. Sandra took a deep breath, ready to give her statement.
Chapter 23
The first questions were easy: What is your date of birth? Where do you go to school? How many brothers and sisters do you have? Then came the part she dreaded.
“Tell us everything that happened last night starting with the phone call from Roger.”
Sandra found herself reliving the nightmare with each lengthy explanation. Never once stopping and asking for a break, she answered with details that painted a night of horror and refused to quit until she’d unloaded every strange memory that had been gnawing away at her weary mind.
“Honey, you’ve been through a lot.” Vinson’s jowly voice was calming. “You rest now. I’ve got your mother on the way.”
Sandra gratefully laid her head onto her folded arms, not even aware she’d dozed until her mother’s soft touch startled her awake. Lolo grabbed her daughter in a tight embrace and stroked her hair that was now matted with the grime of dirt paths and lost innocence.
“Ma’am, your daughter provided excellent information. We hope it will prove very useful in catching the murderers,” Vinson said reassuringly.
Sandra looked into her mother’s eyes and whispered, “Murderers?”
Is that what homicide meant? Breathless, she sat wondering if it could really be true. Were Roger and the other boys really dead? How could this be happening?
But moments later, reality set in and Sandra collapsed onto the floor and broke into fitful, choking sobs. Lolo enveloped her daughter with loving arms and tried to absorb her pain, but it was no use. For Sandra, her anguish had reached its climax and exploded, sending her into hysterics.
As Lolo and Vinson discussed the agenda for the investigation, Sandra clung to her mother, shuddering. She wasn’t sure what they were talking about because even though she heard their words, the meaning just bounced off her brain. Somehow they managed to transport her into a car, and then she was vaguely aware of being ushered into a sterile white room with an unsettling bright light overhead. Lolo was immediately removed from Sandra’s side and a stream of strangers, men in white medical coats, filed into the room, making notes on their clipboards and spewing out more words she didn’t understand about pelvic examinations and speculums. Although she was now clothed in a thin gown, it felt as if her body was being violated again, this time by the group of men wearing medical masks . She held her breath and tried to block out what was happening “down there” by thinking of words to her favorite song, praying to God for this to end, and counting down the seconds until she could run to Lolo’s arms again. Then, as if a biting wind had finally passed through, the men wer
e suddenly not there anymore. The last one wordlessly left the room and shut the door with a soft click. An officer she didn’t recognize drove her and Lolo back to the police station. Surely, Sandra thought, the worst was over.
While Sandra wept with a fervor brought on by a combination of lost love, trauma, and violation, the policemen in the next room determined their next move. At the top of the list was finding a safe place for Sandra and her family. Three killers were presumably at large, and they knew where she lived. The possibility had been raised that perhaps Sandra knew the killers, and this needed to be taken into consideration. A love triangle? Would she try to run? It was Sunday evening, and their choices were limited. It was ultimately decided that she would spend the night at the juvenile detention center for her own safety, as it was put. Tomorrow, the department would find a safe house for the whole family.
That night, on a thin, institutional-grade mattress, Sandra eventually fell into a restless sleep only to awake screaming. All alone, she was once again separated from the person who held the power to comfort her. Lolo, who was staying at the home of a friend along with the rest of the family, longed to take away her beautiful daughter’s pain and yearned for time to heal her. Neither could have known that the worst was not over. There was taxing work ahead for Sandra. Although exhausted, she made the commitment to compose herself for the sake of the boys who were now, as she’d been reminded several times that night, in a better place.
The house was dark and still when Vinson arrived home many hours later. He turned on a small lamp and saw someone had left him a note on the table.
Terrible game! You didn’t miss much. Bears scored in the first quarter, and then it was a washout. Bears: 7, Lions: 30
Had that been just this afternoon? Any importance he’d attached to the game had vanished in the wake of the day’s events. Vinson didn’t feel like the same man who’d left the house expecting to find himself on the receiving end of a prank.
