Summitt

Chapter Five

Early Saturday morning an edge of light spread over the trees in Selby’s meadow. He was alone in the study, an untasted glass of whiskey beside him. To distract himself he had been glancing through his father’s diaries, the words occasionally blurring in front of his eyes.

Merwin Kerr, their family doctor, had been upstairs with Shana since about four that morning, almost two hours. Troopers Milt Karec and Ed Jimson were on their way to East Chester General with the rolls of film and other medical evidence which Paramedic-Sergeant Edith Redden had compiled from an examination of Shana’s injuries. This evidence would be developed and classified at the hospital’s laboratory, since neither the sheriff’s substation nor the East Chester Police Department had the facilities for sophisticated forensic work; such analyses and evidential procedures were routinely processed by local hospitals on a rotating basis.

The paramedic-sergeant had explained to Selby that this was not an ideal arrangement, that the police department should have its own labs and staff for such work, but there were money problems, there always were, and the voters had chosen to cut off their noses by voting down a measure for the funding of such a facility and the personnel to operate it.

Selby suspected there was a deliberate therapy in the nurse’s determined explanation of her department’s staffing problem. In those strange and dreadful morning hours, he was numbly grateful for it.

Little Tenn had been a hellish nightmare. The trailer park was originally named Pleasant Acres. Some years before, a sign at the entrance had announced this, a big square sign hanging between tall posts. The lettering was quaintly stylized, a blend of Amish and Old English characters surrounded by yellow daisies, painted to resemble rows of smiling, welcoming eyes.

When the dogwood and wild apple trees flowered, the park was fringed by a profusion of pink and white blossoms. In that season the pathways among the trailers were swept clear and clean by fresh winds. There were parties in the central campground of Little Tenn, kegs of beer and cider, corn-on-the-cob and pork ribs roasting over open grills. Square dancing and Bible readings broke out with the first flush of spring, and the Jessup boy with his second sight and visions shouted prayers and prophecies with such wild-eyed fervor that it made the hand-clapping spectators homesick with longing for revival tents, and pines and swamps and mossy trees.

But the Pleasant Acres sign had blown down and nobody seemed responsible for putting it back up. Rain and snow turned the paths into ribbons of mud. Only Casper Gideen had done anything about it; he and his sons flagstoned a lane from their trailer out to Fairlee Road, giving them year-round access.

As more people from the south moved in, the camp became known as Little Tenn. The migrants worked the woods and tended the mushroom houses that dotted the rolling countryside, low and vaulted, like windowless barns. But the people living at Little Tenn didn’t mind the mushroom houses that ringed them in, because the work paid their bills and kept their heads a desperate fraction above the line that separated them from the welfare blacks and Puerto Ricans.

That’s what made it bearable for the pineys, Gideen had told Selby, to be able to stand in line at the Muhlenburg stores and markets and pay cash for their vittles while strapping black men (or more likely, their women) handed over, in shame, the strips of food stamps.

Barby Kane lived with her mother, Coralee Kane, in a two-room caravan model, with worn carpets, flowered draperies and a nineteen-inch television set. With her small face and white-blond hair, Coralee Kane looked more like Barby’s older sister than her mother. Selby knew Barby as one of Shana’s school friends who came to play in the meadow with her, listen to records or drink cocoa upstairs and skate on the pond when it was safe.

He’d found Shana lying in the small, airless bedroom of the trailer, a pale blue blanket pulled up around her throat. Her face was turned to the wall; he couldn’t make out her expression, but he saw the damp stains on the blanket, dark, uneven blotches below her narrow hips.

“Didn’t you bring a blanket, daddy?” she said, without turning her head. “I’ve ruined this one. I’ve made a mess of Mrs. Kane’s blanket. Didn’t you bring one of ours?”

“Never mind the blanket, honey,” Coralee Kane said, fingering her curlers. “You can take hit.”

“It’s all dirty, it’s filthy.”

“I said you could take hit. Needs to be cleaned anyway.”

“Did you hear, daddy? We can go now.”

“Your daddy can bring hit back. Get hit cleaned like new and bring hit back.”

“Momma, will you stop talking about that goddamn old blanket,” Barby Kane shouted. “Will you just shut up about it, momma?”

“Child, I been on these two feet of mine for ten hours, and I don’t want no blasphemy from you, hear? Blanket’s ruined anymore, but I told him to take hit.”

“I wish you’d stop about that blanket, it’s already been worse places tonight.”

“You want a whipping, you keep hit up, Barby. Go on, Mr. Selby, take your child home.”

Selby lifted Shana and carried her to his station wagon through the rain. Barby walked with them, holding a plastic pillow over Shana’s head. Residents of Little Tenn stood in their lighted doors watching them. Selby saw Casper Gideen, tall in a black raincoat, walk up to the staring men and women and speak to them. His words were carried off by the wind, but their effect was obvious; the gawkers pulled their heads in and slammed their doors.

On the way home Selby looked at his watch. It was nearly two-thirty. The interior of the car was warm and close, sour with the mud and the damp and the acid sharpness of his daughter’s sweat.

Selby had adamantly refused to allow troopers Karec and Jimson to either question or examine his daughter.

“But we got to get a line on this thing.” Milt Karec had been angry and confused, standing at the fire in the foyer, rain dripping in a steady stream from his hat brim to his thick, black boots. “We got to get a description of the guy and a make on the car. The perpetrator could be gone the hell clean out of the country if we keep stalling around. This is a felony, Mr. Selby, and you just can’t—”

“Now hold it, goddammit. I’m her father and she won’t even talk to me. She’s been raped and badly beaten. She doesn’t need cops standing over her asking for details.”

“But we can’t—”

“I want her examined by a policewoman. Nobody else is going to talk to her until Dr. Kerr gets here.”

Milt Karec had called Sergeant Ritter at the substation near Muhlenburg. The sergeant agreed to contact Paramedic Redden, but warned Karec that this would waste valuable time.

Paramedic-Sergeant Edith Redden had arrived an hour or so later. After assisting Dr. Kerr tend to Shana — the doctor had reached Selby’s house only minutes before the nurse — Redden had questioned Shana briefly, eliciting a tentative description of the man who had kidnapped and raped her.

This information had been reported to the East Chester Detective Division, which had the investigative responsibility for such felonies. The description of the rapist and his car was processed for preliminary evaluation and priority by the shift supervisor, Sergeant Burt Wilger.

When Dr. Kerr came downstairs, Selby started to get up, but the doctor said, “Sit still, Harry. Shana’s sleeping now. I’ve given her something that will let her sleep for another eight or ten hours. When she wakes she’ll be hungry. I’ve told Mrs. Cranston what to give her. Then see that she takes the pills I’ve left, every six hours. She’s all right, in one sense. It’s her period, I mean. But I want her to stay absolutely quiet for a few days. No visitors and not too much time on the phone. If you don’t put your foot down, her friends will swarm around like it’s a damn skiing accident, and they’ll want all the details and it’s too early for that. She needs rest and sedation. If she’s fretful or angry, or won’t talk to you, don’t be upset, that’s normal.” He winced at the word “normal” in such a circumstance.

Dr. Kerr gripped Selby’s shoulder; Selby felt a tremor in the old man’s hand. “Goddammit, Harry, a thing like this makes my whole life seem like a waste. You work so hard to bring them into the world, to take care of them, teaching them what you think is right. Maybe the bad old days with a hanging tree and a whipping block weren’t so bad after all.” He looked at his watch. “If she wants to talk about what happened, I won’t put any restrictions on that. But don’t press her. It’s too late to say good night, so I’ll say good morning, Harry. I looked in on Davey, by the way. He’s restless but he’ll be dropping off soon. I’ll see myself out.”

Then Selby was alone, the untouched whiskey beside him, a thin white light rising above the meadow. He couldn’t quite see the pond, only the beech trees that screened it from the house. The rain had turned their trunks black. They were saplings when Sarah planted them. She could circle them with her hand.

Blazer came down from Shana’s room and padded into the kitchen. Selby heard him drinking from his stoneware bowl. The big shepherd then prowled quietly around the first floor, finally settling beside Selby in the study.

Shana hadn’t got a good look at the man; her description was emotional, splintered, charged with panic and hysteria. A wild kind of look in his eyes, twenty-five, thirty, she couldn’t be sure, dark (the night? the man?), anger...

Blazer growled and raised his head. Davey called from the top of the stairs, “Dad, please come up, hurry. Shana’s talking...”

Selby took the stairs two at a time. Davey stood at the open door of her room, eyes bright under his tousled hair.

“She said something about ‘hornets,’ dad. It was real clear. I came out here and listened, and she said some other things I couldn’t understand. Then she said, ‘hornets’ again, and she was crying.”

Blazer tried to push Selby aside with his head and crowd into Shana’s room.

“Hold it, stay, Blazer. Goddammit, stay.”

Selby went in and put a hand on her forehead. It was cool and dry. He touched her shoulder, she didn’t move. Her breathing was soft and shallow. The room smelled of talcum powder.

Shana’s desk was covered with books. A tennis racket stood on end in the window embrasure. An assemblage, covered with glass and framed in dark wood, hung above her bed. The wood was painted in alternating stripes of yellow and green and red, and the bottom strip displayed a narrow brass plate with the etched legend: Munich, 1972.

A dozen names were printed on a parchment in a round, childish hand, and traced with pressed leaves and flowers. It had been a project of Shana’s for a history class — years ago, she had been only a child, in second or third grade, he couldn’t remember which.

But he remembered her looking up the colors of the Israeli flag in the atlas and then finding a plant and flower book at the library, an old curio of a book which listed the traditional virtues and vices associated with flora of all kinds down through the years. Shana had bordered her tribute with leaves and flowers from their own woods and meadow, the leaves and petals pressed and waxed and intertwined... oak leaves for valor, white dogwood for strength and laurel for glory, aspen leaf for lamentation, white chrysanthemum petals for truth and orange, feathery strands of wild marigold, fading now, as the flower of grief. A woven design of nature’s message to honor the names of the Israeli athletes who had been murdered in Munich, Germany, at the Olympic Games. Selby looked at those names in the lightening dawn, a hand still touching his daughter’s slim, young shoulder. Yaacob Springer, Kehat Schorr, Mark Slavin and Eliazar Halfin...

He started when he heard Shana’s voice. She had murmured the word “hell” and another word he couldn’t make out.

Davey came into the room. “Did you hear that, did you, dad?”

“Not all of it. ‘Hell’ and then something else.”

The morning light covered her bed. Her arms were outside the covers, the bandages small and white about her wrists and one of her hands. Her sandy eyelashes accentuated the blue-black bruises on her cheeks.

She stirred suddenly and Selby put a hand tightly on her arm. An expression of panic twisted her features. But her eyes remained closed.

“Mommy, I’ll kill it. I’ll kill it.” Shana’s lips barely moved, but the words were clear and spaced deliberately.

“The waves,” she said then, and tears started under her eyelids and glinted on her swollen face. Her voice became deep and rasping, as she cried out, “I am worse than men, in my heart is hatred—”

A phone began ringing. “Stay here,” Selby said to Davey. “Try to remember everything she says.”

He went into his bedroom and picked up the phone from Sarah’s worktable, still cluttered with jars of pencils and books and files, recipes and random news clippings.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Selby, this is Mr. Stoltzer, Clem Stoltzer in Summitt City. It’s early, I know, I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No, what is it?”

“Mr. Selby, your brother, Jarrell, left Summitt unexpectedly this morning. I was wondering if he’d mentioned anything about a change of plans to you?”

“When was this?”

“Around five or six o’clock, according to the guard at the north gate.”

“Well, is that unusual? For someone to leave that early?”

“Of course not, people come and go as they like here, anytime they want. But the cleaning crew assigned to your brother’s unit reported that his clothes and gear are gone. If he intended to resign, he would have mentioned it, I think, and collected his money from the credit union, seen about his pension and insurance, things like that. He’s got a fine future with Harlequin, and it’s not like him to leave this way...”

Selby wasn’t too interested, his mind and heart were with his daughter, but he said, “We were supposed to meet for dinner last night. Sergeant Ledge told me Jarrell was planning to stop by my motel. I don’t know where he is or why he left, Mr. Stoltzer. Maybe his girl friend knows.”

“That’s a thought, Mr. Selby. Do you happen to have her phone number or address?”

Selby told him no, that he didn’t even know her last name. Stoltzer said, “If Jarrell gets in touch with you, I’d appreciate it if you’d ask him to call me. Would you do that, please?”

As Selby hung up, his son hurried into the bedroom. “She’s talking too fast for me to remember, so I got my tape recorder. She’s saying she’ll kill something, she said something about a tunnel and something that sounds like poetry. She’s talking about birds too.”

The phone rang again. Selby said, “You go back and stay with her, Davey.”

It was Casper Gideen. In his typically brusque fashion, he said he’d stop by in ten minutes if that suited Selby. If it didn’t, he’d stop by when it did.

Selby put on a hunting jacket and went to the parking lot. The sun was up and the meadow was slick and white with frost. Beyond it was the smooth shine of the pond, and the white beeches.

The log cabin near the garage was named for Casper Gideen, who had built it for Shana and Davey. Davey had burned the letters into a piece of notched and varnished pine. When Gideen saw the sign swaying on its chain, he had said slowly, “My name looks funny printed out. But I’m proud to see it. It was Gideon once, my daddy told us.”

Gideen did occasional work on the Selby place, keeping the meadow in trim with a tractor and cutter bar, and chopping down old fruit trees when they were ready for the fireplace.

Tall and thin, about Selby’s age, with a rough, weathered face, Gideen’s cool, blue eyes could become dark and wary at even a hint of disrespect or ridicule. He wanted to be “let be,” in his words. Gideen could hunt pheasant and take his limit without a dog to point or flush them. He knew spring holes in local ponds where panfish were layered by the hundreds; and he took Shana and Davey there in the summer and cooked them breakfasts of perch and bluegills before the sun was up. He knew when game was tiring, and had taught Selby to watch for the sign of tracks going downhill. At night, hunting raccoons, they had often sat on frozen hills and listened to Casper’s red-bones bugling over the valleys, the sound seeming to carry forever on the winds.

One winter night Gideen had got savagely drunk and smashed his truck into a tree. His wife, Lori, had called Selby, who had found Casper half frozen in his truck and had driven him home. It was after this that Gideen built the log cabin for Davey and Shana. But he had never once mentioned the “accident” or Selby’s aid.

When the blue van stopped in the parking lot Gideen climbed out with a cardboard box under his arm.

“I came by to ask for the girl.” He handed the box to Selby. “It’s from the woman, a new pie and a jar of raisins in pepper sauce. She said it would be good for her.” From the front of the van, he took out a jug and worked the stopper loose with his thumb. “We could have a drink, you and me, Harry.”

Selby nodded and took a swig of the powerful, colorless liquor. He handed the jug back without wiping off the rim of the neck.

Gideen said, “How is she?”

“Sleeping now. Dr. Kerr’s been here.”

Gideen drank and stoppered the jug and put it back in the truck. “There was some talk at Little Tenn this morning.” Gideen’s cold, blue eyes were darker now. “Then it stopped. That means something’s started, something’s coming. I heard enough to know it’s touching your daughter and Goldie Boy Jessup. Don’t ask me how. They’re afraid. And that could mean the law’s in on it. It’s against my raisin’ to go against my people but I’m with you, Harry. I’ll find out what it is. And I’ll tell you one more thing now. In my granddaddy’s day, they catch the son who did it, that’d be the end of him right there. You tell me we do better, I say prove it. Goodbye to you, Harry.”

Davey was waiting for Selby in the foyer. “Dad, Shana’s bike is gone. I put it behind the kennel run yesterday, where it’d be out of the way. But it’s gone now.”

“What about the garage? Somebody might have put it inside, the troopers or Mrs. Cranston. Let’s look.”

But Shana’s bike wasn’t in the garage, or anywhere else they looked; it was gone.

Selby called Sergeant Ritter at the sheriff’s station, but Ritter was no help; he told Selby that neither Milt Karec nor Ed Jimson would have had any reason to bring the bike in, and if they had they would surely have told him about it.

“But maybe the county detectives got it,” Ritter said. “It’s their case now, Mr. Selby.”

Selby thanked him and called the detective division in East Chester. After being switched to Captain Slocum’s office, he was put on hold briefly, and then transferred to a Lieutenant Gus Eberle.

The lieutenant said yes, he had picked up the bicycle earlier that morning, and that the police lab had already run a series of checks on it.

“It was our first lead, Mr. Selby, and we put a top priority on it.” Eberle’s voice was low and rasping, a heavy smoker or drinker, Selby thought, but his tone was amiable. “A sample of paint from the perpetrator’s car would have given us solid ID for an all-points. But the bike didn’t help us. It checked out negative.”

“What does that mean?”

“What I said, Selby, negative, which means nothing. Your daughter’s bike is white with green trim. That’s all we found in the way of paint. Some mud and tar, bits of stone and asphalt on the mudguards, but no foreign paint.”

“That’s very strange.” Selby saw that Davey was watching him. “There was red paint on her bike yesterday.”

“Who told you that?”

“My son did, Lieutenant. There was red paint on the frame and sprocket after the accident.” -

“Did you see any red paint, Selby?”

“No, I didn’t. But it’s not likely my son’s mistaken about it.”

“What you got to take into account,” Eberle said, “is that it was about dark when it happened. Your boy might’ve seen a streak of tar or mud and figured it for paint.”

“I doubt it, Lieutenant.”

“Well, maybe he just saw what he wanted to see, Selby.” Eberle’s voice dropped to an exasperated growl. “Now listen, Selby. I’m just a goddamn cop, but give me credit for knowing how to read a damn lab report. I’m looking at it right now. There’s scratches on your daughter’s bike, the spokes are broken and the frame is twisted. There’s mud and tar on it, and pieces of stone stuck in the metal. But there’s no goddamn paint on it except the original white paint and green striping that was sprayed on at the factory, which, by the way, was a Schwinn outlet in Buffalo, New York, in case you want to know.”

“What time did you come by to pick it up, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t know why the hell that matters. Around four or five o’clock this morning. Doc Kerr’s car was in your drive. I didn’t want to disturb anybody so I collected the bike and took it to the lab. It was ticketed like any other piece of physical evidence, a weapon, stolen goods, whatever. The thing was not to waste time. Get the bastard before he gets clean out of the country. There’s something screwy, by the way Selby, about where your daughter was that night. About the time, I mean. But we’re checking that out. You’ll get a receipt for her bike, don’t worry, and we’ll ship it back to you when the lab’s through with it. Or you can come by and pick it up. Suit yourself. I been on the case all night, Selby. You got any other questions, talk to Burt Wilger, Sergeant Wilger, he’ll be the case officer from here on in. We’ll be in touch if there’s a break.”

When Selby put the phone down, Davey said, “Why is he lying about it, dad? I know there was red paint on Shana’s bike.”

Selby squeezed his son’s shoulder. “Let’s keep this talk with the lieutenant between you and me for a while, Davey. Don’t say anything about it to Mrs. Cranston or to anyone at school. And not a word to Shana.”

“Okay, dad. But he was lying, wasn’t he?”

“It sure looks like it.”

Later Selby listened to the tapes that Davey had made. He ran them back several times, trying to make a copy of what his daughter had said under sedation. It wasn’t easy because at times her voice rose hysterically, and at others sank into whispers that were barely audible. It was terrifying to listen to her. Blazer lumbered into the room and whined when he heard Shana’s voice rising from the spinning reels.

“Take it easy,” Selby said, and pulled the big dog close to him, smoothing his ruff.

Finally Selby had a list of what his daughter had said under sedation. With his comments, it read:

Shana had apparently retreated into metaphor, drugged and hysterical in her dreams. He had to find out where she’d been taken that night, what she was hiding from them.

Selby spread out a map of East Chester County on the coffee table and drew a penciled circle around Muhlenburg and Fairlee Road, an area including woods, open country and many small farms and residential neighborhoods. He knew these woods and meadows. He and Casper had hunted there many times.

Davey came in and looked at the map, tracing the network of roads running out of Muhlenburg. “I could go with you, dad,” he said. “I could help, couldn’t I?”

Selby put an arm around his son’s shoulder. “We’ll start tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll find where he took her, Davey, then we’ll find him. That’s a promise.”