Serial

20

Hogart, 1991

Willis from the Quick Pick convenience store heard the screaming as soon as he stepped outside into the hot night. He knew right away the screams were coming from the woods behind the store.

He folded the LIVE BAIT sign he’d come outside to bring in and laid it on the concrete near the door. Would there be more screams?

The night was quiet now. He stood with his arms dangling limply at his sides, his head cocked to the left so as to bring his good ear into play, listening for sounds other than the buzz of insects in the woods and up around the pump lights.

The next thing he heard that was louder than the cicadas was a roar. It was uncertain and stuttering at first, rising and falling. Then, about a hundred yards away, he saw a motorcycle burst from the woods onto the county road. It turned away from him, running without lights until it straightened out and had a level stretch in front of it. It roared louder, as if its spirits were lifted by the black ribbon of road ahead. A big Harley-he could tell by the distinctive sound of its engine.

As it receded from his vision, he studied it in the moonlight. It was a dark-colored bike, ridden by a big hefty guy wearing what looked like jeans and a black T-shirt. He had on a dark-colored helmet. Willis saw long dark hair sprouting out from under it, and it seemed that the guy had a beard.

That was it, the image that stayed with Willis as the lone cyclist passed from moonlight into the darker night and was gone.

Then he heard another scream. A woman. He thought about Beth Brannigan, who’d left the store not that long ago, lugging a paper sack containing a six-pack of beer for her husband, Roy. Fearless young Beth, who might have taken the shortcut through the woods. Roy would be on the other side of the woods watching TV from his beat-to-crap recliner, like he always did when the Cards games were televised. Willis wondered if Roy had heard the screams.

The screams continued, ending in a keening wail almost like an animal would make.

Maybe there were others besides the man on the motorcycle. Maybe whatever was going on in the woods hadn’t stopped.

Willis ran back into the store and snatched the twelve-gauge Remington shotgun from where he kept it propped behind the counter.

After checking the gun to make sure it held shells, he went back outside, locked the store’s glass door, and headed for the woods. He found himself feeling oddly elated as he moved at a fast jog toward the source of the screams, holding the shotgun out in front of him crossways with both hands, the way he’d been trained to do back in ’Nam.

Thirty-two years ago. Not so long a time.

Sheriff Wayne Westerley kept the Ford cruiser’s accelerator flat on the floor during much of the drive to Willis’s Quick Pick convenience store. He wanted to get there before Beth Brannigan’s husband showed up. The big car seemed to chase the converging headlight beams probing the darkness out in front of it.

Roy Brannigan had a temper at the best of times. The fact that he was a religious fanatic didn’t seem to have influenced him to try settling matters peaceably.

Willis had carried Beth into the store before calling the sheriff’s department. When Brannigan arrived there and was told what happened, he might immediately go after his wife’s attacker and trample the crime scene even more thoroughly than Willis probably had, Roy having more at stake.

But Westerley didn’t see Brannigan’s battered old Plymouth anywhere as he pulled the cruiser into the Quick Pick’s gravel lot and parked near the door.

The inside of the store was brightly lighted. When Westerley tried the door he found it locked. It only took a few seconds for Willis to appear inside and open it.

Willis’s thinning hair was hanging over his forehead, giving his face depth and shadow in the overhead fluorescent lighting. He looked distraught.

“She’s in back,” he said.

Westerley had always liked Beth Brannigan. In truth he was kind of attracted to her, maybe especially so because she didn’t deserve a nutcase husband like Roy. A drunken Roy tended to preach all the more fervently and defend his view of the Lord with his fists. Westerley sometimes wondered if he used those fists on Beth.

She was in the storage room, reclining in one of the webbed aluminum lawn chaises that Willis sold in the summer. Beth had a terry-cloth beach towel over her that featured a likeness of Elvis in his later-years Las Vegas regalia. The towel came up to her neck. Her bare feet and ankles showed at the other end, where Elvis’s head was. Beth’s feet were dirty on their soles and turned in toward each other. Nearby on the floor was a wad of rumpled clothing. Some torn jean cutoffs, a ripped T-shirt, and pink panties.

Westerley didn’t like Willis messing up the crime scene and its evidence, but on the other hand he couldn’t have left Beth suffering and unconscious in the woods. The clothes, though, might have yielded some clues. They might still.

Willis noticed the way Westerley had glanced at him.

“Well, hell,” he said, “I couldn’t leave her layin’ there on the ground. And I had to cover her up. The son of a bitch that got her’s the one that tore off her clothes.”

Beth didn’t say anything. She was staring straight ahead, probably in shock, trembling even though it was warm in the storeroom. A bruise was beginning to take colorful form below her left eye.

“I got an ambulance coming from Fulton,” Westerley said. He knew they’d use a rape kit on Beth at the hospital, begin the process of accumulating evidence, building a case that would hold up in court. If we can find the bastard. “Did you call her husband?” he asked Willis.

“Nope. I thought I’d wait till you got here.”

Westerley noticed a shotgun leaning against the wall near the storage room’s rear door. “Were you fixing to use that twelve gauge?”

“Would have if I could have,” Willis said.

“You gotta-”

“Willis! You in here?”

Roy Brannigan’s voice. Willis hadn’t relocked the door after Westerley had arrived. He and Westerley looked at each other. Westerley nodded.

“Back here, Roy. In the storeroom.”

Brannigan entered and looked around. He saw his wife in the lawn chair, barely covered by a towel. He aimed a dark and puzzled scowl at Willis and the sheriff.

“What in God’s name is goin’ on here?”

“Beth was attacked,” Westerley said. He could smell beer on Brannigan’s breath.

Brannigan stared at him as if he’d spoken Chinese. “What do you mean, attacked?”

“I’m sorry, Roy. Not long after she left the store to go back home, Willis heard somebody screaming in the woods. He went to see what was going on, and he found Beth on the ground and hurt. So he brought her here and called me.”

“She musta been taking the shortcut back to your place,” Willis said. “I was just about to call you.”

Brannigan’s intense features were bunched, but his eyes were huge and unbelieving. He was trying to comprehend what he’d just heard.

“What do you mean, attacked?” he said again.

“We’ll get her to a hospital, Roy,” Westerley said. “Then we’ll know more. We gotta find out how bad she’s hurt.”

Brannigan stared at his wife, who lay gazing at nothing as if she were alone on a distant island. Her teeth were chattering.

“I told her and told her not to take that shortcut at night,” Brannigan said. His anger was growing, simmering right now, but it might boil over. “They don’t listen. They don’t damn listen!”

Gravel crunched outside in the lot as another vehicle pulled in and parked. Westerley thought it might be the ambulance and paramedics, but instead his deputy, Billy Noth, appeared in the storeroom doorway. Westerley had told him what happened, so he wasn’t surprised to see Beth in her condition. Billy looked at Brannigan, then at Westerley.

“She okay?” he asked.

“We’ll find out soon,” Westerley said.

“Who did this?” Brannigan asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Westerley said.

“We’ll find the son of a bitch,” Billy said.

“God had best find him before I do,” Brannigan said.

“We’ll do the looking,” Westerley said, remembering Willis’s shotgun. He knew Brannigan owned several guns. Too many damned guns around here.

More gravel crunched out in the parking lot. This time it was the ambulance. Tight metal doors thunk ed shut almost in unison, and shortly thereafter came the sound of somebody entering the store.

“Back here!” Westerley yelled.

Two burly paramedics in white outfits came into the storeroom, making it suddenly seem small and cramped and very warm. Westerley was perspiring heavily and could feel the taut material of his tan uniform shirt sticking to his back.

He told the paramedics briefly what had happened, and they hurriedly set about bringing in a gurney and transferring Beth onto it. As they shifted her weight, the towel came half off her. There were leaves and dirt sticking to her nude body. One of the paramedics got a blanket over her in a hurry and kicked the towel to the side. Elvis’s eyes showed, somewhat rumpled, and seemed to be observing everything with mild interest.

“Lord, Lord…” Brannigan said in a choked voice. “I’m goin’ with her to the hospital.”

The paramedics looked at Westerley.

“He’s her husband,” Westerley said. For a moment he wondered how it would have felt to say he was Beth’s husband. Westerley’s own wife had left him three years ago, unable to stay married to a cop.

“You can ride in back, sir,” one of the paramedics said to Brannigan.

“Make absolutely sure they do a rape kit on her,” Westerley said softly to the other paramedic.

The paramedics rolled the gurney through the store and outside, handling it gently. Everyone followed. The night was dark but for the island of light where the convenience store stood. The ambulance’s flashing red and blue roof lights seemed inadequate, surrounded by all that vast darkness and silence. Moths flitted like stunned spirits before its headlights.

As the gurney’s wheels were raised and Beth was loaded into the ambulance, Brannigan walked about ten feet away and stood staring up at the sky. He suddenly howled, startling everyone. His jaws spread even wider and the tendons in his neck tightened like cables as he howled again, louder.

Then he calmly walked to the rear of the ambulance.

“The Lord doth have his reasons,” he said, and climbed into the vehicle after Beth.

One of the paramedics shut the ambulance’s rear doors. As he walked around to get in the passenger’s seat, he looked over at Westerley and rolled his eyes.

Westerley didn’t respond, thinking about Beth.

The three men stood and watched the ambulance spray gravel, then break from the lot. A couple of hundred feet down the road, its siren cut in.

“I’d like to know what those reasons are,” Billy Noth said. He turned his head off to the side and spat.

When the ambulance was out of sight and could no longer be heard, Westerley laid a hand on Willis’s bony shoulder.

“Take us to where this thing happened,” he said.