Serial

22

Hogart, 1991

Westerley and Billy used their flashlights and were helped by whatever moonlight filtered through the leaves. Willis stood off to the side, as instructed. Now that they’d reached their destination, he switched off the flashlight he’d brought from the store. He had no idea where to shine it, anyway.

Obviously Beth had put up a struggle. The brown carpet of last year’s half-decayed leaves had been violently stirred so that here and there bare earth was exposed. The leaves were thick enough that they prevented footprints, and there were none in the bare spots. Westerley noticed a small strip of torn fabric that looked as if it had come from Beth’s T-shirt. He kept the beam of his flashlight trained on it while Billy stooped and used a tweezers to lift the fragment and bag it.

Off to the side of where the main struggle seemed to have taken place was a ripped paper sack. Next to it was a six-pack of Wild Colt beer, also ripped open. Westerley went to it and saw that it contained three cans. There were no empty beer cans lying about. Westerley guessed the rapist had punched Beth in the eye in an attempt to quiet her screams. When that didn’t work, he hurriedly grabbed three beer cans for the road and tucked them wherever they’d fit in his pockets or on his motorcycle before fleeing the scene.

“This the brand of beer Beth bought at the Quick Pick?” Westerley asked Willis.

“Yeah. That’s all Roy will drink.”

“The guy you saw speeding outta here on a motorcycle, he look like he was carrying anything?”

“Nope. Had both hands on the grips. I’m sure of that. Coulda had something tucked in his saddlebags, though.”

“I’m figuring that,” Westerley said, knowing he was making a lot of suppositions without much evidence.

“I’m sure it was a Harley he was riding,” Willis said. “I used to own one and I know how they sound, ’specially when they’re idling. Potato, potato, potato.”

“Huh?”

“You say potato over and over fast and that’s what a Harley sounds like.”

“Uh-huh.”

Westerley told Billy to cordon off the scene with yellow tape so he could come back tomorrow and examine it in daylight. Nobody was likely to come along and disturb it anyway, until the rape found its way into the newspapers and on TV, and that would take a while. This wasn’t St. Louis or Kansas City.

When Billy was finished cordoning off a rough square by winding crime-scene tape around four trees, the three men trudged from the woods, following the wavering flashlight beams. Willis walked out ahead, leading the way as if he were guiding an expedition.

When the convenience store lights were visible through the trees, Billy leaned close to Westerley and said, “Potato, potato, potato.”

Early the next morning Westerley returned to the crime scene alone. He surveyed the area of the struggle carefully. About ten feet from where the rape must have taken place, he found marks where a motorcycle had been parked. There was a clear indentation from the cycle’s kickstand. He searched for tire tread marks but couldn’t find any.

When he was about to leave, he saw what looked like a dark stain on a dry brown leaf. He stooped low and examined it carefully. It was no more than half an inch across, but he thought he could detect a splatter pattern. He was pretty sure it was blood.

Beth hadn’t bled much, if any, so it might not be her blood, but that of her assailant.

He carefully lifted the entire delicate leaf with tweezers and managed to slide it into one of the plastic sandwich bags the sheriff’s department used for evidence bags. He sealed the top of the bag carefully.

The hospital had been unable to obtain any blood from beneath Beth’s fingernails, though she’d said she’d scratched her attacker, so this blood could be valuable evidence if it was the same type as the suspect’s.

If they had a suspect.

Westerley recalled the words of a former Missouri politician about a wordy but ineffective bill that had passed the legislature. Now if we had some bread and we had some mustard, we could have a ham sandwich, if we had some ham.