Serial

47

Hogart, 2005

Beth Colson watched the boxy yellow back of the school bus rumble down the dirt drive to the county road and then turn toward the highway. For an instant the pale face of a student was visible staring out the rear window. Not Eddie, she was sure.

Dust raised by the bus was still hanging in the air when Sheriff Wayne Westerley’s cruiser slowed and made a right turn into the drive. It was a gray SUV with SHERIFF lettered on both sides and a roof bar full of lights. There were extra lights mounted on the front, down low and protected by wire guards.

The big vehicle navigated the bumpy dirt drive easily on its oversized knobby tires. Beth moved back to stand by the front porch while Westerley parked near the stand of big oak trees that were showing their golden fall leaves.

He climbed down out of the big SUV and came toward her, smiling. Beth couldn’t help but think how trim and handsome he looked in his tan uniform and black leather cross belt and holster. He even had a black tie on today, tucked in between his uniform shirt’s top two buttons. Beth had always thought that was an odd way for uniformed men to wear their ties. Either you were going to wear a tie or you weren’t.

“Special occasion?” she asked, smiling at Westerley.

He grinned and appeared puzzled.

“You look so dressed up and nice in your uniform.”

“Always special when I come see you, Beth.” He removed his black-visored garrison cap and stopped and stood a few feet away from her. Behind him dust was still settling. A bird started nattering in one of the oaks. “I saw the bus on the way in. Eddie get off to school okay?”

Beth smiled. “Yeah. He’s on the honor roll again this year. Can you believe it?”

“Sure. He’s a super kid.”

“He is that.”

“I got some news,” Westerley said. “Thought it best if I came and told it to you in person.”

Beth felt a cold weight in her stomach. “This bad news?”

He shrugged. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“Who you are, I guess.” He removed his cap and held it before his crotch with both hands, as if he’d forgotten to zip his pants. “Now that DNA makes identification so certain, even after years have passed, there’s this organization, a bunch of lawyers running around the country reopening old crime cases where there were blood samples taken. Those samples, mostly taken to determine blood type, are still around in old evidence files.”

The bird stopped its nattering and the forest around the house was silent. “I heard about that on the news,” Beth said. “They started doing that after the Simpson case.”

“DNA science has gotten more sophisticated since then. And so have the people using it to free wrongly convicted prisoners.”

“Not a bad thing,” Beth said.

“Yeah. Well, this organization looked into the state’s rape case against Vincent Salas.” Westerley moved slightly closer to Beth, as if he wanted to be within range to catch her if she fell. “They determined that Salas couldn’t have been the one who raped you, Beth.”

Beth did feel dizzy. The sky, the woods, the sheriff himself, seemed to spin for a few seconds, as if the earth had tilted. She felt Westerley’s hand on her arm, steadying her.

“That ain’t possible,” she heard herself say.

“It is, Beth. The DNA proved it. Salas’s attorney’s been to the state capital, rushing this thing through. They don’t want an innocent man in prison one day more than he has to be there.”

“Innocent? Can that really be true, that he’s innocent?” A thought hit her hard. “If Salas didn’t rape me, who did?”

“That’s something you don’t need to worry over, after all these years. Besides, the statute of limitations has expired.” Westerley wasn’t positive of that, but it had to be close. “Bastard who did it, from way outta state, the kinda things he’d do and the life he musta led, he might even be dead by now. Time has a way of leveling things out. Let that part of the past stay buried in the past, Beth.”

Westerley was gripping both her arms now, looking down at her from beneath the visor of his cap. “You must have made a mistaken identification, Beth. It happens. You didn’t do it on purpose. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Except send an innocent man to prison.”

“There was plenty of other evidence against him.”

“How could that be, if he wasn’t guilty?”

“It’s that kind of world, Beth. That’s why a jury needs to find beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury in your case thought it was doing just that, that there was no reasonable doubt Salas was the rapist.”

“When’s Salas gonna be released?”

“In three days.”

Beth began to cry and shake her head sadly. “What did I do? Oh, God, what did I do?”

“Your best,” Westerley said. “You believed Salas was the one, or you wouldn’t have pointed him out in a lineup, and in the courtroom. None of this is your fault.”

“All of it’s my fault.”

She was suddenly hugging Westerley, and his arms were around her.

“You want me to be with you when he gets out?” he asked.

“You suppose he’ll be furious with me?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure how he’s gonna feel. I know this: I’m gonna have a talk with him right off. You won’t have anything to fear.”

“I’ve got me to fear, Wayne. My conscience.”

“I don’t see how you could have done anything different, Beth.”

“I coulda been more sure.”

“It’s so easy to say that after the fact. Knowing what you knew, thinking what you thought, feeling like you did, there wasn’t much else for you to do.”

She looked through a mist of tears up into his eyes. “You really believe that?”

“Damned right I do.”

“I wish I could be as sure as you.”

She dug her forehead into his shoulder, and her body trembled with her sobs. The woods began to trill with the sounds of insects becoming more active in the building heat. A breeze kicked up, stirring the leaves and moving the dust around.

“You want me to stay with you?” he asked.

She hugged him harder. “Yeah, I want you to stay with me.”

I do, and I don’t.