by Joe Derkacht
#
I came to in what seemed to be a dark closet, wakened by a distant pounding that made the building tremble. Someone shuffled past my room on quiet feet. Several moments later I heard a door opened, followed by murmuring voices. The door shut and the murmurs rose in volume, as though drawing nearer, until a vague recollection of the people behind the voices came to me.
“You can sit in my rocker. Coffee won’t take any time at all to warm. I made cookies yesterday.”
“Well, I guess that’ll be okay. It’ll be another half hour before a man from the county sheriff’s office makes his appearance.”
My gaze wandered over the tiny space in which I was confined, its deep gloom broken by occasional shafts of light, as a breeze disturbed a roll-up shade to my left. For the briefest of moments I thought I’d seen faces staring at me! My eyes rolled back in alarm. There might be hundreds of them, all as bleached white as a skull, some stacked in rows along the walls, others much closer, even upon the bed. On a card table next to the bed were heaps of tiny human limbs, of individual arms, legs, naked torsos. What had I fallen into? What kind of monstrous, nightmare world—?
Then I remembered. The woman I heard speaking was Zell and the man was Chief Blackie, as everyone in Driftwood Bay called Burt Blackmer, the town’s single full-time policeman. Someone had deposited me in Zell’s craft room, where she assembled dolls for Driftwood Bay’s summer tourist trade. I tried calling her name but no sound seemed capable of passing my lips. I struggled to lift an arm and instead barely managed to lift one of my fingers; I was as useless to help myself as one of the half-assembled dolls on the card table.
If I could groan loudly enough, Zell or Blackie would come running.
“What was that noise?” Blackie asked.
“Oh, the wind,” Zell said lightly. “You know how any little breeze around here makes the place sound haunted. Sugar and cream in your coffee?”
“Sure, thanks.”
Now why had she told him it was the wind? Blackie and I knew each other well, even if we weren’t exactly buddies. Through the thin walls I heard the clinking of spoons. They were drinking coffee without me.
“For what reason did I see you prowling around John’s house?”
Either he was swallowing coffee, or her use of John rather than Jack threw him for a moment. “Lookin’ for him,” Blackie finally said. “The sheriff says he’s been in the loony bin for a few weeks and tried raping a nurse. They figure he’ll turn up here sooner or later.”
I heard what sounded like a crash of china. Someone had dropped a cup.
“Why—” Zell sputtered. “Is that where he’s been? Do you actually believe that nonsense? I thought something might have happened to him while he was out camping!”
“You knew I made inquiries a week ago but didn’t hear anything.”
“Probably one of those turf issues,” she said.
“What?”
“You know—turf, Blackie. Like they talk about on TV, where one police department won’t cooperate with another because they’re afraid someone else will interfere with a case or get the credit for a job well done.”
“Oh.”
“Would you cooperate with them?”
“Them who?” He asked thickly.
“Another police department. You know, the county sheriff you were talking about.”
“Well yeah, Zell, sure. We’re just a little municipality here. It’s not like it’d be smart, refusing to cooperate. I’d be in hot water myself.”
“Even if you knew they were wrong?”
“What are we talkin’ about here? Have you seen him?”
“If I had, do you think I would tell those jackbooted—”
“This isn’t Nazi Germany, Zell. Everybody knows about Albert and how you lost some relatives in the war, but that was a very long time ago and it’s not the same. You can’t go around obstructing police business.”
Silence reigned for a moment. Then, “You haven’t tried one of my cookies.”
“I was waiting for you to ask,” he said.
A longer pause ensued. I imagined they were busy chewing, swallowing, something like that. I wished I had one of Zell’s cookies. I didn’t care whether anybody knew about it, either, county sheriff or otherwise. I just wanted a cookie.
“You didn’t tell me if you’ve seen him,” he said.
“Was his ex-wife involved in this?” She asked. “That little tramp would say anything to get him in trouble. You know as well as I do the reason she married him was because she wanted his house.”
I didn’t hear his answer. Ex-wife? I didn’t remember any wife, ex- or otherwise. The very thought made my head feel like it was a coffee can with marbles rolling around in it. No face came to mind, no personality, no voice, no scent. Nothing. I remembered Zell and Chief Blackie. I remembered Driftwood Bay. I remembered my parents and vaguely recalled their deaths. I remembered my house and thought I remembered my childhood. Why couldn’t I remember a wife? What else had I forgotten? Did I have children?
My mind must have drifted, or I simply fell asleep. When I came to again, I sensed someone seated at the foot of the bed. Voices filtered in through the window. One was Blackie’s, the other a stranger’s.
“No one’s seen him, and I’ve checked the premises,” Blackie was saying.
“Did you go inside?” The stranger asked, his voice officious, as if addressing an idiot child. Blackie got that a lot from people who didn’t know him well. It was difficult for most people to see past his bulging eyes and chipped buck teeth to the subtle mind beneath.
“Not without a warrant. All I did was look through the windows and walk through his workshop, which he always leaves unlocked.”
“You don’t need a warrant when you’re pursuing a fugitive.”
My window must have been open, because I heard every little sound, even Blackie’s sigh. In my mind’s eye, I saw him scratching the back of his head, a habit he had when thinking things through. A whiff of cigarette smoke told me the stranger was smoking, since I knew Blackie, except for the occasional Swisher Sweet cigar, seldom lit up.
“Look, he’s someone I’ve known for forty years. The worst I can say about the poor sap is that he has an awful stutter and lets people take advantage of him. He’s not crazy, and he’s certainly not dangerous.”
The stranger exhaled loudly, before answering. “He’s been in before.”
“Yeah?”
“Something about his having bl—”
“He was ten, forgodsakes.”
Been in what? I wondered.
The stranger continued doggedly: “Is he a loner?”
“Sort of.”
“Introverted?”
“You could say that.”
“Girlfriend?”
“Divorced.”
“In and out of work?”
“Has his own business—he makes do. But what that—”
“Poor relationship with his parents?”
“Both dead,” he admitted grudgingly.
“Suspicious deaths?”
“No,” he said, obviously irked. “Oh, let me correct myself. His mother died in the same hospital you’re telling me you want to take him back to.”
“Sure fits the profile.”
“Profile?”
“Yeah, you know, sociopath. As far as you know, he might be a serial killer and he’s been sitting here under your nose all these years.”
I could almost see the officer’s eyes narrowing smugly, as he stared down at Blackie, Driftwood Bay’s finest, the moronic local yokel.
“Fine theory,” Blackie said. “Except you have one problem.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“A lack of victims. Don’t serial killers usually have victims?”
“You—”
“Unless maybe you State and County boys have been hiding information from us local jurisdictions?”
&nb
sp; “You know what I meant.”
Blackie was controlling himself admirably, but the shadowy presence at the end of the bed shook with mirth.
“Actually, I don’t think I do know. Jack doesn’t get around much, not in that old rattletrap pickup of his. When he does drive, and I admit he probably shouldn’t drive at all, it’s to pick up supplies at the local lumberyard for his work, or for groceries. And oh yeah, once in awhile he goes camping somewhere up on Old Baldy or out near Batterson.”
The opposing police officer was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, it was with great deliberation—and louder, as if he were speaking to someone deaf.
“I was making a point. He’s a time bomb waiting to go off. He’s already tried to rape a nurse.”
“I talked with Salem General this morning,” Blackie said, speaking patiently, and just as loudly. “A Dr. Sarah Mc Gilly told me a different story.”
“Is that right?”
“She says no way could a human being in his condition have raped anybody.”
“Attempted. Attempting is still a crime.”
“Or attempted, according to her. She says the shrink at the mental hospital has had him in electroshock and kept him doped up enough to keep a horse down.”
“And?”
“This Dr. Mc Gilly says he was in some kind of accident, that they were probably just trying to cover their backsides.”
“Then you can maybe explain how this doped up friend of yours walked away from Salem General, escaped clean as a whistle?”
“No.” Another sigh. In my mind’s eye I saw him scratching the back of his head; this was a tough one.
“I’m going in. I have my court order.”
“Fine,” Blackie said. “You can do that, being from the sheriff’s office. I’ll even go with you and take notes. If for no other reason, I’m sure his insurance company will want a complete list of everything you break. And since I moonlight for our local fishwrapper, maybe I can make a few extra bucks selling the story of your success to The Oregonian.”
Except for a scatological, one-word expletive, the deputy sheriff gave no answer. Gravel crunched under two pairs of feet, the sound quickly fading.
“Oh, dear Lord in heaven!” Zell exclaimed in a loud whisper. “The fools will break down the door.”
She bounded from the bed and out of the room. A door slammed. A couple of seconds later, I heard her calling out, offering to tell them where they could find the key to my house.