The sound of his breathing exploded in his ears and he drove his legs to go faster, to move like the wind itself and put an end to his torture. Once he had the little bitch, he would find out what animal had stripped his friend of his life and dignity, turning him into the oozing, mutilated remains they were now burying.
Behind him, Jody was also running, slipping and falling on the hill. She called: “Clay...stop!” She was crying now, confused and hurt at this sudden, bizarre behavior.
The two priests in their black coats had also moved away from the crowd, their hands thrust into their right hand pockets as they moved after the sheriff in a trot. He was running full out. They hurried forward as best they could. He’d put an impressive amount of ground between them.
Below, the service had stopped. The crowd stared upward as Clay followed by Jody and two men raced towards the deserted tree. Reaching it, he screamed in anguish and whirled in dismay, He dashed about left and right, finally dropping to his knees in the wet snow, defeated.
Some mourners put it down to grief, other, less friendly folk, whispered that the sheriff had finally cracked up.
Jody reached him.
“She was here...she was here!” he yelled, as he desperately brushed the snow left and right searching for tracks, for any trace of the child’s presence.
Fathers Dermott Murphy and Ronald Langevin reached Jody and Clay. Father Murphy tried to comfort him as Father Langevin seemed to stand guard, his hand still in his right coat pocket, eyes scanning the area..
“Easy lad...easy lass...” Father Dermott Murphy said soothingly, placing one hand on Jody’s shoulder and the other on Clay’s arm. To Jody, he said: “He’ll be all right.”
“She was here,” Clay screamed. “That thing was here, I tell you!”
“Who was here, Clay...who?” Jody whispered, sinking to the ground with him, restraining him, holding him, and comforting him as he collapsed.
Throughout the weeks after his deputy’s death, Clay had refused to cry, choosing instead to maintain the stony silence and strength expected of a strong leader.
Until now....
~ 9 ~
A little more than six months after the funeral, Agent Stan Pritchard of the FBI, resplendent in a charcoal grey suit, gleaming white shirt and silver power tie, sat across from Clay in his office, notebook and gold pen in hand. On the desk a small Sony tape recorder whirred softly.
“Quite frankly Sheriff, we’re no further ahead in this matter,” he said, opening the collar of his immaculate white shirt and loosening his tie to compensate for the stifling summer heat. “One thing would help us all greatly – if you would agree to take a lie detector test.” Prichard held up his hand to ward off any protest. “Look, it would help you as well. It would clear you as a...” he hesitated and began again. “Well...clear you as a person of interest. It would also re-establish your credibility and let us all get on with focusing the investigation somewhere else.”
Clay sighed and shook his head. He listened to a fly droning around in the office and wished he could find the swatter. He was sure someone had hidden it, just to frustrate him. His loyal police force seemed to enjoy frustrating him lately, working around him, and whispering behind his back.
He spotted the fly near the ceiling fan and then ignored it. He wished he could just go home and lose himself in a glass of Scotch, though, admittedly it was a habit that had caused some dissention with Jody lately.
BUT HELL, HE HAD A RIGHT TO TRY AND FORGET....
Granted, he’d not been easy to live with, either at home or at work.
Initially he drove his men pretty hard in the search for clues to the killer. But when he mentioned they keep a sharp lookout for a little girl with unusual eyes, his men looked at him curiously. For six months he agonized over the pros and cons of confessing exactly what had happened that evening but it all boiled down to a simple fact: nobody was going to believe him. There was little to gain and any credibility he had left would be lost.
He thought back to the evening he’d insisted on leaving the hospital after his arm had been temporarily immobilized. Declaring he needed surgery, the doctor refused to let him go without a signed, self- release form. He signed the paper and had Deputy Tom McConkey drive him back to the murder scene; it looked decidedly surrealistic.
The road had been plowed to the house where a portable generator purred loudly furnishing power to the brilliant Klieg lights illuminating the scene. The sound of radio transmissions crackled in the freezing night air as red and blue emergency strobes lit the snow. Troopers traveled back and forth, their boots crunching, their breath frosting in the sub-zero air. Hitch’s body remained pinned to the door where it was barely visible through a translucent, polyethylene sheet tacked up to cover the horror. Four uneasy volunteer firemen stood by, crowbars in hand, none looking towards the open cellar door as they awaited word from the coroner. The dead goat had been cut down, dragged to the back and lay stiff in the snow off to one side.
His arm encased in a temporary plastic splint throbbed viciously as Clay watched white-suited forensic experts on loan from the FBI meticulously combing the interior and exterior of the house and root cellar. Down the road, reporters and curious civilians were being impatiently held back behind yellow police tape and several wooden construction roadblocks.
As he watched, Doc Severn, the County Coroner, decided it was time to move the body. The plastic sheet came down and the firemen quickly worked with crowbars to pull out the rusty, rail-road size spikes. They wore purple nitrile examination gloves and carefully handed the gory spikes by their relatively clean tops to a plain-clothed detective who preserved each one in an individual plastic evidence bag.
During the process, one fireman suddenly turned, vomited and was led away by a trooper. The man fell to his knees gulping for air and desperately washed his face with handfuls of snow.
Clay gained entrance to the kitchen, also illuminated with generator-powered bulbs. Of course, there was no sign of the child nor the dozens of bags of blood from the refrigerator. The appliance stood with its door open, strangely free of dust and dirt, and obviously out of place amid its filthy surroundings. Though sorely tempted to ask if any belongings from a child had been found, he kept his silence about the little girl. Using a flashlight in his good hand, he wandered through the entire house with his deputy by his side.
Since that night, Clay had weathered an inquest, multiple visits from the Vermont State Police and, now, again, from the FBI. Because he was a “person of interest,” he’d been ordered to relinquish control over the investigation and, further, not to pursue it in any manner.
To the investigators, it was obvious he was hiding something and the FBI judiciously seeded rumors in town in an effort to apply more pressure on him to come clean. He stuck to his story and their frustration and anger grew.
Meanwhile, the gossip and rumors were taking their toll. Morale in the force was poor and his authority had eroded to the point where the men seemed to be operating independent of him – still providing excellent service to the community – but working around him. It was a polite, but cold, conspiracy of silence and benign neglect they served up to him.
With the rumor mill grinding on, the pressure was intensifying. Today, both McConkey and Lefty Drazel, two of his most supportive deputies, had flatly refused to do any further checks at the Baker Estate citing the orders from the FBI. He called their actions insubordination. They called it reality and stamped out of his office.
Pritchard showed up every two weeks to grill him relentlessly, and Winder County presented him a standing offer to take a financial package and resign. Though Jody was sticking through it with him, he hated how tired and haunted she looked. He had repeatedly suggested she spend a few months with her parents now living in Boston but she’d refused.
The FBI agent was speaking again. He’d have to get the fly later.
“Timing, Sheriff...timing,” Pritchard was saying. “That’s the key.”<
br />
“I know the timing doesn’t hang together,” Clay said, for the hundredth time, “but I can’t do much more than tell you exactly what I did from the time we got to the Baker place to when I found Hitch. You figured out the timing.”
Pritchard’s pursed his lips. He was losing patience again as he slowly and deliberately said: “Okay. Let’s assume that this satanic cult – or whatever it was – could mutilate and partially remove the epidermis off the head and drain the blood from a full grown man in about five minutes, how could they do it without you hearing?” Pritchard leaned intently forward, his watery green eyes fastened intently on Clay like a cobra eyeing a mouse. “The pathologist’s report said that it was likely done while he was still alive. So he must have been screaming like a stuck pig. And what did they do with the skin? Sell it to the Colonel as a KFC special?”
Clay came out of the chair like a rocket. He was around the desk and had Pritchard by the throat before the agent was even able to rise. The notebook and pen flew across the room and hit the wall.
“Now listen you son-of-a-bitch!” Clay said, through gritted teeth. “Hitch was my friend. To you he’s nothing but a name on a report, but he was my friend!”
Gurgling for air, Pritchard tried to pry Clay’s hand from his throat but Clay stood four inches over the man and outweighed him by twenty pounds. He didn’t slacken his grip as he stared at the agent now turning bright pink. “So listen up, Agent Pritchard. I’m going to let go of your throat. As soon as I do, you take your neatly pressed suit and your questions all the way back to Burlington or Washington or wherever you keep that rock you climbed out from under. You hear?”
He let go and the agent dropped, dead weight, back into the chair. He groaned as he sucked in air. It took a full 30 seconds for his color to return to normal.
“Y-You’re a madman,” Pritchard gasped. “We’re gonna-gonna nail you...right to the wall. We don’t think there’s any satanic worship group involved here, Sheriff. We never did. We think it’s some sicko...and that sicko is YOU!”
“Charge me or leave me alone!”
Pritchard swallowed and glared at him. Though Clay’s rage seemed spent, taking no chances, the agent got up and hastily backed away. “I-I’m leaving, but I’ll be back,” he said, heading for the door. Realizing he was missing his briefcase, he retrieved it from the corner and then stood staring at the desk.
“What?” Clay finally demanded, anxious to be rid of the man.
“My recorder...” he said, eyes shifting uneasily from Clay’s stare.
Clay swept it from the desk with one hand. It exploded into a melee of plastic and soldered circuit boards on the floor.
“That’s okay Sheriff, we don’t need that to get you.” Pritchard looked at the gold pen near Clay’s foot. Clay followed his gaze and then deliberately lifted his heel and ground the pen into the floor. As the casing bent, it popped open and the inner spring sent the ball-point filler rolling across the floorboards. “That was a graduation present,” Pritchard whined.
Clay felt his anger building again. “Well you just GRADUATED asshole! Get out!”
The agent exited his office and stamped across the outer office. Clay expected to hear the door slam but instead, other boots sounded on the floor. Low voices were followed by Pritchard’s growl and he heard two men walking towards his office. Clay tensed.
Tom McConkey rounded the corner followed by Pritchard. The middle-aged deputy looked both harried and dissolute as he stood in the doorway. His prematurely grey hair seemed greyer, and the lines in his weathered face seemed deeper today. His hands fiddled nervously with his gun belt. Behind him was Pritchard, looking at Clay with something close to pity.
McConkey said gently: “Clay...?” There was hurt in the man’s face.
“What’s up now?” Clay asked bitterly.
McConkey shook his head.
“Spit it out, Tom.”
The look on the man’s face was something Clay had never seen before.
McConkey just stared at Clay, working up the courage to say the words he knew would change his life forever.
Somewhere in Clay’s subconscious, suddenly he knew. Before McConkey spoke, that tiny voice inside whispered that, despite his conviction that things couldn’t get any worse, they had gotten worse. And, there was only one thing that could make matters worse.
“Please God...not Jody,” he murmured, feeling his lungs expanding so fast he couldn’t exhale to take another breath and get the oxygen he needed. He wanted to run, to escape. If the words were never said, then, she’d be alright, they could move away together from this madness....
“There’s been a bad accident, Clay. Jody is-is missing.”
~ 10 ~
As they drove to the accident site at Quechee Gorge, Clay fought to focus on the deputy’s words. They sped along the two-lane highway, the siren wailing.
“Somehow she missed the bridge...went off to the side and into the gorge,” McConkey said. “We found your Explorer upside down in the river at the bottom, the driver’s door was open...but no...body...I-I mean...no Jody.”
“Maybe it was stolen...,” Clay said, desperate to provide any explanation that would see his wife safe. “Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe she’s out shopping with someone.”
“Sorry...the owner of the Amoco up the highway said she’d just gassed up.”
Within minutes Clay was plunging knee deep into the rushing water of the Ottauquechee River and examining the mangled metal that was their SUV with its roof smashed flat and the open driver’s door bent in half. Puddles of gasoline still drained from the vehicle’ split gas tank into the river sending ribbons of Technicolor water downstream. Professionally, he knew nobody could survive such a violent drop. But inward he kept rationalizing that sometimes the impossible happened. Trying to grab hold of his emotions he took a deep breath and then another and yet he couldn’t seem to consume enough oxygen. His head was spinning so he tried to pretend it was someone else’s vehicle but the tiny brown teddy bear hanging upside down from the mirror refused him his fantasy.
Silently, with quiet dread, he prayed to the God of his childhood. Just one more chance. I’ll do anything...but dear God...let us find her alive, he begged. Don’t take my Jody from me. Please, please...make Jody alright. It’s too cruel to do this again. “I live by the rules...do what’s right...you owe me, Goddamn it,” he finally screamed aloud. McConkey looked at him with sadness. As though in answer to his demand, he heard a shout from down river and looked up to see three Vermont Highway Patrol Troopers struggling along the rocky river bank. One held something in his arms.
Clay slipped, stumbled and fell. Spray flew as he charged out of the river towards the men. McConkey was behind him imploring him to wait, to slow down. “Clay, for God’s sake, stop; let me see what they’ve found.” But it was useless. Blood was rushing into Clay’s head as he ran and he could vaguely hear someone crying out to God to let her live, let her be alive – a voice that sounded very much like his own.
But her body hung limp in the trooper’s arms, a tumble of dark, wet hair cascading towards the grass and rocks of the riverbank, face milk white and beautiful blue eyes closed forever. Desperately Clay wished that whoever was crying and pleading with God would just stop. Wasn’t it obvious? God wasn’t listening, God didn’t care.
But again, the voice sounded all too familiar.
~ 11 ~
After the funeral, Clay went into a prolonged period of situational depression as weeks of mourning gave way to months of incredible longing and loneliness. His beautiful Jody had been cruelly stolen and, with the loss of her life, any desire on Clay’s part to continue had vanished. Everything lost value for him. He watched others go about their daily lives feeling like an alien dropped onto a planet with no concept of how to even fake a semblance of normalcy. His depression deepened; it devoured his ability to concentrate, his confidence, and finally his will to live. The silent house, the empty bed, and knowing he would never h
old Jody again, nor hear her laughter had become his personal living hell.
Life soon became a downhill slide, a mad toboggan ride into oblivion with his professional and personal self esteem lost in a virtual blur of booze and self-recriminations. He’d stopped answering or replying to phone calls and emails from his sister. And, in the middle of it all, Jody’s parents, his sole supporters were, ironically, killed in an automobile accident. Daily he revisited the “What-if?” demons residing in his head. What if he’d been home? What if Jody hadn’t felt the need to go shopping? What if? What if?
For a short time Clay managed to endure the stares and whispers of the townspeople, the sudden silences in the cafes when he managed to rouse himself from home and go out for a sandwich. Despite his problems, he also noticed the too-quick service by clerks, bartenders and barbers. He was no longer Jody Mather’s husband and favored son-in-law of their ex-sheriff. Fair or not, it seemed people were only too eager to believe the worst of an outsider, particularly when the outsider had cost the town the lives of two of its favorite people. Though his grief was sincere and obvious, the town had enough mourners. What they needed was someone to blame.
Six months after Jody died, Clay hired a lawyer, walked into the Burlington FBI office and gave a detailed statement of everything that happened at the Baker Estate. In the following interrogation sessions he spared no detail, no longer caring how far-fetched or ludicrous it all sounded. He told of the little girl and her superhuman strength as well as her invulnerability to three .45 slugs. He stated his belief that somehow she, or an accomplice, had killed and mutilated his deputy.
They took statement after statement, had him interviewed by a forensic psychiatrist and questioned him during three separate polygraph exams. Finally they looked at the results and shook their heads in disbelief. All indications were that he was telling the truth. When Clay asked Agent Pritchard if he was satisfied, the man had just muttered something about polygraphs not being an exact science. It took two passing FBI agents and the examiner to pull Clay off the agent. Quick negotiations by his lawyer citing harassment and provocation eliminated any charges being filed.
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