by Gregory Kay
Luke knew Joe Parks very well, and he grinned and shook his head.
“Oh boy. Do I need to ask who won?”
Johnny smiled sheepishly and scratched his head.
“Well, I guess that depends on how you look at it. In a way, you could say I did, I suppose, because he didn’t whip Allie. He couldn’t, because he kinda broke his knuckles on my face.” Finished with his account, he shrugged and threw up his hands as if to say, ‘you take what you can get,’ and Luke laughed and briefly draped an arm around his shoulders.
“Well, for what it’s worth, it looks like you hurt him more than he hurt you, and there’s not many who’ve fought Joe Parks can say that!” Motioning toward Fiona, he made the introductions, and the reporter stuck out her hand.
“Any man who’ll fight for the woman he loves is alright in my book!”
Johnny, almost the same height as Luke and already towering over her, seemed to grow about two inches taller at her praise.
“Thank you, ma’am.” He suddenly sighed with sadness. “It’s going to be a long time before I can tell her that, though; her daddy won’t let her see me; he grounded her, won’t let her go anywhere except school and church, and it’s three months until she’s eighteen. We don’t have any classes together, so the only time we see each other is just for a minute or two in the hallways.”
Luke looked at him thoughtfully.
“What would the coach do if you blew off a practice?”
“He’d run my butt off during the next one, that’s for sure.”
“Would it be worth it to spend a few extra minutes with Alison?”
“Hell yeah!” he answered without hesitation, and with a flicker of hope.
“Alright.” Nodding at Fiona he said, “You answer all the questions this lady has completely and honestly, and I might be able to make that happen. You see, I’ve made arrangements to talk to Alison at her house after she gets off the bus tomorrow, and I could tell her parents I’d like to pick her up after school, when it’s still light, and take her out to the spot where it happened, just to get a few points straight. Now I’m not telling you to be out there, you understand, but, if you just happened to be in the neighborhood, just by chance, mind you, I might see fit to let you talk to her for ten or fifteen minutes...”
Fiona nearly choked up at the tears of gratitude that gathered in the boy’s eyes above the crazy smile on his face as he pumped Luke’s hand up and down for all he was worth.
As it turned out, Johnny had told Luke everything he knew during the initial report, but at least the damaged Camaro was there for her to examine, as he had driven it to school.
The roof had been crushed, just like the report said, but seeing it in person was a different matter. It had clearly been impacted from above by a large, heavy object...no, Fiona thought, getting level with it and walking around the car, eyeballing it from one side to the other while speaking into her recorder, two large objects; there’s a slight hump in the middle, separating them. Large gouges, three to the front and one to the rear – assuming whatever it was jumped down on the car facing forward, that is. Those gouges left bare metal that appears to be damaged, almost pierced through, with tapering scratches toward the front of the car, consistent with the report of the car throwing the intruder off by sharply reversing.
“Luke, do you have a tape measure?”
He did, and, after he retrieved it from the cruiser, she carefully measured the distance between the...footprints, she guessed she’d call them for now for want of a better term, although it was hard to tell. She photographed them from several angles, including climbing up on the hood and the trunk on her knees to get the images she wanted.
She suddenly had an idea.
“Johnny, can you do something for me?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Jump straight up in the air, as high as you can; then, after you land, don’t move your feet, okay?”
He shrugged, said, “Okay,” and obeyed, and she knelt on the asphalt parking lot and measured the distance between his feet.
“Got it. Luke, your turn.”
He saw what she was doing, leaped upward as far as he could, and then stood still while she repeated the process on him. Looking over her at Johnny, he winked and said, “You’re learning an important life lesson from this, son; they say ‘jump’ and we do it without even bothering to ask why.”
Pursing her lips out in mock anger as she stood, she told him, “Nobody likes a smart-ass,” and was startled when he looked meaningfully at her and replied, “That’s funny; I do,” in a manner that could be taken two ways, although she was sure of exactly how he met it.
So was Johnny; he looked aside and snickered, and Fiona blushed, just a little.
“So, what did you find out from this experiment?” Luke asked her.
Happy to change the subject, she said, “That whoever jumped on this car landed with his feet a good two feet wider than either of you.”
“I’m not surprised; I told you he was about eight feet tall.” Johnny rubbed the back of his head as if stimulating his brain. “It would stand to reason, wouldn’t it?”
Fiona’s only response to that was, “Take off of one of your shoes, please.”
Johnny did, and handed her his tennis shoe while he leaned on the hood with his unshod leg slightly raised to keep his white gym sock off the pavement. Fiona took it, carried it around to the side of the Camaro, opened the door and used the threshold for a step to get where she could reach, and set it in one of the depressions. Then she measured the length of it before handing it back.
“What size are those?”
“Ten and a half.”
“The flat parts of those depressions are a good four inches longer.”
Johnny stopped in the middle of tying his shoe and stared at her with shock and irritation.
“You thought it was me...”
“No,” she said quickly before his sense of outrage had time to build, “but someone else would’ve if I hadn’t checked. So, unless you jumped out of a tree onto your own car with a pair of cinder blocks tied to your feet, and landed with your legs spread far enough to give yourself a quadruple hernia – which I am not about to check for, by the way – I can safely say, no, it wasn’t you.”
“And that still doesn’t explain the claw marks,” Luke added.
After a little more small talk, Luke thanked the boy and sent him on his way, and the two got back in the cruiser.
“So,” the deputy asked, “what do you think?”
“I’m doing like all good paranormal investigators do, and operating under the assumption that there’s either a natural or, more likely in this case, man-made explanation for all this. I’ll only accept a supernatural cause when I’ve exhausted all other possibilities.”
Luke shrugged and said, “I can’t argue with that. So, what’s next on the agenda?”
“I’m going to need to do a little more research at the Mothman Museum, plus I suppose I’ll need some books: THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, BEHIND RED EYES, MOTHMAN: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE LEGEND, VISITORS FROM LANULOS...If the library doesn’t have them, I guess I can buy them from the museum.
“Oh, I can loan those to you; I’ve got them all.”
Looking at him with suddenly renewed suspicion that he might know a lot more than he had been telling, Fiona kept her voice carefully neutral when she asked why.
“It’s just part of living here, I guess. Hell, I’m willing to bet more than half the homes in town have at least one of them. Besides, Linda – my wife – was an aficionado; anything paranormal, especially local, she was heavily into; used to give our preacher the fits. They were her books; I’ve skimmed through most of them, you know, but never actually sat down and read any of them cover to cover.”
“You mean you’re trusting me to borrow your late wife’s books?”
He glanced at her and grinned as he started the car.
“Hey, I trusted you behind me with a gun, when I could tell
you’d never had one in your hand in your life, didn’t I?”
Suddenly she inexplicably felt as if she were going to cry.
This is so not like me!
Fiona realized he was speaking again.
“If you’d like, we can stop by the house, and you can sort through the collection there, figure out what you need, and bring whatever you don’t get a chance to go through while we’re there with you. Then we’ll grab some lunch, and by the time we get done with that, Benny should be back so I can borrow that saw and get your tree branch for you.”
“That sounds like a plan to me.”
Luke put the Dodge in gear, glanced out the window, and promptly returned it to park.
“Shit!”
“What is it?”
“Look.” He accompanied the single word with a nod of his head in the desired direction.
A skinny boy of about sixteen – obviously a student – was crossing the lot, headed toward the school. Fiona only had to watch him take a couple of steps before she realized it wasn’t his shaggy, greasy blond hair or glasses that had gotten her host’s attention, but his manner. There was something furtive in his movements, guilty and sneaky, and he also looked like he was stoned off his ass.
“Damn it!” Luke sighed angrily as he turned the motor off and climbed out. Turning to Fiona, he said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
She had been about to ask him if it was okay if she got out, but he was already gone, so she did it anyway, curious as to what was going to happen.
“Come here, Rodger.”
At the sound of the deputy’s voice, Rodger Corwin blanched, and Fiona could tell from his body language he was considering making a run for it.
“Don’t even think about it, boy,” Luke said in a conversational tone, not having missed the not-so-subtle signals either, “You know I can outrun you, and if I have to chase you down, I’m going to seriously kick your ass.”
Fiona thought that might be a little harsh, although she had no trouble at all picturing her father making the same threat and following through on it if the guy tried. Still, in the end Rodger fortunately thought better of it, but she didn’t miss the slight visible movement of his shoulder that told her he was doing something with his hand out of sight behind an intervening car, or the sound of something hitting the ground with a rattle and rolling away when he kicked it. If Luke heard it too, he gave no sign.
“Oh, hi, Deputy Carter. What do you want?”
Luke pointed at a spot on the pavement about three feet in front of him.
“I want you to do like I told you and get over here – now.”
The deputy crossed his big forearms and waited. Rodger nervously licked his lips, and approached with hesitation, his steps getting smaller and smaller as he came, until he was only moving a few inches at a time as he neared the indicated spot.
“I...”
“Closer, Rodger. Right here.”
Fiona plainly heard the audible gulp, and saw the boy crouching slightly, almost folding in on himself as if he expected to be hit, but he managed to force himself to obey, and move within arm’s reach of the officer. Luke simply regarded him silently for a moment before speaking.
“You’re late for school.”
“Oh!” Rodger said, his expression brightening with relief, “Yeah, I just...overslept. You know...”
“I know,” Luke told him, “Oh, you’d better believe I know.” Before Fiona realized what had happened, he had the boy firmly by the upper arm and was turning him toward the cruiser; his motion was so quick and unexpected she hadn’t even seen him move. “Hands against the car. Get your feet back and spread ‘em; you know the drill by now.”
“But...why? What did I do? I didn’t do nothin’!” he whined as Luke shifted his grip to the collar of his denim jacket and quickly but expertly patted him down before producing a pair of handcuffs.
“First,” the cop said, never raising his voice but unable to disguise the anger in it just the same while he bent one of his prisoner’s arms behind his back, and Fiona heard the ratcheting of the cuff, “part of your probation requires you to attend school, and to be there on time.”
The other hand was on its way back and being secured as well when Rodger declared, “That’s bullshit, man! Being tardy isn’t a crime!”
“Being stoned out of your mind is.”
“I’m not stoned!”
“You could have fooled me; your pupils are so dilated I could drive a truck through them.”
“No! I didn’t – “
“Littering is a crime too.”
“I never littered!”
“So, why did you throw down that bottle of pills behind the car when you thought I couldn’t see? I heard them hit the ground; from the sound of it, there must have been at least a couple of dozen in there. What is it this time, Rodger; Valium again, or is it Percocet now?”
“No!” He began struggling for the first time, at least until Luke gave the cuffs a slight twist that made him gasp from the resulting pain.
“Hold still. Fiona,” he said over his shoulder, “Would you mind picking up that bottle this young man seems to have lost?”
“Sure, I guess.” As she walked over to the area where she’d heard him drop it, she was having some serious second thoughts about Luke’s personality, now that she’d seen him in action. He wasn’t exactly brutal, but, at least in her opinion, he was borderline. At least, he was being a hell of a lot rougher with this kid than necessary.
After finding the bottle rolled against the rear tire of a Chevy Blazer, she retrieved it and handed it to the deputy. Keeping one hand securely on his prisoner, he studied the prescription on the label, then held the bottle up to the light, and his face twisted in a rage.
“You little son of a bitch!” he hissed before jerking the cruiser door open and literally throwing the boy into the back seat so hard he slid to the opposite side of the car. He slammed the door behind him with a bang that echoed off a nearby hill.
“Luke!” Fiona finally snapped, unable to silently observe any longer, “You don’t have to be so rough!”
“Don’t I?” he asked glaring back at her from a face as dark as a looming thunderstorm, his normal grin nowhere to be found, but, in her outrage, she ignored it.
“No you don’t! It’s not like he’s the first kid to have a little dope.”
“He’s the first one to get it here!” Thrusting the bottle at her, he said, “These are oxycontin tablets, one of the strongest narcotics you can get; that doesn't really surprise me. But see that name on the bottle? That’s his grandfather, Jack, who has doted on that boy all his life, bought him everything he’s ever asked for, and is planning on leaving him everything when he dies: house, car, bank account, and all. Right now, that good man is bedridden with tubes constantly draining his lungs into a plastic bag; he’s literally dying in agony from mesothelioma from asbestos exposure.” Her own eyes widened when she saw moisture sparkling in the corners of his. “I went to visit him last week, and he told me, if he wasn’t afraid of going to Hell, he’d crawl over to the closet, get his shotgun, and end it all; the pain is that damned bad! And this ungrateful, screwed-up little bastard stole his pain medication to get high on!” He paused, took a deep breath, and looked at the bottle, which was more than halfway full. “And, considering the quantity, to sell here at school. To hell with Grandpa, as long as spoiled little shit here can catch a buzz and have a few dollars in his pocket.”
Fiona felt slightly sick to her stomach at that revelation; her father had lost his brother to the same disease when she was ten, and, when she recalled his condition the time she visited him in the hospital, all her sympathy quickly flew out the window.
“That little son of a bitch!” she repeated Luke’s words, then added, “Do I need to ask what he’s on probation for?”
“Stealing, both drugs and other stuff to get money for drugs. It used to be more mundane narcotics, but now that he’s doing oxys, it looks like he
’s graduated to the big leagues.”
He suddenly made an inarticulate noise and slammed the fender hard with the palm of his hand.
“What really pisses me off is that he used to be such a good kid! Never in any trouble at all until a year ago, when he got into this crap!”
She was beginning to understand his anger a little more now.
“You know his parents too, then?”
“Yeah.”
“Friends?”
He nodded.
“All my life.”
“I guess they won’t be after he goes to juvie.”
Pursing his lips thoughtfully, Luke said, “They may not be after this; I don’t know, but he’s not going to juvie.”
Her lips parted, but before she could ask, he gestured with a hard jerk of his head toward the back seat where Rodger sat blubbering, tears streaming down his face.
“Locking him up won’t help; all that will mean is he’ll spend the next few years as somebody’s butt-buddy, and be worse than before once he gets out. At this point, there’s only one chance to salvage this kid, and it’s one his parents have never had the guts to take. I take that back; his father does, but his mother won’t hear of it. Well, I do have the guts, and she’s not going to have the choice this time.” He made a visible effort to calm down, enough that he managed a wink if not a smile, and asked Fiona if she’d like to see “some creative law enforcement” in action.
“Is that anything like ‘a strategic redeployment of the truth?’” she asked, and received a nod and the beginnings of a renewed grin in return.
“Something like that.”
Rodger’s mother cried, screamed, stomped the floor and knocked a lamp off the end table, cried some more, accused Luke of picking on her little boy, and even threatened him physically, but he stood his ground, and calmly laid it out for her in no uncertain terms.