Eye of the Beholder

  Chapter 65

  The dog paced the fenced-in yard, occasionally stopping to gnaw on a large piece of rubber that looked as though it had been discarded there for that very purpose.

  Sheridan didn’t care much for dogs; they made his work much harder, especially stakeouts. He and the two other officers had been watching the house for about thirty minutes, during which time the dog had most definitely found them out, and made it impossible to get close enough to the windows to get a look inside. There was light behind the heavy window coverings, and there seemed to be movement, but so far there had been no one going in or out.

  Sheridan glanced at his watch. Five of nine—should be any minute now.

  His pager went off, causing him to jump a fraction of an inch. Damn, he hated that. He reached down and punched the button. The office—they’d have to wait. A few seconds later it buzzed him silently again; he ignored it this time.

  Down the dark street came the reverberating sounds of a big truck. He drew back farther into the shadows of the bushes along the side of the road, and waited. The dog lost interest in anything except the approaching noise, getting excited and turning in circles. The dog knows the car, thought Sheridan. This is it.

  The truck’s big engine rumbled up to the driveway and turned in enough to have to stop at the gate. The door of the driver’s side opened and a well-built man started to climb out. In the darkness Sheridan couldn’t make out his face, but he was wearing shiny cowboy boots and pressed jeans, as though ready for a night out.

  The detective raised his small walkie-talkie to his mouth and waited. The man walked to the gate and began to unlock it.

  “Now,” Sheridan whispered sharply into the transmitter, and then he moved forward. At the same time the other two officers came out of the darkness from the other side of the gate. The dog went insane, lunging and thrusting at the legs of the men just outside of his reach. The pointed ears of his breed flattened back against his head, and he bared his long teeth as he desperately tried to protect his master.

  The three officers were on the unsuspecting man in seconds. Sheridan stood back with his gun drawn as the other two forced the man’s hands over his head and pushed him up against the chain-link fence.

  As Sheridan read him his rights, the front door of the house flew open and a young girl, maybe fourteen, peeked cautiously around the edge of the doorway.

  “What going on?” she said in a high-pitched voice that was just hysterical enough to carry over the din of the dog and the men.

  “Police. Can you call off the dog, please?” Sheridan’s tone was much more of a command than a request.

  So far the man with his face pressed against the cold metal had said nothing.

  “What’s going on?” The girl’s voice banked steeply upward.

  “Police. Call off the dog!” Sheridan barked.

  “Gunner! Come!” she half cried, to no avail. She finally had to move down the steps from the porch and pull him back by the collar. She put the German shepherd in the house, where he repeatedly threw himself against the window, scrabbling up under the curtains, but the sound, at least, was now muffled.

  “What’s going on?” the girl asked again when she returned to the other side of the gate. She was standing directly in the headlights of the truck, and her resemblance to a deer in the same situation was marked.

  “Do you know this man?” Sheridan asked. He had taken the man’s wallet out of his back pocket and was searching through it.

  “Yes,” she said hesitantly. “Is he in some kind of trouble again?”

  Sheridan raised one eyebrow at the word again, but other than that he didn’t comment on it. “Could you identify yourself, please?” He looked at the teenager; she was blond, wearing too much makeup and a short cutoff shirt that barely covered the bottoms of her breasts. Her jeans were so low that he could see the bare skin of both her hips. If she had been his daughter he would have washed her face with a rough cloth and made her put on a sweater.

  “I’m, uh, Lucy Fuller.”

  “Are your parents home, Lucy?”

  “Uh, no, sir. This isn’t my house, and anyway I live with my grandmother, but she’s at work. She’s a cocktail waitress at the Pine Lodge.”

  “I see.” A cocktail waitress would mean that the woman was probably never home before at least three a.m., leaving this youngster alone until then. Sheridan wondered again that anyone could blame these kids for their moral wandering. “And do you know this man?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s my cousin. Our moms were sisters.”

  Sheridan closed his eyes and cursed softly under his breath. He needed to find Joy Whitehorse, and he needed to do it now. He rubbed his burning midsection with one hand unconsciously. What if it was too late already? “He picks you up at school sometimes?”

  “Yes, sir. When my grandmother’s working, he sometimes picks me up if he can get away from his work. Is he in trouble?” She sounded very afraid.

  “Yesterday? Did he pick you up yesterday?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In response to this Sheridan gestured to the other officers, who turned the man around. He was handsome in a rough way, and his face was full of that patient, resentful hatred that came with being on the wrong side of too many law officers.

  “What’s your name?” Sheridan asked him.

  “Army Newman,” the man replied after a short hesitation that held both contempt and resignation.

  “I got a couple of calls about you, Mr. Newman. It looks like maybe one of them—the one about you picking up an underage girl at the high school—was a slight misunderstanding. But in view of the fact that two girls have disappeared from that school, I’m sure you won’t mind answering a few of my questions.”

  Army kept his eyes riveted to the ground, but he said, “I don’t have anything to do with that.”

  Sheridan walked forward. “We’ll go into that a little more later. The other call was unrelated and anonymous. It got shuffled to me because of a different ongoing investigation that happens to be in a file on my desk.” Sheridan paused to burp silently, releasing some of the acrid gas from his digestive system. “You don’t seem to have too many fans, Army Newman.”

  Again Army said nothing, just shifted his arms a little to try to ease them into a more comfortable position with the cuffs on them. His exhalations made little clouds in the harsh truck lights. He had the air of a man who was waiting to see what he was in trouble for this time.

  “You’re on parole. You’ve got a nine-o’clock curfew; that’s how we knew when to meet you. And since you’re supposed to be living clean, you wouldn’t know anything about crystal methamphetamine, would you? I mean, seeing how it’s illegal and would send you back to prison for a long time, you wouldn’t have any on you, would you?”

  The girl made a funny, impatient sound that drew Sheridan’s eye. He found himself looking at someone very different from the frightened teenager he’d seen a moment ago.

  “Drugs! Are you crazy?” She stomped her foot and put her hands firmly on her hips; she looked furious. “Army never has anything to do with drugs. He’s a health freak. Look at him; he works out two hours a day and he drinks nonalcoholic beer. He caught me with a joint one time, and I thought he was gonna kill me. You’re out of your ever-loving mind! Drugs.” She said the word contemptuously. “No way. Let him go!”

  Sheridan was so surprised by her outburst that, if he had had a sense of humor and not been in pain, he might have laughed. “Okay, okay, settle down.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his breast pocket and, unfolding it, held it up for Army to read. “Search warrant. If you don’t mind, we’ll just have a quick look around inside and see what we see.”

  But Sheridan’s burning stomach was telling him that a search of this house was a waste of time. Even if they found evidence of drugs, it wasn’t what he needed to save the girl. He knew that, on the small chance that Joy Whitehorse was still alive, the clock was running down, and he was so far from the
bomb that he couldn’t even hear the ticking.

  Chapter 66

  “Officer Willoughby.” The man in the blue uniform turned down his radio on his belt as he introduced himself. “Are you the people who called in the assault?”

  Greer rose from her chair to meet the young policeman. “Yes, sir. We are.”

  “And are you the victim?”

  Greer was sitting in the exam room holding Leah’s hand, while the ER doctor carefully stitched up the cut on her lip. Sterling was squeezed into the corner; he looked as though he were trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Leah looked up at Officer Willoughby as if he were nuts when he addressed his question to her. She could neither speak nor shake her head for fear of further injury.

  “No, she’s not,” Greer answered for her.

  Officer Willoughby’s eyes rose from his clipboard with the worksheet attached and flicked from Leah to Greer. “No?” he asked incredulously.

  “This is Leah Falconer. Jenny Sanchez, the woman we called about, is in radiology getting a CAT scan. She was knocked unconscious and they want to check for hemorrhaging,” Greer explained. “Her husband, Lewis, is with her.”

  “So who is this?”

  Sterling interceded. “She’s a victim of a different assault, but she’s already given her report to different police officers. They’re in with her attacker now.”

  Willoughby rubbed his brow. “And where is he?”

  The doctor spoke without ceasing his intense concentration on the minute stitches. “He’s in four.”

  “What happened to him?” the officer asked the doctor.

  “Penile abrasions, bruising, trauma to the testicles.”

  The officer’s head had started to nod, as though he got it, even though he didn’t get it. “Uh-huh. I see. Okay. So, these two, uh, three assaults are not related?”

  Now Leah made a noise. It sounded like an angry “Uh-huh!”

  “Please don’t move,” the doctor said with monotone calmness.

  “The same man attacked both women,” Greer told the young officer, taking pity on his inability to keep the disinterested face of a seasoned peace officer.

  “And who attacked him?” Willoughby asked, using his pen as an accent, as though drawing his question mark in the white light of the exam room.

  Another noise came from Leah, and she raised her hand, but it was Sterling who said, “She did. Well, she bit the son of a bitch when he was sexually assaulting her.” He couldn’t keep from smiling his pride.

  Willoughby’s eyebrows went up now. “Really?” He whistled softly. “Anybody else?”

  Greer and Leah’s eyes found each other as they both thought of Joy, and Greer had to look away. “I hope not,” she said softly. She felt the pressure of Sterling’s hand on her arm and smiled up at him gratefully.

  “I think I’d better go and speak to the other officers. Excuse me. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He moved to the door and then turned and pointed the pen at Leah. “Don’t leave!” he told her firmly.

  A long blue suture wire was being pulled through the skin of her lip as she looked at him. Her eyes went to Greer and then rolled incredulously to the ceiling.

  “Her the huk hood hi ho?” asked Leah.

  Greer and Sterling looked at each other and frowned, but one corner of the doctor’s mouth smiled and he spoke without breaking his gaze or ceasing his artful work. “She said, ‘Where the fuck would I go?’ ”

  Chapter 67

  Sitting on his idling bike by the edge of the highway, Joshua hesitated. For the third time Sarah appeared in front of him and beckoned before flickering away. “I don’t know what you want me to do.” He sighed and fought back tears as he muttered, “This is crazy. I should just go back. I don’t even know which direction to go.”

  Just behind him something fell heavily onto the dirt road. Startled, Joshua fumbled a flashlight out of his pocket and shone the beam in that direction. A rock had fallen from the steep, loose embankment onto the rutted dirt road. It wasn’t impassible, but it would have been bad news if he had turned back.

  All the hair on Joshua’s arms prickled upright. His skin crawled as he mumbled, “Okay, but maybe you know which way to go,” to the empty night. He had no idea where he was going or what he might find, but he was pretty sure that tonight wasn’t going to be a ride in the park.

  He had left a note on the bulletin board next to people’s business cards and take-out menus, where he knew his mom would find it, that read, Gone to look for Joy. Don’t worry; Sarah is with me. The wording was far more confident than he felt, but he hoped that his mother would understand why he had to go when she read it. He knew that no matter what he said she would worry, and that was why he had decided not to call her.

  “Okay, I’m not going back. Now what?” he asked.

  There was no response, but he remembered Sarah pointing up and to the left and decided to try that direction. He revved the engine and tore off, deeper into the uninhabited section of the forest, the cold stinging his unprotected face.

  Chapter 68

  Joy had made it only a short way up the path into the woods when she realized she was going to have to get to the highway. Her befuddled brain was telling her it would be on the other side of the crest to her left. She found after a while that she could make out the shapes of the trees and the shrubbery in the darkness. There must have been a moon behind the light cloud cover, because there was a sort of glow from the sky. Or was it just her eyes playing tricks on her?

  Squinting and wiping cold sweat from her brow, she peered up the hill. She could make out no path, but there seemed to be passable open ground. She started to climb.

  Each step was excruciating. Several times she lost hope and sank down, only to find herself torn awake from unconsciousness by pain—she had no idea how much later—and she forced herself to get up, to keep climbing.

  It felt like an eternity of endurance. To try to keep herself awake and moving, Joy began to talk to herself.

  “Maybe I’m already dead. Maybe this is hell. I’ll just have to keep walking in the dark and I’ll never get anywhere. Shut up—yes, you will. You can make it. Just get to the road and then someone will help you. It’ll be over. You can rest.”

  Her breathing was so labored that the inside of her throat felt as though it were scratched raw. Her body was soaked with sweat, but she couldn’t stop shaking. As she passed a hand across her face to wipe the stinging sweat from her eyes, her skin felt far too hot. But she kept on climbing.

  She had no idea when she reached what appeared to be the top of the crest. All she knew was that she found herself lying on a hard dirt surface without leaves or shrubbery that seemed to her limited depth perception to continue on both sides. “It’s a fire road; it must be a road,” she whispered to herself, trying to clear the scum from her brain. But her thoughts were so murky that she couldn’t find anything solid to hold on to. She lay on her back and watched the shapes around her spin and lurch.

  “Down,” she rasped. “Go down, Joy. The road will be down there.”

  She was so thirsty that when she tried to swallow, she called out from the burning pain. Slowly she rose to her feet. Dragging her injured leg, she crept laboriously forward. She fell onto her hands and face repeatedly, the dark shapes around her growing more and more alive as her grasp on reality flickered in and out.

  There was no more breath for words; she had not one more drop of strength or courage to go on. She had to stop, to rest, to give up, even. Shivering with cold and fever, she crawled on her hands and knees to a pile of leaves under a tree and, curling up into a ball of misery, let go of the world.

  Chapter 69

  Sheridan strode into the ER and was greeted by Officer Willoughby.

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “You said to let you know if I heard anything. This just seemed a little too similar for my taste, if you know what I mean.” Willoughby looked slightly nervous. He wasn’t a detective. He
didn’t have very much experience, but a vicious assault on a local woman seemed like it should be mentioned to the detective who was investigating a like crime. The truth was, the disappearances of those two girls had haunted Officer Willoughby, and he would have loved to be the one to catch the fucker responsible.

  “You were right. Let’s go talk to him.” The two started to walk toward the hospital room. “What kind of shape is he in?”

  “He’s in pain. I don’t think the nurses want to give him a full dose of Demerol, if you know what I’m saying. But that’s good for us, because he’s completely coherent.”

  There were two officers milling around outside the room. Both of them were veterans, older and more experienced than Willoughby. They nodded and shook hands with Sheridan, whom they knew.

  “How’s he doing?” Sheridan asked them.

  The two men exchanged looks and then both suppressed smiles. The older of the two was chewing gum, and he rolled it around in his mouth before saying, “Not too bad, considering the victim tried to bite his dick off.”

  All four men grimaced, but the expression was quickly followed by chuckles of admiration.

  Sheridan popped a Tums in his grinning mouth. “I can’t wait to meet her,” he said as he pushed the door open.

  He went in alone. Vince was curled on his side, facing away from the door. Sheridan walked around and stood in front of him.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Vince muttered as his eyes fluttered open.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Go away.”

  “No.” Sheridan pulled up a chair and made himself comfortable. “I need you to tell me if you know where Joy Whitehorse is.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  Sheridan sighed as though this were a big problem. “I understand you’ve got quite a stash of ice at your bank there. You could be going away for a long, long time. There’re two women next door who have a couple of small issues with you as well.” Sheridan let the burning in his stomach transfer to his eyes and made sure that Vince caught the brunt of it. “You’re gonna fry.”