As he stood over the motionless body, everything came to Rudolf at once. After three weeks of fruitless, confused pursuit, the “Blue Ball Devil” lay captured before him. The whole thing would now be revealed as a hoax—its perpetrator locked up, caught red-handed. And Beaumont due for some recognition …
As long as Fatty stayed out of the way.
Again, the radio: “*-Officer Beaumont?-*”
Headlights approaching from over the hill …
Snapping out of it, Rudolf dragged the kid to his cruiser and threw him in the backseat. A pickup appeared. He waved it onward, then climbed back into his driver’s seat.
The western stretch of Dillerville Pike went by like trees on the side of a runway.
“*-Officer Beaumont-*”
It was the sheriff.
Rudolf picked up. “Yes, sir?”
“Where the hell are you?” Highman screamed. “Officer Kutay needs your backup.”
“I’ve taken a suspect into custody.”
The line went dead. Then: “What did you say?”
Beaumont answered: “Sir, it’s a kid in a wolfman costume. I’m bringing him in.”
“In a wolfman costume?” Highman echoed.
“Affirmative, sir. I’m bringing him in.”
The sheriff’s voice trailed off in the background, yelling at a dispatcher: “Get a load of this!”
Officer Kutay continued to squawk, as Keiffer chimed in: “Did you save us some, Rudy?”
Beaumont turned his radio down.
The media wouldn’t bother with Highman. Rudolf’s name would be the one in the paper. The “Cop Who Uncovered the Blue Ball Devil.” With photographs: “Captor and Prize on Display,” like a fisherman flaunting his catch on the dock.
In the midst of his reverie, a tree limb dropped to the road in his headlights, directly ahead. Shrieking, Beaumont swerved to avoid it. The cruiser jolted. One of its wheels drifted off the pavement, tearing and grinding.
A voice went up from the backseat: “What are you doing?”
The kid was awake.
“You asshole!”
Again, the cruiser lurched with a bang.
Rudolf managed to straighten his wheel. He angled his front left tire from the rim of the ditch, then leveled out on the pavement. And no sooner done than the sheriff was back on the radio, yelling—though no more than patches of clarity broke through a wash of static. Beaumont reached for his volume dial, but it didn’t help. He pounded the box. Only part of a statement trickled through. “*-kid woRks foR -&%$#@—yOu’ve G*t thE wrong—*#$”
Beaumont turned his radio off.
“Jesus.” He looked in the rearview mirror, still not clear as to what had just happened.
With Kutay and Highman dropped from the mix, he felt like he’d just boomed out of a dust storm. Dillerville Pike was as calm as before. The sound of his breathing filled the car. He dabbed the clammy sweat from his brow.
The backseat was quiet. He looked around. The kid was unconscious again. What had happened? Another blow to the skull? Or just terror …
Turning to face the road once more, Rudolf’s heart continued to race. He shook his head in bewilderment. Jesus …
Later that morning, a couple of rum and sodas would go down nicely. Stiff.
The sloping, weed-choked banks to either side of the roadway glowed in the headlights, plunging into the ditches below while rising up to a series of pastures. Gripping the wheel, Beaumont angled his cruiser between them, straight down the middle.
He was plotting his course of return to the precinct, torn between Groffdale and Eby Hess Roads, when everything seemed to go strangely quiet.
It wasn’t a drop in sound, or any reduction in visible movement, so much as the sudden, eerie sensation of being watched, and closely, that caught his attention. The hairs on the back of his neck had already begun to bristle when something flickered—a flash of movement, off to the left. Just out the window. Directly beside him … Stiff with hesitation, he looked over—slowly turning his head to see. At first, nothing appeared to him clearly. What looked like the lights of a distant radio tower flashed across a lake … (?) … Or was that a lake? And, actually, wouldn’t those flashing lights have been blocked by the road bank? For that matter, how were they holding steady beside his cruiser for hundreds of yards?
The sudden loss of perspective confounded him.
Then, to skew his bearings further, the “lake” disappeared—as though a haze had drifted across the moon’s reflection. That’s when Rudolf nervously started to reconfigure his visual take. What he came up with coursed a chill to the farthest extreme of every appendage. No, that wasn’t a radio tower. Those weren’t signals off in the distance … No, that was a pair of eyes—red and beaming, directly beside him. And no, that wasn’t a lake. That was a tongue, a mouth, glistening, panting—fogging the window, just inches away. A hideous face was staring at him. And not just staring, but laughing, cackling …
Paralyzed, Beaumont’s stomach dropped. Suspended in breathless, flatline shock, he could only await the return of his senses.
It looked like an overgrown jackrabbit, bounding …
- at sixty miles per hour, at least
- glaring in mockery, jeering
- it smiled …
Rudolf lost control of his cruiser.
PART THREE
Ride It Out
Unsurprisingly, Dr. Elias Kepple, MD, the Stepford General’s resident authority on genetic disorders, was either unable or unwilling, based on the findings of a single examination, to link under oath the Bontrager boy’s condition with chronic physical abuse. Seeing how the area’s 20,000 Anabaptists had descended, by and large, from twelve families (roughly 200 people) of Swiss and German extraction who’d settled The Basin in the early eighteenth century—that is to say: being that most of the community had been a closed genetic population for twelve generations—a host of related disorders had come into being, the symptoms of which were all too commonly taken for signs of abuse. In Ephraim’s case, one of two metabolic disorders would have come into question: the first, and more common, being MSUD, or Maple Syrup Urine Disease. This condition was highly prevalent among the Amish of Stepford County. Defined as a disorder in the body’s ability to metabolize three amino acids in protein—leucine, isoleucine and valine—collectively labeled the “branched chain amino acids”—MSUD resulted from the inability of mutated genes to convert these amino acids into energy. Because this conversion could not proceed, metabolites built to toxic levels, precipitating illness, coma and, sometimes, death. Often, attacks occurred early in infancy—as early as the first few days after birth—causing grievous neurological damage. If treated in time, victims survived. However, subsequent sicknesses, whether the flu or chicken pox, might induce relapses, even the mildest of which could still render permanent mental retardation.
This would’ve come into question with Ephraim, given his seemingly muted status. And even though x-ray photos revealed that, at some point, probably in early childhood, the boy had sustained a fractured skull, an MRI under Dr. Kepple revealed no significant traces of brain damage. Officially, Dr. Kepple would’ve diagnosed Ephraim as having suffered a milder bout of MSUD early in life, and as presently being in the midst of a relapse. Corroborating symptoms coincided: bruising about the arms and neck (which could have been caused by regular seizures), dehydration, hypertonia (excessive muscle tension), spasticity, acidosis (his blood test levels were abnormally high) and, obviously, lesions and rashes, which marked his body in splotches from head to toe.
One of the only problems was: his urine didn’t smell of maple syrup. His urine, instead, smelled of cleaning solvents, and was inexplicably bluish in color. What’s more, because the MRI had revealed no striking irregularities—aside from an overabundance of testosterone—and no trace of cerebral edema or other accumulations of fluid, the judge or jury might also have been informed of a second possibility: Glutaric Aciduria One. Another metabolic disorde
r, GA1 occurred most frequently in Sweden, among the Native Americans of Manitoba, Canada and in Pennsyltucky’s Amish community: among whom one in three hundred was afflicted. Symptoms were similar, if not identical to MSUD, in several regards. The bruising, the rashes, the dehydration—the hypertonia—all matched up. But again, a discrepancy lay with the fact that, given Ephraim’s neglected condition, i.e., the fact that he hadn’t been treated—both disorders might easily have put him into a coma, if not killed him.
At the very least, Dr. Kepple maintained, he should’ve looked “like he had cerebral palsy.”
Still, on the record, the doctor would have diagnosed one of these two diseases.
In his private opinion, however, the boy, in all likelihood, was a victim of abuse. His speech block appeared to be psychological. And his injuries corresponded with most of the telltale signs of inflicted trauma.
But that didn’t mean the doctor was willing to testify to as much in court. On one too many occasions already, Kepple had taken the stand to be cross-examined by infamous Amish and Mennonite public defender Davin Stutz. In twenty-five years of local practice, Stutz had cleared an overwhelming majority (as many as nine out of every ten) clients faced with equivalent charges. His office, which had begun in a roadside apartment on 342 in the sixties, had since been expanded and relocated to a three-story building in Central Intercourse. There, it served as a hub of the whole Anabaptist community’s legal front—although a significant many Amish and Mennonites stood opposed to his practice. Stutz, who wasn’t a member of The Order—who, in fact, had been Lutheran for most of his life—was considered by some an opportunist, a scavenger feeding off cultural schisms—loyal to none, including legitimate victims of crime, but the almighty dollar: a man with one foot in The Basin and one in The System, with little allegiance to either—someone who knew every clause in the book, and was versed in persuading any jury that, short of felony violations, the Plain Folk were better left to themselves. Seeing as how they paid no social security taxes and, what’s more, considered themselves exempt from all laws but the word of God (Obey thy parents, among them), then, Stutz argued, these people’s affairs, so long as they posed no threat to the masses, were none of our business. If independent, autonomous coexistence was what they wanted, so be it. Their churches would monitor matters of discipline. And no one disputed their churches’ integrity …
As members almost never bore witness against one another in English courts, and as, again, MSUD and GA1 (loosely known as “Shaken Baby Syndrome”) had numerous precedents of misdiagnosis, the jury was often set to dismiss Dr. Kepple before he took the stand. As such, the doctor refrained from committing to testify in all but the most severe cases—among whom, Ephraim Bontrager, even with a glaring black eye, didn’t manage to qualify—for, even in bearing the markings of physical cruelty, he was also, in Kepple’s words, “covered in pine sap, stunk like a leper and looked to have gone for a roll in the briars.” It might have been argued with little rebuff that the boy simply couldn’t take care of himself, and was prone, by mental defect, to injury. Meaning: there was no way in hell he would get around Stutz. The case wouldn’t make it to trial.
Jack, in having appealed to Yoder to make the exam, had expected as much. Physical checkups were standard procedure. They rarely, if ever, sufficed in securing a warrant for legal intervention. Yet, one didn’t go to court without them. Formally, they were indispensable.
Both men had come to their meeting in Yoder’s Prince Street office well-prepared. Jack pulled an envelope out of his leather satchel and dropped it on the table between them. “We don’t have much more time,” he said.
Yoder picked up the envelope, nodding. “I know.” He broke the seal and removed a manila folder. He turned it over.
“There’s more where that came from,” Jack assured him.
Jarret’s expression was unperturbed. He flipped through the documents, print by print—until, halting, he tilted the page on an angle. “What is that?”—recoiling—“Jesus, man. What are they?”—disgusted, he turned another page. “Who handled this case?”
“Davin Stutz,” said Jack.
Yoder rolled his eyes. “That figures.” Again, he stopped. “My God …” He was horrified. “What do you call this, Jack?”
“Inadmissible. That’s where you come in.”
Yoder blinked. He stuck one end of a pen in his mouth and gnawed it, gurgling.
“Nobody’s had a crack at these people in years,” said Jack. “They’re due for a hit. There’s a detailed list of contacts in there—customers, clients, neighbors and whatnot. The SPCA’s expecting your call.”
“I’m on it.”
Producing a videotape, Jack nodded gravely. “And wait till you see this.”
Ten minutes later, he left the building and wandered up Prince Street, bound for his truck. A couple of kids were gathered around the base of a colonial stoop playing handball. One of them spotted Jack and called out: “Coach!”
With a grin, Jack nodded toward them.
The pang of accord seemed out of place.
While working with Yoder on one thing, he’d been contending with Roddy and Jones on another—with turbulent subchapters back at the gym, the latest of which involved more missing items: someone had stolen his cell phone. Along with some headgear and gloves from the rack.
And nothing had turned up on Franklin’s person.
The daily madness of life as The Coach may have taken a back-seat, but it was still pressing. Jack was looking forward to getting away from it all for a couple of months. He hadn’t been able to breathe in weeks.
He hadn’t been able to breathe for years.
A line was queued at the rescue mission. There, too, someone called his name. “Hey, Coach! Y’all better whoop that Cobra!”
Jack raised his right hand, forming a fist.
He cut through an empty lot full of garbage to Water Street, spotted with wreckage and trash. Sunlight bathed the pavement around him, glaring brightly for mid-October.
Less than a block from his truck, he passed a newspaper box and, with a double take, stopped.
The headline, slightly bowed by the plastic viewing glass of the copy dispenser, struck him, at first, as a practical joke or a tabloid gag, if not a mirage. “The Blue Ball Devil Captured,” it read. With a subhead: “Chappaquiddick Revisited.” By: Celebrated Columnist Owen Brynmor. And beneath it, centered, some white kid’s high school photo, with a caption reading: “Menace to Society?”
Jack stood scratching his head for a moment. When, at last, he’d managed to dig some change from his pocket and purchase a copy, he still hadn’t fully accepted the print’s authenticity. Something was wrong.
Indeed.
In the opening paragraph, Officer Rudolf Beaumont was credited with “cracking the case,” though only by flipping his squad car into a ditch, then leaving the wounded “suspect,” a seventeen-year-old Hempland student, trapped inside, cuffed to the door, while “searching for help” at a local tavern. Jeremy Ruoss, who harbored “acting ambitions” and worked at a theme park four nights a week in the role of the “Stepford Basin’s Wolfman,” was listed in “stable” condition at sunrise. Police spokesmen, when asked to verify that a perpetrator had been apprehended, confirmed the report. Officer Beaumont himself was being treated for “injuries.”
At first, it was everything Jack could do not to laugh. Had he been more surprised, or less calloused by ongoing updates, he might not have held back.
As it occurred, the article only served to confuse him all the more …
For one thing, Brynmor’s wording—his clearly theatrical, partly sarcastic and wholly disdainful-of-county-authorities bias—wasn’t in keeping with the otherwise customarily sterile paper’s spirit. Right from the start, that had baffled The Coach. For many years, he’d been reading The Plea. He knew more than one of its staff reporters, to whom he had granted numerous interviews. He knew Dale Goodall, in charge of sports, and Terrance Jarvik, the ci
ty editor—both on a first-name basis, and both well enough to know that, after hours, they may have been decent-humored enough—but, once at their desks, neither man had distinguished himself as a taker of risks … Above all, he knew what the demographic would tolerate in public print. And in that regard, and those preceding it, Owen didn’t fit the bill. The fact that his stories were being printed suggested a senior-level malfunction. Something was happening over at the paper, as something was happening off in The Basin, as something was happening back with Yoder …
This was a hell of a cycle, thought Jack.
Whatever the case, it was making him paranoid. With Brynmor unknowingly under his nose, recounting the “wildest night in The Basin”—and, as listed upon conclusion: “For more by the author, see Section C (Sports),” having been ordered to couple the photo he’d taken of Jones and Roddy with text—Jack was now beginning to feel at continual risk of investigation. Even during Golden Gloves, he’d never gotten so much publicity—and just when he needed it the least. Again, he might have laughed it off, had the odds against everything not overwhelmed him.
Owen, as unsuspectingly, couldn’t have blown more shit at The Coach with a twister. The kid was a serious pain in the ass. And he didn’t even know it.
He would have been embarrassed.
Whatever, the photo he’d taken was perfect: Roddy, clearly unconscious of the camera, with a hazily affable grin on his face, unfocused (the moment had passed in a flash), standing over The Cobra, who was halfway pitched over backwards, his torso horizontal, with one leg folding underneath him, the other shooting off at an angle and a grimace of pain and disgrace, going down …
And “Ole Broken Dick” standing behind him, horrified.
That part, Jack didn’t mind so much. Once he’d come to grips with the fact that Jerry Blye had actually dared—it was almost impressive—to enter the West Side (which, never having put the old bastard past it, was still incredibly hard to believe) he couldn’t help quietly reveling in it. Ole Broken Dick looked like a horse’s ass … Jack could hear them in Philth Town already: “You hear about Blye?”—with merciless laughter. And televised, leading up to the fight: “The Cobra takes a flying spill!”
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