by Al Lamanda
Peck returned to the truck and opened the door. “You called me on a radio.”
Linda pointed to the portable, short wave radio mounted under the dashboard. “He said I should call for help.”
“Move over,” Peck said and entered the truck.
By the time Reese and his army of men arrived, it was after two thirty in the morning. The lack of sleep showed on Reese’s face and in his tired, bloodshot eyes.
Earlier, Peck found a pair of jeans and a sweater for Linda Boyce and moved her inside to the kitchen. He built a fire in the small woodstove and ran the generator for heat, and still her teeth chattered, and she shook uncontrollably. They were sipping hot coffee when the small band of vehicles pulled up outside of Linda’s mobile home.
The first thing Reese said when he walked into the tiny trailer was, “I recognize the truck. It belongs to my man Harvey Peterson.”
Peck stood up from the tiny table and led Reese into the bedroom. “He’s a cop, a state trooper?”
“A corporal with great potential. A good man if somewhat undisciplined.” Reese nodded as he knelt down to the body and turned it over. “Oh Harvey, you dumb bastard.” Reese sighed loudly.
“What was he doing here?” Peck said.
Reese stood up. “Good question. Maybe we should ask her?”
Linda was trying to sip coffee from a mug when Peck and Reese reentered the kitchen. Her hand shook so violently, she spilled coffee onto the table.
Reese sat down opposite her at the small, round table. “Miss Boyce, did you know Harvey was a state trooper?”
Linda shook her head no. “He said he worked for the paper company.” She attempted to light a cigarette but could not steady the match. Peck leaned in and held her hand so she could light it. She looked at Peck. “Thank you.”
Reese said, “Can you tell me anything else?”
“He liked sex and had the money to pay for it.”
Reese and Peck exchanged glances. “He paid you?” Peck said.
Linda looked past Reese at Peck. “This is 1959; don’t tell me you never met a hooker before?”
“I didn’t expect one in the middle of nowhere, Dunston Falls,” Peck said.
“Wherever there are men,” Linda said.
“Let’s talk about the intruder,” Reese suggested.
“What do you want to know?” The cigarette was doing its job and Linda appeared to be regaining some of her nerve.
“Whatever it is you know and can tell us,” Reese said.
Linda puffed on the cigarette and looked Reese in the eyes. She appeared almost annoyed. “I was talking a bath, he showed up. He hit me on the head. Harvey showed up. He killed Harvey. I called you people. Did I leave anything out?”
Doctor McCoy came in from outside and stood behind Peck. “I got here as soon as I could,” McCoy said. He looked at Linda. “Is this her?”
Just after sunrise, Peck and Reese met in the lounge at the hospital. They were drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes when McCoy opened the door and joined them.
McCoy poured coffee into a mug and sat down at the table. “She will sleep most of the day, I’m afraid. In the meantime, do you want an autopsy report on Officer Peterson?”
“For God’s sake, doctor. We know what killed him. We need to talk to the girl,” Reese said.
“When she’s rested,” McCoy said. “Otherwise she will be unable to answer your questions to your satisfaction. Why don’t you come back later, say around four this afternoon.”
“Doctor, we need information,” Reese insisted.
“Well, you won’t get it from her until around four this afternoon,” McCoy said. “Unless gibberish is helpful?”
Reese and Peck found a table at the diner and ordered breakfast. Reese requested his men bring as many dozen eggs, slabs of bacon and potatoes as they could fit into their vans and half the amount went to the diner.
Reese ate his scrambled eggs, bacon and home fires as if it were his last meal. Peck simply picked at his eggs. The appetite wasn’t there.
“The natives are growing restless,” Peck said.
Reese nodded his agreement as he spooned eggs into his mouth. “They will want answers soon.”
“So do I.”
“Meaning?”
“You brought all this shit for fingerprints, blood sampling, hair and fiber and I doubt we will extract anything other than Harvey and the woman’s prints. Even the bloody footprints belong to the victim.”
“Sheriff, you want answers and I don’t even know the questions yet,” Reese said. “We both know working a homicide takes time, effort and a great deal of luck. Restless or not.”
Peck took a sip of coffee and thought a moment. “Answer me this, lieutenant.”
Reese looked over his spoon, giving Peck his full attention.
“I’ve been here eighteen months and never heard of Linda Boyce until this morning. Harvey was here one day and knew she was a prostitute. Don’t you find that a little odd?”
Reese, with a mouthful of eggs stared at Peck. Then Reese slowly chewed and swallowed.
“How did he know that, huh?” Peck said.
Reese set his spoon aside and took a sip of coffee. “My, my, the small town sheriff with the big city question.”
“That had to occur to you,” Peck said.
“It did,” Reese said, nodding his head. “I put it to my men and all they knew was Harvey had a woman stashed away somewhere. He gave no details. To be honest, I am partially responsible for not asking questions when I knew he was sneaking out to meet a woman. The both of us should have known better to let him get away with it.”
“Well, we need more from the girl than the he showed up, Harvey died thing if we’re going to catch him before he kills again,” Peck said.
“And you’re sure that he will?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He has the taste for it now.”
“Not that I don’t agree,” Reese said, picking up his spoon. “But last night may have scared him halfway to New Hampshire by now.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“He has forty seven square miles to hide out in,” Peck said.
“And?”
“He likes it here.”
Reese spooned some eggs into his mouth and washed it down with coffee. He looked directly at Peck. “Then we better do our job and catch him.”
SIX
Late in the day, Peck returned to Linda’s hospital room and found her still asleep. He pulled a chair against the wall and sat down. He looked at her in the bed as if seeing her for the first time and realized just how tiny a woman she was. Maybe a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. He was grateful that she was alive and not just because she did nothing to provoke such a horrible death. She may well turn out to be the key that unlocked the clues that solved the mystery for them. Exhaustion suddenly washed over him and he closed his eyes and was asleep in a matter of minutes.
He woke up an hour later when Linda’s voice penetrated his semi consciousness.
“Sheriff, are you okay?” he heard her say, softly.
From his light sleep, Peck heard her voice and he opened his eyes and looked at her in the bed. “Yes.” Slightly disoriented, he looked at his watch. “I must have dozed off.”
“Where’s the other guy, the mean looking one?”
“Lieutenant Reese?” he said, more awake now.
“I guess so.”
Peck stood up to stretch his back. “He’s at your house with his team of men.”
Linda sat up in bed with her back against the stiff, hospital headboard. “Going through my stuff,” she said with mild annoyance.
“It’s how you find clues and evidence.”
“I suppose,” Linda shrugged. “Do you have any cigarettes?”
Peck removed his pack, lit two and gave her one. “It’s difficult, but I need you to help me now. I need you to talk me through what happened right up to the
end.”
Linda blew a smoke ring as she thought. “I never did thank you for being so nice to me, did I?”
“It isn’t necessary,” Peck said as he retook his seat. “It’s my job. So?”
Linda nodded, then said, “I was expecting Harvey around midnight.”
“As a client?”
“Yes. Anyway, I started the generator so I could take a bath. When a man is paying you he has the right for you to smell good, and even if he isn’t paying you.”
“What time was that?”
“Around eleven, eleven thirty. Right in there somewhere.” Linda paused to puff on the cigarette and made eye contact with Peck. “I thought it was Harvey when I heard footsteps. It wasn’t.”
“What happened then?”
Linda took a deep breath. “It happened so fast. All of a sudden, he was there. He……I think it was a log from my woodpile. He hit me with it. In the head. When I woke up, I was tied to the bed. My mouth and eyes were covered in tape. After a little while, he ripped the tape from my eyes, I guess so I could see him.”
Peck thought for a moment, and then said, “Did he say anything to you?”
Linda shook her head. “No, nothing.”
“Not even one word, nothing?”
“He never made a sound. Never said one word.” Linda shook her head again. “He just……. watched me. Like he was studying me or something. His eyes through the ski mask, they looked yellow.”
“Yellow?”
“I know that sounds crazy,” Linda said. “I think it was the flame on the candle what made them look that way.”
“What happened next?”
Linda took a puff on the cigarette as she looked at Peck. “He……….I tried to fight, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even scream. He had a bread knife from the kitchen. Then………. he pulled down his pants. He had an erection. The sick bastard is holding a foot long knife on one hand and his dick in the other. I started to pray he would kill me first.”
Linda took another puff on the cigarette and closed her eyes. “Funny the stuff you think when you feel you’re going to die. I remember thinking I could stand the pain of the knife, but not of being raped.” Linda opened her eyes and puffed on the cigarette.
After a moment of silence, Peck said, “After that what happened.”
“Harvey showed up. I heard his truck and I tried to warn him, but the tape on my mouth… I couldn’t scream.” Linda paused to close her eyes again and take a breath. She opened her eyes and took a sip of water from a glass on the bedside table.
“Take your time,” Peck said.
Linda replaced the glass on the table. “Harvey walked in and he was hiding in the shadows behind the door. It happened so fast, I wasn’t sure I even saw it. He shoved the knife into Harvey’s stomach and Harvey dropped the bottle of scotch he brought for me. He seemed to stand there for a second as if he was admiring what he did, then he was gone and Harvey was on his knees with the knife in his stomach.”
“Harvey, he crawled to you and cut you loose,” Peck said.
Linda nodded. “He…. pulled the knife from his stomach first. I can’t imagine how much that must have hurt. He saved my life. He said, run to his truck and call for help on the radio.”
“Up to that point, you didn’t know Harvey was a cop, a state trooper?”
Linda shook her head. “Not until that Lieutenant Reese told me.”
Peck thought a moment and said, “There’s something I’m not seeing.”
Linda smiled for the first time in their conversation. “For twenty bucks you can see a whole lot more.”
Peck stood up to toss his cigarette into the toilet. “That reminds me. When this is over, you’re under arrest for solicitation, young lady.”
Linda wrapped the covers over her shoulders. “It’s freezing in here.”
Peck reached for the extra blanket in the closet and placed it around her shoulders. “They turn the heat on every two hours. It will warm up.”
Linda tucked her arms under the second blanket. “Thank you.”
“About Harvey, how did you meet?”
“Like they all do,” Linda admitted. “He called me for a date.”
“When was that, yesterday?”
Linda shook her head. “No, at least three days ago. He said he got my number from a friend at the paper company. He would not say who because the guy is married. Like that would have mattered. All these married guys and their big secrets.” Linda held her cigarette to Peck and he took it and tossed it into the toilet.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Peck said, returning to the chair.
“What, that the guy is married?”
Peck shook his head. “Harvey called you before the first murder was even discovered,” Peck said. “He was supposedly on duty in Augusta. Why would he do that?”
“Maybe he was horny?” Linda joked.
“Enough to drive two hundred miles and risk his life during a statewide crisis? I haven’t been there, but there has to be some women in Augusta who practice your …vocation.”
“Was Harvey married? He said he was, but he also said he worked for the paper company. A married man will do all kinds of things to keep his wife from finding out,” Linda said. “Like the wives care. As long as the man brings the paycheck home and doesn’t give her any diseases, most women don’t care at all who their husbands are sticking it to. I’ve heard of some wives joining in for a threesome.”
Peck shook that off. “I don’t know if Harvey was married but I’ll find out from Reese.” Peck slumped back in the chair and gently massaged the spot between his eyes just above the nose.
“Do you have a headache?” Linda said, softly.
“I’m working on it,” Peck said. “A doozey.”
Linda sat up straight in the bed. “I’ve had those, too.” She got out of bed, stood over Peck, and looked at him.
“It starts here,” Linda said. She touched the spot between Peck’s eyes with one finger. It felt warm and comforting to the touch.
“Then it spreads out.” She ran her fingers across his forehead. “Slowly at first.”
Peck looked at her as she reached out and touched his face. Her fingers felt warm and sensual against his rough skin and stubble of beard. Peck felt almost embarrassed at the sensation.
“Then, bang,” Linda said, suddenly.
Linda placed both hands on the top of Peck’s head.
“It’s like an explosion went off inside your head.”
Peck made eye contact with her and there was an awkward moment of silence. Slowly, Linda lowered her hands. “I can see him,” She whispered. “Those yellow eyes looking at me.”
Peck stood up and took hold of her hand. It was suddenly freezing. Her arms were covered with goose bumps. “Maybe we better get back to bed.” He guided her to the bed and she slipped between the covers.
“If it’s we, leave a twenty on the way out,” Linda joked. “I have to pay this hospital bill somehow.”
Peck returned to the chair and sat.
“It’s funny, but I can still taste the glue from the tape in my mouth,” Linda said. “I’ve brushed my teeth a dozen times, but I can still taste it. Maybe it’s just my imagination, like a man missing an arm can still feel his fingers.”
Peck looked at her and nodded.
“Is there any chance at getting something to eat around here?” Linda said. “Besides medicine and toothpaste?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Peck said.
Peck found Doctor McCoy in the small emergency room where he was patching a kid who fell on the ice and bruised his knee.
“The cafeteria open?” Peck said.
“It was. You hungry?”
Peck shook his head. “For Linda Boyce.”
“She’s awake? Good. I’ll check on her.”
“Maybe I’ll get her something from Deb’s,” Peck said.
He left the hospital, crossed the street, and entered the diner. Of course, the entire town was now awa
re of the incidents, although sketchy. They looked, but the staff and patrons of the diner were respectful and did not push him. Kranston and Regan had made the rounds; an official announcement would be forthcoming at Sunday services, they said. That seemed to satisfy their curiosity for the moment.
Peck ordered a cheeseburger with French fries and a large soda to go. The order was ready in fifteen minutes and he carried it back to the hospital in a paper bag.
When Peck entered her hospital room, Linda was not alone. Father Regan had joined her.
“Good evening, sheriff,” Regan said, with a smile. “Miss Boyce and I were just having a chat.”
“Hello, Father,” Peck said.
“Is that food I smell in that bag?” Linda said, sniffing.
“From the diner,” Peck said, handing Linda the bag. “It’s the best I could do at this hour.”
Linda looked into the bag and smiled. “It will do.”
“Linda and I were just discussing this Sunday service,” Regan said. “I missed her last week, but she promised to be front row as usual.”
Peck looked his question to Linda.
“I was raised Catholic,” Linda said as she bit into the cheeseburger.
“And she was about to make the act of confession,” Regan said.
Peck, unaware of Regan’s hidden request, did not move until the priest cleared his throat and said, “A moment of privacy, sheriff?”
“Sure, of course,” Peck said. He nodded his goodnight to Linda and left the room. In the hallway, he could hear Linda ask the priest if he could wait until after she finished her cheeseburger.
Alone in his office, Peck made a fire in the woodstove, percolated a pot of coffee on its flat service, then sat behind his desk and read reports. There were dozens of statements given by town residents, none of which shed any light on the two murders.
He read Reese’s report on Doris White, then his own several times in succession.
The report written on Deb Robertson by Reese was three times as thick as the one on Doris White and he read it through several times with the same results. Nothing. Whatever he was searching for was not there. If it was, it failed to register in his mind.