* * *
THE HIGHWAY patrolman didn’t like it, but the sheriff ordered Weatherstone to undo Ronnie’s cuffs and sent the two deputies who came with him to search the perimeter for Sheila and whoever else might have survived.
“So tell us what you know.”
“I know there’s a bunch of people with their heads blowed in and ain’t none of them Sheila.”
“We’ll find her, but we need you to show us where these people are.”
“Just walk right in. They’re all laid out for you. But I ain’t about to go back in there.”
The sheriff nodded toward the cuffs still in Weatherstone’s hand. Wilson saw the glance and changed his mind.
* * *
IT WAS a sad, bloody business and Weatherstone, with just six months on the force, had never seen the like and hoped never to see the like again. They counted ten. Two on the porch, two in the parlor, three in the kitchen, a naked couple in an upstairs bedroom, and one more who had tried to hide between two of the cars lined up in a row behind the house.
“Looks like they took everybody by surprise.”
“People was so fucked up, they wouldn’t of heard a brass band come up that hill,” Ronnie said. “I was so fucked up I couldn’t stand and that’s the only reason I’m still alive.”
Each of the victims had taken a well-placed bullet to the head. The naked couple were still in their final, bloody embrace.
“All very neat and proper,” said the trooper.
The sheriff asked Wilson. “Can you ID any of these people for me?”
“Ain’t none of them Sheila, that’s all I know.”
But he did know some of them. One was his buddy from work. He had been shot in the back of the head and the bullet tore out half his face on the way out, but Wilson knew him by his big red Irish fro. Randy the Man sat bolt upright at the kitchen table where he had been parsing pills into plastic bags. He had taken a bullet to the middle of the forehead and there was a hint of surprise and irritation in the creases around his eyes; his lip was curled around a curse he never got to speak.
“Last name?” the trooper asked.
“He’s just Randy the Man. That’s all I know.”
“You never asked him his last name?”
“Man, a motherfucker like Randy the Man just tells you what he wants to tell you and you don’t ask him nothing else.”
Ronnie knew the naked couple, though. “She’s got a husband and he’s got a wife,” he said. “I don’t reckon you can keep this part quiet.”
“Can’t tamper with evidence,” the sheriff said.
Weatherstone took down the names and closed his notebook.
“Hold on,” Wilson said. “You ain’t done.”
He led them out to the yard and pointed to the dirt path that led to the barn. “Shine your light over there,” he said. The trooper took out his flashlight and beamed it out toward the barn. There was a blood-black streak in the dirt track, a scuff line, a sandal cast off.
“Just follow that track up to the barn.”
The trooper led his beam up the track another twenty yards to what looked to be a pile of rags just at the door of the barn.
“Go on,” Wilson said. “This is as close as I want to get.”
It was a girl laid out on her back. Her face was pale as a plaster saint. Her eyes studied the most distant stars. From the look of it, she had probably been running for the barn when they shot her. “My guess,” the sheriff said, “they shot her in the legs so she couldn’t run. They shot her in the arm so she couldn’t crawl.” Then, as she begged, or prayed or cursed, they tucked one last shot just under her chin.
The first shots would have laid her helpless. Then she would have had to lie there waiting as they came to finish her off.
“They wanted that one bad,” the sheriff said.
* * *
TIMOTHY WEATHERSTONE had been the first on the scene, but within half an hour, other sirens had bawled up the hill and now the yard between the house and barn was a maze of red and blue and yellow lights. A captain from the State Highway Patrol was here, and two more deputies and a couple ambulances with EMTs for what good they might do, and even a couple boys from the police department in Union City. The forensic people were on their way down from Columbus and, following procedure, nobody had moved a thing. Ronnie Wilson was locked in the back of Weatherstone’s cruiser, damning them all to hell and West Virginia because no one would let him out to go find his girlfriend and Weatherstone’s job, for now, was to keep watch on him while the sheriff, the police chief from Union City, and the State Patrol captain stood in a huddle.
“What’re they saying?” Ronnie asked.
“Your guess is good as mine.”
“They ain’t saying, ‘Let’s go find this boy’s girlfriend,’ are they?”
“Buddy, I don’t know.”
The sheriff turned out of the huddle to wave Weatherstone over.
“Tell them,” Wilson said. “Tell them Sheila’s missing and we got to go find her.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Work him, buddy. Work him.”
The sheriff put his hand on his deputy’s shoulder. “I want you to go down the hill and fetch Maggie Boylan.”
“Why Maggie?”
“If anybody knows who these people are, it’s Maggie Boylan,” the sheriff said. “It’s a wonder she’s not up here herself.”
“She’s not been up there in three months. I see her every day at the Square Deal Grill. If she was getting high, she wouldn’t be working.”
The sheriff looked dubious. “It’s a wonder she wasn’t there,” he said. “Go fetch her.”
* * *
FETCHING MAGGIE Boylan had never been an easy job. But she was awake and on the porch with a jacket thrown over her shoulders.
“I don’t want to go up there,” she said.
“Maggie, we need you.”
“You just said Ronnie Wilson ID’d most of them.”
“Yeah, but Ronnie’s drunk as a lord. And he’s not all that reliable when he’s sober.”
“This ain’t my problem, Timmy.”
“If it was one of yours, wouldn’t you want to know?”
“Goddammit, Timmy.” She cinched her jacket higher on her shoulders, stepped out onto the porch, and pulled the door to.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this nightmare started.”
In the cruiser, Maggie had to shade her eyes from the glare of red and blue lights. “First time I ever come up this hill riding,” she said.
“Always walked it before?”
She nodded. “Or crawled.”
“How much clean time you got now?”
“More’n they’ll ever get.”
They pulled up into the lot and Maggie hesitated, but she got out of the cruiser and looked around at the lights whirling and blending, shadowcasting the men and cars onto the walls of the house and barn.
“This is like the story of my life,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“One fucking disaster after another.”
Weatherstone took Maggie as far as the door of the house. “You sure I gotta do this, Timmy?”
“Come on, Maggie,” said the sheriff. “Let’s get this thing done.”
Maggie glared the sheriff off when he tried to take her by the elbow, so he stepped aside as Maggie stepped into the house on her own.
She came out, twenty minutes later, looking stunned and stunted. A flash of tears crooked down her cheek. Her voice was hoarse. “Can I go home now?”
“Hold on, Maggie,” the sheriff said
“I done told you everything I know,” she said.
“There’s one more.” The sheriff pointed toward the barn. He nodded to Weatherstone. “Walk her over there for me,” he said. “See if she can ID that girl.”
“I reckon that’ll be Ronnie’s Sheila,” Maggie said. She began to mutter too low for Weatherstone to hear, but he could guess.
&
nbsp; “It’s not Sheila,” Weatherstone said.
“That’s too bad,” said Maggie. “She earned it.”
A trooper pulled back the sheet from the pale face of the little rag of a girl and Maggie stopped as if she had been hit with a brick. She grabbed her temples and fell to her knees in the dust.
“Oh God, no,” she sobbed out. “Oh Jesus, oh God, oh, what the fuck?”
The trooper wouldn’t let her, but she wanted to stroke the dead girl’s bloody hair.
“Do you know her, Maggie?”
She did not answer at first. Maggie sat back with her fists balled up and her eyes streaming. “She said they would find her. And she said they would kill her. And sure enough, they did.”
* * *
THE SHERIFF offered her a ride back home with one of the deputies, but Maggie Boylan did not ever want to be in a police car again.
“Suit yourself,” the sheriff said. “But don’t plan any trips out of town. We might have some more questions.”
“I got no answers,” Maggie said.
The sheriff raised a skeptical brow.
“If I was to know anything else—which I don’t. And if I was to tell you—which I wouldn’t—how long do you think it would take before they’d come and thump me in the head like they done this bunch?”
But the sheriff had stopped listening. He had turned toward the shouts and commotion that had risen from the other side of the yard. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “There he goes.”
For there was Ronnie Wilson zigzagging among the cars in the yard and there was Timmy Weatherstone, a frustrated half-dozen steps behind him.
* * *
TIM WEATHERSTONE’S inclination was to let Ronnie go so he could hunt for Sheila, but the State Patrol boys nixed that. “Investigative detention,” they said. They had rank on everybody else, so they took charge. But all they could get out of him was a string of curses. “I’ll tell you any goddam thing you want, once you let me find my girlfriend.”
“He might be the luckiest druggie in the country, but I think he knows something he’s not telling,” said the captain from the Highway Patrol. So Weatherstone had to lock him in the back of the cruiser and tell him to wait while they searched, which none of them, at the moment, was doing.
“Why the hell can’t you let me out?”
“Cause the state boys want to question you”
“You can all question my ass,” the boy told him.
Weatherstone had no intention of doing anything of the sort, so he left Ronnie Wilson alone with his curses in the back of his cruiser.
The forensics had to come all the way from Columbus and it was the middle of the night. The scene was secured, a long perimeter of yellow tape was strapped around the whole yard, including the line of cars. Everyone knew not to tamper with what was here, so there was nothing to do for now but wait.
He thought, Why not try one more time? He stepped over to the patrol car and tapped at the window. “If you was to go out looking for Sheila, where would you start?”
“I’d start from where you’d let me out of this damn car,”
“Look,” he told him, “I can’t let you out, but I can go myself. So where do you think she might be?”
He jerked his head in the direction of the road. “Last thing I know, she said she wanted to go home and she was headed out the front door.”
“So maybe we should call your house.”
“Phone’s cut off.”
“Was she driving?”
“I got the keys.”
“So was she gonna walk?”
“I reckon.”
“You still on Harper’s Run?”
The boy nodded.
“That’s five miles at least.”
“And she wasn’t moving none too fast, neither.”
“So she might not be far.”
“Let me go and I’ll see how far she is.”
Weatherstone shook his head.
“So Timmy, how long you plan to keep me in this car?”
“Till somebody tells me I can let you go.”
“And when will that be?”
“When they’re all done with their questions, I reckon.”
“I done already told them I don’t know nothing. I didn’t do nothing. I didn’t see nothing. I didn’t hear but that little bit I told them about. When all this was going down, I was passed out at the bottom of the hill.”
“And you don’t know why somebody might have wanted to kill all those folks.”
“Man, it was a party to me and they had a load of dope. That’s all I know. John Ambrose from work, he’s laying up there with his head blowed in, he says to me, ‘Come on out tonight. I know some people gonna party hearty.’ So, I gathered up my girl and we went on down. And I never seen so much in the way of drugs. It was the Walmart of mood alteration, man. It was a pharmaceutical fantasy, every dopehead’s dream. And I’m thinking, This is the party of my life.”
“And you don’t know anything more than that.”
“You don’t think I’d tell you? Timmy, we been knowing each other since we was eight years old.”
“What’s your point?”
“You could cut me a little slack here.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“I mean, you got me locked in the back of a police car and my girlfriend ain’t nowhere to be found and ain’t a goddam one of you doing a thing about it so why in hell don’t you let me go so I can find her?”
“I’m about to go look myself.”
“You couldn’t find your ass with both hands.”
“Careful.”
“What the fuck, I didn’t mean it. We can go look together. Just let me the fuck out of here.”
“Can’t do it.”
“Yeah, you can.”
“You know I can’t.”
“Man, you never used to be like this.”
“Things change.”
Ronnie muttered, “I reckon they do.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, man.” He paused. “What about letting me out so I can take a leak?”
“You didn’t do too good the last time you went out to take a leak.”
“Yeah, I’m a stupid, fallen-down drunk who don’t know nothing. But all them smart ones is wearing toe tags.”
“You’re right. Falling down that hill might have been the smartest thing you ever did.”
“So let me out and I promise you I won’t fall down no more hills.”
“Sorry, buddy.”
“Then how bout I piss on your floor?” He crawled up on the seat and made himself ready. “Better yet . . . ,” he positioned himself at an angle, “I’ll piss through this cage. Which side do you usually sit on?”
“All right, goddammit.”
“All right, what?”
“All right I’ll let you out. Just hold on a minute.”
“Hold on for what? It’s coming on me like a freight train.”
“Let me get these cuffs on you.” He pulled open the patrol car door.
“Now how am I supposed to do the deed with handcuffs on?”
“That’s your problem.”
“Then how bout I just stay in here and piss up your seats?”
“Come on, then, goddammit.”
“All right. All right. All this alcohol, we got the kidneys to working overtime.”
Wilson stepped out of the car and started around it, but Weatherstone blocked him with his baton. “That’s good right there.”
“Do you want to have to walk in it?”
“No, I don’t want to walk in it.”
“Well, let me step away just a little, at least.”
Weatherstone let him pass and Wilson stepped out into the yard a few paces and zipped down his jeans. “You ain’t watching, are you?”
“Of course, I’m watching. It’s my job.”
“Because I didn’t think you was that kind of fella.”
“You’re doing a lot of talking, but I
don’t hear a lot of pissing.”
“Man, I never could piss under pressure. Like all them drug tests.”
“Just do it, man.”
“Will you just look away for a second? I can’t do it with you watching.”
Weatherstone sighed and turned his head.
“So I just gotta relax . . . relax . . . relax . . . NOW!”
Wilson shot out across the yard at a run. Startled, Weatherstone hesitated a moment before he swung his baton. He tried a sweep to catch Wilson’s feet, but he had leaped ahead of him.
Weatherstone shouted, “He’s getting away!” But none of the others was close enough to help. He tried to keep up, but Wilson, powered by drugs and obstinacy, faked him through the maze of red and blue lights, past the yellow crime scene tape and the body of the girl under the sheet, past the squad cars of the Highway Patrol and the town police, past the barn, and straight toward the edge of the hill. Weatherstone fell behind a little more with each fake, but he hoped to catch up in the straightaway.
But too late. With a final leap, Wilson dropped over the edge and out of sight.
Weatherstone ran to the edge of the hill and stopped. Which way did that stupid motherfucker go? He pulled a flashlight from his belt and probed among the willows along the run. Nothing, not a one of them moved.
I’ve got to find him or my ass is grass, he thought.
And sure enough, half an hour later, after he had twisted an ankle thrashing through the run and soaked himself, the sheriff called him aside.
“How in the world did you let that boy get away?”
“He talked me clean out of my senses.”
“He’ll do that. But the State Patrol boys is pissed.”
“I reckon.”
“The captain as much as said you let him go on purpose.”
“Well, just let him think that.”
“Son, you don’t understand. The captain thinking you let him go on purpose is not the same as anybody else thinking it. If he wants to make a case out of it, you’ve got as much trouble as the boy. He says it don’t look good, as he’s a friend of yours and he gets away.”
“He’s not a friend of mine. I went to high school with him is all.”
“From the State Patrol point of view, either way, you’re cooked. If you let him go on purpose, you’re complicit. If you let him go by accident, you’re incompetent.”
Maggie Boylan Page 13