by J P Barnett
The phone rang a few times, then a voice came on the line: “Sheriff Donner here.”
Chapter 6
Macy melted into Shandi’s arms the moment the deputy opened the door to the interrogation room. Tears streamed down Macy’s face, her smeared makeup like that of a sad clown’s. Shandi immediately wrapped her arms around her daughter, desperate to take away the fear and pain.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did Wes hurt you? Are you okay?”
Macy didn’t lift her head from Shandi’s chest, but Shandi could still make out her muffled words. “I’m okay. It was just an accident. There was a thing in the road. Some animal or man or something. Wes swerved to miss it and hit a fence post, and then...”
Macy went from tears to sobbing as she related the story. “I called Daddy and he came and... and... he handcuffed Wes and Dad won’t believe me. Wes is going to be so mad at me. He told me not to call Daddy, and I did and now I messed everything up.”
Shandi’s heart hurt for Macy. Though Shandi certainly had her issues with Cam, the relationship between Macy and Cam tended towards the healthier side. Macy had always been daddy’s little girl, and Shandi respected that relationship. Macy rarely experienced Cam in full-on sheriff mode.
While wearing the mom hat, Shandi’s journalist side started creeping in. What had Macy seen? Some animal or man? Which was it? Between Macy and Wes, they would know what they had seen. Both grew up in Rose Valley. They knew the local fauna just like any kid would.
Shandi pried Macy off her and looked into her eyes, a brilliant green against her porcelain skin and fiery red hair. Shandi secretly loved that Macy looked far more like Shandi than Cam. “Listen. I’m gonna talk to your dad and get this sorted out. It’s going to be okay. He’s just being protective. Are you okay in here?”
Macy attempted to compose herself, nodding her head and sniffling. Shandi glanced over to the interrogation table and noticed a bag of Reese’s Pieces, a Coke, and Macy’s cell phone. Obviously, Cam didn’t suspect her of any criminal activity, so it must have just been someplace to keep her while Cam did something else. But why keep her isolated like this?
“Okay. Good. You just hang out here and I’ll figure this out. Text me if you need something.” Shandi reached around to her back pocket to ensure she had her cell phone with her. She did.
She stepped out of the unlocked interrogation room and walked down the hall to the other one. The fact that Rose Valley even had two interrogation rooms made it the envy of many a small-town sheriff.
She looked through the one-way mirror where Cam sat menacingly across from Wes. Unlike Macy, Wes’ hands sat awkwardly tethered to the table by his handcuffs. At the moment, Cam watched Wes try to write something on a piece of paper. It seemed a bit heavy-handed to make him do that handcuffed.
She considered barging into the room to lay into Cam, but thought better of it. He would only fight fire with fire, and it behooved her to keep things calm, for Macy’s sake. She opted to gently knock on the door.
Cam stood up and pointed a finger at Wes. Without the intercom on, Shandi couldn’t make out what he said, but it most assuredly came with a stern warning.
The door opened just enough for Cam to slip through. He gently closed it behind himself. “Shandi.”
“Hi, Sheriff.” Shandi made a special point of calling him by his title. She liked to imagine that it stung just a little to have her address him so formally, but she realized deep down that he probably didn’t care. He had placed that title above their marriage, after all.
Cam rubbed his eyes, which were bloodshot and sagging.
“Why in the world do you have Wes Morris in handcuffs?” Shandi asked.
Embarrassment flashed briefly across Cam’s face. “He damaged private property. I thought Bill might want to press charges.”
None of that really explained how Cam could justify handcuffing Wes, but Shandi supposed Cam’s actions sprouted from something more primal and fatherly. Macy could have been hurt, and Wes would have been to blame, intentionally or not, and that angered Cam. Shandi didn’t like an angry Cam, but she could handle papa-bear angry much better than former-husband angry.
“Macy says Wes swerved to avoid a collision and ran into the fence. Could’ve happened to anyone. You can’t arrest the quarterback just because he accidentally put your daughter in danger. Hell, you couldn’t arrest the quarterback if he murdered your daughter in cold blood.”
That rang true. As much power as Sheriff Cam Donner had in Rose Valley, Wes Morris wielded even more. The Jaguars would have a legitimate chance at State this year, which meant the townsfolk cared only about winning, ready to defend Wes with their dying breaths. They would riot before letting the sheriff keep Wes off the field.
Cam remained surprisingly calm and patient with her. “I know. I just... I’ll let him go, of course. He just wouldn’t stop going on about seeing a gorilla in the road. I thought he was drunk or high or something at first. He’s not, though. He just saw something that he can’t explain.”
“A coyote?” Shandi blurted out.
Cam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Shandi searched his face. It had never been easy for Cam to admit that he might be wrong.
Cam motioned to Wes through the mirror. “I expect that Wes knows what a coyote looks like. I don’t know what he saw. That’s why I’m having him draw it.”
Wes’ tongue hung halfway out, his eyes heavily focused on the piece of paper. Despite the age gap, Shandi found him endearing. She wished Macy would choose someone more upwardly mobile, but in thinking back to her teenage years, she couldn’t begrudge Macy for being smitten with him.
Cam reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to Shandi. “This is what Macy drew.”
Shandi took the paper and tilted it towards the brighter light coming through the mirror-window. Macy excelled in the sciences, not the arts, but the intent of her drawing shone through the rough, unsteady pencil lines.
The sketch depicted what looked like a man, though Macy had guessed he was maybe seven feet tall. She drew him in profile, hunched over, his arms slightly longer than one would expect for a normally proportioned person. He wore no clothes. Macy had a drawn a star over his genitalia.
Under the drawing was a series of Macy-scribbled bullet points:
Walked funny, with a limp or something
Ran really fast away from us when we got out of the car
Normal hairy man body hair
Shaggy haircut & beard
Weird face
Eyes glowed in the headlights like a deer
Shandi shivered as she studied the drawing. Everything suddenly felt otherworldly, as if she floated outside of her own body. How could her own daughter have run into such a creature?
“I know,” said Cam. “It seems impossible. It may be exaggerated, but even if we just have a streaker loose in Rose Valley, we need to catch that sonofabitch.”
While Shandi wanted to process and think about the situation, Cam bristled with the anticipation of a fight. She recognized that that’s why he did make a good Sheriff, despite being a genuine asshole.
Likely, this strange man-beast mutilated the goat, the sheep, and maybe even sprung the cheetahs out of Relics Park. Shandi suppressed the urge to smile at this huge lead.
Cam put his hand on the door handle. “Looks like Romeo is done. Time to compare.”
He left Macy’s drawing with Shandi and went back into the interrogation room with Wes. Within a few seconds, he returned with Wes’ drawing. Cam studied it for what seemed like an eternity before letting Shandi see it. Time ticked by slowly.
When Cam finally handed over the new sketch, Shandi immediately took it in. Wes clearly spent more effort on his drawing, imbuing it with incredible detail, every hair meticulously drawn into place.
Wes had drawn the creature mostly in profile. His incarnation had more than a beard, the entire face obscured with graphite-colored curly
hair and snake-like eyes. The arms bulged with massive muscles and weren’t as long as they were in Macy’s rendition.
Like Macy, Wes attached a written description:
Walked like a tiny armed gorilla
Super hairy
Glowing eyes, like a serpant
Ran really fast
Moved with a weird gate
Shandi chuckled when she interpreted his description as a miniature gorilla carrying a machine gun and an old, unpainted gate. Wes wouldn’t be winning any spelling bees in his future, but the earnestness of his idiocy was charming.
“This is insane,” Shandi finally said. “I don’t understand what this is. Is it a man?”
Cam shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. They did go through some trauma, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for them to incorrectly remember what they saw. I talked to them both about whether they had discussed the creature with one another and both said they hadn’t. That’s why I wanted them to draw it.”
“It seems pretty clear that they saw the same thing.”
“Yeah. Seems like.” Cam gently tugged both pictures out of her hands.
“Wait. Can I have copies of those? To put in the paper? It might help us find others who have seen it.”
Cam shook his head. ”No. You can’t do that. I need to keep this secret so that I can use them to corroborate any other sightings. If you put ’em in the paper, we’ll have everyone in town claiming they saw this exact thing.”
Shandi hated to yield authority to Cam. For her, getting the information out there took top priority, so she wanted to protest, but the voice of Dan Carter haunted her mind. Play nice with the local law enforcement.
In this particular case, it seemed a reasonable request.
“Also, it might not be possible,” Cam continued. “but if you can convince Macy to keep it quiet, that would help too. We don’t need all her friends making things up.”
Shandi laughed out loud. “You left her cell phone in there with her. All her friends already know. That ship has sailed.”
Cam actually smiled as he rubbed his neck. “I guess you’re right. I shoulda thought of that. I forget that she’s so old sometimes.”
“You and me both, Cam. You and me both.”
Chapter 7
Jake quickly undressed down to his boxers, shivering in the shock of cold air on his skin. The woman with him had seen him like this many times. She appeared taller than a tape measure would read, lean and wiry. Some might describe her as emaciated now, but Jake’s memories of her painted a different picture. Her blonde hair sat atop her head in a messy bun, her makeup applied with practiced precision. She looked tired, but appropriately alert for this particular meeting.
Her name was Deirdre Valentine, but her friends—those she had left, anyway—sometimes called her Dee. She had graduated as the valedictorian of her class and now boasted perhaps the most impressive resume of any graduate in the history of Rose Valley.
Jake didn’t know the exact path that she’d taken after graduation, but he knew it involved several Ivy League schools, illustrious internships, and distinguished awards. That she’d wound up back in Rose Valley was still hard to believe.
Deirdre lightly ran her hands over one of the scars snaking up Jake’s torso. He shivered. Her fingers sent jolts down his body. He watched her blue eyes study him, though she was focused on his every scar.
Occasionally she would stop, take notes on a clipboard, then resume her work. The first time Jake had endured her studying his nearly-naked body to check his healing, it caused him extreme discomfort. It felt invasive—inappropriately intimate. He struggled to separate the vivacious girl he knew in high school from the highly accomplished woman before him. Over time, however, the memory of Dee evaporated and left only Dr. Deirdre Valentine.
Deirdre stood up and finally met Jake’s gaze. “Okay. Things look good. The scars are healing nicely. You can get dressed now.”
She picked up and stared at the clipboard, as if enraptured by its contents. Many months ago, Jake had figured out that she did this to give him some private space in this clinic that hardly had any.
After the accident, Jake had taken a settlement offer from Arrowhead Research. It had stipulated that, in addition to financial compensation, he would receive all his medical treatments directly from Arrowhead Research—free of charge, of course. Deirdre Valentine served as the lead researcher of biomedical development. Why she agreed to personally take on his case was a bit of a mystery.
The one room outbuilding in which they now sat had once functioned as a research facility, and had since been repurposed into this small, makeshift clinic solely for the Jake’s rehabilitation. Truthfully, he would have been perfectly happy with them covering his medical bills, but Arrowhead had seemed all too eager for some other arrangement. Arrowhead Research had been operating in Rose Valley for almost a hundred years. It had grown from a couple of doctors in a barn to a huge facility, employing some of the best minds in the country. In Rose Valley, Arrowhead Research employed more people than any other company; indeed, it was the financial lifeblood of the town. Probably their “generosity” to Jake came from a desire to preserve their public image.
Visiting this clinic always reminded him of the accident. Arrowhead Research medical personnel had been the first on the scene. Rose Valley existed in a blackhole of civilization; the nearest fully functional hospital was at least twenty minutes away by car. Waiting for traditional medical help may have left him dead on the side of the road. Accepting their settlement meant that he received care by some of the best doctors in the world, and that he would save on gas money and travel time for his appointments. Not a shabby deal, really.
Deirdre looked up once Jake was covered. “Before the injection, I want to ask you a few questions.”
Jake had received an injection of an experimental drug on every visit; one she insisted would speed along his recovery. The side-effects had been minimal, and the speed of his healing had exceeded all expectations. Once it went on the market, it would surely cost a fortune. Jake felt privileged to receive it for free.
“Go for it,” Jake replied.
“How’s your sleeping?”
“Mostly good. I have nightmares sometimes. Usually about the accident. Sometimes about things that I can’t remember when I wake up.”
Deirdre wrote something down before continuing, “What about pain?”
“Pretty minimal at this point. Sometimes I’m stiff when I wake up. Occasionally there’s pain in my knee. The hydrocodone usually knocks it right out, though.”
“Good. We need to get you off that, though, so try not to take it any more than you have to. I’d like you to switch to over-the-counter pain medication. Ibuprofen will probably work best, but you can try Aleve or Tylenol as well.”
Deirdre got up and went to the small mini-fridge at the back of the room. Jake took the opportunity to throw out some small talk.
“So, have you heard about the livestock mutilation stuff in town?”
She carefully filled a syringe with a translucent golden liquid. “No, I haven’t. I don’t hang out in town much. Honestly, I feel like I’m always here.”
Jake filled her in on the pressing town news, hoping to pique her interest, and regaling her with his theories of a new, unknown animal. Though she was clearly a doctor now above all, a small part of him still hoped the younger “Dee” rattled around in there somewhere. Jake had crushed on Deirdre for years in high school, and nothing had come of it. She seemed cold and distant now, making it hard to remember what had once so fascinated him about her—other than the fact that she was gorgeous, of course.
Her brow furrowed at what he told her. She looked worried. As he finished the story, she picked up her clipboard. Jake followed her eyes. They seemed to stare blankly.
“That’s pretty crazy,” she said, smiling. “Maybe Rose Valley has its very own Bigfoot.”
Dr. Deirdre Valentine did not smile often, and this smile seemed
forced and uncomfortable. While hoping to draw her out, his talk appeared to have had the opposite effect. Jake felt foolish.
“You know what?” she said. “You’ve done really well. You won’t need to see me at all for much longer. I don’t think there’s any reason to keep you on this.” She picked up the syringe and emptied it back into the bottle, before placing it in the refrigerator.
He had been doing really well. Jake had felt more like his old self in the past few weeks than he had for the entire year. Nonetheless, the prospect of ending these injections was almost melancholic. They had made him feel better. Would his recovery come to a halt without them? Maybe he’d also miss seeing Deirdre so regularly.
Deirdre crossed the room back to Jake and extended her hand. “Unless something comes up, I would plan for next week’s appointment being your last. The guys over in epigenetics will be happy to get their lab back.”
Jake instinctively took her hand as he stood up from the examination table. Her frigid touch sent tingles up Jake’s arm, but she had a practiced, solid grip. Deirdre gave him a professional smile this time. One of the many faces of Deirdre. As Jake attempted to decipher Deirdre’s facial expression yet again, he recognized the thrill of trying to understand her, the possibility of reconnecting with the woman inside. He would miss her. Like the beast, she represented an enigma that he desperately wanted to solve.
Chapter 8
The click-clack of her heels on the concrete floors might have been deafening to those in the offices she passed, but Deirdre didn’t notice. Nor did she notice her pace very nearly qualified as a jog. She tried to remain expressionless, to keep the panic at bay.
Reaching her office, she shut the door and sank into the chair behind her desk. Immediately she rose again, began pacing the room and then stopped to slip off her high heels, throwing them haphazardly into the corner of the room. Minutes later, she removed her lab coat as well.