After the End: Survival (13 page)

"Hey, Pete. You doin' all right?"

It was a standard west Texas greeting, but the sheriff peered to see if he really was doing all right. A look of relief crossed his face.

Apparently I passed muster, Pete thought.

"Just fine, Rob. What have we got?"

The sheriff looked over Pete's shoulder as Judy approached.

"Sheriff Rob Westlake, this is Judy Gilliam, the new nurse from Claude. She asked if she could observe, and I told her it was up to you, but it would probably be OK."

Which wasn't quite the truth, but close enough.

"Sure, that's fine. Glad to meet you Judy. OK, what we have is a twelve year old girl, deceased, identified as Laura Benchly. She was reported as missing at midnight last night by her foster mother. Last seen around dusk last night walking toward home from the school, where she'd been playing basketball with some other kiddos. We started the search for her at daybreak this morning with about a dozen volunteers from the neighborhood. We found her not thirty minutes later. Looks like another one, Pete. Come on in and tell me what you think."

The house was new and in fairly good condition, considering no one had lived in it for the past three years. The front door opened into the living room. A massive china cabinet dominated one wall. A large couch, matching love seat and recliner filled the room. In one corner, a shirt and a pair of jeans were folded, and next to them, two shoes and a pair of socks. The girl was lying on the living room carpet. She was on her back, nude, arms by her sides, legs spread wide apart. Pete focused all his attention on the body. Kneeling beside the prostrate figure, he saw an adolescent female, Caucasian, medium build, black hair. One eye partially open, the other swollen shut. Blood around the mouth and nose, lips swollen, jaw bruised and misshapen. Neck bruised. Right shoulder appeared to be dislocated. Numerous bruises to the thorax and abdomen. A single deep laceration extending from the pubis to the sternum. Lower extremities unremarkable. Hands, fingernails, unremarkable.

"There's hardly any bleeding from the abdomen."

Pete became aware of Judy kneeling next to him. He nodded.

"He did that after he'd killed her. I'm thinking she was strangled first, and then he made the, ah, incision."

Pete looked around the room. He was about to stand when his eye caught something small and dark under a chair. Walking over, he picked it up.

"Whatcha got, Pete," asked Rob Westlake.

Pete held it out for the sheriff to see.

"An M&M. Haven't seen one of these in a long time."

The rain started quickly, coming down in torrents so heavy, at times houses across the street were obscured. Judy covered the body with a blanket she'd found in one of the bedrooms. The group moved out of the living room, away from the dead girl, and into the kitchen. They were mostly quiet, sitting at the kitchen table, watching sheets of rain pound against a sliding glass door.

"The rain will wipe out any tracks or scent we may have had," said Pete.

Nothing else was said for a few minutes. A sound like popcorn popping began, and Pete could see marble size hail on the concrete patio.

"Starting to hail," said a deputy.

More silence. Finally, the sheriff erupted.

"Goddamn, Pete, we've got to get this son-of-a-bitch. We just can't let it keep happening."

"I agree," Pete said calmly. "What do you suggest we do different?"

"Well, obviously, we don't know who this guy is. So why don't we just try and figure out what we do know. Or what we can assume."

"OK. It's a guy. And he's probably white."

"How do you know he's white?"

"I was afraid you'd ask that. I read an article in Reader's Digest about serial killers. It said victims were almost always the same race as the killer."

"Reader's Digest, huh?" said the Sheriff, starting to grin.

"Hey, Rob. You wanted my expert help," Pete said, shrugging his shoulders. "You get what you pay for."

"OK. Let's assume he's a white guy. And he rides a horse. What else?"

"I would say kids trust him. He didn't seem to have to fight little Laura here." Pete spun the M&M on the kitchen table. "I know it's almost a pedophile's cliché, but maybe he offers them candy.

"And speaking of pedophiles, maybe he's already been arrested for it. Could he have been at the Clements Prison Unit? What happened to the surviving prisoners there after the Change?"

There was a pause before the Sheriff spoke.

"They were all released."

"About how many?"

"Seventy two."

"How can you be so precise?"

"Two years ago, right after my department came into existence, I drove up there. In the warden's office there was a logbook of prisoners who'd been released. From the guards standpoint it was a matter of letting them out, or letting them starve to death. From that list, I pulled the files on those individuals. Each of those files contained a full set of fingerprints. I’ve got them at the S.O. None of those fingerprints match the set that was found on that beer jar. Good idea but no dice. What else do we know?"

"We haven't ever found any underwear."

"What?"

"I think he keeps the underwear. Like a souvenir. There's none here, and the Shupe girl didn't have any either.

"I think he knows the area really well. He knows where he can find his victims, and he knows where he can go where it'll be . . . private. So that means he's local, or at least he's been here for a while. Since there's no guarantee that the beer jar we found in Canyon belonged to the killer, how much good would it do to try fingerprinting doors and such here?"

"We can try it," Westlake said, doubtfully. "Everyone who's sitting here, we've got their fingerprints on file, on account of all of us being county employees. So other than the people who've gone scrounging through here, the kids that have played here, the original owner's fingerprints. . .

"The point being, what we find out from fingerprints may help us, but probably only at some future point."

"Has anybody seen any new faces in the neighborhood?" asked Judy.

"No. We asked around, the search volunteers asked around, nada," said the sheriff.

It was quiet for a moment.

"Drafty in here,” said a deputy.

"Shouldn't be," said Judy.

Pete and the sheriff's eyes met. They walked over to the stairs.

"After you," said Pete, with a sweeping gesture.

They went up the stairs and followed the draft of air to a south facing bedroom. Like the rest of the house, the room was neat. A quilt covered the queen sized bed. It was wrinkled, as though someone had slept on it recently. The room's two windows were open. The curtain on the east window was blowing in, along with considerable rain, drenching the carpet. The sheriff carefully closed that window. The other window, though open, was dry, its curtain blowing to the outside. Neither windowsill displayed any long term water damage.

"Nice view of the playground from here," Pete commented.

"This guy is slick," the sheriff said. "I bet you a dollar he came here the night before last, spent the day watching the playground, did the girl yesterday evening and left last night. No wonder nobody saw anyone strange around here. He only moves at night."

The two men searched the rest of the upstairs, but could find nothing that seemed out of place. Pete noticed urine in the commode.

"Doesn't smell, I guess it's fresh. Could be his. Think we'll find any fingerprints on the lid?"

"Maybe. We'll try that and the windows. Can you do anything with hair samples, if we find any?"

"Save them if you do. Other than determining the race of the person, though, they won’t help us much. We can’t run DNA profiles. If it's OK I'm going to clean the girl up some and take her home."

"That's fine. Bill can tell you where she lived. We'll do what we can with the fingerprints."

Pete went downstairs. While he quickly sutured the huge abdominal laceration, Judy gently washed Laura, using towels moistened with rainwater. Wrapping her in a blanket, Pete carried the limp body out to his car. Though the rain had stopped it was cold and windy.

"Thanks for letting me tag along," said Judy, as she closed the tailgate to the SUV. "If there's anything I can do, let me know."

"Thank you for your help."

They both stood quietly for a few seconds.

"Well, I've to got go to morning clinic," she said, moving toward her car.

"Yeah. Thanks again," Pete said. "Hey, you're a great dancer, you know it?"

Judy smiled wanly, started her engine, and drove away.

Since the massive deaths three years earlier, the institution of death had changed. People rarely died in health care institutions anymore because the sick and injured were usually cared for at home. Everyone alive had been scarred by the death of almost everyone they had ever known. It takes the mystery out of dying, Pete reflected as he drove the few blocks to the girl's house. The change in attitude was not subtle. Death had become an integral and inevitable part of life.

The new traditions usually involved a wake. The deceased was put in an open casket, which would rest on a sturdy table in the living room. No embalming was used, so the weather and time of year would generally dictate the length of time the body would be on display. In the summer, that would be less than two days. Neighbors would come by, bringing food and condolences. Services would have family and friends eulogizing the deceased; those remembrances seldom involved more than events from the past three years. Burials were usually at an established cemetery, though sometimes the family would opt for a backyard burial.

Pete pulled up slowly to Laura's house. Several groups of people stood in the front yard, watching him. As Pete got out of his car, a huge, bear-like man walked toward the vehicle. He looked to be six-five, maybe two hundred fifty pounds. A full beard obscured most of his face, and his massive arms were covered with tattoos. Pete had seen him before at area baseball games. A welder, he recalled.

"You're Dr. Pete," the man said softly, extending a hand. "I'm Frank Crenshaw. Laura lived with us."

"Frank, I sure am sorry for your trouble."

Crenshaw nodded, and together they went to the back of the car. Pete opened the tailgate and for a moment, they looked at the blanketed form.

"Same guy do this that killed that other girl?"

"Most likely," Pete answered.

Crenshaw nodded again.

"He needs to be dead."

There wasn't a thing Pete could say.

By the time Pete drove away from Crenshaw's house, it was almost ten a.m. Clinic hours were from eight to noon, so Pete was not surprised to find several patients waiting for him. Amy Randolf, his whenever-she-felt-like-it sixteen year old clinic volunteer, had taken vitals and done all the initial paperwork.

"Morning, Amy. Sorry to keep you folks waiting."

There were a few murmurs.

"Good morning, Dr. Pete,” said Amy. “You’ll find fresh tea in exam room one. Clint Myers has some obvious trauma. I think you should see him first."

Pete entered the exam room and greeted a man in his mid-twenties, very pale, sweating, holding his right arm across his abdomen. His t-shirt was a mixture of mud, grass stains and blood. There were abrasions on his right arm and the right side of his face.

"Mr. Myers?"

"That's me."

Pete walked over to him.

"Where's it hurt?"

"Shoulder."

"Any place else?"

"Nope. But that's enough," the young man said, trying to smile.

"Clint, we're going to have to ruin what's left of your shirt. Amy, use the scissors and cut over the top of both sleeves, then cut straight up the back. What did you do to yourself, sir?"

"I was on my bike. Got caught in the rain. Couldn't see where I was going and crashed into a curb. So there I am, trying to pick myself up and it commences to hail. Like to got beat to death. Lucky for me, most of the hail hit my head so there wasn't any damage done."

Pete chuckled appreciatively at the "hard-head" humor that seemed to be in vogue for most Panhandle men recently.

Amy slid the man's shirt away from his torso. Pete backed away from the patient a few feet, cocking his head a little to the side, like an artist viewing a painting.

"What happens when you let your arm down?"

"Makes my shoulder smart."

"OK. Pretty tender right here?" Pete asked, gently placing two fingers on a swollen lump between the injured man's neck and shoulder joint.

"Yes," Clint said, inhaling sharply.

"How about here, or here?" Pete squeezing the upper arm, pushing different areas of the neck and shoulder.

"No, sir. Just that one place."

"Any numbness, tingling anywhere?"

"No."

"All right. Clint, believe it or not, you're lucky. You have a broken collar bone. They usually heal up real good all by themselves. It'll take six weeks. You'll end up with a permanent bump at that swollen spot where the bone heals, but it shouldn't affect how your arm works. We can't put it in a cast or anything but we'll make a sling to help you feel a little more comfortable. You have any aspirin or ibuprofen or Tylenol, anything like that?"

"I think my wife has some Motrin for when she gets, uh," glancing over towards Amy, "to feeling bad."

"That'll work. Don’t take it on an empty stomach. As soon as you can, without a lot of pain, move your arm around like this," Pete said, demonstrating, "so it won't lock up on you. Over the next few days you might try soaking pads in warm water and putting them on your collar bone. Want your Tt-shirt back?"

Clint grinned as he looked at the ripped garment lying in a heap on the floor.

"I guess I'll let y'all keep that."

"Thank you, Mr. Myers," said Amy, picking it up and tossing it into a waste can. "We'll treasure it forever."

They fitted him with a Velcro strap shoulder brace, and he left.

"Why can't men say "menstrual period"?" Amy asked.

"Just consider it a gender defect. Who's next?"

"A three year old with an itchy butt. Betcha it's pin worms."