Read The Girl in the Woods Online
Authors: David Jack Bell
The Girl in the Woods (25 page)
Although when he really thought about it, sitting down in the woods or while sitting on the throne taking a dump, he wasn't so sure the girl was really settling in. Sometimes, when he looked at her and he thought she didn't know he was looking, he wondered if maybe she wasn't planning something like another escape. Or maybe even something more. At times like those, Roger rubbed the spot above his eye where she had speared him with the toilet plunger. The cut had healed, but it left behind a narrow strip of a scar. It was pink and soft and still a little tender to the touch. Touching it reminded him of what the girl was capable of.
So he kept a close eye on her at all times, and he was doing so on the morning the cop arrived at the front door.
No one had knocked on the door of the house since his parents died. No one ever came there. In fact, Roger couldn't remember having company since his dad's funeral, and that had been over twenty-five years ago. They just lived too far out in the middle of nowhere, and Roger didn't have any friends or even acquaintances. So for someone to show up and knock on their door out of the blue was an occurrence along the lines of having a UFO land in the back yard. It just didn't happen.
When the knocking, a rat-a-tat-tat like gunshots firing, sounded against the front door, Roger couldn't process exactly what the sound was. He thought it might have been someone throwing rocks against the front of the house or hail falling from the sky and pocking against the roof. He sat up.
The girl lay next to him, tied to the bed. He checked the clock on the bedside table. 8:38 a.m. He and the girl liked to sleep late, sometimes almost until noon. The girl hadn't moved. She breathed steadily, her eyes closed, and Roger thought maybe he had dreamed the noise. He let his head fall back against his pillow and closed his eyes when the knocking came again, harder and faster.
He sat up straight. He wasn't dreaming. Someone was at the house.
The girl stirred, making sniffling sounds like she was about to wake up. Roger clamped his hand over her mouth.
"Shhhhhh," he said.
The girl only moaned louder.
"Someone's at the door," he said.
"Mmmmmph," she said.
"Shhhhhhh."
He kept a roll of duct tape by the side of the bed, and with his free hand, he grabbed it. He used his index finger to pick the end of the tape loose, and leaning against the girl for leverage while still keeping her mouth covered, he managed to pull a strip of tape free from the roll. He brought it to his mouth and used his teeth to work on cutting it loose, and after a few long moments of trying, managed to do so.
Whoever was at the door knocked again.
Maybe it's just a salesperson, Roger thought. Or someone whose car broke down on the highway. Maybe it's a Jehovah's Witness or a kid selling candy bars and if we pretend like we're not home, they'll just go away. But Roger began to suspect that was wishful thinking. Pie in the sky, as his mom used to say. No Jehovah's Witness or kid selling candy had ever come to his door, and their house was too far from the highway for someone with a breakdown to show up there. If someone knocked on his door, they meant to be knocking on that door. It wasn't an accident.
Moving quickly, Roger stuck the strip of tape across the girl's mouth. She tried to turn her head away, and she was almost fast enough, but Roger managed to slap the tape down before she turned all the way, and so it landed at a crooked angle across her mouth. But it did the job. The girl couldn't talk. She couldn't yell or scream. She made little grunting noises behind the tape, so Roger held a warning finger up in front of her face.
"Be quiet," he said, his voice low. "Just stay quiet."
The girl stopped making noise, but her wide eyes showed a kind of excitement that Roger hadn't seen in them before. She thought she was being saved by whoever was knocking. She thought this was her chance to get out. She'd tell them everything, whoever it was, and get Roger in all sorts of trouble.
"Just stay quiet," he said again.
Roger moved slowly to the bedroom window, the one that looked down over the front yard. He slipped his thick fingers into the opening in the curtains and parted it just an inch or so. He saw the truck first. A nice black pickup, one of those Ford F-150s, and it shone in the morning sun like a new toy. Then Roger saw the man. He stepped away from the front porch and looked up, causing Roger to release the curtain and jump back into the room. But then the man moved across the yard and started looking in the big front window, allowing Roger to get a better look at him. He was tall with a shaved head, and he moved with his shoulders back like a military guy or a cop. He wore a leather jacket over a black t-shirt, and even from that far away Roger could tell the man was muscular and strong.
But he wasn't driving a cop car. Far from it. Roger knew that plain-clothes cops drove oversized, dark-colored sedans and wore suits and ties. None of them drove pick-ups or wore leather jackets. So maybe he wasn't a cop after all. Maybe he was just a guy, a tough-looking, well-built guy. So then why was he standing in Roger's yard, examining the house like he wanted to buy it?
Roger again hoped he would just go away, but instead the man walked over to the front door and knocked again, just as loud, just as insistently. Roger didn't know what to do, but he had to do something because the man wasn't going to go away. He took a deep breath and decided to answer the door. But he stopped before the left the bedroom.
"Remember," he said to the girl. "Silence. Absolute silence."
The girl didn't do anything. She didn't even grunt.
Roger went down the stairs and approached the front door. He stopped near the front window and peeked out again. The man wasn't on the front stoop anymore, but rather was moving around the side of the house toward the back yard, back where the path to the clearing began. He couldn't go back there, Roger thought. He might walk into the woods and find the place no one was supposed to know about.
Roger undid the lock, the tumbler squeaking and resisting after years of disuse, and when he finally got it undone, he pulled the door open and stepped outside.
"Hello," he said. "Hello?"
The sun was bright, the day cool. Roger squinted against the brightness and realized he had come outside barefoot, wearing only pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt. He thought maybe the man hadn't heard him, but then he reappeared from the side of the house, a pleasant and somewhat puzzled look on his face.
"Oh, hello," the man said.
"Hello," Roger said again. He couldn't think of anything else to say.
"Nice house. How long have you lived here?"
"All my life," Roger said. "Are you looking to buy it? It's not for sale."
The man laughed. "No, I don't want to buy it. I just wanted to know if you were around a few weeks ago. Were you?"
Roger looked back at the house. "I guess."
"Did you hear that a girl was kidnapped out on County Road 600?"
Roger nodded. "I read about it in the paper."
"Did you see or hear anything around that time? Notice anything unusual?"
Roger's throat felt dry and scratchy, like he had swallowed dust. "Are you a cop or something?"
The guy smiled a little. "Yes, I am."
"But you're not in uniform," Roger said. "And you don't have a car."
"Would you like to see my badge?" the man said.
Roger nodded. "Yes."
The man reached into an inside pocket of his jacket. When he did, Roger saw a small pistol clipped to his belt. He brought the badge out in a folded leather case. He held the case open so that Roger could see the badge.
"Officer Jason McMichael with the New Cambridge Police Department."
Roger didn't look at the badge closely. It looked bright and shiny. He believed the guy really was a cop. "Okay," he said.
"So, seen anything unusual out here?"
"I don't think so."
"You must be cold," the cop said. "Do you want to talk inside your house?"
"I'm not cold."
"You sure? We can just step inside."
"No. Not without a warrant."
The man looked surprised. He raised his eyebrows, and Roger wished he hadn't said what he had said. But he hadn't been able to stop himself. He didn't want the man in the house, and that's what they said on TV when cops wanted to come into the house and they weren't welcome.
"Okay," the man said. "But you're not in any trouble. I just thought you might have been more comfortable."
"I'm fine."
The man nodded. He leaned back, tilting his head so he could examine the windows upstairs.
"You live here alone?"
"Yes."
"Always?"
"Since my parents died."
The man turned toward the side of the house, the area he was walking toward when Roger came out and called him.
"How far back does your land go?"
"Far," Roger said. "Way back there's some farmland, and maybe some new houses after that. But it's all a long way back. I don't really go back there."
The cop stared into the distance at the trees for a moment. He appeared to be thinking of something, but Roger had no idea what. Maybe he was wondering if Roger was lying or maybe he wondered what was out there in the woods, back beyond the trees where the last girl was buried and the bones of the other girls lay scattered. Roger didn't know.
The man shrugged. "Okay," he said. He reached into his inside pocket again, the same place where he kept his badge, and brought out a business card. "If you see or hear anything unusual around here, give me a call. There's a chance we'll be back to search this area anyway."
Roger took the crisp, white card. "Sure, I'll keep my eyes open."
The man nodded. And Roger knew he was doing the same thing that so many others did. He was deciding that Roger was different. Strange.
Special.
But for once Roger didn't mind as long as it got the man the hell out of the yard.
Special.
But for once Roger didn't mind as long as it got the man the hell out of the yard.
"Okay. Have a good day."
The cop started back to his truck, and Roger felt a profound sense of relief, as though someone had removed a heavy burden from his shoulders. But just as the cop placed his hand on the truck door handle, something shattered above Roger's head. It sounded like breaking glass, and indeed a shower of glass fragments came down from the top of the house and fell on top of Roger and around his feet. Both he and the cop looked up.
"What the hell was that?" the cop said.
"I don't know."
"I thought you lived alone."
"I do."
And that fast, the cop was past him and into the house, leaving Roger behind in his bare feet and pajamas like he didn't even matter.
* * *
Roger froze for just a moment. Among the glass shards that shone in the yard like diamonds in the morning sun, he stood still while the cop—the cop!—ran past him and into the house, and Roger could imagine him going up the stairs and finding the girl in the bedroom.
Roger dropped the business card and started to move. He followed the cop, lumbering up the stairs as fast as he could go, and when he entered the bedroom he saw the cop standing over the girl on the far side of the bed, his gun drawn, and the girl whimpering and squirming halfway on the bed and halfway off. Her feet were bleeding, and the window was smashed. Somehow she had managed to work her legs free and swing them at the window, connecting with enough force to break the glass and alert the cop.
"Get down! Get on the floor! Now! Down!"
It took Roger a moment to realize that the cop meant him, that he was yelling at him to get down and get on the floor because the cop saw the girl and assumed all the things that he feared people would assume.
"Get down! Get down!"
Roger eased down, his hands raised in the air. It wasn't a simple matter for him to flatten himself against the floor, so he moved slow, and as he did, he never took his eyes off the barrel of the gun that the cop kept pointed at him, an angry-looking little black hole designed to bring about his death.
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