Eyes of the Predator (46 page)

“Don’t feel too much like a big
deal,” he managed to whisper.

“Well, you are.” Cy’s grip on his
brothers hand tightened. “I’m proud of you. And something else, I wish I had
been…I wish I
was
more like you.”

The brothers sat hand in hand
until Clay drifted off to sleep again, and Cy could wipe the tears off of his
face.

*******

In another room, on another
floor, Lyn sat in a chair staring out into the hospital courtyard. Ruby Stinson
sat beside her daughter, their arms entwined. They spent much of the time like
that.

Lyn seemed to drift off to
another place, a place her mother could not go, and it made the burden of guilt
heavy for the older woman. She had sent her young daughter out into a world she
knew nothing about. It was an act of desperation, but in doing so, she had
almost lost her daughter. Still, she did not know what else she could have
done. Her father would have beaten her, probably to death.

She reached up, touched the
swollen side of her own face, and then withdrew her hand at the pain. As it
was, the old man had beaten her badly after regaining consciousness the night
Lyn left. So badly, that she had called the law on him, for the first time. Oh,
there had been plenty of other times she could have called, should have called,
she knew. But fearing for her daughter’s life and sending her away and then the
beating, it was too much, the final pain and degradation.

The old man was in the Pickham
County Jail on domestic violence charges where he would probably stay until
trial. Word around Judges Creek was that no one would be bailing the mean, son
of a bitch out of jail, so they were safe, for a while. It seemed that Carl
Stinson’s relationship with the world was no better than with his family.

Ruby wondered if it had always been
that way. There must have been some happy times early on. If so, the memories
had faded in the swirl of physical and mental abuse that had become her life.

The sheriff’s department had put
her in touch with a women’s advocacy group. Lyn’s ordeal had received a good
deal of coverage in the press, and the group was going to great lengths to
assist the mother and daughter. The case’s notoriety had put a spotlight on the
abuse of women and children. And while the group would have assisted in any
event, they were sparing no effort or expense to help the two. She had a hotel
room in Athens for as long as Lyn was recovering in the hospital. They were
helping with something else too. For the first time, Ruby was talking to
someone who could help her understand the patterns of domestic violence, and
her own self-worth so that the pattern in this case would be broken
permanently.

The counseling for the mother
would continue for months. For the daughter, it might be necessary for the rest
of her life. Lyn’s counselor had assured her mother that the emotional scars
her daughter bore would heal, slowly, but they could be healed.

The guilt for what had happened
to Lyn was overwhelming. She could have acted to stop the abuse years ago. She
should have, she knew it. Somehow, she couldn’t. She had been trapped. But now,
maybe the puzzle could be unraveled. Maybe, with the counseling, she would end
the cycle. She was coming to understand that what had happened to her daughter
was the result of a long chain of events. Break that chain, and you could
change your life. Ruby Stinson ached for not having broken the chain earlier
and because of her own guilt for what had happened to her daughter.

Wrapping her arm more tightly
around Lyn’s, she pulled the girl as close to her as she could. There was no
response, but the warmth of the contact with her daughter brought her some
small comfort.

Lyn’s eyes focused intently on
the tops of the swaying pine trees in the courtyard. They pulled her in, and
she felt herself leaving the hospital room again, even as her mother struggled
to hold her close to no avail. Lyn drifted to a faraway place where her mother
could not go.

*******

Gerald Parsons sat quietly on the
porch of his small house nestled among the trees at the base of one of the
foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The southern end of the Appalachian
Trail was only a few miles from that spot. From there you could hike all the
way to Maine if you had a mind to, and good, strong set of legs. He and Grover
had hiked parts of it all through north Georgia when Grover was still a boy.

“Good night, Gerald.” Sheriff
Bill Siler had been coming by to visit Grover’s father as much as possible
since the young deputy’s murder. They rarely spoke. There wasn’t anything to
say. Mostly, Siler just sat on the porch with him hoping in some way that his
company might dull the knifing pain in the father’s heart. It seemed to have no
effect, but he would not abandon the man whose boy did not abandon his duty.

Parsons pulled his empty gaze
away from the darkness that surrounded the small house and nodded his good
night back to the sheriff. An instant later, he was lost again in the darkness.
There was no other world for him, only the dark loss of the boy that had been
his life

Things moved in the dark, in the
trees. Mostly harmless, some not. Gerald Parsons ignored them all and listened,
straining to hear. But the husky, happy voice of his son was gone. So many
things were gone.

*******

 Some small creature moved
in the high grass in the ditch alongside the dirt road. Tom Ridley took no
notice. He stood quietly at the edge of his property looking down the dirt
road. The place where he had found the young girl’s body was visible. The grass
and weeds had been trampled down by the deputies and GBI people. Remnants of
yellow crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze. It was still dark, but in the
dim, misty light of the oncoming day, he could just make out the silhouette of
a vehicle.

Behind him in the little frame
house, he could hear his wife busying herself with breakfast. It was a
comforting sound. One he took pleasure in most mornings as he stood for a few
minutes in the yard looking at the sky, watching the stars fade. After a few
minutes, he would smell coffee and sometimes bacon frying. But this morning, he
paid no attention to the homey sounds and smells. Turning, he walked briskly
into the house.

“Breakfast be ready in a few
minutes, Tom,” Margaret said from the kitchen.

Reaching up over the front door,
he took the shotgun from the two pegs that served as a gun rack and then
reached into a box on a shelf under the pegs, pulling out four .00 buckshot
shells.

“Tom?” Margaret said from the
doorway. “What are you doing?”

Without looking he said,
“Nothing. Just gonna go check something.”

“Tom! What is it? You stop right
there and tell me what’s going on.”

He turned and looked at her.
“Nothing…probably nothing. Looks like a car or truck down the road. Down there
where…”

Margaret Ridley nodded her head.
“All right then. Be careful.”

Tom nodded, turned, and walked
out the door. As he crossed the little dirt yard, he heard the screen door open
behind him. He knew that Margaret would be watching from the driveway.

Holding the shotgun in both
hands, the barrel pointing to the side but at the ready, he walked quickly and
quietly down the dirt road. He made no sound in the dirt.

As he got within fifty feet of
the vehicle, the door opened and the interior light came on. Tom relaxed and
let the barrel of the shotgun lower, resting it under one arm.

George Mackey stepped out of the
brown sheriff’s department pickup.

“Morning, Tom.”

“Morning, George.” Ridley came
closer until they could see each other clearly in the dim light from the truck
interior.

 “You’re not going to shoot
me with that are you?”

“Naw, George, not gonna shoot
you. Didn’t know who it was down here. Just checking.”

“Yea. I know. Me too.”

The two men stood there, looking
into the weeds and grass on the side of the road. The yellow crime scene tape
was still there, wrapped around trees and brush, marking off the area where the
girl’s body had been found. Tom reached into his shirt pocket, pulled a
cigarette from a beat up pack, and lit up. He looked at George and held the
pack out. George just shook his head. The two men leaned against the sheriff’s truck
not saying anything for a few minutes.

Finally, Tom broke the silence.

“I thought it was you.”

“What?”

“That morning. I was standing in
the yard and heard the car tires moving. I thought it was you. Figured you’d
been napping.”

“I know. You told me. I wish to
God it had been me, Tom.”

“Yea, me too. I reckon that fella
would have had a surprise when he pulled down my road if you’d been there.”

“Yea, Tom. I reckon…who
knows…maybe I’d have had the surprise.”

“Oh, you’d have got him, George.
You’re a good deputy.”

George felt the guilt well up
inside him. He looked over at Tom.

“Not that good, Tom. Not very
good at all.”

Tom let the words fade away for a
moment before speaking. “George, you didn’t kill that girl. She was already
dead.” They were almost the same words George had spoken to him the day Tom
found the girl’s body.

George looked down at the dust
around his feet. “You know, I
was
napping that night. Just not on your
road, Tom.”

Tom said nothing. Taking a long
drag on his cigarette, the glow of the butt cast an orange hue over his face.

George went on, “I saw the car go
by…I didn’t stop it. I didn’t do anything. Just went back to napping. I could
have, but I didn’t.” His words faded off.

Tom thought this over,
considering what George had said and weighing what it meant. Then he spoke.

“No, George. You’re a good
deputy. Everyone does things they wish they didn’t do. That don’t make them
bad. That’s just mistakes. The fella that did what he did to that little girl
was just bad. Bad as I’ve ever seen. But he did it, not you. Maybe you could
have caught him that night if you weren’t napping. That would have been a good
thing. Maybe you wouldn’t have caught him. Maybe he would have killed you too.
That’s a lot of maybe’s. No way to know. But you did get him, George. Remember
that. You got him.”

George made no response, and the
silence grew up around them again.

After a few more minutes, Tom
said, “Well, I gotta go get to work. I’ll be seeing you, George.”

“Yeah,” George replied, as Tom
turned and walked back up the dirt road, shotgun under his arm. The sky was
slowly changing from deep black to charcoal gray. The day was coming on now,
and George could make out the form of a woman up the road by the Ridley’s
drive. It was Margaret, watching and waiting for Tom to return.

George knew that Tom would be
shoveling chicken shit out of the barns most of the day. Even so, life for the
Ridleys in the little frame house was good enough. Maybe not special. It didn’t
have to be anything special. Just life was good enough. He wasn’t sure that it
would ever be good enough for him again.

Deputy George Mackey’s head
turned at the sound of a breeze rustling hauntingly through the weeds on the
side of the road where the girl’s body had lain. Climbing into the pickup, he
drove slowly down Ridley Road. His eyes avoided the rearview mirror.

End

Coming in the spring of 2013

Term Limits

The
Hunters Series

Volume 2

A series of killings, but not a
serial murderer, link a Superior Court judge, a State Senator, a small town
reporter and blogger, and a Savannah businessman. They have two things in
common. All were murdered or died under suspicious circumstances and they are
all on a list. Why were they on the list? Whose list is it? Who else is on the
list? These are the questions that must be answered.

GBI Agents Price and Shaklee team
up again with Deputy George Mackey to find the answers to those questions. They
know the clock is running and that it is only a matter of time before someone
else on the list meets the fate of the others and there is a fifth murder to
solve. Andrew Barnes, a fedora wearing homicide detective from Atlanta joins
the team of hunters, bringing his own insight from working the tough streets of
Atlanta. The hunt begins.

Preview the first chapter of

Term Limits

A New
Novel by

Glenn Trust

On the following pages

The pump whirred to a stop, the
digital LED display showing $53.79. The slightly balding, older man gave a
“humph” in disgust and replaced the gasoline nozzle. He stood patiently while
the little printer clicked and spit out the receipt, then squinted at the
printed amount and gallons indicated and compared them to the numbers displayed
on the pump. Another disgusted shake of his head and he moved to the door of
the black BMW.

It was not a common car, but in
this affluent Atlanta neighborhood near the Buckhead district, uncommon cars,
and homes and jewelry and the other trappings of the upwardly mobile and
successful were more common than usual. Those who could, mostly white at first
and then the black, had escaped to the surrounding towns and cities that made
up the large metropolitan Atlanta region. They had been doing so for forty
years. But neighborhoods still existed in the city. They were enclaves really;
islands of prosperity floating in the midst of tawdry businesses, downtown
high-rise offices and the desperate poverty of those forced to remain behind in
the housing projects and low rent districts.