Helens-of-Troy (24 page)

The cruiser turned onto the highway and
Roy hit the accelerator. There were some linehaul trailers heading
south to the city, but not much other traffic. Within five minutes
he had reached the turnoff. He turned his high beams on and headed
slowly down the dirt road leading to the Wildman’s farm. The
country road was pitch black at this time of night.

As he pulled the cruiser into the long
driveway leading up to the house, he was met by two of Ralph’s
dogs, who barked noisily at his arrival.

“Yeah, now you make noise. Where were
you when the trouble started?” he thought to himself.

Roy slowly got out of the cruiser, and
not knowing what he was about to face, had his hand ready on the
butt of his pistol. He quickly surveyed his surroundings. No
voices. No screams. No cries for help. Just the damn
dogs.

Tara Wildman came running from around
the back of the house to meet him. Her sweater was covered in what
appeared to be vomit. He could smell her before she got three feet
in front of him. “Wolfie, Max...shut up,” she directed the dogs.
“Get back inside the house.”

The dogs stopped barking and wandered
off, content that their job was done.

“Been drinking tonight, Tara?” Roy
asked.

“No. I swear,” she said, gasping for
breath. She glanced down at her clothes. “I’m sorry. The puke. It
happened when I saw him.”

“
Saw who, Tara?” Roy asked.
He could see that the girl was extremely upset. Her knees were
trembling, and he knew it wasn’t just because she was
cold.

“That kid.” Tears ran down her cheeks,
and she used her sleeve to wipe them away, her gloves also having
traces of her stomach contents on them. “The one Ryan’s brother
hangs around with. “I think his name is Kevin.”

Roy knew who Tara meant. The two boys
had been together on Halloween when he had been called to the
LaRose house after Mr. Wagner died. “Okay Tara, I need you to take
a deep breath,” he told the shaking teenager. “Is there anyone else
here? Anyone with a weapon? A gun? Maybe a knife?”

“No,” she insisted. “I haven’t seen
anyone else.”

“Okay,” Roy said hesitantly, still
trying to get a sense of what had happened. “Walk with me. Talk to
me. Take me to what you saw.”

Tara moved slowly. Although she was
relieved the Chief had arrived, she wasn’t anxious to go back down
her driveway towards the shed. It was unavoidable, she realized,
but she would have preferred to let Roy go down there by
himself.

“I met Jacey downtown and we were
hanging around for a while at the Roxy,” she began. “It got late
and I needed a ride home, so she drove me back here. She dropped me
off at the end of the driveway because she didn’t want to run into
my dad. She says he scares her. Ralph had left the shed lights on,
so I went around to the back of the house to turn them off. That’s
when I saw the fridge turned over in the middle of the path between
the shed and the barn. It’s not supposed to be there.”

Roy looked down the path. There was
what appeared to be a fridge lying in the middle of the dirt
walkway, between the house and a small wooden structure.

“It’s the one my dad has in the shed.
He keeps his home-brew in it for when he’s fixing the tractor and
stuff.”

“I see the fridge.”

“I could see the coils on the back when
I got closer to it, and then I saw my dad lying under
it.”

“Is he dead Tara? Is that who you
meant?”

She looked at him like he was crazy.
“No, it’s Kevin who’s dead. I told you that. My dad’s arm is just
pinned under the fridge. I think it’s broken. He’s wearing dark
clothes, but you’ll see him when we get nearer. He’s pretty much
out of it.”

Roy could now see Ralph’s form on the
ground towards what would have been the back of the appliance. Tara
was probably right, he thought. Ralph was most likely out of it or
he would have been able to pull himself free, judging from the
angle of his body and its position to the top of the fridge, which
had partially landed on an old tree stump.

“I can hear him moan every once and a
while,” Tara continued. “Yesterday he was talking about moving the
fridge inside the root cellar so the animals wouldn’t try to open
it in the winter. The raccoons got into his beer one night last
winter and it made him really mad. So that’s what I thought had
happened. I thought he had tried to move the fridge all by himself
and it toppled over. I went around the other side of it to see if I
could push it off him. That’s when I saw…” She couldn’t finish her
sentence without gagging.

“Kevin Clark?”

Tara nodded, her body trembling. “I
grabbed the door handle to try to get my weight behind it so I
could push the fridge off my Dad, but it didn’t work because the
door wouldn’t close. I looked inside to see what was blocking it,
and...”

She let out a long sob before
continuing. “I saw him. I got so scared I let go of the door handle
and I think I hit the kid in the head. I’m so sorry.”

“Did you check if he was breathing?
Kevin, I mean.” Roy asked. He knew that if Ralph had been moaning,
he had been breathing. At least at that point in time.

“I live on a farm, Chief Cohen. We have
a lot of animals. I know dead when I see it.”

She would, Roy acknowledged. “Have you
called an ambulance?”

“No. I just called you. There wasn’t
much point.”

“For your dad, Tara.”

“Oh.”

Her father was pinned under a fridge
and she never called for medical aid? Roy shook his head. Things
were not right in the Wildman household.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She’s in Vegas with Liz Delaney and
Stacey Freeman. She’s not coming back until Tuesday.”

The fridge was now only a few feet away
from them and Roy could see Ralph’s breath visible in the cold
night air. The air puffs emitting from his wide-open mouth were
steady, and he was snoring.

“Ralph, this is Chief Cohen. Can you
hear me?”

Ralph moaned in response.

“Okay, don’t move. Stay flat on your
back.” The Chief lowered himself to Ralph’s level, pulling some
latex gloves from his pocket as he did so. He rapidly felt over
Ralph’s frame, but there did not seem to be any limbs in distress
aside from his right arm, the one partially pinned between the
fridge and the tree stump.

“Tara, I want you to stay here by your
dad,” the Chief said, removing the gloves, stuffing them in his
right pocket and reaching for his cell phone.

He quickly dialed 9-1-1.

“This is Chief Cohen. I need a couple
of ambulances to come out to the Wildman farm on county three. Hang
a left from the highway. It’s the last farm on the right, just
before you get to Stillman’s Creek. You’ll see my police cruiser in
the driveway. We’re out back, between the house and the barn. I’ve
got one male, in his 50’s, possible broken arm, and one male child,
status to be updated,” he looked at Tara, “presumed critical,
possibly deceased.”

He disconnected from emergency services
and started to walk to the front of the fridge.

“Oh God, don’t go around there,” Tara
pleaded.

“Tara, I need you to watch your Dad, or
turn around and watch for Officer Purdy. Don’t watch me,” the Chief
directed. He could see a little leg poking out from behind the
half-opened refrigerator door. He took a new pair of latex gloves
from his left pocket and put them on, pausing to take a deep breath
before opening the door further.

Roy knew then why Tara had thrown up.
She was right. Kevin was deader than a stillborn calf. His little
legs had been scrunched up into the area above the cold meat
compartment. The egg tray had put a dent in his temple. It might
have happened when Tara accidentally let go of the door, but maybe
not. It wouldn’t have mattered. Kevin was long past feeling any
pain. Cyanosis had set it, staining his little lips an unnatural
shade of blue. Roy took Kevin’s pulse only because protocol said he
had to.

“Dead.” Tara said. “I told
you.”

Roy shone his flashlight around the
ground. Frost had formed, and the only footprints Roy could
immediately see were Tara’s, the ones made by his own boots, and a
third set of tracks, most likely a man’s and even more likely,
Ralph’s.

“Did you touch anything inside the
fridge, Tara?” he asked.

“No,” Tara insisted. “I just wanted to
shut it because...because nobody should have to see what I
saw.”

The Chief turned towards Tara and
looked at her hands. “Were your mitts on the whole time you were
out here?”

She nodded.

So forensics shouldn’t find her prints
anywhere on the fridge, the Chief thought. “What time did you say
you left home today?” he asked.

“I didn’t say. But I left about
five.”

Smart-ass, the Chief thought. “Where
did you go? Did you go straight to the Topaz Cafe?”

“No.”

“Were you by yourself?”

“I told you. Jacey was with
me.”

“Actually, you said you met Jacey. Did
you meet anyone else?”

“Am I in trouble or
something?”

Somebody’s in trouble, Roy thought. He
just didn’t know who. “A lot went on in this town tonight, Tara.
I’m just trying to piece it all together.”

Tara’s feet began to shuffle on the
ground. Roy could tell she was trying to decide whether she wanted
to talk to him or not.

“You might as well spill it, Tara,” Roy
said, “because I already know who you were with earlier in the
evening. What happened? Did you and Ryan have a fight? Was it about
your dad?”

“I was only with Ryan for about fifteen
minutes,” she said. “He wanted to come out here, but—like I want to
spend my Saturday night at home.” She turned to look at Ralph,
preferring not to look at the Chief.

So that much of Ryan’s story was true,
Roy thought. The two teenagers had been together earlier in the
evening. “What did the two of you talk about?”

“What does that have to do with
anything?” she asked.

“Kevin Clark died tonight,” the Chief
said patiently. “And I’m trying to establish a time line. Did you
and Ryan talk about Brooke Quinlan? Is that why he came out here
earlier tonight?”

He waited for her to answer. She was
taking her sweet time about it, but damned if a sixteen-year-old
was going to get the better of him. It would take more than a
frosty night in November for that to happen.

“Maybe,” she finally offered. “Are we
done here?”

“Not by a long shot.”

Roy wondered whether she was scared or
just playing him. His instincts told him the latter was most
likely. She was as ballsy as her father was. “If I know Ralph, he
got on the phone and told half the town about what happened out
here earlier. You know Ryan’s in jail, don’t you?”

Tara shrugged. “The new girl, the one
Ryan calls Goth-Chic, she’s the one who told him where the body
was,” she said coyly.

“Elaborate.”

“Ryan told me that she told him to come
out to the old bridge.”

“Just like that? She told him to look
in the water and he’d find Brooke’s body?”

“Pretty much.”

“Really? Why is it I find that a little
hard to believe?”

“If you already know, why are you
asking?” she said flatly.

“Maybe I want to hear your version of
the story.”

“I don’t know what happened. Maybe Ryan
killed Kevin before he found Brooke. Maybe he stuffed him in the
fridge while he was out here.”

“You certainly seem to want to land
Ryan right in thick of things, Tara. Why is that? I’ve seen you two
together before. I have the impression you’re more than nodding
acquaintances.”

Tara paused. Again, the Chief could see
she was hesitating before answering. The delay suggested to him
that she was plotting an answer, not freely offering up
one.

“I can’t remember,” she said. “Maybe
I’ll remember more in the morning.”

“We’ll both be a little cold standing
out here until then, don’t you think?”

“I didn’t do anything. He’s the one in
jail.”

“If you’re as smart as you want me to
think you are, Tara, consider this. We’ll have to wait for the
pathologist’s report of course, but I’ve seen a few dead bodies
from time to time. I‘ve seen everything from what you might call a
‘fresh kill’ right on up to the maggot infested remains of torso’s
blown apart and left to rot in the Gulf. I’m pretty damn sure that
Kevin here died well within the time frame Ryan Lachey had his
wide-end planted within the confines my jail.”

“Oh.”

“So...”

“Okay,” she relented. “I thought Ryan
just wanted to come down here to fool around. So I blew him
off.”

Roy looked at her.

“No! I mean I told him to get lost. But
obviously he was more interested in what he’d find here than what
he wanted to do with me. Ryan told me Goth-Chic had a dream the
night Brooke Quinlan disappeared. He said her dream told her where
Brooke’s body could be found. Ryan thought it was spooky because
Goth-Chic described the bridge even though she had never been here
before. He wanted to check it out, but like I said, I didn’t want
to come back here, so I got mad at him and I left. Ryan thinks
maybe Goth Chic’s psychic or something. Personally, I think she’s
just sick. I don’t like her. I don’t like the way she looks at
Ryan. So that’s it. I ran into Jacey and we went to the movie and
then to the Topaz. We saw Goth-Chic at the movie, but we ignored
her. Can I change out of these pukey clothes now?”