Rosalind (19 page)

Rosalind woke up, glad that she was no longer puking every morning. She felt heavy and had trouble breathing. Susan had told her that when she was ready to deliver, the baby would drop. It was crowding her lungs right now, so she figured she still had some time until that happened, even though the last visit to Dr. McClelland revealed to her that "Any day now!" was the prognosis.

She opened the drawer of her nightstand and pulled out the page with the woman in the yellow dress. She unfolded it and smiled, looking at her name and how badly scrawled it was. Her handwriting had improved over the
summer, and she hardly believed that this was her first attempt. She thought about Nancy. Nancy would never get to see her Maggie. And Rosalind would never again get to see Nancy. It was horrible to think about. She pushed the memory away and got dressed.

Downstairs, Susan was making breakfast. John had already left for work
.

There was a knock on the door, so Rosalind got up and answered it. It was Arvin Sparks.

"Lady of the house around?" he asked Rosalind.

"Come in," she replied. Rosalind disappeared into the kitchen.

Susan came out of the kitchen and said, "Oh!" He was here for the paperwork that John had finally signed, so Susan dried her hands on a towel and went into John's den to fetch them from his desk. They were signed and neatly stacked, so she took them to Arvin, who stood near the door.

"Here they are," she said, handing him the papers.

He looked them over, one by one, and then put them into his briefcase. "That'll do," he said. He looked at Rosalind. "You've made a wise decision, young lady. The Byrd's will be fine parents."

"But, Susan said I will still be her mommy," said Rosalind. Susan's cringed.

"How old are you, dear?"

"Thirteen," she said.

"Excuse me?"

Susan raced out of the den. "Rosalind, no honey we talked about this." Rosalind hung her head.

"Can I see those papers please, Mrs. Byrd? Susan sighed and handed him the papers. He flipped through the pages until he came to Rosalind's signature. He muttered a few mhm's and a uh-huh's and then looked at Susan. "Easily fixable, although I wish you would have told me the truth in the beginning."

"I'm sorry. Her age and her…situation…have been kind of a running secret. On the orders of the sheriff," she added.

"I understand," Arvin said. "All we need is a parental signature and this goes away."

"What? No. I mean
—" She pulled Arvin Sparks closer to the door and away from Rosalind. "Her parents are dead."

"
Mrs. Byrd, I can't in good faith put my name on something I know is illegal. However, if we forget the paperwork and, I dunno, you happen to give birth unexpectedly, it would be the easiest way around the situation."

"What do you mean?" Susan said.

"It happens all the time. Women give birth when they never knew they were pregnant to begin with. You know what the funny thing about it is?"

"What?"

"The stupid women," Arvin began, "just thought they were fat. It's quite funny when you think about it. And the husbands? At first most of them cry infidelity from the shock of it all. I've seen a few cases like that back in New York."

"I didn't know a woman could carry to term and not know about it."

"Most can't, but back to Rosalind."

Susan looked at Rosalind when he said her name and she was gone. She looked back at the lawyer. "So you expect me to say that I was pregnant all this time
and I didn't know about it?"

"I don't expect you to say anything. I've said what I needed to protect myself.
"

"I can't anyway. She's seen doctor's. And I have a history of infertility."

He shrugged. "Not sure what to tell you. You look like a resourceful woman. I'm sure you'll figure something out. But in the meantime, I'm destroying these papers. And Mrs. Byrd?"

"Yes?"

"Don't lie to your lawyer. That's our job." He grinned and it revealed a silver capped incisor on the right side of his mouth.

Arvin
Sparks put his hat on and left.

Idiot
, Susan thought. But it didn't matter. She went back to the kitchen and let Rosalind sulk in her room.
 

Sheriff Hanes sat at his desk, looking out the window at the Regional Tire building. John had driven the car to work today.

Smart move
, he thought. But he still needed to look at the pack of cigarettes, or more importantly, count the ones remaining.

The phone rang and he answered it.

"Joe? Pete here," the caller said.

"Pete, how goes it? Anything new?"

"That's why I'm calling. We combed the area outside the house Jessica Peterson was last seen. It was the darkest area on the route back to her house, so we figured that is most likely the place she was abducted. We did find some cigarette butts and some tire tracks, but there weren't no identifying tread marks."

"How is that possible?" Hanes asked.

"Bald tires, maybe? So, how's about that chat?"

"Yeah, s
ure. But I need to check something out here first. How does tomorrow around noon sound?"

"That sounds fine, Joe. I'll
be in the area so I'll stop by. If you need any help with this, it sounds like we might have the same guy and I would be more than happy to assist."

"We'll talk about it tomorrow. I almost forgot, how many butts did you find?"

"Five," replied Wilkes.

"That's fourteen total," said Hanes.

"So what're you thinking? Put out an APB on a pack with only six sticks in it?" Wilkes laughed, but it was a nervous laugh. Sheriff Hanes got the humor and returned a weak chuckle. "I'll see you tomorrow," said Wilkes.

Sheriff Hanes looked out the window. It was almost 5 P.M. and John would be going home soon. He still hated to think that this was his only lead, but he had to follow it. He waited until John closed
Regional Tire and drove home. He needed a search warrant, so he started filling out paperwork. When he got to the pursuant, he hesitated and then inked John Byrd's name in the box.

A shiver
grabbed him.

He was really doing this.

But first (and it wasn't proper procedure) he would take a trip out to the Byrd farm that night. He would look for himself and do his best to rule the man out. It was hard enough working from circumstantial evidence, but even harder if that evidence was attached to someone as prominent in the community as John Byrd. He needed to be careful, but the way he saw it, there were two things he was looking for: six cigarettes and bald tires.

Bald tires
, he thought. If it was in fact John's truck that made those tracks, the irony of bald tires did not escape him.

When the sun
disappeared under the horizon, Sheriff Hanes left his office and locked the door behind him. He drove his cruiser to his house and switched it with his Plymouth Belvedere. If this was going to be unofficial, he wouldn't drag the cruiser into it.

Fourteen
, he thought.
Six
.

He revved the engine. He hadn't driven it
for over six months, but it started and purred like a kitten. He was thankful for that. He might be able to do this unnoticed. He pulled the Belvedere out of his driveway, and headed to the Byrd farm.

When he got to the T that intersected Main Street, he killed the lights and then pulled off the side of the road. It was a mile to the Byrd house, but he didn't mind the walk. It was muggy, but all the same, he needed the exercise. In a small town like Whispering Pines, sheriffing was, for the most part, a hands-off, sit-down affair.
He cursed his gut and started walking.

The stars were out but the moon was hidden, which made the stars that much brighter and more plentiful. He could see Orion and the Little Dipper off to the
West and Perseus off to the South. As a boy, his father had had a book on astronomy and he learned all of the constellations that he could, but over the years, those were the three he remembered best. He didn't have any need or desire to relearn things once forgotten, and really had no need for the three left in his memory, but they were burned into his mind like the stars were the sky.

He reached the farm about
twenty minutes later, sweating and breathing like he had just run a marathon. He looked for the truck but didn't see it. The car was in the driveway. Behind the driveway, however, was the barn that he had seen so many times before, and it was the only place big enough to store something the size of a truck. He pleaded with himself not to find what he suspected he would find, but pushed himself to eliminate this one lead. If he could, he told himself, he would close the case and retire with that one blemish—the one case he couldn't solve. And that would have been okay, if it had only been a break-in. But it wasn't just a break-in. An innocent girl had been violated. And as he said that word to himself, he knew that it wasn't remotely adequate enough to describe what had been done to Rosalind. She had everything stolen from her. Her youth; her innocence. But remarkably, she had kept her kind spirit and, whether it was innocence or just plain simplemindedness, he didn't care. She was undefeated because she was ignorant of the prospect that she could lose. But he sighed when he thought about her. He thought that if it had been his daughter, he would have gone sleepless until he found the bastard and killed him. Had he done enough for Rosalind? Had he really pursued this guy as if Rosalind was his own? The answer of course was no. He hated himself for that, but he wasn't done yet. And if what he suspected was in the barn turned out to be there, the damage to his psyche, his sense of being a father, would be incalculable. Susan would be destroyed. Rosalind, he wasn't sure. It would destroy the community. But there was Rosalind. She didn't ask for anything that had happened to her. No one in life ever did, really. But most people have in them a sense of self-preservation. He thought about that for a moment and realized that maybe she did. Her ability to deal with and even survive what had happened to her just might be one of the highest forms of it.

But she didn't asked for any of it, and she didn't deserve it.
She didn't ask to be raped by her father, and then impregnated by another man at the age of thirteen. But was her justice worth the reputation of an entire community? Without hesitation, he said yes.

He ducked behind
the Byrd's car. The lights to the living room were on and Susan was sitting at the table, reading a book. The lights were also on in Rosalind's bedroom, which was good. He didn't see John, and that made him nervous. His study was off the living room, and would have taken him going around to the backside of the house to see if that light was on, but he was already close to the barn. He slinked past the car and to the gate of the fence. He carefully and quietly lifted the metal latch of the gate and crouched into the barnyard. Wanting an easy escape, he set the gate latch to where it was touching its cubby, but not latched in. Once inside the yard, he went over to the barn door, took a deep breath, and slowly opened it.

It was pitch black inside
of the barn. The sweet smell of rotten hay and oil permeated the air and sank into his lungs. He had been in many barns that smelled like this, so it was not an unwelcome nor surprising thing. He reached for the silver and red Daimon flashlight in his back pocket, and flipped it on, aiming it at the biggest area where a truck would sit, but when the light came on, he saw no truck.

Had he gotten rid of it?
Had John gotten spooked when he asked him about the cigarettes? And where was John? Was he out right now, raping, or worse killing, another thirteen-year-old?

He shook his head
. There was no evidence to suggest he was responsible for either Rosalind's situation or Jessica Peterson's disappearance. He was not here to make an accusation. He was here to rule him out as quietly as possible. He drug the beam across the floor of the barn to look for tracks, but the dirt here was completely dry and mixed with ground up hay from years past. He did spot a patch of oil in the middle, so the sheriff knew that this is where he kept the truck. He flipped the flashlight off and went back to the door. The sound of tires crackling down the driveway started getting closer. Had he seen the flashlight?

The sheriff raced around the barn, clumsily looking for anything to hide behind. If it was John, he'd be pulling the truck back into the barn.

When he'd found what he thought was adequate cover, he hunkered down, making sure once again that his flashlight was off. It was.

The sound of the barnyard gate creaked open and the shadow of a figure appeared under the doorway to the barn and into the light that was coming from the house. The big door swung open and the black figure stood there for a minute, looking in. Hanes held his breath and watched it.

The figure, which he was sure was John, took a drag from a cigarette and toss it on the ground, stepping on it and squishing it into the ground. He turned around and then headed back to his truck and slowly backed it into the garage. The sheriff let out a breath and started to take air in normally. A waft of exhaust poured over the sheriff's face and burned his eyes. He coughed a little right as the engine cut off. John stepped out of the vehicle and looked in his general direction. He closed the door and stood there. After a few moments, he turned toward the house and exited the barn, closing the big door behind him. The sheriff let out a big sigh and then wiped his eyes.