Rosalind (22 page)

He looked out the window and down the street and saw his car parked outside the station. Susan was already at work. How was he going to explain the suit and the truck?
He could say that the truck broke down on the way to the junkyard and that his suit was ruined. Yes. That sounded good. And she wouldn't even question it. She never questioned anything he did. She was a good wife. She knew her place.

A few minutes after John had spotted their car in front of the police station, Susan and Rosalind got in the car and left. She came to their road and turned down the road to the Byrd farm and slammed on the brakes when she came to the Belvedere. Susan hopped out and ran around to the driver's side door of the Plymouth. She put her hands around her eyes as she pressed her head to the window. She slowly stood up, her face a horror of recognition. It wasn't common practice to memorize every facet of a person's vehicle, but she knew this one belonged to Sheriff Hanes. And she wondered why he had parked so far away.

She had never been inside of the sheriff's car, but she knew that it was his. The fact was that no one else in town had a Plymouth Belvedere. It could have been a random traveler who had broken down, but with the warrant she found on the sheriff's desk and the proximity of what appeared to be his car to her home, she knew it was his. But where was he?

She walked around to the driver's side of her car and got back in.

"What's wrong?" asked Rosalind.

"I don't know. Let's get home," Susan said. She didn't know what was wrong, but she knew that something wasn't right. The sheriff was filing an application for a warrant for her husband, she found the sheriff's personal car a mile from her house, and John—

Blood, she thought. John had blood on him when he came in last night. What did that have to do with anything? Why was she thinking about his bloody hand? He was working on the truck, and wasn't much of a mechanic to her knowledge. She wanted to pound her fists on the steering wheel, but she
didn't. What would it accomplish? This was all circumstantial. And none of it added up. She wasn't a police officer and she knew that she had no training to put together the pieces she had found so far.

Susan closed her eyes and rubbed her temples then drove home.

Rosalind struggled against the shape of her belly to get the car door open. Susan didn't go inside right away. She walked to the barn. She didn't know what she was hoping to find, but she pushed the barn door open and looked inside at the empty space where the truck usually sat. Everything around the perimeter of the bay looked in order (at least the way she remembered it looking the last time she was in here, which was three years ago). She looked at the ground at her feet and saw a large, black oil spot with a few drops that looked fresh. She stepped over it and walked to the middle of the room. She looked down to her right and saw that there was another spot, but while it was dark like the oil spot, it did not have the shiny, black hue to it. She bent down and put her finger in it, but only came up with an light red colored dirt.

This must be where John cut himself,
she thought.

But she looked again
at the shape and size of it. John had sliced his hand. She wondered if someone could even stand after losing this amount of blood. When she stood up and compared the two dark spots on the ground, the reddish one was twice the size of the oil spot.

She brushed the dirt from her hands onto her skirt and looked at her watch.

11:06.

Sheriff Wilkes would be returning to the office at noon to meet with Sheriff Hanes. What would she tell him if the sheriff wasn't at his home? In a bigger city, she thought, it would be easy to say that he was running errands, checking up on some lead somewhere, getting his oil c
hanged. But in a small town, none of those things would hold up. Running an errand in Whispering Pines meant walking a block to pay a utility bill or return a library book. Checking up on a lead meant walking down to the barbershop and asking around. And getting his oil changed meant doing it himself or taking to the Chuck's Garage near the interstate. If Sheriff Wilkes meant to talk to him, he could easily follow up on any excuse Susan could give him.

11:10.

She threw her arm to her side and stormed back to the house.

As soon as she stepped inside, the phone rang.

"Rosalind, can you get that?" Susan said.

"Okay."

Rosalind answered the phone. She said hello, but the man on the other end was talking to someone else. She waited. A voice in the background started laughing and so did the man on the other end. It was muffled at first, but when the line became clearer, she heard the man on the other end say, "I'll kill you, now get back to work." and then he laughed.

Kill
,
she thought. She had heard the word before. Her father had threatened her mother with it many times, but it had became a household word that lost its bite after a while. She held the phone a few inches from her head and stared at it. Her hands began to tremble. It wasn't the word that frightened her at all. It was the voice. She recognized the inflection in the voice.

Nancy, she thought.

Why was she thinking about Nancy? Nancy had never said the word before that she could recall.

The voice on the other end of the phone spoke again, saying, "Hello?" It startled Rosalind and she dropped the receiver on the ground. Susan, hearing the noise, came out of the kitchen.

"What the hell, Rosalind?" she said. She stomped her way over the phone, picked it up.

"Hello?" she said.

"Honey, is everything okay over there?" John said.

"Yes, Rosalind can't seem to hold a phone anymore. And she looks like she's just seen a ghost." Susan went to grab her purse to pull out the warrant.

"I took the truck to the junkyard this morning before you woke up, but it broke down on the way. Can you bring me one of my gray suits?"

"Uh, sure, I guess. Just put your other suit in a bag and I'll take it to the dry cleaners. I don't know how bad it is but the
n Gene's pretty good at getting out just about anything," she said.

"
Already squared away, sweetheart," he replied.

"Peaches," she said absently. She unfolded the warrant and was about to speak when John spoke again.

"I'm sorry, I'm needed in the warehouse. If you could just drop it off here within the hour that'd be great," he said, and then hung up.

Susan slowly put the phone down. She had had weird days in the past, but nothing like this one was turning out to be. She looked at the her watch.

11:48.

Rosalind was sitting on the couch, staring at nothing in particular
.

Susan came down the stairs, holding the gray suit John had requested. She draped it over a chair and went into the living room.

"Rosalind?" she said. She didn't reply, only stared at the television set that wasn't on. "What happened? You look pale as a ghost." She still didn't reply. "I don't have time for this nonsense."

Susan only looked at her curiously. She grabbed the suit from the back of the chair and left.

Susan only had time to run into Regional Tire and set the suit on John's desk. She would have stayed longer if Sheriff Wilkes wasn't going to come by the office at noon. She left the car parked outside of the business and walked down the street to the station.

Sheriff Wilkes had not yet arrived, but it was two minutes to
12:00 P.M. She opened the office and went in.

Sheriff Hanes had still not been there. His desk was still in the state it was in that morning when she had grabbed the warrant and stashed it in her purse.

Susan sat down at her desk and put a piece of typing paper into the Oliver and began to type. Her mind was still filled with questions, all of them unanswered and all of them disturbing. She was not a detective, it was true, but she had seen her share of detective shows on the television and in most of them, there were always clues that while they weren't linked together in the middle of the show, at the end they all usually formed a guilty verdict as they wove together like a knot. She was in the middle of the show now, and she had bits of clues, that was all.

She looked down at what she had typed and saw:

i
hate her why won't she just have the baby and go away…

"What?" she asked herself, looking at the paper. "I didn't write this."

"Write what?"
a voice said.

Susan whirled around and saw Sheriff Wilkes standing in the doorway.

"I'm sorry, I didn't hear you come in," she replied, folding the cryptic message.

Sheriff Wilkes took his hat off and held it in both hands. He raised his eyebrows at Susan.

"Sheriff Wilkes, I'm terribly sorry but he isn't back yet."

He shook his head and looked around the office, stopping at Hanes' small office to the right. "I guess I can leave a message," he said, coming around the gate and to Susan's desk. He sat in the chair across from Susan. "He contacted me the other day." Wilkes wiped the sweat from his forehead and continued. "We have a missing persons in Hampton; a young girl named Jessica Peterson. He seemed to think it was connected to a case he had here, but he wouldn't tell me too much about it. That's why I'm here today."

"I'm sorry Sheriff, to the best of my knowledge we don't have a missing persons in Lincoln county."

"Oh no, nothing like that. But there was a break-in. We found similar evidence at or around the scene in Hampton that he found here," he said.

"Evidence? I wasn't—" Susan thought hard. Sheriff Hanes had found something, but it wasn't enough to go on. "He might have a folder in his office." Susan went to Hanes' office and searched the desk. She didn't see a file or folder. She bent down and ran her fingers over the files in the cabinet, but didn't find anything. Whether out of instinct or frustration, she went to dial his home phone number and saw a folder sitting underneath the phone. She hung up the receiver and pulled the file out from under. She carried it back into the main office.

"This is the only thing I could find," she said. When she opened the file, the stench of
stale tobacco filled her nose. She looked in but didn't see anything except cigarette butts. She dumped them onto her desk. Sheriff Wilkes looked at them and nodded.

"Yep, that's what we found. A pile of 'em. May I see one?"

Susan, confused, took one and handed it to him. The sheriff inspected it closely. It was a Marlboro; the same brand he found at his scene.

"Joe never told me what brand. I guess he want
ed to make sure he wasn't leading my investigation. We found the same brand between what we think is the path Jessica took to get home."

It was another clue that didn't make sense.
But the more she thought about it, the more it
did
make sense. John used to smoke Marlboros, but he quit. He smoked pipes now. She was sure of it.

No. She didn't want to think about it. She needed more information.

Susan cleared her throat and said, "How old was the girl? Jessica?"

"Thirteen. I know, it's almost unthinkable. It' still possible we're dealing with a runaway, but my gut tells me it was an abduction. It also tells me that she
is more than likely already dead. It's days like this where I thank God I don't have any children."

Thirteen,
she thought. Rosalind's age. John used to smoke Marlboros.

No.

"Not much to go on, is it?" he asked her. Susan shook her head. "Well, I thank you for your time. Startin' to worry about Joe. I've known him for years and it ain't like him to be late for nothin'."

"I'll have him call you the minute he comes in, Sheriff Wilkes."

He put on his hat and left, scanning the office one more time.

Thirteen… Marlboros… Sheriff Hanes missing… Belvedere… Jessica is thirteen
(was thirteen?)…Rosalind is thirteen…why am I thinking about Rosalind? Marlboros… red puddle in the garage… John needed a new suit, where was his old one? Oh! at the dry cleaners… Rosalind is pregnant, due any day… warrant… Hanes… Jessica was abducted… thirteen… Joe is never late… Where is Joe? Why did I type that I hated Rosalind… she annoys the fuck outta me… Marlboros… Belvedere… Dry cleaning…

That was it. This could all be solved
by a trip to the dry cleaners. She could go and look at the suit before they cleaned it. If John was connected with any of this, maybe there would be something on the suit. Besides, never in the course of their marriage had John taken in his own cleaning. Was he hiding something?

John finished looping his tie and pulled the drapes back and looked down the street. A man in uniform had come in and gone in less than thirty minutes. Susan's car was still there. Why was he there? Was it the truck?

They found the truck!
It didn't sink to the bottom. Shit, why didn't I bring a flashlight to make sure?
The sheriff!