Sixty-Four
I AM SEATED at a table in Scobee’s. EJ offered to cook me breakfast, but I passed, needlessly explaining to her that sometimes an overpowering need for an egg-and-cheddar sandwich comes over me. I’m waiting for my order when Burt Webb calls.
I’m about to tell him to hurry over here and join me when he cuts me off by saying, “Meet me at Corley Park.”
Before I can ask why, he says, “They took another girl.”
Burt told me where I can find him, out between the tennis courts and thick woods at the far end of Corley.
By the time I arrive, there is enough of a police presence, so many squad cars lined up in front of the courts and so many cops having set up a perimeter, that I find myself thinking this would be a good morning to rob the Bank of Appalachia over on Main Street, if not all of Main Street itself, if somebody had the time.
Burt is here. So is Helene Mayes. There’s already a crowd of lookie-loos outside the crime-scene tape.
One TV truck, one cameraman, one reporter, a young woman I don’t recognize.
A lot of the people in the crowd have their phones out and are using them to take pictures, even though there’s not much to see.
Burt is standing next to a road bike tipped over on its side, almost like he’s standing guard over it. I walk over to him after he’s yelled at one of the cops controlling the perimeter to let me pass.
Helene nods at me and then snaps, “Fucking fucks.”
Burt says, “Girl’s name is Lynette Coleman.
Lives with her single mom in a small ranch just on the outskirts of downtown, north side.
The girl likes to ride her bike some mornings over to Bagels and Bialys to get bagels for them.
For her and her mom, I mean. Then she cuts back across the park and heads home. ”
He stares down at the Culver bike. I had one like it in high school. EJ bought it for me one Christmas. Nice bike.
“Only she didn’t make it home this morning,” Burt says. “They took her and left the bike.” Then Burt Webb, who doesn’t normally cuss, didn’t even on a football field, adds, “The fucking fucks.”
I give him a moment. Right now he resembles a fighter who’s taken too many punches and needs one of those standing eight counts.
Helene has walked away and is talking to a couple of the county cops now under her command.
“How old?” I say softly to Burt.
He turns around, surprised, almost as if he’s forgotten that I’m standing right here.
“I’m sorry… what?”
“Lynette Coleman,” I say. “How old?”
“Fifteen.”
It’s as if the number falls out of the air before it can make it all the way to me.
“Where’s her mom right now?” I ask.
“I’ve got Katie Springer, one of my rookies, sitting with her at their home,” Burt says. “Just because there’s nothing for the mom—Connie is her name—to do here. Or see.” He shakes his head. “Other than her daughter’s bike, I guess.”
“Witnesses?” I ask.
“One jogger is all we got so far,” he says. “Helene and I spoke with him. He says he saw a white van he didn’t recognize, no markings on the outside, pulling away on Cass Road, over there on the other side of the woods.”
“But the bike was right here.”
“Yeah,” he says.
“So whoever it was grabbed her and then took her through the woods and got her into the van,” I say. “But nobody heard screams or anything, or saw it happening?”
“No,” Burt Webb says. “For now, all we’ve got is the van. Helene’s got her people putting a BOLO on it. You know what that is, right?”
“Be on the lookout,” I say. “I watch a lot of those FBI shows.”
“So we’re looking for an unmarked white van,” he says, “even though God knows how many of those are around here, and everywhere else on the planet, for that matter.”
He looks at me, his face a mix of hurt and anger. Or just plain sadness.
“It’s like whoever’s doing this is putting it right in our faces this close to the town hall the other night, Silas,” he says. “Like letting us know they’re not afraid of us. Almost like they’re mocking us.”
“Fucking fucks,” I say.
The crowd of onlookers, I can see, has grown since I’ve gotten to Corley Park. Like this has turned into a different kind of town hall meeting, just outdoors. Another tragedy of our town, another girl who’s been kidnapped. Or worse.
“You think these girls are dead, Burt? Gotta ask.”
“If they’re not,” he says, “it might be something even worse than that. There hasn’t been a single ransom demand, which to me means they’re being trafficked if they are still alive.
Only thing that makes sense.” He takes out his phone, looks at it, puts it away.
“It would mean they’re being sold off, just God knows where and to who and for God knows how much. ”
His eyes leave me now and drift over to the people continuing to collect on their side of the yellow crime-scene tape, the crowd growing. Small town. Big news about another missing girl.
“You gotta be kidding me,” he says, and then heads in that direction.
I turn and see right away where he’s going and what caught his eye: two of the punks we’d seen in front of their trucks outside the parish hall the other night. One of them, the taller of the two, is even wearing a ratty-looking “Cross Rivers HS” sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off.
They’re standing in the front row. Even if we didn’t recognize them, they would have stood out anyway, as they happen to be the only ones in the entire crowd laughing right now.
Burt manages to stay on his side of the tape, but motions for them to come closer to him. I’m standing next to him by now, feeling as if I really am one of his deputies.
“What do you assholes seem to think is so funny?” Burt asks.
Everyone close to us has gone quiet and still.
The one in the sweatshirt, string-bean skinny and sporting old-fashioned mullet hair, says, “Huck here just made a joke, is all.”
I see Burt’s face begin to redden. Never a good sign, I know from experience, especially not with this many people as witnesses to what might happen next if he blows.
“You think this is some kind of joke?” Burt asks, managing to keep his voice low.
The punk looks at him now with sullen eyes and makes me remember a line, from either a book or a movie, about someone looking as if he’d grown up to be a perp.
He ignores Burt’s question and says, “Nice bike. You gonna hold on to it? Or can I have it?”
Burt starts to take a step forward, but then I’m quickly between him and them, addressing both of the punks at once.
“Leave,” I say. “Now.”
“Or what?” the mullet asks.
“Or,” I say to him, “I will grab you and swing you like a baseball bat and use you to beat the shit out of your friend.”
“What?” he says to me, not backing up or down. “You’ve always been such a big deal around here you think you’re the law now, too?”
“Today he is,” Burt Webb says.
The standoff doesn’t last but a few seconds longer. The two punks turn and walk away, as if they’ve determined that the show is over, or that they’ve taken this as far as they can. The people behind them give them so much room to let them pass, it’s as if they’re afraid they might catch something.
When they get to the tennis courts, somehow sensing that Burt is still eyeballing them, they turn and give him the finger.
As we walk back toward the bike, I say, “You convinced it’s the Crocketts taking these girls?”
“I know it’s them,” he says. He stops and takes one last look at the bike, like a kid looking at his own. “Now I just have to find a way to prove it.”
“Just do me a favor,” I say, “and try not to take any dumb-ass chances while you do.”
Somehow he manages a grin, one built out of practically nothing.
“I should be telling you the same thing,” he says.