Chapter 1 #3
“Hey there Derry.” One woman wearing a red-and-white checkered dress waved as the young deputy passed them. There were two twenty-somethings, one male and the other female, who didn’t acknowledge the deputy.
“Hey there, Gina,” the young cop called back.
“A real mess up there,” an elderly man in overalls and a soiled T-shirt said. He stood next to a towheaded tween who appeared excited by whatever was happening. “Be careful Derry, a wild cougar done got loose and is spitting mad,” the old man said.
They all laughed: the woman in the checkerboard dress, the couple in the first car with two kids under five, the wiry man with bloodshot eyes, and the twenty-somethings.
“She’s already clawed strips out of Deputy Roan so you might want to let the sheriff handle it,” checkered dress, Gina, said.
These people obviously all knew each other, and Lauren, the only onlooker who wasn’t White, felt her otherness acutely.
“This could all be an ambush,” she muttered, reaching for her pepper spray in the arm pocket of her car door, placing it in the front pocket of her sweatpants.
Some lookout had probably radioed ahead, told them a lone black woman was driving up the mountain with California plates and now they were all executing a plan to steal her SUV, her belongings, beat her to death, and bury her body up here in one of those hollers Loretta Lynn sang about.
Lauren didn’t even completely know what a holler was but knew it was a part of the mountainous landscape.
“Fuck this,” she snapped and stomped up the incline, passing the others with her hand around the tube of pepper spray.
She eyed each person with suspicion—even the Children-of-the Corn-looking kids—and silently dared any of them to try something.
Not that she was a black belt, but she needed them to understand that they’d end up as tree fertilizer before she would.
“You ain’t from around here, so maybe you wanna trust me when I say, hang back and stay downwind of this little shit show,” the woman in the checkered dress said, her tone kind but strong.
Now that Lauren had an open view of the road, she could see where the cruiser blocked off traffic from above, and where an old school Pontiac’s hood was crumpled like tin against the side of the mountain.
A big man in a brimmed hat and uniform stood with his back to them talking to someone.
She could hear his deep voice rumbling through the air as if it carried thunder, but she couldn’t hear what he said.
All she knew was that he wasn’t saying it with enough urgency for her.
They had to speed this along if she was going to make it to the other side of the mountain in time.
The big guy moved, and Lauren saw a uniformed woman in front of him.
Her heart hammered to life and her grip on the pepper spray tightened.
The woman was mixed-race with thick black hair secured in a ponytail.
Like a chameleon, the female cop briefly became the spitting image of Lahn, not because the cop looked like her sister, she didn’t in the least, but because… Lauren didn’t know why.
“It just came out of nowhere, Sheriff,” a petite elderly woman in a mauve silk wrap dress and platinum hair called out frantically from the opposite side of the road. “There was nothing I could do but try to avoid it, and now, would you just look at my car!”
Lauren walked over to the shaken woman and looked at the drop off to the left of the road.
“What came out of nowhere?” she asked, scanning for a large animal. She’d come across predatory animals in the wild when hiking, which was one reason she always had her pepper spray with her. The other reason was because human animals were just as dangerous.
“I’m sorry, dear,” the elder woman said, arms crossing over her chest, one hand touching her throat. “Who are you?”
Lauren frowned, stepping closer.
The woman’s eyes were watery, and Lauren could smell the alcohol on her from two feet away.
“Oh, hell no,” Lauren snapped. “You’re drunk? You have the nerve to be driving drunk and think you can blame that shit on some fictitious animal?”
“Animals on the road are a big hazard in these parts,” a man directly behind her said. Lauren jumped and pivoted, fists high and spray armed.
“Woah, woah there missy, we don’t mean you no harm,” the old man with the teenager said, hands raised in submission. “I’m Harlan, and this is my grandson, Zeek.”
“Where I come from Harlan, men who sneak up on unsuspecting women usually do mean them harm,” she said.
“Well, ain’t you glad we not wherever it is you come from?”
You don’t know the half of it, Harlan, she thought, lowering her arms. She refused to take out her anger at those people on an innocent old man.
Not when the man responsible for handling this mess was standing right there, looking her way with black sunglasses that reflected the world but exposed nothing about the man wearing them—except that he was less charming than Derry.
As a matter of fact, he kind of looked like an idiot, because why wear shades when you’re on a dappled road with maybe two hours of sunlight left?
“What is your problem? Why are you looking at that car for answers when the answer is right fucking here?” she shouted at him. “This woman should’ve already been arrested, cuffed, and put in the back of your patrol car. Or is not arresting people who drive drunk what you do here?”
“Oh, you just hush and mind your ever-loving business,” the drunk woman sneered, the veneer of innocence gone. “Don’t you come to my town causing trouble, you hear. Now you get back in your car, and I mean get in there now. Get.”
Lauren took a settling breath before she responded. She wasn’t trying to end up in jail in some Deliverance-type town she didn’t even know the name of.
“You do realize you could’ve killed someone? That the tree lying across the road could’ve been one of these people’s dead and broken bodies.”
When the woman didn’t respond, Lauren looked back over to the still motionless man waiting for him to do something, anything. When he continued to silently stare, her anger rose to nearly nose-bleeding levels. She was sick to death of people getting coddled for doing terrible things.
“Are you gonna handle this, or are you waiting for me to make a citizen’s arrest?” Lauren demanded.
“You, arrest me?” The older woman snorted. “You must be an idiot. I have never been, nor will I ever be, arrested.”
“So let me get this straight,” Lauren said, looking the sheriff dead in his eyes even if she couldn’t see them.
“In this town, where you are paid to enforce law and order, some crusty privileged bitch”—there were gasps from the people on the road—“so drunk off her ass she can barely stand straight, can hold up traffic, cause environmental damage, and endanger lives, yet you care more about her crashed car than the fact that she drunkenly crashed it?”
“I said I crashed it trying to avoid a deer, dear,” the woman said smugly.
Lauren didn’t give her the time of day, choosing to focus on the piece of shit sheriff who seemed more than willing to believe the bullshit deer story.
Without looking away from him she pointed behind her.
“That car has a whole family in it. They were likely right behind her, which means that not only could they have been killed, but they would’ve also seen the deer.
Did you even ask them, did you do a breathalyzer?
Unless you plan to aid and abet a criminal, do your fucking job! ”
The sheriff turned toward the horizon and stretched his neck from side to side.
Turning back toward her, he advanced slowly, like she wasn’t losing precious time with every languid step.
Not until he stopped well within her personal space, did she acknowledged that she may have responded with a bit more passion than prudent, because, Jesus, was this guy big.
“I’m gonna strongly suggest you walk back down the hill, get in your car, and be patient until we have this matter cleared up. Ma’am.”
Her brow rose dangerously high. “And if I do that, what happens to her?”
“If you don’t, I may have to charge you with obstruction.”
Both her brows rose dangerously high as she leaned forward. “Are you capable? I mean, really, are you capable of doing something besides being unbothered by actual criminals?”
“I am,” he said, grabbing her right arm and forcing her to turn around. She looked behind her to see him wrap a steel cuff around her wrist.
What the fuck! I didn’t do anything wrong!
Sick of suffering the fucked-up consequences for other people’s actions, Lauren yanked away and spun around intending to plant her knee deep into his balls, but the world turned upside down. Literally.
Momentarily disoriented, she realized that he’d slung her over his shoulder like a sack of feed and carried her down the hill like she didn’t weight a solid one hundred and eighty pounds.
“Nicely done, dear,” the old woman called out, wiggling her fingers goodbye.
Lauren reared up and began slamming her fists against the sheriff’s hard back. He jumped, bouncing her, and she fell back over his shoulder and gripped his shirt, praying she wouldn’t land on her head.
“You bastard! Did she pay you off, you crooked-assed cop!”
He ignored her and called for the young male deputy. Opening the back door of the deputy’s cruiser, he dumped her inside as she awkwardly kicked out at him. Shoving her feet in safely, he slammed the door shut. She hurled curses and threats at him as if she was possessed.
“Take her to the station and put her in holding cell one until I’m finished here.”
“She under arrest, Sheriff?”
Lauren went silent.
“I’ll decide when I get back to the station.” He headed back up the hill and paused at her car, reaching inside to pull out her purse. He walked back down and handed her purse to Derry. “Call up Tovin and tell him we’ll need a second tow for her vehicle.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lauren sat back and watched him through the half-open window. He returned her gaze as the deputy put the car in reverse, rolling backward down the hill. Lauren adjusted her position so that she could continue watching him through the windshield, then Derry made a three-point turn and drove away.
Gazing at the trees, Lauren listened as Derry put in the call for another tow.
After a few miles, he turned onto a road she hadn’t noticed before.
Closing her eyes, she rested her head on the seat, admitting—only this once—that the great betrayal had made her reckless.
But the way that sheriff chose to overlook the older woman’s drunken actions, treated her as if she was the one at fault, then proceeded to manhandle her, helped Lauren to understand that her reckless need for retribution wouldn’t go away anytime soon.
Now what she wanted most in this world was to make that asshole regret ever laying a hand on her.