Deputy Dwayne Clarke pulled up behind the sheriff’s Range Rover, able to make out the sight of the sheriff grabbing hold of his daughter. She looked to be okay.
He grabbed the shotgun off the passenger floor, donned his hat and stepped purposefully out into the storm.
The sight of the two motionless bodies stopped him in his tracks. The first was Deputy Randy Hines. He couldn’t make a positive ID on the second body from where he stood, but considering that Alex McKinney’s Camaro sat off the side of the road, battered to hell, he assumed the torn-up body was the boy.
The thing that had done this to them could still be around. He gripped the shotgun a little tighter and stepped toward Joe. “What can I do, Sheriff?”
Joe Fischer held his daughter tight. The thought that he had come so close to losing her made him grip her as if the storm could pull her away at any moment. He’d be damned if he’d ever let that happen.
Sonya clutched him just as tightly. Her all-out cries had turned to nonstop sobs, quiet but deep enough that her entire body seemed to hitch with each one. She was scarred by something he could never take away. She’d seen the monster haunting this small town. It was no longer merely a drunkard’s tall tale or some stupid rumor passed about during a junior high school Halloween dance. She was now cognizant of the unfathomable evil he’d tried so hard to keep from her.
He knew Deputy Clarke was standing behind him and that he had just asked him something. “Clarke?”
“Sheriff?”
“It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“I got it, but it still made off into the trees. I’m not sure how bad it’s hurt, or how far it can get, but I landed two silver bullets right into its back.”
“Should I go—”
“No. I don’t know what shape it’s in. If it’s still strong, I don’t want you in there alone with it, and I’m sure as hell not about to leave my daughter out here. Call Glescoe and tell her to come pick up Sonya.”
“You got it, sir.” Clarke ran back to his car.
Joe pulled his daughter toward his truck. He felt her resist at first, but then go flaccid as she figured out what he was doing.
She felt the heaviness of her wet clothes, the nearly unbearable weight of something she had no way of comprehending. She couldn’t quite put together how or why one minute Alex had been driving her from Hollis Oaks, then the next he was dead.
She wanted to be out of the rain. She let her father guide her to his truck, watched as he opened the passenger door and then climbed in. She looked out through the windshield and saw Alex’s mutilated body. The tears came again.
Joe stepped up behind Clarke. “Where is she?”
“At your house. She’s still got Mel with her. I guess the door is locked.”
“The spare key’s under the welcome mat. Tell her to let Mel in, tell her—hell, give me that.” He grabbed the radio from Clarke.
“Glescoe?”
“Hey, Sheriff, you boys okay?”
Joe knew that Mel was probably sitting there right beside her, listening. “Yeah, we’ll be all right. Tell Mel the spare key’s under the welcome mat; tell her to make herself at home and to stay put. I need you to come out here and pick up Sonya.”
“You got it, Sheriff.”
After making sure Melanie Murdock made it inside the sheriff’s house all right, Shelly Glescoe backed out of the driveway and radioed Deputy Clarke.
“Clarke?”
“Go ahead.”
“Dwayne, are you and Joe okay? Is Sonya all right? Where’s Randy?”
“I’m fine, the sheriff’s okay, Sonya’s going to be all right, but…Randy and Alex McKinney…they’re both dead.”
Melanie Murdock found the sheriff’s home a lot cozier than she had imagined it would be, although Sonya, who he’d said would be here, was not.
Maybe she’s in her room?
Mel didn’t feel like yelling up the stairs, but figured she should. “Hello? Anyone home? Hello? Sonya?”
The place was dead quiet. She decided to have a closer look around.
She expected to see the head of a 30-point buck stuffed and hanging over the fireplace. Instead, there was a print of Winslow Homer’s The Gulf Stream. Her heart ached at the sight and tender surprise of the painting. The portrait’s depiction of a man on a small boat, all alone, surrounded by a massive storm on a raging sea, was enough to break her heart. Is this how he felt? Losing a wife and raising a young girl alone?
She stared at the painting, lost in an overwhelming sadness brought about by the lonely scene. She stood there, looking at it for a long time, longer than she realized. She broke herself away from the painting and moved on to the computer desk. Across the lone shelf that sat over the monitor, there was a Boston Red Sox bobblehead of Manny Ramírez, a picture of Joe and Sonya at the beach, a copy of Irish Thunder: The Hard Life and Times of Micky Ward, another picture of Joe with a much younger Sonya at a Portland Sea Dogs game and a paperback copy of a book called The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves, and Other Monsters.
Must be Sonya’s. Kids these days, with their Harry Potter and their Vampire Diaries, and their Dawn of the Dead.
She saw a note. It was from Sonya, who had apparently gone out to Heath’s… Must be Heath Jorgensen. He was going with her friend Kim. They’d all been at the café together at least a hundred times over the last five or six months.
She walked over to the flat-screen television, turned it on and sat down on the end of the royal-blue suede couch. The couch was as comfortable as it looked. NCIS was on. Mark Harmon was a good-looking man. Joe kind of looked like him. She smiled at the sudden realization.
The note said that Sonya would be back before dark. She was late. Mel decided to veg out until one of the two Fischers came home. She hoped it would be Joe. She’d feel awkward if Sonya came in to find her lounging in their living room like this.
The rain had stopped, but the wind was now swirling hard enough to bend the trees over the road. Deputy Shelly Glescoe could feel it trying to push her patrol car around. She slowed to a stop behind Dwayne’s. She could see him standing with the sheriff as they conversed over something lying covered on the wet ground—
Oh no.
She got out and went straight to Joe’s truck.
Sonya stared blankly at the dash. Shelly decided to leave her be for the moment and walked over to where the two men stood.
“No time to fill you in, Shelly,” Joe said. “Sorry, but I need you to get Sonya home right now. I don’t want her out here.”
She looked from Joe to Dwayne.
“It’s out there,” Dwayne nodded toward the woods behind the crumpled Camaro. “We need you to take her so we can see what happened to it.”
“What happened to it?”
“No time, Glescoe. Get Sonya home,” Joe said.
“Yes, sir.”
Joe watched as she walked over to the truck, helped Sonya out and led her over to the cruiser. She turned the car around and headed back toward town.
Joe turned to Dwayne. “I hope you’re ready for this.”
“To be honest with you, Sheriff, I’m scared shitless.”
Joe shifted his gaze back to the clump of trees he’d seen the beast run off into after he’d shot it full of silver. He watched for a moment as the tall pines swayed wildly with the storm.
He turned back to Deputy Clarke and said, “To be honest with you, Deputy, you should be.”