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Macy melted into Shandi’s arms the moment the deputy opened the door to the interrogation room. Tears streamed down Macy’s face, her smeared makeup like that of a sad clown’s. Shandi immediately wrapped her arms around her daughter, desperate to take away the fear and pain.
“What happened?” she asked. “Did Wes hurt you? Are you okay?”
Macy didn’t lift her head from Shandi’s chest, but Shandi could still make out her muffled words. “I’m okay. It was just an accident. There was a thing in the road. Some animal or man or something. Wes swerved to miss it and hit a fence post, and then...”
Macy went from tears to sobbing as she related the story. “I called Daddy and he came and... and... he handcuffed Wes and Dad won’t believe me. Wes is going to be so mad at me. He told me not to call Daddy, and I did and now I messed everything up.”
Shandi’s heart hurt for Macy. Though Shandi certainly had her issues with Cam, the relationship between Macy and Cam tended towards the healthier side. Macy had always been daddy’s little girl, and Shandi respected that relationship. Macy rarely experienced Cam in full-on sheriff mode.
While wearing the mom hat, Shandi’s journalist side started creeping in. What had Macy seen? Some animal or man? Which was it? Between Macy and Wes, they would know what they had seen. Both grew up in Rose Valley. They knew the local fauna just like any kid would.
Shandi pried Macy off her and looked into her eyes, a brilliant green against her porcelain skin and fiery red hair. Shandi secretly loved that Macy looked far more like Shandi than Cam. “Listen. I’m gonna talk to your dad and get this sorted out. It’s going to be okay. He’s just being protective. Are you okay in here?”
Macy attempted to compose herself, nodding her head and sniffling. Shandi glanced over to the interrogation table and noticed a bag of Reese’s Pieces, a Coke, and Macy’s cell phone. Obviously, Cam didn’t suspect her of any criminal activity, so it must have just been someplace to keep her while Cam did something else. But why keep her isolated like this?
“Okay. Good. You just hang out here and I’ll figure this out. Text me if you need something.” Shandi reached around to her back pocket to ensure she had her cell phone with her. She did.
She stepped out of the unlocked interrogation room and walked down the hall to the other one. The fact that Rose Valley even had two interrogation rooms made it the envy of many a small-town sheriff.
She looked through the one-way mirror where Cam sat menacingly across from Wes. Unlike Macy, Wes’ hands sat awkwardly tethered to the table by his handcuffs. At the moment, Cam watched Wes try to write something on a piece of paper. It seemed a bit heavy-handed to make him do that handcuffed.
She considered barging into the room to lay into Cam, but thought better of it. He would only fight fire with fire, and it behooved her to keep things calm, for Macy’s sake. She opted to gently knock on the door.
Cam stood up and pointed a finger at Wes. Without the intercom on, Shandi couldn’t make out what he said, but it most assuredly came with a stern warning.
The door opened just enough for Cam to slip through. He gently closed it behind himself. “Shandi.”
“Hi, Sheriff.” Shandi made a special point of calling him by his title. She liked to imagine that it stung just a little to have her address him so formally, but she realized deep down that he probably didn’t care. He had placed that title above their marriage, after all.
Cam rubbed his eyes, which were bloodshot and sagging.
“Why in the world do you have Wes Morris in handcuffs?” Shandi asked.
Embarrassment flashed briefly across Cam’s face. “He damaged private property. I thought Bill might want to press charges.”
None of that really explained how Cam could justify handcuffing Wes, but Shandi supposed Cam’s actions sprouted from something more primal and fatherly. Macy could have been hurt, and Wes would have been to blame, intentionally or not, and that angered Cam. Shandi didn’t like an angry Cam, but she could handle papa-bear angry much better than former-husband angry.
“Macy says Wes swerved to avoid a collision and ran into the fence. Could’ve happened to anyone. You can’t arrest the quarterback just because he accidentally put your daughter in danger. Hell, you couldn’t arrest the quarterback if he murdered your daughter in cold blood.”
That rang true. As much power as Sheriff Cam Donner had in Rose Valley, Wes Morris wielded even more. The Jaguars would have a legitimate chance at State this year, which meant the townsfolk cared only about winning, ready to defend Wes with their dying breaths. They would riot before letting the sheriff keep Wes off the field.
Cam remained surprisingly calm and patient with her. “I know. I just... I’ll let him go, of course. He just wouldn’t stop going on about seeing a gorilla in the road. I thought he was drunk or high or something at first. He’s not, though. He just saw something that he can’t explain.”
“A coyote?” Shandi blurted out.
Cam closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Shandi searched his face. It had never been easy for Cam to admit that he might be wrong.
Cam motioned to Wes through the mirror. “I expect that Wes knows what a coyote looks like. I don’t know what he saw. That’s why I’m having him draw it.”
Wes’ tongue hung halfway out, his eyes heavily focused on the piece of paper. Despite the age gap, Shandi found him endearing. She wished Macy would choose someone more upwardly mobile, but in thinking back to her teenage years, she couldn’t begrudge Macy for being smitten with him.
Cam reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to Shandi. “This is what Macy drew.”
Shandi took the paper and tilted it towards the brighter light coming through the mirror-window. Macy excelled in the sciences, not the arts, but the intent of her drawing shone through the rough, unsteady pencil lines.
The sketch depicted what looked like a man, though Macy had guessed he was maybe seven feet tall. She drew him in profile, hunched over, his arms slightly longer than one would expect for a normally proportioned person. He wore no clothes. Macy had a drawn a star over his genitalia.
Under the drawing was a series of Macy-scribbled bullet points:
Walked funny, with a limp or something
Ran really fast away from us when we got out of the car
Normal hairy man body hair
Shaggy haircut & beard
Weird face
Eyes glowed in the headlights like a deer
Shandi shivered as she studied the drawing. Everything suddenly felt otherworldly, as if she floated outside of her own body. How could her own daughter have run into such a creature?
“I know,” said Cam. “It seems impossible. It may be exaggerated, but even if we just have a streaker loose in Rose Valley, we need to catch that sonofabitch.”
While Shandi wanted to process and think about the situation, Cam bristled with the anticipation of a fight. She recognized that that’s why he did make a good Sheriff, despite being a genuine asshole.
Likely, this strange man-beast mutilated the goat, the sheep, and maybe even sprung the cheetahs out of Relics Park. Shandi suppressed the urge to smile at this huge lead.
Cam put his hand on the door handle. “Looks like Romeo is done. Time to compare.”
He left Macy’s drawing with Shandi and went back into the interrogation room with Wes. Within a few seconds, he returned with Wes’ drawing. Cam studied it for what seemed like an eternity before letting Shandi see it. Time ticked by slowly.
When Cam finally handed over the new sketch, Shandi immediately took it in. Wes clearly spent more effort on his drawing, imbuing it with incredible detail, every hair meticulously drawn into place.
Wes had drawn the creature mostly in profile. His incarnation had more than a beard, the entire face obscured with graphite-colored curly hair and snake-like eyes. The arms bulged with massive muscles and weren’t as long as they were in Macy’s rendition.
Like Macy, Wes attached a written description:
Walked like a tiny armed gorilla
Super hairy
Glowing eyes, like a serpant
Ran really fast
Moved with a weird gate
Shandi chuckled when she interpreted his description as a miniature gorilla carrying a machine gun and an old, unpainted gate. Wes wouldn’t be winning any spelling bees in his future, but the earnestness of his idiocy was charming.
“This is insane,” Shandi finally said. “I don’t understand what this is. Is it a man?”
Cam shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. They did go through some trauma, so it wouldn’t be out of the question for them to incorrectly remember what they saw. I talked to them both about whether they had discussed the creature with one another and both said they hadn’t. That’s why I wanted them to draw it.”
“It seems pretty clear that they saw the same thing.”
“Yeah. Seems like.” Cam gently tugged both pictures out of her hands.
“Wait. Can I have copies of those? To put in the paper? It might help us find others who have seen it.”
Cam shook his head. ”No. You can’t do that. I need to keep this secret so that I can use them to corroborate any other sightings. If you put ’em in the paper, we’ll have everyone in town claiming they saw this exact thing.”
Shandi hated to yield authority to Cam. For her, getting the information out there took top priority, so she wanted to protest, but the voice of Dan Carter haunted her mind. Play nice with the local law enforcement.
In this particular case, it seemed a reasonable request.
“Also, it might not be possible,” Cam continued. “but if you can convince Macy to keep it quiet, that would help too. We don’t need all her friends making things up.”
Shandi laughed out loud. “You left her cell phone in there with her. All her friends already know. That ship has sailed.”
Cam actually smiled as he rubbed his neck. “I guess you’re right. I shoulda thought of that. I forget that she’s so old sometimes.”
“You and me both, Cam. You and me both.”
