Bedeviled Eggs (14 page)

markings
on the vehicle. Because there was no mistaking
the whip antenna, reinforced
bumpers, light bar on top, and
official
emblem on the door.

“That’s one of Doogie’s
cruisers,” Petra exclaimed.

Suzanne tapped her
brakes and eased over onto the
shoulder directly behind the cruiser. “It sure is. And
it
looks
unoccupied.” She wondered what Doogie or one of
his deputies could be doing way
out here. Maybe an emer
gency
call? Or call of nature.

Putting her car in
park, Suzanne said, “Sit tight, I’m
gonna take a quick look.” She hopped from her car,
engine
still running.

A low vibe had
started to prickle up and down Suzanne’s
spine. A car parked in the
middle of nowhere? Seemingly
unoccupied?  The woods on both sides of the road felt
dark,
dense,
and slightly ominous. If—and this was a wild thought
that suddenly cascaded through
Suzanne’s brain—if an ar
cher was waiting with a bow and arrow cocked, she’d
never
see
him. Doogie wouldn’t have seen him, either.

Stepping silently
over to the cruiser, Suzanne peered cautiously inside. And saw ... nothing. No
body slumped
in the driver’s seat or crumpled in a heap on the floor.

Doggone it,
she thought
If I
had any common sense, I’d
hightail it out of here.
But Suzanne stood firm, her
curiosity
burning like a
signal flare.

Cupping her hands to
her mouth, Suzanne called out,
“Doogie! Are you out there?” She hesitated. “Is anybody
out there?”

There was no answer,
save the low hiss and rattle of
wind
through the forest.

Suzanne backtracked a
few steps toward her car, her
nerves
jacked up high.

Petra rolled down her
window, looking worried. “What
do you think happened?” she called out. “Would Doogie or
one of his deputies
just leave their cruiser like that?”

Suzanne shook her
head, puzzled. “I don’t know.
Maybe, if they had car trouble. But I’m going to take a
quick look around, just in case.”

“You
want me to come with you?” Petra asked. But
her quavering tone implied she’d
much rather stay in the
warmth
and safety of the car.

“No, that’s okay,”
Suzanne called, already heading to
ward a sort of opening in the woods. “I’m just
going to take
a quick peek.”

“Be careful,” Petra
called.

Careful
is my middle name,
Suzanne thought, all the
while knowing she was dead
wrong.
Just my way of whis
tling in the dark, that’s all.

Putting her hands in
front of her, Suzanne parted a stand
of tall reeds. And stepped into darkness.
The woods were dark and dreary now, and the words
Sleepy Hollow
pinged in Suzanne’s brain. The sunset’s
encouraging glow had long since vanished and blackness
loomed in front of her in the form of twisted oaks
and
scruffy buckthorn. The mournful
hoot of an owl echoed off
dead and
wind-stripped trees, and off in the distance she heard a high-pitched yip.
Probably a coyote, she decided.
Lots
of those little pests thronging the woods these days.

Turning up the collar
of her jacket to keep the chill wind
at bay, Suzanne called out, “Doogie?” Then,
because the only other deputy whose name she could remember was
Wilbur Halpern, she
cupped her hands and called out,
“Wilbur?”

No response.

She tried again. “Deputy
Halpern?”

As
Suzanne ventured a few more steps into the woods, her eyes slowly became
accustomed to the dark. Now she could see what might be a faint trail—a deer
trail?—and a
couple of places where cattail stalks looked freshly broken.
As though someone or
something had blundered hastily
through
the woods.

So maybe... a person?

She
pushed her way into the tangle of woods, mindful
of wind rustling dead leaves and
making them sound suspiciously like stealthy footfalls, her nose caught the
putrid, rotten egg scent of brackish swamp water nearby.

Two more steps brought
her to the edge of a small pond
and
more broken cattails.

“Doogie?” she called
again.

Pushing her way into a
small clearing, Suzanne felt a
sharp prickle, then bent forward to pick a cluster of
brown
burrs
off her slacks. Her heart pounded a timpani drum solo
of nervousness in her chest and
she felt dampness seep into
her
loafers.
Probably shouldn’t be...

Overhead, the gray
veil of clouds suddenly parted and
a not-quite-full moon shone down its faint
waterfall of sil
very light.

And that’s when she
saw Deputy Wilbur Halpern.

He was kneeling in a
sort of clearing, head bowed, as
if in prayer. His arms were pulled around a skinny poplar
tree, a
pair of standard issue handcuffs locked tight about
his wrists. The young man’s eyes
were open wide, his pu
pils fixed and dilated, mouth drawn back in a feral
rictus
of pain.

And he was dead. Shot
execution style in the back of
the
head.

Standing
transfixed, Suzanne stared at the dark slick
ness at the back of Deputy
Halpern’s head, the deep, purple grooves where handcuffs had dug into his
wrists. Probably,
she decided, Wilbur had struggled terribly. The poor guy
hadn’t gone down without a fight.

She felt curiously
solemn, like she should say a prayer
or something. Until she heard a faint rustle
nearby, maybe the wind, maybe not, and decided the smart thing, the sane
thing, was to get the heck out of there!

Sprinting to her car
in record time, Suzanne clambered
in and punched the locks.

“What’s wrong?’ asked
Petra.

Suzanne struggled to
catch her breath. “Call Doogie,”
she said, frantically. “Hurry up and call Doogie!”

Realizing something
bad had just gone down, Petra
yanked her phone from her quilted tote bag and hit 911.
Then she quickly
passed the phone to Suzanne.

Suzanne gave a hasty,
abbreviated, shrill explanation to the dispatcher, fearing it might even be the
same one from
the other night, then listened for a few moments. “Yes, this
time I’ll stay on the
line.” She handed the phone back to Petra, looking nervous as well as
distracted. “We’re sup
posed
to keep an open line.”

Petra, who’d
listened, wide-eyed and shaking, to Su
zanne’s blow-by-blow report, put
a hand to her mouth and
moaned,
“Oh no. That poor boy.”

Suzanne, meanwhile,
put her gearshift into reverse and
jammed her foot firmly on the brake. “If we see or
hear
anything
out of the ordinary,” Suzanne instructed Petra, “be prepared to fly backward. I’ll
goose this buggy up to a hun
dred
miles an hour if I have to.”

Petra
was the first to spot the flashing light bars. “He’s here. Doogie,” she
said, as multiple red-and-blue pulsing
lights careened toward them. One
car swerved to a halt,
followed
by two more.

Doogie emerged from his
vehicle, ashen-faced and stiff-legged. And for the first time in decades,
Suzanne saw him
out of uniform. In his baggy gray sweatpants and coordi
nating hoodie
sweatshirt, Doogie could have easily passed
for a sloppy, aging jogger.
Except for the fact that he held
a
gun.

“Where is he?” Doogie
asked in a terse, tension-filled
voice, as his remaining three deputies crowded around
him.
He
looked more anxious and upset than Suzanne had ever
seen him.

“Over here,” said
Suzanne. “Follow me.”

She led them back to
the path, then they all crashed through buckthorn and scrub willow, branches
swatting
their
faces and tearing at their clothes. Thirty seconds later Suzanne, Doogie, and
deputies arrived at the clearing.

“There,” said Suzanne,
pointing.

Four flashlights were
suddenly focused directly on Deputy Halpern, bleaching his face white and
revealing the ter
rible
circumstances of his death.

Doogie stood for a
few moments, taking in the scene.
Then he stepped softly over to Deputy Halpern and
put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, in an almost fatherly gesture.

“Dang. Wilbur,” Doogie
murmured, softly. He sounded
beyond
sad, he sounded almost defeated.

For the first time in
her life, Suzanne watched Doogie
wipe away tears. Then he stepped back and bowed his
head. “What am I gonna
tell that poor boy’s mama?”

Nobody answered,
because nobody had the answer.

Doogie pulled it
together then, his lawman’s instincts
overriding his emotions. “Check the woods,” he
barked to
the
other deputies. “But go easy, this is all one big crime
scene.” The men
scurried away, weapons drawn, flashlights
probing, as Doogie clicked on his
cell phone and called
the state crime lab. Muttering softly for a few minutes,
he
concluded with, “He’s one
of ours.”

“What can I do?”
Suzanne asked in the silence that spun
out.

Doogie
opened his mouth, hesitated, then said, “Let’s
hike back to me road.”

They tromped back and
met up with Petra.

“I’m so sorry,” Petra
told Doogie. “Wilbur’s mom is
one of our volunteers at church. She’ll be... she’ll be
devastated.”

Doogie nodded.

“You have questions?”
Suzanne asked. Doogie looked
so forlorn and out of it, she felt she ought to prod him
a bit.

“What
the heck are you two doing out here?” he finally
asked. “Driving through these
woods at night?”

“The Quilt Trail,”
said Petra.

Doogie
shook his head. “Kind of late to be taking in
historic sites, don’t you think?”

“We were lost,” said
Petra.

“We were
trying to find the old schoolhouse and got
turned around,” Suzanne added.

“Lost?” said Doogie. “The
old schoolhouse is right up
this road, about a quarter of a mile.” He gave a half
wave,
as if it didn’t matter
anymore.

“Oh,” was all Suzanne
said.

“So let me get this
straight,” said Doogie, rubbing the
back of his hand against his stubbly cheek. “You
were out
here driving the
Quilt Trail.”

“Correct,” said Petra.

“Okay,” said Doogie, “but
what the heck was Wilbur
doing
out here in the boonies?”

“No idea,” said
Suzanne. “We pulled over when we saw his empty car. Maybe he’d been...
responding to a
call?”

“Might have,” said
Doogie. He shook his head again in
disbelief. “The thing is, Wilbur was a real
friendly type.
Talking with everyone, always making with the PR. He even gave out his
private cell phone number. In case, you
know, like the law enforcement
center line was busy.”

“Busy?” said Suzanne.

Doogie shrugged. “Cutbacks.
Only got three lines now
and
one’s to the jail.”

“Wait a minute,” said
Suzanne, “so you’re saying that if
Wilbur got a call, it wouldn’t necessarily have
been routed
through the switchboard at the law enforcement center?’

That’s right,” said
Doogie.

“So no way to trace
it,” said Petra.

“Oh, we can trace
Wilbur’s cell phone,” said Doogie. “It
just might take a couple of days.”

The three
deputies came shuffling back, looking angry
and a little defeated.

“Anything?” asked
Doogie. They all shook their heads.