She was in the storage room, reclining in one of the webbed aluminum lawn chaises that Willis sold in the summer. Beth had a terry-cloth beach towel over her that featured a likeness of Elvis in his later-years Las Vegas regalia. The towel came up to her neck. Her bare feet and ankles showed at the other end, where Elvis’s head was. Beth’s feet were dirty on their soles and turned in toward each other. Nearby on the floor was a wad of rumpled clothing. Some torn jean cutoffs, a ripped T-shirt, and pink panties.
Westerley didn’t like Willis messing up the crime scene and its evidence, but on the other hand he couldn’t have left Beth suffering and unconscious in the woods. The clothes, though, might have yielded some clues. They might still.
Willis noticed the way Westerley had glanced at him.
“Well, hell,” he said, “I couldn’t leave her layin’ there on the ground. And I had to cover her up. The son of a bitch that got her’s the one that tore off her clothes.”
Beth didn’t say anything. She was staring straight ahead, probably in shock, trembling even though it was warm in the storeroom. A bruise was beginning to take colorful form below her left eye.
“I got an ambulance coming from Fulton,” Westerley said. He knew they’d use a rape kit on Beth at the hospital, begin the process of accumulating evidence, building a case that would hold up in court. If we can find the bastard. “Did you call her husband?” he asked Willis.
“Nope. I thought I’d wait till you got here.”
Westerley noticed a shotgun leaning against the wall near the storage room’s rear door. “Were you fixing to use that twelve gauge?”
“Would have if I could have,” Willis said.
“You gotta-”
“Willis! You in here?”
Roy Brannigan’s voice. Willis hadn’t relocked the door after Westerley had arrived. He and Westerley looked at each other. Westerley nodded.
“Back here, Roy. In the storeroom.”
Brannigan entered and looked around. He saw his wife in the lawn chair, barely covered by a towel. He aimed a dark and puzzled scowl at Willis and the sheriff.
“What in God’s name is goin’ on here?”
“Beth was attacked,” Westerley said. He could smell beer on Brannigan’s breath.
Brannigan stared at him as if he’d spoken Chinese. “What do you mean, attacked?”
“I’m sorry, Roy. Not long after she left the store to go back home, Willis heard somebody screaming in the woods. He went to see what was going on, and he found Beth on the ground and hurt. So he brought her here and called me.”
“She musta been taking the shortcut back to your place,” Willis said. “I was just about to call you.”
Brannigan’s intense features were bunched, but his eyes were huge and unbelieving. He was trying to comprehend what he’d just heard.
“What do you mean, attacked?” he said again.
“We’ll get her to a hospital, Roy,” Westerley said. “Then we’ll know more. We gotta find out how bad she’s hurt.”
Brannigan stared at his wife, who lay gazing at nothing as if she were alone on a distant island. Her teeth were chattering.
“I told her and told her not to take that shortcut at night,” Brannigan said. His anger was growing, simmering right now, but it might boil over. “They don’t listen. They don’t damn listen!”
Gravel crunched outside in the lot as another vehicle pulled in and parked. Westerley thought it might be the ambulance and paramedics, but instead his deputy, Billy Noth, appeared in the storeroom doorway. Westerley had told him what happened, so he wasn’t surprised to see Beth in her condition. Billy looked at Brannigan, then at Westerley.
“She okay?” he asked.
“We’ll find out soon,” Westerley said.
“Who did this?” Brannigan asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Westerley said.
“We’ll find the son of a bitch,” Billy said.
“God had best find him before I do,” Brannigan said.
“We’ll do the looking,” Westerley said, remembering Willis’s shotgun. He knew Brannigan owned several guns. Too many damned guns around here.
More gravel crunched out in the parking lot. This time it was the ambulance. Tight metal doors thunk ed shut almost in unison, and shortly thereafter came the sound of somebody entering the store.
“Back here!” Westerley yelled.
Two burly paramedics in white outfits came into the storeroom, making it suddenly seem small and cramped and very warm. Westerley was perspiring heavily and could feel the taut material of his tan uniform shirt sticking to his back.
He told the paramedics briefly what had happened, and they hurriedly set about bringing in a gurney and transferring Beth onto it. As they shifted her weight, the towel came half off her. There were leaves and dirt sticking to her nude body. One of the paramedics got a blanket over her in a hurry and kicked the towel to the side. Elvis’s eyes showed, somewhat rumpled, and seemed to be observing everything with mild interest.
“Lord, Lord…” Brannigan said in a choked voice. “I’m goin’ with her to the hospital.”
The paramedics looked at Westerley.
“He’s her husband,” Westerley said. For a moment he wondered how it would have felt to say he was Beth’s husband. Westerley’s own wife had left him three years ago, unable to stay married to a cop.
“You can ride in back, sir,” one of the paramedics said to Brannigan.
“Make absolutely sure they do a rape kit on her,” Westerley said softly to the other paramedic.
The paramedics rolled the gurney through the store and outside, handling it gently. Everyone followed. The night was dark but for the island of light where the convenience store stood. The ambulance’s flashing red and blue roof lights seemed inadequate, surrounded by all that vast darkness and silence. Moths flitted like stunned spirits before its headlights.
As the gurney’s wheels were raised and Beth was loaded into the ambulance, Brannigan walked about ten feet away and stood staring up at the sky. He suddenly howled, startling everyone. His jaws spread even wider and the tendons in his neck tightened like cables as he howled again, louder.
Then he calmly walked to the rear of the ambulance.
“The Lord doth have his reasons,” he said, and climbed into the vehicle after Beth.
One of the paramedics shut the ambulance’s rear doors. As he walked around to get in the passenger’s seat, he looked over at Westerley and rolled his eyes.
Westerley didn’t respond, thinking about Beth.
The three men stood and watched the ambulance spray gravel, then break from the lot. A couple of hundred feet down the road, its siren cut in.
“I’d like to know what those reasons are,” Billy Noth said. He turned his head off to the side and spat.
When the ambulance was out of sight and could no longer be heard, Westerley laid a hand on Willis’s bony shoulder.
“Take us to where this thing happened,” he said.
21
New York, the present
“I figured that sooner or later I’d see my good buddy Detective Quinn again,” William Turner said.
Quinn was back in the brownstone vestibule that smelled faintly of cat urine. Turner, the former manager and part owner of Socrates’s Cavern, had opened the door and was staring out at him, grinning. He didn’t look so much like Einstein today. With his meaty lips and gapped teeth, he had what could only be called a lascivious grin. It went so well with his former business that Quinn wondered if it might be practiced.
Turner wasn’t wearing a blazer and ascot today. He had on a shimmering purple silk kimono and the same fleecelined leather house slippers he’d worn during Quinn’s last visit. His curly gray hair still looked as if it would overwhelm any comb. His blue eyes were alight with amusement, as if Quinn had just told a joke. Or maybe Turner regarded Quinn simply being there as a joke.