In the truck, I screamed out loud.
Tears spilled down my face. I couldn’t hold them back. Everything I had built for myself, this whole cardboard life that—even though I didn’t know it until that moment—meant everything to me, had been pulverized with one man’s death. I didn’t know how it had happened, but there wasn’t a solution, no magic words to turn back the cruel hands of time. The wolf had betrayed me. I had killed an innocent man. I had killed my one friend.
TWELVE
On the way home I passed a liquor store. I hadn’t been in the place in years, but before I had the house it was like a home for me, just like the bars were. I was messed up. All I could think about was having a drink or two or twenty to dull the pain I felt inside. The stuff was poison, but God had never made a more effective salve for people like me.
I stopped the truck outside the liquor store, knowing damn well what Pearce would say about this if he were still alive.
I didn’t go in.
I came home and locked the door behind me. Checked all the windows. The sun was pouring in through all my curtains, it was that powerful. It was like God was shining the floodlights on me, saying, “There he is.”
I turned on my little black-and-white television, and all that came through was a garbled wall of static, alien shapes moving through the rough snow. I twirled the rabbit ears around in a circle and finally found a position for them in which I was at least able to receive the audio clearly.
I guess there was a news conference in progress. I didn’t know if it was the one Pearce had mentioned—the one the feds had been orchestrating in some kind of attempt to set a trap for the Rose Killer.
It wasn’t.
I saw a wall of reporters outside of the police station on the other side of town. On the bottom of the screen was a scrolling message: OFFICER KILLED.
“This is Linda Roth reporting from outside the Evelyn Police Department,” the lady with the microphone said. “Details about the death of Detective Daniel Pearce are scarce, but to reiterate what we already know, we take you back to the studio.” A man appeared in a newsroom.
“Detective Daniel Casey Pearce,” the man said, “was one of Evelyn’s finest. Born in 1964 to Carol and Herbert Pearce, he attended school here in Evelyn, graduating as valedictorian from Stephen Bailey High School in 1982. Upon receiving his diploma, he entered the United States Air Force. He came back home to Evelyn in 1985.”
I reached for my side. It felt like it was on fire.
“He immediately joined the Evelyn Police Department, and through years of hard work and a strong work ethic, quickly became one of the force’s most decorated officers,” the man continued. “In the fall of 1991, he earned his gold shield after his involvement in what has become known as the Starling Street Hostage Crisis.”
Two men had gone into the jewelry store to rob it. Someone tripped the silent alarm, and it quickly became a hostage situation. Pearce was the responding officer. He put both men down before his backup arrived. Not a single hostage was injured in the short gun battle.
“Daniel Pearce is survived by a sister, his wife, and his unborn baby girl. He was twenty-nine years old.”
These were the bare facts about the man who saved me. The man I killed. I felt like the careful balance between life and hell that I had worked so hard to keep up over the last few years had crumbled just like that and just so quickly that I didn’t even know where the pieces went. I didn’t know what to think.
They cut back to the intrepid news lady on the street.
“At sunrise this morning, Daniel Pearce’s body was discovered on what is known as the Crowley property here in Evelyn, about a mile north of Old Sherman Road. As we have reported, this is the same site where, just a short time ago, the body of Gloria Shaw was found murdered at the hands of the serial murderer known only as the Rose Killer. Detective Pearce, in a joint effort with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was conducting surveillance at the scene of this brutal crime. Now it seems that tragedy has struck twice here in Evelyn, and we can only hope that these two deaths are unrelated. We take you now to the PD conference room. Bill?”
They cut to a crowded room in the precinct.
“Bill Hagmeier here, where Captain Louis Thorpe is about to read a brief statement, and answer a few questions about this tragedy.”
A man with a shock of white hair climbed the steps to the podium at the far side of the room. He was decked out in his dress uniform with about twenty-five pounds of medals pinned to his chest.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Evelyn,” he said in a deep voice, reading from a sheet, “and members of the press, at approximately five-forty-five this morning, the body of Detective Daniel Casey Pearce was discovered on the property of the Frederick Crowley family on the north side of Evelyn.”
“Who found him?” someone shouted.
“A resident on the property, and that is as specific as I am going to get at this time. The authorities were notified forthwith and …”
“How was he identified?” someone else shouted. Someone else yelled, “Is it true that the body was dismembered?”
More shouts rose.
The captain silenced them all with a sharp bang on his pedestal, a closed fist raining down on the board the microphones were attached to.
“He was identified by his shield. The investigation is in its earliest phase, and … Detective Pearce was … he …” and then he broke down, right up there in front of the world. The press jumped on him like vultures.
“Was it true his body was found beheaded?” they asked. “Is it true that it was a bear? Is it true that shots were fired? Was it a suicide-by-shotgun? Was he involved in any illegal activities that the department is aware of? Was this a crime of revenge? Is there any connection to the Rose Killer?”
The captain responded to the questions with yes or no answers, and finally got fed up enough that he walked off the stage. The sounds of the camera flashes were almost as loud as the shouts.
Someone else stepped up to the mike, a sergeant, I think, and warned the public to be aware of any dogs roaming around that weren’t tagged at all. This set off another maelstrom of questions from the press, but the sergeant promptly exited stage left.
I went into the bathroom and threw up.
They said it was a tragedy. A hundred times I heard them use that word. It was a tragedy.
In the kitchen I untwisted the twisty-tie that held shut the big black Hefty bag the bloody tarp was in. I opened the bag, and right there, resting atop the thing like a candle on a birthday cake, was the piece of the jawbone I had presumed belonged to the Rose Killer. It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and was crowned with two sterling, white teeth. Danny’s clean teeth.
Dear God, I thought. I wanted to reach down and touch it, to express how sorry I was, but that fragment wasn’t Pearce anymore. It was an item that proved to me what a curse I was to the world. It was evidence, and it had to be destroyed. I was sorry to have to think about it. I closed the bag.
I went into the bedroom and closed the door behind me. Up on the wall were all the articles about the Rose Killer and his victims. The Rose Killer was supposed to be dead, not the man who had believed in me, had trusted me, and had been my friend. Something had gone horribly wrong.
I briefly came upon the thought that if the wolf had known what it was doing, that if it had gone out with a mission last night and had killed Pearce, then he must have been guilty of something, if not the Rose killings, then maybe he … I don’t know. Left his seed on the bodies of those dead girls, perhaps. But I knew this was impossible. Pearce couldn’t have been involved in the murders or anything as filthy as I was thinking. First off, he was a normal guy. He had a wife and a baby on the way, and further, those murders went back for years and had occurred all over the country. There was no way that Pearce, while being a family man and a cop, would have the time to travel all over the United States to carve up a couple of dozen women.