And Crawling Things Lurk

Don wheeled his patrol car around the corner onto Main and eased into the traffic flow of the northbound slow lane.

Ray was still riding right seat, at least until the following day when he would start driving around solo as a cover unit for whoever needed him. Although with the light activity of the small town, he would most likely spend his time running official errands. He said, “Well, you know, at least one of De Leon’s points was right. The only loss was the dog. And that’s if he really was killed or sold and not still on his way back home. And there hasn’t been a sign of another attempt.”

But Don knew better. They had only had a week of sweating about the possibility of someone sneaking through a window and making off with a child, whether Kelly or someone else.

“Naw. His assumptions stink as bad as what the prowler left behind, and he ought to know it, too. A week is nothing between outings for a prowler with even half a brain. A month or even six months wouldn’t be unreasonable for someone careful enough to let things calm down before trying again.”

“Okay, but what could we do different that would be any better? Like the sergeant said, we can’t just ignore the rest of the town, not that we’re exactly facing an overwhelming wave of criminality. And, who knows, maybe it’ll turn out to be just a one-time thing, after all, whatever it was. And, as dark as it was, the guy might not even have been aware anyone was in the room until Be-Be went after him.”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

The mid-morning traffic on four-lane Main Street was fairly light, and Don stayed in the slow lane. That’s why the car coming up from behind in the fast lane caught his attention. With a speed limit of thirty-five, he’d usually give them at least forty as long as they stayed with the flow and didn’t do anything erratic or stupid. But the driver of the late model Mustang that swept past him and every other car on the road at better than fifty failed that simple test.

“Oh, man!” Ray said, cinching down his lap belt as Don accelerated. “You believe that guy?”

“Ray, my lad,” Don said as he moved into the fast lane and hit his red light. “As time goes by and you get jaded like the rest of us, you will come to believe just about anything.”

The Mustang kept going without slowing towards the city limits at the north end of town. Don moved up on him and tweaked on the siren just enough to create an attention grabbing, and usually pulse-quickening, electronic yelp.

Still no response.

He hit the switch again and let the siren continue in its up-down pace until the Mustang moved over into the slow lane, although it still didn’t slow down.

Hanging on the Mustang’s bumper through the lane change with his siren wailing and accompanied by strobing red and blue lights in his roof bar, Don mumbled aloud. “Well, that’s right nice of you, pal, but I’m not on my way to a fire.” He added, “Uncle Don wants you.”

Finally, the Mustang pulled over to the curb and stopped after passing a man driving a motorized wheelchair in the bicycle lane.

Ray got out with Don and took up a position at the right front of the patrol car to watch for anything Don might not be able to see. He glanced back at the man in the wheelchair who had stopped several yards behind the patrol car and appeared to be staying back there.

Don walked up to the Mustang’s driver door and looked in the window. Within seconds his pulse quickened, and, with his jaw clenching, he was pretty sure he could feel his blood pressure climb. The driver and the sole occupant, a casually dressed young man, sat there with his left hand hanging out the window and holding his wallet loosely flopped open over his shoulder. It wasn’t a driver’s license displayed but a police badge from a town up the road a bit. The guy was just sitting there peering through the windshield and sort of slouching in his seat with his head cocked a bit to the side like he was bored with the whole situation and not just a little bit miffed. His body language said, “Okay, see the badge, apologize for interrupting my passage through your little town, and go away.”

“G’morning,” Don said. “You guy’s up north running Mustangs for unmarked units, now?”

“It’s mine.” The driver still didn’t look out at Don, and his head still had that I’m so bored tilt that matched the tone of his voice.

“That so? So, you’re not, like, on duty and rolling to something imminently important and utterly urgent? I was wondering why your dispatcher hadn’t notified us you were going to be ripping through our jurisdiction. Your driver’s license handy?”

There was a pause of several seconds before the young man responded, as though he had to adjust his understanding of how things should go. Either that or he was really bored and dozing off. He glanced up at Don as though just to be sure the man in the uniform was still addressing him. He didn’t say it, but his raised eyebrows and body language clearly said, “Really?” Turning back to face the windshield, he said, “Behind the badge.”

“That’s a really handy place to keep it, all right, but I can’t see it. Wanta take it out?”

No delay this time. “Hey, I’m a cop.” But he made no move to take his license out of the wallet.

“Yeah, I got that. So, you on duty? Work investigations, maybe?”

“Patrol division, just like you. I work nights.”

“Oh. Well. Then, just like me, when you’re off duty, you’re s’posed to drive just like everyone else. But I’ll bet you already knew that, right?”

The young officer from up the road worked his license out from behind his badge and held it between the tips of his index finger and middle finger as he held it out over his shoulder to Don, sorta like he would hold a tip out to a parking valet. His head still had its sideways tilt, and his gaze, maybe not quite so bored anymore, went back out through the windshield.

Don glanced at the license for a moment and said, “I see you live out west of town. So, you must come through little old Cedar City all the time on your way to and from work, and maybe into town for shopping and such, huh? A restaurant? Maybe a movie?”

“Mmm.” It sounded sorta like an acknowledgement, but you never know.

“Well, officer,” Don went on. “I’m going to extend to you a courtesy I have had occasion to make to other young men and women who have chosen to join our profession...”

The driver sat up and reached his hand for the gearshift with his right hand and stuck his left over his shoulder for his license, but still without looking at Don.

Don held the document in his fingertips just as its owner had done, but he kept it just out of the young man’s reach. He waited until its owner looked up his way to see where it was before going on. “And that is to remind you that professional courtesy as extended to fellow professionals is not the same thing as a free pass. Fellow professionals – that would be those folks that do the same sometimes-shitty work, and doing so, respect others who do it. And because they appreciate knowing there are others out there willing at any time to jump in to assist in any way necessary if a situation calls for it, they have special ways of saying thank you to each other by giving each other a benefit of the doubt in the event of infrequent and unintended minor violations. But, in reciprocating that respect, they don’t go busting through the other’s jurisdiction with the attitude that they are above the very laws they are all out there trying to enforce. They don’t flash their badges when they’re stopped for flagrant violations they commit off-duty and expect to be let off with a smile of brotherly-love and a pat on the back, because that isn’t what professional courtesy is all about. Now,” Don glanced back down at the license in his hand, “Officer John Collins, you may go with a warning – this time. Do not flash your badge at me again.”

“Yes sir,” Young Officer Collins mumbled with his head turned down as he accepted his license back. “Thank you.”

Don walked back and stood at his own driver’s door, Ray at his passenger door, until the driver demurely drove the Mustang off, signaling to re-enter traffic and all. Then, with a tweak of his head for Ray to join him, Don turned to walk back behind his car where he greeted the man in the wheelchair.

“Way to go, Evans,” the disabled man said. “He’ll catch on…sooner or later.”

“Yeah, but he’d better make it sooner rather than later.” Don leaned back against the trunk lid and crossed his arms comfortably over his chest. When Ray walked around the other back corner of the car, Don added, “Sarge, this is Ray Edwards, new reserve we’re getting ready for nights. Ray, this is Sarge Garrett. Don’t ask me what his real first name is.”

Sarge pulled forward enough to reach out his hand to shake Ray’s. “Edwards,” he acknowledged with a nod and a smile.

“Sarge,” Ray responded. “How you doin’?”

Sarge reached up over his shoulder and gave the staff extending four feet above its mount on the seatback a flick with his hand. It started the little American flag on top and the bright yellow pennant right below it to fluttering. Grinning through the tangle of untrimmed gray beard covering his face, he said, “Cruisin’ high, man. And, speaking of which, Don, I take it you talked to someone at city hall. They’ve got the colors flying again.”

Don gave him a crooked smile with a shake of his head. “It was the old bureaucratic excuse. You know, ‘It’s not my job!’ Up to the end of last year, the janitor put the flags up and took ’em down. But the new janitorial service they got in January said, ‘huh uh, not in our contract.’ And, since no one else cared enough to take responsibility for it, either, it just got ignored.”

“Oh, man, those colors cost too much to just let ’em go ignored.”

“Yeah, I hear you. I had to threaten the assistant city manager with calls to the American Legion, the VFW, and a couple of TV stations down in the city. He don’t like me much, but the feeling’s mutual. Anyway, when he couldn’t convince the chief to break an officer off patrol long enough every day to do it, he got the parks department to take over putting it up and down.”

“That’s great, man. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. And thank you for making a stink of it. I hadn’t even realized it had been that long since the flags flew.”

“Hey, man, that piece of red, white and blue cloth means something to some of us, don’t it?”

“It do, that.” Don answered as he stood forward, turned and walked back toward his driver’s door. Ray went to his and got in. As he got in, Don gave Sarge a wave and said, “See you around.”

“I’ll be there,” came the reply.

Don waited for a break in traffic and pulled out.

As he swung back into the flow, Don said, “Sarge lost both legs just below the hips to a land mine in Viet Nam. He was only a corporal at the time, I understand, young and legless but still not bitter at the world until they brought him home. Back then, a lot of people saw Nam vets as baby killers. I heard he didn’t get a very warm hometown welcome. They had fitted him with prosthetics, but he just couldn’t seem to ever get the hang of balancing on two of ’em at the same time. Although, he probably didn’t give his new legs much of a chance just hanging around his parent’s house. I’ve heard his attitude at the time with his therapist wasn’t the best, either, so when he told them to stop coming they took him up on it. I guess it was easier and probably less painful to just fall back to the bare-bones push-type wheelchair Uncle Sam sent him home with.”

After making a U-turn at the first corner and heading back towards downtown, Don went on. “The story is that’s when he started letting his beard grow full and bushy, like he was trying to look as much unlike a soldier as possible. But in a small town like this, it didn’t help much. Everyone knew who he was. A few years later a local woman whose son was killed over there took on a couple of federal bureaucracies, plus the town, and she got Sarge the battery-powered chair. He was probably used to his beard by then and kept it. By the time it had gone from dark to gray, most of the bitterness between him and the town simply evaporated. He inherited his parents’ house but kept his beard, and with his new ability to stretch his horizons to at least the edge of town, he started wearing a field jacket he got at Warren’s War Surplus Emporium out on North Main. The master sergeant stripes were already on it. No one complained.”

They turned at the school and headed into the industrial area between it and the river. “Oh, and our old friend Jackie Simms made a new friend when…”

Don was just finishing telling Ray about Jackie tossing Tori into the river – but just the shallow part – when their meandering patrol took them into the old warehouse area. The patrol car crept over the cracked and holed pavement the streets had become in the area of Dogwood Street as they checked for signs of forced entries or vandalism. Break-ins were rare but still occurred. There hadn’t been a serious fire since a careless campfire down in the Hole had spread to the trestle pilings nine years before.

Half way between the patrol car turning the corner and the trestle, a figure burst out of the doorway beneath the sign for Lucas Manufacturing. On the sidewalk, it turned and reached back inside. With a jerk, a wobbly shopping cart emerged. Now, nearer and with the shopping cart, Don recognized her.

“That’s Erica Waters. Her ex used to beat her up on a regular basis. When he did it the last time with a broken table leg, we got him some serious prison time for ADW. He’s still there. But, without him to pay the rent and other bills, she wound up on the street. Seems to be a whole lot happier, though. Now she’s one of the Hole-bunch.” He pulled over to the curb and stopped along side her.

Through Ray’s open window, he called out, “What’s wrong, Erica, don’t you like the accommodations?”

Erica looked over at Ray in the window. Leaning over, she looked past him to Don, and a toothless grin lit up her face. She had been beaten up and choked so many times over the years her face had a puffy, putty-like appearance, like it was been molded, wadded up, re-molded, wadded up, and re-molded again. But she always had a smile for her local cop.

“Hey, Don,” she called out in a voice like gravel pouring into an empty bucket, “how’s it hangin’?”

Don smiled. He liked Erica. She had less reason to smile than just about anyone in town, but she always had one for him, toothless as it was. “Why, it’s hanging just fine, thank you.”

She bent over to peer in at Don and flashed a gummy smile at Ray. “Ooh, you got yourself a new one – and pretty, too. Can I have ’im?”

“Gosh, Erica, I don’t know. Promise not to break him?”

She patted Ray’s elbow propped up in his open window. “Don’t worry, sugar,” she said with a wink. “I’m teasing. I didn’t know you fellas were hiring, Don. Got any more back at the stable?”

“Nope, just Ray. But he’s a reserve, so you’ll only see him on occasion.”

“Well, Ray, hon, you just listen to Don, and you’ll do all right.”

She was under fifty, Don knew, but she could easily have gotten a senior discount anywhere in town just on her looks – if she were allowed in. “You sure came out of there in a hurry. Someone getting fresh or something?”

“Hah! That’ll be the day, won’t it? Naw, but there’s something in there really raunchy. I just ducked in for a bit of rest out of the sun, and to find a corner for a bit if private business. Never noticed this door bein’ unlocked before. If it wasn’t showing just a narrow crack, I wouldn’ta seen it then. Anyway, I thought I’d give it a try.”

Don gazed at the door for a moment and said. “Now that you mention it, I don’t think I ever saw it open either. I don’t remember the last time, but I do recall shaking this door more than once over the years along with the others down here, and it was always secure. Don’t know how there could be an open door around for very long without getting noticed. Must have been done recently.”

“Yeah, but, God a’mighty, there’s a stink in there! It might be just a dead rat or something, but it’s riper’n I care for. And, fresh or not, and it sure don’t smell like it is, it’d be something to stick in a memory, all right.”

At talk of such an overwhelming odor, Don got a feeling like an itch in the back of his brain. Of course, the chances that the two were related were pretty slim, but he had been a cop long enough to know the feel of a possible lead when it whacked him.

“Well, does it smell like something dead, or more like someone forgot to flush?”

Erica cocked her head in thought, then shook it and said, “You know, it really ain’t either one. Or, it’s more like something dead that didn’t get flushed – but with something else mixed in. I don’t know. I ain’t never smelled nothing like it.”

“You see it, or just smell it?”

“Naw, it hit me soon’s I went in. I tried to squat for my business just inside the door, but I’da lost my lunch if I stayed long enough to even get started. It ain’t close enough to the door to see from there, though, not unless it’s just a little smidgen. It ain’t behind the counter, either; I looked. The stink’s strong enough for it to be good-sized pile, wherever it is. As big as this place is on the outside, it must go on forever, inside.”

“Okay, we’ll take a look. So, how you getting on, otherwise? Things okay?”

Her rubber-like face stretched out another grin. “You bet, hon. I’m doin’ just fine. But, I’ll sure let you know if ever I’m not.”

“See you,” Don called after her as she waved and wheeled her cart, squeaking wheel and all, down the street toward the trestle and the Hole.

With their big flashlights and the small jar from the glove compartment, Don pushed open the door that had crept back to where it was barely ajar after Erica came through in such a hurry. The first thing he did upon entering was to check the door. It had apparently been secured until not very long ago with two boards nailed across it on the inside. The boards with their bent nails protruding lay on the floor just off to the side. The door latching mechanism with the knob was destroyed from being jimmied and pried, but probably numerous times and long ago; the lock’s interior looked like it was bent and then rusted so badly it was frozen. The door breach had been accomplished by forcing the removal of the boards, but there was nothing to indicate whether that had been done from the outside or the inside. If was from the inside, that would mean entry had been made at another point, and that would mean searching the entire perimeter either from within or without. But, since the building was abandoned, anyway, there was hardly any point in going to that extreme. He turned to face the interior.

As the public entrance, it opened into a space the size of a normal sized room, but with no ceiling. The enclosing walls rose only seven feet above the floor. From there to the upward sloping roof was a dark gap of five feet or so. A service counter five feet from the entrance split the room in half. A four-foot gap at the left end allowed access behind it and lined up with an archway of similar width leading into the dark interior behind the walls. A foul stench overwhelmed the senses the moment they entered.

“Is it the same as you smelled at the Anderson house?” Ray asked.

Don didn’t have to think twice. “Seems to be.”

It smelled of putrescence, and of vomit, filth and feces, but of something else, too. He still couldn’t place it, but his mind flashed, again, back to that dark cave that had swallowed four or five fierce fighters, where unseen things crawled. The old Vasov place had enough of its own smells of rot, dust and mold to mask a lesser one, but this one dominated all. They propped the door open for whatever cross-ventilation it might provide, swept their light beams about to verify the source of the odor wasn’t close by, then headed through the archway and deeper into the cavernous space beyond that, in the shadowy depths, was all too similar to a maze of cave tunnels.

This first room was large and open, with a high, open-beam ceiling filled with shadows and shapes. Unidentifiable machinery and materials still filled corners and spaces between and around wood-beam pillars. Occasional desks with long-discarded drawers and often crippled on broken legs, littered other open spaces. Thick, undisturbed dust layered every surface. The bare wood floor squeaked with each step they put forward, although not with the sudden cracking sounds of failing support.

They poked their heads into storerooms and offices, but they kept coming back to the large room where the stench was strongest. As they made their way to the other rooms around the sides, they noted an increase in its intensity.

Don noticed what could be footprints in the dust coming from the direction of the entrance and going where he and Ray had not been to, yet. They were just smears in the dust as though the feet that made them had shuffled, and then been lightly brushed over with something that all but erased them, perhaps too-long pants cuffs or something lightly dragged. They led into a small room not far from the door, a large closet or storeroom, and, there it was – apparently.

At first, he didn’t realize he had found it. He was looking for something recently left, something that would stand out from the dust-covered wreckage of the old building. What he found looked like something that had been there as long as the floor, but the stink in the confined space was strong enough to be a real threat to his last meal. This had to be it.

Since they no longer had to follow their noses, Don opened his jar, scooped out a small dab of Vicks and applied it to his nostrils. After handing the jar to Ray, he knelt to examine their find. Ray stood beside him and held his own light high for a wider spread of the adjustable beam.

The thing on the floor appeared to be nothing more than an indistinct bundle wrapped in cobwebs, three feet long and a third that wide and high. It could have been a stack of papers that had been eaten by mold into a rounded mound. It could have been a pile of bedding, long since left to feed the worms and moths as it accumulated dust and cobwebs. But, when he poked at it with the tip of his baton, it felt solid under the spongy outer layers. He prodded it in several spots with the same, muffled thud. He tested its weight by trying to lift it with the baton tip. Although it had significant heft, it was surprisingly light for its size. Then he used the baton to stir the outer dust and webs down to an actual surface, and, in the glare of the halogen flashlights, he saw it was covered with fur.

When he moved around to the other side, he realized he had been looking at it from its top. Now he could recognize the shape of folded up legs, a stub of a tail, and a head. He pushed the baton through the fibers webbed across the space beneath the chin, but when he tried to pull the covering down and away, it proved too strong to break loose.

Bending over for a better look, Ray said, “It looks like spider webs, like when they wrap up flies.”

“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?”

Don took his folding knife from a pouch on his belt and sawed, cut and hacked through the tough stuff until he exposed the distinct shape of a pit bull’s face. Near where his baton had first penetrated was a leather collar from which three metal tags hung. Kneeling closer, he could read the phone number on one of them along with a plea for the finder to contact the owner of this loved lost dog named Be-Be.