Off Season - Jack Ketchum [24]
Then she looked a little more closely. There were two dogs, she thought—or else one very strange one, because one stool was a whole lot darker than the other. How very neat of them, she thought, to have crapped right on top of one another. How very considerate. Wonder if I can find them.
She walked out back and around the house. Nothing. If she found them she was ready to skin them alive. Where had they come from, and where had they gone? They were nowhere in sight. A pair of furtive shitters, she thought.
She went inside and looked for something to clean it up with. There was toweling by the sink left over from the cleaning yesterday. She wadded up a fistful of it, picked up a handful of stool, and dumped it in the garbage can behind the house. She had to make a second trip for the rest. Then she went inside again for a scrub pail and a brush. She filled the pail with water, added some bleach and stirred it in, then returned to the stoop.
She was on her knees, still scrubbing, when the car pulled up. The timing was okay because by then she was over her anger and indignation. It was pretty funny, actually. Jim was the first one out of the car. She stood up and he walked to her and smiled and put his arms around her. She hugged him back, the scrub brush in her hand.
“There’s dogshit on the mat,” she said. “Welcome to the country.”
6:40 P.M.
Peters tapped Shearing on the shoulder and motioned him into his office. He took off his hat and sunglasses and put them on his desk, moved around to the other side and sat down. It felt good to sit down. “Close the door,” he said.
Shearing did what he was told and stood there, waiting. Peters made a noise that was something like a groan. The big man looked tired and sour. Shearing knew the look and knew it usually meant a long day ahead. Outside on his desk a report was waiting. Three-car collision on Highway 1. Looking at Peters, he guessed he was going to be late filing.
“Well, we got it,” Peters said. “I just talked to our Jane Doe. Mrs. Maureen Weinstein from Newport, Rhode Island, age forty-two if I remember rightly, out here to visit her son and daughter-in-law in St. Andrews. Car should be sitting somewhere between Lubec and Whiting, she doesn’t know exactly where.”
“Would that be a ‘78 Chevy Nova, black?”
“Yes, it would.”
“Willis just reported one maybe half an hour ago, three miles north of Dead River.”
“That’s the car, then. Any identification?”
“Just a minute.”
Shearing went out the door and back to his desk and shuffled through some papers. He returned to Peters’ desk at a brisk trot.
“Checks out,” he said. “Automobile is registered to Albert Weinstein, Newport, Rhode Island. Willis found no evidence of theft, though the car had been broken into. Stuff all over the front seat, purse emptied. But there was eighty-five dollars left in the wallet and a bunch of credit cards. Strange stuff, no? I thought this might be our baby when it came in.”
“Okay. The problem is we still don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with here.”
“What do you mean?”
“She says it was kids.”
“Teenagers?”
“No, kids. Little kids, like seven eight nine ten, in there. A couple of ‘em teenagers, but mostly younger. Wild kids, she says. Dressed in skins, Sam. Sound familiar?”
Shearing’s chin dropped abruptly. “George, please, I don’t need the aggravation,” he said.
“I mean it, Sam. Same thing our clamdigger friend told us about six months ago. The old gentleman with the empty quart of Rock and Rye. Youngsters in furs and skins, roaming ‘round the shoreline. Only he said there were a couple older ones, as I recall. Adults maybe. We take a statement on that at all?”
“George, we threw him in the tank.”
“I figured. Anyway, our Mrs. Weinstein says there were about a dozen of ‘em. Stopped the car for a little girl wandering along half-naked on the highway. They jumped her. Marks across her back made by sticks. Seems they drove her all the way from the highway to the shore, like a heifer. Says they meant to kill her and it sounds as if she was right. She