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“Gary, if there is anything of note on these tapes, I’ll bring
it to the attention of your supervisor. Now, any further questions?”
Gary, seated behind his desk, had stiffened so much as to give the appearance of having snapped to attention. Weinstock took the tapes, turned without a further word, and walked away.
Back in his office he locked his door and popped the tape into the deck, sat down in his swivel chair and hit PLAY. For a long while he saw the morgue room, empty and badly lit. He hit FAST-FORWARD and the time code in the lower left speeded up. There was a blur of movement and he stopped, rewound the tape, and played it forward at normal speed. It took him nearly ten seconds to understand what he was seeing. It would take him the rest of his life to fully accept that what he was seeing was real. Numb, staring, immovable except for his thumb on the remote he sat there for over an hour, pressing STOP, REWIND, PLAY. Over and over again as icy tears streamed down his cheeks.
(3)
Newton looked at Val and then swiveled his head toward Crow. “What do you mean about it not being over?”
“I’ll get to that in a sec. ” Crow said. “So, with Billy dead, the people in town started to really get up in arms. Drifters getting hacked up they could more or less accept—you’re a drifter, shit happens—but a popular town kid like Billy getting killed, well that was something different. Cops and men from town started scouring the brush, checking the forest, poking in every swamp and hollow around town. I don’t think they had any kind of a clear idea what they were looking for—they were just looking. They needed to find something, and in a way it brought the town together. Instead of fighting each other, they were unified in searching out what had done this thing to Billy.
“Two days later I was in my backyard, just sitting on a swing and thinking about Billy. It was just around sundown, and I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere out of sight of the house, of course, but I couldn’t stand to be inside. I guess if my dad had actually cared about me he’d have had me inside with every door and window locked shut, but he was too busy drinking and he figured if I was in the yard what could happen? Ah well. Anyway, I was sitting there and trying to wrap my head around the idea that Boppin’ Billy was dead. I was still all screwed up by the deaths of my friends, but that was from sickness, and I could half-assed understand sickness leading to death, but to die by violence, that was something totally outside of my experience, and it was hurting me. I felt lost and stupid, and somehow I even felt as if I was to blame. No, don’t ask me how, it was just the sort of stupid thing a confused kid feels. Something about feeling like I was being punished for being a brat by having Billy taken away. Stupid shit.
“So, I just sat there and watched the sun go down, trying to understand the enormity of the fact that Billy was dead and was going to be dead forever, and that I would never, ever see him again. I kept wanting to, you understand. I think I even wished on the first star that came out just to be able to see him one more time. Maybe I was half asleep, or maybe I was so wrapped up in thinking about it that I had sort of hypnotized myself. Either way, just as the sun was dipping down over the treeline I heard something crunch down on a branch behind me. I actually believed it was Billy. Boppin’ Billy come back to be with me, smiling that cocky smile of his. I remember that I was actually smiling when I turned my swing around to face him, grinning the way I always did when Billy came home from school. I swung myself around and I think I even said his name.
“But…it wasn’t Billy, of course. That was stupid. It was—someone else. He grabs me by the front of my shirt and throws me—actually throws me—across the yard. I go flying, screaming, terrified, and crash right into a big azalea bush, land upside down, still screaming, hurt, confused…nothing making sense. I can hear whomever it is running at me, grunting and wheezing with effort. Sounds like a bear with all the noise he’s making. I get only one brief glance at the man’s face, and even then it isn’t a good clear look. I have leaves and stuff in my face and fireworks going off in my head. When he grabs me again I try to hold onto the branches, try to keep from being picked up again. I never made the connection that this might be the same guy who killed Billy, dumb as that sounds. For a minute there I actually thought it was…my father. ”
“Your father?”
“Sure. He was always kicking the shit out of me. Sometimes it was as bad as what was happening that night in the yard. Sometimes he’d beat me so bad I’d be out of school for a week, two weeks. ”
“Jesus…”
“And you can leave that part out of the article, too. ”
“Uh, sure, man. Don’t worry. “
“Good,” Crow said firmly. “Anyway…the guy starts grabbing at me and I’m thrashing around, trying to hold onto the bush, trying to kick him, and this time I get a real good look at his face, which is when I really start screaming my head off. He suddenly lets go, and I fall and whack my head against the trunk of a pine tree. I’m lying there, stars in my eyes, and I hear the sounds of a scuffle and some screams and even something that sounds like a roar. The next thing I know, someone is grabbing at me again, but this time it’s different, gentler. I stop fighting back and let myself be picked up. Once the fireworks in my head settle down I can see that the man holding me is Oren Morse, and the other guy—the real attacker—is running away down the alley. ”
“Damn,” Newton said, scribbling furiously in his notebook.
“Then there were lights on in all the houses around, people are coming from everywhere. My father comes hustling out of the house carrying a big son of a bitch of a shotgun. Everyone swarms around me and Morse, and my father literally tears me out of the Bone Man’s hands. ”
“Is that when they got the idea he did it?”
“No, not then. Too many people had looked out of their windows and backdoors and saw him fighting with some other guy—something they all conveniently forgot later when the Bone Man got blamed for everything. Right then they saw some other guy hotfoot it out of there and Morse helping me up. ”
“Morse chased him off, then?”
“Well, if no one else had showed up, I think both Morse and I would have been killed, but the Bone Man slowed the killer down long enough for the commotion to get the neighborhood up in arms. With all that had been going on in town, everyone was trigger-happy and came running with plenty of artillery. Typical of these things, nobody got a good look at the attacker. At least none of the neighbors, but Morse must have, though, ’cause later he knew where to go looking for the guy. But, I’m getting ahead of the story. I don’t want to tell it out of sequence. Morse was kind of out of it right then. The other guy had smacked him around pretty badly, his nose was bleeding and all. ”
“The attacker got away clean?”
With a sigh, Crow sipped his Yoo-Hoo and then said, “The guy ran, all right, but he didn’t give up. He went all the way over to the far side of town, the upscale part of Pine Deep. Mind you, at the time, the town was not as rich as it is now. Back then only Corn Hill was ritzy. Well, this sonovabitch went over to Corn Hill and found another yard with another kid. Actually, two kids. He scaled this big wooden security fence and there was a little girl playing in the yard, right in sight of the kitchen window, and her older brother in his tree house reading Fantastic Four comics by the light of a Coleman lantern. He didn’t waste any time throwing her around—he just pounced on her, tore her throat out, and hacked her body up pretty bad. They said it looked like a bear had mauled her. ”
“Good God. What happened to the boy?”
“No one has ever been able to put that together clearly. The popular version of the story has it that the boy jumped out of the tree to try and save his sister, and the killer gave him a couple of pretty bad slashes across the chest and left him dazed and bleeding. By that time their mother was running out of the house with a . 22 caliber rifle. She found the boy sitting on the ground holding his sister’s body. He was in a kind of coma, but he was alive. The little girl, of course, was dead. ”
“Jesus…that’s horrible. It’s so…sad!”
“Yeah. ” Crow wiped his mouth. “The boy was in the hospital for over a month, and when he snapped out of the coma, he couldn’t remember a single thing. ”
“Maybe it’s better for him that way,” suggested Newton.
“Maybe. Who’s to say?”
