Miller's Woods

When the call came over the radio, Officer Joe Frampton was sitting in his 1964 Chevrolet Bel Air, the vehicle painted regulation black and white, chowing down on a Big Slammer from the Burger Shanty on Rt. 60. A half-pound of Choice American beef, with two slices of white cheddar (one on top of the patty, one on the bottom), two thick tomato slices, leaf lettuce, pickles, big red onions, ketchup, and spicy mustard. And, of course, you couldn't have a Big Slammer without an order of steak fries (with a little bit of skin still on them). A heart attack in a bag, that's what Sue called it, but if she knew that Joe was stuffing his gob like this he wouldn't need to worry about his heart seizing up; Sue would knock his head right off his shoulders. And what if she knew that he was washing it all down with a large vanilla milkshake? Best not to think about it.

He was barely halfway finished with the burger when the radio came to life, and Wanda's voice came crackling out of it.

"Closest available unit … ten-fifty … near Highway Forty-four …"

"Ah, crap; what now?" Joe said around a mouthful of burger.

He grabbed the mike, depressing the button on the side.

"Ten-one, Station; do not copy. This is Unit Four. Come again."

"What's your ten-twenty, Joe?

"I'm sitting in the parking lot of the old ironworks and trying to eat my damn lunch."

"Perfect … closer than any … else. Get your pale behind out to Highway Forty-four, near the Westgate exit. There's been a ten-fifty out that way. Ambulance is … the way."

He didn't catch it all, but he caught enough. There'd been an accident on Highway 44, an ambulance was already en route, and a police unit had been requested.

Double crap, Joe thought. Into the mike, he said, "Ten-four, Station. On my way. Unit Four out."

Joe looked longingly at what remained of his burger before folding the wrapper over it and replacing it in the grease-spotted bag, sliding it down carefully next to the paper sleeve still half-filled with fries, and then folded over the top of the bag and placed it on the passenger seat. He took one last drink of milkshake and set it in the cupholder. The Bel Air's engine rumbled to life, and Joe pulled out of the lot of the ironworks that had been closed for three years.

It took him all of twelve minutes to get there, and he pulled his cruiser to the side of the road, parking behind a Juniper County Sheriff's Department vehicle. Joe shut the engine off and got out of the Bel Air as a short fellow in tan Sheriff's Department duds came over to welcome him to the party. Joe had always been envious of the uniforms the SD boys wore, hating the seaweed-green uniforms of the CFPD. (This was something he would never admit to one of the SD boys, of course.)

"It's about time one of you townies showed up," the deputy said.

Joe checked the man's name nametag: Hinton.

"And it's a good thing, too, Deputy Hinton," Joe said amiably. "Someone competent needs to take over for you county boys before you screw the pooch."

"Yeah, yeah."

From where they stood Joe could see a couple of paramedics working on someone at the side of the road. He saw the person's feet, one clad in a brown shoe, the other covered only by a stocking. A late-model Mercury Cougar sat at an angle further up the road so that its back end stuck out into the roadway. The front end of the vehicle looked as if it had run head-on into a brick wall at full steam. A trail of shattered glass, pebbles winking back bright flashes of sunlight, trailed from the Cougar to a telephone pole. The pole itself seemed completely unbothered by the day's events.

"I think I know that car," Joe said. "Yeah, that's it; it belongs to Jack Wellesley. He's a big cheese in town."

"I think that, before the sun goes down, someone will be telling Mister Big Cheese that he's now a widower. And it sure as hell ain't gonna be me."

Joe looked at those feet, the bare one and the other. He hadn't ever spoken a word to Mrs. Wellesley, as far as he could remember. He'd seen her around town, though, a pretty lady with a short blond bob. Her husband was a common attendee at town meetings, and at various soirees either thrown or attended by important people from town. Seemed a nice enough fella, but he always came alone.

"You think there's no hope for her?" Joe asked.

The deputy shook his head.

"Nah. The side of her head was … she's a goner for sure."

Joe looked around and saw no other wrecked vehicles.

"So, it was a one-car wreck?" he asked.

"Yep. She must've lost control and hit yonder pole."

The ambulance crew had given up the ghost. One of them came over to inform the deputy and the officer (looking from one to the other as he spoke, unsure of which one of them was in the position of authority), letting them know that the woman was as dead as the proverbial doornail, but that they'd take her to Juniper County Memorial anyway, since the county morgue was located in the hospital's basement.

While the medics lifted the dead woman onto a board and loaded her into the back of the wagon, Joe called into the station to fill them in on the situation. Wanda told him to hold on while she let Captain Stivic know that it was Pamela Wellesley who'd been in the crash out on Highway 44. Soon, the Cap himself was on the horn, asking if what Wanda had told him was correct. Joe confirmed it.

"Want me to head out to Wellesley's place to give him the word?" Joe asked.

He hated that part of the job, and supposed that he always would. Some cops developed a professional coldness about it, were able to break the worst of news to folks and then go home and eat the pot roast the little missus had fixed for dinner as if nothing had changed (probably because, for them, nothing had). Joe always found he had little appetite on nights like that, however. Got little sleep, too. His appetite and sleep were given a break when the Cap let him off the hook.

"I'll do it myself," Captain Stivic said over the radio. "Damn shame; they got a little girl, too."

"You sure you want to do this yourself, Cap?"

But there was no response.

***

"I heard it looks like a man, but he's got the head of a goat," Dave said.

Jim, half Dave's age and the youngest of the three siblings, stared at the older boy with wide eyes, a forkful of wound-up spaghetti held frozen in front of his open mouth, sauce dripping back down to the spaghetti still on the plate.

"Nuh-uh," Alice said.

At nine years old, she was the middle child, three years younger than Dave and three years older than Jim.

"Gabby Saunders told me at school that her cousin saw it. It didn't look like a man-goat. She said that her cousin told her just what it looked like, and that wasn't it at all."

Sue looked over at her husband, and he rolled his eyes comically at the tale the children were telling each other. She covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.

"Then what does it look like?" Dave asked, indignant that his version hadn't been readily accepted by his little sister.

"Gabby said that it looked just like a deer, but it had big old fangs."

Young Jim's eyes followed the conversation, moving between his siblings as they spoke.

"So, what … you think it's a vampire deer?" Dave asked.

"Who said anything about vampires? I just said it had fangs; that doesn't make it a vampire."

Jim finally ate the spaghetti off of his fork. He hadn't expected the conversation to turn to vampires, and it both frightened and delighted him.

"Baloney," Dave said. "Gabby didn't see nothing. She's a liar, and everybody knows it."

"I never said she saw it herself. I told you, her cousin saw it."

Dave shook his head, negating anything Gabby Saunders, or her cousin, claimed to have seen. He had it on good authority (from an eighth-grader at the junior high) that it was a goat-headed man, and nothing was going to convince him otherwise.

"Enough of this silly talk at the dinner table," Sue chided the kids. "You're going to give yourselves nightmares."

"Not me, Mommy," Jim said. "I'm not scared."

Sue smiled at the boy; he'd had trouble sleeping for a week when they let him watch Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man on television.

"Listen to your mother," Joe said.

The children let the matter drop for the time being, though both parents knew they weren't through with it. The kids would just wait until they were alone, when no parents could interfere in the debate over the monster in Miller's Woods. It had been the talk of the playground for weeks, ever since Old Man Collins had called the police to report seeing something strange in the woods while cutting through them one night.

Everyone knew that Old Man Collins was a booze-hound, and if Joe had been the one to respond to the call that night, he probably would've cuffed the man and made him dry out in the drunk tank. As it was, the new kid on the force, Lawson (who looked like he should be enjoying a summer break from high school instead of enforcing the law in Cedar Falls) had driven over to hear the old lush's story. Lawson had gone into the woods and spent more than an hour searching for whatever it was that Collins had seen. Lawson went red with embarrassment the next day at the station when everyone ribbed him about stumbling through the woods in the dead of night looking for spooks and goblins. (They were careful not to tease him too strongly while the Cap was around, though.)

"If he calls again with this crap," Captain Stivic had said, "tell him to go home and sleep it off. Damn skunk-drunk old coot."

But when the next report came, it wasn't from Old Man Collins. A girl from the high school named Kelly DuBois came to the station with her mother to tell about something she'd seen in the woods the previous night. When asked what she was doing strolling through Miller's Woods on a fine summer evening (the girl seemingly surprised by the question, as if she hadn't imagined anyone would be curious), she'd admitted to having gone into the woods to meet with the Franklin boy. It didn't take much imagination to see they hadn't planned a friendly match of Parcheesi in the woods. The girl burst into tears when her mother promised to tell Mr. DuBois about Randy Franklin once they got back home.

Although they still thought it was pure foolishness, a second report (and this one not from a known drunk) meant that someone had to check the woods again. The Cap ordered Joe to see to it, instructing him to take Lawson along for the ride. The kid was fairly beaming as he and Joe searched the woods that afternoon. After all the teasing, the Cap himself had sent them back to the woods. They found nothing that day except a few empty beer bottles and a discarded rubber.

Since then, there'd been three more sightings in and around those woods. The third in that series was reported by none other than Officer Carl Barlow, currently in his eighth year as a member of the CFPD. Barlow had been tasked with staking out the woods for a night.

"Probably some teenagers up to no good," Captain Stivic surmised. "Getting up to shenanigans. But another thought I had is that it might be some of them hippie-dippies going in there late at night to trip on el-ess-dee. If it's the former, read 'em the riot act and take down their names so I can call their parents to let them know what their little miracles are up to. If it's the latter, give 'em a crack over the head with your billy club and bring 'em on in."

So instructed, Barlow found a spot on a back road that bordered the eastern edge of Miller's Woods. His plan, as he later explained to Joe over a cup of coffee, had been to sit parked on that back road for a half-hour , reading a paperback by the dome light, and then to take a break from the latest potboiler to drive around the perimeter of the woods with his spotlight lighting up the trees. He would repeat this process through the night until he either saw something (maybe one of those hippie-dippies heading into the woods) or his shift ended. He didn't like the assignment one bit and didn't really expect to see anything at all.

It was on the second trip around the woods that Barlow hit the brakes and came to a jolting halt. He'd seen something among the trees, something he struggled to describe in both his official report and his later conversation with Joe. His first instinct was to call for backup; however, recalling the crap Lawson had to take just for checking out the woods on the old drunk's word, he thought better of this. He pulled his cruiser off the road and went into the woods on foot, cautious. He admitted to Joe that he'd gone in with his service-issue revolver out, the hammer pulled back. (In the official report, he'd merely had his hand resting on the revolver, the weapon itself still snug in its holster.)

"And that's when you found the tracks?" Joe asked, finishing his coffee.

"Yep. Strange, too. Never seen anything like them. Didn't never find the thing I saw when I was driving past, though, the thing that made me stop in the first place."

To this, Joe merely nodded, keeping his thoughts on the matter to himself.

The stories had spread like wildfire, being told and retold until they little resembled what they had been upon the first telling. If even half the people who claimed to have seen something strange out there were telling the truth, then one would have to guess that Miller's Woods was the busiest little patch of woods in the state, maybe even in the country. It had gotten to the point that even Joe's own children were helping to spread tall tales of goat men and deer with fangs. The only thing he could do about it was shake his head and wonder when people were going to come around to the idea that it was spacemen from Mars that were out in the woods. Probably not very long, he figured.

That night—the night of the spaghetti dinner—Joe Frampton lay awake long after midnight, thinking of the wreck on the highway, and of those feet, one shod and one bare. The question kept pecking at him: what would he do if one day there was a knock at the door and someone in a seaweed-green uniform (Barlow perhaps, or—god forbid—Lawson) was standing on the front porch, hat in hand, a sorry look on their face, telling him about an accident on the highway?

He pushed the thought out of his mind with some effort, and he fell asleep to the sound of Sue's deep, even breathing.

***

The day of Pamela Wellesley's funeral was cloudy and reasonably cool for summer. The woman was put into the ground near the southeast corner of North Hill Cemetery. Though neither Joe nor Sue had really known the woman, Captain Stivic—having received his own invitation on account of his friendship with the man—had told Joe that the grieving widower had requested that he attend the funeral as well. Joe could only guess that the man wanted him there simply because he'd been there at the scene of the accident. Joe half-expected to see the county deputy at the funeral too, but he hadn't noticed the man at either the church service or the cemetery.

"Will I get paid for the day?" Joe had asked the Cap.

"Of course not."

The minister was saying some nice words that were supposed to make it easier for the bereaved, helping them accept the inevitability of death and take comfort in the thought that the deceased was sitting on a cloud somewhere listening to the angels strum their heavenly harps.

Jack Wellesley stood listening to these nice words, his eyes raw, red and sunken. One of his big hands was closed over the smaller one of his daughter, a girl who looked to be about Alice's age. The girl was pretty, with dark hair like her father's, though hers was thick and full where Jack's was thinning. She had pale blue eyes that now held a sadness that broke Joe's heart to see. There was a void around father and daughter, a gap between them and the other graveside mourners closest to them. It was like people were afraid to get too close, lest whatever bad luck that had touched them spread like a cold.

After the coffin was lowered into the ground, some of those gathered around threw handfuls of dirt down onto the closed lid of the coffin. Jack Wellesley and the girl were the first. Jack tossed his handful but his daughter hesitated, pausing with her closed fist hanging in the air above the maw of the grave. He bent down and whispered something in her ear, and the girl finally opened her hand, letting the dirt fall.

Joe was unsure if he was supposed to grab up a handful of dug-up earth himself from the mound of it near the grave, but it appeared that only family and close friends were expected to. He was glad; there might be some beautiful symbolism at play but, as far as he was concerned, throwing dirt onto a coffin was bad juju. He knew that it would be covered entirely with dirt anyway, but it still felt wrong.

When the proceedings came to an end, father and daughter took up a position near the gates, thanking those who'd come to the burial, as they left the garden of the dead to return to the streets of the living. Captain Stivic stood near them, passing a word or two with Jack between well-wishes. Joe meant only to give a brief word of condolence and then to slip away, but the Cap clapped him on the arm and made the introductions.

"This is Officer Frampton, Jack. He was the man on the scene when …"

Stivic didn't finish, but Jack Wellesley nodded anyway, sticking out a hand. The man was at least a head taller than Joe, who was a big man himself. Joe took the man's hand and they exchanged a brisk shake.

"It's good to see you, Officer Frampton. May I call you Joe?"

"Of course you can."

"Good, good; and you can call me Jack. I wasn't sure if you'd be able to make it."

"This here is my wife, Sue," Joe said.

"It's good meeting you, ma'am. This here is Emily."

The girl looked up at Joe and Sue with watery eyes. Sue knelt down, not concerned about dirtying the hem of her dress.

"You look very lovely, Emily," Sue said.

"Thank you," the girl said quietly.

Sue gave the girl a brief hug and stood up again, smoothing down her dress. Jack Wellesley gave the woman a grateful nod.

Captain Stivic addressed the young girl:

"You might know Joe's little girl from school. Alice Frampton?"

Emily nodded.

"She's a year ahead of me. She's nice."

"Yeah; Alice is a good girl," Joe said.

"Maybe we can arrange a playdate sometime," Sue suggested.

"That sounds great," Jack said, settling one arm across his daughter's shoulders.

They parted ways then, Joe and Sue leaving through the gate and walking to their car (not the Bel Air, of course, which belonged to the town of Cedar Falls; their own car was a Chrysler Newport in two-tone blue and white). They got in, and after one last look at the cemetery, Joe started her up and swung the big hunk of rolling steel out of the parking lot, pointing her in the direction of home.

***

The weeks passed.

There was a truck turnover on Highway 53; nobody was badly hurt, but a full truckload of beer bottles was splashed over the highway, dark glass glittering under the sun and amber liquid foaming on the hot macadam.

There was a scare at the public swimming pool when a young boy hit his head on the deck while attempting a dive. The lifeguard (coincidentally, the lifeguard was Kelly DuBois, she of the nighttime tryst in the woods) pulled the boy out of the pool, the water already stained with inky waves of red near the spot where the boy had gone in. There'd been a lot of blood, which elicited a good deal of screaming from the kid's frightened mother, but a trip to Juniper County General and some stitches set the boy right again. Of course, he wouldn't be able to swim for some time on account of the stitches; his whole summer might just be shot in that regard.

There was an armed robbery at the Northern Illinois Bank & Trust branch in Fryeville, putting the CFPD on high alert in case the guys headed their way and tried robbing one of their own town's fine financial institutions. The crooks—two guys in bright-orange balaclavas—had been gone before the first police cars roared onto the scene. The men would be apprehended four months later, in Wisconsin, after shooting dead the attendant at a gas station before looting the register of the eighteen dollars in the till. They still had those balaclavas in their possession when they were arrested.

Someone called the police to report a dead body lying in the road at the corner of Gardenia and Low Street. The dead man turned out to be none other than Old Man Collins, not dead but dead drunk. He spent the night in the tank, earning himself a ticket for public drunkenness. The ticket was to be paid within thirty days, or else he would spend thirty days in jail. The old-timer grumbled about "gubment rob'ry", but paid the ticket with two days to spare. Some wondered where he'd gotten the money, but thought it better not to ask.

And there were sightings of strange creatures in or near the woods. Maybe it was a tiger escaped from the zoo (though there was no zoo within a two-hour drive of Cedar Falls), or a wendigo, or a revenant come back to haunt the woods for some inexplicable reason. Or maybe it was a pig man (a variation of Dave's goat man story), or an invader from Neptune (not Mars, as Joe had predicted to himself).

"Damn kids messing around in those woods, scaring people half to death," Deakins said one day in the breakroom.

Carl Barlow, Deakins's fellow officer, agreed wholeheartedly. Barlow seemed to have forgotten all about his own sighting, and those strange tracks in the woods.

Joe, for one, was sick of the talk about Miller's Woods, and while he held no sway over what the boys at the PD talked about (or the folks at Hal's Barbershop, or the Fourth Street Diner, or any of the other fine places in town where people chewed over rumors and innuendo of all sorts), his children were forbidden to discuss this nonsense at the dinner table. He knew this wouldn't stop them from talking it over elsewhere when they were out of his hearing, but that was just fine with him, so long as he got to eat his meatloaf or baked chicken and potatoes in peace. If Sue had any desire to speak on the matter, she did so with others, never raising the subject with her husband.

When he thought about it, Joe figured the Cap had the right of it. It was just some kids having fun, and a whole lot of damn fools in town were letting themselves be taken for a ride. Summer would end and a new schoolyear would begin; the kids would forget all about their games, with more important matters (which girls put out, which boys had Russian hands and Roman fingers, whose big brother was willing to buy beer for a party) taking precedence, making them forget all about going out to Miller's Woods to spook people in the middle of the night.

But he had to reevaluate this conclusion when Petey Wheatley was taken to the hospital with a broken ulna, a banged-up noggin, and an assortment of scrapes and bruises. If it was a game, it was one that had gone too far.

***

"What did I do to deserve this, Cap?" Joe asked. "You know how sick and tired I am of this woods business. Send Deke to talk to the kid."

"Deakins couldn't tell the difference between his ass and a hole in the ground, and you know it, Joe."

Joe looked at the open door of the Cap's office, wondering if Deakins was in the station, and if he'd heard what Stivic really thought of him. And if he had, what then? There wasn't much Deakins could do about it, Captain Stivic being Captain Stivic. Still, it was best not to ruffle feathers, and so Joe didn't mention Deakins again. He accepted the duty he'd been assigned, taking Barlow along because that's the way the Cap wanted it.

It was late and Joe was tired, so he let Barlow do the driving. Thirty minutes later they were walking through the front entrance of Juniper County General Hospital. The thin-lipped receptionist, who looked old enough to remember the Neolithic Era, directed them to Room 146. Joe thanked her. The halls of the hospital were clean, white and quiet. They passed an old man in a pale blue gown walking down the hall; a nurse in a crisp white uniform was helping the man along.

Petey Wheatley was fifteen years old but could've passed for twelve. He was sitting up in bed when Joe and Barlow entered the room, with his arm in a cast and a bandage wrapped around his head. His parents were in the room. Petey's mother sat in a chair pulled right up to the bed, busily stroking her son's hair, her face full of hurt and confusion ( How could anyone ever even dream of hurting my little baby?, that look said). The boy's bother paced around the room, and the look on his face was anger.

"Afternooon, Mister and Missus Wheatley," Joe greeted them. "Afternoon, Peter."

"Petey, Officer," the woman spoke up. "He likes to be called Petey."

"All right then; Petey it is."

"What are you going to do about this?" Mr. Wheatley asked. "My boy's lying up here in a hospital bed with a concussion, he's gonna have to stay overnight for … whad'ya call it, Norma?"

"Observation."

"That's it, for observation. People have been talkin' about those damn woods for over a month now, and what have you done about it? Jack squat, that's what."

"Calm down, Harry. Getting upset isn't good for your blood pressure."

But Harry Wheatley had no intention of settling down, blood pressure be damned.

"Something in those woods did this to my boy, and you better … you better just do somethin', all right?"

Joe noted the man had said something in those woods and not someone in those woods.

Joe looked over at Barlow and could tell that he was irritated. Barlow wasn't the most patient of men, and standing around while some pencil-necked kid's father read them the riot act didn't sit well with him.

"I understand that this must be very frustrating for you," Joe told the boy's parents. "I promise we'll get to the bottom of this and get justice for your boy."

This seemed to mollify Harry Wheatley; his wife just went on fussing over Petey.

"Now, let's start at the start of the thing," Joe said.

He dragged over a free chair and took a seat. Barlow, without needing to be told, took out a pad of paper and a pencil, ready to jot down any salient details.

"My name is Office Frampton, Petey, but you can call me Joe."

Petey looked Joe in the eyes but didn't say anything. The boy's own eyes were slightly glassy, whether with pain, or with whatever dope the doctors had given him to dull that pain, Joe was unsure.

"I'd like you to tell me everything that happened tonight."

And so the boy talked, telling about a shortcut through Miller's Woods ("I warned you to stay outta those woods," Mr. Wheatley interrupted, earning a reproachful glare from his wife), and how he'd gotten twisted around in the woods, how he was trying to find his way out of them.

"And then I sorta heard this whistling sound," Petey said. "But there was another sound, too. Almost like … a growl."

Norma Wheatley covered her face with one hand, as if the thing that had made those sounds was right there in the room with her and she couldn't bear to look at it. Joe could hear the scratch of pencil on paper behind him and knew that Barlow was keeping up.

"And then there was a rustling in the bushes," Petey continued. "It was dark, but I could see something moving through the trees, something that was awfully big."

The boy paused, his young face troubled.

"What happened then?" Joe asked.

"Well, something came out of the bushes and picked me up just like I weighed nothing at all. Threw me hard into a tree; I hit the tree and fell to the ground. I didn't even know how bad I was hurt. I just got to my feet as fast as I could and ran until I found the road. Then I walked all the way home, and my mama just about fainted when I walked in the door with my arm looking funny."

As if the memory was too much to handle, Mrs. Wheatley started blubbering then, but she quickly got herself back under control, reaching into the depths of her purse to find a tissue to wipe her eyes with.

"This … thing that picked you up and tossed you … what did it look like, Petey?"

The boy shook his head.

"It was very dark, sir. But I know that it was big, bigger than any man I ever saw."

Joe tried prodding more details out of the boy, but he'd gotten all he was going to get. Joe and Barlow took their leave, promising Petey and his folks that they would get to the bottom of this. Mr. Wheatley was still pacing the room when they left.

They drove back to the station, neither of them saying much. Joe wrote up the report, using Barlow's notes as a reference, before clocking out for the night. When he got home Sue was asleep and his dinner was waiting for him in the fridge.

***

The day after the interview with the Wheatley boy was a Saturday, and Joe had the day off. He slept in late, not getting out of bed until after ten, and then only because his bladder demanded relief. After granting it, Joe went into the kitchen to fix himself breakfast. He made what he (and he alone) considered his specialty, a concoction of chopped and fried potatoes with crispy bacon, the bacon sizzling in its own grease as he fried it up, filling the kitchen with its good smell. He topped it all with a generous helping of cheese that he shredded himself. The heat of the potatoes and bacon melted the cheese into delicious gooiness. Joe sat at the table and ate his breakfast to the sound of cartoons coming from the living room, alternating between bites of food and sips from a tall glass of orange juice.

He was still eating when Sue came into the kitchen. She stood in the entrance to the kitchen for a moment watching him eat, and then moved to the sink. There were no dishes in the sink, so she took a few clean ones from the dishrack, gave them a rinsing, and stacked them in the rack again. Joe knew his wife well enough to see that something was bugging her, and that she wanted to tell him about it but was having trouble finding the right way to start.

Several possibilities flitted through Joe's head: Dave was in Dutch again for getting into fights at the playground; Sue had dinged the car while she was out yesterday, and it would need to be taken to the shop; Jim, their youngest, was wetting the bed again after a year free from his little accidents.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Did you say something, Joe?"

He ate the last of the cheesy potatoes and bacon and pushed the plate away from him.

"There's something on your mind, and we both know it. So instead of washing dishes that don't need washing, why don't you just come out with it?"

She thought it over, looked at the entranceway and the sound of Bugs Bunny getting up to his usual shenanigans, and made a decision.

"In the bedroom," she said. "Where we can talk without anyone overhearing."

Joe's breakfast gurgled unpleasantly in his stomach; he had an idea that his nice, quiet morning was about to be ruined. Sue left the kitchen and turned down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, trusting that he would follow after her. Joe looked at his plate and glass, thinking about washing them before joining his wife in their bedroom. He knew that the dishes could wait, and that washing them would just be a lame attempt at delaying things for another minute. Joe left the things on the table and followed Sue to the master bedroom.

She was waiting near the window, her arms folded, the clean light shining in from outside bright on her face. Joe closed the door behind him when he came inside the room, and he sat on the bed. Sue went on looking out the window for another moment or two, then turned to Joe.

"So, is this it?" Joe said with jocularity. "You're leaving me?"

"That's not funny, Joey."

She was the only one who could call him Joey without it bothering him.

"All right, then. What is it?"

"You know that Alice has had a few playdates with the little Wellesley girl."

It wasn't a question, but Joe nodded anyway.

"The two of them really do get along famously," she said. "It's just that …"

She left him hanging.

"Just what, Sue?"

"Well … yesterday, Alice told me something that Ellen Wellesley had told her. About Mister Wellesley."

Joe waited for her to continue.

"Joe, how much do you know about Jack Wellesley?"

"Not much. He's old pals with Stivic, and he's tight with some of the people at City Hall. From what I gather, he may be the wealthiest man in town. I don't know much beyond that. What, did his girl rat him out for smoking dope like the teenagers or something?"

He laughed at this, but Sue did not.

"I think he's done awful things to that girl," she said.

She told him the story (as related to her by their daughter). Joe asked her to tell it again, and to take care to tell it precisely as Alice had. His earlier premonition had proven to be true: his morning was thoroughly ruined. When Sue finished the story again, Joe expressed a desire to question Alice himself.

"You can't," Sue said. "For one thing, she would never forgive me for telling you; I swore that I wouldn't tell a soul. And for another, I don't think she would ever be able to talk about these things with you. She's so young, Joe; she had a hard enough time telling me."

Joe got up off the bed and paced around the bedroom in a way that would have reminded Sue of Petey Wheatley's father if she'd seen him tromping around the hospital room.

"What am I supposed to do with this information, Sue? Just what in the hell do you expect me to do?"

"I was thinking that you could make a report to Family Services. They'll give your word more weight than mine, with you being a cop and all."

"Even with the badge, I don't know how seriously they'll take a story that begins with, 'My wife told me that our daughter told her that another girl told my daughter…' "

She threw up her hands in frustration.

"Well, somebody has to do something! Can't you just arrest him?"

"I would need probable cause to arrest him. Everything you've told me is not only hearsay, but it's hearsay of hearsay. There's no way I could get an arrest warrant signed by a judge with just this."

Sue walked back to the window and folded her arms again so that she looked exactly like she did when Joe walked into the room.

"Maybe you could talk to Mister Wellesley," she said. "You tell him that you know what's going on and that he'd better stop."

Joe shook his head.

"If this is true—"

She turned on him sharply.

"If it's true?"

He held up his hands in a gesture that said just let me finish.

"If it's true, then letting him know his daughter spilled the beans on him could just make things worse for her. He's bound to be unhappy knowing that she's telling people about it."

"Then what, Joe? Do we do nothing at all?"

No, they couldn't do nothing at all. But also, he didn't know what they could do. But an idea came to him; it wasn't one that he liked very much, but it was the best he had.

"Stivic," he said. "I'll talk to the Cap."

***

Barlow was at the station when Joe walked through the doors. The man was leaning back in his chair so that the front legs hung suspended in the air, and his own legs were up on the desk. He had a transistor radio in his right hand, and he was listening to a White Sox game.

"Hey, Frampton," Barlow called out. "I thought you had the day off today."

"I do."

"Then what's your sorry butt doing here? You should be home catching the game on the TV."

Joe, who found baseball to be the height of boredom, and wouldn't have watched the game at home even if hadn't come into the station, headed for Captain Stivic's office.

"I have something I need to talk to the Cap about," he said.

"Asking for a raise, are ya? Well, good luck!"

Barlow's laughter followed Joe into the office; he'd entered without knocking, which was a violation of an unwritten rule. Stivic was on the phone, and he held a finger up to Joe when he looked and saw it was him who'd come in.

"Right … right," he spoke into the phone. "I'll look into it, and I'll let you know."

Stivic finished the call and hung up the receiver.

"What are you doing here?" the Captain asked. "Don't you have—"

"The day off," Joe finished. "Yes, but there's something that I didn't think could wait."

"All right, then; take a seat."

Joe sat across the desk from his captain. Stivic sat back in his chair, waiting for him to start talking, but Joe hesitated for just a moment. He seemed to realize, really realize for the first time, just what he'd come to the station to do. Joe had come to the station, and into the Captain's office, to accuse one of the Cap's personal friends of being a kiddie fiddler, the kiddie in question being the man's own daughter. And this after the man had had to bury his wife.

But he'd promised Sue that he would do something.

"I need to talk to you about Jack Wellesley, Cap."

Stivic's eyebrows went up in surprise.

Joe talked for a while, and when he was done talking he waited for Captain Stivic to say something. After a period of contemplative silence that probably lasted for no more than twenty seconds (but which felt more like three minutes), the Cap did say something. In fact, he said several somethings, and though his voice never rose above a conversational volume, there was unmistakable venom in it.

When Joe came out of the Captain's office (Stivic rebuking him to knock next time), Barlow started to ask how his request for a raise had gone, but the dark look on Joe's face made Barlow shut his yap. He went back to listening to the game. The Sox were losing, but there was always the hope of a late-inning comeback.

Joe left the station and got back into his car. He sat for a few minutes, thinking, and then slammed the dashboard once with his fist. He looked at his hand; the knuckles were starting to flush red. Joe started the car and headed back home, where Sue would surely be awaiting his report. He hated that he had nothing good to tell her.

***

It had been a week since Joe's unproductive talk with Captain Stivic, and in that week there'd been two more reports concerning the goings-on in Miller's Woods. The first had come from Mr. Garner, an insurance man with an office on Main Street. He claimed to have swerved off the road to avoid hitting something big and hairy, with dark eyes and a mouth filled with too many teeth. The creature ran into the woods after the near-miss. Those who knew Mrs. Garner put forth the theory that her husband driving into the ditch was the result of falling asleep at the wheel, and that he was using the story of the shaggy beast in the road in an attempt to keep the missus from boiling him in a vat of oil. He'd fallen asleep once before and the result—a ding in the fender—had resulted in Mrs. Garner chasing her husband down Stewart Street with a nine iron.

The second report came from the wife of a member of the Town Council (the Town Council holding the Police Department's purse strings and all), and Stivic had taken this report more seriously than Mr. Garner's. The plan was to have two officers prowl the woods every night until the source of all this madness was discovered.

Barlow and Adams were sent out the first night (Barlow hadn't accepted the duty with grace), and Lawson went out on the second night with Faraday. Now, on night three, it was Joe's turn to spend some time in the woods, and he was accompanied by Deakins. The two officers decided to split off and follow different paths; they would walk rough circuits through the woods, keeping an eye out for goat men, pig men, or any other strange nocturnal creatures.

"Do me a favor, will you?" Deakins said when they began their watch. "If we bump into each other in there, don't shoot my pecker off thinking that I'm Dracula or the Wolf Man."

Joe promised, but Deakins had notably not responded with a promise of the same.

Joe found himself on a clear path that meandered near the northern edge of the woods. He had a heavy-duty flashlight in his hand, and used it to shine light into the deeper shadows under the trees. The song of crickets buzzed in his ears as he walked along, his eyes searching for any movement in the woods. Summer was nearing its end, but the night was warm. A fat wedge of moon hung in the velvet sky, and the stars were cold pinpricks of light.

Joe wanted to be home, lying in bed next to his wife, asleep. He might have chalked this assignment up to pettiness on Captain Stivic's part after their conversation about Jack Wellesley, but the thought held no water since no one seemed to be safe from woods duty. Hell, the Cap was over the moon about Lawson (hadn't Stivic developed a habit lately of bringing up his daughter—who just happened to be the same age as Lawson—in conversations the young cop was a part of?), and Lawson had been sent out even before Joe.

A noise up ahead. Joe pointed his flashlight up the path, its yellow beam spearing through the dark. His hand went instinctively to the butt of his service revolver, but he kept the weapon holstered, with the strap secured. The last thing he needed was to accidentally shoot some teenager out in the woods for a rendezvous (maybe Randy Franklin back for another round with Kelly DuBois), or to inadvertently break his oath that he wouldn't shoot Deakins's pecker off.

Joe walked ahead cautiously, nearing a bend in the path, the dirt track disappearing behind a thick growth of shrubs. As he neared the blind turn, Joe's heart leaped in his chest (and his hand, with a mind of its own, tried to draw the revolver, forgetting that the strap was still on it) as he came face-to-face with another person.

"Christ!" Joe blurted.

The other man flinched, having been just as spooked by the unexpected meeting. Joe shined the light on the man (his hand had left the butt of his weapon, and now hung at his side), and the man raised a hand to shield his eyes from the harsh light.

"That's awfully bright," the man said.

It was Jack Wellesley, and meeting him there in the woods so soon after his talk with the Cap made Joe nervous. Joe lowered the light so that it was no longer shining directly into Wellesley's eyes, and Wellesley lowered his shielding hand in kind.

"What are you doing out here in these woods?" Joe asked. "Especially at this time of night."

"Good seeing you again, Officer Frampton," Wellesley said. "I might ask you the same question."

Joe quickly analyzed the man's words, their tone and inflection. Did he know about the meeting with Stivic? Would the Cap breach professional ethics in such a way, even for a friend? Joe's analysis came back with a finding of UNDETERMINED.

"Captain Stivic has us out here monitoring the woods at night in hopes of catching whoever is perpetuating this 'creature in the woods' nonsense," Joe said.

Wellesley chuckled lightly.

"You aren't afraid that it might really be some monster from beyond that is out for blood?"

Joe shook his head.

"I stopped believing in ghouls and goblins a long time ago, Jack. So, how about you?"

"Do I believe in monsters, you mean?"

"No; I mean, what are you doing out here?"

"Oh, right; my house borders the woods over yonder."

Wellesley gestured vaguely back in the direction he'd come from.

"Some nights I get restless," the man continued. "So I take walks in the woods. It helps to settle my mind down."

Joe raised the flashlight so he could see the path behind Wellesley; the path was empty.

"Have you ever seen anyone in the woods during your walks, someone who doesn't belong out here?"

"You mean other than you?"

Joe nodded his head exasperatedly.

"Yes; I mean other than me."

"Every now and then I might come across some teenagers. They like to come to these woods to drink and smoke, and sometimes … for other things. When they see me, they usually scatter like cockroaches. Probably afraid I'll call their folks and tell them what Junior and the little princess are up to."

There was a noise off in the brush; Joe swung the light that way but saw nothing.

"Tell me something Officer Frampton … are you out here alone?"

Joe swung the light back in Wellesley's direction, taking care not to shine it directly into his face.

"No; Deke is somewhere in the woods, too. That's Officer Deakins."

"Yes, I know him passingly. Seems like a good man. The kind of fella who would never go sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, into other peoples' personal business and such."

The two men stared at each other in the stillness of the woods. Joe was very aware that Wellesley was bigger than him, and he had to look up slightly to meet the man's eyes. A mirthless grin spread on Mr. Wellesley's lips.

"Well, have a safe night, Officer. I hope you find your monster."

Wellesley didn't wait for Joe to say anything in return, brushing past him and continuing down the woods trail. Joe turned and watched him go. He was sure now that Stivic had betrayed him to Wellesley, and this caused a flame of anger to kindle within him. After Jack Wellesley turned and disappeared around another bend in the path, Joe Frampton pressed the round button on the side of the flashlight, extinguishing it. He stood in the dark of the woods, listening to the nightsound around him.

***

After the encounter in the woods, the flame inside of Joe refused to gutter or die out. There was no angry scene where he barged into Stivic's office again, telling him that he knew the Cap had ratted him out to Wellesley, and he didn't resign from the police force in a fit of ire. But still, that flame burned. Sue didn't ask him what he was doing about the situation with Wellesley and the girl; he had promised to do something, and she believed that he would. Still, there was an anxiousness about her that hadn't been there before.

At dinner one night, Alice asked if her mother could arrange another playdate with Ellen Wellesley, and Sue ignored the request, getting little Jimmy started on his favorite subject of late: the upcoming school year. Alice looked at her mother questioningly for a moment before turning her attention back to her sloppy joe.

Joe puzzled over a way to proceed on the matter of Jack Wellesley, who just might be a predator whose chosen prey was his own child. Captain Stivic had made it quite clear that he thought the man incapable of such behavior and would allow no one, even one of his own men, to sully Wellesley's sterling reputation by throwing muck at him.

Joe had no proof that Wellesley had actually done anything wrong. He didn't think Alice would make up such an awful story; if she said that Ellen had told her those things, then Joe was sure the girl did indeed tell her. The simplest thing would be to interview the girl himself. If she repeated the story directly to an officer of the law, then there would be probable cause for an arrest. But Stivic would never allow Joe to interview the girl officially, and to do so off the record would not only fail to secure a warrant, but it could lead to questions about what a grown man (cop or no cop) was doing talking about such sensitive matters with a little girl behind everyone's backs.

But he had to do something. He'd promised, and he meant to keep the promise.

One afternoon, while Joe had the place to himself (Sue had taken the kids to one of Dave's ballgames; his team hadn't won a game all season, but there was always hope), he searched his address book for an old associate who worked for the State Police. He dialed the number, unsure if the man would be home at that time of day. The line rang once, twice, and started ringing a third time when a voice came on the line:

"Simmons residence."

It was a woman's voice. Joe had only met Steve Simmons's wife once, and didn't know if she would remember him.

"Hello; could I speak to Steve, please?"

"Who is this?"

"My name's Joe Frampton. Steve and I used to—"

But she was gone; there was the sound of the receiver being put down, a long silence, and then Steve's gravelly voice came on the line.

"Joe, is that you?"

"Yeah, Steve. How're things going?"

The question was mostly a formality, but Steve took it as an invitation to fill in every detail of his life for Joe's benefit. Right around the time that Steve started detailing the plans for his daughter's upcoming sweet sixteen party, Joe politely cut him off.

"Listen, Steve-o, I called because I was hoping that you could do a favor for me."

"Well, sure. What can I do for you, Joe?"

He didn't seem at all put out at having his life story cut short, which was a good thing.

"I was hoping you could look up a person for me, see if there's anything in the state records about them."

"Yeah … yeah, I guess I could do that. Hold on, let me grab a pencil."

The sound of the phone being put down again, another silent interlude (shorter this time), and then Steve's voice was back.

"What's the name?"

"First name, Jack. Last name, Wellesley. Jack might be a diminutive of John."

Steve Simmons jotted the name down on the other end of the line.

"What is this guy, a suspect in a crime down your way?"

"It's … complicated," Joe said. "This would have to be off the record, Steve. You get me?"

There was a pause on the line. Was it hesitation on Steve's part?

"Sure, Joe; I'll see what I can do. But if whatever this is goes south on you, then we never talked. Right?"

Joe smiled.

"Right," he said. "We never talked, Steve."

Joe told Sue about the phone call, keeping Steve's name out of the conversation. (If things did indeed go south, then it was better if she could truthfully say that she didn't know who he'd talked to.) It took three days for Steve to call Joe back. Joe took the call on the phone near the sofa in the living room, sitting at an angle so he could write notes in the little notebook on the end table there. The pen in his hand scratched swiftly over the paper in a circle of soft yellow light from the table lamp. He thanked Steve for his help, promised again that nobody would know where he'd gotten the information, and hung up the phone.

Sue, who'd been trying to pay attention to the TV (tonight they were watching Bewitched, which was Alice's favorite show), followed Joe when he got up from the couch and walked back to the bedroom. She closed the door as Joe turned on the bedside lamp. She looked at him expectantly.

"It's not the first time," Joe said.

Her face fell.

"There was an investigation twelve years ago," he went on. "Wellesley was living downstate at the time. The girl was the daughter of a business associate. There was a Christmas party, and apparently, Wellesley slipped into the girl's bedroom unnoticed. The girl told her mother about it a few weeks later, and her parents reported it to the police."

"Well, what happened? Did he have to spend any time in jail?"

"No. The family stopped cooperating with the police, and said they would refuse to let the girl testify if the case was ever brought to trial. The authorities had no choice but to drop the case, and no charge was ever filed."

Sue looked confused.

"But why would they do that if he hurt their little girl?"

"Some people thought maybe the parents didn't want to put their kid through the stress of a criminal trial."

He told her there were others who held a more cynical view, finding it more than coincidental that the company the girl's father had a majority stake in landed a sweetheart deal with one of Wellesley's businesses the following spring.

"So the bastard just … got away with it?"

"That's what it looks like."

Joe could see the righteous fury in his wife's eyes, and it made her even more beautiful than she already was. Then the fury dulled and was replaced with despair. Her eyes filled with tears.

"What the hell are we going to do about him, Joe?"

"I don't know. But I'll figure it out, Sue. I'll figure something out."

And later that night, as his wife lay asleep beside him in bed, and as Joe stared up at the ceiling, tied but unable to sleep, he did figure something out. In time, he would come to realize what a stupid plan it was; it was never going to work. But at the time, to Joe's tired, angry, and confused mind, it seemed like a pretty good one.

***

Jack Wellesley, who had in all likelihood bought his way out of a child molestation charge once upon a time, received the call just after eight in the morning. He didn't recognize the voice on the other end of the line—it was clear to him that the caller was making an effort to disguise his voice—and though the caller was worried that Wellesley would guess his identity despite the subterfuge, this was not the case. The man claimed to know certain secrets that Wellesley would rather remain just that, secrets. From what the man said, a few details given, Wellesley must surely have realized that this was no bluff, and that his darkest secret had been revealed in some way to the caller. The caller warned that, if he didn't follow instructions, the secret would be made common knowledge to the whole damn town.

After the stranger ended the call, Wellesley must have considered a number of ways to respond, weighing the pros and cons of each. He might have thought of calling his lawyer (a man like him was sure to have at least one lawyer on retainer), or his pal who was a captain of the Cedar Falls police. Maybe he ran a hundred other scenarios through his mind, many no more than variations of a few main ideas.

Whether this playing-out of scenarios in Jack Wellesley's mind really happened or not, no one will ever really know for certain. What is known is that sometime in the afternoon he called one Mrs. Doris Oakley, an octogenarian widower who volunteered part-time at the town library, and asked her if she would come to watch Ellen for the evening because he had some business to take care of. This wasn't the first time he'd asked Doris to watch Ellen, but he usually gave her a few days' notice. Short notice aside, Doris Oakley readily agreed (she adored the little girl, after all), and arrived at the Wellesley home shortly after six p.m. Jack stuck around for a while.

"He seemed kinda nervous," Doris would say later, "like he had something on his mind that was buggin' him."

At approximately seven-fifteen, as the sky went dull and the sun headed for its resting place below the horizon, Jack gave his daughter a peck on the cheek and headed out. Doris assumed he would be driving, and he did leave the house by way of the door letting out into the garage. Only she never heard the car start up, or the garage door rolling up on its track. By chance, she happened to look out a back window just in time to see Mr. Wellesley enter Miller's Woods. She didn't know why he'd gone into the woods, and though it seemed odd, it was really no business of hers.

The next part of Doris Oakley's account of the night's events, a part of the official record, takes up some hours later. She was concerned at Jack Wellesley's failure to return, or to at least call home to let her know he would be late. Ellen had already been put to bed, and after some debate with herself, she called the police, certain that Wellesley would return just after she did so and that she would be revealed as a damn fool.

But there is another part of the story that is unofficial, and which appeared in no reports or police statements. This unofficial version of the story of that night picks up where the gap in Mrs. Oakley's story begins, with Wellesley entering the woods. Though the day still wasn't quite dark, there was less light on those woods. Jack Wellesley knew the woods well, however, and had no trouble navigating to the place the mystery caller had instructed him to go.

There was a clearing in the woods that some of the local kids called "the Heavenly Acre", though it was no more than a clear patch of bare dirt near the heart of the woods. The remains of a fallen tree had been pulled into the clearing to serve as a bench. When Wellesley got to the clearing, he sat on the dead tree and waited, as he'd been instructed. He kept his hands planted firmly in the pockets of the light jacket he wore.

"Get up slowly."

The voice came from behind Wellesley, and its suddenness startled him.

"Do it, now."

He obeyed the command, getting up from the fallen tree and turning, his hands still in his pockets. He turned to see who it was that had spoken, but at first, he was unable to see the man's face. The man wore a big, black jacket, and had a hat on that had been pulled down low. The hat, the collar of the jacket, and the darkness served to hide the man's visage. Wellesley squinted hard, and then recognized him.

"Frampton? What in Sam Hill is going on here?"

"Just stay where you are, Jack."

This was when Wellesley first noticed the gun in Joe's right hand, which he held down at his side. In Joe's other hand was a bulky device that it took Jack a moment to recognize as a tape recorder.

"On second thought," Joe said, "do me a favor and step back a ways."

Wellesley did as he'd been asked (that revolver was a pretty good motivator).

"A little more," Joe said, and Wellesley moved backed a few more steps.

Joe stepped forward and set the recorder on top of the fallen tree. He watched carefully for any sign that Wellesley might try to leap at him. Wellesley was the bigger man, and if he got hold of Joe things might take a bad turn.

"What are we doing out here, Frampton?"

"Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to start this here tape machine, and then you are going to admit the things you've done to your little girl. And to that girl from downstate, too."

Wellesley looked startled. During the call, Joe (taking care to disguise his voice on the off chance that the man was in the habit of recording his phone calls) had hinted at Wellesley's misdeeds with Ellen, but this mention of that other case was new news.

"Even Stivic won't be able to protect you then," Joe said with a sense of triumph.

"Stivic? What does he have to do with this?"

"I thought he could be counted on to do what was right, but I was wrong. Did you reward him well for tipping you off about our little chat?"

A look of confusion came over the man's face.

"I have no idea what you're talking about. What chat?"

"Cut the crap, Jack; I know that he told you. You admitted as much the night we bumped into each other out here in these woods, with that comment about Deke keeping out of other peoples' business."

"I … I was just making conversation. Officer Deakins seems like a good fella, and I was paying him a compliment. I have no idea what chat you think Stivic told me about."

Joe searched the man's face and so no falsehood there. So okay, he might have been wrong; maybe the Cap hadn't betrayed his confidence, and maybe he had read too much into Wellesley's words the other night. Maybe. But that changed little; it certainly didn't absolve the man of his sins.

"Listen, Frampton—"

"Just shut up!"

Joe raised the gun so that it was pointing right at Wellesley's chest.

"As I said: I'm going to turn the machine on, and you are going to confess."

"To what end?"

He could see that Joe was confused by the question.

"Even if I say that I did the things you think I did," Wellesley said, "what good would it do you to have me say so on tape? Do you think that a so-called confession made at the point of a gun will ever stand up in court?"

Spoken aloud, it did sound ridiculous. Of course it wouldn't stand up in court; even the greenest judge would toss the confession without a second thought. Joe knew it, and Wellesley could see that he knew it. A smirk appeared on Wellesley's face.

"So, are we done here?" he asked.

"No … no, we aren't. Even if it won't ever be played in court, I'll make sure that everyone in town hears it somehow. I'll make sure Stivic hears it. Someone … someone will be able to do something."

But the words lacked conviction.

"I'm going to go home now," Wellesley said. "If you're willing to forget that any of this happened, then I can forget, too. All right?"

"Stay where you are."

Joe reached down and pressed a button on the tape machine. There was a whir as the tape inside started to spin.

"You can leave after you confess, Jack."

The two men stared at each other, the only noise that soft whir of the machine.

"Just let it go, Frampton."

"I can't."

Wellesley could see that it was true; the cop wouldn't be able to let the matter drop. Joe had lowered the gun, though, and that was foolish.

The story played out in Wellesley's mind: he'd gone for a walk in the woods, which wasn't unusual for him. He'd brought his little .22 revolver with him. Why? Well, there were all those reports of a mysterious creature stalking the woods. Probably nothing, of course, but it was enough to make anyone nervous. He was surprised by someone in the woods, and he hadn't been able to see the man's face. What he had seen was the gun, and he'd reacted on instinct. And the tape recorder? That could be gotten rid of easily; no one ever needed to know about it.

Wellesley's right hand pulled free of the jacket pocket, bringing the .22 out with it. He moved quickly, but Joe even more so. Before Wellesley could level his weapon at Joe, Joe's own gun barked once, the report a loud clap that reverberated among the trees. Jack Wellesley collapsed like a sack of bricks. Joe came over to him warily, stepping over the tree bench. He knelt to get a better look at Jack. Part of his skull was missing, and gore was spilling out of it. Joe had to fight to keep his stomach down.

Joe paced around for a few minutes, deciding on a course of action. Whoever Stivic sent out to patrol the woods wouldn't arrive until at least nine o'clock, which was little more than an hour away. He noticed the tape recorder still running and shut it off. He looked down at the dead man and made a decision.

It took time to drag Wellesley through Miller's Woods, worrying the whole time that the woods patrol would show up early, or some kid would pick that time to cut through the woods. Joe didn't know what he would do then, and tried not to think about it. He'd left his car in a little turnout off a back road bordering a stretch of the woods. (It was the same road that Carl Barlow had parked on that night when he thought he saw something in the woods.) Joe managed to get Wellesley there by pulling him along with his arms circled around the man's chest.

Joe let Wellesley down to the ground while he opened the trunk and took out a tarpaulin. He spread the tarp in the back seat of the car and loaded the man in on top of it. He tossed Wellesley's gun on his chest and folded the tarp over the body as best as he could. He got into the front seat and was about to start the car when he remembered the tape machine. Joe got out again and ran through the woods. When he got to the clearing, he kicked some dirt over the pool of blood where Wellesley's head had lain. Then he grabbed the recorder and rushed back to the car.

The day was truly dark by then, and he was tired, but his night wasn't over yet. It was an hour-long drive to the Brown Den Forest Preserve, and on the way he made one stop. He pulled into the parking space farthest away from a big store called Landry's Emporium, a spot that the light from the tall lamps spaced out across the parking lot didn't quite reach. Inside the store, he asked a stock boy where he could find travel luggage, and the young man directed him to the correct aisle. Joe picked out the largest suitcase he could find, paying for it in cash.

"Goin' on a trip?" the man at the checkout counter asked.

"Yeah; something like that."

When he arrived at the preserve, the big parking lot on the west side of the woods was empty. Joe parked at the edge of the lot, so that the only thing to the left of the car was an overgrown field. He worked as quickly as he could, pulling the body, tarp and all, out of the back seat of the car and loading it into the suitcase. He had to bend the dead man's legs at an unnatural angle to get them to fit. He had to kneel on top of the suitcase so that he could zip it shut.

Joe supposed that he would've found himself in a tight spot if he were to run into anybody on the trails in the preserve. He tried to think of a good reason why a man might be dragging a big, heavy suitcase through those woods in the dead of night, but he found none. As luck would have it, this wasn't a problem. He saw no one in the woods, and went from one trail to the next, choosing to follow those that were overgrown and looked like they received little traffic.

Just when his muscles were threatening to give out and give up, he found a spot that looked like no other person had been there any time in the past decade. A thick ring of brush surrounded a greenish pond. Joe didn't even stop to take his shoes off before stepping into the murky water, pulling the suitcase in with him. He dragged it out as far as he was comfortable going, the water coming up to his waistline, and pushed the suitcase toward the center of the pond. It disappeared beneath the surface of the water.

It took him longer to get out of the woods than it had taken him to find the pond, his wet shoes squelching all the while. Several times, he became convinced that he was well and truly lost, but every time he would recognize some bend in the trail, or a landmark. Eventually, he found his way back to the parking lot, and he drove out of the lot and away from the forest preserve.

He was halfway home before he remembered Wellesley's gun. He didn't remember seeing it when he'd loaded the body into the luggage. Joe pulled over into the lot of a derelict gas station and searched the backseat of the car, and then the trunk. He found the weapon lying in a corner of the trunk. He set it on the front passenger seat before driving off again. When he crossed a bridge spanning a creek, he tossed the revolver out the passenger-side window and over the railing without stopping.

The house was quiet when he got home. He walked into the dining room and set the recorder down on the table before heading to the bathroom, where he took off his clothes and threw them into the dirty clothes hamper, wet pants and all. He took a quick, hot shower, washing off the sweat and dirt, and the traces of Wellesley's blood. He crept into the bedroom (Sue was fast asleep) to find some loose pajamas, then went back out to the dining room.

Joe turned on the light over the table and took a seat. He pulled the tape machine close to him, and then pushed the button to rewind the tape to its beginning. When the tape was finished rewinding, he hit the button to start the machine recording again. When the tape was filled up, it would stop recording automatically, and on it would be nothing but the sound of the silence of the dining room at night. Getting up from the table, Joe turned the light off and walked back to the room that he shared with his wife. She stirred as he crawled in beside her. She didn't wake, though, and that was good; he didn't want to have to answer questions about where he'd been all night.

It was a long time before Joe was able to get to sleep. He'd used a payphone to make the phone call to Wellesley, and had wiped it down when the call had ended; there was no chance the call would be traced back to him. Still, Stivic would surely suspect him when the man was reported missing. For Jack Wellesley to disappear so soon after Joe had brought those allegations to the Cap was a mighty coincidence. The Cap would suspect, but he couldn't prove anything, could he? No, Joe thought not.

Sue would suspect, too. Would she approve of what he'd done (and he would tell her everything, if she asked), or would she be horrified?

And how would Emily fare? Would she have a happier life without the man who had done those bad things to her, or would she still mourn the loss of her father? Did she have other family in the area, someone who could take her in?

Joe Frampton didn't have answers to these questions. What was done was done, and it couldn't be undone. Having come upon this revelation, he fell asleep. In his dreams, he was lost in the woods.

THE END

Bio: Mike Ramon is a writer living in the Midwest.

Link to more work: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/mramon

E-mail: Mike Ramon

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