NaNoWriMo: Murder in Wilson Park, Chapter 30

“He’s out cold. But he’s not dead,” said Sally, feeling Mr. X’s wrist for a pulse. “Call 911. And call Matt. Tell him to get out here now! If this guy wakes up, we’re gonna be in real trouble here.”

Mr. X laid on his stomach in the brush, his head turned to the side. Blood oozed through his crewcut on to the collar of his black shirt. Sally lifted one of his eyelids. His pupil looked fine. She didn’t dare repositioning his head to get to the other eye. It was enough to know he was alive, it was up to the medical folks to figure out if he had a concussion or fractured skull. She didn’t really care. She only cared that he hadn’t managed to kill Amanda and, for the time being, he was out of commission.

“Matt and the EMTs are on their way,” said Amanda. She watched Jerky circling Mr. X laying on the ground. She was still holding the rock as if any moment she’d crashed it down on his head again. Amanda tried to get Jerky’s attention in an attempt to calm her down but then realized she didn’t want her to calm down. She wanted Jerky to be ready and willing to smash Mr. X’s skull if he moved a single muscle. The guy was dangerous. He had been ready to slice Amanda into pieces with that damn shrimp knife, not to mention he’d terrorized Jerky. Amanda didn’t know the details of that incident with Jerky but now she could imagine. This guy was brutal.

Sally and Amanda heard the sirens right away. The police and emergency people will have to pull into the parking lot of the Senior Center and then hoof it down the path.

“God,” Sally said, “I sure hope they have the young guys on duty today, so they get their rear ends back here fast.”

Mr. X reached for his head and then his hand fell back in the dirt. Jerky stopped her circling and held the rock directly over the wound she’d previously inflicted.

“Don’t move, mister, or that rock’ll split your head into a dozen pieces.” Sally was mad and getting madder. This horrible man had hurt so many people. She almost wished he would move so Jerky could really let him have it.

Matt was the first to arrive, Jovan right behind him. They rolled Mr. X on to his back and cuffed his hands over his belly. They wanted no question about contributing to his death by cuffing him while he was on his stomach. Mr. X was heavy, dead weight, so it took both Matt and Jovan to get him rolled over and cuffed. They put an emergency towel under his head but just then the EMTs came crashing down the path, half wheeling and half carrying a stretcher along with heavy bags of medical equipment.

“Ah, so what have we got here?” said the lead EMT. The team gathered around the heaped man, taking his vitals, and assessing the wound. They lifted him on the stretcher and started the long bumpy trek to the ambulance waiting in the parking lot.

Jovan went with the EMTs to get Mr. X safely into the waiting ambulance while Matt stayed back to shepherd the three women to safety.

“He would’ve killed your girl if Jerky hadn’t come,” said Sally. Amanda nodded but stayed silent. She was sorting through all the things she’d been told, the things she’d seen, trying to piece all the parts into an explanation that made sense. Jerky trailed behind them, holding the big rock in her arms like a baby.

Amanda stopped walking and grabbed Matt by the arm. “Matt, there’s something going on back there. I just know it. You need to bring in a search team, a cadaver dog, all of that. Those pipes? They mean something. Can you get it checked out?”

*   *  *

It wasn’t until the next afternoon that Matt brought the news to Amanda, Sally and the other two Dorothys. The four of them had decided to meet to talk through everything that had happened. Coming into the Senior Center, Sally spied Jerky standing at the edge of the woods and waved her over. She motioned for Jerky to come along, to have coffee, she put an imaginary cup to her lips and sipped, and Jerky just smiled, not willing to commit one way or the other. The most she would do was to come sit by the front door of the Senior Center. From there, she peered in to watch Matt and the group talk about what had been discovered.

“Okay, we know who Mr. X is,” said Matt. “His name is Dennis Ferryman.” Everyone at the table leaned in. “He used to work here at the Senior Center, but he got fired because they thought he was stealing money from the meal program.”

That must be how Mr. X or Mr. Ferryman knew Jacob, thought Sally. They probably worked together.

“And you were right about the pipes, Amanda. They led to a grave. We’re pretty sure the body we found is Renard Green.” Matt had already decided to leave out the details.

“The kid that went missing? Like years ago? Oh my God.” Esmeralda covered her face in her hands while Debbie reached over to pat her on the back.

“Who killed him, Matt?” asked Amanda.

“Who said anything about him being killed?” said Matt.

“Well, people don’t bury themselves in the woods, now do they? For heaven’s sake,” said Sally, exasperated with how long it was taking to figure out what the hell was going on.

“We’re not sure yet,” said Matt, just as Jerky slid into a vacant chair at the table. She took a stubby pencil and a crumbled gas station receipt out of her pocket. On it, she wrote. I know. And then she slid the message to the center of the table for all to see.

Jerky began to talk. It had been a long time since she talked. First, she never had cause to talk, living by herself most of the time, and second, she couldn’t hear the sound of her own voice, so she was never sure if the words lined up in her head came out of her mouth in the right way.

“He knew I knew. Dennis. He knew I seen him at Ace’s camp. And before that, in the parking lot with Jacob. I seen him a lot of times. The first time was in those same woods as today. Right there. I seen him and Jacob and that guy Clark all together burying that boy in the dirt. That was when I could hear but I was using and, I don’t know, some of it is messy in my head.”

“Did they kill the boy? Who killed the boy?” asked Matt. He never thought in a thousand years that there had been a witness to Renard Green’s murder. He remembered she couldn’t hear so he wrote the question on a piece of paper ripped from the pad he kept in his breast pocket.

“They didn’t kill him. He did. Punched him in the face so hard, he fell over dead. Mad about money, the boy stealing, I don’t know. But he killed him. The others were there but they just watched.” Jerky looked tired. She hadn’t talked this much in years, it made her want to run off, go back in the woods and lay down at her camp, cover herself with a blanket, be invisible, be a leaf. She was exhausted by seeing things and having to tell about them.

“Did Dennis kill Jacob and Clark?” He forgot again and then remembered to write his question on a piece of paper. He slid it across the table in front of where Jerky sat, more and more at the edge of her seat ready to flee out the door.

“I don’t know. They were there. That’s what I know. And now they’re dead.” Jerky pushed herself away from the table. “I have to go.”

Matt started to go after her, but Amanda stopped him. “Give her some time. I know where her camp is. I’ll take you there tomorrow.”

“Okay. So, a guy named Dennis Ferryman killed a foster kid because he thought the kid stole from him and Jacob and Clark watched it happen and helped him bury the boy in the woods? And then it all blows up? Why? Why didn’t they all just carry the secret to the grave?” Sally wondered out loud.

“Well, it seems like two of them did,” said Esmeralda. “We don’t know yet about #3.”

“Maybe Jacob and Clark weren’t willing to keep the secret any longer. Maybe Jacob thought he was about to be exposed. I have to say it’s still a mystery,” mused Matt.

“And what was going on with the flute music? Does anyone understand that?” asked Amanda. It had been the flute music that had frightened her the most, so ominous, so encompassing, she’d never listen to flutes again without feeling the brush of that black-shirted arm against her face and waiting to die.

“We don’t know about the flute – why the flute, why that particular music,” answered Matt, putting his hands on Amanda’s shoulders and looking around at everyone at the table. “His phone was locked in on Pandora to Vivaldi. We also found an old flute in a case when we searched his car. It looked like a kid’s flute that hadn’t been played for a long time.”

Sally stood and clapped her hands like a schoolteacher signaling time for recess. “Come on, ladies. We have to go wash. You, too, Amanda. You belong with us right now.”