“It is not a creature of the day. When the sun arrives, it has returned to darkness.”
- from The Journal of D. D. Windward
Tuesday May 5, 2015
Until this morning, Deputy Gil had never seen a fatality on-the-job, and that had been just fine. On this morning, Sparkle was like a battlefield at dawn, full of crumbling rubble and confused people. Gil’s father arrived soon after him, driving his personal vehicle. His son ran up to his window and briefed him as he got out. Chief Roger was already on the phone with State Patrol, by then. Overlapping jurisdictions, usually, caused problems in such situations. However, the state police were received with open arms by Sparkle’s finest, who were in over their heads just keeping the scenes of the accidents pristine.
If any group of two people is considered a small group, then the Sparkle police force is a small group. Those two people happen to be the father and son team of Roger and Gil Hallestrom. The Hallestroms hold several official titles between them: Roger is the Chief of Police, fire investigator, and also the enforcer of district code. He does most of the paperwork, as well, these days. During business hours, most of the phone traffic goes through him, and is, more and more, relayed to Roger’s well-liked, thirty-something son Gil. Gil does most of the people work, which consists of continually crisscrossing the town in Sparkle’s single patrol car.
Two cars were overturned on Appoline, Sparkle’s main thoroughfare, several hundred yards apart from one another. One car was resting on its roof on the median strip while the other was flipped up on its side, halfway out of town. Extensive damage was done to one local business, and this only added to the conundrum. When he got a chance, Gil made a call to Rose Windward, who had once run the business with her deceased husband. As he expected, she checked on her son, then made her way out to see him. Gil had not prepared her for what had occurred at her antique furniture store. She pulled up to a mess that had, just yesterday, been her sole livelihood since she’d gotten married. Getting slowly out of the car, Rose had a hand up to her mouth when she saw the immense hole in the storefront. The entire wall was a crater into which much of the roof had tumbled.
“Oh, my God, Gil!” she yelped.
Gil took off his hat and wiped his brow. It was a humid morning. Even with his hat off, his whitewall haircut barely moved in the wind.
“That’s not the worst of it, Rose. Believe me,” said Gil, already exhausted.
“What?” she gasped. “What is it?”
“Marta Finnicum is dead, Rose.”
“Oh, my god!”
“You believe that!”
“What happened, Gil?”
“I got no idea. No idea, whatsoever, Rose. People are telling me a hundred different things. Some horseradish about a bear, or a bunch of bears, whatever that’s called.”
“A sleuth,” said Rose, just keeping herself collected.
“A sleuth? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s something, isn’t it? It’s all people guessing, anyhow. Pretty soon the guess becomes something they saw. I’ve seen it before. I think that nobody saw anything. Not that I’ve found. Some of these people you see here are shoppers, anyway. Here real early. Imelda Bacorn is hanging on for life. Did you know that, Rose?”
“Oh, my gosh, Gil! Her, too! Where is she now?”
“They took her by helicopter to UPMC. Critical.” Gil looked out on the much larger mess that used to be his little town.
“Not sure, yet, whose jurisdiction this falls under. If this was an animal, this falls on the Game Warden.”
“Is that you or your father?” Rose asked.
Gil shrugged. “It’ll be the County Warden, probably. Honestly, it's all mixed up. I hope he keeps me on the inside.”
“He’ll need you.”
“Yeah. Most likely.”
“Golly, it’s so confusing.”
Sparkle was, clearly, caught off-guard by this string of incidents. Up the street, people were gathered in prayer around the second car accident. Imelda Bacorn’s scratched-up Ford Escort was turned up on its passenger side. She was the owner of the town’s only general purpose store, J.E. Bacorn’s Market, which had been open, in some form, for seventy-nine years. The old widow was pulled out of her car through the roof, which had to be sliced open and pried apart. She was unresponsive but alive.
Marta Finnicum’s VW Golf was entirely flipped over onto its roof. Marta had been the proprietor of Willow’s Music. She didn’t have anything to do with the management of the shop, anymore. However, she and the manager had a falling out recently, so for the first time in a decade she was running it on her own, turning up early every morning. Her eldest child, a daughter named Ellie, was flying in from Pueblo to see to her affairs. She had been frantic for information on the phone. Gil had never delivered bad news like that before. It is thought to be routine for most police, but life in Sparkle had never been that routine.
While Gil and Rose were talking, the County Game Warden turned up and was being shown the accident sites by Chief Hallestrom. He was just one of many officials in the town, right then, but when Gil saw the man’s car park nearby, he excused himself to Rose. Although her shop was closed off with police tape, Gil would let her have a very limited look at the damage, later in the day. The Game Warden had already been shown the site of the non-fatality and seemed just as flabbergasted as everyone else. They shook hands. The Warden, named Branford, was about his father’s age, but stout and with a flush red face that made him look like he’d been holding his breath.
“Deputy,” the Warden greeted Gil with little personal interest. All business.
“Mr. Branford.”
“Quite a peacock you got here,” said the Warden.
“Yes, sir.”
“I expect the Inspector General’s going to want in on this.”
“You think so?”
The man shrugged and removed his hat, too, then started flapping it in his face. Gil decided he would offer him refreshments in a minute. “Something like this…” the man said, as if wondering out loud. “Might involve people outside of state jurisdiction.”
“You think this is a federal case?”
“We’ve been discussing that very thing,” said Roger.
“We certainly have,” Branford added.
“In what capacity is it federal?” asked Gil.
Branford adjusted his uniform. It was too small, although it hadn’t always been. “If this incident does involve wildlife, it’s safe to assume it’s not indigenous wildlife. I don’t know of anything…”
“Yeah,” Roger agreed. “Not anything.”
“But I’d take that over anything terrorist-related.”
Gil took a deep breath, wondering when they would hear from the D.O.D. “Me, too. What kind of wildlife do you think is responsible? And what does non-indigenous mean, in a legal sense?”
Branford shrugged. It was the gesture of these times. “Well, now, if you’re asking me what type of animal could of done this, I’d have to say there hasn’t been anything native of Pennsylvania since the Ice Ages. There was a large mastodon, at one time. Extinct, these days.”
“So, by non-indigenous, you mean foreign to this continent? Exotic?”
“Pretty damn exotic, I’d say,” added Roger.
“Ain’t that the truth. Who knows? You know, there are any number of kooks in Ohio keeping exotic pets. Tigers, lions, and rhinoceros. You know how they are up there. That’s why this might go federal. Jury stills out. Jury’s still out, rather.”
Gil nodded. “A rhinoceros could do this. Easy. I can see that. I saw one in person, once. It could take that wall there like it was nothing.”
“It surely could. Problem is, I already know, factually, that one ain’t missing. I called Jefferson County, guy I know up there, he ain’t heard nothin’ about a rhinoceros. He’s been calling around all morning. Never heard of one even being in Ohio. Not in the possession of a civilian. Hell, this sure is a nice town,” said Branford, looking around. “Ain’t been here for years.”
Roger beamed with pride. “Welcome here, anytime.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Branford got distracted by a strange pair that happened by. It was a red-headed girl of about twelve or thirteen leading a tiny, innocent-looking younger boy around by the hand. The girl wore an obnoxious dress, festooned with cartoon characters, while the boy was dolled up like Little Lord Fauntleroy. It was more than just a boy’s Sunday outfit, he was dressed in knickers, and looked like he was playing golf in a bygone era. A more distinctive pair would be hard to find. Anywhere outside the town of Sparkle, that is.
“Okay, kid,” said Miranda-Julia. “I’ll walk you out there since you don’t know the way. But under protest since you can just disappear there if you wanted to.” The boy looked all around, at odds being around so many people. She’d seized him like a bandit as soon as she set eyes on him. She’d let him get away, once before, and she’d regretted it.
“Doont get ta enny trouble on account o’ us, miss,” the little boy said, speaking in his vintage Yorkshire, confusing to Miranda's ears. Part of her skipped happily every time he lobbed that twaddle at her. He sounded too polite. He needed someone to look after him. That was obvious.
“God!” she yelled. “You’re a bigger wimp than Derek!” She’d discovered him milling around the outskirts of a crowd gathered at the second accident site. He looked like he’d just appeared there out of thin air. He had, in fact, just appeared there out of thin air. No one had seen it, fortunately. Not that it would have impressed Miranda-Julia, she’d seen people disappear before. Now she was walking him back to the Huffys’ house, which was just a short drive outside the town. He had asked her, repeatedly, but as nicely as you can imagine, to please not bother. Even if she’d understood him, it wouldn’t have mattered. “They are going to be glad to have you back, kid,” she told him. “They’re gonna owe me big.”