Eyes of the Predator (23 page)

“Say it,” Bob said sternly.

“I understand; I won’t press
charges, just let me be now,” Henry said through bruised and swollen lips.

Bob went over to Leon, and
together they helped Lyn to her feet. She was coming around. Looking at her,
they could see no injuries. Lucky for her, Bob thought. Another fifteen minutes
and the fat trucker would have had his way with her, and like all bullies, he
wouldn’t have been too gentle. What are these girls thinking, he wondered. It
was common to find them on the road, hanging out at truck stops and bus
stations. Could life at home be that bad? He shook his head as he and Leon
helped the girl across the parking lot, glad that his three daughters were safe
at home in Tennessee. Lucky for this girl, that fella had seen what was going
on and decided to do something about it.

He looked around at Lylee who was
still standing by the truck, tense. It wasn’t tense like he was nervous or
afraid, but tense like every muscle in his body was coiled and ready to spring.

“You coming?” Bob asked.

“Yea. Sure, I’m coming. I’ll just
pull my car around to the truck stop.”

“All right then. See you inside”
Bob said turning back and helping Leon guide Lyn.

Looking down at Henry, the
predator snarled in a low voice that only Henry could hear, “You’re lucky. Not
because of some attempted rape charges.” Lylee paused, making sure that Henry
was paying attention through the haze of pain. He was. Their eyes met, Lylee’s
fierce and piercing, Henry’s wide and frightened. “One word to anyone, and I
will gut you like the fat pig you are.”

Henry’s eyes widened even more.
He nodded his understanding.

Lylee spit a tight stream of
saliva that splattered on the gravel an inch from Henry’s face, smiled, and
turned towards his car. The engine turned over smoothly in the old Chevy. He
put it in gear and gunned it, causing the tires to spit gravel over Henry’s
sprawled form.

A few minutes later, Henry
managed to pick himself up. His arm was probably broken from the fall, and his
face and head stung from the abrasions and cuts that the impact with the gravel
had caused. He sat down on the step to the truck cab holding his arm. It was
the same step that Lyn had sat on a few minutes earlier.

What the fuck. He rocked in pain
on the step. One minute, he was about to get a tight little piece of ass, and
the next he’s beat all to hell.

It took several minutes of
rocking back and forth in pain until he came up with the story for the
emergency clinic he was going to have to visit. Slipped and fell off the truck
steps. That was the best he could do. Nothing fancy, and he would take some
ribbing from other truckers when they saw him, but that was better than another
visit from that mean little bastard, the man with the fierce, dangerous eyes.
Henry was a bully and like most bullies, he was also a coward. He picked his
battles carefully and always made sure he would win. No, that little bastard
was mean and scary. Henry had no doubt in his mind that he would keep the
promise to come back if Henry ever said a word about it. He shuddered at that
thought. Yeah, the little fuck was very scary.

Henry continued rocking and
cradling his arm. Son of a bitch, it hurt!

George Mackey and Ronnie Kupman
pulled up in front of the doublewide mobile home within a few seconds of each
other. George stepped out of his pickup first and waited for the dust to settle
while Ronnie shut his engine off and stepped out. The adrenalin was pumping.
They were so close. They needed an ID, a physical description to go with the
arm and ring…something. He owed it to the girl in the weeds. The girl who, at
some point, had been in the car he had seen last night. He owed it to Mrs. Sims
and her poor husband Harold who took a walk in the woods.

As Ronnie came even with him,
George turned and they walked to the house, leaving the county vehicles parked
in the dirt drive behind a ten-year-old Ford Taurus. Following a bare dirt
path, they walked towards the front stoop of the doublewide. The yard wasn’t
much. Some weeds and dried up grass, but they were cut short and not overgrown.
Not much money here, George thought, but they took care of what they had.

Extending his hand, George rapped
sharply on the aluminum screen door. He waited fifteen seconds, and when there
was no response, he looked at Ronnie and shrugged, opened the screen door and
thumped hard on the doublewide’s door.

They heard rustling and someone
plodding heavily across the floor. The doublewide’s walls visibly rattled and
vibrated as the person moved to the front door.

A young man, about twenty or so,
swung the door open wide and stood squinting in the sun. He was dressed in
boxer shorts and a tee shirt. His sandy hair was rumpled. Surprise crossed his
face as he looked at the two men in uniform on the front stoop.

“Mornin’, deputies.” He
recognized the uniforms for what they were. “What can I do for you?”

“Mornin’. This your place?”
George spoke. Ronnie stood to one side and looked on quietly.

“My parents’. I live with them.
Something wrong?”

“No, nothing wrong, we just need
to speak to Beth Hilts. She live here?”

“Yea. She’s my sister.”

“Can we talk to her?”

“She’s sleeping right now. Worked
last night. So did I.”

George stepped closer into the
doorway. “We know. Sorry, but it’s pretty important. Would you get her for us?”
It was a question, but George’s tone was a command.

The boy shrugged and stepped
aside so the deputies could enter.

“Yea, I’ll go get her.”

He walked down a narrow hall off
the living room and stopped at a door on the left. He knocked lightly on the
door.

“Beth, you need to get up.”

There was a muffled response from
inside the room. The boy shook his head and knocked again louder, and pushed
the door open slightly.

“Beth, come on. There’s some
deputies here to see you.”

They heard her groggy, surprised,
“What?”

In the midst of rustling and
creaking of the bed, they could make out the questions mumbled to her brother.

 “Deputies? What do they
want? I just got off work a little while ago.”

Her feet thumped audibly on the
floor.

“Tell them I’ll be there in a
minute.”

The boy turned and came back down
the hall.

“She’ll be right here.” He stood
there in his boxers and tee shirt looking back and forth from one deputy to the
other. He was waking up more now and feeling a little more assertive and
confident now that the grogginess was gone.

“Is Beth in some sort of
trouble?”

George smiled and said, “No not
at all, we just need to talk to her about someone she might have seen.” He saw
the protective and slightly aggressive look in the young man’s eyes. That was
his sister, and this was his house, or at least his parents’ house. Deputies or
not, they couldn’t come in without some reason.

“You’re welcome to sit in and
listen too if you want. I know she’s your sister,” George added in an
understanding voice to show respect to the young man. No reason to antagonize
him. He had a right to question why they were there, and they weren’t there to
cause problems, just to get information. Very important information.

Chief Deputy Ronnie Kupman stood
quietly beside George, hands hanging loosely by his side, a mild look on his face.
George may be country and rough around the edges, but he knew how to deal with
people. He could be the toughest guy in the county when you needed him to be,
but only when it was required. When it was required though, George wasn’t
afraid to kick an occasional ass. But ‘ass kicking’ was just a tool to him, to
be used only when needed. He was not abusive or physical by nature, and
preferred reason and respect as his tools, when possible.

Unfortunately, to a sheriff with
no desire to offend any of his constituents, there was no ass worth kicking,
only those worth kissing. And there lay one of the issues between George and
his boss.

Ronnie watched with appreciation
as George handled the situation, giving the young man no reason to take
offense. His words had the desired effect. The hard edge in the young man’s
face softened somewhat.

“Okay. I will sit in. Ya’ll can
sit down there if you want.” He motioned them to the sofa.

“Thanks,” George said as they
turned to sit. “Your parents can sit in too if they want.”

“Naw, they’re both at work. Won’t
be home till five.”

“What’s your name, if you don’t
mind us asking?”

“Brent. Brent Hilts.”

“Well, I’m George Mackey and this
is Chief Deputy Ronnie Kupman.”

Ronnie nodded at Brent, and Brent
nodded back.

“All right, well I’ll throw some
clothes on and be right back,” Brent said, as if to make sure they didn’t start
without him. “Beth should be out in a minute. Takes her a bit of time to get up
and about when she’s been sleeping.” He smiled and shook his head as if to say,
‘Girls, what are you gonna do?’

The two deputies smiled and
nodded back knowingly.

Brent Hilts padded down the
narrow hall and went into the room across from Beth’s.

“Good boy,” George said, looking
around at the walls.

“Yep, he is,” Ronnie replied, squinting
in the dim light at a family picture on the wall across the room.

After ‘throwing some clothes on’
which consisted of a pair of jeans and flip-flops, Brent came back down the
hall. Beth was nowhere to be seen.

Looking around and seeing that
Beth had not made an appearance, Brent turned and shouted this time back down
the hall.

“Beth! Come on out.”

A second later, the bedroom door
opened and a pretty little blonde girl walked out in a yellow flannel robe,
buttoned up to the top. Her feet scraped along in white terry cloth slippers.
Her hand patted and stroked her hair, trying to smooth and straighten it out.
Her face clearly showed confusion and anxiety at being called out of bed by the
deputies.

As she came into the living room
and focused on George and Ronnie, she was even more uncomfortable. The two
deputies stood up.

“Is there…uh, something wrong?”
Her voice was unsteady and nervous.

“They said they want to talk to
you about someone you might’ve seen,” Brent spoke up.

George smiled and added, “That’s
right, Beth. Nothing to worry about. We just want to ask you about someone you
might have seen at work last night. Okay?”

Beth nodded. Still concerned, but
they could see that her mind was working, probably going over everyone she had
talked to last night.

“Should we sit back down so we
can talk?” Ronnie said. They were the first words he had spoken, and he said
them only to reinforce that there was no reason for concern, and so that she
would not worry about the silent deputy looking at her and listening intently
while she spoke with George.

Beth nodded and sat on a recliner
positioned next to the sofa. The deputies sat back on the sofa and Brent,
intently interested, sat on a rocker across the room leaning forward and
resting his elbows on his knees.

George smiled at Beth and began.

“Beth, do you remember last
night, this morning really, about five a.m. maybe a little later, there was a
man that came in? There was no one else in the store at the time. He left just
before two truckers came in. Dropped a twenty on the counter and went out kind
of quick.”

Beth’s eyes narrowed, looking
back at George.

“Well, yes I do, but how do you…”
She stopped and shook her head and went on. “Oh. The camera, right? The little
TV thing?”

“Yes, that’s right, the CCTV. I saw
you on it, and I saw him. Well, I didn’t really see him. Just his arm. That’s
why we’re here. We need to know what he looked like.”

“Why? What did he do?” Beth’s
voice was soft, her expression concerned.

She had reason to be concerned,
but he didn’t want to panic her. He needed her to remember calmly everything
she could about the man with the longhorn ring on his finger.

“Well, we think he might have
been involved in a crime,” George said, and then added quickly before she could
question him about that, “It would really help if you could tell us what color
hair he had.”

“Well it was kind of light
brown.”

“Good, light brown,” George said
making a note on a little pad he pulled out of his shirt pocket. “Now,” he
continued quickly, before she could ask him anything else about what the man
had done, “What about his eyes? Did you see what color they were?”

Beth thought for a moment, “No
not really. We talked for a minute but I didn’t really notice.”

“Ok. That’s fine. So how about
his height? About how tall do you think he was?”

George stood up quickly and went
on, “As tall as me? Taller or shorter?”

“Well it’s hard to tell. I mean I
was standing behind the counter and he was a few feet away. He never got very
close, even when he threw the twenty down. I thought that was kinda funny?” She
looked at George. “I mean that was funny wasn’t it? He kinda stayed away from
me.”

“Yes,” George said, “that was
funny. I think he didn’t want to be seen on the camera. You know, he kind of
kept out of view. That’s why we need you to remember everything you can for
us.”

“Okay”, she nodded. “Well, it’s
hard to tell how tall he was. I mean I’m not very good at judging.”

“That’s okay, Beth. Why don’t you
stand up and get about as far away from me as you were from him.” George smiled
again at the girl.

Beth stood up and moved back from
George a few feet. She looked at George and then moved back another couple of
feet.

“Ok. Right there. I think that’s
about how far away he was.”