Mama Pursues Murderous Shadows (13 page)

Dawn Crosby was curled up in bed like a little child. I had never been raped, but I knew women who had been where Dawn was at. I wasn’t surprised by how miserable she looked. She’d been violated and it showed.

We sat quietly next to her bedside for some time before Mama decided to speak. “Dawn,” she began gently. “I know you’ve been through an ordeal.”

At first Dawn stared at us with a blank look, then she buried her face in the pillow. “It was horrible,” she wailed.

Mama reached out and touched Dawn gently. “It must have been a nightmare.”

Dawn shook her head violently. “I fought as hard as I could,” she cried. “Lord knows, I tried to stop him!”

“You did a good job, too,” Mama reassured her.

Dawn pulled herself up in the bed. Her eyes darted back and forth from Mama to me, and back again. “I was asleep. I tried to scream, but—” She sobbed.

“I understand from Abe that you got a look at this man.”

Dawn shuddered. “When it was all over, I snatched the blanket from my head. I saw him, all right!”

“You say he was young?”

Dawn looked at Mama strangely, like she didn’t understand why she was asking questions. “I gave Abe his description,” she said.

“Abe told me you think he’s about twenty-two or
-three. That he’s big, tall, and that all of his hair was shaved.”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t remember seeing this man around town?”

Dawn closed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know anything anymore.”

Mama stood up. “We’ll let you rest now,” she said softly. “I’ll be back later. I’ve got some homemade soup that I think you’d enjoy.”

When Dawn looked up at Mama, I could see the tears that filled her terrified eyes, tears that slipped silently down her cheek. “I tried to stop him, Miss Candi,” she whispered. “I did everything in my power to stop him!”

Mama pulled Dawn into her arms. “You did the right thing, Dawn,” she told her firmly and lovingly. “You did all that you could have done, and that was the right thing to do.”

Dawn curled up in Mama’s arms and closed her eyes. The only sound that came from her now was a whimper. She reminded me of a puppy, one that was hurt, lost, and very, very afraid.

C
liff and Daddy were gone when Mama and I got back home at three o’clock. Mama seemed tired and withdrawn; she lay down on the couch in the family room and stared up at the ceiling, not saying a word. I understood her mood, so I gave her some space. Around four o’clock, though, I couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

“Mama,” I started as gently as I knew how, “I know you’re thinking about everything that has happened in Otis the past few weeks, but—”

“Simone,” she cut in. “My intuition tells me that I know something, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.”

“Something like what?” I asked.

“Something that will make all that has happened with Ruby, Betty Jo, and Dawn come together.”

“You think all three of their experiences are related?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I feel like I’m on a mountain looking down at shadows.”

I got up and followed her to the window, leaning against the wall so that I could see her face. I hated to see Mama like this, like she was bottled up and couldn’t figure out how to become unplugged. Her frustration always touched something deep inside of me. Mama was the coach who made our team a winner; I hated to see her disheartened, especially since I didn’t have her skill of making lemonade out of lemons.

Just then my father rushed inside the house, his eyes shining with excitement. Cliff was right behind him.

“Candi, baby,” my father said, almost out of breath. “I think we’ve come up with the dude that’s been climbing in women’s windows and jumping them in their beds!”

A funny feeling rushed through me.

“James,” Mama said, “you’re not kidding me, now are you?”

Daddy looked Mama straight in the eye. “Baby, would I do something like that?” he exclaimed. “We think we know who he is. We’re not sure, but we think—”

“What makes you
think
you’ve spotted the right fella?”

“For one thing, this guy has fresh scratches all
over his face and neck. I can tell that a woman had hold of him for a good while,” Daddy said. “And he’s talking crazy, boasting that he scored last night with a woman that he had to make
give
him what he wanted! And Coal now remembers that he’s seen this guy wearing a shirt that looked exactly like that piece of cloth you showed us that Ruby had torn from the man who attacked her!”

“This is wonderful,” Mama told him. “We’ve got to get ahold of Abe before we lose this man,” she said, walking to the phone and dialing Abe’s number. A moment later she hung up with a sigh. “His answering machine is on; he’s not in the office,” she told us.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

Mama turned to my father. “Do you know the name of this man?”

“Around the pool hall he’s called Honey Man. I don’t know his given name.”

“My Lord.” Mama’s eyes shone now, her frustration blasted away. “We have to get in touch with Abe!”

“Listen, Candi,” Daddy said. “I left Coal at the pool hall to keep an eye on the guy. This is what we’re going to do. I’m going back to the hall, just in case Coal needs me. This Honey Man is big. He weighs every bit of two hundred fifty pounds or more. And he’s all muscle. I’m surprised that Ruby was able to fight him off as long as she did—truth is, I’m surprised that any woman would be able to fight him at all.”

“What do we do?” Mama asked.

“You and Simone go to Abe’s office and wait for him.”

“I want in on this,” Cliff now said.

“You stay here,” Daddy told him. “If Abe calls, tell him to get to his office as soon as possible. Tell him that Candi and Simone are waiting there for him.”

“Why don’t I just call 911?” I suggested.

“If this Honey Man isn’t the fella who is climbing into women’s bedroom windows, you’d be hard pressed to explain an emergency call,” Daddy told me.

Mama nodded resignedly. “James is right,” she told me. “Let’s do as he says and go to Abe’s office to wait.”

Abe’s office was locked, so Mama and I sat waiting in the car for him. An hour passed before Abe arrived. There was sweat on his face and his shirt was wet and dirty. When he saw us waiting, he ushered us inside his office, closed the door, went behind his desk, sat down, and started fussing. “That darned old man Thrasher who lives next door to Vincent Kelley should have been locked up in the state hospital years ago,” he grumbled.

“Mr. Thrasher isn’t crazy,” Mama told Abe. “The poor old soul is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”

I was impatient to get on with what we’d been
waiting to tell Abe. “This isn’t the time to talk about Mr. Thrasher,” I said.

Abe ignored me. “I don’t care what he’s got,” he said, annoyed. He pulled out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. Then, as if he remembered that he didn’t smoke in front of Mama, he snatched it from between his lips and threw it down on his desk. “Thrasher wanders off at least three times a week. His wife, Cassie, expects me and Rick to drop everything and go searching for him. There’s a whole lot more to my job than tracking down an absentminded man!”

“Listen,” Mama said firmly, giving Abe her most steely-eyed look. “James and Coal think they’ve identified the man who’s been attacking the women in town.”

Abe’s mouth dropped in amazement. “Who is he and where is he?” he asked.

“His name is Honey Man. He’s playing pool at Joe’s Pool Hall right this minute. James and his buddy Coal are keeping an eye on him.”

Abe stepped into the corridor outside of his office and shouted, “Rick! Come in here! It seems that James may have spotted the rapist.”

“James told us that Honey Man is big—if he decides to put up a fight, you’ll have a tough one on your hands,” Mama warned Abe.

And Mama was right.

Mama and I waited in Abe’s office for more than an hour, staring out of the window into the streets of Otis.

We were just about to leave Abe’s office when my father arrived.

“I came to tell you to drive your mother home,” he told me. “Candi baby, things aren’t coming together the way I’d hoped they would.”

“What’s happened?” Mama asked, instantly concerned. “Did Abe arrest Honey Man? Has anybody gotten hurt?”

“No, no, baby. Nothing like that has happened.” Daddy touched Mama’s arm. “Do as I say and drive home. I’ll meet you there. We’ll talk then.”

When we got into the house and Mama had made a fresh pot of coffee, Daddy told us this story: The moment Honey Man saw Abe and Rick Martin approaching him, he pulled out a knife. There was a scuffle. Honey Man’s eyes were wild, like those of a madman. Other men in the pool hall scattered. Honey Man broke loose from Abe and Rick and used the confusion to push through the crowd and make it through the back door. In a few seconds he was across the street. Abe and Rick followed, but Honey Man was fast. By the time Abe and Rick decided to go back to the pool hall and get their car, Honey Man was no place to be found.

In the middle of the next week, Mama called me in Atlanta to give me the news. Honey Man had been captured. This was Mama’s account: Abe and Rick drove around town, telling people that Honey Man was the alleged rapist. But no one knew where he had gone; Honey Man had simply vanished from Otis on Saturday. Then, on Wednesday, Abe and Rick got a tip. Loggers had spotted Honey Man near an old cabin in the woods five miles behind Herman Spikes’s place. They surrounded the place and Honey Man was finally captured.

“Are you coming home this weekend?” Mama asked now.

“Yes,” I said, remembering that Yasmine had asked me to get her two or three of my parents’ wedding pictures. She’d wanted to surprise them by having one of the photos blown up and become part of a special table centerpiece.

“What time Saturday can I expect you?”

“Early.”

“Nine o’clock.”

“Not that early!” I protested. “It’s a three-hour drive!” I took a deep breath. There was no point in resisting her. Mama always got her way. “Okay, pretty lady. I’ll be in Otis at nine-thirty Saturday morning,” I said, feeling a slight victory because I’d pushed the time back a half hour.