John Burley - The Absence of Mercy

They had all come to see Monica: this child of the town who had sustained a brutal attack and had been left in the woods to die—this brave girl who had somehow summoned the strength to drag herself more than an eighth of a mile through the mud and underbrush to the side of the road in order to be found. They had come to support her parents, yes; but they all wanted to see her, to sit at her bedside and to pray for her recovery, to will her back to health by their sheer numbers, by the force of their desire to see her well.

It occurred to Ben then, as the faces around him began to blur together into something whole—something unifying—that Monica Dressler represented more than simply one of their own. In many ways, she was the town—a physical manifestation of the emotional assault they were all enduring together. To Ben and most likely to others, she represented their will to fight back, their refusal to succumb to the evil that had descended upon them. She had become an inspiration, even as she fought for her life. For if she could find a way to survive this thing, then perhaps so could they all.

“What do you mean, ‘He eloped’?” Detective Schroeder ran a hand through his dark hair. He was standing near the ambulance entrance next to the emergency department.

“Sorry—hospital terminology,” the security officer responded. “Patients aren’t prisoners, so we don’t usually say they ‘escaped.’ But in this case, well…” He looked back at the automatic sliding glass door. “We called it in to the police as soon as it happened. They’re out there looking for him right now.”

“I know we’re out there looking for him. I heard it over the radio.” Carl took a deep breath, telling himself to ratchet his anger back a notch. “ How did this happen? I thought the psychiatric unit was a locked facility.”

“It is a locked facility,” the man confirmed. “You need an ID badge to leave the unit itself, and also one to summon the elevator.”

“I remember.”

“But the patient didn’t escape from the psych unit. He escaped from the ER.”

“What was he doing back in the ER?”

“He had a seizure on the unit—a pretty bad one, I guess. The nurse called us to come help them transport him down here. It took a bunch of us just to lift him onto the gurney.”

“Was he still seizing?”

“No, he’d stopped by then. But he was unconscious. I mean, I’m just security—I don’t know about the medical stuff—but that guy was dead weight.”

“So what happened then?”

“Once we got him onto the gurney, we left the psych unit, took the elevator to the first floor, and brought him to the ER. When we got here it was pretty crazy. They’d just brought in a patient in cardiac arrest. There were no beds available, so the charge nurse told us to put the gurney up against a wall by the ambulance entrance. Then the family of the cardiac arrest guy showed up and started going nuts. The ER staff needed help with them, and since our guy was unconscious we figured, you know”—he shrugged—“ he wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“But a few minutes later when I looked back at the stretcher he was gone. Just got up and walked out, I guess. Man, I’ve never seen a seizure patient wake up that fast before.”

“If it really was a seizure in the first place,” Detective Schroeder grumbled.

“What do you mean? You think he faked it?”

“Right now, I don’t know what to think,” he called back over his shoulder, heading for his car. “All I know is that he’s out there somewhere, and we’d sure as hell better find him.”

The junkyard at S&D Auto Salvage off Thistlewood Drive had always been referred to by the younger generation as simply the Yard . The quarter-acre lot was enclosed by a chain-link fence topped with an arthritic, twisting spine of barbed wire. A simple glance at the scattered heaps of scrap metal and rust-laden automobile carcasses was enough to make one check the expiration date on their last tetanus shot. A pockmarked sign, yellowed with age, hung at a listless angle near the padlocked front gate, advising would-be visitors that TRESPASSERS WILL BE DEALT WITH ACCORDINGLY—conjuring images of a toothless, barefooted proprietor in overalls with a shotgun at the ready. A mangy, ill-tempered Rottweiler named Rocco patrolled the premises, endlessly pacing the makeshift aisles between the abandoned detritus, as if anything here were actually worth stealing.

The Yard was clearly no place for teenagers, and as such it was really no surprise that this had become the chosen meeting spot for all sorts of gatherings and events. Ernie Samper’s father, an accountant by profession, had inherited the place when his own father had died eight years ago. He should’ve sold it, for an accountant knows very little about the world of scrap metal and automobile salvage, but he just hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it. As odd as it might sound, the place had taken on a certain sentimental value, and so it remained in the family but otherwise sat dormant as the years went by, the cars and decrepit office trailer slowly settling into the dust like everything else within its fiercely guarded perimeter.

“What I don’t understand,” Dave Kendricks was saying, “is how the police let something like this happen so soon after the first murder.”

“They can’t be everywhere at once,” Eileen Dickenson pointed out from her seated position on the sun-welted hood of what was once recognizable as a blue Chevy Malibu. “I don’t think it’s fair to blame this on them.”

“That’s ’cause your dad works for the Sheriff’s Department,” Kent Savage commented. He plucked a small stone from the dirt, took aim, and hurled it at the left headlight of a Ford Ranger eighty yards away. There was a metallic chink as the stone bounced off the front grille, a foot and a half to the right of its intended target.

“That’s got nothin’ to do with it,” Eileen responded, glaring in his direction. “When things go wrong, everyone always wants to blame the police. They’re an easy scapegoat. I didn’t see you offering to walk people home that night.”

“Well, Brian Fowler walked her home, and she got attacked anyway,” Kent retorted.

“He didn’t walk her all the way home, though, did he?”

“No, he didn’t. So maybe we should blame him.”

“I think he blames himself enough already,” Devon said. He reached down with his hand and scratched Rocco behind the right ear. The dog growled and wagged his short, stubby tail simultaneously, apparently uncertain what to make of the unsolicited affection. “How is he, by the way?” Devon asked. “Has anyone heard from him?”

The others were silent. Despite multiple phone calls and attempted visits, none of them had seen Brian Fowler in almost two weeks. His chair, along with that of Monica Dressler, sat empty at school as the academic year drew to a close, constant reminders of the two teenagers’ absence and the circumstances behind it. If that vacant space was a distraction to learning, none of the teachers had mentioned it. The seats remained empty, day after day. No one dared sit there, and no one dared remove them.

Paul Dalouka spoke up. “His stepfather told my mom that Brian received permission to finish the school year early.”

The others nodded.

“I don’t blame Brian,” Eileen Dickenson commented. “There’s no way he could’ve known.” She looked around, as if searching for support in her assertion. “Any one of us would’ve done the same thing.”

“I agree.” Heads turned toward Natalie Rhodes, who was sitting cross-legged in the dirt. “A lot of us walked home alone that night.” She looked up at Bret Graham, who was leaning against the hood of a Volkswagen Beetle that had clearly seen better days. “Your house is, what, four miles from Devon’s? Mine’s at least that far. We both got home safely.” She frowned, her eyes returning to the ground in front of her. “This isn’t something any of us could’ve predicted.”