John Lutz - Serial

She seemed to have a lot of those.

Hogart, 2005

As the days passed, the weight of Beth’s guilt became heavier. Wayne Westerley had told her where Salas was living, in a rundown trailer park fifty miles up the highway, near Lorenton. He wasn’t working, as far as Westerley knew.

So what was Salas doing? That’s what Beth wondered. Was he simply lying around hating her, blaming her, having good reason to think she’d ruined his life?

That was what Beth couldn’t stand, not knowing what Salas thought of this entire tragedy. Of the mistake-if he thought it was a mistake-that had cost him his reputation and some of his best years.

As she sat on her porch, in a wooden rocking chair Westerley had bought for her at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, Beth’s mind would dart like a trapped insect in a bottle with a cork, where there was no way out, but there was nothing to do but keep trying.

As she sat rocking, gripping the chair’s armrests so tightly her fingers whitened, she heard Sheriff Westerley’s big SUV turn into the drive. She recognized the sound of its powerful engine and the underlying whine when it switched gears to negotiate the rutted drive beyond the copse of maple trees.

It was sundown, and she was expecting him this evening. She sat quietly, rocking gently back and forth in her chair.

Westerley flashed her a smile from behind the steering wheel and then parked the big vehicle where he usually did, near the back of the house where it wasn’t visible from the road.

She heard the SUV’s door slam shut, then Westerley’s boots crunching on gravel.

Beth smiled as he stepped up onto the porch. He came over and leaned down, and she scrunched up her toes to stop the rocker momentarily while he leaned down and kissed her forehead.

“What were you thinking?” he asked, as she let up with her feet and the rocker resumed its slow rhythm.

“You don’t wanna know, Wayne.”

“Guess not,” he said, looking more closely at her.

She looked toward the orange ball of the sun dropping ever so gradually toward a distant line of pines.

“Eddie around?” Westerley asked.

“I thought I told you the other day, he’s visiting his great aunt in St. Louis.”

“You did tell me,” Westerley said.

He entered the house and came out a few minutes later with a beer can in his hand, letting the screen door slam behind him. “Sip?”

“No, thanks.” She rocked. The chair’s runners made a soft creaking sound on the porch planks.

“You don’t have to worry about Salas,” Westerley said. “I got that straight with him the day after he was released. He won’t harm you, Beth.”

“Did he say he forgave me?”

“I can’t tell you that. He wouldn’t discuss his feelings toward you. I think he’s so busy hating the state of Missouri, he’s got no room to hate anything else. He thinks they owe him.”

“I think so, too.”

“Well, that’s not for us to decide, except maybe on election days.”

She rocked silently for a while.

“Still and all,” Westerley said, “with Eddie away and you alone here, I get uneasy.”

“I’m fine here,” Beth said. Why tell him about the nightmares she lived in as an alternate world, and the guilt that lay on her like one of those lead aprons that dentists use to x-ray?

“Sun’s almost down,” Westerley said. “We should drive up the highway and get us something to eat.”

“Then come back here?”

“That was my thinking.” He smiled at her. “Yours, too?”

“No need to drive anyplace. I thawed out some steaks,” she said. “I can make a salad while you’re cooking them on the grill out back.”

“Yours is the best plan,” Westerley said.

He moved close to her again, leaned over her, and kissed her once more in the dying light.

When Beth woke the next morning to a jay raising a ruckus outside her bedroom window, Westerley was already gone. The edges of the shades were illuminated by the brightness of the day. She couldn’t remember dreaming, but she must have. Her palms were red and sore where she’d dug her fingernails into them.

What she did remember vividly was last night before she’d slept. She absently reached over to where Westerley had lain and her fingertips explored cool linen.

If only her life had begun last night, instead of-

Just like that, her memories of Westerley’s touch, his warm breath in her ear, everything… dissipated. Her mood immediately darkened.

Salas. She seemed unable to go fifteen consecutive minutes without thinking about Vincent Salas, and what she had done to him. Nothing-not even Westerley-could change that. She wore the past like chains, and she couldn’t find a way to break free.

She felt her face stiffen and begin to contort. Unexpected and uncontrollable weeping threatened. It never lasted more than a minute or two, but it was becoming more frequent. She drew and held a deep breath, keeping it inside her until she felt her sanity return. The impulse to weep receded. She knew she had to do something about this. It might occur in public. She couldn’t let that happen.

Face your fears.

That’s what she’d been told by the state-assigned psychologist who’d been so much help to her after Salas had-after the rape.

That’s what Beth decided to do this morning, face her fears and her regrets, in the person of Vincent Salas. She and Salas both knew that nothing could heal the damage done because of Beth’s mistaken allegation; the only course left was for Beth to let him know how terrible she felt about what had happened-no, what she’d done. It hadn’t simply happened like a brief summer shower. She would apologize to him. It was the least she could do for him. Even if he refused to accept her apology, maybe she’d feel less of a weight on her during her days, and during her nights when sleep wouldn’t come.

So am I doing this for me?

Maybe. Or maybe for both of us. It might help to put what happened behind us.

She took a quick shower, dressed hurriedly, and brushed her hair. It seemed that more individual hairs than usual were caught in the brush’s bristles. Were fear and remorse causing her to lose her hair? She’d seen that happen before, to an abused woman who used to own the beauty salon in Hogart.

Though she wasn’t hungry, she forced down a hasty breakfast of toast and coffee. Before leaving the house, she took a long look at herself in the mirror. The woman staring back at her appeared haggard and older than Beth remembered, as if she were being consumed from the inside. In a way that was happening. Guilt like acid was eating her alive.

Well, it was time to act. To do something.

She locked the front door behind her and then left the porch and walked around to the garage. Its wide wooden doors opened to the side, and as she swung the second one on its rusty hinges something buzzed past close to her ear, making her flinch. Hornets had built a nest in the garage, just as guilt had claimed a home in her mind.

When Roy had left he’d taken their late-model Ford pickup truck. Beth was left with the old Plymouth. She still drove it, even though there were over two hundred thousand miles on the odometer. The old car had some rattles, but it still looked okay, and except for a persistent squealing sound coming from inside the dashboard-Westerley had told her not to worry, it was probably a fan motor with a loose bearing-it ran well.

Beth pulled the garage door all the way open, got in the car, and was relieved but not surprised when it started right up. She let it idle motionless for a few minutes and then backed it out of the garage. Though the morning was clear, you never knew about the weather this time of year. Clouds and rain could develop quickly. She got out of the car and closed the garage doors so water wouldn’t run in if a sudden shower did blow through while she was gone.