Ann Rule Small Sacrafices

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fc p^1"^^' ^dy Patterson wrapped the arm again, but she wasn't "tident about
it. Rosie Martin stopped, looked askance at the
28 ANN RULE
arm, and unwrapped the gauze. She quickly put a less flexible
bandage on it.
"How are my kids?" Diane asked.
Rosie answered that everyone was working on them--that
they were still very serious. "We have four doctors doing their
best for them."
That much was true. Neither Rosie nor anyone else had time
yet to come out and tell the family just how bad things were. |
Diane and her parents conferred with the deputies. They
decided that Wes and Diane would go with Rutherford to show
him where the shooting had occurred.
Shelby Day knelt down in front of Diane and said softly,
"One of your girls is really bad. She may not be alive when you
come back." |
Diane nodded. She drew a deep breath and turned to Rob
E Rutherford. She would go with him. She couldn't save her chil- tt I dren
just sitting there in the waiting room anyway. Judy heard
Diane murmur something else, but she couldn't understand it, the
i| words didn't make sense; she turned back toward her post at the
1' I I front desk. ,�� , | s1! H i.^- |
"' When Diane and her father walked out of the emergency room
with Rob Rutherford, the sheriffs sergeant noted that though
Diane was clearly in pain, she seemed to have tremendous will
power. She appeared calmer now that she had something to do,
something that might help find the gunman.
^|]|iii|||i| They walked past Diane's red Nissan, guarded by Rich
Jljlll Charboneau. She looked it over. "I hope my car's OK. Does it
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have any bullet holes in it?"
"I don't know," Charboneau said. "Nobody's checked it
over yet."
thj l!111!! Sergeant Rutherford headed away from Springfield, along
nu [ I ||j Mohawk Boulevard, following Diane's directions. At the intersec-
ie; |;| tion of Nineteenth and Marcola Road, he turned right. They^ le j ||
moved away from the sprinkling of city lights, past empty houses ^ Hill with
lawns that had long since become do-it-yourself junkyards,
past the man-made mountain of sawdust that loomed through the night at the
Kingsford Charcoal Briquet plant. Beyond the grubby
northeast outskirts of Springfield, the innate beauty of the land
took over, although it was shrouded now in the black of night.
The squad car rumbled across Hayden Bridge. Beneath them.
SMALL SACRIFICES 29
the McKenzie River narrowed itself into a chute of turbulent froth
as it raced by the power plant.
"This is where Christie stopped choking," Diane remembered.
"Right here on the bridge ..."
Rutherford shivered involuntarily.
They came off the bridge to a crossroads of sorts. To the
right, Camp Creek Road, barricaded for resurfacing, meandered
off, forking again and again into a series of dead ends; to the left,
two-laned Old Mohawk Road cut away from the main road to
attach itself again to Marcola Road a few miles north. It was only
a local access road, well off the regular route between Springfield
and Marcola.
Rutherford looked questioningly at Diane and she nodded.
Old Mohawk was the road where it had happened. She had driven
across the railroad tracks and then over Hayden Bridge as she
raced to the hospital with her children.
"I never should have bought the unicorn," she murmured
softly, almost to herself.
"What did you say?" Rutherford asked.
"The unicorn," she answered. "I bought the kids a beautiful
brass unicorn, and I had their names engraved on it--just a couple
of days ago. It was . . . you know ... It meant we had a new life.
I shouldn't have bought it."
They passed by the patrol units that were stopping all cars
entering or leaving Old Mohawk--not a busy job, since the road
was sparsely traveled late at night. Rutherford drove slowly past
darkened homes. It was very quiet; the Little Mohawk flowed
more gently than her big sisters. Occasionally there was the sound ,
of a dog barking, or the soft whinny of horses behind the barbed- I
^re fences along the road. The air smelled sweet--cottonwood ^ees just budding
out. Old Mohawk seemed the most peaceful of
country roads. It was hard to believe that four people had been wot here less
than two hours earlier.
As they approached the far end of Old Mohawk just before it reconnected with
Marcola Road, the road narrowed, with no 'shoulders or turning-off places.
Every so often, a thin white '""epost protruded through the black beside the
road. ,,, "Here," Diane said. "We're getting close. It happened just [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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