Excerpt: Untitled Serial Killer Story
In this scene, we meet Emery Taylor and Sam Pawwannee. I love the character of Sam. And, actually, he's a combination of two other characters I've been playing around with for some time, searching for the right story in which to insert them. The right story never has come along, but blending them together to get Sam and to put Sam in this story seemed perfect. His entire storyline flowed perfectly, easily, and was as narrow and specific or as wide open and flexible as I needed it to be. That almost never happens and it makes me love Sam that much more.Of all the characters in this story, Emery Taylor is the one most on the chopping block, so to speak. Or at least her storyline and background are. Initially, she filled a hole in the story. I liked the potential I saw and began fleshing her out, developing her into a bigger more substantial character, fitting her into larger story pieces. I'm not at all through with her, and in a second round of editing, I imagine much of her will change. I can't cut her entirely, at least, I won't. But her evolution is not yet complete, and while I have some ideas of what changes need to be made, I'm never entirely sure what the final outcome will be. These characters often have minds of their own and make their own demands during the writing and editing process.
Still, this scene here is a good introduction to Emery, Sam, their relationship, and Emery's journey for healing. We also are introduced to Greendale, which is a fictional town in northern Colorado. It's a place I wish I could visit, actually, and I hope it coveys, over the course of the story, the pros and cons of a small town.
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“Congratulations,” the little lawyer
said, holding out a ring with a dozen keys on it. “It’s all yours.”
Emery Taylor
took the keys from the lawyer and put them into her coat pocket. She was
already wearing her coat and moving out the door.
She’d just grossly
overpaid for land that was rightfully hers. She smiled inwardly at that; maybe
this was what the Indians had felt like when the government allotted them bits
of their own land back.
“I’ll walk you
out.”
The little
lawyer caught up with her and walked with her back down the long hallway of the
Park County courthouse, the one-hundred-and-twenty-three-year-old floorboards
creaking under their feet.
“So what do
you plan to do with the place?” He was several inches shorter than her five
feet ten inches.
“It needs to
be cleaned up.”
The lawyer
bobbed his head. “The house does need some attention, but the bunkhouse is
livable and all the outbuildings are still in working order.”
He must have
forgotten she’d already bought the place.
“Any cattle left
on the T-Bar Ranch are long gone now, and there isn’t much farming to do with
February.” She turned right in the main hallway of the building and headed for
the front door.
“T-Bar? We’re
talking about the 3B Ranch.” The lawyer was obviously new in town.
“My mistake.”
The little
lawyer looked out the front doors onto the snow-covered lawn and street. “How
long you gonna be in town?”
“Short trip,”
she said, reaching for the door. “Overnight.”
The lawyer
smiled. “Moose Trail Motel is the best motel in town.” He chuckled at his joke.
The Moose
Trail Motel was the only motel in town, apart from the casino. And this lawyer
obviously did not know who she was.
If she’d been
permitted on the reservation, she would have stayed there. Instead she planned
to stop in at the bookshop. Eleanor Jenkins had always kept two rooms in the
back she rented to men heading to or away from jobs with the oil companies or
ranches. She thought she’d see if Eleanor was still there, and if the woman
might have an open room for the night.
“Thanks,” she
said, pulling the door open and stepping out into the single-digit warmth of
the morning. “I’ll give it a try.”
The lawyer
smiled, waved, thanked her again, then turned and disappeared back into the
building.
She zipped her
coat then pulled gloves from her pockets and put them on as she descended the
wide stone steps in front of the massive and regal courthouse. Even for
February at eight thousand feet in northern Colorado, the weather was bad. It
had been one of the longest, coldest, wettest winters in recent memory with no
immediate end in sight. Today the sky was clear, but only yesterday had a storm
that had dumped eighteen inches of snow in three days cleared out. And another
storm was expected by the end of the week.
Her boots
crunched over the frozen sidewalk that led to Main Street. She walked half a
block to her 4Runner and saw that a plow had come by while she’d been inside.
She unlocked the door then reached for the running board, climbing over the two
feet of snow that hadn’t been there an hour ago. She started the engine and let
it run.
Along Main
Street, which was six blocks long, residents were taking advantage of the break
between storms. The street was lined with cars and the stores and shops all
looked busy. She remembered the last time she’d been here, and how little
anything had changed. Small towns were like that.
She put the
truck in gear and it muscled its way out into the road.
At the north
edge of town, she passed the train station that had been converted into a
museum fifty years ago, and drove over the railroad tracks that still saw
several trains a day. The museum was open on Fridays and by appointment during
the winter months, but saw hoards of people over the summer. Emery had been in
there a couple times herself as a child; her father had taken her.
She passed
County Road 14 and the Greendale-Park County Municipal Airport on the right. An
eight-foot chain link fence ran east along the north side of County Road 14 and
north along the east side of Main Street, which was called County Road 21 this
far north of town. Small blue lights blinked from the top of the fence every
ten feet, and spaced between the lights were yellow signs that read no trespassing aircraft operations area.
Twenty years ago, she remembered hearing stories about high school kids who
jumped the fence and roamed the airport in an effort to appease the boredom of
living in a small town. She imagined kids still did that.
A few miles
past the airport, she made a left onto County Road 18, dropping the truck into
four-wheel drive and barreling through two feet of frozen snow. It was slow
going, but the truck was made for this kind of work. And she was in no hurry.
It had been
twenty-three years since she’d been on this road. The last time, she’d been
eight years old, sitting in the passenger seat of her father’s pickup truck,
bracing herself against the door as her mother drove too fast over the
unmaintained gravel road. It had been the end of August, and hot. The truck
windows were open and warm air and smoke from her mother’s cigarette blew
around her. Dust swirled into the truck, and pebbles kicked up and dinged the
undercarriage in an unrelenting symphony. The back of the pickup was packed
with her mother’s belongings and the things from the house Sheri knew she could
sell in the first big town they came to. Emery’s belongings were packed into a
pink backpack that bounced on the floorboard of the truck near her feet.
The dust had
stuck to the tears on her cheeks.
She slowed as
she neared the turnoff for Country Road 7 to the right, buried under so much
snow the only indication of it was the break in the fence. Her thoughts
automatically jumped to the realization that the cattle guard was buried under
so much snow it would be ineffective, and that she’d need to string a makeshift
barrier until the snow cleared. Then she remembered it didn’t matter; there
were no cattle on the ranch.
She looked
again at the snow-covered road. The last time she’d been here, there had been a
simple wooden arch announcing the property as the T-Bar Ranch. Most of that was
gone now, with only the pillar on the left still standing.
She eyed the
road, which was no road at all but a thick, frozen sea of snow. She could
barely make out the indentations of tire tracks, but they had nearly been
filled in. She guessed those were from the inspector who had been out to the
property three weeks ago.
When she
closed her eyes, she could see this road as clearly as if she was once again
running over it or riding along it on horseback as she had as a child. But today
it was indistinguishable under snow so thick she couldn’t even really make out
the stream that ran parallel to the road until it broke off to the east past
the house.
After one moment
of hesitation, she shifted to 4L and turned the wheel. The truck trudged
forward steadily, eating up the snow-covered ground in even strides. With one
eye alert for any indication of a downward slope into the streambed, Emery
primarily kept to the faint tracks made by the last vehicle to burrow through here.
With her
attention on navigating the road, she almost missed the first outbuilding. It
was a huge machine shed, where all of the farming equipment had always been
kept. It was a long white building with red doors, and it was almost
unidentifiable under all the snow. It was buried under eight-foot drifts on the
two sides she could see, the strip of red of the door struggling to peek out
over the snow.
She noticed
almost immediately that the snow leading up to and around the building was
pristine; no one had been anywhere near it since well before the snow had begun.
Including the inspector. But she wasn’t surprised. And it didn’t matter. She’d
known from the start she was going to get screwed on this deal.
She pushed on,
the road winding around to the left and then back as it skirted a dense copse
of trees. In the summer, and especially the fall, the stream bubbled and
gurgled here, running over large stones in the streambed. She could remember
long summer days spent here, barefoot, wet and covered in mud.
The road
curved around to the left again and the house came into view. She gasped softly
and let off the gas, the beast of a truck rolling almost instantly to a stop.
As she stared, her vision became blurry, and she quickly blinked away tears.
The house was
exactly as she remembered it, but it was in a horrible state of disrepair, as
the inspector had said. The siding was falling off, several of the windows were
broken and had plywood boarded over them. Because of the snow, she could not
immediately identify the extensive damage to the roof, but the inspector had
assured her it was there, and she didn’t doubt him.
The house was
a simple two-story affair with a wide porch running across the front and one
side. The first of two additions stood to the right. The second was in the
back, and was the one her father had done. The house had been white once, with
black shutters. Now only a single shutter still clung to the house, and only by
its top fixtures. The others were long gone.
Most of the
wood planks that made up the front steps were also gone, but she could see the
two that remained, as well as the porch, because someone had kept them clear of
snow. A great deal of snow had been cleared from the front walk as well. The
road leading north was plowed, as was a small area her father had always used
as a driveway.
She pulled the
tuck forward and parked in the drive, turning off the car. For a long time, she
just sat staring out the windshield at the house. Memories washed over her,
ones she’d replayed herself in the last twenty years, and ones she’d forgotten
about. Tears spilled over her lashes and ran down her cheeks, but she was also
smiling.
She’d been
born in this house. That wasn’t supposed to happen, she knew. Her mother had
wanted to go to the hospital in town, get the good drugs, or maybe have a
cesarean and skip the pain all together. But Emery had been born in April,
nearly four weeks early. And like this one, that winter had been particularly
gruesome, with lots of snow and freezing temperatures. Two days into a
worsening blizzard, Sheri had started feeling contractions. Sheri’s pregnancy
had been plagued with a variety of ailments, including transient contractions.
By the time Sheri had taken these contractions seriously, it was too late to
get her to the hospital. There had barely been time to fetch a midwife from
town.
Sheri had
never let Emery forget the story of her birth, or how it so clearly illustrated
what a painful and troublesome burden Emery proved to be. Her father had always
chuckled warmly at the memory of her birth. “Always had a mind of your own,
buttercup,” he’d always said. “Right from the start.” Then he would smile,
pulled her into a hug, and kiss her head.
Sometime
later, she got out of the 4Runner and made her way up to the porch. She could
easily recall her mother sitting in an old wicker rocking chair on the far end,
smoking and reading celebrity magazines, and wishing she were anyone else,
anywhere else. Just as easily she could remember the evenings she’d sat with
her father snapping green beans they’d just picked from the garden, or the
afternoons he’d set up the sprinkler in the front yard and they’d laugh and
chase one another through it.
Carefully,
Emery climbed onto the porch using the two remaining steps. The old wood
creaked and groaned under her feet, and she couldn’t help smiling.
She turned in
a slow arc, taking in the vast space around her. Even under all the snow, she
could see that places had gotten overgrown and neglected over the years, but
under that, it was the same.
She leaned a
shoulder against one of the porch columns, closing her eyes and breathing deep
the clear mountain air, and soaking up the solitude. What was she doing here?
She’d been
trying for years to buy back this ranch. It never should have been Sheri’s to
sell all those years ago. Emery’d approached the estate manager nearly eighteen
months ago when Bob Biscayne had died and the ranch and all his other worldly possessions
had gotten tied up in probate due to the fact that he hadn’t written a will.
His three children, who had never had even a passing interest in ranching,
began squabbling over who got how much. She’d made a more than generous offer,
but it had taken months for the transaction to finally settle.
Now she wanted
to get it cleaned up. It was a project she would have undertaken no matter when
she’d been able to buy it, but it was especially welcomed now.
It was time to
move on. It was clear that Nick wasn’t coming back. Her heart was still broken,
dangerously fragile, but she hoped that moving away might help with moving on.
She was ready to get away from a place and a house where every street and every
room brought painful memories.
And she’d been
happy here once—the only other time in her life when that was true. If she
could ever be happy again, this seemed like the place it would happen.
She turned and
leaned her back against the rail, feeling it give slightly under her weight. She
looked at the front door, a heavy, solid oak affair with a large oval-shaped
beveled glass window. The glass was filthy, even under the frost, and it was
broken, a spider web of cracks spreading from a point of impact on the lower
left side. From the look of it, something had struck the door, a golf ball
maybe, or more like a rock.
“Children from
town,” a deep voice said from behind her. “Throwing rocks. On a dare.”
She smiled and
looked over her shoulder at the man standing at the bottom of the steps.
The enormous
Indian looked up at her. “This place is haunted. Or so the children tell one
another.”
“Hello, Sam,”
she said.
He smiled.
“Hello, Emmy.”
Samuel
Pawwannee was six and a half feet tall, with shoulders as wide as most
doorways. He had an enormous barrel chest, hands the size of hubcaps, and every
part of him was steel-strong muscle, without an ounce of unneeded fat.
His face was
angular with a slightly heavy brow and a wide nose, his skin still a deep brown
from the sun, despite being this far into winter. He had big brown eyes that
were warm and welcoming, burning with intelligence and twinkling with humor.
She’d never once seen hate in those eyes, and only once had she seen anger in
them. His long black hair was usually free around his shoulders, but today it
was tied at the base of his neck with a short piece of leather.
He was dressed
in jeans, cowboy boots, and his father’s sheepskin coat, which he’d worn since
he was big enough to fit into it. She didn’t see his truck anywhere, nor did
she see a horse. He’d either left whichever one he’d brought around back, or
he’d walked here. With Sam, one was as likely as the other.
“What are you
doing here?” she asked.
Sam shrugged a
massive shoulder. “I knew you would be here.”
She turned
back and looked at the house again, her hand wrapped around the heavy keychain
in her pocket. She never heard a sound, but she suddenly saw Sam standing on
the porch at the top of the stairs. He took a step and leaned his shoulder
against another column.
“Is your
business in the white man’s court concluded now?”
She chuckled
at his phrasing then pulled the key ring from her pocket. “Official this
morning. Just came from signing and filing the last of the paperwork.”
“Good. This is
long overdue.”
Sam had never
liked that she’d left the ranch, and he’d never been particularly fond of Bob
Biscayne.
“Have you been
clearing the snow?”
He nodded
once. “Yes.”
They stood
like that in silence for several long minutes, comfortable in their
companionship and their own thoughts.
“Shouldn’t you
be at work?”
“I am taking a
lunch break.”
“You’re not
eating,” she said.
He nodded
once. “I am to pick you up and meet Marie at the casino.”
“I’m not
allowed in the casino.”
“I reminded
her of this. My instructions did not change.”
She eyed him
skeptically. He remained impassive, and unreadable.
“Marie is a
powerful woman,” she acknowledge after some time.
A faint,
adoring smile curled up the corners of his mouth and he nodded. “Yes. She is.”
She chuckled.
A more perfect couple did not exist in this world.
They were
quite for a while longer. After some time, she stood up and fingered the keys.
“Guess I’ll
have a look around inside now.” She’d been putting it off.
He stood and
turned to face her. “You should prepare yourself,” he said, his big voice
steady. “It is not what you remember. And it is a mess.”
She looked up
at him, her eyes finding his big brown ones. She saw in him what she’d always
seen—strength, certainty, conviction, and a calm she’d always been envious of.
Sam was a constant in this world and in her life.
She nodded as
if she’d expected this, and looked again at the door.
“Will you come
with me?”
“You know the
answer to that.”
She swallowed,
knowing he was right. “What I meant to say is, I want you to come in with me.”
“Then I will.”
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