Nobody Knows Your Secret

63

They chatted for a little while longer. Hadley got to work cleaning out some pens.

Ruth knew Hadley didn't mind the dirty work. It was one of the reasons she was one of Ruth's favorite volunteers. Hadley was at the far corner of the compound.

All of a sudden, she heard sirens.

Hadley prayed it wasn't a fire. Fire in these dense woods was always one of her worst fears.

So many folks were careless. They thought nothing of starting a trash fire on a blustery day, nothing of tossing a lit cigarette out of a car window where it might come to land on patches of bone-dry grass during times of dry weather or low humidity.

Hadley edged closer to the fence that marked the outer perimeter of the wildlife compound. There was a washed area a few feet to her right. It looked like an opening just about her size.

She got down on her hands and knees and wiggled through the opening under the fence. She'd have to tell Ruth about it. A bear could wander under that gulf between the gulley washout and the bottom of the chain link fence.

She grabbed a sapling and hoisted herself up from the ground. Good thing she'd been cleaning out Eustian's house with Beanie, she thought. All that exercise did her body good.

She picked her way through the woods, aiming for the general direction where the sirens originated. She thought the noise had come from somewhere near the big clown's head.

There was Bill's car. But it was obvious that he was nowhere around. There was a second patrol car there, as well. Probably Elwin Dollie, one of Bill's deputies. Bill's other deputy, Wayman Hoke, was usually assigned to the eastern half of the county.

What in blue blazes was going on, Hadley wondered as she crept closer?

Then, she spotted them. Lying on the ground were several used syringes, just in the corner of the clown's mouth.

"Darn drugs," she whispered.

She looked back over toward the wildlife center. Ruth had been smart to install that intercom buzz-in system.

When Hadley first volunteered, she was fretted that she simply could not come up the back service road and drive right through to the wildlife shelter. It seemed like such a silly inconvenience to have to stop her car, roll down her window, and speak into an intercom. There was something Big Brother about the video cameras Ruth had installed at the entrance, too.

This was sleepy, little Hope Rock County, for Pete's sakes. But then Ruth had explained that she had to have the security system around the compound. She kept drugs for the animals in her dispensary, and it would be an open invitation for people to break in and steal them.

A shiver traced down Hadley's spine.

Maybe Ruth should have shelled out the dough to have the whole amusement park under surveillance.

Too expensive. Too impractical.

Bill Winthrop, Hadley prayed, you be safe.

Hadley crept further into the clown's head. She didn't see anyone in the hollow cave, but then again, the deepest parts of this gargantuan dome were pitch-black. Anybody could be hiding in the shadows, she thought. I'd never see them coming at me until it was too late.

She wanted to run away, but the images of Bill chasing after some thug kept her moving forward. Her plan was to stay on the fringes. Heaven forbid, if Bill got shot or injured, she'd be there for him.

She hadn't been for Harry.

The breeze picked up. The wind rushed through the mad clown's mouth.

Mad clown.