Harvestland

TWO

Thirteen Years Earlier

November 17, 1981

Just outside Porterville, Illinois

"You Dr. Loomis? Go right on through."

Sam Loomis maneuvered his yellow Honda onto the shoulder of Highway 18 as a patrolman directed him forward. He pulled to a stop next to a sign indicating SPEED LIMIT 45 and got out, the patrolman lifting some police tape for him to enter the scene.

Before looking down at the crash site, Loomis surveyed the desolate stretch of highway behind him. The accident had happened on a sharp curve of the two-lane road. He could see thick tire marks in the road, officers bending down to examine them and setting flares some distance down the asphalt.

Traffic was scarce so closing one lane was no problem. Loomis had noticed maybe a half-dozen cars on the road his way here. For miles and miles there was only beautiful countryside.

"Dr. Samuel Loomis," an approaching police detective in a sports coat, shirt, and tie said, meeting him through the busted guardrail off the highway and before an embankment. "We gotta stop meeting like this. What's it been, three years?"

Loomis recognized him from somewhere, this middle-aged cop with slicked back brown hair, didn't remember his name.

"Ken Smolka," the detective said, picking up on Loomis's confusion as they shook hands. "I was a patrolman in Haddonfield. I was there that night in '78."

"Ah," Loomis said. Yes, that night.

"I'm state police now," Smolka continued. "Investigator. But I remember that night three years back clear as day. And I remember the next morning, giving the body count in the hospital as ten, thinking one of them was you."

Loomis gave him a curt nod and skipped over the pleasantries. "It's her?" he asked.

"This way." Smolka led Loomis down the grassy slope to the scene of the accident, taking out his notepad. "Ambo took her to Porterville med center where I'm told she died soon after."

"Identification?" Loomis asked.

A nod. "It's Laurie Strode."

"You're positive?"

Smolka nodded again. "License was found on her person, car's registered in her name, she's got proof of insurance. Just waiting on positive physical I.D. There'll be an investigation, the works. That's why we're here."

"You're the primary investigator?"

"Yeah."

The two men stopped. Loomis took in the scene before him at the start of a dense wooded area. The dark blue Volvo was still smoking slightly from beneath the dented hood, the entire front of the vehicle wrapped around a huge tree trunk, the windshield shattered, shards of glass in the driver and passenger seats. And—

Yes. That was blood lying in pools on the seat, steering wheel, dashboard, floor.

A heavyset cop in a shabby suit coat and wayward tie peered up at Loomis from his notepad, narrowing his gaze. "You're Loomis, right?" he said. "Yeah, they said you'd be coming. Just don't fuck with the scene."

Loomis nodded, for several minutes taking a look around the accident and back up the embankment to the highway. The investigators watched him work.