hurt Ron by showing him up—well, that was his own fault.
She sat down on the edge of her bed for a moment, dismayed by her own hard-heartedness. This wasn’t like her. She’d never before looked on her job as a struggle for the survival of the fittest. But she was upset. She had a daughter who might be headed for the kind of breakdown she’d once had; she had a husband who was probably sneaking around with another—and no doubt younger—woman. There: she’d stated both facts bluntly, facts she hadn’t wanted to face last night.
“And on top of it all, I’ve got you,” she said, thumping Lucifer’s resonant ribcage. “Where were you last night, baby? My theory is that the dognappers caught you and you escaped, the way you looked and acted. Growling at mama. Shame on you!”
Lucifer looked suitably ashamed, but he kept wagging his stump at all the attention. Literally dozens of people, even strangers in the street, had cautioned her about the nasty reputation that Dobermans had for turning on their masters, but she’d always laughed in their faces. They didn’t know Lucy. The dog’s uncharacteristic performance last night had shaken her profoundly, reviving memories of all those warnings. He must have had a truly harrowing scare, but he was himself today. She wished he could talk.
She got her Nikon and gadget bag from the closet. She used her own equipment in preference to the ancient Speed Graphic that the paper would have provided. Higgins had grumbled about it at first, as he would grumble about any deviation from time-honored routine, but even he had been forced to give grudging praise to some of her pictures. She believed that she was a better photographer than she was a reporter. Maybe she could make a living by photography if Ken…
“No, you’re staying home, baby,” she told Lucy as he flung himself excitedly against the front door. “You’re staying indoors, as a matter of fact. I know, I know. But we can’t have you getting stolen again. Try to pretend that you’re a good boy, okay?”
She walked out to her car, steeling herself against the whimpers she heard behind the closed door. He might show his displeasure by pulling all the covers off the beds and all the towels from the bathroom racks, but he had been cured long ago of worse habits. The kids would be home by four to let him out, and he would probably stick close to them.
The man at the general store in Blackwood’s Corners seemed more interested in her t-shirt, worn without a bra, than he did in her questions.
“Some camera you got there,” he said, ostensibly studying the Nikon slung around her neck.
“Thanks. But do you know a man named Peachtree?”
“Oh, sure. Peachy, everybody calls him, and he pretends to get mad about that, but he likes the attention. Self-reliant old coot. Won’t even apply for Social Security; says he never put a penny into it. Still goes out at his age and jacks deer.”
“Does what?”
“Takes his old pickup down a fire lane where the deer feed, turns on his spotlight, the deer freeze, and blam! Peachy’s got meat on the table for the next month or so. Only don’t put that in the paper, you’ll just get him in trouble with the wardens.”
“I don’t want to make trouble for him. I’m only interested in this thing he says he saw.”
“Hoo boy.” The storekeeper laughed for what seemed a long time, then took his glasses off to dry his eyes on his sleeve. “What is it, flying saucers again?”
Marcia’s suspicions were verified, and she smiled wryly. She couldn’t answer the question. She didn’t know what Peachtree had seen. The Jersey Devil had been Higgins’s idea, and her knowledge of that subject was too sketchy for her to suggest it.
“Has he seen flying saucers?” she asked.
“To hear him tell it, you’d think there was a regular scheduled flight out there. Noises. Lights in the sky.”
“You talking about Peachy?” The speaker had entered the store unnoticed by Marcia. He was a lanky old man in loose overalls.
“This here young lady is from the paper up to Riveredge, Alvin. She wants to interview Peachy.”
When the man smiled, his face showed deep creases suggesting kindliness. “It ain’t flying saucers this time. Is that what you been telling her, George?”
“I don’t know what to tell her, Alvin. I ain’t seen Peachy in weeks.”
“Well, ma’am, you got to understand that Peachy is an odd sort of person.”
“I told her that,” the storekeeper said.
“He lives like a hermit,” Alvin continued, ignoring the interruption, “but at the same time, every so often he gets the yen to have people listen to him and make a fuss over him. So he comes out of the woods with some crazy story and tells whoever will listen. Anybody who stays out there for six months on end, even if he don’t drink his own homemade applejack, he’s going to start seeing things. When was it, fifteen-twenty years ago? He called up the papers about a flying saucer he seen; they come and took his picture and made a big fuss over him. I guess he figures he’ll repeat his former triumph with this snake thing.”
“He told you about it?” Marcia asked.
“Sure, he’s all excited about it. Scared, too, though he don’t want to let on. I drop in on Peachy every once in a while. He’s an old man, you see—” Alvin was pushing seventy himself, she guessed—”and I just look in to see he’s okay. This thing’s come snuffling around his house two, three times in the past couple weeks. Claims it killed two of his dogs, but I think he’s got them confused with a couple dogs he lost ten years ago. Says this thing sounds like a consumptive steam engine, nosing and poking around his doors and windows. He seen it once. A big, black thing, he says, like a snake with long legs. It whipped around a tree so fast that his eye couldn’t follow it, then it was gone. Sort of like a weasel, I guess, only a hundred times bigger. You can’t say we don’t make good applejack around here.”
“You figure Peachy’s monster, that’s what’s bothering your livestock?” the storekeeper asked.
Alvin’s face lost its good-humored set. His calloused fingers drummed for a moment on the countertop. Marcia sensed that the storekeeper had joked about an inappropriate subject.
“That’s a dog,” Alvin said. “That’s some goddamned no-good dog I’m going to drill right through his black bastard heart. I beg your pardon, young lady.”
Marcia had winced at the idea of shooting a dog, not at Alvin’s language. Suppose he shot a straying Lucy by mistake? But this was too far for Lucy to stray.
“Maybe the hippies are doing it,” the storekeeper suggested.
“Hippies,” Alvin snorted. “They just want to sit around in a circle and chant all night and smoke their funny cigarettes. I watched them close; closer than they ever dreamed, and they ain’t up to no harm. Dumb, maybe. But they’re just wasting their own time and hurting themselves, not other folks. The ones out to Falls Road, they got this goat there, and they treat it like Mrs. Astor’s pet horse. I figure they like animals.”
“Some dog is killing your animals?” Marcia asked.
Alvin sighed. “Not just mine. And killing them, that would be better than leaving them to bellow and bleed to death. Some son of
