Chapter 10

When Larry Foreman heard a dial tone in his ear, he hung up the phone and looked nervously toward the bed where Mary Tendoy lay unconscious and drugged and naked. Larry had told Coach that he thought Mary Tendoy had been raped. There was no question about that. She'd been beaten as well as raped. Her face was bruised and bloody, bite marks marred her heavy breasts, and her sex was awash with semen, more semen that one man could produce, Larry figured. Mary Tendoy had been gang raped.

After calling Coach, Larry had believed he could pull a sheet over Mary Tendoy's naked body and wait for Coach to arrive. But no, Coach did the right thing. The fucking boy scout said he'd call an ambulance. That bothered Larry on a number of levels. Number one, the gendarmes would arrive with the ambulance and all hell would break loose at the Quint residence. The county jail couldn't hold all the drunk and drugged-up teenagers celebrating in the house. Some of the teenagers would resist arrest and give some of the more vicious deputies an excuse to demonstrate how tough they were. Larry hoped Tiny Gorman wouldn't be among the responders. A year ago, Larry had been the recipient of Tiny's brutality, and Larry wanted to avoid a repeat of that incident at all costs.

But not at the cost of Mary Tendoy's death, Larry told himself as he walked toward the bed. The fucking boy scout had been right about that, too. That was the second level bothering Larry. Calling an ambulance had been the right thing to do. Deep down Larry knew that, but Larry had called Coach instead of calling the ambulance himself. He'd sloughed off the responsibility, and because he'd tossed the ball to Coach when it was his to carry, Larry felt less of a man than he believed he was. But Coach hadn't completely absolved Larry of the responsibility to save Mary Tendoy. And that was the third level that bothered him. Mary was naked. To do what Coach told him to do to try to save her, Larry would have to touch her, and he'd never touched a naked girl. He'd touched his mother when she was naked and passed out drunk, he'd had no choice, but his mother wasn't a girl, a girl close to his age. With school, work, and taking care of his mother, Larry had not dated a girl. He wasn't a virgin. A friend of his mother had seduced him when he was sixteen. But as far as dating a girl, touching a girl his own age went, he was a virgin. Getting to know a girl was the reason he'd decided to attend the party. In the deepest recesses of his mind, he'd fantasized about touching a naked girl. But not this way, not a bruised and broken girl who had been repeatedly raped.

"You've got it to do," Larry muttered out loud. "Do it."

The top sheet on the bed had been pulled off and was lying in a heap on the floor at the foot of the bed. He grabbed it and wrapped it around Mary before he picked her up in his arms to carry her to the bathroom where he would put his fingers down her throat to try to make her throw up. She was dead weight, and Mary was not a slim girl. Like many Native Americans, she carried some extra weight, but Larry was strong, his upper-body strength adequate to the task. He laid her on the floor of the bathroom. The covering sheet was in disarray. He could see her large breasts again. He fumbled with the sheet to cover them, and then told himself to forget her nakedness and do what Coach told him to do. With effort, he arranged her so her head was over the toilet bowl, and then he opened her mouth and stuck a finger to the back of her throat. She gagged but didn't throw up. He pushed the finger in deeper. More gagging, and then she wretched. Vomit spewed. He made sure her airway passage was clear and stuck his finger in her mouth again.

"Larry Foreman, what the hell are you doing?" a female voice said as Mary threw up the second time.

He turned his head toward the voice and saw Helen Sanford.

"Trying to make Mary throw up. She's unconscious and I think she overdosed on drugs, Helen. And she's been beaten and gang raped. I called Coach. He called an ambulance and is on his way here. He told me to try to make her throw up, try get some of the drugs she'd taken out of her system."

"Eewew! That stinks," Helen said as she pulled a towel off the towel rack on the bathroom wall. She drenched one end to the towel with water in the sink and knelt by Larry.

"I think she's thrown up all she can," Larry said. "All I get are dry heaves now."

"Let me clean her up a little," Helen said as she reached and flushed the toilet.

"Good idea," Larry said. "Take care of her. I need to tell Barry that the police will be knocking on his door momentarily."

"Good luck on that. Barry is passed out in one of the bedrooms," Helen said. "I came down here to use the bathroom."

"That's what I was doing when I saw Mary on the daybed. Is Cal still conscious?"

"I think so. Go on. Warn him. He's your friend, and friends help friends."

"Okay, and thanks, Helen. When the ambulance arrives, I'll bring the attendants down here."

Larry took the stairs two at a time. At the top of the stairs, he heard sirens. They were close. He glanced around the living room. Barry wasn't the only reveler that had guzzled too many beers, or smoked too much pot. Ben Perkins was leaning over the glass coffee table. He had a rolled ten dollar bill in his hand, sniffing cocaine through the ten spot into his nostrils. Ben wasn't even a high school student. He was older, graduated two or three years ago, worked at one of the mines, if Larry remembered correctly. A few more men and women that didn't go to the high school sat or lay sprawled around the room. Some students, too, though. But Larry couldn't see Cal. Thinking Cal was in one of the bedrooms, Larry moved toward the hall that led to the bedroom wing of the house. That's when the ambulance arrived. It's siren whining one last time.

Sorry, Cal, Larry thought, you're on your own. He hurried to the front door, threw it open, started to rush outside to greet the attendants, and ran into Tiny Gorman—literally. Running into Tiny Gorman was like running into a reinforced concrete retaining wall. As large as Larry was, he was smaller than Tiny. Every man in Ely was smaller than Tiny. Tiny stood unmoved and solid from the collision. Larry bounced. Then Tiny grabbed him. "Where you goin', boy?" Tiny growled.

"To meet the ambulance," Larry said.

"Not likely. Take the position, boy."

"But..." Larry groaned with pain when Tiny's massive fist struck him in the kidney.

"Resistin' arrest, huh? We'll see about that."

Tiny pushed Larry into the house and mashed his face against the open front door, jerked one arm behind his back, cuffed that wrist, and then did the same with the other. "Come on, boy. You can sit this out in the cruiser while I sort out what's goin' on inside that house." The big deputy spun Larry around and pulled him through the front door.

"I need to tell the ambulance attend ... whoof!" All the air left Larry's lungs when Tiny shammed his fist into Larry's stomach. It felt like the fist went deep enough to hit his backbone. In his struggle to regain his breath, Larry twisted away from Tiny.

"Tryin' ta run, huh? That ain't goin' ta happen, not on my watch," Tiny hissed and hit Larry with a right cross.

There had to be six inches of snow on the roads. It was slow going, but I squelched the urge to drive the pickup faster because I feared I would slide off the road in the process. Then again, I wasn't altogether certain the pickup was on a road. I could be driving in an open field or across someone's winter-dead lawn for all I knew. What gave me hope were the tire tracks of another vehicle in front of me.

I'm sure this body with the real John Windom behind the wheel knew how to drive in the snow. Windom had grown to manhood in Reno, a city nestled in the high Sierra Mountains where snow on the roads was normal during the winter months. Driving confidently in the snow would be second nature to the real John Windom. Aaron MacDonald was born and raised and lived in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The Aaron MacDonald in John Windom's body had little experience navigating the white stuff, uh-uh, make that no experience. And it was still snowing. I could see farther than the hood of the pickup, but not much farther.

I'd studied an Ely street map while talking to the 911 operator, and I felt confident that I knew the location of Elysium Drive and the roads I should take to arrive at that street, but with the snow blurring and limiting my vision and blotting out any landmark reference points like street signs, I could very well be lost.

Then out of the dark and the falling snow I saw the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle. Maybe I wasn't lost. I glanced at the clock on the dashboard of the truck. I'd been driving for thirty minutes, a trip that would have taken me ten minutes on dry roads. I could see no place to park, so I stopped the pickup in the middle of the street, hopefully the street was Elysium Drive, left the engine running and lights on, and stepped from the pickup.

The emergency vehicle with flashing lights wasn't an ambulance. It was a police cruiser. At least the police have arrived, I told myself. Police are trained in emergency procedures for an overdose. The ambulance had probably been delayed by the snow, like I was.

As I approached the house, I saw a very large man, a deputy sheriff I assumed by the uniform he wore, manhandling someone, one of the teenagers at the party intoxicated or high on drugs, I guessed. As I came closer I realized the teenager was Larry.

"Tryin' ta run, huh? That ain't goin' ta happen, not on my watch," the deputy growled and threw a right cross, the meaty fist striking the side of Larry's face. Larry went down, and he was cuffed, I noticed when he fell and rolled on the snow. That should have been it. After Larry was handcuffed, he was under the deputy's control. The deputy had no business hitting the cuffed teenager. Then I watched aghast when the deputy picked Larry up. The big man was in the process of hitting Larry again when I stopped him.

I grabbed his huge arm, used his unstable position against him, twisted his arm and took him to the ground. I didn't hit him. In a lethal situation, I would have taken him out with some fast blows to his kidneys, and when he turned kicked him in the balls, then kicked the side of one of his knees when he was falling, and finally hit him with two fast punches to his neck with the heel of my hand.

After being mugged by two men while in college, I'd researched martial arts and selected krav maga as my method of self defense. Then I'd trained diligently for a number of years under a man who had learned krav maga from a member of Mossad in Israel. Krav maga devotees don't mess around. They take out their opponents quickly, without mercy, and permanently, whether the opponent is armed or unarmed. I didn't do that to the deputy. I'd merely stopped him from hitting Larry again, which was a mistake.

With an animalistic roar, the deputy rose to his feet and came at me. He was huge, four inches taller than I, maybe more, and he had to weight over 300 pounds. He was big and strong, but my training in krav maga kicked in again, and when he swung at me, I ducked under the swing, grabbed the arm and threw him to the ground but not before kicking him in the nuts with the toe of my cowboy boot.

That's when I felt a massive blow to my back and shoulder. I ignored the excruciating pain, turned slightly, saw the nightstick coming at me again, grabbed the wrist of the deputy swinging the weapon, twisted my body, took the nightstick from his hands and kicked the side of his knee. He went down screaming in pain. Most likely, I'd broken his leg. I had not pulled the kick.

But the altercation wasn't finished. Another deputy came at me. He was no more adept than the other two, and not nearly as large. Like the others, he was soon writhing in the snow in pain clutching his side. I'd hit him three times on the left side of his torso as I took him down, probably breaking some ribs. I'd also dislocated his shoulder.

The next deputy had more sense than the first three. He stood back, pointing a gun at me. He wasn't close enough for me to take the gun away from him, and his hands were steady, his stance in the snow balanced.

"Move and you're a dead man," the man said.

I didn't move.

"You're under arrest for assaulting an officer of the law," the deputy said. He glanced at his fellow deputies still writhing prone in the snow. "Three of them."

I said nothing. I did notice that another police cruiser was parked and empty in the street behind my pickup, and the ambulance was stopping behind the last cruiser.

"Deputy," I said, "I'm Coach John Windom. The young man cuffed and beaten and lying in the snow is Larry Foreman, a student of mine. He called me about a half-hour ago, told me that there was a girl at the party that he thought might be dying, that she might have overdosed on drugs. He said she was unconscious and might have been raped, as well. I told Larry to stay with the girl, get her to throw up if he could, and that I'd drive to the party after calling an ambulance. When I arrived, that large deputy was beating Larry. The boy was handcuffed, completely controllable, but the brutal bastard was beating that boy. I stopped him. I didn't hurt him, but I stopped him. Then he attacked me. I took him down, and took him down hard the second time. Two more deputies came at me. I understand why. They were protecting a fellow officer, but my training kicked in, and I defended myself. Unless attacked, I'll give you no trouble. The ambulance has arrived to help the overdosed girl. She has to come first. Then I want the EMTs to check out Larry. He's still unconscious, probably concussed, maybe badly concussed, which could lead to swelling on his brain and his death. The big deputy hit him hard. What's your name?"

"I'm Wade Cantrell. The Sheriff is on his way here. I'll let him sort out this mess." He chuckled. "That's why they pay him the big bucks. Until he arrives, I'll need to cuff you, Coach."

"I understand. If you do, and that big sonofabitch attacks me again, I'll hold you responsible, though."

"Shit! You're right. Okay, do I have your promise to stay calm and..."

"Deputy Cantrell," I said, interrupting him, "I was calm when I took out those three men. I will promise you that I won't hurt or attack anyone unless I'm attacked."

"That's good enough for me," Cantrell said and holstered his weapon. "Frankly, I don't want to get close enough to you to put on the cuffs."

Larry groaned then, and rolled over. I walked to him, leaned over and said, "Larry, it's Coach. Where's the girl?"

"Basement. Helen's with her."

"Okay. Stay calm. The ambulance is here. I'll have them check you out after they check out the girl. Okay."

"Yeah," he muttered. "Tiny..."

"Tiny?"

"A deputy sheriff ... big fucker..."

I patted Larry's shoulder. "I know. I stopped him. Stay calm. You'll be all right now. I need to talk to the EMTs."

I told the attendants the location of the overdosed girl and followed them into the house and down the stairs. We found Helen and the girl in the bathroom, and the EMTs took over.

"Where's Larry?" Helen asked.

"Outside. One of the deputies beat him unconscious."

"Oh, no!" She exclaimed and rushed away.

The Shoshone girl was in professional hands, so I followed Helen upstairs, noting for the first time that the girl in the basement bathroom wasn't the only unconscious body in the house. I didn't envy Sheriff Ken. Sorting out this mess wasn't going to be easy.