“It does.”
Paul gently touched the uplifted part of fingernail. “I’ll have to cut this part off completely,” he said. “It’ll hurt for a moment, but will feel much better once everything is bandaged up, okay?”
“Um… okay,” Jimmy said.
He watched while Paul pulled out a small pair of scissors from the First Aid Kit and got them positioned to cut away the torn part of nail.
“Hold still,” Paul ordered.
Jimmy did.
The first cut wasn’t so bad, but then the scissors pressed into the nail bed and everything went white hot and it was all Jimmy could do not to jerk his hand away. Thankfully it didn’t last long. Two quick snips and the flipped up part of torn nail that would have snagged on everything was gone.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Paul said.
Jimmy glared at him.
“Let me just wrap that up and you’ll be on your way.” Paul started wrapping the finger. “By the way, any idea what could have happened to those two girls?”
“What?”
“You’ve been riding your bike so much I wondered if maybe you saw something,” Paul said. His hands pressed down hard on Jimmy’s finger with the gauze so that it wouldn’t slip free.
“Yeah, but I never saw anything and I heard they were taken when they were walking home from school, so me and Alan probably weren’t even home yet.”
“That’s the theory at least. The last place anyone ever saw the two was at school so we assume they were taken while walking home.” He paused to tear a strip of white tape. “This is the road they would have been taken on; at least, this is the road Samantha King should have been walking home on. Did you know that?”
Jimmy was going to say no but then realized that couldn’t possibly be true given all the talk at school and instead said, “Yeah, I’d heard that.”
“What I can’t figure it who would do such a thing?” Paul asked. “If it had just been Samantha King then I could see someone just coming into town and grabbing the first girl he saw. But you’d think they would leave town right away, not stay around and grab another girl. Too risky, don’t you think?”
Jimmy nodded.
“That’s why I believe it’s someone in town.”
“But who?” Jimmy asked.
“That’s the question, isn’t it? Who could do something like this? Makes you wonder what goes on behind closed doors.”
“Yeah, ahhh!”
“Sorry, had to press the tape down into it so it sticks.”
“Wasn’t expecting it,” Jimmy said.
“The gauze pad is medicated too so you don’t have to worry about disinfecting it, just make sure you take everything off in a day or two and put on a fresh bandage.”
“Okay.”
“And be careful. I know you say you didn’t see anything, but you might not realize you did see something and the person or persons responsible for all this might come after you.”
“Okay,” Jimmy said again.
“In fact, maybe it would be better if you rode on the other side of town since this area seems to be the focal point of everything.”
“I really like this area though.”
“Suit yourself, just be cautious. I don’t want anyone else to disappear or get hurt.”
“I appreciate that and will be extra careful.” You have no idea just how careful I will be.
“Great. Can you make it home from here or do you need a ride back?”
Jimmy didn’t want to get into the car. “I’m fine.” To prove it he jumped up onto the bike. “See.” He tried not to show how much his finger hurt when gripping the handle, but had a feeling he didn’t do a very good job because it hurt like hell.
“I see,” Paul said. “Be safe.”
Jimmy wanted to ask him if they had any suspects but figured that would be too much at the moment and simply started riding home.
Paul followed for a while, but then turned at the next intersection.
Jimmy sighed. He had had enough close calls at the Hood place for a while. Hopefully his trips there would be uneventful from this point on.
Deputy Paul Widgeon followed Jimmy Hawthorn on his bike until the first intersection and then made a right turn at Elm as if he were planning on patrolling another area, but really was just using the road to wrap around to the left, the three way intersection half a mile down making this possible, one which eventually connected back to the road the Hood place was on.
Paul slowed the vehicle as it came upon a turn off that dead ended into a cul-de-sac five houses down, the house to the right of the center being the King household. Like all the houses along the right side of this road their home backed up into the woods, ones that didn’t end until they came upon the farm fields a few miles away. The houses on the left also backed up into the woods, but those stretches eventually opened up into other backyards on the north side of town, properties that gradually got bigger and bigger as they headed south toward the Hood place.
After a moment Paul continued his journey back to the Hood house, his eyes noting the last house before their property began about half a mile from the actual home. The land had been in the Hood family a long time and a decade earlier it could have made them rich beyond their wildest dreams if they had sold it to developers. Now no one would buy it, the last new house having been built back when Paul was in Iraq, back before Wall Street had gone into its first nosedive.
Jimmy, what were you doing out here? Paul asked himself while pulling up alongside the Hood’s crumbling driveway. What were you hiding from me?
Jimmy’s story about falling off his bike had been bullshit because fingernails wouldn’t tear outward when impacting the ground from a fall. Plus he had had no other wounds on his body, not fresh ones anyway, and if he truly had taken all the impact of a fall on his hand like that, the broken fingernail would have been the least of his pains. Nothing had been broken though, a fact made obvious by the way Paul had been able to twist his hand back and forth while bandaging it. It also hadn’t been swollen. So now the question was what had Jimmy been doing that would leave him with a torn finger?
No answer would arrive without a little investigating, so he got out and walked around. He was pretty sure that whatever had happened to Jimmy’s finger had happened on this property because why come here after the fact — unless he had been going home from the school and took the old wooded path. Of course such a situation would bring up two more questions the first being what would he had been doing at the school after hours, the second being why he would head home on this path when taking the sidewalk provided to him would be much faster.
Could he have snagged his finger while riding, which is why there were no other injuries?
Paul asked himself this while in the backyard, his eyes looking at the thick brush everywhere. If one were cutting though that on their bike it would be possible to get a stick caught up under the fingernail and rip it outward, but then why lie about falling?
And why was he out in the woods to begin with?
He knew Jimmy had been riding his bike a lot. He had witnessed it a few times this past week, and others had as well, most concerned by the very idea Paul had planted in Jimmy’s head about him being a target in case he had seen something he didn’t realize. Paul, however also wondered if Jimmy could have had anything to do with the two girls having disappeared. Most in the department didn’t think a high school student could be behind something like that, but Paul knew differently. Paul had been overseas and had seen what people his age were capable off. Hell, Jimmy was eighteen and that had been the age Paul had been the first time he had ever killed someone, his eyes fascinated by the damage the grenade had done in the room where the insurgent had been waiting.