The "Well District" (10/01, 12:23pm)

The “Well District” (10/01, 12:23pm)

Yellow crime scene tape has been wrapped around the old brick well in a residential district of Stakeford. The town sheriff, accompanied by a deputy, is talking with a local resident. The woman stands in the doorway of her sulfur-yellow colored house, with her arms crossed. She wears horn-rimmed glasses, and her blonde hair is in the style of a bob. She is wearing a navy blue long-sleeve shirt, denim jeans, and white socks.

The deputy, who has a shaved head, watches the woman in silence while the sheriff speaks. For a while, their conversation is too quiet to be heard, but then the woman’s voice raises.

“I already told you, I don’t know anything at all,” she says. “I found out the same way everybody did, when I read the newspaper… And can you ask him kindly to stop staring at me?”

The woman gestures to the deputy. The sheriff says a few quiet words to him, and the deputy walks away. He continues on toward the well, at which he point looks down into its depths. Something about his face when he is scowling makes him seem very young, like an angry child.

A few of the townsfolk look down at the district from their windows. Gawkers have started to appear, despite the efforts of another officer, an older man with graying black hair, to keep onlookers away from the crime scene.

After a short conversation transpires, the woman wearing the horn-rimmed glasses goes back inside her house and closes the door. The sheriff turns around and regroups with his deputy.

They look at each other for a couple of seconds, and then they both shake their heads.

"Dr. Green didn't see anything either," the sheriff says.

The deputy looks around at the buildings surrounding the well, then the well itself. "I take it she didn't hear anything, either? Or smell anything? Taste? Feel? Anything?"

The sheriff shakes his head again. "The perp was quiet-- real quiet. Dr. Green was emphatic that she's a light sleeper. She told me that she wakes up as soon as the birds start in the morning, and she even wakes up whenever a car starts up in this part of town. And she slept like a baby last night, she said."

The deputy and sheriff turn and, silently, walk over to the well. They peer inside.

"The Ackermann kid said that the head was placed on a pedestal down there," the sheriff says.

The deputy looks at him, curiously. "A pedestal? Well... was it?"

"Sort of." The sheriff continues to look deep into the well. "He said it was on a white, granite column. About waist-high. He said there was weird writing on the column, too. But when I went down there, the head was sitting on top of a rock. A large, but normal rock. Either way, this head was gently placed down there. It wasn't thrown."

"I guess the culprit's not the violent type," the deputy says. He sneezes into his arm. "Well, you know what I mean."


THE "WELL DISTRICT" IS CLOSED