Coontail Myster

Gray heavy rain clouds tumbled in the late afternoon sky out over the ocean. The clouds caused the sunlight to stream in at odd angles, turning the air above the tree tops to a shade of yellow. The atmosphere and lack of previous of humidity had been unusual for this winter. But now with the giant storm just off the coast and the air sizzling with the coming change there was general feeling of gloomy excitement. This was going to be a big one. The moister was coming to the forest town like an angry wife comes barreling full-bore angry at a second-rate, useless husband. This was going to be a storm most had planned to avoid by being indoors.
But the storm was the last thing on everyone’s mind. People stood around stunned at what they were seeing. Traffic, if one could call a bus and twelve cars traffic, was stopped in the middle of the road in every which direction. Truth was anyone could easily go around if they wanted but morbid fascination kept them there. The entire population kids from the local school who were coming home from school in the bus were moving about everywhere. Some sat on the side of the street crying while other ran willy-nilly around in confusion, excitement and shock. The fire Chief, a large fat man who should have retired 10 years ago, who had just arrived, stared with his mouth half open. Some by-standing idiot asked him if he thought the girl was still alive.
Henry, the bus driver and someone else who should have retired a long time ago, was in a state of denial. He blabbered on continually to anyone who would listen that the girl hadn’t been there. He hadn’t even seen anyone standing anywhere by the street, let alone in the street. You just don’t miss seeing people in a small town like you do in a large city.
The familiar blare of the siren echoed in the distance down highway 101, followed shortly by the red strobe lights of the sheriff’s truck joining the kaleidoscope of flashing colors of the fire truck. Towering pines of dark green swayed in the wind as people turned to watch.
The green vintage `63 Dodge truck rumbled to a stop and two figures jumped out. Scary and unexpected as this event was, the town people were in an excited, almost gleeful state. Shop owners had walked out with their shoppers to view the carnage like it was a parade on Fourth of July. Nothing ever happened here in the quiet little town of Neilton, population 634, Washington, just south of Lake Quinault.
The sheriff followed by his companion, walked passed the hundreds of questions thrown at them and walked over to the fat fire Chief who had removed his helmet and was scratching his thin mousy brown hair.
“Fred, what do we got?”
“Sheriff. Miss.” The chief said to the two while he continued to stare bewildered at the two vehicles in the wreck. “I ain’t never seen nothing like this before.”
“Where is the body?” the sheriff asked. His companion moved past him up to the bus and car.
“It’s still sandwiched in there. We was waiting for you and Doc Ronald to show up.”
“You are doing a fine job Fred.”
“Thank ya sheriff. No one knows who da girl is or where she come frum. Henry swears this side of his mutd`rs left fist he never saw the girl. She was just there. Kind`a like she just popped into existence, all in the wrong spot. Not a prettie way to go out that is for sure.”
“Thanks Fred. Try to see if you can get some of these people out of here could you? I better go take a look.”
The sheriff moved around the back of the yellow school bus and walked up to the point of impact. Wrecks weren’t anything new to him. He had seen hundreds. He had been in at least half of them too.
“F…” The swear word started to come out but he never finished it.
Coming around the front of the bus he saw what all the commotion was about. There, pinned between the front of the bus and a rusty old blue `82 DeVilles Cadillac was the body of a young woman. Her head and top torso was on top of the trunk on the Cadillac while her hips and lower legs were lost in twisted mess of chrome metal and flesh.
Problem was there wasn’t enough blood. He expected more. The sheriff looked up across to the other side to his companion and gave her a questioning raise of his right eyebrow. The crowd looked on.
He jumped up on the back on the car and slid over to get a better look. Taking out some surgical gloves he reached over and began to examine the body. The girl’s left hand, the side the sheriff was on, was trapped down in the metal while her right hand laid half severed on the trunk. Her body and head was face down covered by a mess of long curly red hair. The girl was oddly wearing what looked to be pajamas. Carefully, he lifted her hair out of the way and lifted the head to take a look.
“Sh#t!”
He momentarily forgot himself and dropped the head. It banged back down.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” He lied. This dead girl was a part of the reason why he was here and why Mellisa was mad at him but he was sure she didn’t know this girl. No one in this po-dunk town should know her. What the hell was she doing here?
“Come up here and help me out will you.”
Mellisa jumped up and slid carefully over. The fire chief came around the bus with a camera round his neck to stand where she had been.
Together the sheriff and Mellisa eased the body up to take a better look.
She was dead, there was no doubt about that with the state of her bruised face. But there were some weird things going on. On the girl’s forehead was a picture of a five point star drawn on by what looked like a metallic blue magic marker. There was also some writing on her chest that could be seen just about her nightgown written with the same color. Mellisa reached over and pulled down the cloth. It spelled out the word ‘WENDY’.
“Chief, can you get up here and take some pictures?” The sheriff called.
“You think her name is Wendy?” Mellisa asked.
“Nope.” He replied as the chief started snapping some shots.
“How do you know?”
“I will tell you later.” He was looking at the dirt smear on the front of her nightgown. “Here, hold the body for the chief, will you? I want to check something out.”
The sheriff grabbed a mirror on the front of the flat nose school bus and jumped up onto on top. His boots landed with an echoing thud on the roof of the yellow bus. It was a flat top metal riveted bus you would see anywhere in the county. The difference here was there was a dirty indent in the roof, barely noticeably except for the pool of dried blood and the words written over and over.
“Fly PETER PAN Fly.

Barett Coontail, the new sheriff in the little town of Neilton Washington, had a murder on his hands.