The Bridge, Part 3

This story showed up out of nowhere, then got away from me. What was to be a very short, one—maybe a two-part tale doubled in size. However, I have almost finished it. Here’s Part 3, with The End coming the next week as Part 4. If you’d like to read what happened earlier, here are Part 1 and Part 2. I’m tagging A.C. Cargill, All-Human Author and her #Summer Scare.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Part 3

Once I’ve listened to the conversation several times, I’m convinced I’m in a classic Rod Serling episode of The Twilight Zone. I’ve been left with questions I can’t answer: Who was on the bridge with Glory? Why couldn’t I hear her when I was only a few feet away? What more don’t I know about my grandfather’s past?

I drain the last of my beer and grab another one from the fridge.

I’ve been writing for this tabloid too long. I’m beginning to believe the weird and wildly impossible are true.

My biggest question is about the crime that voice mentions: Did Glory kill four people when she was seventeen and get away with it?

I’m a reporter. My mom and dad were reporters, and my grandfather, Glory’s 1955 prom date, was one, too. I don’t leave questions unanswered. That’s why I arrive at the police station the next day.

“1955?” The officer at the desk offers up condescension in a toothy smile. “Slow day at that rag of yours?”

“You got it.”

He leads me to a back room filled with shelves of boxed crime records that haven’t been digitized. Fortunately, Wooten is never in a hurry to get organized, so the box I need, while at the bottom of a stack, is there and waiting for my inquiring mind to sort through it.

“You can’t take anything out from this room.”

“Wouldn’t think of it. Can I use that for a few hours?” In the corner is a table and a chair.

He shrugs. “Whatever,” and goes to answer a phone call.

When I dig into that box of 50s history, I find that in Wooten, crime spiked in summer when the kids had too much free time or on the Fourth of July when the local bar served beer at half price. Otherwise, in that long-ago year, not much called the police into action…except the fire at Wooten High.

The reports give a thorough account of the grim scene, the victims, who got out unharmed, the condition and location of the bodies. When I come to “Witnesses questioned.” I sit down so hard the chair creaks under my sudden weight.

There are only three pages. Witness statements. Timelines. List of students in the building that afternoon decorating for Prom. The investigator’s notes in detail.

Janitor Earl Benson reported seeing Glory Hayes and Michael Davidson arguing in the back of the gym near the utility closet about an hour before the fire.

It feels eerie reading about my grandfather, someone without slumped shoulders, unscarred.

The investigator had starred one sentence: *Subject Hayes observed carrying a metal can. Witness Earl Benson thought it might be a gas can. He could not be certain.

There’s more: Glory Hayes admitted taking a gas can from her father’s garage. She claimed her boyfriend, Michael Davidson, asked to borrow it. According to her, he wanted to use it on his boat to make sure he had enough fuel for a long trip they and some of their classmates were taking after graduation. She denied that the can contained gasoline and claimed it was empty.

The next entry’s about my grandfather’s statement: Michael Davidson admitted he did ask Glory to borrow her father’s gasoline can because he planned the boat trip she’d mentioned. She brought it to him at school, empty.

The last notes are brief: Evidence insufficient for prosecution. Case remains open.

At the end: Unsolved.

I photocopy every page and slide the report back into the box. When I leave the police station, I know very little more than when I came, but I can’t let go of this story. I have to find out what happened that day in 1955.

End Part 3. Part 4 (The End) next Wednesday

---

I like mysteries, so in Shattered, I wove one into the story. Reviewers have commented that they like that aspect of the book, so I’d like to play around with mystery a bit more. Maybe that’s one reason I wrote The Bridge.