by Kris Ashton
“Just in here darlin’,” he said.
She opened the door to his office and yanked him in after her, popping a button off his shirt. Red had gone way beyond the point of caring about his shirt; he would grab it by both collars and rip it off completely if Janet wanted him to. He shut the door and turned the key in the lock.
Janet had slipped off her underwear and she now sat on his desk, her skirt hitched up and her legs spread for full access.
My God, Red thought, I’ve died and gone to heaven.
No one had answered the phone at Tina Radford’s house (it didn’t hurt to check, especially when a kid made the missing person report) so Bert had got the address off little Jessica and headed out there. Several unsavory possibilities ran through Bert’s head—murder was rare in a country town, but accidents and suicides tended to make up the numbers well enough. Tina hadn’t answered the phone but that didn’t mean she wasn’t in the house. Three years earlier, Bert had found Maude Hanson hanging from the clothes rail in her wardrobe like one of her dresses—her son, Marty, had been an early casualty of the Vietnam war and she had not dealt well with his valorous honor.
He opened the flyscreen and knocked on the unfinished wood of Tina’s front door, taking in the house’s split weatherboard cladding and the cracked concrete of its porch. She had fought hard to eke out an existence for herself and her daughter, and while some folks spoke badly of her, Bert admired her in an oblique sort of way—Jessica always looked clean and healthy and presentable, with her hair brushed and her clothes washed. Bert wondered whether some of the acid-tongued gossips would cope half so well if their husbands up and left them.
A second knock brought no response either. Bert went to the front window and tried to see in, but the old lace curtains obscured his view. He pondered his options for a moment, then opened the flyscreen again and shoulder charged the wooden door. It rattled in its frame the first time, made a cracking sound the second, and gave on the third, splinters of half-rotted wood pattering onto the floor.
“Mrs Radford?” Bert called out. He felt a sense of déjà vu; he had been through this in his own house not twenty-four hours earlier.
He found no signs of forced entry other than his own, no evidence of a scuffle, and nothing to suggest Tina had left the house at short notice or against her will—the TV, radio and all other appliances were off. He investigated every room and storage space that could contain a fully-grown woman’s body, but they held only routine things—brooms and cleaning products, clothes suited to a young mother and her growing daughter, neat piles of manchester. He even used the Radford’s rusty stepladder to get up through the manhole in the bathroom to check the poky crawlspace, but found nothing apart from rotted insulation batts and a few cobwebs.
He climbed back down and returned the rusted stepladder to its place in the laundry. On the way out, he removed a card from his wallet and wedged it between the broken door and its frame. If Tina had just temporarily lost enthusiasm for her single mother’s life and decided to take a day or two’s sabbatical, the card would (Bert hoped) make him her first point of contact when she returned.
Bert sat in his cruiser to think. He would alert law enforcement agencies to Tina’s disappearance and have some missing person sheets printed up, but otherwise it would have to be a case of him and Cody asking if anyone around town had seen her. Bald Eaglites minding one another’s business did not often have an upside (in fact most of Bert’s call-outs were a side effect of it) but it did help in missing person cases. He wondered if he should add Sharna to the list…then decided against it, at least for the moment.
The radio crackled into life and Martha asked if he was there.
“Go ahead, Martha.”
“Sheriff, we just had a call from Mrs O’Malley—you know, the farmer’s wife up on Holyoke Road? Apparently her husband went out this morning and never came back.”
“So what? He’s probably out tending to his cows or something.”
“No, she says he always comes home for lunch no matter what. Gets stroppy if it’s not waiting for him on the table by the stroke of one. And besides, none of the farmhands have seen Digger either.”
“Oh, for the love of…” Bert sighed and pressed the button on the side of his microphone. “I’m heading out there now.”
“Received, Sheriff. Over and out.”
More damned paperwork. Just what he needed when his daughter was God knew where smoking God knew what.
Bert backed out and gunned the engine, departing with a small screech of tires.
The old Cadillac pulled up to the pump, a garish white beast with red pinstriping and fins that looked like they belonged on the back of a whale.
“What can I do for you today?” Fletch Carter asked.
The Caddy’s driver got out, a fiftyish man in a big hat and suede jacket. “Fill her up and wash the windscreen if you’d be so kind,” he said.
Fletch popped open the gas cap, noting the car’s Texas plates. “You staying a while or just passing through?”
“Naw, I’m just passin’ through. My mother lives up in Wyoming and she ain’t doin’ so well these days, so I go visit her whenever I can.”
“That’s too bad,” Fletch said.
“She’s an old bitch, truth be told,” the Texan said, “but if I don’t go and visit her once in a while, no one will. Got me one brother and one sister, both of ’em within twenty miles of Mom, but she’s lucky if she sees them at Thanksgiving and Christmas.”
“Who do you like for the World Series?” said Fletch, eager to change the subject.
“Well, I’d like to say the Astros, but I don’t think they’ve got an ice cube’s chance in hell this year. My guess is Baltimore.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right there, although I’d say the Mets will make a good showing.”
“No doubt,” the Texan said. “Well, wouldja lookit that. You breed ’em all as beautiful up here?”
Fletch paused in pulling a squeegee across the Caddy’s enormous windscreen. A lone girl approached from the direction of town, her hair blowing out like an aura in the stiffening afternoon breeze.
“She’s one of those hippies that moved in up on the Hill here,” Fletch said, judging by her attire. “They started a communist party or something.”
“Gosh, maybe I ought to think about becomin’ a hippy,” said the Texan, hitching up his belt.
Fletch plopped the squeegee back in its bucket. “That comes to fifteen dollars, thank you sir.”
“Fifteen bucks?” the Texan hollered. “My God, I remember a time when I could get all the way to Nebraska on that.”
Fletch smiled and shrugged. “It’s you fellas down south that set the petrol prices,” he said, pointing to the Caddy’s license plates.
The Texan roared laughter. “Well, I guess you got me there. What the hell, fifteen dollars and a little something for yourself. Buy a beer after work.”
“Always do. Thanks very much, and you have a safe trip, now.”
The Texan navigated his vehicle out the driveway and onto Main Street. Fletch stayed to watch as the Caddy bellowed west to rejoin the i70, the sun glinting off its rear window.
Turning to take the money back to the register, he found himself face to face with the hippie girl—so close, their lips almost touched. “Whoa, sorry, love,” he said, stepping away to the side. The last thing he needed was a sexual harassment suit filed against him. Thanks to the feminists, a man could hardly look at a woman anymore without being labeled a masher or ending up in court or some damn thing.
As he tried to walk by, she caught his wrist. “Make love to me,” she said.
“Oh, no,” Fletch said, pulling his arm away. “I’m not falling for that.”
He continued on inside and the hippie girl followed him. “Make love to me!”
“No, I know how this goes. You pretend you want it right up until the moment there’s no turning back and then you switch it off. When I try and take what was suppose
d to be mine, you start screaming.”
She looked out of her head on something as well. If that came up in an investigation, he could find himself on rape charges.
The girl loosened the lacing on the front of her blouse and pulled both lapels back, exposing the outrageous swells of her breasts. Nipples stared at Fletch like eyes, red and bulging with emotion, and he couldn’t help but return the stare—at least for a moment.
But he shook off the base urge and crammed his mind with images of court summonses and compensation bills and jail time. “Come back tomorrow when you’re straight, honey,” he said, “then we’ll talk.” He looked towards the door to make sure no one had driven up to the bowsers. “Now, if you don’t plan on buying anything, why don’t you just dress yourself and get out of here.”
The girl pulled the top of her dress closed but did not tie it up. She looked frustrated, on the verge of a tantrum, like a child who had been refused a lollipop. Firing a glare in his general direction, she turned on her heel and walked out. Fletch watched her go to make sure she didn’t lift out a pump and spray gasoline everywhere or something. To his surprise, she headed towards the women’s restroom and shut herself inside.
She’s probably gone to splash some water on her face and cool down, Fletch thought. Jesus, what kind of aphrodisiac did those hippies take? He had once taken an old girlfriend to a seafood restaurant and convinced her to eat oysters with him, hoping it might unpick the lock between her legs. Rather than a furious night of lovemaking, they had spent a furious night vomiting bad mollusks into his toilet. That had been their fifth and final date.
The girl emerged from the restroom a minute later and came back into the shop. Her dress remained untied and she still appeared stoned out of her brain, but she had lost the voracious black widow look. She took a stick of gum off the rack and held it up.
“Five cents,” Fletch said.
She handed him something much larger than a nickel.
As a diversion, hunting up justice sure beat drowning in bourbon, Hank thought. He could use a shot or two, just to push his hangover all the way back, but he felt okay. “A man needs a purpose,” Larry was fond of saying, and Hank could now appreciate it as more than a homily.
He opened the door to Waldo Cook’s office. Waldo stared at Hank like he was a bad reflection in a grubby mirror.
“Hi, Waldo.”
“Hi,” Waldo replied impatiently.
“Have I caught you at a bad time?”
“You have actually.”
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a matter of some urgency.”
Waldo shut his eyes, as if wishing Hank away, and then sighed. “Is it something to do with the Truth? Because if it is, just bring the relevant papers in to me on Monday—”
“No, it’s nothing to do with the Truth. I have reason to believe a member of our town is being incarcerated unlawfully.”
Waldo appeared uninterested. Some more sunlight caught his face and Hank noticed a pouch of puffy charcoal flesh beneath each eye. “You mean Sheriff Grayson?”
“That’s right.”
“I’ve never known Bert to hold someone who didn’t deserve it. Who does he have there?”
“Derek Brolin, one of the members of the Peace Out commune.”
“Oh.” Waldo’s indifference switched to near hostility. “Like I said, Bert never arrests or holds anyone who doesn’t deserve it. Now, if you—”
“No, you don’t understand. Brolin has been seeing the sheriff’s daughter and he’s convinced that—”
“What the hell? His daughter?”
“Yes his daughter. That’s my point. The sheriff isn’t thinking clearly—”
“I’m sure he’s thinking plenty clearly. Those hippies are an infection in our town and Bert’s only mistake was not running them out of here the day they arrived.”
“Please, if you could just listen for a moment—”
“No, I’m tired and I’m not feeling well and I’m going home now. If you want legal representation for that juvenile delinquent, you’ll have to seek it elsewhere.”
Hank considered pointing out that Derek was neither juvenile nor delinquent, but decided he had nothing to gain by it. Waldo locked the door to his office and marched off to his car without saying goodbye.
“Thanks for your help,” Hank called after him. He put his hands on his hips and looked around the brickwork plaza. Sadly, a second solicitor had not popped up overnight. So he set off at a quick walk back to the Eagle’s Nest Motor Inn.
When he got there, Marjorie Bennett stood at her ‘concierge’ post, but while she made brief eye contact, she did not greet him. This struck Hank as rather strange, but he was not ungrateful for the social reprieve. He took the stairs to his room two at a time and let himself in.
He saw the reason for Marjorie’s silent treatment: the moat of sick around his typewriter had vanished. No doubt the cleaner had made a detailed report—or perhaps Marjorie had decided (just out of kindness, of course) to service the room of their local guest herself. The Vomit Fairy had also taken off with last night’s empty bourbon bottle, but she had left the new one standing tall and proud beside Hank’s typewriter, like an admonishing brown finger.
Well, not that it mattered. If he planned to help Derek, it looked like he would have to leave Bald Eagle anyway. He would hire a solicitor and check into the hotel nearest to him. He hunted up a phone directory (Bald Eagle was too small to warrant its own; it shared one with two other towns) and scanned the contents for lawyers and solicitors. There were seven altogether.
He picked up the phone and was about to get a line out when his eyes went again to the bourbon bottle—so fresh, so pristine, so virginal. It held within it hours of pleasurable self-damage, an escape from—
But then interrupting this intoxicating daydream was an almost total recall of last evening’s purge—stomach acid burning the sensitive lining of his nose, the crushing weight of regret, the intensification of his misery and despair as he lay prone on the bed awaiting the next uprush of nausea, and replaying the soul-threshing events of Saturday morning.
No, he had to take it easy. One nip to take the edge off, perhaps one more to loosen the tongue. Sheriff Grayson was well liked and respected, even outside his own county. If Hank wanted to convince a solicitor to take Derek’s case, his powers of persuasion would have to be at their nimblest.
Just one or two shots, then.
He found his trusty coffee-cum-bourbon mug and sat down before his typewriter, which had not produced a single worthwhile word in nearly two weeks. He twisted the top off the liquor bottle, its seal cracking deliciously under his hand.
A shot or two for courage—what any white knight might indulge in before commencing his crusade for justice.
Bert rolled down the window to let some of the cool, late afternoon air blow on his face. He had spent nearly two hours trying to extract a statement from the O’Malley woman (she admitted her husband had come back to the house grumpy and they had squabbled the previous evening—Bert’s guess was that Digger had holed up in a shed somewhere with a transistor radio and a few bottles of beer) and not two minutes after he left the farm, Martha sent Bert on a third call-out, this one from Cheryl Bates, whose husband had gone fishing in the backwoods one afternoon and never returned home for dinner.
Taken singly, all these things seemed insignificant…but added to the strange business up on Bald Eagle Hill and little Jessica Radford, it made his lawman’s feelers twitch. The maddening thing was, he didn’t know what that twitch meant. Only one person had offered any sort of explanation, and that was Derek Brolin with his crack-head meteorite story. Still, Bert had not examined the steel object, whatever it was. Perhaps it could be the key that unlocked the door to a wider puzzle.
That would be tomorrow’s concern. Bert had not eaten for nearly twenty-four hours and felt as though he had not slept in about a week. Right now he planned to return to base, complete as much paperwork as he could be bo
thered completing, and make a few discreet phone calls to colleagues in Laymon and Darlington, asking them to keep an eye out for his daughter. Then he would go home, have a bite to eat, and patrol the streets of Bald Eagle until he risked running out of gas or falling asleep at the wheel.
When he got back to the station he found Cody typing up reports. Bert had heard one of his call-outs over the radio—a farmer claiming someone had killed his dog—but judging by the frenetic pace of Cody’s two typing fingers, his day had been fuller than that. “Anything interesting?” Bert said.
Cody hit one more key and looked up. “Depends what you call interesting, I guess. Weird as hell is probably a better description. Got a dead sheepdog, only it wasn’t baited or shot; the farmer says it looks like it’s been stabbed with a knife. Then there’s this one,” Cody said, flipping through his notepad, “some hunter who says he saw some kind of weird creature up in the north-western corner of the forest.”
“Weird creature? What, like a sasquatch?”
“Who knows? When I got to his house he was sitting at his kitchen table with half a dozen empty beer bottles—and I’m willing to bet he had another six-pack with him out there in the forest. We’re lucky he didn’t shoot himself or somebody else. I could hardly get any sense out of him, let alone a useful description. He probably saw a pink elephant.”
That struck Bert as funny…but no laughter came out.
Cody turned to another page in his notebook. “Also got a couple of teenage girls, friends, who went to a party last night and failed to come home.”
“When was that reported?”
“About ten-thirty this morning.”
“Probably home safe and sound by now,” Bert said, but it set off a fresh twinge of alarm.
“Probably,” Cody agreed.
Bert went into his office and closed the door. He rolled a new report sheet into his typewriter and removed a notebook from his shirt pocket.
“How much longer are you going to keep your head in the sand?”