The Branson Beauty

by Claire Booth

  He completed a very boring loop and started to head back south. By now it was about three o’clock, and he was starting to crash. He decided to head out east, maybe check out near the county line. And that would take him past Lakefront Manors, which—naturally—had no lake, and no manners. Instead, it had a ramshackle accumulation of mobile homes that made the term “trailer park” seem upscale.

  He drove at almost a walking pace through the middle of the park, avoiding the bigger ruts in the road, which was just dirt covered with snow. His headlights were the only illumination, except for one light nailed halfway up a power pole. And it kept flickering on and off, like the bulb couldn’t decide whether it was ready to just give up.

  Everything else in the place seemed to have already made that decision. Trailers tilted on sinking supports. Several windows were broken. One had a hole stuffed with what looked like socks. One set of steps up to a front door had been replaced by an overturned five-gallon bucket. Another place had an end that looked as if it had blown out and someone had tried to seal it up with plywood.

  Hank stopped the car. That had to have been quite an explosion. He was mighty curious about what that resident had been cooking to cause such a blast. He got out of the car to take a look around, and then he heard it. Much farther down, two from the end. One hell of a fight. At least two people screaming and then glass shattering. Hank took off at a flat run.

  The woman’s screams got louder and longer as he neared the trailer. Another crash. He leapt over the rotten bottom step, hit the top one, and threw his shoulder into the door. It flew open, he skidded to a halt in the middle of someone’s living room, and the screaming stopped.

  The three of them stood there. The silence felt like the instant before a static electricity shock. Crackling, and sure to be painful. The man’s grip on a chair leg tightened. The woman had a knife in her right hand and a plate in her left. Hank had a stitch in his side and a hand moving toward his gun.

  The place was completely torn apart. The couch sat on its side in the middle of the narrow room, half of it knifed and in shreds. Dinner dripped down the far wall. Broken dishes carpeted the floor. There was an enormous dent in the refrigerator and a chunk taken out of the Formica bar. The chair with the missing leg lay at the guy’s feet.

  The woman had a huge red welt on her cheek and an eye starting to swell shut. The man, a wiry little guy, had a torn sleeve and nasty red slice down his arm. Hank honestly wasn’t quite sure who was winning. But he couldn’t very well call it a draw and just leave. He held out his left hand, keeping his right one on his gun. He slowly identified himself and asked them to put down what they were holding. Nobody moved.

  “You in my house,” the man growled. The chair leg inched higher.

  “Yeah, and I’m here to stop an assault,” Hank said.

  “You trespassin’.” The woman this time.

  So now they were in agreement? Apparently so, because they both started to advance. The woman began to swear at him.

  “This my job, bitch,” the man snarled as he took a step closer to Hank. “I’m the man. This my house, I defend it.”

  “Fuck you,” the woman screamed, and she let loose the plate. Hank dropped to the floor as it cut through the air just where his head had been. It stabbed right into the middle of the flat-screen TV, the one previously undamaged thing in the whole trailer, and the front cracked into a hundred pieces.

  The man hesitated, unsure of who he should take his rage out on. He chose Hank. The chair leg whizzed past his ear as he rolled to the side, praying that the woman and her knife would not be waiting when he popped up onto his feet. She wasn’t, and he dodged to the right as the chair leg came at him again. It hit him in the left shoulder and knocked him into the trailer wall next to the sagging front door. He grabbed the door, yanked it the rest of the way off its hinges, and got it in front of him just in time for the man’s next swing. The chair leg hit the door and splintered in half. Less reach, more sharpness.

  Hank held the door like a shield as he unholstered his gun. He steadied his hand, pushed away the door, and aimed for the spaghetti on the wall. The shot tore easily through the ridiculously thin shell of the trailer. And froze its occupants. The woman gawked at him from behind the Formica bar. The man stared at Hank with his jaw hanging open. Hank moved the gun until it was pointed quite clearly at his pasty face.

  “The next one gets you in the head.”

  CHAPTER

  20

  Apparently, the law in these parts did not typically open fire. No deputy in his department had discharged his or her weapon in six years—in a county that included places like Lakefront Manors. Hank, after experiencing that neighborhood’s particular charms firsthand, found this very hard to believe until he reviewed enough patrol records and dispatch logs to figure out that the law rarely left the squad car. There was a lot to patrol, and not a lot of deputies to do it. Heck, he almost hadn’t gotten out of the car, either.

  But every once in a while, it did seem that deputies stumbled upon some law-breaking in their cruises through Lakefront Manors. They had to find it themselves, though. All of the incident reports Hank sat looking at before dawn that morning were deputy-initiated. No one in that trailer park ever called the police. For anything. One man there had shot his wife to death in their trailer several years before. With a shotgun. A big, loud, twelve-gauge. And no one had called it in. It wasn’t until the woman’s employer reported her missing that the sheriff’s office knew anything was wrong. They’d found her buried five feet from the back door.

  Certainly no one had bothered to call in the Mocklers and their volcanic fight. No one had even come out of their trailers to see them taken away in handcuffs. In Hank’s experience, that action always drew a crowd, even if it was only to jeer the cops. But not here. There were absolutely no signs of life as he drove away. But they were there. He could feel the eyes on him as he backed slowly down the one road out of there.

  Now Jay and Jean Mockler sat in separate sections of the county jail. He filled up his travel mug—there were still several hours to go on his patrol shift—and decided to make a pass through the jail on his way out. He regretted it as soon as he stepped into the women’s section. The Lady Mockler’s screeching bounced off the walls and pierced the sides of his skull. Man, could that woman yell. And she had the whole wing yelling back as Hank walked down to her cell.

  “Shut her up, will ya, Sheriff?”

  “That man of hers shoulda finished her off.”

  “Lemme out. I’ll do it.”

  That one drew laughter from the others. Hank hid a smile and stopped in front of Jean’s cell. Her screeching hit new highs.

  “You can’t hold me. I ain’t pressing charges. You hear? You got to let me out. I ain’t gonna press charges and neither is he.”

  Her eye was now completely swollen shut. Stringy hair that might have been blond when clean hung over her face. She was as little and wiry as her husband. But he doubted they were evenly matched as he caught a glimpse of the cauliflower ear underneath her dirty hair. The holes in her sweatpants showed bruises in various stages of healing. And the fingers she was currently using for obscene gestures were twisted in the kinds of positions that only came from broken bones that hadn’t been set properly.

  “I don’t care if you don’t want to press charges,” he said, leaning toward her cell door and speaking softly, which forced her to stop yelling so she could hear him. “In the morning, I’m going to put you in touch with the domestic violence crisis center. You’ll have to at least listen to them, because they’re going to visit you here in jail. And this is where you’re going to be for a very long time. You tried to assault a police officer.” He smiled. “And I do press charges.”

  He left her screaming after him and walked out and over to the men’s side, which was delightfully quiet. Jay Mockler was passed out in his cell, snoring away the drunkenness that had become obvious once Hank had gotten him handcuffed in the trailer. He
stared at Mockler and rotated his left shoulder. The pain was really starting to kick in, and he could feel the welt rising in a straight line where the chair leg had landed. It was going to be a monster of a bruise. The only good thing, he supposed, was that it certainly took the focus off his aching feet.

  He left the snoring drunk and walked two cells down the row. Chad Sorenson had fallen asleep sitting up. He slumped against the wall, looking quite uncomfortable and out of place. He’d have to have a bail hearing in the morning. Hank had initially been worried about that. Judges usually let nice well-off boys like that out on bail, but the airplane ticket the jail search had found in the inside pocket of that nice leather jacket—Springfield to New York’s LaGuardia via Dallas–Fort Worth—would go a long way toward proving that Chad was a flight risk.

  He purposefully left through the jail lobby. His feet hurt, his shoulder hurt, his tired eyes hurt, and he felt like picking a fight. The intake desk was empty. He walked outside. Gerald Tucker was standing with his back to the wind, trying to light a cigarette with a match.

  “Hello.” GOB spun around. The match went out. Hank smiled. “I’d like a rundown of the inmate roster.”

  GOB struck another match, slowly lit his cigarette, and shrugged. “It’s inside.”

  “You should be, too,” Hank said. “You seem to have a habit of abandoning your post.”

  GOB glared at him. Hank looked at the book of matches in his hand. “No lighter?”

  “I lost it,” GOB growled. He stuffed the matches in his breast pocket. “And I got a right to a smoke break.”

  Hank held open the door into the jail lobby.

  “Break’s over.”

  GOB didn’t move. The two men stared at each other. Hank could practically see the guy’s thought process play across his face, trying to decide whether it was worth challenging his new boss. He looked Hank, who was almost a head taller, up and down. Hank waited patiently with a blank look on his face. After about thirty very chilly seconds, Tucker grunted and walked inside. Hank smiled as he let the door slam shut behind him.

  * * *

  He had come into Forsyth, a town of about 2,500 people about fourteen miles east of Branson, from the north. As he left, he decided to head south, taking Highway 76 over Bull Shoals Lake and then looping west through tiny Kirbyville to Branson. It wasn’t the patrol area assigned to his shift, but at this point, he didn’t care. He was patrolling, and that was good enough. And since he was now the boss, he could make that call without having to justify it to anybody. That was nice.

  He cruised into Branson at about 5:00 A.M. and stayed on 76 as it hooked left and headed up the steep hill from the Taneycomo shoreline, past the electric company and then the Steak ’n Shake. He crossed over the freeway as the road curved to the south and then back around. That was where it turned into the Strip. Technically, it was Country Music Boulevard, but he’d found out quickly that everyone local called it the Strip. And everyone local tried to avoid it. Stoplight after stoplight. Tourists unsure of where they were going. Cars competing for space in the middle turn lane. Median driver age seventy-five. But apparently 5:00 A.M. was too early even for the early breakfast specials. No one was out. The entire stretch was quiet. Piles of dirty black snow lined the roadsides, hiding many of the theater parking lots, but not the signs. They stood tall and clean, advertising everything from the Boxcar Willie Theatre to an auto museum to go-kart rides.

  Hank smiled. Maribel had been crushed to learn when they first moved down here that she wasn’t tall enough to ride one by herself. Little Miss Independent had no interest in riding one with a grown-up. They’d told her she only had to wait until the spring before she would probably be the right height. She’d made them measure her every week since then. Kids.

  He paused, then tapped the brakes and turned right. A few miles and he was at the Brysons’ house. The kitchen light was on. He pulled into the driveway. Mrs. Bryson met him at the door.

  Neither one said a word until she had poured Hank a generous cup of fresh coffee and they were seated across from each other at the kitchen table. He took a grateful sip and said, “I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing. I’m afraid I don’t have any news, though. I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure whether it was a condolence or an apology.

  She tried to smile. She succeeded in turning one side of her mouth upward, but that was as far as she could get. The tears in her eyes made them look a brighter blue than normal. He wondered if Mandy’s had done the same thing.

  “Thank you, Sheriff. I … I appreciate it. More than you know. It’s nice to have my thoughts interrupted. All I do is sit here and think. About who. And why. Why? Why would anyone do that? How could someone hate that much? How could someone hate Mandy that much? My Mandy? She was so good. So good…”

  The tears spilled over. She reached for a tissue from the box on the table. The motion was fluid and automatic. She’d probably done it hundreds of times in the last three days.

  Hank asked after her husband, who she said had finally been able to fall asleep tonight. She had not.

  “I’ve been sitting here all night. Safe and warm. Not like my Mandy.” She didn’t bother with a tissue this time. The tears fell unimpeded. They and the steam rising from Hank’s coffee were the only movements in the room.

  “What am I going to do?” The question was so quiet Hank thought he’d imagined it. “What am I going to do now? How am I a person anymore? I’m not a mother. That’s what I’ve been. For eighteen years. That’s what I’ve always wanted to be. I waited so long. We tried and we tried, and we prayed and we prayed. For years. And then—Mandy. This beautiful perfect being”—her hands went out, as if she were presenting her infant daughter for christening—“this blessing. This gift from God.

  “And she was so much better than either of us. In everything. A better athlete, a better student, a better person. She was the greatest thing I’ve ever done. That I’ve ever even had a small part in. She was my baby … my baby…”

  She dissolved, slowly, right in front of him, like salt into water, blending with the grief, becoming a new solution altogether, unpalatable. Hank’s coffee grew cold on the table between them.

  CHAPTER

  21

  He rolled over, still mostly asleep, and then sensed something. Someone in the room, at the foot of the bed. He sprang out of bed and into a defensive crouch.

  “Good grief,” Duncan said. “I just said, ‘Wake up.’”

  Hank swore and slowly stood up, his heart pounding, semi-dizzy from the quick movements.

  “What the hell are you doing in here?”

  “What? You told me to wake you up at eleven. It’s eleven. Wake up.”

  “I didn’t tell you to sneak into my bedroom. You could have just knocked.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think of that. Hmm.”

  Hank sagged against the bed as his father-in-law shuffled out of the room. He was pretty sure that was not the most healthy way to wake up after only three hours of sleep. He almost wished it had been an intruder. At least then he could have gotten a few punches in. He staggered off to the shower.

  * * *

  The hot water hadn’t helped his bruised shoulder at all, which hurt like hell whenever he moved. And his shins were almost as purple from the chair Chad Sorenson had thrown at him in the coffee shop. He sat, slouched and sullen, at his desk, occasionally stabbing at the keyboard as he searched the internet for information. The only good thing going on was the Pecan Delight that Sheila had left for him. Apparently getting attacked during a patrol shift was what it took to get any sympathy from her. Good to know.

  Gallagher Enterprises had a very snazzy website, but it told him nothing about the actual state of the company’s finances. It was not a publicly traded company, so it did not have to file with the SEC or anything like that. As far as he could tell, it was strictly a family business. He clicked on a few newspaper articles.

  Gallagher had made his money in real estate. He tol
d reporters he’d visited Branson on vacation and fallen in love with the area. The first thing he bought was the Beauty—which Crazy Otis’s nephew was trying to unload—for dirt cheap. After that came two different hotels on the Strip, the nice resort a little ways out into the country, and one of the outlet malls in town. Hank wondered why he’d bothered when most of the stores in it had shut down after the economy tanked. Apparently a reporter had asked the same thing, but Gallagher batted the question away. “I am confident that the market will rebound. Branson is a well-known and prized tourist destination, and I am investing in its long-term future.”

  Hank rolled his eyes. He drove past that place all the time, and he guessed there were ten or twelve stores hanging on in a development built for sixty. But, on the other hand, even if all those businesses went under, Gallagher would still own the land and would only have to pay a couple of guys to maintain the buildings so they didn’t fall into too much disrepair. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad deal after all.

  Not like the Beauty. Unlike the mall, the boat had some significant local sentiment attached to it. Maybe those feelings hadn’t been clear to Gallagher until he tried firing the very old, unproductive, and expensive staff. He had done a pretty quick about-face on that one. Hank wondered why public opinion was so important to Gallagher. It was after that backlash that he’d funded the new county animal shelter, which had worked like only cute kittens could. Gallagher had been named Citizen of the Year by the Daily What’s-It and gotten an honorable mention of some kind in the bigger Springfield paper.

  That reminded him. He dug around on his desk until he found the kid’s number and dialed.