Pernicious

by Henderson, James

  “About what?”

  Tasha rested the receiver on her shoulder and sighed.

  The LRPD honored a courtesy policy: consult with the local authorities before traipsing inside their jurisdiction.

  Yet she didn’t want to spend two minutes chatting with this yahoo about the rising price of Angus beef.

  She replaced the receiver. “Sheriff Bledsoe, I’m simply informing you of my intentions.”

  “You’ll need backup.”

  “No, not necessary. I’ll talk to Doreen Robinson and head back to Little Rock.”

  “Where are you now, Detective?”

  “I’m not sure.” She read the sign atop the store. “Duncan’s Grocery.”

  “You just stay right there and I’ll come get you. I’ll show you our new jailhouse. We just had it remodeled. I’ll make you coffee and we can talk.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff, but no thanks. I’m sorry I gotta go.” Inside the car she realized that she hadn’t gotten any directions. Craps! She reached for her cell phone in the passenger seat.

  “No, I’m not calling him again. Can’t be too hard to find.”

  Two hours later, after riding down miles of dirt road, she found the street she was searching: Harkrinder. “Bingo!”

  Tasha drove slowly down the cratered road and stopped at 564 Harkrinder, a quaint single-story frame house. The front lawn needed mowing, knee-high grass and waist-high wild sunflowers.

  Tasha got out and crossed to the front door. It was ajar. “Hello!” She pushed it open. “Hello!” Her voice carried throughout the house. Empty.

  She started to step in when a voice behind her shouted, “Hey, you! What you doing in them people’s house!”

  Tasha jumped and whirled around.

  He was a big man. Basketball tall. Heavyset. Dark-skinned. A well-cropped mini-afro.

  “You enjoy sneaking up on people?” Tasha said, not masking her displeasure.

  He grinned, pearl-white teeth. Broad nose, bags under sleepy-looking eyes and a wrinkled forehead, he projected an air of congeniality.

  “I scared you, didn’t I?” he said.

  “You didn’t scare me,” Tasha lied.

  He laughed. “Girl, you almost jumped out your snake skins.”

  “Excuse me! I’m thirty-three years old!”

  “Whoa up, Detective. Don’t get your feathers ruffled.” He held out his hand. Tasha ignored it. “I’m Sheriff Ennis Bledsoe.”

  “Sheriff Bledsoe, why didn’t you tell me on the phone Doreen Robinson had moved?”

  “You didn’t give me a chance. I offered to come get you and you hung up in my face. I bet you’ve been riding around for hours looking for this house.”

  “How long?”

  “How long what?”

  “Since Doreen Robinson moved?”

  “You want to go back to the station with me? It’s hot out here. We could talk there, soak up air conditioning. I’ll make you a cup of my best coffee.”

  Tasha shook her head. “How long?”

  “Hmmm…about three years ago, give or take a few months.”

  “She leave a forwarding address?”

  “No. Mrs. Joyner there,” nodding at the adjacent house, “told me they left in the middle of night. She came over and asked Doreen where they were going. Doreen didn’t say. They’ve been friends for years, it’s strange Doreen didn’t tell her.”

  “They?--who all are you referring to?”

  “Doreen, Burt, her husband, and their granddaughter, Keshana.”

  “They just up and took off, just like that?”

  “Sure did. Say, look, why don’t you come down to the station. We just had the place remodeled and I’d like to show it off to somebody. Come on, what you say? Mosquitoes will start biting soon.”

  “No thanks, Sheriff. I haven’t much time.”

  “I know you didn’t drive this far to look at an empty house. When you get back to Little Rock, don’t say we weren’t friendly to you.”

  Tasha crossed to her car and got in. “Thanks, Sheriff. Maybe next time.” She started the engine.

  “Too bad you’re in such a hurry. I wanted to tell you what I know about Doreen’s daughter. Perry.”

  Tasha turned off the engine. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me,” walking back to his cruiser. “Guess I’ll see you next time.”

  “Did you say you made the best coffee in Dawson?”

  He turned, grinning broadly. “Follow me.”

  Sheriff Bledsoe showed Tasha around the Dawson County jail and the Dawson County police station. She was not impressed. The jail, though recently remodeled, looked the average run-of-the-mill, two-celled county jail with a fresh coat of gray paint. The police station, circa 1800’s, was equally unimpressive. One main room, approximately the size of her living room, an interrogation room and two small offices.

  “What you think?” he said after the tour.

  “Impressive,” Tasha said. “Very impressive.”

  He went over to a homemade cabinet and plugged in a coffee machine. “I’ll make you a pot of the world’s greatest coffee.”

  She didn’t often drink coffee; it made her jittery.

  “I prefer mine black,” he said, watching the coffee drip. “How ‘bout you?”

  “You are talking coffee, right?”

  He chuckled. “You do have a light sense of humor. That’s a good thing for a burglary detective.”

  “And you’re slick,” Tasha said. “You know I didn’t say anything about being a burglary detective.”

  He handed her a cup. “So tell me, what kind of detective are you?”

  Tasha sipped. No sugar. “I’m a homicide detective.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s…it’s just, you know, you don’t fit the type.”

  “What type is that, Sheriff? Cerebral?”

  “Girl, please. You seem too impatient for homicide.”

  “Don’t call me girl.”

  “Yeah, I forgot. That word rubs you the wrong way, doesn’t it?”

  “Sheriff, why don’t we cut to the chase and you tell me what you know concerning Perry Davis.”

  He sipped his coffee. “This is good coffee, isn’t it?” He took another sip, and suddenly his expression turned serious. “Have you met Perry, Detective?”

  “Not yet. I plan to do so soon.”

  “Well, you’re definitely in for a real treat. I advise you to watch your back. Perry is a very unusual girl. I say girl because when she was here she was just a teenager. I can’t imagine what she’s become as an adult.”

  “You’re not the first to tell me that she--”

  “I’m not telling you, Detective. I’m warning you! She’s a very vindictive person. In my unprofessional opinion, she’s a stone sociopath.”

  “Sounds like you had quite an experience with her.”

  He shook his head. “Not an experience, Detective, a nightmare. I first met Perry about fifteen years ago. She came in here and sat down in the same chair you’re sitting in now.

  “That day she was dressed kinda whorish, wore a low-cut skirt, a hot-pink halter top that took away all the mystery. I asked her what she wanted and she said she was thinking about filing a complaint. She uncrossed her legs and I could see she didn’t have on any bloomers. I said, ‘Girl, close your legs!’

  “She read my nametag and said, ‘I’m sorry, Sheriff Anus.’ I told her my name was Ennis, not Anus, and she insisted on calling me Sheriff Anus. If she was a few years older, I would have locked her butt up. Then she goes into this sob story: Burt, her stepfather, allegedly, tried to mess with her, you know, sexually.

  “The way she told it, Burt was coming into her room flashing the family jewels. While she’s telling me this I’m thinking if she dressed a little more conservative she might not have to worry about unwanted advances. I told her to file a complaint and we could start from there.

  “Now before
you ask why I didn’t call SCAN, let me tell you this: I know Burt, known him all my life. I know that doesn’t mean anything regarding sexual abuse, but I had a gut feeling this girl wasn’t right. She’d showed me all she had in one sitting. I could imagine what Burt was dealing with on the home front.

  “If this girl--not his daughter, remember--was prancing around the house half-naked, then…well…I could see it being a problem. She said, ‘I don’t wanna file a complaint right now. I just want to find out how you would file one.’

  “Despite her intentions I knew I had to talk to Burt. Of course he denied everything. He was madder than an amputee in a bar fight. A minute there, I thought he was going to take a swing at me. Burt said that Perry was upset because he’d forbidden her to visit Robert Stubbs’ house. Doreen came out and they got into this big argument, so I left. Three weeks later Carolyn Hawkins, Robert Stubbs’ sister, came running in here screaming bloody murder. Her exact words: ‘That nigra gal voodooed my brother!’”

  “She told you that?”

  “Sure did. I guess she was so upset she forgot she was talking to an African American.”

  “Then what?”

  “Carolyn finally settled down a bit and told me the girl staying with her brother wouldn’t allow her inside the house. She was thoroughly convinced the girl was taking all her brother’s money.

  “Surer than a pimp with gold teeth, when we rode out there, Perry and old man Stubbs were out on the front porch. He all of seventy-years-old sitting in a rocker, hooked up to an oxygen tank. She, barely sixteen, standing behind him, massaging his back, and, of course, dressed in one of those hootchie outfits.

  “I told Carolyn to wait in the car till I found out what was going on. I walked up, said, ‘Robert, what seems to be the problem out here?’ He commenced to coughing and wheezing. ‘Ain’t no problem here, Bubbles.’ Since I was five-years-old he called me Bubbles. Why? I haven’t the slightest idea.”

  Tasha pursed her lips.

  “Go ’head and laugh. I can tell you’re holding it in.”

  She smiled. “I’m sorry. Continue.”

  “Before I could say more, Carolyn jumped out the car and started charging up the steps at Perry. ‘I’ll kill you, you nappy-headed…’ You get the picture. I had to fend her off. Perry just stood there, cool as a cucumber. The girl didn’t even flinch. Carolyn called her more names, and Perry leaned down and whispered into old man Stubbs’ ear. He started coughing and wheezing again, blowing phlegm in every direction.

  “He collected himself, rose to his feet, snatched the tube out his nose, pointed a crusty finger at his sister and said, ‘Bubbles, get this heifer off my property!’

  “Carolyn heard that she fainted, fell smooth out. I half-carried and half-dragged her to the car and put her in the backseat. I was fixin’ to pull out, Perry strolled up to the car. ‘Sheriff Anus, you inform her when she wakes up she’s no longer welcome here.’”

  Tasha burst out laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said, covering her mouth. “I’m just surprised you put up with so much disrespect.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. You want some more coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “I need another cup.” He got up and crossed to the coffeepot. “I offered to take Carolyn to a motel over in El Dorado. She refused. Said she was going back to St. Louis to get her son so he could straighten Perry out. Two days later a busload of Hawkins showed up, each one hotter than a bigot with a biracial grandbaby. They were convinced Perry and I were in cahoots.

  “They kept asking me to arrest her. I couldn’t get em to see the facts. Perry was a minor. Any improprieties between Robert and her, then Robert, not Perry, was subject to arrest. Ronnie, Carolyn’s oldest boy, really didn’t get it. He kicked over my desk. He spent a night in jail. As you can see, I’m the only officer here. We have a part-time sheriff, Larry Grogan, but he comes in only during emergencies.”

  “You knowingly allowed a minor to remain in an unsafe environment?”

  Sheriff Bledsoe frowned. “Now this ain’t Little Rock! This is a little town. Most everybody knows everybody. I could have easily arrested Robert, and then I would have had the whole town on my back, black and white. Besides, I didn’t know for sure what was going on over there. Yes, it looked bad, very bad. Yet no one had filed a complaint. Yes, there were a lot of rumors floating around, but as you know, rumors don’t constitute arrest warrants.”

  “Don’t get so defensive,” Tasha said, smiling. “I was only ruffling your feathers.”

  “Well, you sure know how to ruffle them.”

  “Is that it?”

  “No. You have to realize who Robert Stubbs was. A time he owned all the farmland in a fifty mile radius of Dawson. He was worth a lot of money, some say millions. Maybe, maybe not. I do know that everybody here treated him like royalty till his wife died and he started entertaining young black girls.”

  “Perry wasn’t the first?”

  “No. She was the first he allowed to move in. Everybody knew young girls were going to his house and coming out with money. When Perry moved in, all other traffic came to a screeching halt.”

  “This Robert Stubbs, is he deceased?”

  “Deader than Elvis…or Tupac, whichever you prefer.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Natural causes. The man was seventy-something-years-old. You’re not the first to raise suspicion about his death. I talked to the doctor. Natural causes, he told me. Gossip had Robert with a million dollars hidden in his house because he didn’t trust banks. When his people went to the house after the wake, everything but the kitchen sink was gone. Perry took everything that wasn’t nailed down, even the flowers in the yard. People started pointing fingers.”

  “At you?”

  “Yup. Rumor had it I helped Perry load the U-Haul.”

  “I can’t see you doing that.”

  “Neither can my back. Perry didn’t help matters not going to the funeral.”

  “Did you request an autopsy?”

  “No, I didn’t. There wasn’t enough to go on to justify doing that. I start calling shots on dead white people around here I better have a darn good reason.”

  “You think you can get a copy of Robert Stubbs’ death certificate?”

  “I don’t see why not.” He interlaced his fingers, rested them on his paunch and stared curiously at Tasha.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “No. I was just wondering how your husband puts up with you on a daily basis.”

  “Who said I was married?”

  He gestured at her hand. “The ring on your finger.”

  “Oh,” holding up her hand. “This was when I was married. I haven’t had time to…Can we stick to the subject here?”

  Sheriff Bledsoe smiled. “I understand. Really. I was married until two years ago. You remind me of my ex.”

  “A compliment or an insult?”

  “A little bit of both. She, like you, is very headstrong.

  Do as she say or have a miserable day. When I relented, told her she could wear the pants, the next thing out her mouth, I wasn’t man enough for her. Turns out her beautician is more manly than me…and she’s a woman.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Sheriff. We’re veering off the paved road. Let’s keep to the subject, okay?”

  “Detective, forgive me for asking. Have you ever dated a small-town sheriff?”

  Tasha’s mouth dropped. “Excuse me!” Hotly: “Tell me you didn’t just proposition me!”

  “Calm down. I-I was just asking. Nothing wrong with a fellow asking, is there?”

  A long moment Tasha stared at him. Finally: “Did I mistake you as a professional law officer?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sheriff Bledsoe said. “Okay? What else you want to know?”

  “You made me forget. It was on the tip of my tongue.”

  Sheriff Bledsoe smiled, grinned and then started laughing. Tasha, unable to stop herself, joined in.

  “You s
hould have seen the look on your face when I asked you!” Sheriff Bledsoe said.

  “You should have seen the look on your face when I turned you down!”

  They both laughed.

  Tasha returned to business: “Perry’s daughter, Keshana, how long has she lived with Doreen?”

  Sheriff Bledsoe coughed into his fist. “Now that I’m not too sure about.”

  “Keshana’s last name is Green. You know who is her father?”

  “Robert Stubbs. Perry fingered Otis Green as the father. He’s gay since kindergarten. Robert is the father.”

  “A seventy-year-old man? You know that for a fact?”

  “She looks like him. Long nose. Wide forehead. Blue eyes.”

  “That doesn’t necessarily determine paternity.”

  “Robert told me the child was his.”

  “He just came out and told you I’m the child’s father?”

  “No.” He got up and poured another cup of coffee. “Now that’s another long story. You care to hear it?”

  Tasha looked over her shoulders. Outside the sun was setting. “If you keep it short.”

  “The entire time Perry lived with Robert I caught more hell than a preacher with a blabbermouth boyfriend. Half the town was in here raising a million dollars worth of Cain. If Robert had been the average old white man with pee stains coloring his trousers, not much would have been said. I tell you, we had white people here who couldn’t sleep because they just knew for a fact that Perry was scheming Robert out of his money.

  “Perry didn’t help the situation running around buying everything in sight. Somewhere during her travels she came across a large Saint Bernard and she bought it. Each time she bought something new, within minutes my office was packed with people, all of em screaming and hollering at me to do something.

  “When Perry showed up in town driving a brand-smacking-new Lincoln Continental, I took two days off. The first time in my career I considered quitting. Problems with my wife and Perry Robinson was driving me crazy. She knew I couldn’t do anything, I’d allowed it to go too far. I drove out to Burt’s place to tell him to tell Perry to chill a bit, you know, tell her to show a wee bit discretion.

  “I got over there the first thing I noticed Burt’s driving a brand-new John Deere tractor. In the window I see they’d bought a big-screen television. I knew then it was no use talking to them.”