Missing White Girl

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “But more interest, after what I’ve told you.”

  Buck nodded his head. “More interest. That’s a fact.”

  3

  The news blackout had not, as of yet, had the effect that Ed Gatlin had hoped for. Driving back to the station, Buck wondered if it would discourage Lulu’s abductor, and if so, how long it would take. And if the man—he was convinced a man had snatched her, if only because so few kidnappers of teen girls were female—would really let her go, or just kill her, when he gave up. From what little news he’d caught, the Tucson press and the national media hadn’t let go of the Elayne Lippincott story long enough to even notice four dead people and a missing girl.

  He had not been able to turn up any living relatives to inform of Lulu’s disappearance. In itself that wasn’t a bad thing, but relations could sometimes point an investigation in a direction that law enforcement hadn’t considered. Hugh Lavender had been an only child, and his parents had both died in a car crash eight years earlier. His grandparents had long since passed away, and if there were any great-aunts or-uncles Buck hadn’t found them yet. Manuela’s family had lived here in the Valley, but her mother had died of emphysema in a Bisbee hospital a few years back, and her father a year later from a gunshot wound outside a bar in Douglas. An older brother had died in Vietnam. Manuela had brothers and sisters, but they were down in Oaxaca somewhere. Buck remembered her telling him that her father was the only one of their family who had made it to el norte.

  As he drove, Buck watched the sides of the road, looking out at the fields greened up by the summer monsoon. Oliver Bowles drove this same road, with Lulu Lavender sitting in his passenger seat. What did they talk about on those rides? Did they ever pull off the road, take some lonely dirt trail, get friendly? If she didn’t turn up soon, Buck would have to expand the search to include all the rural roads between school and home.

  He still wanted a look inside that shed too. He didn’t have probable cause for a warrant yet. Didn’t mean he couldn’t do it.

  It would just have to be the hard way.

  Elfrida was slightly less than twenty-five miles north of Douglas on Highway 191, which had been Highway 666 until Bible-thumpers like Buck’s wife Tammy had forced the state to change it. The town called itself the Heart of the Valley, but the word “town” implied something a little grander than a visitor would see. Elfrida straddled both sides of the highway with a cluster of shops, gas stations, cafes and bars, and most of the residents lived scattered about on the surrounding rangeland.

  The sheriff’s substation there was in a barnlike building that also contained the Fire Department. Sheriff’s offices in Bisbee, Douglas and Willcox were too far away to respond quickly to emergency calls in the center of the vast Sulphur Springs Valley. Cochise County was as big as Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and the valley itself was thirty miles across at its widest point and a hundred miles long, anchored by Douglas at the border. Willcox dominated the north, where Interstate 10 passed through, but the valley continued up beyond that, eventually flowing into Aravaipa Canyon.

  When he had been promoted to patrol lieutenant and transferred out to Elfrida, Buck didn’t complain. He lived outside of Bisbee, on the northwestern edge of the Mule Mountains, but it wasn’t a bad drive to work. He liked being able to see the Swisshelms and the Perillas, the Pedregosas and the Dragoons and the Chiricahuas and the Mules, just some of the mountain ranges hemming in the valley, which he could at this posting. And outside the immediate proximity of Ed Gatlin, he had more freedom to do his job the way he wanted to do it, without worrying so much about the crease in his trousers or the shine of his boots.

  He pulled into the gravel parking area in front of the substation and killed the engine. Thirty-one hours. The girl had been missing for thirty-one hours, and what did he have?

  Not a whole hell of a lot.

  He walked inside. Raul Bermudez looked up from Lulu’s computer, which crowded his desk along with his own. “Buck,” he said, “have a look at this.”

  4

  There is a TV in the cabin, and he turns it on. Lulu remains blindfolded, but after telling her that no matter how much she screams no one will be able to hear her, he removes the gag. She tests it anyway, screaming until her throat aches and she gags, bile burning the raw tissue there. Finally he storms over to her and slaps her a couple of times, and she gives up. He wouldn’t make a mistake on something like that, something so basic.

  She hopes that turning on the TV will be a mistake, however. He will realize how many people are looking for her, how utterly he has screwed himself. Jace will be on, and Oliver maybe, and other friends, pleading for her release. But he tunes it to a twenty-four-hour news channel, and while she hears hour after hour of commentary on Elayne Lippincott—and how, she wonders, can these people find so many ways to say they know nothing more now than they did yesterday?—her own name never comes up. Lulu is pretty sure he killed her family, although she didn’t see him do it, and no one mentions the four dead people either. It’s as if none of them ever existed. The thought makes her weep, inconsolably, not that there is anyone trying to console her.

  The air smells different here than it did at home. She can make out pine and cedar. When they first came in there was a musty odor, as if wherever they were had been closed up for a time. That clued her in to the idea that they were someplace remote, not his regular home. When she explored the bits of floor and wall that she could reach with her hands, she found knotholes. Walls of knotty pine and mountain trees and a cold night convinced her that he had brought her to a mountain cabin.

  But today, when she asks him what he means to do with her, he refuses to answer. He won’t answer any question directly, not even a simple one like is it day outside or night, which she can answer herself, but throws at him as a test. Most of the time he ignores her, sitting in the other room with the TV on, or going outside, maybe going away altogether. Once he is silent for hours at a time, and she strains against the chains that hold her, tries to rip her blindfold off, but he has secured her in such a way that she can’t do either. She screams again, after that, more from rage and frustration that any hope that she will be heard.

  He comes back, and he gives Lulu a hamburger he must have bought someplace fairly distant. It is cold, and the grease has congealed in its wrapper, and he gives her a plastic bottle of water to wash it down with, and she thinks she has never had a finer meal in her life. Then he takes the bottle and the wrapper away from her, slaps her once, hard across the cheek and says, “When is she coming?”

  “Who?” she asks.

  “When is she coming?” he repeats.

  “I don’t know who you mean.”

  “When?” He slaps her again, harder. His hands are soft, the skin like a baby’s, but still it stings when he whips one across her cheek. And of course she never sees the hand’s approach, so each slap startles her anew.

  It is almost a relief. She has wondered what he wants with her. Rape has come to mind, of course, but he doesn’t seem interested in her that way. He hasn’t touched any private parts, except in the brief initial struggle when they were both flailing at each other. He subdued her quickly, though, pressing something over her face that had caused her to pass out.

  So she waited for something, a clue as to what he wanted, and the waiting had been terrible.

  Now it is here. He wants information.

  She would gladly give it to him, if only she could understand what it is he wants to learn.

  5

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Drexler,” Hilario Machado said. “We just don’t have any positions available for you right now.” He smiled when he said it, like he’d been smiling ever since Barry had walked into his office after filling out an application on the computer terminal in the front of the store and then waiting on a metal bench for almost thirty minutes. The smile was nearly as slick as his hair, with its visible comb lines. He was a kid, not even thirty, Barry guessed, and a Mexican. And he got to ma
ke decisions about who would work at the largest store in the area, one of the biggest employers after the prison and the Border Patrol.

  Barry pointed to a printout of his application, sitting ignored on Machado’s desk. “I have retail,” he said. “At the Redi-Market. And a letter of recommendation from my boss there.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Drexler,” Machado said. “It’s not that I doubt your qualifications; it’s just that I don’t have a job to give you.”

  “I heard you hired people my age.”

  “We do, when we have suitable openings. We just don’t have any right now. Maybe in six months.”

  In six months Barry could default on his mortgage, which he only had two years left to pay on. It would have been paid off long before except that he and Clarice had refinanced twice, extending the term each time.

  “He was a Mexican too,” Barry said. “My last boss. I don’t mind workin’ for ’em. I can even speak it a little.”

  Machado’s weaselly grin faded, as if Barry had said something wrong. “I think you’d better go now, Mr. Drexler,” he said. “Thank you for your interest in our company.”

  “Isn’t there someone else I can talk to?” Barry pleaded.

  “No, there’s not. Good-bye, Mr. Drexler.”

  Barry snatched the letter of recommendation, in its own separate envelope, from the kid’s desk. He might need the letter someplace else.

  If there was, in fact, anyplace else to try.

  Wal-Mart was in Douglas, not far from the Mexican border, on a strip dominated by fast-food restaurants. Pancho Villa had crossed into the United States around here, Barry had heard, often enough that the army had stationed hundreds of men in Douglas in the days before the First World War had required their attention elsewhere.

  Looking at the faces that surrounded him in the parking lot as he walked back to his truck—olive-skinned, black-haired, mostly speaking Spanish—he thought maybe General Black Jack Pershing had won the battle, but Pancho Villa had won the war. As if to prove the point, dust kicked up by a sudden wind blew across the border from Agua Prieta and into his eyes.

  Barry climbed back in the truck and drove the streets of Douglas’s historic downtown. Most of the businesses here fronted onto G Avenue, although there were a few on Pan-American, the road that led up from the international border and connected with Highway 80, and more along Tenth Street. On G, many of the signs he saw were in Spanish, and most of the people Hispanic. Other shop windows were boarded up or simply vacant. A few businesses had English names—the Gadsden Hotel, the Grand restaurant, Southern Arizona Auto Company, where he had bought his truck nine years before, Strathcona Electric—but they were outnumbered by Spanish ones.

  Douglas was the biggest city for fifty miles around on this side of the border. Agua Prieta was far larger—estimates ranged from sixty to seventy thousand people over there, while Douglas had closer to sixteen thousand. Bisbee, the county seat, was less than half that size. To get any bigger, one had to go all the way to Sierra Vista, third largest city in Arizona, on the other side of the San Pedro Valley.

  And yet here in Douglas he barely felt like he was still in the United States. He’d lived in Arizona all his life, except for basic training in Georgia and a stint in Vietnam, and he had always known there was a strong Mexican presence in the state. But somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, they seemed to have taken over.

  Uneasily, he parked the truck on G and Twelfth and walked down the west side of the street as far as Seventh, then crossed and came back up the other side. The buildings were mostly brick and stone, built between the turn of the century and the 1920s, Douglas’s boom years. The Phelps Dodge Company had located the smelter for their Bisbee copper mines here, precipitating early growth, and then the military had swelled the population during the war against Pancho Villa. Since then, the city had been in slow, steady decline, as if the high desert country hoped to reclaim it little by little.

  The only HELP WANTED sign he saw was printed in Spanish, and it was in the window of a women’s shoe store. He didn’t bother going in. When he reached Tenth, he walked toward the east as far as the post office, then crossed and returned toward G, past the library and Bank of America (which, judging by its clientele, might have been the Bank of Mexico). Still nothing presented itself.

  Frustrated, he got back into the truck and slammed the door. He could always refi the house again, but with only two years to go he had hoped to own it free and clear. Anyway, that would leave him with mortgage payments and no income until Social Security kicked in. That was still a few years off.

  The other alternative was selling the place. But ranch property often sat unsold for years. Even if he did manage to sell, could he be sure of finding a more affordable place? Maybe a rented mobile home on a small lot somewhere, or a fixer-upper here in town, or up in Bisbee. Those were all question marks, uncertainties, and he had spent the last thirty years counting on living in his own place until the day he died.

  Barry cranked the engine and peeled out of the parking place beside the curb without even looking. A horn blared behind him, and he glared back over his shoulder at a Latino driving a brand-new fire engine red Ford truck. Barry gave his old GMC the gas and left the Ford behind.

  6

  “Tonight’s guest is Joseph Dominick, who has revealed to authorities that he was secretly dating missing teen Elayne Lippincott of Arizona and that the night of her disappearance, she was supposed to sneak out of her house to meet him. Can I call you Joe?”

  “I guess. Most people call me Joey.”

  “Joey it is, then. First things first, Joey. Why did it take you almost two weeks to come forward? Didn’t it occur to you that the police would need to know that Elayne had left her family’s house of her own accord?”

  “I didn’t, you know, want to get mixed up in it. On account, partly, that I had a girlfriend, and—”

  “So you were cheating on this other girl with Elayne Lippincott. Did you tell the authorities that?”

  “Yeah, I did. And now she won’t even answer the phone when I call anymore.”

  “I don’t blame her, but let’s continue. You said that was part of why you held back this vital information. There’s more?”

  “Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if she even left her house. She never showed up where we were supposed to meet, in the Target parking lot. If I knew for sure that she was on her way and someone grabbed her, then I’d have gone to the cops first thing, you can count on that, Larry. But since I didn’t know, I figured I didn’t have actual information, I only had a lack of information. And what good would that do?”

  “I think you’ve learned that it’s better to let the police make those calls, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “And why was she sneaking out? If you had a date, why didn’t you just pick her up at her door?”

  “Oh, her parents hate me.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “They just have this thing about me, I don’t know. Like I’m not good enough for her or something. But she didn’t let that stop her from seeing me, we always just had to sneak around.”

  “What about Elayne? Was she seeing anyone else, or are you the only cheater involved?”

  “Elayne? No, just me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I told her I didn’t want her fooling around with nobody else, you know? On account of I was going to help her with her modeling career.”

  “Are you in the business? A modeling agency, maybe? Advertising?”

  “Me? No, I work at the Tune and Lube. But see, I have this kick-ass—Oh, can I say that on TV?”

  “That’s fine. They’ll bleep it out if you say something you shouldn’t.”

  “Okay, sorry. I have a good digital camera, so I was taking some pictures of her. And this buddy of mine knows a guy with this website.”

  “A modeling site, I presume?”

  “Something like that, yeah. It’s called Hot L
ocal Bitches dot com, and it gets, like, thousands of hits a day, and you can vote for your favorite, and—”

  “Did you love her, Joey? Were you in love with Elayne Lippincott?”

  “I…I guess so, yeah. I mean, she was a fun girl. We had a lot of laughs. And, you know, you’ve seen her picture. Great body, nice hair, so I guess, yeah.”

  “Well, we’re glad you’ve finally decided to talk to the authorities, whatever your reasons for holding back as long as you did. Thanks for being here with us.”

  “No problem, dude.”

  7

  Buck wheeled a chair over next to Raul’s desk and plopped into it, exhaustion weakening his legs. “Glad to,” he said, glancing longingly through his open office door at his coffee cup, exiled on his desk. Any coffee left in it was cold, and the pot had been turned off. The mug bore the S-shield logo from Superman’s costume, and had been given to him by a woman he’d arrested years before for running a meth lab out of her mobile home. She had endangered the life of her four-year-old daughter as well as her own, and a stint in the county prison had convinced her of that. When she got out, she brought Buck the mug as a thank-you gift. “If it means I can sit awhile. What’ve you got?”

  “The girl had a blog,” Raul said. “A weblog.”

  “I know what a blog is,” Buck said. “I may be a redneck, but I’m not an ignorant one.”

  “I never called you a redneck,” Raul said with a mischievous grin. He smoothed down his thick black mustache. He was slender, muscular and liked to think of himself as a sharp dresser, and maybe he was—Buck was redneck enough not to know Armani from Perry Ellis, and not ashamed to admit it. Today Raul wore his uniform, which he’d had tailored to fit better than most sheriff’s officers’. Off-duty he favored suits and ties or, on particularly casual occasions, bright polo shirts with dress slacks. Always, he kept his hair neatly combed and his shave close, except for the mustache of which he was so proud. Buck knew he hoped to be a detective someday so he could dress nicely all the time.