City Problems

by Steve Goble

  She peered at me through the bulletproof glass and opened the little window. “Hey, Ed. How are you?”

  “Good, Debbie, good.” I tried to sound like I meant it, but this whole missing girl thing kept rolling around in my head. “You?”

  “Fine. Wishing I could get home and back to my book. I am at the good part.”

  “Sex and violence?”

  “Ghosts. Shirley Jackson.” Her brow furrowed, and she waved a hand in front of her nose. “Strawberries and beer? You know how Sheriff feels about drinking on duty.”

  “And he knows how I feel about going on duty when I’m drinking. We’re even.”

  She flashed the nova smile and buzzed me in. “Stay away from him anyway.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Farkas called. Wants a quote or two on the trial this morning.”

  “I got no quotes for the press. Tell him to read my report.”

  “Already did. Oh, there’s a message on your desk. Mr. Green called again, about the tractor.”

  “His son-in-law didn’t steal the goddamned tractor.”

  “Tell Mr. Green that.”

  I had told Mr. Green that, probably a half-dozen times, and I would tell him again, but not right away. He did not believe his son-in-law was fit for his daughter, and he probably was right about that, but being drunk and jobless and stupid didn’t add up to being a farm gear thief. The poor son of a bitch didn’t have enough property to hide a stolen tractor, and he didn’t have enough brains to sell one without getting caught. I didn’t think he had the energy to steal a donut, let alone an antique tractor.

  I snuck one more peek at Debbie, who caught me doing it and smiled, then headed down the hall and entered the squad room. Only one deputy was in the room. Irwin Trumpower sat at one of a half-dozen desks, probably writing up his report on the fight at Tuck’s. I asked, and he confirmed that. “I will write mine tonight,” I told him. “Thanks for the assist today.”

  “Thank me with a beer,” he said. “I forwarded you the name of the skinny guy, and his priors. Nothing major. He’s a guitar man, plays devil music.”

  I nodded and ducked back out to the hall.

  Sheriff Daltry was in his office with the door closed, so I continued on to the detectives room. There are six desks in that room, but we had only two detectives. The taxpayers recently had funded a nice shiny new building and jail for us. The office had big windows to let in a lot of afternoon light and illuminate all the empty desks. Daltry spent a lot of his time these days trying to convince farmers to pony up for a few more bodies to sit at those desks, but the county had fallen short in two straight elections. Farmers prefer paying for jails to paying for manpower, I guess. And then they wonder why it takes a deputy twenty minutes to rush from across the county whenever they call about something.

  I plucked the sticky note about Mr. Green’s stolen antique tractor from my computer screen and tossed it in the garbage can. I sat at my spot, by the big window with a view of a barbecue place and a hot dog joint, and started typing up my report on the incident at Tuck’s.

  According to Trumpower’s email, the skinny guy’s name was Bob Van Heusen. Age forty-two. He claimed to be a professional guitar picker out of Columbus, but he seemed to make most of his money selling pot. Picking on Ollie got him hurt, and busted, which was bad for him because he was wanted on misdemeanor charges from a couple of other jurisdictions. The dumbass should’ve kept his head down and his mouth shut, but dumbasses seldom remember that. Dumbasses often make my job easier. I made a phone call to Columbus to let them know we had Van Heusen under lock and key.

  I had left the door open. Sheriff Daltry leaned in and said, “Hey, Ed, meet Michelle Beckworth.”

  He waved her in, and she maneuvered around his towering bulk. His potato nose dipped as he took a peek at her ass.

  Michelle Beckworth was cute as hell. I put her at thirty-two or thirty-three, a few years younger than me. Dark brown hair, curly and almost to her shoulders, framed a good smile, brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a few freckles. She wore a white short-sleeved blouse and faded jeans, along with a pair of running shoes. She had a Columbus Police Department badge and a holstered pistol on her belt, and carried an official-looking file folder. A blue windbreaker was draped over her arm. She hung that on the back of a chair.

  Daltry hadn’t bothered to announce her as Detective Michelle Beckworth, but then again, he didn’t think women should be cops. I had asked him once if his attitude might make female voters decide he didn’t need more tax money to hire deputies. My question did not endear me to him.

  I came around my desk and shook her hand. “Detective,” I said. “I’m Ed Runyon.”

  “Hello.” She had a deeper voice than I expected, and it had a smoky quality. “Call me Shelly.”

  She grasped my hand firmly, then let go. She didn’t have colored stuff on her fingernails, and she didn’t wear any rings.

  The sheriff cleared his chubby throat. “Shelly here has a missing person case—girl might have come up our way. You show her around and help her out, Ed.”

  “Will do, Sheriff.” I looked her in the eyes. “Hungry?”

  “I ate on the way up here, but coffee would be great.”

  “I will let you get to it,” Daltry said. He gave me a hard look before vanishing, and ran a hand through his gray hair the way he does when he’s annoyed. I figured he had smelled the beer on my breath and planned for us to have a little talk. I figured I had better rehearse speaking in one-syllable words.

  I pointed Beckworth toward the coffee station in the squad room and followed in her wake. She had a nice walk, so I was inclined to forgive her for making me go back on the clock. “It isn’t fancy, so if you want better coffee, I know a place.”

  “No, this will be fine. I am not fussy as long as it isn’t decaf. Black, please.”

  I poured two cups, black. “OK, so tell me about your missing girl. Runaway?”

  “Maybe. The girl’s name is Megan Beemer, an Upper Arlington charter school junior. We’re assisting Upper Arlington PD on the case.”

  “Upper get to call in Columbus PD every time a girl disappears for a couple of days?”

  “Her dad owns an arc welding business and contributes enough to local political campaigns to get their attention.”

  “Ah. Lucky for her she’s not a poor kid.”

  “Whatever her circumstances,” Shelly said sharply, “it’s my job to help find her.”

  “True enough. OK, so runaway?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe not. Girl has good grades, no record with us or Franklin County or anyone else.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “A very recent ex, in fact.”

  “Those make great suspects.”

  “Yeah. But he has a very strong alibi. He was gaming online with friends in three countries, shooting alien zombies or some such. The whole thing was recorded, time-stamped, everything. Our online forensics people doubt it could have been faked, but they are checking anyway, and the kid is cooperating. Seems genuinely worried about her, too, despite the breakup. The kid looks exactly like the type to spend so much time online shooting alien zombies that he bores his pretty girlfriend. His name is Matt Foreman, and there is a sheet on him in the folder.”

  I declined to look at the sheet. Columbus PD could worry about Matt Foreman. I was more concerned about whatever Mifflin County connection the girl had.

  She took a sip of coffee, closed her eyes, smiled like God was whispering in her ear, sighed, and set the cup down. For a moment, her expression was rapturous. “This coffee is way better than advertised.”

  “Locally roasted beans,” I said. “And we clean the coffeepot at least annually.”

  She laughed, then she was all business again. She handed me a photo from the folder, then picked up her coffee.

  “Megan went to a party Saturday night, one of those warehouse one-night-stand things where they rent a place and get a band or two and some booze and some drugs
and some strobe lights and dance their little brains out. She never made it home.”

  This was Tuesday. “So, a couple days missing.” I looked at the picture. The pretty face in the photo—a yearbook picture shot in front of a brick wall decked with ivy—looked familiar, like maybe she was a Disney actress or something. Wholesome, fresh. Blue eyes, blonde hair, bright smile. She was sixteen or seventeen, I figured, wearing a bright floral sundress and posing with her arms wide open, like she was announcing her imminent conquering of the world.

  Now she was missing.

  The image reminded me too much of another girl, in another place, who was not so pretty when we finally found her. That was the night I left the big city, full of bourbon and mental pictures I could not erase. I hate thinking about that night. I had spent a great deal of time and effort learning how to not think of that night.

  I shoved those thoughts aside, shoved the photo back into the folder, and reminded myself this detective had not come to Mifflin County just to drag my nightmares into the light of day.

  “Did you give this info to Debbie?”

  “The hottie in dispatch? Yes. She jumped right on it. She probably has it on your Facebook and all that by now.”

  “Good. So … what makes you think your girl came this way? Did she want to see corn and cows?”

  “First, I just don’t think this is a runaway,” she said. “She didn’t fight with her parents. No history of unruliness or any other issues. We talked to her friends, and her teachers. She liked her life, by all accounts. And … she drove herself to the party and her car was still in the parking lot.”

  “OK.” Her words stirred up some stuff in my mind that I didn’t want swirling around in there. I took a deep breath. “It does not fit the usual runaway profile. What else?”

  “She texted a friend from the party, said she had met a guy. Said he was from Hicksville.”

  I shrugged. “Well, we have a lot of hicks and a Jodyville, but no Hicksville.”

  “I assumed she meant it generically,” Shelly said, “although there is a Hicksville in Defiance County. We got a guy looking there, too. Anyway, we tracked down the warehouse owner, a disgusting creep named Kerr, and hit him with a shitload of charges related to the party. He said he didn’t know anything about Megan, but he remembered seeing a lot of Mifflin County plates in his lot that night.”

  “That’s a slim lead,” I said. “I do not suppose this guy gave you complete vehicle descriptions and license plate numbers, by any chance.”

  “Lots of pickups, he said.” She took another sip of coffee. “NRA stickers, Browns decals, shit like that. No license plates. And we checked the security cameras in the parking lot. Low resolution piece of shit cameras shooting in the dark from an angle too high to begin with. Couldn’t read a damned plate in the lot. Couldn’t make out a single face, either. Just saw the tops of the ball caps.”

  I sighed. Someday, I’ll write a primer on where people ought to put their security cameras. The cheap ones ought to be put up the manufacturer’s ass. “Well, that narrows it down to, oh, about eighty percent of the vehicles we have around here.” I drained my coffee mug.

  She grinned. “I noticed that driving here. My thin lead gets a bit thicker, though. And the guy did not notice a preponderance of plates from any other Ohio county.”

  “How much thicker?”

  “We found Megan’s phone, busted and wet and muddy, off the interstate near Alum Creek. You ever try to separate a teen girl from her phone?”

  “No, I am not brave enough for that.”

  “State worker cutting weeds saw the phone and called it in to his dispatcher, and they called the sheriff and he called us because he’d heard of our case.”

  “Pure goddamned luck.”

  “Yep, but I will take it. It was an iPhone with an Attack on Titan phone case, just like Megan’s.”

  “What is Attack on Titan?”

  “An anime where they battle gross naked monsters.”

  “Like Godzilla?”

  “I don’t think so,” Shelly said. “I don’t really know the show. Anyway, our forensics guys have been able to confirm it is her phone.”

  “Any prints?”

  “None useful, just partials. Phone got rained on, and it was busted up pretty bad. Not too far from the road. It was hurled from a vehicle on 71, maybe, based on the damage. Not merely dropped, in any case.”

  “OK.” I pondered for a couple of seconds. “So Alum Creek is north of the party venue, sounds like.”

  “Yes.” Shelly nodded.

  “But not far north, so while the phone headed in this direction, it did not head far this way, right?” I poured more coffee. “There is a lot of Ohio between here and Columbus that could be accurately described as Hicksville.”

  “Right, but combined with all the Mifflin County plates in the parking lot …”

  “Yep, you are right. It is a logical starting point. Anything useful on the phone? Photos, texts, anything like that?”

  “Tech guys are fishing around in there to see what they can retrieve. The phone was found Monday morning—took a while for all the planets to line up and get it in our hands. Damage is extensive, but our guys are pretty good.”

  “And they have a backlog, no doubt.” Crime labs always have a backlog—it’s just a fact of life. They work their asses off, but they can’t possibly keep up. Unless you have a hot lead or a solid suspect, your evidence usually has to wait for its turn under the microscope or whatever other digital watchamajig they are using these days. “At least we aren’t waiting for a tox screen. So, there is hope we’ll hear soon?”

  “I have filed paperwork trying to get us moved up on the priority list,” Shelly said. “The girl’s parents have money and friends in high places, so that will probably help. And one of the lab techs likes me a lot.” She winked.

  “OK, so in the meantime we’ll see what we can find out here. You working with Ambletown PD, too? They’re the city here, county seat, but they’ve got hillbillies, too. Sort of Hicksville, but with more traffic lights and better Wi-Fi.”

  “My partner has a pal at Ambletown, a guy named Dyson, who said he would work the city for us. So I get corn country.”

  “I know Ray Dyson, good cop. OK, then. Finish the coffee, we’ll saddle up in my truck and go find your girl.”

  She looked me right in the eyes. “You been drinking, Detective?”

  “Until the sheriff told me you were coming, I was off duty. I’m fine.”

  “OK.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Tuesday, 2:10 p.m.

  “WE’VE GOT TWO high schools in the county, aside from Ambletown, that is. We’ll start with Hollis High,” I told her, swinging the pickup out onto the main east-west highway.

  “OK. Why?” She was thumbing through the CD case I’d moved so she could sit down, and I think she was trying not to laugh. “You know you can just stream music from your phone these days, right?”

  “I spent a lot of time collecting CDs, and this truck is older than Spotify.” I gunned it a bit. “Still runs good, though. OK, so why Hollis. One, they’ll be letting kids out about the time we can get there. Two, I know a friendly face there—things might go faster. Three, they had a big football win Friday night, so maybe some kids from here went down to Columbus to celebrate.”

  “Cool.” She shook her head slowly. “This music all seems older than you.”

  “I like the good old stuff,” I said. “Waylon, Willie, Johnny Cash, Bocephus …”

  “Bowhatsit?”

  “Hank Williams Jr. It’s a nickname. Mostly sings about booze and his dead daddy, a country legend, by the way. Anyway, I like that stuff. I even play at the guitar a bit, and sing when no one sober is listening. My dad gave me a nice guitar when I was a kid. I just strum, never learned to really pick. Dad thought I could learn that, but I was too impatient.”

  “I haven’t heard of most of this stuff.” She put the case back into the console and started fil
ling me in on the scant details of her case. “Aside from the ex-boyfriend, Megan Beemer had no big issues with her parents or classmates, but she had an independent streak. She supported LGBTQ rights, railed against the machine on Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr, all that. As happens to anyone with two X chromosomes who dares to speak her mind online, she’d attracted her share of anonymous assholes who thought a lot of ad hominem attacks and sexist bullshit would set her straight, but she generally handled those with humor and grace.”

  “Sounds like a good kid.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You looking into those online guys for a possible suspect?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Looking for guys who stand out from the crowd, or who might be in the area, or whatever. None so far seems to be a strong candidate, and they almost all go by anonymous nicknames because they are cowards, but we’ll try to get an IP address or something to identify one of them if we get a good suspect.”

  “OK,” I said. “Tell me about the party.”

  No one had gone to the warehouse party with Megan; in fact, her friends had tried to talk her out of going at all, on the theory that it sounded too wild.

  “I wish she had listened to her friends.” I sighed.

  “Me, too. Young people. Fearless as ever.”

  “Yep.”

  I wrestled the Ford onto the two-lane road that led toward Jodyville and Hollis High School, and we left town behind. About a half-mile later, a big-ass corn combine took up almost all of the road ahead of me. I glanced around, figured I could make it easily. “Hold on, Detective.”

  I steered the truck into a harvested field to my right. Thank God for four-wheel-drive. I gunned it, threw up a big cloud of dirt, and passed the farm gear. I got back onto the road, and the F-150 stopped rocking like a toy boat in a kid’s tub.

  “You have different road rules here,” Shelly said, grinning and catching her breath.

  “Yeehaw.” I slapped the steering wheel. “That actually is the first time I have ever done that, but I have been dreaming of it for years. Most of the time, there are ditches along the road that make it sort of impossible. We got lucky here. But I have practiced that little maneuver in my head about fifty billion times.”