City Problems

by Steve Goble

  “My friend is a cop, here to do cop stuff.” I poured two cups of joe to go. “Her name is Shelly. Shelly, this is Jenna, and she’s wondering if you and I are getting married anytime soon, and if we are going to invite her.”

  “He’s not my type,” Shelly answered, and selected a strawberry fry pie.

  I selected a peach pie, paid up, and then we got back to work. I aimed the truck for the trailer park. We ate on the go. It’s a skill all cops have to acquire.

  You could hear the damned drums and bass long before you could see the trailers. Rapid-fire tempo, only one chord as far as I could tell. The closer we got, the more I could feel the rumble climbing up from the road, through my truck and up my ass. I’m sure Hank never done it this a-way.

  Once we had the place in sight, I could hear someone singing. Droning, really, with no more tonal range than one of those big machines that suck autumn leaves up from the curbside. I tried to make out the alleged poetry, but the only thing I could clearly discern was a phrase that sounded like “turd blossom.” It sure as hell didn’t sound like Robert Frost.

  Everyone in Jodyville called it a trailer park, but that was something of a poetic expression itself. The collection of six trailers had just sort of gathered off the main north-south route south of town over the years on what used to be farmland. There was no fancy name for the place, no attempt to pretty things up. One dirt road slanted off the main paved route, and all the trailers were on the north side of that. Pickups, four-wheelers, and beat-up cars were tucked in anywhere there was room. Grills stood in front of every trailer, and everything smelled like burnt meat, dead grass, and gasoline.

  I found a spot for my F-150 and got out. The unseasonal warmth was slowly giving way to the tyranny of the calendar, and low gray clouds had parked themselves above all the fiery leaves. I grabbed a windbreaker from behind the truck seat. We started walking toward the god-awful din emanating from the last trailer in the row.

  Shelly tried to say something, but all I could hear was a dude yelling “turd blossom.” She wasn’t reaching for her gun or anything, so I figured she wasn’t trying to alert me to danger. I shrugged and headed behind the trailer. She followed. I think she was dancing a little. Damned if I knew why.

  The rockers were thrashing and shredding or whatever the hell they call it on a platform made of two-by-fours and plywood, and painted black with a lot of white skulls on it. Some of the skulls were bleeding. So were my ears, I am sure. The platform covered most of what passed for the trailer’s backyard.

  Buzz Norris, the guitar player who kept shouting into the mic, was scrawny, tall, and wide-eyed. There was no audience, and he hadn’t yet noticed me and Shelly, but he was playing to an invisible crowd anyway. His jeans were black, his T-shirt was black, his tennis shoes were black, his guitar was black. The poor excuse for a beard he wore was black, like his hair. I suspected both had help from a bottle. The sole spot of color on him was a yellow handkerchief or bandana, tied around his head in a way that made his hair stand up like bristles on a porcupine. A skull earring dangled from his left ear, and it, too, was black. I couldn’t remember if an earring in the left ear meant he was gay or a pirate, but I didn’t really care.

  He went at the guitar strings like one of those TV chefs chopping meat. The rapid slashing made a blur of his hand. The other hand was locked into a bar chord that I suspect was supposed to be A. I wondered how long it would be before a string broke. I wondered if he’d even notice when it did. I hoped they would all break.

  Beside him, Johnny Burke played a bass that looked like a cheap replica of McCartney’s Hofner, but he wasn’t playing anything that sounded like The Beatles. Blond and bewhiskered, he jumped like a pogo stick and pounded a single note on the biggest string, basically providing a low drone behind Buzz’s vocal. Burke wore a Star Wars T-shirt and jeans, both in great danger of falling apart.

  The kid on the drums, Gage Thomas, looked younger than the other two. Maybe he was a freshman. He had a pale face, short reddish hair, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and a Reds baseball jersey. A beer bottle stood precariously atop the bass drum on a set that seemed to have been cobbled together from remnants of three or four different kits. Every time he thumped the foot pedal, that beer scooted around on the drum. Judging from the stains on the brown wood, he’d already spilled a couple million beers on that drum, so this one wouldn’t really do any more damage when it eventually tumbled. His right hand struck a crash cymbal in time with the bass drum, about once every three seconds, while his left tapped out sixteenth notes on the snare.

  Every now and then, Gage did a short roll, silenced his crash cymbal, and everyone stopped for a second while Buzz screamed “turd blossom.” Then the aural assault resumed.

  I flashed my badge, but the power trio kept on playing. I walked slowly toward Buzz, glaring, and he stepped away from the mic and stopped punishing the guitar strings. “Chill, dudes,” he yelled.

  Mercifully, they chilled. The sudden quiet was enormous. Mark Twain once said that truth hurts, but silence kills, but Twain never heard these guys.

  I put my badge away. “I’m Detective Ed Runyon, Mifflin County Sheriff’s Office. This is Detective Shelly Beckworth, Columbus Police Department.”

  “Damn! Columbus? We have moved on up!” Buzz ran fingers through his dark hair, knocking the yellow kerchief sideways a bit. “We haven’t had detectives come out to tell us to quiet down before. And now all the way from Columbus? Awesome!”

  “We’re not here just to quiet you down,” I said. “But, yeah. Quiet down. Anyway, Detective Beckworth is working a missing persons case, and she has some questions.”

  “Yes,” Shelly said, fishing the photo out of her folder. “You guys can rock, by the way.” I think she meant it.

  “Fuck yeah,” Gage said.

  “You know it, dude,” Johnny said.

  “We fucking suck,” Buzz said, sucking some snot back into his nose afterward.

  “Amen,” I said, but low so no one could hear it.

  “You had a gig in Columbus this past weekend?” Shelly made it sound like the coolest thing that ever happened.

  “Party,” Buzz said. “Private thing. We got paid, though.”

  “Paid by Eric Kerr?”

  “Yeah,” Buzz said. “He rented a warehouse, or bought it maybe, I don’t know, and had a big party. He saw us on YouTube and asked if we wanted the gig and, you know, money for nothing, chicks for free, right? Hell yeah, we wanted the gig.”

  “Sure,” Shelly said.

  “But if that dude Kerr is into some evil shit or pot or even actual real drugs or anything, look, we just got paid to play, OK? We didn’t take nothing, we didn’t snort nothing, we didn’t shoot nothing.”

  Shelly held the photo of Megan Beemer where Buzz could see it. “Yeah, sure. This girl was at that same party and she never went home after. Her parents are worried sick, and we’re hoping you might have seen her and can maybe tell us something, anything, that can help us find her.”

  Gage and his beer came out from behind the drums, and Johnny leaned over Buzz’s shoulder. “Her name is Megan Beemer,” I said. “Did you happen to see her?”

  “No,” Burke said.

  “Wish I had,” Thomas said. “She is fucking hot.”

  “Lot of people heard us that night,” Buzz said, wandering over to a cooler and pulling out a bottle of Bud. “Can’t expect to remember one chick out of the bunch.”

  I decided not to bust the boys on the beer just yet. Finding Megan was way more important than a juvenile drinking charge. But it bothered me to know Buzz didn’t give a damn whether I busted him or not. He was dismissive. Cold. Snakelike.

  “Look closer,” Shelly said. “Try to remember. She’s a pretty girl. You guys pay attention to those, don’t you?” She smiled. If I had been a teen boy looking at that smile, I’d have melted.

  These guys didn’t melt.

  Buzz, looking bored, peered at the photo. “Yeah, she’s a babe
. Not one of the babes I screwed that night, though. Probably.”

  He laughed, and looked around at his two-man entourage while they laughed, too.

  “You think we did something to her?” That was Gage, twirling a drumstick.

  I jumped in. “Why do you say that?”

  “Um,” Gage said, dropping the stick. “Well, you know, you’re fucking here, aren’t you, asking questions and shit?”

  Shelly shook her head. “We are not accusing anyone of anything,” she said. “The girl has vanished, and the last place anybody knew, she was listening to a band in a Columbus warehouse Saturday night. You played in that warehouse in Columbus on Saturday night. We just want to find her, that’s all. We hoped maybe you’d seen her, or talked to her, or saw her with someone.”

  “She probably ran off with a guy,” Buzz said, sneering. “Hot babe like that? Probably done it with a dozen guys, and one of them convinced her it was love.” He turned the last word into a four-syllable monstrosity. “Happens all the time. But none of us fucked her.”

  Shelly inhaled sharply, but didn’t lose her cool. “Fine. None of you remembers seeing her. But we have reason to believe she left with someone from Mifflin County after that show, or maybe came up to Mifflin County afterward. So, do any of you recall seeing any classmates there? Or anyone else from Mifflin County? Another student, maybe, someone who came to hear you play? Or the girl might have run off with an older guy, for all we know.”

  “Or a girl, or a woman,” I added. “Or a group.”

  “Hot,” Gage said, nodding and leering.

  “Nope.”

  “Nah.”

  “No fucking way.”

  “You didn’t see or talk to any classmates there?” I waved my hand around impatiently. “No one at all?”

  Buzz snorted. “Talking to people isn’t really something I do voluntarily.”

  The other two shook their heads.

  “OK,” I said, figuring we weren’t going to get anything from these boys. “I gotta ask. Were you yelling ‘turd blossom’ in that song?”

  Buzz looked suddenly pleased. “Yeah!”

  I sighed. “What the hell is a turd blossom?”

  Buzz doffed his yellow headband and twirled it on a finger. “You’ve heard of the phoenix, right? Great bloody bird of fire that rises up from the ashes of its predecessor’s total immolation?”

  After a few seconds it dawned on me the kid wasn’t going to say more until I said yes or no. So I answered. “Yes. I can read. I even do it sometimes. I know what a phoenix is.”

  “Good for you,” Buzz said, raising his beer bottle in a mock salute. “OK, so a turd blossom plays off that idea, right? It’s like a beautiful flower, rising up out of the shit that is life. A ray of hope in the midst of Shit City. An incongruous and unlikely blossom rising up, like a phoenix, out of the manure that we all have to wallow in all the fucking time.”

  Buzz stared at me, his eyes popping and his Adam’s apple bouncing. I think I was supposed to say his lyrics were the work of genius. Instead, I said, “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” he said, then he took a big swig of beer. “It is way more of a hopeful song than what I usually write. I mean, it’s like some yin to balance the yang of our other stuff, like ‘Sausage Head’ and ‘Dung Puppets.’ But we’re like trying to balance shit out, you know?”

  “Fucking cool, man,” Burke said. He hit a low, growling note on the bass. I am pretty sure it was the only note he knew.

  “Drumbeat fucking rules on ‘Turd Blossom,’ man,” Gage said. “Fucking rules.”

  “Fucking rules,” Buzz said, reaching out and grabbing Gage’s hand for a frat-boy shake. “Fucking rules. When you hit the right tempo. Not like what you did just now.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “OK,” I said. “This is your home, right, Buzz?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Your parents here?”

  “Mom’s at work, waiting tables at Briscoe’s. Never met Dad. Think Mom only met him once.”

  “OK. Turn the damned music down so your neighbors can enjoy their turd blossom life. If any of you recall seeing anyone from Mifflin County at your little party, call me.” I proffered a card with my phone number on it. “If you remember anything else that might be helpful, no matter how minor it is, give me a call. And if I have to come back out here because of the noise, I am going to hit you with so many charges you’ll not rise like a blossom from the shit that is life for months.”

  We turned to go.

  “Wait.”

  It was Buzz, speaking through the mic so that his one word reverberated between the trailers.

  We stopped, turned, faced him.

  “I remember seeing one guy from around here at the party—saw him in the toilet,” Buzz said. “Pissing a lot of beer, man. A lot of beer.”

  I asked who.

  “Jeff Cotton.”

  I knew the name, and wished Buzz had seen someone else. “The linebacker.”

  “Yep,” Buzz said. “Local hero.”

  “Was he with the girl?”

  “Didn’t see no girl. I think Jeff prefers boys. Or dogs.” Beavis and Butt-Head, behind him, snickered in unison.

  “OK,” Shelly said. “Thanks. Call if you think of anything else.”

  We walked back to the truck. Light rain started to fall. “I hope this short-circuits their amps.”

  “You don’t like their music?” Shelly smiled as we got back into the truck. “Their manners suck, but I liked the music.”

  “That,” I said, “is not music.” Behind us, the bass and drum kicked up again, but at lower volume. “It’s going to take a lot of Waylon Jennings to erase that turd blossom shit from my mind,” I confessed.

  “Waylon who?”

  “Jesus. Shoot me.”

  Shelly laughed. She gave me ten seconds to wonder how the hell anyone could not know who Waylon Jennings is, then continued. “You think they know more than they let on?”

  “Probably,” I said. “And I will tell you right now, talking to Jeff Cotton ain’t gonna be even a little bit of fun.”

  “No?”

  “No,” I said, firing up the truck. “Jeff is a football stud, hits like a frickin’ truck, and everyone in this county loves him. Ohio State is looking at him. Michigan is looking at him. UCLA is looking at him. To make things worse, his dad is a total nutcase and probably owns more guns than our sheriff’s office.”

  “Lovely,” Shelly said.

  “No. Not lovely. Not even in the neighborhood of lovely. Ain’t seen lovely in years.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tuesday, 3:55 p.m.

  WE ROLLED THROUGH Jodyville’s single traffic light, took a right and then a left and hit Big Black Dog Road, which leads out past where I live. As we passed cornfields and barns, I filled Shelly in on Brian Cotton.

  “Jeff’s dad is like a lot of folks around here. Loves God, loves guns. Thing is, he doesn’t like much of anything else. Doesn’t like liberals. Doesn’t like reporters. Doesn’t like courts. He especially doesn’t like cops. We’re all jack-booted thugs, you see, paid by an evil government to stomp on American freedoms. We want to take away their guns, put Christians in jail and all that.”

  Shelly inhaled sharply. “I see. Damn. I guess I missed those training sessions.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Brian Cotton sounds like a whole lot of fun, Ed.”

  “He’s not. He’s really not.”

  We zipped past half-harvested fields, kicking up dust and scattering crunchy leaves. “A lot of people out here feel that way, the way Brian Cotton does, at least to some degree,” I said, “and sometimes I can see why. At least a little. I don’t trust the government I work for a whole lot myself—sometimes, anyway.” I swerved to miss a rabbit who apparently had accepted a daredevil challenge from his bunny friends. He bolted into the road from the right, and I braked just enough and drifted a bit to give him leeway. From the corner of my eye, I saw his white tail vanish into a d
itch.

  “Whoa! I can’t believe you didn’t hit that little guy,” Shelly said.

  “You get a lot of practice sharing the road with wildlife out here,” I answered. “Anyway, OK, I’ll admit it. I don’t understand it at all how some of these people feel about cops and the law and all that. I really don’t. Most folks out here, though, are nice enough. They’ll treat you nice, smile and all that, raise money for a neighbor in need. If you stay away from talking politics or God, you can get along with them just fine, for the most part, even if they know you’re a cop. And a lot of them are just good, churchgoing people who support the police, raise money to help us out with community stuff like sports leagues and school resources, that kind of stuff. I don’t want to paint all the people here as a bunch of zealots. But Brian is … Brian is special.”

  “How so?”

  “He leads a group called the Mifflin County Patriots. About a dozen members, and he’s the boss. They write letters to the newspapers and post all over Facebook about how the government steals your money, the cops just act as the enforcers for the evil government, taxation is a crime and a sin, the government is illegitimate, your preacher is bastardizing the true word of God, etcetera.”

  “Great.”

  “And they’ll show up at an ice cream shop all toting their big guns, just to remind everyone else they have a right to carry them.”

  “Sort of like waving their dicks around?”

  I laughed. “You could put it that way.”

  “Sounds like a party. Should we bring booze?”

  “Yeah.” I pointed down a dirt road that led past a two-story farmhouse. “I live out that way, by the way.”

  “That’s your house?”

  “No, that belongs to my landlords. My palatial estate is further back, by that pond yonder.”

  “That’s a lake.”

  “One might think. Anyway. The patriots group. They meet at the Cotton farm, further out this road, in a big-ass barn. I haven’t seen it in person, not on the inside, anyway, but I have seen a lot of aerial images because I am on SWAT here and it is exactly the kind of place where you might need SWAT one day.”