by Steve Goble
“I play guitar.”
“In a band?”
“In any band that needs a guitar. I mostly sit in; some band loses a player or some singer needs a backup band in a hurry. A working band can’t afford to lose a gig just because a guitar picker is in jail or broke his finger, right? The show must go on, right? They call me, and I play and get my pay. I can do Jimmy, I can do Nugent, I can do Clapton, Frehley, any of those guys.”
“Don’t have a band of your own?”
“People like the way I play. They don’t like me.”
“Why is that?”
“Taste in music, no taste in people, I guess. Anyway, I don’t like people, either, so who the fuck cares? It all works out.”
“What bands do you usually play with?”
“Do you need my client’s entire work history, Detective?” Pearson looked mean.
“It would help, actually,” I said. “But I asked a pretty simple question.”
The guitar man shrugged. “I played with Changed Agent, Dinner for Rick, Unhallow, Orange Dog Whiskey, bunch of others.”
He had not mentioned Soul Scraped.
“Did you have a gig Saturday?”
“Yeah, backing this short little blonde named Allison who thought she was fucking Joan Jett or something. Had a nice voice, and a nice ass, but she was a bitch. We played at a place called Zeke’s, on High Street close to campus. Shithole. Ain’t been open six months. Probably won’t last another three.”
“Got a last name and number for her, this Allison?”
“Yeah, in my fucking cell phone, which you guys got locked away somewhere. Zeke’s number is in there, too—he knows I played at his place.”
“Ever play with a band called Soul Scraped?”
“No.”
“Ever heard of them?”
“No.”
“We have your bike, Mr. Van Heusen. We are going to check it for evidence. If this girl was on this bike, ever, we’re going to know it.”
He shrugged. “Do what you gotta do.”
“Do you have a warrant to search the bike?” The lawyer’s eyebrows arched.
“Indeed, I do.” I pulled a copy from my folder and slid it across the table toward her. She looked at it.
She gave it back. “They have a warrant,” she told her client.
“It’s OK,” Van Heusen said. “I don’t know that girl, and she wasn’t on my Harley.”
“I am done here for now,” I said. “I will leave you here to let you explain to your attorney how you pulled a knife on me.”
I stepped into the hall and closed the door behind me. I walked into the viewing room.
Daltry pulled up his belt. “You think this guy was involved with your missing girl?”
“No.”
I went to the vending machine in the break room and bought a Snickers. My phone rang at the same moment my candy bar plopped into the pickup tray. It was Debbie. “We got a nibble from Facebook on Megan Beemer,” she said.
“Really?”
“Girl named Ally Phelps—says she saw her yesterday morning in Jodyville. Says she was running, looked scared.”
“Where is this girl?”
“At Hollis now. You probably can catch her at lunch if you hurry. She lives over the store in Jodyville, if you want to get her after school.”
I did not want to wait. “I am on my way to the school now.”
“Farkas called, too. Wants to know about the girl case.”
A reporter? Fuck that. “Did you tell him no comment?”
“I emailed him the reports, told him that was all he was getting until we had more to release.”
“Good. If he calls back, don’t tell him where I am.”
“Do I ever?”
I went through the squad room on my way to my desk to grab my keys. Baxter tried to flag me down. “Mr. Green called again. About the tractor.”
“He can wait.”
“He says he thinks his son-in-law sold the tractor to a guy in Wadsworth.”
“The son-in-law’s a saint. An idiot, but a saint. He didn’t steal it. Green can wait.”
Baxter sighed. “That is a weird case, Ed. Don’t know what to make of it. It looks like an egg but smells like a chicken.”
“Huh?”
“Just don’t make sense, is all. Big thing to steal, was in the barn in the morning, gone in the afternoon, hard to hide. I seen that tractor, Ed, it’s a real nice one, ’59 Allis-Chalmers with—”
I halted, turned, and leaned on Baxter’s desk. “I do not give a shit about a fucking tractor. I have a girl in trouble, and I’m going to find her, OK?”
“Jesus, Ed. That tractor’s worth some money, and been in Mr. Green’s family for years.”
I swallowed hard. “Sorry, Bax. I’m sorry.”
“OK.” His eyes were still wide, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a yo-yo.
“Look, do me a favor, Bax. You want to be a detective, right?”
“Yeah. Working up to it.”
“And you know way more about farm equipment than I am ever gonna know, right?”
“You do have trouble telling a combine from a shit spreader and such, so yes.”
“Take Mr. Green’s case. It’s all yours.”
“Really?”
“Yes, grab my reports, just take over.”
“I am supposed to go on patrol.” He glanced at the wall clock that was always fast. “In twelve minutes.”
“Patrol up by Mr. Green’s house, or wherever he thinks the damned tractor is,” I said. “If that is not your beat today, trade with someone. Find the tractor, the sheriff will like you. It will be your ticket to the big time. You’ll be a detective.”
His eyes widened further, but he was smiling. “OK! Thanks, Ed!”
“Sure. Find that tractor and I will buy you a beer.”
“Great! I have one idea I can—”
“Find it without ever talking to me about it again, and I’ll buy you two beers.” I ran to get my keys.
I was in the truck within five minutes, tearing through a light rain with the windshield wipers going at a slow country ballad tempo. I called Shelly Beckworth.
“Might have a lead. Girl here says she saw Megan alive, in Jodyville, yesterday morning. On my way to talk to her now. Want to listen in?”
“Hell, yeah. Skype me. I’ll text you the contact info.”
“OK.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in a tiny conference room at Hollis High School, waiting for a secretary to fetch me Ally Phelps. I had a small voice recorder on the table. My phone was propped next to it on an improvised stand made with a couple of huge paper clips, and Shelly Beckworth’s cute but unattainable lesbian face stared from my screen.
“Think this is the big break we need, Ed?”
“I hope so. I truly do. We’ll see.”
“Yeah.”
Shelly had that “don’t get your hopes up too high” expression I’ve seen on lots of detectives. I suspect I had it, too.
It wasn’t a long wait. “Ally,” the secretary said, “this is Detective Runyon.”
“And this,” I said, pointing to my phone, “is Detective Shelly Beckworth, from Columbus. I am helping her find a missing girl, the girl you say you saw yesterday. Thank you for calling us.”
The girl glanced at the floor. The secretary, who looked rather like the short waitress on Cheers, lingered. “Close the door behind you, please,” I said, “and see that we are not interrupted. Thanks.”
She complied, begrudgingly.
Ally Phelps was a waif, a freshman dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and topped with wild black hair streaked with yellow. Or maybe it was wild yellow hair streaked with black. I couldn’t tell. The T-shirt was adorned with a demon, who was either trying to swallow a cat or coughing one up. It was tough to figure out which. Once I fought for a glance beyond all the mascara, I saw that her eyes were brown. One might describe her overall aesthetic as “pissed at the world.”
Ally did not say hello, nor did she look at me. She sat at the table and gazed at the photo of Megan Beemer.
I slid it across the table to her. “That the girl you saw?”
“Yes,” Ally said, sharply. “Definitely.” She stared hard at the photo, as if trying to memorize it.
“Tell us about it,” Shelly said from the phone. “What did you see, and when?”
Ally cleared her throat, and spent at least ten seconds trying to decide whether to aim her eyes at me while she talked, or at the phone. She finally settled on staring at Megan’s photo. “It was yesterday morning, on my way to school.”
“So, about seven thirty?” I started taking notes, even though the voice recorder was working fine.
“More like seven forty. I am always running late,” she said, shrugging. “I catch the bus at the middle school, ride over to Hollis.”
I nodded. “OK. What did you see, and where?”
“I saw this girl,” Ally said, pointing at the photo. “She looks stuck-up.”
“What makes you say that?” Shelly leaned toward the screen.
“I don’t know. She just does.”
“OK.” Shelly leaned back.
“Just tell us what you saw.” I tried to look more patient than I felt.
“I saw her.”
“Where?”
“Running into town.”
“Where into town?”
“Down the road from where I live.”
“Running toward your place? You live over the store, right? So, into town, then she was south of you?”
“Yes, running toward our apartment,” she said, glancing at the ceiling. “Guess that’s south, but she was on the other side of the street.”
“OK,” Shelly said. “Did you see where she went? Did she run into a building? Get in a car?”
“I don’t know,” Ally said. “I saw her, then a bit later she was gone. I did not see where she went.”
“Are you sure? It’s important.”
“That’s what I saw,” she said.
“Did she look scared?” I asked.
“Yeah. She wasn’t exercise running, like her type does,” Ally said. “She was scared running, you know?”
“OK.” I pictured all this in my mind. If Megan Beemer had entered town as Ally described, she’d come running from the direction of the trailer park, where Soul Scraped filled the world with really loud poetry. Buzz and company practiced their act less than a mile away from town.
“What was she wearing?” I sat with my pen poised, and glanced at the phone. Shelly extended a hand to indicate she’d let me continue to ask the questions.
“Um, just clothes, you know.”
“I don’t know. It could be important. Try to remember.”
“Well, it was a hooded jacket, some sort of school jacket, I think.”
“What color?”
“Red.”
“A red school jacket, like a fleece jacket?”
“Yeah.”
Megan’s school colors were blue and gold, and she hadn’t worn a fleece jacket to the party. I shrugged. “Like an Ohio State jacket?”
Ally’s eyes widened. “Yeah, like that.”
Great. Half of the people in this state own Ohio State jackets. I have three.
“Anything else? Like a purse, or a ring? What kind of pants was she wearing?”
The girl looked as though I had asked her to explain quantum mechanics. “I don’t know. Jeans. She wore jeans.”
“New jeans? Old jeans?”
“New. Dark blue. But ripped, you know, on the thighs? Not really ripped, like you’d actually worn them a long time. You buy them that way. If you think you are cool.”
“Your jeans are ripped.”
“Because my mom can’t afford to fucking buy new ones,” she snarled.
“OK. Calm down. Anything else about her you noticed, Ally?”
“Boots. Very clean ones. Black, halfway up her calves. Like, really expensive boots.”
Those did not sound like proper running shoes to me. “OK. Did you see anyone chasing her?”
Ally stared at me for three seconds. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am sure.”
“Anyone following her in a car? Anyone watching her?”
“No.”
“Other kids around? Did anyone else see her?”
“No. No.”
“No other kids on their way to school?”
“I was running late,” Ally reminded me. “Other kids were already at the school.”
Shelly jumped in. “Do you know Buzz? Gage? Johnny?” She apparently had created her own decent mental map of Jodyville and the surrounding area during her visit. There’s not a lot of Jodyville to memorize.
Ally glared at the phone. “Yeah, everyone knows them. Everyone knows everyone here.”
“Do you know them personally, though?”
“I used to hang out with the band some. Not anymore.”
I asked, “Why is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you a girlfriend to one of them?”
She stared at me before answering my question. “Sort of. Went out with Buzz some.”
“Some.”
“Yeah. Just some.”
“OK.”
“Why do you care about that?”
I looked at the girl. “Those guys were at a party, where this missing girl was last seen. Were you at the party?”
Her lips tightened and quivered for a heartbeat or two. “No. Not invited.”
“But you and Buzz used to hang out.”
“Look, you guys are looking for a girl and I saw her, OK? Why the fuck do you need to know who I know or any of that shit?”
“Whoooooaaaaa, Nelly,” I said. “We don’t care, really. Honestly. We just want to find the girl, OK? And if you know Buzz, we’d like to know if maybe you heard him say anything about this girl, or any girl, OK? You said you saw her running from the direction of the trailer park, Soul Scraped practices there, and they all were at a party in Columbus, OK? Dots seem to connect. So, do you recall Buzz, or Johnny or Gage, talking about a girl from Columbus, or meeting a girl there?”
“No,” she said. “I have not talked to Buzz in a while. And I don’t really like the other guys. And they don’t like me.”
I stared at her a while, hoping she would say more. She didn’t crack.
“Anything else you saw that might help us?”
“No. Is she like rich or something?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just wondered. Columbus, big city, everybody looking for her.”
“OK.” I ignored her question. “Did you mention what you saw to anyone? Other students, teachers, your parents, anyone?”
“No. Why would I?”
I shrugged. “Weird thing, isn’t it? A strange girl in town, running scared. People usually talk about such things.”
Ally grinned, rather bitterly. “I don’t really talk to people.”
Buzz, the poet lyricist of Soul Scraped, had uttered similar words.
“OK,” I said. “Thanks for talking to us, anyway. Shelly, do you have more questions?”
“Not for now. Probably later, though.”
I collected Ally’s phone number, gave her my card, and sent her back to class. The secretary peered through the open door, as if she might be able to see what we talked about.
I picked up the phone.
“What do you think, Shelly?”
“I am … not sure.”
“Those weren’t the clothes she was last seen in,” I said.
“Yeah, but she might have borrowed, if she’s been with someone a couple days. And she was wearing boots to the dance.”
“True. Ally struck me as off-kilter, though,” I said. “When she described the clothes, I’m wondering if she was telling us what she imagined a stuck-up rich girl from C
olumbus would wear, and not something she saw.”
“I had the same thought,” Shelly said. “She did a lot of editorializing about a girl she supposedly did not know.”
“Agreed. But at the very least, I think Ally believes Buzz knew Megan Beemer.”
“Yep. And I want to know why she thinks that.”
“Me, too.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Wednesday, 1:10 p.m.
I WAS EATING tacos at my desk and checking out Ally Phelps in our records. There was not much there. Bax had caught her smoking a joint behind the middle school about a year ago, and she’d sworn it was the first time she’d ever done that. She’d told a cop in Ambletown the same thing when she caught Ally about two months after that. Both cops had let her off with warnings, because who the fuck really has time to do paperwork for a single joint these days?
Ally had no other interactions with law and order in the database.
I was still listening to the Phelps girl’s interview when my phone beeped an alert at me. “Attn: SWAT. Hostage situation, 726 Oak St., Nora, Ohio. Man with gun; locked in home; female hostage.” The scanner across the room issued the same message before the alert vanished from my screen.
“Goddamn it,” I growled at the universe. I did not want to go out on a SWAT call. I wanted to press this lead we had from Ally Phelps. I wanted to find Megan Beemer while she was still alive. If she was still alive. But SWAT calls were not optional.
Unlike those guys on Hill Street Blues, Mifflin County did not have a full-time team of officers trained in special weapons and tactics, waiting and training and ready to roll the moment trouble reared up. We had a team made up of officers from several departments, mostly from Ambletown PD and MCSO but with a couple of guys from village departments. We trained as often as we could, then jumped whenever an alert came. And unless you were actively in pursuit of a suspect, exchanging gunfire with someone already or deep undercover at a drug buy, you fucking showed up when the SWAT alarm came.
I stopped a moment at dispatch, in such a rush I scarcely noticed Debbie had her hands quite full with calls and dispatches. “Debbie, see if we can get road patrol out to the trailers south of Jodyville, near Black Powder Creek. See if anyone else besides Ally Phelps saw Megan Beemer.”
Debbie nodded and kept pushing buttons on her communications console. If I had annoyed her, she didn’t show it. A good dispatcher has to be quite the multitasker. “Will do, Ed. And you be careful out there. I hate SWAT calls.”