by Steve Goble
I sighed, and retrieved her gun. I emptied it, then stuck gun and ammo into my jacket pocket. This was going to turn into a long stop, another distraction from the Megan Beemer case. I wanted to just turn and go, but this woman was clearly unstable, very drunk, and waiting to kill some guy named Dave. Or maybe herself. Booze and guns don’t mix.
“I don’t actually care about what you might be doing here or know anything about it,” I said. “You are not in trouble, not from me. I am looking for a missing girl. She was seen around here.” I fished the photo out of the folder, and held it out to her. I wasn’t certain Tess Baldwin could even see straight, let alone remember anything she might have seen before, but I had to try.
She looked at me for several seconds, her eyes unfocused, then she took the photo. She stared at it a long time. Finally, she handed it back. “Ain’t seen her.”
“You sure?” I slipped the photo back into the folder.
“Sure.” She picked up a tiny purse from a grimy counter near the sink. She pulled free a cigarette and lighter. Seconds later, she was inhaling deeply. She released a cloud of smoke and said, “She ain’t blowing guys around here? Don’t need competition.” I think she intended it as a joke, something to ease the tension, but her voice cracked hard and tears started flowing.
“She vanished. After a party. In Columbus.”
“Well, I ain’t seen her. She ain’t here.”
“Not with Buzz and his band?”
She shook her head. “No, not those boys. Fags. Well, maybe fags. Seen girls with them sometimes. Not that one.”
“You are certain? It’s important.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Sure. Pretty. That girl.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “So, who is Dave?”
Her forehead creased. “Fuck Dave.” She started shaking again. “Jesus. Cops. He’s gonna shit. Gonna kill me.” She started looking around. “My gun. Jesus.”
“I confiscated your pistol. You are not in any condition to—”
“Gimme my fucking gun!”
“You are not killing Dave tonight.”
“Fuck Dave!” She grabbed at me, and I spun her onto the couch. Her landing was harder than I’d intended.
“Calm down,” I ordered.
“Not killing Dave! Killing m-m-m …”
“Tess.”
She covered her face with quaking hands. “Killing m-m-me. Myself. Can’t … can’t …”
She began sobbing, hard, and fell over on the couch.
I pulled out my phone. I told Carolyn, the night dispatcher, what had happened, and that I needed a road patrol to assist, and an ambulance, and asked her to arrange an emergency committal at the hospital for a drunk, possibly high, detainee.
“You busting me, are you?”
“Yes.” I sighed. I wanted to be out there hunting Megan Beemer, not dealing with this woman’s messy life. But here I was, unable to just walk away. “I am placing you under arrest, attempted assault on a police officer—”
“I thought you was Dave!”
“—firearms under the influence, possibly more.” I tried to look her in the eyes, but her head was shaking hard. “You are going to the hospital. You are going to get help.”
“No.”
She uttered the word “no” three more times before I finished reciting her rights.
“You spoke of killing yourself. That means you need help, whether you want it or not.” I could have added I knew that from experience, but decided not to.
“Fuck.”
We stayed there, her sitting and crying and me pacing and awaiting the cavalry, when I heard the roar of a heavy engine outside. The vehicle braked hard and shut off.
“Dave,” Tess said, fear filling her eyes. She stumbled to the front door and peeked out. “Dave.”
“Wait here.”
I stepped outside. A broad-shouldered man who seemed made up mostly of beard and sweat stepped out of a rusty blue Chevy pickup. I glared at him. “Are you Dave?”
“Who the fuck are you? Just get laid, did you?” His fists clenched, and he strode toward me. “What did she charge you?”
I flashed my badge. “Detective Ed Runyon, Mifflin County Sheriff’s Office. Who are you?”
He halted suddenly, raised his hands. “Hey, man. Just visiting.”
“I am here on official business,” I said, putting my badge away. “Who are you, and what brings you here?”
“I just … I know the woman who lives here.” He pointed at the trailer.
I waited a few seconds, to see if he would mention any concern about showing up here to find a cop, or maybe ask me if Tess was OK. He didn’t.
“I asked your name,” I reminded him.
“Dave. David Conley. Live in Ambletown.”
“State your business,” I said.
“I just wanted to see her, is all. No business.” He edged back toward his truck.
“Well, I do have business here. Do you come out here a lot? Have you seen a blonde girl around here lately? Pretty. High schooler.”
He shook his head. “No, man. No girl.”
“Then you can stay here and interfere in official police business, or you can turn around and go.” As I spoke, I memorized his license plate.
Blue and red lights flashing from the road got his attention. The road patrol was coming.
“Shit, man,” the bearded guy said, “not looking for trouble.” He headed back to the truck, and I watched to make sure he didn’t reach inside for a gun. He climbed inside, cranked the key, and the truck started with a roar. Dave did a quick turn and headed for the road.
I should have asked him more questions. I should have tried to figure out why Tess Baldwin feared him, why he was so eager to leave once I announced I was a cop. But this was already eating up time I could be spending on the search for Megan Beemer, and I could bust this guy later if I needed to. Tess Baldwin would be tucked away safe, at least for a while. I noted his plate number in my phone and went back in as the road patrol rolled up. The woman was still sobbing on the couch.
“Dave left in a hurry.”
She nodded.
“Does he have some reason to worry about cops? Does he hit you?” She nodded. “Shoves me.” She lifted her shirt and showed me some bruises on her belly. She showed me some other stuff, too, but did not seem at all concerned about that. “Threw me at the counter. Mad because I’m a hoo … hoo … hooker.”
“Do you want to file a complaint?”
She shook her head. “No.”
Deputy John Gavin announced his arrival while still outside, then walked in. He removed his hat to reveal a buzz cut worthy of the Marines. “Heard you had a gun pulled on you?”
“Briefly. She thought I was someone else.” I explained the situation to Gavin as quickly as possible, and we both heard the ambulance pull in. Gavin went out to fill them in.
I turned back to the woman. “If we were to search Dave’s home or vehicle, would we be likely to find some pot or some other illegal substance? Maybe stolen goods? Anything I could lock him up for?”
She looked at me. She stared for about thirty seconds before nodding slowly.
“Then we will search his place,” I said. I managed to slowly get what she thought was Dave’s address out of her. His last name was Bannon, not Conley, she said. “OK. While we deal with that, you are going to the hospital, to get checked out.”
“I am fine.”
“You are drunk and talking suicide.” I reached out a hand to help her stand as the paramedics came in.
“I am fine,” she said slowly, although she nearly fell while trying to stand. She threw up a little.
“Stretcher,” one of the paramedics said. They unfolded it and I helped get her onto it.
“Fuck,” she said. “Fuck. Fuck.”
They took her out. The Vietnam pilot peered at us from his doorway. Gavin headed toward his cruiser to follow the ambulance, but I halted him. “John, a minute?”
“Sure, Ed.”
>
I gave him Dave’s name, address, and plate number. “She says this guy beats her, and that’s why she was waiting with a gun. I have that in my pocket, by the way—I’ll bag it and you can take it.” I headed toward my truck for an evidence bag. “In the meantime, I’d like you to get a warrant, based on an anonymous tip from a citizen, or get Bob to do it, and search this guy’s place. She says he’s got pot, maybe other drugs there.” I finished bagging the confiscated gun and ammo, grabbed a pen and filled in all the info on the bag, and handed it all to him.
“I can do all that, Ed, set up a search and all, but aren’t you going to be in on that?”
“I have a missing girl to look for, so help me out. I don’t have time to follow up on this now, but I would not mind seeing this Dave guy in the pokey for the time being.”
He looked a little put out. “OK, I will.”
“Thanks. I know I am pushing some stuff off on you. I’ll owe you one. I’ll write up my report on this tonight. Probably late.”
“Fine.” Deputy Gavin returned to his cruiser with the woman’s gun. I glanced at the time and cursed the minutes ticking away.
I looked toward Buzz’s trailer. Lights were off, and no one was peeking out to see what was going on with all the cops and paramedics.
I went over there and knocked anyway. No one answered. I walked around the trailer, peeked into windows and saw nothing. I checked the four-wheelers parked nearby, but none were warm.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
I walked back to my own truck, started it up, and aimed it away from the sheriff’s office. I knew I should go follow up on this situation with Dave Bannon, or Conley, or whatever the hell his name was, but I was going to leave that to others. With luck, they’d find enough on the guy to run him in while maybe, just maybe, Tess would sober up and get things under control. A cop can dream, anyway.
But I was going to let this be someone else’s problem. Megan Beemer was still missing, and I needed to get back on the hunt.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Wednesday, 9 p.m.
“DUDE, GET YOUR ass over here!”
“Why?”
“Things got worse. Just get over here!”
“How much worse?”
“Way fucking worse, man! Get over here now!”
“Why don’t you text me this shit?”
“Cops can find the texts if they want, that’s why. Jesus.”
“They can?”
“Yes! Jesus, did you text about this?”
“No.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“You better not.”
“I won’t. Fuck.”
“Get over here. We gotta do something. And we gotta do it now.”
“What happened?”
“Ain’t saying it over the phone. But it’s bad.”
“Bad?”
“Real fucking bad. Just get your fucking ass over here now.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wednesday, 11:36 p.m.
I DOWNED A shot of bourbon and toggled the laptop screen between photos of Megan Beemer and Briana Marston. It had not been merely my imagination. The two looked eerily similar. The same blue eyes. The same blonde hair. The same smiles.
I reached for the bottle of Knob Creek, purchased on my way home, and poured another shot. “Up yours, Linda,” I muttered as I lifted the shot to my lips. I considered sending her a bill for the bottle she’d stolen.
I should have been asleep already, or at least trying. Instead, here I was outside my trailer, sitting at a picnic table and testing my Wi-Fi’s limits, scrolling through photos of two girls. Every now and then I browsed Google to see whether Professor Donald Graser had slipped his prison bonds and started killing girls again. I found myself typing his name again and stopped, slamming my palms against the table surface. “Fuck,” I said.
I knew it was my own irrationality, fueled by bourbon, that made me try to connect these two cases. Yes, the girls looked alike, but you could find equally pretty, blue-eyed blondes in any high school in America. The only other connection between the case that had sent me running from New York and the case I was working now was me—the guy who had been too busy with other police work in the Big Apple to find Bree before Graser had slaughtered her. And here I was, worried that Megan Beemer would meet a similar fate because a county detective’s work is never done.
“Fuck,” I growled, hurling the empty shot glass. It splashed into the fog-shrouded pond, and the frogs went silent for a moment. I started rehearsing a speech in my head. “I am leaving SWAT, Sheriff. Find another sniper. I am done with that and with stolen tractors and with fucking Career Day speeches and fairgrounds security details and hookers and wife beaters and every fucking thing else until I find this girl.”
I thought it sounded good in my head. But then again, I was drinking straight from the bottle now because I had thrown my fucking shot glass at some goddamned frogs, so what the hell did I know?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Thursday, 7:38 a.m.
THE PHONE BUZZED while I poured coffee and tried to forget haunting dreams.
“Hey, Bob,” I said.
“Hello, Ed.” Bob Dooman’s voice is one of the deepest I’ve ever heard, a Darth Vader voice, cultured and refined and somewhat creepy. He sounded like he should be lecturing on Shakespeare, or quasars. “Listen. We have a dead body, south of Jodyville, in Black Powder Creek not far from the bridge. Might be the girl you and that Columbus cop are tracking, might not. But it’s a teen girl, blonde, naked.”
“Damn. OK, Bob, on my way.”
“Yep.” He gave me the precise location. It was not far from my place at all, and not far from the Cotton farm. Buzz and his band were fairly close to that spot, too, but from the opposite side of the river from the Cotton place.
I rushed to grab a shirt, and felt dizzy. I had known this would happen, goddamn it. I leaned against my closet door, closed my eyes, tried to get it together. Then I hurried out to my truck, dialing Shelly.
“Hi, Ed.” She sounded groggy.
“Hey. We have a body. Teen girl. Blonde. In a river.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“On my way.”
“I will text you the location. Remember I showed you where I live? Same road, further out, but not far from there.”
I rushed to my truck. I had left the Knob Creek bottle on the picnic table. There was a distressingly small amount of whiskey left in it. I could not quite decide if I found it distressing because it meant I had drunk a lot, or because it meant I would need to get more.
I fired up the truck and roared toward the road, ignoring the wave from my landlord. He was carrying a spinning rod toward the pond to catch some bass. I was going to see if Megan Beemer was dead.
The location, a wide bend in Black Powder Creek, was just three miles or so farther down Big Black Dog Road. I hurled past the driveway that led up to Cotton’s armored barn on Breakneck Hill on my way to the crime scene.
I drove a little faster than was strictly prudent. My teeth hurt from clenching my jaw. I knew this had to be Megan Beemer. I’d failed again. Intellectually, I knew the odds were that she had died before I’d ever heard of her. If this was indeed her, she had most likely been killed Saturday night or Sunday morning, on the heels of the warehouse party, and then dumped here, long before Shelly showed up in Mifflin County.
That girl, Ally Phelps, said she had seen Megan alive Tuesday morning, but my instinct told me Ally was not a reliable witness. She had seemed confused, evasive. Maybe she was lying. But if she really had seen Megan, then maybe the girl had been alive while I was stuck on a SWAT call, or almost getting shot by a drunk hooker, or arranging for someone to bust a guy named Dave. Maybe history had repeated itself.
The shadows in my brain told me I’d failed again. Just like they told me I’d failed Bree. I’d spent a good deal of money on counseling and antidepressants trying to convince myself
that I had not failed Bree, that bad things sometimes happen despite the best efforts of cops, that it was not, in fact, all my fault.
For a few years there, I believed the counselors. Now, I wasn’t so sure.
I punched the roof of my truck. I might have left a dent, but didn’t look to see. I knew I’d scraped blood from a knuckle.
Bob Dooman was waiting for me when I rolled up.
“Thank God it’s harvest season,” he said, wiping a handkerchief across his dark brow. Bob kept his head shaved smooth, and the beads of sweat on his dark pate reflected the morning sunshine in a way diamonds could only envy. He pointed across a field. “Jerry Coontz was working this field, riding high in that goddamn thing”—he paused to point at a harvester—“and because he was sitting up high, he saw her in the river. Fortunately, it’s not too misty this morning or he’d have missed her.”
Jerry Coontz sat on the ground by one of his combine’s massive wheels, holding a worn John Deere cap between his knees, while Trumpower listened to him talk and took notes. I knew Jerry only slightly, but enough to know he was a decent, friendly guy, the type who would be hit kind of hard by finding a girl’s body in the river.
We were crossing a harvested portion of that cornfield now, walking toward the river, which for some goddamned reason was called a creek on maps. We passed by a trio of road deputies and a couple of Ambletown cops who were there to make sure no curious bystanders followed us. We trod upon the stubble left behind by the combine, on ground that was just moist enough to give way a little beneath our shoes.
I eyed the ground, but didn’t see any kind of track that hadn’t been made by the combine, deer, dogs, or the forensic team near the bank below. Those people had waited patiently up on the road until Dooman had given them clearance, and then they’d walked single file.
There wasn’t any evidence in the field for them to trample, though. This probably wasn’t where she had gone into Black Powder Creek, which currently was high and swift. She’d most likely gone in upstream, and only God knew where. But there was a bridge across the two-lane highway, not far upstream, and within sight of the trailer park where Buzz and his cohorts played their angsty rock music. They could have reached that bridge, easily, and tossed her in. Of course, hundreds of other people could have done so, too. A high school linebacker. A guy on a motorcycle. Anybody.