No Good Deed

by Lynn Hightower

  Chauncey hung his head, and Sam and Sonora had to lean close to hear him. ‘No, ma’am, I do not.’

  ‘Nothing at all? No gut instincts? Nothing?’

  He shook his head, staring at the table-top.

  ‘You haven’t had any indication at all that things might not be right? Strange phone calls, hang-ups, calls from school?’

  ‘No. No, ma’am.’

  ‘Was Joelle worried a lot? Depressed?’

  Chauncey mumbled something.

  ‘What?’ Sonora asked.

  ‘Maybe a little depressed.’

  She could barely hear him. ‘Mr Chauncey, are you saying that Joelle seemed depressed?’

  His head bobbed. ‘Yes, she did. She didn’t kill herself?’ He looked up at her, eyes full of fat, pearly glycerine tears. He had a hopeful air, like a puppy in a cage at the pound.

  She knew that he wanted her to pat his back, to comfort him. What she really wanted to do was leave the room.

  Sonora glanced at Sam. No help there.

  ‘Your daughter was murdered, Mr Chauncey.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘You told me.’ He was crying now, head down, eyes on the floor, quiet, steady sobs.

  Sonora looked at Sam. His hands went up, waist level.

  Time to stop.

  Sonora came out of the women’s bathroom, droplets of water glistening on her face, just in time to see Sam heading down the hallway. Chauncey, a puppy at his heels, did not see her.

  She had bailed out and left Sam alone with the sobbing man.

  She hadn’t meant to make Chauncey cry, and it made her feel unclean. His breakdown had disturbed her in a way she could not quite explain. It came too pat, like a habit, a familiar groove. The harder she was on him the more he put that head down and groveled. She had the uneasy suspicion that he liked it, that he wanted to be dominated.

  She did not like the way he looked at her – eyes so bright and needy. He had wanted her to look at him, to notice him, to feel sorry for him. She did not like being in the same room with him. He was like bruised fruit – soft and whangy. When he opened his mouth, she could see the metal fillings in his teeth.

  She could not get the faces of Mary Claire and Kippie out of her mind. She told herself that they would be okay, that Chauncey kept an immaculate house, cooked nutritious dinners, worked hard for hearth and home.

  She watched him follow Sam down the hallway, heard Sam’s voice, tones soothing, promising Chauncey a short wait in the lobby until a uniform would come to give him a ride home.

  Chauncey walked like a little bird, arms clamped against his sides like wings, hands balled into fists. Even when he moved his arms, they were never more than six inches from his hips, as if they were under restraint.

  Sonora leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. The bullpen was night crew silent, Crick was God knew where, and her head ached. She had not called the kids or bought groceries, and at the time when a good mother would have been home supervising dinner and homework, she’d been parading Dixon Chauncey through the morgue.

  Time to call it quits. In her mind she spun the fast food roulette, thinking that Wendy’s was close.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Sonora was in at seven the next morning, an hour before her shift. She had gone home the night before to a hot shower and five Advil, falling hard asleep on the couch where she had curled up to read her horoscope and be in the same room with the kids, who had immediately left.

  She was awake before daylight, thinking about Joelle Chauncey’s collection of missing children.

  In the office, craving coffee, she found that her mug was one-third full of cold, old coffee. The cream, aged now, had gathered in the middle, forming a star shape, with streaks that stretched across the brown oily surface.

  She poured the leftovers into Molliter’s cup, which glistened, squeaky clean, inviting. These petty forms of revenge made her happy, a bad reflection on her character.

  She made a fresh pot of coffee, washed out her mug and waited while the plastic coffee-maker bubbled three-quarters through the cycle, then filled her cup. A stream of coffee, still spewing and brewing, hissed against the brown, grungy burner and filled the bullpen with the evocative scent of scorched coffee.

  Not an unpleasant smell, to an addict like Sonora.

  She eased herself into her chair very slowly, closed her eyes against the blinking lights on her answering machine, and took the first sip.

  Disappointing. She hadn’t put in enough cream. She was trying to cut down, but the coffee was too harsh, and she didn’t like the color – it was too dark. Might as well drink it black if it was going to taste this bad.

  ‘Yo, Sonora. You make that fella cry? Molliter worked the night shift, and he said you were brutal.’

  Gruber. Tie askew as always, but freshly shaved. He was coming from the men’s room, he kept his razor at work. The man grew hair like an orang-utan.

  The guys were spending ridiculous amounts of time in the john these days. The city had renovated the men’s bath and locker room and they were getting pretty comfortable. Sonora wondered when the women’s room would get fixed up.

  ‘Did you spend last night in the john, Gruber? What do you guys do in there for so long?’

  Gruber grinned. ‘I could draw you a picture. Better still, why—’

  Sonora put her fingers in her ears and turned away. Could not believe she’d given Gruber an opening like that. She must be more distracted than she thought.

  ‘I missed you last night. McCarty called.’

  The voice, immediately recognizable, came from directly behind her. She turned her chair back around and faced Sergeant Crick, who stood in front of her desk.

  ‘He’s been working the horse angle. Horse and trailer. He wants you to meet him at this address today at three.’ Crick tossed a folded yellow triangle on to her desk. Looked just like the notes they’d passed in junior high.

  Sonora unfolded the paper. Frowned. Where the hell was Samoyan? ‘Is this in Cincinnati?’

  ‘You’re a detective. You find out.’

  It was one of Sonora’s least-favorite lines. Cops and psychics took too much of that crap.

  Crick moved away, then paused. ‘I don’t get this body drop. It’s not Delaney’s place – that End Point Farm?’

  ‘No, sir, Halcyon Farm, about two miles away. End Point is the primary. Likely she was fatally injured in that paddock out there where she was snatched. Halcyon is the secondary, where she was buried.’

  ‘Okay, the body’s at Halcyon, what about the Dually?’

  ‘Same place. The secondary. The truck actually belongs to the people who own Halcyon Farm. We think it was stolen and used in the commission of the crime at the primary, which is End Point Farm, and wound up back at Halcyon, the secondary.’

  ‘As long as you’ve got it straight,’ Crick said.

  ‘We don’t actually have confirmation this truck is the one used in the commission of the crime. Mickey’s on it, but I’m telling you, it’s the one.’

  ‘Horse trailer turned up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m almost relieved. I’m not sure I could keep track of another farm.’

  ‘We’re dragging the pond out at Halcyon to see if it’s out there.’

  ‘And no horse?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Halcyon. Why does that name sound familiar? You talk to the owners yet?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘They do it?’

  ‘My crystal ball says no.’

  He turned a quarter-turn and faced her.

  ‘It’s no wonder you remember them,’ Sonora said. ‘They’re Tammy Kidgwick’s parents. The Randolph boy was murdered by their pond, you remember?’

  Crick dropped his arms, stuck his left hand in his pocket. His face had that faraway focused look they all knew and dreaded. If he came up with
a connection you missed, you’d feel stupid. If he came up with an assignment, you got overtime.

  ‘Talk to Barry Fellowes about that. You know Fellowes? He’s downtown with the mayor now. He worked that case, on the Randolph boy.’

  Sonora nodded. Crick was always telling them to look up the old guys. Like they had the time.

  He gave her a second look. ‘What have you accomplished with your morning, Blair?’

  Sonora glanced at her watch. Seven-thirty a.m. ‘We’re waiting on the autopsy, sir. We interviewed the father last night. He gave us a definite ID.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wasn’t a whole lot of help.’

  Crick folded his arms. Lifted one thumb to rub the rounded jut of his chin. ‘He have any theories at all?’

  Sonora shook her head. ‘Nothing but some vague stuff about ‘goings on’ out at Delaney’s barn. Nothing specific.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘That he didn’t like the looks of some of the people Donna Delaney dealt with, and that she did business with Bisky Farms.’

  ‘How well you think he knows her business? They close? They fucking?’

  ‘Not even vaguely possible.’

  ‘Then who does he think killed his little girl?’

  It wasn’t just the way Crick said little girl, softly, without edges, but the fact that he’d said little girl and not kid – clearly the man was upset.

  Sonora shook her head. ‘I’m telling you, he’s got no theories.’

  ‘None?’

  ‘None.’

  There was a look in Crick’s eyes. Sonora wished she could read him better.

  ‘This guy cry every time you ask him a difficult question?’

  ‘Pretty much. Hard to tell if it’s a trend. He’d had a rough day.’

  ‘I don’t like it when they cry instead of helping.’

  ‘Me either.’

  He took a step away, then glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Have the proper compassion, Detective Blair.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Joelle Chauncey’s things had been boxed up by Renquist, released by a bewildered Dixon Chauncey, and were now resting next to Sonora’s desk. The box, originally, had been used to ship a case of chicken-liver-flavored Alpo.

  The reduction of an important life.

  Sonora flipped through the envelope of information on missing children, parental searches for a birth child.

  Joelle had been obsessed. And Dixon Chauncey had denied any interest on her part.

  Kids kept a lot to themselves. Joelle was fifteen. How much had Sonora confided in her dad at that age?

  Nothing at all.

  She’d like to talk to the other children. Which would be touchy. She needed to go to Joelle’s school, talk to her teachers and friends.

  The Kidgwicks had mentioned Joelle writing in a little book. Sonora rooted through the box, came up with several spiral notebooks, one a washed-out red, one shimmery lavender, one with Cinderella on the front.

  That was right. Joelle Chauncey was a Disney kid, still attached to the mouse. Sonora knew people who stayed that way their entire lives.

  She opened a notebook, read a few lines. She had hit pay-dirt. Joelle Chauncey kept journals.

  Sonora frowned as she read the stained notepaper, pages full of boys who were cute enough to die for but did not even look at her in the hall. Teachers who were impatient, bored, focused on their ‘pets’. Little sisters who drove her crazy and got into her things.

  Sonora leaned back in her chair, glanced around the office for Crick, then put her feet up on her desk.

  Joelle Chauncey worried a lot.

  She’d made a list of things she did not like about herself. Her weight, right at the top. Her hair color. Thighs that were ‘lumpy’, cheeks that were round, eyebrows too heavy to be like ‘the pretty ones’. And bony knees.

  Bony knees?

  Sonora glanced at a picture of Joelle at age twelve. A pretty child by any standards. Dark eyes and hair and a look of intelligence.

  She glanced down the hallway, watching out for Sam. He was late.

  She flipped through the pages, lines and lines of tedious angst. Someone should have told this child to lighten up. She flipped to an entry neatly labeled as written at Halcyon Farm.

  Joelle had an almost obsessive interest in Ben Randolph, the boy murdered at the pond. If Sonora hadn’t known better, she’d have assumed the two had been close for a lifetime.

  Understandable. Like a crush on a rock star. Intense and distant.

  There were real friends, thank goodness, living, breathing school-friends. Joelle called them Pistol and Bits. Likely not baptized that way.

  The next entry got Sonora thinking.

  I have bad dreams a lot at night, and I am scared in my dreams.

  Scared in her dreams?

  Last night I dreamed about tornadoes – I had Mary Claire and Kippie with me. I was holding Mary Claire’s hand and carrying Kippie, and we were running in the rain, and no one would let us in.

  We would go to the door of every house, and no one would want us.

  I dream about Mama sometimes. It is always daylight in those Mama dreams, and the sun is so bright my eyes hurt, and I can’t quite see, but I know it is her.

  Do I look like her? I wonder. I do not think so, because I have this feeling she is so beautiful and I am not. But maybe I am like her some. I watch families, regular ones.

  Regular ones. Interesting. But probably most teens felt that way.

  … and it’s not so much that they look alike, they just talk alike and move their hands around. It’s in the way they stand, too. That’s how you can tell a family.

  Poppie says we are sisters because he is all of our dads, but he isn’t my dad. I don’t remember my dad, but I do remember it was just Mom and me for so long.

  Sonora had been reaching for her coffee cup. She checked. Chauncey had described a close devoted family, the mother dying tragically after Kippie’s birth. But Joelle would have been eight. She would have remembered. Had the Chaunceys separated for a while? Not surprising, really, that he wouldn’t have brought it up. If that were the case.

  If I run away, what will happen to the girls? They are so little. And they make me so mad I feel like I hate them, but truthfully, I guess I do love them. I have taken care of them all of their life. I am like their mom. I’m never going to have any kids of my own, those two are enough.

  But it would be wrong to leave them. I don’t think we can all get away. I could go and come back for them, but I don’t know where to go. And Poppie moves so much I might never find them again.

  Sonora made a note to look into past moves. Made another note. Had Joelle been going through the typical teenage runaway thing, or had she felt threatened in some way? The feelings could not be discounted – being buried alive was not a typical teenage experience. And Sonora got the feeling that the girl had felt an unease in her family situation that was striking. But very, very typical at this age. Don’t jump to conclusions, she told herself. Her son could be writing worse, if he kept a journal.

  If I find my mama maybe she could take us all.

  Very odd, this. As if the woman were alive.

  The law would never allow it, but we could all hide somewhere. We wouldn’t even have to go to school. I could teach Kippie, and Mary Claire is so smart, she could get it all out of books anyway.

  But we could all run away until we grow up and then we’ll be safe.

  There it was again. The fear. Then we’ll be safe. Was Chauncey molesting the girls? This did not have that feel to it, but she’d have to keep her eyes open.

  If we lived in the country maybe we could have a horse. I wish we could take the mare with us. Mrs Delaney says she is a bitchy mare, but Sundance likes me because she knows I would not hurt her. I sneak her food like Poppie does, and I never smack her or shank her with a chain like mean dog Delaney.

  Poppie really does love the horses. If I do leave the girls, he
will see they grow up okay.

  Sonora ditched the child-molesting theory.

  And Poppie loves us and takes care of us. It would kill him for me to run away. Maybe if my mom is rich she could buy Sundance? Mrs D. will do anything for money.

  If my mom is really dead like Poppie says, then I don’t want to even think about it. He says she had cancer and he cries and everybody feels sorry for him, but she’s my mom, why does he get all the attention? I have heard that cancer runs in families. I am afraid that means I will get it. But Mary Claire and Kippie are safe because they are not my real sisters.

  What was with this kid? Living in fantasy land? Losing it? Or something truly odd in the wind?

  Maybe I’ll get married. If Joshua Bender would notice me, we could get married. I could go to work at Taco Bell.

  When I am eighteen I can go to that place that helps you find your mother. But that’s only if she gave me up for adoption.

  I keep on trying to remember what happened. It seems like one day she was there, then she went on a trip and did not come back. And Poppie said we would find her when we moved, but we never did, then he says she died.

  Sonora sighed. Had Dixon Chauncey made the colossal error in judgment and told his daughter that her mother had ‘gone on a trip’ when she’d died? That would explain a lot.

  But if she really died, why didn’t I go to the funeral? I don’t remember a funeral. You can’t forget your own mother’s funeral!!!!!!

  But if she’s alive, why doesn’t she find me? Maybe she can’t, because we move so much.

  Maybe

  The phone rang, and Sonora jumped. ‘Shit,’ she said, pulling her feet off the desk, leaning forward in the chair.

  ‘Homicide, Blair.’

  ‘Medicine, Gillane.’

  She frowned. He was out of context. Then remembered. The devastatingly attractive doctor in hiking boots.

  ‘How are you, Cricket?’

  ‘Why do—’ No. She was not going to play that game.

  But he was.

  ‘Why do I call you Cricket? It’s not to annoy you, if that’s what you think. My favorite dog in all the world was named Cricket.’

  ‘How can I help you, Doctor?’