by Jackie Lynn
“And these people they may wait months or years before they come back to make you return their favor. You might have been out of trouble for a long time, living clean and sober, like me and Jason were, but they always come back. And they always expect you to hold up your end of the deal.” Chariot glanced out the window. Her shoulders sagged and it appeared as if she was very clear about this part of her story. She seemed to have a very good handle on why her boyfriend did what he did.
“What was the favor he got?” Rose asked, thinking that Chariot probably knew that, too. “You said that on that night he woke you up that Jason told you that he was sorry about what it meant to leave town,” she added. “What did he mean by that?” she asked.
Chariot didn’t answer at first. She fidgeted with her hair, taking it out of the ponytail style she had been wearing, smoothing down the sides again, and then pulling it back up.
“He got me the chance to get Constance back,” she finally confessed. “When I was in prison,” she added.
The news surprised Rose. She waited for more.
“After she was born,” Chariot explained, “they were going to take my baby away for good, send her somewhere else, another state or something.” She shook her head. “I never understood exactly how he did it, but Jason got Constance in the foster care system in Pierre. He found somebody that pulled some strings and she didn’t leave the state, and like I told you earlier, I got to see her, and I was just about to get full custody of her.”
Rose watched as the tears rolled down the young woman’s cheeks. She reached in her pocket to see if she had a tissue. She found one and handed it to Chariot. “How old is she?” Rose asked.
“Almost three,” came the answer. “I didn’t show you before, but I have a picture of her.” She reached down and pulled out the purse she had been able to bring with her. She retrieved a small plastic bag with a few pictures inside and pulled one out.
“This was just a few weeks ago,” she explained. “I got to see her three times a week, supervised, of course. The foster mother is still the same person as the one who got her when she was born.
Rose took the photograph and studied the little girl dressed in a pink jacket and a pink pair of jeans. She was smiling and holding out a flower, a small plastic flower, her smile wide with delight.
“She’s definitely a cutie,” Rose responded, looking a long time before handing back the picture to the young mother.
Chariot nodded. “I named her Constance because Jason and me, we felt like she made us different, made us want to be better always, you know, not just for a little while, but always.”
Rose nodded. She wondered if Chariot’s fears of losing custody were valid. She wondered what murder charges did to a custody suit. “We’ll get her back for you,” Rose said, not even sure why she said the words. She had no way at all of promising such a thing. She understood that had been Jason’s promise, too, at one time and that Chariot had foolishly believed that as well.
Chariot looked closely at Rose and then turned away. “I think I’ve always known I’d never be good enough to keep her,” she confessed.
Rose snapped up her head. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Even if you lose custody, even if you broke the rules by leaving South Dakota and they keep her in the foster home a while longer, that doesn’t mean that you aren’t good enough to keep her.” She shook her head.
Chariot put the photograph away without a response.
“Chariot, do you hear what I’m saying?” Rose asked. She spoke so loudly that the sheriff looked back at the two women from the rearview mirror.
They were just heading into Memphis.
“Everything all right back there?” the sheriff asked.
Rose, seeing his face in the mirror, nodded.
Chariot dropped her head.
“Do you hear what I’m saying?” she asked her again, reaching over and taking Chariot’s chin in her hand. “Do you love Constance?” she asked.
“With all my heart,” Chariot replied. “I’ve never loved anybody as much as I love her. She got me clean. She makes me want to stay clean.”
“Then you are good enough to take care of her, you are good enough to bring her into your home,” Rose said. She wiped Chariot’s tear as it fell.
“Okay?” she asked.
“Okay,” Chariot answered.
Rose pulled away and breathed out a big breath. “Now, here’s what we have to do,” she said. She sounded confident and certain of herself. “Lucas will try to find out the names of the other guys that were involved in the robbery. You got any idea about them?”
Chariot considered the question. “I think it was some guys from the bar where Jason used to hang out before we went to jail. I don’t really know their names.”
Rose nodded. She figured that Lucas could find out who those guys were.
“We’ll work on that. Rhonda and Lucas are getting you squared away with a lawyer. I’m going to get Thomas to try and figure out who ‘the president’ is, try to look up on the Internet any news stories about meth labs in Pierre and who was running them, and I’m going to go through all of your stuff to see if there’s anything that looks like it could be something somebody else would want. You need to try and remember everything about Jason in the last couple of weeks, everything he said or did that seemed out of the ordinary.”
She took another breath as they pulled into the parking lot at the Baptist Hospital in Memphis.
“And we have to get him”—she gestured toward the sheriff—“to refrain from calling the police in South Dakota to report that he has you in custody since somewhere in Pierre there is a dirty cop.”
“How are you going to do that?” Chariot asked.
“A lot of begging and a little bit of Southern charm,” Rose replied.
She shook her head as she glanced in the direction of the sheriff. She wasn’t sure that was going to work. “Is there anything else you can think of that we can do at Shady Grove?” she asked.
Chariot thought for a minute as the car stopped in front of the emergency room. There was something that she wanted to ask.
“I couldn’t find my photo album,” she said. “When I stopped by the tent with you and Mr. Willie to get some stuff, I couldn’t find it. If you could get it for me and just keep it so I can have it.” She hesitated. Her time with Rose was up.
The deputy got out and opened the door on Rose’s side.
“I’ll get it,” Rose said reassuringly.
Rose patted her on the arm and stepped out of the car and headed toward the lobby. She figured that there should be a wheelchair inside. Deputy Davis headed around to where Sheriff Montgomery was holding open the rear door for Chariot.
Chariot slid out from her seat and waited. Rose brought back a wheelchair and moved it so it was right beside the young woman and she pulled herself up and sat down.
Rose spun the wheelchair in the direction of the front of the building. And then, all four of them headed through the hospital doors.
FIFTEEN
What did Lucas find out?” Rose was back at Shady Grove. She had stayed with Chariot while they did X-rays and bandaged the sprained ankle, but she was not allowed to remain with her in the county jail. Deputy Davis had brought Rose back to the campground once they started to process Chariot.
Rose was glad that the medical staff at the hospital took almost three hours getting Chariot treated before finally releasing her. She was relying on a slow emergency room and was hopeful that the extra time meant the South Dakota police had not yet left for Arkansas and that everyone at Shady Grove was using the precious minutes to find out as much as they could about the charges held against Chariot.
She knew Sheriff Montgomery had called the police in Pierre from the station to make his official report. Before she left with the deputy she heard him place the call letting them know that he had in custody the woman wanted for murder in the state of South Dakota.
Rose had tried to talk him out of making the
call, but it was useless. Sheriff Montgomery was a “by-the-book” lawman and no amount of charm or begging could make him change his mind.
He had promised her that he would assign an officer to watch Chariot and that he would not let her be removed from the jail until he was confident that she was being turned over to the right people. In the meantime, he had said that he would check out the murder charges filed against her and try to find out the names of the officers who investigated the homicide in Pierre and the ones planning to make the trip to Arkansas to pick up the offender. He would keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary that might happen.
Even as she was trying to convince Montgomery to withhold his report to South Dakota, Rose had called Rhonda from the hospital and delegated responsibilities to everyone. She had even asked Ms. Lou Ellen to help out by looking up South Dakota newspapers online to check out local police reports that might have made mention of a robbery in the state capital in the most recent months. She thought that there might be some public record of what Jason had done.
Rose knew that Ms. Lou Ellen had recently bought a laptop computer to be able to stay in touch with astrologists and that she had become quite efficient at researching information. She also knew that the older woman would love a project and appreciated being able to help out.
“He was calling some old friends in Rapid City to see if they had heard any news,” Rhonda replied to Rose’s question about what Lucas had found out. “But he doesn’t know anything yet.”
Rhonda was the only one waiting at the office for Rose to return. After Rose’s phone call from the hospital and the division of responsibilities, Lucas had gone to talk to a friend who had connections in South Dakota. Ms. Lou Ellen and Thomas had left to do their work on their computers, looking up the information Rose had requested. Rose glanced through the window and could see a small light on in the older woman’s cabin. She wondered if her friend was still up.
She glanced over at the clock on the office wall. It was nearing midnight. She knew that they didn’t have a lot of time, but she wasn’t sure exactly what else could be done.
“Did you call Lionel?” she asked, wondering what the lawyer was going to do to help Chariot, if there was anything he could do with a woman facing charges in a state other than Arkansas.
Rhonda nodded. “I talked to him before the sheriff took her into custody,” she explained. “He was trying to put some things together to slow the process of extradition, but he didn’t seem real hopeful.”
Rose stood at the counter.
“He did have a good contact in South Dakota, though,” Rhonda added. “He said she was a real good lawyer and would take good care of Chariot.” She seemed relieved to report this bit of information.
“That’s something,” Rose responded.
“Yep,” Rhonda noted.
There was a silence as the two tried to determine what they should do next.
“I’ve been trying to think about everything I knew about Jason and Chariot from before,” Rhonda said. “I’ve gone through every conversation we had to see if I could come up with anything that might help us understand what has happened. But it was a long time ago that we knew one another. I think there’s been a lot of change since we first met them.”
Rose wondered if there was anything from the past that could shed light on what was happening in the present.
“Chariot said that Jason used to do some breaking and entering,” Rose said. She didn’t know if Rhonda knew that about the young couple from South Dakota.
“Lucas and I figured that,” she replied. “He was a good kid, friendly and nice. He was real good to Chariot, but I could tell they were heavy in the drug scene and once that happens, you have to find a way to support those costly habits,” Rhonda noted.
Rose walked over and poured herself a glass of water at the sink. She drank it all, wiped her mouth, and turned back to face Rhonda.
“Usually, a person learns handy skills like burglary or how to jack a car or how to fence jewelry,” Rhonda continued.
Rose moved over and sat down at the table across from her. She wondered what handy skills her friend had learned to support her drug habit back when she and Lucas were using.
“So, even though we didn’t know about the convictions Jason or Chariot had, the breaking and entering makes sense.”
Rose had such respect for her friends Rhonda and Lucas. She knew that they had a rough history, had done drugs and been in prison, but she also knew that getting clean and staying clean when a person is an addict is a very hard thing to do.
“Did you know they had a little girl?” Rose asked.
Rhonda glanced up from the table to face Rose. “She told you?” She looked surprised.
“Yeah, she had a picture,” Rose noted. Then she looked over to Rhonda. “Why do you think she wouldn’t have told me?” she asked, surprised at the question.
Rhonda shook her head. “I just found out myself this morning and she seemed real private about it, like she wasn’t going to tell anybody, like she was ashamed or something.”
“I don’t think it was that,” Rose replied. “I think she believes she’s lost custody of the little girl for good, that she won’t be able to get her back ever again.”
“When she showed up this week, I hadn’t heard from Chariot in a long time,” Rhonda explained. “After we got to know her and Jason, she used to call and ask for money or just say that she needed somebody to talk to. I cut her off when I could see that I was just being codependent with her, letting her get by with stuff and not holding her accountable.”
Rose nodded.
“I told her that I wouldn’t talk to her anymore until she was in some program to try and get clean. After that, she quit calling and I heard she was in prison. It’s been three years since I’ve talked to her and even though she has a history of lying and doing drugs, I believe what she’s told us. I believe she really was changed by her baby and that she has been working the program, staying sober, trying to get custody of her daughter.” Rhonda shook her head. “I’m pretty good at reading addicts and drunks. I think she’s telling the truth.”
Rose nodded. She glanced out the window toward Ms. Lou Ellen’s cabin.
“So, what do we know for sure at this point?” Rhonda asked.
Rose explained everything that she knew. She went over every question she had asked and didn’t leave out a detail in relaying the information to Rhonda.
“You think Jason owed somebody a favor, and to pay them back, he participated in a robbery of a drug dealer and that he took something from the place he robbed. The drug dealer found out who had stolen his stuff and came looking for it. Jason was killed because he was involved and because he had something that the drug dealer wanted.”
Rhonda was tapping her finger on the table, going over the story. “A police officer from Pierre is involved. He either is the drug dealer or works for the dealer and he murdered Jason and is now looking for Chariot. Is that it?” she asked.
Rose nodded. “I think that’s about it.” She was about to ask a question about how much would have to be taken in order for a drug dealer to kill, when the office phone began to ring.
The two women glanced at each other. They were surprised to be receiving a call at that late hour. Lucas, Thomas, and Ms. Lou Ellen would have dialed Rhonda’s cell phone.
Rose got up from the table and crossed the room.
“Shady Grove Campground,” she said.
There was no response from the other end.
“Shady Grove,” she said again, waiting.
There was a click. She hung up the receiver and glanced back at Rhonda.
“Maybe just a wrong number,” she guessed, moving back to the table. “By the way, did that camper come in?” she asked.
Rhonda looked puzzled and was about to say something when suddenly her cell phone began to ring and she flipped it open.
“It’s Lucas,” she said, seeing the number on the screen.
; Rose nodded and assumed that he was the one who had just tried to call on the office phone and for some reason had not been able to complete that call.
“Hey,” she said to her husband.
Rose listened closely as Rhonda continued her phone conversation. She looked over at the door and noticed a small canvas bag in the corner by the counter. She recalled Chariot giving it to Willie when they stopped by the tent earlier in the evening. Curious, she stood up, went over, and picked it up. She set it on the counter and began looking through it. It seemed to be only clothing. She wondered if the photo album she had promised to find might be in the bag.
Rose walked over and looked out the window on the door, recalling the camper who was to arrive late. She noticed that the receipt was gone and figured that he must have arrived while she was at the hospital. She looked across the driveway and noticed the light still on in Ms. Lou Ellen’s cabin. The rest of the campground was dark.
She glanced back at the canvas bag and wondered when Willie had put it in the office. She looked out the window toward his camper, but she could see no lights on there. Rose turned around when she heard Rhonda flip her cell phone shut. “Did he find out anything?” Rose asked.
Rhonda nodded. “He talked to a biker who lives in Rapid. He’s a good guy but he still hangs out with the folks walking on the wrong side, if you know what I mean.” She raised her eyebrows at Rose.
Rose nodded. She headed back over to the table.
“He runs a biker bar there.”
Rose sat down. She left the canvas bag on the counter to finish going through after she heard about the conversation.
“This guy said he heard some bikers from Pierre talking about some break-in a couple of weeks ago.”
Rose listened closely. “Lucas get any names?” she asked.
Rhonda nodded. “I think so, but I didn’t ask him.”
“Okay, I’m sorry, go ahead.” Rose realized that she had interrupted Rhonda’s story.
“He said that there was talk that a couple of ex-cons had robbed a guy in Pierre.” She stuck the phone in her pocket. “He said that the guy was a known drug dealer, a bad dude, and that was what made the story so interesting.” She paused. She wanted to make sure she wasn’t missing any of the details.