Drowning Barbie

by Frederick Ramsay

  “Indeed. I had you in mind, Frank, and bought these little cup things. You can dump your teabag in them, substitute them for a K-Cup, and you have nice fresh-brewed tea, or prefilled cups with a variety of teas are available. I didn’t want to risk picking the wrong kind. Tea drinkers can be tiresome about things like that…green, black, chai—whatever that is, no offense meant.”

  “None taken.”

  “Any news on our victims in the woods?”

  “Some usable information on the latest, nada on the other. We were able to lift prints from the dead woman’s body. It turns out she has a jacket three inches thick. Her prints practically jump off AFIS. Her name is Ethyl Smut, if you can believe it, AKA a number of aliases—none particularly original—Jones, Smith, Franco—and a history of drug busts for using, distributing, and abuse, meth mostly but had an occasional fling with heroin, also prostitution, and petty larceny.”

  “A busy lady and now she’s dead. Good Lord, with a history like that there must be dozens of people who might have killed her.”

  “The drug culture is not a nice group of people to hang with, that’s for sure. Some of those meth heads would kill for a stick of gum.”

  “They’d kill for something trivial, Frank, but probably not gum. Their teeth couldn’t survive a stick of Juicy Fruit. Where does, or where did, she live?”

  “Still working on that. Last known address according to her rap sheet was over in that mobile home park out past Bolton. You know where we send a cruiser or two most weekends?”

  “Okay, let’s confirm it and get out there and toss her place. Then, find who she’s working with, associates and all that stuff. Put Billy on it and make sure he has backup.”

  “Right.”

  “Who’s manning the computer since Grace White left?”

  “I got a kid on loan from the Police Academy who knows electronics. He was due to intern somewhere so I asked Captain Rodriguez for him, and he said okay. Rodriguez owed me a favor. We have the kid for two weeks and then we have to send him back.”

  “With any luck, we’ll have our new geek cop in by then.”

  “I miss Sam,” Essie chimed in.

  “So do I, but our former deputy and first official geek cop, Miss Ryder, now Mrs. Hedrick, is firmly ensconced in Washington, D.C., at NSA. She’s busily listening to our cell phone calls and reading our mail, and isn’t available.”

  “She isn’t doing that, is she? Don’t answer. You could spring her.”

  “Not likely. What’s the attraction of the Picketsville Sheriff’s Department compared to international snooping in the capital of the universe?”

  “More friends and fewer Congressional investigations?”

  “Good point. Frank, get Billy up to speed on Miz Smut and send him out to her digs. He can take the kid from the Academy along. Reward for finding her in the first place and to keep your Captain Rodriguez happy.”

  “On it.”

  Ike left Essie to sort out the new coffee equipment. His office, the “fishbowl” as the deputies called it, had windows for walls. It had been built to the specifications of his predecessor who, the old-timers said, didn’t trust his deputies and felt he needed to keep an eye on them. All but a handful of them had since died or landed in jail, including him, so it seemed he’d been correct.

  Frank dropped the two new murder books on Ike’s desk. One he’d labeled “John Doe” and the other, “Ethyl Smut.” The Doe file didn’t have much in it—a few pictures and measurements. Ethyl’s was fatter and included the downloaded materials—her record and a series of mug shots. Ike shuffled through the sequence of mug shots and marveled at the changes in her appearance over time. When she’d first been arrested on a minor drug charge, the picture in the file showed a moderately attractive young woman. Then, as the years passed, he face seemed to collapse as the ravages of methamphetamine tore at her. Her latest photo could have been that of any of a thousand women addicted to the drug. Sunken cheeks, popped and frantic eyes, scraggly hair, bad and missing teeth—meth face.

  According to the file, she had a daughter, Darla or Darlene. An occasional mention of abuse, child abuse, allegations concerning the child were noted here and there, but the charges had been dismissed. The hearing judge had tossed them because of shoddy police work, mostly a failure to Mirandize Smut in a timely manner. Interestingly, that judge had also followed some of the town’s former deputies into jail. The child had refused to testify. Most victims won’t. A penciled note in the margin suggested that the girl was too frightened of either her mother or the current live-in boyfriend to say anything.

  Or too ashamed.

  There had never been a Mr. Smut, but the child—a young woman now—had to have had a father. Ike jotted a note to search him out. He also wanted to read the complete abuse record, but it would be filed and most likely sealed in Child Protective Services, and he’d need a court order to get it. It would be easier to find the girl and ask her directly. He scribbled another note.

  He called his father and accepted the dinner invitation for Sunday, and then put in a call to The Reverend Blake Fisher. He listened to the church’s answering machine, waited for the beep, and left a message.

  A call to the medical examiner produced one important new wrinkle to the Smut case. She’d been stabbed in the side before someone bashed her head in. The wound was not lethal, but serious enough to warrant medical treatment, which had not been administered. The ME said he’d need more time to establish the interval between the two incidents, but Ike might want to start looking for a blood trail. He also stated that he had no idea who the other body was or even where it had come from. The only clue so far related to the man’s clothes.

  “What about the clothes?” Ike asked.

  “Well, they are not local. The suit he had on when he was killed came from New York and was not off-the-rack cheap either. It has a label from a tailoring outfit, A. M. Rosenblatt and Sons, New York. Also, he’d been shot in the head and chest and one bullet had lodged in his spinal column. I retrieved it and sent it to the state ballistics lab. I also have his dental chart, and it’s also on the wire, as we used to say. We should hear something in a week or so. I’ll put copies of the photos in the report and shoot it over to you.”

  Ike thanked him and hung up. Then he remembered his father’s hay barn. He sent for Charley Picket. Ike gave him the padlock key and directed him to go out to his father’s barn and collect and bag anything that didn’t belong there.

  Last, he asked that the evidence the deputies had collected at the crime scene be brought to him. He would go through it on his return. His morning briefings would not be complete until he’d dropped in the Cross Roads Diner for breakfast and gossip. He left the office and headed the short block to Flora Blevins’ diner, which was, after the university up on the hill, the town’s most enduring institution.

  Chapter Seven

  Flora Blevins’ middle initial was said to be S. No one knew what the S stood for but all agreed it was not Subtle or Saintly—Stubborn, maybe. As Ike entered the diner, she fixed him with a fierce eye.

  “I hear you got Ethyl Smut on a slab at the morgue,” she announced. Ike couldn’t tell if the news had come to her as a surprise, an expectation, or simply as bad.

  “I do, Miz Blevins.” No one called Flora by her first name before ten o’clock. As with her middle name, the reasons for that rule remained buried in Picketsville folklore. “Did you know the woman?”

  “Another lifetime, maybe I did.”

  “Right. Okay, would you know where her daughter is?”

  “Why would I know that?”

  “You said you knew the woman, I thought it possible you might know the daughter’s whereabouts.We are looking for her in connection with her mother’s death. So, you don’t have a suggestion where we might start?”

  “That ain’t in my job description, Sheriff. What
I can tell you is she ran away from home at sixteen or so. She could be anywhere or nowhere.”

  “And you know her because…?”

  “I was her godmother and so I still care about her, that’s how, not that it’s any business of yours. She was a darling little girl when she were little, Darla was. Ethyl ruined her and I don’t blame that girl for booking out of that trailer as soon as she had a chance. Been, what, two, three years now.”

  “Her godmother?”

  “Don’t you go and give me that look. You heard me. Now eat ’fore the hash browns get all cold. And try Facebook.”

  “Facebook? Flora…Miz Blevins, you look at Facebook?”

  “Me? Not a chance. I don’t own one of those computer things and don’t ever aim to. I heard about it from old Colonel Bob Twelvetrees before he up and died on me. He used to do all that whatever they do on them things.”

  “Facebook. I’ll keep that in mind. You said she was a nice girl back in the day?”

  “I said she was a darlin’ little girl. That didn’t last long. Not past her seventh or eighth birthday, it didn’t. No, sir. That Ethyl, she ruined the little girl.”

  “How?”

  “Ain’t proper talking about it here, or anywhere else either as a matter of fact. I’ll just say this, if I’da had the opportunity and felt pretty sure you wouldn’t find me out, I’da snuffed the Smut bitch my own self. And that’s the truth.”

  “Listen to you, Miz Blevins. I declare. I am making progress. I have my first suspect.”

  “I didn’t say I did it and I ain’t the murdering kind. I only said if.”

  “I heard you. Would you be willing to drop in the office and fill me in on why, if you were the murdering kind, you would have done in Ethyl Smut?”

  “Why? How is knowing what I woulda done if, gonna help you catch the person who did?”

  “Because, if you feel that strongly about a woman whose daughter you agreed to sponsor at baptism—have I got that right?—it’s reasonable to assume that some others, many others in fact, might share those feelings. And I need to know why, to find out the who.”

  “That’s too many words in one mouthful there, Ike, but sure, I’ll drop by. I only know what I saw. No, make that only what I was allowed to see, if you follow my meaning. There’s more to it than that.”

  “I am sure the girl could tell us a great deal, but as you can’t help me find her, I am stuck with you. Is there anyone else in town who might know where she is?”

  “That’s all I can say. You read Ethyl’s arrest file. You’ll see. Lordy, I don’t know how many times me and the neighbors called to complain about what was going on in that trailer. Then, of course, she moved away with that bum, Angelo somebody.”

  “Angelo was the girl’s father or Ethyl’s boyfriend?”

  “Not the father and just one of God-only-knows how many men. She jumped from one to the other depending who would feed her habit. It was the flavor of the month, you could say. Franco.”

  “What?”

  “Angelo Franco was one of them that she lived with for a spell. He was probably in on it too.”

  “In on what?’

  “Misusing that little girl is what. I ain’t saying anything more.”

  “Okay for now, but later you will need to talk to me. And now, don’t you go giving me the look. So, she lived in your neighborhood for a while and then left. Is that right?”

  “Yep. Now eat.”

  “Yessum.”

  ***

  Ike returned to the office, his mind on Flora. He believed she had information that could open the investigation so, why did she only offer gossip? Usually she would be forthcoming. Today he would swear she had something she did not want to share. What was she not telling him? He stepped through the sheriff’s office door. Something was missing. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but the office had somehow changed. He felt as if he’d somehow walked into a parallel universe configured exactly like his own but different. He stepped into the squad room and looked around. Essie stared back at him.

  “What?” she said.

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, definitely. I can’t figure out what it is.”

  “Probably ’cause you don’t smell coffee. That’s what’s missing. Good or bad, fresh or burned, this place always smelled like coffee brewing. Now we don’t brew except one cup at a time in that thing you brought. The office has lost its coffee personality.”

  “Ah. Gone, but not forgotten.”

  Ike retreated to his desk and picked up Ethyl Smut’s file. He caught the Police Academy intern out of the corner of his eye as he exited the office. Ike called out to him.

  “You managed to find a recent address for the Smuts. Good work.”

  He grinned, pulled himself up, and tried to look police professional. Ike said that when he returned he should search through Facebook and find the girl, if he could. The kid said he would. If she had a wall, he’d find it. Ike didn’t ask him what the hell a wall was. TMI.

  Charley Picket arrived with a large evidence bag filled with things he’d found in the hay barn. Actually the evidence bag was a garbage bag with an official-looking tag, but nobody needed to know that. Ike retrieved his key and padlock and dumped the contents of the bag on the floor. He began to pick through it, then thought better of it. His father’s mystery intruders could wait. He had two murders on his desk, one old, one recent, and he needed to concentrate on the job at hand. He could sort through all this stuff later. He gathered the pile on the floor together and shoved it back in the bag. He paused over a faded photograph. It could have been an early Polaroid. It wasn’t, obviously, but the degree of yellowing and the serrated edge made it seem so. He put it aside rather than returning it to the bag.

  Essie was right, there was no coffee personality. Funny how you get to expect something like that. It wasn’t as if it held any great attraction, the opposite actually, but change, even change that improves, isn’t always easily accommodated. He swiveled back to his desk and directed his attention to the meager gleanings from the crime scene in the woods.

  In addition to Charley Picket’s apparent murder weapon find, the deputies had uncovered a few odds and ends. One plastic bag held an old shell casing—nine millimeter—corroded. It wasn’t clear if it had come out of or lay on the ground, but in either case it had done so for some time. Ike wondered if it might be connected to the older case. Certainly a possibility.

  A second bag held a faded ragged one dollar bill with a phone number scrawled in pencil on it. Who used a pencil nowadays? The United States Treasury printed bills on expensive and special paper. The formula changed from time to time as counterfeiters grew increasingly more sophisticated, and there was a very readable serial number on it. There was a better-than-even chance he could date the bill by the paper’s composition and serial number. Then, if it connected to the dead guy, he’d at least have a rough time frame and a phone number from the time to look up. He’d have it tested. No area code with the phone number, so it could be for anybody and from anywhere. Still, it was worth a try. The dead man’s clothes, the ME said, had been purchased in New York. That narrowed the search area somewhat. He’d have someone look for the phone number in the Connecticut, New York, Long Island, and New Jersey directories for the years the bill had been in circulation. Maybe something would jump out.

  Then there were the dental records the ME was cooking up. He should have an ID soon enough. There was no way all or any of this could be linked to either killing with certainty, but the fact they were found at the scene might lead to something. One hoped so.

  The techs had made a plaster cast of a footprint, boot print actually. It could be either that of a child or a woman and the tread indicated the boot had been recently purchased. He’d need to identify the maker and survey the local stores for a rece
nt sale of that particular boot. So, progress. As soon as Billy and the intern returned, he’d get them cracking on this stuff.

  He stared at the yellowed photo, leaning back in his ancient oak desk chair which, mercifully, had responded to oil and lost its squeal.

  Chapter Eight

  In mid-June the scent of hundreds of flowers and shrubs compete with each other for attention, particularly in the morning when the air is cooler and the dew still adorns the petals. In a few weeks or perhaps days and, if you haven’t planned your plantings carefully, only honeysuckle will be in bloom and by July, that will be the only relaxing scent anywhere. Aromatherapy is not a New Age invention. Gardeners have known about it for millennia.

  Ike and Ruth sat in his car on the parking lot of Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church with the windows rolled down. They’d had their hour with The Reverend Blake Fisher and now stared through the windscreen seeing, but otherwise not appreciating, the flowers that bordered the graveled lot.

  “He said ‘No.’ Do you believe that?” Ruth asked.

  “He did, and I do.”

  “I can’t believe it. I mean, we have known him since he arrived as a wet-behind-the ears vicar with enough baggage to keep a shrink busy for a year. You solved a murder that practically shut his church down and could have sent him packing. And, as you pointed out, I very nearly made him a faculty member. Well, thank God that didn’t happen.’

  “Slight exaggeration on the baggage quotient there, Harris, and it’s his church. I guess he can do anything he wants. Maybe if you had given him an appointment of some sort, he’d have to have accommodated. Hell, you’re the president.”

  “Nuts. How could he not marry us?”

  “Listen, he does have a point.”

  “Which was? Remind me.”

  “He said a church wedding is a sacrament and not to be taken lightly. In his line of work I guess that’s important. He said he loved us both but he also knew that the wedding would be just for show and to cover our asses—actually he didn’t say asses—embarrassment at the circumstances of our foray into matrimony in Vegas. But doing it for us certainly did not represent a commitment by either of us to a religious point of view, lifestyle, or the sacrament involved.”