Drowning Barbie

by Frederick Ramsay

  “But maybe they can stay permanent.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Well, for one thing, there’s that position that is empty now that Grace White has went back to Maine. Sam could just fall right back in and take over all that computer stuff, and…umm.”

  “Umm is right. We only got one slot and what are the chances the town council with the mayor on Ike’s case, giving us another? And if they don’t, then where you going to put Karl?”

  “I was thinking that maybe Charley Picket was getting ready to retire and Karl could have his spot.”

  “Retire? Who said Charley was fixing to retire?”

  “Well, nobody, I guess. But he could. He should, you know. He’s been on the force for, like, forever and it’s time for him to think about letting someone else have a chance. He’d still get his pension and all.”

  “Don’t you go there, Essie. Charley ain’t about to step down, if I know him, and neither is anybody else on the staff.”

  “Maybe someone will get hurt or, God forbid, there’d be a fatality or—”

  “Hold it right there, Missy. We ain’t about to wish for anything like that. You know what they say about wishing for a thing too much. You just get them crazy ideas out of your head, you hear? Wishing for something like that…You do understand that a wish like that one, if you were to make it, could end up it being me that’s the fatality? You want me dead?”

  “Not you, no, not anybody, and it’s not a wish. I’m just saying.”

  “Well, you can stop it right now.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ike entered Frank’s restaurant, acknowledged Ruth’s presence in a booth in the back with a wave, and went directly into the men’s room. Ruth signaled for Frank to bring her another martini and Ike’s old-fashioned. The drinks arrived with Ike.

  “You look like hell,” she said.

  “I feel like hell. I feel like I’ve been dragged backwards through a pile of garbage…wait, make that something worse, a pile of sh—”

  “I got it. So, who or what prompted that journey?”

  “You know the woman we found dead in the woods last week?”

  “Know her? No, I don’t. I know that you found a body, yes, Ethyl Somebody. What about her?”

  “Ethyl Smut. I just spent an hour discussing the lady’s lifestyle with Rita, the night dispatcher, and another hour with a longtime friend of hers, if friend is the right word, and I feel like I need a shower—two showers and a long soak in bleach or something.”

  “Care to share?”

  “Not before we eat, no. It would spoil your appetite.”

  “Afterwards, then, and we can take the shower together.”

  “You are incorrigible, but I like your style.”

  “And hungry. Drink up, Schwartz. I already ordered us the roast beef and a side salad. The shower can be dessert. By the way, did you know that if you want to order a martini nowadays you have to say what kind?”

  “You mean vodka or gin, on the rocks or straight up?”

  “No. Today, anything served in what is generally regarded as a martini glass is some kind of a martini. So, there are apple-tinis—don’t ask, I have no idea—someone sent me a recipe for a s’mores martini last week. She said saw it on Facebook. And then there are chocolate martinis, seafood martinis—”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. A seafood martini would be a bed of shredded lettuce with shrimp or tuna or, I don’t know, maybe whale, in it.”

  “Lord love a duck. I was just getting used to ‘comfort dogs’ and now—”

  “Comfort dogs?”

  “Pooch in a purse. Psychologists prescribe them to anxious patients to relieve their stress, aid in grieving, and so on.”

  “Like a hook-up bag only it barks.”

  “Hook-up bag? What the…? Wait, let me guess. Young women, who should know better, carry around a change of clothes, toothbrush, and other necessaries, in case they hook up, spend the night with a man, and don’t make it home by morning?”

  “You are being judgmental but, yes, that’s the idea.”

  “I am not being judgmental, I am showing my age.”

  “I like your age.”

  “I’m beginning to think I don’t.”

  Frank placed their dinners in front of them and bid them “bone appa-tit.”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “It’s bon appétit, Frank. It’s French.”

  “That’s what I said, bone appatit.”

  “Right.”

  He wandered back to the entrance and positioned himself in the doorway as if to will another customer or two off the sidewalk and into the building.

  Ike twirled his napkin into his lap. “There’s a new one. Who knew there was an app for that?”

  “What?”

  “App a tit.”

  “Shut up. Do you ever think we’ll have a restaurant that serves decent food in this berg?”

  “Someday. Maybe we should quit our jobs and start one. Anything would be better than being law-and-order in Picketsville. We could serve the state’s only comfort martini—a pooch-tini.”

  “Hook-up burgers.”

  Ike shoved back from the table, eyes closed. “Thanks for the attempts at hilarity but…”

  “Your conversations with whomever…your sources, must have been really bad.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Finish your dinner first.”

  They ate in silence. Ruth pushed her plate away and shook her head at the dessert cart Frank wheeled to their table.

  “Just coffee, Frank,” she said.

  “You finished eating?”

  “As much as I care or dare to, yes. So, what did you hear?”

  “Do you know anything about meth babies?”

  “Only what I read. Is that what this is all about? Babies or a baby addicted to methamphetamine?”

  “That is only page one of a very thick book. The woman—the one we found dead in the woods, was a heavy user. She supported her habit by dealing, stealing, and selling herself. Then, not surprisingly, she got pregnant and had a baby, a meth baby with all the potential deficits and problems that go with that status.”

  “So, what happened to the child?”

  “Patience…When the baby was eight or nine, maybe younger, we can’t be sure, her mother pimped her out as well.”

  “She turned her daughter, her child, into a prostitute?”

  “Yep. The kid, according to the woman I spoke to, had been serially raped so many times that by the time she turned fifteen her reproductive organs were effectively destroyed. Her mind was so scattered by doses of meth, heroin, and booze forced on her that she is, or was, borderline schizoid. If there was ever a prime suspect in the mother’s murder, she’s it.”

  “Did she do it?”

  “I’m guessing not. I can’t say why, but no, I don’t think so. Furthermore she ran away a couple of years back and, if she got—and then stayed—clean, she should be more or less stable by now. That is good news and bad.”

  “Explain. I mean clean is good, right?”

  “That part, yes, but if she’s rational, she can point her finger at more than one abuser, and that could spell big trouble for some. They will attempt to stop her.”

  “My God, Ike that is terrible. I can’t imagine what that must be like. To have endured the abuse would be bad enough, but now to be in danger for her life because of it? She’s the victim all over again. And you say the mother really…men really…?”

  “Really. It must have been a whole lot worse than anything you or I could possibly imagine. Think of what that child must have been forced to do. I have seen a lot of really bad crap in my day, Ruth. Suicide bombings that blew up people at random, kids, moms, grandparents, body parts scatt
ered all over and mixed up so that you couldn’t tell where one body began and another ended. I’ve witnessed assassinations, mass murders, and God only knows what other horrors here and abroad, but the thought of a girl spending her childhood and early adolescence—the time when she should be playing with Barbie dolls, or talking for hours on the telephone, or having a small life crisis at the appearance of her first zit, or menstrual cycle, and pursuing boys when the hormones kicked in…Instead of that, she is subjected to a string of pushers, perverts, and men who should have known better forcing themselves on her and all with her mother’s connivance.Hell, I could have killed the lady myself.…”

  Ike’s voice trailed off. He stared at the gravy congealing on his plate and drained the rest of his old-fashioned.

  Ruth did the same with her martini. “For what it’s worth, if I had known about it, Ike, I would have happily killed the woman too.”

  “And that goes for most of the people I’ve talked to who knew even a few of the details. We’d have to get in line, like the gang on The Orient Express, and take turns. And that’s the problem. I have too many suspects and, therefore, none at all.”

  “Whoever killed her did the community a service, Ike. Let it go. Concentrate on rehabbing the kid. What about her father, or is that asking too much?”

  “Her father is…damn, I can’t remember the name. That’s annoying. I never forgot stuff like that before. It’ll come to me. I said I was having problems with my age. Anyway, he is also missing, possibly dead, maybe even the other body we found, although that’s a stretch, so, no place to go there. And I can’t do anything about rehabilitation—that’s for the child services people and assumes we can find the girl. As for doing the community a service, I understand, but, as I said to my source, ‘It doesn’t work that way.’ Murder is murder and the people who kill bad guys go to jail just like the ones who kill good guys.”

  “They shouldn’t have to.”

  “To do otherwise creates much too great a risk for the rest of us, believe me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, vigilantes can get out of control and all that, but just this once I’d be in favor of looking the other way.”

  “I hear you.”

  “I think I’m ready for that bath now. Jesus, her own daughter. Nine you said? Jesus.”

  “Eight or nine, maybe seven, yeah. I will put a call into the welfare wonks and see if they happened to have run across her. Flora Blevins knows where she is but she refuses to tell me. I could arrest her for obstruction of a criminal investigation, but she can be stubborn as hell and wouldn’t talk anyway. I think the fact that George LeBrun is on the loose shook her cage a little, though. Anyway, until I find the kid, sit her down, and get names, dates, and places, I’m stuck. You know what really frosts me?”

  “There’s more?”

  “Nobody was able to stop it, Ruth. Presumably, the cops were called, but except for a disturbing the peace or a drunk-and-disorderly citation, nobody would come forward with the proof of any wrongdoing. The mother was never arraigned on the abuse charges. When push got to shove, either the authorities were too inept or the people who could say something were too scared to step up.”

  “You don’t know that. I read that the number of sex abuse cases that ever go to trial is, like, twenty-five percent, that prosecutors say they never have a tight enough case to pursue it and get a conviction.”

  “And they let them walk. You would think they would at least try. Even if they can’t nail the bastards, they could put them on notice and in the public eye.”

  “Prosecutors are public officials with an eye to reelection. They don’t like to lose cases, especially ones that carry the emotional baggage child sex abuse crimes do.”

  “I guess. Then there is the drug culture that spawns it, and the people involved in the traffic who have power and reputations. Celebrities shove that crap up their noses while they thumb them at society. Glamour is cocaine. You remember the t-shirt we saw in Vegas…it had ‘Caviar and Cocaine’ emblazoned across the front and the moron who wore it seemed convinced that trendy justifies stupidity. Then there is the idolization of gangsters on TV. It might have been great acting, but to make a hero of a man who murders, sells drugs in his own son’s school, and keeps a prostitute as a mistress? We have a culture that glorifies crime and refuses to understand that by so doing we are aiding and abetting.”

  “Wait. What about murder mysteries, books—Agatha Christie, Ian Rankin, Donis Casey?”

  “Donis who?”

  “Never mind. What about books with crime as the theme?”

  “If the bad guys get caught, I’m on it. If the protagonist is the murderer, no way.”

  “You don’t read a lot, do you?”

  “I live this stuff twenty-four seven. If I read anything, it will be nonfiction or classics. There are stacks of them I haven’t gotten to yet. When I’m done with them, there are plays and poetry.”

  “Okay, okay, I take your point, but I will say methinks the sheriff doth protest too much. I think you have a secret cache of pulp fiction under your bed and late at night you sneak-read it under the covers with a flashlight.”

  “You peeked under my bed?”

  “You were asleep and I was restless—had a look around. Self-preservation, you could say. If I have to be married to you, I want to know what dark secrets you are hiding.”

  “And you thought you’d find them under the bed?”

  “Where else?”

  “In the freezer is where I’d look.”

  “Right. Getting back to your rant…aiding and abetting what?”

  “Murder, for one. The murders committed by gangbangers who shoot up rival dealers in the streets every day. If you are paying some low level dealer for cocaine and shoving it up your nose because it is—or you think you are—cool, you must assume some responsibility for the acts your money bought along with the drugs.”

  “Wow, a cop speaks his mind. A society that trivializes evil will eventually succumb to it.”

  “I guess. Who said that?”

  “No idea. Must have read it somewhere.”

  “The point is, we have a badly used child and if that weren’t enough, the worst of this whole rotten mess, inherent evil notwithstanding, is that she and abused children everywhere don’t make very compelling witnesses. Half the time they’re too young and cannot articulate what’s happened to them or even know what is wrong. They don’t know what has happened to them isn’t normal. If they’re older and able to, they are afraid to say anything and dummy up.”

  “What do you do?”

  “What we can, I suppose. And you know what really frosts my buns? For some reason, this girl’s mother avoided any real jail time, or she pleads out to lesser charges, and nothing changes for the kid. How can that be?”

  “Life sucks, Ike.”

  “For some folks, it does indeed.”

  “Okay, on your feet. Time for a long hot bath which may include some therapeutic options.”

  “Works for me.”

  “One more thing.”

  “What?”

  “My system can’t take this in. I can’t help but think of the women, the students, who are nominally in my charge and I am scared for them. How many, do you suppose, had to endure something like this in their growing up?”

  “More than you or I might imagine.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Dorothy Sutherlin owned her house outright. Thirty years before, when she married her husband, she declared she wanted a large family and room for all the kids. He did not have the money to purchase that kind of house, but managed to put a down payment on a modest bungalow outside the Picketsville town limits where prices were lower. As the youngest of a string of first-generation sons and daughters of Great Depression parents, he’d been encouraged to learn a variety of skills as part of his growing up. His parents, like others
who managed to outlast the dark days of the nineteen thirties and early forties, insisted that anyone who could do many things, from manual labor to bookkeeping, could always find work even in the worst of times. He took up carpentry as one of those ancillary skills. Thus, as his family grew, so did the bungalow. Each successive child meant an addition to the house—another room, an enlarged kitchen, a second story and so on, all of which he built himself. In the end when his youngest, Henry, bawled his way into the world, the house had grown to be the largest in the area and, in appearance, the most architecturally challenging. The neighbors sometimes said it would be a dwelling more suitable for a Dr. Seuss story. Nevertheless, it served its purpose by providing a warm and safe haven for his family and that, after all, is the only reason to own a home in the first place.

  Billy and Essie now lived across town in a starter home, but Dorothy’s eldest, Frank, and youngest were still with her. The other boys, except the one KIA in the first Gulf War, were in the service—SEALs, Army, and so on. So, there was more than enough room for Essie and Billy and their new baby and Karl and Sam and theirs to move in temporarily. And Danny, on leave from Little Creek, rounded out what for Dorothy had evolved into a near perfect week.

  It is an axiom that bad news will sometime bring good times. The several murders, old and recent, and the incomprehensible release of George LeBrun from prison had many worrisome aspects, but it had also created a reunion of sorts. And for that, Dorothy had a celebratory feast laid out for her guests.

  “There’s enough food here to feed the Eighty-second Airborne,” Billy said when he eyed the stacks of sliced thick homemade bread, sticks of real butter, a dark Smithfield ham, two whole rounds of cheese, slaw, a huge bowl of German potato salad, and four pies—one of which he could see was pumpkin, the others’ contents hidden by golden crusts. There were four different vegetables and a whole turkey complete with stuffing.

  “There’s coffee and ice cream for later,” his mother said, obviously pleased with the display she’d been working at all afternoon. “Ya’ll just dig in. We can just catch up, and later you can unpack.” New mothers and new babies will always divert the start of any other undertaking for at least twenty-four hours. After which there is at least a slim chance that more serious activities might be attempted.