Drowning Barbie

by Frederick Ramsay

  Gone.

  Someone had beat her to it? Leota? Probably not. She wouldn’t have a reason to fetch it out unless she wanted her to stay put and thought the bag being missing would hold her in place. The old woman didn’t know anything about being on the run. Anyway, her stuff was gone. She followed the drag marks where it had been pulled free and out onto the center of the barn floor. She eyed the place where the contents must have been dumped and picked through. So, definitely not Leota. She picked up a single earring the thief missed. She counted several sets of footprints and frowned. She needed to consider what to do next. The possibility of retrieving the bag now was zip, whether Leota or someone else had it. That fact meant she’d be traveling light. Whoever took the bag took her leather jacket, too. That meant she couldn’t travel some places without freezing and all. She stamped her foot in frustration. The noise disturbed some of the barn’s permanent residents. Darla wasn’t afraid of much anymore. Being knocked around by pigs and perverts during your growing up years pretty much toughened you up for anything. Mice, on the other hand, did not work for her. She had a friend in juvie who was allowed to keep a pet mouse. Darla had dumped it out the window one night. She hated mice.

  Luckily, she’d managed to lift five twenties from the fancy sugar bowl Flora kept in her kitchen cupboard. Old people were funny. Like, who wouldn’t know exactly where to look for a stash of cash in their houses? A hundred bucks wasn’t much, but it was a start. A good coat would eat most of it if she went north, but it was summer here, so maybe that could wait. She stamped her foot again, turned and headed for the door. Sticking around this mouse motel wasn’t such a good idea and she really needed to figure out what to do next.

  She had just cleared the barn door when she heard what she was sure must be Leota’s truck approaching. There was no mistaking that crappy-sounding motor. She ducked into the brush next to the barn, hunkered down, and waited. She had no intention of debating with her guardian about next things and all. Leota was a nice lady, but she didn’t know shit about what you had to do to survive in the real world. Darla guessed that came from being a library lady. They lived out of books, not on the streets where things were, like, really different.

  ***

  Leota stared into the vacant space where Darla had stowed her backpack and made the same discovery. Darla must have come, retrieved it, and skipped. God only knew where the girl thought she could go and not be found. Suddenly, and for the first time, the enormity of what Leota had set into motion in the days and weeks before hit her like an ice tsunami, like someone had just punched her in the stomach. She hadn’t felt anything so disabling since Timmy O’Donnell had done just that to her in the third grade. She could scarcely catch her breath.

  She couldn’t pry her eyes from the empty space. A tear ran down one cheek. She had been so sure that she’d done the right thing about Darla and now, instead of making the girl’s life safer, she’d made it a hundred times more dangerous. She squeezed her eyes closed and tried to push aside the panic that had started to take over her thoughts. She could just hear what Flora would say when she found out.

  “What were you thinking, Leota? Isn’t this just like you? I guess they didn’t teach you common sense in that fancy college you ran off to, did they? First it’s that bum Mark Dellinger and now this.”

  She heaved a guilty sigh and thought of the girl.

  “I didn’t think any of this would happen, I promise you, Darla, I thought with your mother out of the picture…How could I have known about George LeBrun? My God, Flora was right all along.”

  A mouse in search of an exit from what had become an increasingly hostile environment, and emboldened by the preoccupation of the woman talking to herself, darted across the floor and disappeared through a knothole in the wall. Leota was drawn out of her trance an instant later by a shriek. Not a very loud shriek but still audible. She could have sworn someone outside had made the noise. She rushed to the door and searched the road both ways. Nothing. She must have been imagining things. The countryside is full of odd noises. Now what? The Road House of course. Anything else?

  What had the deputies been talking about? If she remembered correctly, the sheriff’s people had mentioned a BOLO. That meant they were notifying other law enforcement to be on the lookout for Darla, didn’t it? They’d had one on her, too, and they’d found her. She had no idea what the acronym stood for but she knew its significance. Would someone find Darla in time? She rocked back on her heels and forced herself to concentrate.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Ike had his cell phone clamped to one ear and his land line to the other. Billy Sutherlin had his attention in the former. He waited for Flora to pick up on the latter.

  “What’s she doing, Billy?”

  “She stopped at that hay barn on your dad’s property. Went in and five minutes later came back out. Then she jumped in that old One-fifty of hers and took off.”

  “What was she doing in the hay barn?”

  “I got the impression she went in to get something. But she didn’t have anything when she came out so, either she didn’t find what she was looking for, or there’s something else in there she was after.”

  “She didn’t find the pile of old clothes. There was a photograph in that pile. That’s the one we ran through the software to identify the girl. So, that’s who put the stuff in there. Stay with her, Billy, I want to know where she goes.”

  “You do know she has a twelve-gauge shotgun in the bed of that truck?”

  “Charley found it while you all were questioning her and took the shells out. Before she can do anything rash, she will have to reload. Charley didn’t find any reloads in the truck and we searched her purse. I think she’s neutralized. If she goes back to the Road House, we can assume she’s stalking LeBrun. I don’t want…Hold on a second, Flora, okay?…I don’t want her messing with that man, especially with a firearm.”

  “But you would like to know why she’s doing it.”

  “I think I already do, but yes, I’d like to be sure. Out.” Ike snapped his phone shut and shifted the land line to his other ear.

  “Okay, Flora, we found your cousin, Leota? She had no idea that the girl had disappeared. Why didn’t you tell me about her relationship with the girl’s father?”

  “I didn’t?”

  “You know you didn’t. Listen, your cousin is in town, but you knew that.”

  “I thought she went home, Ike. Okay, here’s the thing, you wouldn’t know this on account of it happened when you were off being an international snoop in them days, but Leota, she and Mark Dellinger were an item once, you could say.”

  “So she said. It gets worse. It looks like she’s stalking George LeBrun and on top of that Mark Dellinger is dead, probably murdered. Does any of this mean anything to you, ring any bells?”

  “I reckon that’d be good news and bad news.”

  “There is no good news in this. Flora, what the hell is your cousin up to?”

  “With Leota, you can never tell, she’s one of them nervous women. Did you just say you thought she’s stalking that LeBrun? That ain’t like her. She’s never showed any spunk in her entire blessed life and you think she’s after that piece of trash?”

  “I am not a mind reader and I never met the lady until an hour ago. How would I know what she’s up to? You’re the cousin. You tell me.”

  “Like I said, she don’t have the courage of a rabbit. I can’t think, except…that bum Dellinger is dead, maybe murdered?”

  “Yes.”

  “If she thinks LeBrun done him, she’ll maybe be after him. I don’t know what that flop ears would do if she catches him, though.”

  “She had a twelve-gauge shotgun hidden in the bed of her truck. Does that suggest anything?”

  “Lordy, Lordy. That old scatter gun was her daddy’s. He killed hisself with it. You don’t think she plans to shoot LeBr
un or herself with it, do you?”

  “Or both maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Well, I told you, she ain’t the brave type. Ike, she’s a librarian, for crying out loud. She more likely would throw a book at him.”

  “I can’t take the chance.”

  “So what will you do?”

  “We have her under surveillance. We can only wait and see.”

  “Whyn’t you pick her up and put her away for awhile?”

  “And we could do that because…?”

  “Vagrancy?”

  “She has a hotel room and she hasn’t done anything illegal. Not like someone I could name.”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’d have done the same if you was me.”

  “Goodbye, Flora. If you hear anything, you let me know.”

  Ike put both phones down and banged his fist on the desk so loudly Rita looked up from across the room.

  “We have a girl on the loose who does not want to be found. We have dozens of people looking for her. Some of them do not wish her well, a half-dozen of them would throw a party if she turns up dead, and one or two would do the killing if they had the chance. On top of that, she is as afraid of the police as her potential killers, so the good guys can’t get at her.”

  Frank who had just walked in from the street, said, “That’s the part I don’t get.”

  “Long story short, Frank. Some of her original abusers used to work out of this office.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what we’re hearing. It puts us in a hell of a bind. She won’t come in willingly. If she did, she could have every one of the people who might be after her in, or back in jail in twenty minutes.”

  “But…”

  “But will she risk it? Does she believe we will do that for her? She doesn’t. Why should she? And so she’s more likely to skip town than allow herself to be drawn back into the godawful life she’s had so far.”

  “What are you going to do, I mean beyond what we’re already doing?”

  “Hope and pray she stays safe until we can at least isolate her from the bad guys. The worst part of all this is, we still haven’t a clue who killed her mother and as much as I dislike the idea, we have to assume she might be the one who did it. At least she has to be on the list of our suspects.”

  “I think if I were that girl, I’d head west as fast and as soon as I possibly could. Sorry, Ike, but I don’t see a good ending here.”

  “No, neither do I.”

  ***

  The girl in question might have felt her ears burning if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with everything going on around her. First a mouse sailed out of a knothole in the wall next to her and ran between her legs. She couldn’t help the “yike” that popped out of her mouth. She thought for sure Leota would have heard her and she’d be found out. Sure enough, a second or two later Leota popped out of the barn and looked around. Darla scrunched down as far as she could and made herself smaller. She held her breath. Leota stood there for a moment like she didn’t know what to do next and then climbed into her ratty old truck and drove away. Darla rose slightly to watch the vehicle disappear and would have stepped out of the bushes except at that moment she heard another engine rev up. She froze and watched as a sheriff’s cruiser sped past.

  It must have been sitting down the road watching and waiting, she thought. Why were the cops following Leota? Probably looking for me. She waited a full minute and the black-and-white had cleared the curve down the road a quarter-mile or so before she eased out of the brush and stepped into the sunlight. Cops were looking for her. Leota was looking for her. Probably other people would be too. She daren’t risk hitchhiking now or even staying on the road. She couldn’t go back to Flora. She’d just call the cops and the nightmare would start all over again. She looked right and then left to get her bearings, then raced across the road and into the woods opposite. If she had it figured right, and if she could maintain a straight line of march, she would be on the north side of Picketsville in half an hour.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  A tall man with what Leota would describe as “an unpleasant manner” stepped out of the bar she’d been watching and lit a cigarette. She could almost smell the aroma from where she sat hunched down in the cab of her pickup. At least she thought it was a cigarette. It might have been dope. She’d heard about dopers from Darla. Everyone knew that bikers smoked dope and this man looked like one of them although he wasn’t wearing a leather jacket with a skull and cross bones on it. Did that matter? she wondered. She’d have to Google it when she got back to Virginia Beach. However there were more immediate things that needed doing that might keep that from happening for a while.

  The man glanced casually right and left and then fixed his eyes on her truck. He stared at her for what seemed a lifetime but could not have been more than half a minute. He dropped his smoke on the gravel and without bothering to extinguish it, turned on his heel and reentered the bar. Had he recognized her? Her truck? Had they guessed what she intended? How could they? What to do. Clearly, she was not cut out for this line of work, but she’d made a promise to herself, to Mark, that she would not rest until all of this sordid business was finished. Once one set out on a certain course, its trajectory seemed immutable. It was like fate, like a Greek tragedy. She could almost hear the chorus chanting away in the background, warning of imminent doom. She shuddered. She was not prepared for doom at that precise moment. She imagined George LeBrun, or that dope smoker or even the occupants of the bar, bursting out of the door, racing across the road, and murdering her where she sat. She decided that she wouldn’t wait around and find out. She started her engine and headed back to her motel to think.

  The prospect of violent death did not frighten her as much as she thought it might. She found that curious. Surely being stabbed or shot or clubbed by drug-crazed monsters should have at least raised her heart rate. But it hadn’t. How odd. She was too occupied with these thoughts to notice the black-and-white take up a position a hundred yards behind her.

  ***

  Darcie Billingsly pushed her oldest through the door and headed straight for Ike’s cubicle.

  “You tell him what you done, Junior.”

  “Darcie, you’re back. I thought you had enough of us for one day. Hello there, young Whaite. What is it you’re supposed to tell me?”

  The boy shuffled his feet and stared at the floor. He tugged at a leather jacket at least a size too large for him and muttered something Ike couldn’t hear.

  “Sheriff Ike can’t hear you, Junior. Now you speak up and tell him what you and Tommy Dewcamp did.”

  “Umm…”

  “It’ll be okay, Whaite. Just spit it out and we’ll deal with it. It wouldn’t have something to do with that jacket, would it?”

  A disproportionately large, pre-adolescent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as the boy searched for enough saliva to alleviate the dry mouth a trip to the sheriff’s office created.

  “Yes, sir, it umm, does. How’d you know?”

  “I’m a policeman. I can tell when a crime has been committed. Talk to me.”

  “And don’t forget about that brand new backpack Tommy took,” his mother chimed in.

  “Okay, Ma, okay. See, Mister Ike, me and Tommy was in the hay barn down on the Franklin Road. You know where that’s at?”

  “I do. It belongs to my father so, yes, I do. What about it?”

  “Oh, shoot, I didn’t know it was yours and all.”

  “My father’s. What about the barn?

  “Oh, yeah, we were, like, in it. Honest, Sheriff, all the kids go there and even some of the older ones. You should be talking to them because what they do in there is probably against the law a whole lot more than what me and Tommy do.”

  “Probably, but right now I want to know exactly what you and Tommy Dewcamp were doing in there that has you sta
nding here and your mom so upset.”

  “Oh, right, sorry. So, me and Tommy was in there exploring, like, and we come across this backpack stuffed up in the rafters.”

  “And?”

  “And so we drug it out and looked at what was in it. Like there was mostly girl’s clothes and—”

  “Baby clothing, pictures, and papers?”

  “Yeah, how’d you know?”

  “I told you. I’m a policeman. We know stuff. I’m guessing you dumped the contents on the barn floor, took some of the clothes, including that jacket, and the backpack and…what did you do with the clothes?”

  “Tommy…”

  “Tommy what?”

  “Tommy figured to use them to bribe Francine.”

  “Tommy was going to bribe Francine…Francine who, and to do what?”

  Whaite Billingsly, Jr. blushed and murmured, “DuVal. Francine DuVal. He thought she might…you know, umm, like, that is…”

  “I get the picture. I won’t ask you if he succeeded. In my experience used clothes that probably wouldn’t fit a thirteen-year-old, no matter how snappy they looked would more likely get Tommy a shot to the chops than a carnal moment.”

  The boy risked a grin. “Yes, sir, and if you mean asking for sex, that’s what happened. It was pretty funny.”

  “So, you stole a bag and clothes from my father’s hay barn, solicited an underage girl for sex, and destroyed private property. Is that what you’re telling me, son?”

  The grin disappeared and the boy gulped and began to sweat. “Well, see…”

  “Do you have any idea what that many felonies that could amount to and how many years in jail you could end up serving if convicted?”

  The boy stared at Ike in panic. “I didn’t have anything to do with Francine Duval. That was all Tommy’s idea. And we thought the bag was, like, abandoned or something. We thought we had, like, salvage rights to it.”