County Line

by Bill Cameron

  “How many games is Clarice suspended?”

  “Clarice is not the one who struck her teammate—”

  “No. She’s the one who drove Gabi to open her wrists.”

  “That is way out of line, young lady.”

  “Gabi is dead. Clarice is a cancer. But somehow I’m the one who’s out of line.”

  “I know you and Gabi were close, but that doesn’t give you the right—”

  “You know what, Coach? Fuck you.”

  “Ruby Jane Whittaker, if you expect to ever play basketball at this school again—”

  “Are you kidding me? That vicious bitch made Gabi’s life a living hell, and you looked the other way.”

  “You’re trying to deflect the issue—”

  Coach held his ground as Ruby Jane surged to her feet. “Clarice is the issue. But you’ve closed your eyes because she’s your Femzilla and all you care about is the size of the fucking trophy in the case up front.” Her fists shook at her sides. “She’s all yours now. Because no way am I ever going to play for you again.”

  “Get out.”

  “Gabi’s death is on you—”

  “Get out!”

  Ruby Jane got out. Her mother’s car was gone. She walked home, imagining a day at the elementary school hoops, and miles of mindless roadwork ahead. No one offered her a ride. She passed the Caprice in the driveway. Her mother waited in the kitchen. “Slutting around and stealing my car? I ought to have you arrested.”

  Ruby Jane walked past her. “Jail would be an improvement over living with you.”

  - 39 -

  Interview, April 1989

  Mrs. Parmelee threw open the conference room door. Grabel and the chief stood at the counter. Nash sat at a desk. The three turned, surprised, as Mrs. Parmelee marched through the office. Ruby Jane moved to the doorway.

  Mrs. Parmelee stopped a foot from Grabel’s chest. He had to lift his head to look her in the eye. “About time. You have no business—”

  “I know who you are.”

  He attempted a smirk. “My name is stitched above my shirt pocket.”

  “You’re the cop who perjured himself over that botched Stop-n-Go robbery last year. You falsified the report in order to implicate an innocent teenager whose only crime was practicing skateboard tricks a block away when the robbery occurred. Then you conspired with your partner to lie to the grand jury.”

  Grabel’s face went slack. “That unfortunate incident was misrepresented in the press.”

  “You took a shortcut because you couldn’t be bothered with doing your job. Thank God for that young man the prosecutor noticed inconsistencies in your report.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Credit where credit is due, though. You dodged the grand jury long enough for your partner to break under pressure and put his gun in his mouth. All you had to do then was deflect blame onto him for the whole sad mess.” She shook her head, tut-tutted through her teeth. “Too bad your supervisors at the Dayton P.D. weren’t sold on your story. Perhaps they knew it wasn’t an isolated incident.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m surprised the chief here hired you.”

  Grabel swallowed. The flesh on his throat grew taut. He looked to the chief, who frowned.

  “So now what? A repeat performance in Farmersville? Reach a conclusion and then squeeze some poor girl until you achieve the outcome you’ve predetermined?”

  Grabel backed up against the counter. When he spoke, his voice spluttered. “She committed assault—”

  “She had a fight with a classmate. The school dealt with the incident.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Let me explain to you how simple it is.” Mrs. Parmelee leaned into him, her lips twisted into a nasty smile. “These fellows know me as a high school English teacher. What they don’t know is my brother is Roger Lockman.”

  It took a moment, but what color remained drained from his face. Ruby Jane remembered Mrs. Parmelee said her brother was a county prosecutor.

  “I’m going to speak with Roger now. If I have to come back here, I’ll bring him with me. He’s often mentioned his desire to have another go at you.”

  Mrs. Parmelee glanced back at the conference room door, her eyes bright with triumph. Ruby Jane smiled gratefully. Mrs. Parmelee nodded as if to say you’ve got this now, girl. Ruby Jane wasn’t so sure, but made no move as Mrs. Parmelee banged through the gate at the end of the counter and stomped down the stairs. Grabel sagged against the desk, ran his hand over his face. Shaken, apparently unaware Ruby Jane had witnessed the exchange. She returned to her chair at the window.

  She didn’t have to wait long. When Grabel and Nash returned, they brought the smell of old air with them. Grabel’s face was still pale, but he’d regained some measure of his composure. He no longer carried the folder. He held a couple of curling fax pages. He didn’t bother to sit down.

  “You do much traveling?” His voice was a rasp.

  “What do you think?”

  “You ever find yourself out Missouri way?” He raised the fax. “Dale Whittaker sold his Dodge Ram pickup to a soldier at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri last September. Title transfer went through in October.”

  The arms of the chair grabbed the table edge as she pushed to her feet. She staggered, caught herself with one hand on the window. She felt a sudden urge to keep pushing, to lift her palm and strike the glass. Watch it shatter and slice into her wrist. She imagined the pain would offer escape from the turmoil in her heart. But with that thought she drew a sharp breath and jerked away from the glass. She turned her hands over and traced the faint blue veins along her wrists. All Gabi wanted was to be loved, and to be free of derision for who she was. Deprived of both, could she be blamed for taking the only escape she believed left to her?

  At least, in the end, Mrs. Parmelee frustrated any chance for Grabel to attack Gabi’s memory and spirit. And now Ruby Jane—deservedly or not—was free.

  She thrust past Nash to the door. Grabel was talking, his words like marbles rolling around in a jar. When she slammed the conference room door, the whole building trembled.

  - 40 -

  Stormy Night, August 1988

  Later, Ruby Jane would wonder if she missed on purpose, or because of her overwrought nerves. Dale knelt beside the hole and reached out to her, hands beseeching, a mewling in his throat. The smell of gunpowder hung on the air between them and stung the inside of her nose.

  “Ruby—”

  “Don’t talk.”

  “But I need help, baby girl. It hurts.”

  She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him to cry and whimper and beg. His eyes fragmented in the flashlight’s glimmer, two empty holes. He swallowed, and the brush crackled under his knees as he shifted side-to-side. He tilted his head, cringing. In that moment she saw a shade of Grammy Mae in his stricken face. She remembered her last visit to the hospital, the night the morphine lost all power to blunt the jagged edge of her grandmother’s pain. Grammy had wept and looked at Ruby Jane and told her to be a good girl. To be a true girl. To grow past Dale and Bella and become a woman shaped by her own dreams and desires, not by the petty cruelty of her parents.

  She drew a long, shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, Dale seemed somehow further away, his whining fainter.

  “I need a doctor.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Ruby—”

  “You’re dead to me.” Sweat gathered between her palm and the gun butt. “I’m offering you the chance to keep that a metaphor.” The edge in her voice was sharper than the need in her chest.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t care. Go away. Never come back.”

  “I need—”

  She pointed the gun at the bridge of his nose and he got quiet. “Your truck is up the road. Go.” After a moment, he struggled to his feet and backed out of the broken moonlight. His footsteps crunc
hed away through the woods. Likely as not, he’d be home ahead of her, patched up and angry, his gunshot wound raising questions she wouldn’t want to answer.

  But at least she wouldn’t be a killer.

  The truck started. Dale drove north, away from her, away from home. For now. She was alone. All that remained was to clean up. First the toolboxes, then the gun went into the dark cavity. The rain returned while she shoveled, but she welcomed its cleansing caress. When the hole was filled, she scattered wet leaves around the depression. In the fading glow of the flashlight, she saw what looked like a shallow grave. Form followed function.

  She slogged back out to Preble County Line Road, left the shovel in the rain-clogged ditch. The flashlight died during the walk to her mother’s car. She threw it into the Wentz cornfield. Headlights appeared in the distance a few minutes later.

  She knew it was a cop. For a moment she considered hopping the ditch and vanishing into the corn. But her arms hung at her sides, dead weights. Each step felt like she was climbing through sand. She drew a breath and waited.

  The patrol car stopped beside her. Werth Nash lowered his window and hit her with the beam of his spotlight. She squinted and raised a muddy hand to block the glare.

  “Ruby?” He bobbed his head side to side. “Ruby Whittaker? Is that you?”

  “Can you get that light out of my eyes?”

  He swiveled the beam toward the ground. “What are you doing all the way out here?”

  She lowered her hand. “I’m walking.”

  “Walking?” He moved the beam around, as if expecting to find a crowd lurking in the dark. “You’re five miles from town and covered in mud. You look like you’ve been fighting the raccoons.”

  “I tried a short cut.”

  “Didn’t work out too well, did it?”

  There was no answer to that.

  “Well, climb in. I’ll drive you home.”

  She didn’t want to get into a police car. Not yet. Soon, she wouldn’t have a choice.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You are not fine. You’re soaked through.”

  “I want to walk. I need to walk.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What’s going on, Ruby?”

  “Nothing.”

  He looked her up and down again, indifferent to the searing effect of the light on her eyes as he passed the spotlight beam across her face.

  “You look like hell.”

  “No one ever taught you how to talk to girls, did they?”

  “You have a fight with your mom?”

  Something in her face must have betrayed her anxiety.

  “That’s her Caprice back there, isn’t it? You took off in it. Maybe realized you had no business driving without your license yet. Decided to walk it off, then realized how far out you were?”

  Her lip trembled. Nash tried a gentle smile. He didn’t know she regularly ran this far and more. Her eleven mile loop took her right up Preble County Line from Chicken Bristle.

  “Ruby, listen to me. You think I don’t remember being a teenager, but hell, it wasn’t that long ago. I’m not looking to make trouble for you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He was quiet for a long time. Then he licked his lips. “Did Dale come after you?” Her face must have betrayed something. His smile dissolved into a wary concern. “Earlier, I passed his truck farther up the road, but I see he’s gone now. Did he do something to you? Is that why you don’t want to go home?”

  “He’s not there.” She said it more as a desperate hope than a statement of fact. But as she spoke, her words seemed to take on substance. Her heart rate slowed.

  Nash spotted the change. His grim smile softened. “How about this? You drive your mom’s car back. I’ll follow after you, make sure you’re safe. You get it home and we’ll let this go, okay?”

  “Okay.” She went to the turn-out, climbed into the Caprice before Nash could change his mind. Bella would be pissed by all the mud on the seat and carpet. Ruby Jane didn’t care. She started the car, and backed out onto Preble County Line Road. Nash flashed his brights as she pulled away.

  She drove well below the speed limit, expecting Nash’s lights to flash any moment as the news of Dale came over the radio. But she got all the way home, parked in her mother’s usual spot in the driveway, left plenty of room for Dale’s truck. Nash waved goodbye as she climbed out. She stood beside the car for a moment, tried to catch her breath. Jimmie’s car was parked on the street. The house was dark, quiet. No sign of her mother, but Jimmie waited in the kitchen, alone. The only light was from the single dim bulb over the stove.

  “What happened? What did you do?” He’d freshened up with Jim Beam.

  “I took care of it, you coward.” She went to the sink to wash the mud off her hands. Her father’s scent lingered in her nostrils, cigarettes and machine oil and wet earth.

  “I’m sorry, Roo. I freaked out. I—” He ran his fingers through his damp hair. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. Someone will probably find the hole tomorrow.” If Dale doesn’t send the cops after you first. She watched him pace, increasingly agitated by the squeak of his sneakers on the linoleum and by the ridiculous stammer when he repeated, over and over, “What was I thinking? … What was I thinking?” Her anger raw, she left him to fret.

  After a shower, she lay on her bed in her robe, hair wrapped in a towel. Her intention was to get dressed and await the inevitable, but she awoke at first light to a still, silent house. No cops, and no Jimmie. He’d left a note on the kitchen counter. “Got a chance to stay with friends at the Jersey shore before classes start. Going straight to BG afterward.” Bullshit.

  She went for a run, shot threes at the elementary school.

  As the days passed into weeks, Bella and the shade of Dale haunting her days and nights, she came to understand she would never tell Jimmie the truth. He’d left her alone to face the repercussions of his actions, first on Preble County Line Road, and then in the house with the woman who’d incited it all.

  - 41 -

  After the Interview, April 1989

  Ruby Jane paused at the door at the foot of the stairs, hands on the crash bar.

  She supposed she ought to feel relieved. Relieved Jimmie hadn’t murdered their father. Relieved she hadn’t buried him in the woods. Instead she felt guilty—not for her decision to cover up the crime—but because, faced with the same choice as her brother, she hadn’t shot the old man herself.

  What kind of person feels guilty she couldn’t kill her own father?

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  “What was that, Ruby?”

  Nash. He’d followed her.

  “Nothing.”

  “I heard what you said.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “Ruby. Sergeant Grabel isn’t here.”

  “Did you stop being a cop between here and the conference room?”

  He sighed. Maybe he hoped she felt bad about the trouble she gave him and Grabel, but if he thought a sigh would penetrate her armor, she had news for him. She lived with Bella Denlinger, for Christ’s sake.

  She pushed through the door. Nash followed, undeterred by her antipathy.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any need to take you to school now.”

  “They had an early release.”

  He didn’t seem to hear. “It’s been a long day for all of us.” He zipped his jacket against a chill that wasn’t there. Maybe against Ruby Jane herself. “You want a ride?”

  “My house is six blocks away.”

  “I thought you might not be ready to go back right away. Your mother—”

  “Yeah. My mother. You think she played hooky too?”

  “She was very upset when we talked to her this morning.” Nash must not know that her mother didn’t have anything to play hooky from. She was either home necking with a bourbon bottle or making her determined way to the liquor store.

  “Very drunk, you mean. But
you took her at face value anyway, didn’t you?”

  She laced her fingers behind her back, right from above, left from below. She needed to stretch, needed to sweat, needed to breathe. She never got to finish her run.

  “Ruby, I realize you didn’t want to talk to Sergeant Grabel. But, seriously—”

  “Seriously what? You think I have anything different to say to you?”

  “I’m trying to help you.”

  “Help me into jail, you mean.”

  “Ruby—”

  “You people are all looking to hang me.”

  “It’s just, if you know where he is, we could clear all this up. Think about your grandmother’s money.”

  “I don’t care about my grandmother’s money.”

  There was more. She heard the need in his agitated breathing. Maybe he wanted to prove he could do something Sergeant Grabel, late of the Dayton Police, couldn’t. Or maybe he gave a genuine damn about Ruby Jane Whittaker. It didn’t matter. Everyone had either turned on her or abandoned her, except Mrs. Parmelee.

  Nash was too late to earn her trust now.

  Bella rolled up to the curb in the Caprice and stopped, engine idling. Ruby Jane ignored her and headed west on foot. Bella threw the car into gear and followed along beside her. The passenger side window was down, and when Bella pulled even with Ruby Jane she called out through it.

  “Ruby, honey, get in the car.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Language, young lady. I’m still your mother.”

  “I don’t know what you are.”

  One of the valves was sticking in the Caprice. Bella’s fingers twitched on the steering wheel.

  “You wanted me to go out there that night.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure you do. All that coy, ‘He’s not going to Eaton,’ crap. Then, pretending like you were trying to stop me. Well played.”