Smiley

by Ezell, Michael

  Robert Lee’s cheeks still held a high red color. His labored breathing huffed into a more rapid pace. Garrett had seen the look before on many, many drunks. Working himself up to do something. So Garrett decided to short-circuit the process if he could.

  “Tell you what. We’ve had our say, and I think we can understand each other like two grown men, can’t we?” Garrett said.

  “I guess,” Robert Lee said. His eyes stayed narrow, though, suspicious.

  Garrett smiled. “Good. Then Tom and I can just leave. Fair enough?”

  “Yeah, you do that.”

  Tom and Garrett both backed toward their cars, still watching. Robert Lee opened his front screen to go back inside—

  And Tom tripped over a corroded bumper and sat down hard.

  Later, Garrett would run it through the theater of his mind over and over. Freeze-frame on the beginning. No loud noises. Nothing threatening. A cop just tripped and fell on his ass.

  Robert Lee spun at the sound, the Ruger suddenly in his hand. The .44 boomed over the snow-covered yard and Tom Poston flopped back like a discarded doll, shot through the head.

  The Colt leaped into Garrett’s hand and the front sight found Robert Lee’s chest before Garrett mentally registered the action. Two loud thunderclaps from the .45 and Robert Lee dropped just as fast as Tom had. Garrett’s pulse hammered in his neck, bright dots swam across his vision.

  “Ah, fuck,” Garrett said.

  In the hushed silence of the snowy yard, only rusting cars and two dead men heard him.

  2

  Taylor smelled hay and clean earth. And blood.

  The blood came from various places on her body. The man had been at her twice so far, working with a scalpel and a piece of hot steel he heated with a torch. Strapped into the special chair, she couldn’t tilt her head down to look at her ruined body. Whatever he put in the IV in her arm turned the screaming white pain in her breasts into a dull throb. She had no way of knowing this wasn’t a kindness, but the cruelest sort of relief, meant to keep her from going into shock and dying too soon.

  The trapdoor hiding this place opened, smooth and silent. This wasn’t some old doomsday shelter thrown together and neglected. This underground room had thick support and crossbeams, and a tidy, dry dirt floor. Like the workshop of a meticulous man.

  He came down to her on handcrafted wooden stairs that would have looked right at home in a multi-million dollar house. Same as the last two times, he wore a rubber butcher’s apron and nothing else. Taylor hoped he wouldn’t try to screw her again. His last failed attempt drove him into a special kind of rage. The scalpel and hot iron hadn’t been enough. He’d used pliers and laughed in her face when she screamed.

  “Well, the little whore is awake,” he said in a soft drawl.

  Taylor saw the bone saw in his hand and screamed and screamed.

  The cold mask he wore when he started on her ankle never changed expression. If someone had told Taylor this blue-eyed monster’s nickname was “Smiley,” she would have told them they were fuckin’ crazy.

  ***

  The station house felt like the family room at a mortuary. Silent. Bereft. Stunned. Foil-paper letters hung on a string said Happy Anniversary. Garrett snatched the sign down, rolling string and letters into an angry ball and slamming it into the trashcan.

  The State Police interview had been short. Pretty cut and dried Justifiable Homicide. But Garrett still had a pounding headache. It started when he drove to Tom Poston’s place and told his wife he’d been killed. The kind of headache no pill could fix. He thought maybe half a bottle of Jack and a night of self-loathing might take the edge off.

  Harley Merriman manned the radio in Shirley’s absence. Shirley had stayed on the radio long enough to settle everything down. Then she went home and alternately cried and drank herself to sleep. She’d known Tom for better than forty years. He even took her to a school dance when they were in Junior High.

  Garrett waved through the window of the dispatch center and Harley gave him the “hold on” signal. He hurried to the door and peered out toward Garrett’s office, like some horrible secret waited down there.

  “There’s a fella here to see you, Chief.”

  “State or County?”

  “He’s...a black fella. That is to say, not that he couldn’t be a State or a—Well, anyway, he’s neither.”

  Times change, but slowly, slowly.

  In Garrett’s office, the stranger sat on a couch the City Council bought in 1979, when Lamar Evans first became Chief. Orange plaid and pleather. Oddly enough, the man looked right at home in 1979, with his long leather coat and flawless Afro.

  “Can I help you?” Garrett said.

  “Chief Evans?” The man looked surprised.

  “Yes?”

  “Sorry, you seem young for a Chief.”

  “I get that a lot.”

  The man stood to shake hands and Garrett took the measure of him. Two or three inches taller than Garrett’s six feet, and about forty pounds heavier. Thick through the neck and chest, with big hands and scarred knuckles.

  “The name’s Chester LaSalle. I understand you had some trouble this morning.”

  “Yeah, so... I was just stopping back by to check some messages. Technically, I’m not on duty. I have to be cleared by the State investigator—“

  LaSalle flopped back down on the hideous couch. “How long you been at this?”

  Garrett shrugged and sat behind his dad’s desk, a flawless cherry-wood piece of art crafted by Smiley Carmichael himself, with the tracks for all the drawers so ingeniously recessed you could hardly see the part line where the drawer and desk came together.

  “I’ve been on the Job thirteen years now. Twelve in LA,” Garrett said.

  LaSalle’s eyebrows went up a millimeter. “Then you know there’s no way in hell of telling what a drunk’s about to do. No making sense of it.”

  “You a counselor?”

  “Nope.”

  One thick hand laid a flier on the desk.

  A smiling young girl stared up, forever frozen in a moment of joy at a seventeenth birthday party according to the candle on the cake. Blonde, straight teeth, two piercings on her right eyebrow.

  LaSalle said, “I’ve been looking for her for two years. Finally talked to a trucker who said he dropped her off near this town. I hear there’s a truck stop around here that lots of young girls frequent.”

  “Only certain kinds of girls,” Garrett said.

  “I’m not looking for a saint. Just a missing girl.”

  “Private eye?”

  “Got some credentials if you wanna see them.”

  The corners of the laminated ID were creased and bent. He’d had this out quite a few times in quite a few police stations, most likely.

  “New York State, huh?” Garrett said. He handed it back. “You probably already found out New York or LA anything doesn’t really impress out this way.”

  “That I have. I’m sure it’s just the New York thing.”

  Garrett put the Cop Eye on LaSalle. The vibe coming off this guy was not Private Investigator. Didn’t make him bad, necessarily. Not yet.

  “You specialize in Missing Persons?” Garrett said.

  “No. The grandfather is an old friend of mine.”

  Garrett took another look at the flier. Girl’s last name was Santini.

  “Blonde Italian girl?”

  “Miracles of modern chemistry. Would you mind if I asked around the truck stop, see if anyone remembers her? I’ll probably be around for a few days, try to talk to as many truckers as I can. I always make a point of checking in with the local law,” LaSalle said.

  “No problem. For me, anyway. You may not get the warmest reception out there.”

  “Maybe you’ll come along. Help warm up the atmosphere a little.” LaSalle stood and headed for the door, walking on the refusal he’d probably gotten in every little town he visited.

  Garrett didn’t know why, but he already li
ked the big man. Very matter-of-fact and self-sufficient, he didn’t really care if Garrett went along or not. He’d promised someone he’d find their girl and that’s what he would do. Garrett could respect that.

  “Tonight?” Garrett said.

  LaSalle stopped and looked back. His turn to take the measure of Garrett.

  “Nah, I wouldn’t ask that. Not after today. I’m staying in room fourteen at that little motel on the edge of town. You know the one?”

  “You mean the Lazy Eight, a.k.a the Artemis Hilton?”

  “That would be the one.”

  A business card appeared. Plain and white, perforated on the edge, likely from a sheet of home-printed cards. It just said LaSalle and gave a cell phone number.

  “Give me a call when you’re ready. I also have someone local I’d like to talk to, if that’s okay with you,” LaSalle said.

  “Who would that be?” Garrett said.

  “Lady by the name of Nadine Pearson. Somebody told me she likes to minister to the girls out at the truck stop.”

  “Good luck with that one. I know you want to chase down every lead, no matter what, but just bear in mind Nadine lives with her nose against her window and sees the worst in everyone.”

  “Sounds like a lady after my own heart,” LaSalle said.

  ***

  Garrett knew he would dream that night. It had taken months to get past the dreams of Michelle, and he hadn’t even been there when she died.

  In this dream, the Robert Lee Withers incident went down pretty much the same way, except Michelle went on the call with him instead of Tom Poston. They rode together in Garrett’s warm car, him in his ridiculous Chief’s uniform, her in LAPD blue, chitchatting all the way about whether painting a baby’s room a particular color really affected the child later in life.

  The snow pattered against the windshield and her perfume made his heart ache.

  And then they were standing in Robert Lee’s front yard and it all happened again, but this time Garrett’s gun wouldn’t work. He crushed the trigger until tendons stood out on his forearms, but the Colt refused to fire. Robert Lee just kept shooting and Michelle just kept screaming.

  In the morning, Garrett sat up in bed and didn’t move for an hour, staring at the wall and thinking about nothing. By the time he mentally checked in, his Mustang rumbled down the empty highway. Not the greatest car for winter roads in West Virginia, but he’d driven the damn thing all the way from Cali, and he kept it as a tiny reminder of what might have been. His therapist said he should sell it.

  He punched in LaSalle’s number and hit Speaker. It rang once. “LaSalle.”

  “Hey, it’s Chief— Uh, Garrett Evans. You feel up to taking a ride?

  3

  “Yep. I remember her. Poor thing.”

  Nadine Pearson looked sorrowful, but then she often did. She’d worn old maid style high-collared dresses since high school. Maybe the life of the senior citizen spinster she would become loomed before her even then. She outlived all her family and took possession of this three-story monstrosity out on the end of Main Street. When the new county roads, and eventually the highway came in, it made the top floor of Nadine’s house a perfect crow’s nest to see all the comings and goings in Artemis. And she took full advantage.

  She tapped LaSalle’s flier with a nicotine-stained finger. “She said she was from New York. Ran away because her pa wouldn’t let her date some young fool she fell in love with. Look where it got her. Men are always looking. They get what they need, and it ain’t ever enough. So they go looking again.”

  She didn’t add “No offense.” She adjusted red-framed glasses with no lenses in them and glared at Garrett and LaSalle.

  They sat smashed together on a love seat probably made the same year Thomas Edison patented the incandescent lamp. One of those overwrought Victorian things with high backs behind the occupants that swooped down to a low center. The wood frame creaked every time LaSalle shifted.

  “Ma’am, as the son of a single mother, I can’t really argue with you, there. You’d be talking about Jerry Conway. I, uh... spoke to him a couple of years back. They parted ways in Georgia. What I’m trying to figure out is how she got to your pretty little town.”

  Garrett noticed LaSalle kept a smile in his voice when he spoke to Nadine. He had an easy way with people. It probably made him great at his job.

  Nadine lit a cigarette and smoke curled up past a ceramic praying Jesus mounted on the wall behind her. Even our Savior bore nicotine stains.

  “It ain’t that hard to figure, if you put your mind to it,” Nadine said. “When a young girl ain’t got a home, food, any kind of education worth a damn, she’s got a choice. Stay homeless, or spread your legs for a man. They start out thinkin’ they’re gonna turn tricks and get some money. They wind up in the warm cab of a truck, and suddenly a free ride outta wherever they are looks good. When you’re young, where you’re goin’ matters a whole lot less.”

  Nadine took another drag and tapped ashes into the cut-off bottom of a Howitzer shell her father brought back from World War II. When she didn’t speak again, Garrett gave her a gentle nudge. “Thank you for helping, Nadine. Is there any chance you can remember the last man you saw her with?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I spoke to her outside the truck stop diner, wasn’t anyone with her. When I didn’t see her again, I figured she finally found a ride to California. For some reason, they all seem to think that’s the Promised Land.”

  The last bit was delivered with a pointed look at Garrett.

  “Now,” she said. “Can we talk about those damn kids I saw drinkin’ and drag racin’ out on Eisenhower Road?”

  ***

  The Mustang’s rear end slid out as Garrett hit the onramp, giving LaSalle a good look at the guardrail. “Hey, man, don’t all you West Virginia rednecks drive pickup trucks with four wheel drive?” LaSalle said.

  “Mine’s in the shop.”

  Garrett got everything straight again and pointed them toward the truck stop, even though he knew it would be useless. None of those guys would admit to seeing a missing girl.

  “Can I ask you something?” LaSalle said, and continued without waiting for a yes. “You seem like you’re from here... but you’re not from here.”

  “Not much of a question,” Garrett said. The rumbling laugh surprised him.

  “I guess it isn’t. May I ask then, what the fuck you’re doing in the backwoods of West Virginia?” LaSalle said.

  “Well, I did grow up here. But I was one of the California runaways Nadine talked about. I wanted anything but this place when I was a kid. Got accepted to UCLA, went out there thinking I’d work my way through college. Student loans and the cost of living in California laid that to rest pretty quick.”

  “And LAPD came callin’?” LaSalle said.

  “Sort of. I applied at a job fair, got in, and quit school. I always thought I’d come back and finish.”

  They watched the snow melt on the windshield and the mile markers slide by for a while. Maybe they both had a few things they always thought they’d finish.

  “My dad was the Chief here. Widower. Mom went years back to emphysema. Dad got killed in a traffic accident last year about this time, and I took some leave to come home for the funeral...” Garrett trailed off. With him and LaSalle both packed in here, the air in the Mustang felt close and humid. He cracked a window and let the frigid air blast him in the face. It eased the tightness in his chest. He hadn’t talked about this in... Ever.

  “I had a fiancée out there. She was on the Job, too. Right before I left, she went to a Domestic call with her partner. Pretty low key, just a couple arguing. When the guy answered the door, he shot Michelle in the face. Just like that. Then he dropped the gun and surrendered before her partner could even clear leather. Never even explained why. Maybe it was the meth, paranoia, whatever. Didn’t even have a fucking record.”

  LaSalle examined the back of one of his ugly hands. “If I’d been there, I
believe the report would have read that he still had the gun in his hand. Probably a good thing I’m not a cop.”

  “Probably a good thing I never had the chance to make that decision. Anyway, when I got the call about Michelle, I’d just packed my suitcase to come home for Dad’s funeral. I kept packing. Packed fourteen boxes and never went back.”

  ***

  Burton’s Truck Stop had legendary status among truckers who traveled through West Virginia. From another era, the place was tiny compared to modern truck stops on giant lots. Burton’s L-shaped gravel lot filled up fast and most truckers would have to drive back to the rest stop to sleep, but they came here anyway.

  Burton’s featured down-home country food, still cooked by one of the ancient Burton brothers, Garrett forgot which it was, Donny or Bobby. Served on mismatched plates in a narrow dining room with tiles scuffed all the way through in some places by decades of heavy boots.

  Proud of their Appalachian history, the Burtons left strings of dried green beans hanging in the kitchen window where everyone could see them, authenticating their Leather Britches and ham as the real deal.

  LaSalle wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “I have eaten a lot of local food in the last two years, but this is a first.”

  Garrett hadn’t eaten this stuff since his grandmother passed. The salty richness of comfort food took him back to her kitchen. “My Granny used to make Leather Britches, too. But she didn’t hang her beans to dry, she spread ‘em out on a screen in the sun. Pain in the ass, had to bring ‘em in every night and take ‘em back out every morning till they dried.”

  A big purple Mack growled into the lot outside. It had a sledgehammer painted on the driver’s door, and curly cue letters arching over it. Hank the Hammer.

  “Now there’s a gentleman worth talking to,” Garrett said.

  He and LaSalle went back out into the blustery cold. The snow flurries had stopped, but the wind still bit like a mean little dog. They hadn’t had much luck so far. As Garrett suspected, no drivers wanted to talk about picking up truck stop girls, much less ID a missing girl.