Smiley

by Ezell, Michael

  LaSalle brushed snow away from the line, all around the trail. He discovered the line had a twin a couple of feet away. Two straight lines together. Skis? Nah, skis weren’t this skinny.

  He reversed course and now that he was looking for them, he found the tracks leading past the rest stop parking lot, out toward the road. Faint, hard to really tell how old. They stopped about three feet away from a giant snow bank created when the plows cleared the highway.

  Mostly dirty snow, the bank was surrounded by various footprints. LaSalle spotted two small, dingy snowmen where people at the rest stop obviously let their kids blow off some steam before getting back on the highway.

  Near the spot where the tracks ended, the snow bank had a U-shaped chunk taken out of it. Odd. Could someone have been dragged from the parking lot, through the bank, and onto whatever left those tracks?

  Again, he stood still and looked around. His process worked best if he didn’t let his brain get in the way. The new snow had melted enough for something beneath it to catch the sunlight and glimmer.

  LaSalle bent down and picked it up. A charm bracelet of some kind, with only four charms. Silver teddy bear, cheap red plastic heart, Eiffel Tower, and the letter T.

  He looked at the picture Garrett printed out. Nadine had captured the girl in a waist-up candid. Closer to a mug shot than an Annie Liebovitz portrait, but you could see the girl’s hands. Hard to tell what, if anything, was around her wrist. He’d have to pull it up on the computer and zoom in.

  He searched the immediate area for another hour, but found nothing else. He decided he’d come back in some decent hiking shoes, maybe with Garrett. And maybe not. He didn’t want Garrett there if he found something definite.

  LaSalle wasn’t being paid to send anyone to prison.

  ***

  The gravel of Smiley’s driveway crunched and popped under the Mustang’s fat tires. After being shut down at the State Police barracks, Garrett felt like talking to a friendly face. With Tracy teaching, he figured he might as well show the newest picture to Smiley.

  He shut off the rumbling car and got out to stretch his back. The Carmichael place still looked good. Little two-bedroom farmhouse with a tidy yard and a well-kept barn out back. Even at his age, Smiley kept the place tight as a drum. Before Garrett could mount the front step, the barn door swung open. Smiley came hustling out with a manic grin plastered on his face.

  “Hey, Garrett. I thought I heard your monster of a car out here.”

  Garrett went to meet him and shook hands. “Sorry about just dropping in. I’ve been helping LaSalle with his Missing Person case and I wanted to run another picture by you. I called the County Dispatcher, but they said you took the day off.”

  “Yup. Misty had somethin’ come up, and she needs me to look after Angela. And don’t apologize, you’re not botherin’ me one bit. Anything I can do to help.”

  The barn door stood open a bit, showing Garrett a wedge of clean wood floor and a scythe hanging on one wall. Smiley stepped between him and the open door.

  “Did you say you had a picture?”

  “Yeah, hang on.” Garrett took the picture of Taylor out of his coat and handed it over.

  Smiley’s eyes roved over the girl’s face and body. “She doesn’t look familiar, but then I don’t get a very good look at most of them. Can I keep this one and show it around, too?”

  “Sorry.” Garrett took the picture back. “This is my only copy right now. I’ll make another one and get it to you.”

  “Sounds good. How are you and Tracy gettin’ on?” Smiley said.

  “What? We’re not— I mean, I’ve known her a long time.”

  “I know, I know. But I hear things from time to time. I think you two would make a great couple,” Smiley said.

  “Oh. I don’t know, Smiley.”

  “Not today. Or maybe even tomorrow. It takes a heart as long as it takes to heal. Tracy seems like a good person to be around while you’re healin’,” Smiley said.

  “She is that.” Garrett looked around for anything else to talk about. “The place sure looks nice. You really kept her up.”

  “I guess I can’t help it. It’s the way my daddy raised me.”

  Garrett took in the front of the barn. Weathered and beaten, but it got a new coat of paint every five years. The raspy growl of a busted muffler interrupted. They watched Misty’s tired pickup drive up the gravel road and pull in behind the Mustang. A little blonde dynamo in a pink snowsuit leaped out and ran over to hug Smiley.

  “Hey, Smiley,” Angela said. She turned and waved to Garrett. “Hey, Chief Evans.”

  “Uh,” Garrett said.

  By now Misty had caught up and she gave Garrett an embarrassed look. “Angie, sweetheart...”

  “Best darn police chief this sorry town ever had.” Smiley clapped Garrett on the shoulder. He winked at Angela. “Wanna hear a story about him when he was your age?”

  “Sure,” Angela said.

  “When Garrett wasn’t much older than you, his daddy and I took him on his first fishin’ trip in a boat. The water got a little rough on the lake and Garrett made yeck over the side.”

  Misty and Angela both said, “Eeeww.”

  Smiley and Garrett laughed.

  “Before ya know it,” Smiley said, “them fish decided somebody put out a buffet for ‘em. They all swam up and we caught our limit in no time flat.”

  Angela made a face. “I wouldn’t want to eat those fish.”

  “Me, neither,” Garrett said. He turned to Misty. “You working tonight? Good to see you getting some more hours. They told me you’d been cut back to weekends.”

  “Oh.” Uncomfortable pause. Hand to face gesture. Garrett knew she was about to lie to him. “Yeah, they squeeze me in when they can.”

  Misty touched Angela’s red nose. “I should get this little booger factory out of the cold.”

  “Ew again,” Angela said.

  Smiley laughed and dug out his house key. He handed it to Angela and said, “The fire should be about perfect by now.”

  “Race you!” Angela took off for the front door. Misty gave them an apologetic shrug and sprinted after her. “Angela Wisteria Heideman, you get back here!”

  Garrett shook hands with Smiley and locked eyes with him. “The way I remember the story, we didn’t catch any fish, and the old man called me a fucking idiot for puking in the water and scaring them away.”

  “Hmm. Maybe I’m just getting’ too old to remember things right,” Smiley said.

  “Maybe. You know what I remember? On the way home, when we stopped for gas and Dad went inside to piss, you told me not worry about it, that you got airsick in the Army and threw up all over the inside of a helicopter.”

  “Ah, I was just tellin’ stories.”

  “Uh huh. Maybe one designed to make a boy feel a little better?”

  Smiley put a hand on Garrett’s shoulder and pinned him with those blue eyes. “Your father was a good man. We all got our faults, the places where we fall down. He loved you a lot, and he was proud of you. Boy, you shoulda heard him brag on you when you got assigned to that robbery team.”

  An emotional surge he wasn’t prepared for washed through Garrett. He blinked back tears and choked out a goodbye to Smiley. He saw him in the Mustang’s rearview, still smiling and waving. If the world had a few more like Smiley, it might just be a better place.

  11

  Angela lay on a blanket in front of the roaring fire. She’d reached the age where she took her time and colored in the lines to make a pretty picture. It looked like some kind of gnome with a curly-cue on top of his head. She’d colored his eyes bright blue.

  Smiley peeked in on her from the kitchen. The fire glowed off her burnished gold hair—

  Ma’s hands shake as they hand over a wad of bills to Papa. Her lips are bright red, her eyelids blue. Tarted up, Gramma Gigi would say. The fire roars hot and bright, snapping and snarling, dazzling Smiley’s eyes as he peeks from the kitchen.


  You know what to do, Papa says.

  But I gave you the money. You— You wanted—

  Now!

  Ma kneels, hands behind her head, on the hardwood floor in front of the snapping and snarling fire. Papa’s belt hisses against his loops as he draws it like a sword. Smiley turns away before the first lash strikes her skin.

  When Papa accuses her of sucking cocks for money, Smiley hides under his bed—

  But he doesn’t hide anymore. No, sir.

  Smiley released a shuddering breath and strode into the living room. Angela grinned and showed him her picture. “Look, Smiley.”

  “That is the prettiest... uh, little fella I have ever seen.”

  “His name is Phred with a P-H. He’s part of the Gogo Monkeys.”

  “You know what, I think I got a Gogo Monkey right here in my house.”

  Angela giggled and capered about like a monkey, accompanied by some kind of spider monkey screech. Not that Smiley ever heard a spider monkey screech. But it had to be close.

  He laughed and laughed until her pajama bottoms came loose and fell down around her ankles. He spun around immediately, his back to her. He heard her giggle while she got them back up.

  “You can turn around,” she said.

  When he did, his smile had fled. “Angie, honey, come here for a second.”

  He led her to the couch. “Now, I want you to know I would never ask you to do this, and if anybody else ever does, why you run and tell the police like we talked about, okay?”

  “What is it?” Angela said, her eyes wide.

  “I thought I saw somethin’ on the back of your leg, love. I’d like to look again, but that means you have to take your pants down. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

  She did look nervous. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

  Normally, he would never deceive her, never do anything but shoot straight with this kid. This time he played on the simple value system of a child.

  “Who’s known you longer, me or Bradley?”

  “You.”

  “Who does your momma trust to take care of you, even if Bradley’s home?”

  “You.”

  “Okay, then. You and me are friends. That means I would never tell your secrets.”

  “Okay,” Angela said.

  She turned, hesitant, but undid her drawstring. She slid her pants down and his heart broke. “Put ‘em up again, sweetie. I’m sorry. We won’t tell anybody you showed me.”

  Angela faced him again and reached out to touch his cheek.

  “Why are you crying, Smiley?”

  “What happened?” Smiley said. Control. He had to keep control here.

  “I got a whoopin’. I’m not supposed to go in the old barn out back anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Bradley’s got a art project going out there. It’s like a bunch of glass bowls and stuff. I’m not allowed to say anything, because he doesn’t want people to steal his idea. I don’t know what kind of art it is, though,” Angela said.

  “Me neither,” Smiley said. He had a sneaking suspicion the only art Bradley Wentz ever created was the patterns he made in his diapers.

  Smiley waited until Angela fell asleep.

  He paced the floor before he went out, the guilt gnawing at him, pushing him into a panicky, tight feeling in his chest. He’d never, ever done anything to Angela. Tonight he gave her something to make sure she slept soundly and now he felt a tiny bit of slime had worked its way into their relationship. Before Bradley came along, this never would have happened. Misty was a good mother, but she was weak. She’d chosen a con man and drug dealer over the bruises on her daughter’s legs.

  He went to the barn and fired up his snowmobile. He wouldn’t have the sled behind him tonight, so he’d be light on the snow. Through years of trial and error, he’d engineered his own extended muffler system to quiet his little hunting machine. He didn’t need performance exhaust. He needed stealth.

  He took Papa’s best filet knife with him. The mean blade, the cutter of fingers, unforgiving of any mistakes.

  It didn’t take long to get to the Heideman place as the crow flies. He made sure to approach down a narrow draw running between his property and theirs, further masking his engine’s sound. Even though his bones bitched him good for coming out into this cold, he stopped and walked the last quarter mile.

  The house stood dark, black windows on the front seeming to follow him like the eyes of a watchdog. The house knew the Hunter was in the woods. The person in the barn didn’t.

  Smiley crept up slow and quiet, careful to avoid narrow blades of light shining through the warped planks of Heideman’s barn. Damn shame. The grandfather had been one hell of a farmer and a fair carpenter. He would’ve shat his overalls to see this barn now.

  A sharp chemical smell burned his nose, made his eyes water. He forced himself to peer through the crack in the door.

  Bradley stood in front of a large beaker bubbling away over a burner like they used to have in Science class. His head bobbed up and down in time to some crashing metal shit blaring from speakers buzzing like they’d blown ages ago.

  Smiley took in the modest meth lab. In his mind, in stark relief, he saw himself stride right in, cut Bradley’s throat, watch his heart splash the walls with bright jets of red, like his girls sometimes did. Then he’d set fire to the place.

  His gaze found a table in the corner and his eyes welled up for the second time that night. Papa would’ve called him soft for crying.

  Misty sat there, bundled up in her dad’s hunting jacket, weighing and packaging little clear baggies of white powder. Smiley stood there watching until his knee joints took command of the whole operation. They told him a story about a night of pain ahead as he stiff-legged his way back to the snowmobile.

  By the time he got back to his own barn and put the machine away, every step induced a groan. This would be the last year he could take a girl during the winter. He couldn’t handle sitting in the cold anymore, waiting, like a patient trapdoor spider, night after night. He stopped on the front porch, knees throbbing, and looked back toward the barn, his special room. The drive to fill the room was a different kind of ache, and no pill he took so far had stopped it.

  He went inside to wash down some painkillers with two fingers of Jack and sit in front of the fire until his knees would let him sleep.

  ***

  Garrett dozed in front of the television, Kimmel barely halfway through his monologue. He stuck to beer, and had eight dead soldiers lined up on the coffee table. On a dishtowel, of course. Even now, he couldn’t bring himself to commit the heresy of glass on the bare table. His dad may have paid the bills, but all shiny surfaces in this house belonged to Mom. He woke himself with a snort and stared at his empty beer bottles with bleary eyes. He tried to figure out how the bottles made a knocking noise on the table.

  About the third time, his sloshing brain said, Someone’s at the door.

  Shirley Rankin, the dispatch supervisor, stood on his front step. She ran a critical eye over his disheveled clothes and the stubble on his face. He felt like his mother had caught him drinking. He noticed her hair was a mess and she wore a simple housecoat over sweats. She’d left her place in a hurry. She got straight to it, as Shirley always did.

  “Garrett, I want you to know I don’t hold you responsible for Tom’s death.”

  “Thank you, Shirley, but you didn’t have to come over at this hour to—“

  She stopped him by holding up an honest-to-goodness brown paper grocery bag. Those were practically as illegal as moonshine these days. For reasons known only to him, Lamar Evans used to keep his working case files in paper bags instead of file folders. Dad’s blocky print marked the front of the bag— Ortega, Danielle.

  “What is this, Shirley?” Garrett really wanted to be sober right now.

  “It’s something your daddy left behind. Some of his personal things are in there, one of his cigars, a tee shi
rt, and a personal file he was working on. Nothing in here belongs to the department,” Shirley said.

  “But how did you— I’m so sorry, please come in.”

  “No, I better not. It took me half the night to work up the nerve to drive over here.”

  “Were you and Dad...”

  “Only after your mother passed. I’m not that sort of woman. We kept it quiet, as quiet as you can in a small town. You know, he couldn’t have people think he gave me preference at work and all that,” Shirley said.

  “Right, of course. That sounds like him.”

  “I’m sorry I kept it so long. He had it all bundled up to take to work with him the next morning. He was just going to run down to May’s and pick us up some dinner...” Her chin quivered and her face folded in around her frown.

  “I know, Shirley. I know.”

  She leaned against him, and he held her and weathered her sobs. He still had the paper bag in one hand and he could smell the wet cardboard odor of it. Once she got herself composed, Shirley let go, looking embarrassed. She covered it by waving at the paper bag.

  “When I heard you and that fella from New York were looking for a missing girl, I knew I had to give this file to you. It’s something he worked on in his spare time. He took a Missing Person report about ten years back. One of the truck stop girls had taken a room in the motel with her friend, and the friend claimed she just up and vanished into thin air. Really stuck with him. Nothing ever came of it, but he took to watching that TV show about people who disappear. I’d see him check the bulletins every morning when he came in. If he saw one, he’d jot it down. To tell you the truth, I didn’t think it was healthy.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would a Missing Person report stick with him so bad?” Garrett said.

  “I asked him. He said he could never really put it into words. He said her friend believed she disappeared, you know? He looked into her eyes and knew she was telling him the truth.”

  “Truth about what, she didn’t come back? I’ve heard of girls skipping out on bills and leaving the other girls stuck.”