“What kinda report?” Garrett said.
“Theft. Some trucker did a deal with one of the girls up there and he claims when he woke up in the morning, she was gone and so was his wallet.”
“Not unusual, unfortunately. Sad thing is, I don’t really blame the girls. The chumps who pick them up should know better. Any ID on the girl?” Garrett said.
“That’s just it. He knew exactly which girl. She kinda stood out, had a whacky hairdo, all dyed green. We went down there, but no one had seen her since the night before. That was as far as we took it. Whit figured she caught another ride out of the rest stop and moved on up the road. Makes sense to me, if she did steal a wallet.”
“Yeah, it does.” Garrett hated to admit it. He wanted to find Whit at fault somehow.
“Same summer, we all went fishing on Big Top Lake. Me, Whit, your dad, and Smiley,” Lyle said. “Whit joked about how the green-haired girl could be in the lake underneath us right then and we’d never know. Man, how Smiley laughed, fit to be tied. He said how he’d seen so many come and go through that place, we had no idea. He bet us five bucks that girl was somewhere warm and safe and having the time of her life.”
“Most likely,” Garrett said.
Shirley’s voice sounded tinny over Lyle’s radio.
“Dispatch to Car Two.”
“Hey, you got a promotion,” Garrett said.
Embarrassed, Lyle keyed the mike. “Go for Two.”
“Chief Abercrombie needs you to do that Code Forty-Two.”
Garrett looked confused. “Got a new radio code?”
“Sort of. Whit wants me to swing by May’s and pick up his chicken fried steak.” Lyle put his unit in gear, but kept his foot on the brake. “For the record, Garrett, I think you were a great chief. I never had the kind of training you brought here. You made me a better cop.”
He drove off before Garrett could respond.
Memories of his father, Shirley crying on his shoulder, he felt nothing. But something like that had him blinking back tears? Holy shit, he was a wreck.
Garrett took a circuitous route back to his place. He drove past muted forms smothered by snow. Trees he climbed as a kid, dead lawns he earned money cutting during the summers, coming home with the green blood of the grass splashed across his shins, shoes, and socks.
His dad always made him save the money and put it in a college fund account, allowing Garrett only a few dollars to spend on “junk” like cassette tapes of his favorite band, or Valentine candy for whatever girl he was sweet on at the time. Garrett paid a total of three thousand and forty-five dollars into his pipe dream called a college fund. Would three grand even cover books?
Why the hell would the old man get so involved in this missing girl? Sure, he’d always been kind to the girls out there. He never treated them like garbage the way a lot of cops would. Hell, he even put a couple up in the motel on the harshest winter nights, which led to the only big fight he’d ever heard his mom and dad have.
Surely, he wasn’t— no. Garrett couldn’t even imagine the old man taking one of these girls somewhere and— no. Ugh.
The first week here, he had crammed all the boxes of personal stuff from Dad’s office in the garage and hadn’t bothered to open them. Hadn’t wanted to. Until now.
It took eight beers and three hours of digging to make it through old file cabinets, a trunk kept on plywood across the garage beams, and the moldering manila envelopes in his dad’s gun safe. He found two things for all his troubles.
A black and white photo of Lamar Evans and Jebediah “Smiley” Carmichael in Army uniforms. They were both corporals and they had their arms around two young Filipina women.
Scratched in white letters along the bottom: Subic Bay
Garrett spied the second thing while sitting on the floor of his father’s bedroom, finishing off the eighth beer. (He still slept in the guest room, though he lived here a year now.)
The gun safe stood empty and cold, all the guns and personal paperwork scattered on the bed behind Garrett. He tipped his beer up and when he brought it back down, his gaze landed on the floor of the safe. One corner looked odd. Too high.
After some judicious prying with his dad’s old skinning knife, he got the false floor lifted enough to look beneath. He found an old packet of photographs from one of those places you mailed your film to for developing back in Dad’s day.
Garrett sat at the kitchen table, drinking sweet black coffee for some time before he could bring himself to open the packet. Lamar Evans had always been a man who kept private business to himself. As affable as he’d been when Mom was alive, he’d never been one to chatter about things going on in his life. It broke Mom’s heart to a certain degree when Garrett inherited his father’s solitary nature. It took three years, but Michelle worked some of it out of him. Mom would have loved her.
“Shut up,” Garrett said in the empty kitchen. He picked up the packet. Whatever it was, the old man was dead and buried and no one could change it.
The top picture rocked Garrett back in his chair. He finished his coffee with just that picture lying in front of him. She stared up at him the whole time. Ortega, Danielle.
In front of the orange walls from the La Quinta over in Wheeling. Her hair tousled on a pillow, she gazed at the camera the way a woman looks at a lover in the morning. Not sure he wanted to go on, but knowing he absolutely had to, Garrett spread the other pictures on the table, one by one.
Ortega, Danielle in a red blouse, black skirt, and boots. Just the skirt and bra, less and less clothing from there. Different underwear, the light slanting through the gap in the curtain at a sharper angle. Even with the implications of the pictures of the girl, the hotel room, all of it, still the last picture was the one he had the most trouble looking at.
Clearly caught unaware by the girl, his dad had his pants halfway up. He’d seen her getting ready to take the picture, and he was laughing so hard his eyes were crinkled shut.
Laughing.
That night, Garrett dreamed of his first partner. The guy who giggled uncontrollably every time he saw a dead body.
***
Tracy Ellsworth, the girl Garrett was sweet on, walked out of church in a blue dress almost exactly like Ma’s church dress. Her red hair flowed behind her and Smiley caught the smell of perfume and paint thinner as she passed.
He wondered what she would sound like if he poured paint thinner in her eyes.
A little girl’s giggles pulled him away from the Hunter’s thoughts.
Angela ran around and around in circles, laughing and grabbing Misty’s hand every time she came by. Not the best behavior at church, but service had ended and everyone was filing out, so most of the stodgy old folks smiled at the rambunctious girl.
Pastor Dean shook Smiley’s hand and checked out his shiny boots. “You have got to teach me your secret, Smiley. Those boots looked that good when I was in Junior High.”
“It takes patience and work, Pastor. Just like the good Lord done with his disciples, and hopefully he’s doin’ with me,” Smiley said. He gave Pastor Dean the really big smile he practiced in the mirror every day.
Nadine Pearson came over in her best black dress. Nadine had always been a bit of a busybody in Smiley’s book. He wondered what it would feel like to strangle her.
“Howdy, boys,” she said. “Pastor Dean, what a wonderful sermon. I do love when you preach on our Savior’s forgiving heart.”
Even a humble preacher loves praise now and then. Pastor Dean grinned. “I’m glad you liked it, Nadine. I hope it spoke to your heart like it spoke to mine when I wrote it.”
Someone called Pastor Dean to meet a visiting friend, leaving Smiley and Nadine alone.
“Haven’t seen you out at Burton’s lately,” Nadine said.
“I’ve been watchin’ Angela quite a bit.” It makes my palms itch to go there.
“I almost got one of the girls to go to church with me today, but she backed out when some of the others mad
e fun of her,” Nadine said.
Thank the good Lord. “Too bad. Woulda done her some good,” Smiley said.
He wouldn’t have been able to stand the smell of her if she stood next to Nadine right now. Worse and worse. His ability to control the urges, his desire to act on them. It seemed like it ran through his head non-stop these days. Was he getting too old to control the Hunter?
Angela crashed the conversation in her usual style.
“Hey, Smiley! Watch this.” She did her best cartwheel, showing off her gymnastic skills, and a set of mermaid princess panties.
“Angela Wisteria Heideman!” Misty hustled over and grabbed Angela by the arm. “We’re still in church, young lady.”
“Aw, she’s just lettin’ off some steam,” Smiley said. “Folks around here don’t get to see real-live Oh-lympic gymnasts too often.” But he knew Misty was more worried about people seeing the fading yellow bruise.
Angela giggled and hugged Smiley. “I love you, Smiley.”
Misty and Nadine exchanged the “aww” look.
Smiley smiled for Angela. Not a mirror smile, or a church smile, or a grocery store smile, but something real that leapt out of a place he usually kept well guarded. He tousled her already gymnastically ruined hairdo. “Old Smiley loves you too, sweetie. Don’t you ever forget it.”
He saw Misty waiting. She wanted to ask, but not on top of something like that. He did the asking for her. “You need me to watch Nadia Comeneci here tonight?”
“That would be great, Smiley. Eunice is giving me a full shift tonight and we really need the money,” Misty said.
“What do you say, Angela? You up for ice cream sundaes for dinner?” Smiley said.
“Yes!”
Misty arched an eyebrow. “You two are trouble when you’re together.”
Smiley held up his hands. “Okay, okay. We’ll wait till after dinner.”
“What are you all having?” Nadine said.
“Dinosaur steaks and onions,” Angela said.
“Wow. I never heard of those,” Nadine said.
Liver and onions, Smiley mouthed over Angela’s head.
“Oh,” Nadine said. “I do love those dinosaur steaks.”
“Angela, did you know to this day, Nadine makes the best cherry pies in West Virginia?” Smiley said.
“Really?” Angela said.
“It’s a certified fact. Writ in the Federal lawbooks,” Smiley said.
Nadine looked embarrassed. “I’m not certain one ribbon at a County Fair amounts to all that. Now, if you folks don’t mind, I need to go to the parking lot and smoke a ‘dinosaur bone’.”
Nadine strode away, digging a pack of cigarettes from her purse.
“A what?” Angela said.
“Nevermind,” Smiley and Misty said over one another. They shared a grin and Smiley felt warm. Not as warm as blood made him feel, but that would follow.
***
The Mustang rumbled in Garrett’s earmuffs, low and steady like a thunderstorm on the other side of the mountain. He sat inside with the heater running, snowflakes dancing across the windshield, dying on the warm glass before they got halfway.
He’d parked right on the concrete behind the firing line, since no one else was stupid enough to be here on a day like this. Although the Artemis Pistol Club owned the range, it sat on county property. He wouldn’t accidentally run into anyone from town out here, which suited Garrett right down to his bones.
Last night had been a bad one. The dream started with sweat rolling down the trench of his spine beneath his Kevlar. A hundred degrees in early May, standing in front of a rundown craftsman house with peeling green paint and wet mossy stains four inches up the wall from the damp flower beds. A couple arguing inside from the sounds of it. Confusion. He couldn’t place the neighborhood. He never worked this beat.
A black and white rolled up and Michelle and her partner got out, and Garrett knew where he was. He’d never been there, but he knew. The house. Where it happened.
He stood there mute, his dream-mouth full of cotton, unable to speak to her.
“Hey,” she said, waggling her fingers as she went past with her partner. The partner checked his cell phone for a message and Garrett tried to scream at him to pay attention.
It quickly became a dream he knew was a dream and he screamed at himself to wake up, his words jumbled and tumbled and then the door opened and the gun barrel came out, obscenely long and impossibly big and the boom made Garrett’s heart stop.
He opened the Mustang’s door and stepped into the frigid air in one fluid motion. He flexed his knees and moved forward in a semi-crouch toward a row of bowling pins on a sawhorse. The Colt came up smooth and natural, he’d always had a knack for the gun.
Bang-bang. Bang-bang. Bang-bang. He shot on the move, double-tapping as he went, bowling pins splintering, flying under the impact of the 230 grain .45 caliber bullets.
The slide locked back, Garrett ejected the empty mag, slapped a new one in, and thumbed the slide release. He stood still, hot gun in his hand, snowflakes hitting his face like little molecules of winter. The first time his old man let him shoot a semi-auto had been at this very range. He bought Garrett a little Marlin .22 rifle and Smiley carved these amazing wooden rabbit silhouettes for Garrett to shoot.
They all came to the range and Garrett abided by every safety protocol, drank in every lesson. Soon, he was knocking down wooden rabbits one after the other. Then he got a crazy notion in his head and cut loose with all the ammo he had left in the Marlin’s magazine in a pow-pow-pow-pow rapid-fire string, tearing the hell out of one of Smiley’s bunnies.
His dad snatched the hot rifle from him and called him an idiot who didn’t deserve to have a gun. Smiley had, of course, given them a big smile full of dentures and crinkled lines around his eyes. “Aw, he’s just havin’ a little fun, Lamar. No harm done, don’t ya think?”
Garrett’s dad relented, but still sulked on the tailgate of the pickup, drinking beer while Smiley reset the rabbit targets until they were wood chips and Garrett was out of ammo.
Dad certainly hadn’t sulked that night at the La Quinta. Or maybe it had been many nights. No way of knowing, really. He laughed it up and had a good time with his hooker. Who knows, maybe he fantasized about saving her. And what, live happily ever after in Artemis, West Virginia with a twenty-year-old prostitute? Go to bake sales with Ortega, Danielle and buy pies from the Methodist Ladies Club and invite them over to have tea with his runaway hooker?
The front sight on the Colt found the sawhorse’s crossbeam and Garrett thundered away with the entire magazine, rapid-fire, shattering wood and old memories. While he waited for his heartbeat to stop rushing in his eardrums, he picked up his spent brass and put it in a fifty-five gallon drum the club kept under a lean-to behind the firing line.
By the time he cleaned up his mess, he had to admit two things. One: He hated the cold much more than he ever admitted. Two: For all his faults, his old man didn’t do things like compile a list and put a map together because his heart went pitter-patter. Something about the girl’s disappearance sparked a fire in Lamar Evans, the old country cop.
And as much as Garrett hated to admit it, that alone made it worth looking into.
***
Nadine put on her WVU sweat pants, glad to be out of that damnable girdle, and sat in her plush leather office chair, the one indulgence she’d allowed herself in an otherwise parsimonious life.
She sipped a glass of wine and scrolled through the pictures on her laptop. Like smoke, she’d said. Bravado for Garrett Evans and the big black fella. In truth, it wrung her heart to see them pass through, those lost girls, those wandering souls. They made her alternately happy and sad she never married and bore children of her own. If she’d had a daughter, she’d be a grown woman now, having long ago gotten past the age of the girls in these photos.
Nadine hoped she would have given her a fighting chance to not wind up in the back of some smelly truck cab. Or
worse.
She landed back on the photo of the girl she told Garrett about. Taylor. Where was she right now? Halfway to California? Florida? New York? Alone and scared. Nadine closed her laptop. She’d be up all night if she let her brain spin and spin like this. She had to do something with her hands, something to keep her occupied.
She stalked the old house in her slippers and sweats, the floorboards creaking out memories of tiptoeing down this very hall when she was twelve and it was midnight and there was cold fried chicken in the ice box—
That was it. Cooking.
She hadn’t baked in ages. She’d surprise Smiley and Angela with a cherry pie tonight.
In the kitchen, she ripped a scrap off an old brown grocery bag and found the nub of a pencil in her junk drawer. The first thing on her shopping list was lard. Because that’s how you make a proper pie crust, thank you.
Thoughts of missing girls fled, and soon Nadine was puttering toward Delroy’s Grocery in her dinged up Lincoln. She made a mental note to brush the top with butter right at the end.
This was going to be a great pie.
14
Smiley had the mean blade tucked under his coat, which made the metal warm as flesh.
A new blanket of sparkling white covered the fields and trees around the Heideman farm. Snowflakes swirled in the breeze like fluttering white moths, occasionally highlighted by the industrial lights bleeding through the cracks in the barn doors.
Smiley left his snowmobile where the fence broke years ago and no man worth a damn had been around to fix it. He hefted his air rifle and went to the barn on foot, sticking to the thinnest spots in the snow. Easier for the new snow to fill in shallow prints than deep ones.
His hips muttered their distaste for the cold, the complaints registering as sharp zings up and down his legs. Age had crept up on him like a sly pickpocket and made off with the Hunter’s feeling of invincibility. Smiley gritted his teeth against the joint pain. Getting the bulge on an idiot like Bradley Wentz took brains, not brawn.
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