by Kit Frazier
He rubbed his temple with the palm of his hand. “Writing obituaries is only part of your job, and this is no longer a straight obituary and you know it.”
“No, it’s a scoop that will get me on the front page, but that’s not why I want to do it and you know it,” I fumed, so mad I could feel blood boil behind my left eyeball.
“Isn’t it?” he said.
And then he delivered the sucker punch. “How are you doing on that gang war research?” he said, and I cringed. I wasn’t doing anything at all on the gang war research because I’d been busy trying not to get shot on the courthouse steps.
“I’ve been asking around,” I hedged.
“Asking around and solid research are two different things,” he said, and I scowled. But I knew he was right. At this rate, I was going to be stuck on the Dead Beat for the rest of my childbearing years.
Tanner turned back to his computer and logged on. “Give your file on Puckett to Shiner and email what you’ve got on your computer,” he said. “Take the rest of the day off. You look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet.”
I was being dismissed.
“Thanks a lot. You oughta volunteer for the self-esteem hotline. You’d be a real hoot.”
I hopped down from his desk, resisting the sudden, violent urge to kick him in the leg. “I’ll have solid intel on the gang war to you by the end of the week,” I said, swinging the door shut behind me.
“Let the Puckett thing go,” he called after me.
“Let the Puckett thing go, my ass,” I growled, but I did it under my breath. I’d already sent my career into triage twice this week. I was afraid three times in as many days would send it permanently into the Dead Copy file.
I logged off my computer, grabbed my purse from under my desk, and speed-dialed Ethan’s cell phone. “Hey, E? You wanna go see a girl about a video?”
Chapter Fifteen
“Are we going to get the cat?” Ethan wanted to know. He sat in the passenger seat of the Jeep, the hot wind performing some kind of aerodynamic phenomenon off his gelled hair.
“You haven’t seen that cat,” I said. “Better to go find Faith and make sure she wants it.”
I pointed the Jeep up Ranch Road 620, past the new flyover at 183, coughing and sneezing at the limestone and caliche dust the new roads kicked up. Traffic slowed as construction crews scattered about, jackhammering a foundation for future highways and spanking fresh strip malls out of the rugged cliffsides. Progress.
Beside me, Ethan rewound the video and watched it again, pulling a pad and pen from his messenger bag.
I snuck a peek at his pad and smiled.
“Are you rehearsing?” I said, and Ethan blushed right up to his slightly overlarge ears.
“I just I know she’s upset, and I want to get this right.”
After thirty minutes of full-contact driving, traffic diminished. Depressing, tightly packed tract houses slowly gave way to farms and fields pocked with thin, foraging cattle. The wide prairies north of Austin unfolded into a vast, rolling grassland or what used to be a vast, rolling grassland.
Despite the rains we’d had back in spring, the drought continued its two-year stranglehold on the state, and the once-green grass was dry and brittle.
Hand-painted signs dotted barbed-wire fences, announcing “Horses for Sale.”
The sky wouldn’t rain so hay didn’t grow, and the progeny of family farms were making tough choices.
We bumped along Faith’s driveway in a gritty cloud of red dust. I glanced down at the clock. A little past five. Yesterday I hadn’t seen the barbed-wire fence that wrapped around a small patch of back yard or the sign nailed to a huge live oak that said NO TRESPASSING: Protected by Smith & Wesson.
I knew she lived on a fairly big spread, but I hadn’t realized how isolated her home was. Several acres back, the remains of a burned-out, blue, two-story farmhouse cast a pyramid-shaped evening shadow that almost reached the trailer.
Daylight didn’t do much to enhance my earlier assessment of Faith’s home. It was a dingy singlewide that probably came from the factory white, but large colonies of aggressive orange rust ate away at the corners. Large smudges of grayish green mold streaked the metal siding at intervals between the single-paned aluminum windows. The windows themselves were neatly lined with pink and ivory frilly curtains, incongruous with the shabby metal trailer. It reminded me of a silk-lined steel coffin.
“She lives here?” Ethan said, staring at the crumbling, warped trailer. “Alone?”
I nodded. “Get your note cards ready.”
I climbed out of the Jeep and Ethan scrambled out behind me, and we mounted the wobbly aluminum stairs.
I knocked.
No one answered.
We both knocked. Nothing.
I knocked again and yelled, “Faith! It’s me, Cauley!”
I tried to peek in the peephole. I know you can’t see squat from the wrong side of a peephole, but somehow, it never stops me from trying.
“What do we do?” Ethan said, leaning over the rusty railing for a peek in the window.
“I don’t know. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” I bit my lip. “You see anything?”
“Do you count the huge rat sitting on the back of the sofa staring at me?” He grimaced. I would have grimaced, too, but I was five years older than Ethan, and I was trying to be a role model.
The evening air was hot and breezeless, thick with heat and dirt and the slight odor of skunk.
Ethan swallowed hard. “Maybe she’s in there and can’t answer the door?”
“Yeah,” I said, studying the window latch. I climbed over the railing and pushed up hard on the window, grunting with the effort. “I think we’re going to have to break it.”
“Any problem with using the door?” Ethan said as he tried the knob and it gave.
I stared at him. “Well, sure,” I said, climbing back over the railing. “If you want to take the easy way.”
Though the open door, I could see that the doorjamb was slightly splintered. I was no expert, but I bet if the crime scene geeks compared this job with my own jimmied lock, they’d probably say it was done with the same type of tool and with the same strength behind it and the same skill set.
I glanced nervously around for Dead Canary Guy or Obregon the Maniac.
There are times to be brave first one in the water, wearing white after Labor Day. And then there are times to call in the guys kill the rat, squash the bug, arm wrestle any stray homicidal earless guys.
Flipping out my cell phone, I dialed the Dawes County predator patrol. A bored-sounding woman answered the phone, and I identified myself and asked for Sheriff Hollis.
I could hear the theme song from Desperate Housewives playing in the background. The woman promptly put me on hold for ten minutes before coming back to inform me that Hollis was out of the office and not expected back.
“If he checks in, will you tell him I called?”
“Oh, sure,” she said.” I got nothin” else to do.”
“I’m checking in on a girl Faith Puckett. I think she might be in trouble. Is there anybody else you can send over?” I said, and the women let out a beleaguered sigh.
“We’re shorthanded right now. Is this an emergency?”
I stared at the splintered doorjamb and then around the rest of the crumbling structure. “I think maybe it is,” I said and disconnected.
“Well, what now?” Ethan said, and I peeked inside. It still looked like someone went wild with PeptoBismol and a paintbrush, but there was no sign of visible derelicts with daggers or of the rat.
“Faith?” I called. No answer.
“Are you here? Are you all right?”
Hearing nothing, I stepped over the threshold and reached for a chair to prop the door open in case the need arose for a hasty escape.
Inside, I hesitated. The place smelled like baby powder and broken promises. It was empty of life, except for maybe the rat. We stepped onto the iv
ory shag carpet and I felt very much an interloper into a life where I didn’t belong.
“Wow,” Ethan said, studying the wide-eyed dolls that lined the shelf near the ceiling. “Creepy.”
“It kind of is,” I said, trying to quell the jitters. “Faith!” I called again.
The living room was even more dismal in daylight. It was small, maybe a hundred square feet, flanked by a short, pink Formica half-bar that separated it from the kitchen. To the left, a narrow hall led to the bedrooms and bath.
From out of nowhere, a little yellow rocket propelled right at my face. I ducked and Ethan said, “What the hell?”
“Shut the door!” I yelled. “That’s Keates, Faith’s bird!”
Too late. The bird was out, sitting in the tree, chiding me for all he was worth. After an hour-long attempt to catch him, we headed back into the trailer, making sure to crack the window of his “birdie door.”
Back inside, Ethan scanned the pink and ivory panorama. “You don’t think she’s hurt or something, do you?”
“I suppose anything is possible,” I said, but the moment I’d walked in, all the little hairs on the back of my neck lifted.
Ethan did a little hand gesture suggesting I go down the hall first.
I stared at him. “With a rat on the loose? If you’re kidding, you don’t know how to do it very well.”
“What?” he said. “You think I should kill the rat?”
“Nobody’s going to kill anything,” I said. “I hope.”
Ethan blew out a breath, ducked behind the small counter, and came back with a spatula.
“Planning on serving it pancakes?” I said.
“Only in self-defense.”
We began creeping down the hall.
“Why are we creeping?” I said to Ethan, and he shrugged.
“It just feels like a situation that calls for creeping.”
There was a door to the left. I knew from the brief search last night it was a bedroom, and I knocked and waited. Hearing nothing, I let us in through the flimsy door. “I’ll take the bed, you take the closet,” I said, and Ethan nodded.
The silence was heavy, and I could hear molecules bouncing around in my ears.
I looked behind the curtains and kneeled to pick up the bedspread, holding my breath.
“Did you hear that?” I said.
“Hear what?”
“A scratching noise, like something was moving underneath the floor…”
“I didn’t hear aaaaaahhhhh!”
From the closet floor, a huge, nasty rat stared at us, wide eyed, the very soul of beadiness.
Ethan screamed, and then I screamed too.
The rat leapt four feet in the air, flipped a three-sixty, landed, and scuttled over Ethan’s sneakers, scrambling and squealing into the hallway.
“Ew, ew, ew!” he yelled. “I gotta go wash my hands.”
“Did you touch it?”
“No, but still…”
“Give me that,” I said, and confiscated the spatula from him and headed down the hall toward the bathroom, brandishing the spatula.
“Faith,” I called, flinging back the shower curtain, watching carefully for the rat and hoping I didn’t happen upon Obregon. The odds that I’d actually whack the rat were right up there at twelfth and never, but it made me feel marginally better.
I yelped when U bumped into E as I backed out of the bathroom.
“Jesus, E! Make a noise or something!”
When my heart quit hammering next to my eyeballs, I took in a big breath and we hit the bedroom again, careful of the rat.
“Faith?” I said.
“This time I’ll take the bed,” Ethan said. He lifted the old quilt and peeked.
I had opened the closet, checking behind the clothes, when there was another scratching noise. I slammed the door.
“Okay, I think we’re done,” I said.
“I thought you said there was a crawl space,” Ethan said, and I did an inward groan.
“Of course there is,” I said, and headed for the laundry area in the hall.
I turned to Ethan. “Hey, you have to come, too.”
Ethan trailed along behind me and held open the trap door between the washer and dryer.
“Can you see?” he said.
“No.” I dropped to all fours so I could get a closer look, and Ethan dropped too. We peered through the hole into the dry, dusty darkness.
And there it was. The scratching noise. “The rat,” Ethan hissed.
And then the closet door in the bedroom slammed.
“Not unless he learned to slam the door!” I yelled and scrambled to my feet, and Ethan scrambled too and bumped my head. I staggered backward, and we came face to face with a man in a ball cap.
“Shit!” I screamed, and the man screamed too, and he tried to clamber over us and fell, knocking the three of us into a big, struggling, swearing heap.
“Okay, everyone stop!” I yelled, and the struggling stopped. The smell of Jim Beam was so heavy in the air that I could practically see the fumes.
Someone in the pile was sobbing. I knew it wasn’t me.
“E, are you all right?” I said, and Ethan stood, straightening his jeans and smoothing his short hair. We both stood staring at the man on the floor.
“Man” was overstating it. More like a kid with a bad beard, a bad hangover, and a bad case of the blues. The one Tres had suckerpunched at the Pier. The one who was deadly in love with Faith.
“Hey,” I said to him. “Are you all right?”
He was clutching a photo of Faith. His eyes looked like a roadmap and his breath could choke a charging rhino.
Ethan got a gander at the photo of Faith and bristled. I was glad I’d taken the spatula away from him.
“Josh, what are you doing here?” I said. “Have you seen Faith?” He shook his head and winced at the movement.
“I can’t find her,” he said.
Okay. Now I was concerned. “When was the last time you saw her?” He hedged.
I waited.
“I came by last night. Just to check on her. I saw the news, and I wanted to see if she was okay. See if she needed me.”
“Was she okay?” I said, and he shrugged.
I sighed. “You remember what time?”
“I saw you drive up,” he mumbled. “You put her to bed.”
“You were stalking her?” Ethan said. His fist clenched. His thumb was tucked inside his fingers so that if he ever did wind up hitting someone, he’d probably break his thumb. I shook my head.
A deep, guttural growl sounded at the front door. The hair on my neck lifted.
“Well, what have we here?” a familiar voice drawled. I looked up and found Junior Hollis tapping his palm with his billy club, Napalm bristling at his side.
“We came by to check on Faith,” I said, but my cheeks flushed. This was no time to back down. “Did you come check on her last night?”
“We’re just lookin’ for my girl,” said Josh, and Ethan took a step forward to line up with him. I shook my head. War buddies.
We were all in the living room near the little pink coffee table, frozen like deer caught in headlights.
The big dog snarled and I put my hand out. He sniffed and wagged his tail, and it was Hollis’s turn to snarl.
“Faith works at a titty bar and she does her li’l honky-tonk angel thing on the weekends. She’s not missing. She’s just got what you might call other interests.” He smiled an ugly smile.
“Nothing so needs reforming like other people’s habits,” I said.
“You gettin’ smart with me, blondie?” Hollis said, but Josh and Ethan looked like they were going to team up and pound the hell out of Junior Hollis. I stepped between them and the sheriff. There was no need to go to jail over this, and it was quickly heading that direction.
I glared at Hollis. “It doesn’t worry you that her brother got shot less than twenty-four hours ago, and now no one’s seen her since last night?”
“That happened in Travis County. We don’t put up with that kinda shit here in Dawes County, and ever’body knows it. You do the crime in this county, you do twice the time. We got a reputation, and we like it that way.”
“But you don’t look for missing girls?”
“You said yourself you saw her at eleven o’clock last night. It’s not even twenty-four hours. She ain’t missing yet.”
I ground my teeth. “You and I both know the longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be to find her.”
At that moment, Keates swooped through the window and dove into his open cage. Napalm went airborne after the bird.
Without blinking, Hollis swiveled and hit the dog on the nose with his club. The dog landed. He didn’t whine but his eyes got a surprised, withdrawn look. Hollis went for the dog.
A small noise came from the back of my throat, and I extended my foot at the toe of his polished boot.
Ethan grabbed for my arm, but he was too late. Hollis tripped over my foot and he fell hard. His big, red-veined nose caught the coffee table on the way down, and he came up holding his face, blood oozing between his fingers.
He looked down at his bloody hand. “You did that on purpose!” he sputtered.
“What?” I said. “It was an accident. I have witnesses.”
The dog came and sat beside me. I scratched him behind the ear.
Hollis got to one knee and heaved himself up, a big vein throbbing on his forehead.
For a minute, I thought he was going to hit me. Ethan stepped between us.
The sheriff breathed hard, wiping his bloody nose on his sleeve. He stared at me, eyes bulging like they might pop right out of his crew-cut skull.
“That’s it,” Hollis growled, looking down at the blood dripping off his hand.
He grabbed my arm, yanking it away from Ethan, and before I knew it, I was cuffed and stuffed and in the back of the prowler, flanked by Ethan and Josh.
Chapter Sixteen
“He hit the dog?”
“In the head with a sap,” I said.
Cantu nodded. “Even so, you can’t go around tripping people.”
“Can’t or shouldn’t?” I said. “And calling Hollis people is pushing it.”
I was boiling mad and getting hotter. “And a Class A Misdemeanor?” I huffed as Cantu leaned over the back seat and handed me and Ethan our shoelaces. “I was just trying to help. I can’t believe I have a record.” I blew out a breath. “I bet Daddy is rolling in his grave.”