Problem Child (ARC)

by Victoria Helen Stone

  “We don’t sit around and braid each other’s hair and

  discuss her pimp, lady. How should I know where he lives?”

  “You must have a name.”

  “Sure,” she spits. “His name is Little Dog. Does that

  help? Little Dog? Think you can find him? Maybe he’s in the fucking phone book! If you find that piece of shit,

  tell him he owes me two hundred bucks for that iPad. I

  know damn well he’s the one who stole it.”

  “What’s he look like?” I ask, but I’ve relaxed too

  much, and she sees her chance to escape and shoves the

  door closed in my face.

  “Bitch,” I say to the door. The TV volume rises on the

  other side. I pause for a moment to think of a way to get

  revenge for her disrespect, but she’s not worth the time.

  Kayla clearly isn’t here and hasn’t been here for a while.

  My cold heart sinks a little. If Kayla was turned out

  by some small-town pimp, then she’s nothing at all like

  me. She’s just a poor, abused girl like all the other poor

  abused girls out there.

  In a nice suburban neighborhood, if a girl disappears,

  it’s city news. Maybe even national news. Posters every-

  where. Manhunts. Strangers weeping for this vulnerable

  child. If a grown man is having sex with a teenage neigh-

  bor who lives in a McMansion in the good part of town,

  the police will be notified. Consequences will be swift.

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  But if that girl is poor trash when she goes missing, or

  if she’s being paid for the sex, then all law and sympathy gets thrown out the window. She’s a whore and she deserves whatever she gets, even if she’s only sixteen. She’s all used up and worthless now. She probably was from

  the moment she was born.

  Hell, if she’s a brown child, she might not even be

  called missing at all. Just another girl who hardly deserved to live. What did she expect?

  I stroll slowly back to my car, frowning at this lifestyle

  news about Kayla. She’s obviously a very troubled young

  woman. “Troubled,” I say aloud to myself with a smile,

  because I’ve always loved that description.

  Troubled means that she very likely walked away from her family and hooked up with Little Dog or some other

  award-winning loser, because choosing your own bad

  path is better than following someone else’s. At best, she’s a runaway headed for a long, hard life that will never get

  better. At worst, this pitiful, pimped-out girl has been

  killed or kidnapped or loaned out to work for someone

  else in some big city.

  She might be in deep trouble, she might be dead,

  or she could be nodding off in someone’s heroin base-

  ment, having the time of her life on the fast track to an

  overdose.

  I’m not a social worker, and there’s nothing I can do

  about any of those situations. I was hoping to find someone kick-ass, and that prospect is looking less and less likely.

  Kayla is just another sad girl who wasn’t ever going to

  have a chance in this world. There are millions of them.

  Junkie mom, dad in prison, too many men watching and

  waiting … Come on.

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  I should just go home. But the kind of trouble I hate is

  waiting at home. Emotional trouble, the one kind I have

  no aptitude for, and I hate being bad at things.

  And there are more benefits to staying in Oklahoma.

  There’s road food, of course, always the best part of any

  trip. And there are strangers to interact with, which is

  always exciting. And there’s one last benefit to this trip

  that I wasn’t expecting: each of the partners at my firm

  has emailed to express their support for what I’m doing.

  One even mentioned my “heroism.”

  Me! A hero!

  If I go home with no results and no resolution, I’ll

  give up this newfound glory and all the bragging rights

  of returning triumphant. So onward I slog.

  As I round the edge of Kayla’s building I see the same

  pitiful swing set that exists in every apartment complex of this kind. Two swings, one of them broken and wound

  tight around the supporting pole, the other one hanging

  at a slight angle. The swings are flanked by the kind of

  metal slide that causes second-degree burns on a hot sum-

  mer day. That’s a particularly sadistic touch when it’s one hundred degrees in Oklahoma for the entire season that

  kids are out of school. Even I could plan a better park,

  and I’m a goddamn sociopath.

  Past the swing set is an ancient picnic table, and gath-

  ered around that are several teenagers who decided not

  to bother with school today. Or this year. Hard to say.

  “Hey!” I bark out. They glance up without any

  alarm at all. Punks. “You guys know Kayla?” I’ve been

  in Minnesota too long, and now I’ve identified myself as

  an outsider, but maybe that’s okay. They know I’m not

  a local cop, certainly.

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  Two of the kids shrug, but the youngest, a boy, tips

  up his chin in a nod.

  “She been around?” I ask.

  “What’d she do?” the boy calls as I walk closer.

  “She won the lottery. I’m just trying to deliver her

  prize money.”

  All three of them collapse into drug-induced giggles

  at that. I smile as if I’m friendly and hand the young white boy a twenty. “A clue, a clue,” I sing, echoing an old kids’

  show I used to watch when I was alone in our trailer for

  days. The three kids giggle again at the hilarity.

  Maybe I’m better with children than I thought I was. At

  least when they’re high. I could start an outreach program

  for high teens. I’ll suggest it at our annual five-minute-

  long meeting about how the firm can have a beneficial

  presence in our community. Now I’m giggling too.

  “Listen, I just want to know if you’ve heard where

  she could be.”

  “Kayla’s a slut,” the boy says. “Could be anywhere

  with anyone.”

  Sluts don’t go missing; they just become looser sluts.

  I’m getting bored now. “Fine. Just guess.”

  The girl, with a short blond hairstyle that could be

  edgy if she’d cut the bangs a little shorter, finally speaks up. “If she didn’t just take off with some trucker, then

  maybe she’s with Little Dog. He’s been gone a couple

  weeks himself.”

  “You been hanging out with Little Dog?” the taller

  Hispanic boy asks archly.

  “Fuck off, Del.”

  I roll my eyes. “Does Little Dog have a real name, or

  were his parents giant dicks?”

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  More hilarious laughter. “Brodie,” the younger boy

  finally offers.

  “And where does Brodie live?”

  I’m surprised when all three of them point in the same

  direction at the same time. Following their gesture, my eye falls on the back of a brick building. “The Laundromat?”

  “Nah,” the girl says, “the hill.”

  I follow the point of her finger again and look beyond

  t
he building this time. Past a few hazy clouds, a rise of

  trees climbs up a shallow hill outside town. Either Brodie

  is a troll in the old-fashioned sense of the word or there’s a run-down shack up there somewhere. I guess I’m about

  to find out.

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  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I leave the kids at the picnic table plotting how to score

  more weed with their twenty-dollar windfall, and I drive

  in the general direction of “the hill.” I lose sight of it

  anytime I get too close to a building, but lucky for me

  there aren’t many structures in this town. I have a clear

  view in no time and realize I’m not looking for a shack

  at all. Just the opposite.

  A fancy wooden fence runs along the road like the kind

  you’d normally find around the horse farms of Kentucky.

  This one protects no quarter horses or Arabians. It’s just a ridiculous acreage of browning grass, and its sole purpose

  is to use up precious water. If I ever noticed this in my

  childhood, I don’t remember it. I probably didn’t realize

  how much money it would take to fence in a property

  this size. Who the hell would build something like this

  outside a prison town? The warden? Even that seems a

  bit of a stretch. Unless he’s crooked.

  And it is a grand estate, though the peeling whitewash

  of the fence indicates the place has seen better times. I

  turn under a wooden archway and drive up a lane that’s

  guarded by rows of pecan trees on either side like be-nutted sentries. Very pretty. My tires crunch over old shells.

  At the top of the hill, a good forty feet above sea

  level, I discover a man-made pond complete with a

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  nonfunctioning fountain and, beyond that, a low ranch

  house that stretches out forever. A covered porch adorns

  the entire front side of the house. I expect to see rocking chairs standing sentry, but the whole long porch is empty

  aside from an overturned bucket someone left near the

  front door.

  Very odd.

  After pulling into the circular driveway, I park in

  front of green double doors outfitted with honest-to-

  God doorknockers. To entertain myself, I use one to

  clack away at the wood, then push the doorbell for good

  measure. I’m not the least bit surprised when it chimes

  out the openings of some classical arrangement I don’t

  know. Mr. Little Dog Brodie comes from surprisingly

  fancy stock.

  When there’s no answer, I press my ear to the wood

  and I think I detect the rumbling bass of an action movie

  inside. This time I knock with my fist and hit the doorbell several times. A few seconds later one of the doors flies

  open to reveal some twenty-something kid with long,

  stringy hair, a nearly concave bare chest, and loose jeans

  falling off his hips.

  “Monsieur Little Dog?” I inquire politely.

  “Nah. I’m Nate.”

  “May I please speak to Little Dog?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “Naw, man. He took off two, three weeks ago after

  some big guy came by. Cleared right out of here.”

  A voice shouts out from somewhere deep inside the

  dim house. “Nate! Your turn, man!”

  Nate looks over his bony white shoulder, then back

  to me, then over his shoulder again.

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  “May I come in?” I ask, and he sighs with relief and

  pulls the door wider.

  “Yeah, man. Come in.” He closes the door after I

  step in; then he rushes toward the voice and the rumble

  of bass down the short hall. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

  he tosses back.

  “Naw, man,” I answer. “Definitely not a cop, dude.”

  As I follow Nate, I recognize the cacophony of bass and

  explosions as a video game, and indeed I emerge from

  the hallway into a living room graced with four young

  white men. A sunken living room.

  The guys are draped over a U-shaped couch that looks

  like it was built to fit perfectly into the recessed space.

  Their eyes are all focused on a giant flat-screen TV above

  a moss rock fireplace.

  The huge table in front of them is littered with at

  least several days’ worth of pizza boxes and enough beer

  bottles to nearly camouflage two big glass bongs.

  “Hello, boys!” I call out above the din.

  One of the guys nearly jumps from his seat at the sight

  of me, and I notice he has a third bong clutched between

  his thighs. This one is shaped like a big brown penis.

  “She’s not a cop,” Nate clarifies as he grabs a controller.

  “Hey, everyone!” I call out. “Anyone seen Little Dog

  lately?”

  They shake their heads and their eyes drift back to

  the screen as Nate starts playing. “He took off,” someone

  finally offers.

  “After some guy kicked his ass,” another adds.

  “Oh, really? Someone beat him up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was this after Kayla disappeared?”

  “Yeah,” Nate says, “like a week later.”

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  I descend into the pit and nudge one guy’s leg until he

  shifts it and leaves me room to sit down. I sink into soft

  gray leather and realize I’m facing a huge pastel painting

  of the very house I’m in. “Whose place is this?”

  A couple of the guys snort in answer. “It’s Brodie’s

  place, man,” Nate answers. “His grandparents died and

  left it to him two years ago. So dope.”

  Jeez, what a way to honor Nana and Pawpaw’s sacri-

  fice. “So this whole giant place is his?”

  “So dope!” Nate shouts.

  “And you guys live here?”

  All of them shrug. “Not really,” one says. “On and

  off,” says another. “We’re watching the place for Brodie,”

  says Nate.

  Nice gig. “Can I buy a beer off you?” I ask as I toss

  another of my twenty-dollar bills on the table and grab

  an unopened can of Milwaukee’s Best to pretend I’m in

  high school again. Of course, now I notice the stench of

  old weed and body odor. I’ve become more discerning

  in my old age, and the kid next to me reeks of sweat or

  onions, I’m not sure which.

  I drink half the beer and settle in for a little while.

  They’ve been fucked-up for days and don’t seem to ques-

  tion my presence. I’ve appeared, so here I am.

  After a few minutes, I find myself staring at a book-

  shelf full of tiny pale statues. They’re Lladró figurines.

  I recognize them only because I remember watching a

  whole segment about them on a shopping channel one

  day at my grandma’s house.

  If that sounds like a touching moment, it wasn’t. My

  grandmother was a stone-cold bitch who treated me re-

  sentfully when she was forced to babysit. When I was at

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  Problem Child

  a little cunt.” That’s a fun word to learn when you’re
six.

  You can really shut down a whole first-grade classroom

  with that one.

  At that age I wasn’t even a monster yet, though my

  brain was definitely rewiring itself to better protect

  me. I knew by then that I was on my own. That no

  one else would take care of me. That fear and vulner-

  ability brought predation and pain. My parents could

  never be depended on, and when they disappeared for

  days at a time, my brother offered cruel taunts instead

  of comfort.

  No one took care of me, so my brain helped me do it

  myself by shutting down anything that made me weak.

  I grew strong. I grew invincible. I would never have let

  these idiot little punks pimp me out or use me. On the

  contrary, I would’ve used them for whatever they had

  to offer.

  “What’s up with Kayla?” I finally ask, and receive

  another chorus of shrugs. None of them even looks

  nervous, though I watch their faces for guilt. “Did she

  take off?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Onion Boy says. “She was calling

  Brodie a lot before he left.”

  “So she’s alive?”

  Nate snorts loudly. “You think Kayla’s dead? Why?”

  “No one has seen her in weeks.”

  More shrugs, and then someone farts and the boys

  erupt into guffaws. This isn’t exactly playing out like an

  interrogation scene from an Agatha Christie novel. “Did

  Kayla ever crash here?” I try.

  “Sure,” Nate says.

  “Great.” Without asking for permission, I get up and

  wander out of the room looking for any evidence of this

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  niece of mine. There are four bedrooms, all decorated in

  the finest expensive eighties oak furniture, big, lumbering pieces sculpted with generic leaves and vines. All except

  the master bedroom, which is graced with cherrywood

  against mauve-painted walls. It appears that Little Dog

  hasn’t changed a thing in two years. In fact, a portrait of his grandmother watches him sleep at night.

  Jesus.

  Speaking of, a big cross hangs above the headboard

  in a matching cherry finish. It’s full-on grandma chic.

  There are no bodies or bloody knives or even notes

  about how to get rid of a dead girl’s corpse. But when I

  wander into a brass-fixtured bathroom, I do find evidence

  that a young girl has been here. There are hair scrunchies

  and lip gloss at the makeup table. I carefully touch a

  finger to a compact of glittery purple eye shadow, then