Drowning Barbie Read online

  “So, I should do what?”

  “Can’t say, Hedrick. The dental records got sent over to that identity facility, so it’s too late to lose them. You might go down to wherever they found the stiff and make sure it can’t be Barbie.”

  “And how would I do that?”

  “He had other identifying marks, like a missing pinky finger. You’ll say it’s a dental clone or twin or something. I don’t know. You figure that part out. Best case, if this new body has all his fingers, you’re in the clear.”

  “I’m in the clear? Excuse me, Phillips, but it’s not my out-of-wedlock baby we have here. If there was a screw-up in the original investigation, it’s someone else’s problem.”

  “Hedrick, you haven’t been listening.”

  “I haven’t been…Wait, are you asking me to ‘take one for the team’? A couple of our guys go for a quick close on the basis of a snitch’s chatter, and the prosecutor is…is what, running for office and needs some good ink? Sorry, not my game.”

  “Listen, Hedrick, you’re right, it’s not your game, mine either, but the trouble is, there’s some guys who worked this case then who are still active now and who are in positions that could affect your career. I don’t like this any more than you do. Just know what’s at stake here.”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Essie Sutherlin had every right to flee from an at-large George LeBrun. It had not been that long since he’d dragged her and her then-to-be husband to a local park and attempted to kill them both. As soon as she heard the news, she’d packed up the baby and left for Bristol. She told no one, not even Billy, where she was going. Once there, she checked in to a motel owned by an old high school friend who would not register her name in the computer. George LeBrun would have his work cut out if he wanted to find her.

  ***

  A year and a half in prison, denied the crystal meth that previously had been LeBrun’s daily diet created for him a clearer state of mind, and a set of government-issue dentures had restored his face to near normality. Before his surprising and—for practically no one else—welcome release from the maximum security facility, he’d used this relative clarity to assess his business opportunities, past and future. His cousin had made a botch of the meth cooking operation in his garage, and his brother likewise the importing of weed and South American glass from Norfolk. As both were no longer in play, he’d managed to assemble another, tighter network from his prison cell. Everything seemed to be going well and he’d intended to focus his attention on his retrial when the news that Ethyl Smut had been found dead in a shallow grave in the woods threw a small wrench into his not-yet-well-oiled machinery.

  At this particular moment the object of his anger was not Essie Sutherlin, but whoever killed the Smut bitch. The man across the beer stained-table shook his head.

  “I got nothin’, George. I asked around, you know, but nobody out there has a line on her or anybody who might have snuffed her.”

  “Nothing?”

  Ethyl Smut meant very little to George in the big scheme of things, so her death did not disturb him that much. What did cause him to overdo his first hit since coming outside was the possibility that her death signaled the entrance of a rival drug dealer into what he considered his territory. Ethyl, for all her obvious faults, had served him well enough as an informant and dealer. Her irregular visits to the prison had enabled him to put together his current group and keep track of it, not to mention the considerable cash it generated, cash he needed to keep lawyers on retainer.

  In her younger days, before the effects of her addiction had ravaged her face and melted her mind, Ethyl had served him in other ways as well. But then she’d stooped to taking on anyone, anything , any way, to support her habit. It was too bad her kid had run off like she did. He preferred younger women—hell, everybody did. He licked his lips and fumbled in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes.

  “What about her kid?”

  His companion looked away and mumbled something George couldn’t make out. He cleared his throat and said he had put out feelers but did not get much in the way of information. The girl was in the wind, maybe dead, maybe in a foster home Back East. He didn’t know.

  “You don’t know or don’t want to say?”

  “I asked around, spent some money, and dealt some smack, but no one knew anything about the old woman’s killing or where the kid went.”

  “Listen, Dellinger, you disappear for a million years. Then you pop up on the radar screen looking to make some money. So, okay, we can do business, like, maybe for old time’s sake. But if you’re not being straight with me, if you’re hiding something, it could go hard on you.”

  “George, you got more important things to do than worry about the girl. Your lawyer said—”

  “I know what that snake said.”

  “All I know is that the kid has dropped out of sight. Someone said she went to live in a foster home in Virginia Beach, but I can’t find her nowhere. Some said they heard she OD’ed up in Baltimore. It’s a big user town now so, that makes sense. Jesus, leave it. Is it that important? I could, maybe, put somebody on it, but it would cost you.”

  As far as George was concerned, she could stay out of sight in Virginia Beach or Timbuktu. If she did come back and refused to get back in the game, though, she’d have to be taken out of circulation. She knew too much and, more than that, she could send people to jail—important people. That is, if she decided to talk to the cops. So there could be no talking.

  “There’s rumors that she’s come back to town,” he said.

  “I ain’t heard that.”

  “If they’re true, it could complicate my day.” George polished off his third beer and a shot. “See, it could be good if she’s on the game, but not so good if she’s clean and chatty. Either way it’s a good bet she’ll turn up in time. Stoners and junkies always do. They need their lift. Keep your eyes open just in case.”

  For the moment, he needed to sort out who bumped off the old lady and deal with the guy on the other side of the table who, George was convinced, had an agenda that had put them on opposite sides, so to speak. Some people, like this guy, were too sentimental about things like family and friends. He leaned back in his chair, finished his beer, and realized he liked the way this was working out. It’s a lot easier working on the outside than in.

  ***

  “Where’s Essie?” Ike asked. The main office seemed unnaturally quiet. The few deputies who were on their way out, shrugged.

  “She called in and said she needed a few personal days and asked me to fill in,” Rita, the night dispatcher, said. “I’ve fixed it up so Darcie Billingsley will sub for me tonight. Things are quieter at night and her kids are old enough and smart enough to go to bed and stay there. Besides, Ike, she needs the work.”

  “Okay, I’m good with that, but why did Essie go off? Did she say?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Apparently not. What should I have heard?”

  “George LeBrun. He’s out of jail. Some smarty pants lawyer from Richmond got him a re-trial hearing and he’s out on bond, or something.”

  “Ah, that would explain it. I have seven text messages on my phone. One of them must be about that.”

  “You have seven texts and you haven’t responded?”

  “I don’t like text messages. You want to contact me, call, write, drop in and chat. Nobody’s time is so damned important that they have to resort to misspellings and ridiculous contractions just because it will save thirty seconds of their precious time. So, no, I haven’t responded. I am sure there is an official announcement on my computer or in the mail. What has that to do with Essie…? Oh, crap, I almost forgot. It’s George LeBrun who’s on the loose. Where’d she go?”

  “She didn’t say. She was just scared of what LeBrun would do to her if he found her.�
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  “How about Billy?”

  “He’s off duty for two days anyway. I guess they’ve both bolted.”

  “Billy knows better. See if you can find either of them and let me know. And, thanks, Rita.”

  “No probs, Boss.”

  Ike slipped into his office and nearly tripped over the bag of miscellany from his father’s barn. He gave it a kick and sent it into the corner. Two dead guys and George LeBrun on the loose trumped a bag of trash. He paused and stared at the bag again.

  “Might it have been left in that particular barn because whoever left it there wanted it found by someone who would tell me? But who’s that clever and if they are, wouldn’t it be simpler to drop it off here? Maybe they didn’t realize what they were doing as a conscious thing. Maybe it was one of those Freudian worms Ruth was talking about.”

  “You talking to me?” Rita called from the outer office.

  “Nope, just consulting with my inner cop.”

  “If you say so. While you have his attention, ask if he can get some more of those coffee thingies. The night crew went through the whole box. That’s what you get when you serve up drinkable coffee.”

  “On it. By the way, Rita, you’ve lived here all your life. What can you tell me about Ethyl Smut and her daughter?”

  “You have enough overtime in the budget to cover the hours it will take to tell you? I mean there’s a thick book on the old lady and another, thinner one, on the girl. Neither one of them is pretty reading, you could say.”

  “Check with me before you go home and, yeah, I can cover it.”

  “Just kidding about the money, but hey, if you got it…”

  “I do, and I will.”

  Ike turned back to the papers on his desk, booted up his computer, cursed at three error messages and wished Samantha Ryder had never been shanghaied by NSA. And why did that girl in Lee Henry’s Hair Cuttery seem familiar, and where the hell was the kid from the academy, TAK?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Leota Blevins had lived in Virginia Beach since her thirtieth birthday—after the breakup of a disastrous affair with an ex-Marine. The affair had invoked the disapproval of her cousins and grandmother, and the upshot had not been pleasant. She’d returned to Old Dominion University after a five-year lapse and received her Bachelor of Library Science degree. She moved to the shore and took her first—and so far only— job as an assistant librarian in Little Creek, a position she’d filled for almost two decades. Any chance of promotion was blocked because her immediate superior was eight years younger than she. And as Leota’s inquiries about openings elsewhere evinced no interest from any other library, and because her boss did not seem interested in leaving, she’d settled in to making a career in eastern Virginia. After her fiftieth birthday she had abandoned all hope of an alternative venue and started to count the days until she had accumulated enough time and age to start drawing a modest pension. Social Security would come soon after—that is if the system didn’t collapse from years of being raided by a Congress eager to spend other people’s money.

  She also had cousins in Picketsville—Flora and Arlene, who ran a diner. They rarely spoke and never exchanged Christmas or birthday cards or, indeed, correspondence of any sort. The coolness in their relationship stemmed from two unrelated occurrences that happened at about the same time. One had to do with a dispute over a set of Spode china each claimed their mutual grandmother had wanted them to have and a misunderstanding about funeral arrangements. Then, of course, there was the problem of the ex-Marine. They never spoke of that either. As all these events are intertwined in that part of their collective consciousness where emotion and often-rash decisions are made, there would be no resolution. Leota turned her back on her family and settled in the east, as far from them as she could manage.

  On this particular Monday afternoon, Leota sat in her pickup, its motor idling, as she wondered if she had made the right decision about the girl and if she ought to retrace her route westward again. Perhaps she should have given Flora more of a heads-up. Dumping the girl on her without any warning would not sit well with the eldest of the cousins. Then, had she thought through what she’d done? Should she have taken her back to Picketsville at all? Of course, the child needed to be told about what happened to her, but in the end, what good could come from that? She had not bothered the caseworker, since that person had not been any help before.

  The girl, Darla, had not come to live with Leota of her own free will, exactly. A representative of the commonwealth’s Child Protective Services office had offered the child an either/or choice. Go to jail or be placed in one of the foster homes known to service incorrigible children. Leota knew the girl’s history, and knew that she had been the victim for most of it, and therefore had done nothing to warrant the label incorrigible. But, like it or not, her checkered past landed her there. As luck would have it, Leota heard that the case was in process and knew the remanding official. She persuaded the official to place Darla with her, with the promise that Leota would provide both the care and the security the child required. So, Darla had not been sent to the stringently regulated home she was destined for, to join those like her with similar and nearly always misunderstood histories. In a very real way, Leota thought of the girl as the daughter she might have had.

  Leota became distressed after she’d coerced a summer intern into hacking into the court’s sealed records and discovered Ethyl Smut had petitioned the court to re-hear her custody claims. The thought of the girl falling back into that woman’s hands was unthinkable. What kind of society would ever entertain that possibility for even a minute?

  Well, Leota’s promise to provide security had been breached. The girl was gone, so Leota dutifully reported her as missing to the caseworker. So sorry. Now what?

  ***

  Ike did a double take at the entrance. Darcie Billingsly had settled into the dispatcher’s desk. For years he had always glanced to his right, waved to Essie or Rita and walked to his office. Not Essie—Darcie. She had the headset on and was busy chatting with one of the patrolling deputies. If Ike had to guess who, it would be Chester Franklin. The year before, Chester’s wife had emptied the joint bank account and run off, they said, with a twenty-five-year-old fitness guru. Chester was left alone with two teenagers, payments on a new Chevy Silverado which also went missing, and a mortgage. Darcie, on the other hand, had finally put the death of her husband, Whaite, behind her, and she and Chester had connected at the office Christmas party. Shortly thereafter, Chester had stopped making payments on the truck.

  Romance.

  Ike shook his head. Maybe he and Ruth could share whoever they could persuade to do the honors and have a double wedding. What had he and Ruth been thinking? They hadn’t been thinking, that’s what.

  Rita, now officially off duty and on overtime, she hoped, plunked down in Ike’s only other chair.

  “Okay, what do you want to know about Ethyl Smut?”

  “What do I need to know, Rita? The woman is dead. I have the impression she was disliked by any and all, and that no one who knew her is surprised or even cares that she’s dead. There is also the daughter and her troubles. I don’t know why I don’t know either of their stories, but I don’t.”

  “You probably don’t know because most of her sorry crap went down while you were away doing whatever it was that nobody around here talks about but everybody knows was for the government. And then she dropped out of sight for a while. Her daughter is a different story and one I can only guess at, on account of nobody talks about that either. So, we’re dealing with rumors and outright lies.”

  “Wow. Okay, start where you want. I need as much as I can get and for now I’ll even take the lies with the truth.”

  “Okay, let’s start with the girl. Remember, a lot of this is hearsay. People don’t like to talk about stuff like this.”

  “What kind of stuff?’

>   “Child sexual abuse kind of stuff. Remember, Ike, this isn’t the big city and we are not so calloused about things as those folk are. We still hold onto old values and standards—is that what I want to say? You know what I mean. We haven’t caught up to Hollywood yet. Some things are just plain evil and that’s that.”

  “I hear you. So the ‘abuse’ mentioned in the files wasn’t just assault and battery of someone, the child?”

  “Not even close. I’ll get to that in a second. So, okay, Ethyl lived hard and fast even before she started doing drugs. Once she discovered methamphetamine the world changed for her and everyone around her. She got mixed up with that ex-Marine, Mark somebody, and the next thing you know, she had a baby, a daughter. That is when it really got bad. I mean it’s one thing to sell yourself for a hit or two, another to pimp out your daughter.”

  “She traded her daughter for smack?”

  “Smack, glass, whatever you call it now and anything else that was moving down the highway from Baltimore and Washington or up from Norfolk. If it blew your mind, Ethyl smoked it, snorted it, shot it, or drank it. Back then I swear she’d shoot up with diesel fuel or talcum powder if she thought it would get her high. So, yeah, from the time the kid was seven or eight, Ethyl allowed as how the girl was available for the right price. Do you have any idea how many men lust after little girls?”

  “Yes, and I wish I didn’t.”

  “Whatever number you may have heard it’s probably on the low side. Hell, even one is too many. They say that the poor kid was raped for most of her young life just to keep Ethyl on a perpetual high.”

  “What happened to the girl?”

  “Darla? She up and disappeared a few years ago. Some say she got picked up by the children’s bureau, some say she died. Some say she ran away to Chicago or D.C. I don’t know. All I know is Ethyl was mad as hell that her meal ticket, you could say, had vanished.”