Drowning Barbie Read online

  “So, nobody knows where the kid is?”

  “If she’s alive, somebody knows. If they’re a friend of hers, they won’t be telling, though. I sure wouldn’t. She’s been through bloody hell. And on the other hand, if they’re one of the legions of abusers, rapists, and perverts who went after her, then she’s probably dead. There is no way they would want her around to testify against them. As for the girl, there’s a limit to how much of that crap a body can stand before it just shuts down.”

  “Voice of experience?”

  “I had to bury a second cousin last year, and her life before taking up residence in the cemetery, was a hayride compared to Darla Smut’s, believe me.”

  “I’m sorry. And the old lady…what’s her story? The part not covered by the awfulness she perpetrated on her child.”

  “Like I said, she got mixed up with drugs early on. Like most druggies, her brains were scrambled so you could argue she didn’t really know what she was doing to the kid. I don’t buy that, of course, but some lawyer in a thousand-dollar suit, like the one who sprung George LeBrun, might make a case for it. That’s the other thing. Ethyl was one of his customers and paid for some of her drugs by being a distributor.”

  “She hustled drugs?”

  “She hustled drugs, her kid, and her own ass to stay afloat, pardon my French. George, they say, had a thing with her before her face fell apart, then he started raping the kid instead.”

  “Lovely man. And he’s out of the slammer.”

  “With his taxpayer-supplied new teeth and waiting for a new trial, yep.”

  “And Essie is in hiding. Anything else I should know about any of the players in this sordid drama?”

  “I’ll let you know if I think of anything…and sordid don’t cover the half of it.”

  “Are there any pictures of the girl?”

  “I don’t have any, but I can ask around. There should be one or two somewhere. Check your mug shots. The girl had to come across the desk here once or twice. You could also check with the child welfare folks. If she wandered into their system, they might know where she landed. Oh, and check with Flora Blevins at the diner. She used to be tight with Smuts. She might have a snap or two.”

  “She told me she’s the girl’s godmother.”

  “There you go.”

  “She’s not talking.”

  “That’s Flora.”

  Ike thanked Rita and waved her out the door. What an awful story. Could a mother really do such a thing to her child? He knew of a few fathers who might, but a mother? He needed to talk to Flora again.

  A quick check in the files failed to produce a picture of any sort. Curious, that. Did someone just fail to file them, fail to take them, or were they removed for some reason, perhaps because she was a juvenile? Ike shook his head. Things were not getting easier.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “We’re going to Picketsville. Pack for a couple of days and don’t forget to lock up your piece.”

  Samantha Hedrick looked up from her real estate brochures and stared at her husband. The baby slept in her lap having pretty well drained both sides, so to speak. “Picketsville? Piece? What on earth are you talking about, Karl?”

  “I’ll explain later. Let’s just say I stepped into a pile of organic fertilizer left for me a decade ago by a couple of hot-shot agents with more ambition than patience.”

  “I guess that makes sense in some language. Next time could you try English?”

  “A body found in the woods outside Picketsville should have been in the Atlantic Ocean and is causing a major case of the vapors for some of my senior colleagues. I am tasked to make it all better.”

  “Well, okay, I think. Where will we stay?”

  “Stay?”

  “Um…yeah, stay. We are travelling to the Shenandoah Valley and you did say I should pack. So where will we sleep, eat, bathe, you know live temporarily?”

  “I guess we could find a motel.”

  “Karl, you guess we could find a…You want me and the baby to hole up in a motel for, what did you say, a couple of days? And you will be doing something which sounds like a major clusterfudge and then all will be fine? Sorry, but as my dad used to say, ‘That dog don’t hunt.’ How about this? Martin and I stay in here D.C. while you travel south to Picketsville for a few days and do whatever it is you’re going to do. Say hello to all the gang for me while you’re there.”

  “I thought you’d want to see Essie and Ike and the rest.”

  “I would, I do, but not operating out of a motel room that you guess we might find. We have a baby to manage here, Karl. Diapers, baby food, and bags of things that he needs plus all the stuff you and I will need. Unless there is a meteorite headed this way, and this is an emergency evacuation from the D.C. area, we can do better than guessing we might find a motel room.”

  Karl had a suitcase open on the living room couch and was staring at it the way a kitten will stare at its own image the first time it encounters a mirror—not quite sure what to do next. Sam watched as she imagined he made a mental list of items that should go into the case. At least that is what she hoped he had in mind. With Karl, you could never be sure.

  “What? Karl, you pack a suitcase in the bedroom. That’s where the clothes are.”

  “I know, I know, it’s just that I thought that you would…”

  “I would what? Want to visit our friends in Picketsville? Of course I do. But Karl…oh, never mind.” Sam picked up her smartphone and scrolled through her directory. She punched the call icon and waited. “No answer at Billy and Essie’s. They must be at work. I’ll try Dorothy.”

  “Dorothy?”

  “Yes, Dorothy. Dorothy Sutherlin…Billy’s mom. We could stay with her if she’ll have us. She has a huge house and she’ll want to see the baby anyway.”

  “Dorothy Sutherlin?”

  “Men!”

  ***

  Dorothy Sutherlin’s next-to-youngest, Billy, picked up Ike’s call on his way to the drugstore. Ike told him what he already knew: that George LeBrun had somehow finagled a new trial and had made bond. He also knew that Essie had more than likely lit out, and he told Ike that he would either join her or bring her back. He also said he had a pretty good idea where she might be holed up. But he needed to stop at a drugstore first.

  “Yeah, whatever, Billy, but—”

  “Not to worry, Ike. I know the drill. I’m on it.”

  “Okay. Do you want TAK to run a check on Essie’s credit cards to see where she might be headed?”

  “She won’t be using them. As far as she’s concerned, LeBrun can track them too. It ain’t true, but where it comes to that guy, Essie is, like, super paranoid. No, she won’t touch them.”

  “How will you find her?”

  “She has a friend who runs a place outside of Bristol. That’s where she’s going.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Back before we were married, you know, when she was, you could say, more of a free spirit, and things with her old lady were sometimes not so hot—or maybe just to get away from whatever was eating at her—she always went to ground down there.”

  “Okay, you’re the boss on this one, but you know she’s better off up here where we can all keep an eye out rather than tucked away someplace where we can’t possibly get help to her in time. I can tell you, and this is from personal experience, that hiding where no one can find you—including your friends—while bad guys are looking for you is definitely not a good idea.”

  “Ike, I’ll bring her back if I can, but it’ll take some doing. I reckon she’s pretty well spooked. Actually I reckon I am too.” Billy hung up and went into the drugstore.

  There were simple survival things the two of them needed no matter where they rode out the storm that the release of George LeBrun had roiled up. And the drugstore was next door to the ha
rdware store and the hardware store sold shotgun shells.

  The sun had set by the time he knocked on the door of unit fourteen of the Wayside Motel, a stopover favored by truckers and salesmen traveling on per diem and short of cash, or with tapped out credit cards. He heard a stirring inside.

  “Essie, honey, it’s me. Open up.”

  Essie’s voice was muffled but he heard her ask if he was alone. The window curtain twitched and he caught a glimpse of the blue-gray barrel of his old service revolver flick it back.

  “It’s just me, Babe, open up.”

  The door opened a crack and one large blue eye peered out.

  “See, it’s just me. No gun on my back. No George LeBrun fixing to kill us both. Not anymore.”

  Essie swung the door open just wide enough to grab his shirtfront and pull him in. She slammed it shut and locked it in one continuous motion.

  “What are we going to do?” The panic in Essie’s voice could have etched glass.

  “We’re going back to Picketsville. We are not going to let that sumbitch LeBrun run our lives. Get your things, Babe. We’re bigger than this.”

  “He wants to kill us, Billy. He said if he ever had the chance, he would find me and kill me.”

  “Well, in the first place, he ain’t found you. In the second place there is going to be so much security around you he won’t get within ten miles ’fore he’s looking down the barrel of Ike’s .357 Magnum. So, we will be just fine.”

  “He has people.”

  “And we have more. Listen, who do you think is the scariest dude in a situation like this, Ike or LeBrun? If I’m LeBrun, I don’t get in Ike’s crosshairs ever. And don’t forget, Danny is home on a two-week pass. He’s even worse news for LeBrun than Ike. He’s family.”

  “Danny is a SEAL. He could be off on a mission inside five minutes of getting to the house.”

  “Until our bad guy is back in the jailhouse, he ain’t going nowhere.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Essie, nobody, not LeBrun or any of his brain-dead friends, is going to get within shouting distance of you or me. He’ll be back on death row before the week is out.”

  Billy took her by the shoulder. “Look at me, Essie. Everybody thinks we’re hiding out down here, shaking in our boots. It ain’t true, but that’s what they think. Hell, back awhile, maybe they’d be right. I thought about it all the way down here. But not now. Nobody’s going to make me live like a rat in a hole. You neither. The way it sits now, you’re covered.”

  “You promise?”

  “Cross my heart.”

  Essie stared wide-eyed at her husband. She blinked twice, grabbed her as-yet-unpacked bag, and took his arm.

  “Let’s go, then. I feel safe here only when I am sure nobody knows I’m here. I mean Cindy didn’t even register me, you know. But the thought of days without you, and then things like how do I shop for the baby had me in a bind. You’re sure we’re okay back home?”

  “Between me, Danny, Frank, Ike, and Henry—”

  “Henry?”

  “Well, maybe not Henry. He’s more of a lover than a fighter. But you’d be surprised at that boy and what he’d do in a pinch.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Daylight savings time means that the sun, while low on the horizon, still shines at six in the evening in southwestern Virginia. Ike had promised Ruth they would meet for dinner somewhere and plot and scheme their wedding into place. Rita’s narrative about Ethyl Smut’s sordid life made clear to him he needed to have a sit-down with Flora Blevins. He called Ruth and asked for an hour’s delay.

  “No problem. I have paperwork up the wazoo, Ike.” Ruth said, “So, okay fine, see you around seven-thirty.”

  Ike clocked out of the office and walked the half block or so to the Cross Roads Diner. Whether she wanted to be quizzed or not, Ike needed to have his talk with Flora. He doubted she would be eager to have it, but it needed to be done. Irrespective of what people thought of Ethyl, she’d been murdered and whether she deserved it or not, the murderer had to be caught, tried, and put away.

  The diner had regulars for each of its three mealtimes. Ike counted as a breakfast regular as did most of the patrons, although many ate breakfast at noon. Dinner regulars were sparser and even then, most preferred the breakfast menu. Only the brave or those suffering from a significant loss of gustatory acuity ordered off the dinner menu, but a few hardy souls were willing to risk gravy out of a can and yellow-brown mounds of flesh which Flora insisted were chicken fried steak. Ike pushed his way in through the glass doors and scanned the area. Diners sat in booths and at tables urging their mashed potatoes into pools of congealing gravy or sawed at the substance Flora insisted was meat with their dinner knives. Flora did not believe in steak knives.

  “Too dangerous if a crazy man came in,” she’d said.

  Ike refrained from asking her how often that happened.

  Flora was not positioned behind the cash register or circulating between the tables giving advice on good eating and generally bullying the patrons. Ike asked Bob, the counterman, where she had gone. Bob might not have been his real name. All of Flora’s countermen wore shirts supplied by Flora and they all were the same size and identified their wearer as Bob. This current Bob, his shirt a size too large, tilted his head toward the rear and door leading to the pantry and the cramped office Flora used to do her paperwork. Another rarity. Flora usually left the paperwork to her cousin, Arlene, who stood the night shift and filled the empty predawn hours sorting through orders, bills, and mail.

  Ike eased around a fifty-pound bag of red potatoes. “Evening, Flora. Have your ears been burning?”

  “Why would they?”

  “I’ve been having conversations about you on and off most of the day. Can you guess what about?”

  “Nope.”

  “Just ‘nope’? Aren’t you just a little bit curious?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay. Well, how about you tell me about Ethyl Smut and her daughter.”

  “I already done that, Ike. We had that confab yesterday, or was it the day before? I don’t know. Either way, I got nothing to say to you. So there. Are you going to get out of my office?”

  “Nope.”

  “Whataya mean?”

  “Flora, your former neighbor and mother to your goddaughter has been murdered. It is my job to find her killer. It seems this is the place to start.”

  “I got nothing to say. Nobody gives a hoot in hell about that evil woman’s death. Neither should you.”

  “Doesn’t work that way. Whether she deserved to die or not, murder is still frowned on in my town. Talk to me.”

  “If I don’t?”

  “We could go down to the office and chat there. You’re my only lead, maybe a person of interest, as they say on the eleven o’clock news.”

  “So, arrest me.”

  “Maybe I will. Maybe I will have to. Listen, Flora, I can get as snarky as you and since I wear the badge, I have an advantage. So, talk to me now, here, or later down at the station and under arrest for obstruction of justice. Your choice.”

  “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am. That is why I am talking to you in the middle of sacks of potatoes and crates of canned vegetables and not through the bars of a cell. I need to know everything you can tell me about Ethyl Smut or Dellinger, her daughter, and where I might find the latter.”

  “Why do you want Darla?”

  “Several reasons. First, how about she has the strongest motive to kill her mother?”

  “Not good enough. What’s another?”

  “George LeBrun is out of jail and headed this way.”

  “No. How’d he do that?”

  “Money and friends on the outside. He’s drugs, Flora—drugs, murder, and worse, if anything can be. Drug money can bu
y a lot of friends in high places. Ethyl was about drugs. Ethyl is dead, but Ethyl had a daughter when he was loose before. Does this daughter know anything that might get in the way of his continued freedom? Something her mother knew and took to her grave? Do you want her to take the chance?”

  “That ain’t fair, Ike.”

  “What’s not fair?”

  “That little girl has suffered enough at the hand of them people. You gotta keep her safe, you hear?”

  “How am I going to keep her safe when I don’t know where she is, Flora?”

  Flora sighed. She swiveled around in her chair and faced Ike. “I’ll tell you a couple of things, but I ain’t ready to tell you where the girl is at.”

  “Then you do know.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

  “Not good enough. If the girl knows anything—not if, I’m thinking—she can identify men who were involved in her abuse, Flora. She is in deep trouble. If those people get even a hint she might talk about what she knows, she’s in the same place only deeper. And, as much as I am sure you don’t want to hear it, she has to be considered a suspect in her mother’s murder. Talk to me, Flora.”

  ***

  Essie sat slumped low in the seat of the cruiser as if she were afraid she might be seen and recognized and perhaps attacked as she and Billy drove northeast from Bristol. She jumped when Billy’s cell phone went off.

  Billy tapped his earpiece. “Sutherlin,” he said. “What…who? You’re kidding, right?” Billy’s grin almost reached each ear. He tapped off and turned briefly to Essie. “Guess who’s coming for a visit?”

  “Who?”

  “Sam and Karl. Old Karl has some kind of FBI business in town and them two is coming down. Ma says they’ll be staying with us. What do you think about that?”

  “Sam and Karl?” Essie sat up straight. “They’re going to be at the house?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “It’ll be like old times.”

  “Well, not exactly. I mean Sam, she works up in Washington for the NSA and Karl is still FBI. But for a little while, yeah, it’ll be the good old days.”