Drowning Barbie (3 page)

Chapter Five

Ike plunked down in the only comfortable chair in his rented apartment. The two of them had driven to the quarry as planned and, like the teenagers they weren't, had attempted some heavy petting in the front seat, not the back. It didn't work. It didn't work because, in fact, neither of them were teenagers anymore and hadn't been for much too long. It didn't work because the press of real work and duty distracted them from the moment, and because…hell, all those adult concerns push in and stifle whatever spontaneity they might have enjoyed. Ruth took care of him in a less athletic manner and he had driven her home. He had the sense that Ruth had more on her mind than just work, but Ruth was Ruth and she would work through it.

He let his gaze wander around his apartment. Ruth had said “poor excuse of an apartment.” She was right, of course. He'd rented it when he had been elected sheriff. The drive into town from the mountains where he had his A-frame took too long to be convenient and was too tricky when the snow fell and iced the roads. The apartment's two rooms, kitchenette, and bath had come furnished. In the intervening years he'd added little to the décor. He had a bookcase of his favorites. Ike did not collect books. He figured if he had no plans to ever read the thing a second time, he'd pass it on to someone who might. His bookcase contained, then, a couple of dozen volumes, mostly nonfiction and two-thirds of them biographies of leaders, famous and infamous. He'd purchased a flat-screen TV which had not yet been connected to cable. He used it to watch old movies he streamed from Netflix and rented DVDs. Also he had some plates, pots and pans, and a second small freezer he kept stocked with frozen dinners, and that was pretty much it. So, aside from the books, there was precious little to move over to the president's cottage. Actually, “cottage” diminished the building. “Mansion” more nearly covered it. Downstairs was largely given over to receptions and meetings. Ruth occupied an apartment carved out of the upstairs. It was barely larger than his, although there were guest rooms for visiting dignitaries. Fitting in the bookcase might be a challenge.

The larger question resonated around the minutia of marriage and cohabitation. Did he really want to share a bathroom? Was he ready for things like loofahs and body wash on the tub's sill? He was a bar soap man and things that came out of squeeze bottles made him nervous. Was she the sort who would use his razor in places and for purposes it was not designed? The truth about marriage and its many failures, he thought had more to do with the everyday frictions over trivia, than any lack of passion, love, or communication.

He sat back and ran the thought through his head once again and laughed. Bullshit. You adjusted or you installed a second bath—problem solved. Marriage was a state he'd only tasted, never completely devoured. He'd leave heavy analysis to Abigail Van Buren.

Charlie Garland called Ike around midnight.

“So, you have done the deed.”

“Which deed would that be, Charlie?”

“Las Vegas, the Budding Rose Wedding Chapel. That deed.”

“Is there anything about me you do not know? Charlie, if I didn't know you better, I'd swear you're having a bromance with me and that thought is really scary. Why in hell were you snooping into my time in the west?”

“I am your guardian angel, your Clarence. I wanted to get my wings. Your wedding bells secured them for me.”

“What?”

“
It's a Wonderful Life,
don't you remember? Jimmy Stewart, or rather George Bailey thinks all is lost, his career as the town do-gooder finished and—”

“I got it. You as Clarence Odbody, the postulant angel, is way too much of a stretch, Charlie. You are the villainous Henry Potter, if you are anybody.”

“I am wounded. I have to ask, are you ready for this move?”

“Ready? How do you mean?”

“You were a single guy for a long time. Then, you married Eloise after what…a twenty-minute romance?”

“It wasn't twenty minutes.”

“Close. Eloise died and Ruth helped you heal. Are you sure that isn't all there is to this latest move?”

“Charlie, you are not my mother, you are not even a good psychologist. Stop prying.”

“Very well, if you insist. Moving along, the director wants to know if your nuptials will temper Ruth's chronic enmity toward the nation's select service. If so, does this raise the possibility that you could be tempted to help us out on, say, a consultant basis from time to time?”

“The contrary, my friend. At her request and my concurrence, you have been removed from my speed dial. Your name may not be spoken in her presence. You are permanently banned from the premises. Before you ask, that is because she dislikes being caught in a cross fire especially when the bullets are real. She wishes never to be so again. And so say I. Done and done, Charlie.”

“You two are annoyed. I understand and I am sorry about that. I will take it, then, that you are temporarily out of the loop.”

“Not temporarily.”

“We'll see.” Charlie hung up. Ike sighed and thought of Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren and
RED
and wondered if there was ever an ending to a career foolishly begun in the darker reaches of the CIA.

More importantly, now that Charlie had resurrected it, had Ike finally said goodbye to Eloise's ghost?

***

Ruth believed she handled stress about as well as anyone she knew, except Ike. Her cure was to do more. That is, if work stressed her out, she'd just work harder. If something in her private life, her not work life, caused her to pause, she simply pushed on through. Truth be told, that part of her life had been anything but stressful. Her relationship with Ike, which had started out about as oddly as any, had over time found a comfortable place, a rhythm. It could have gone on forever just as it was. But it wasn't going to—not now. Las Vegas and tequila had seen to that. So, a new game. Until now, the faculty, confronted with their coupling had, as a whole, managed with varying success to look the other way. Long before Ike appeared on their doorstep, they had bought into the
de rigueur
notion of “celebrating diversity.” Most of them had done so as a knee-jerk response to the then-fashionable idea. None had actually considered what it meant beyond recruiting the occasional minority student—Latino, African American, gay, and so on—whatever the social imperative suggested to be important at any moment in time. All agreed that it was a good thing they did and so they “celebrated.”

Having their PhD, DLitt president sleeping with the town sheriff, however, forced some of them to rethink their early subscription to the concept. Somehow, Ike and Ruth as a couple, a sexually active couple, didn't fit the broader intent. Yet, objecting to Ruth's choice exposed in them a level of hypocrisy which they found difficult to internalize. So, they looked the other way and hoped in time the whole affair would just go away. It hadn't. Ruth had dealt with this as with everything else. She soldiered on, daring anyone to say something. No one had.

That was then and this is now. It was one thing to be perceived as having a fling with a “townie,” as one or two of her students did each year, and more than one faculty member did as well. But those flings were considered anomalies and not to be taken seriously. For Ruth to flaunt the norms of her “class” by actually marrying the man created a wholly different problem. She had not found an easy way to work through that. Her relationship with Ike could no longer be allowed to be viewed as a mere trifle, a whim, or a peccadillo, on her part, even when in fact it never really was. She'd permitted that camouflage to exist when she knew in her heart it was essentially disingenuous. Now it would no longer disguise anything. She had stepped over the line and the man many of her people viewed as “the hick” would soon be moving into the president's cottage permanently.

And for this, she felt stress. Even an old divorce years before did not leave her in such a state. Sometimes while in the shower or lying in bed late at night when sleep eluded her, she thought about what it would be like when the two of them reached this place in their relationship. At those times she had difficulty catching her breath. She knew she wanted Ike more than anything—didn't she? She did, but…

“What's wrong with me?” she'd mutter to the shower head or the ceiling. “I told Ike I've wanted this since…” Then she would recall the night up in the mountains. He'd just finished telling her about Eloise, his bride of a hundred days, accidently killed by an assassin in Switzerland. She'd heard the pain in his voice and his plea for understanding and wondered at the man who in spite of her bitchy behavior had been supportive during an extremely difficult time in her life.

“I don't know if I should cry or be angry” she'd said to him at the time, “and here's something else for you to think about, I think you are the most irritating, engaging, infuriating, attractive man I have ever met.” And, that said, she'd stepped up and kissed him. “Smooched” him, she'd described it in their Las Vegas hotel room, wearing nothing but an overlarge bath towel. My God, how far they'd come. She smiled at the image. Not much had really changed since that early beginning. Nothing about Ike, that is. He could still be irritating and engaging, infuriating and attractive. And lately, she found him to be the coolest man in a tight spot she'd ever known or imagined.

Now, things had to change. They were no longer playmates. Their sandbox days were over. No more necking out at the quarry…well actually, that hadn't worked out too well. The two superannuated teenagers would have to settle into adulthood. And when they went public, there could be no turning back. She took a deep breath. They'd manage it, somehow.

Second thoughts? No, none. They'd figure it out.

Chapter Six

Essie looked up from her dispatch desk and raised one eyebrow. The clock read 7:45, early for Ike under any circumstance. He backed in the door, a box under each arm.

“An improvement of which everyone will approve,” Ike said in response to her unasked question. “Clear the stuff off the table in the corner.”

“That's the coffee corner, Ike. What kind of improvement comes from dumping the coffee pot?”

“A great deal, trust me. Just do it.” He put the boxes on the floor next to the table while Essie began moving the coffeemaker, jars containing sweeteners and lightener.

“Where do these go?”

“The pot in the trash, the other stuff on the empty desk. That reminds me. Did you post the job opening on the town website?”

“I did and in the journals and all the other places you wrote down. Why are you chucking the coffeepot? Have the food police finally arrived?”

“In the first place, it's not a pot exactly. It's a very tired old urn. It is going because I am no longer willing to risk life, limb, and tooth enamel on the stuff that pours out of its spout. I am replacing it with modern technology.”

“Like what?”

“K-Cups.”

“Whose cups?”

Ike unpacked the two boxes and placed a K-Cup coffee brewer on the table and handed Essie a plastic container he detached from its side. “Here, fill this tank with water, then watch and learn.”

He opened the second box and pulled out one of the cups.

Once the tank had been filled and the brewer plugged in, he loaded the small covered cup into the receiver, tapped the start button, and the machine groaned, gurgled, and hissed out a single cup of coffee. He added his creamer and a half package of sweetener and took a sip.

“Every cup fresh and, even better, making coffee will no longer be on your job description.”

“It never was. I just did it because the department is full up with out-of-date macho guys who can't or won't, and I got tired of the whining. Makes me wonder how you manage to catch the bad guys. ”

“A pungent observation. Score one for you. And you're welcome. Now all you need to do is teach those macho whiners how to do this and make sure the last one to empty the tank refills it. So, no more liquid asphalt, burned, or industrial-strength coffee. Now ditch that piece of crap that used to be an unhealthy part of our lives.”

Frank Sutherlin, who served as acting sheriff when Ike was off duty, had entered the room and listened to this last exchange. “Can it make tea too?”

“Indeed. I had you in mind, Frank, and bought these little cup things. You can dump your teabag in them, substitute them for a K-Cup, and you have nice fresh-brewed tea, or prefilled cups with a variety of teas are available. I didn't want to risk picking the wrong kind. Tea drinkers can be tiresome about things like that…green, black, chai—whatever that is, no offense meant.”

“None taken.”

“Any news on our victims in the woods?”

“Some usable information on the latest, nada on the other. We were able to lift prints from the dead woman's body. It turns out she has a jacket three inches thick. Her prints practically jump off AFIS. Her name is Ethyl Smut, if you can believe it, AKA a number of aliases—none particularly original—Jones, Smith, Franco—and a history of drug busts for using, distributing, and abuse, meth mostly but had an occasional fling with heroin, also prostitution, and petty larceny.”

“A busy lady and now she's dead. Good Lord, with a history like that there must be dozens of people who might have killed her.”

“The drug culture is not a nice group of people to hang with, that's for sure. Some of those meth heads would kill for a stick of gum.”

“They'd kill for something trivial, Frank, but probably not gum. Their teeth couldn't survive a stick of Juicy Fruit. Where does, or where did, she live?”

“Still working on that. Last known address according to her rap sheet was over in that mobile home park out past Bolton. You know where we send a cruiser or two most weekends?”

“Okay, let's confirm it and get out there and toss her place. Then, find who she's working with, associates and all that stuff. Put Billy on it and make sure he has backup.”

“Right.”

“Who's manning the computer since Grace White left?”

“I got a kid on loan from the Police Academy who knows electronics. He was due to intern somewhere so I asked Captain Rodriguez for him, and he said okay. Rodriguez owed me a favor. We have the kid for two weeks and then we have to send him back.”

“With any luck, we'll have our new geek cop in by then.”

“I miss Sam,” Essie chimed in.

“So do I, but our former deputy and first official geek cop, Miss Ryder, now Mrs. Hedrick, is firmly ensconced in Washington, D.C., at NSA. She's busily listening to our cell phone calls and reading our mail, and isn't available.”

“She isn't doing that, is she? Don't answer. You could spring her.”

“Not likely. What's the attraction of the Picketsville Sheriff's Department compared to international snooping in the capital of the universe?”

“More friends and fewer Congressional investigations?”

“Good point. Frank, get Billy up to speed on Miz Smut and send him out to her digs. He can take the kid from the Academy along. Reward for finding her in the first place and to keep your Captain Rodriguez happy.”

“On it.”

Ike left Essie to sort out the new coffee equipment. His office, the “fishbowl” as the deputies called it, had windows for walls. It had been built to the specifications of his predecessor who, the old-timers said, didn't trust his deputies and felt he needed to keep an eye on them. All but a handful of them had since died or landed in jail, including him, so it seemed he'd been correct.

Frank dropped the two new murder books on Ike's desk. One he'd labeled “John Doe” and the other, “Ethyl Smut.” The Doe file didn't have much in it—a few pictures and measurements. Ethyl's was fatter and included the downloaded materials—her record and a series of mug shots. Ike shuffled through the sequence of mug shots and marveled at the changes in her appearance over time. When she'd first been arrested on a minor drug charge, the picture in the file showed a moderately attractive young woman. Then, as the years passed, he face seemed to collapse as the ravages of methamphetamine tore at her. Her latest photo could have been that of any of a thousand women addicted to the drug. Sunken cheeks, popped and frantic eyes, scraggly hair, bad and missing teeth—meth face.

According to the file, she had a daughter, Darla or Darlene. An occasional mention of abuse, child abuse, allegations concerning the child were noted here and there, but the charges had been dismissed. The hearing judge had tossed them because of shoddy police work, mostly a failure to Mirandize Smut in a timely manner. Interestingly, that judge had also followed some of the town's former deputies into jail. The child had refused to testify. Most victims won't. A penciled note in the margin suggested that the girl was too frightened of either her mother or the current live-in boyfriend to say anything.

Or too ashamed.

There had never been a Mr. Smut, but the child—a young woman now—had to have had a father. Ike jotted a note to search him out. He also wanted to read the complete abuse record, but it would be filed and most likely sealed in Child Protective Services, and he'd need a court order to get it. It would be easier to find the girl and ask her directly. He scribbled another note.

He called his father and accepted the dinner invitation for Sunday, and then put in a call to The Reverend Blake Fisher. He listened to the church's answering machine, waited for the beep, and left a message.

A call to the medical examiner produced one important new wrinkle to the Smut case. She'd been stabbed in the side before someone bashed her head in. The wound was not lethal, but serious enough to warrant medical treatment, which had not been administered. The ME said he'd need more time to establish the interval between the two incidents, but Ike might want to start looking for a blood trail. He also stated that he had no idea who the other body was or even where it had come from. The only clue so far related to the man's clothes.

“What about the clothes?” Ike asked.

“Well, they are not local. The suit he had on when he was killed came from New York and was not off-the-rack cheap either. It has a label from a tailoring outfit, A. M. Rosenblatt and Sons, New York. Also, he'd been shot in the head and chest and one bullet had lodged in his spinal column. I retrieved it and sent it to the state ballistics lab. I also have his dental chart, and it's also on the wire, as we used to say. We should hear something in a week or so. I'll put copies of the photos in the report and shoot it over to you.”

Ike thanked him and hung up. Then he remembered his father's hay barn. He sent for Charley Picket. Ike gave him the padlock key and directed him to go out to his father's barn and collect and bag anything that didn't belong there.

Last, he asked that the evidence the deputies had collected at the crime scene be brought to him. He would go through it on his return. His morning briefings would not be complete until he'd dropped in the Cross Roads Diner for breakfast and gossip. He left the office and headed the short block to Flora Blevins' diner, which was, after the university up on the hill, the town's most enduring institution.