Drowning Barbie (22 page)

Chapter Forty-four

A door slamming woke Ike. He was alone. Ruth had bounced out of bed at five-thirty, showered, had her breakfast, and left for the office by six-fifteen. What important things did she have to do that called her out so early on a Sunday morning? Ike sighed. Too much time had passed and a public commitment had been made. There could be no turning back now. They would share a life together. It had
final
written all over it. But, how long could an extreme “morning person” and a confirmed “night person” expect to stay married? Opposites attract, they say, but two people operating on diametrically opposed diurnal cycles did not bode well for the future of either. Ike pondered this…for him at seven in the morning, a deep philosophical question…then grunted and dozed off again. He would be late getting to the office, but it had been a long and somewhat athletic night and he wasn't as young as he used to be. It was Sunday after all, a day he normally took off.

He did manage to get to the Cross Roads Diner by nine for his pre-ordered breakfast and obligatory sour look from Flora.

“What are you doing in town on a Sunday? You usually hide out on us, lately.”

“Busy looking for you goddaughter, if you must know.”

Today Flora seemed more out of sorts than usual. The girl and Flora's unacknowledged but very real sense of guilt expressing itself, he thought. Good. She should feel guilty. Most of the problems created by Darla Smut's disappearance stemmed from Flora's suspicious and stubborn nature.

“Before you ask, no news, but I am feeling a little more confident about finding the girl, Flora.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, in the first place, consider the possibilities. One, she is on the road and far, far away and presumably safe for now. Second, she is still in the area and if so we will find her and bring her in. I believe the latter.”

“Why is that? Did someone see her around town?”

“Why? I can't say, for sure, but there is something about this business that doesn't quite work for me. Because of that, I am taking a different approach and that leads me to believe we have a chance at a good outcome.” Ike didn't know if he said that because he believed it or simply to make Flora happy.

“What in the devil did you just say?”

“I said, be of good cheer, I think it is going to be all right. By the way, if the girl does surface—”

“If? You just said—”

“Okay, when the girl surfaces, Flora, when she does, where should she go next? Living with your cousin Leota didn't work out so well. Are you and Arlene planning on taking her in? She's in her teens and she has more baggage than Federal Express. Are you two up to handling that?”

“We will, if that's what's needed. We ain't young no more, that's for sure, but to keep that girl safe, we will do what we can.”

“I see. Well, perhaps there will be other options.”

“Maybe. Say, how come you didn't ask me to provide eats for your big do tomorrow?”

“Scrambled eggs, grits and gravy, and pancakes just won't cut it. It's a wedding reception, not a prayer breakfast.”

“I could do other things.”

“Talk to Dorothy Sutherlin. She's in charge.”

“Who put that woman in charge?”

“I did. I have to go. Remember, if the girl surfaces, you get her to us somehow.”

The sheriff's office occupied space in the Town Hall a half-block north. Ike made it in less than five minutes including a nod and a wave to the few merchants who were open for business along the way. Lee Henry stopped him briefly to say that she thought someone had spent Wednesday night sleeping behind her dumpster.

“You're not open on Sundays now, are you?”

“Just doing some bookkeeping before I head out to church.”

Ike tucked away her notion that someone had slept in the alley. It could be important. He just didn't know how at the moment. Karl waited for him in his office.

“The news is not good, I take it.”

“Not bad, actually. Not flaming good either, but it could be worse.”

‘You've lost me.”

“Sam and the other Sutherlins are off to church and I decided to use the time to do some thinking. So, while the Bureau futzes around deciding how to deal with the embarrassment of Anthony Barbarini's body turning up here instead of in the Atlantic, I started to look into a New York–Picketsville connection, as ridiculous as that sounds. Hey, it was your idea, don't forget. I didn't get much, but I may have something. It's pretty thin, but with thin, you never know where it will lead.”

“What did you find?”

“Did you know that the local BAB's father once ran a butcher business in Buena Vista?”

“Karl, I have no idea what you are talking about. What's a BAB?”

“Bad assed bastard, and in this instance, your own George LeBrun. His father, Henry LeBrun, had a specialty butcher business. He imported and exported meats and so on. Some of his customers were, briefly, restaurants in the New York area, Italian mostly, but not exclusively. Then something went south and the father disappeared. Retirement was the word on the street but nobody knows for sure. Georgie ran the business for a short while before joining your predecessor as a deputy and before his love affair with high octane cough medicine took over his life.”

“This is fascinating, Karl, but I am not seeing a connection.”

“The meat, Ike, meat processed and otherwise, transported in refrigerated trucks up and down the east coast. So, here's a hypothetical question for you. Suppose you had a body you wished to get rid of and your snitch inside the NYPD tells you that the FBI is watching the docks and local landfills because too many minor league mobsters and associated hoods—”

“BABs”

“Yes, too many of them are washing ashore on Fire Island and turning up in garbage bags, what might you do?”

“Had George taken over the business by then?'

“Theoretically, yes.”

“Ah, ha. So we consider the very real possibility that the trucks had an alternative return cargo at least once. That begs the next question.”

“Which is?”

“Are there any more dead gangsters' planted around here? The thing about this quiet, peaceful…one might even say idyllic…place is that the woods around here are vast and the traffic through them sparse.”

“There may be dozens.”

“Or none. And in either case, what are the chances we will find them? We can expect only so much from Andy Lieux's dog.”

“I am due to talk to the director's guy about the possibility of heading up a special team tasked with finding that out.”

“Are you interested?'

“I don't know. It would keep me in the bureau. After a few months, things could blow over. I don't know, maybe. Sam heard you have an opening in this office. Is that true?”

“It is. Her old spot is vacant and…” Ike glanced at his desk and saw no follow-up paperwork from Feldman. “There is a very real chance there will be another deputy's slot open as well. Can I tempt you?”

“Two slots?”

“Possibly, but before you decide, there is something you should know. I had the intern track down that phone number—the one you gave up on, by the way. Then I had him trace the ID of the tailor who made the dead guy's suit.”

“You can do that?”

“You know I can, so could the Bureau, if they wanted to.”

“And?”

“He made a list of people who had the number at one time or another. It was not as long as you might think. One of them turned out to be the witness who fingered Barbarini and Murphy. He's dead, of course, but the connection is there. The tailor who made the suit retired but his book is still open and the purchaser was Anthony Barbarini.”

“Okay, so you confirmed what we already knew.”

“Operative word
you
, that is, I confirmed. You didn't, I did. You see?”

“I'm missing something aren't I?”

“And you call yourself an investigator. Okay, once I had those bits and the ME's dental record report, I dashed off a note to the FBI. I said that it was my understanding that Special Agent Karl Hedrick, was in the area and if they wish us to cooperate with him, I needed to be read into his mission. Then I said that we, that is…”

“You.”

“No, the sheriff's office in Picketsville, Virginia, had positively identified a corpse found in our woods as one Anthony Barbarini and that we thought they ought to know because he was reported to be one of their cases some years back.”

“You did that?”

“I did. As of now, you are off the hook. Some hick sheriff down in the boonies just pulled the desk chairs out from under some FBI asses.”

“My career is not up in smoke.”

“Nope. How do you feel about your career prospects?”

“I should say ‘pretty good' but here's the funny thing, Ike. I have dreamed about being an FBI agent forever. I've said it a hundred times and I meant it every time I said it. This last run-in has made me wonder. I mean, my career might have ended because someone else's was deemed more important, or because I wouldn't ‘take one for the team,' or God only knows what, you see? Right now, I don't know how I feel about it anymore.”

“Take your time and think it through.”

“I will say this, if it were up to Sam, we'd move back here.”

“Happy thought. Now, help me with another problem. My instinct says the girl we are looking for is still local. Any chance we have of solving her mother's murder hinges, I think, on finding her. If we have her in custody, she will tell us something we need to know to get this one off the books. Failing that, the fact we have her could open the proverbial can of worms which would lead us to the killer and, coincidently, a bunch of other men who need to explain to a judge why pedophilia is a necessary part of their lifestyle.”

“How can I possibly help?”

“Two brains are always better than one. Assume you are the girl and on the run but the roads are full of cops with BOLOs. What do you do?”

“How well do I know the area?”

“Fair. The people hardly at all and many of the ones you do know are a threat to you at one level or another.”

“Does she trust anyone? I assume the threat you speak of means she can't trust too many locals.”

“Including the police, us, as it turns out.”

“It's a dead end, unless you can identify someone who doesn't fit that mold. Was she a church person? Of course that doesn't guarantee much in the trust department anymore either, does it?'”

“No, but maybe. She talked to Fisher.”

***

Sometime later that night, Ike Schwartz, sheriff of Picketsville, and George LeBrun, the local BAB in question, came to the same conclusion. Separated by some five miles and a chasm of moral rectitude or lack thereof, they blurted to anyone in their immediate vicinity, “I know where she is.”

Then Ike received a phone call that confirmed it.

Chapter Forty-five

George LeBrun searched the length of the bar. Only two drinkers stood at the rail: the trucker who hadn't yet heard about his next load and said he wanted to score some crank, and Jocko Fishbein, the old fireman whose wife left him ten years back and who, after a decade of trying, had yet to find the bottom of his bottle of sour mash.

When Feldman walked in, LeBrun motioned to him to follow him outside. Feldman did not look happy. The trucker patted his pockets, looked around, and left after them. He told the barman he needed his smokes. The barman said nothing, but he was pretty sure he had never seen a cigarette in the guy's mouth in the days he'd been hanging around.

Jack Feldman seemed jumpy when he and LeBrun reached the parking lot.

“George, I'm not sure this is a good idea. Schwartz has patrols sliding by here ever since you set yourself up in the place. Besides, it isn't smart for me to be seen with you.”

“Shut up and listen to me. Just so you know what's at stake here, Jackie-boy, I figured out where the Smut girl is. You and me are going to that church where you took the B-and-E call and grab her before that Jew sheriff figures it out on his own. You understand what I'm saying here? If he finds her first and she blabs, you're dead meat, Jackie. You'd better just dump any ideas about not being seen with me. I need your help and you need my protection.”

LeBrun spun and took in the trucker lurking by his rig. “What the hell are you looking at?” The trucker shrugged, pulled something from the truck's glove box and left.

“You think he heard?”

“That stoner? Heard what? He don't know nothing. We go for the girl.”

“Okay, but, what are you going to do when you get her?” Feldman could guess, but couldn't resist asking anyway.

“Well, she should be pretty fresh now, seeing as how she's been out of circulation for a while. We'll have some fun and when we're done, she goes away.”

“Goes away?”

“You know, she joins her old lady wherever her kind goes when they die. Skank heaven, probably.” George snickered at is joke. “Good one, huh? Skank heaven.”

“Yeah, good one. You mean kill her?”

“Jesus, Feldman, Are you that stupid?”

“I'm not too sure about—”

“When did you get to be a pussy? If she lives and talks to the cops, you'll wish you were dead. Do you know what the guys in the slammer do to baby rapers?”

Feldman considered his options. He lit a cigarette to buy some time while he thought them through. “How'd you find out where the girl was at?”

“You told me. You and Frankie Chimes.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You were called to that church, right? And you didn't find nothing. You didn't because the little bitch knows how to hide. Don't you remember how she'd squeeze into crawl spaces to get away from doing her duty back before she disappeared? Her Ma used to drag her out by the hair and beat her ass until she rolled over. Helluva sight.”

“Yeah, I guess so. So, you think she's in that church? What did Frankie say?”

“He didn't say nothing. His sister-in-law, what's-her-name, did. She does stuff in that church, cleaning and like that, and she heard the sheriff and some old bat talking about things being missing, food and all, and I did the math, see? The kid is holed up in the church somewhere. All we got to do is go there and you walk me through where you went that night and try to remember anything that looked off, you know, out of place?”

“I don't know, George. I mean, what're the chances somebody would miss a kid hiding out there?”

“Sometimes Feldman, I think you're an idiot. Now saddle up, we're going.”

“Okay, okay, so, how about I follow you in the cruiser? That way if the preacher or somebody butts in, I'll say something like it's okay and you're with me or, you know, cover you.”

“I guess you're not always an idiot.”

The two men started their vehicles and pulled out onto the road, headed to Stonewall Jackson Memorial Episcopal Church.

***

Leota didn't know whether LeBrun knew he was being followed or not. She'd been watching the Road House for days. A normal person would wonder why she'd kept it up for so long. Well, she had and now at nearly midnight something seemed to be happening. If the opportunity to confront the object of her obsession presented itself, what else could she do? She knew that Mark had been killed and LeBrun had something to do with it. She knew that the girl had fled from a hell created for her by her mother and LeBrun had something to do with that, too. She knew the girl's mother had been killed but because LeBrun had still been in jail at the time, he had nothing to do with that, or had he? Cause and effect is not always easy to sort out. One could argue that the events that took Ethyl Smut to the woods that afternoon had their genesis in LeBrun's polluting effect on those close to him. People like Mark Dellinger, for example, who might have been a good man if he hadn't met George LeBrun, if he hadn't met Ethyl, if he hadn't…but he had and it did happen.

She had started her engine with the intention of giving up for the night when LeBrun appeared and drove off. What she couldn't understand was why a sheriff's car followed LeBrun as well. She'd seen the two men talking but that didn't make any sense. Why would a deputy sheriff be mixed up with LeBrun?

They headed toward town, Leota laying back thirty yards or so with her headlights off. She soon discovered that driving in the dark without them can be tricky. She'd seen it done on television shows and it looked easy. But even staying reasonably close and benefiting from the headlights of the car ahead of her didn't keep her off the shoulder and once she nearly put the truck in a ditch. She did, in fact, clip a culvert and a mailbox and for an anxious moment, she thought she'd been spotted. But LeBrun and his police escort didn't pause. She righted the truck and kept on his tail.

LeBrun turned into the parking lot of an old church. What brought him to this place? She pulled over onto the road's edge and waited as the two men stepped out of their vehicles, circled the building, and disappeared inside. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Leota had kept the motor running. In horror she saw her fuel gauge slide to empty. If she didn't get to a gas station and soon, she'd have to walk back to her motel and she'd not be able to follow LeBrun when he left. Something stirred at one corner of the church.

LeBrun appeared in his headlights dragging the girl out of the building by an arm. How had LeBrun found her? Everyone thought she'd left town, yet here she was being dragged across the parking lot wearing some sort of black dressing gown. The top buttons had been lost or undone somehow. Funny how you notice things like that. Darla did not scream or even resist. Leota didn't understand that. No screaming, no resistance? She knew that if she were dragged along like that, she'd be kicking and yelling her head off. What was wrong with this picture? Maybe the presence of the deputy had something to do with it. Still, cop or no cop, she'd should be kicking and fighting and calling for help. But Darla stumbled along as if resigned to her fate.

Then it came to her in a flash. Leota understood, finally understood why Darla had never taken to the pictures, had never responded to her assurances of a better life in her future. All those years of abuse. Of course, Darla believed her old life was the norm for her, an expectation, that the few years out of her mother's sick and twisted orbit had been a promise that could never be kept. She had been drawn back into the only life she knew and had resigned herself to it. She believed that resistance would be futile. That no one would care or intervene. Why should they? No one ever had before.

This revelation hit Leota like a dousing in arctic water. She took all of it in, thought of what she'd tried to do to spare the child, all she'd attempted and how she'd utterly failed. All those hours spent trying to paint a bright future for the girl, hoping, praying for her and it had fallen on ears made deaf by a life of pain and humiliation. The sight of George LeBrun yanking her along by the arm was too much for her. In that blinding moment, Leota snapped and in the next, made up her mind to fix things once and for all.

Without weighing the consequences, she dropped the truck in gear, stamped down hard on the accelerator, and headed straight toward the two figures. The truck's tires kicked gravel and the engine racketed to a roar. Darla looked up and saw the vehicle break into the light and bear down on her. LeBrun, riding a methamphetamine-fortified notion of immortality, ignored it. Darla's mouth formed into a perfect O and at the last second, yanked free from her captor leaving him grasping the empty cassock sleeve. LeBrun turned and would have grabbed for her again except the Ford 150 slammed into him at a speed sufficient to send him sailing into the trunk of an old, and some say historic, oak tree. Leota did not brake. She kept her foot pressed down on the accelerator and the truck followed George into the tree as well. Leota's last thought was, even if it were remotely possible for him to survive, in the end, there was no way George LeBrun would recover from his injuries to stand trial. The result was not pretty but for Leota, it was redemption.

Jack Feldman stood frozen as he watched the truck and George fuse with the tree. He still had not moved moments later when Ike and three more cars skidded on the gravel and came to a halt and discharged deputy sheriffs. Flashing blue and red lights, the steam from the truck's crushed radiator turned the parking lot into a surreal moonscape. Ike had Billy cuff Feldman and read him his rights.

“Wait, what's this for?” Feldman said.

“Aiding and abetting, for starters.”

“You got this all wrong, Sutherlin. Look, I saw LeBrun leave the Road House, Okay? And I heard him talking to some guys—”

“What guys?”

“What? Like, I don't know. Just some barflies. There was this truck driver there. Maybe it was him. So, I hear him talking about finding the girl and we're looking for her too, right? So, even though I'm off duty, I say to myself, ‘Jack you should follow him.' So, I come out here and I am ready to make the collar when that crazy woman drives in here about a hundred miles an hour and—”

“Shut up, Jack. The only reason you were here was to help him grab the girl. You know that and we know that. You are toast and about time, too. If you were acting like a cop instead of LeBrun's errand boy, you'd have called it in. But since someone else did, here we are throwing the net over the last of the goons who used to screw this town over.”

“No, that's not right, I would'a called but—”

“Jack, we had someone in the Road House for a day and a half. We knew what you were doing. How do you think we got here so fast? That truck driver you saw? He's my brother Danny. He called it in, not you, you dirtbag. No, you're done. And think about this while your sorry ass rots in the slammer. The girl will recognize you from back in the day when you and your buddies, including Georgie over there, helped to destroy her. She's going to talk, Jack, and you and everyone else who was a part of that operation is going down. As I said, you, are toast, buddy, now get in the car.”