Drowning Barbie (6 page)

Chapter Eleven

The ballistics test from the bullet imbedded in the man's spinal column lay on Ike's desk when he returned from his trip to Lee Henry's salon. The lab verified it as a nine millimeter with no important or distinguishing marks. It had been photographed and the images transmitted to the national registry. It would be checked for matches against other samples from around the country. If the gun that produced it had been used in the commission of a crime anywhere and had been entered into the system, they would soon know.

It was progress, of a sort, especially for a cold case like this one. Not much, to be sure, but crimes were not solved in the hour television devoted to the art, forty minutes if you discounted the time spent on commercials. The woman's death was a different story. She'd been identified and had next of kin lurking around somewhere. She also had a record. She had acquaintances; Flora Blevins knew her, for example. Surely one had either to be the killer or lead Ike to the killer. It would take some time but not as much as the dead-a-decade guy.

TAK rapped on his door.

“What have you got for me, Son?”

“I found the girl on Facebook. Not too much there—no photo, just an avatar.” Ike's eyebrows shot up. “Um…it's like a cartoon face only not always. See—”

“Never mind, I got it. Go on.”

“Anyway, I'm sure it's her. She uses the name Darlene Dellinger instead of Darla.” Ike started to speak and thought better of it. Give the kid his moment. “And here's the good part. When I tracked her through the juvenile justice system, I discovered she'd had a name change right after that entry. You'll never guess to what.”

“Darla Smut.”

TAK's face fell. “How'd you know?”

“Since you nearly wet your pants waiting for me to guess, it had to be one of our latest problems and a female child meant the Smut woman's daughter. Why the name change?”

“Okay, here's the rest. The mother's name changed, like, monthly as she jumped from one alias to another. Most of them were scams—ID thefts to collect welfare or food stamps she could sell. Dellinger was the father's name, according to her birth certificate in the file—Mark Dellinger, and she decided to use it. I guess she thought she could hit him up for support money. Anyway, he took off for parts unknown about the time the kid was born, did a dime for assault and public drunkenness, and disappeared for good after his release.”

“Did she ever catch up with the father?”

“Guess not. So, the girl had a history of having been abused. The arresting officers thought that the mother might be complicit. I guess she thought a name change would get her off the radar, so to speak.”

“Thank you. You've done good, kid. Any luck with the program that ages a face?”

“No, sorry. Running that program is way beyond my pay grade. I'll keep trying, but don't hold your breath.”

“Fine. Before you give up on computer work, see if you can find a picture of Dellinger for me and anything else that's available.”

“Yes, sir. You want his arrest record and—”

“There ought to be a mug shot in the system somewhere and maybe a dental record.”

“Yes, sir.” TAK drifted back to his temporary desk and began his next assault on the computer's keyboard.

Ike leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk, castled his fingers, and began running through the few facts he had and wished he had. All he knew for certain was that Smut had a long history of drug and child abuse and that she changed her child's name at least once. What were the chances she'd done it multiple times? Pretty good, probably, if she wanted to stay ahead of Child Protective Services and the police. But there was the business of her rarely spending any real time in jail and the fact that serious charges were almost never brought. Why was that? Finding the daughter, whatever her name was now, would help. But to do that depended on someone stepping up with an address, a phone number, or a sighting. Unfortunately, the streets of America's cities were filled with waifs and strays most of whom looked too much alike. You've seen one runaway, you've seen them all—like meth-faced women. That girl in the salon for example, Flora's niece or whatever she was, in other circumstances, could easily be one of America's lost children.

Finally, he had to concede that, farfetched or not, the woman's murder and the other body could be related. That is, if the other body in the grave turned out to be Mark Dellinger. Maybe it was he who did the molesting and the Smut woman popped him for doing the girl one time too many. It made sense, but only if the person who killed Smut also knew about the father. Perhaps he had a brother or close relative who decided to even things up. That would explain going to all the trouble of having them share a grave.

Likely or not, he'd post the connection as a possibility on the tack board he'd set up in the outer office.

***

Charley Picket stood on the sidewalk outside the Cross Roads Diner and stared at its glass door. It was that time of the year when the humidity level caught up with the temperature. He mopped his forehead with a red bandanna. He could smell the food cooking inside and his stomach started to growl. He had not eaten anything since five o'clock and he'd missed lunch because he had to chase some redneck in a pickup for miles before the boy finally gave up and pulled over. The truck was a mess, the kid not much better. Charley had given him a ticket for failure to stop at a four-way and another for not yielding to an order to stop. He called in the plates and turned the kid loose.

Charley was close to sixty, which side and how close were not clear. He had never eaten a meal or even had a cup of coffee in the Cross Roads Diner. Growing up, it had been forbidden territory. “Coloreds” were expected to eat in their own restaurants. All that had changed a good while back, of course. It had taken a long time, but the changes came. Still, he hesitated. Laws can change what people do and where they can do it, but not how people feel. Until this moment he had never had any desire to find out if the attitudes of local white folk had changed since
Brown v. The Board of Education
out there in Topeka, at least as it related to the Cross Roads Diner. But he was hungry and Jack's Lunchroom was located over on the other side of town.

“Whatcha waiting for, Charley?” Billy Sutherlin had somehow snuck up behind him. “Flora can be mean as a snake, but she's an equal opportunity mean snake. She'll as likely yell at me as you.”

“Yeah, I guess so. It's just I never been in this place.”

“You're kidding? Hell, Charley, you must be the only man in town that ain't.”

“Well, it's just that—”

“Charley…hey, all that stuff was a lifetime ago. Ain't nobody in there going to come at you and I ain't just saying that 'cause I'm white. So come on.”

Billy shoved open the door and held it aside for Charley. Flora Blevins glared at the two of them.

“Get in or get out, but either way, shut the door. I am not in the fly farming business. You must be Deputy Picket. How come you never eat here? Jack's food can't be that much better. I do reckon I'll never match his ribs, though. Billy, shut the damned door.”

Charley grinned an apology and took a booth with Billy in the corner. Flora plunked down a slice of apple pie with a wedge of cheddar and a cup of coffee in front of him.

“Excuse me, Ms. Blevins, but I didn't order anything yet.”

“You will and that is what it'll be. Billy, your chili is on the way.”

“But—”

“It don't do any good to complain, Charley. Flora decides what you need and you get it. After you've eaten here a while you might be able to change it, but for now, your afternoon between-meals eating at the diner will be coffee and pie. It's good pie, by the way. Flora, what's the hold up on my chili?”

“I told you once already, it's on the way.”

Chapter Twelve

Friday finally arrived and with it the prospect of an uninterrupted weekend. However, Ruth and Ike had work to do. Not work related to their professions, but tasks connected to their behaviorally rash evening in Nevada. They had to decide the means by which their hasty and irregular marriage should be announced to the public. For ordinary folk, the problem would not loom so large, but for a popular public servant and the respectable president of an emerging university, the situation had facets ordinary people could not appreciate. Or so they thought.

Ike signed out early that afternoon at four. He could be reached at his A-frame, he'd announced, but short of a national emergency approaching Hurricane Sandy proportions, he would prefer to be left alone. Ruth managed to sneak out of the Administration Building at Callend University by a side door and thereby missed an unscheduled meeting with a very irate chairman of the Biology Department who'd just discovered an FTE had been cut from his budget. The fact that he hadn't filled the slot in three years, and clearly did not need it whereas others did, meant nothing. Turf and pride were in play. To lose so valuable an asset, even if not needed, constituted a blow to the department's prestige and, more importantly, to his ego. The fact that the creative writing division of the English Department got the faculty slot didn't help either. Ruth's surreptitious exit meant his complaint would go unheard until Monday.

Ruth did leave a phone number where she could be reached. Agnes Ewalt, her secretary—administrative assistant—knew it and she would screen how and when and by whom it should be and could be utilized. That would be any and all attempts to reach her. On the whole, Ike thought, Ruth had a better avoidance system than he did.

They ate an early dinner of leftover pizza salvaged from an office birthday party, which they supplemented with a bottle of red wine. Neither could identify it as to vintage or year as the label had mysteriously disappeared.

“Mice?” Ruth asked.

“Cheap glue most likely. Does anyone ever use the word mucilage for glue anymore?”

“It may be the ugliest word in the English language, Anglo-Saxonisms excluded. Language aside, and stop stalling, Schwartz, where,” Ruth said as she simultaneously sipped and grimaced at her wine glass, “do we begin?”

“No idea. Parties and generating guest lists are not in the male skill set. They are in the category that includes thank-you letters, Christmas cards, and the excessive affection for cats that often borders on the obsessive. I think those traits are on the X chromosome and apparently require two of them to be expressed or, in this case, to generate such a list.”

“Bullshit, Schwartz, you don't get off that easy. This is your town and these are your people. You pick up your BIC and start writing.”

“Let's think this thing through. Do we really need a party? How about a mass mailing of a nice engraved announcement? I can run down to Roanoke tomorrow and have the whole thing done in an hour.”

“And what? You will order an ‘All in ZIP Code' mailer?”

“It's a thought. How about I find us a bottle of wine with a label still attached while you mull over the idea?”

“Yes to the wine, no to mulling. There is another possibility, you know. The Reverend Fisher might reconsider and anyway, he's not the only game in town.”

“We've been through this once already. I told you Rabbi Schusterman would likely say the same thing as Blake, and showing up at the Baptists or the Methodists begs the question.”

“I'm not thinking about trying another church. Why not a Justice of the Peace?”

“It would require we apply for a marriage license which could take some time to acquire and an affidavit that there are no impediments and/or previous marriages. Since it is a legal document, that might entail a bit of perjury on our part. Jail time or probation isn't a good way to start a marriage, do you think? It's a stretch, but it could happen, and then our embarrassment would triple.”

“Crap. So, what do we do?”

“We have three options. We beg Fisher to reconsider, we proceed with the party and admit to our rash behavior, or we do nothing and hope lighting strikes—metaphorically speaking.”

“You are hoping someone or something else solves this for us?”

“In a word, yes.”

“That is a trait found exclusively on the Y chromosome, I believe. Doing nothing only puts off the inevitable. Our relationship, as jolly as we seem to think it is, has produced major heartburn among the faculty, your deputies, and our respective parents. Doing nothing will only promote more of the same and perhaps irrational behavior by the people we need in order to maintain our professional positions.”

“Wow! All that? Who knew? In the first place, you know what I think about my professional position, as you call it. I have been elected sheriff of the town twice, which is one more time than I had planned for. So, if the job goes away, it will be a mercy. You, on the other hand, can pick just about any academic post you want. If it's in the northeast or the People's Republic of California, our relationship would be celebrated as an exercise in diversity and broad-mindedness. Political correctness would elevate us to star status. So, no big deal.”

“Don't be a horse's gazunka, Schwartz. You know what I mean. We are here, will be for the near future, and at the moment I have no desire to move north, east, or in any direction, and for all your fake disdain for your job, you love it and you know you do. So, get the wine and let's get serious.”

Ike uncorked a bottle of Merlot with an odd year, which he'd been assured by the bald guy at the liquor store was a good thing. Ike did not know or wish to learn the niceties of wine appreciation. Red was red, white was white, and pink was pink. What more did anyone need to know about wine?

Ruth tasted the new batch and nodded. “Better. Plans?”

“How about this? You know the mayor…”

“Of course I know the mayor. Everybody knows the Town Dope. Why?”

“We'll ask him to do the honors.”

“You want “the Mayor from the Dark Lagoon” to perform our wedding? Ike, he hates your guts.”

“He does and that's the best part. He hates me, but he owes me for saving his cookies in the last election, remember? So, he'll be glad to even things up a bit.” Ike grinned at the idea of putting the mayor front-and-center. “Oh, and let's have your guy who teaches comparative religion…you know, the Presbyterian-pastor-turned professor to be the co—whatever you call them when they tag-team a wedding. Think of it. Town and gown together, a celebration of unity.”

“I know you think you are being cute and funny, but you may have hit on something. Do you think the mayor would do it?”

“We have but to call and ask.”

“You think?” Ruth did not sound convinced.

“No, but on the other hand I really do not want to make a party list tonight.”

“No? No, you're right. We need to think this through and neither of us is acting particularly sensible at the moment. Remember you've slept at your apartment for the last three nights and if you're over the leg cramps you developed in your Buick, not to mention the endgame, shall we say, coming up less than what you expected—”

“I have no complaints about the end game. You may end the game that way anytime you wish.”

“Be happy to, but it is a bit one-sided. Anyway, with that thought in mind, I have a better idea where we might polish off this mediocre red. Different ending, however.”

“I like the way you problem-solve.”