Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel (3 page)

Harley had his muzzle all over the young man, begging for attention, his tail wagging ninety miles an hour.
Billy Ray knew the drill and looked for a stick to throw. Inside, Lester checked his uniform. He wasn’t sure how many days he had worn the same shirt. He sniffed the armpits, shrugged, and slipped it on.
There were matching pants of course, but Lester never wore them, opting for his familiar and
far
more comfortable Wrangler blue jeans.
The alligator cowboy boots followed, also a little worse for wear. A
Stetson
straw hat hung on a peg near the front door and he grabbed it on the way out.
His sidearm, a Colt .45 revolver along with the belt and cartridges, he carried outside and carefully lay in the
seat
of
the
County’s
F-150
Ford pickup.
Naturally, the county had wanted him to drive
their
old Ford sedan
, a six year old model with
150,000 miles on it
,
but Lester had made it plain;
Get me a 4-wheel drive pickup or find another man for the job.

“B.R., you gonna dick around with that dog all day or are we gonna go fight crime?” As the deputy stepped to the passenger side of the truck, Harley gave his owner an inquiring look. “Not today buddy, maybe next time. You stay now, you hear?” The dog sank to the ground, its amber eyes pleading.
“No. You be a good dog.
I’ll see you this evening.”

As they pulled out of the drive, Lester gave the Camaro an admiring look
. “For a fifteen year old car, that thing still looks pretty good.
Been
slapping the polish
to it I’d guess. You got it shinin’ like a diamond in a goat’s ass.
How’s it run?”

“Faster than you wanna know.”

“Don’t doubt that. I catch you breakin
’
the speed limit; I’ll give you a ticket
so fast, it’ll make your head spin.

Billy Ray grinned. “What’s the story on this missing girl? Only thing Nelda told me was that she didn’t come home last night.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s probably nothin
’
. You know how teenagers are.”

“I do,” Billy Ray said, “but I’m surprised that you remember, old as you are.”
Lester checked for traffic before pulling onto the blacktop and eased the truck up to the 60 mile an hour speed limit.

“Keep that kind of talk up and I’ll jerk you out of
that seat
and show you just how old I am.” Billy Ray smiled but said nothing, watching the scenery slide by.
A good sized herd of Black Angus cattle, fifty or more, grazed along a grassy depression on the north side of the road, the sun dancing on and off their coats as they moved. Up ahead, a Red-tailed Hawk sat on a weathered fence post, its sharp eyes watching the short grass along the highway for any movement, not bothering to look up as the Ford sped past.

“You know what I like about this part of Oklahoma?” Billy Ray said.
“It has a beauty all its own. All these plains, uncluttered, clean air, and you can see for miles. No cities, at least no big cities, just a few little towns for things you need; doctors, hardware, and groceries, things like that.”

“I hear you,” Lester agreed. “I sure don’t need to be dealing with gangs, and killings, and bank robberies. No sir. Just give me a few speeders and drunks and maybe a larceny now and then.
I’ve had all the excitement in my life I want.”

“Afghanistan was all I needed,” Billy replied.

The
S
heriff shot his deputy a look.
The
young man continued to wear his hair military style, close on the sides with a small brush up top. Physical fitness remained a priority in Billy Ray’s civilian life, thick through the chest, his biceps plainly visible and bulging beneath his khaki shirt.
He was lean around the middle, even more so than the skinny sheriff, and confirmed by his size 32 jeans.
Unlike Lester, Billy Ray preferred his old Army camo footwear rather than the traditional cowboy boots favored by most residents in the county.
He continued to stare out the side window as the miles passed.

“How’s the foot?” Lester asked.
“I saw you limpin
’
back there at the house.”

“Considering what’s left of it, not that bad I guess.
Some days are worse than others.”

Lester had never heard the full story, how Billy Ray’s platoon had been ambushed by the Taliban, how men had died that day.
Billy Ray wouldn’t, or couldn’t, talk about any of it and Lester didn’t push it. Some day, when the time was right, the
details
would come out.

Traffic on the highway was light as usual with only a few pickups and an occasional cattle truck. Most east-west traffic in
this
part of the country
used I-70 to the north or I-40, about a hundred and twenty miles south, leaving the
narrow
two-lane to the locals. Many of the homes alongside the road were similar to the
S
heriff’s, one story, clapboard, and built in the 60’s and 70’s. Only a few sported attached garages, most making do with pole-barns to shelter their cars and tractors.
New construction in
Cimarron County was mostly
limited to town folks, and there was very little of that.
During the past decade,
one plagued
with
high temperatures and drought,
a lot of the farmers had quit and moved out, some
relocated
to town to try
and
eke out a living doing whatever they could find. Most went east to Enid or Tulsa or Oklahoma City, leaving the land to the ranchers and their cows.

The pickup made a slight left turn, leaving Highway 412 and onto U.S. 56 going northeast.
Passing through the town of Keyes, population 350, Lester took a look at his gas gauge.
Pumps of any kind were scarce in this end of Oklahoma
,
and it paid to be vigilant lest you find yourself on the side of some lonely road with an empty tank and no cell phone service. The needle showed a half a tank.

“Flute Festival,” Billy Ray said.

“Huh?”

“The sign on the pole, it says ‘Flute Festival’. Probably the wildest thing they do here, toot on a flute.”

“I doubt it,” Lester said, “But what’s wrong with playing a flute?”

“Nothing, just saying.”
Billy Ray pulled a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket.
“According to Nelda’s directions, you need to turn south at the next intersection. Look for a roadside bar, then about a quarter mile past that.”

“I know the bar,” Lester said.
“Been there a couple of times.
Once for a fight where one guy had to be hospitalized and another time when I heard the owner was serving minors. He denied it of course, but I warned him about it anyways.”

Chapter 3

A few minutes later, the Pirate’s Den Lounge appeared on the left.
There were no vehicles of any kind in the gravel parking lot. Out front, a metal awning covered a wooden deck
strewn
with plastic tables and chairs.
There was a well-worn divan shoved against the outside wall of the bar but only partially out of the weather. Its green vinyl covering was torn and stained.
Yellow foam puffed through one end where a drunken patron had kicked it in. The Coors
beer
sign in the window was dark.

Lester drove on
,
spotted the road he was looking for, and turned south for another half mile before entering the yard of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Parker.
The house was a modest
two story, at least 40 years old, maybe more,
and in desperate need of upkeep. The paint—once white
,
but now a pale yellow—curled and peeled away from the gray and rotting boards beneath. Several sections of the cement walkway leading to the house had
wide
cracks with
uneven
jagged gaps. A John Deere tractor and assorted farm machinery
—most
of it rusty and surrounded by weeds
—lay
scattered across the property.

A spring-loaded
s
creen
door
at
the front of the house slammed shut.
Imogene Parker stepped off the front porch and hurried toward the pickup.
She wore a simple cotton dress,
pink
with faded
blue
flowers
,
and long
—the
hem almost touching her shoes.
Her
thin
black
hair
was
streaked with more gray than her age belied.
Eyes wet with tears, her
haggard
face sagged with fear and concern
.
Mr. Parker was nowhere in sight.

“Good morning
,
Ma’am
.
I’m Sheriff Lester P. Morrison and this fella is
Deputy
Ledbetter.
Have you heard anything from your daughter?”

“Not a word and I am so scared.
Something’s happened to her, something bad
;
I just know it. I’ve never had a dread like this before. Can you find her for me, Sheriff?”

“We’ll try
,
Ma’am.
Now, have you looked over your entire property, the sheds, in the attic, your car, places where she might have crawled in and gone to sleep?”

Imogene took a quick look around as if she might have missed something.
“Oh yes,
at least
twice. I’ve looked everywhere. There’s no sign of her. It’s like
an evil spirit
took her from the face of the earth.”

Lester
added,
“And her friends, you’ve contacted them?”

“The only really good friend she has is Becky
; she
lives just down the road.”
The woman pointed south with a long bony finger.
“I called over there, first thing this morning, but Becky’s mom said they hadn’t seen Melissa, not recently anyway.
The family was in Boise City till late last night, gettin’ groceries and visiting an uncle. Becky
said the last time she saw Melissa was yesterday afternoon on the school bus, coming home.”

Lester said, “Does your daughter have a car?”

“Oh no, we can’t afford two cars.
We can barely keep the one we have running. Repairs
and gas
cost so much these days.”

Billy Ray asked, “Could someone have met your daughter out front or up on the highway, a boy friend maybe?”

The woman thought about that for a moment, her gaze swinging to the blacktop as if her Melissa might
come
walking down the road
at any
minute.
“That’s possible I suppose.
But if Melissa has a regular boy friend, she never told me about him. Thing
is, we have only the one phone
in
the living room
.
I didn’t hear her call anyone and nobody called the house.
Melissa doesn’t have a cell phone. Those things cost a fortune.”

Lester asked, “What was the girl wearing
,
Ma’am, the last time you saw her?”

“Just a simple t-shirt, white I think. I don’t recall if there was any picture or anything on the front. Maybe she took her sweater.
I’m not sure.
She was wearing a skirt, blue denim, and well, it
was
kinda short.
That’s what started the squabble.”

“Where does Melissa go to school
,
Mrs. Parker, Keyes or Boise City?”

“Boise City, she’s a cheerleader on their football team, the Bobcats,” she said with a suggestion of a smile, a mother’s pride.

Billy Ray spoke up.
“Who was the last one to see Melissa, you or Mr. Parker?

Imogene hesitated. Her eyes darted toward the house as her brow furrowed tight with an additional wrinkle. She swiped at a wisp of wind-blown hair and patted it into place.
Then, “
It was my husband…Albert.
I’ll tell him
you want to
see h
im
.”

When the woman was out of earshot, Billy Ray
said,
“What do you think?”

Lester didn’t answer immediately, intent on watching the front door, but then, “I think I find it a little strange that the father didn’t come out here to talk to us when his wife did.
Off hand, I can’t figure why a man would have anything more important to do than to find out what’s happened to his daughter…unless he already knows.”