Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel (5 page)

At least there was one small piece of good news.
Whatever was making that rustling noise
on the floor
, that scary sound that triggered her living nightmare
and nearly pushed her over the edge
,
had
thankfully
gone
silent
, or better yet, left the cellar…somehow
.
Returning to the top of the stairs, she gave the door another push with exactly the same maddening results as
with
her previous efforts, a metallic bang, the same small gap, not an inch more. The angle of the sun had changed and now Melissa could see the bottom of the cellar, at least the first couple of feet around the base of the stairs.
A solid mat of leaves and twigs
—nature’s carpet—covered most of the floor.

One of the larger sticks gave her an idea. She dropped the door
and it fell with
a resounding clang, the volume
of it
catching her by surprise. She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust, still couldn’t see, and
began feeling
her way down the steps.
Safely on
the floor
, she shuffled forward until her toes made contact
. She wrapped her fingers around the circumference of the stick, judging the thickness. It seemed about right.
Back
at the top of the
stairs, she jammed the branch between the ledge and the door, blocking it open as far as the mysterious obstruction on the other side would permit.

“There, that’s a little better,” she said, her spirit rising by the minute.
“Now, let’s see what kind of new home I have.”

C
autiously
,
and keeping both hands in front of her
,
Melissa
explored
the darkness,
touching, feeling,
hoping for something, anything,
to
aid
her escape.
Nearing the rear of the cellar, she
made
out
a dim shape, an object of some kind, leaning against one wall.

“What’s this?” she said as she ran
her
fingertips over the
find.
“Oh, it feels like a lawn chair.”

Taking it to the light,
she unfolded the cheap aluminum frame, tested the webbing, decided it was safe, and sat down.

“Somebody carried this down here to wait out the storms.
Good idea.
Thank you, whoever you were.”

On her next foray, she found another prize
, even better than the first
.

“Ah ha, a cot, a folding cot. Even better than a chair.
Army surplus?”

Pushing a few of the leaves out of the way with her foot, she spread the old wooden legs, and pushed on the fabric.
It held.

“Super.
Now I can get my feet up and away from things that want to bite my toes.
What more could a girl ask for? Well, maybe a little food and water and some FREAKING WAY TO GET OUT OF HERE!” she yelled, her anger replacing the fear. “On second thought, forget the food
, not right now.
But a glass of cold water would be to die for.”
Slapping her hand to her mouth, the realization of her words sank in.

“
To die for.
Well Melissa, unless you find a way to get your young butt out of here, that could happen, right?
Right? Well, shit.”

Melissa seldom used cuss words and never around her parents of course.
Her mom would have a cow. Her dad, on the other hand would simply slap her across the mouth as he usually did when she said something to displease him.
It hadn’t t
aken her long to learn how to stay quiet
and speak
only when spoken to if her dad was around. Life
on the farm
was easier that way.

Melissa reached the far end of her confinement and touched the clammy concrete.
Working from left to right, her fingers moved the length of the wall, searching, feeling, seriously hoping not to touch another spider web. Then,
another object
…a board, a shelf?
Using her right hand as a guide for perspective, she slowly swept her left along the top of the board, feeling the
accumulated dirt and grime from years of abandonment.
Another shape
, round this time.
A bottle or a jar?
Using both hands, she carefully carried whatever it was to the stairs and into better light. It
was
a jar, a quart jar, like her granny used to put peaches in. There was something inside. She held it higher for a better look. And there, pretty as you please, was a candle, a big fat candle
,
at least three inches high. Beside it, a small box of Diamond brand matches,
strike anywhere
it said on the box.

“Oh sweet Jesus, thank you, thank you.”

Chapter 5

The quick search of the ditches between the highway and the Wilson place proved fruitless; no signs of foul play, no
suspicious
ruts, no articles of clothing, and no dead girls. At the junction to the highway, the Sheriff’s pickup idled in front of a bullet-riddled stop sign, a common condition for red octagons in rural Cimarron County.
Lester stared through the windshield, deep in thought. After five minutes of silence and not one inch of forward progress, Billy Ray broke the silence.
“I think we need to wait it out, at least till this evenin
’
, and see if she shows up.
Right now, we got nothing.
Besides, when’s the last time this county had a kidnapping, or any major crime for that matter, a hundred years ago?”

Neither Lester nor the truck responded to the question. All was quiet. The highway was void of traffic, not a single vehicle coming or going, nothing moving but the trees in the wind and a
few fluffy clouds
on the western horizon.
Billy Ray was accustomed to these lapses in conversation and knew that Lester would answer…eventually.
The deputy closed his eyes, leaned his head against the rest, and waited.

“It was a hundred and
three
years ago to be exact,” Lester said.

“What was?”

“The last major crime in Cimarron County.
It was in 1909, in Boise City. Sheriff Ben Milligan arrested a man that was wanted in Texas. But the s
heriff made a mistake—a big one
. H
e let his prisoner use a bathroom before takin
g
him to jail. The guy came out of the john with a gun and shot old Ben graveyard dead.”

“Sheriff,” Billy Ray said with a hint of exasperation, “That girl ran off and is holed up with a boyfriend somewhere, scared to go home; knowing her father is gonna beat her. I can’t see anything more than that.
Your little history lesson just proves my point, those kind of things just don’t happen around here anymore.

“Proves one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re overdue.”

Lester goosed the pickup, slinging gravel from the rear tires, and swung onto the highway heading southwest. The temperature had climbed to seventy-four, the heat feeling good in the cab.
As was usual during an Oklahoma mid-morning, the wind had picked up, and was now gusting between 10 and 15 mph.
Up ahead
, a tumbleweed, seeking moisture for its seeds to propagate, broke loose from its r
oot and rolled toward the road
. But
its quest for renewed life was unsuccessful, coming to rest
against
a barbed wire fence
with others of its kind
,
the
dry, cracked earth beneath unable to support life.

Billy Ray kept one eye on the Sheriff, waiting for more words of wisdom, but the old lawman said nothing until they reached the parking lot of the Pirate’s Den bar.
Lester drove around to the back and stopped at a large tan Dumpster.
The lid was open. The aroma of stale beer and week
-
old trash was strong.
A black plastic trash bag lay on
top of
the heap.

“Billy Ray, why don’t you hop in there in and get that bag?
I’d do it but I’m not quite as spry as I used to be.”

“My ass. Why is it I only hear the
old man
excuse when there’s dirty work involved?”

Lester grinned while the deputy—still cussing to himself—jumped in the middle of the beer bottles and cigarette butts.

“Here,” Billy Ray said with a grunt as he tossed the bag to the ground. “You got enough strength to open this by yourself or should I do it?”

“Oh, you go ahead.
I’ll watch and see how it’s done.”

Hoping to avoid
as much
of
the barroom slime as possible, Billy Ray used his pocketknife to slit the bag open.
Both men peered in.
It was full of clothes
,
all female
;
dresses, skirts, a sequined blouse, some high heels, and a pair of lacy black panties lay on top of the heap.

“Throw that in the back of the truck
,
Billy Ray. We’ll go through ‘em back at the station.
Look for blood.”

The deputy wrinkled his face.
“Blood? Are you serious?
You really think her father might have killed her?”

“We can’t rule it now
,
can we?”

At the Keyes city limits, Lester slowed to the legal speed, checked the gas gauge again, decided he had enough, and kept going. Fourteen miles later,
on the outskirts
of
Boise City
,
Lester said
,
“I’m gonna drop you off at the station to go through those clothes and
start
a
missing person
report.
I’m gonna head on over to the high school, see if Melissa’s might be there.
Be just like a kid to go on to school without botherin’ to phone home first.”

“You
sure you
want me to write it up as a missing person
?” Billy Ray asked.
“
Hell, she hasn’t been gone for a whole day yet.
I thought a person had to have disappeared for 72 hours before they can be declared as missing.”

Lester shook his head.
“Nope, that’s a popular misconception.
It’s entirely reasonable to classify a person as missin
g
if they disappear under violent or unusual circumstances.
It’s up to the discretion of law enforcement.
That would be me and you
,
Billy Ray, and I’m sayin’
Melissa Parker is missin
g
.”

“And if she’s not
at school
?”

“Then you and I are gonna get real busy, real quick.”

*****

At the town square, Lester made a turn and drove to the back of the courthouse, a two-story brick building, tan with four prominent and ornate columns atop a flight of concrete steps.
Billy Ray pulled the trash bag out of the back and dragged it across the lawn to a door marked
Sheriff
in big gold letters on a frosted window.
Under the title was a decorative
five-pointed
star with another smaller star
featuring
a banner that read Cimarron County.
The deputy drug the bag past the front office with the two metal desks where he and Lester shared one out-dated computer, and into the back room.
He spread the young girl’s clothes on a long table and carefully looked at each garment for rips, tears, or any suspicious stains.
He felt slightly uneasy handling Melissa’s undergarments, especially when he came
across
a
bright red thong. Other than the short skirts, a couple
of
scoop-neck tee’s, and two other pair of underwear—one pink, one black, both high cut—Billy Ray found nothing that would set any reasonable caring father into a fit of rage, much less give him a reason to kill.
There were no bloodstains visible to the naked eye, nor anything that looked like semen on the panties or skirts. He bagged the clothing in a new sack, labeled it, and stuffed the black smelly one in the trash can.
Returning to his desk, he found the proper form, and began to write:
Parker, Melissa, female, Caucasian, age 18.