Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel (7 page)

“Hello?” the voice said with a noticeable waver.

“Sheriff
Lester P. Morrison on this end.
Have you heard anything from Melissa
,
Ma’am?”

“Not a word. I called everyone I know including my sister in Tulsa.
No one has seen her or talked to her.
She’s gone
,
Sheriff
.
I’ll never see her again.”

Lester heard the voice break, her words barely audible. He waited a moment and said, “Mrs. Parker, we’re still lookin’ for your girl. I checked with the school and talked with Becky but she hasn’t seen her since yesterday afternoon.
I’m goin’to talk to more of the kids at school later on today,
but in the meantime,
I’d like to come back out
to your place and
look around a little more
.
If she
doesn’t show up soon
, I’m gonna call the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and get those boys in on it, or try to.
Thing is, they won’t make much of a move until there’s evidence of a crime but I’m gonna talk to them anyway, try to find somebody over there that’s got some
common
sense. ”

“Thank you
,
Sheriff.
I’ve spent all morning praying about this, praying as hard as I know how.
I hope the Lord hears me.”

“I’m sure He will
,
Mrs. Parker.
You keep praying’ and I’ll see you later on, okay?”

If the woman replied, Lester didn’t hear it, and he ended the call.

“Anything?” Billy Ray asked.

“Not a word
.
Let’s grab a quick bite to eat
. I want to go back out to the P
arker’s and check the property for any sign.
Want to stop at that bar too.”

“You buying lunch?”

“What
are
you talkin’ about young man?”

“It was your dispatcher made me miss breakfast this morning.”

“My dispatcher?
Humph. If you
could
haul your young ass out of bed a little earlier, you
would’ve had plenty of time for
breakfast.”

“Oh, you’re a fine one to talk.
If I recall, you were still in your
skivvies
when I got to your house this morning.”

Lester
shot
him a look.
“Hey, you young whipper-snapper, I’m old
er than you
.
I need my rest. You
should show
more respect for
us seniors
.”

“I would if you’d buy my lunch.”

“Get in the truck
,
Billy Ray.

*****

The Merry Mart convenience store had one gas pump and no customers until Lester pulled in, unscrewed the cap on the fuel tank, and began to fill up.

“You thought I’d forget to gas
up
didn’t you?” Lester said, leaning in the window.

“Like that’s never happened?” Billy Ray answered without looking up from the latest
Guns & Ammo
magazine.

“Maybe once.”

“Maybe more than once.
Don’t think I’ve forgotten the number of times we had to call the local police to bring us some gas.”

“Hell, they probably didn’t have anything better to do.”

“It was embarrassing
,
Sheriff.”

“Little embarrassment never hurt anybody, builds character.”

“Uh huh.”

The pump performed the automatic shut off with a clunk. Lester replaced the hose and checked the meter.

“By Gawd, that’s un-American, to charge a man that much for a gallon of gas.”

“The county’s paying for it
,
Sheriff, not you.”

“What, you don’t think I ever put gas in my personal pickup?”

“You
never
drive
your personal pickup.
You stick it to the county even if you’re going to church.”

“That’s because I’m always on the job, ready to rid the county of evil doers, face em’ down in the street at high noon if need be. I’ll throw their sorry asses in jail too, yes I will.”

“Get in the truck
,
Sheriff.”

At the turnoff toward the Parker home, Lester pulled to the shoulder and shut the engine down.

“What are we
d
oing
now
?” Billy Ray asked
, unable to conceal the impatience in his voice
.

The Sheriff didn’t answer
,
but got out of the truck and stood at the intersection
,
looking first northeast and then southwest, the brim of his cowboy hat casting hard shadows across his face.
A lone pickup of indistinguishable color, the only other vehicle on the road, passed and faded from view.

Finally, “The way I see it is this.
First, Melissa walked south toward her friend Becky’s house, but seeing that no one was home,
she wasn’t sure what to do next. She had no cell phone and nowhere else to go.
She probably wait
ed
around in the yard awhile, still mad
,
too mad
to go home yet.
E
ventually
, and givin’ up on Becky,
she walks
back down the road to
here, this intersection.
She may or may not have seen her father on his way to or coming back from the Dumpster.
I’m sure she didn’t want to have another confrontation.
Could have stepped off the road and hid in the brush when she saw his headlights, but who knows?

Left is the bar, the Pirates Den, she could probably see the neon sign from here.
It’s what, only a quarter mile, maybe less? Remember, Melissa didn’t have a cell. There’s a chance that she walked to the bar to use their phone, probably wanted to call Becky and see where she was
and when she’d be home
. The only other possibility is northeast, but why? The nearest thing in that direction is that one old ramshackle house that looks like a junkyard. You’ve seen it Billy Ray, the one with the half dozen rusty cars out front and a yard full of trash?”

Billy Ray nodded. “I know the place but I’ve yet to see the owner.
Not real sure if anyone’s living there.
”
The deputy spent a little time o
f his own emulating the Sheriff
,
saying nothing, hands on hips,
staring up and down the road.
“I’m guessing about now is when the walking starts.”

Lester grinned, “Damn boy, you’re gonna make a lawmen yet. C’mon, I’ll take the right side of the road, you take the left.”

“Which way?”

“Think about it.”

“Toward the bar, a public place.”

“That would be my choice.
Let’s move out.”

The ditch on both sides of the highway wasn’t all that deep but there were a lot of weeds.
It was the same story with many of Oklahoma’s roadways. Due to the economy, state revenues h
ad suffered a serious decline.
T
he counties had to make
cuts. One
of the first to feel the axe was the highway maintenance department, fewer employees, less men to run the mowers. The result was
high
weeds
and unsightly trash.

Halfway to the bar, Lester called out from across the road, “See anything?”

“Lots of things; beer cans mostly, a few grocery sacks, Styrofoam cups, and what looked to be the remains of an old condom.
No bodies though.”

“Keep lookin’. How’s the bad foot holdin’ up?”

“You don’t hear me complainin’ do ya?”

Lester smiled.

As the pair reached the bar, an older model Chevy Impala with a massive dent in the left rear fender sat alone in the Pirate’s Den parking area.
A sticker on the rear bumper displayed an image of an eagle with upraised wings, the words,
Join the NRA
beneath it. The Coors sign in the solitary window of the bar glowed a dull yellow.
Despite the pleasant afternoon
weather
, there were no drinkers on the patio.

“Shouldn’t we go in and talk to the owner?” Billy Ray asked.

“Yeah, but not now. It’ll be dark soon.
Let’s go ahead and
walk the highway in the other direction, toward that junker place,
just for a ways,
while we still got some light.”

“Seems like we’re doing a hell of a lot of walking
,
Sheriff.
Why didn’t you take one direction back there at the intersection while I took the other? We’d be done walking by now.”

“If you had any kind of experience behind you instead of bein’ the rookie that you are, you would know that you should always search an area from both directions.
Too many things
could be
hidden in the
weeds
to be seen on one pass.”

“You mean I might find another condom on the way back?”

“Don’t make me have to walk over there and bitch slap you
,
Billy Ray.”

No other words were spoken until the men had walked back past the Sheriff’s pickup
. They
were almost to the junkyard house when the deputy asked, “See the field here on my side of the road? What’s up with that string of pipes on wheels?”

Lester stopped, took off his hat, and wiped his brow with a big blue handkerchief from his back pocket.
“That would be for irrigation
,
son.
If you were to take a ride in an airplane and look down on this part of the country, you would see dozens of circles like that, big circles, most a quarter-mile in diameter, crop circles is what they are.”

“You mean like from the UFO’s?”

“No, no, no. Lord, give me strength.
Look, we don’t get a lot of rain here in this end of the state.
Ever heard of the Dust Bowl? Back in the 30’s it was.
The Panhandle, right here where you’re standing, was caught in the worst of it. These days, the farmers have learned about better methods to hold the ground down
,
but they still don’t know how to make it rain,
least not consistently
.
That contraption you’re looking at waters the crops
. It’s called center-pivot irrigation
.
The nozzles, those tubes you see all along the length of the pipe, is where the water comes out.
The holes in the nozzles—the sprinklers—vary in size so that the water is distributed evenly all along the path. There’s an electric motor at the center to keep the thing moving.
I think it makes a complete revolution about once every three days or so, something like that.”

By now the deputy was staring at the man across the road. “My, my, Sheriff, sometimes you do amaze me.”

“I’ve a wealth of hidden talents and vast knowledge on a plethora of subjects yet to be revealed my boy.
Keep walkin’.”

Billy Ray had no reply to su
ch a line of obvious bull shit and asked instead,
“How
‘
bout the house—the junky one—check it out now?”

Lester turned to look at the sun and thought about it.
“No,
w
e’ll do that tomorrow, that is if the girl hasn’t shown up by then.
Let’s
get on back
to the Parker’s.”

C
hapter 7

Mrs. Albert Parker came to the door looking even more gaunt and haggard than Lester remembered from earlier in the day.
Her eyes were hollow
, dark,
and lifeless
;
the lines in her face like ruts in a muddy road.
It was as if she had aged ten years in only a few short hours. A pocket on the side of her dress bulged with used tissues.

“Ma’am?” the Sheriff asked, “Any news?”

“None,” she said, as her eyes grew watery once again.

“Mrs. Parker, do you think it would be all right if my deputy and I looked around a little bit?
I’d like to see Melissa’s room if I could, maybe get a photo that I could borrow for a while?”

“A picture, yes, of course
.
I have several.
Melissa is our only child you know. Please come in.”