Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel (9 page)

“
If
she’s still alive,” Billy Ray added, watching the man
on the floor,
hoping for a reaction.
But Albert Parker
had no response, his dull eyes unfocused, staring into space,
and blinking like a bullfrog in a hailstorm.

The parking lot of the Pirate’s Den hadn’t changed much since Lester and Billy Ray had passed by earlier in the day. The old clunker Chevy
hadn’t moved
, looking like it
could become a permanent fixture
, but
was
now joined by a black Dodge pickup, also raggedy and rusted.
The tires were mostly bald and it was missing the tailgate and rear bumper
—the
license tag duct-taped to the window.
A dozen e
mpty beer cans littered the bed.

Billy Ray pointed at the cans. “Strange isn’t it, how a bunch of empties can stay in the bed like that even when there’s no tail gate? Somehow, the back draft keeps them in I guess, or most of them anyway. You know the truck?”

“I believe I do,” Lester said.
“Let’s us go in and chat for a spell.” At the door, he turned to the deputy. “You still got a live round in that pistol of yours?”

Billy Ray nodded, realizing he had made another mistake. He drew the gun and popped the magazine into his hand.
The Glock had no safety as such, no button to push or lever to slide.
If he should accidently pull the trigger, the forty-caliber slug would slam into something or somebody, ready or not.
He jacked the cartridge out, returned it to its rightful place at the top of the stack, slammed the magazine back home, and holstered the weapon.
Lester gave a nod of approval and opened the door.

Inside, the Pirate’s Den reeked of cigarette smoke and stale beer. A pool table,
the
felt stained and patched, sat silent at the far end of the room. A string of padded booths, back-to-back, dark and unoccupied, took up most of one wall. Two round
wooden
tables
,
pockmarked with numerous
cigarette burns, filled the center of the room.
A jukebox with its garish reds, greens, and yellows, glowed quietly from the far left corner.
A single customer sat at the L
-
shaped bar, a half-empty bottle of Bud in front of him. The
bartender
looked up from the Boise City newspaper he was reading and eyeballed the two lawmen as they stood just inside the entrance, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the dim light.

Lester called out. “Earl?
Earl Redman? Is that you back there?”

“It is,” the man behind the bar
admitted
. “What have I done now?”

Lester laid his hat on the bar, chose a stool at the opposite end from where the customer was sitting, and said, “Reckon a man could get a tall glass of ice water around here?
Been a long day.”

Billy Ray remained standing, visually locating the bathroom door, and took a position where he could watch the entrance as well as the man drinking the Bud.

Redman made no verbal reply to the request
,
but grabbed a beer glass from a shelf and scooped it through an unseen pile of ice.
He held the glass under a tap, filled it, and with a thud, placed it in front of Lester.

“Thank you
,
Earl.
I appreciate it.” Lester took a long pull from the glass
,
but said nothing more and simply looked at the bartender, waiting for what might come next.

Finally, “Why are
you
here?
I’ve done nothing wrong.
My licenses are up to date.”

“Oh
,
not much.
Just stopped to check on things, see how you were doin’…and to ask a couple questions.”

“Well, ask them and get it over with.
Your pickup out there with that big gold star on it is bad for business.”

“Oh. We’re a might grouchy today aren’t we
,
Earl? But okay, here’s what I want to talk about.
We got a missing girl, a teenager by the name of Melissa Parker.
Billy Ray, you got that photo?
Lester sat the framed picture of the smiling teen on the bar, using the tab on the back to hold it upright. “She lives with her folks not far from here. You know the Parkers?”

Redman gave the photo a cursory glance and shook his head. “Never heard of ‘em.”

“Okay
,
Earl, if you say so
, but hear me out
.
We
think Melissa left her house at some point last night and took off walkin
’
down the road, probably in this direction—must have been around ten, maybe ten-thirty, or eleven.
Seein’ as to how there’s no other place around, it’s likely she stopped in here, maybe to use the phone. You recall anything like that?”

“No
,
I don’t
,
and you know damn well that I don’t allow any teenagers in here.”

“Maybe not any more,” Lester said.
“But I seem to recall one summer night when a number of high school kids were spotted right out there on your patio. They were drinkin
’
your
beer that
you
served them if I remember correctly.
I wouldn’t be mistaken about a thing like that would I
,
Earl?”

“That happened just that one time, that’s all.
One of those boys had a fake I.D. and he was settin
’
up beers for his buddies.
I would have shut that down myself
,
but then
you
came along.”

“Yes, and I let it slide didn’t I? But what did I tell you that night?”

Redman glanced toward the door as another car pulled in the lot.
“You said if it ever happened again, you’d shut me down quicker than a cat can lick his ass.”

Lester
grinned
, “That sounds like something I’d say all right.”

The door swung open diverting the attention of everyone in the bar.
Two men, short in stature, and wearing
blue
long
-
sleeve
d
work shirts, stepped inside and chose one of the booths in the back.

“Excuse me
,
Sheriff,” Redman mumbled
.
“I need to try to earn an honest livin’ here.”

As Redman approached the booth, one of the men pointed to the Coors sign in the window, and then held up two fingers.
Redman returned to the bar.
“Mexicans,” he said under his breath as he poured two drafts from the tap.
“Can’t speak a word of English. Probably wetbacks.”

“You mean illegal immigrants?” the
S
heriff asked. “Oh, I doubt that. Think about it
,
Earl.
You think illegals would park beside my pickup, the one with the star on the door, and then walk in here and order a beer?”

Redman made a grunt sound, served the two men, and collected their money.

On the way to the cash register, he
stopped in front
of the Sheriff, making a show of wiping his hands on a towel from his back pocket, as if he were worried about germs from people with brown skin
and said,
“
Don’t
you have something else to do beside harassing law-abiding, tax-paying citizens?”

Lester took a long look at the man sitting at the other end of the bar. “Matter of fact I do
,
Earl.”

The man that Lester approached had a large frame with a belly overhang that sagged a considerable distance below his belt buckle.
A cotton print shirt with the sleeves cutout made it impossible to overlook his massive and hairy arms. The scowl on his face seemed set in stone, like it hadn’t held a smile in a lifetime.
The man took a short sip from the bottle as he watched the reflection of the
S
heriff get larger in the mirror.

Lester took the nearest stool and sat with his back to the bar, facing the man, elbows up, and relaxed.
“J.O.,” the
S
heriff said, “I thought I remembered that handsome face.
Billy Ray, this here is J.O. Mecham.
J.O. and I have a bit of history, don’t we J.O.?”
Mecham said nothing and took another hook off the bottle, never taking his eyes
from
the mirror as Billy Ray came up behind, standing close.

“J.O., why don’t we step outside, just for a minute or two?
We need to catch up on old times, you and I.”

Mecham swiveled a quarter turn on the bar stool, his dark, deeply recessed eyes gleaming with malice.
“Why don’t you eat me, you mother…”

Lester’s hand shot out like a bullet, clamped around Mecham’s throat and squeezed hard, choking off the words.
“Don’t go there
,
J.O.”

Long before Mecham’s beer
-
soaked brain could process any sort of retaliation, the deputy grabbed one of his hairy arms at the wrist, twisting it out and backward, causing J.O. to yelp in pain. Billy Ray held the arm rigid as a pole, elbow locked, and pushed the big man forward until his faced banged on the bar, spilling the Bud.

“Out the door
,
J.O., now,” Lester said, easy like.
“Peaceable being our goal here.”

At the booth, the two Mexicans watched with
only mild interest
, sipping their Coors. They had seen men removed from bars before.

The two light poles in the parking light, their ghostly blue having been turned on by the automatic timer, shone down on the trio of men, one of which was now bent over the hood of Lester’s pickup.
Billy Ray did the pat down; pockets, belt, but stopped when he slid his hand down one of J.O.’s heavy brogans.

“Got a knife.”
The deputy held his find up to the light.

“Switchblade?” Lester asked.

“No, not exactly. It’s one of those that you can flip open with a flick of the wrist
though.
You put your finger on this little knob here on the blade,” he said, demonstrating the action, “and give it a flip.”
The four inch steel flashed in the bluish light. Billy Ray tossed the knife on the hood of the pickup and finished the search. “Nothin’ else.”

“Okay,” Lester said, “I think we can talk now. J.O., were you here last night?”

“I’m here most ever night
,” Mecham admitted
.
“
So?”

“How about between the hours of ten and eleven, or thereabouts?

“I don’t remember.”

“Didn’t figure you would, but just for the sake of argument, let’s assume you were. Did you see a young girl walk through
? A
teenager, long brown hair? She might have looked older.
She has a nice body J.O.
You’d remember that, I know.”

“Don’t remember no girl like that.”

“Uh huh. Thing is
,
Billy Ray, J.O. here has this annoying tendency to break the law from time to time. There was a DUI—at least
one
that I know of—twice for aggravated assault, and what was that other thing J.O.?
Something about a rape wasn’t it
?
”

Mecham
tensed.
“Hey, don’t be starting that shit again.
That was bogus and you know it.
That little bitch was lying from the git-go.”

“Way I heard it,
”
Lester
added
, “was that she dropped the charges.
There was talk that she’d been threatened, her and her kids both.”

“Lies, like I said.”

“Yeah, well, been nice talking to you
,
J.O.
,
but I know you got to get home.
Let me get your door for you.
Wouldn’t want you to aggravate that sore arm.”

J.O. pressed it, the beer talking now.
“Hey, I’m not ready to go home, not yet.
I’ve done nothing wrong. You got no right…”

Billy Ray gave J.O. a quick but forceful shove in the middle of his back.
“I think this might be one of those times you should quit while you’re ahead
,
Mr. Mecham.”

Mecham glared at both the men, holding it as long as felt he could get away with it, and then got in his pickup, slamming the door so hard that
both
lawmen winced, half expecting the glass to shatter.
Lester and Billy Ray watched the Dodge spray gravel, then
heard
a chirp of rubber as the wheels hit solid pavement.