Bitch Factor

by Chris Rogers

  Dann drew a keeper, rearranged his hand to accommodate it, then discarded the six of clubs.

  “Heard you were favored for stepping into the DA’s seat. Must be quite a story, you giving them the bird and taking up bounty hunting.”

  Dixie looked at him over the top of her cards. The story wasn’t any secret. She’d joined the lower ranks of the DA’s office right out of law school. Like the Ghostbusters of movie fame, she wanted to rid the world of slime, but it oozed through loopholes, slithered back into society, and expanded.

  “Remember the Leigh Ann Turner murder trial?” Dixie’s last case had made national news.

  “Turner… Turner…” Dann eyed the discards. “Accused of killing her aunt, wasn’t she?”

  “Flora Riggs. A scrawny old woman with pink-tinted hair and clothes recycled from the decadent twenties. Good-hearted and stronger than horseradish.”

  Dixie had met Flora Riggs a year before her death, after the old woman witnessed a mugging. When Dixie questioned her eyesight, Flora had retorted, I saw those two boys beat that man as clear I can see those ugly shoes you’re wearing. Dixie’s plain brown pumps were comfortable, which is what she required of all her clothes. She asked Flora if she tried to stop the boys. Oh, fah! It was over before I could get my old bones out the door. But I sicked Pooch on ’em . Pooch was the German shepherd that lay at Flora’s feet and growled at anyone who came near. He’s old like I am, and not a sharp tooth left in his head, but he can still bark a ghost back in its grave. Flora’s hearty cackle had made Dixie smile. Those boys took one look at Pooch tearing across the yard and they turned tail fast. Then I dialed 911.

  Thanks to Flora’s swift reactions, the victim had lived, and for once the Texas judicial system worked as it should: the two young men went to prison. But the murder of Flora Riggs was not so easily resolved.

  “Newspapers said a neighbor found her hanging from a ceiling fan,” Dann said.

  “Engineered to look like suicide. The chair she supposedly climbed on was tipped over, as if she’d kicked it aside after fixing the rope around her neck.”

  The neighbor had also found Pooch, dead beside his water dish, a nasty lump between his eyes. Me and old Pooch keep each other alive out of pure cussedness, Flora had told Dixie. We’re both too ornery to go first.

  “But Ms. ADA Supersleuth suspected it wasn’t suicide, I suppose.” Dann’s voice held a barb, which Dixie ignored.

  “Forensics examined the bruising on Flora’s neck, the direction the rope fibers were bent, and said, ‘No way it was suicide.’”

  Like Pooch, Flora had been murdered. But why would anybody want to kill Aunt Flora? her niece, Leigh Ann, had protested. Everybody loved her.

  Why indeed? The back door was unlocked. A number of family heirlooms, mostly jewelry and silver, were missing. Had Flora surprised a burglar? Dixie didn’t think so. A burglar wouldn’t have taken time for a trumped-up hanging, would’ve knocked the woman in the head, same as the dog.

  “Leigh Ann’s thumbprint was found on the ceiling fan” Dixie told Dann. “Of course, she might have touched the fan while cleaning it, but Leigh Ann didn’t strike anybody as a conscientious housekeeper. And she had moved out of Flora’s house more than a year earlier.”

  “Cute little blonde, wasn’t she? Delicate, soft-spoken?”

  “Picture of innocence.” To everyone but Dixie. “At first she couldn’t produce an alibi. Claimed she’d spent the afternoon shopping with a friend at the Galleria. But her friend wasn’t available to comment. Leigh Ann said she’d mentioned taking a trip.”

  “Let me guess: the aunt was a rich bitch.”

  “Not rich, but frugal. Inherited her home, and set money aside for years, living on the interest and the sale of her needlework. She took Leigh Ann in after the girl’s parents were killed in a car accident.” All the while that child was growing up, Flora had told Dixie, I worried something would happen to me and she’d be left all alone in the world. “Flora Riggs took out a half-million-dollar insurance policy on her own life so her niece wouldn’t be left penniless.”

  “And you figured she murdered her aunt for the insurance money?”

  “Yes, but the policy had a double indemnity clause for accidental death, so why make it look like suicide? Suicide doesn’t pay. That’s the part I couldn’t make fit.” Dixie shook her head. “Besides, Leigh Ann didn’t exactly need the money. She earned a fancy salary as an interpreter for the State Department, and her fiancé was an ambassador from some unheard of country in South America.”

  “Came out in the trial, didn’t it, that the girl’s aunt didn’t like the boyfriend?”

  “Flora didn’t like him, but that’s a thin cause for murder.”

  “Not when you add a cool million. Correct me if I’m wrong, but murder qualifies as accidental, for insurance purposes. Swipe a few fancy baubles, looks like the aunt was killed during a burglary.”

  “That still doesn’t explain the business with the rope, though, does it?” Dixie knew Dann was feigning interest, hoping to win her over. But she was getting a kick out of hearing him puzzle it out the same way she had two years ago. He had a sharp mind.

  He stood up, the handcuff sliding to the top of the rounded headboard.

  “Here’s this sweet-faced blonde. Looks like she wouldn’t harm a fly. Yet evidence keeps stacking up against her.” He paused, rubbing his stubbled chin with his free hand. “Personally, I thought she was guilty. Reminded me of a Norman Rockwell painting—maybe you’ve seen it—an angel hiding a slingshot under her wings.”

  “The jury wasn’t fooled, either. When all the evidence was heard, they were ready to convict—”

  Dann’s eyebrows arched suddenly. “That’s when the mysterious friend showed up.”

  “Myra. Claimed she’d left for Europe the day after her shopping spree with Leigh Ann, and went from there to China, in no hurry to return home until she heard about the trial.”

  Dann’s eyes narrowed, and he went silent for a beat.

  “So the friggin jury, twelve persons good and true, almost convicted an innocent woman.” A slow drawl flavored his words with cynical amusement. “Proving circumstantial evidence can look damning as all hell and still be pure dogshit.” He yanked at the chain holding him to the bed. “Guess I know exactly how Leigh Ann felt.”

  “Then you missed the rest of the story,” Dixie said. Dropping her cards on the bed, she stood and walked to the window. To the east, the sky had brightened. Wisps of pink limned the dun-colored clouds. Buck and Emma Sparks would wake up soon, and Dixie hadn’t yet decided how to handle the snow-shoveling problem. She trusted inspiration to strike at the right moment.

  “You’re telling me Leigh Ann was guilty? I saw her and the boyfriend on television, boarding a plane for South America.”

  Dixie folded her arms against the chill air near the window.

  “Shortly after the trial, another witness surfaced. A neighbor recognized the ambassador in the news and remembered seeing him at Flora’s house on the afternoon of the murder.”

  “Then you’re saying sweet-cheeks and her boyfriend planned the whole thing together.”

  “Right down to Leigh Ann’s thumbprint on the ceiling fan and the missing Myra, who turned up precisely when her testimony would do the most damage to the prosecution’s case.”

  “The prosecutor being you.”

  “It couldn’t have worked any better if they’d had a ring through my nose, leading me from one clue to the next.”

  Dann leaned against the wall, studying Dixie, his piratical brow furrowed with interest. “In the end, though, you figured it out.”

  “Sure, I figured it out. When it was too damn late! The ambassador was exempted from prosecution—diplomatic immunity—and a jury had already found Leigh Ann innocent. She couldn’t be tried again, even if two dozen witnesses lined up to swear they saw her string her aunt from the ceiling fan. By the time I pieced it together, Leigh Ann was on that airplane to South Amer
ica with the insurance check in her pocket.”

  “So, they both walk—and angel collects a million dollars to boot.”

  When Dixie nodded, Dann slammed the heel of his fist against the wall.

  “Now that chaps my butt. Here’s my jury, ready to fry my ass good on circumstantial evidence. Maybe I even did it, hell, I don’t know, I don’t remember, but if I did hit that child, I never intended it, like you’re talking about with this Leigh Ann, and I damn sure won’t do anything like that again because I’ll never again touch a drop of liquor and drive a car. How does a jury justify sending me up the road and letting real murderers get off?” He stopped, let out a heavy, exasperated breath, then kicked the bed frame. “I don’t friggin understand that.”

  Dixie had heard every drunk-driving story in the books, and they all included the promise never again to drive after drinking. But she agreed with Dann about Flora Riggs’ killers it enraged her that they were walking around free.

  “The system’s not perfect,” she said quietly. “It’s rife with political pressures, inadequate prison facilities, incompetent attorneys, corrupt officials. Sometimes it just breaks down.”

  “Well… you should know.” He fanned his cards out. “So that was the case that ripped your britches.”

  Leigh Ann Turner and the ambassador weren’t the first killers Dixie had watched walk free, nor the most ruthless. But after the Riggs case, Dixie was filled to her gullet with bitter pills, would choke if she had to swallow another one.

  Now her job was pig simple. She never concerned herself with a skip’s guilt or innocence. When a bondsman posted bail, the client signed a contract guaranteeing his own physical presence in court on a specified date. The bondsman in turn had to post collateral guaranteeing the court that his client would be available, much like backing a loan. If the client skipped, the bondsman owed the court the entire bail amount and had the right to “repossess” his client’s “physical presence,” through force if necessary, like repossessing a car. Only hauling back skips paid a lot better than hauling cars. And there were times it carried emotional reward, as well. Such as bringing a child killer to trial.

  Turning back to the bed, Dixie started to reclaim her cards, when Dann spread his hand on the bed, faceup.

  “Gin,” he said, his cocky grin and amused blue eyes full of mocking impertinence.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Saturday, August 1, Camp Cade, Texas

  “I heard it again,” Courtney whispered.

  “Heard what?” Her bunk mate’s voice, thick with sleep, rose from the darkness.

  “Lisa, someone’s creeping around outside.” Courtney held her breath in the muggy dawn, listening for skulking noises. At dinnertime around the campfire, and later, walking back to the cabin, she’d gotten a feeling—a scary feeling.

  “It’s probably someone going to the latrine.”

  “The latrine’s not around here.” In fact, it stood in the middle of camp, near the counselors’ quarters. Their own cabin lay farthest out, farthest from the lake.

  “It’s nobody. Go back to sleep.”

  But Courtney knew she hadn’t imagined it. In nearly two weeks at Camp Cade, nothing like this had happened. She wasn’t in the habit of imagining things.

  “I heard someone—or something—creeping around. There it is again. Listen!”

  Outside the window, something rustled, like dead leaves. The cabin sat in a clearing, away from the jutting pines and dense underbrush of the woods, but dry bark had been spread in the flower beds as mulch. Someone must be standing in the flower bed, trying to look in.

  Courtney peered hard at the window nearest her bunk. Had a shadow shifted outside the pale curtain?

  “Probably a raccoon” Her bunk mate’s voice sounded more alert. “Who would be creeping around this late?”

  “A chain-saw killer.” Courtney watched the shadow, waiting to see if it moved.

  “There’s no such thing as a chain-saw killer, except in the movies.”

  Maybe. But other kinds of killers were real enough. Like Mr. Parker Dann. Out on bail, Daddy Travis had said, not locked up like murderers ought to be. Courtney’s eyes felt gritty. She needed to blink, but she didn’t want to miss—

  There! The shadow moved. Didn’t it?

  “I’m going to wake up Miss Bryant.” Bryant was the nicest of their three counselors, the one least likely to get mad at being awakened before reveille. Slipping over the side of the bunk, Courtney dropped quietly to the bare wooden floor.

  “Courtney, you’re not going out there? Suppose it really is someone?”

  “Shhhh. If you keep quiet, maybe I’ll find out.”

  She sounded bolder than she felt. She didn’t want to go out there like some dumb chucklehead in a TV movie. When told NOT TO GO IN THE ATTIC, where did they always go? To the attic, of course, to get beheaded by the Rhinestone Ripper or gutted by the Shadylane Stabber.

  Somebody had to go out there, though. Someone had to alert a counselor.

  “But, Courtney—”

  “I don’t want to lay awake till breakfast worrying about someone chopping us up in our sleep.” She shuddered at the thought, and glanced back at the curtain swaying gently in the breeze of the ceiling fan. Was the shadow still there? Maybe she had imagined it. Or maybe the killer had moved on to chop up someone in another cabin. These girls were all her friends.

  She pulled on her bathing suit, then her T-shirt and shorts. She’d planned to get in a few early laps anyway.

  “You… um… want me to go with you?”

  Courtney sat on the lower bunk to put on her shoes. Lisa’s round brown eyes and chubby cheeks reminded her of Ellie.

  “No, stay here. If I don’t show up for chow” she made her voice spooky, “send someone to look for my mangled, be-headed body.”

  “Courtney! I don’t think you should—”

  “Shhhh! Like you said, it’s probably just a raccoon.”

  She slipped out the door. The sultry darkness enveloped her as she turned toward the window where she’d seen the shadow. The rustling came again, then footsteps sounded in the dirt.

  Rounding the corner, Courtney saw white running shoes flash in the moonlight as someone darted behind the next cabin in the clearing. Something about the person’s shape looked familiar. Willing her feet to hit the ground softly, Courtney followed the muted footsteps… away from the cabin… into the thicket surrounding the lake.

  Then she slowed down.

  It was dark under the trees, and the footsteps had stopped.

  In the overlapping shadows, someone could be hiding, ready to pounce as she walked past.

  Courtney waited, holding her breath again, listening.

  Behind her something shifted in the grass. She whirled, her throat tight with fear; but it was only a frog.

  All right, ‘fraidy-cat, why did you come out here if you were just going to freak out when you got to the scary part? Now suck it in and get MOVING… moving… moving…

  Slowly, she edged forward toward the lake, peering around each tree as she passed it, casting frequent glances over her shoulder.

  Something splashed in the water.

  Probably just a fish, she thought. Just a fish… a fish… a fish…

  When she emerged into the moonlight, Courtney quietly exhaled and looked out over the inky lake, shrouded now in fog. Nothing moved, not a sound, not a fish, not even a breeze.

  But there, in the soft dirt beside the pier—a shoe print.

  She crept closer, squatting for a better look. A heel print, under the sign announcing today’s swim meet: SATURDAY, 1:00 P.M., VISITORS WELCOME. All week Courtney had been swimming laps before breakfast, out to the diving platform and back. The counselors would croak if they knew she swam alone, but how else could she get enough practice? In the afternoon race she planned to knock Queen Toad off her pedestal.

  The person she chased must have stopped beside the pier. To read the sign? Or was it one of the other girls, try
ing to spook her?

  Courtney stood up and carefully fitted her sneaker into the heel print; it was too big to be one of the girls’.

  Yet the shadow had seemed vaguely familiar.

  The sky was already turning from black to gray. Soon there’d be fingers of pink jutting above the trees. Courtney walked to the end of the pier and sat down to wait for sunrise.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday, December 25, Sisseton, South Dakota

  Dixie wiped condensation from the window glass to watch the sun’s first rays turn the pristine landscape from blue-white to ivory. Minutes later, Buck Sparks made his appearance.

  A tall, gray-bearded man, he wore square eyeglasses and a navy-blue overcoat with a matching cap. Wisps of pale smoke rose from his curved-stem pipe. A red hunting dog sniffed at his heels.

  Dixie watched him shovel a path from the back of the main house to the front door of the first cabin. The task took less than ten minutes, and amazed at the old man’s energy, Dixie immediately felt better about not being out there to help. He cleared the entrance of snow, then knocked on the door, the sound carrying clear and loud in the early hours.

  A woman in a woolly robe stuck her head out, long hennaed hair a tangled mass, as if she’d just awakened. She seemed surprised at the amount of snowfall. A man in overalls, pulling on a coat, squeezed past her through the door, but Buck Sparks waved him back.

  They talked for a minute, Sparks pointing with his pipe toward the main house. Then Sparks moved on, wide shovel clearing a path for his heavy boots. Apparently, the old man didn’t want any help, which was fine with Dixie; she had other things to worry about. In thirty minutes or so he’d knock on their own door, the last of the four cabins, and she hadn’t yet decided what to do with Dann.

  “Be real handy if you took sick all of a sudden,” she muttered.

  “Sick? I feel fine.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t feel fine at all. Fact is, you’ve caught a humdinger of a cold, and much as you’d like to join everybody if we’re invited for breakfast, you’re worried about spreading germs around.”