Bitch Factor

by Chris Rogers

“If you’ll put him on, maybe I can explain.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. He’s not here.” She didn’t sound a bit sorry, she sounded pleased, but Dixie knew Amy was only venting her frustration. Her notion of jobs that constituted “women’s work” was not quite Victorian, but certainly pre-Margaret Thatcher. “Carl and Ryan are driving around, looking at the snow.”

  “It snowed in Houston?”

  “Enough to turn the ground white. Of course, it’ll burn off by noon. They should be back here in a couple of hours. Dixie, you’re not doing anything dangerous, are you?”

  “A routine job. Nothing to worry about.” Someday lightning would strike her for telling these white lies, but the truth would set Amy to walking the floors.

  “South Dakota doesn’t sound at all routine to me.”

  “You should see it, Amy, it’s so beautiful up here. The couple who own the motel are cooking Christmas dinner for everyone who got snowed in. They’re really sweet….Of course, I’d rather be home with you guys.”

  “I know. We’ll miss you, too.” Her sister’s voice softened. “Dixie, drive carefully. We’d rather have you arrive in one piece, even if it means you’ll get here a little later.”

  “I will, Amy. Cheers.”

  “Yeah… cheers yourself.” She paused. “I think there’s a nine-volt battery around here someplace that wil fit the remote control for Ryan’s model airplane. I’ll tell him to save that package and open it when you call.”

  “Thanks, Sis. I love you, too.”

  Cradling the phone with a pang of regret, Dixie regarded Dann. He sat at the yellow table finishing his breakfast, one hand cuffed to the table leg, where he could rest it on his knee. She was not missing a traditional Flannigan Christmas for the ten-thousand-dollar fee, she reminded herself. She was not missing Christmas because of her loyalty to Belle Richards or because Belle didn’t want the jury to know Dann had skipped. She had taken the case because an eleven-year-old child would never see another Christmas. Accident or not, Betsy Keyes’ death was wrong. Dann could not be allowed to carry on with his own life as if drunkenly killing a child meant nothing.

  Reminding herself why she was here helped ease the ache Dixie felt, missing the biggest day of the year with her family. But it didn’t ease that ache a whole hell of a lot.

  “Guess it messed up your holiday, coming after me,” Dann said, as if reading her mind.

  Innocent until proven guilty, Flannigan.

  “Actually, the storm messed up my holiday,” she relented.

  He stacked his plate on hers and set them both on the shelf above the table. Dixie had found a small radio in the closet. It sat beside Mr. Coffee now, tuned to Christmas music.

  “Your family have big holiday plans?” Dann took a box of worn wooden dominoes from the nightstand drawer and turned them out on the tabletop.

  “Not big, exactly, but mandatory. To miss a Flannigan family dinner requires a death certificate or, at the very least, a hospital admission slip.”

  “Big family gatherings,” Dann said. “That’s what I miss most about Montana. Our whole clan used to pile in the hay truck, drive up the mountain to pick out a Christmas tree. Arguing all the while—which tree had the bushiest limbs, straightest trunk. Back home, Mother would break out the apple cider, a bottle of schnapps, a box of tree trimmings. No matter how much we fooled around, rearranging the lights, by midnight Pop always positioned the angel and hit the light switch.” Dann sat down and drew a domino hand. “Good times.”

  He had washed up and changed his shirt before she set out their breakfast. His chin stubble was starting to fill in, Dixie noted. He had the sort of face that looked good in a beard.

  She’d taken her own turn with one of the tiny bars of Ivory soap, washing even her teeth with it, in the absence of toothpaste. Her overnight kit, which she kept in the Mustang’s trunk for emergencies, had been conspicuously absent when she brought their things in. After her last trip across the Mexican border, she’d removed the kit to replace the sample-size deodorant and mouthwash. She could see the brown, zippered leather kit sitting exactly where she’d left it, on a shelf in the utility room, handy for the next time she went to the car. But the next time she went to the car, her hands had been full and her mind busy with Christmas tasks.

  Dixie ran her tongue over her teeth. She could sure use a slug of that mouthwash right now. And some fresh clothes. She resisted sniffing her armpits.

  “At our house, it was Southern Comfort and eggnog,” she said, squirming her chair around so she’d be sitting downwind. “And pecan shells burning in the fireplace.” Dixie counted only the years after she became a Flannigan, never the earlier years. Holidays with Carla Jean were celebrated with turkey sandwiches from the Stop & Go.

  “Had you figured as a teetotaler.”

  “I’ve got nothing against alcohol. I just believe in moderation.”

  Dann looked at her from under his heavy eyebrows, and something in his gaze reminded Dixie of a private investigator on a TV series. She couldn’t remember which one.

  “Moderation in everything?” he said.

  Now what the hell was he up to, flashing those blue eyes and dropping his voice into the sexy zone? She stared back at him.

  “Even the best things can be overdone, Dann.”

  He shrugged and shuffled his dominoes. They made surprisingly loud swishing sounds on the wooden table. Annoying sounds. Dixie glanced at her own hand, but didn’t see how it would improve with rearranging.

  “Like soap,” Dann mumbled. “Soap can be overdone.”

  “What?”

  “You have a soap smudge.” He touched his jawline near the ear, and Dixie automatically mirrored him. “Other side.”

  She slid her chair back, stalked into the bathroom, and closed the door. Soap smudge. Yep, there it was. Good thing she didn’t wear makeup, she’d probably paint her eyebrows red and her lips blue. She scrubbed the smudge off and splashed her face with cold water. Watching the droplets drip off her nose in the mirror, she wondered what sort of biological clock made a woman her age finally start worrying about appearances. No gray in her hair yet. No unsightly wrinkles. She wouldn’t turn any heads at a beauty pageant, but she looked okay.

  Drying her face, she noticed Dann’s comb lying on the countertop beside his toothbrush and toothpaste. Borrowing the toothpaste had seemed too intimate a request to make of a man you held prisoner. Of course, it was only her imagination, thinking she could still taste the Ivory soap after chasing it with breakfast. She looked at the comb, about four inches long, black, the kind barbershops gave away free. What could be intimate about that?

  When she picked it up, a single dark hair fell into the sink. The same brown as her own. Shorter, of course. Her own collar-length hair was heavy enough that it fell more or less in place, but there was no denying it would improve with combing. She pulled the comb through it. No magical rays zapped her. After a few more strokes, she did look better. Felt better, too.

  From the bedroom came the swish, swish, swish of Dann shuffling his domino hand. Probably shuffling hers, as well.

  She eyed the toothpaste. In For a Penny, In For a Pound— as Kathleen’s maxim would state. She squirted a dab of toothpaste on a clean washcloth, rubbed her teeth and gums, and swished with water. Better. Monumentally better. Absolutely, fantastically, peppermint-flavored better. Only now, of course, she’d have to confess to toothpaste theft.

  Chapter Twenty

  Fessing up never came easy, though she’d had plenty of practice. Barney had told her there were two kinds of people, those who asked permission and those who forged ahead, begging forgiveness later. Dixie’d never learned the knack of asking for anything. But she understood quid pro quo.

  Before resuming their domino game, she’d scraped the Mustang’s trunk free of snow and had found another pair of handcuffs. The two pairs linked together with some extra chain gave Dann nearly five feet of mobility, enough to take a bathroom break without asking and to
sit comfortably in one of the wooden chairs. Watching him move around, she noticed he favored his right leg. An old injury?

  She’d also made a fresh pot of coffee. Dann produced an airline-size pony bottle of Baileys Irish Cream to sweeten it.

  “You won’t believe this, but I’m a moderate drinker, myself. Most of the time.” He played a six-five on her five-two.

  “Right. That’s why you can’t remember what happened the night before the accident.”

  “Hellfire, woman, I’d just hit a big sales quota. Happens maybe once a quarter, if I’m lucky. Sure, I celebrate! Deposit the check, hit the Green Hornet, buy drinks for the whole room.”

  “Once a quarter?” She didn’t really want to argue about his drinking problem. It was the driving after drinking that caused trouble. “According to your file, you’re a twice-a-week regular at the Green Hornet.”

  He flipped a domino down, flipped it back up.

  “I stop there couple times a week. Play a few hands of backroom poker, down a drink or two. I’m too old to binge every week—not worth the morning after.” He stared at the dominoes, focusing on something deep in his mind. “Especially this last time. God, what a nightmare, like walking into a tunnel that gets blacker and blacker. Only the nightmare didn’t start until I woke up.”

  Hearing the misery in his voice—and wondering if it was genuine—Dixie couldn’t resist asking: “What do you remember?”

  He drew a domino from the bone yard.

  “I remember it was a busy damn night at the Hornet. Fifteen, twenty guys from a computer software convention, along with the usual crowd.” He paused, spinning the domino facedown. “What I can’t figure out, though, is where I was between three A.M., when Augie swept me out the door, and seven forty-five, when… the little girl was killed. I mean, it’s only four friggin blocks to my house. That time of morning, that neighborhood, I rarely meet another car on the road. Not much chance of an accident. Otherwise I’d sleep it off right there in Augie’s parking lot.”

  “Have you done that often?”

  “Once or twice.” He flipped the domino up, looked at it, turned it down again. “Anyway, after a big night, I’m usually good for ten, twelve hours sleep. So what was I doing back on the road before breakfast?” He looked up at her, then shook his head wearily. “Sorry. I know you don’t want to hear this shit. Even if you gave a damn, what could you do about it?”

  He’s setting me up, Dixie thought. Selling me swampland. “Did anyone see you going back out the next morning?”

  “Nope.” He scraped at a spot on the back of a domino. “Nobody saw me come, nobody saw me leave. Neighbor lady said she saw the car pull out about seven-thirty. Didn’t see who was driving.”

  That much was true. Dixie had read it in his file.

  “How were you dressed when the cops roused you?”

  “Same clothes as the night before. Looked like dogshit, like I’d slept in them, which I probably had.”

  “Where were your keys?”

  “On the dresser, in this tray where I dump everything out of my pockets.”

  “The door was locked?”

  “Dead bolt, both doors.”

  Also true. Someday she might tell him how easy the back door could be jimmied.

  “Anyone else have a key to your car?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Keep a spare key anywhere?”

  “A spare? Yeah. Richards, my attorney, asked that, too. I kept a spare key in a magnetic gizmo under the car frame. Wasn’t there when the cops looked. They said it could’ve jarred loose anytime I went over a bump.”

  “Plastic or metal?”

  “Huh?”

  “The key gizmo, was it hard plastic or metal?”

  “Metal, I think. Does it matter?”

  “It might. The plastic ones can melt and fall off if you put them too close to the exhaust. The metal ones stay on.”

  “I don’t know… could probably find out. Bought it at the hardware store around the corner, the one the kid’s father owns.”

  “Whose father?” Dixie felt the hair rise on her arms. “The girl who was hit?” She hadn’t realized Dann knew Betsy Keyes.

  “Her folks own the hardware store and cafe. I used to eat in the cafe couple times a week, shopped at the hardware store when I needed anything.”

  Dixie stared at him. “So you knew Betsy before she was killed.”

  “Her and her two sisters.” He must have noticed Dixie’s curiosity had turned to suspicion; his brows jutted together.

  “How well did you know her?”

  “Betsy waited on me at the cafe sometimes. Said she wanted to be a writer. I kidded her about being the next Danielle Steel.”

  “Did you ever see Betsy outside the cafe?”

  “Outside-?”

  “Were you ever alone with her?”

  His face turned red, his eyes hot. “If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking—goddamn, Flannigan! I wouldn’t hurt that kid on purpose. That’s sick.”

  “Did you ever see the girl outside the cafe?”

  He slammed his dominoes down and shoved them away from him. “You want to know if I get a hard-on for little girls? Shit!”

  “Dann, did you ever see the child outside the cafe?”

  Turning sideways in the chair, he looked out the window, his jaw tight. Dixie stared silently at his back until he decided to answer, his voice hard and flat.

  “At the hardware store. She sometimes helped her old man. May’ve seen her playing with the other girls in their yard when I walked by, maybe stopped to talk. But what you’re implying … no.”

  He stormed into the bathroom and slammed the door against the chain connecting the handcuffs.

  Dann’s denial left Dixie cold. Too many times, when prosecuting a case, she had listened to men deny their sick attractions to children. Once, an outraged father agreed to testify against a friend accused of molesting his own daughter. The witness had a girl the same age, and it turned out during the trial that both men had been sexually abusing their daughters for several years. But the outraged father considered his own situation different, claimed he was teaching his little girl how to satisfy a husband, preparing her for wifedom.

  Dixie’s anger was like a rock—cold, hard, and heavy in her gut. She knew it had more to do with herself than with Dann, and she had to deal with it. She shuffled and reshuffled her hand, snapping the dominoes with unnecessary force on the wooden table.

  Picking up one of the worn black rectangles, she ran her thumb across six smooth, dished-out spots. She’d been six years old the first time one of Carla Jean’s men approached her, not yet old enough or savvy enough to know what he wanted; powerless against his advances. Carla Jean wasn’t intentionally a bad mother, but she was absolutely self-centered, incurably romantic, and too generous with her body. She believed in “happily ever after,” believed that someday a prince would carry her away to a golden castle. Meanwhile, she brought home every man she met who had a sexy smile and a pretty line of bullshit.

  Dixie had been sitting in bed, reading a picture book about Amelia Earhart, when the man eased the door open.

  “My, aren’t you a cute little thing?”

  She didn’t know how to answer, had never considered herself cute. The other girls in her first-grade class were prettier. The man didn’t seem to expect an answer, anyway. He sat down on Dixie’s bed and lifted her chin toward the lamplight.

  “I’ll bet you grow up to be as fine as your mother.”

  Dixie didn’t plan to be anything like Carla Jean, whom she loved devotedly but who cried too often “the morning after.” Right now, Carla Jean was probably passed out from all the booze she drank when she had a “date.”

  “I’m going to be an airplane pilot,” Dixie explained earnestly. Amelia Earhart was her current heroine.

  The man took the book out of her hands.

  “How about I put this aside for now and show you a game?”

  Dixie li
ked games, especially card games. She always beat Carla Jean at Go Fish. But those weren’t the sort of games the man had in mind. His hand under the covers stroked Dixie’s leg.

  From that night on, every time Carla Jean had a date, Dixie hid in the closet with a pillow and a reading lamp. Only a few of her mother’s “steadies” realized she had a daughter, and only Tom Scully was persistent enough to find Dixie no matter where she hid. Scully was a big man with strong hands and a temper.

  “You don’t like it when I slap your mama around, do you?” Scully asked.

  I don’t like it when you show your ugly face at the door, Dixie wanted to say. But she just shook her head.

  “If you ever tattle to anybody about you and me, little girl, I’ll do more than black your mama’s eye.”

  Telling Carla Jean had never done any good, anyway. She had a knack for not seeing what she didn’t want to, for disbelieving anything that threatened her fairy-tale view of life.

  When the closet trick stopped working, Dixie learned other evasions. If she saw Scully’s car headed their way, she would duck out and sleep at a friend’s house. One night, when she heard his voice after she was already in bed, she slipped out the window and spent the night on the roof.

  But there were plenty of times during the next six years when she was powerless to avoid him. Carla Jean remained oblivious to the truth, even when Dixie tearfully admitted she’d missed her period.

  “Honey, that’s natural at your age. Why, you’ve just barely even got the curse.” At twelve, Dixie had been menstruating for two years, but in Carla Jean’s eyes her daughter was still a baby, in ruffles and hair ribbons.

  A few nights later Dixie was rushed to a hospital, after a quack doctor finished scraping out the unborn fetus. She awoke at Founders Home, surrounded by teenage girls in similar situations. That night Dixie had vowed never again to be powerless.

  Now, hearing water running in the bathroom, she dropped the blank-six in place beside the double and knew that her anger at Dann was the same anger she’d known as a child. The same anger she’d felt as a state prosecutor watching hairballs routinely beat the system.