Bitch Factor

by Chris Rogers

  “I was at the cafe this morning. Gillis said Elbe’s still pretty sick. Maybe Rebecca took her to the doctor.” Ellie seems to feel worse every day, Gillis had said. Ryan was almost fully recovered.

  “I think I have the pediatrician’s number here.” Keyes’ voice grew muffled, as if he had tucked the receiver under his chin. “Here it is. I’ll call him, but… you’re a private investigator, right?”

  “Well…” Not exactly a licensed investigator.

  “If Ellie isn’t at the doctor’s office, if they haven’t seen her, I want you to find out what’s going on.”

  “Mr. Keyes—”

  “I don’t care what it costs, whatever your rate, I’ll pay.”

  “That’s not the—”

  “You can’t imagine how awful Ellie sounded, like she was… I don’t know… scared.”

  Perhaps Rebecca changed her mind and decided to join Travis in Denton. But Gillis had said Ellie was still ill.

  “Jon, does Rebecca have family or close friends she might have left Ellie with?”

  “You obviously don’t know my ex-wife. She’s—well, Rebecca doesn’t make friends, and except for a card or gift at holidays, and to arrange visits for the girls, she’s scarcely spoken to either of her parents in years—”

  “Her parents are divorced?”

  “Since Rebecca was a kid. Christ, maybe that’s why Rebecca’s so desperate for attention, why her world revolves around the man in her life. I don’t know how Travis takes it. It nearly drove me crazy—”

  “Some men would find that flattering.”

  “I suppose it was, at first. But the woman clings like briar nettles. She won’t let you breathe. She was even jealous of the time I spent with the girls—”

  “Your adopted daughters.”

  “Ellie, too, after she was born. I’ve spent more time with those kids since the divorce than I did in all the years we were married.”

  Jealous of her own kids? Dixie recalled Keyes’ similar comments in the custody hearing transcripts. She wasn’t entirely sure she trusted his motives.

  “Mr. Keyes, go ahead and call that doctor, then get back to me. I’ll have someone telephone the hospitals.” She gave him her cell phone number.

  “What’s going on?” Parker said when Dixie rang him back.

  “Ellie left a cryptic message on her father’s answering machine. Now Ellie’s disappeared, and he’s worried. Frankly, so am I. Something feels wrong.” Dann agreed to call the hospitals, starting with those closest to Spring Branch. Dixie had scarely disconnected, when Jon Keyes called back.

  “The doc says Rebecca brought Ellie in on Monday. She had the flu that’s going around, and he prescribed some antibiotics for the bronchial symptoms. Told Rebecca to call him if Ellie wasn’t better in a couple of days. He hasn’t heard from her since, so he assumed Ellie was recovering.”

  It’s a nasty strain, three people have died.

  “I also called Rebecca’s mother in Piano,” Keyes said. “She told me Rebecca was planning to drop Ellie off with her, then drive on up to Denton where Payne’s family lives.

  About an hour ago, Rebecca called back, said the roads were icing over. She owns a house on Lake Livingston, and she was going to stop there overnight, start out again when the weather clears.”

  The people who died were street people without anyone to care for them, Amy had said. Kids were more resilent than street people. But maybe Rebecca didn’t realize this flu strain was more dangerous than most.

  “Jon, do you know where the cabin is located?”

  “Somewhere east of Huntsville, about an hour from Houston. I was only there once, right after we married.”

  “Let me see what I can find out. I’ll call you back.”

  “Are you thinking of driving all the way up there tonight?”

  “Unless there’s a phone…”

  “I asked Rebecca’s mother. There’s no phone at the cabin, no answer on Rebecca’s car phone. You think something’s wrong up there, don’t you?” When Dixie didn’t answer immediately, he started rambling. “Rebecca wouldn’t ignore Elbe’s health. She never actually neglected any of the girls. Maybe she doesn’t pay them a lot of attention, but… Oh, Jesus, that’s what you think, isn’t it? That Rebecca’s so wrapped up in her business and her new husband that Ellie isn’t getting the care she needs.”

  “Mr. Keyes, all I’m thinking is maybe Rebecca needs some help, up there in the woods alone, with Ellie sick. If we can find out where the cabin’s located, maybe someone from the local sheriffs department would drive out and check on them.”

  “Okay. Okay… let me think. Maybe Rebecca’s mother—”

  “Call her back. Meanwhile, I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  She punched in a number for Belle Richards. “Did you bring Dann’s file home with you?”

  “With all the work I have to finish before Monday? Of course. What do you need?”

  “That lake property Rebecca Payne received in the settlement from her first husband, do you have an address on it?”

  “It’s in the boondocks, Flannigan. Trust me, there won’t be a street address. But maybe there’s something… here it is.” She read off the state road and general location. “Hey, I talked to the insurance investigator. Remember that gross story you told me about the three-legged pig?”

  “What about it?”

  “What would you say if the pig cut off its own leg so the farmer wouldn’t starve?”

  It took Dixie a moment to shift her thoughts and let the question sink in. She suppressed a shudder.

  “You’re suggesting Rebecca cut off her own fingers? On purpose?”

  “The investigator is convinced, although he couldn’t prove it. Travis left the room to wait on a customer, heard the saw start up and run for a few seconds. When he got back, there’s Rebecca holding a shop rag around her bleeding hand, calmly dialing 911. Travis sees the fingers lying on the floor, wants to wrap them in ice, but can’t bring himself to pick the things up. Yuck.”

  “Betsy was in the room when this happened?”

  “She was in the room, but claimed she was sweeping up sawdust and didn’t see the accident. The investigator thinks she did see it, or at least saw enough to suspect what really happened. When he asked where she was when her mother screamed, Betsy said Rebecca didn’t scream.”

  “Damn, what’s she made of? Stone?”

  “Rebecca claimed she was too shocked to scream when it happened, and the pain didn’t start until afterward.”

  “That fits with reports I’ve heard of gunshot wounds.”

  “But get this. The investigator said Rebecca called to ask about her dismemberment clause and how soon she could expect a check while she was still in the ER waiting for the doc to look at her hand.”

  A chill seeped through Dixie’s bones. Had Rebecca maimed herself for $20,000? The money had lasted no more than a month in her husband’s bank account.

  “Ric, what would seeing something like that do to a kid? She’d be scared to death her mother was crazy.”

  “I can’t see a sane woman calmly hacking off her own fingers.”

  What was it Rashly had said? It amazes me what some women will do for a man.

  Dixie felt sick. “If a couple fingers are worth twenty thousand dollars, is fifty thousand a fair price for a child? Are we saying Travis got a taste of easy money and talked Rebecca into murdering her own children to finance his business expansion?”

  “You’re the one who pointed out that Rebecca has a hard time hanging on to husbands.”

  “It sounds so crazy. No crazier, I suppose, than the man who killed Halloween.” Houstonians would be a long time forgetting that one. The man poisoned his own kids’ candy before sending them out trick-or-treating.

  “It’s always easier to believe such atrocities of men. Trust me, Flanni, women account for fifty-five percent of domestic violence.”

  But mothers were supposed to love their kids. They could be though
tless, sure, careless, forgetful, self-centered. But underneath all that, mothers loved their kids. A mother does not look the other way while her husband kills her children.

  Does a mother pretend her “boyfriends” are not visiting her daughters bedroom? Dixie swallowed hard, recalling the nights she had prayed Scully wouldn’t come, or that her mother would stay sober and not pass out. Now she remembered something else. Mama always bought her something special after one of Scully’s visits, usually a box of cherry cordials. Dixie had loved cherry cordials. The thought of them now made her want to throw up.

  “I’m not ready to rule out Jon Keyes,” Dixie said, realizing that she had softened toward him. The fear in Keyes’ voice had been too real… of course, Ellie was his blood daughter, while Betsy and Courtney were not… did that make the two older girls expendable?

  “Maybe Rebecca’s accident was really exactly that, just an accident,” she told Belle. “But maybe getting that first insurance check incited Travis’ greed.” Now her own voice sounded shaky and filled with fear. She cleared her throat. “You realize, of course, if both kids had been killed in one accident, we might never have caught on. I’m surprised the killer—whichever of them it was—didn’t consider that”

  “Perhaps the first fifty thousand was supposed to put Travis’ business forever in the black.”

  “Like a gambler’s lament? The next race, the next game, will be the one that scores big, paying off the old debts?”

  “Dear God, Dixie, we’re talking about children! You make it sound so… dispassionate, like buying a lottery ticket. It’s giving me the shivers.”

  “What gives me shivers, Ric, is knowing that Travis Payne is out of money and Ellie is missing.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  Ellie kicked the covers off. She was hot, hot, hot. Dreaming of peanut butter-and-chocolate ice cream, her favorite of all thirty-one flavors. Mommy had bought her a cone and told her not to drip on the rug, but the ice cream kept melting, running down her fingers faster than she could lick it off.

  She started to run, hurry, get off the rug, but the rug wouldn’t go away! She ran fast. The rug stretched to meet her feet, curling up at the end like a big tongue, lapping at her teasing her.

  Screaming, Ellie turned and ran the other way, melted ice cream sticky on her face and hands. The rug curled faster and faster and faster, licking at her legs, covering her like a scratchy blanket.

  Ellie stomped and kicked, trying to get the scratchy rug away from her legs. Then she fell and tried to crawl, but the rug wrapped itself round and round and round, sealing her up like a bug in a cocoon.

  She punched at it, tearing away big chunks of sticky fuzz with her fingers, but it was no use. Every time she tore away one chunk, another grew in its place.

  She was hot… so hot…

  Chapter Forty-two

  New Year’s Eve, Interstate 45, Texas

  Dixie rummaged through the glove box until she found a map of Walker County and the area surrounding Lake Livingston, where the cabin was located. Hail peppered the Mustang’s roof like buckshot as she joined a stream of holiday traffic on the interstate. The hour was early enough that holiday revelers were still reasonably sober. Later, the bar fights would start. Maybe bad weather would curtail the usual fireworks disasters.

  Tuning the radio to an all-news station, Dixie adjusted the volume over the noise of the hail. Severe thunderstorms were expected in a nine-county area, temperatures in the teens. She wondered if Rebecca’s cabin had sufficient heat, imagined Ellie shivering in a dark room, brown eyes bright with fever, face chapped, lips parched….

  Noticing her death grip on the wheel, her heavy boot on the gas pedal, Dixie forced the image from her mind. What help would she be to Ellie if she plowed into another car?

  The cabin was still more than an hour away. What if Rebecca told Travis she was stopping at the cabin, and he decided to join her? His “traffic accident” squelched, what better place to effect Ellie’s death than a lonely cabin in the woods—the child already ill?

  However, Jon Keyes was on the edge of hysterics, which wouldn’t help anyone. Dixie dialed home; got a busy signal. Who the hell was Parker talking to? If Travis is determined Ellie won’t survive the flu, she thought, if he’s doing something right now to escalate Ellie’s symptoms, I don’t have a snow-mans chance in hell of getting to the cabin on time.

  She needed to round up some help. She dialed the Walker County Sheriff’s Department.

  “We’re overloaded with traffic accidents,” the desk officer said curtly: “I’ll send somebody out as soon as possible—”

  The connection went dead. Even cellular networks depended on phone lines, which were probably being brought down steadily by ice. She dialed Homicide, was disconnected twice before getting through, and got an earful of static, but she also got a live voice, hallelujah, and asked for Ben Rashly. He was out, could anyone else help her? She couldn’t think of anyone who would respond without a lengthy explanation, which she’d never accomplish with the phone fading in and out. She thumped the steering wheel in frustration. Why did communication devices always fail when you needed them most?

  A weather report bleated from the radio. Dixie turned up the volume. Nothing had changed. But she was outside the city now, away from the worst traffic. Maybe she could make some time. Moving into the fast lane, she passed a bus that kicked up a blinding barrage of hailstones.

  Travis Payne claimed he was handling inventory during the hit-and-run, leaving Rebecca at home with two sick kids until a sitter arrived. The Paynes live a block and a half from Parker, who was a regular customer at Payne Hardware as well as the Garden Cafe. Travis and Rebecca both could know Parkers habit of drinking at the Green Hornet every Thursday… and about the spare key carrier. With the younger girls in bed asleep, either of them could have jogged to Parkers house, taken the car, and waited at the intersection Betsy would have to cross. What if Betsy had walked to school with a friend that day? Would both children have been killed?

  In the dark, Dixie couldn’t see the snapshot on her visor, but she could envision the three sets of brown eyes. Trusting eyes. A mother’s love ought to be unquestionable, a child’s absolute certainty.

  Remember your mother had a hard life, Kathleen Flannigan had said about Carla Jean. Remember the good times. Had there been good times? Dixie recalled Carla Jean’s high spirits and endless fairy tales featuring handsome young knights. Perhaps there had been good times—before Tom Scully.

  Dixie pictured Betsy’s protective arms embracing her sisters. Had she known even then they needed protection from their stepfather… and their own mother?

  On the radio, a local furniture store owner shouted, “We save you money!” Dixie changed to a traffic report. “Accident outbound on Interstate 45 at Spur 336, traffic backed up on both sides…”

  She was less than a mile from the snarl. Brake lights dotted the road ahead like a ruby necklace, as cars slowed down. Zipping across two lanes, Dixie took an exit a bit too fast, then searched the map until she found a detour that would take her all the way to the cabin. She’d have to risk driving on rough roads, but she doubted they’d slow her down as much as the traffic jam.

  There had to be somebody who could get there faster.

  McGrue!

  She dialed the Texas Highway Department and left an urgent, detailed message.

  Dialing home again, she heard Dann pick up but couldn’t hear anything he said—and he evidently couldn’t hear her. As a last hope, she dialed the Gypsy Filchers’ private line, got the machine, as always, and punched in her pager number, not really expecting anyone to call back. Brew, Ski, and Hooch would be heavy into their New Year’s Eve party by now.

  Brew’s call came less than five minutes later. He sounded as if he already had a snootful.

  “Hey, Dix, thanks for the bubbly. You coming—”

  “Brew, I need your help. I’ve a hunch a six-year-old is in trouble.” Nothing would sober him up fast
er. She rushed through an explanation, expecting her voice at any moment to be garbled in static. “If you know anyone in the Lake Livingston area, send them to the cabin.”

  He promised to call around, but Dixie could hear music and laughter in the background and wondered how much help she could count on. At the moment she couldn’t be choosy.

  The road dipped into a densely wooded section of Sam Houston National Forest. Trees crowded the roadside, limbs whipping the icy air. The unpaved road, flanked by deep drainage ditches, snaked sharply in curves that defied her headlights. Dixie slowed her speed.

  On the day of Courtney’s swim meet, Travis claimed he was at a computer conference near the airport—conveniently near Camp Cade. But with Ellie also at camp, that meant Rebecca was at home alone and already planning to attend the last day activities. What had Jon Keyes said? We all enjoy swimming, snorkeling… The prowler Courtney mentioned to her bunk mate that morning may have been Rebecca or Travis… checking out the lake. Rebecca would know her daughter’s risky habit of swimming alone.

  Did the child see her killer’s face as she was drowning?

  The Mustang hit a pothole, invisible under the wash of rain and ice that covered the road. The tires bounced and skidded. Dixie knew she was driving too fast, but she had to keep moving.

  Tracking her route by the dim map light on her dash, Dixie saw that she was nearing the turnoff to the cabin. She slowed for the turn—Shit! That’s not a road, nothing but a muddy path— whipped the Mustang to the right, wrenching her injured shoulder, and felt the tires slide before miraculously gaining traction.

  Pines danced crazily overhead. Deciduous skeletons bent icy limbs across the road, scraping the Mustang as it barreled along. The darkness was absolute; her headlights bounced off sheets of rain and ice. Dixie slowed again, fighting the car’s constant slide toward the ditch.

  A feeble light shone through the trees—it had to be the cabin. Only one car in the driveway. No sign of Travis, then. No sign of help, either. Rebecca had certainly picked a remote spot. If Ellie’s condition worsened, who could blame Rebecca for not getting her child to a hospital in such miserable weather? For choosing instead to keep her daughter warm and snug until the roads cleared? And what could be easier than withholding proper care and medicine from a sick child?