by Sue Hardesty
“Yeah, he's so grateful for your help he buys you a cheap burger at the Last Chance.”
“What are you saying Loni. That I’m a cheap date?” Lola's bracelets rang like church bells. “I’m not marrying him, for god’s sake.”
“Or having sex?”
“I didn’t say that, but no. I just happen to love wine hamburgers.”
Shit! “Just forget I said that.” Loni lifted her head. “I know we need to deal with this thing between us but not here. Maybe meet up after work? Can we talk about something else?”
Lola stared at Loni. “Not tonight. I’m not sure what talking would accomplish.” Abruptly changing the subject, Lola continued, “Junior says he's close to getting the rest of the evidence he needs to crack the case.”
“Oh, bullshit!” In total disgust, Loni stomped out of the station house.
Loni wanted to go home to the ranch, but finding Willie drove her back to her cell phone. She sat in her truck calling bars. The sixth call gave her hope. The barkeep at Voltap, a Podunk spot at a crossroads forty miles from Caliente, said, “Sounds like the drunk in the back.”
Loni got there in thirty-five minutes. She showed the barkeep her badge, and he pointed to the back door.
It wasn't Willie.
Leaning down, she tried to wake the man up. His skin was dry and pasty. Groaning, he pushed Loni's hands away and rubbed his head. “Got a drink?”
“No. But I'll take you to a doctor.”
“No doctor. Stay here.” The drunk rolled back over on his filthy blanket and passed out again.
She stopped at every bar back to town and finally found him at the Oasis.
Willie leaned his head on her shoulder. “Loni. Paint dead.”
“I know, Willie.” Loni hugged him. He reeked of alcohol. Loni was overwhelmed by his pain.
“My Paint gone.” Tears ran down his leathered face.
“Come on, Willie. Time to go home.”
“Ni, ni, ni, ni.” Willie stumbled away from her and crawled back onto a barstool.
Loni wrote her cell number on the back of her card and handed it to the bartender. “Call me when he passes out.”
For the next few hours, she drove around sick at heart, Willie's pain mixed with despair over her fight with Lola. Fear and grief slammed her like a sledgehammer and froze her to the steering wheel. She could have dragged him home, but he would only leave again. If only she could drag Lola home with her.
A red streak flashed from a dirt side road onto the county road in front of her. She considered chasing it, but the sports car was already out of sight. It might be more important to see why they were in such a hurry. She called Bobby about the speeder and drove along the rutted track where the low-slung sports car had left clouds of dust in the air. In the beam of her headlights, she saw a girl on the side of the road, struggling to stand. Loni jumped out of her SUV and ran to her. As she reached out to touch her, the girl swung at Loni, screaming “No” over and over.
“You're safe now, you're safe now,” Loni kept repeating, keeping a calm voice. Long, black hair was stuck in the congealing blood from the girl's bleeding slashed cheek and split lip that puffed out to one side. She was naked beneath the torn purple shirt she held over her breasts. Her thighs were covered with bruises and cuts as if she’d been thrown out of a moving car. The girl collapsed into her arms, sobbing. “They raped me! Oh, god! They raped me again!”
Loni helped her into her SUV and looked carefully at her in the overhead light while the girl buried her face in Coco's furry neck. Digging a pair of shorts out of her emergency bag, Loni handed them to the girl.
“What's your name?” Loni carefully drove the SUV up the road as the girl wiggled into the shorts.
“Chickie Bodia.”
“Chickie, can you tell me who did this?”
The girl hiccupped through sniffles, working to talk. “It was Billy Joe.” She paused and cried out, “I hurt!”
“I know. We're almost to the clinic.”
“Find Chelsa. I need to see Chelsa.”
Loni parked next to the emergency entrance at the clinic and opened the door, but Chickie refused to let go of Coco. Flipping her phone open, Loni asked for Chelsa.
“Hey, it's Loni.” She kept her voice low and quiet. “I'm at your door and need your help.”
Chelsa was at the passenger door before Loni could hang up. “Chickie?” Chelsa gently pulled the girl out of the SUV. Loni followed them as they slowly walked into the clinic and disappeared behind a curtain.
It seemed a long time before Chelsa reappeared. “She was the first girl these bastards raped,” she muttered in anger. Sighing, she rubbed her face. “She works in the clinic during the day. Admittance.” She glared up at Loni. “Can't you stop these animals?”
“Yes,” Loni reassured her. She turned to the door. “I'm picking them up right now!”
Slamming a flashing red light on top of her cab, she sped to Wagner Road, the glow of the hangar coming up fast. She turned off the flashing light before she pulled up in front of Dorothea’s house. Sleepy and disheveled, Dorothea answered the door. “Where's Billy Joe?” Loni demanded.
“Why?” Dorothea said defensively. “It was an accident. He didn't mean to kill Jimmy.”
“No, it's not that.”
“It's not about Jimmy?”
Dorothea grudgingly opened the door and motioned toward the living room.
“Which way is his bedroom?”
“Last door straight ahead.” Dorothea pointed down the hall. “It's probably locked. He's got an outside entrance.”
Loni failed to keep the fury out of her voice. “Get your kids and keep them in your bedroom.”
Dorothea stared at her dully.
“Now!” Loni ordered.
The woman tightened the belt around her robe and disappeared down the hall. Loni heard a shuffling and then a lock turn.
Quietly, she walked up to the door where Dorothea had pointed. Standing to the side, she knocked. “Billy Joe, open up!” She knocked again and shouted, “It's the police.”
“What?” a surly voice snarled. The lock clicked, and the door slowly opened. “I ain't done nothin'.” He was dressed in Levis and a light yellow pearl-snapped button shirt with dried blood smeared across the front and down one sleeve. Red hair flopping in his eyes made it hard for Loni to read him.
“Billy Joe.” Loni pushed him back into the room. “You're under arrest for rape.”
“Balls! Nobody can prove nothin'!”
“Turn around.” She waited while he tried to stare her down. His shoulders finally slumped in defeat, and his body crumpled as he turned around. Handcuffing him, Loni read him his rights and searched him. A sneer crossed his face as she ran her hands down his body. “You want some too, bitch?”
“You're not getting out of this one.” She hauled him out of his room.
Dorothea was peering through a crack in her bedroom door.
“Stay out of Billy Joe's room,” Loni told her. “I need to get a search warrant.” Loni wondered how many pairs of panties she would find. “You should call his father.”
Dorothea shrugged. "I would if I could find him."
“Where'd you get your 'Come to Mama' plant?” Loni asked Billy Joe as she shoved him into the back of the SUV.
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Sure you do. You gave it to Todd.”
“Oh, that shit. Got it from the O'Neal farm last summer before you assholes closed it down.” Billy Joe turned belligerent. “It's not illegal.”
“Just 'Come to Mama'?”
“I got more. Tried a few.” He snickered.
Loni waited. Billy Joe couldn't keep his mouth shut. “Ginseng really got my juices going. And Horny Goat Weed. Want me to tell you how I used them?”
“And the meth?”
“What meth?”
“The meth you gave Todd last summer.”
“No, no, no. That was coach. I don't touch th
at shit.”
Loni let that question go. “Why Mexican girls?”
“You stupid breed.” Eyes flashing, he stuck out his chin. “That's how you got here, isn't it? Mixin' white in to improve the gene pool? Bet your old man raped your mother. Maybe he even killed her.”
God help us. More Billy Joes were the last thing this world needed.
Billy Joe shut up for the rest of the ride to the station. She jerked him out of the SUV and pushed him into the building as he shriveled with each step. “Bobby,” Loni called out as she entered the building. “I'm putting Billie Joe in the holding tank until Lola gets here. Can you ring her? I promised her the honor of booking him.”
Shoving Billie Joe into the small, hot room, she uncuffed him and clanged the door shut behind him. She opened it and clanged it shut again. “Hear this sound, Billy Joe? You better get used to it.” For the hell of it, she clanged it one more time.
“Junior won't like this,” Bobby said when she came back down.
“Do I care? Don't let him out, Bobby. Junior's got no jurisdiction over this one. We got a witness and DNA on this kid for at least four rapes.”
“You look beat. Want me to send James for the other two boys who helped Billy Joe rape the girl?”
“Changing the subject?”
“You need to go home soon,” Bobby reached out to her. “Lola said she'd be right here.” Dropping his arm, Bobby returned to his stool behind the counter.
“Wait, Bobby. Can you leave an order for a search warrant on Billy Joe's room?”
“Sure. I'll get it ready for Lola to take to the judge.”
At her desk, Loni laid her head down on her arms, exhausted. Coco curled up at her feet and was soon snoring. They were both still there when Lola shook Loni's shoulder.
“I'm not sleeping.”
“You snore awake?”
“I don't snore.”
“How would you know?”
Ignoring Lola, Loni lifted her head. “I've got a present for you. It's upstairs with the rest of the rat dung.”
“Bobby said you picked up Billy Joe.” She looked at Loni's face quizzically. “Not before he attacked another girl, I gather.”
“It's Chickie.”
“Oh god, how is she?”
“She's at the clinic.”
“I've got to go.” Lola was already at the door when Loni hollered to her back. “What about Billy Joe?”
“You book him,” she retorted. “I'd kill him.”
* * *
Loni's feelings raced between relief and regret as she drove home. Bobby was right. Billy Joe would be gone a long time. She wished it didn't have to be that way. If only the DNA had been back sooner, she could have saved Chickie this last horror. If only Billy Joe had been in jail and not been driving Joy's pickup, she could have saved Jimmy Barclay. If only wishes were horses...
FROM: Loni Wagner
TO: [email protected]
DATE: July 18
SUBJECT: Still here
I can't find Willie.
I was finally able to arrest Billy Joe for rape. I guess that's all for now.
Loni
Hoping for cheerier stories, Loni took one of her grandmother's notebook from the boot box and crawled into bed with Coco. She rubbed Coco's nose as she began to read the story out loud.
“My folks bought a large black milk cow. She had a white face with a large black spot over her nose. She was a character and spoiled from so much attention. I broke her to ride, as it was my job to round her up at milking time. I hated the long walk back. She let me ride her until she’d get tired of me and then she’d run under a mesquite tree and brush me off. One time an old range bull came charging at me and I lost no time climbing on old Spot. Sure surprised the bull, he stopped, stared, and strutted off. When Spot had her calf, she was so proud. When we found her, she ran to me, mooing, she licked me, and then the calf. Guess she thought we both belonged to her.
“We named the calf McGiny. He also was a pet. We had a dog named Waffles who warned us many times when rattlers were near. I had a dog named Mae. I didn’t really steal him. I just didn’t drive him back when he followed me home. Our chickens were named too. Sal’s hen Penny met an untimely death when I dropped the lid of the grain bin on her head. We also had pet white-wings that were banded and they returned for years. We never caged them. They lived in a mesquite tree. We had two pet tree lizards, Maggie and Jimmy. Jim lost his tail when mama threw the poker at him for getting in the house. Every child should have the joy of ranching, fishing, hunting, working and living at peace with our neighbors.”
Loni closed the notebook and replaced it in the box. “What do you think, Coco? Bet that poker in the fireplace at the ranch is the same one caused Jimmy to lose his tail.” Loni pulled on Coco's wiggling stub. “Wonder what poker took your tail?”
CHAPTER 23
THE CALL CAME ON Sunday afternoon. Somebody said they saw him sick behind the Aqua Verde Canteen. She remembered the bar and the old graveyard hidden around the back of a hill. Left over from the Vulture Mine in its glory days in the late 1800s, it was a very small graveyard with maybe thirty wooden crosses in unreadable pieces. In one corner, a small headstone, the only one with a visible name, read “Baby Mary” and “May 2, 1877.”
A thunderhead blowing in fast out of the Bradshaws bellowed high overhead as dun gray and cotton white fell over each other in the huge blue sky. Loni watched it while she sped the twenty miles to the tiny settlement. Once a mining town, it survived these days mostly from the big RV campgrounds around it. Every winter the desert filled with every kind of sleeping contraption anyone could dream up. Some days it resembled Quartzsite, homeless homes on wheels stretching for miles.
As the flashing sign of the bar came into view, Loni slowed down and pulled up in front. She walked up to the barkeep and asked for Willie. She knew he had been here because his favorite bolo tie hung on a hook beside the large mirror behind the bar.
“Who are you?”
“His sister.”
“Out back,” the barkeep said. “Smelled so bad I had to throw him out.”
“Not before you took that off him.” Loni pointed to the tie.
“I gave him a bottle for it,” he replied belligerently.
“How much?”
“$400.”
“Sorry?”
“Take it or leave it.”
Disgusted, Loni handed him a credit card and stuffed the bolo in her pocket.
She pushed through the back door and followed the smell of vomit around to the shed. The roof was partly covered with a blue tarp, and the missing boards in the flimsy walls left spaces wide enough to walk through. The stuffing of an old couch, faded and rotted from the sun and rain, surrounded Willie.
He groaned in pain. His breathing was irregular, and his lips were tinged blue. Loni had seen the same thing plenty of times on the streets of LA. She tried to help, but any time she took them to a clinic, she'd be stepping over them again the next day.
This was different. This was Willie. She tried to get him to stand, but he was a limp, dead weight. Giving up, she locked her arms around has chest and dragged him to her truck. Just as she got the door open, a car pulled up and a cowboy got out, offering to help. They wrestled him up and seat belted him in.
“He's pretty much gone,” the cowboy said somberly. “Better find a doctor.”
“I'm on my way.” She nodded her thanks, starting the truck.
Loni called her Uncle Herm and asked him to hurry her grandparents to the clinic. “If you get a ticket, Uncle Herm, I'll pay for it.”
* * *
Chelsa moved him into the area equipped for serious emergencies and called Dr. Benjamin.
Loni sat between her grandparents to wait. “He has to make it,” she said, holding onto the edge of hope.
Bahb rubbed her back as Shiichoo held her hand. “Can't. Grief too deep. He ride Paint home now. Let him go.”
An hour later, Willie was dead.
Dr. Benjamin signed the certificate, calling it death by alcohol poisoning. Loni knew it was a broken heart that killed him, but she didn't argue with the doc. Uncle Herm picked Willie up and walked out of the clinic Setting him on the back seat of his big cab pickup he held Bahb's crutches as he climbed in front. Shiichoo got in beside Willie and held him to her.
Time passed in chunks, folding in upon itself, as Loni followed Uncle Herm to the ranch and climbed out of her truck, watching Uncle Herm take Willie into the house. Loni started to follow, but Shiichoo grabbed her arm and pulled her toward Willie's place. “Need to get his clothes,” she insisted. “Herm will help Bahb clean him up.”
They found clean underwear, socks, his favorite shirt, and new Levis. Shiichoo had carried Willie's boots home in her lap. She handed them to Loni as she gathered the clothes and left her to clean the boots. Loni found the soap for the boots and spent a long time polishing them. On her way out, she picked up his tomahawk from the table.
Night had fallen by the time she entered the house. Uncle Herm was gone, and Willie was cleaned up, dressed, and laid out on the dining room table. Shiichoo had Willie's two ollo pottery bowls filled with pinole and water beside him. His bolo tie was around his neck, and his hands were on his chest. Loni handed Shiichoo Willie's boots. She slowly walked up to Willie and gazed down, placing his tomahawk in his hands as she leaned over and kissed his forehead. Then she sat down beside him.
CHAPTER 24
TIME FOR ONE MORE CHORE before they buried Willie.
“Lola? It's Loni. I need a favor.” Even talking hurt.
“Sure, sweetheart. Whatever I can do.”
“I need you to come and cut my hair.”
“Why?”
“It's tradition. Pimas cut their hair when they bury a loved one. It's something Willie asked me to do.”
“I'll be there in an hour, okay?”
