Missing White Girl

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  Lightning daggered the dark sky. Thunder boomed from everywhere at once. The wind, blowing toward the west, slapped wet tumbleweed off Oliver’s windshield.

  By the time he turned off Davis Road onto Larrimore, almost an hour later, his shoulders ached from the tension and his hands felt frozen in place on the steering wheel. He stepped from the wagon into slick mud and opened the front gate to his property (which, he had discovered, really did need to be closed in order to keep stray cattle out of the yard). Standing outside the car he saw activity at the Lavenders’ place, a couple hundred yards up the road. Big white SUVs, it looked like. Hard to tell through the driving rain, but they might have had light bars on top. Border Patrol or Cochise County sheriffs, he guessed. He knew only that he had never seen them there before. He didn’t know what they might be doing at the neighbors’ house, and given the absurd public fascination with that missing girl over in Sierra Vista, he would have been surprised to learn that there were any deputies available to come out into the boonies.

  Maybe Jeannie would know. She’d started a job at a little art gallery in Bisbee, a few hours a week to begin with. Selling their expensive San Diego house and buying the little place here, even with a piece of land most Californians could only dream of owning, had left them with a financial buffer, so working, for her, was more about getting out of the house than economic necessity. Since she hadn’t met many people in the area yet, most of her time was spent at home, trying to make their little ranch house into something they could live in. She had a knack for decorating, and she’d decided to veer away from the expected Western style, instead going for a French country look.

  Having parked inside the corrugated steel garage, Oliver splashed though quarter-inch puddles to the covered front walk. The wagon had made it okay, but Jeannie still drove her old Camry. They would have to trade that in before she was stuck someplace or washed away in a flash flood.

  “Are you soaked?” she called as he walked in the front door.

  “Pretty much,” he admitted. He toed off his leather shoes, not wanting his hands to touch the muck adhered there, and left them in the tiled entryway. “It’s as bad out there as I’ve seen it. Everything okay here?”

  “Fine,” Jeannie said. She emerged from the spare bedroom, which she was turning into an office/library, with a paintbrush in her left hand, holding a can of sage paint under it with her right, to catch the drips. She wore splotches of the paint on her Abbey Road T-shirt. “The lights flickered a couple of times, but we never really lost power.”

  Oliver ran his fingers through wet hair. “Guess I know why people wear cowboy hats and boots around here,” he said.

  “Things like that don’t become customary without a reason,” she agreed. “Unless you maybe count parachute pants. And those oversized ball caps they wear cocked at that weird angle so the bill doesn’t shade your eyes or your neck.”

  Jeannie was thin, with pale skin and straight hair the color of straw framing a narrow, high-cheekboned face. At thirty-six, she could pass for late twenties or so. The black T-shirt was cropped, lifted slightly by breasts that swelled beneath it, large for such a slender woman, and Oliver admired the stretch of flat stomach he could see extending down into the waistband of her faded jeans. Her grin illuminated her whole face, glowing from her cornflower blue eyes, crinkling the sides of her nose and making the freckles there stand out, and every time Oliver saw it he knew he was incredibly fortunate to have met her, luckier still that she’d stuck with him through everything.

  “Those do look pretty ridiculous,” he said. “As I’m sure I do.”

  She leaned in, kissed him hard on the lips. “Wet puppies turn me on,” she said. “Especially that puppy-dog smell.”

  “All I smell is paint,” he countered. “You’ve been busy.”

  “A little.”

  “You know what’s going on at the Lavender place?”

  “There’ve been cars there most of the morning,” she said. “From the sheriff’s office. I saw one drive by. But I’ve been listening to the radio and haven’t heard anything about it.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t be the best time to walk down there,” Oliver said. “But Lulu wasn’t in class today. I just hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “We could drive over if you’re worried.”

  Oliver shook his head. “The road’s like soup,” he said. “I’ll call instead.”

  Tugging his wet shirt away from his torso, he found the cordless and sat down at the dining room table. There was no such thing as cell phone service this far out, but at least the local phone company had run land lines a few years before. He knew the number well enough—since he and Jeannie had moved in, Lulu had been an incredible help, happy to teach them about all the aspects of rural life they had never experienced. Dealing with private wells and septic tanks and Gila monsters and rattlers had all been new and different to this pair of suburbanites, and there had been times they wondered how they would have survived it without Lulu’s assistance.

  A male voice he didn’t recognize answered the phone. “Maybe I misdialed,” he said. “I’m looking for Lulu Lavender.”

  “This is Lieutenant Shelton with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office,” the voice informed him. “Who am I speaking with?”

  “My name is Oliver Bowles. I’m Lulu’s teacher, and her neighbor. Is everything okay?”

  “You’re the fellow lives down Larrimore Trail from the Lavenders?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’d like to come and see you, if that’s okay.”

  Oliver swallowed back his fear. This didn’t sound good at all. “Sure. We’ll be here.”

  He ended the call and looked at Jeannie, who watched him through narrowed eyes. “What’s up?” she asked when he didn’t speak right away.

  “A sheriff’s officer answered the phone. He’s coming over to talk to us.”

  Jeannie’s face blanched and she tugged at the lower hem of her Beatles shirt. Watching her chew her pale pink lower lip, Oliver couldn’t shake the feeling that a bad day was about to become much, much worse.

  7

  The rain hit while Buck Shelton was walking the Lavenders’ acreage looking for any sign of Lulu. The barn hadn’t offered any clues. He checked the pigs and cows in case they’d been drawn to a body, but they scattered at his approach, revealing nothing.

  As he wandered the brush-choked slopes, dodging the piercing thorns of mesquite, occasionally snagging his boots on long vines of desert gourds or clumps of thick grass, thunder roared overhead, lightning strobed the sky like paparazzi at a celebrity sighting, the wind picked up and the first heavy drops thudded into earth that had already dried and cracked since yesterday’s storm.

  He had left Scoot to take casts, photos and measurements, since the young man seemed incapable of moving more than about ten yards from his car, and gone on the walkabout himself. He hadn’t really expected to find anything. There would have been no reason to kill everyone else inside the house and take Lulu away to kill her. If she had been killed here, she would be in her room like the rest of the family.

  Buck tried to run down the sequence of events in his own mind. The killer or killers had entered through the front door. He hadn’t seen any sign of forced entry, but many people around here never locked their doors at night. No way to tell how the dogs had reacted, if at all. Chances are they’d been away from the house, hunting rabbits or doing whatever it was country dogs did at night. The killer or killers entered the boys’ room first, stabbing them quickly so as to not allow them to raise the alarm. From there he—Buck couldn’t help feeling this had been a one-man job—went into the master bedroom, shooting Manuela and Hugh.

  That noise must have awakened Lulu, unless she was asleep with an iPod plugged into her ears or something. Had she tried to run away, or hidden under her covers? The killer couldn’t have waited long after shooting her parents before he charged into her room. The condition of her bed made it look as if she might
have been there when he came in. He grabbed her and wrestled her out of bed, perhaps. Or he threw back the covers and showed her the gun.

  Still, Buck believed the killer had taken the time to wash his hands in the bathroom. Had he taken Lulu out to a truck or van, bound her or worse, then gone back into the house to clean up? That would take a degree of coolness that few people possessed. But he couldn’t have committed the murders while Lulu slumbered unknowingly in her room. So she was out of the house altogether, or the killer had restrained her outside somehow and gone back in.

  When the rain hit, Buck ran for the house. By the time he reached it, his shirt was glued to his skin and water ran off the brim of his hat as if from a downspout. Scoot was nowhere to be seen, so Buck went inside.

  “Scoot!”

  “Right here, Buck!” Scoot came down the hallway carrying the department’s digital camera, which recorded time, date and exposure information into its files so that they couldn’t be manipulated on the computer without leaving evidence. “Find anything?”

  “No sign of her,” Buck admitted. “I’m calling Ed.”

  The Lavenders had a phone mounted on the wall in their kitchen, beneath a shelf of patron saint candles in tall glass containers. Buck’s cell had no signal here, so he used his Motorola portable to call the sheriff. As he dialed, he reflected on the fact that none of the saints on that shelf had done the family much good in the long run. The coiled cord stretched long enough to reach a scarred pine dining table, so he drew back a chair and sat down.

  After being transferred three times, he had Ed Gatlin on the line. “Sheriff Gatlin,” he said. “It’s Buck Shelton.”

  “Yes, Buck.” Impatience in his voice. Patience had never been his long suit, and now that he had an emergency situation on his hands—and omnipresent media—he was even worse.

  Buck got to the point. “We have a problem out here,” he said. “Four people dead, murdered, out between McNeal and Douglas. Their teenage daughter is missing.”

  “Oh, Christ, don’t tell me that,” Ed said. “That’s all I need right now.”

  “I’m going to need some help out here, Ed.”

  “I don’t have it to give you,” Ed said without hesitation. “I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up, but we’ve got some major developments going on. We just found out there’s a boyfriend no one knew about, and the Lippincott girl snuck out of the house to hook up with him. Which means the house isn’t our crime scene after all. The boyfriend says she never showed up, so now we aren’t sure where the hell she was snatched. Every fucking eyeball in the country is on us and suddenly we look like we’ve been walking around with our dicks in our hands for two weeks.”

  “I understand that’s a priority, Ed. But I’ve got four bodies and another missing girl here. Could be the same guy took her too.”

  “Or it could be that she’s out of town on a school trip. Or maybe there’s a copycat, in which case we should try to keep the media away from that one. Once he realizes he’s not drawing the attention the Lippincott snatcher is, maybe he’ll give her up.”

  “Or kill her,” Buck pointed out. “I’m just saying the five of us aren’t really a full-fledged investigative unit. I need forensics, I need detectives, maybe even a full-on task force.”

  Ed gave a bitter laugh. “You mistaking me for someone with a budget? Some big city police force, maybe? You can have a forensics team. Until we can figure out where our real crime scene is I don’t have any use for them. Beyond that, if I can free up any resources for you, I will. Don’t hold your breath, though.”

  “Whatever you can do, Ed. Anything will help.” Buck clicked off the radio, disappointment swamping him like the rain outside had. With twenty-two years on the job, he had at least twice as much experience as anyone else at the Elfrida substation. Scoot Brown had worked for the state prison for a couple of years and for the sheriff’s department for three. Raul Bermudez had been around for nine, Carmela Lindo for five. Donna Gonzales ran dispatch, answered phones, made copies, but she was office help, not a real cop.

  And they were supposed to solve a multiple homicide and kidnapping?

  At least, he thought, if it could be confirmed that Lulu had been kidnapped, the FBI would take over. His feelings were mixed on that score—they were far more practiced at this sort of crime than he was. But he suspected they’d cut him out of the loop altogether, and that was the last thing he wanted. So far the feds had waited in the wings on the Lippincott case, because there had been no ransom demands or other evidence pointing to a kidnapping, which made her still just a missing person.

  The phone rang before Buck could leave the kitchen. Ordinarily he’d let it go to voice mail or an answering machine, but he didn’t see the latter and didn’t know if the Lavenders had the former. Anyway, little about this case was ordinary, and if a ghost of a chance existed that whoever called could be helpful, he thought he needed to grab for it. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and draped it over the handset of the Lavenders’ phone. Pinching the receiver near the top, trying not to obscure or smudge any prints that might have been left by the murderer who, he reasoned, would have held it toward the middle, he lifted it from the phone. “Lieutenant Shelton.”

  “Maybe I misdialed,” a male voice said. “I’m looking for Lulu Lavender.”

  8

  Having determined that the caller was the new neighbor, Buck told him to stay put. He would need to question them, and he might as well do it right away. One more thing he wanted to take care of first, though. He located an address/telephone book on the counter below the phone, and flipped pages until he recognized the name he was looking for: Jace Barwick, in Bisbee. Lulu’s boyfriend.

  He dialed the number, waited. After a couple of rings, he heard a click. “Hello?”

  “This is Lieutenant Buck Shelton with the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office. I’m calling for Jace Barwick.”

  Hesitation. “Umm, that’s me.”

  “Mr. Barwick, are you Lulu Lavender’s boyfriend?”

  “We see each other,” Jace said.

  “Did she happen to spend last night with you? Or away from her home anywhere, to your knowledge?”

  “No,” Jace answered immediately. “I talked to her right about nine-thirty, and she was at home. Then I got an e-mail from her, sent a little after ten. And she posted an entry on her blog later than that. I think she was there all night.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her today?”

  “Not yet. Can you tell me what this is all about?”

  “Please think very carefully, son. Is there anyplace else she might have stayed the night? A friend’s house, something like that?”

  Jace didn’t consider for long. “Like I said, she posted on her blog, late. She wouldn’t have gone out after that. Please, what’s going on? I’m kind of freaking out here.”

  “I’m afraid I might have some bad news for you, Mr. Barwick. I’d prefer to tell you this in person, but I’m afraid that there isn’t time for me to drive up to Bisbee right this minute. Lulu’s not in her house. Her family has been killed—her mother, father and both boys, but there’s no trace of Lulu, and—”

  “Oh my God!” After the exclamation came a huffing noise that Buck took for labored breathing, or perhaps an attempt to hold back sobs.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, sir. There isn’t necessarily any indication that Lulu’s been hurt in any way. That’s why I asked you if there’s any other place she might have spent the night, because there’s no sign of struggle in her room.” He heard no response from the other end of the line, and wondered if Jace had hung up, or fainted. “Mr. Barwick?”

  “I’m here.” The voice was faint, unsteady. “She has some friends around there, but I don’t know all their names. Sasha, I think, and Elenora. Becka. Paul. I…There are more, but…their numbers are programmed on her phone, I think.”

  “We’ll do everything in our power to find Lulu, Mr. Barwick. I don’t want you to have
any doubts on that score.”

  “Do you…do you know who…killed her family? Kevin and Neal?”

  “At this point we don’t know much of anything, I’m afraid. But we’ll find out, you can bank on that.”

  Jace sniffled a little before answering. “Okay. God, I can’t believe…Nothing better have happened to her.”

  Buck was not at all surprised by the boy’s quick switch between emotions. He was dealing with a lot, and it had all come from nowhere. Buck had seen the bodies, and Lulu’s empty bedroom, all of which made the whole thing very real, very concrete. Jace didn’t have that advantage. Very likely it wouldn’t be real to him for a while yet.

  After finishing up with the boyfriend, Buck left Scoot to mind the crime scene and drove through the downpour to the old Martin house, where Oliver Bowles lived now. The sand-colored stucco house occupied a five-acre parcel that had once been part of the same ranch the Lavenders owned now. A ten-thousand-acre spread had been whittled down to eighty-acre lots, then just under forty, and finally five. That kind of subdivision was common enough in these parts—Buck’s own ranch had once been a larger cattle outfit, but it had been split between his father and three other siblings, then divided again when his father died. Most of the owners had sold out and moved on or passed away long ago, but Buck still owned some of his dad’s portion, and ran some cattle on it with the help of a Salvadoran immigrant named Aurelio Santana.

  Beside the house Buck couldn’t stop thinking of as the Martin place—they had lived there for forty-eight years and both Nestor and Leticia were buried down in Douglas now—was a steel garage, and behind that a shed big enough for a riding lawnmower and some other garden implements but not much more. The rest of the land, except for a trimmed lawn immediately around the house, was the same combination of mesquite, creosote bush, yucca, rabbitbrush and other high desert scrub the Lavenders had.