Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel

by Warren Williams

  All right, if I can’t be rescued right away, the trick then is to stay alive until that happens. Water, that’s the biggie. Got to get some water. Damn it, I wish I hadn’t lost that poncho.

  She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate but even that was becoming more difficult, a fact that had not gone unnoticed.

  Need to be ready if we get more rain, but how? I got nothing left to collect water. She made one more quick inventory of the cellar but found nothing suitable. A wave of despair washed over the girl, and she buried her face in her shirt where traces of vomit stained the front and held the smell.

  “God, I stink,” she said aloud. But thinking about the shirt gave her another idea. “When it rains, if it rains, I could work this shirt out from under the door and let it soak up the water. Get it sopping wet, and then wring it out and into the jar. Do that a few times and you got a drink. Need a lot of rain though. What are the chances? Slim at best, especially in this end of Oklahoma. Might need another prayer for that one. Okay, that will be Plan A. Now, what about your other problems?”

  The snake shouldn’t have worried her all that much, unless it was poisonous —her being a farm girl and all—but it did. She got the heebie-jeebies just thinking about snakes of any kind. There were plenty of them around the barn, living off the mice and lizards. Back when her mom was raising chickens, the snakes would invade the hen house, looking for eggs. But what kind of snakes were they exactly? She tried to remember what they looked like. She had seen a couple of them up close and personal when her mother had directed her to gather the eggs for breakfast. It seemed like they were dark in color, black probably, not like a rattler with that diamond pattern on the back. No, she was certain that none of them had been rattlesnakes. And now that she thought about it, the snake that swallowed the mouse (she prayed it wasn’t Lulu), the one down there in the cellar with her, was dark as well. Probably not venomous at all and if that were true…A hint of a smile broke across Melissa’s parched lips. Two birds with one stone, she thought, yeah, two birds with one stone.

  Chapter 28

  “Pull in up there at the Merry Mart would you, Sheriff? I need coffee before we head out of town, maybe an apple fritter. I didn’t have a chance to eat bein’ as how you were in such an all fired hurry to get started at the crack of dawn,” Billy Ray complained.

  “A man should eat his breakfast before he goes to work, not after he’s on the job,” Lester mumbled as he crossed the center line and stopped in front of the little store with its single island and customary grades of gas; regular, premium, and diesel. A half dozen lottery signs were plastered on the front window along with various business cards advertising “dirt work” and “tree trimming.”

  “Oh, give me a break. You want a cup?” Billy Ray asked.

  Lester grinned. “Sure do.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “And get Harley a sausage biscuit while you’re in there, would ya?”

  Billy Ray shook his head but said nothing and went inside, stopping long enough to read the homemade poster taped to the front door.

  Lost Dog

  Blue Heeler

  Answers to the name of Moxie

  A photo showed a medium sized dog, black coat mixed with white, with one whitish patch around one eye. A phone number followed.

  Good lookin’ dog, Billy Ray thought. Hope the poor guy finds him. The deputy had considering getting a dog, maybe a lab like Harley. Some kind of big dog, not a little yapper, he couldn’t handle a yapper. A dog might be a little company in the evenings, now that he was divorced. He’d think on it.

  The store had two sausage egg biscuits left, growing stale under a warming lamp, and Billy Ray bought them both. The apple fritters were sold out. He filled two Styrofoam cups with coffee and paid the clerk knowing full well he would not get a lick of reimbursement from Sheriff Tight Ass out there in the pickup.

  Halfway back to the truck, Harley had the smell, his nose wedged between the truck’s window and frame. “Wait a minute! Wait a damn minute till I get the wrapper off. Okay, here. Careful, might be hot.”

  Two bites and four seconds later, Harley was eyeballing the second biscuit he knew to be inside that white sack.

  “No way pal, not today, this one’s mine.” Billy Ray smiled and passed the coffee across the seat to Lester. The Sheriff was tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, the clouds of impatience building. He started the truck and backed out, spinning tires, and sloshing the coffee. “We’re burning daylight,” he said.

  There was little conversation on the way to the Pirate’s Den although Billy Ray tried to make some with a comment or two about the weather. But the Sheriff was stoic in his lack of response, eyes straight ahead, seemingly deep in thought. Billy Ray didn’t push it. He knew better.

  The gravel parking lot in front of the Pirate’s Den was empty if you didn’t count the half dozen empty beer cans and one raggedy tennis shoe, lost in a long ago shoving match. A half pint bottle of Jim Beam lay empty on the front step where someone had used it to beef up the watery drinks that Earl mixed behind the bar. Lester got a thick chain from the bed of the pickup and fished it through the handles of the entryway, securing the links with the snap of a hardened padlock. Billy Ray peeled the backing from a stiff red paper with the words: Closed by order of the Sheriff, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, and stuck it to the window.

  “That son of a bitch,” Lester mumbled. “Serving kids straight shots of Tequila. I told him what would happen, I warned him, but did he listen? Nooo. He gets the kids liquored up only to fatten his own pocketbook and see what happens? We got a girl in big trouble that’s what.”

  “Think we should drop in on the Parker place seeing as how they’re just down the road?” Billy Ray ventured.

  Lester thought about it. “No, I don’t reckon we should. Nelda told me Imogene’s been calling in pretty regular and being kept up to date. Tell you the truth, I don’t feel like dealing with that idiot Albert today but sometime soon, I want to pick him up, take him down to the office, and sweat him a little. I don’t like his beady little eyes. I can see meanness there, I just don’t know how much.”

  Billy Ray weighed in. “If you ask me, and I know you won’t, but if you did, I’d tell you that anybody crazy enough to point a shotgun at an officer of the law is crazy enough to do just about anything, including killing his own daughter if she were to make him mad enough. And making Albert mad ain’t that tough to do.”

  “Agreed, Deputy. We won’t forget about old Albert but I doubt he’s going anywhere. We’ll save him for later on after we’ve talked to some of those other folks, like the junkman. Let’s head over his way and see what sort of fella we’re dealing with.”

  *****

  Gerald McCoy had been watching through barely parted curtains since the moment he became convinced that a SWAT team was hiding outside and ready to beat down his door at any moment, probably turn the dogs loose on him too. He had no idea why those two men in uniform were walking the road in front of his house the other day, but it was a portent of bad things to come, he was sure of that. The thing that really bugged him was that he couldn’t remember if he had actually committed a crime or not. Like the time he’d found those plastic cigarette lighters in his pocket after his last trip to Boise City, a handful of them, various colors, and he hadn’t had a smoke for twenty years. Or the time when that lady called the cops to say he was looking in her window. Gerald hadn’t meant to, at least he hadn’t planned it, but he was in her yard when the policeman drove up, he couldn’t deny that. There was a chance he might have glanced through the bedroom glass as the woman was getting dressed, but it wasn’t as if he were spying on her. A man can’t help which way he looks. Everyone has to look at something if their eyes are open he reasoned. It was pure coincidence that the woman was standing in front of her mirror in her underwear when Gerald’s eyes happened to move in that direction. His reflection in the mirror made the woman scream. He remembered that part. Was that wh
y the cops were watching him now? Had he done it again? Gerald never meant to make anybody mad, but there had been times in the past when some people had yelled at him, right in his face, saying he did things he didn’t do. He didn’t like that. And once, a man had hit him, hard, right in the nose and made it bleed. The man accused Gerald of touching his wife’s butt while standing in line at the Merry Mart. But if Gerald was guilty of running his fingers over that woman’s rear end in her tight western jeans, he wasn’t sure. He might have thought about it though.

  At the front door, Gerald had just finished letting two cats in and another one out when a white pickup with a star on the side pulled off the highway and stopped in front of the his house.

  “Man slammed the front door just now, you see it?” Billy Ray asked.

  “Yes, I did. Looks like we’ll get to talk to somebody today. How bout you mosey around back and keep an eye on the rear of the place, just in case.”

  Billy Ray surveyed the premises. Gerald McCoy’s yard looked like the aftermath of a record flood, an EF4 tornado, and possibly an earthquake. There were barrels of every size, rusted bed springs, a dozen cars in various stages of decomposition, washers, dryers, piles of brick and rock, scraps of plywood, a toilet bowl, a toy wagon half full of rainwater, and two mattresses with their guts hanging out.

  “I’m not real sure I can get around back,” Billy Ray observed.

  Lester said, “I see what you mean, but do your best. I’m gonna go knock.”

  Harley, in the meantime, had never seen so many cats in all his 70 odd dog years. It was a virtual doggy heaven. Black cats, yellow cats, gray cats, cats of many colors, all right there in front of him begging to be chased. Two of the cats, one black, one white, watched him from the dashboard of a 69 Oldsmobile while another, a tabby, kept an eye out from atop an overturned washtub. The lab pushed at the window of the cab, whining in anticipation, but the Sheriff paid him not one glance and walked away without a sign of compassion. Harley groaned in disappointment.

  For some odd reason, and there was no basis to think about such things at this particular time, but Gerald recalled the words of one of the orderlies when they had found him wandering down the halls back at the psychiatric ward. “Mr. McCoy, you look like you don’t know whether to shit or go to Topeka.” Indeed, Gerald didn’t know what to do about that man in the uniform pounding on his door. So, finding a space between two pasteboard boxes, he sat down on the floor, wrapped his arms around his knees, and did nothing.

  “Sheriff’s office,” Lester yelled and pounded a little harder. “Open up, I know you’re in there.” Gerald put his hands over his ears and wedged himself a little tighter between the boxes.

  “If you don’t open up,” Lester hollered, “I’ll send the dog in after you.” Lester knew damn well what Harley would do if taken out of the pickup, chase every cat he could find, but he was betting that the man inside didn’t know that.

  It was Gerald’s worst nightmare, to be torn apart by a savage police canine. He sang out, “Okay, I’m coming. Please don’t use the dogs.”

  The delay to answer the door had put Lester on alert, and he rested one hand on his revolver as Gerald peeked around the edge of the peeling wood.

  “C’mon outside Mr. McCoy. I only want to talk with you a minute. It is Mr. McCoy isn’t it? That’s what our records show.”

  Gerald nodded and poked his head out to look around, wondering where the rest of the SWAT boys were hiding. He took a deep breath and did as the fellow with the badge asked.

  The nervous man standing in front of Lester was middle-aged, hatchet-faced, mostly bald, wearing gray sweatpants with a shirt sporting faded red flowers that once would have been loosely described as Hawaiian. But the feature that jumped out at Lester was the man’s eyes, wide, owl-like, with white showing all the way around the irises, looking like he’d just seen Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street.

  Lester stepped back, went to the corner of the house, and yelled toward the rear. “Billy Ray? Come around here please. Mr. McCoy has decided to talk to us.”

  He knew it. Gerald knew there had to be more cops out here, dozens of ‘em. He scanned the yard looking for movement or gun barrels, but saw nothing. He thought seriously of running back inside and locking the door again, and would have except for the sight of that demonic black dog in the white truck, pawing at the window, aching to tear his throat out.

  “Mr. McCoy, can you tell me if you were at the Pirate’s Den last Thursday night, that’s the bar right next to the road, a couple miles west of here?” Lester watched the man’s face as he asked the question, looking for the lie.

  They know something, Gerald thought, the panic growing in his belly. But what, what did I do? What do I say? The eyes got even wider and whiter as he struggled for an answer to the question. Just play dumb, he thought, admit nothing. It was a good solution for Gerald. Playing dumb was one of his strong suits.

  “Well, I might have been there, I don’t exactly remember. My memories not so good you know.”

  Lester said nothing, holding the man’s weird eyes with his own cold stare, waiting for a slipup.

  Nervously shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Gerald continued to check behind the junk piles, particularly the old cars, watching for the muzzle flash of a sniper’s rifle. After a few silent moments, Gerald continued, “I go over there sometimes. I drink a beer and watch the big TV. Have you seen it? It’s very nice. It’s fun to watch the football games there.”

  Lester ignored the question and asked, “When you were there on Thursday, and we know you were Mr. McCoy, so don’t play games with us, did you see a young girl, long hair, pretty? She might have been drinking with some boys.”

  At the mere mention of a female and trouble, Gerald knew his life was over. These men would arrest him and put him in prison, or maybe back in the hospital. He hoped it was the hospital; he hated it there, but prison? Lately, he’d been watching TV shows about prisons. The men in there were monsters, ugly tattooed brutes, itching to beat you or stick you with a knife or worse. Gerald thought he’d rather die than go to prison. Suicide would be better than prison. He was almost sure he had an old gun in the house. That would do it. Finding it would be a problem though. But if he could give the policemen the answers they wanted, maybe they’d go away. He thought hard about the last time he was in the Pirate’s Den. Why would he go there on a Thursday night, a college game? He couldn’t figure it out but he needed to tell the police what he’d seen.

  “You know, I do believe a girl was there. When you mentioned the boys, I remembered. They were out on that porch in front sitting on that old couch. The boys were talking loud and the girl was laughing a lot, like they’d had too much to drink I think.”

  “Did you see the girl and boys leave?”

  “No, they were still out there when I got back in my car to come home.”

  “And what time was that?”

  Gerald looked at his wrist. It seemed like he had a watch once but where did he put it?

  “I don’t know what time that was. Oh, I watched something on the TV after I got home. Give me a minute to think of it.” Gerald screwed his wide eyes shut but nothing came to him.

  “I got home, I fed the cats, and turned the TV on, and…” His voice trailed off.

  “Do you remember any of the other people in the bar that night Mr. McCoy?

  Oh good, now he’s asking about other people. Maybe I’m not the one they’re after.

  Gerald took another look around the yard, saw movement and tensed, but it was only a yellow cat stretching in the sun. “Uh, there was the guy behind the bar.”

  “Anybody else?” Lester was quickly losing hope that Gerald McCoy would be forthcoming with any sort of useful information—didn’t keep him from being a suspect though.

  “I think there was a big man sitting at the end of the bar. I don’t know his name but he’s been in there every time I have. He drinks a lot of beer.”

  Gotta b
e J.O. Mecham, Lester thought. “Okay, now think really hard Mr. McCoy, who else was there?”

  Gerald wanted to remember other people, someone that looked guilty of something, but for the life of him, he couldn’t and told the Sheriff as much.

  “Mr. McCoy, I got just one more question for you.” By now Lester had a good idea of the IQ of the man he was interviewing and kept it simple. “Did you see or talk to any female after you left the bar that night? Maybe just to give her a ride home or…?” Lester continued with the stare down, leaving the query open ended.

  Gerald was silent for a moment or two before answering. “I didn’t see nobody after I left, boy or girl. At least I don’t think I did.”

  “You don’t think you did? What does that mean?” Lester said, his voice rising.

  “Like I said, I don’t remember so good anymore. I forget things. I’m so sorry.”

  “Deputy, you have any questions for Mr. McCoy?”

  Billy Ray shook his head.

  “All right then. Mr. McCoy, that girl you saw at the bar is missing. I might want to talk to you again. You’re not planning any trips away from home are you?”

  Gerald had never taken a trip in his life, at least not voluntarily.

  “No sir, I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here, like always. I have to feed my cats you know.” He gestured toward the yard where a dozen cats preened, slept, and sprawled across the piles of debris.

  Back in the pickup, Billy Ray said, “Well?”

  “I’m thinkin’ on it.”

  Billy Ray closed his eyes and waited. Finally, “I need to do a background check on Mr. McCoy, arrests and warrants. I’ll ask the city cops if they’ve had any problems with him in town. Obviously, Mr. McCoy is not the brightest star in our Oklahoma sky, but that doesn’t mean he had anything to do with Melissa. Right now, our best bet is to find out who those boys were, the ones feeding her tequila. We could go back to the high school, talk to every boy there.”