“We don’t sit around and braid each other’s hair and
discuss her pimp, lady. How should I know where he lives?”
“You must have a name.”
“Sure,” she spits. “His name is Little Dog. Does that
help? Little Dog? Think you can find him? Maybe he’s in the fucking phone book! If you find that piece of shit,
tell him he owes me two hundred bucks for that iPad. I
know damn well he’s the one who stole it.”
“What’s he look like?” I ask, but I’ve relaxed too
much, and she sees her chance to escape and shoves the
door closed in my face.
“Bitch,” I say to the door. The TV volume rises on the
other side. I pause for a moment to think of a way to get
revenge for her disrespect, but she’s not worth the time.
Kayla clearly isn’t here and hasn’t been here for a while.
My cold heart sinks a little. If Kayla was turned out
by some small-town pimp, then she’s nothing at all like
me. She’s just a poor, abused girl like all the other poor
abused girls out there.
In a nice suburban neighborhood, if a girl disappears,
it’s city news. Maybe even national news. Posters every-
where. Manhunts. Strangers weeping for this vulnerable
child. If a grown man is having sex with a teenage neigh-
bor who lives in a McMansion in the good part of town,
the police will be notified. Consequences will be swift.
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But if that girl is poor trash when she goes missing, or
if she’s being paid for the sex, then all law and sympathy gets thrown out the window. She’s a whore and she deserves whatever she gets, even if she’s only sixteen. She’s all used up and worthless now. She probably was from
the moment she was born.
Hell, if she’s a brown child, she might not even be
called missing at all. Just another girl who hardly deserved to live. What did she expect?
I stroll slowly back to my car, frowning at this lifestyle
news about Kayla. She’s obviously a very troubled young
woman. “Troubled,” I say aloud to myself with a smile,
because I’ve always loved that description.
Troubled means that she very likely walked away from her family and hooked up with Little Dog or some other
award-winning loser, because choosing your own bad
path is better than following someone else’s. At best, she’s a runaway headed for a long, hard life that will never get
better. At worst, this pitiful, pimped-out girl has been
killed or kidnapped or loaned out to work for someone
else in some big city.
She might be in deep trouble, she might be dead,
or she could be nodding off in someone’s heroin base-
ment, having the time of her life on the fast track to an
overdose.
I’m not a social worker, and there’s nothing I can do
about any of those situations. I was hoping to find someone kick-ass, and that prospect is looking less and less likely.
Kayla is just another sad girl who wasn’t ever going to
have a chance in this world. There are millions of them.
Junkie mom, dad in prison, too many men watching and
waiting … Come on.
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I should just go home. But the kind of trouble I hate is
waiting at home. Emotional trouble, the one kind I have
no aptitude for, and I hate being bad at things.
And there are more benefits to staying in Oklahoma.
There’s road food, of course, always the best part of any
trip. And there are strangers to interact with, which is
always exciting. And there’s one last benefit to this trip
that I wasn’t expecting: each of the partners at my firm
has emailed to express their support for what I’m doing.
One even mentioned my “heroism.”
Me! A hero!
If I go home with no results and no resolution, I’ll
give up this newfound glory and all the bragging rights
of returning triumphant. So onward I slog.
As I round the edge of Kayla’s building I see the same
pitiful swing set that exists in every apartment complex of this kind. Two swings, one of them broken and wound
tight around the supporting pole, the other one hanging
at a slight angle. The swings are flanked by the kind of
metal slide that causes second-degree burns on a hot sum-
mer day. That’s a particularly sadistic touch when it’s one hundred degrees in Oklahoma for the entire season that
kids are out of school. Even I could plan a better park,
and I’m a goddamn sociopath.
Past the swing set is an ancient picnic table, and gath-
ered around that are several teenagers who decided not
to bother with school today. Or this year. Hard to say.
“Hey!” I bark out. They glance up without any
alarm at all. Punks. “You guys know Kayla?” I’ve been
in Minnesota too long, and now I’ve identified myself as
an outsider, but maybe that’s okay. They know I’m not
a local cop, certainly.
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Problem Child
Two of the kids shrug, but the youngest, a boy, tips
up his chin in a nod.
“She been around?” I ask.
“What’d she do?” the boy calls as I walk closer.
“She won the lottery. I’m just trying to deliver her
prize money.”
All three of them collapse into drug-induced giggles
at that. I smile as if I’m friendly and hand the young white boy a twenty. “A clue, a clue,” I sing, echoing an old kids’
show I used to watch when I was alone in our trailer for
days. The three kids giggle again at the hilarity.
Maybe I’m better with children than I thought I was. At
least when they’re high. I could start an outreach program
for high teens. I’ll suggest it at our annual five-minute-
long meeting about how the firm can have a beneficial
presence in our community. Now I’m giggling too.
“Listen, I just want to know if you’ve heard where
she could be.”
“Kayla’s a slut,” the boy says. “Could be anywhere
with anyone.”
Sluts don’t go missing; they just become looser sluts.
I’m getting bored now. “Fine. Just guess.”
The girl, with a short blond hairstyle that could be
edgy if she’d cut the bangs a little shorter, finally speaks up. “If she didn’t just take off with some trucker, then
maybe she’s with Little Dog. He’s been gone a couple
weeks himself.”
“You been hanging out with Little Dog?” the taller
Hispanic boy asks archly.
“Fuck off, Del.”
I roll my eyes. “Does Little Dog have a real name, or
were his parents giant dicks?”
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Victoria Helen Stone
More hilarious laughter. “Brodie,” the younger boy
finally offers.
“And where does Brodie live?”
I’m surprised when all three of them point in the same
direction at the same time. Following their gesture, my eye falls on the back of a brick building. “The Laundromat?”
“Nah,” the girl says, “the hill.”
I follow the point of her finger again and look beyond
t
he building this time. Past a few hazy clouds, a rise of
trees climbs up a shallow hill outside town. Either Brodie
is a troll in the old-fashioned sense of the word or there’s a run-down shack up there somewhere. I guess I’m about
to find out.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
I leave the kids at the picnic table plotting how to score
more weed with their twenty-dollar windfall, and I drive
in the general direction of “the hill.” I lose sight of it
anytime I get too close to a building, but lucky for me
there aren’t many structures in this town. I have a clear
view in no time and realize I’m not looking for a shack
at all. Just the opposite.
A fancy wooden fence runs along the road like the kind
you’d normally find around the horse farms of Kentucky.
This one protects no quarter horses or Arabians. It’s just a ridiculous acreage of browning grass, and its sole purpose
is to use up precious water. If I ever noticed this in my
childhood, I don’t remember it. I probably didn’t realize
how much money it would take to fence in a property
this size. Who the hell would build something like this
outside a prison town? The warden? Even that seems a
bit of a stretch. Unless he’s crooked.
And it is a grand estate, though the peeling whitewash
of the fence indicates the place has seen better times. I
turn under a wooden archway and drive up a lane that’s
guarded by rows of pecan trees on either side like be-nutted sentries. Very pretty. My tires crunch over old shells.
At the top of the hill, a good forty feet above sea
level, I discover a man-made pond complete with a
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nonfunctioning fountain and, beyond that, a low ranch
house that stretches out forever. A covered porch adorns
the entire front side of the house. I expect to see rocking chairs standing sentry, but the whole long porch is empty
aside from an overturned bucket someone left near the
front door.
Very odd.
After pulling into the circular driveway, I park in
front of green double doors outfitted with honest-to-
God doorknockers. To entertain myself, I use one to
clack away at the wood, then push the doorbell for good
measure. I’m not the least bit surprised when it chimes
out the openings of some classical arrangement I don’t
know. Mr. Little Dog Brodie comes from surprisingly
fancy stock.
When there’s no answer, I press my ear to the wood
and I think I detect the rumbling bass of an action movie
inside. This time I knock with my fist and hit the doorbell several times. A few seconds later one of the doors flies
open to reveal some twenty-something kid with long,
stringy hair, a nearly concave bare chest, and loose jeans
falling off his hips.
“Monsieur Little Dog?” I inquire politely.
“Nah. I’m Nate.”
“May I please speak to Little Dog?”
“He’s not here.”
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Naw, man. He took off two, three weeks ago after
some big guy came by. Cleared right out of here.”
A voice shouts out from somewhere deep inside the
dim house. “Nate! Your turn, man!”
Nate looks over his bony white shoulder, then back
to me, then over his shoulder again.
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Problem Child
“May I come in?” I ask, and he sighs with relief and
pulls the door wider.
“Yeah, man. Come in.” He closes the door after I
step in; then he rushes toward the voice and the rumble
of bass down the short hall. “You’re not a cop, are you?”
he tosses back.
“Naw, man,” I answer. “Definitely not a cop, dude.”
As I follow Nate, I recognize the cacophony of bass and
explosions as a video game, and indeed I emerge from
the hallway into a living room graced with four young
white men. A sunken living room.
The guys are draped over a U-shaped couch that looks
like it was built to fit perfectly into the recessed space.
Their eyes are all focused on a giant flat-screen TV above
a moss rock fireplace.
The huge table in front of them is littered with at
least several days’ worth of pizza boxes and enough beer
bottles to nearly camouflage two big glass bongs.
“Hello, boys!” I call out above the din.
One of the guys nearly jumps from his seat at the sight
of me, and I notice he has a third bong clutched between
his thighs. This one is shaped like a big brown penis.
“She’s not a cop,” Nate clarifies as he grabs a controller.
“Hey, everyone!” I call out. “Anyone seen Little Dog
lately?”
They shake their heads and their eyes drift back to
the screen as Nate starts playing. “He took off,” someone
finally offers.
“After some guy kicked his ass,” another adds.
“Oh, really? Someone beat him up?”
“Yeah.”
“Was this after Kayla disappeared?”
“Yeah,” Nate says, “like a week later.”
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I descend into the pit and nudge one guy’s leg until he
shifts it and leaves me room to sit down. I sink into soft
gray leather and realize I’m facing a huge pastel painting
of the very house I’m in. “Whose place is this?”
A couple of the guys snort in answer. “It’s Brodie’s
place, man,” Nate answers. “His grandparents died and
left it to him two years ago. So dope.”
Jeez, what a way to honor Nana and Pawpaw’s sacri-
fice. “So this whole giant place is his?”
“So dope!” Nate shouts.
“And you guys live here?”
All of them shrug. “Not really,” one says. “On and
off,” says another. “We’re watching the place for Brodie,”
says Nate.
Nice gig. “Can I buy a beer off you?” I ask as I toss
another of my twenty-dollar bills on the table and grab
an unopened can of Milwaukee’s Best to pretend I’m in
high school again. Of course, now I notice the stench of
old weed and body odor. I’ve become more discerning
in my old age, and the kid next to me reeks of sweat or
onions, I’m not sure which.
I drink half the beer and settle in for a little while.
They’ve been fucked-up for days and don’t seem to ques-
tion my presence. I’ve appeared, so here I am.
After a few minutes, I find myself staring at a book-
shelf full of tiny pale statues. They’re Lladró figurines.
I recognize them only because I remember watching a
whole segment about them on a shopping channel one
day at my grandma’s house.
If that sounds like a touching moment, it wasn’t. My
grandmother was a stone-cold bitch who treated me re-
sentfully when she was forced to babysit. When I was at
her house, she instructed me to sit quietly and “stop being 94
Problem Child
a little cunt.” That’s a fun word to learn when you’re
six.
You can really shut down a whole first-grade classroom
with that one.
At that age I wasn’t even a monster yet, though my
brain was definitely rewiring itself to better protect
me. I knew by then that I was on my own. That no
one else would take care of me. That fear and vulner-
ability brought predation and pain. My parents could
never be depended on, and when they disappeared for
days at a time, my brother offered cruel taunts instead
of comfort.
No one took care of me, so my brain helped me do it
myself by shutting down anything that made me weak.
I grew strong. I grew invincible. I would never have let
these idiot little punks pimp me out or use me. On the
contrary, I would’ve used them for whatever they had
to offer.
“What’s up with Kayla?” I finally ask, and receive
another chorus of shrugs. None of them even looks
nervous, though I watch their faces for guilt. “Did she
take off?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Onion Boy says. “She was calling
Brodie a lot before he left.”
“So she’s alive?”
Nate snorts loudly. “You think Kayla’s dead? Why?”
“No one has seen her in weeks.”
More shrugs, and then someone farts and the boys
erupt into guffaws. This isn’t exactly playing out like an
interrogation scene from an Agatha Christie novel. “Did
Kayla ever crash here?” I try.
“Sure,” Nate says.
“Great.” Without asking for permission, I get up and
wander out of the room looking for any evidence of this
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niece of mine. There are four bedrooms, all decorated in
the finest expensive eighties oak furniture, big, lumbering pieces sculpted with generic leaves and vines. All except
the master bedroom, which is graced with cherrywood
against mauve-painted walls. It appears that Little Dog
hasn’t changed a thing in two years. In fact, a portrait of his grandmother watches him sleep at night.
Jesus.
Speaking of, a big cross hangs above the headboard
in a matching cherry finish. It’s full-on grandma chic.
There are no bodies or bloody knives or even notes
about how to get rid of a dead girl’s corpse. But when I
wander into a brass-fixtured bathroom, I do find evidence
that a young girl has been here. There are hair scrunchies
and lip gloss at the makeup table. I carefully touch a
finger to a compact of glittery purple eye shadow, then
Problem Child (ARC) Page 10
