“Well, things looked like they were turning for the better when the old boy had a pile of pulpwood snap its chain and cover him up and kill him good…But Jennifer, therein lay another problem. She wasn’t any smarter at sixteen than she was at thirteen, and the next thing you know she’s pregnant again, some black fellow from over around Houston. Now, I know how some people feel. I don’t give a damn about skin color. What I think’s wrong here is that Jennifer was little more than a baby and this fellow was nearly thirty, and he wasn’t any better than the husband she had before. Except he didn’t drive a pulpwood truck. He kicked Jennifer one night while she was pregnant, and the baby died from the kick. The kicker, her old man, disappeared into the woodwork.
“Caroline was soon the stepdaughter or stepniece or pal to whoever came along and was shacking up with her mama, and that’s all Caroline knew. She didn’t know that these men weren’t supposed to touch their daughters, or stepdaughters, and they sure weren’t supposed to have sex with them. She started being molested early on, I figure, but certainly by the time she was eleven she was being taken full advantage of by her mother’s boyfriends, or husbands, whatever Jennifer called them. And as Caroline got older, she turned into a real looker, and that brought all manner of boys around.”
“How did you learn about all this?” I asked.
“Her social workers, people who knew her. Things she told me. Believe me, I did my research. I wanted to do whatever I could to help her. I had had abused children before, but this poor girl, she was the most worked over and manipulated I had ever seen. Her mother used her. It was a way for her to attract men to help take care of her and Caroline. She put her out there like bait on a line. And she didn’t care if Caroline was servicing them like a show heifer. Long as it kept food on the table and she didn’t have to bother with work or raising a kid. By this time my guess is the mother had pretty much worn out on sex, and she was just then old enough to really start having it.
“Sex isn’t just an act. It’s an emotional investment, though kids these days try to tell you different. They call it hooking up. At least they’re making the choice to hook up. Caroline, she wasn’t making the choice. Least not at first. But by the time she was fourteen she knew something about manipulation herself. Two men came to live with Caroline and her mother, and they both were there for Caroline. And somehow, Caroline worked them. Or that’s my guess. And one of them killed the other, and the survivor ended up in jail. Caroline, she never went to see him or had anything else to do with him. She had played them. She was a hollow shell. All of her goodness, or any potential for goodness, had been sucked out and blown away dry. She took to hurting animals and setting fires, and finally she was taken away from her mother.”
“And that’s how you ended up with her?” Belinda said.
“That’s right, sugar. That’s how I ended up with her. Her mother swore she was going to clean up her act, but what she did was put a needle in her arm that was full of something that killed her. Caroline, when I told her about it, she said, ‘Huh.’ Just like that. Nothing else. She didn’t go to the funeral. She didn’t have any real connection to anyone, except maybe me a little, and Ronnie.
“But I don’t know how to explain their relationship. I think Ronnie was someone she had feelings for, but I just don’t think Caroline could have deep feelings. Wasn’t in her. Ronnie was a way for her to travel with the normals, though Ronnie was a mess herself. She had had a bad family, but nothing like Caroline. Mostly just neglectful. She was damaged goods, but she wasn’t ruined goods. More tea?”
“No thank you,” I said. “So did they stay with you a long time, Ronnie and Caroline?”
“They stayed until they graduated. And here’s the funny thing. Suddenly Caroline quit acting out. She did her homework, did well in school. She spent the rest of her time here in the back room playing games and writing stories.”
“Do you still have the stories?” I asked.
Mrs. Soledad shook her head. “She took them with her.”
“Did you ever read any of them?” Belinda asked.
“Once. They were mystery stories. They were stories where puzzle crimes were invented and the cops tried to figure it out, and the criminals got away with it.”
“Not too unusual,” I said.
“No. It wouldn’t have been unusual, except that it was coming from Caroline. I lay down here at night, I locked my door. I didn’t trust her, and finally I wasn’t sure I could trust her with Ronnie. That was just instinct, nothing to validate it. Anyway, she graduated with high grades, and Ronnie got through on a hair and a prayer, and they got in the university, though Ronnie just barely managed it. I remember asking Caroline, trying to be mother-like, what she was going to major in. You know what she answered? ‘Cleverness.’”
“What did you make of that?” I asked.
“I took her at her word. I think her life was about manipulation. She’s returning the favor of what was done to her, by her mother and by a horde of men and lovers. I think she sees the world as just one big game to survive. She’s just going through the motions, and she’s going to try and make other people go through the motions she wants them to go through. Not because they have done something to her, but because they haven’t. Because they are just innocents that she can hurt and make miserable. The way she was made miserable. Worst part is, she had her own child.”
“A child?” I said.
Ms. Soledad nodded. “She had a child when she was thirteen, right before she came to be with me, by one of the men who raped her, or misled her…all the same. It’s rape no matter how they had sex with her. I think this man was someone she really cared about, someone who had really done a number on her. From some things she said I got the feeling if there was anyone she might have trusted, it was this man.”
“I assume that trust evaporated after she had the child and the man left?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Ms. Soledad said. “I think she always had something for this guy. Maybe she gave him all the love she had left and could never quite take it back. In a way, I hope not. That shows a side of her that’s more truly human than most of what I saw. But her getting knocked up like that, it was just like her mother. History repeating itself.”
“What happened to the child?” Belinda asked.
“A relative or a family friend ended up with the child. I don’t really know any more than that. Maybe she put it up for adoption, but the story I heard was the one about the relative or family friend. I also heard they died. But it could have just been a story. I don’t even know if the child is alive. I just know that she and Ronnie went to the university in Camp Rapture, and that I told Ronnie to watch herself, to make new friends. Ronnie began to write me, and she told me that she thought she was gay, and that she had fallen in love with Caroline. Thing is, I don’t care who loves who, as long as it’s healthy, and there wasn’t anything healthy about Caroline.”
“More gamesmanship?” I asked.
“Exactly. It’s like Caroline was petting and grooming Ronnie for something mean. I think Caroline was always about something mean. And she was patient. She could wait a long time to do what she wanted to do, and the closer you were to her, the more likely you were to be a victim. My dog here, George, he had a companion, Albert. The day Caroline left I found Albert floating in a bucket of water out back of the house. It was a bucket I used to catch runoff from the roof. I put it on my flower beds. I had a hard time believing he climbed up there to get a drink and fell in. I think Caroline, as a kind of going-away present, dunked him in there and held him under until he drowned.”
Outside thunder rumbled, like God falling down stairs.
“How did Ronnie take Caroline going missing?” I asked.
“Last letter I got from Ronnie she said she felt both sad and relieved. I think she had started to listen to me, or perhaps due to events there she had come to believe that Caroline was a real troubled little girl. I hate Caroline for what I think she became, but I feel
awfully sorry for her too, but I’m glad she’s gone and I’m glad she’s dead.”
“We don’t know she is for a fact,” I said.
“But that’s how it usually is in these cases, isn’t it?” Mrs. Soledad said.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s how it is.”
“You know what I think?” Mrs. Soledad said. “I think she tried to manipulate someone as bad as she was, maybe someone worse. And, like she did with my little dog, they killed her for the sport of it. It’s sad and wrong of me, but I hope so. It’s bad enough her killer is loose in the world, but it’s a better place with her gone. And you want to know my guess? Whoever killed Caroline killed Ronnie, otherwise I would have heard from her by now. We were too close. That’s why I agreed to talk with you. I want you to find whoever killed her and make them pay, even if they did kill that monster Caroline.”
“We’ll do our best to find out what happened,” I said.
“One more thing. I have something of Caroline’s, though I doubt it’s of any importance.”
Mrs. Soledad got up and went into a back room and came back with a little red book done up in leather. “I think this is something that one of her many daddies had. I think she kept it. Maybe she had some connection with the owner, or maybe she just liked the book. I read a little but couldn’t get much out of it. It was behind the bed, hung up on the headboard at the back. Way it was back there, it was hard to see. I found it when I took the bed apart. I don’t think she meant to leave it.”
Mrs. Soledad gave me the book. The cover, like the rest of the book, was solid red, but in gold letters was written: Leather Maiden, Jerzy Fitzgerald. I opened it up. Inside was a handwritten inscription. “To the best girl in the world.” I thanked Mrs. Soledad and slipped the book in my back pocket.
“She read that book all the time, and Edgar Allan Poe. She loved a story called ‘The Premature Burial.’ That was her favorite. She found an old movie of the story. She said it was different than the short story, but she liked it anyway. She watched it a lot.”
“You think that was odd?” Belinda asked.
“I like Poe and I liked the movie. Lots of people do. But she was drawn to it for different reasons than you and I. She saw things with a different eye. Now, unless you want another cup of tea, that’s about all I have.”
“No, ma’am, we’re good. We’ll use your restroom if we may, and then move on.”
She pointed to its location.
“One thing,” I said. “Do you really have a .357?”
She reached under the couch cushions and pulled it out. “I decided I didn’t really need it.”
“That’s good. You don’t have kids here anymore, do you?”
“No,” she said, replacing the gun. “I decided after Caroline, and what happened to poor Albert, and now sweet Ronnie, that I had had enough. There’s only so much do-gooding a do-gooder can do.”
34
The rain had slowed considerably and the wind was no longer blowing when we went out on the front porch. I captured Mrs. Soledad’s chairs before we left, and she took them inside and then came back with something in her hand.
“I have a few of these, so you can have this one.”
I took it. It was a photograph of Ronnie, for reference. I didn’t mention that I had a DVD for reference. I thanked her, and Belinda and I went out to the car. Mrs. Soledad waved at us from her porch as we sat in the car, the motor running and the heater on.
We drove away from there, and after about fifteen minutes on the road, the sky turned clear. I shut off my wipers and we drove along until the sun came out and it turned hot. I turned off the heater. We stopped at a hamburger joint in a little town and ate lunch. Sitting there, eating our burgers and sipping sodas, I said, “What did you think about what Mrs. Soledad said?”
“I don’t think she told us the half of it,” Belinda said. “Caroline was probably worse than Mrs. Soledad could express. I actually think she was holding back.”
“I got the same feeling,” I said. “I think it was hard for her to come down on someone that way.”
“Yeah, that’s how I feel,” Belinda said. “But what I can’t figure is, where is Ronnie?”
“Think it could be like Ms. Soledad said—that whoever got Caroline may have gotten her too?”
“And what about the girl who’s missing now, the one whose boyfriend was hacked up?”
“Tabitha. Yeah. I thought about her too. No doubt in my mind, it’s all connected, and I think it may have to do with the Geek.”
I had told Belinda all about the Geek, and she took a moment to consider. She said, “It’s all like an ugly game. With puzzle pieces and clues, and blind alleys.”
“And red herrings,” I said. “Thing is, we don’t know it’s a game anyone’s playing. In the long run we may not learn a damn thing more than we know now.”
“That’s true,” Belinda said, “but we will have had an interesting road trip.”
35
When we got back into Camp Rapture, I took Belinda home. We enjoyed each other’s company, but I sensed that a little alone time for the two of us wouldn’t be a bad idea. Too much togetherness had begun to tug at us.
I went by the newspaper, which was closed, and used my key to get in and sat down at my desk and banged out a column that my mind was halfway invested in. When I was finished I e-mailed it to Timpson’s computer so that she’d have my column for next week.
When I went out to the car to go home, I thought I’d call Belinda, realized I had turned my phone off at some point and had not turned it back on. I brought it to life, and when I did, messages popped up.
One was from Jimmy.
I listened. He and Trixie were out of town, doing what he had told me he wanted to do. Mom and Dad had gone with them. They were going to be gone for several days. The message was simple and general and I assumed Trixie or Mom and Dad were nearby when he gave it.
The last message was from Booger. It just asked me to call.
I sat in the car for a moment, wondering if I should bother. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. I called.
“Hey,” a voice said. I knew it wasn’t Booger. He has a unique voice. But then again, so does Runt.
“Runt?” I said.
“Hey, punkin, how you doing down there in the wilds of East Texas?”
“Mixed report,” I said. “Thought I was calling Booger’s cell.”
“You are calling Booger’s cell. Well, one of them. I have another number for him, but he’s not answering it. He left yesterday, and left this phone with me. He sold me the bar for a dollar.”
“A dollar?”
“He does that now and again, so something happens to him, he says, it’ll be in good hands. I got a contract and everything. When he comes back, we tear up the contract and he gives me the dollar back. He thinks every time he goes out for a while, it might be his last time.”
“What if you didn’t want to give the bar back?”
“I always want to give it back,” Runt said. “He’s my compadre.”
“But if you didn’t?”
“Fireworks.”
I laughed. “I don’t doubt that. Where is he?”
“When he gives me the contract and I give him the dollar, it means he could be anywhere. He’s probably running whores in Oklahoma City, or Tulsa. That would be my guess. He might even be doing a cage match. He does that shit, you know?”
“No. I didn’t know.”
“Did do it, I mean. He got disqualified last time. Booger thought they really meant no rules. He poked a guy in the eyes and twisted the guy’s nut sack and bit off part of the fellow’s cheek. I think he got banned for life from cage matches, or some such shit. He said they had put him up in a hotel and given him a fruit basket, but after that little incident they locked him out of his room. He kicked the door down and got his clothes and the fruit basket. He’s nuts about oranges. I think he owes some kind of fine, which, of course, he’s unlikely to pay.” br />
“Booger is a man of mystery, for damn sure.”
“In your case, might be best you didn’t find out some of that mystery.”
“Well enough. You say you got another number for him?”
Runt gave me the number and I wrote it down.
“He misses you, boy,” Runt said. “For him, you’re the man.”
“I’ll buy him some flowers next time I see him, take him on a date.”
“You know what he really likes?”
“What would that be? Slow walks in the rain, puppy dogs and kitties?”
“Malted eggs. He likes oranges, but malted eggs, that’s his thing.”
“Malted eggs?”
“Like they sell for Easter. He’s like a nut for that stuff. One Easter weekend he put on five pounds eating that shit.”
“And I thought I knew a lot about Booger.”
“Nobody knows a lot about Booger,” Runt said.
I drove on home. I sat in the car out front of my place and flipped open my phone and dialed the number Runt had given me for Booger, let it ring as I got out of the car and went to the door. I had no sooner put the key in the door and turned the lock than I heard a phone ringing inside my house.
It was ringing in conjunction with the number I dialed, same timing.
I listened to it ring another time or two, went back to my car and got the .38 out of the glove box and went back to the door. I turned off my phone. The ringing stopped.
I pushed the door open and eased around the motorcycle there.
Sitting on my couch in his underwear with the open phone lying on his knee, a beer in one hand, a .45 in the other, grinning like he had just found a fifty-dollar gold piece, sporting a chest tattoo that said TIGHT NOOKIE IS PROOF OF GOD, was Booger.
“I was hoping you were a burglar,” Booger said. “That would have given me a reason to blow your head off.”