Chasing The Dead

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Alex followed Bethany into the trailer. It was twenty-four feet long and eight feet wide, not counting the pop-out dinette, which was like a restaurant booth with a cushioned horseshoe-shaped bench. A sleeping bag and pillow were laid out on the bench, turning it into Charlotte’s bedroom. There was an unmade sofa sleeper at one end of the trailer flanked on each side by a small wardrobe closet. A Murphy bed was mounted in the wall above the sofa, Alex guessing that Bethany got the sofa sleeper, leaving the Murphy bed for Joanie. The bathroom and shower were at the back of the trailer. Kitchen appliances were mounted on both sides in the middle, an ironing board leaning against the dishwasher, the iron on the floor. The air was stale with fast food and dirty laundry.

Charlotte scrambled onto the dinette bench, pushing the sleeping bag into a corner and hugging her spatula to her bony chest. Bethany set the grocery bag on the narrow kitchen counter.

“I gotta use the john,” Bethany said.

Alex leafed through a stack of mail on the kitchen counter, finding an open bank statement from the month before. She ran her finger down the transactions, noting the direct deposit of Bethany’s modest paychecks from Clay County and an ending balance of twenty-eight dollars. Beneath that she found an open envelope filled with cash, the top edge of a hundred-dollar bill sticking out. She picked the envelope up, doing a quick count that totaled five thousand dollars. She put the envelope and the bank statement back where she found them when she heard the toilet flush, glancing at the girl, who was watching her, expressionless.

Alex smiled, giving her a thumbs-up, smiling again when Charlotte balled her fingers together, her thumb poking up. Alex nodded, touching her forefinger to her thumb in the universal okay sign, clapping when Charlotte did the same. Encouraged, Alex shrugged, opening her palms out, as if to say, What else? Charlotte didn’t hesitate, giving Alex her middle finger.

Bethany came out of the bathroom. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t know what that means. She picked it from me flipping people off all the time.”

Alex laughed. “Thanks. I’d hate to think I made such a bad impression. Have you gotten Charlotte any therapy? There’s been a lot of progress treating kids with autism.”

Bethany shook her head. “Not that I don’t want to, but when am I gonna do that? I leave here at three thirty to get to work, and I’m there from four to midnight. By the time I get home and get some sleep, I hardly have time to do what I need to get done before I got to get back to work. And how am I gonna pay for it? The county’s insurance don’t cover it, and I ain’t poor enough for Medicaid.”

Alex wanted to tell her to use the five thousand bucks sitting buried in her stack of mail but was afraid Bethany would throw her out for pushing too hard and for snooping. She’d have to make that call to Child Protective Services after all, opting for sympathy for the time being.

“That’s a shitty crack in the system to fall through.”

“Tell me about it. But you didn’t come here to listen to my troubles. I guess you want to talk about Joanie.”

“If you don’t mind.”

Bethany cocked her head to one side. “Quit pretending that I’ve got a choice. Let’s go back outside. I need a cigarette.”

They sat in the folding chairs. Bethany lit up, exhaling a long plume of smoke.

“See there? I don’t smoke in the trailer because I know that’s bad for Charlotte.”

“Good for you. When did you find out about Joanie?”

“Friday afternoon, just after I got to work. The supervisor called me in to her office. There was a detective waiting for me and he told what happened and asked me to go to the morgue to identify Joanie’s body.”

“That must have been quite a shock,” Alex said.

“Not so much. With her, it was always a matter of when, not if, she’d end up like that. I told her so till I was blue in the face, but she wouldn’t listen. She’d get that drug addict’s dreamy look and say someday she was gonna find a guy who’d take her away from all that, and I’d ask her how that was gonna happen when all the guys she met just wanted her to suck their dicks, swallow, and get the hell out of their cars.”

“Sounds like you two argued a lot.”

“Pretty much all we did. I shoulda thrown her out twenty different times, but she was my sister and no matter what she did, I couldn’t turn my back on her. ”

“Must have been hard on Charlotte.”

Bethany nodded and took a drag on her cigarette. “Hard on all of us.”

Whatever grief Bethany felt was too tied up in anger and resignation to find its way to the surface, but Alex could see hints of it in her unsteady hands and glistening eyes.

“How did Joanie end up on the street?”

“You want the whole father-raped-her-strung-out-junkie sob story or you want me to just cut to the chase and tell you that selling her pussy and trading blow jobs for crystal was the only thing she was ever halfway good at?”

“I get the picture. Did she ever try rehab?”

Bethany laughed. “Shit! Whenever it was too cold to be outside and she was too mad at me to come home.”

“How’d she pay for that?”

“Medicaid, except for when she did a stint at Fresh Start, that fancy place up north of the airport.”

Alex was familiar with it. Fresh Start was the closest thing to the Betty Ford Clinic in the Kansas City area, drawing an affluent clientele from around the region. Medicaid patients didn’t fit their preferred patient profile.

“How’d she pay for a place like that?”

Bethany took another drag on her cigarette, lifting her chin and blowing out the smoke. “I wouldn’t know.”

Alex didn’t believe her, not the way Bethany looked away and her voice took on a phony nonchalance. Rather than press the point, Alex filed it under leads to follow up on, knowing she could subpoena Fresh Start for the information.”

“When was the last time you talked to her before she died?”

“The day she was killed. She called me all excited that she had some big date that night.”

“Did she say with who?”

“No, and I didn’t ask. I figured it was more of her bullshit.”

“If she did have a date with someone special and she wanted to get all dressed up, would she come here to shower and change?”

“I don’t know where else she’d go.”

“Did the detective tell you that Joanie wasn’t wearing anything when her body was found?” Bethany nodded. “Do you have any idea what she might have worn if she was going out for a special evening?”

“Only thing she had was a satiny black dress she said always showed off her tits and ass real nice.”

“Do you know if that’s what she was wearing that night?”

“Must have been because when I came home from the morgue, I gathered all her things and took them to Goodwill and I didn’t see that dress.”

Rossi’s investigative report didn’t mention finding the dress or any other clothing belonging to Joanie.

“Did the detective ask you about what Joanie might have been wearing?”

“No. Only thing he asked me was if it was Joanie lying in the morgue. When I told him it was her, he said not to worry ’cause they got the guy that did it.”

Bethany took a final pull on her cigarette, the smoke curling around her until a wisp of air coming through the trees blew it away. She turned in her chair, facing Alex, her brow furrowed.

“You think maybe she really did have a date that night and was wearing that dress when she was killed?”

“Maybe.”

“That fella they arrested, what’d he do with the dress?”

“I don’t think he did anything with it. He was living in a tent down in Liberty Park. That’s where they had sex, but he says he didn’t rape her. She told him that she had to go home to get cleaned up for some big date. That was the last time he saw her.”

Bethany gave her a long look. “So you really think he’s not the one who killed her?”

“I haven’t seen all the evidence the police have against him, but at least that part of his story matches up to what Joanie told you.”

Bethany dropped the cigarette on the ground and clasped her hands in her lap.

“Joanie always did look good in that dress.”

She lowered her chin, quiet at first. Her chest began to swell, her shoulders heaving. She snaked her arms around her middle, trying to hold back her grief, then giving in and sobbing.

“I shoulda been there. I shoulda been there.”

Alex put her hand on Bethany’s shoulder. “Been where?”

Bethany lifted her head, tears streaming down her face. “In the garage the first time our daddy raped her. On the street the first time she traded her pussy for dope. I shoulda been there, but I wasn’t. She was my baby sister and I shoulda been there. I shoulda saved her.”

She began to cough, a convulsive smoker’s hacking that forced her to stop crying. When the cough subsided, she stood, red-eyed and out of breath, ashamed that she’d broken down in front of Alex. She lit another cigarette, putting her armor back on.

“You can go. We’re done here.”

“Almost. Who stays with Charlotte when you’re at work?”

Bethany folded her arms against her breasts. “That child is ten years old. She don’t need nobody to stay with her.”

“Of course not.”

Alex walked away, stopping and turning around when she reached the end of the concrete slab. Bethany was standing at the trailer door, one foot on the step, watching her.

“You’ve got five thousand dollars sitting on your kitchen counter. That would buy a lot of therapy for Charlotte.”

Bethany glared at her, drawing deeply on her cigarette and exhaling the smoke through her nose.

“You come snooping around here again, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Is that money yours or Joanie’s?”

Bethany flicked the butt on the ground and opened the door to the trailer.

“Doesn’t matter anymore, now, does it?”