Memories

Sundown in zion

Chapter 36

            Nelson drove to the city limits of Connorville where he saw a pleasant farmhouse located just inside the city and a part of a large area of pastureland extending into the county. The land around the farmhouse had once been beautifully landscaped, but now appeared to be nurtured by one not talented in the art of pruning. The care was apparent, the effects not striking, like the results of a husband’s dressing a once fastidious but now helpless spouse. He continued to the far extent of the farm on which a smaller house, evidently unoccupied, stood. Nelson saw the glint of an automobile windshield from a concealed place behind the house. He pulled into the drive, drove the length of the drive, turned, and parked behind a Connorville Police cruiser. Sergeant Ralph Patterson stood behind it. Both vehicles sat beyond the view of those on the main highway.

            The sergeant held a large manila envelope in his left hand and held it to his side as he extended his right to shake Nelson’s. “Thanks for texting me,” he said. “I was already in the vicinity and this worked out well.” He smiled and added, “I hope you understand the need for secrecy.”

            “I do,” Nelson said.

            “It’s always better in Connorville if the right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing,” Patterson said. “I keep my own counsel.”

            “That’s a good practice anywhere,” Nelson said. “Even team members need to know only what concerns the mission.”

            “I’m not sure what the word ‘team’ means in our police department,” Patterson said. “I think it means different things to different folks.”

            “Wouldn’t surprise me,” Nelson said. “Not a bit. Were you able to find much?” He nodded toward the envelope.”

            “What they had in Saline County,” Patterson said. “They are first responders to runaways from the Ransom Center. They usually make an investigation and record it as just that, a runaway.”

            “Do they ever catch one?”

            “Not the police,” Patterson said, “although the so-called ‘security force’ at the center caught one last year.”

            “I think I may have heard about that one,” Nelson said, “if it involved a young girl sent to the center because of an eating disorder.”

            “That’s the one,” Patterson said. “Seems she was just craving a cheeseburger, or maybe two cheeseburgers. They found her at a local diner with crumbs on her face.” He smiled.

            “You have records on the ones they didn’t find?”

            “Four over the last year and a half,” Patterson said.

            “Anything else?”

            “Some notes I jotted down,” Patterson said. “I happen to know some families who sent their kids to the center. Since you are interested in it, I checked and a couple of them are willing to have the kids talk to you about their experiences there. One is the cheeseburger gal.”

            “Are there many successful experiences?”

            “In some cases, yes. In fact, the center seems to have a good success rate, for a church-funded facility.”

            “Interesting,” Nelson said. “I’ll contact the families and set up interviews.”

            “So you think the Ransom Center connects in some way to the death of the young?”

            “I’m not sure.”

            “But you believe in connections?”

            “I believe in gravity,” Nelson said, “the attraction of one thing to another. It’s how we located enemy hideouts in my last profession.”

            Patterson looked confused.

            “The top dogs don’t show themselves except when nobody is looking,” Nelson said. “But they have to eat and,” he paused, “satisfy other needs and urges. So gravity takes over. Then it’s just a matter of following the donkeys, girls, and young boys.”

            “Young boys? Going to join up?”

            “Sometimes,” Nelson said. “Not always. But more to our point, our magnet is the group called the Soul Warriors and the places they hang out.”

            “That would be the church and their hunting club,” Patterson said, “when they aren’t helping at the Ransom Center.”

            “That’s where I’m starting,” Nelson said, raising the envelope Patterson had brought. The clouds were gathering for another spell of rain. Nelson tossed the packet into his truck and turned. “Thanks, and Sheriff Love says I can trust you.”

            “As much as you should trust anyone around here,” Patterson said, “and I wouldn’t make a habit of it.”

            “I won’t,” Nelson said, “and thanks again.”

            The two men shook hands and Nelson waited while Patterson eased the patrol car onto the main road and disappeared. He opened the packet, examined the papers and then walked to his truck and sat in the cab with the door open. He took his phone from his pocket and began making calls and writing notes.

            Nearly 30 minutes later, Nelson drove his truck from behind the house and drove back into Connorville. Reaching the city limits, he consulted his notes and began a twisted route to a new subdivision on the north side of town. He turned into the only entrance and followed the street until he reached a cul-de-sac, whereupon he turned and drove to the last house on the right. He parked his truck in the drive and walked to the door. Before he could ring the doorbell, the door opened and a tanned woman wearing a tennis outfit stood waiting. “Are you the deputy?”

            “Gideon Nelson, Mrs. Anderson,” he said, extending his ID. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”

            “You’re lucky,” she said while examining his credentials. “Bonnie Sue is a bit under the weather today. Nothing major, just enough to stay home. Sorry for how I’m dressed but you caught me leaving the club. My tennis date was rained out.”

            “No problem,” Nelson said. “If I could just speak to your daughter a few minutes, I’ll be on my way.”

            “Come in,” she said. “May I get you a glass of tea or soft drink?” She had started into the foyer but turned and eyed Nelson carefully. “You don’t wear a uniform?” Her eyes settled on his biceps.

            “I’m on special assignment,” he said. “Some people find the uniform off-putting.”

            She smiled. “I would imagine you look good in a uniform,” she said. She turned and as she did, she threw her head back, spreading her long, brunette hair, evenly across her shoulders. She was well-shaped, perhaps in her early forties and her smooth, shapely legs moved effortlessly beneath her shorts. She walked with a brisk, business-like, pace that made her breasts rise and fall beneath her top with seeming enthusiasm. Nelson followed her into the living room where a young girl, apparently the woman’s daughter, sat on a couch waiting.

            “Bonnie Sue,” the woman said, “this is the deputy I told you about. He wants to talk to you.”

            The girl didn’t speak, only lowered her eyes and stared at the floor as if deciphering a puzzle printed on its surface. She was in her teens and substantially overweight. She wore a too-large pullover advertising the Connorville Cougars athletic team. She wore sweatpants that fit tightly on her flabby legs. She work a pair of black tennis shoes, the laces untied and spread out on the floor. She had reddish hair and freckles mixed with signs of acne across her face. Her hair appeared to have been fashioned at one time, but lately unattended. She began to busy herself with a loose thread on her pants.

            Her mother motioned for Nelson to take a chair opposite the couch and she sat beside her daughter. She punched the child gently with her elbow and said. “Straighten up and say hello to our guest.”

            “’Lo,” Bonnie Sue said without raising her eyes.”

            “Hello,” Nelson said. “My name is Gideon. I’m with the Armistead County Sheriff’s department.”

            “I didn’t do nothin’,” Bonnie Sue said.

            Of course not,” Nelson said. “That’s not why I’m here.”

            Bonnie Sue didn’t speak.

            “I’m working on an important case,” Nelson said, “and there is a good possibility that you might be able to help me with it. Help me solve a crime.”

            Bonnie Sue looked up for the first time. “Me?”

            “Yes, you,” Nelson said. “I’ll bet you are the type that notices things and you just might have noticed something that could help us with our case.”

            “What case?”

            “The case,” Nelson said, “involves the death of a young girl named Abbey Stubblefield, but I don’t imagine you know her.”

            Bonnie Sue’s eyes opened wider and she looked at Nelson. “Is she the one they found in a ditch shot to death?”

            “Yes,” Nelson said. “She was found in the county so we are investigating it instead of the Connorville police.”

            “I don’t know nothin’ about her except I heard she got killed,” Bonnie Sue said.

            Her mother poked her again. “I don’t know ‘anything’ about her,” she said. “We mustn’t let Deputy Nelson think we talk like rednecks.”

            Bonnie Sue’s eyes dropped toward the floor again.

            “I understand,” Nelson said. “She didn’t go to your school, in fact, she wasn’t even from Connorville.”

            Mrs. Anderson interrupted. “She was colored … black, or whatever they call themselves these days, wasn’t she?”

            Nelson only nodded and kept his attention on Bonnie Sue. “There may be a chance that you and Abbey knew another girl,” he said. “She’s the one I’m here about.”

            This aroused Bonnie Sue’s attention. She looked up again. “Another girl?”

            I think the two of you may have shared some time together in the medical center over in Saline County.”

            Bonnie Sue’s eyes shot down again. “I don’t know,” she said.

            “Her name was Bridgette,” Nelson said. “Bridgette Thompson.”

            This time, Bonnie Sue’s face moved up slowly until she stared in Nelson’s face. “She is so pretty,” she said. “Everybody thinks so.” She stopped and took a breath, then exhaled. “She was nice too.” She blinked. “Even to me.”

            “I can believe that,” Nelson said. “You seem like a nice person too.”

            For the first time during their conversation, Bonnie Sue’s face attempted a smile. “Me?”

            Her mother stirred. “Yes you, silly,” she said. “Now you help the man.”

            The face fell again. “She ran away,” Bonnie Sue said. “That made me so sad.”

            “That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Nelson said. “Do you have any idea why she might have run away?”

            “No.”

            “Did you talk to her much?”

            “A little.”

            “Did she seem unhappy?”

            This time Bonnie Sue thought before she spoke. She looked up and away and then said slowly, “Why should she be unhappy?” She thought again. “She hadn’t been there long and she was going to get to go home.” She said the last with almost a sense of pride. Then she added, “She is a swimmer, you know.”

            “I know,” Nelson said, “so was the girl who was killed.”

            “Bridgette was going to teach me to swim after we both got out,” Bonnie Sue said. “She promised.” She looked back at the floor and then at Nelson. “She promised she would.” Her eyes began to turn red.

            “Did she ever say why she was planning to run away?” Nelson said, but Bonnie Sue was through talking. Tears began to fall from her reddened eyes and she sobbed softly. Nelson moved his hand as if to reach and comfort her, but drew it back. “I can’t begin to thank you enough for helping me,” he said. “Would it be okay if I tell Sheriff Love how helpful you were?”

            She didn’t answer, but nodded her head almost imperceptibly.

            Mrs. Anderson showed Nelson to the door, and as they reached it said. “It’s so hard being a single mom, especially with a troubled child,” she said. “Dr. Anderson and I divorced five years ago, you know.”

            “No ma’am, I didn’t Nelson said. He thanked her and walked out. She stood with the door open, watching him. Then she turned and said loudly enough, though obviously not intending it, for Nelson to hear, “I goddam told you to answer the man’s questions, didn’t I? But no, you couldn’t pass up another opportunity to embarrass me, could you?” The sound of a slap echoed across the manicured lawn.

            Gideon Nelson got into his truck and left Connorville.