her, but she was nowhere to be seen.” The woman shrugged. “I just assumed Mister Carter hadn’t come back from his dinner break just yet and that the Santa thing was just a matter of a big sister picking at her little sister… And since then we’ve been so worried about finding Merrie I didn’t even think about him.”
The earlier notch of added concern was now joined by several more, and Deputy Carmichael felt every single one as each ratcheted into place. It wasn’t that a missing child hadn’t been important from the outset, but this was a small town. Kids around here were never really missing; they were just off being kids, daydreaming and hiding in plain sight while parental hearts skipped a beat or two.
However, something suddenly felt very different about this situation, and he didn’t like it at all.
“So that’s the missing girl’s name?” he asked, a thin but noticeably real edge of urgency had crept into his voice. “Merrie?”
She nodded. “Yes. Merrie Frances Callahan.”
“Would you happen to know where this Mister Carter goes on his dinner break?”
“No…” She shook her head.
“How about what type of car he drives?”
“It’s older. Kind of an orangish-brown,” she replied hesitantly, then paused to think. A heartbeat later she added, “It’s a four door, and it has a vinyl roof. Black, I think… Definitely dark… He’s only been here a few days, and I never really paid much attention to the make or anything. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Skip told her as he glanced quickly up the row of vehicles ahead of him as well as the traffic on the street. “That’s a good description. Did he normally park out here, or in the back?”
“In the back,” the manager replied.
“When you were looking for Merrie did you happen to notice if his car was out there?”
“No. I’m sorry. I didn’t even think to look for it.”
“Do you know where he’s staying?”
“I believe Mister Bremerton said he put him up at the Greenleaf,” she replied. Obvious fear was now welling in her voice. “You don’t think that…”
Skip filled in behind her failing words. “I’m just covering all the bases, Missus Babbs, that’s all. But I need you to do me a favor. I want you to go in and call back to the office, and give Sheriff Morton all of that information you just gave me, as well as a description of Carter and the girl. Tell Clovis that I told you to talk directly to him, okay? Can you do that for me?”
He could see that Missus Babbs was now wearing a far more concerned expression than when he had first arrived on the scene. She nodded in the affirmative, but didn’t say a word.
“Okay, let’s get moving,” he told her.
There was far more urgency in their pace now. It didn’t take uncanny powers of observation for Skip to put these pieces together and see that the picture they might well be forming wasn’t very pretty.
The gap between them and the crowd shrank quickly now, and as he expected, once he could start making out faces Skip recognized that he knew several people in the clutch. Those he didn’t actually know, he registered as having seen before. After all, Hulis wasn’t really as big as it looked on a map. Truth is, the majority of it was farmland spread out around a spot on the road that just happened to have its own post office. The population was relatively small, so it was easy to become familiar with faces, especially when you’d lived here your entire life and had a good memory.
“You have to find her,” a voice cried at him as they moved through the parting bodies. At almost the same instant, a hand clamped tightly onto his arm.
“Go on ahead in,” Skip told the manager as he came to an unscheduled halt. “And, make that call right now.”
Missus Babbs continued on, and Skip turned to see Elizabeth Callahan staring at him, a tight mask of worry clawing at her features as she clung to his arm. “Something’s wrong,” she said.
“I’m going in to look for her, Missus Callahan,” he said.
She shook her head, moaning, “This isn’t like Merrie at all.”
“Has anything been bothering her lately?” Skip asked. “Anything that might give her a reason to run off? Trouble at school or at home, maybe?”
“No, noth…” she said, then backpedaled almost immediately. “Wait… She said she wasn’t feeling well when I picked her up. I finally got her to tell me that she was worried about going to Hell because she was having bad thoughts about someone…”
“Bad thoughts? What kind of thoughts? About who?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Do you think she was bothered by it enough to run away?”
A fresh round of tears began welling in her eyes, overflowing to embark on a trek downward across her cheeks. She blinked hard, and then answered in a choked whine, “I don’t… I don’t know… I… just… Please find her…”
He locked eyes with her and found himself searching for something to say. Unfortunately, he wasn’t having much luck where words were concerned.
The simple fact was, it hadn’t been all that long ago that Deputy Carmichael had been just plain “Skip” Carmichael, a former high school football star who had somehow been lucky enough to avoid being drafted into the service, thereby missing the horrors of Vietnam, unlike some of his friends. He’d had little ambition where furthering his education was concerned, but he’d always wanted to be a cop. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much luck when applying to accredited police academies in the bigger cities.
Eventually, he gave up and contented himself with working on the family farm. After that, he had no greater plans in mind other than convincing Kathy Higgins to marry him.
Then, the position for a deputy sheriff opened up. Sheriff Morton had taken a chance on him and soon afterward was making calls. No matter what the old man said, Skip knew he had called in some markers on his behalf.
And now here he was, on the verge of what could be his perfect career. The only problem was that the career was still on the horizon. Right now, he was just a deputy sheriff in a small town where the worst thing that ever happened was a drunk and disorderly call that didn’t even end up on the books because it was someone you knew and you just drove them home, or let them sleep it off in the holding cell for a few hours.
He had been trained, yes; Sheriff Morton had seen to that. But he hadn’t been prepared for something like this. Besides, training wasn’t everything; experience was often the real teacher, and that was something he sorely lacked. Even he would admit that he was green enough to sprout roots if he stood still long enough.
And it was for that very reason, as well as the fact that in Hulis everyone seemed to be family whether related by blood or not, that he did the only thing he could think of to do. He opened his mouth, and what came out was something that would have caused any seasoned law enforcement veteran to cringe.
“Don’t worry Missus Callahan,” he said. “It’s going to be fine. I promise I’ll find Merrie. I’m sure she’s just fine. I promise…”
PLASTIC slammed hard against plastic. The initial noise made by the sudden clash of handset versus cradle was short-lived, but the echo and resulting forlorn ping of the telephone’s metal ringer hung on a bit longer. Not only did they linger in the air, they joined together and carried through the open transom above the closed door of Sheriff Morton’s office. The blended sound continued, unhindered by obstacles from that point on as it zipped across the span of the room and entered Clovis’s ears.
She swiveled around, startled by the sudden noise and the resulting commotion. Through the large windows on the back wall she could see that the sheriff was up from his desk and moving about his office in a purposeful fashion. It had only been a couple of minutes since Missus Babbs had called and asked to speak to him, apparently at Skip’s insistence. She didn’t yet have the details, but she got the impression they would be coming soon. The urgency in the woman’s voice had already given her a very bad feeling.
And now there was this.
A few seconds later the office door swung open and Sheriff Morton stormed out. He was heading straight for her desk, one arm stuffed into a sleeve of his coat while he fought to fill the other as well. An index card was tucked between his lips.
Given his expression, he didn’t seem like he was angry. Actually, he appeared more than just a little
