them.”
“Were you blackmailing them?”
Ernie nodded. “Most. We weren’t blackmailing the girl, though. We knew her, and knew she didn’t have any money.”
“What girl?” Jimmy asked.
“Ronnie Fisher,” Tabitha said.
“Wait a minute,” Jimmy said. “Caroline was on some DVD with a girl?”
“That’s right,” Tabitha said.
“Making out?” Jimmy asked.
“If eating her snatch like it was a hot taco is making out,” Ernie said, “then, yes, I would say they were making out. Also Caroline had one of those big rubber dongs—”
“Dildo,” Tabitha said.
“Yeah,” Ernie said. “Thanks, hon. One of them. With knots on it. They were putting that in a lot of places. So I guess they were making out, and then some.”
“Oh, shit,” Jimmy said, as if knowledge of the knots on the dildo was the final straw. “Who the hell is Ronnie Fisher?”
“I know who she is,” I said. “I can fill you in later.”
“You know?” Jimmy asked.
“Later,” I said to him.
“I don’t believe it,” Jimmy said.
“The DVDs show it,” Ernie said. “We’ve seen her on enough of them we can identify Caroline just by the birthmark on her ass. That ring any bells? A kind of strawberry-shaped birthmark. Almost purple in color. It’s something that really shows up on her skin and that nice ass of hers.”
“It’s a little too big, I think,” Tabitha said.
“The birthmark or her ass?” I asked.
“Both,” Tabitha said.
“You could have just seen that on my DVD with her,” Jimmy said.
“Could have,” Ernie said, “but didn’t. Trust me, the girl was a rodeo all by herself. She was the bull ride, the calf roping, and maybe even the rodeo clowns. She was a full evening of fun with a trip to the snow-cone stand afterward. She did it all.”
“Shut up, punk,” Jimmy said, and he looked as if he might be ready to pistol-whip Ernie.
“Cool your jets, Jimmy,” I said. “We want the whole story. That’s what we’re here for.”
“He doesn’t have to be gleeful about it,” Jimmy said. “He likes telling me this shit.”
“Your brother asked,” Ernie said, pointing at me.
“You’re right,” I said. “I did. Tell us about Caroline.”
“We weren’t close,” Ernie said. “She was part of our crew, ones who did the exploring. We called ourselves the Subterraneans.”
“How many of you were there?”
“Five, maybe six at first. Then Caroline, couple of others for a while. She added the later ones, two guys. Real odd guys, those two. We met her at school, talked a little, maybe too much, and I got to feeling a little too free with things—”
“He liked the way she looked,” Tabitha said, and the words were as stiff as a classroom full of boys watching a cheerleader tryout.
“Anyway,” Ernie said, “I talked about what we did. She wanted in. It all just seemed like fun then.”
“I don’t believe that,” Jimmy said. “That doesn’t sound like her at all. I would have known if she was involved in anything like that. You’re making this up.”
Ernie shook his head.
Tabitha said, “She could sound a lot of ways. She could fit anywhere she wanted to, or had to. Think about it. Was she with you all the time at night? Wasn’t, was she? Slipped away with you at odd moments, am I right?”
Jimmy didn’t say anything, but I could tell Tabitha had nailed it.
“Go on,” I said to Ernie.
“We were just playing like we were flirting with death, sneaking around, taking pretty mild chances. I mean, if we got caught breaking into buildings we could have gotten in some bad doo-doo, but it wasn’t life-threatening if you were careful. I did have a pretty nasty fall once, through the roof of an old rotten building. But I was okay. That was as close as it got. But with Caroline, I got the feeling she was dating death.”
“How colorful,” Jimmy said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Ernie said. “She had this guy she brought around with her. He was right out of someplace just due south of hell.”
“More colorful phrasing,” Jimmy said. “Perhaps you should move from history to literature. You could make up these kinds of stories and get paid for them.”
“He’s not making up anything,” Tabitha said. “We called him the Geek. She called him Stitch. He wasn’t the only guy she brought around either. There was that other one.”
I turned my attention to Tabitha. “Who else?”
“Some other guy, a kind of greasy drunk. Always showed up with a six-pack, stinking of liquor, and he had a flask with him. He’d finish off the beers then drink from that. Time it got late, he was feeling no pain.”
“How did Caroline act?”
“Exploring for Caroline wasn’t a big enough thrill,” Tabitha said. “She was always trying to find out where the line was, then step over it. Got so we were, like, you know, taking big chances, not scoping things out like before, not preparing. We just started going right at it. We nearly got caught by a watchman over at the fertilizer plant. We started to have like minor accidents, wasn’t as fun as before. We were letting her push us around. She could do it too. Not always directly, but one way or another you found yourself doing pretty much what she wanted.”
Ernie nodded agreement, added, “The Geek found a dead cat on the road once. He ran it up the flagpole on campus. It was quite a chance he was taking, that we all were taking, because we were with him, in his van. He parked at the curb and just walked up big as you please and hooked the cat to the rising line, and jacked it up. I thought that was pretty weird. The Geek, he thought that was some funny business.”
“How absolutely normal of you to be offended,” Jimmy said.
“We weren’t like them,” Ernie said. “Not even a little bit. One time we slipped into the Catholic church. Us and Caroline, the Geek and the other guy, the drunk. But when we got inside, they had some explosives—”
“And inside the church you blew up the Virgin Mary’s statue?”
“We didn’t,” Ernie said. “They did…You know about it?”
“It was in the news, Sherlock,” I said. “I heard about the cat too. What about the drunk? Did he have a name?”
“Caroline and Stitch called him Glug.”
“Glug?”
“Like the sound you make when you drink a beer. You know, glug, glug, glug. Least that’s how Caroline explained it.”
“How do you think she knew these guys?”
Ernie heaved his shoulders.
Tabitha said, “She may have picked them up at a bar, for all we know.”
“I’m pretty sure they all had some kind of history,” Ernie said. “Her and the Geek and Glug. It was obvious they all knew each other.”
“Were they the same age as Caroline?” I asked.
Ernie shook his head. “Older. I guess the Geek was forty or so. The other guy, he maybe was in his mid- thirties. I got the impression they were military. The Geek said things now and then made me think he had fought in a war. Maybe not the Iraq war, but something else. Mercenary stuff. But it could have just been bullshit.”
“They were creepy,” Tabitha said, “way they looked at me, like I was a pork chop.”
“Yeah.” Ernie said. “Sex was on Caroline’s mind all the time. And not just straight sex, or interesting sex. Caroline was always talking about how it would be fun to have a threesome, talking about me and Tabitha and her. Use all the holes, she said.”
