“Speak up, son.”
You could see the boy’s mind looking for a way to say it, whatever awful thing it was he’d come out here to tell her husband.
“Let it out, Homer. It’s all right, honey,” Daisy said.
Those bedroom eyes looked like they were liable to start filling up again. But Homer bravely took a deep breath and got himself under control.
“They’ve done…I’m sorry, Sheriff, seems like they took another one.”
“Another girl.”
He rubbed his sleeve roughly across his eyes. “Yessir. I reckon I’m not too good at being the bearer of bad news. I just came from telling Mr. and Mrs. Beers about what happened to their daughter. They’re pretty shook up.”
Daisy wanted to get up and hug the boy.
She would have, too, if not for how embarrassed he’d be in front of Franklin. It had been a tough year for him. He lost his American father when they had that explosion out at the fertilizer factory here about a year ago. Family had to move out of their house after that. Staying in some apartment over the hardware store now. And his momma, Rosalinda, who was originally from Juarez, was never any damn good. Drugs or alcohol, everybody said.
His mother just upped and took off with some married John Deere regional sales manager from Wichita here about six months ago. People said she and her lover boy run off together. Went down Juarez and kept on going. Nothing runs like a Deere, as they say on television. Rosalinda left Homer to take care of his baby sister, graduate high school, and do his part-time courthouse job all at the same time. Last June, after graduation, that’s when he’d come to see Franklin about a job on the force.
Of course, Franklin had said yes. He always did, somebody needed something in this town. And now she saw those damn worry lines around her husband’s pale gray eyes coming back again. Those damn worry lines never stayed gone too long lately, worries piling up like they were around here. Illegals, drugs, border shootings. And now the abductions of four beautiful young girls.
The shit around here was knee deep and rising.
The boy looked over to the window, watching something out there maybe, trying to compose himself.
“She’s just a baby, you know, Sheriff? Not even fourteen.”
“I know what you mean, Homer,” Franklin said. He let go of a sigh and shoved his chair all the way back from the table. Then he reached for his boots.
Daisy knew what Franklin meant, too. She’d felt it coming as soon as she’d seen Homer at the door. Everybody for miles around was living in fear until they were sick with it. They’d finally sent a posse out on horseback to look for the girls. Now another one had gone missing. They’d been snatched from their houses in the middle of the night. Stolen from the roadside in broad daylight, waiting on the school bus or coming out of the Piggly-Wiggly. Drugged and trussed up and hauled across the border to God knows where all or whatever.
White slavery, that’s what her friend and neighbor June Weaver said it was. Underage prostitution. Steal the little Anglo girls and put them to work in the cathouses south of the border. June worked the switchboard down at the courthouse. Which meant obviously that not much that happened in this county, good or bad, escaped her notice.
“Who’d they take?” Franklin said in a tired voice. He was getting to his feet, brushing cornbread crumbs from the front of his jeans. He eyed his deputy who’d managed to pull himself back together.
“Joe Beers’s youngest daughter, Sheriff. Name is Charlotte. Didn’t come home from the picture show.”
“This evenin’, then?”
“Yessir.”
“What time is it? I mean right now?”
“Just after nine p.m., Sheriff. Charlotte went to the six o’clock with her girl cousins. Supposed to meet up with them at the Rexall after the show. Didn’t sit with them at all. Went to sit up in the balcony with her boyfriend.”
“Hollis.”
“That’s him all right.”
“When did you get the call?”
“About an hour ago. I was out past Yancey in the Crown Vic, looking for our posse. It was Junebug on the radio told me. They got the boyfriend in custody already. He says she went to the little girl’s room during the show and never came back.”
“What about her purse?”
“Pardon me?”
“She take her purse to the ladies’ room?”
“I don’t know, Sheriff.”
“Homer?”
“Yessir?”
“The posse. You say it like they were vigilantes. They aren’t. They volunteered to go. And I deputized ever one of them boys.”
“Yessir, I reckon that’s true enough.”
“I know you wanted to ride with them. Your time will come soon enough. Let’s saddle up. I’ll go with you in the cruiser. Daisy? Listen to me. You lock up these doors please. Front and rear. Leave that shotgun sitting right there on the counter. It’s loaded with double-ought buckshot. I’ll be back here in a few hours.”
The screen door slammed behind him and she watched him walk all the way across the yard. She liked the way he walked.
HIGHWAY 59 over toward Prairie proper was deserted in both directions. The hills and rocks and sage looked golden in the strong white light of the full moon. Franklin Dixon didn’t seem to feel much like talking so the deputy left him alone with his thoughts. Prudhomme could imagine where they were running without too much trouble. Four girls taken in the jurisdiction this month alone. Almost thirty people had been abducted along the Tex-Mex border over the past year. Four girls from Prairie alone. Vanished into thin air, every one of them. Make it five, now, most likely, with Charlotte gone.
“Pretty moon,” Franklin said after a few miles.
“Yessir, it sure is.”
“No word from that posse.”
“No, sir. Not a peep. I don’t know what in Sam Hill could have happened to ’em. They’re supposed to be back here yesterday evening.”
“I know that, Homer.”
“Sorry.”
“Taillights up yonder.”
“Semi. Yessir.”
“How fast you reckon?”
“Eighty. Eighty-five.”
“Accelerator’s the one on the right. Use it, son.”
“Bells and whistles?”
“Good Lord gave ’em to us for a reason.”
“Yessir.”
Prudhomme turned on the siren and the blue rotators and accelerated. The old Ford Crown Vic didn’t have much juice but what she did have, Homer used up pretty quickly.
“Slow down, son, you ’bout to rear end him.”
“Yessir. He’s slowing down pretty quick with those air brakes. You want me to pull him?”
“He’s a lawbreaker I believe.”
Homer hit the high beam flashers and the big truck slowed way down fast, moving toward the shoulder of the two-lane, brakes hissing.
