Angel Doll. Arlette Lees
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been beaten to death and hidden in a culvert on Silver Creek. Rather than gratitude, she was suspected of complicity in the crime. How could she know so much if she hadn’t been part of it? She was exonerated when Bucky’s stepfather confessed to ‘maybe going overboard’ when he disciplined the boy for dropping his pack of cigarettes in the toilet. After that, she kept her visions to herself.
She didn’t call the station about the waitress who disappeared two years back. They found her remains in a ditch near the city dump where Cookie knew she’d been since day one. Nor did she call when she envisioned thirteen-year-old Gretchen Frey give birth to a baby girl at home and extinguish the child’s brief flame of life. The remains were discovered buried under the floor of the chicken coop six months later. Whether Cookie reported these incidents or not, the victims wouldn’t have been any less dead, but the young lady in the woods was different. She was alive.
* * * *
Sergeants Don Swackhammer and Bruce Green are on duty at the station. Sundays, especially rainy ones, are quiet. The troublemakers who frequent the watering holes of Santa Paulina on Saturday nights are home nursing black eyes and hangovers and trying to recall the name of the woman in the bed beside them. That is hunky-dory with Don and Bruce who are both as lazy as hell and won’t take accident reports in bad weather unless serious injuries are involved.
The Chief is home with his wife and six kids, so they put their feet up on the desks and kick back with their auto, hunting and girly magazines, drink coffee, smoke and tell jokes. Oh yes, life is good until the phone rings. Nobody wants to pick up no matter who‘s on the other end, each hoping to outwait the other. Don finally caves in.
“Officer Swackhammer. What can I do for ya?”
“Good morning, Officer. This is Cathleen Cook.
Madame Zarina. Wouldn’t you know it! Don looks over at Bruce, mouths her name and rolls his eyes. Bruce chuckles silently. He can rib Don for a week on this one.
“Yes, Madame Zarina, I’m listening. A young lady injured in the woods? Really? The victim of foul play. No, I can’t say anyone has reported a girl missing. Yes, of course I’m taking notes.”
“Without a pen in your hand, Officer?”
“Well...I...how?”
“Not everything requires a crystal ball, Officer Swackhammer,” she says. “Does The Chief know you’re scuffing up public property with those cowboy boots of yours?” Don looks around like she might be peeking through the window, thumps his feet to the floor and picks up a pencil. How does the old biddy know this shit?
“There, isn’t that better?”
For the next few minutes he dutifully takes down every word. When she’s safely off the line, he crumples up the note and tosses it in the wastepaper basket.
“What are you doing?” asks Bruce.
“She’s talking crazy about some girl been attacked in the woods. I don’t know what she expects us to do about it.”
“She see it happen?”
“Dreamed it. Ain’t like real evidence. Now, if we had a missing persons’ report it might carry a little weight.” He wipes a drip of tobacco juice from the side of his mouth and spits into the wastepaper basket.
“I don’t know, Don. A lot of folks around here swear by them visions of hers. She told my sister her husband was going to leave her before Thanksgiving and it came true.”
“Anybody could have figured that one out the way he’s been carrying on with that cocktail waitress from the Leprechaun Lounge.”
“I guess you’re right. Here, you want to read a good article about fly fishing on the Klamath?”
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