Wreckage: An Addictive Psychological Thriller Packed with Twists, page 35
DISPATCHER: Have you checked the places she usually frequents? Called her friends?
CALLER: My car ain’t workin’, and I told you, my phone’s shut off. That’s why she’d never leave without tellin’ me. Somethin’ bad happened. A mother knows. She can feel it in her belly, in her baby place. Besides, her bike’s still at the house. Oh, I forgot to say that! Her bike’s still at the house! She don’t go nowhere without her bike. Somethin’ bad happened!
DISPATCHER: What is your daughter’s name?
CALLER: Abigail. Abigail Pruitt. We call her Abby. She kept her daddy’s last name because he said he’d stop sendin’ the checks if we changed it. Not that he sends ‘em anyway.
DISPATCHER: The girl’s father doesn’t live with you? Is that correct?
CALLER: That’s damn correct.
DISPATCHER: Can you tell me his name and address?
CALLER: His name’s Gregory Pruitt. And his address is Somewhere in the Butt-Crack of Unicoi County. I’d tell you to check him out, but I know he didn’t take her, because that would mean takin’ some ‘sponsibility for her. Which he ain’t done since she was three.
DISPATCHER: Can you give me a physical description of the child?
CALLER: About five-two, tall for her age. Close to my height. Sandy hair, down to her shoulders. Pretty young thing. Prettier’n her mama. And don’t she know it? Struttin’ around, shakin’ her hair and peekin’ out from behind it, all coy-like. I keep tellin’ her, you gotta watch that stuff. You don’t know yet ‘cause you’re only eleven. That stuff’s like gunpowder. If you ain’t careful, it can get you into a world of hurt. Maybe it already done happened.
“And can you show us her bicycle, please, ma’am?”
Elizabethton Police Officer James T. Grandy was not having a grand morning. He’d slept the night on the old couch in the basement after arguing till twelve thirty with his wife, then polishing off a half pint of Fireball. The morning sun felt like a searchlight in his eyes, and his mouth tasted like burnt cotton as he followed Verna Roy from the house to the back shed. He and his partner, Officer Melissa Price, had met the distraught mother at the Baptist church where she made the 911 call. After questioning her there, they’d driven her home in the cruiser.
Home was a sixty-year-old house trailer on the side of a wooded hill about three-quarters of a mile from the church. The trailer’s sun-faded, mustard-colored metal siding was dented all around, at shoulder height, as if someone had punched the place a thousand times. Its overgrown lot was strewn with abandoned objects: a bottomless rowboat, a car engine, two refrigerators, a stack of old bed springs.
Verna, clad in micro-shorts and a lacy gray baby-doll tank top that looked like underwear to Grandy, pointed into the doorless toolshed. A pink Huffy bicycle leaned against the rusty sheet-metal wall.
“This the only bike she owns?” Grandy asked.
“We look like the Kardashians to you?” Verna lit a cigarette with shaking hands. Grandy had trouble pegging her age. She could have been 40 or a hard-living 27. Good looks still in evidence but fading fast. Furtive-eyed and skittish.
“And does she ever walk anywhere from here?”
“There’s nowhere to walk. Look around you.”
“Just so you know, ma’am, the vast majority of children reported missing turn up in a familiar place.”
“I’m telling you, there’s no familiar place she can get to without her bike or gettin’ a ride. She don’t run in the woods like some kids. Coons and salamanders ain’t her thing.”
“You said she plays on a Little League team in town,” Officer Price chimed in.
“Not at five a.m. in the morning she don’t.”
Grandy noted her eyeballs jittering from side to side. Chemically induced, he surmised. “How does she get to practices and games?”
“Sometimes by bike. Sometimes her coach picks her up. I think he got some kind of notion Abby needs rescuin’ or takin’ care of. She don’t. I’m a good mom. They won’t be makin’ no Disney movies about me, that’s for sure, but we do okay, Abby and me.”
“What about the father? You said he lives over in Unicoi County. How often does your daughter see him?”
Verna raised her voice. “You gonna ask questions all day or are you gonna look for my daughter?”
“The only way we’ll know where to look is by asking questions,” said Price. “How often does she see the father?”
“Whenever ‘the father’ feels like showin’ up. Which is usually about once in a blue frickin’ moon. And then he’s gone, fast as he came. Though lately…” Verna trailed off.
“Lately what, ma’am?” Price asked.
“Lately, I don’t know... Seems he been comin’ round more often. Maybe lingering a bit longer. Making noise about carin’ about her.”
“You’re saying the father has taken a sudden interest in the girl?”
“I guess you could call it that.” Verna folded her arms and looked at the ground. “I’m hopin’ the reason’s what I think it is, not… somethin’ else.”
“Ma’am?” asked Price, a note of wariness creeping into her voice.
“My daughter Abby, she’s a heck of a ballplayer, officer. Last year her team went sixteen and two, made the finals, mostly on account a’ her. And she’s about to start a new season. I heard from someone I work with, over at the Food City, that her daddy was takin’ bets on her games last year with all his no-‘count drinkin’ buddies. Makin’ himself a lot more’n beer money, from what I heard. He denies it, a-course, but…
“But what, ma’am?”
“…But I hope that’s the reason it seems like he’s been tryin’ to —what’s the word—‘gratiate’ himself with her these days.”
“You hope the girl’s father is taking bets on her Little League games?” said Grandy.
“Better that than…” Verna trailed off.
“Than what, ma’am?” Grandy prodded. He was not in the mood for Twenty Questions. “Than what?”
“You seen a picture of my daughter, officers?”
“We were hoping you’d provide one.”
Verna Roy pulled a six-year-old smartphone out of her skin-tight back pocket. Its screen was cracked and cloudy, but the picture shone through clearly enough: a ten-year-old girl with twin bows in her hair, a huge grin on her face, and a missing canine tooth.
“That was Abby last summer,” Verna said to the police. She swiped the screen a few times and brought up a new image: Abby, at age eleven, hair swept across her face, baby fat gone, a worldly glint in her eye. Pretty in a whole new way. “That’s Abby last Tuesday, not even a year later.”
Price turned her head to the radio on her shoulder. “This is unit seven. We’re going to need to talk with the sheriff’s department over in Unicoi. Make that a 10-18.”
If you enjoyed the beginning of Last Resort, you can order here by clicking on the following link or scanning the QR code:
LAST RESORT (JOE DILLARD BOOK 10)
Again, thank you for reading!
J.D.
J.D. Pratt, Wreckage: An Addictive Psychological Thriller Packed with Twists
