Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

“Hi, there. I’m Alex. What’s your name?”

The girl didn’t answer, instead drawing back and looking away. Her hair was pulled back in a long ponytail secured by a clasp adorned with an oversized butterfly. She was wearing jeans torn at the knees and a frayed One Direction T-shirt. Alex looked up at Bethany.

“She’s a quiet one.”

“She don’t talk.”

“Shy, huh? That’s okay,” Alex said, grinning again at the girl and tousling her hair as she stood, the girl crying out as if she were hurt, pounding the air with her spatula.

“She don’t like to be touched.”

“I guess not. Is she your daughter?”

“She’s mine.”

“When I asked you about her the other day, why’d you pretend you didn’t know who I was talking about?”

“There’s more than one little girl in this world, and why would I tell you anything about mine?”

Alex didn’t argue. She was right on both counts.

“What’s her name?”

“Charlotte.”

“I’ll bet she talks a blue streak when it’s just the two of you.”

Bethany gave her a warm look and a sad smile. “I wish she could.”

Alex grimaced at the awkward situation she’d created.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize she was deaf.”

“Oh, Charlotte’s not deaf. She’s autistic. The doctor at Children’s Mercy said some autistic kids never talk.”

“How do you communicate with her? Do you use sign language?”

“She understands me as long as I’m real clear. The doctor told me autistic kids take things real literal, like if I say hold your horses, she’s gonna look around for a horse, so instead I got to say slow down or stop. And don’t try to tell her a joke, ’cause she won’t get it.”

“But how does she communicate with you?”

“She’ll take my hand and pull me over to something she wants or shake her head, things like that. We’ve kind of worked out a system. Sometimes she throws a fit and I just have to wait till it passes. And if she gets scared, she screams bloody murder and there’s no stopping her till she calms down.”

They were talking now instead of trading punches. Bethany’s posture was more relaxed, making Alex hopeful that Bethany would open up.

“Why isn’t she in school? There are special education programs for kids like her.”

Bethany recoiled, squinting at Alex, their cease-fire over. “What are you? Her truant officer? Now, get off my property while you still can.”

Friendly but firm hadn’t worked, so Alex switched gears.

“Who needs a truant officer when I can get someone from Child Protective Services out here in an hour to find out why Charlotte’s not in school and when she last had a decent meal, a bath, and clean clothes.”

“Don’t even think about doing that,” Bethany said, setting down the bag of groceries and balling her hand into a fist. “Nobody’s takin’ this child away from me.”

Alex took her phone from her pocket. “I’ve got their number in my phone. I see a lot of this kind of thing.” She scrolled through her contacts, clicking on a number, holding the phone to her face. “This is Alex Stone from the public defender’s office. I need to report a possible child neglect case.”

Bethany gritted her teeth. “Okay! Okay! What do you want?”

“I’ll have to call you back,” Alex said, clicking off the call. “I want answers.”

Alex followed Bethany into the trailer. It was twenty-four feet long and eight feet wide, not counting the pop-out dinette, which was like a restaurant booth with a cushioned horseshoe-shaped bench. A sleeping bag and pillow were laid out on the bench, turning it into Charlotte’s bedroom. There was an unmade sofa sleeper at one end of the trailer flanked on each side by a small wardrobe closet. A Murphy bed was mounted in the wall above the sofa, Alex guessing that Bethany got the sofa sleeper, leaving the Murphy bed for Joanie. The bathroom and shower were at the back of the trailer. Kitchen appliances were mounted on both sides in the middle, an ironing board leaning against the dishwasher, the iron on the floor. The air was stale with fast food and dirty laundry.

Charlotte scrambled onto the dinette bench, pushing the sleeping bag into a corner and hugging her spatula to her bony chest. Bethany set the grocery bag on the narrow kitchen counter.

“I gotta use the john,” Bethany said.

Alex leafed through a stack of mail on the kitchen counter, finding an open bank statement from the month before. She ran her finger down the transactions, noting the direct deposit of Bethany’s modest paychecks from Clay County and an ending balance of twenty-eight dollars. Beneath that she found an open envelope filled with cash, the top edge of a hundred-dollar bill sticking out. She picked the envelope up, doing a quick count that totaled five thousand dollars. She put the envelope and the bank statement back where she found them when she heard the toilet flush, glancing at the girl, who was watching her, expressionless.

Alex smiled, giving her a thumbs-up, smiling again when Charlotte balled her fingers together, her thumb poking up. Alex nodded, touching her forefinger to her thumb in the universal okay sign, clapping when Charlotte did the same. Encouraged, Alex shrugged, opening her palms out, as if to say, What else? Charlotte didn’t hesitate, giving Alex her middle finger.

Bethany came out of the bathroom. “Don’t worry. She doesn’t know what that means. She picked it from me flipping people off all the time.”

Alex laughed. “Thanks. I’d hate to think I made such a bad impression. Have you gotten Charlotte any therapy? There’s been a lot of progress treating kids with autism.”

Bethany shook her head. “Not that I don’t want to, but when am I gonna do that? I leave here at three thirty to get to work, and I’m there from four to midnight. By the time I get home and get some sleep, I hardly have time to do what I need to get done before I got to get back to work. And how am I gonna pay for it? The county’s insurance don’t cover it, and I ain’t poor enough for Medicaid.”

Alex wanted to tell her to use the five thousand bucks sitting buried in her stack of mail but was afraid Bethany would throw her out for pushing too hard and for snooping. She’d have to make that call to Child Protective Services after all, opting for sympathy for the time being.

“That’s a shitty crack in the system to fall through.”

“Tell me about it. But you didn’t come here to listen to my troubles. I guess you want to talk about Joanie.”

“If you don’t mind.”

Bethany cocked her head to one side. “Quit pretending that I’ve got a choice. Let’s go back outside. I need a cigarette.”

They sat in the folding chairs. Bethany lit up, exhaling a long plume of smoke.

“See there? I don’t smoke in the trailer because I know that’s bad for Charlotte.”

“Good for you. When did you find out about Joanie?”

“Friday afternoon, just after I got to work. The supervisor called me in to her office. There was a detective waiting for me and he told what happened and asked me to go to the morgue to identify Joanie’s body.”

“That must have been quite a shock,” Alex said.

“Not so much. With her, it was always a matter of when, not if, she’d end up like that. I told her so till I was blue in the face, but she wouldn’t listen. She’d get that drug addict’s dreamy look and say someday she was gonna find a guy who’d take her away from all that, and I’d ask her how that was gonna happen when all the guys she met just wanted her to suck their dicks, swallow, and get the hell out of their cars.”

“Sounds like you two argued a lot.”