Chapter 16 #2
Shoemake leaned back in her chair and folded her arms again, cigarette between two fingers.
Smoke streamed straight up her shoulder beside her face.
“Let me tell you something. Every one of us here do this job because we believe in the children. We have faith in them. But once in a great while, we come across one who you swear was just born bad. That’s Ricky Lee Pink.
” She shuddered, then leaned forward and snatched up the phone receiver.
Cutter, always tracking, studied the overflowing glass ashtray and tried to match the color and brand of lipstick-smudged butts with the teachers seated around the table.
Either a lot of them smoked Mores or Nancy Shoemake was ahead by at least six cigarettes.
Mumbling into the phone, the counselor made a motion like she needed something to write with.
Johnson slid a pen and sheet of paper from his clipboard across the table, tentatively, as if feeding a caged lion.
Shoemake snatched it up, then nodded into the phone, pen poised over the paper ready to write.
“Yes,” she said into the receiver. “They’re at the school now … You bet. I’ll tell them.” She hung up and then dropped the pen on the paper, sliding it back across the table to Johnson.
“That was Carol, the attendance secretary at the middle school,” Shoemake said.
“I wrote down her name and number. According to her, Ricky’s parents moved away a couple of years ago, somewhere near Texarkana, she thinks.
It’s likely they hoped to get their younger kids away from his bad influence.
They left him in the care of another relative, an aunt, but Carol can’t remember her name.
She’s going to try and find it for you, but it might take a while.
Schools create an unholy amount of paperwork.
They put all of last year’s files in storage.
I’m afraid the principal has the key, and he’s in Wichita Falls at an administrators’ conference.
He’ll be back late tonight and at school tomorrow morning.
” Shoemake stabbed the table with her index finger, seized with a sudden memory.
“Ricky did list a person named Vincent Millner as an emergency contact.” Cutter gave a slow nod.
Shoemake, evidently accustomed to reading faces as a guidance counselor, sighed.
“I’m guessing Mr. Millner was the one who was killed by police? ”
“He was,” Cutter said. Millner’s name would be in the paper soon enough. No point in keeping it to himself.
“I don’t know if this will help,” Shoemake said, “but Carol remembers a guy picking up Ricky Lee from school about a month before my incident. He told her he was Ricky’s uncle.”
“Millner?”
“Not according to Carol,” Shoemake said.
“It was an older fellow who was not on the contact list. She can’t remember the last name but thinks it was an actor’s name.
I doubt he was really Ricky Lee’s uncle, but he was scary enough she didn’t argue with him.
He would have had to sign a checkout page.
Those binders will be in the same storage facility.
She’ll look for them tomorrow, but the school doesn’t really check IDs.
He could have written Mickey Mouse on the paper and they would have let Ricky Lee go.
Carol did say she thought this man was driving a black or blue dually pickup. ”
“That was more than a year ago?” Johnson said. “She still remembers what kind of pickup he was driving?”
Shoemake laughed derisively. “She remembered because the guy let Ricky drive. She thought about calling the police, but frankly was afraid they’d bring Ricky back to school for the rest of the day.
Beyond that, anything involving that kid tended to stick out in our minds.
We paid attention to him. At first, we hoped we might be able to help him.
You know, guide him to make better choices in his life.
We took note later because every one of us who dealt with him were convinced that boy would come back to school one day with a shotgun and murder every last one of us. ”
Cutter took a stack of business cards out of his shirt pocket, gave one to the guidance counselor, and then passed the others around the table.
“Thank you, Mrs. Shoemake,” he said. “We’ll check in at the middle school first thing tomorrow.”
“I hope you catch him before he hurts someone else,” she said.
“That’s the plan,” Cutter said. “You have been incredibly helpful.” He turned to go. Johnson followed him to the door but stopped, as if seized by a sudden idea. Cutter was surprised to see the kid turn and face the teachers again.
“One more thing y’all might be able to help with,” Johnson said. “We’re having a rash of vandalism along Highway 51 toward Granbury.”
Charlotte Blake looked over the top of her cat-eyed glasses. “Let me guess,” she said. “A bunch of damaged mailboxes?”
Johnson gave an excited nod. “Yes, ma’am. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“You certainly have good timing, LJ,” Blake said.
“I heard two boys whispering about mailbox baseball just this morning.” She tore a piece of paper out of her gradebook and wrote two names in perfect cursive with her fountain pen before passing the paper to Johnson.
“Hope this helps.” She touched the back of his hand as he took the paper.
“I really am proud of you, Lafayette. So very proud.”
“I guess you were right about those fugitive gods,” Johnson said, sighing with obvious relief as they walked out the front doors of the high school.
“Yep,” Cutter said. “Good things come to those who put in the time.”
Johnson shook his head as they crossed the front lot, chuckling to himself.
“What’s up?” Cutter asked.
“Nothing really.” Johnson grinned. “I was just thinking how teachers and titty dancers both smoke the same brand of cigarette. If I’d known that, I’d been a lot less intimidated in high school. …”
“I suppose there’s a lesson in there somewhere,” Cutter said.
“Where to now?”
Cutter opened the door to his El Camino.
“Hospital. We need to pick up your patrol car. You can follow me back to the Sheriff’s Office.
I’ll park this beast and either grab another rig or jump in with you until we knock off for the night.
Sixty-five cents a gallon for fuel adds up fast in my personal vehicle. ”
“We should get a BOLO out on Ricky Lee Pink,” Johnson said.
“Yep,” Cutter said. “He doesn’t have a driver’s license photo on file.”
“Texas Youth Commission should have a photo, right?”
“Without a doubt,” Cutter said. “But all his information will be sealed. I’ll get with the judge, but I’m sure it’ll be tomorrow before we hear anything back.”
“Same with the middle school records,” Johnson noted.
“Yep,” Cutter said. “You go talk to Garza when we get to the SO. Give him the names of the mailbox baseball stars your favorite teacher gave you. He can run them down and then get back with the Pizza Place lady. Good thinking back there, by the way. Looks like you now have yourself a whole stable of informants.”
Johnson gave a mock shudder. “It’s okay with me if I never have to go to that teachers’ lounge again.” He looked at his watch. “What are you going to do?”
“Make copies of Pink’s police sketch. We can split up and deliver them to surrounding Sheriff’s Offices. I called a buddy at Tarrant County. He said we should send it over via wirephoto.”
“Wouldn’t that require the right equipment on this end?”
“Exactly,” Cutter said.
“Newspapers send photos by wire,” Johnson said. “We could get with the editor of the Democrat.”
“That would get the photo to Fort Worth. But like you said, it wouldn’t help with the other counties. We’re lucky if we have two tin cans and a piece of string to communicate out here in the hinterlands.”
“What about the newspaper? We could get the sketch of Pink out to the public that way?”
“We could,” Cutter said. “And the sheriff may decide to. I’d just as soon wait a beat, see if we can capture this outlaw before he figures out we know who he is.”
“Good thinking,” Johnson said. “I don’t feel like going home yet. How about you let me take care of delivering the sketches? I’ll get deputies to meet me at each county line. You go on home to your wife.”
Cutter tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel, considering the offer. “I might take you up on that. I do have a horse I can shoe this evening.”
“You sure got a thing for horseshoes.”
“I’ve got a thing for medical bills,” Cutter said.
He groaned, dog-tired, but resigned to the notion that his day was far from over.
“I figure my shoeing fee at five times the cost of an average haircut. That’s thirty-five bucks for an hour’s work.
” He gave the kid a wink. “Besides, I do some of my best thinking when I’m stooped over with a mouthful of horseshoe nails. …”