Travis Starnes
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Going Home - Chapter 22
🕑 Added 2022-06-16 00:14:32 +0000 UTCMy plan to talk to Orville about Evan and Dixon, since he was harassing Rosita on their behalf, didn’t end up working out as planned.
My next shift was the night shift and Orville called me an hour and a half before I should have started to meet him out on the county road all the way out at the county line where Buxton bordered the next county.
It was still early enough in the day that we had a fair amount of traffic on the county road and an eighteen-wheeler had blown a tire and crashed into a truck before flipping over and spilling its load. Worse, it was almost a sure bet that the driver of the smaller truck was a fatality in the accident, although Orville had to wait for firefighters from the next county over to arrive to get into the crushed cab of the truck, since our volunteer department didn’t have the jaws of life or other cutting equipment.
Although a trooper from the highway patrol also responded, Orville called me in early, and Al in on his day off, to help with traffic control, since the spilled load basically blocked the remaining open pavement.
It was well after dark by the time we finally got the wreck cleared, by which point Orville was wiped out and I figured it could wait a few more days, since we were having dinner in a few days anyway.
For her part, Rosita didn’t want to talk about what happened, and I wasn’t going to push her, since I was getting to know her well enough to know she’d just dig in her heels if I did.
I picked Rosita up at her house Sunday afternoon, since she wanted to go get cleaned up before we went to Orville’s. When she opened the door, once again, I was stunned by her . She was wearing a sundress, although a different one than last time, and I realized they might be my favorite thing for her to wear. The way it let just a little light shine through to hint at her figure and occasionally swoosh up a bit if she turned fast, was tantalizing.
She had a bottle of wine in her hand, which surprised me. Not that she had alcohol, since I knew she drank in small amounts from time to time, but that she didn’t have some kind of food to bring.
“Wine and not food?” I asked, vocalizing my thought.
“You don’t bring food to someone else’s dinner unless asked. It would be rude, since you would be saying ‘I don’t think I’ll like your food, so I’ll bring my own.’”
“Ohh, I hadn’t thought of it like that. I guess that makes sense. Okay, wine it is.”
We were running a few minutes behind because when I’d originally agreed to the time, it hadn’t occurred to me that Rosita would need to go home and shower. I guess I spent so much time with her at the restaurant that I didn’t notice the grease and sweat. In hindsight, I should have accounted for it, but thankfully Sarah and Orville didn’t seem to mind.
Their place was pretty nice. Although I’d never been there, I knew it was where he’d grown up. He’d mentioned briefly the week before that his parents had left him the house when they decided to move south to retire. While that didn’t happen a lot around here, I didn’t blame them. In the winters the roads could become a mess, which could be a problem since we didn’t have many roads out to the highways to start with. I knew my dad, who hated everything that was more than twenty miles outside of Buxton, wouldn’t ever want to move somewhere with a more hospitable year-round climate, but I was pretty sure Mom wouldn’t mind.
Sarah had made a roast pork that smelled amazing. I loved Rosita’s cooking, but it was what I ate most days of the week recently, with the rest being something out of a box, so it was nice for a little bit of variety.
Apparently Rosita only really ever ate her own cooking too, because there were several side dishes that were very much West Virginia staples that she hadn’t seen before. I think the thing that got her the most was the apple butter, which my mom had always served when she made pork, and was something I loved.
The first fifteen minutes were spent with Sarah explaining how she made hers with Rosita, who was after all a professional cook, asking questions. Orville and I listened patiently because both women were so engaged. I think Orville might not have gushed over his wife’s food much, because Sarah was definitely enjoying the attention. It actually worked out well, because of the four of us, Sarah and Rosita knew each other the least, having only ever seen the other in passing. Orville at least sometimes stopped in for food while he was working, and made conversation.
“I think it’s really nice you’re taking time to get to know the people who work for you,” Rosita said when her conversation with Sarah petered out.
I was a little confused by the statement, since I had explained my conversation with Orville that led to the dinner invitation in the first place. I tried to catch her eye, but she was looking at Orville, and I couldn’t tell if she saw my look and was purposefully ignoring it or just hadn’t noticed. Either way, I didn’t want to call her out, especially in front of Orville and Sarah, so I just kept my mouth closed and waited to see what happened.
“Thanks,” Orville said. “I actually am glad we finally got Henry over here. The way things are set up, I only have a little bit of time every couple of days for us to connect, and our schedule doesn’t really work well for socializing. I do believe it helps for us to all know each other well, since we’re such a small force, but that’s just a nice side benefit of this dinner. The real reason I’d set this up is because of something Henry said. We were talking about how he liked living in Buxton again, and he pointed out his biggest problem was how closed off we could be. He also used you and your restaurant as an example since, although I see you all the time when I’m working and stop for a bite to eat, we’ve never really gotten to know each other. I thought about what he said, and he was right. You’ve been doing such amazing work supporting this community since you moved here, like everything you’ve done to help Elaine and her food bank and what you did for George Cooper. Part of my job as sheriff is working with folks just like you to help keep our community strong.”
“I appreciate that,” Rosita said, finally looking my way, although mostly because his little speech seemed to make her uncomfortable. “I’m not sure I agree that people have made me feel unwelcome. If anything, I’d say the opposite is true. I’ve felt very welcomed to the town. Everyone’s been very supportive of the restaurant.”
“Well, not everyone,” I said, under my breath.
At least, I’d planned for it to be under my breath. The way all three heads turned to look at me as soon as I said it suggested it might not have been as quiet as I’d planned for it to be.
“Henry …” Rosita said, warningly.
“We had a run-in with Evan Farmer the other day, and he stopped me a few days before that. Rosita hasn’t complained, but I’m betting she’s been getting harassed by him for a little while now.”
“Have you?” Orville asked.
“I don’t know if harassed is the right word. He really just wants to buy my property. He hasn’t done anything beyond that.”
“Rosita doesn’t like to rock the boat or draw attention to the problem, because she thinks she can handle Evan without it becoming something bigger. I’ve tried to tell her that Evan is not the kind of guy you can deal with by just telling him ‘no’ over and over, but she won’t listen to me on that.”
“And he threatened you?” Orville asked Rosita.
“No,” Rosita said.
“Yes,” I said at the same moment.
“It wasn’t a real threat,” she said to me, clearly getting annoyed at my making a big deal of it.
She’d brushed it off when we talked before, and now wasn’t the time and place for it, but I was really wondering why she was so dead set against believing that Evan was an actual threat. She kept treating him like he was all talk and an annoyance, which I couldn’t understand.
“Has he made any specific threats?” Orville asked me directly, clearly picking up on the same thing I was getting from Rosita.
“Hinted at. He’s trying to be clever by saying things like ‘you’ll regret’ and ‘if you were smart’ when asking her to sell her property to Dixon without actually spelling out what he’s planning. He stopped me the other day and tried to get me to talk to her, ‘for her own good,’ I think was how he put it. I also heard him and some friends talking about making sure you didn’t find out what they were doing, although that’s all I heard. I didn’t actually get specifics, so I’m not sure if they were talking about Rosita or something else. They are all part of that group that does Dixon’s dirty work in the mines, though, so it’s a safe bet.”
“Is Dixon behind it?”
“I don’t know, but it would be strange to have this group of people involved if they weren’t.”
“I don’t know why you two are making a big deal about this. I’ve said no, so that’s where it ends. He hasn’t done anything except ask a bunch of times. He’s a thug. I know how to deal with thugs.”
“Rosita, you are a fabulous woman,” I said, locking in on her eyes so hopefully she would take me seriously. “You’re strong, motivated and unshakable. In this, however, you’re being naive. I know Evan. He would one-hundred percent hurt someone if he thought he could make a buck out of it.”
“He’s right,” Orville said. “Besides how he was when we were in school, I’ve had a few run-ins with him over the last couple of years. He might not have gone to college, but don’t discount how clever he is. He knows what can and can’t get him in jail and always makes sure to stay just on the other side of that line as long as anyone is watching. He also works damn hard to make sure no one is watching when he decides to step over it. He’ll slip up one day and do something that I’ll be able to arrest him for, but I’d hate for that to be at your expense. You need to listen to Henry. Evan is dangerous.”
Rosita crossed her arms, as stubborn as ever.
“I have some folks I can talk to at Dixon,” Orville said. “They’ve been in some hot water up north recently and just lost a pretty big court case with some injured workers. They’re gun shy right now about ending up in court again, so this would be a good time to get them to back off.”
“I only hope Evan backs off if they decide to drop it. Knowing him, he might keep pushing just because he feels challenged now and wants to make a point.”
“We’ll keep an eye on him,” Orville said. “Rosita, do me a favor. If you see him around, just try to be somewhere where there are other people. I know it’s a hassle, but I also know Henry would be a wreck if something happened to you.”
“I’ll try,” she promised, although it was clear to both of us she wasn’t planning on going out of her way to do anything.
The conversation moved on from there, but I was glad it had come up. I at least wanted Orville to know what was going on so he could help keep an eye on Evan and Rosita. I hadn’t realized he had dealings with Dixon, but that made sense. As the county’s biggest employer, of course he’d deal with them from time to time. I just hoped he had some luck getting them to back off.
Other than that brief bit of uncomfortableness, the dinner was a hit. Rosita and Sarah really got along. Orville was kind of a homebody but Sarah used to be big into hiking when she was younger, something that Rosita really loved. By the end of lunch they’d even made plans to go on an afternoon hike together a few Sundays later after the restaurant closed for the day. Although it meant I’d get a little less time with Rosita, I was thrilled about it. Although she was friendly with a lot of people in town, I hadn’t actually witnessed Rosita spending much time with other people when it wasn’t something official, like dealing with the food bank or the like. I was really happy to see her making friends in her own right that she could spend time with, which really was the whole point of this dinner anyway.
That alone would have made the dinner a success, even without getting Orville on board with the Evan problem.
***
Tuesday night I got my first real call for assistance, although I didn’t know it at the time. It was early evening when the call came in and Sarah had already gone home for the evening, meaning dispatch calls were coming directly to my radio. I’d only had a handful of emergency calls in the couple of weeks I was working, so it still surprised me every time it happened.
The previous calls had all turned out to be fairly minor. Someone got spooked by something, someone was unhappy with a BBQ or other social gathering that got just a little too loud, or there was an accident on the county road, none of which had included serious injuries or fatalities except for the wreck that happened when Orville was working the previous week.
The call was from the night cashier at the gas station, which was unusual. In the city, there weren’t a lot of gas stations, but there were a ton of corner stores, which also made up a good number of the calls every night, since establishments like that usually had more cash on hand than most other businesses. Maybe it was because Buxton had just the one gas station or maybe because it was such a small town that it would be hard to rob it without everyone knowing who you were, but I hadn’t received any calls for service there before.
I could probably say I still hadn’t, since this call was made by one of the people who worked the late shift. The gas station wasn’t twenty-four hours, but it did stay open until eleven, which was later than anywhere but the bars. The call was about a couple that had pulled up for gas and had apparently started arguing while they fueled the car, which then dissolved into what the attendant called a ‘fight.’ I’d serviced enough calls about fights over the years to know that word had a pretty wide range of definitions, from just a loud argument to someone being beaten unconscious with a metal pipe.
I had just left Rosita’s so she could go home and rest, so it made sense to make the short drive to the station instead of trying to get the attendant to give an accurate description of what was happening. Calls for service could be incredibly subjective, so it was just easier to see what was happening than spend minutes that might be vital hearing his point of view. The only question I asked as I got in my cruiser and turned onto Oak Street was if either person had a weapon, which the attendant didn’t think either person did.
It was getting late, so there weren’t any other cars in the parking lot except for the attendant’s which was all the way up near the tree line at the edge of the building.
Parked next to one of the pumps was a beat-up old truck with a male leaning in through the driver’s side door. I couldn’t see the other person, but his fist was arcing down and a leg was sticking up, pressed against the back of the seats by the man’s body.
I whipped the cruiser around to the other side of the pumps so I was on the same side of the truck as the man, threw my cruiser into park and hopped out. Although I hadn’t ever had to use it in New York City, since I was always on foot, one of the things a training officer told me when we were covering vehicles is, when on a service call, keep the seat belt buckled behind you so you don’t have to spend time unbuckling yourself. I don’t know why I kept doing that, but I did as long as I was in Buxton proper. If I was out driving the county roads, I did put on my seatbelt, especially at night, because with both the reckless drivers and the deer, a chance for an accident was higher than I was willing to risk.
He must have really been wailing on the person in the car because he hadn’t noticed me until I cleared the pump and threw the car in park, my tires screeching when I braked hard. Even though the attendant had said he hadn’t noticed a weapon, I still pulled mine as he started to back away from the vehicle, because I couldn’t see his hands or the passenger and in West Virginia, the odds were high that there was a gun in the truck.
He turned around in a huff, fists balled up, only to stop as he saw the barrel of my weapon pointed his way. My position wasn’t great, since I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of shooting past a gas pump if it came to it, but at least this was an older station without big brick columns in between pumps that would have really inhibited my aim. Instead there were just two metal poles on either side of each pump, going up to the overhead.
“Get on your stomach with your hands stretched out in front of you, palms facing up,” I said as I circled away from the pump to a position more diagonal to the truck instead of facing the open door.
That was also not a great position, since as soon as I started to circle left, I lost sight of the passenger, but I had caught a glimpse of her, hands to her face with blood coming out between her fingers. At least I thought it was a female. The way she was laying it was hard to tell.
For a moment, I thought the male was going to take a step toward me, maybe to try something. Thankfully he thought better of it. He gave me the stink eye, but he went down to one knee and then lay on his stomach and put his arms out in front of him.
“Second passenger, I need you to step out of the vehicle.”
I waited for a second, hoping they weren’t injured enough that they couldn’t get out. Every piece of my training said to not try and handcuff a prone suspect while another suspect was still mobile around you, especially one that was out of your line of sight.
Thankfully, after a few moments, she slid out of the truck, a hand still clutched to her face. I could see her nose was clearly broken and still had blood streaming out of it. There was some additional swelling that would look like hell in the morning, but other than that she seemed uninjured, at least at first glance.
“Go to the front of the truck, a few steps away from it, and sit on the ground,” I said.
The attendant had come outside, still by the door, but trying to look over the truck to see what was happening.
“Could you call Al? See if he can get Doc Thompson or one of the volunteer fire guys with EMT training to come out here with him. Then come back with a rag for her, see if you can stop the bleeding.”
Orville had worked the day shift and would be well asleep by now, so Al was my best bet. Other than the accident the other day, this is the first time one of us had been needed to be called in on our time off, but the SOP that Orville had put down clearly stated that in a situation like this, someone else needed to be called in. If a few more people had been involved I would have had to call Orville in too. He’d warned me to always have my cell phone on me unless I told him ahead of time that I wouldn’t be available, since we could get called in at any time.
I had considered for a second just calling for an ambulance for her, but it would have been, at minimum, forty-five minutes before they got out to us, and if it was just a broken nose and swelling, they wouldn’t take her back anyway.
Once she was sitting on the ground, her legs hugged up to her chest, I circled back the way I’d come, around the pump, so I was behind the man.
“Put your right hand behind your back, palm facing up. Keep your left hand out in front of you.”
He paused a second, seeming to consider each hand, probably trying to work out what he was supposed to do, before he followed my instructions. I holstered my weapon and dropped on top of him, my knee in the small of his back directly on top of his hand, with the hip where my weapon was holstered angled away from him, just in case he decided to get grabby. He let out a yelp of pain, but I’d done this enough times to know I hadn’t hurt him. My knee pressing what was probably his dominant hand into the small of his back would make it hard for him to do anything, and I hadn’t landed with enough force to break either his back or his hand.
“Bring your left hand back to me,” I said as I pulled out my cuffs.
He did as I instructed, and I snapped the cuffs on that wrist before pulling his right hand out from under my knee and connecting the other side. With him still on the ground, I then did a quick pat-down to ensure there wasn’t anything on him that could hurt me, removed a pocketknife from his front pocket, and helped him first onto his knees and then onto his feet.
“Man, I didn’t …” he started to say before I pushed him to lean over the hood of his car, causing his handcuffed hands to kind of jut out behind him.
“We can talk about that in a minute. Right now I’m going to put you in the back of my car and check on her.”
“Man, that bitch …”
“That meant shut up,” I said, pressing him down onto the hood of his truck.
This was pretty clearly a domestic, since I didn’t think she was a prostitute. Orville had mentioned an operation just on the other side of the county that was closer to us than Summersville, but out of our jurisdiction, that a few girls worked out of, but she didn’t fit their description and it was unlikely they’d be all the way out here. Domestics tended to drag out, and I didn’t want to get into that while the woman was bleeding all over the parking lot.
I patted him down more thoroughly, pulling out his wallet and setting it and the pocket knife on the hood of his truck before marching him to the back of my cruiser. With the man secured, I went to check on the woman. The attendant was back and she was holding a rag on her nose, trying to stop the bleeding.
“I’ve got this,” I told him before kneeling down next to her. “Are you okay?”
She pulled her hand off her eye, and I could see it had already started to swell pretty badly. He’d done a number on her, and the eye would probably be swollen completely shut by the morning.
“Yeah,” she said, kind of mumbled.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“I told him I was leaving. I tried to leave him before, and last time he told me he’d kill me if I ever tried again. He told me to shut up and pulled in here, and I tried to get out. He grabbed me and just started swinging. I couldn’t really do anything to stop him.”
“Has he hit you before?”
She nodded her head meekly.
“Who is he to you? Boyfriend? Husband?”
“Boyfriend.”
“What’s your name?”
“Tessa.”
“Do you have anywhere you can go, Tessa? Family nearby?”
She shook her head no.
“Where does your family live?”
“Florida, but I can’t go back there.”
“Okay. What about friends?”
She shook her head no again. I was trying to think of where I could put her, since going home wasn’t going to be a real option. If she really wanted to leave him, which was still a big if, going home would just put her in his hands again, since domestic abuse was rarely one of the crimes when judges refused bail. I also knew that, no matter where we put her, it was also possible she might go back to him as soon as he was out. It seemed insane to me, but I’d witnessed the abused return to their abuser of their own free will many times.
I was about to ask something else when Al pulled in. He’d made good time, and I felt bad, because he had to work in eight hours, which meant I was eating into his sleep.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, leaving her on the ground and meeting Al at his cruiser.
“What’s up?” he asked, getting out.
“I pulled up just as he was beating the shit out of his girlfriend. He’d messed her up pretty good, but other than a broken nose, it’ll mostly be ugly bruising, I think.”
“Man, that sucks.”
“Yeah. I need to figure out what to do with her and I still need to search the truck. Could you read him his rights and get his statement?”
“Sure,” Al said.
He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and looked like I’d pulled him out of bed, which I probably had, but that was how things went down here. Al went back to his cruiser, probably to get something to make notes on just as Doc Thompson pulled up. He, if anything, looked worse than Al, dressed in a house coat and slippers, but he didn’t even pause before going to the Tessa with a small medical bag in hand. Since that was going on, I went to inventory the truck.
Although a lot of times the abuser was hammered, I hadn’t smelled anything on him while I was hooking him up and there weren’t beer cans or even a lot of trash in the truck. I checked the truck looking for drugs or weapons, and found a pistol in the glove box, but strangely it didn’t have a magazine in it. I also couldn’t find a magazine for it in the glove box or anywhere else in the truck. Since he hadn’t had any on him, the weapon was basically useless, which was odd.
I put the weapon on the hood of the car with his other things and went to where the doctor was checking on the Tessa.
“Is she okay?” I asked him.
“Yes. I put her nose back in place and taped it up, so it should be fine once it heals. There don’t seem to be any broken bones or anything, so she’ll be fine,” he said, before turning back to talk to her. “I’d like for you to come see me at my office in a couple of days, so I can check on you.”
“I don’t have insurance,” she said.
That was pretty common around here. The mine offered health insurance, but some of the younger workers decided not to get it, since it could be a little pricey. Long term, it seemed like a bad idea, since the mine was a pretty dangerous place to work, not even counting what the coal dust did to your lungs, but young people always thought they were invulnerable. I know I had thought so, until I’d blown out my leg.
“That’s all right. Just come down so I can look at you.”
Doc Thompson was a good man and never turned people away, even if they couldn’t afford to see him. I’d heard he got paid in trade and goods as much as money and insurance claims.
The doctor gave me a nod and went back to his car to go home.
“Tessa, do you know anything about the gun in the truck? Is it his?”
“Yes. Since I was going to try and leave him tonight, and like I said, last time I tried to leave he said he’d kill me if I did, so before he got outside, I took the ammunition and threw it out into a bush.”
That was smart thinking and explained the missing magazine. Although it also meant I couldn’t add any weapon-related charges to the assault, which would mean less time for him in jail and a greater chance of bail. Of course, had the ammunition been in the car, she might not be here to worry about the next steps anyway, so I couldn’t fault her decision.
“Is there anywhere you can go? Anywhere you can think of?”
“No. He doesn’t let me work or spend any time with anyone other than him, especially once we moved out here.”
“Where did you move from?”
“Virginia. His friend got a job in the mine and told him he could get one, so he moved us here last month. Except for one trip to the grocery store, I haven’t had a chance to get out of the apartment since we moved here.
Al came back, shaking his head.
“That guy’s a real piece of work,” he said, closing up his notebook.
“Let me guess. ‘I didn’t do anything’ and ‘it was really all her fault.’”
“Pretty much. What do you want to do with him?”
“We have him on battery at a minimum, since I actually witnessed that. He had a gun, but it’s unloaded, so there isn’t anything to be done about it. If you could stick him in a holding cell while I figure out what to do with her, I’d appreciate it. I’ll be by later to book him and I can transfer him to Summersville in the morning when you come on shift.”
“Sure.”
“Thanks for coming out. Orville said if there were two of them and it was violent, we had to bring someone else out, but I …”
“Don’t worry about it, man. You did the right thing. I’ve pulled Orville out of bed a bunch of times over the last year. I’m sure I’ll be returning the favor some time.”
“Probably,” I said.
Al waved me off and went to move the man into his cruiser so he could take him back to the office and stick him in one of our two cells. We were a tiny county that didn’t really have the money or need for a full-time judge or legal apparatus, so the county had worked out a deal where we paid some money to the neighboring county every year, and they handled arrests and incarceration of any of our criminals. The only real downside to the deal, at least from my perspective, is it required one of us to transport anyone in custody to Summersville so they could be arraigned.
First, however, I had to figure out what to do with the girl. While I really liked how casual and simplified things could be down here, there were times it would have been nice to have some of the social infrastructure larger counties and cities had. We really didn’t have anything like women’s shelters or social services that could handle taking care of her, which is where I would have taken her in New York City. An option had come to mind, but it wasn’t one I really wanted to choose. Unfortunately, I was still coming up short finding anything else.
To stall, I went to my cruiser, now empty of the boyfriend, and pulled out a large evidence bag, which I used to hold his wallet, gun and knife. Since I couldn’t very well leave his truck blocking the gas pumps and we didn’t exactly have an impound lot, I moved it next to the attendant’s car and locked it up, putting the keys in the bag holding the rest of the boyfriend’s things.
Tessa was up off the ground, her arms hugged around herself, the bloody rag gripped loosely in her hand, forgotten. She looked confused and lost and I felt bad for her, which helped me make up my mind more than anything else.
“What do I do now?” she asked when I came back to her.
“For now, I’ll get you someplace safe. After that, I guess we’ll figure it out,” I said, leading her over to my cruiser.
I’d seen her type before in New York City. Someone who’d suffered long-term abuse, like she clearly had, was going to need a lot of help getting back on her feet. Unfortunately, since she didn’t have family or friends to help with that, any decision I made to help her now would mean she’d become my problem for the foreseeable future.
It really wasn’t much of a decision and I’d loaded her into the back of my cruiser before I really even considered the ramifications. It wasn’t like I was going to just leave her sitting in front of the gas station, all alone.
