Joanna was often perplexed by Angie’s odd mixture of toughness and naiVete. She was at once both young and old; innocent and jaded. How could someone who had made her living by prostitution be so seemingly unaware of her own beauty and of the physical impact she made on those who met her?
Angie was experiencing some difficulty in making the transition from an economy in which her body had been the sole medium of exchange to one in which her paycheck paid the bills. With help from people like Bobo Jenkins and Jeff Daniels, she was only now learning that it was possible to have male friendships that didn’t automatically lead to sex, and that real freedom existed in the privilege of saying no.
“So would you like to go for a ride? Maybe have lunch?” Angie asked, her face alive with disarming enthusiasm. “Today’s my morning off. I don’t have to be at work until six.”
It was still early. With two homicides hanging over her head, Joanna felt as though there was something she should be doing besides going to lunch. The only trouble was, right that minute she had no idea what it was. In the end, she went With considerable pride.
Angie escorted Joanna outside to where her cream-colored 1981 Oldsmobile Omega was parked in front of the building. They ate an early lunch at Daisy’s, leaving well before the noontime crowd started arriving. Afterward, Joanna asked Angie to help her ferry the Eagle back home to the ranch so she’d have only one vehicle parked at the office rather than two. Angie was glad to help out. They stopped by the Justice Center long enough to pick up the car.
The trip out to the ranch didn’t take more than twenty minutes in one direction and ten back, although to a white-knuckled passenger, the ride back seemed much longer. Angie might have passed her driving exam with flying colors, but she was still a very inexperienced driver. The Omega tended to first cling to the shoulder of the highway as she met approaching vehicles and then to meander back to ride the centerline as soon as the road ahead was clear.
Joanna gripped the armrest and tried to keep her mouth shut. She remembered all too well how much she had resented Eleanor’s backseat driving, but after years in the insurance business, she also understood why it is that inexperienced drivers have to pay much higher premiums for auto insurance.
“So how’s it going?” Angie asked suddenly. “Is being sheriff what you thought it would be?”
If Angie Kellogg had ever given much thought to possible career choices, a position in law enforcement would never have crossed her mind.
“It’s hard work,” Joanna said. “With two homicides on the books since Tuesday night, I could do with a whole lot less excitement.”
“I heard about those,” Angie said. “The people in the bar hardly talk about anything else.”
“By the way, has Detective Carpenter been by to talk with you about those?” Joanna asked.
Startled, Angie turned to stare at her passenger.
During the momentary lapse of attention, the wheels on the rider’s side of the Olds veered off the road. As a cloud of rock and gravel spewed up behind them, she managed to wrestle the car back onto the pavement.
“About the murders?” she managed, while the color drained from her face. “I don’t like detectives. Why would one of them want to talk to me?”
Clearly Angie’s old life carried some bad experiences into her new one. Joanna hastened to reassure her.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Joanna said. “It’s just that a person of interest in one of the murders supposedly spent the better part of Tuesday afternoon in the Blue Moon. I know you were scheduled to work on Tuesday, so I thought you might have seen him.”
“One of my customers is a suspect?” Angie asked, still bewildered. “Which one?”
“I didn’t say that. He’s just someone we need to check on. His name is Burton Kimball,” Joanna went on. “He’s a lawyer.”
“Oh, him,” Angie said suddenly contemptuous as she switched on the turn signal to turn into the Justice Complex. “What about him?”
“His uncle was murdered sometime that after noon or evening. Burton Kimball isn’t known to be that much of a drinker, but he evidently got himself plastered on Tuesday. In a murder case, you always look at people close to the victim and note anything unusual, including uncharacteristic behavior.”
“You’re right,” Angie agreed. “He’s not much of a drinker. That’s why it was so easy to get him drunk. Couldn’t hold his liquor worth a damn.”
“You got him drunk? On purpose?”
“You bet.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted him so smashed that he wouldn’t be able to drag his ass out of bed the next day to go defend that dirty old man of his.”
“Wait a minute here, Angie. How do you know Burton Kimball? For that matter, what makes you think Harold Patterson was a dirty old man? Did you even know him?”
“I know about him,” Angie replied. “I know enough. He was a child molester, wasn’t he? One of those creeps who fucks his own kids. Those guys always find some slick lawyer to get them off!”
Angie’s voice trembled with suppressed rage. “You’re damn right I got him drunk, and I’d do it again in a minute. I wanted the son of a bitch so blind drunk that he wouldn’t be able to hold his head up, but he left too soon. Just got up and walked out.”
“You’re lucky he wasn’t involved in an accident, Angie,” Joanna said. “Bartenders can be held accountable, you know. You could have lost your job.”
“I didn’t think about that,” Angie insisted stubbornly. “Still I’d do it again if I had a chance.”
By then the Omega was parked and idling in the front parking lot of the Justice Center, sitting astraddle a white line, occupying half of two full spaces.
“But why would you do such a thing?” Joanna asked. “Why run that kind of risk?”
Angie sat with her hands gripping the wheel and with her eyes focused on some invisible middle distance. She didn’t answer for such a long time that Joanna wondered if she’d even heard the question.
“How could a man defend someone like that?” Angie asked at last. “How could he try to get him off? As far as I’m concerned, that makes the lawyer as bad as the father. Maybe even worse. The father could be sick or crazy, but the lawyer is just doing it for money, working for the person who has all the cards. The little girls are the ones who have nothing, no one to turn to. They’re the ones who need someone to defend them, to help them.”
As Joanna watched in dismay, Angie Kellogg’s face seemed to splinter into a thousand pieces. The words she had never been able to muster in her own behalf had suddenly erupted in defense of someone she didn’t even know, in defense of Holly Patterson.
While Angie sobbed brokenly beside her, Joanna finally recognized the linchpin of Angie’s past, a piece that had, until that very moment, eluded her.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, horrified. “The same thing happened to you, didn’t it?”
Angie nodded. “And my mother wouldn’t even help me. Maybe she didn’t know at first, although she must have. But even when I told her, she didn’t lift a finger, didn’t make him stop.”
Since mid-September, Joanna had struggled to pull together the stray pieces of Angie’s history.
There had been a blank spot. She could never understand what had forced Angie out onto the streets from the time she was a child only a few years older than Jenny was now. And now that Joanna knew, now that she understood, she almost wished she hadn’t.
“Are you going to be all right?” she asked, reaching out to touch the distraught young woman’s arm.
Gradually, Angie regained her composure. The sobs diminished to hiccups and sniffles. “I’ll be okay,” she managed.