The Wages of Sin Read online

Chapter Ten

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, Elsie sat in the passenger seat of Tina Peroni’s Volkswagen.

  “So you got a good foster care placement for her?”

  “Yeah, pretty good, actually. A young ­couple with a baby, Holly and Dale Hickman. I think they’re taking in a foster child so the mom can afford to stay home with the infant. But she’s nice; he has steady employment; and they have a stable home life. And it keeps Ivy in her same grade school.”

  Tina fell silent, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel as she drove down a residential street. Elsie was reassured by Tina’s words. She had a high opinion of Tina Peroni and considered her a friend. Tina was dedicated and savvy; and despite twenty years in social work, had not succumbed to burnout. They had worked as a team on many cases involving child victims, most recently the Kris Taney case—­a father who’d abused his daughters, and was currently serving a life sentence for rape as a result of their efforts.

  Elsie glanced over at Tina. “So that’s good, right? Ivy doesn’t have to adjust to a new school, with all the other upheaval in her life.”

  Tina nodded. Pulling up beside a small ranch style house covered in yellow aluminum siding, she adjusted her glasses. “There she is. Sitting right out front.”

  Elsie rolled down the window to get a good look. A bespectacled child wearing a purple T-­shirt sat on the concrete steps of the yellow house.

  Tina tapped Elsie’s arm. “You want to talk to the foster mother first?”

  “No. I want to see the kid. Get a feel for her, see what I’m dealing with.”

  As Elsie and Tina walked up the asphalt-­covered driveway, the child peered at them through her glasses, her face a blank. When they approached the steps, Tina said, “Hi, Ivy. I’m Tina, back to see you and your foster mom again. How’s it going?”

  Ivy blinked. “Okay.” She pushed up her glasses. They sat at a crooked angle on her face.

  “This is Elsie. She works at the courthouse, and she’s a friend of mine. Can she sit out here while I go inside and talk?”

  “I guess,” Ivy said.

  Tina gave Elsie an encouraging wink and stepped up to the doorbell. As Tina entered the house, Elsie settled down beside Ivy.

  The girl dipped into a can of blue Play-­Doh resting at her side and pulled out a fist-­sized lump. With a deft hand, she rolled it on the step.

  “I got new shoes. And a new backpack,” Ivy said.

  Elsie brightened. The topic of new property was a fine place to commence an acquaintance. “A new backpack is totally cool,” Elsie said. “What color?”

  “Blue. I like blue. It got a princess on it.”

  Elsie flashed a confident smile; she might be on the dark side of thirty, but she knew the Disney girls backwards and forward. “I bet you picked Cinderella.”

  Ivy shrugged, concentrating on rolling the blue dough into a snake. But Elsie persisted.

  “Because if the dress is blue, it’s Cinderella. Blue dress? Blond hair? Ribbon at her neck?”

  Ivy didn’t answer. She scratched her nose. An angry rash circled both sides of her nostrils.

  It seemed to Elsie that she wasn’t gaining ground with the Disney princess angle. She shifted to a direct approach.

  “Ivy. I’m so sorry about your mama.”

  Ivy’s face closed. Thrusting her hand into the Play-­Doh can, she dug out a blue lump and popped it into her mouth.

  Elsie gasped. “Don’t,” she said, more sharply than she intended.

  Ivy looked up through the smudged eyeglasses set askew on her nose. “What?”

  “Oh, Ivy, sweetheart. You don’t eat it. Spit it out.”

  Ivy chewed, with a rebellious expression. “It’s good.”

  Elsie watched the girl’s chin move as the ball of dough made a wad in her cheek. She looked like a man dipping snuff, enjoying a chew from a can of Skoal.

  “It’s bad for you, Ivy,” Elsie said, keeping her voice gentle.

  “Don’t taste bad. Tastes like salt.” The girl had a direct quality that was unsettling.

  “Well, it’s really not something you want to eat. It has artificial colors. Chemicals.” With an involuntary gesture, Elsie reached out and pushed Ivy’s cat-­framed eyeglasses onto her head, adjusting them so they sat straight under her brow.

  Lodging the lump of dough in her cheek, Ivy hung her head and toyed with the blue snake. “I don’t eat it all the way. I just like how it tastes.”

  “Would you please spit it out? Pretty please?”

  Ivy complied. She rose from the step and spit the blue lump into the spiky bushes that lined the front of the house.

  Returning to the front step, Ivy coiled the snake in a circle on the concrete. Turning her back to Elsie, Ivy switched her attention to a battered cigar box that held broken crayons. She lifted the box from its position on the concrete step and held it in her lap. Ivy fished through the box, picking up and discarding the colored stubs.

  “Where’d you get your color box?” Elsie asked.

  “They’re mine. From my old house.” In a defensive voice, Ivy repeated, “They’re mine.”

  “What are your crayons doing out here? Are you going to make a picture?”

  “I brung them,” Ivy said, pulling out a brown crayon from the box. With care, she peeled the paper away and set the bare crayon on the step, under the bright afternoon sun. Propping her chin on her hand, Ivy sat, watching it.

  Elsie was hesitant to broach the topic of Ivy’s mother again. She decided to cover other important territory. Reaching into Ivy’s cigar box, Elsie picked up a red crayon.

  “I bet you know your colors, don’t you, Ivy?”

  Ivy nodded, glancing at the crayon Elsie held.

  “Do you know this one?”

  “Red.”

  “That’s right! It’s red.”

  “We learned colors in kindergarten.”

  “That’s why you’re so smart. You’ve been to school.” Elsie rolled the crayon between her finger and thumb, keeping it before Ivy’s face. “Hey, Ivy. What if I said, ‘This crayon is green.’ ”

  “It’s not,” Ivy said, a look of disapproval crossing her face.

  “You’re right. So if I said it was green—­when we know it’s really red—­would that be telling the truth?”

  Ivy shook her head.

  “Or would it be telling a lie?”

  Ivy nodded. “Lying.”

  “Right! That’s right! It would be lying.” Elsie dropped the crayon back into the box. “Ivy,” she said in a conversational tone, “is it wrong to tell a lie?”

  Ivy didn’t answer for a long moment. She picked up a twig and used it to poke the naked brown crayon she’d set on the step. With the twig, she rolled the crayon, turning it over on the concrete.

  The silence made Elsie nervous. She would need to demonstrate to the court that the girl understood the meaning of the oath to tell the truth. Ivy would have to articulate to the judge’s satisfaction that she knew the difference between the truth and a lie.

  She tried again. Gently nudging Ivy’s leg with her knee Elsie asked again. “Is it wrong to tell a lie? Ivy?”

  Ivy nodded, poking the naked brown crayon with the stick.

  Elsie let out a breath. “That’s right.” Though she was hesitant to push her luck, Elsie followed up. “Why is it wrong to tell a lie?”

  “Jesus says.”

  Elsie blinked. Though she had not formed a precise expectation as to the child’s response to her question, the reference to Jesus took her by surprise. Apparently Ivy’s deceased mother had attended to the child’s religious education.

  “How’d you know that?”

  “Church.” With a jab, Ivy poked at the crayon. “Look,” she said, smiling down at it.

  The brown crayon was glistening in the
sun, and had taken on a liquid glitter. Elsie pointed at it, saying to Ivy in a cautious tone, “You’re not going to eat that.”

  Ivy gave her a confiding look, revealing a row of baby teeth that bore signs of serious neglect. “It looks like a Tootsie Roll.”

  “It looks like one. Kind of,” Elsie hedged. “But it isn’t.”

  Ivy nodded with a philosophical shrug. Elsie said, in a worried tone, “Really and truly, don’t put that in your mouth. It’s not a Tootsie Roll.”

  “Naw,” Ivy said. “I ate one yesterday, and it wasn’t no good.”

  Back in the front seat of Tina’s Volkswagen, Elsie scribbled notes on a legal pad, summarizing Ivy’s statements.

  She tapped the pen on the paper, pondering, and then looked over at Tina. “So who’s taken Ivy to church? How does that fit into the late Jessie Dent’s lifestyle?”

  Tina shook her head.

  “I think it’s a recent development. It’s the foster family. And the counselor.”

  “The counselor?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, enlighten me. Why is a child psychologist reciting the New Testament in the treatment?”

  “The counselor is not a psychologist.”

  Elsie frowned. “I thought you were getting her in to see one of the ­people at The Victim Center in Springfield.”

  Tina shot her an apologetic look. “The Victim Center agreed to see her. It was all set.” At an intersection, Tina hit the brake with more force than necessary, sending Elsie’s upper body against the shoulder harness. “It’s a logistics problem. The foster mother doesn’t want to transport her all the way to Springfield every week.”

  Elsie made a sound that was a cross between a snort and a raspberry. “She’s a stay-­at-­home mom. What else does she have to do?”

  Tina frowned, serving up a look of reproach. “Holly Hickman is a woman with an infant—­a new baby. Who has taken in a traumatized foster child. Don’t minimize her burden, please.”

  Abashed, Elsie backpedaled. “I didn’t mean to disrespect her.”

  “You know, that’s the kind of rhetoric that keeps women from supporting each other.”

  “Yeah. I know, it was stupid.”

  “We’ll never unite as a gender—­”

  “Jesus! I take it back, okay? She’s busy, I get it.”

  “Yeah, there’s the baby. And her car’s a junker, barely gets her to the grocery store. So we looked for a local option.”

  “For counseling?”

  “Yep.”

  “But we don’t have a child psychologist in Barton,” Elsie said. In fact, the small county seat in McCown County had no practicing psychologist at all. “How about the new pediatrician?”

  “I tried him. He says he’s swamped. No time. Not qualified. No education or background in this kind of thing.” Tina gave Elsie a knowing look. “I think I let it slip. The word ‘Medicaid.’ ”

  “Yeah, dirty word. Fucking greedy bastard.”

  Tina sighed. “So we can’t make arrangements out of town, because of the foster mother’s limitations. And the doctor in town isn’t interested. I had to take what I could get.”

  “Which is?”

  “The senior pastor at Riverside Baptist. He does counseling.”

  “Shit,” Elsie said in a whisper.

  “Hey. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

  “Why didn’t you try the Disciples of Christ? The pastor there is great.”

  “You gotta be licensed, go through training. The Baptist dude is licensed.”

  “Wait—­Riverside Baptist? It’s gotta be Albertson.”

  Tina nodded, keeping her eyes on the road. “Reverend Luke Albertson.”

  Elsie groaned. “Good Lord, Tina—­you are one of the few stalwarts with the courage to be openly gay in our backwards little community. How can you tolerate it, turning that girl over to Albertson?”

  Tina shook her head and said again, “Beggars can’t be choosers. Got to make do with what’s available.” She gave Elsie a curious side glance. “How are you up to speed on the Right Reverend Albertson? You don’t go to Riverside Baptist.”

  “No. But Ashlock does.” Elsie closed her eyes and dropped her weary head onto the headrest of Tina’s car before she remembered the lump on her skull. With a hiss, she sat up straight.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the living room of his mother’s brick bungalow, Bruce Stout sat in near-­darkness. The plastic blinds were drawn, hanging askew; and the window facing the street was covered from the outside. Aside from one bulb in the overhead fixture, the only source of light in the room came from a television set, sitting on a plywood stand in the corner. Bruce looked away from the television screen when his mother, Nell, entered the room.

  “What’re you going to do?” she asked, walking over to his recliner with a can of Natural Light beer.

  He popped the top and the beer gave a hiss. He took a long swallow and set it on the table beside half a dozen empty cans.

  “Nothing,” he replied, without looking at her.

  With a dour face, Nell crossed her arms against her chest and glowered as he pointed the remote control at the ancient television set.

  “There ain’t nothing on. How come you ain’t got cable no more?”

  “I cut it off,” Nell said. “I didn’t like them shows. A hundred channels of nothing.”

  He pushed the button again and the screen went blank. “Three fucking channels. No point in having a TV at all.”

  With a grim smile, she said, “You can watch the news. See how your buddy is getting on at the jail.”

  “Shut the fuck up.” He tossed the remote onto the scarred side table beside his chair, knocking two beer cans to the floor.

  With a weary grunt, the woman bent over to pick up the cans. “You need to be thinking on this.”

  “I don’t need to do nothing. He’s in jail. They’re going after him, not me.”

  “They’re going to give him the death penalty. You think he’s going down alone?”

  Nell stood in front of his recliner, hugging the beer cans to her chest. When Bruce pushed the chair into a reclining position and stared at the ceiling in silence, she said, “Son, don’t be stupid.”

  He lifted an empty can and threw it at her head. “Don’t you call me that, Ma.”

  With her bare foot, she shoved the footrest of the recliner to the floor, returning him to a sitting position.

  “I think I done raised a fool,” she said, emphasizing the last word. “Any man who’s going down is gonna take someone with him. It’s the way folks are. And he’s got plenty of shit on you. On all of us.”

  “I didn’t touch that bat.”

  “But you was there.”

  “Who says?”

  “The child. She’ll tell. She’ll flap her jaw and say who knows what-­all. And that girl has seen plenty over there at the trailer.”

  Bruce tipped the can and chugged the beer, wiping his mouth when he was done. “Get me another Natty Light.”

  “You done drunk them all.”

  “Shit,” he whispered, tossing the can onto the floor, where it rolled under the couch. A black ringtailed cat emerged from its spot beneath the couch and began angrily scratching the worn upholstery with its claws.

  Staring at the cat he said, “That cat done tore up everything in this house. I don’t know why you don’t get rid of it.”

  “He acts better than you.” She reached down and stroked the cat’s fur. It stopped its assault on the couch and arched its back with pleasure.

  “I’m hungry. I need something to eat.”

  She scratched the cat’s head. “I can make you a bologna sandwich.”

  “I want me some barbeque. Didn’t you bring nothing home from Smokey’s? You was there all day.”

 
“Smokey Dean’s not running no soup kitchen over there. Him and his daddy didn’t get where they got, giving it away for free. You want a sandwich or not?”

  “Fuck,” he said with a groan. “You feed the cat better than your own son.”

  As she stood, leaning over him, the overhead light cast a silver glow on her gray hair and left her face in shadow. “I’ll make that sandwich. And you start thinking about what you’re going to do.”

  “About what?”

  “About the girl.”

  She walked away, her bare feet slapping on the tiled floor. Closing his eyes, Bruce pushed the recliner back again.

  Once his mother left the room, he started to cry.

  Chapter Twelve

  At seven o’clock on a Sunday evening, Elsie should have been stretched out on the couch in her apartment, shouting at the television screen during an episode of Sister Wives while sipping a cold bottle of Corona.

  Instead, she was rattling the church bulletin at Riverside Baptist, waiting for the Sunday night ser­vice to begin.

  Ashlock nudged her with his elbow. “Relax. Ease up. You’re fidgety as a kid.”

  “Yeah. Nervous as a whore in church,” Elsie responded, crossing and uncrossing her legs.

  Ashlock flinched, turning to see whether his teenage son had overheard. Ashlock’s son, Burton, had moved in with him a few months prior, after protracted negotiations with Ashlock’s ex-­wife. Elsie stole a glance at Burton, to see whether her comment had shocked him; but the young man exhibited no particular interest in Elsie, or in his father, for that matter. He sat at the end of the pew, his short-­cropped head bent over his phone. Most likely he was playing Clash of Clans.

  “Burton. Put that away,” Ashlock said in a whisper. Burton looked up, his expression neither resentful nor surprised. With good-­natured resignation, he slipped the phone into the pocket of his khaki pants.

  He was a good-­looking kid, Elsie thought, in the scrubbed, all-­American-­boy style. At fourteen, he was slight in size, the arms extending from the sleeves of his orange polo shirt slim as a girl’s. Too bad he didn’t inherit his father’s build, she thought, then chided herself for comparing a boy of fourteen to a man of forty. The kid was still a lump of clay. No telling how he might turn out.