Darla Boothe hasn’t breathed since I don’t remember when.
Sitting there, her skin slowly drains of color like death is creeping into her veins, bleaching her life to a waxen nothing. I drag from my smoke and watch her. She methodically, somberly closes her cell phone and sets it on the table before her. She stares at it, sadness dropping like a veil across her eyes. Examines the mundane details of the phone as if inscribed in there somewhere were the answers she needs.
I reach out. Take the phone. Hit REDIAL. Nothing. Voice mail. I do it again. Voice mail again. Over and over.
Finally: “What did she say?”
Quiet, so quiet: “She said she was scared and she was being threatened. She said she was pregnant.”
“Why would she call, tell you how scared she was and then just hang up?”
“You’d have to know her...” She exhales so wearily it sounds like she were a starved and frozen soldier in some long campaign and for months now there has been no sleep. Just terror. Just a quiet hell.
“Delilah is impulsive. Sinfully so. She’ll get in these moods and just start to confess a secret or lay her troubles on you and then just as sudden as the wind will change she just catches herself and thinks better of it. I have always hated that. It’s like she had some terrible secret she needed to tell me and she just couldn’t quite get it out of her mouth. Belinda was always just silent. Contemplative. Delilah would do this start-stop thing.”
“So you think she called out of momentary fright and then thought better of it?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, Mr. Buckner.”
“Do you think someone else made her hang up?”
“Who knows?”
“Would that not surprise you either?”
“No.”
“Did you hear another voice in the background?”
“No.”
“What about any noise at all? Cars? Boats? The sounds of daily living?”
“I didn’t pay attention. This is the first time I’ve heard her voice in months. She was being threatened.”
“Did she give an example?”
“I don’t know she just said—”
“Call the cops but listen to me first. Ready?”
“Oh...”
Probably not going to hear a word I say. Outside, the daylight passes from us in an instant. It might as well be Darla’s soul. Gray.
“Without something specific to go on, something like Delilah saying John Doe tried to punch her or a note from John Doe saying he is going to hurt her, they can’t do much. So—”
“Can’t do much? Much? My damn kid is being threatened for Christ’s sake! What does that sound like to you?”
“It sounds like a girl who, according to her own mother, runs from everything. The word ‘threaten’ needs to be quantified. He
r just saying it means nothing. It’s not illegal to be crazy. Or act crazy. Or make bad decisions. Or fuck up constantly. Or be a drama queen. Are you listening?”
“No...” She begins crying. Head-in-hands crying.
“Call the cops. Tell them what she said. They can put out notice to other agencies. Check the welfare. That means if they see her they’ll stop her. See if she’s okay. And they’ll notify our PD.”
“Can they form a, a...like a manhunt or something?”