The Sheriff's Little Girl Read online

  Chapter Four

  Late on a Sunday night in a small town, Sheriff Peter Mitchell didn’t have much to do. But someone needed to be in the office at all times, and when there wasn’t much going on, Peter didn’t see the point of keeping any of the younger men who worked for him around. Some of them had wives and families and those who didn’t had places they wanted to be, anyway. Peter didn’t really have any of that.

  At thirty-eight, Peter wasn’t an old man by any means. Although his face was a little wizened and his hair was streaked with gray, he kept in excellent shape, so he certainly didn’t look old. But he felt it sometimes: old and frustrated with the way that Palm Oasis had changed since he grew up there.

  He missed the days when living in a small town meant knowing your neighbors and working together as a community. Now, it seemed to him like his town, and all of Palm County, was a place where people ended up instead of wanting to be there, and left just as quickly as they could. He figured that the guys working for him would only be doing so for another year or so.

  Suddenly, Peter’s daydreaming was interrupted by the sound of a gentle knocking. He got up and walked down the linoleum hallway, flipping on lights as he did, just in case someone was there. Peter kept most the station dark when he was there by himself to save electricity, but he didn’t want it to look abandoned if someone was looking for an officer.

  He arrived at the front door of the station to see a small girl standing there. She was a sight; that was for sure. Probably in her late teens, Peter guessed, with the bright pink hair and crazy clothes that were popular among ravers. Rave culture had been a rising trend in the desert in recent years, and Peter couldn’t help but crinkle his nose at it. It seemed to him that it was, at best, a good way for kids to disobey their parents and cause scenes at school and, at worst, a fast track to substance use and dropping out of school.

  The girl was wearing an oversized backpack, a pair of sneakers, and not very much else. Her outfit was basically a bikini, he thought, shaking his head. He opened the door with a sigh.

  “Get in here, it’s not safe for you to be tromping around half naked in the middle of the night,” Peter scolded.

  The girl slipped into the office and then immediately set her bag down, reaching up to rub her shoulders. She didn’t respond to his comment.

  “What are you doing here?” the officer asked. She looked like a runaway. Maybe she had gotten some sense and wanted help getting home.

  “Is this how I report a crime?” the girl asked, her voice shaking as she spoke. When she looked up at Peter, he noticed that she had a red mark on her cheek.

  Peter tried to soften his tone a little when he realized how scared she was. “Well, this is the sheriff’s office, so you’ve come to the right place. I’m Sheriff Mitchell,” he told her, offering her his hand.

  The girl gave him a rather weak and halfhearted handshake and didn’t introduce herself back. He picked up her bag for her and led her down the hallway back to his office. She followed him nervously, looking around as they walked.

  When they reached the office, he took his seat behind his desk and took out the appropriate forms to take down her report. The girl just stood next to the desk nervously, so Peter gestured to the chair on the other side. She sat down, grinding her toe against the floor.

  “First, what’s your name?” Peter asked.

  “Julie Barbary,” she squeaked out. “B-A-R, B-A-R, Y.”

  Peter wrote it down on the form, then asked: “Age?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  Peter put his pen down and looked at her. With her tiny frame and unusual way of dressing, it was hard to believe she wasn’t a teenager. Besides, her voice and mannerisms made her seem so young.

  “Can I see your ID?” he asked.

  Julie got up and went to her backpack. She unzipped the stuffed animal bag that was attached to it and rummaged around inside for a moment. A few beads rolled out and across the floor as she did. Peter stifled a sigh as she scrambled to pick them up.

  She came back with a tattered piece of yellow paper. “I have my birth certificate, if that works?” she said meekly.

  Peter took the paper from her and opened up a records search on his computer.

  “Julie Barbary, twenty-four years old, 5′0″, eyes blue, hair brown…” he gazed over the monitor at her overly colorful hair for a moment before continuing, “born in Monroe, Idaho?”

  Julie nodded.

  “You’re pretty far from home.”

  “I live here now,” Julie explained. “At 1200 Winthrop Avenue, number G.”

  Peter couldn’t help himself. “G is not a number,” he quipped.

  “My apartment is algebra,” Julie shot back immediately.

  Peter chuckled at this. “Fair enough.” He scanned her online file quickly and saw that she had no warrants for her arrest and was not a missing person. “Alright,” he said, “what’s the crime that you want to report?”

  Julie took a deep breath. “Well, you see, if I tell you this, then no one is going to know that I told you, right?”

  Peter was used to people, especially young people, being nervous in these situations.

  “I can keep your information classified, but it’s possible that you might be asked to testify in a trial, if you’re willing. But you don’t have to. Why don’t you just tell me what you know and we’ll figure that out later?” he explained.

  “Well…” Julie started again.

  Peter looked at her and saw that tears were forming in her eyes. There were traces of glitter makeup there still, but looking at her closely, it seemed like she had been crying a lot. Peter frowned, concern for the young girl growing.

  “It’s okay, you can tell me. I’m here to help,” he assured her.

  Julie burst into tears and started talking a mile a minute. “When I got home tonight I found out that Crank has been selling drugs to the rehab people and when I got mad about it he grabbed me and hit me and I can’t go back to the house because he…” she breathed in with a deep gasp, “he threatened me,” she finished.

  Peter was both confused and greatly upset to hear this story. “Who is Crank?” he asked.

  “My boyfriend,” she explained, hiccupping through her tears.

  “What’s his real name?” Peter wanted to know. He assumed that his birth certificate didn’t say ‘Crank.’

  “Jonathan Crichton,” she said. “C-R-I, C-H, T-O-N,” she spelled, sniffling between the sets of letters.

  Peter reached into a drawer of his desk, pulled out a box of tissues, and passed them to Julie. “So, your boyfriend is a drug dealer but you found out that he’s selling drugs to people at the rehab center?” he tried to piece together.

  “I didn’t know he was a drug dealer at all,” she whimpered. “I wouldn’t have dated him if I thought he was.”

  Peter slumped his elbow against his desk and rested his face on his hand.

  “Your boyfriend is called ‘Crank’ but you didn’t realize he was a drug dealer?” he asked, wondering just how naive this girl could be.

  Julie nodded. “It’s just his rave name; they call me Juju, our friends are Bubbles and Pancake and…”

  Peter cut her off. “I get it. Let’s move on.”

  Julie’s face looked a little hurt by his gruff demeanor, so he tried to dial it back.

  “How is he selling drugs at the rehab center? Isn’t it a closed facility?” he asked.

  Julie nodded, putting a slim finger in her mouth to chew on the nail. “He works there,” she explained.

  Peter felt a rush of anger. He had been very proud when the town had opened the rehab center, and had hoped that it would help with the growing addiction problem that plagued the community in recent years. The idea that someone was using that system to keep people addicted when they were trying to get help made Peter’s blood boil.

  “What does he do there?” he asked, trying to not show how much this upset him.

  “He’s an orderly,
I think. He knows a lot of the patients there. I thought he was, you know, befriending them because he cared, but I guess… not,” she told him, her voice letting Peter know that Julie was as upset about this as he was.

  “He also hit you?” Peter asked.

  Julie nodded. “In the face. And he grabbed me. He’s a lot bigger than me.”

  “Are you alright now?” Peter wanted to know. “Physically, I mean?”

  “I think so,” Julie said in a quieter voice. “I think I bit my lip inside but it’s not so bad.” She grabbed her lip and pulled it down, showing off a small injury there.

  Peter felt a protective nature coming over him. “It looks like it hurts, but I think you’ll be okay,” he assured her. “What do you mean that he threatened you?”

  Julie returned her hands to her lap and looked down. She sat this way for a moment.

  “If you tell me what happened, I can help you,” Peter said, realizing he had used this line already. It was hard. He wanted to let her know that he could keep her safe, but he couldn’t think of anything to say besides tired, overused lines that he said to everyone who came into his office needing something. “I want to make sure you’re okay,” he tried.

  “He made me promise not to tell anyone, and he made me swear… on my life. The way that he said it made me feel like he was going to…” Her voice faded out as she was obviously not wanting to say what she was thinking aloud.

  Peter got the message. “So, you came here because you don’t feel safe at home anymore?”

  “Yes,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye with the back of her hand.

  “Well, do you think that if we called your parents, they could come get you? Do they still live in Iowa?” Peter asked.

  Julie shook her head. “It’s Idaho. And they’re still there, yes. But I’m not going to call them. They don’t want me around.”

  When Peter was a younger man, he would have been shocked by the idea that parents wouldn’t help a young person in need like this, but by now, he had seen enough situations like this that it didn’t surprise him anymore. It still made him angry, though.

  “How long ago did you move out, Julie?”

  Julie shrugged. “Maybe eight years ago?”

  “You left home when you were still a minor?” Peter thought that this made some aspects of the girl’s behavior, just in what he had seen, make more sense.

  “Yeah, I’ve always lived with friends and boyfriends. I didn’t like my stepdad and everyone was happier when I wasn’t there, including me.”

  “Well,” Peter drew in a breath. “I guess you can’t go back there, then. That wouldn’t be much of a help. Do you have any trusted friends who could keep you safe while we start an investigation?”

  As soon as Peter said that, he realized how silly that sounded. Her friends were people with names like ‘Bubbles’ and ‘Pancake.’ They probably weren’t the kind of people he’d ask to protect a kitten, let alone a fragile girl like Julie who was in real danger.

  He was relieved in a certain way when she shook her head no.

  “I don’t know who I can trust anymore. All my friends are friends with Crank.”

  Peter weighed the options in his head for a moment while he filled out the report with the information that Julie had just given him. He’d call a meeting about this situation in the morning, but he figured that the best course of action would be to try to catch Crank in the act of selling, so that the case wouldn’t have to rely primarily on Julie’s testimony if the evidence didn’t point to intent to sell. That sort of investigation could take some time to put together and execute, but Peter believed in putting in as much effort as he could to making sure that no one was needlessly endangered.

  Palm County didn’t have a huge police force, and it didn’t have a lot of resources for protective custody. He wanted Julie to be somewhere far enough away from Crank that she was safe but also somewhere close enough that she could help with the investigation if it was needed. A place where someone would keep an eye on her.

  The ideal place, of course, would be his ranch. Peter lived on a big piece of property a few miles outside the limits of the town. It wasn’t an active farm of any sort, seeing as it was in the middle of the desert, but he had purchased it because he loved the privacy that the land offered him. Nobody bothered him there.

  There were problems with that, of course. As much as his impulses were telling him that this girl needed to be kept safe, he didn’t know anything about her. While he knew that Julie could trust him to keep her safe and protected, he had no reason to trust her. He had seen plenty of these rave kids brought into the station for various minor crimes: graffiti, theft, and of course, drug use. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to have that kind of person in his house. Besides, he enjoyed his privacy. He could see lots of ways in which sharing his space could go poorly.

  The sheriff looked up at the girl who sat perched on the edge of her seat. She was trembling a little bit. Of course she was. She had gone through a lot that evening. It made his heart melt a little bit when he remembered just how few options the poor kid had. He decided that it would be worth it to take her home with him, at least until they weighed the options that they had. He knew she’d be safe there.

  “Well, Julie,” Peter said, looking up from the papers that he had been filling out while he mulled this over, “it’s important that you go someplace safe. If you’re comfortable with it, I’d like to bring you to my house just outside town for now. I’ll keep an eye on you and make sure that you’re safe there, and we’ll figure out what to do from there, okay?”

  Peter couldn’t tell if he was just imagining it, but he thought that Julie looked relieved. “Sure, that’s fine.”

  “It’s important for your safety that you don’t tell anyone where you’re going for now, alright? Can you do that?”

  “Yeah,” Julie said. “I can do that.” She looked around the office for a second. “Do you guys have like, any donuts or something?” she asked.

  “Really?” Peter asked with a sigh. “You’re making donut jokes?”

  Julie shrugged, a bit of a playful smile coming across her face for the first time. “I haven’t had anything to eat today, and I’m pretty sure that cops get donuts, right?”

  Peter shook his head. He opened his desk and handed something to Julie. “You can have an energy bar. That’s much healthier than a donut,” he said, playfully scolding her.

  Julie took the bar, unwrapped it, and nibbled at it as Peter finished filling out both the paper and computer version of his report.

  When he finished, he stood up and picked up Julie’s bag. “Let’s get you back to my place so you can get some rest,” he suggested.

  Chapter Five

  “Here’s the kitchen,” Sheriff Mitchell explained, flipping on the lights as he took Julie through each room, “and the dining room is down there.” He led her through the living room and into a hallway. “This first room is my home office, then there’s my room.”

  He led Julie down the hall to the last door, carrying her bag for her. She followed wearily. It had been a long day.

  “This is where you’ll stay,” he told her.

  The room was fairly plain, with white walls and tan carpeting. But Julie didn’t mind that at all. She was focused on the bed. It was a big, plush-looking bed with a puffy white comforter on it and plenty of pillows. She had to resist diving face first into it.

  “Your bathroom is across the hall. Do you want to eat anything else before bed, or are you too tired?” the sheriff asked her.

  Julie was still hungry after eating only the energy bar, but she was mostly just sleepy, and that bed looked so inviting. “I just wanna go to bed,” she said, her voice a little whiny.

  “That’s fine, I’ll make you something in the morning,” he said. “Do you have any pajamas in your bag?”

  Julie shrugged. “I don’t really know what I brought, honestly. I just tried to grab things.”

  Peter opened up her
bag for her and Julie rummaged through it. She pulled out a Teddy Bear Land t-shirt and, after another minute of searching, a bright pink thong. “Pajama enough?” she asked.

  Sheriff Mitchell’s face looked disapproving. “Just put something on the lower half of your body before you come out of your room in the morning if that’s what you want to wear,” he said. Then he added, “I might have to pick you up some more clothes tomorrow.”

  Julie mostly ignored the sheriff’s comment and continued searching in her bag until she found her stuffed bear, which she quickly slipped under her arm.

  Sheriff Mitchell smiled at her with the corner of his mouth. Julie looked at him a little more closely now, and realized that he was very handsome. He had a strong jawline, and his dark eyes were caring and kind.

  She hadn’t really thought about whether or not it was a good idea to go sleep at a strange man’s house, but she felt safe with the sheriff. He seemed to really want to help her, and that made her feel a little more calm. Besides, there was that bed…

  “Well, I’ll be right down the hall if you need anything. You should get some sleep,” he told her, a little awkwardly.

  Julie nodded. “Night night,” she said.

  The sheriff left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Once he was gone, Julie peeled her clothes and shoes off and deposited them on the floor. She pulled all the bracelets off and picked the bows and clips from her hair and let those fall down, too. Then she changed into her t-shirt and panties and plopped on the bed.

  It was so much more comfortable than what she was used to. Despite her sleepiness, she took a moment to roll around in the comforter, and enjoyed the feeling of the soft sheets against her body. She started to close her eyes without turning the lights off, but then she realized that she probably should.

  She got up out of bed and flicked the light switch off. The room went entirely black. Panic filled Julie, and she peeked around to see if there was anything creeping in the darkness. She only lasted a few seconds before she turned the lights back on. It was just too dark out here. She’d sleep with it bright.