Free Dead Girl Moon by Charlie Price Page A

in the trailer if she didn’t have to.
    She spoke first. “That girl. I tried to sleep but I kept seeing her.”
    “Up at Skinny’s they said she was from Plains,” Mick told her. “Waitress. Grace said she didn’t know her.”
    “Somebody could kill me and nobody would notice,” JJ said, picking up a small rock and throwing it in the river.
    “No way. Me, Grace, the Stovalls. You don’t think she drowned?”
    JJ shook her head. “Alone, naked, no car? You think somebody could have dragged her to the water? Upstream a ways? Pushed her in?”
    “Maybe. Did you see something?”
    “Maybe.” She looked up at the sky. “I need to ask Gary … I don’t even know who my father was,” she said.
    Mick was losing her. Did the dead girl spin her out?
    She went on, “I don’t know how come I can play softball. Gary played catch with me maybe five times total. Think my real dad was a ballplayer?”
    He didn’t know what to say.
    “I just tried it at recess one day and I could do it. I was as surprised as everyone else. I’m pretty good, but you came to the games. I don’t think the girls on the team even know my name.”
    It could have been true. Mick never saw anybody but the coach talk to her.
    “I was chubby until seventh grade and then I grew taller. Everybody in my classes for years? They didn’t notice.” She shook her head. “Nobody would take me…”
    He saw tears in the corners of her eyes.
    She gave him a weak smile, rose to leave.
    Mick felt bad for her. Girl who didn’t think she was pretty enough to kill. “What kind of moon is this?” he asked, shifting his look to the sky.
    “Waning,” she said. “Past gibbous.”
    Mick thought “gibbous” was a monkey. He didn’t say that. “Name?” he asked.
    She smiled again. “Um, Longhorn Moon,” she said. “Or maybe it should be Death Moon. Dead Girl Moon.”
    She was right about that.
    Mick reached out and touched her arm to stop her. He told her how he got his scar that went from the corner of his mouth to over by his ear. How he’d had it since he was ten. How he got it from one of the motels he and his father lived in after his mom split. How he was running, chasing a butterfly and not looking down, and tripped on a small brick wall the owner had put around a tree, probably so people wouldn’t back their cars into it. How he fell headlong and crashed his face into the edge of the bricks and cut the whole side open. How his mom was long gone, but he still missed her.
    “Zipper,” she said.
    Somehow Mick didn’t mind it coming from her.
    He still didn’t tell her that his dad was a thief. He didn’t think to tell her about seeing Jon when they were up at the drive-in, and he didn’t talk about Grace. Mick liked JJ, but it wasn’t the same. Grace had something he wanted. Mick was afraid to put a name to it.

 
    27
    T HE H IGHWAY P ATROL got the car and the probable site of the killing. Tuesday morning the ranch owner living at the end of the dirt road with the mailbox made his daily trip to town. Saw a red sedan in the narrow clearing. The car was small, not likely used by hunters, and the man thought little of it; someone walking a dog or taking pictures in the woods, whatever. That afternoon on his return trip he was surprised to see it still there. Lived down this road twenty years. Never seen a car parked in that spot.
    The river was nearly a mile away through impassable brush. No ponds in the area. Not a destination by any means, so what was the car owner doing? He stopped, listened, walked to the car. Had a feeling. Stolen? A suicide with the body thirty feet into the woods? He called the Highway Patrol.
    The first responding officer leaned in, saw the keys still in the ignition, and became very careful. Looking more closely, he saw spots and a dark stain at the sharp edge where the driver’s window joined the frame. He backed away and radioed Cassel, his lieutenant, who immediately phoned the Missoula office for crime