Little Girl Lost

We had become a couple for the briefest of times, a week and a half, ending when Sandy was killed by a drunk driver in a beat up old pickup truck. The worst though, was the fact that the accident occurred shortly after she and I had argued. I was concerned what other people might think if they found out that I was a lesbian. Sandy had looked at me so sadly when I voiced my juvenile, 'me-based' arguments. It was incredibly immature of me, and a weight I would always carry.

I mourned her loss, then worked my way out of depression, finishing up my senior year, then joining the Department of Public Safety, like my father before me. I moved up to Trooper II, and here at 27 years old, I found myself going on this class trip.

I had buried any attraction I might feel for women in my work, and Kes' question was uncomfortably close to the skeleton in my closet. To fill the empty air around us, I thought I'd recall my dad, helping him to live if only for a short time, in my account of his final heroism.

"My dad was riding patrol on Rte 83, in the Rio Grande Valley near the Mexican border, between Mercedes and Weslaco early one morning, some ten years ago. It was pitch black out, no moon to cast any light, and the area was mainly cow pastures and aloe verde fields. He radioed in to his dispatcher that there was a car broken down along the road, a 1988 Chevy pickup, and that he was stopping to see if he could give assistance."

"He was always helping people, I guess that's why he became a cop in the first place. Anyway, he was never heard from again. The rest of the story was cobbled together from an account by a Mexican farmer who happened to drive by. His account was garbled, but if you stripped out the superstitious stuff, it was just basically some nut turning on a cop and killing him, and himself too."

"Superstitious stuff?" Kes said.

"The farmer said that he saw the 'policia' walking towards a guy who was bent over, checking a tire. He said that the guy was all of a sudden 'en fuego,' and stood up, looking as though he were ten feet tall."

"'On fire'?" Kes said. "What could he have meant?"

"I don't know," I said. "At any rate, the farmer sped up, believing the man to be 'el diablo,' you know, the devil. He looked in his rearview mirror, and said that he saw flashes of light coming from the policeman's hip, which probably meant my father was firing his weapon. When my father didn't respond to radio inquiries, they sent some of his fellow officers out, and they found a scene straight out of hell, to use the farmer's reference."

"My father was torn to pieces, as though torn apart by wild dogs. A body next to him was of a man who'd been missing for a month, with six bullets from my father's weapon in him. Apparently, he'd just been nuts, as he had no criminal record, he'd just disappeared the month before. Maybe he'd just snapped. One funny thing, though..."

"What was that?" Kes said, enthralled.

"The medical examiner said that the man's body was far more advanced into decomposition than just a few hours, that he actually looked as though he'd been dead for weeks. But all I knew was that my father was dead, and I never got a chance to say goodbye to him."

"How awful," Kes said. We rode in silence for a while, then I decided that I needed to find out more about my assigned duties.

"So, what will you have me doing? And, can you be more specific about the 'trouble' you mentioned at the site?" I asked.

"Well, there have been reports of strange physical occurrences at the old school over the years, starting about 8 years ago, getting more frequent, and reports of vagrants who broke in, never coming out again. The police investigated, but were never able to find anything, so they'd just lock the place up and nail another piece of plywood over whatever window might have been broken out by the missing vagrants. A couple of cops claimed that they were attacked by an animal inside the building, probably a dog that got stuck inside," Kes said.

"I happened to hear about these events, and decided it would be the perfect place for a Paranormal investigation." As she said this, we reached the turnoff to IH-37 in the heart of San Antonio, and headed down it. By the time we reached the south side of San Antonio, I offered to switch places, so we stopped at a Burger King to gas up and fill up, and we lingered over sandwiches and Cokes. I took off my beat up 'DPS Softball' sweatshirt, and as I lifted it over my head, showing off my 36C breasts in my tight tee shirt, I briefly noticed Kes' eyes on my body, an approving look on her face.

I decided to try to clear the air about my shutting her down earlier. "Kes, I'm sorry about snapping at you about the gay thing. The truth is, I had some experience in school, and it didn't turn out well, so I guess I was a little sensitive. Funny thing is, I hadn't thought about it in seven years." Which was a lie.

"I'm really sorry for bringing it up. It's just that I AM gay, and I thought you needed to know, so I was trying to broach the subject," she said. I wasn't ready for that, though.

"Oh," I responded. After a short silence I said, "Well, that's good to know," and smiled, trying to be noncommittal. Kes looked at me, and didn't say anything, but I thought I saw a little hurt in her eyes. Well, I couldn't be responsible for her emotional life, I could barely manage my own. Inside, I was in turmoil. If I had been associating with any lesbians in the safe confines of the Department over the last 6 years, it would have been news to me, though I'm sure there were some, and the perps that we arrested, well, their sexuality was the least of their problems.

But, here I was going to be spending the next week with an attractive woman who'd just told me that she was lesbian, and I didn't know how to respond, or if it was even appropriate to respond. I felt a curiosity, I guess. Curious about the feelings that I'd felt for Sandy so long ago, and still carried the residue of today. Were they the feelings of a lesbian, or of a girl who'd just once given in to a bi-curiosity?

I decided that I needed to be an adult, and just forget about it, and get on with the job. It had worked for me ever since school, and I'd might as well ride the bronc I knew.

After we finished our lunch, I drove us further down IH-37, past huge fields with dozens of rolled bales of hay geometrically spaced, looking like marbles on a chinese checker board, pastures with hundreds of incurious cattle grazing, their dappled brown and white sides adding a touch of color to the green of the Texas countryside, and even a few random oil wells, reminding us what state we were still in.

We reached the turnoff for Rte 281, passing through the little, typically Texas towns of Three Rivers and George West, until late in the afternoon, we pulled into the town of Premont, distinguished by the abrupt change of speed limit from 70 to 35 mph, and by the modest cottages that represented most of the houses along 281. "There's the school right there," Kes pointed, before I even realized we were actually in the town limits. A few blocks further on, we pulled into the dusty parking lot of the Oasis Motel. It was a small, 15 unit, cinderblock construction out of the '50s, centered on the parking lot. We entered the small lobby, decorated in a surprisingly modern style, and were warmly greeted by the middle aged clerk. "Hi, what can I do for you?" she asked, with a smile.

"We'd like two rooms for the week," Kes said.

The woman's expression fell. "I'm so sorry, but this is hunting season. We don't have two rooms available."

Turning to me, Kes said, "Well, we'll have to bunk in Falfurrias-"

"Oh, you ladies look tired," the clerk piped up. "I'd hate to make you drive another ten miles late in the day. We DO have one room, a single queen, and I can give it to you at a slight discount, but that's all, if you'd like-"

"We'll take it!" I said, though I don't know why I leaped in like that.

"Are you sure?" Kes said, looking into my blue eyes with her wide brown eyes, deep and dark. I saw little flecks of green in them, and thought I'd ask her about that some time, but for now I just nodded. She put her hand on my shoulder to give emphasis to her question, and I nearly leaped out of my shoes. I felt a static electricity shock like never before. She pulled her hand away, and looked at it as though it had been loaded.

"Well, you said we'd be over at the school most of the time, so sleeping arrangements don't really matter," I reminded her.

"Okay, like the lady said, 'we'll take it,'" Kes said, and gave the clerk her University credit card to seal the deal. After getting the room keys, we drove the Suburban over in front of the room, then carried in our personal gear.

"There's time to get over to the school before dark," Kes said. "Let's take a look." We jumped back in the truck, and drove the couple of blocks back up Broadway, as 281 was called in the Premont town limits. Turning left onto NW 1st Street, we parked along the curb.

"It looks so....harmless," I said. It was just a nondescript 50's style, block construction school, like thousands throughout the country. While the block walls of the building were a yellow, fired vitreous glaze, the windows of the classrooms looked crimson , as though they'd been painted over with that reddish color. Several oak trees that had undoubtedly been saplings when first planted, now towered next to, and over the single level structure. The flat roof was no doubt awash in oak leaves. Their roots were most likely doing damage to the foundation, no more than 3 or 4 feet away, but I didn't suppose that anyone cared. Except perhaps, if Kes were right, for a few ghosts. The grass along the strip from the building to the street was mowed, though carelessly, with tufts of grass a foot or so high here and there, so at least we didn't have to negotiate stray biting insects there.

Reaching the nondescript main entrance, its glass panels not painted over, but dark nonetheless, we tried the door, which of course was locked. "I've got the key," Kes said, "but let's check out the outside tonight." We walked back towards 281 along the front of the school, and down along the ghostly glass block wall that probably represented the location of the cafeteria, and I imagined that I could see movement within. We continued down to the end of one of the arms of the'C'. We reached a rusted 4' high chain link fence, past which we could see the sad little playground, completely weed overgrown, with its dilapidated playground equipment.

"C'mon," Kes said, vaulting the fence handily. I was impressed, as I'd thought that maybe she was just an academic, but she showed that she wasn't afraid to get a little dirty, and that she was in fairly good shape. "Watch for ticks, and the fire ant mounds," she said, but to a cop in Texas, those warnings weren't really necessary.

Still, I was impressed with her enthusiasm, what with her only wearing shorts on her lower half to protect against the inevitable insects and burrs. I was a little slower, the bullet wound in my calf still troubling me a little. She proceeded ahead of me, and I had to admire the way her trim little ass moved and looked, then hustled up when I realized that I was falling behind her.

We reached the center of the playground equipment, which was surrounded and overgrown by grassy weeds. Along with a swing set, with one wooden seat hanging by only one rusty chain, and another now consisting only of two rusty chains, with the wooden seat laying on the ground and being busily devoured by termites, there were a set of monkey bars, standing askew like a drunk leaning on a light post, and looking like it would soon fall over, with or without help, a merry go round that just looked like a rust pile, and that shrieked in despair when I tried to turn it, and a lone, forlorn looking wooden seesaw.

Kes was standing by the seesaw, looking down at it as it sat in the center of the overgrown area. "It was right here," she said.

I knew immediately what she meant. Little seven year-old Izel Montemayor, shooed out to her family's back yard while their mother was busy preparing dinner, disappeared one Saturday night, and although the Premont police were quickly notified, and began a manhunt immediately, her body wasn't found until the following Monday, when the school opened for the week's classes.

She had been raped, then strangled, her body left half on, half off the see saw. The DPS of course lent its expertise to the manhunt for the killer, but had never found anyone who they could prove had committed the crime. Those most under suspicion, employees at the school, and Izel's relatives, were quickly cleared, so it was common wisdom among police that a stranger, passing through, had committed the crime. To lend some substance to that theory, a neighbor claimed he'd seen a Chevy pickup in front of the school at some point that weekend. No trace of any such vehicle was found, though, and the witness's reputation as a lush made that something of a dead end. That was about the end of it, except for the shock waves of slow-motion destruction that passed through the town, and through Izel's family. Every crime like that destroys far more than just the immediate victim. In this case it also destroyed a town. The town of Premont, already declining, had decayed even faster after that awful event, and I could only imagine the effects on the family of Izel Montemayor, having seen it in many similar, if less spectacular, events over the years. I looked over at Kes, and she knelt down by the see saw, tears running down her face. I was puzzled at the depth of her emotion, although my own stomach hurt considering the savagery of the crime. As moving as the death of a child is, this was supposed to be some sort of quasi-scientific investigation. It didn't seem all that professional to get emotional, at least this early into the fact finding. But, that was Kes' decision, and I respected it.

"Um, the manifestations have been noted pretty much inside the building, so that's where we'll do the bulk of the investigation, starting tomorrow," Kes said, as I helped her get back to her feet, south Texas clay on her bare knees and shins. I was surprised again, at the second static electricity spark that momentarily jumped between us. "Let's just take a quick look along the immediate perimeter of the building itself," and she headed toward the end of the 'C' at the far side of the playground. I was starting to get chills up and down my spine, I wasn't sure why, but then I'd never been to such an unbearably gut-wrenching crime scene, even ten years or so after the event, and it spooked me a little.

We walked in cool shadows along the back wall of the building, and when we accidentally brushed against the yellow block, I suddenly had a flash of how the playground had looked ten years before. I could see a neatly trimmed and groomed dirt playground, Izel's small body crumpled over the piece of playground equipment, a monstrous looking figure looming over her The vision was so real, that I had to blink a few times before it would fade out of my sight.

Just then, Kes and I reached a breezeway between two wings of the building, and walked under it to get to the front of the building. I heard a loud scream, as though by a small girl in infinite pain, and saw a blinding flash of light. I turned to Kes in slow motion, and found her lying on the ground, apparently unconscious. Her right arm and leg were bloody, 4 or 5 inch long cuts on each. It looked as though she might have cut them on several sharp looking rocks next to her on the ground. They both contained spots of what looked like blood.

"Kes, are you okay?" I said, patting her face, and checking her breathing and pulse. Both seemed okay. I looked around, and seeing no help, nor immediate source of the scream or flash of light, I pulled out my cell phone, and dialed 911, reaching the Jim Wells County Sheriff's office, and had them patch me through to the Premont police department. When the dispatcher answered, I told her of what had happened.

About 5 minutes later, a Premont cop, siren and lights going, followed by a paramedic vehicle pulled up by the breezeway, and the cop and paramedics came running through. By this time, Kes was recovering consciousness, and was fairly lucid, but still seated on the ground. The paramedics fussed over her, and patched up her arm and leg, which fortunately weren't seriously cut, while I answered the Premont cop's questions. He was none too happy that we hadn't let them know we were in town, but I assured him that we'd just gotten into town a few minutes before, and that we had just been reconnoitering briefly. I knew if he really cared, he'd confirm it with the motel desk clerk, but I didn't really care if he did or not. I was more concerned about my failure to protect my client.

He finished up with me, checking doors and telling me that loud noises and bright flashes weren't all that odd an occurrence at the school, 'probably just electrical circuits shorting out, or something.' I thanked him, and turned back to Kes. She was telling the paramedics that she was fine, so I took her hand in mine and steered her back to the truck, taking the breezeway so that we wouldn't have to leap any more fences. As we headed back to the motel and the restaurant nearby, Kes asked to stop at a package store. She came out with a bottle of Raspberry flavored vodka, saying, "This stuff would be better chilled, and neat, but what the hell."

We went into the room, and Kes asked if it would be okay if we had dinner delivered. I said, "Sure." I looked up restaurants that delivered, and finding one (literally), made the call, ordering us both fried chicken, french fries, side salads and bottled water, while Kes got a bucket full of ice from the motel's ice machine. Unfortunately, the sous chef at the Oasis Restaurant was off that night, so that was about the best we could do for eats. I'd had worse, including unheated MREs, and to be truthful, the food was actually pretty good. We chowed down, sitting on the bed, and then Kes poured us each a triple shot on the rocks, in our little plastic motel tumblers.

"Here's to a successful scientific investigation," she said, draining the glass. I was a good ways behind her, wondering what had changed her from a scientific researcher into a frightened little girl. It was pretty clear that something at that school had scared her, maybe even terrified her. I figured I didn't have long to wait to hear what it was. Two drinks later, her story came out.

"I heard her, as clear as a bell," Kes said.

"Heard who?" I said.

"Izel. The murdered girl. She said, 'Please, help me, it's trying to take us down there with it.'" I thought this over.

"When did you hear her?" I asked.

"Right after that flash. I heard her voice, a little girl's voice just as I remember it, then you were patting my face and I was lying on the ground," she said.

"You just said, 'Just as I remember it.' What did you mean?" I asked Kes.

"Umm, I guess you should know. Izel's last name wasn't always Montemayor. When her parents were killed in an auto accident, she and her siblings were separated, and raised by different families." Kes paused, but I waited before saying anything, so she continued. "Her older brother and sister. Andrew, my brother and me. Izel was our sister."

"Do you remember the turquoise and silver hair comb I wore yesterday?" Kes asked.

"Yes, I think it's beautiful," I said. "Where did you get it?"

"I got it the same time I bought a small turquoise and silver cross, for Izel. The cross was supposed to be a First Communion present. Instead, she was buried with it in her hands, that sad day..." Kes said, her voice trailing off.