Page 52

Danny doesn’t know what his next stop will be—maybe Denver, maybe Longmont, maybe Arvada—but after nearly three years in Oak Grove, his two small suitcases won’t be enough for the belongings he means to take.

He decides to go to Manitou Fine Liquors and see if he can get some empty boxes for his clothes.

They might not know his face there because even in his drinking days he stuck mostly to beer.

He opens his trailer door shortly after noon and stops on the top step.

Darla Jean Richardson has set up her dollhouse on the asphalt in the shade of the Oak Grove office building.

It’s a big one, damn near a mansion.

Carrying it from her trailer must have been a chore.

Becky ordered it from Amazon for DJ’s seventh birthday, then threw up her hands in despair when she realized it had to be assembled.

Danny put it together with DJ handing him the various components, both of them singing along with the radio.

That was a good day.

She’s nine now, and he hasn’t seen Marigold’s DreemHouse for almost a year.

He supposes she plays with it in her bedroom.

Or has outgrown it.

But if she lugged it all the way out here from her trailer, it can only have been for one reason.

“Hey, DJ, what do you say?”

That’s always been good for a smile, but not today.

She gives him a solemn look.

“She’s gone, if that’s why you were staying inside.”

Danny doesn’t have to ask who DJ’s talking about.

Ella Davis was in the park earlier, knocking on doors and talking to anyone who was home.

He expected her to make a visit to his trailer, but she never did; just took off her Covid mask and left.

“Where’s your mom?”

“She hadda take Marielle’s shift at the diner.

Marielle’s got impetigo.” DJ says the word very carefully, syllable by syllable.

“She said I could stay on my own and she’d bring me back a slice of cake.

I don’t want cake, I don’t care if I ever have cake again.

She told me I couldn’t knock on your door, so I came here.

So I’d see you when you came out.”

Danny goes down the steps, walks half the distance to DJ, then stops.

The dollhouse is open on its hinges and he can see Barbie and Ken inside, sitting at the kitchen table.

Barbie sits with her legs stuck awkwardly out because her knees don’t bend very well.

There was a time when DJ and Danny discussed this, and other unrealistic attributes of various dolls—plastic skin, creepy hair—at some length.

“Why are you just standing there?” DJ asks.

Because he can feel eyes, of course.

The accused killer and the defenseless little girl.

Most people are at work, but some are at home—the ones Inspector Davis talked to—and they will be watching.

Maybe he shouldn’t care, but he does.

Before he can think of a reply, she says, “Ma ast if you ever molested me.

I know what that means, it means stranger danger, and I said Danny would never molest me because he’s my friend.”

Darla Jean starts to cry.

“DJ, Jesus, don’t—”

“You didn’t kill that girl.

Did you.” Not a question.

Fuck the watchers.

He goes to where she’s sitting and squats down beside her.

“No.

They think I did because I had a dream of where she was buried, but I didn’t kill her.”

DJ swipes an arm across her eyes.

“Ma says I can’t come over your trailer anymore and you can’t pick me up at school anymore.

She says they’ll either arrest you or you’ll go away.

Are they going to arrest you?”

“They can’t because I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Are you going away?”

“I have to.

I don’t have a job and most people don’t want me here anymore.”

“I want you! What if Ma decides she wants Bobby for a boyfriend again? He can’t fix the car if it busts! I hate him, he sent me to my room once without my supper and Ma didn’t stop him!”

She begins to sob, and double fuck the watchers, Danny puts an arm around her and pulls her to him.

Her face against his shirt is hot and wet but okay.

More than okay.

“She won’t have Bob back,” he says.

“She knows better.”

He has no idea if this is true, but hopes it is.

He’s never met his predecessor, for all Danny knows he could be a skinny bespectacled accountant who gets a kick out of sending little girls to their rooms, but he imagines a big hulk with a crewcut and lots of tattoos.

Someone a little girl could really be scared of.

“Take me with you,” DJ says against his shirt.

Danny laughs and gives her dark blond hair a scruff.

“Then they’d arrest me for sure.”

She looks up at him and gives him a tentative smile.

That’s when Althea Dumfries comes out of her trailer.

“Let loose of that child!” she shouts.

“Let loose of that child this minute or I’m calling the police!”

DJ shoots to her feet, tears still streaming down her face.

“Go fuck yourself! GO FUCK YOURSELF, YOU FAT BITCH!”

Danny is horrified but also admiring.

And even though he’s sure Darla Jean just bought herself a whole boatload of trouble, he can’t help thinking that he couldn’t have said it better himself.