by Chris Culver
I picked up the drink and then brought it to my face. The liquor smelled sharp but clean. It was good vodka. That was part of how I justified it. I had arrested lots of drunks on the job. When they bought vodka, it came in giant plastic bottles, and it smelled like paint thinner. I drank the good stuff. That made me better somehow.
As I stood there, I felt moisture form on the exterior of my class, I heard the ice crack as it melted, and I watched as a bead of condensation dripped to the floor. I didn’t want that drink, but if I kept holding it, I would finish it. Then I’d finish another and another until I passed out.
I didn’t want that. I wanted to feel something real—even if for just a night. Before I could stop myself, I poured my drink into the sink and then looked to the dog.
“You want to sleep outside tonight?”
Roger cocked his head at me, confused. I needed to get out of the house, so I patted his cheek and then went upstairs for my badge and firearm. With the fair going on, there was plenty of work tonight. I was sober and ready to do it. I took the dog outside and watched him climb into the doghouse I had built in the backyard. Then I locked up and got in my truck.
I didn’t plan my route when I headed out, but somehow I knew where to go. I drove to the Wayfair Motel. With all the attention the media had given Christopher Hughes, Travis had assigned a uniformed patrol officer in a marked cruiser to sit in the hotel’s parking lot to keep him safe. I parked beside her and rolled down my window. Officer Alisa Maycock did likewise.
“Hey, Joe.”
“Hey, Alisa,” I said. “Anything going on tonight?”
“You’re looking at it,” she said, nodding toward a closed door at the end of the building. During fair week, people often congregated outside to drink and smoke, but tonight, the lot was empty. Alisa’s cruiser had a lot to do with that. “Nobody’s been in, and nobody’s been out.”
“How much longer do you have on your shift?”
She glanced at her watch. “Two hours. I’m here until midnight.”
I nodded. “Why don’t you go home? I’ll take over. I need the break.”
“You need a break, so you came into work?” she asked, raising her brow.
“Yeah,” I said, not wanting to elaborate further. Alisa considered and then nodded.
“If you want the most boring job on the planet, it’s yours for the next two hours.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Have a good one.”
“You, too,” she said, before rolling up her window. Within five minutes of arriving at the Wayfair, I was alone in the parking lot. I stared at Christopher’s door, almost hoping he’d come out. For twenty minutes, nothing moved. Then I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. I hadn’t thought this out. If I had, I would have brought coffee.
At the hour mark, I wondered whether I should have stayed at home and gotten drunk. It would have been more fruitful than sitting in a truck for two hours. At eleven-thirty, an old minivan pulled into the lot. It was late, but this was a packed hotel. I thought nothing of it until the drapes in Christopher’s room shifted a moment later, and his head appeared in the window. He scanned the lot, and I slouched low, hoping he wouldn’t see me over the dashboard. He was looking for Alisa’s cruiser.
“What are you up to?” I asked, my voice low.
Within seconds of scanning the lot, Christopher opened his door and climbed into the front seat of the minivan. I transcribed the van’s license plate as it pulled out of the lot. Then I turned on my truck. I should have called this in, but that would have taken time. Plus, I would have had to explain why I was in the lot instead of Alisa. Travis wouldn’t appreciate me taking over a uniformed officer’s shift without consulting him first, but since I already had, I figured I might as well keep going. If I found something, I’d call it in, but for now, I could do this on my own terms.
I put my truck in gear and headed out, uncertain where the hell I was going.
27
May 2008
According to the experts, my therapist was the best in the city for young women, but I didn’t give a shit. I wasn’t a depressed little girl upset because her boyfriend broke up with her, and I wasn’t stressed about getting into the perfect college. Nobody bullied me, and nobody harassed me online. I didn’t have the same problems as everyone else, so I didn’t need the same therapy as everyone else.
Sometimes I got scared late at night, and sometimes I had nightmares. Once, I even thought I saw Christopher Hughes in a tree outside my window. He was in prison, so I knew he wasn’t there, but still, I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling he was watching me, laughing at me, waiting so he could have his chance to hurt me again.
Talking wouldn’t help that. My problems were my own, and I had solved them on my own. I had installed a deadbolt outside my bedroom door, and I slept with a baseball bat beside my bed. No one would hurt me again. I had taken care of that. My Louisville Slugger gave me all the therapy I needed.
Still, Julia insisted that I see a therapist every week. She meant well, so I went along. She thought if I could just talk about what Christopher had done, I could process things and find closure. But closure was bullshit. If therapy taught me anything, it taught me that.
Still, therapy had one upside, at least: For two hours every Friday afternoon, I got out of school. Julia even took me for coffee afterwards. We didn’t get a lot of time alone, so I looked forward to it most weeks. As I sat and sipped my chocolate chai latte after my latest session, Julia picked up her coffee mug and looked at me over the rim.
“Did you talk today?”
“No,” I said. “Dr. Collins keeps pressuring me to talk about Christopher, but I don’t need to talk about him. I lived through what he did. I don’t need to rehash it.”
Julia nodded and sipped her drink. “Many people think talking our way through trauma helps us get over it.”
“So you’ve told me,” I said, putting my drink down. “Here’s the thing, though: I don’t want to get over what happened. Christopher made me stronger.”
Julia put her drink down. “There’s a difference between being strong and brittle.”
I rolled my eyes. “I spent an hour hearing that shit from my therapist, and I don’t need it at home, too.”
Julia looked up from her drink. “So this coffee shop is home now?”
I rolled my eyes again. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” said Julia, reaching across the table to touch my wrist. She squeezed. “I love you, too.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said, shaking my head.
“Then I take it back.”
I opened my mouth and then laughed. “You’re impossible to talk to.”
Julia smiled. “Your dad says that, too.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. “Doug is my dad, isn’t he? I’ve never had one before.”
“He’d love the job if you’ll give it to him.”
“I guess it’s his,” I said. We both went quiet again. I cleared my throat. “I’m thinking about becoming a cop after college.”
Julia nodded and drew in a breath. “You’re smart, observant, and well spoken. I think you’d make a good one.”
“I will,” I said.
“You’re humble, too. I think that’s your best quality.”
“My humility is amazing,” I said, smiling and looking down. Neither of us spoke, but then I locked eyes with the woman across from me. There was no pretense there. She didn’t want anything from me. I liked that about her. “You don’t have to keep driving me to therapy. I think I’ll quit.”
Julia nodded. “If you don’t like Dr. Collins, we can find you someone else.”
I shook my head and looked away. “Dr. Collins isn’t the problem.”
“Then what is?”
I drew in a breath and then another before sighing.
“Every therapist I’ve been to thinks I’m broken and that they can put me back together just by talking. I’m tired of that.”
Julia nodded and sipped her coffee. “What do you think?”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I said. “I’m not weak, I didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and I’m not going through typical teenage depression. Dr. Collins doesn’t even want to understand what happened. She wants to fix me and move on.”
“I see,” said Julia, nodding and sipping her drink. I waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t, and that just pissed me off. Even though I was a teenager, I knew what she was doing. Silence was hard to deal with, and she knew it. Somehow, sitting with another person without saying anything was more intimate than even the most intimate conversation. I didn’t like silence. Julia knew if she stayed quiet, I’d talk, just to fill in the lull in conversation.
And yet, even knowing that, I couldn’t stop talking. Something inside me begged to come out. In that moment, I loved Julia, and I hated her. She knew what she was doing and what she was dragging out of me.
“Christopher Hughes drugged me so I wouldn’t fight him, and then he put himself inside me. Afterwards, I tried to get help, but nobody did shit until another girl died. Do you know what that’s like?”
“No,” said Julia. “I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“I don’t have to imagine. I lived it,” I said, my voice rising. A couple at a table nearby looked at us, but Julia didn’t belittle me by asking me to calm down. She nodded. My throat felt tight, and my skin felt hot. I felt like a balloon full to the breaking point. One more puff of air, and I’d pop. I waited for Julia to say something. Instead, she reached across the table and touched my hand. I ripped my arm back.
“I’m not human to them,” I said. “I’m a puzzle to solve. That’s it. I sit in their office for an hour, and they poke and prod me like a science experiment, and then they get a paycheck. I’m tired of people thinking they can fix me. There’s nothing wrong with me. I want everyone to leave me alone.”
Julia didn’t react for a moment, but then she nodded.
“I understand.”
I waited, expecting more. She looked at me with a serious but caring expression on her face.
“So you won’t make me go anymore?”
She picked up her mug and sipped. Then her eyes went distant.
“I’ll make you a deal,” she said, putting down her coffee. “You can stop going to the therapist’s office when you remove the deadbolt from your door, and when you can make it through a week without crying at night.”
I shook my head, feeling my cheeks and throat grow hot.
“I don’t cry at night.”
“Yeah, you do,” she said. “It’s not every night, but it’s three out of four. Doug and I take turns staying up in case you need somebody.”
I lowered my chin. “You listen outside my door to hear if I cry?”
She picked up her coffee and shook her head.
“We live in an old house. The walls are thin.”
I opened my mouth. It felt like the worst kind of betrayal.
“I can’t believe you listen at night. That is so wrong.”
“Get used to it. It’s what families do, and you’re a part of our family. We will always be here when you need us, even when you don’t want us to be.”
I shot to my feet, knocking my stool over.
“I can’t talk to you right now. I’m going to the car.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding and sipping her drink. I hurried out and almost ran into somebody near the door as cascading waves of revulsion and anger washed over me. There was something else there, too, something in the background that made my eyes tear up. All those nights, all that time, I had felt as if I were alone behind that heavy wooden door…and I hadn’t been. I’d had someone listening the entire time.
Half an hour later, Julia came to the car. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I gave her the longest hug of my life though. She thanked me afterwards and told me she had needed that.
That night, I didn’t cry myself to sleep as I had the previous two. Instead, I went downstairs. Doug was on the couch in the living room, eating Fruity Dyno Bites cereal from a soup bowl and watching Letterman.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, sitting on the end of the couch opposite him. For a few minutes, I watched TV with him, but then the show went to commercial, and he patted my knee.
“Make sure you turn the TV off when you go to bed,” he said. “It’s getting late for me.”
He picked up his bowl and started for the kitchen. I almost let him go, but then I cleared my throat.
“Hey,” I said. He stopped near the doorway and looked at me. I couldn’t hold his gaze, so I looked down. “I don’t want you to make a bigger deal about this than it deserves, but I want to call you Dad instead of Doug. Is that okay?”
He said nothing until I looked up. Then he smiled and nodded. “Yeah, kiddo. That’s okay.”
I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Goodnight, Dad.”
He walked back to the living room. I didn’t know what he was doing until he grabbed a blanket from the loveseat and tossed it to me.
“It’s cold down here, sweetheart. You’ll want that.”
“It’s not cold. You’re just eating cold cereal. Does Julia know you’re eating on her couch? She’d be pissed.”
He looked down to his bowl. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”
“You gave me a home, so I guess I can keep your secret.”
“I’ll be forever in your debt,” he said, winking as he walked out of the room. I watched until he disappeared, and then I focused on the TV again. I cried after that. I wasn’t sobbing or anything, but it was a steady cry. I didn’t cry a lot, so I was glad no one else was around to see it.
When I went to bed that night, I locked my deadbolt, but I didn’t put on the chain. My therapist would tell me that didn’t matter as long as I kept the deadbolt engaged, but it mattered. As I lay in bed, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I thought about why I had cried on the couch. It made little sense at first, but then it did. I had cried because my dad loved me. It was as simple as that.
For the first time in my life, I was home.
28
Smoke and the soft murmur of whispered conversation hung in the air. Warren Nichols hunched over his drink at the end of a long scratched and scarred wooden bar. The nearest person sat three seats away from him, transfixed by a cell phone. Behind him, two guys played darts.
Aside from the bartender, no one had spoken to him for more than an hour. That was why he liked Ray’s Tavern. Warren didn’t go there to meet friends or make new ones. He went there to get drunk. Warren preferred to be alone nowadays. He had a daughter with whom he almost never spoke and an ex-wife who called every time she needed money. Sometimes he gave it to her, but sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes she slept with him as a thank you, but most nights she told him to work one out on his own.
Pictures of his ex-wife and daughter had both ended up in the folder given to him by James “Sherlock” Holmes. If he didn’t go along with Sherlock’s plan, they would die. He wouldn’t have minded if Sherlock and his goons knocked off his ex, but he couldn’t let anything happen to his daughter, despite their differences. More than his garage and shop, she was his legacy and his hope for a better future. One day, if he lived long enough, her kids would call him grandpa. The thought of someone hurting her made him sick.
And so he had gotten drunk at Ray’s every night since then. After he had enough to drink, he’d walk two blocks home, where he’d pass out on his couch. If he went along with Sherlock’s plans, no one would hurt his daughter. Maybe he’d even get rich like Sherlock had said. At this point in his life, he didn’t much care.
Warren had stage four colon cancer that had metastasized to his lungs and liver. It was incurable. His doctors gave him a year, maybe two if he were lucky. No matter what happened, he was going to his grave sooner rather than later. He hoped he wouldn’t take his kid
with him.
A cell phone rang somewhere in the bar. It was only when the bartender glanced at him that Warren realized the sound was coming from his own pocket. He finished his drink and then pointed to his empty glass as he fished the phone out. Candace, his daughter, had made him buy the phone two years ago when she went to college. Only a handful of people knew his number, and he only liked one or two.
He didn’t recognize the number identified by his caller ID, but he answered anyway. He wanted a fight, so he ran a finger across the screen and then put the phone to his ear.
“Fuck you,” he said, speaking before the other person on the line could say anything.
“Is that how you talk to an old friend?”
The voice sounded familiar, but Warren took a moment to place it.
“Christopher?” he asked.
“Yeah. My lawyer gave me your number. Didn’t think you’d hear from me, did you?”
In fact, Warren had expected a call any day now. Christopher would expect to pick up business where they had left off. He didn’t know everything had changed.
“Good to hear from you, brother. I saw you on the news today. I don’t get to talk to too many celebrities.”
“Hell yeah, I’m a celebrity,” said Christopher, snorting. “My lawyer’s gonna make me fucking rich, too.”
“You’re already rich,” said Warren, nodding his thanks to the bartender as he refilled his glass. “What do you need?”
“What do you mean, what do I need?” asked Christopher. “I got out of prison, and I’m calling an old friend. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Warren ran a hand over his head and sighed. “Sorry, man. I’ve had a long day. I’m glad you’re out. We should get a drink.”
“Fucking right we should get a drink. You’ll buy, too. I’ve been gone for twelve years. I deserve a drink with my friends.”