by Jeff Vrolyks
Chapter Forty
I was at work the next morning, patrolling Highway 18. A sedan ahead of me was making too wide of turns, crossing over the double-yellow line on nearly every curve. I hit the light-bar and sped up to catch him (it ended up being a her). She pulled over at the first turn-out. I ran her plates, nothing came up. I stepped out of my cruiser and felt the vibration of a cellphone in my pocket. I ignored it and walked to the sedan. The lady was a new face, and by the way she drove I suspected she was a flatlander. I hadn’t yet decided if I’d write her a ticket or just give her a warning. My phone vibrated again, and not just once which is indicative of voicemail. Another call.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?”
“I’m pretty sure,” she said.
“Oh yeah? Why?” This was a game I enjoyed playing. Let them confess, it’s good for their conscience. Sometimes they say the most outlandish things. One guy guessed that I was pulling him over to tell him that if everyone drove more like him there would be no need for cops as there would be no accidents. I wrote him a ticket with a smile.
“Because I’m drinking and driving,” she said.
I gawped at her. Was I losing my touch? I can smell alcohol on motorists’ breaths even before I lean into the open window, but apparently not today. “You’re drinking and driving?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well shit, I appreciate your honesty. That’s the first time in my six years of being”—my phone vibrated again; I fished the phone out of my pocket and saw Norrah was calling me. I pressed cancel and saw I had a missed call from Norrah already, and a missed call from Aaron. “First time anyone’s ever admitted that preemptively,” I said distractedly.
“Honesty is the best policy, huh?” She grinned at me, her eyes slightly glassy.
“Not quite. Having a designated driver is the best policy. Who the heck drinks at nine in the morning, anyway? Are you an alcoholic?”
“No, sir. I rarely drink. I learned last night that my husband of nine years had an affair. I long suspected it, but he confirmed it last night. I drank myself stupid well into the night, and I guess I’m still affected.”
“I see. Again, I appreciate the honesty. I’m sorry about what happened. Would you step out of the car for me?”
“Sure,” she said agreeably. Pretty damned odd. I wished everyone I pulled over was more like her.
The phone vibrated in my hand: it was Norrah again. Okay, this was the third time she called in two minutes, and Aaron had called once. Something was up. An emergency.
The woman stepped out of her car. Without being asked she walked to the side of the road, put her feet on the white line in preparation to walk it.
“Just one moment,” I said to the lady. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
“Leleith. Or Lilly. Or Lil.”
“Just one moment, Leleith. I have to take this call.”
“Take your time,” she said sweetly.
“You’re a damn breath of fresh air, you know that?” I answered the phone. “What’s up, baby?”
Norrah was crying. I waited for the bad news.
“He’s dead,” she said and sobbed.
“Who?”
“Edward Berg.”
“No…”
She said nothing but I pictured her nodding and wiping her eyes with tissue.
“Just now? What happened?”
I glanced at Leleith, who was practicing walking the line. I decided I wouldn’t be giving her a DUI.
“He was killed in jail. There was a brawl in the cafeteria and he was stabbed. Jay, my heart is just broken for that poor boy! He shouldn’t have even been in jail!”
“I know,” I said softly and I was fighting back tears of my own. I had a lot of emotional capital invested in the outcome of his situation. “A needless murder, as most are, but some more than others.”
“Can you take the rest of the day off? I want you by my side.”
“I’ve been taking a lot of time off lately.”
“Please?”
By how she said it, there would be no way I could turn her down.
“See you in a little bit,” I said and ended the call.
The woman finished walking the line, had turned around and was now walking toward me with her gaze focused on the white line before her, her arms spread out for balance. She was walking pretty straight; I judged that she wasn’t much over the legal limit, if any.
“Drive straight home,” I said. “And never do that again.”
“You’re letting me go?” Her face brightened.
I nodded, crestfallen, and walked to my cruiser.
“What’s your name?” she asked me.
I looked over my shoulder. “Davis. Why?”
“Your first name.”
“Jay.”
“You got bad news just now, didn’t you? What happened?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I entered my black and white and closed the door. Leleith appeared at my door, tapped on the glass. I rolled my window down.
“Want to talk about it?” she asked.
“Who are you?”
She frowned. “Leleith. Why?”
I shook my head. “You’re odd. Like I said, drive straight home.”
“Would you like to talk about it over a cup of coffee? The Cliffhanger restaurant is just up ahead. I was heading there for some breakfast. Pancakes and bacon, comfort food.”
“A guy I know was just murdered. There’s not much to talk about, I don’t know the details.” I started the engine.
She covered her open mouth, eyes wide. “I’m so sorry.”
“So am I.” I pressed a thumb and forefinger into my stinging eyes. “Divorce your loser husband, you deserve better.” I rolled up the window on her and drove away. In my rear-view mirror I saw her watching me off.
I was at Norrah’s ten minutes later. I embraced her on the couch, then got busy watching the news. My phone rang. It was Aaron. I answered it this time.
“Eddie’s dead,” Aaron said off the bat.
“I know. And I know you’re blaming yourself. Don’t.”
“I’m too stunned to do much self-loathing.”
“I haven’t heard the details yet. Just that it was in the cafeteria and he was stabbed.”
“That’s all they’re saying. They’re mostly just regurgitating what happened last month, the murder of the Boise girls, the trial that will never be, and showing footage of emergency vehicles in front of the prison.”
“Do you think Paul or his friend had anything to do with this?” I asked.
“No. Things like this just happen in jail. It’s the result of being perpetually accompanied by convicted murderers. God forgive me, but do you know what I thought right after I heard the news? That if it had to happen, I wish it happened before yesterday; before you met with him and got that damned notepad from him. It really haunts me what you said last night.”
“That Paul accused you of wanting to rape Brooke?”
“Everything you said, not just that. If you hear something enough, if someone tells you something enough times, you begin wondering if it’s true. Tell a smart person that he or she is stupid enough times and they’ll start believing it. I’d never so much as fantasize about sleeping with a minor, let alone a child like Tinkerbelle. I guess she’s not a child anymore, but still. The thought literally repulses me, makes my stomach sour. But Paul seems so certain that I have a thing for that girl. It plagues my mind, the scourge of my sanity.”
“Aaron, come on, you don’t need to tell me this. I know you’re a good guy.”
“Like I said, when you hear something enough you begin second guessing yourself. I know it isn’t true, but still…” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I wish you didn’t have that damned notepad.”
I didn’t listen to what Aaron had said there. I was on to something new. “Aaron. For shits and giggles, let’s say that Paul or his friend had something to do with Edward’s murder. They probably didn
’t, but for the sake of my argument let’s say they played a role in his murder this morning.”
“Okay.”
“If that were the case, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind?”
He considered it. “Uh… I don’t know. Oh. Oh. I see where you’re going with this. The timing. Murdered after he gave you the notes, not before.”
“Yeah. Wouldn’t his murder have been better committed before giving me the notes?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” Aaron said. “It’s not like we learned anything useful there.”
“You’re assuming Brooke isn’t going to have a run-in with Paul on the day after her fifteenth birthday.”
“It’s not going to happen. I’m going to see to it that it doesn’t.”
“Going to spend that day with her?” I asked.
“If I have to, yes,” replied Aaron.
“Let’s say I’m right about Paul or his friend having been responsible for Edward’s murder. That would mean they waited till after I got the notepad to have him killed. That would mean they wanted us to read those things. What if all this was a means to get that information to us? A ruse.”
“I think that’s far-reaching,” Aaron said.
“Yeah, I suppose it is. But isn’t it possible? You can’t say there is a zero chance that it could have happened.”
“I suppose.”
“If there’s a chance, and you just admitted there is—albeit a small chance—shouldn’t we consider what it might mean? I’ll tell you what it might mean: that there’s something on those pages that Paul wanted me to read. And to share with you. Or Norrah. Maybe it’s one of the things I told you over the phone, but maybe not. There’s a lot I skimmed over, but I think I might read it more carefully a second time.”
“I think you’ll be wasting your time,” Aaron said.
“Am I selfish or what? I should be doing nothing but lamenting that poor kid’s death, but instead I’m thinking about how this affects me. About how I won’t be watching his trial, how there’s no reason for me to find proof of his innocence, and how—”
“Maybe that’s why Edward was killed. If you are operating under the no-stone-left-unturned mentality, you have to throw that in there as well. And if you ask me, it’s more likely that he was killed to prevent a trial than killed only after he wrote what he did.”
“Killed to prevent a trial that he was responsible for creating?” I said. “That sounds stupid.”
“I guess it does,” Aaron conceded.
“As I was saying, I’m seeing this murder as something that affects me, when I should be thinking about Edward and his family.”
“Ditto.”
“All right, I’ll let you go. Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Man this sucks. See you, Jay.”
Seated on the couch I put an arm around Norrah. “Fucking Paul,” I muttered. I couldn’t help but consider that this was his fault, Paul’s, just as the two girls murdered last month were the doings of that asshole. How could there be any doubt? I thought I’d do some more research on Sedona, Arizona, to see what I might find. Without knowing his real name, it would be a futile search. There had to be some way to find his birth name.
“Huh…” I said.
Norrah looked over at me.
“Paul was investigated, had a California Driver’s license with the name Paul Klein. If it’s a fake name, which I’d guess it is—that’s why there is no record of his birth—that means he took on a whole new identity at some point. When he bought his Dodge Ram, he had already taken that name, so says his registration. His registration, Wells Fargo bank account, State Farm insurance, all are under the name Paul Klein. But that’s all that’s under the name Paul Klein. He claimed not to remember his Social Security number before saying that he doesn’t believe he ever had a Social Security card. You need one of those to get a job, and to get a loan, such as a loan for his Dodge Ram. I wonder how he pulled that off?”
“He’s never had a job,” Norrah said, “until the one at Papagayo’s. But didn’t you say he never worked there?”
“Yeah, another one of his lies.”
“He mentioned that once, that he never worked a job before Papagayo’s. He was proud of it for some reason. Like he’s above labor. I suppose he made up the job at Papagayo’s so I’d let him live here, being that I was looking for a tenant who had income to pay rent.”
“How’d he get his money then?”
“I thought from Papagayo’s. But he did say his parents send him a check every month.”
“Which is a lie, I’m sure. He ran away from his parents at thirteen, hated them; it said that in Edward’s notes, and that I do believe. I’m going to look into that, how he bought that Ram. If it was on loan, I want to know what Social Security number he used to get the loan.”
“Maybe he stole it from another Paul Klein? Maybe there is a real Paul Klein and he just assumed his identity,” Norrah theorized.
“Who knows,” I said and exhaled. “I can’t stand liars.”