by Dan Lawton
“What’s in Sweden?” Randolph asked.
Patricia found his eyes. “What?”
“You bought two tickets to Sweden. Why?”
“Shay is from Sweden. We were going to visit her homeland.”
He nodded as though he knew that, but he did not. Sheila never told him she was from Sweden. Yet, Patricia knew. This confirmed it: They were not as close as he thought they were. “And Fiji?”
“Somewhere far from here. Somewhere to start over together.”
Ouch. It hurt. It all hurt so much. Sheila was a manipulative person, and she had played them all.
He went to the sofa and sat down too, but kept his distance. “Did you know Janet is pregnant?”
She nodded.
He sighed.
They sat together quietly.
“You know that’s not enough, right?” he said.
“What isn’t?”
“Signing away all your financial rights. You tried to have me killed. And you used my money to do it.”
She dropped her head. “I know.”
“I’m sorry, Patricia.”
She looked back up. “For what?”
“For whatever I ever did to you to make you feel like you had to resort to these dramatics. I’m sorry for not fulfilling you in the way you needed to be fulfilled.”
She slid closer and reached out and grabbed his hand and squeezed. They shared a quick moment—a glance at one another for old time’s sake, a somber flash of where things had gone wrong between them—and then he pulled his hand away. Despite everything, including her trying to have him killed, he still did not hate her.
“You’re going to have to turn yourself in,” he said.
Tears fell. But she nodded. “I know. And I will. And I was serious when I said I’ll sign whatever you want.”
“Thank you.”
And that was that. He stood. It felt like closure. At least when it came to his marriage.
Outside, a car door closed. Benji walked toward the window and peeked out, then turned back and announced to the room, “He’s here.”
“Who’s here?” Randolph said.
Benji did not answer. Instead, he opened the door and waited for the guest who walked in.
O’Reilly!
“You!” Randolph said when he saw him. Anger swarmed through him like a nest of irritated killer bees.
“Hello, Randolph. Good to see you again.”
“You know this guy?” Benji said to O’Reilly.
O’Reilly grinned at Randolph through a flexed jaw. “We go way back.”
“What are you doing here, Gary?” Randolph said.
“So your name’s Gary?” Benji said.
O’Reilly glared at him.
“It was you at the airport, wasn’t it?” Randolph said. “You’re the one who detained this kid, aren’t you?”
“Very good,” O’Reilly said.
“I know who you are,” Randolph said.
“Is that so?”
“Sheila told me all about you. How you two used to be lovers, how you stalked her after she broke it off with you. How dangerous and jealous you are.”
O’Reilly laughed. “If we’re talking about the same Sheila here—Sheila Backe—then you’re mistaken.”
“No, no. I don’t think so. I know your type.”
He laughed again. “Is she here? Where is she?”
Randolph folded his arms. As much as Sheila did not deserve a protector in all this, he was still human; feeding her to the hungry wolf that was her jealous, potentially violent ex-boyfriend was unruly and cruel. He would not do it.
“She’s in the bathroom,” Benji said. “Down the hall.”
Randolph glared at Benji with a level of disgust he could not put into words.
“Thank you, Benjamin.”
O’Reilly stormed past Benji, then Randolph, as if he owned the place. Nobody stopped him.
“Who the fuck is this guy?” Bruce said as he staggered from the kitchen with a refilled tumbler. His words slurred just enough to sound abnormal.
Randolph watched from the base of the hallway as O’Reilly went to the first closed door on the right and knocked. Benji stood close to Randolph as if ready to pounce if needed for backup. Then it hit him: There was no sound. The weeping had stopped. Something was wrong.
O’Reilly rapped on the door once and listened, then again and listened. After a third time with no response, he grabbed the handle and turned, and the door pushed open. By now, Randolph knew what they would find on the other side.
O’Reilly stood that way for a few seconds—arm extended, palm around the doorknob, blankness on his face. Then he turned to Randolph and said, “You better come see this.”
Randolph hurried there—quickly, but not too quickly—and saw what O’Reilly did, and what he suspected they might. Benji was on his heels like the pest he was. The bathroom window was open and the curtain blew in a funnel from the wall. The toilet seat was closed and the box of tissues that had been on top had fallen to the floor.
Sheila was gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
O’Reilly shouted obscenities and ran out of the bathroom, down the hall, and out of the house. In seconds, Randolph saw him through the open window as he scoured the backyard for evidence. He ran wildly around the grass as if chasing an animal and popped in and out of view as he encircled the house. It seemed the rain had mostly let up, the clouds now white. Nobody joined O’Reilly outside. They simply watched.
O’Reilly disappeared into the woods through a manmade trail at the back of the property, and he returned later without Sheila. He got in his truck and drove through the surrounding neighborhoods, so he said, but came up empty-handed. Once he returned for good, Bruce had sobered up and Janet and Max were quiet in the bedroom—napping, perhaps. Randolph and Patricia and Benji sat on the sofa like old friends but did not speak. To Randolph, there seemed to be nothing left to say.
“Did Sammy pass?” Randolph asked at one point to anyone who would listen. Sammy was the dog.
“Yes, Dad, she passed.”
That was all there was to say about it.
O’Reilly came in and plopped himself on the sofa and hung his head. “What are the chances I can get a drink?”
“We have water and milk and apple juice,” Bruce said.
“Anything stronger?”
“How about Belvedere?”
“You have Belvedere?” Randolph said.
“It was a gift.”
“That sounds perfect,” O’Reilly said.
Bruce took off to retrieve it.
“I was so close I could smell her,” O’Reilly said. “It’s like she slipped through my fingers. She’s impossible sometimes. She’s going to be the death of me.”
Randolph looked between Patricia and Benji, but neither seemed interested. Bruce quickly returned with a tumbler with a small amount of clear liquid and gave it to O’Reilly, who thanked him and took it. He held the glass to his nose and scrunched his face, but he threw back a swig anyhow. Randolph practically felt the burn from where he sat.
“So,” Randolph said to O’Reilly, “are you going to tell us what you’re really doing here?”
O’Reilly winced as he swallowed. It took him a second to find his voice. “Well...what the hell? She’s gone anyway.”
Randolph waited him out, did not prompt him further.
“Sheila Backe has a blue notice out for her. Are you familiar?”
&nbs
p; Randolph was not. He had never heard of such a thing.
“INTERPOL has a notice system regarding international criminal activity. She’s a person of interest in an overseas criminal investigation.”
Woah.
Randolph had not been expecting that, although nothing surprised him anymore, not when it came to Sheila. Not after all the stories he heard today. He really did not know her at all. He sat up straight. “And you’re here to bring her in?”
“I was.”
“So you’re an INTERPOL agent? She said you were some sort of private investigator.”
“Partially true. I am an investigator, but not an agent. There’s no such thing. I’m a contractor hired by INTERPOL to, in this case, track down fugitives.”
“Why didn’t you just arrest her on-the-spot back at the hotel?”
“Can’t. I don’t have arresting powers. I’m simply a liaison between INTERPOL and local law enforcement. I tried to convince her to come with me to the local station to talk, but she refused.”
“What about when you saw her at the hospital? Why didn’t you talk to her then? Before all this happened.”
“I did. Briefly. But she was out of it, distracted. Maybe it was the explosion at the supermarket that rattled her, hard to say. She was supposed to meet me the next day so we could talk further, but she never showed.”
That made sense. It explained her change of heart after Randolph visited her in the hospital—from the initial rejection of the idea of leaving together to the sudden desire to skip town, which came only minutes after O’Reilly left her room.
“And now?”
“Can’t stop, won’t stop. I have a job to do. I was going to show her the video footage from the supermarket and put the pressure on, hope she’d crack. I’m sure you know about that by now?”
He did. He nodded. O’Reilly’s story seemed believable.
“I report into an office in D.C. I’ve been watching and following her for months, waiting for her to do something that would trigger a red notice.”
“What’s a red notice?”
“It’s the next step up from a blue. If she had a red notice, a warrant would go out for her arrest. I could have called in the local police, wherever she was, and she wouldn’t have had a choice but to go with.”
Well then. Reality weighed heavily on the room. Sheila was potentially an international criminal being watched by an international crime agency. It was difficult to imagine, but also not when he considered the latest information. Did she seem like an international criminal type? Did anyone? She certainly had the manipulative trait he often heard those kinds of people had. On the contrary, Randolph had driven her across the country without a second thought. She did not seem like the criminal type then—mysterious, sure, but was in all respects a law-abiding citizen as far as he could remember. Did that mean he was abetting a fugitive on the run?
“Am I in trouble?” he asked. “I had no idea.”
“Did you do anything wrong?”
“No.”
“Then no, you’re not in trouble.” O’Reilly smirked, almost smiled. Randolph started to like him.
“What did she do? Why are you after her?”
“Maybe nothing.”
Randolph stared at him.
“I can’t really say. It’s an ongoing investigation.”
Randolph looked at Benji, who intently listened now, his eyes locked on O’Reilly. The international criminal talk had captured his attention. Not Patricia’s though; she was off in some faraway land, completely oblivious.
Randolph turned back to O’Reilly and asked what seemed to be the obvious question: “How do we know you’re being honest with us? Sheila told me you two had a personal relationship and you were...dare I say, abusive.”
“She said that?”
Did she? She certainly implied it. Implication, in this case, was more than good enough.
“She said that to me too,” Benji chimed me. “She told me she had an abusive ex.”
O’Reilly looked between them. “And you think that’s me?”
Randolph and Benji locked eyes. They were on the same page.
“Wow. Okay,” O’Reilly said. “Well, it wasn’t me.”—he leaned forward and shoved a hand in his back pocket, returned with a folded sheet of paper—”Here.” He handed the paper to Randolph, who unfolded it.
It was an official-looking letter on INTERPOL letterhead and a Lyon, France address, and a brief but professionally crafted memo. Sheila Backe was printed in black ink, and it confirmed everything O’Reilly said—a blue notice was issued for her to collect more information about an unnamed crime. There was a signature above the field office address of Washington, D.C., just as O’Reilly said. Randolph showed it to Benji, who handed it back to O’Reilly after he studied it.
“Satisfied?” O’Reilly said.
Randolph nodded. Benji too. O’Reilly folded it using the same creases and slipped it back into his back pocket. Randolph sighed and leaned back. What did any of this mean?
“So,” Benji said.
“So,” O’Reilly said.
Randolph understood. He looked toward Patricia one last time, but her face pointed at her feet. She was defeated. It was over. “So, where do we go from here?”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
A few days later, Randolph was back in Iowa. Another long drive, this one especially lonely. Just him and his thoughts. Was it wrong of him to miss Sheila, despite everything? He did. He could not help but reminisce about the blissful moments they had—all the good ones that led up to a devastating, unforeseen conclusion. He still, despite everything, wondered if at least part of what they had was real.
Patricia and Benji were accompanied by O’Reilly back to Iowa, who flew with them. Randolph did not ask and did not care what was being done with the vehicles they had in Utah. His understanding was that jail was in their futures.
Though the exhaustion suffocated his every thought, he did what he said he would when he arrived back in town—he went straight away to Larry’s office, who anxiously awaited his arrival. There was a two-inch-thick stack of papers Randolph was to sign, which he did blindly. His wrist twisted on repeat as if he were a machine while Larry explained what he signed as he signed it. Randolph neither listened nor tried; he just wanted it over.
“We’ll talk later,” Larry said when the stack was inked. Randolph nodded and left.
He went home, though it felt anything but. If his key did not fit in the door he would have flipped, but not because he would have been surprised; rather, he desperately needed a familiar pillow. He undressed and threw his barely functional body onto the bed and crashed hard against the pillow. He woke up what he thought was a day later, though he was not certain what day that was.
Hunger pangs finally revealed themselves, which was inevitably going to happen. He ravaged the fridge and cabinets in the kitchen, but there was nothing of sustenance that satisfied him. So he had a pizza delivered and ate every slice in the silence of his kitchen, then he sat on the porcelain throne for longer than usual and just relaxed as he waited for nature to call. The door was left open because why not? It was just him now. The only struggle was the numbness in his toes from sitting too long.
After another night of restful sleep, he finally felt like himself again. The malnourishment of late had wreaked havoc on his system and so he spent more time in the bathroom than he would have liked. He made a pot of frozen vegetables for lunch to begin the rebalancing process. A cleanse was in his future.
He showered, finally, with the soaps he was embarrassed to admit he missed—but not the soaps themselves, rather the comfort
s of them, the familiarity. It felt good to get back to being himself again. He missed the structure. By the third day back home, he was ready to leave the house. His usual supermarket was out of the question—it would be awhile before the wreckage was cleaned up and the store reopened—so he drove across town and hit the Publix, which was a zoo—to be expected, he thought, considering the extra volume of shoppers they were not accustomed to. He needed one of everything, which he bought. Except for bananas—no more bananas. Maybe ever.
He found peace in putting everything away in the kitchen where and how he wanted. All labels faced out and all available space was used efficiently so nothing would need to be moved when he wanted it. As if Big Brother were watching his every move, the phone rang just seconds after he closed the final cabinet door and shoved the plastic bags into the trash. O’Reilly was on the other end.
“She’s talking,” he said. “Do you want to come down here?”
He did. So he did. He went to the police department.
O’Reilly greeted him with a firm handshake and a friendly pat on the shoulder. They were friends now, apparently. Randolph was not sure when that happened. Larry was present too, and he and O’Reilly chatted among themselves in the corner while Randolph watched through the glass.
Patricia was unrecognizable in her prison orange and no makeup and flats and frizzed hair. Randolph recognized the suited man who sat next to her as her attorney, though the man’s name escaped him at the time. The two stiffs on the opposite side of the table had their backs to the glass, but their roles were not difficult to imagine.
Randolph listened without reaction as Patricia rehashed the same story he heard before in Utah, almost word for word. He wondered if it was rehearsed, and what that might mean if it were. But he did not care. There was not much he cared about these days. He noticed the stack of papers in front of her were covered in signatures—at least the top page was—and that was all that mattered. Patricia would get what she deserved.