Red Rain- The Complete Series

by David Beers

  A Portrait of a Young Man

  Years Earlier

  Depression followed.

  It came on the same as winter, slowly, but day after day progressively growing worse.

  John spoke to no one; he kept everything inside, because there wasn’t anyone he could share with. He read the papers, but nothing showed up about the dead bodies. Two weeks later he checked the police blotter and saw that they had been found, but no one even bothered trying to identify them.

  Cindy didn’t call and neither did he. John wanted to, though. God, did he ever. If he could only talk to her, apologize, have someone just a bit closer to his world—it felt like he was underwater in a frozen lake, pounding at the ice above him, and if he could just crack through, air awaited. Cindy was that air and the ice the debacle he caused in the cafeteria.

  He ate little.

  He slept less.

  When he did close his eyes, he saw the woman—her hair pulled back from her face, and heard that thwap when he brought the metal pole across her head. He saw her blood leaking out all over that horrible, dirty hallway.

  Perhaps things would have turned out differently if Cindy hadn’t come back. Because he didn’t just want to talk to her; no, the depression compounded that to a degree John almost couldn’t handle. Perhaps he would have sunk lower and lower until finally he ended his own life instead of others.

  Instead, she showed up.

  Eight at night on a Thursday. John hadn’t so much as glanced her way the past month, not in class, hallways, or the cafeteria. And she treated him the same, as if he didn’t exist.

  Yet, she knocked as John lay in his bed on top of the covers, lights shining from the ceiling, ready for another mostly sleepless night.

  He thought about not answering, indeed, wasn’t going to until she spoke.

  “It’s me,” she said and John felt sure he hadn’t ever heard such sweet words.

  He sat up, swinging his feet off the bed and looked at the door in front of him. She wasn’t even allowed inside the dorm, let alone his room, but there she stood, just a few feet away.

  John stood and went to the door, turning the lock. He opened it slowly, revealing Cindy and feeling tears come to his eyes as he saw her.

  “Hey,” he said, not reaching up to wipe them away. His voice shook as he spoke, certain that the breakdown would come soon. The one in which all this ended, the depression, the self-hate, all ending when he threw himself from his dorm room window.

  “You’re going to need to get a restraining order if you don’t want to see me,” Cindy said. No tears in her eyes, only a hard clarity. “Because I’m not going anywhere. I don’t care what you say in lunch rooms or how much you ignore me. I like you, John. Hell, I might even love you and I’m not running just because you’re scared of something. So watch out.”

  She walked directly towards him, using her left arm to move him out of the way, though he gave no resistance. She walked past him and sat down in the chair at his small desk. She didn’t say anything, only crossed one leg and stared at him as he stood dumbfounded by the door.

  Finally John closed it and sat down on his bed, facing her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said and started crying.

  26

  Present Day

  John parked his car but didn’t get out.

  He rolled the windows down and turned the air conditioning off. His car sat in a motel parking lot, but he didn’t know the first thing to do. This wasn’t an American motel, but a Mexican one, and the clock on his dashboard read eleven at night.

  He drove the past twelve hours, crossing the border but not stopping there. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he wanted to be far, far away from Dallas, Texas.

  Harry hadn’t shown up the entire drive. John did it alone, as he did all the hard shit that Harry put him through.

  “Fuck,” he said. John grabbed his cell-phone that sat on the passenger seat, truly not wanting to look at it, but having few choices. He knew what he would see, but knowing and seeing were very different things.

  Twenty-five missed calls, all from Diane.

  He needed to call her, but what would he say?

  “Buck up, champ!”

  John looked at his rear-view mirror. Even with only the moon shining its weak light into the car, John could see Harry’s expanded pupil staring back at him.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” John said.

  “I needed a little vacation time, that’s all. I’m back, no worries.”

  John shook his head, his eyes narrowing into slits. “What the hell am I going to do, Harry? I don’t even know how to go in there and ask for a room. I don’t speak Spanish!”

  Harry looked at the little motel from out his window. “Dingy thing, isn’t it?”

  “You were expecting The Four Seasons? I’m serious. I can’t go back. I can’t live down here. THERE’S NOTHING I CAN DO GODDAMNIT!” His voice boomed inside the car.

  Harry didn’t even look at John. He just stared at the motel, the dim lights planted around the outside casting yellow rays down onto the concrete.

  “John,” he said after a few moments, “we’re fine. We’re actually more than fine. Don’t you see that?”

  “Clearly not.”

  “Dick Face is going to think you ran. So you stay down here for a month. Tell Diane whatever you want, but just stay here. And then, after that month, slide back over the border and kill them all. He will have moved on to the next case—his boss will force that. The Starbucks’ girl won’t be suspicious anymore. All of them will have gone back to their regular lives, and you can slip in and end their regular, little lives.” Harry looked to John. “This is temporary, my man.”

  “Tell Diane whatever I want? What about work, Harry? What do I tell them? They’re not going to like that I took a month vacation with no notice.”

  “You can work from down here. Tell them you’re having some personal issues, and just put in some hours anywhere that has wi-fi.”

  John looked out the windshield, wondering if this was possible. Or was it just another brick falling off Harry’s crumbling building? That was the problem. John couldn’t ever tell, because when Harry spoke, what he said made sense. Yet the aftermath? Well, he sat alone in a motel parking lot talking to someone his imagination created.

  “John, if you can think of anything else that will work, I’m all ears.”

  “If I go back and kill them, then what? You think the death of two people attached to my case will go unnoticed, Harry? Or do you think it might put a bit more scrutiny on me?”

  “For someone with as many degrees as you have, you don’t possess any imagination.”

  “Then tell me, Steve Jobs, what do we do?”

  “The same thing we did when you were eighteen.”

  John turned all the way around in his chair and looked at Harry dead on. “You can’t be serious.”

  Harry smiled. “Oh, yeah. It’ll be fucking perfect.”

  “You’re where?” Diane asked.

  “In Mexico.”

  “And just what are you doing there, John? Did you finally take your little vacation? Having a good time soaking up some rays?” Diane said. Her voice moved calmly across the kitchen, as if she was speaking to a small dog that couldn’t figure out how to get at a bone hidden under the table.

  A pause came over the line and then he said, “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “Have I not been clear about that?”

  Diane, despite the calm in her voice—the almost antagonistic patronization—felt completely lost. It was two in the morning and she sat at her kitchen table, the lights off throughout the house, with her phone to her ear talking to a husband who decided he was going to reside in another country. None of it made any sense and Diane really didn’t know what to say. She only sat on the phone talking to John because she feared if she got off, she might never hear from him again.

  “Why won’t you tell me what’s happening?” she sai
d into the silence, but nothing came back. “Did you kill anyone, John? Are you running because you did? God, just tell me if so. We can get through it. We’ll get a lawyer and we’ll figure it out, but don’t put me in the dark like this. I can’t handle it, John. I can’t fucking handle it.”

  Her voice cracked and emotion welled from her heart to her eyes.

  “Why won’t you just let me in? What’s happening?”

  Only cold silence spoke to her, both in the house and across the phone connection.

  “I didn’t kill anyone, Diane. That’s insane.”

  “THEN WHY DID YOU LEAVE?” she screamed into the phone, forgetting about the boys sleeping in their beds. She brought the next words under control quickly, spitting them out like bullets from a silenced pistol. “If you didn’t do anything wrong, then why the fuck did you leave the country, John? Tell me that. A vacation? When was the last vacation you took without us?”

  “I’m still working,” he said. “My boss approved it.”

  “Oh, that’s great, John. Really great. You can still get your job finished even if you’re neglecting being a father or husband. At least you can still contribute to the bottom line. Stop ignoring the question. Why did you leave? Just tell me that. Why?”

  “I can’t tell you, Diane.”

  She heard the first crack in his voice, a sound that made her think of a levee breaking.

  “You can. You can tell me anything. I’m your wife.”

  “I’ll be back soon,” he said.

  “That’s not good enough, John. If you don’t tell me what’s going on, then don’t come back ever. Just stay down there.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do,” she said. “If you won’t let me in, then I’m forcing you out.”

  “I love you,” John said. “I’ll call soon.”

  Diane hung up the phone and dropped it to the table, her hand shaking.

  Did he murder that person? Was that why he left? She hadn’t even asked about the lawyer because she couldn’t keep anything in her head for longer than five seconds.

  Oh, God, what do I do? Just what in the hell do I do?

  The police? She could go to them, but what if John did it? She didn’t care about the repercussions; Diane wasn’t reporting him until she had to choose between him or her kids. If forced to choose John or herself—she would side with John every single time.

  But maybe the police could help find him. He was probably having some kind of nervous breakdown, not murdering people. Probably? Hell, that’s what was happening.

  Alicia. She might know what to do.

  Diane looked at her shaking hand and wondered if she would even be able to find Alicia’s number in this state.

  “He’s in Mexico, Alicia. He’s in fucking Mexico.”

  “Calm down, honey. Just calm down for a second; I can barely understand you.”

  “Oh, God …,” Diane sobbed into the phone.

  Alicia understood the gist of what she said, but the backstory—what the hell was happening—she didn’t understand at all.

  “Okay, take a few breaths, Diane.”

  Alicia waited, sitting up in her bed with the desk lamp on. Mark had rolled over on his side and was looking at her, both of them woken up in the middle of the night from Diane’s call.

  “What’s going on?”

  In a voice slightly more calm, Diane said, “John left. He’s in Mexico. He didn’t tell me, didn’t say goodbye to the boys. He just left. I don’t know what to do.”

  Alicia waited a second before speaking, trying to make sure her thoughts were in order, because the last thing Diane needed right now was Alicia saying something dumb. “Did he say why he left?”

  Diane laughed. “He said he needed a fucking vacation, Alicia.”

  She shook her head; she could feel Mark looking at her, wanting to know what was happening, but she didn’t have any answers for him. “What’s going on over there? What’s happened to him?”

  “Oh, Christ,” Diane said, still crying into the phone. “A cop came by here, Alicia. A week or so ago, and he said John was wanted for murder. Murder.”

  Murder.

  A calming, yet radically awful feeling bloomed in Alicia’s mind. It felt like a rotten flower, something made of spoiled meat rather than plant life, opening up inside her head. Instead of a beautiful floral smell, it gave off putrid vapors, covered in maggots that lunched on its decay.

  “The cop said John murdered someone?” Her voice sounded calm to her own ears, and she only asked the question to let Diane know she hadn’t hung up. Because in truth, whatever Diane said right now didn’t matter.

  That disgusting flower grew rapidly, expanding beyond the first few petals, and creating a huge trunk for a massive tree of rotten flesh.

  Because something about what she said, about murder, fit into a spot that Alicia didn’t know existed. Even now, unable to stop the feeling from growing inside her, she didn’t understand completely what it meant.

  But something was there, though. Something important.

  “Yes. John said he didn’t do it. He said he was going to get a lawyer, but I don’t even know if he got one.”

  “He’s in Mexico?” Alicia said.

  “Yes. Yes. He went there today.”

  “Oh my God,” Alicia whispered. “Have you talked to our dad?”

  “No, I just called you. I didn’t know who else to call. The kids don’t even know yet.”

  “Okay. Let me try to call him. I’m going to call my dad, too. I’ll get ready and come over, okay? I can call out of work tomorrow.” She was already stepping out of bed, seeing that Mark was sitting up and turning on his bedside lamp.

  “Are you sure? You don’t mind?” Diane said.

  “Of course not. Give me about a half hour.”

  She got off the phone and headed to her closet.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Mark said.

  “My brother. He went to Mexico, apparently.”

  “What?” Mark got out of bed.

  “Yeah, I don’t know what’s happening.” Alicia simultaneously dug through her hangers and flicked through her phone’s names until she found John. “Calling him.”

  She put the phone to her ear and listened as it rang.

  Once.

  And then went to voicemail.

  “Damn it,” she said, hanging up.

  “Nothing?”

  “His phone’s off.” She shoved a shirt over her head and then started reaching for pants, halfway looking at her phone to find her father’s number.

  And it rang.

  Once.

  And then went to voicemail.

  “This is insane,” she said loud enough so that Mark could hear.

  “Nothing either?”

  “The whole world has decided to stop talking.” She shoved her legs into a pair of sweats and then exited the closet. “I’m heading over there.”

  “You want me to come?”

  “No. Get some sleep. I’ll let you know what’s happening in the morning.”

  She walked over and kissed him. “I love you.”

  “Love you too,” he answered.

  Scott woke up in a New York City hotel room. He hadn’t slept in New York before, and he briefly recognized that as he opened his eyes and looked out the window next to his bed. He’d spent a good deal of money on the room, giving him a view over Time Square. He knew this would be the one and only night he slept here, not just the room, but the city. Whatever he found out today would probably put such a horrible taste in his mouth that he’d never return.

  He had a few hours to kill but didn't really know how to spend them. He hadn’t thought of sightseeing when he booked the trip; he made the two most important reservations, one being the hotel, and then flew out of Dallas.

  His phone had been off since he boarded the plane and he didn’t plan on turning it back on. He would hear this out and then make whatever decisions needed to be made by himself. He didn’t
want to hear Alicia’s worries or even John’s. Not yet. Lori left this up to him and so he would be the one to carry it.

  Scott toured through the early morning trying to see as much as he could. His mind wouldn’t let him, though, not really. His mind focused on what was coming next, and so the sights all fell to a secondary, perhaps even third-rate issue.

  And, finally, he found himself at the building that housed the man he came to see. A tall thing with a lot of offices, which surprised Scott, given the man’s age he wanted to meet. Scott followed the signs, up the elevator, and found the correct office. He told the lady up front who he was here to see and then sat down to wait.

  “Mr. Hilt?”

  Scott had been staring at the wall, completely oblivious to the world.

  He blinked and looked to the door that led to the individual offices. “Yes, Dr. Brighton?”

  “That’s right, come on back.”

  The man was old. Even older than Scott, but he stood straight and appeared to have a wiry strength underneath his tailored suit. He wore a tie but not the suit jacket and his face was clean shaven.

  Scott stood and walked across the office, where Dr. Brighton shook his hand. “Nice to meet you,” Scott said.

  “You too, I’m right this way.”

  They went through a brief hallway and then Scott found himself in the nicest office he’d ever seen.

  “Wow.”

  “Working until seventy-eight does have its perks, I suppose.”

  Scott didn’t turn around but just took in the size of the office and the immaculate scene around him. The window was wall to wall, showing New York City's skyline. Multiple couches sat around a marble desk as if this was a living room and not a psychiatrist's office charging five hundred dollars an hour.

  “Go on, sit anywhere you like.”

  Scott didn’t know exactly which couch to take, so he went to the one on his right and sat. The doctor walked around the marble table and took the one sitting diagonal, with the arms of the couches touching.

  “You really piqued my curiosity asking about Vondi. At my age, and with this work, it takes a lot to make me curious, so thank you for that. I hadn’t thought of him in ten years; I moved out this way right after his death.”