The bedroom windows were still black but the crickets had stopped singing. It was too early to get up but too late to sleep. So I got up. I contemplated drinking alcohol. I weighed sobriety. These nightmares. Tried to assert the notion that I might be somehow healing, or at least taking a step in that vague direction. But it still didn’t fit. Into the shower I pondered the move down here, the trauma, and my sense that evil is spreading in the world at large. By the time I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair it dawned on me I might be a lot closer to taking a drink than I realized. Towel wrapped around my waist, and dripping wet, I searched my wallet and found Kathleen’s business card with the Alcoholics Anonymous contact scrawled on the back. Monty Dresser. In meetings I’d often heard the joke about trying to lift up the four-hundred pound telephone to call someone in the program for help. Now I felt the weight of my phone in my hand and swallowed. The joke was on me. Plagued with doubt, like was I really crazy, did I really have a drinking problem, did I really need a fellowship-program-cult to get through my days responsibly, I dialed each number anyway. Kathleen warned me my brain would do this. Rebel against logic. But only to regard it as my disease talking or some other blah, blah, blah…
A man answered; his voice cold and suspicious. This is Monty. Yeah? What time is it? Who are you again? When I dropped Kathleen’s name and casually mentioned my alcoholism, his tone suddenly transformed and he became instantly warm and persona, an affectionate, old friend. We spoke briefly about my career, the move, my recovery and losing Emily. Five years ago, he’d also lost his wife. I would get through he said. But it would require more pain and a lot more time to get better. Oh yeah? He sensed the sarcasm in my voice and reminded me that I’m the one that called him. We talked about honesty for a few minutes. He said he would only be honest with me. That if I needed a sugar-coated world, he was the wrong guy. I appreciated his frankness and told him so. He said he liked me already, and texted me the link to the AA website for meetings in Story Mount. Right before we hung up, Monty Dresser gave me a long pause on the other end of the line. “Shade, do yourself a favor. Get your ass to a meeting right away. This shit is deadly.”
On my way into the basement of Tenacity Truth Church for the noon AA meeting, my phone buzzed. Luke asked me to roll by the police station in the afternoon. His boss Chief James Wadsworth wanted to meet me. There was a fresh case involving a fatal single-vehicle motorcycle accident. Happened just yesterday evening out by the county line. My throat tightened. A small flash of anger. I pondered asking Luke how Chief Wadsworth knew I even existed. Let alone that I was career law enforcement. I wasn’t ready to have a name in this weird little town. Drawing a deep breath, I tried to make my shoulders relax. But they didn’t. Luke was just trying to help me out.
Into the side door of the church, I followed the stairs down to a glossy tiled floor room. Less than a dozen people sat in tiny, wooden chairs arranged in a circle. A row of basement windows lined against the ceiling brimmed with daylight. Like a cliché, in the rear sat folding card table with a box of donuts and a full coffee maker. The place smelled like stale cigarette smoke and children’s school supplies. The chairperson, a very old, dusty man with a wispy gray beard announced the Sober as a Blue Bird group. They used the pass-the-gavel format. When the wooden mallet came to you, you spoke. Being a bad-ass Chicago crime investigator didn’t help. The wooden mallet and the expectation to speak terrified me. I’d attended numerous meetings in Chicago but only shared, “My name is Shade, I’m an alcoholic.” Sharing alcoholic fears with these strangers wasn’t how I wanted to start the day. But the gavel came. I writhed in the tiny wooden child’s chair, “I’m Shade, alcoholic.” Then I drew long blank. The old man sensing my extreme discomfort finally nodded for me to pass. I apologized and announced I’d just relocated to town. I didn’t mention when. I didn’t mention why. Yet everyone suddenly applauded. My cheeks flushed hot. When the meeting ended, I couldn’t remember anyone’s names or what they said. A hell of a thing for a detective to admit.
Making my way out to the door, a woman cut perpendicular right into my path stopped. She brushed my elbow with her fingertips. Maybe five years younger than me. Asian-white heritage. “May I ask you a quick question?” she asked.
“Sure.” Large brown eyes, apple cheeks, full lips and fresh, golden skin. I bet she was a stunning beauty in the eyes of other men. But I felt nothing. When Emily died, so did my ability to feel attraction toward any woman. The world and it’s people, especially women, were more or less animated shadows.
“Lou,” she said pointing to the fragile, bearded chairperson. “He told me we’re running low on coffee. Since you’re new in town, and might be around, would you mind to pick some up? We’ll reimburse you. Just bring the receipt?’
“Sure.” I made eye contact just once.
She threw out her hand. “My name is Melanie.” We shook.
“Thanks.” Perfect white teeth. The glow of youth. I turned away.
“No problem.”
She stepped back into my view, an elbow block, eyes smiling. “Regular not decaf.”
“What real alcoholic would drink decaf?” I said walking away. Somewhere behind me she laughed.
The Exodus County Police Department looked like a failed makeover of a shitty late 1960’s brown-brick hotel; the kind of place Dirty Harry might’ve shown up in a tweed coat, all sideburns, hand clutching that .44 Magnum, kicking down the door. Enormous plastic light globes with faded urine-yellow water stains lined the frontside of the building. Right off the sidewalk, double swinging glass doors marked the non-descript entrance. Each door had been silvered like a pair of mirrors, the left side showed large badge inscribed with “To Trust and to Serve”, the other simply read Exodus County Police Department. The front door beeped as I stepped in and a frosted glass window at a narrow counter whipped open. An African American woman dressed in formal police blues and wearing an old-style navy eight-point cap nudged the air, fingers clicking rapidly on a keyboard, eyes flashing from the computer to me and back again.
“Yeah?” Dripping wet-purple lipstick lips, a wide gap in her front teeth.
“Shade Bardane.”
She stopped typing, eyes popping, her lower lip giving me the boot, shooting me a You gonna’ waste my time? She was so rude I loved it. I broke into a broad smile. I could have been right back home in Chicago.
I cleared my throat. “Detective Bardane for officer Luke Bodwell.” I shook my head at myself. Announcing as a detective. The ego talking. I wasn’t anything anymore. And I liked it. Being nothing at all. So why the pretense Shade…
She picked up her phone, mumbled, went all snippy and came back down from the attitude, pointing and buzzing the next set of doors. “Elevator to the second floor.”
When the door dinged shut and the car lurched, I pondered punching that kid in the throat. Luke’s warnings not to be to fooled by the false ambience of a rural mountain village all rang true in just a single afternoon. Horse drawn carriages, fresh baked pies in storefront windows, cobble stoned streets, and downtown Colonial architecture, patriotism, American flags lining the streets beneath the breast of the Cumberland Mountains was just a fake stage set. None of it could mask the opioid-meth reality of the new world barging in through the front door like a wolf, the needles, homicide, addiction, HIV, theft, assault, underage runaway teen prostitutes and lowlife street pukes on motorcycles. What was left of the old country I didn’t know. I’d arrived too late to see it. I cringed a little. But as much as I loved Luke, he was talking as if this would be as bad as it gets. Wrong. If he wanted to see real evil, if he wanted to see darkness herniate and the infection drain out, then he should have joined me for a field trip to Chicago. Maybe go through the case file of the man who decapitated his wife with a chain saw just purchased that morning at Walmart- only to cash out an insurance policy. I’d never told him the worst of the worst stories. Not because of the vanity of coming off a
s some all-star detective. No. I didn’t share nastier crimes because ignorance is bliss. The longer he could think “this is as bad as it gets” the better. Because once you saw the new darkness, the new brand of evil, hopelessness became real. And now I got a bad feeling. Like something could go wrong fast. Maybe a new evil was already waiting just outside, right on the doorstep of these mountains.
The elevator bucked to a standstill and the doors slid open. A cramped, administrative office came into view, bustling, the mild flurry of too many bodies jammed in too small a space. I stepped out and straight into a pungent hint of sweat, mildewed coffee grounds, the chemical tang of cheap aerosol bathroom deodorizer and that lingering jock-stench of a poorly ventilated high school locker room. I eyed the cops wearing wrinkled clothes and sporting wet armpits. It only took one or two to light the whole place up. Phones rang and cops standing or sitting chattered, motioned to each other with hands, typed on keyboards and scratched out reports with ink pens while two young hookers locked inside a temporary holding cell shook the chain-link fence in the far corner of the room, stoned eyes turned into watery wounds of streaked mascara, pleading their case to every cop that shuffled by. That’s how I knew they were young. Old whores didn’t even bother. Nobody had enough money to pay for innocence. Veteran prostitutes simply embraced guilt, relaxed on the benches and massaged their feet. It was the fastest way out. A cop nudged me out of the way, pushing a drunken male ahead of him, wrists cuffed at his back, vomit spilled down the front, the brawny odor of half-digested booze seeping out, the cop bitching about lunch and how it wasn’t his day to get carry-out. Paperwork and files lay strewn across desktops. The jabbering, jacking jaw jumbling the same jive from one desk to a thousand just like it all over the world. Luke had been right. Different zip code, same shit.
A damaged light fixture hung loosely off the ceiling where it’s long-rod fluorescent bulb flickered nervously into another hallway leading to deeper offices. In the strobe, Luke suddenly appeared behind a large square window waving his arms, his red hair slightly receded and going almost purple in the cheap light. Motioning to his left, I found the door and entered. The breakroom was worn thin, coffee stained countertops, wall to wall cabinets, all the doors cracked open with nothing inside but a few plastic dishes, a huge vending machine, and the prerequisite coffee machine, microwave and an unused electric oven. Two cops sat hunched over a long fold-out table, oil-slicked paper bags pushed in each face, stealing huge bites of fried fish sandwiches, tartar sauce and rye bread going every which way. “Hey everybody, meet my brother-in-law, Detective Shade Bardane.” He beamed. “Fresh in from the mean streets of Chicago.”
I frowned again. Luke evidently missed the part where we agreed not to share my resume’ with any cops, let alone what seemed to be the entire town. With the introduction, the heavyset cop of the pair pulled the fish bag from his face and belched loudly, then rhythmically nursed a can of soda without making eye contact. The other looked up and chewed slowly, the food going round and round like clothes caught in a slow-motion dryer. I fixed my eyes at him. Rude. Clueless. Rural. Maybe too much time spent around cows. And yet he sat gawking and chewing, like waiting for entertainment, perhaps a magic trick, like I was supposed to pull a giant pink bunny out of my ass. Right when I was about to snap my fingers in his face and ask, “Stare much?” he stuck out his hand and broke into a wide grin, “Officer Chad White, nice to meet you.” A decisive, firm hand shake. “Chicago.” He let go, and scanned the width of the ceiling as if it were the city itself. “That sounds…big.”
The delayed reactions of mountainous Kentucky folk kept throwing me off, the cognitive timing so sluggish, like their brains had been marinated in molasses. Slow to walk, slow to cross the street, slow to answer, slow to acknowledge any new stimulus introduced into the environment. My city timing was two steps too fast. Or theirs two country steps too slow. Unimpressed, the heavyset cop beside Officer White stood up, stretched his arms wide and yawned loudly. Then he stared at me, shrugged, and walked out the door muttering, “whatever.”
“That’s Darrel Biggs,” Officer White pulled a bite off his fish sandwich and thumbed the air. “His wife is twice his size and snores all night. Makes him grumpy.” He wolfed another bite and mumbled through his food, “When it comes to Officer Biggs, we all keep our expectations real, real low.”
Luke’s skin flushed red, his copper hair going orange now, working his jaw, hating the disrespect. Sorry about that Shade. Fuck the guy. Nobody likes him.” I felt bad for Luke. Ever since Emily died, he’d pushed harder to grow close to me. He was sensitive on my behalf, even overprotective. Before the door fully shut behind Biggs, a boot kicked it back open. A hulking woman of medium stature with a masculine square jaw, burr cut, and narrow-set eyes popped into the break room. She was shaped like a human-sized cinderblock, wide neck, stump legs, wide hips, arms swollen and rounded. A real ass kicker. A power-forward. A thick hide of fat wrapped around bounded muscle. A pocket Hercules. Or what here in the mountains they referred to as a brick shit house. Maybe 30 years old. She walked right up to me, stood toe to toe, a half foot shorter than me but looking up like she was looking down. All energy. Small eyes that made up for their size with intensity. She gave me crooked grin, her face going all playful. “Well, who do we have here?” Before I could answer, she nudged her head sideways at Luke. “Is this this your brother-in-law and if it is, ask him if he’s into women that can beat him at arm wrestling and drink him under the table.”
I pressed my palm over my mouth, not letting the laughter come out. I liked her instantly. I could tell she didn’t give a fuck about anything. Except the shit that mattered. Just like me. I stuck out my hand, and she gave me a hard grip, pumping my hand. “I’m Detective Bardane but my friends call me Shade.”
“Okay Shade,” she grinned, her scalp going pink under her crewcut, not giving up her name just yet, having some fun with me. “Let’s keep it informal. I like that.”
Luke stepped in. “This is Officer Debbie Nichols.”
She puffed her chest up a bit, threw Luke a look of agitation and gave me a grin, making the clarification. “He meant to say Assistant Detective Debbie Nichols.”
Luke threw up his palms, face going a little screwy with light embarrassment. “It’s a new promotion. I forgot.”
“Congratulations.” I nodded at the thirty-something cop. “Detective Nichols.”
She batted her eyelids as a joke and laughed. “My friends just call me Debbie.”
“Ah,” I smiled. “Touché.” Something kicked in and I suddenly felt like this was enough for today. I eased back a bit, pondering exactly why Luke had me here, and decided after these introductions, I would go directly back to the Bodwell’s farm house and become nobody again. These people were great. But I didn’t like being here, the dirty sock stink, bad lighting, stale coffee, uniforms, it was just all “copping” me out too much. Debbie and Luke fell into hushed conversation, going back and forth. I watched her profile as she spoke, her masculine stance, wondering where my sense of familiarity with her had come from. She was a stranger to me. Then it hit me. She favored my older sister Molly. Yet they didn’t look anything alike. Not remotely. And that’s what threw me. But they had identical mannerisms. The grin. Eyes locked in, up close and personal. Boisterous. Confident. Outgoing.
Molly and I had been inseparable in youth but we’d steadily lost touch over the years. For what I rightly expected and discovered to have been our parent’s resistance to accept her lesbianism. When our parents died, she didn’t go to the funeral. I was hurt to be abandoned at the burial site like that. And I stayed upset for some time. Until months later a letter arrived in the mail. She spelled out her emotional struggles with our folks. She admitted she’d chosen selfishness as a means of self-preservation. She even wrote that for years after she announced she was gay, she felt damned. Judged. Broken. That their love had turned into hot contempt and cold judgment. Tha
t she needed to heal. For her that meant leaving the past behind. And me along with it. The explanation helped. I no longer fumed. But I was deeply hurt. And probably always would be. But now after losing my wife Emily, as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I understood the desire to abandon the past. Especially if it meant survival. Just throw it all away. Fuck it.
A spindly man appeared in the doorway, eyes covered with crow’s feet, salt and pepper hair slicked back. His eyebrows raised when he saw me, folding his forehead into too many creases to count. He wore a short-sleeved western plaid shirt with pearl snaps and a police badge clipped to the chest pocket. Clean shaven, he had the kind of face that looked bare without a toothpick stuck between his teeth or a push-broom mustache. Lean and long-boned with a small but protrusive potbelly, a front-crease ironed into his khakis shot all the way down to his cowboy boots. He wore no gun that I could see. He threw Luke a skeptical glance. The old man studied me head to toe, as he eased between Luke and Debbie to come greet me, pushing through, hand extended. “I’m Chief Wadsworth. Welcome to Story Mount, Mr. Chicago.” He gave me a firm grip. “What do you think of our fair town so far? Luke’s told me all about you.” I shot Luke a look, the big talker. He turned his head sideways pretending not to see me, bullshitting with Debbie now.
Skin the Cat Page 7