by Grant Pies
Turning back to Dennis, Carter said, “Give me your hand.”
He shoved his gun into his waistband and yanked Dennis’ left hand behind his back, locking the cuff around his wrist. Carter reached for the other hand, but Dennis launched himself up, pedaling his body backwards until he pushed Carter into Sam, and until Sam slammed hard against another table with tubs filled with liquid. The table toppled over and the developing baths splashed onto the floor along with Sam. Carter stumbled over and fell on top of Sam, and Dennis fell on top of them both. Carter’s gun went off, vibrating his entire hand. The shed erupted in a split second of light.
Orcheck sprang up and ran. As he left, he flipped the light switch, turning the red overhead lights off. Carter and Sam laid in total darkness. Carter’s ears buzzed from the gunshot. He guessed the bullet went up through the ceiling.
Groaning, Carter pushed himself up and yelled, “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Sam said. “Go!”
Carter took off running into the dark forested lot, swiveling his head in all directions. He squinted through sheets of rain blowing between the oaks to see Dennis run back into his house. Carter gripped his gun and took off after him.
Inside, the western movie still played on the TV, but now Carter could just barely hear it over the ringing in his ears. He felt a vein in his neck pulsing. His heart raced. He stood still and focused, trying to hear anything out of the ordinary.
There! A thud towards the back of the house. Then another. He moved briskly through the kitchen, his gloved hands tight around his gun. Arms straight out in front of him, finger hovering over the trigger. He looked down a pitch-black hall across the living room towards Dennis’ bedroom.
A flash of light exploded in the middle of the dark hallway. Before he could even flinch, a bullet flew past and drove into the kitchen cupboards behind him. He dropped to the ground as a second shot lit up the hallway.
Shit! Where was that gun hidden? He scrambled on his knees until he made it behind the kitchen island then reached his hand over the countertop and fired two rounds towards Dennis.
“You broke in!” Dennis yelled from the end of the hallway. His voice was muffled, like he was talking through a Halloween mask. “I can kill you, no questions asked,” Carter thought he heard him say.
“Fuck.” Carter pressed his back hard against the kitchen cabinets. “We know it was you, Dennis. You really feel confident explaining all this to the cops?”
“You don’t understand!” Dennis said. Carter peeked around the kitchen island and saw nothing in the hall. “We were in love!”
Carter just shook his head. He snatched a can of beans off the counter and crept out from his cover, launching the can into the hall. It thudded against the back wall and dropped to the floor. That’s how Carter knew Orcheck had retreated into the bedroom and no longer stood in the hallway.
Carter sprang to his feet and lunged into the living room, pressing his back against the wall next to the hallway. Gripping his gun in one hand, he reached around the corner, feeling for a light switch.
“She was mature,” Dennis said. “Not like others her age.”
“Okay, okay,” Carter said, still feeling for a light switch. “Explain it to me. Tell me everything.” Carter clenched his jaw and breathed in deep. “Let me understand.”
Where the fuck is Sam? Carter moved his hand flat against the wall until he felt a light switch. He flipped it and bathed the hall in white light.
“Don’t come in here!” Dennis said, panic in his voice. “I’ll shoot! Stay the fuck back!”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Carter lied. “But if you shoot, I’m gonna have to shoot back.” Carter took a deep breath, spun around the corner, and stood in the bright hallway. He was maybe ten steps from Dennis’ bedroom. “I’m coming to you.” He took one step.
“I’m telling you! I’ll shoot!”
“Tell me about Rose.” Carter took another step.
“She gets me. She makes me laugh.”
“Fucking sick,” Carter whispered to himself and took another step.
“She’s mature – and not just mentally. Physically too,” Dennis said, his voice growing less panicked.
Carter clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on his gun. Another step forward. The floorboard underneath him creaked.
“I hear you coming!” Dennis’ voice back to panic. “I told you, I can kill you in my house!” Carter took another step. “I know the law!”
Another step. The vein in his neck pulsing more and more until he felt the blood coursing up to his head with each beat.
“I don’t think you’ll shoot,” Carter said, now just one step away from the doorway. “We have your pictures.” Carter waited for a response. Nothing. “We have the memory card.”
“Memory card?” Dennis mumbled.
“The pictures of the kids.” His body beat rhythmically, so fast he felt like he was vibrating. “At school. My partner has them. You kill me and you’re still fucked. All of a sudden this shooting won’t look too justified. Will it, Dennis?” Carter rocked back and lifted his foot to take that last step. “So, I’m coming in.” He stepped forward and stood in the doorway.
Dennis stood on the other side of the bed. Dennis held a gun at his side. The handcuffs were locked around his wrist and dangling next to the gun. One long black rubber glove was still on his other hand. He glanced behind him at the window, maybe wondering how injured he would get if he jumped through and ran.
“Dennis.” Carter lowered his gun. “I told you, I’m not going to shoot unless you shoot first.”
Dennis shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He slowly raised his weapon.
“Dennis,” Carter said, and now his voice grew panicked. He didn’t know if he would shoot someone, if he could shoot someone. “Think about this. I just want to know where Rose is.”
Dennis raised his gun higher and higher. Carter’s body pulsed and vibrated. In response, Carter raised his gun, while also holding his other hand out at Dennis, signaling that he meant no harm.
“Fucking stop!” Carter snapped. “I don’t want to – don’t make me!” Carter said, not threatening but pleading. But Dennis ignored him.
He raised his gun until it pointed straight at Carter. A shot snapped in the air, then another. The window behind Dennis shattered, throwing glass around the room. Carter dodged to the right. Both of them fell forward onto the bed, blood spreading over the mattress.
“You in there?” Sam shouted from outside, pointing his gun at Dennis, the barrel still smoking.
Carter sat up. Looking down at his chest, he patted his body. Nothing. He looked behind him to see a bullet hole in the wall. Dennis was lying on the bed face down. Flipping him over, Carter said, “Get in here!”
With his revolver, Sam brushed glass from the window frame then pulled himself through and fell onto the floor, glass crunching under him.
“Shit.” Sam bounced up off the ground. He pulled a long piece of glass out of the meaty part of his palm. “He hit bad?”
“I don’t know,” Carter grunted as he pulled Dennis across the bed and laid him out on the floor. “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pull the trigger.”
“Good thing I’m here then. Looks like my shot went straight through his shoulder. I’ll call 9-1-1.” Sam stepped over Dennis’ body and slowly pulled his phone from his pocket.
“Hurry! We need to keep him alive!” Carter shouted, grabbing a t-shirt from the floor and pressing it against the exit wound on Dennis’ chest. It grew damp in only a minute. “Fuck,” he mumbled. Dennis groaned and squirmed in pain, but his eyes were closing.
He heard Sam’s voice on the phone with the 9-1-1 operator. His tone calm and matter of fact while blood oozed around Carter’s hands. Sam returned to the bedroom.
“You better let me do the talking when they show up. If we play this right, we may not get arrested for breaking in this man’s house.” Sam knelt down to look at Dennis. “You don’t
have to do that.” He pointed at Carter’s hands.
Looking up from Orcheck, Carter said, “He’s the only one who knows what happened to Rose.”
“She’s not here,” Sam said in that same matter-of-fact tone. “I think it’s time you come to terms with the fact that I was right all along. She’s dead. I said it from day one.” Sam stood. “And you’re busy trying to keep this fucker alive.”
Carter stayed with Orcheck until the paramedics arrived. He blinked and nodded off, blood flowing over his shoulder.
“Hey! Hey!” Carter patted Orcheck’s cheek. “Stay awake!”
Dennis winced and mumbled, saying “Rose” and “I love her.”
After the paramedics lifted him to a stretcher. As they pushed him through his house and out into the dusk with the rain and wind, he looked at Carter and said, “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.”
Part Two
The Space Between the Waves
Carter watched Sam from across the street, leaning on the hood of the car. Sam stood in Dennis Orcheck’s front lawn smoking a cigarette, the smoke fading into the night air as soon as he puffed it from his mouth, then the orange tip was lost in the sea of police and paramedic lights flooding the property. Yellow crime tape was wrapped around the trunks of the oak trees and strung around the yard. By now the sun was just peeking through the leaves. It was coming up on 6 a.m.
Carter had stayed out of the crime scene since the police arrived. Sam remained on site to answer any questions, and convince the police they had seen something suspicious from the street, something that would justify their entering the house and shooting Orcheck.
Sam said it would be best if only he spoke to the police, and that was fine by Carter. The less police he had to deal with the better. The excessive admiration society bestowed on them made Carter look at cops even more skeptically … to balance things out. To watch the watchmen.
Before he saw the blind trust bestowed on the Chicago PD, he saw it in his hometown in Kentucky, in the way people treated his father, the Sheriff, and then his step-father after that who took over after his father’s death. Carter didn’t know if that’s when it started, his distrust, he only knew it was there.
Sam shook the detectives’ hands, turned, and walked towards Carter, his hand bandaged from the shard of glass that pierced him. Once he got close enough, he shook his head and rolled his eyes.
“I think we’re okay. Detective Shaker and Ward,” Sam jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the detectives, “they had this case before it was passed to the task force. Old co-workers of mine. They aren’t taking us in, and Orcheck’s gonna be dealing with his own shit for some time. Doubt he’ll look to press charges … at least no time soon.”
“So? What about Rose?” Carter spoke loudly over the wind and the commotion of the police. Two K9 units showed up, the dogs barking and pulling on their leashes.
“Oh gee, Sam, thanks for keeping me out of jail,” Sam said mockingly.
“Thanks. Did they find anything?”
“Nothing yet,” he said, leaning against the hood next to Carter.
“Nothing?”
“No signs of Rose … or a body, but they’ve found some stuff linking him to Rose. Letters back and forth, spelling out their fucked-up relationship.”
“Letters? Like written on paper?”
“Yup, old-school pen pals. Maybe emails are too traceable. That’s the problem with digital.” Sam reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of crumpled paper. “Here.” He handed the papers to Carter. “Detective Shaker let me keep a few of them. There were shoeboxes filled with ‘em, so he figured a few less wouldn’t make a difference.”
Carter unwrinkled the letters. “See, this is the sort of sloppy work that probably botched this investigation in the first place.”
“Sloppy?”
“Yeah, giving evidence away. I’d call that sloppy. Bending the rules. Breaking protocol. Call it what you want.”
“You want me to give the letters back? Look Carter, a little comradery goes a long way with the CPD, to your benefit I might add.”
“This time. But, big picture, this Detective Shaker doesn’t seem all that concerned with preserving evidence, following leads … solving this case.”
“You get all that from him giving me a couple letters?”
“You ask him about the police report? Ask him why the interviews with Rose’s teachers aren’t in the report? Hm?”
“Yeah, I asked.”
“And?”
“And he said he doesn’t know why. He said he did talk to them, but he wasn’t the one that typed up the report. He gave his notes to some junior detective to type out.”
“See, sloppy.”
“But he said there was nothing remarkable about any of the interviews. They all said the same thing. She kept to herself. Not a lot of friends. No enemies.”
“So, we just take his word for it?”
“Got no other choice.” Sam crossed his arms and sighed. “Apparently, he started grooming her right when she showed up at St. Mary. Moved fast too.”
The two men leaned against the car next to each other and watched the numerous officers wander around the property. Carter breathed in deep and sighed, Orcheck’s words as he was pushed into the ambulance echoing in his brain. It wasn’t me.
“He wanted her to keep it,” Sam said. “Least that’s what he said in the letters. Who really knows?”
“Keep it? The baby?” Carter cocked his mouth slightly sideways. “Mike said she was gonna abort. Maybe they got in an argument over it, and he snapped?”
“One thing I’ve learned is, there’ll always be some unanswered questions surrounding these things. This shit isn’t for the completionists.” Sam pushed off the hood of the car and patted Carter on the back. “Let’s get some breakfast. Sun’s almost up.”
Carter stayed leaning against the hood for a few seconds longer, staring into the flashing blue and red lights until they blurred into a blotchy mess. The same heavy pulsing he felt while pursuing Orcheck came back. His mind went blank, or maybe it went to another place. But his body remained and he felt the hard winds rushing across his face.
“Hey!” Sam shouted from the driver’s seat. “I’m starving, let’s go!”
Carter shoved the letters in his coat pocket and got in the car.
The two men sat across from each other in a booth by a window of a nearby diner. Sam gulped his black coffee down and lit a cigarette.
“This is the last place I’ve found that lets you smoke inside,” he said, taking a long drag as Carter slowly scanned each page of the letters. “Yeah, my dad took me to this place when I was a kid.” He looked around and squinted. “Maybe just a place like this. Dunno, but he took me somewhere is the point. He wouldn’t eat. Just smoked and drank coffee. Hit on the waitresses. Those are probably the only good memories I have of my old man. Come to think of it, one of those trips to the diner was probably the last time I saw him.” He looked up, blowing a cloud of smoke in the air and watching it drift towards the ceiling. “What about you? When’s the last time you saw your old man?”
Carter was still staring at the letters, running his finger along each line. Without looking up, he reached for his coffee and took a cautious sip, testing the temperature.
Snapping in Carter’s face, Sam said, “Hello! You with me?”
Carter pulled his eyes upward to look at Sam, and quickly lowered them back down. “Last time I saw my father?”
“Yeah.”
“Alive or dead?” Carter asked, taking another sip of his coffee.
“Well … um, if you don’t want to talk about it—"
“No, it’s just I didn’t know what you meant. What you’re looking for. Last time I saw him alive was before school one day. I was ten.” Carter sat up and leaned back, taking his eyes off the letters for the first time since they sat down. “He sat at our dining table in his sheriff’s uniform, sipping coffee.” Carter nodded down at his own mug and took
a larger gulp now that it had cooled off. “I waved at him as I walked out the door. He gave me a nod and raised his mug.” Carter picked up his and mimicked the gesture. “That’s it. That’s the last time I saw him alive.”
Sam just nodded. Carter had never told him the story of his father. It was a subject Carter didn’t talk about much, and one Sam never asked about directly until now. So, it stayed hidden between the two of them.
“Last time I saw him at all was that same day. After school. He was sitting in his car in the garage. Engine running, garage door closed. Still wearing his sheriff’s uniform. A letter on his chest.” Carter held up the letters he had been reading then looked out the diner window and nodded. “…That was it.”
“What did it say? The letter?”
Carter paused, thinking back on his father, his body slumped down in the driver’s seat. He thought how he was likely the last person his father ever saw.
“It was just one line. ‘Time is the only currency that matters. Spend it wisely.’” He didn’t say anymore, and Sam didn’t ask. Carter returned his attention to the letters, and the two sat in silence until their food arrived.
Ignoring his meal, Carter pointed at the letters and said, “How closely did you read these?”
Sam shrugged and chewed some food, swallowing before saying, “Eh, I read enough to know the two were in some sort of relationship. Enough to know he’s our man.”
“I see it differently. He cares about her. You can see it in these letters. He wants to protect her.”
“The guy is a rapist!”
“No doubt about it, but in his own twisted way, he cares for her.” Carter kept his eyes locked on the letters. “He’s the only one, aside from Claire, who referred to her in the present tense. Not even Robert did that. Speaking of Robert, you see how Rose talks about him?” Carter pointed at a spot on one of the pages.
…Robert was awake when you dropped me back off last night. I don’t think he heard me come back in, but be careful. If he sees you outside the house … I don’t know … he’d flip out. Wouldn’t even give us a chance to explain. I don’t think Robert has ever been in love like us. If he had, he wouldn’t be so pissed off all the time…