52
Anna and I are making love when the call arrives.
The buzz buzz of my phone on the nightstand in our dim, hushed bedroom illuminates a small area around it and joins our breathing and intimate expressions as the loudest sounds in the room.
“Get it if you need to,” Anna whispers. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I shake my head. “Absolutely not.”
Our first attempt at making love this evening had been interrupted by Taylor’s upset little cries coming from the baby monitor on Anna’s nightstand, and we had only recently returned to this secret sacred sanctuary where we alone worship.
“What if it’s—”
I glance at the number being displayed.
“It’s not Johanna,” I say. “Everyone else can wait.”
As an investigator with the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department and a chaplain at Gulf Correctional Institution, I get a lot of emergency calls. But it’s as the dad of a young daughter who lives with her mother much of the time that I most often check my phone before the first vibration is concluded.
“But—” she begins.
“Homicide, kidnapping, hostage situation, riot . . . doesn’t matter.”
She smiles up at me. “Thank you.”
It’s August in Florida and hot even inside our air-conditioned home with a fan and window unit running, and a small bead of sweat rolls down my nose and drops onto her forehead before I can catch it.
“Sorry,” I say, and ineffectively attempt to wipe my face on my bare shoulder.
“Don’t be. Clearly I adore your body fluids and I love it when our sweat mixes.”
“But you’re not sweating,” I say.
“Only because you’re doing all the work. We can flip around if you want me to sweat on you.”
The incessant buzzing on the hard surface of the bedside table has a certain relentless rhythm to it.
“Did you start . . .” Anna begins. “Are you moving in sync with the vibrations of the phone?”
“Not consciously,” I say with a smile, “but I think maybe I am.”
She laughs that laugh that lightens the world.
Our lovemaking is many things—sometimes playful, others intense, sometimes gentle, others aggressive, sometimes sacred, others profane. At times we talk and laugh our way through the early stages of our entanglements. At others the only noises able to escape our mouths are unintelligible expressions of ecstasy and private words whispered from passion-hoarse voices.
This evening our lovemaking is tender, nurturing, restorative.
When my phone stops vibrating, I return the full weight and focus of my attention to the woman I have been in love with since we were kids, casting aside all thoughts of the call, who it might be, what they might need.
Being intimate with Anna is my favorite thing in all the wide world, and everything else I feel and experience while one with her is infused with gratitude.
Looking down at her bottomless brown eyes, I feel as if I could dive right into them and never resurface, and in a very real way that’s exactly what I’m doing.
“Some women go their entire lives without ever being looked at the way you look at me,” she says.
“Some go their entire lives without having sex to the rhythm of a vibrating cellphone,” I say.
“If they’re lucky, neither group knows what they’re missing,” she says.
Our eyes lock again.
She had confided in me near the beginning of our relationship how much she loves our intense eye contact while we make love and that Chris, her ex, would never look at her, would never open the windows to his soul while in the vulnerable state of sexual intimacy.
My phone vibrates again to notify me whoever called left a voicemail message, but it’s as desultory as the swishing, swirling sound the little window unit and box fan are making.
“Who was it?” Anna asks. “Who doesn’t know how to leave a tender moment alone?”
We are lying on the bed, our moist, naked bodies entangled, all the covers shoved down toward the bottom.
I am holding my phone above us, squinting to see who had called and caught us in flagrante delicto.
“Don’t recognize the number,” I say.
Without moving my torso, which her head is partially propped on, I reach over and replace the phone on the nightstand.
“What’re you—you’re not gonna check the message?” she says.
“Eventually,” I say. “I’m busy right now.”
I put my other arm around her and pull her even closer.
“Now, come closer and whisper secrets to me and let’s keep the outside world away for just a little longer.”
She does and we do and for a short, inviolable while, there is no world outside this one.
And when I do finally listen to the message, I wish we had kept it at bay even longer.
The call had been from a bartender at 22, the Package and Lounge out on Highway 22. The message, “Come and get your brother before I make an official call to the cops.”
53
I open the door to the newly remodeled little bar wondering how many I’ve been in over the years.
Dim and nigh quiet.
Smoke and chatter and laughter and Chris Stapleton’s version of “Tennessee Whiskey” playing softly on the jukebox.
“Oh hell,” Jake yells from the far end of the bar, “it’s on now.”
The large, sullen man sitting next to him with thick, sunbaked arms and hands looks up from his drink. I have no idea what he’s drinking because the rather large glass is completely obscured by the massive mitt of his right hand.
“My alcoholic brother is in the house,” Jake adds. “This round’s on me. Whatcha drinkin’, John? ’Bout some Tennessee whiskey?”
I cross the dance floor, nodding at the two middle-aged men shooting pool in the small side room, feeling an old familiar familial dread that dates back to childhood.
The wooden bar is in a squared U-shape with people seated on three sides. When I reach this end of the bar, a young, brunette Sunday-night bartender is waiting for me.
Behind her on the back wall, the rope lights on the mirrored shelves of whiskey change colors, and something about the bright, beautifully colored bottles and the way they’re displayed makes me think of Christmas.
“He’s out of money and he keeps demanding drinks and he won’t give me his keys,” she says. “I’m new and I didn’t know what to do. Bonnie said call you.”
I glance over her shoulder at Bonnie, a pale elderly lady with poofy bottle-black hair stacked high on her head nursing a glass of white wine.
Thank you, I mouth to Bonnie.
She lifts her glass and nods toward me.
“You did good. Thank you for calling me. Figure out what we owe and give Bonnie a glass of wine on me.”
“Thank you.”
She moves down the bar toward the register and her pad, and I make my way over to where Jake is slumped on his stool.
On the wall behind Jake is an enormous red and white neon Budweiser sign with a lit crown above it. Seen from a certain angle it looks like the crown is sitting atop Jake’s head.
As I move over toward Jake, he starts shaking his head. “John, John, John. Never ’spected to see you here. But it’s okay, buddy. I won’ let you ’rink too much. I promise.”
“What’re you doin’ in town?” I ask.
“Visitin’ Dad.”
Since retiring, our dad has spent far more time at his fishing cabin here in Wewa than at his home in Pottersville.
“He’s over here most of the time these days,” Jake says, “and I still see him more than you do. It’s like you don’t even care.”
Though Dad had been of retirement age, retiring hadn’t been his idea. He lost the election that would have kept him as the sheriff of Potter County for yet another term. When he did, Jake, a deputy in Dad’s department, lost his job too.
Both men have had difficulty adjusting to their new reality, bu
t some eight months later, Dad has found a certain equilibrium investigating unsolved homicide cases he always meant to return to, while Jake is still lost. Unemployed. Perhaps unemployable. He’s tried a few different things but nothing for very long.
“Come on,” I say, “we’ll go see him now.”
“You go ahead. I’m gonna . . . I’m gonna stay . . . and have another ’rink or two. This place is so nice now. I really like what they’ve done with the place. Isn’t this place nice? I like it here. Do you like it here? What am I saying . . . you like all bars, don’t you, big brother?”
“It’s nice, but it’s time to go.”
The beefy man beside him looks up from his drink and glares at me. “He says he wants to stay and have a drink. Hell, let him stay and have a drink. He ain’t botherin’ nobody.”
“I ain’t botherin’ nobody,” Jake says.
“Tennessee Whiskey” ends and “Smokin’ and Drinkin’” begins.
From across the bar, beneath a huge blue neon Bud Light sign, Bonnie says, “Go with your brother, Jake. We’ll be here tomorrow night. Come back then.”
Jake’s face clouds over and he looks wounded as he tries to focus on her.
The thick man beside Jake looks over at me again. “You here as a cop or his brother?”
“Why?”
“Determines how involved I get.”
“Whichever one gets you the least involved,” I say. “Come on, Jake. Don’t make this difficult.”
“One more drink,” Jake says. “Have a drink with me. Just one. Just one more. Then we’ll go check on Dad.”
“You need to go with him, Jake,” the bartender says.
“You need to calm your tits, Leslie Jean,” he says.
“I ain’t servin’ you another drop, so you might as well go with him.”
She then lets me know how much the bill is and I pay it, tipping her well.
“Buy me one and I’ll help you get him to the car,” the big man beside him says.
Jake whips around toward the man and falls off his barstool, laughing as he lands on the floor as if it’s the funniest thing ever.
Far quicker than I would have thought him capable, the huge man jumps off his own barstool, bends over, and pulls Jake from the floor to his feet in one smooth motion.
Now that he’s standing, I can see that the thick man is even bigger than I realized. Not only does he tower over us, but one of his arms is larger than both of mine together.
“Thanks,” I say.
“Time to go, partner,” he says to Jake.
“One more drink,” Jake says.
“Not tonight, brother. Let’s go.”
Without waiting for Jake’s consent, he lifts him by the arm and walks him toward the door.
“You’re a good friend, Goliath,” Jake says to him as they pass me.
I lay a twenty on the bar. “For Goliath’s next several drinks. And tip yourself well out of it too.”
54
“You really got your shit together,” Jake is saying. “And I really respect that. I do. You don’t drink anymore. You don’t. You’ve got a family. Smokin’ hot wife. She is. I hope you don’t mind me sayin’, but she is. You know? Two beautiful girls. They are. Both beautiful in their own way. You really got it together, big brother.”
We are winding down Lake Grove Road in a low-slung fog toward Dad’s little cabin on the Dead Lakes.
It’s a damp, dark night and the rural road that dead-ends into the Apalachicola River is desolate, only the narrow swath of headlights providing any illumination at all—and it’s mostly the reflective bounce back of the fog.
High humidity and everything is moist. Wipers on intermediate, clearing occasionally the droplets of dew clinging to and sliding across the windshield.
“I’ve never had my shit together,” Jake is saying. “Not really. Not totally. But used to be a fuck of a lot better than it is now. Now, I’m a wreck. A train wreck. A . . . interstate pileup. A . . . a mess. I keep tryin’ to get it together, but . . . I . . . just can’t. Ever felt like that? Like the ends of whatever you’re tryin’ to grab are like that goddamn fog out there and you can’t pull them together. You try. Truly you do. But they won’t . . . you can’t get a hold of them.”
Foolishly, I start to respond, but realize he’s not pausing for a response, only taking a quick breath.
“I need a damn job,” he says. “That’s what I need. Hey . . . Hey . . . you know what? You know what? You could get me on with the sheriff’s department over here. I could be a deputy here. We could work together. How about that, man? Wouldn’t that be cool?”
I have been dreading this moment for as long as I’ve been working at the Gulf County Sheriff’s Department, and am glad it’s drunk Jake who’s asking, and hope he won’t remember it tomorrow.
“’Course now with Dad needin’ me, I ain’t really got time to work no way, but I need to. You know? A man needs to work in this world. He does. I do. You got two jobs . . . I ain’t even got one.”
“What does Dad need you for?” I ask. “You helpin’ him with his investigation?”
“Oh, that. No. Not that bullshit. That’s some foolish-ass shit. He ain’t gonna solve that case after all this time. He’s only tryin’ ’cause he ain’t got nothin’ better to do and he’s thinking about legacy and shit. If he was gonna solve it, he would have solved it back then. Not thirty-something years later. You know? That girl’s gone. Gone baby gone. She ain’t never gonna be found. What would they find anyway? A bunch of old bones? Who needs that?”
Her mother, I think. Our father. And countless other people who carry her vanishing around with them like their own stalking specter.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I should help him. Hell, I ain’t got anything else to do. ’Cept drink. Do too much of that I might end up like Mom. Do you miss her? I don’t really miss her, John. Not really. Am I a bad person? Am I? I just . . . We were never close, you know? And God, I thought she was so weak, so . . . I don’t know. I just—”
A deer grazing on the side of the road darts out of the hot, dark dampness and I slam on the brakes.
I hadn’t seen it until we were already upon it. There was little time to react.
The car skids, sliding on the damp pavement, the driver’s side above the headlight and the front quarter panel striking the poor creature.
“Oh fuck,” Jake says. “What was that? What did you hit?”
“A deer. You okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess. Just startled the piss out of me. Shit man. I didn’t know what was . . . Is it dead?”
“I’m gonna check. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
I shove the car into Park, pull up the emergency brake, turn on my flashers and my emergency lights, and get out.
The sheer level of its volume always startling, the cacophony of nocturnal noises coming from the river swamp on both sides of the road is as discordant as it is deafening.
We’re between two curves in a dangerous spot, even with my lights splashing across the moisture-laden tree branches and dark pavement.
I’ve got to hurry.
Across the opposite lane and about five feet into the ditch, the animal lies unmoving except for labored breaths and moans of pain.
A good-sized doe, the gentle, beautiful creature is not long for this world. All I can do is shorten her suffering.
Squatting down beside her, I withdraw my weapon.
“I’m sorry about this, girl,” I say. “All of it.”
I then press the barrel to her forehead and squeeze the trigger.
The rapport is deafening, reverberating around me, bouncing off the thick forests on both sides of the road, momentarily silencing the crickets and frogs and other nocturnal noisemakers.
Standing, I reholster my weapon, check for traffic in both directions, and rush back over to the car, withdrawing my phone as I do.
Inside the car, I call a local farm family with several children who could really use
the meat from the deer that will otherwise go to waste.
Jake starts talking again, but I ask him to give me just a second.
When Stevie answers his phone I say, “It’s John Jordan. Sorry to call this late. I’ve just hit a deer on Lake Grove Road and had to put it down. I hate for the meat to go to waste but I can’t do anything with it. Thought you might want it.”
The moment I pause, Jake starts trying to talk again, but I hold up my hand.
I laugh as Stevie asks me if this is part of some sort of sting operation I’m running with the game wardens.
“I swear to you it’s not,” I say. “It’d be entrapment if it were, but it’s not. You want it or should I call somebody else?”
When he tells me he wants it, I let him know where it is and disconnect the call.
“Damn, John,” Jake says. “Why didn’t you let me or one of my friends get it? You know I ain’t got no job right now. I could’ve eaten venison steaks and stew for a month or more.”
Trying to change the subject, I say, “What does Dad need you for if not the investigation?”
“Whatta you mean? Just stuff. Taking care of him. Helping him do the stuff he’s too weak or tired or whatever to do.”
“Like what?” I ask. “What’s he too weak to do?”
“Huh? Not much now, but soon it’ll be lots of stuff.”
“I don’t understand. Because he’s getting older?”
“What? No. Because he’s sick. He ain’t told you? That’s why he’s tryin’ to solve this damn case so hard. Wants to do it before he dies.”
55
I find Dad asleep in an old recliner I’d swear he had when I was a child—the one I’d climb up in with him to watch Columbo or McMillan & Wife, the sweet smell of his pipe swirling around us.
Trying not to wake him, I ease past him, quietly half carrying Jake down the short hallway to the spare bedroom.
Jake, in a stupor now, is no longer talking, but his breathing, moans, and awkward movements are loud and I figure it’s only a matter of moments until he wakes up Dad.
Glancing back over my shoulder, I can see Dad has yet to even stir.
True Crime Fiction Page 24