Fifteen Coffins

by Tony J. Forder

  A man of little more than average height and build, Benton nonetheless stood several inches taller than Sydney. When he wrapped his arms around her in greeting, she was reminded of the familiar strength belying his frame. Their embrace was tight but brief. Friendly and no more. Anything else that had once existed between them was over a long time ago; a flickering candle, requiring no breeze to extinguish it at the time.

  ‘It’s actually the infamous and cosmopolitan Miss Merlot again,’ she said as they pulled back from each other. Her accurate pronouncement emphasised the second syllable of her name. She returned his smile. ‘But plain old Sydney will do just as well.’

  ‘Tell me it ain’t so.’ His eyebrows converged. ‘No more Mrs Yates? I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.’

  ‘Not to worry. Five years of marriage was about all that relationship had in the tank.’

  ‘That’s still a real shame.’

  ‘It is what it is, Doc. I’m seeing someone else at the moment. It’s early days, and we’re taking things slow and steady.’

  ‘I hope it works out for you.’ He dipped his head and shook it, biting into his bottom lip before continuing. ‘I was real sorry to hear about your father, Syd. You know I always liked the old guy.’

  Sydney nodded and gave a “what are you going to do?” shrug. She’d not laid eyes on Benton since taking the FBI position in San Diego; even then it was nothing more than a brief encounter inside a pharmacy over in Sonora, during which they caught up in rapid time. She didn’t think he had put on more than ten pounds since they first met, and the clean-cut image remained. Sydney heard no rebuke in his voice at not having been invited to the cremation ceremony, and was grateful for his understanding.

  ‘How’re Kathy and the kids?’ she asked.

  Benton’s smile broadened. ‘All doing real good, thanks. Kath got her real-estate licence and has her own business up and running. It’s become her passion. Brady and Katrina are eight years old, can you believe?’

  ‘Not quite.’ Sydney’s laugh was more self-conscious than she intended. She and Benton’s wife had met on one occasion, but for some reason Kathy regarded her like a shark in the water, circling her husband as if he were chum. Her eyes told Sydney to keep her hands off what was no longer hers. Sydney recalled resenting it at the time, but came to understand the protective glare she had elicited.

  They say you never forget your first love.

  Sydney sure hadn’t.

  ‘I’d ask you to sit down,’ Benton said, ‘but two of us in this tiny room would suck up all the oxygen in it.’

  An electric fan ran hard in the windowless office, causing paper pinned to a corkboard on the wall to flap like a landed fish each time it completed one of its half-turn oscillations. The heat was still unbearable, and Sydney had another place in mind if they were going to get reacquainted.

  ‘How about I buy you a cup of coffee at Bob’s?’

  Benton did not need asking twice. He swept up his baseball cap with its County Sheriff insignia embossed centrally above the peak, and slotted it over his head. Sydney was not a fan of the khaki shirts, but Benton always looked as if he was most comfortable when dressed in a uniform of any kind.

  The fierce summer heat had backed off now that they were into the late stages of fall. Even so, the air remained hot and dry. Outside, the stiff breeze that blew in through the valley off the hills felt cool against bare skin, offering intermittent relief. All they needed was rain to turn the tawny-coloured landscape back to green grass again. Sydney loved Moon Falls, had always enjoyed the scenery in and around the town, but the summers were often brutal and unforgiving.

  Sydney strolled alongside Benton on the shady side of the street. The empty sidewalk was low and wide, years of neglect starting to show signs of decay setting in. As they walked, he mentioned her father again. She deflected it. Again. Something she was getting used to. It was as if not talking about it somehow meant it was less real, that in some way his death was merely one of those fake Facebook posts they’d all laugh about in years to come. Not that she remained in the denial stage of grief. He was gone. She accepted that. But as yet, Sydney had not reached the point where she was able to discuss her loss rationally. The wounds were far too raw for that.

  Sydney noticed many stores were no longer trading, shutters drawn on windows, their glass all but obscured by posters. She remarked upon this as they made their way towards the diner.

  ‘Things are getting tight up here,’ Benton acknowledged with a shrug. ‘What can I tell you? There’s work to be had at the mill, out at the quarry, and on the industrial estates, but when it comes to retail the Falls has taken a knock. Some stores failed to flow with the times so didn’t get enough of what little trade there is, other owners got too old or too disenchanted to carry on running the business, but were unable to sell in this economic climate. Sonora picks up most of the cash people have these days.’

  ‘That’s such a shame. Is the tourist industry dwindling that much, Doc?’

  ‘Sad to admit, but it is. Being an historical site, the original town centre still brings people in. But when you’re up against Jamestown, Sonora and Columbia in particular, folk seem to reach us and decide they’ve had enough of exploring the olden days. You seen one old and creaky building you seen them all, I guess. As for those who do make it up here to visit our areas of interest, few of them tend to linger afterwards. I suspect it won’t be long before some of the more antiquated stores along here become coffee bars, or even little Bistros. Something has to change if we’re going to tempt people to stick around.’

  ‘I don’t suppose Big Bob is too happy about that prospect.’

  Benton chuckled and gave a tug on the peak of his cap. ‘When was the last time you knew Big Bob to be happy about anything?’

  Three

  Big Bob’s Diner was two blocks further down the hill, on the road heading towards the railway tracks and the street sign thanking people for visiting Moon Falls. The restaurant picked up a lot of trade due to being either the first or last stop to eat depending on whether you were entering the town or leaving it, but in the middle of the afternoon it was relatively quiet. The pie and coffee crowd were in, and that was exactly what Sydney ordered for them both.

  They sat at a booth offering a view of the steep forested hillside sweeping down towards highway 108. It would be easier and quicker to roll down there than drive the serpentine route through the woods. The window provided a spectacular vista for the diner’s customers, though charred and desolate spots away in the distance reminded people how close the most recent fires had come.

  Sydney and Benton chit-chatted until their order arrived. The waitress was a hefty blonde wearing a cream-coloured Bob’s Diner T-shirt, navy shorts, with white ankle socks and black-and-grey chequered Vans on her feet. She greeted Benton with warm familiarity, though Sydney felt the woman’s curious gaze linger on her, too.

  ‘No Bob today?’ he asked, nodding over to the counter, behind which stood another woman whose stick-thin and undernourished appearance didn’t look like much of an advert for whatever was on the menu.

  ‘He was on at breakfast,’ Mitzy – if the name badge pinned to her blouse was correct – said. ‘Back on again for the dinner and night shift.’

  ‘So, what brings you to me today, Sydney?’ the sheriff asked, his cap resting on the cushioned seat beside him as his eyes followed the waitress. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not my old-fashioned charm and rugged good looks.’

  As was his habit, Benton Lowe wore short sleeves, and Sydney noticed how the hair on his arms had remained dark while that on his head was working its way to the salt-and-pepper stage. Ageing suited him, she thought. Added a whole new layer of character.

  She blew out her lips, said, ‘It wouldn’t be either of those, would it, Ben? The charm is a mite too cheesy and thickly spread, and the attractive gene looks as if it skipped a generation in your case.’

  Benton laughed. It was a sound that came from deep insid
e his chest, and one that never failed to lift her spirits. ‘You got me there, Syd. I was overreaching. So, what’s on your mind?’

  As she told him about being in town for a few weeks to manage her father’s ongoing investigations, Sydney kept her tone casual and vague. Taking an unpaid sabbatical was a compelling idea and impossible to resist, she explained, because her father would not have wanted to leave his current clients stranded. For him that would have been the worst part of dying; the thing that ticked him off most of all. Her going through his open cases and finishing them off where possible was a natural resolution and a more fitting end.

  ‘That’s a nice gesture,’ Benton said.

  Sydney smiled. ‘I’m a nice woman.’

  ‘That you are. And thanks for the pie, by the way. This place has never made a bad boysenberry pastry since its doors opened to the public.’

  Sydney had not yet touched her own slice, though it was her favourite filling. Her coffee mug stood half drained because she needed the caffeine more. ‘Thing is, Ben,’ she continued. ‘Today I also took on my first ever client.’

  He leaned back in his chair, fork upraised in his hand. ‘For real? That wasn’t part of the plan, I’m guessing.’

  ‘It most definitely was not. This guy came in all bewildered and lost when he spotted me at my father’s desk, so of course I felt sorry for him. He looked beaten and drained, as if seeing me sitting there was about the last straw. There was something so miserable about him, Ben. If he’d had a tail, it would have been curled up between his legs. I sensed so much misery draining out of his pores, I just had to hear him out at the very least. I put on a whole display about how it was my business and I was there to listen and offer assistance if I could. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘That a fellow human being was in pain and needed your help.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah. A soft touch. Always have been, I guess.’

  ‘Not at all. Just kind. So, I gather that whatever he had to say was enough for you to take up his cause.’

  Sydney took a breath to calm her nerves. So far their time together had gone well. There were no hard feelings between them, and never had been. But she suspected that was about to change, putting their long friendship to the test. She told him the name of the man who had come to see her father, but who had instead ended up spilling his sorry account to her. Benton stared at her for the longest time. His smile had fled, snatched away by her admission, and in its place was a silent reproach. Any previous trace of warmth fled his eyes in an instant. It was as if Sydney had become a stranger to him in the few minutes it had taken her to tell her story. The moment was everything she had feared it would be. Only worse.

  ‘Please don’t shut me out, Doc,’ Sydney said, after finishing her coffee in a couple of rapid gulps. ‘Dexter told me how things have been for him here in town since the shooting. He lost his son that day, too, but nobody seems to care.’

  ‘Are you telling me they should?’ A deep frown pinched Benton’s brow. ‘That boy of his shot twenty-three children and three adults. It’s only by the grace of God that he took fourteen lives and not all of them. Would you be able to look the parents, siblings, other family members, friends, or any of the people from this town in the eye and ask them to think of either Dexter or Kevin Muller?’

  Sydney swallowed down her disappointment. It tasted as bitter as the dregs lying in the bottom of her coffee cup. ‘Don’t get angry with me, Ben.’

  ‘I’m not angry with you, Sydney.’

  ‘Well, then tell your voice and expression that would you, please.’

  Both his hands were on the table. She watched as they curled and balled, the knuckles becoming more prominent. It took him a while to respond.

  ‘I’m sorry. If I’m angry, it’s with the loss of fourteen young and innocent lives. If I’m angry, it’s with a society that accepts these mass shootings as something we need to endure as the price of freedom. If I’m angry, it’s with Dexter Muller who raised a boy callous enough to think nothing of murdering a bunch of his fellow students, and ruining the lives of twice as many more.’

  Clearly he carried more than a residue of hostility with him over the shootings, so Sydney gave her friend a few moments to calm down. She responded only when the burning embers of his gaze had cooled.

  ‘He claims his son was not the gunman at all. That Kevin couldn’t possibly have murdered his fellow students. To his way of thinking, that makes it fifteen young and innocent lives lost.’

  Which was precisely what Dexter Muller had gone on to tell her following his earlier startling revelation. That his son, Kevin, had been unmasked and identified as the gunman as he lay dead and bleeding on the ground, but that he did not and never would believe it was true. Muller then listed all the reasons why he was convinced his son was innocent, even going so far as to offer an alternative theory. Which was why Sydney was sitting opposite the local county sheriff.

  His appetite ruined, Benton shoved his plate away with half a pie still untouched. ‘Oh, I know all about his claims, Sydney. Who do you think he pointed his finger at when he made them?’

  ‘You were the most senior member of law-enforcement on the ground. The FBI hadn’t even arrived by the time Kevin Muller was shot dead. It’s only natural for the boy’s father to blame you, don’t you think?’

  Benton’s neck and cheeks flushed, and this time there was venom in his voice. ‘No. No, there is nothing natural about it. As someone who was there, Sydney, unlike either you or Dexter Muller, let me tell you what was natural. We took a call informing us that a gunman wearing dark clothing and a ski-mask, and carrying a holdall filled with weapons over one shoulder, was shooting up the school. After we sealed off the area and established contact with the Principal, started evacuating the terrified staff and students, the gunman came around the side of the building and headed straight for us. I called out for him to stop. Others did the same. I told him to get down on the floor and put his hands behind his head. Instead of that, he kept on coming towards us. Three more times we ordered him what to do. Three more times he ignored us. Then he reached inside the holdall. By this time, we’d been told what he was carrying inside it. So what’s natural, is that to prevent the boy from taking out another weapon and using it on whoever happened to be standing close by, we put him down.’

  ‘You certainly did that,’ Sydney observed with more rancour than she’d intended. ‘Twenty-seven times over.’

  The ridges on Benton’s forehead deepened to the point where it looked as if he’d been branded and they had become a permanent feature. ‘Did you come here to question my tactics, Sydney?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, Doc. I did not. I came here to put to you an alternative theory concerning what happened at the Moon Falls High School that morning.’

  ‘I see. This will be Muller’s own theory that his son was completely innocent, a pawn in someone else’s evil game. That the real gunman somehow forced or coerced Kevin into pulling on the clothing and the mask after the shootings had taken place and then going outside to confront some very angry and well-armed cops. Even to prompt his own death by reaching into the holdall. You mean that theory, Sydney?’

  ‘What was in the holdall, Ben?’ she asked, ignoring his question.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You say Kevin reached inside the holdall. What was in there?’

  ‘It was a card.’

  ‘So, not a weapon, then?’

  ‘No. But we weren’t to know that.’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you were. I’m not implying for one second that either you, your deputies or the local PD did anything wrong up until the point you killed Kevin Muller. And if you were all convinced he posed a genuine threat, not even then. But Kevin was never going to fire on any of you because he was not armed. Instead, he was reaching into the bag to pull out a card he had for you.’

  ‘That’s how it went down, yes.’ Benton remained on the defensive, and Sydney was seeing an obstinate si
de of his character she had not been aware he possessed. Not that he was entirely unjustified in feeling the way he did. In his shoes, she doubted her own behaviour would stand up to scrutiny, though she had not known he had it in him to be so aggressively stubborn.

  ‘And this card,’ she prompted. ‘Dexter told me it read THANK YOU.’

  Benton nodded. ‘That was exactly it. Those two words. In my opinion, he was thanking us for putting him out of his misery. As clear a case of suicide by cop as I’ve ever witnessed.’

  Sydney had guessed this would be his stance. Because of the security footage he had subsequently seen that showed some of what took place inside the school, because the dead boy beneath the ski-mask was revealed as Kevin Muller, and because of the card inside the holdall, Benton had never allowed for the possibility that somebody else might have been responsible for the shootings.

  ‘It was all pretty self-explanatory, Sydney. Like I said before, I think you had to be there to fully appreciate that.’

  Sydney understood, but she was not yet done. ‘Ben, I’m not asking why you didn’t come up with an alternative scenario yourselves. And especially at the time. With all that had taken place, the atmosphere must have been electric. Everything you described would lead anybody to the same conclusion and outcome. I get that. I do. I’m not even saying I believe otherwise. But how about after the boy’s father came to you with his own theory? Did you or the cops look into it at all?’

  ‘There was no basis to. None of the known facts supported the theory.’

  Sydney sighed and collected her thoughts before responding. Earlier on, Dexter had told her how he thought it had most likely gone down. The final reports established that the gunman entered and exited via an unlocked window in the art supply room, though there was no exterior footage of that entire corner of the block. Dexter’s opinion was that the gunman and Kevin had entered the room together. That the real gunman then went on his spree while Kevin held back inside the room, waiting for his return. Then, when the unknown subject went back into that supply room, he and Kevin swapped clothes. Kevin was told precisely what to do afterwards. Meanwhile, the shooter stayed put until the place was caught up in the full chaos of evacuation, before slipping out of the same window and joining in with the crowd of kids flooding out of the school.