Dark Waters

by Susan Rogers Cooper

  That settled in his mind, he glanced once more at the bullpen. Jasmine Bodine, now Jasmine Hopkins, his wife, sat at her desk on the phone. He was going to pretend it was work related and not her talking to the babysitter about their daughter, Petal. She was in the second grade now and one of Emmett’s worst fears had come true: his beautiful daughter had come home crying from school, telling her mama that the boys at school were calling her Petal Pusher. He’d been assured by his wife that they didn’t call those short pants for women that aren’t pants and aren’t shorts petal pushers anymore – they were called capris; no one used petal pushers at all. Well, all he could say to his wife was, ‘Oh, yeah?’

  But Jasmine had been adamant. She was one of four sisters and a brother and all the girls were named after a flower: Iris, Rose, Jasmine and Daffodil, the baby. Her brother’s name was Paul. Emmett always thought they shoulda named him Stem, but he never said that to Jasmine.

  At the desk next to his wife’s sat Nita Skitteridge, their newest deputy, an African-American woman, who, despite Emmett’s misgivings, had turned out to be a pretty good deputy. The only deputy not in the bullpen was Nita’s cousin, Anthony Dobbins, the department’s first African American ever, who would come on duty at noon and stay until eight when they locked the doors and the phone was switched over to the deputy on call. Tonight it was Jasmine, which meant Emmett might have to do some babysitting, although he’d never say that out loud. Jasmine hated it when he said he was babysitting, because as far as she was concerned it wasn’t babysitting when the kid was your own. Emmett stipulated that might be true.

  Emmett wandered down to his office just as Holly transferred a call to him. He picked up the phone and said, ‘Acting Sheriff Hopkins.’

  ‘Hey there, Acting Sheriff Hopkins,’ said a familiar voice. ‘This is Bill Williams, and I’m not acting like a sheriff, I really am one.’ And then, of course, he laughed like it was funny.

  ‘Hey, Bill,’ said Emmett. Bill Williams was the sheriff of the next county over, Tejas, which was a might smaller and had a much smaller budget than Prophesy County. Of course, Prophesy County housed the township of Bishop, one of the higher property-taxed communities in the state.

  ‘Just called to let you know I got a call from McAlester that they released Darby Hunt yesterday.’

  ‘Darby Hunt?’ Emmett said, knowing the name was familiar but not being able to place it. McAlester was the town that housed the Oklahoma State Prison.

  ‘Yeah, you were probably at the police department when this went down, back in ’eighty-seven,’ Bill said. ‘He lived in your county and beat his wife something awful. She ran away – came over here to her mama’s house. He found her and gutted her like a chicken in front of her entire family, most of whom live in your county. Everybody testified and he said he’d kill ’em all when he got out. Well, like I said, he got out yesterday – no prior warning – so I thought I’d give you a heads up.’

  ‘Why’d the parole board call you instead of me?’ Emmett asked.

  ‘’Cause the killing was here in Tejas. Trial was here and everything. But like I said, he lived in your county and most of his wife’s folks that testified against him live in your county. Of course, maybe he got over them sending him to prison, but he never did have what you might call a good disposition, and I doubt if twenty-five years in prison made him all warm and fuzzy.’

  Emmett was nodding his head. ‘Did Hunt and his wife have any kids?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, a daughter, Elizabeth, but she was too young to testify against her father. According to the warden – I checked – she never went to see him.’

  ‘How old was she when this happened?’

  ‘About four, I think. She went to live with her aunt until her eighteenth birthday – the aunt in Prophesy. You might ask the aunt where she is – if the aunt ain’t dead by now.’

  ‘Hush that kinda talk. OK, can you fax me or email me or whatever the names of the family members in Prophesy?’

  ‘Already done. Check your fax machine.’

  ‘Will do, and Bill, thanks for letting me know.’

  ‘Hell, Emmett, I know you’d do the same for me,’ Bill said and hung up.

  Looking up, Emmett saw Holly Humphries standing at his door. In her usual fashion, Holly was wearing bright yellow leggings with pink hi-tops, a black lace skirt that almost reached her crotch, a patchwork T-shirt, too many bracelets and a huge pendant of a skull hanging at about chest level. The bleached streaks in her jet-black hair were tinted green today. Her smile made the hardware on her face sparkle.

  ‘Acting Sheriff,’ she said.

  ‘Stop. It’s still Emmett, Holly.’

  ‘OK, Emmett, here’s a fax for you from Tejas County,’ she said.

  He took the sheet, said thanks to his civilian aid and began to peruse it. There was a list of six names, with three at the same address. The other three were two at another address and one living alone.

  The sheet also told him that the deceased wife’s name had been Cheryl McDaniel Hunt, and of the six names, the three at one address were Cheryl’s brother David McDaniel, his wife Brittany and their daughter Emma, age twelve. The two at another address were Cheryl’s sister, Lisa McDaniel Atkins, her husband Roger, and the one living alone was their twenty-year-old son, Malcolm. Lisa would have been the aunt who took in Elizabeth, Hunt’s daughter. Emmett knew Dave McDaniel, the uncle, from back when he was chief of police of Longbranch. Dave had a paint and body shop and used to do the repairs on the city patrol cars. Nice enough guy, Emmett remembered.

  There was a second page to the fax, with a short biography of Darby Hunt and the addresses of his family members. The biography detailed where he went to school, what jobs he’d had, and his arrest sheet. He’d been locked up twice for domestic abuse, charges dropped, and twice for drunk and disorderly, which was the dropped-down charge in both cases from assault. Seemed like nobody wanted to get on the bad side of Darby Hunt. He counted a list of seventeen family members, many of them cousins – a couple of whom had been arrested with Darby – and all of whom lived in Prophesy County.

  This wasn’t going to be good. Emmett did something he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do. He picked up the phone and called Milt.

  Milt – Day One

  The entryway to the ship was in the bowels of the beast, and there was a man standing guard there in a phony-looking naval officer’s uniform. I walked up to him.

  ‘My wife and kids already boarded,’ I said.

  ‘Did they leave you a boarding pass?’ he asked.

  ‘No, were they supposed to?’

  ‘You can’t enter the ship without a boarding pass, sir,’ he said.

  ‘So where do I get a boarding pass?’ I asked.

  ‘Inside,’ he said.

  ‘Huh?’ I said.

  ‘Inside, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Inside what?’ I said, my temper beginning to flare.

  ‘The ship, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Are you frigging kidding me?’ I said at the top of my lungs.

  Then I saw the guy’s mouth begin to twitch, and Jean and the boys came out from behind him all laughing.

  ‘We saw you coming, Dad!’ Johnny Mac shouted. ‘And Mom said we could play a trick on you!’

  ‘And they talked you into this?’ I said, looking at the guard.

  ‘It was my pleasure, sir,’ he said, sticking out his hand to shake. ‘You can go in now. Your wife has your passes.’

  I shook my head and slipped in behind my wife and the boys. I was wrong. We weren’t in the bowels of the ship. It was some sort of holding place with roped-off lines, but the big room was empty so the guard moved the ropes so that Jean wouldn’t have to circumnavigate them.

  ‘You sure you don’t want me to get you a wheelchair, ma’am? To just get up to the ship. It’s a pretty steep rise,’ the guard said.

  ‘No, Max, we’re fine,’ Jean said. She does that. She gets at least the first name of everybody anywhere. I know the fir
st names of my dry cleaner, my barber, my banker, etc., mostly because I went to school with them or their mama or daddy, or sister or brother, or in some cases, arrested some relative, or in others, them. But Jean knew the names of the bellhops, maids, bartenders and waitresses at the hotel we stayed at in Las Vegas, knew the names of the toll takers on the toll road to Oklahoma City, knew the names of both our garbage men and their back-up guys, knew the names of – OK, I think you get the drift.

  We started up the ramp to the ship. Our luggage, thankfully, had been taken by ship’s personnel to our room – excuse me, cabin. So all we had to do was just get ourselves on the ship. That didn’t work so well. Jean should have taken Max’s advice. A quarter of the way up she almost fell, and I called down to Max for the wheelchair. He brought it up and between me and the boys we got Jean and the chair to the check-in level – against her continued protests. My wife never wants to appear needy, and she isn’t. It’s just that sometimes she could use a little help from her friends.

  Finally we got on the ship, checked in with another phony naval officer, then went through a doorway to Vegas.

  I swear to God it was everything I hated about Las Vegas. Lots and lots of noise, the sound of slot machine bells and whistles, people bustling about, thick phony-smelling, perfumy air – just very Vegas-like. And not one peek of the Gulf anywhere. A woman in a fake naval uniform holding a clipboard came up to us.

  ‘Name?’ she said with a big smile.

  Well, that was nice, I thought. ‘Kovak, Milton, party of four.’

  She ran her finger down the clipboard. The smile brightened her face once again. ‘Here you are. We have you in a small suite, Mr Kovak. Is this Mrs Kovak?’ she said, extending her hand to Jean.

  Jean said, ‘Yes, I am. And you are?’

  ‘Oh! I’m so sorry! The first thing I’m supposed to do is introduce myself.’ She leaned down closer to Jean in her wheelchair. ‘This is my first tour.’ Straightening, she said, ‘I’m Louisa and I’ll be your steward all day today.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Louisa,’ Jean said. ‘And these two young men are John Kovak, our son, and his friend, Early Rollins.’

  Louisa shook hands with both boys and said, ‘I’m so glad you could join us. Seems like it’s spring break in a lot of places right now! We’ve got a lot of children on-board. You two should have a great time.’ Turning to Jean and myself, she said, ‘And we’ve a lot of supervised activities for the kids also, leaving the parents a little alone time,’ she said, and actually winked at me.

  Then she led us to an elevator, went down two floors, and we followed her down one hallway after another, me pushing Jean’s wheelchair, her crutches lying across the armrests of the chair, until we got to a door that looked exactly like every other door we’d seen since leaving the main deck.

  Louisa used a keycard to open the door, then handed that card to me and pulled out a second card from her pocket for Jean. ‘Here you go, folks! Let me show you around!’ The smile she flashed us seemed to indicate we were going into the bowels of the Taj Mahal. That’s not where we went. The room was about as big as our guest bathroom back home. Walking in, there was a bathroom to the left and a closet/drawer thingy to the right. The bathroom was the size of – hell, we didn’t have anything in our house that was quite that small. Evinrude’s litter box, maybe, but that was about it. I knew from looking at it that Jean was going to have a hell of a time. First off, there was a high step into it, then the toilet sorta sat under the sink, and the shower – well, I think I’d probably touch all sides of it. But OK, it was a ship. There wasn’t a lot of room. Getting past the bathroom and closet thingy was the rest of the room: two twin beds with a night stand between and on the other side of the far bed a sliding glass door led onto a balcony with a view of – joy of joys, the Gulf! OK, I liked that. Across from the beds was an archway that opened into the suite part of our accommodations. Smaller than one of my jail cells back home, there were two bunk beds and a small table, and that was it. No extra bathroom or closet thingy. The alcove didn’t have a balcony, but did have a window with a deep window sill that worked as a shelf the boys could use to store some of their junk. What with Louisa in the space and the four of us, plus Jean’s crutches, we had some work cut out to get Louisa out of our ‘suite.’ But finally she was gone and we all sat down for a minute on our beds.

  ‘Seven days in this?’ Jean whispered to me, her face drawn.

  ‘We’ll get used to it,’ I said, trying to put on a brave face.

  Turning her face away from the boys, she whispered, ‘There’s no escape from them.’

  ‘You mean . . .’ I started.

  Jean interrupted, saying, ‘You’re not getting any this trip, mister man.’

  ‘Remember what Louisa said,’ I reminded her. ‘Supervised time for the kids.’

  She grinned. ‘Halli-fucking-luia.’ That was the first time in almost eleven years I’d ever heard her drop the F-bomb. I sat there with my mouth open. She stood up. ‘I’m going to attempt to go pee. If I must, I’ll use the shower.’

  ‘Rinse,’ I suggested as she struggled through the small space with her crutches and tried to get up the steep step to the bathroom. Some people might have tried to help her. Me? I didn’t feel like getting a crutch in my gut.

  TWO

  Milt – Day One

  Luckily they didn’t take the wheelchair away. It was parked outside the cabin when we decided to check out the ship. I talked Jean into using it ‘just this once.’

  Using the map we’d been given, we headed upstairs to the promenade deck and found an opening to the outside that looked out to the dock. We stood with five hundred of our closest friends and waved goodbye to total strangers. More navy guys came up and offered us fancy cocktails for only $6.50 each. I bought two of those – two kinds of rum, pineapple juice, grenadine, and a shot of apricot bandy – and two Shirley Temples for the boys.

  ‘You realize that’s a gateway drink, don’t you?’ my wife the shrink said.

  ‘Huh?’ I said. I’m clever that way.

  ‘Shirley Temples. It’s a mixed drink for children to get them ready for alcohol,’ she said.

  ‘Huh?’ I said again.

  ‘Are you paying attention to me?’ she asked.

  ‘Hey, look down there! See that guy next to the woman in the red dress? He looks just like Al Pacino!’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said, looking down. ‘He looks like Robert De Niro.’

  ‘Right. The other one. I always get them mixed up.’

  ‘You’re such a bigot,’ she said, but there was a smile in her voice.

  ‘What?’ I said in all innocence. ‘I’m a middle-aged southern white guy. What do I know about east coast eye-talians?’ I said, stressing the ‘eye’ to make her laugh. I got the desired result.

  The boys had put down their Shirley Temples and were using the extra-long straws as swords to assault each other. I put my arm around Jean and stared at Galveston. We wouldn’t be seeing that bitch for seven whole days.

  Let me just say this: I’m not a big gambler, I don’t play golf (there was a putting green aboard ship), and I’m not much for Vegas-style shows. But give me a free meal in a semi-star restaurant and you’ve got me for life. The restaurant spread from one side of the ship to the other, with windows looking out to the ocean on both sides. The tables had tablecloths and fancy china and silverware and crystal glasses. I wanted to mention to the boys not to touch the crystal, then figured the ship’s people had to allow for a little breakage or they wouldn’t let kids aboard, right? Then we sat down to a menu of stuff I loved and stuff I’d always wanted to try. Like an appetizer of escargot in garlic lemon butter with toast points, a main course of Chateaubriand with truffles, roasted new potatoes and white asparagus, and for dessert a chocolate soufflé with raspberry sauce. I wanted to lick each plate but figured that might embarrass my wife. The boys weren’t that crazy about the restaurant, wanting to know where on the menu were the chicken nuggets, s
o after a little fine dining we took them across the ship to the buffet line/food court-type place where they were able to find all sorts of kid-friendly foods: chicken nuggets, corn dogs, tacos, spaghetti and meatballs – you name it, it was there, along with some more adult treats like Chinese food, Mexican food, Greek food – and of course, hamburgers, hotdogs and fried chicken. There were vegetable dishes, too, and a salad bar with lots of fruit, but the only things the boys even looked at were the corn on the cobs. I figured no way was I going hungry on this trip, and say what you might about organized fun, as long as I wasn’t hurting for food, I really didn’t care.

  That first night we took the kids to see a magic show, got them to bed around eight-thirty, all tucked in, gave Johnny Mac his mama’s cell phone and told him to call me for anything, and then locked the door and left.

  Jean kept saying, ‘This isn’t a good idea.’

  ‘They’ll be fine,’ I kept saying back.

  Johnny Mac – Day One

  The only thing more adventurous, more spontaneous and more inquisitive than a ten-year-old boy is two ten-year-old boys. Where one boy alone might be a little reticent and a little nervous, add another and the word ‘dare’ and you have a situation. So it was on the first night of the voyage of the Star Line, Gypsy Cruise’s newest and proudest ship.

  After the parents left the two boys, Johnny Mac in the top bunk, Early in the bottom one, talked about things. Like ninjas and zombies and who would win in a fight; about vampires and aliens and what it must be like to live on Jupiter. About inventions like a ray gun that could shoot candy into your mouth from a thousand miles away. After about thirty minutes Johnny Mac climbed down from the top bunk, got the flashlight off the night stand and, with Early behind him, crept into Johnny Mac’s parents’ room to check out their stuff. On the night stand between the two single beds, Early found a book. Since it was a hardcover and fairly big, Johnny Mac claimed it was his mother’s. ‘Dad only reads paperbacks,’ he told his friend. Early nodded his head. He totally understood that.