Discovering Normal

by Cynthia Henry

  “Did they find him?” she choked out.

  “I don’t think yet, but they’re looking.”

  “I’ll be there in a few hours.”

  “I’m flying out too. I’ll wait at the airport.”

  And Beth did one of the rudest things of her life. She hung up the phone without saying goodbye.

  ***

  Beth threw what things she could find into a suitcase while her father made flight arrangements in the hall.

  Francine straightened and refolded what Beth had flung while her mother sat on the bed and watched. “I just don’t understand this, Elizabeth. He called last night and I spoke with him briefly before I summoned the children. There was no indication--”

  Beth swallowed yet another sob. “I don’t suppose he’d tell you if he’d been planning to end his life, Mother.”

  “No, I don’t suppose. But I want you to promise me that you won’t be riddled with guilt over this--”

  Beth spun around and flashed a glare just as her father entered the room.

  “I got you on a 7:40 flight. We’ll have to hurry.”

  “Fine,” Beth said and threw a sweater she forgot she’d even brought into the mix.

  “Please reconsider and let me accompany you, Sweetheart.”

  “No,” Beth said without looking up as she grabbed a blouse.

  “Elizabeth--”

  Beth lifted her head to see her father fidgeting with his pipe. “Thank you, but no. Deej is flying in and I have a lot of friends in the area. I have to call Chris’ parents, but I want to have more details before I do. What I need is for both of you to stay here and tend to my children…” How absurd that this was what they were now--truly just her children. “Our children.” She sucked in a breath and closed her eyes. “Promise me you won’t tell them anything until I know for sure what happened. Keep them from the TV and Noah from the papers. As soon as the press gets wind of the ace agent’s suicide, it’ll be a field day. That is what you can do for me, Daddy.”

  “All right then,” he said with a sigh.

  ***

  Beth bit her nails for the entire flight. With these ridiculous new ‘no smoking’ rules, what choice did she have?

  She was a widow now, though it probably wasn’t a fair title since she’d pushed Chris to this by walking away. But it was all so strange and uncharacteristic--like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit.

  Chris was big on retaliation, and retaliation to him would mean carrying on so she would damn well know that he’d be fine without her. He also adored his children and unless he’d been in a drunken stupor, she couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t have considered the effect it would have on his son and daughter that he was leaving behind.

  The flight landed and Beth grabbed her carry-on. Deej was the first person she saw when she walked into the terminal. He didn’t say a word, just extended his arms, pulled her tight and let her cry into the scratchy polyester of his suit coat.

  “Chin up,” he whispered.

  “Chin up,” she whispered back.

  “Chris was the toughest and the smartest agent I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. I don’t know what the hell the son-of –a-bitch was thinking,” Deej said with a squeeze.

  “I guess I haven’t known that for a long time.” Beth reached for the hankie decorated with a huge ‘D’ that he handed her.

  ***

  Jack had been waiting at the curb when Beth and Deej emerged with their luggage. Beth was so grateful that he’d brought Ramona along for the ride. Now Jack pulled up the long drive to the house and shut off the engine. Deej instantly hopped from the car, but Beth lingered in the backseat, holding Ramona’s hand for just a moment more. She’d left here only seventy-two hours ago and now she was back and her husband was dead.

  It was unfathomable.

  “Come on, honey,” Ramona whispered.

  Beth climbed out and heard the same bird calling in a distant tree. Did he recognize that she’d come home--even sadder than when she’d left and so much more humbled?

  Sundance dashed toward her and Beth stooped to pet him before she followed Ramona up the walk, but paused when Jackson pulled open the screen door.

  No squeak. No slam.

  The jerk fixed it.

  Deej gestured his head for her to follow and she did, entering her kitchen as if she were a stranger and had never seen it before. The counter was a mess--coffee stains and sugar sprinkled around the coffeemaker. The sink was full of dishes--an unwashed frying pan and countless mugs and plates.

  For some strange reason, Beth pushed her foot on the pedal of the garbage can and peered inside. A bag of chips, wrinkled napkins, a Popsicle wrapper, eggshells and the cored inner seeds of a green pepper?

  Beth let it slam closed and turned when Deej called her name. She hadn’t even noticed Larry Thomas, a cop who had worked summers as a farm hand before he’d gone into the academy five years before, was near the kitchen doorway. “I’m sorry, Beth,” Larry said.

  “Have you found him?”

  Larry shook his head. “No, we’ve got a team on it. One of the herdsman said that Chris kept his hunting rifle in a safe in the barn office. We were able to get it open and the rifle’s gone, Beth. We’re working with the assumption that he wandered out into the woods beyond Dennison’s place.”

  She wouldn’t have thought it was possible to feel sicker than she already had over the last four hours. But it was possible all right.

  Beth fell into her kitchen chair--one of the four that she’d meticulously stripped and refinished--and rested her head. “This just doesn’t make any sense,” she muttered. Ramona’s palm stroked circles into her back. Beth raised her head to see Ramona, Jack, Larry and Deej, who’d dealt with so much tragedy in the past, staring at her as if they didn’t have a clue either what the hell it all meant.

  “Can I see the note he left?” she asked and Larry pulled it from a manila envelope that he held and handed it to her.

  Beth glanced down at yellow legal paper and Chris’ half-print, half-cursive handwriting.

  Not much to say besides there’s no reason for me to go on. I’ve lost my wife, my children, everything. The world will be better without me.

  Chris

  The world would be better without him? Chris had never for a moment truly believed that the world would be better without him. He believed there was too little good and far too much bad and he’d never sacrifice a nanosecond of providing the world with even the briefest flash of humanity.

  Unless she’d utterly destroyed him.

  “This doesn’t make sense,” she said again and she knew she was rambling, but it didn’t make any sense at all. “He didn’t even try to get me to stay.” She looked up toward Deej and Jackson. “You know him. He always thought he was right and he’d never give up without a fight. I talked to him on the phone when I arrived in Connecticut. He asked how the car had done. He didn’t say he couldn’t live without me.”

  Beth raised the paper closer to their view. “Chris would never do something like this without at least trying to achieve what he wanted first. I just know it.”

  Deej cleared his thick throat. “Normally I’d agree, Bethie, but the circumstances are unique.”

  Beth looked at the legal paper in her hand. She’d purchased every item this house and Chris’ barn office possessed. She’d placed an order at Office Mart just the week before and she’d ordered white legal pads, not yellow.

  “This isn’t our paper.”

  “Beth, darlin’--”

  But she cut Deej off with a shake of her head. “Come on, Deej. You’re the one who taught me to disregard nothing and never, ever ignore instinct.”

  Larry cleared his throat. “The handwriting is his, Beth. We had it analyzed with some stuff we found in the barn. That’s why I have it with me. I just got the results.”

  Beth shook her head and sucked in a raggedy breath. “None of this makes any sense.” She hopped up, lunged for the back stairs, raced up
them, down the hallway and into the room she and Chris had shared for eleven years. The bed was stripped of sheets and a few items of clothing were scattered over the upholstered chair in the corner. The room was quiet and still--so different from the commotion that always seemed to be taking place somewhere even long after she and Chris had stopped talking. She took in the neatly framed prints she’d searched for to match the toile wallpaper and the curtains she constantly adjusted to ensure that they were falling against the sill just so.

  Her eyes traveled back to the bed. She’d changed the sheets the morning she’d left and she’d never known Chris to care if they were crisp and April-fresh anyway. Beth fell to the bed and ran her hands up and down her arms though the room wasn’t cold.

  What in God’s name was going on?

  She closed her eyes and tried to think. Admittedly she was rusty on procedure and hadn’t taken part in any operations since before her own brainwashing, but there were things she still recalled. The first lesson any agent-in-training was ever taught was to never underestimate inherent intuition. The facts she knew for certain were limited and random, but it was a start.

  Aside from the obvious--the absolutely uncharacteristic move of Chris committing suicide--there were several other indications that something was off, strange, different. The green pepper. Chris detested green pepper and could find the tiniest minced piece in any potato salad. Why were there the remnants of a pepper?

  Beth shook her head and gave a sinister chuckle. She was reduced to putting stock into a pepper seed.

  But the stripped bed and yellow paper and the fact that he didn’t say more to Noah and Audrey on the phone than, “Enjoy your first day of school” and “Keep Mommy company when Noah goes to fifth grade,” made it even stranger. Her mother had sat in the room and relayed most of the conversation to Beth--simple pleasantries between a father and his children who missed him. No, “You’re my world, my life; my everything.”

  Beth looked around the area she knew so well and took that final, crucial assessment. She stood up and walked to the laundry room just off their private bath. Sure enough, the 480 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets that her mother had sent for Christmas were stuffed into a twisted heap in the dryer. Beth slammed the white metal door.

  Then like a bolt of something fast and needy, she flew down the stairs.

  “Jack! Jack!”

  Jack stepped into the kitchen from the back porch where he’d been smoking a cigarette with the mopey Sundance at his side.

  “Jack, who did he sleep with?”

  Ramona sucked in a breath and laid her hand over her mouth. Larry and even the wizened Deej looked uncomfortable as hell, but Beth was relentless. “Tell me who it is because I know there was someone. Who did he sleep with?”

  Jack crushed the butt into the sink. “Beth…”

  Beth grabbed the lapel of his sport coat. “Jack, I need to know. Maybe I can figure some things out if you’ll just tell me. Who was it?”

  Jack glanced around and then back to her. “Anita Borden.”

  The 38, 24, 36 barmaid who said a polite hello to Beth every time she saw her in the grocery store and then sent an unmistakable glare her way when she thought she was no longer looking.

  “Just once?”

  “Just the other night and he was sick about it.”

  Deej stepped to Beth’s side. “Another reason there, Bethie.”

  Beth released the lapel and swatted at her eyes. “I don’t have a yellow legal pad anywhere in this house. There’s not one here.”

  “Maybe he picked one up, or got the paper somewhere else?”

  Beth took the napkin Ramona handed her and sounded a mighty blow. “Can you just investigate, please? Go to Anita Borden’s and see if she gave him a sheet of yellow legal paper.”

  “Beth,” Deej whispered. “This isn’t a criminal investigation, honey. It’s a sad thing and I know you’re feeling shit that I can’t even imagine, but there’s no crime here. Just an unhappy man who couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Beth stamped her foot and felt approximately twelve, but she didn’t care. “I have to go tell his children that their father is dead, Deej, and I won’t do that until I’m certain myself.”

  Larry pushed a button on his radio. “We’re looking high and low for his body, Beth. You know how ruthless that terrain can be when you venture just a little bit off the beaten path. He could be any one of a thousand places.”

  “But why would he leave a note and then wander away so we couldn’t find him?”

  Deej pulled her arm and turned her to face him. “Bethie, we don’t know the answer to that. But you’re in denial here, sweetheart. He’s gone.”

  And then the grief moved over to make room for fury. “How can you give up on him? You’ve seen so many unbelievable situations, Deej. How can you not believe that something just isn’t right? You know Chris almost as well as I do. He would never, ever do this.”

  “The handwriting is his, Bethie.”

  “I don’t care!”

  Deej sighed and plopped into one of the kitchen chairs. It creaked under his heavy frame. “Officer Thomas, could you please have someone check out Ms. …” his voice trailed. He’d forgotten the slut’s name.

  “Borden,” Beth said.

  “Borden’s home and interview everyone who saw or spoke with Chris last night.”

  “I can help with that,” Jackson said. “I was with him until last call.”

  “Thank you,” Beth whispered and sat down too because she couldn’t remember how to stand for a moment more.

  “What can I do?” Ramona asked as she squatted beside Beth.

  Beth tilted her head toward Deej. “How are we approaching this, Captain? Do I tell my children and my in-laws, or do we wait quietly and see if I’m right?”

  Deej closed his eyes, sighed and exhaled. “Tell his family that the press may get hold of this and whatever they hear, to just hold on. There may be more to it. Tell your parents not to say anything to the kids until we know more.”

  “I can call everyone,” Ramona said and hopped up as if she were grateful that she finally had some use.

  The room was empty then--just Beth and Deej and all of the uncertainty. “I’m sorry, Deej, but something isn’t right.”

  “You’re a helluva profiler, Beth and that’s the only reason that I’m allowing this. I came because it’s procedure and because you’re my friends, but nothing seems amiss. If I didn’t love you and that stupid SOB husband of yours, I’d be back on a plane heading for Boston right now. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “And we will deem this a suicide as soon as I am convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that that’s what it is. Do you understand me now?”

  “Yes,” Beth said in a ridiculously tiny voice.

  “All right then.” He crossed his arms over his expanse of stomach. “How are you holding up?”

  Beth blew into another napkin. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s understandable. Now to tackle the next uncomfortable subject matter; I want to call George in on this.”

  Beth raised her head.

  “I know how he feels about you, Beth. Chris told me a few months ago that he suspected something was up with the two of you.”

  “He did?”

  ”Yeah, he did. I called to ask his advice about a case, but you’re all he seemed to

  be able to talk about.” Deej leaned up and snatched Beth’s hand. “Do you see why, though I trust your instinct and training implicitly, I don’t think you’re going to find any more here than a broken-hearted guy?”

  “Call George if you have to. Call anyone you want because I’m not wrong about this.”

  “I hope you’re right, Bethie. I goddamn hope you’re right.”

  Chapter 9

  It was an effort, but Chris bumped the back of his head against the wall and realized before he even attempted the movement that rising from the floor would be impossible. He shifted, flinch
ed.

  Not much worse than broken ribs.

  He bit his lip and clenched his side as he adjusted, using the wall behind him for leverage. He felt the steady whir of an engine beneath him. Train maybe? But there was no bump of track. A shift, a purr and then elevation. He was on a plane heading God only knew where.

  What the fuck was going on?

  He could hear muffled voices, but no one seemed to be in the same area he was confined to. He tried desperately to piece together what had transpired to bring him here. Amidst the pounding of his head and gut he remembered the bar, the drive home, the glaring light, the limo in the dark, the punch that knocked the wind from his sails.

  He remembered two thick bodies stretching and pinning his so only his right hand was mobile. A forced pen into his hand and a paper shoved into his face. He wrote what they told him because even groggy and pummeled he was well aware that until you knew for certain who your foe was, it was useless to try and defeat them.

  Chris clenched his eye, drew in a breath that hurt like hell and tried to remember the dictation he’d taken like a scared secretary in a burning high-rise. The words spun in his mind until he could piece them together.

  He’d drafted a suicide note.

  But why the hell would someone want to make it look like he was suicidal? George flashed into his mind--a swirling image of his neatly combed hair, Pepsodent smile and tailored suit. George had made the mistake of telling Chris the very first night Beth had joined the Bureau that he knew that she was the girl he was going to marry. Trouble was, Chris had known the very same thing. He’d won her of course, but only temporarily as it turned out. Beth was still young, still beautiful, still able to give George the children he hadn’t yet had and be his wonderful wife. From where Chris stood it sure as shit looked like George was winning this game, so why the hell would he want him eliminated now when it would’ve been so much more effective for Chris to be around and suffer the reality of watching George squirm into the lives of his family?