Witness

by Denise Gwen

  This was where the employees of the Casino parked.

  He pulled out his key fob, unlocked the door to a nondescript Ford F-150 rusty pickup truck, got behind the wheel, started the engine, and drove away from the Casino. He got onto Maple Road and drove for twenty miles until he came to the sign marking the entrance to Houser Farms, then turned right, and turned right again when he got to the farm.

  He drove down the long, narrow road, lined with the sugar maple trees, drove past the farmhouse, and kept on driving until he reached the first gated entranceway. Nobody was there to open the gate for him, so he did it himself. He jumped out, unlocked the gate, swung it open, went back to the pickup truck, drove forward, locked the gate closed, and then drove past the hog barns.

  How he hated the smell of the hog barns.

  The stink saturated his clothing, his head, his mind. Every time he drove past, he thought of what they did to the hogs; pushed them onto the back of a truck, taken to the slaughterhouse, where their throats were sliced open and their bodies ripped apart to make bacon and pork.

  And then his thoughts drifted to Randy. Randy must be worried about everything; his wife, the investigation, everything, because he normally liked to process and supervise the exchanges himself; he liked to make sure nothing untoward happened.

  This gave Rob pause.

  Something niggled the Sheriff. For sure, a huge thing to lose one’s wife, but Rob figured the Coroner would rule it as a suicide. And apart from a bit of grumbling, and that bizarre thing his step-daughter did at the funeral home viewing, well, things would die down eventually, he figured.

  And then things could get back to normal again.

  He reached the enormous sized barn the size of an airplane hangar, parked his truck, and walked up to the front sliding door. Before he even had a chance to type in his code on the keypad by the door, the electronic eye saw him and the door clicked unlocked and slid open.

  Some little Mexican girls were busy making the finishing touches to the table where the boxed meals were waiting for the travelers. An old iron wash tub, filled with ice, contained an array of Cokes, Pepsis, Mountain Dews, RC Colas, whatever the travelers might need or want.

  One of the little Mexican girls looked up and smiled, but then her smile faded as she gazed at him.

  “Your shirt, senor,” she said.

  “Oh, crap, that’s right. I forgot.” He quickly unbuttoned his brown Sheriff’s uniform, bundled it up, and stuffed it into a locker where he stored his personal effects whenever he supervised a transfer.

  He wore a white undershirt underneath and was just pulling on a bright green tee shirt when the van pulled into the barn. He had only enough time to tuck in the tee before the van pulled to a stop, the driver turned off the engine, and the engine made its familiar ticking sound as it shuddered to a close.

  He’d timed his arrival perfectly. He didn’t like to hang around anymore than he absolutely had to, and this was perfect timing on his part.

  A crew of guys stepped forward to open the back of the van and a few of them nodded at him as they moved to action.

  Manuel got out of the van from the driver’s side and smiled at Rob as he walked over to the food table. “I am so thirsty, ready for a little break,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you are,” Rob said. He jerked his head at the van, where the first of the travelers was being ushered out and guided to the restrooms they provided, and then told where to find the food to eat. “Where’d you start your journey this time, man?”

  “I picked up this crowd in Key West, and this is only our second stop.”

  “Wow,” Rob said. “How in the world do you manage it, Manuel? Such a long driving haul?”

  Manuel smiled as he pulled back the tab to a can of coke and knocked it back in one long, parched swallow. He belched, then smiled. “I watch movies on my Kindle.”

  “You’re kidding me?” Rob asked, aghast.

  “I kid you not, man, look at my console. I watch the movies while I drive up Highway 75.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Rob said. “I guess you know what you’re doing, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Manuel said. He crumpled up the can and tossed it into the recycling container one of the daughters of the farm had installed. She was apparently a fanatic for recycling. “And now I need to take a piss, Mr. Rob.”

  “You do,” Rob said, jerking his head. “Take care of business.”

  Manuel’s run started on the south-side of Chicago, where he collected his travelers, and then he stopped here, in Indiana, where they changed out a fresh truck, and then took the van up to Canada via Buffalo. Then Manuel picked up a shipment in Canada, drove them to Florida, then picked up another shipment, drove them to Chicago, where the cycle repeated itself all over again.

  Manuel was one of many drivers, but he was by far the most reliable. Other drivers transported travelers to Cleveland, Cincinnati, and then Pittsburgh, before returning and bringing travelers back through here, and on to Chicago.

  Manuel had brought this shipment from Florida. They were bound for Chicago.

  They changed trucks here, with the last stop in Canada. Others of them were coming from Chicago, and were being transported to Cleveland, then Cincinnati. At the same moment that Manuel arrived, another truck arrived, this one a clean one. As Manuel parked the van and killed the engine, he walked to the back of the van, thrust open the door and waited as a succession of Mexicans hobbled off. They looked worn out and tired, rough from their journey. They had more distance to go, but they’d made it this far.

  No fatalities on this trip.

  He and Rob had done over a hundred of these runs thus far, and not a hitch.

  Rob was proud of his work here. He’d made sure there were no problems with this side business of his and the Sheriff.

  As the Mexicans, guided by the sweet little Mexican girls, shuffled off to the restrooms and then wandered over to the buffet table to eat, Manuel walked over to Rob with the money bag and handed it over. Rob opened it, thumbed through it. A hundred-grand. Just as promised.

  He nodded. “A good run, eh?”

  “Si.”

  “Come on over this way,” one of the helpers said to the weary people. “We’ve got restrooms and food for you.”

  Manuel translated and the immigrants followed as the helper led them to the back of the barn to the restrooms. A few wandered over to the buffet table and picked up their boxed meals and went off to various places to eat. They moved quickly, knowing they were expected to get a move on, and after they fed, and did one last restroom break, they trooped back out to the entrance way, and into the fresh van and the new driver drove off with them.

  Not a problem.

  Manuel drove the white van out of the barn and to the back. It would be hosed down, scrubbed clean, and readied for the next installment of travelers. He’d driven up from Florida, so now he was on the way to Chicago, to pick up his travelers from an abandoned church on the south side.

  And it would start all over again.

  With the bag of money tucked under his arm, Rob walked out of the barn and to his pickup truck, got in, and drove out of Houser’s Farm, got back onto the road leading to the Casino, drove to the place where he stored the bank bag until he was ready to disburse funds, and then drove home.

  38

  Monday, March 11, 8:55 p.m.

  As Randy walked out of the Sheriff’s Office that evening, he was pleasantly surprised to see no reporters ready to ambush him, but perhaps he’d worn them out. Reporters had called the Sheriff’s Office earlier, wanting to talk to Randy, but he watched with gratitude as Margie put every one of them off. Eventually, he knew, he’d have to deal with the press, but for now he could hide behind the façade of the grieving husband.

  He got into his cruiser and was driving into the Wells Falls Subdivision before he realized he couldn’t return to the house just yet. There were still a few official-looking cars parked in the driveway. He slowed down as he reached
his house and moved at a crawl. He saw the yellow caution tape all over the front yard and the entrance to the house, saw the wide-open window to the dining room, shuddered involuntarily, and drove out of the Wells Falls Subdivision and headed out to the highway, to the Holiday Inn Express out near the Highway on I-74.

  Mercifully, the clerk at the reception desk was either a blazing idiot or blind, or a combination of both, because she didn’t recognize him at all, not even as he handed over his debit card for her to charge him for the room; over in the reception area, and also in the breakfast nook, where guests ate their plastic breakfasts, he saw two plasma-screen television sets, with his ugly mug—the official one he posed for when he first got elected eight years earlier—plastered across the screen, with the words Sheriff Randy Randalls’s wife found dead at home . . . suicide or something else ticker-taping across the bottom of the screen.

  “Here you are, Mr. Randalls,” she said, handing him back his debit card. “Breakfast is served from seven until ten in the morning, and check-out is at eleven. The pool is open from seven in the morning, until ten at night, and the fitness center is open twenty-four-seven. How many room cards do you need?”

  “One will do,” he said.

  “Here you are, sir, and I hope you enjoy your stay at the Holiday Inn Express Shelbyville.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and walked to his room.

  Why is the world filled with so many dumb cunts?

  A few minutes later.

  As he walked into the arid and pristine hotel room, and saw the beautifully-made king-sized bed, with the coverlet folded down just so, and with the fluffy pillows beckoning him to lay his head down upon them, he inhaled deeply and felt immediately better. He was always his best in a nice hotel room. Something to a hotel stay; it had a curious effect on him; it redeemed him.

  His cell phone chirped, the one he used for day-to-day, but not at the office, and not the secret one, and so, even though he didn’t recognize the number, he had a sense who it might be.

  The area code gave it away. He clicked it on. “Hello.”

  “Sheriff,” a familiar voice said, “this is Frederick Delacourt.”

  “Hello, Fred,” Randy said evenly.

  “Just calling to let you know, I’m here in town, and I’ve got Brittany. She’s here, with us.”

  Randy detected a hint of satisfaction in the usually smug voice of his step-daughter’s father. Fred had driven down quick, then, for him to be here so fast from Chicago, but then again, Brittany was his only child, and of course he would’ve come right away to provide comfort to the girl in the moment of the loss of her mother.

  And no doubt, Fred was probably relishing the idea that he’d never again have to deal with Miranda over parenting time with his daughter; the tedious arrangement of time for vacations, Christmas, holidays, the summer, what-have-you.

  And while Fred may still have been a tiny bit in love with Miranda, Randy also suspected that Fred was probably standing in his hotel room with his new wife sitting nearby, perhaps even listening, as Brittany sat at the hotel desk and pretended to study on her laptop, while secretly listening in to her father’s conversation as well, and Randy wondered, briefly, if Frederick Delacourt was staying in the very same hotel he was? That would be funny, although, when he considered it, it wasn’t really that funny, just mildly ironic.

  He walked idly over to the window overlooking the parking lot, scanning to see if he could espy Fred’s latest hot-shot car. Was it a sleek black BMW? Or a snappy Mercedes? Or perhaps even, a Lexus? Fred liked to drive what he considered to be the ‘quality’ cars. Nothing American. All foreign-made.

  What a fucking snob.

  “I’m glad you called,” Randy said evenly, peering at a shiny black BMW, parked directly under the hotel parking lot lights. That was Fred’s car, all right; Randy was almost certain. God-damn, he was staying at the same god-damn hotel as Randy. Better be careful in the morning, take care not to run into him in the lobby.

  “We’re going to be here for a few days,” Fred said reluctantly.

  And I’ll bet it’s killing you to stay in this ramshackle town, you upscale asshole. I hope it doesn’t blight your prospects, you status-climbing French twat.

  “Well, that’s understandable,” Randy said. “Did Britany get everything she needed from the house?”

  “Yes, for the most part, yes,” Fred said, speaking more normally now. “She went back to the house in the company of a police officer, who stood watch over her as she went to her bedroom and packed up a few things.”

  “Good,” Randy said. “As soon as the house gets . . . cleared, from the investigation, I mean, Brittany’s welcome to take anything she wants.”

  “Oh,” Fred said, surprised.

  Perhaps Fred had worried that Randy was going to prevent him or Brittany from taking any items of furniture they wanted from the house, but Fred seemed to relax in the face of Randy’s absolute impassivity.

  He has no idea how happy I am to be rid of the girl.

  “She’s got all her personal effects,” Fred said, “but she would like a chance to go back through the house and collect her mother’s things.”

  “She’s welcome to anything she wants,” Randy said, realizing how artificial that sounded.

  “Are you serious about that?” Fred asked, keenly.

  “I mean it, Fred. She can clean the house out of every stick of furniture if she wants.”

  “Hm,” and he could just see the frog-man thinking, and hard. “Well, I may take you up on that offer, as Brittany’s attaching emotional significance to every item in the house.”

  “Yeah, I get it. I mean, Miranda picked out every stick of furniture in the house.”

  “Well, and I’m sure you can understand, and it does include some rather large items, like the dining room table, right down to the lowliest item, even some ceramic dish or other her mother used to use while cooking.”

  The dining table. The ever-loving, mother-fucking dining table, made by artisans in Italy and shipped here at ridiculous expense. Of course, she’d want the fucking table.

  “Fred, as far as I’m concerned, you can haul a moving van right up to the front door and take every stick of furniture from the house.”

  Fred snorted with disbelief.

  “I mean it, Fred. She can take whatever the f—she wants, but I do want to warn you about something. I know the ceramic dish you’re talking about, and she’s welcome to it, but it may have been taken into evidence.”

  Only, why the hell did he say that? He had no idea what the techs had removed; he hadn’t even set foot inside his house, why the hell did he give himself away like that? Oh, he was so stupid. So fucking stupid.

  But if Fred suspected Randy had just given himself away, he betrayed no reaction.

  “Hm,” Fred said. “That’s interesting.”

  “But as far as I’m concerned, once that dish gets released, Brittany may have it.”

  “Okay,” Fred said, and he did sound relieved. “That’s good to know.” Then, in an under voice, he said, “She was worried about that. She’s got a lot on her mind, poor girl, especially considering what her mother did to herself.”

  “I understand,” Randy said. “It’s hard on all of us,” and then added, in case Fred thought he might be uncaring, “but I do know it’s especially hard on Brittany.”

  Fred, at least, appeared to buy the story that Miranda had committed suicide.

  “Brittany’s got all these complicated theories floating around in her head,” Fred said in a low voice, “and she doesn’t remember a lot of her mother’s psychiatric history, because I protected her from a lot of it when we were married, but she’s got this wild idea that her mother was murdered, but I know better. I remember Miranda from before.”

  Randy nodded. “Yes, I know. Her depression . . . was a big issue.”

  “When do you think they’ll be releasing her body for the funeral?” Fred asked suddenly.

  “That I d
on’t know, but I’ll give you the Coroner’s number, and as soon as I know, I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  A moment.

  “She wants that bloody dining table,” Fred said, and laughed softly, “and so, quite frankly, does my wife.”

  “I never cared for it. They’re welcome to it.”

  He wasn’t lying, either. He’d never liked it. Miranda got a wild hair up her butt, talked him into it, the big ugly-assed piece of shit, made of virgin wood from some ancient forest-bullshit-or-something where trolls frolicked in the meadows, if you believed that kind of happy-hairy horseshit, and she’d had it shipped here from fucking Italy. Brittany was welcome to the goddamned table, and once the fucking thing was gone, he could the install the nice, country-style dining room set from Josie’s kitchen into the dining room, and which looked so much better than the Italian crap.

  “That’s fine, then,” Fred said. “I think my wife wants it, too. Dear God, Miranda stood on that table in the moments before she took her own life, and the women in my household want this table?”

  “Women,” Randy said, and chuckled.

  “They make no sense sometimes,” Fred said.

  They laughed together, in the way men commiserate with other men when it comes to the quirks and eccentricities of the women in their lives. On this point, at least, they shared the same sentiment.

  “I’ll stay in touch with you, Fred,” Randy said. “I’ll let you know when they release her body. I’m thinking of using Gallatin Brothers, do you have any problem with that?”

  “Gallatin Brothers?”

  “Yeah, their official name is Gallatin Brothers Funeral Home and Crematorium. It’s a well-respected, well-known funeral home in Shelbyville. It’s the best.”

  “Very well, then, I shall call them, will that be all right?”

  “Of course, go ahead. Tell Brittany she can have as much input into the arrangements, all she wants, okay?”