A Welcome Murder

by Robin Yocum

  I did. I got on my knees in front of the chair and took him in my mouth. It was the most repugnant act of my life. Given that, I will say that never in my life had I seen another man who was half as big as Rayce Daubner. When he came, he held my hair and forced me to swallow his load. It made me want to kill him even more.

  I met him at his house twice more. “No more meeting here,” I said as I stood and walked to the door. “It’s too risky. I can’t afford to have my car seen outside your place.”

  “You want me to come to your place?” he asked. “Do you think the sheriff would like to watch his wife suck my dick?”

  “I’ll call you once I have a better idea. How many more times, Rayce?”

  He hitched up his pants and worked his belt through the clasp. “You’re not even close, darlin’.”

  I called him the next week. “Meet me at Jefferson Lake State Park,” I said.

  “It’s a big place.”

  “There are some walking trails on the other side of the lake. There’s a path that goes up to the caves.”

  “Christ Almighty. That’s a fuckin’ hike.”

  “I’ll make sure it’s worth your effort.”

  The remote section of the park was called “the caves,” which were the old entrances to deep-shaft mines that had been sealed up except for the first ten or fifteen feet. For years, high school kids had used the caves for partying and romance on Friday nights after the football games. I was going to use them to kill Rayce Daubner.

  He met me on the path, and I said, “There’s a real private place up here. I already checked it out.” He followed me along a narrow path through a thicket of wild blackberries that led back toward the walking paths. When he crested the ravine, I turned and held the gun on him with both hands.

  Incredibly, he just smiled. “What’s this all about, sweet lips?” he asked.

  I had seen enough movies to know that I should have just shot him, but I felt compelled to answer. “You’re scum, Rayce. You’d never give up that tape no matter how many hours I spend on my knees, so I’m going to kill you. Someone might find the tape, but hopefully it’ll be my husband when he searches your house for clues about the identity of your killer.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me. You want the tape? I’ll give it to you. Follow me back to my house and I’ll—”

  Boom.

  I can’t explain why the first shot hit him in the knee. Nerves and inexperience, I guess. The blast echoed throughout the park. He was just getting off the ground when the second shot grazed his shoulder. After that it was impossible for me to miss.

  Toots knows that I’m the killer. Just before Daubner’s body was transported to the coroner’s office, Toots made one last sweep of the area. It was then that he found the antique blue-and-white enameled compact mirror that Fran bought me for Valentine’s Day the first year we were married.

  I realized it was missing the day after I killed Daubner. I tried to convince myself that I’d simply misplaced it, but I knew what had happened. It had rolled into the high grass when I tumbled down the ravine, and I hadn’t seen it when I was gathering my stuff back into my purse.

  The day that Fran was in his office, talking on the phone to Marshall Hood of the Intelligencer, all upset because the press had found out that he had questioned Johnny and Smoochie, but unaware that I was the one who had called them, Toots walked calmly up to my desk and asked, “Lose something?” He was holding the compact in his thick right hand, waving it back and forth. I lurched at it, and he pulled it back. “We need to talk, Allison.” He placed the compact on my desk, and I snatched it just as Fran walked out of his office, angry and screaming about getting the call from the reporter.

  “I just got off the phone with Marshall Hood at the Intelligencer,” he yelled. “He knows we questioned Johnny and Smoochie; he knew Daubner had kicked the shit out of Smoochie; he even knew Johnny gave me a headbutt to the nose. How in the hell did he find out?” Then he looked me square in the eyes and said, “You’re looking awful damn guilty about something.”

  I was looking guilty, but it had nothing to do with calling the reporter. It was because I had just been busted for the murder of Rayce Daubner. I could feel the red splotches that I get when I’m nervous creeping up around my neck. I went on the offensive and said, “Excuse me? You have the nerve to say that I look guilty?” I said it in reference to his fling with Dena Marie. I knew that would get him off my back. “You are treading on such thin ice it’s unbelievable.”

  Fran and Toots met for a while to discuss the likely suspects of the press leak. By the time they had finished, I had cleaned off my desk and was ready to go home. Fortunately, Fran had to run to an emergency Jefferson County commissioners meeting, and it gave me a few minutes alone with Toots.

  “I didn’t think you had it in you, princess,” he said. I didn’t speak; I was fighting back tears. “You can relax,” he assured me. “I’m not going to say anything about it. He deserved it.”

  “Did anyone else see the compact?” I asked.

  “What compact?” Toots said.

  I smiled while tears started down my cheeks.

  “Listen,” he said, “I don’t think anyone’s going to get too upset if the murder of Rayce Daubner goes unsolved. But if the sheriff’s wife gets arrested for the murder, it’s going to severely damage his chances of ever becoming president of the United States.”

  “He was going to turn that tape over to the FBI and take Fran down,” I said. “Fran’s a good man. I couldn’t just sit back and let that happen.”

  Toots nodded. “Did you steal Fran’s service revolver, too?”

  I nodded. “I figured if Daubner was killed with a gun he was suspected of stealing, then it might throw off the detectives. I was going to leave the gun there so you could find it, but I fell down the hill after I shot him, and I panicked. There wasn’t any time to wipe the prints off the gun. I just wanted to get out of there.”

  “Understandable. What did you do with it?”

  “It’s at the house—in the basement.”

  Toots’s eyes widened. “You have the gun used to kill Rayce Daubner in your house? Jesus Christ, Allison, what were you thinking?”

  “Apparently I wasn’t. I didn’t know killing someone was going to be so unnerving.”

  “Go get it. Now. Do it while Fran is in the commissioners meeting. I’ll wait here.”

  There was virtually no chance that anyone would have found the pistol. I had hidden it in the basement in some soft dirt behind a loose stone in the corner of the foundation. But I did as Toots ordered and had the pistol back in his office inside of thirty minutes. He immediately put it in a manila envelope, slid it into a desk file drawer, and locked it up.

  “What are you going to do with it?” I asked.

  “Wipe it clean of your prints, for starters. Beyond that, I haven’t decided. Allison, I cannot understate the importance of never, ever saying another word about this to anyone. Not Fran. Not me. Don’t even mention it in your prayers.”

  “Trust me. I’ll never utter a word. Toots, thank you so much for . . .”

  He held up both hands and said, “Forget it. Get out of here. Go get dinner started.” I nodded and headed for the door. “One more question.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you burn down his house so that you could destroy the tape?”

  “No, I just killed him. I just lucked out when the house burned down.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  JOHNNY EARL

  At a few minutes before eleven the morning after Deputy Majowski slipped me the keys to room 7 at the Valley View Motel, I was driving out of Steubenville. The canopy of oak and maple foliage shaded the asphalt, and sunlight flickered through, dancing across my hood as I passed. In my rearview mirror, I could see the stacks of the steel mills and the homes that dotted the hillside. Beyond the tunnel of trees, the road dipped and turned to the right, beginning the long descent down Stony Hollow Boulevard to the flo
odplains of the Ohio River Valley. Behind me, Steubenville disappeared from my rearview mirror, and from my past.

  I crossed over the West Virginia panhandle and into Pennsylvania. Just outside of Pittsburgh, I turned off Route 22 and drove to Raccoon Creek State Park. I walked down to the lake, unsnapped the typewriter case, and filled it with stones. I grabbed the handle with both hands, spun like a hammer thrower, and heaved it into the lake. It splashed, bobbed once, twice, and disappeared, sending ripples across the water.

  The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is on Merrimac Street in the Mount Washington section of Pittsburgh, about a mile from where I had lived during my days as a drug dealer and apprentice mason. I rented a room at the Hilton near the Golden Triangle and rode the incline to Mount Washington later that same afternoon. The backpack I had slung over my shoulder contained a manila envelope of clippings and mementos, a pair of rubber gloves, a small crowbar, and a claw hammer, both of which were wrapped in hotel bath towels to keep them from clanging in the bag. I arrived at the church at five forty in the afternoon. I sat in a pew at the back, admiring the towering masonry that I’d had a minor role in constructing, as well as the brick vault in the corner that I had built and sealed. Inside the vault was a time capsule. Two women were praying silently at the front of the church. I sat with my head bowed until they left.

  When they were gone, I walked to the back of the sanctuary and slipped inside a broom closet. Closing the door gently, I sat in the corner behind a vacuum cleaner, the backpack on my chest between my crossed arms. I dozed, listened to the organ and the Mass, and patiently waited for the evening service to end. Long after the Mass had ended, I could hear footfalls within the sanctuary. By eleven o’clock, it had been several hours since I heard the sounds of another human being. I slipped on the rubber gloves and pushed the door open, slowly, to find the sanctuary dark except for a dull light shining from behind the crucifix at the front of the sanctuary. I whispered, “Old man, I’m going to ask forgiveness in advance here.”

  I have never been a particularly religious man, but I’ll be the first to admit that I was still uncomfortable with what I was about to do. I quickly took the small crowbar and placed the flattened edge in the mortar below the first row of bricks. Behind the mortar, I knew, was the steel plate that supported the top of the time-capsule vault. With two taps of the hammer, the mortar crumbled, revealing the edge of the steel plate. Two more whacks with the hammer drove the crowbar beneath the steel. I worked the bar up and down several times until the mortar broke away and the steel plate and brick cap broke loose. I slid the crowbar off the base of the vault, and it fell to the carpeted floor with a thud that echoed in the sanctuary.

  I pulled the steel canister from the vault and twisted off the cap, revealing four hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars neatly wrapped in paper bands. I covered the steel canister with the backpack and turned it upside down, emptying it in a single motion. The overstuffed envelope in my backpack carried the documents the church had given to me eight years earlier to place in the capsule. On it I had printed a simple message: Sorry for the damage. I placed five thousand dollars and the envelope back in the canister and dropped it into the vault.

  I left through a back door and walked to the incline. Early the next morning, I left Pittsburgh with all my earthly possessions and four hundred and sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash in the trunk of my rusting Camaro.

  EPILOGUE

  JOHNNY EARL

  I was asked to join the local Rotary Club. Isn’t that a kick? Once I started my own business and became a successful member of the community, the Rotarians thought I would be a nice addition to their club. A few years ago, I had the skinhead tattoos removed from my biceps with a laser, so there were no outward signs of my previous rank of colonel in the New Order of the Third Reich. I even joined the country club, and last year I placed third in the club golf tournament. I’m not as good a golfer as I was a baseball player, but I’m pretty damn good.

  For obvious reasons, I don’t talk much about my past. The men at the country club love talking about their past athletic exploits, but I don’t say much, as I’m sure it would eventually lead to questions about the time between the end of my baseball career and the starting of my own construction business.

  After leaving Pittsburgh with my stash of cash, I drove west, finally settling down outside of Fort Worth. I love Texas and am grateful to have had an opportunity to start over. I put my ill-gotten money in a safe-deposit box, minus enough cash to get an apartment and buy a backhoe, trailer, and dump truck, and began Big Red Excavation.

  The business has grown to seven full-time employees, a host of subcontractors, and so much equipment that I’m having trouble keeping track of my inventory. I still have well over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars of my drug money in a safe in the basement of my new house. I’m not sure how to spend it or introduce it to my investment account without attracting the attention of the Internal Revenue Service. My business has been so successful that I really don’t need it right now, which is a good problem to have.

  I haven’t been back to Steubenville. There’s no reason to go back. Once Mom and Dad saw that I was a legitimate businessman and was unlikely to go back to prison, they moved near me in Fort Worth. Dad helps me out with the business a few hours a week. It gives him something to do, and Mom is happy to get him out of the house.

  Francis Roberson was recently reelected to Congress. He caused a big fuss back home when in the middle of his last term he switched parties and became a Republican. I saw him on one of those Sunday-morning television shows after he switched, and you would have thought he was a homosexual coming out of the closet. He said he had been living a lie and wasn’t true to himself, blah, blah, blah. He’s starting to sound more like every other politician out there. He won the last election by the narrowest margin so far, but his stature in the legislature seems to be growing. He’s been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate and is reportedly considering a run for governor.

  He was in Dallas last year for a fundraiser for a Texas congressman. They’re big on law and order down here, and Fran is still a big draw when he tells the story of foiling a plot to assassinate the president. The fundraiser was five hundred dollars a plate, and I went just for kicks. After the dinner, while Fran was shaking hands and yammering on about how much he loved Texas, I went over and sat down at a table where his chief of staff, a slimmed-down and dapper-looking Toots Majowski, was talking with a few of the locals. Majowski nodded at me and said , without conviction, “How ya doing?”

  “Good,” I said.

  He continued to talk to the other men at the table for another minute until the light clicked on. He stopped talking in mid-sentence, looked back at me, and said, “Well, I’ll be goddamned. Look what the armadillos dragged in.”

  Fran had no such recognition problems. He walked over to the table and said, “Jesus H. Christ, if it isn’t the great Johnny Earl.” He gave me a hug and said to a few of the Texans nearby, “Did you know this guy was probably the greatest athlete to ever come out of Steubenville, Ohio?”

  I said, “Easy with that athlete stuff, Congressman. Down here they just know me as Johnny the backhoe guy.” Everyone chuckled. When their attention turned away, I slapped Fran in the chest and asked, “What the hell do you mean, ‘probably the greatest’?”

  Fran and I talk on the phone about twice a year. When we talk, he generally gives me an update on the old gang, including Vincent and Dena Marie Xenakis. They moved from Steubenville to a little farm near Lake Austin after Vincent was promoted to chief operating officer of Ohio Valley Hospital. Over time, he gave up the black suits and toothpicks and slicked-back hair, but rumors still circulated that he had been the triggerman in the murder of Rayce Daubner and that he had set up the preacher and general to take the fall. These rumors were circulated, in part, by Dena Marie, who was still in love with the idea that Vincent murdered Rayce. Of course, he did nothing to dispe
l these rumors, and whenever Fran saw Vincent and Dena Marie in public, the former sheriff would flash him an ugly glare. Fran said Vincent appreciated this, as it helped keep Dena Marie in line.

  I don’t know who killed Rayce Daubner. Maybe Fran, maybe Fran’s dad, maybe Toots, maybe Smoochie. I don’t know who torched his house or what they were trying to cover up. None of that matters to me in the least. I’m just amazed that things worked out. Had I stayed in Steubenville, I would have forever been the guy who blew his chance at a pro baseball career, and I would have forever been reminded of my failures. Here, nobody knows that I was a high school legend, and nobody cares.

  And, for the first time in my life, I’m okay with that.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Whenever I sit down to write acknowledgments for a book, I always recall the many times when I was struggling alone, writing manuscripts and sending them off to the black hole that is the slush pile at the publishing houses, a place where unsolicited manuscripts go to die.

  These days, I have an incredible support team behind me, and I am very appreciative of their efforts. At the top of this list is my agent, Colleen Mohyde. In spite of the fact that she represents other authors—a habit I have continually asked her to break in order to focus solely on my needs—she does a tremendous job on my behalf. She is equal parts life coach, editor, and agent. She does all the heavy lifting and math that I don’t want to be bothered with. I would give you her contact information, but she already has enough authors, so please don’t bother her.

  This is my second book under the guidance of my editor, Dan Mayer. I very much appreciate the support, his easy touch, and the confidence he has shown in my writing.

  The duo who publicize my books are Cheryl Quimba and her supervisor, Jill Maxick, Seventh Street’s vice president of marketing and director of publicity. They are a pair of five-star performers. I appreciate their hard work and the fact that they silently tolerate all of my suggestions of how they should be doing their jobs.