When I got in it I looked in the mirror and saw that she had scratched me pretty good under my cheekbone and had missed my eye by only an inch. I put my hand to my cheek and felt a warm stickiness. Blood was beginning to trickle down my face. I put the jeep in Drive, turned it around, and started back down the dirt path. The headlights momentarily caught Clara and her two accomplices. Clara was sitting with her face in her hands, her thin shoulders convulsing as she sobbed. The two boys were still lying on the ground as if they were dead. Even though they had tried to frame me for rape, and possibly had even planned to beat me to death, I couldn't help feeling sick to my stomach about what happened to all three of them.
I could understand the hatred that must have been burning inside her to push her into such a crazy plan. And it was crazy and juvenile and poorly thought out. I don't know how in the world she thought she was going to explain what her two friends were doing on that dirt road so they could just happen to come across me while I was 'raping' her. But I could understand the hatred that drove her to try framing me. I could imagine her looking at her father's face every day for eight years and hating me just a little bit more each day. I could imagine how her rage must've boiled over when she heard that I was being paroled after only seven years. She probably had convinced herself that she was only correcting a gross miscarriage of justice – that it would be only right for me to end up serving another twenty years, and in a harder place than county jail. I was lucky she hadn't gotten herself a gun and walked into Zeke's and started blasting away. And I wouldn't have blamed her if she had.
I made up my mind then to leave Bradley. I'd only been kidding myself for a long time. There are some crimes that just can't be forgiven.
Chapter 5
I drove to the Bradley police station and told my story to the desk sergeant, Frank Schilling. Frank and I went way back. He was a year older than I was, and as kids we used to play football and baseball together. At one time we used to be friends and we were both ushers at each other's weddings. Now, though, he didn't seem too happy to see me and he sure as hell didn't believe my story.
'I got to tell you, Denton,' he said, 'that doesn't sound like the Clara I know. When she was younger she used to babysit my kids. She's a good kid. I don't believe she'd pull a stunt like that. It sounds like bullshit to me.'
'Frank, I swear, that's what happened.'
He made a face when I called him 'Frank', sort of like he was smelling bad cheese. 'Why don't you call me Sergeant Schilling,' he said.
'You got to be kidding.'
He gave me a cold stare. 'You been drinking tonight, Denton?' he asked after a while.
'I had two beers at Zeke's.'
'I'll send someone over to check that out. You doing any drugs?'
I shook my head. 'I've only been out eight hours now. Where would I have had time to get drugs?'
'You've had plenty of time to get into this ugly mess.'
I started to say something, but forced my mouth shut.
He let out a long, pained sigh before asking if I was willing to submit to a drug test. I told him I had no problem with that.
He looked over his notes. 'And you don't know who those two boys were that you worked over?'
'No, they didn't look familiar. But then again, I've been gone for a while. The jeep I took off them is out front. You could check to see if the registration is in the car.'
'You just beat the hell out of those two boys and left them in the middle of nowhere,' he said with some disgust.
'I told you they were trying to frame me for a rape-'
'Yeah, that's your story,' he said. 'I'm going to sit you in the interrogation room until we sort this out.'
The Bradley police station has a single interrogation room that is almost never used. During my twelve years on the force, I had never used it. The first time I ever sat in that room was the night I was arrested for arson and attempted murder. Frank brought me back there and had me sit and wait. Two hours later the door opened and Phil walked in. His skin had a sickly pallor, making it look as if his face had been dipped in wax.
He sat down across from me and told me to tell him my story.
'Your daughter followed me from my parents' house to Zeke's. She picked me up at the bar, drove me down a dirt path off Cumberland Road in Eastfield, and tried to frame me with a rape charge. She had two friends waiting there, one with a tire iron. Maybe they were planning to beat me to death.'
He sat expressionless for several minutes as he stared at me. As difficult as it was, I stared back. I tried not to look at the road map of scars that had been left on his face. Finally he asked about Clara following me from my parents' house.
'You're an intelligent man, Joe,' he said. 'If you knew my daughter had been stalking you, why would you get in a car with her?'
'It wasn't something I was consciously aware of at the time.' I hesitated. I had just left my parents' house. I was upset. But at some level I remembered her car. It wasn't until it was too late that things clicked.'
'And you didn't recognize my daughter?'
'No. I hadn't seen her for a long time, not since she was a kid. And she was wearing dark granny-style sunglasses to hide her eyes.'
He leaned back in his chair and continued with his staring contest. Neither of us moved, neither of us said a word. After about five minutes of it he broke it off and told me that the two boys were in the hospital.
"The one you punched in the face suffered severe damage to his jaw. He won't be talking for months. You shattered the other boy's arm in three places. The surgeon had to use several rods to reattach the bone. He'll have to undergo intensive rehabilitation and probably will never have full use of his arm again. I know both of them and they're from good families. Are you proud of yourself, Joe?'
'I had no choice. What would you have done?'
'Not what you did, Joe.'
'I did what I had to.' I hesitated before asking him how his daughter was.
His eyes showed some life for the first time. For a moment I thought he was going to take a swing at me. 'She's in shock,' he said softly. 'Her shirt was torn off and she's got a black eye and bruises all over her body. How'd her shirt get torn off?'
'She did that herself,' I said.
'And her bruises? She did that herself?'
'I was trying to get free of her after I realized what was happening. When I saw her friends running to greet me, I tried a little harder. I didn't try to hurt her, though.'
"That was awful thoughtful of you, Joe. Those scratches on your face look more like the defensive wounds a rape victim might cause. Just as my daughter's injuries look consistent with a rape.'
'Phil, you don't want to do this. Not to yourself and not to your daughter.'
'I'm just going by the evidence, Joe.'
'No, you're not. I have no interest in pressing charges against your daughter and her friends. I came here to clear this up and make sure they leave me alone from this point on.'
"That's awful generous of you, Joe.'
'Look,' I said, 'this won't make it past a grand jury. It would only end up embarrassing you and making things difficult for your daughter. How in the world can you explain her two friends being out in the middle of nowhere to conveniently save her?'
'First of all, I am past embarrassment. You made sure of that, Joe. As far as those two boys being out on that dirt path, my guess is it was just a coincidence. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm sure Clara and her friends hang out there occasionally. Those two boys were probably there to drink or hunt.'
'There were no guns or alcohol in their jeep.'
'Maybe they were going to meet friends. They'll tell us when they're able.'
I just started laughing. The whole thing was just too laughable. 'Phil,' I said when I could. 'How are you going to explain her stalking me and picking me up at Zeke's?'
'You don't even remember fully my daughter being outside your parents' house. As you told me, it's only some subconscious impression
of yours. And about Clara picking you up…'
He seemed momentarily lost. He opened and closed his mouth. Then he got up and left the room.
As I sat there I couldn't help feeling anxious. I wasn't worried about having sexual assault and battery charges brought against me. As much as Phil would love to send me to prison, I couldn't see him using a frame. He'd wait until he had a real crime. Besides, this whole thing would collapse on him if he tried bringing charges. I guess what I was anxious about was the level of hostility I was seeing. I had every reason in the world to expect it from Phil and his daughter, but from Frank Schilling and Tony Flauria? And from my own parents? With them it was more passive, but it was there all the same. You have dirty cops who get busted all the time and the world moves on. I wasn't the first and I'm certainly not going to be the last. Hell, Dan Pleasant was dirtier than I ever was and he had more blood on his hands. There've been a few people over the years who've died in his custody. They were lowlifes and nobody ever cared much about it, but in one way or another, I knew their deaths were convenient to Dan. Still, people smile and wave back to him on the street and vote him back into office every election.
It's funny, it wouldn't be this way now if Phil had died that night. The memory of what I did would've faded and the hard feelings would've worn away. The problem is Phil is there to face them every day. Every day they have to be repulsed once again by my crime. Because of me they have to feel awkward and self-conscious around him and try to pretend he's not some sideshow freak. There's just no forgiveness for that.
Phil didn't return to the interrogation room until after two in the morning. He looked more somber as he sat down across from me and could barely meet my eyes.
'Your friend Dan Pleasant was here,' he said. 'He looked over my report and remembered that one of his deputies had been assigned to check your parents' house periodically to make sure there were no problems. No surprise that his deputy claims to have seen Clara's Taurus parked near their house.' He hesitated for a long moment. 'I talked to my daughter also,' he added, 'and she admitted to me what she did. If you want to press charges against her and the two boys you put in the hospital, let me know.'
'I told you before, I have no interest in pressing charges. I just want to be left alone. And I don't blame your daughter.'
He met my eyes then. 'I don't blame her, either,' he said. "The only person I blame for this is you, Joe. Why don't you get out of here.'
I got up and left the room and didn't bother to look back.
Chapter 6
I didn't get to bed until three in the morning and I had a restless night of it. At times my mind would race with images from the past – things that I had thought I had long forgotten; other times I was closer to hallucinations. I wasn't quite awake, but I wasn't quite asleep either.
The stuff that went through my mind – Jesus; they were memories that should have stayed buried. At first it was only small stuff, small crimes, but still they were things I didn't want dredged up.
When my older daughter Melissa was three and a half – only a couple of months after Courtney's first birthday – she had cut herself on a broken glass. It was mostly a superficial cut, I think she needed a few stitches, but there was blood everywhere. Elaine was hysterical, and at the time I was out of my mind on coke and trying to place a bet with my bookie. You see, I had a chance to take Miami plus two and a half over Buffalo in a playoff game. The Dolphins had shut out San Diego the week before and how was I supposed to know Dan Marino would shit the bed and lose that game by nineteen points? So now I'm back there and Melissa's screeching like a banshee and Elaine's hysterical about us needing to drive right away to the emergency room, and I can barely hear my bookie over the phone. Remember, at this point
I'm coked up to the gills. So I unholster my gun and point it at them, telling them to let me make my fucking bet in peace. There wasn't a chance in the world I would have used my gun. I just needed them to shut up so I could make one more loser bet.
Other memories raced through my mind. They were things that I'm pretty sure happened, but I couldn't swear my life on it. I might have been mixing up different events, merging them into a single memory. Or I might've been making it up entirely. All I know is they seemed real.
One night I had broken into a hardware store with Dan and his boys. They had a safe that Dan thought he could break open, but he had trouble with it so we ended up carrying the safe out of the store and loading it on the back of his pickup truck. Now I'm riding with Dan and I guess we didn't secure the safe properly and the damn thing ends up tumbling off the back of the pickup and onto the road. It took five of us to pick it up in the first place, and now it's just Dan and me. He radios his boys who were in on the heist and the two of us are standing in the middle of the road next to the safe waiting for help to arrive. Dan's as calm as can be, making small talk about this and that, and I'm going out of my head with worry. I want us to drive away and leave the safe where it fell, but Dan insists on waiting. His boys show up and help us get it back onto the pickup, but I'm sweating bullets through the whole goddam thing, my heart beating like it's going to bust out of my chest.
And then there was another time a drifter stuck his nose into a liquor store that we were breaking into. Dan and his boys ended up taking the guy into one of their cars. I never found out what happened to that drifter. Dan had made a few jokes about the hole the guy had dug himself into, but that was all I ever heard.
Other memories snaked in and out of my consciousness. I had a doozy of a hallucination right before I woke up. I was back with Clara in her car. I had just knocked her sunglasses off and realized what was up. She was grabbing onto me like before, but I couldn't break free of her. I elbowed her and punched her until her face was a raw mess, but she wouldn't loosen her grip. I had no choice. I grabbed the car key from the ignition and started stabbing her with it. Stabbing her over and over again in the face. I must have stabbed her over thirty times, but she still wouldn't let go. And I noticed a chunk of her nose was missing, and how I could play tic-tac-toe on what was left of her face, and how much she now looked like her father…
I bolted up in bed and realized I was drenched in sweat. My bed sheets were soaked through. It was six thirty in the morning. I felt a dull throbbing around my temples and got up and made my way to the bathroom. I looked like hell; worse than if I was suffering from a bad hangover. My eyes had a hollowed-out look and my skin was sickly pale. The flesh along my cheekbone where I had been scratched had swollen and was looking pretty bad. I took some aspirin and then splashed cold water on my face until I felt better. Then I went back to my room, got dressed, and shuffled towards the kitchen.
My parents were both up. My mom was at the stove making eggs, and my dad was sitting at the kitchen table reading his newspaper and drinking coffee. My mom didn't bother to turn around. She greeted me with an unconvincing 'good morning' as she worked on her scrambled eggs. I could see my dad's eyes grow sick as he noticed the scratches along my cheek.
'You got in late last night,' he said.
'Sorry if I woke you.'
'I heard your car pull in around two thirty.'
'I'm sorry. Something happened last night. I couldn't help it.'
My mom had turned around. Her raisin-like face seemed to shrink as she stared at me.
'I told you not to go into town but you wouldn't listen,' she complained, a shrillness edging into her voice. 'What happened?'
I poured myself some coffee and sat down at the table across from my dad. I'd rather not go into this now,' I said. 'Could I have some breakfast?'
'I'll get you some scrambled eggs. You can make your own toast.'
'Who scratched you?' my dad asked.
He was looking as sick as can be. I sighed and told him it was Clara Coakley.
'Oh, Jesus,' he moaned, and for a moment I thought he was about to start bawling. 'What in the world were you doing with her?'
My mom made a bitter face as if she had somethi
ng to spit out. 'Didn't I tell you not to go into town?' she muttered half under her breath. 'You have to act as if you know it all. Sometimes I know what I'm talking about.'
'Look,' I said. I didn't do a damn thing. That girl came up with some crackpot scheme to either have me thrown in prison for rape or to have me beaten to death. I'm not sure which. Any case, it's over.'
Both my parents looked horrified. My dad, flustered, asked if I had gone to the police. 'Yes, I went to the police.’
‘They believed you?'
'They had to believe me,' I said. 'It's what happened.'
'Did, uh,' my dad hesitated for a moment as he rubbed his jaw, 'did you file charges against Clara?'
I shook my head. They were quiet after that. Nobody said a word as my mother finished with the eggs and then spooned them onto three plates. We ate mostly in silence. I could tell there was something on my mom's mind. She couldn't hold it in any longer and made a remark about my dad mentioning that I had asked about Elaine and my two girls.
'I find it hard to believe that she cut you and Dad off completely from my kids,' I said.
'We can't blame her for that,' she said.
'Don't you want to see your grandchildren?'
'Of course I do,' my mom said. 'But I also want what's best for those girls. Elaine couldn't stay in Bradley after what you did, not with the abuse Melissa and Courtney were taking from the neighborhood kids. I'm sure Elaine has had a difficult time having to move to a new area and start over on her own. And she has had to support herself and those two girls for the last seven years without any help.'
'How do you know she hasn't had any help?'
'You're right, I don't know,' my mom said, her tone somewhat uneasy. 'Maybe she has had help. Maybe she's remarried. And Joey, that's all the more reason to leave her alone.'
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