Ebon Moon

  “Megan’s still asleep, but please come in.”

  “You look better this morning.” Nelda placed the box on the dining room table.

  Jessica knew she referred to the black eye. “It’s a wonder what a little makeup can do.”

  Nelda nodded. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Not exactly. It’s a little too quiet out in the country. I’m used to the sounds of the big city at night. You know, sirens, loud cars, and the occasional drive-by shooting.”

  “You’ll be sleeping like a baby in no time, I’m sure of it.” Nelda removed two cups and a pot of hot coffee from the box. “I perked you some fresh this morning.” She next lifted out a black iron frying griddle. “You pour the coffee and I’ll get the pancakes started.”

  Nelda placed the griddle on the stove and turned on the gas. “Damn!” she exclaimed.

  “What’s wrong?” Jessica looked up from pouring the coffee.

  “Sam hasn’t filled the propane yet. We’ve got no gas to cook with.” She slid the griddle off the cold burner. “I told him to fill it first thing this morning.”

  “I heard him out plowing the field,” Jessica said. “Can’t we just ask him to do it now?”

  “That’s the problem. Once he gets on his tractor it’s like pulling teeth to get him off to do anything else.”

  “I see.”

  Nelda lifted a cup and smiled. “Though, a couple of pretty women bringing a hot cup of coffee would cause any man to climb down off his tractor.”

  * * * *

  Jessica followed Nelda out of the trailer and into the sunlight. The morning coolness combined with her wet hair from the recent shower created a chilly embrace sweeping away the last cobwebs of sleep. She took a deep breath of fresh country air as Nelda led the way across the dewy grass of the lawn. Together they stopped at the edge of the plowed field. Fifty yards away, Sam crouched in front of the tractor, studying something in the harrowed earth.

  “Brought you a cup of coffee, big man,” Nelda called out.

  Sam looked up startled.

  “What’s the matter, hon? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “It’s nothing.” He stood and brushed dirt from his jeans. Crossing the field, he took a steaming cup from Nelda. “Now tell me what I did to earn two beautiful women bringing me coffee.

  “It’s not what you did, but what you didn’t do. I don’t have any propane to cook breakfast with,” Nelda replied.

  “I knew it was something like that.” He smiled and sipped his coffee. “I’ll get to it right away.”

  Sam walked over to a large propane tank mounted behind the barn. Jessica and Nelda followed and watched while he grabbed a canister and connected it to a hose from the tank. Turning a valve, a hissing noise followed, and Jessica smelled the odor of natural gas.

  “Did you sleep well, Jess?” Sam asked while the canister filled.

  “I tossed and turned. I guess I’m not used to the quiet of the country.”

  “You didn’t see or hear anything last night?”

  “No, why do you ask?”

  “Well, it looks like a big dog paid the farm a visit during the night. There are tracks all over my field.”

  “A big dog?” Nelda asked, surprised.

  “Either that or a couple of coyotes.” Sam shut off the valve. “It’s hard to tell. The tracks are all messed up.”

  “Maybe Rocky came back?” Nelda asked.

  “No.” Sam looked over his shoulder at the line of trees on the other side of the field. “I didn’t want to tell you this, dear, but I found Rocky yesterday morning. It looked like he got torn apart. It could be the same animal responsible.”

  “Dear God,” Nelda gasped.

  “I buried him out in the trees.”

  “Poor Rocky.” Tears formed in the corner of Nelda’s eyes. “He was a good old hound dog.”

  “I’m going to keep my rifle close in case it returns. I don’t want anything spooking the horses or cattle. My new foal is jumpy enough.”

  Nelda nodded. “You do what you have to, dear.”

  Sam carried the filled canister, placed it in a compartment on the back of the trailer, and hooked it up. Turning on the valve, he said, “All right, girls, you can cook now.”

  “Thanks, hon. I love you.” Nelda gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “Love you, too. I better get back to work.”

  * * * *

  The smell of fresh cooked bacon and pancakes filled the trailer. Jessica sat back in her chair and sipped hot coffee while watching Nelda cook breakfast like a pro.

  “How do you like it here so far, Jess?” Nelda asked, dropping more bacon to sizzle in the frying pan.

  “I love it. Life here is so very different from the hell I left.”

  “Listen, girl.” Nelda placed a plate of eggs, pancakes, and bacon on the table. “I don’t want to get into your business, but if you need to talk, I’m here to listen. Sometimes just talking to someone can help you overcome the bad things in your life.”

  Jessica poured syrup over the pancakes and looked up at Nelda. “You don’t want to hear the abuse I’ve gone through in my marriage, Nelda. Believe me.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell me, Jess, why didn’t you call the cops and report the bastard?”

  “I couldn’t.” Jessica looked down at her plate of food. “Blake is a cop.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Undercover Narcotics Officer Blake Lobato stared down at the aluminum baseball bat resting across his thighs and imagined swinging it full force into his wife’s face. He pictured the club flattening Jessica’s nose in a bloody splat and shattering her front teeth. She would then fall to the ground while he kept hitting her. With each new swing more bones shattered until he pulverized her into a bloody misshapen pulp. Next came his favorite part of the fantasy.

  He would turn the bat on little Megan.

  Blake was sick in the head and knew it. He didn’t care about women. To him they were just pieces of meat for screwing or knocking around when they did you wrong. He learned that from his drunken old man. Sometimes Dad would just knock the shit out of his mom for no reason. He still remembered when he was just a child crying next to his mother sprawled out across the kitchen floor like a KO’d boxer.

  The bastard had been a cop, too. When his old man was really angry, he forced his mother to play the Russian roulette game with his service revolver. One night his mom turned the gun on dear old Dad. Boom! Game over. At eleven, he witnessed the killing while sitting terrified on the couch. Dad lay on the living room carpet with his brains leaking out of the hole in the side of his head. That was when they lived in Detroit, where he spent his childhood. After he moved to Chicago and applied for the police academy, he left that charming family story out of his application.

  Sitting in the recliner in the living room of their Chicago home, he replayed Jess’s payback scene, over and over, in his mind. The long night passed with anger brewing inside, like a cold storm. Jessica was to blame for his failed life. Now he hated her more than anything he had ever known. Everything was her fault.

  The bitch took his backup pistol. She stole his car and the last of the money. He didn’t care that she took his daughter. She could have the whiney brat, but she should have never taken his coke money. He had snorted his last line and was coming down from the high. He needed more but had no way to buy any. His old man had been right when he told him women were nothing but backstabbing whores.

  Blake’s head throbbed where Jessica had hit him three days before. Putting aside the bat, he made his way through the house to the bathroom mirror. Since his hair started receding a few years before, he shaved his head every day. Leaning into his reflection, he examined the swelling on the right side of his bald head. A dozen butterfly bandages held his scalp together where the aluminum bat had left its mark. It was a miracle she didn’t kill him in the attack. He wouldn’t make the same mistake when he foun
d her. The bitch would pay for hurting him.

  He studied himself in the mirror. Strong features with dark, expressive eyes and a constant five o’clock shadow made it easy to find women. The problem was they were all the same—traitorous whores just like Jessica. He still couldn’t believe she grew a set of balls and ran out on him.

  His cell phone suddenly rang, and he snatched it out of the belt holster.

  “Blake,” he said to the person on the other line.

  “The rat squad’s coming for your ass.” It was his old partner, Detective Mark Rudman, the closest thing he had to anything resembling a friend in the department. “They are bringing you in for questioning this morning.”

  “Why? What more do those assholes want? I’m already under suspension from the force. They got my badge and gun.”

  “Ortiz ratted you out about murdering a dealer in cold blood a couple of years ago. He said you lifted all the money and coke.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You’re going down, buddy. I can’t help you anymore. Ortiz cut a deal, and the assistant DA is convening a grand jury. Internal Affairs is going through your case logs with a fine-tooth comb. You’re up to your neck in shit. You were a good cop when we were partners before you went to narcotics. That’s the only reason I’m sticking my neck out for you now.”

  “Okay.”

  “One more thing?”

  “Yes?”

  “You told me to let you know if I had any information about Jess’s location.”

  Blake froze. “You got something?”

  “Since you reported your Camaro stolen, I flagged it to see if it came up on any BOLO check. It seems some small-town sheriff ran the plates on your car.”

  “Where?”

  “Hope Springs, Oklahoma.”

  “Oklahoma?” Blake swallowed hard. “What the hell?”

  “Just thought you’d like to know.”

  The line went dead.

  Blake put his cell on the bathroom sink and returned to gazing at his cold eyes in the mirror. He wanted to start a new life in the Windy City; to prove he could be a good cop and forget about his old man. Instead, he discovered cocaine on the streets, lots of it. Dealers out of Columbia moved it through the street gangs of Chicago. He and his partner, Robert Ortiz, began taking down scum and confiscating their drugs and cash. All of the drugs didn’t end up in the evidence room, however. Most of it went up their noses. Stolen drug money purchased more. His life had become one of good cop, bad cop. During the day he was a respected undercover officer who had commendations for drug arrests. At night, he patrolled the back alleys of Chicago’s South Side with his partner, skimming blow from dealers and getting high.

  Then the bastards in Internal Affairs had gotten wind of the scam. Someone gave them an anonymous tip. He suspected it was Jessica who had turned him in. They took his badge and suspended him from the force. His regular channels for scoring coke had dried up. No one wanted to deal to a dirty cop on suspension.

  Now Ortiz is spilling his guts to the rat squad. The little fuckhead was telling them everything about the night they popped a seventeen-year-old punk in an alley. Rudman was right. He was going down and looking at serious prison time. He knew what they did to dirty cops in prison. He wasn’t going to go out like that.

  His life had turned to shit, and it was all Jessica’s fault.

  White-hot anger pounded at his temples, and he punched the mirror with his right hand. Glass shattered sending splinters cascading to the sink and floor. He looked down. His hand bled from several shards of glass embedded in his flesh, but he didn’t feel any pain. Not anymore.

  Returning to the living room, he picked up the bat leaning against the recliner. Morning’s arrival lit the curtains in a dingy glow, and he looked about the room in the growing light. Various photographs from his fucked-up marriage lined the banister and walls, each one so lovingly hung by his wife—family portraits of the three of them smiling at the camera.

  “Bitch!” he screamed to the empty room. “You’re dead!”

  Swinging the bat, he shattered the glass in the frame of their wedding photo. Another full swing and he hit a home run, clearing the banister of family pictures and knickknacks in a shower of glass and broken ceramics. He continued through the house smashing every vestige of his fucked marriage: Megan’s toys, Jessica’s family heirlooms, pictures in frames, etc. Everything lay shattered and broken by his brutal swings. He stopped when his arms got too tired.

  He needed to get out of the house, leave before the officers showed up to take him in for questioning. His boots crunched across the debris littering the floor as he went to the garage. Grabbing up a container of gasoline, he returned to the living room and splashed the pungent liquid across the walls and furniture. He continued throughout the house until the can was empty. Before leaving, he put on his favorite jacket, a black floor-length leather duster that buttoned in the front. He tore a hole in the inner lining and slid the baseball bat inside. The jacket hid the bat beautifully.

  Standing in the open back door, he paused. The house he had shared with Jessica and Megan represented the last remnant of normality he had in his world. Once he torched it there would be no turning back. They would add arson to his list of felonies. He didn’t care. His only purpose now was to find Jess and make her pay for what she had done to him.

  “I’m coming for you, bitch,” Blake said to the quiet house.

  From the kitchen table, he grabbed a newspaper and rolled it tight. He lit the end with his Bic lighter and tossed the makeshift torch on the kitchen floor soaked in gasoline. Flames made a whooshing noise, rushing along the liquid to engulf the rest of the home. Blake shut the door and crossed the backyard in the early morning light. His next course of action would be to get out of Chicago before the police arrested him. He didn’t have any money or a vehicle, but he knew where he was going.

  Hope Springs, Oklahoma.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Jessica parallel parked the Camaro behind the sheriff’s car in front of Dottie’s Café. The diner was a small whitewashed building like something out of a photograph from the fifties. Words painted across the front picture window announced breakfast and lunch specials in a yellow text.

  “Are we here, Mommy?” Megan looked up from coloring a new picture of Jesus.

  “It looks like this is the place.” Jessica checked her look in the rearview mirror. The makeup covered the black eye to the point one had to look hard to see the bruise. She quickly applied some lip liner. God, look at me, she thought to herself as she finished. I’m fixing myself up like a virgin on a first date. Get ahold of yourself, girl. This is just lunch.

  “I’m hungry, Mommy.”

  “I know, baby. We’re getting something to eat here. We’re meeting the sheriff. You remember him, don’t you?”

  Megan nodded and returned to her picture.

  “He invited us to have lunch with him, so I want you to be good.” Satisfied with her look, Jessica grabbed her purse.

  “Is he going to be my new daddy?” Megan asked innocently while coloring Christ’s robe with a white crayon.

  Jessica stopped and turned toward her daughter. “No, he’s not. Why would you ask such a thing?”

  “Because he’s nice.”

  “He invited us to lunch. I said yes, so that’s why we’re here. Now come on, we’re late.”

  “Can I bring my coloring book?”

  “Okay.”

  Jessica exited the Camaro and helped Megan get out on her side. She bent down to look into her daughter’s face. “Now you got to promise Mommy not to say anything about the sheriff being your new daddy. Do you hear me, baby? You promise?”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  “Good, let’s go in.”

  Taking Megan by the hand, she opened the diner’s front door. The interior design, consisting of a lunch counter and line of booths running along one wall, reaffirmed her initial impression that the establishment was a throwback from the 1950s. Black-a
nd-white photographs showing faded pictures of old softball teams, cars, and homecoming queens from years past covered every available space on the walls. With lunch well in progress, the air smelled of cooked food and hummed with the clatter of plates and people talking.

  Sheriff Sutton, dressed in his khaki uniform, stood up by the back booth. He smiled and motioned for them to join him. Jessica’s heart jumped. Though she couldn’t put her finger on the reason, she hadn’t felt such attraction for a man since meeting Blake seven years ago. The sheriff was handsome but definitely not her type. She had always been attracted to the urban bad boys that she grew up with in Chicago. This small-town hick sheriff was definitely different. What was it that drew her to him? The only thing she could think of was his scent when he was close.

  I’m here because of the way a man smells?

  Aware that everyone was watching her, she continued to the booth with Megan in tow.

  “Sorry we’re late,” she said breathless while helping Megan into the seat.

  “No problem.” He smiled. “I’m just glad you showed. I was beginning to think I got stood up.”

  “We spent all morning searching for a cat named Tig. He turned up missing last night, and Megan just wouldn’t give up looking for him.” She settled into the booth. “That’s the reason we’re running late.”

  “Did you find the cat?” Sheriff Sutton sat in the booth across from her.

  “No.” Jessica shook her head. “It seems pets have a way of disappearing on the Olson farm.”

  “I see.” He turned his attention to her daughter. “Hi, Megan.”

  “Hi.” Megan did a little wave. “Mommy doesn’t want me to talk about you being my new daddy.”

  “Megan!” Jessica jumped and turned toward her daughter. “I told you not to say anything like that. It’s so rude. We don’t even know Sheriff Sutton.”

  “Sorry, Mommy.”

  Jessica faced the sheriff with her cheeks burning from embarrassment. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry. I apologize.”