by Gregg Olsen
I didn't believe him. "You're lying," I said.
"'Fraid not."
"'Fraid so. I didn't touch that note. Are you trying to trick me? God, Martin. I don't know a thing about any of this. Nothing at all."
My accuser's face was frozen. "Your prints came up on Edgar."
Edgar was the nickname of the computer system that had millions upon millions of Americans' prints held within its vast memory bank. The fact that Edgar turned up my prints surprised me for a moment. I had not served in the military, the basis for most of the data. Nor had I worked for the government or in civil service. I never had been arrested for anything, though when I was eleven, my brother and I were questioned for shoplifting a U2 cassette tape at Kmart. We hadn't of course, and the fact that the tape was a U2 release was our saving grace. No true fan would shoplift Bono's stuff.
Then it came to me. I had been printed at my girls' elementary school when I became a volunteer there. It was such a fluke. I was flabbergasted. I was being named in a possible murder indictment because I brought granola bars and helped out in the classroom once a month.
"Marty, I never touched that paper."
My friend looked me in the eye. "Edgar doesn't lie."
"Why would I—just what if—why would I put my name and number in her hand and call the police?"
Raines remained unmoved by my pleas, my desperation. "I thought about that for a long time. Why would Kevin do that? It was a piece that didn't really fit. Not until you added in the other factors, like the poison, for example. And the answer came to me overnight. It woke me up out of a sound sleep. You wanted the press attention of finding the body and playing the hero. With your name in the dead woman's hand, you become part of the story."
My jaw hit the grimy floor.
"You're nuts," I said, finally raising my voice. I could feel my composure slipping away, retreating like small waves on the shore of Puget Sound. "I want to call my wife and lawyer."
"One call's all you get."
"Marty, I've known you for years. You know I didn't do this. You know I couldn't do this."
"I thought I knew you, Kevin," he said, crushing a Styrofoam cup and tossing it over his shoulder to the trash can without hitting the rim. It was a nice shot, but I didn't say so.
"And don't you know, more than anything, I hope I'm wrong," he said.
I didn't even want to look at him then.
"Just take me to the phone," I said.
♦
THE REST OF MY ORDEAL SEEMED as close as I would come to an out-of-body experience. I told Val to sit tight and everything would be fine. She said she'd call my lawyer. My lawyer? I didn't even have one. She was upset, but she reassured me that everything was all right. It was a terrible mistake.
An officer named Mona—"Moan-a-lot," Deputy Davidson had called her, as he bragged about a patrol-car liaison they'd shared—took down some information and rolled my fingers in an ink that I had always assumed was sticky. It was smooth and creamy. Almost like lotion. My fingertips were placed onto a card. Though it hadn't been in the cramped little room at Pierce County, others had been there before me. Erik, Lyle, Scott, Ted, O.J.... all of them and more. All had felt the ink, and the indignity of a hot, rubber-gloved hand as it pressed their fingers onto the little white card. The experience was as far as humanly possible from the fun I'd had pressing my fingers into the Silly Putty-like material Jett had brought over to our house that night. A night that now seemed impossibly distant.
Officer Moan-a-lot gave me a paper towel and a blob of a greasy gray concoction called Goop.
"This'll get that icky ink off your wittle fingers."
I wanted to slap her in her condescending wittle mouth. Her Elmer Fudd impression was over the line. Cutesy-poo was not needed, not appreciated. I felt my face grow hot. And as I rubbed the ink off and rinsed in a home wet bar-sized stainless steel sink, I spoke.
"Deputy Davidson says you're a real screamer."
"Huh?" She looked clueless.
"Screamer," I stupidly repeated.
Recognition hit her hard. She flashed a hateful look. Her eyes were fastened to mine.
I pushed harder. "Does your husband call you Moan-a-lot, too?"
Another hateful look.
"Get on the tape," she said, indicating a pair of gummy pieces of masking tape affixed on a floor so dirty I could not make out what color the linoleum had been.
Two blinding flashes emanating from behind a scuffed camera decorated with a dancing row of Mr. Yuk stickers from the poison control unit down the hall and I was done. God, was I done.
As in finished.
Chapter Twenty-five
Late Friday, August 30
Not really finished, but a little obsessive, that's for sure.I'd left Val with the latest chapter of Love You to Death and even though circumstances had sent the random images of my lackluster life flashing before me like a roller rink strobe light, I wondered what my wife thought about the next chapter left for her to read. I know that's sick. But that's how writers are.
As we're lowered into the grave, we yearn to call out, “What did you really think of the scene on page 88?”
♦
Love You to Death
PART SEVEN
IT HAD BEEN FEWER THAN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS since Janet and Danny had been picked up for questioning in the Cameron shooting. Both were settled behind bars in the impossibly tiny Pierce County Jail. With no separate provisions for female prisoners, a pair of deputies stretched a blue plastic tarp between the two cells that made up the jail. The tarps were a ubiquitous commodity among the folks of Pierce County. Often the water-resistant sheets were used to keep a cord of alder firewood dry, or a leaky shake roof from rotting everything in the attic. The backwoods of the county was dubbed Blue Tarp Country for the proliferation of the plastic coverings found there.
Danny Parker huddled his heavy, hulking frame in the corner furthest away from the love of his life's cell. The blue plastic shield, of course, did not stave off words from Janet.
"Danny, how could you do this to me?" she seethed as she held her face against the cold, black grate of her cell.
She waited, but when there was no response, she called out again. This time her voice was more plaintive than angry.
"Danny, how come?"
"Didn't do nothing," he finally answered.
"Danny, how could you? We're gonna be married. You know that. You know I love you, Sugarbutt."
"Don't know much of anything," he said.
Bitterness rose in Janet's throat. "You stupid son of a bitch! You ruined everything. You didn't stick with what I told you, did you?"
Danny started to cry. It was the blubbering sniveling of a big kid. Fits and starts. His was a herky-jerky cry that reverberated through the jail.
"Grow up," Janet demanded. Her eyes were cold steel buttons.
"I need you to grow up and get us out of this mess. Think of Lindy! Lindy's in trouble. She needs her mama and her new daddy! Buck up, dipshit! Think of Lindy!"
Years after it was all over, Danny Parker searched for the words that would convey how he felt that first day in jail, as a victim of love.
"She kept telling me over and over that if I didn't stick to the story, Lindy would end up as a ward of the state. She could end up with that asshole Paul Kerr. Janet never let up, never stopped," he recalled. "It was 'do this, say that, or else.' I was mixed up. Mixed up more than I ever had been. Never been book-smart, but I know I was in a world of hurt. I was worried about that little girl. She was gonna be my little girl."
-
MARTIN RAINES GUIDED HIS FORD TAURUS up to the little window of a drive-thru espresso stand called Turning Javanese. He ordered a double, tall non-fat latte with one packet of Equal—and a blueberry muffin. He knew that the nonfat milk and fake sugar only offered a slight reprieve from the advancing circumference of his waistline. The muffin was more than a thousand calories. But he didn't care that morning. He was irritable and tired. Only
a jolt of sugar and caffeine could boost his flagging energy level.
He gave a fifty-cent tip to the dog-collared slacker who dispensed the hot drinks and drove toward the hospital.
The nurses at Pac-O had flipped a coin to determine who would watch the patient in Room 113. The combination of medication and the birdshot in his gut had left Deke Cameron with bowels looser than a six-year-old's front teeth. Every fifteen minutes someone had to mop him up. None of the nurses wanted to do it.
"Maybe we can just leave him until the girls from the high school class come tomorrow?" one suggested with false hope.
"You wish," her co-worker replied. She handed over the clean-up gear, which consisted of a stainless steel dish, warm water, and a solution called Orange-Fresh. It was a citrus-scented product that cleansed, disinfected, and left the room smelling of "Citrus Groves in Florida."
No one who used the product ever bought an Orange Crush soda again.
Martin Raines arrived in Deke Cameron's room just as the nurse had cleaned him for the umpteenth time. The room smelled of oranges and feces. Raines could feel his blueberry muffin battling to stay in his stomach. He had been around decomposing bodies that smelled better.
"How you feeling today?" the detective asked.
The smelly, beached whale of a young man managed a fleeting smile.
"Better, I guess. Thanks. At least I'm alive."
"You up to talking?"
"Yeah. I've been laying here thinking about a lot of things... lots I wanna tell you guys. Wanna sit?" Deke indicated a chair next to his bedside.
The blueberry muffin inched upward through the detective's esophagus. He didn't need it to be any closer.
"Nah. Thanks, anyway. I'll stand. Been sitting on my butt all morning."
Deke Cameron understood. "Got a feeling I'll be lying on my ass for quite awhile."
Raines shrugged. "Maybe not. It took a lot of fortitude to drive down that hill after being shot. You might be the kind of guy who gets better fast. It's mental, you know."
Later when Raines recounted what was told to him in that room at Pacific Ocean Medical Center, he would joke that the patient "spilled his guts for a second time."
It started about a year and a half before the shooting....
-
CONNIE CARTER INVITED JANET AND DEKE for Easter dinner. It was the first time she had actually accepted the two of them as a couple. Though he never heard her say it out loud, Deke always felt that Janet's mother had considered him the lesser of the two evils. If it was a choice between her daughter's ex-husband and the mill worker, it seemed that Connie had decided in favor of the mill worker. Only by default. The luck of the draw. Better than nothing.
Connie Carter lived at 394 Seastack Avenue South. It was a forty-year-old, three-bedroom lemon yellow house trimmed in white. Outside of a pair of faded plastic gnomes under a dead rose bush, the landscaping was nothing more than a flat expanse of lawn that irregularly overlapped the edges of the sidewalk. The spring afternoon still held the bite of winter when Janet, Deke and little Lindy arrived.
Connie grabbed the baby the instant they came inside. The smell of booze wafted from her lungs.
"Baby should have a coat on! And shoes! For crying out loud, Janet, what on God's freakin' earth were you thinking?"
Janet made a face at Deke.
"Mama, it was just a five-minute drive! It's not gonna kill her!"
Connie shook her head in contempt. "I've told you fifteen times that a baby needs to be warm."
Janet said nothing more. She had learned long ago never to argue with her mother. It didn't matter that she would be left alone for days at the Seahorse Motor Inn when her mother was out partying. It didn't matter that she had crawled into a Dumpster to get Jett something to eat because the little girl wouldn't stop crying. It didn't matter that she had called more men "daddy" or "uncle" than any child had a right to endure. It didn't matter because Connie Carter had vanquished all of that from her memory. Booze had been an eraser. She could remember what she wanted to and what she chose to remember was a sanitized version of motherhood that held no basis in reality.
Arguing with Connie meant denial and anger. It was Easter. No need for that.
“Does Lindy want her Easter basket? The Easter Bunny hip-hopped to grandma's house early this morning.”
The little girl smiled and giggled, showing off two perfect, tiny white teeth.
Connie went into the back bedroom and retrieved an enormous store-bought basket festooned with curled ribbon and yellow cellophane. Through the plastic, a chocolate bunny could be seen nestled next to a tin beach bucket, a small sand shovel and a plastic sandcastle mold.
Deke Cameron was quiet for most of the meal of rolled and tied turkey roast, a cylinder of jellied cranberry sauce, and mashed potatoes made from the real thing. Janet and Connie took turns holding the baby and lamenting the fact that Paul Kerr's family wouldn't ease up on their claims to Lindy.
“But the Kerrs are the other grandparents,” Deke said between big, mouth-stretching bites.
”They have other grandchildren. They don't need Lindy, too,” Janet said bitterly.
Connie put her fork down and deeply inhaled on her cigarette before extinguishing it in a swirl of potatoes on her plate.
“Does he know what's going on with those people?” Connie asked.
“Not everything,” Janet said.
“Time he did. If he's gonna be Lindy's new daddy, he'd better know in a hurry.”
Connie Carter proceeded to outline a litany of the Kerrs' minor and severe transgressions. They were low class, though they thought they were better than everyone else. Old man Kerr ran a five-and-dime and his missus was the volunteer coordinator at Pac-O.
“Volunteer supervisor! Big fuckin' deal,” Janet chimed. “They gave that to her so she could stay on her fat ass and be happy making six bucks an hour for the rest of her life.”
“You got that right, honey.” Connie twisted off the top of another Bud.
Worst of all, the reason for the Carter women's ire was the family's insistence at keeping tabs on Lindy. As mother and daughter saw it, the Kerrs had tried to hog Lindy. They had wanted her for Easter dinner.
The thought of it made the older woman bristle.
“I told them hell no! The baby is staying with her Nanna and her mommy.”
“Pissed off my ex-mother-in-law real much,” Janet said.
Deke leaned back from the table and loosened his bulldog belt buckle. He saw the anger. He understood it was genuine. Still, he just could not grasp the reason for the hatred; the depth of it puzzled him.
“Well, Lindy's his daughter, too,” Deke said.
Mrs. Carter slammed her fist on the tabletop, jiggling the tube-shaped cranberry sauce nearly out of its dish. She shot a bitter look at Deke. Janet dropped her jaw, as her mother unleashed a verbal assault on her boyfriend.
“Don't you get it?” Connie asked, punctuating each word with a pounding of her fists. “Are you dense? Paul wants to take Lindy from Janet. He wants to take her away from me. His stupid parents want that. They are out to get us and if we don't do something we'll lose Lindy. We'll fuckin' lose her forever!”
“How do you know that?” Deke asked.
“Do I look stupid or are you looking in a mirror? They have said they want custody. Full custody of our beautiful Lindy. But they're not gonna get it. Not at all. She's not safe there! He'll try to sell her for a fishing pole and a sleeping bag!”
“He's scum. Fuckin' scum!” Janet yelled as she held her now-wailing daughter. “Your daddy's fuckin' scum!”
“We've got to find a way to stop him,” Deke finally said.
Connie sucked on a toothpick. “Only one way I know.”
Janet spoke up. “For good, Momma, for good.”
“Yeah. We've got to kill him.”
Deke didn't know what to say.
“Sugarbutt,” Janet said, her tone jarringly sweet after the tirade, “you gotta help us
. You got to.”
“I'm not killing nobody.”
“If he's gone, we can be a family. Get married in Vegas. Have kids of our own.”
Deke blanched at the idea of murder. He wasn't that kind of a guy. He didn't want to get caught and didn't want to go to prison.
“Ain't gonna kill nobody,” he finally said.
Janet got up and put her hands on Deke's shoulders.
“We have to... for Lindy,” she said.
-
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, THE MILL was going full blast when Deke Cameron pulled his buddy Jim Winston aside near the veneer manufacturing platform. The noise was too loud to allow for a private conversation. Deke worried that the machinery would shut down as his secrets were yelled over a nonexistent din. Jim was one of those men on the fringe of the survivalist movement that had brought undue attention on the Northwest. During the day, the compliant forty-year-old fellow wore dungarees and flannel, but at night, he donned army fatigues and an attitude. His hair had receded since he was a junior in high school and for the last few years he had shaved his head, leaving a gleaming pate that shined up on the sides where the leather inside his hard hat rubbed against it. The fingers on his right hand had been sliced off at the first joint during a work accident, making them appear as short as a bunch of Vienna sausages.
Deke leaned over to speak
.
“My fiancé's ex gonna take the baby away from us. We've got to stop him.”
“How can I help?”
“You got to help me get rid of him. Once and for all.”
Jim Winston leaned close enough to kiss.
“What do you mean?” he asked quietly, nearly in whisper.
Deke calmly gave the answer.
“Got to waste him, I guess.”
Inside—that's the term the incarcerated call their digs. Slammer. Big House. Hoosegow. The Pen. I sat in my cell, thankfully alone and therefore without the prospect of being someone's soap-dropped-in-the-shower bitch until I got bailed. The cell had the vibe of a really bad high school detention room. There was no tin cup. No porn splattered with ejaculate from the lonely men spanking away the hours. Not really much of anything. Three cinderblock walls marred with graffiti of varying skill and merit, and an old-school steel-barred gate that ran the length of the cell fronting the corridor to the jail and police offices.