Thread of Doubt

by Jeff Shelby

  “I'm sorry,” I said. “That sucks.”

  “And then some.”

  “Are the other guys here?” I asked. “Your bandmates?”

  He shook his head. “No. They bailed. Supposed to come back but who knows? Everyone's a little fucked up right now.”

  “Rightly so,” I said, nodding. “How long have you guys been together?” I asked. “The band, I mean.”

  “Almost four years,” Ricky answered. “Ruben and Patrick knew one another, and David and I went to high school together. Patrick was looking to put a band together, I saw the ad.” He shrugged. “We all just clicked.” He glanced at the house. “And, look. I get you're trying to help Patrick's uncle or whatever. But if I don't get this shit out of the house, our landlord is gonna show up and make it worse, you know? Not trying to be rude or anything, but taking shit from that guy is the last thing I need right now.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I get it.” I gestured at the house. “You need an extra hand?”

  Ricky squinted at me. “Why do you wanna help me?”

  I understood his apprehension and I was trying not to get irritated by it. “Look, I get it. Rough night and now you're getting tossed. Patrick's uncle is one of my best friends and he asked me to just find out some things, if there's anything to find out. There's nothing else going on, I promise.” I paused. “I'll help you get your stuff loaded up and I'll buy lunch. Let me ask you about the band and Patrick and that kind of thing and we'll call it even.”

  “I did the whole question and answer thing with the cops last night,” Ricky said, running a hand through his hair.

  “And I promise I won't have nearly as many questions,” I said. “I'm offering an extra set of hands and a free lunch. I'd say that's a good deal, considering the night and morning you've had.”

  Ricky studied me for a moment, probably still trying to decide if I had some ulterior motive. I really didn't. I wasn't thrilled about moving furniture, but I recognized that he was under the gun and I was getting in his way. If I was going to get a clearer picture of Patrick and his life, the least I could do was offer to help one of his friends in exchange for asking questions.

  “Probably take us about an hour,” he finally said. “You have time?”

  “I do.”

  Ricky looked at the house and shook his head. “No idea where the other two are, but I can't wait on them.”

  “All the more reason to let me help.”

  Ricky turned back around to me. “Alright. You help me and we can talk about Patrick.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  “And lunch,” he said.

  “And lunch,” I said.

  TWELVE

  Ricky was right. It took us exactly an hour to empty out the house. I helped him carry out beds and furniture that looked like it would be better suited to being left at the curb. We worked to get it arranged in the back of his truck and then he led me to a taco shop about ten minutes away from the house. We sat outside at a round, stone table with a crooked umbrella in the middle of it. They called our number and he got up to get it, returning with two trays full of tacos and burritos and chips.

  “Hey, uh, thanks,” Ricky said, unwrapping a taco. “For this, and for helping. And I guess I ordered a bunch. Sorry about that.”

  “No apology needed. And you haven't heard my questions yet,” I said, smiling.

  He smiled, too, and bit into the taco.

  “So you answered an ad for the band?” I asked, trying to ease my way into the conversation.

  He finished the first taco and reached for another. “Yeah. Can't even remember where we saw it. Think I saw it on a bulletin board at a club? Not sure. But I told David about it. We went to Helix together and we were in a couple of shitty bands. He and I were kind of serious about it, but couldn't hook up with anyone who was. We were both going to State, but just because we didn't really have anything else to do. Was a way to keep my parents off my back, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  He unwrapped the next taco. “Anyway, I called Patrick and we met him for coffee one day after classes. He was just cool, you know? There was no pretentious bullshit. So many guys who want to form a band are so full of shit and themselves. He wasn't. Pretty confident, but not in a jackass kind of way.”

  “He wasn't a diva,” I said.

  Ricky nodded. “Exactly. But he was maybe the first guy I met who I really thought knew what he was talking about and wasn't just looking to do it as a hobby. He was legit, and that was kind of exciting for me, you know? He wasn't just some dude who messed around with a guitar. He played guitar. He wrote songs. He had ideas. And he didn't want to half-ass it.”

  “Hard to find guys like that,” I said.

  He finished his bite of taco. “Like, impossible. Or it felt like it. I don't know.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “So he said he had a bass guy, which was perfect. I play drums and David can play pretty much any kind of guitar. Think it was the next night we got together?” He smiled, shaking his head, clearly enjoying the memory. “The bass guy was Ruben. We played for like four hours in David's garage. Just ripped through stuff. Like I told you at the house, we just clicked.” He shrugged again. “That was it. We were a band.”

  “What's the name of the band?” I asked, finally reaching for my burrito.

  “Crooked Road,” Ricky said, polishing off another taco. “Was Patrick's idea. He thought it was symbolic. Long journey and all that bullshit. But like I said, he had ideas. None of us had a better idea. And it's a good name. It works. It doesn't feel lame.”

  “Has it been?” I asked, pulling the paper away from the top half of my burrito. “A long journey?”

  He swallowed a mouthful of the third taco and thought for a moment. “Yeah, I guess. I don't know. It never felt much like work, especially at the beginning. It was fun. It was exciting. We were trying different shit. And we didn't suck. There are some bands and you watch them onstage and they suck. I don't even mean that in a critical way. They just aren't very good.” He shook his head. “But we don't suck. And this had everything to do with Patrick. We fed off that. He was sure we were gonna make it big.”

  “You didn't?”

  Ricky made a dubious face and reached for his drink. “Could we make a living? Yeah, I'm pretty sure we could've. But, like, turn into mega-stars? Tour the world and buy yachts?” He shook his head. “I don't know. How do you ever know that stuff? A lot of shit has to happen for that to fall into place, right? You can be good and no one will ever know your name. So it's not just about talent. So it's not like I thought we were gonna be buying islands and Ferraris anytime soon.”

  “But he did? Patrick?”

  He laughed and nodded. “Patrick, man, he just...it was his whole life. He wouldn't even let himself think that we weren't gonna make it.” He laughed again. “Me, I was just happy if we made a couple hundred bucks and they fed us at a gig. That felt like forward progress. So maybe I'm a fraud. Maybe I'm the guy I was complaining about before, who wasn't really serious.”

  “How so?”

  “Because Patrick believed it,” he said. “Like how you know the ocean is there and how I know this is food I can eat. He just knew it was gonna happen. I was just more skeptical. Not that I didn't want it to happen, but I was just...realistic. It's a huge long shot.”

  The breeze ruffled the paper wrappers on the tray. Ricky caught them before they blew away and squeezed them into tiny balls.

  “His mother told me that you guys were doing well,” I said. “That true?”

  He glanced at the lone burrito left on his tray and reached for it. “Yeah,” Ricky said. “We were okay.”

  There wasn't much conviction behind his words, though.

  “Did Patrick live out in that guest house?” I asked, changing direction. “In the garage?”

  He unwrapped the fat tortilla and nodded. “He liked to be alone when he wrote. And he wrote a lot. Like, all the time, man. And he wrote some really good stuff. Not cliched, r
ip-off crap. He knew how to play with words, to build a chorus. I had no idea what I was doing, but he absolutely knew what he was doing.”

  “Any of the other guys write, too?”

  He shrugged. “We chimed in, made changes here and there, but mostly, it was Patrick's stuff. He credited us as a band, but he wrote most of the lyrics and music. His stuff was just better than anything we took a crack at.” He took a bite of the burrito and washed it down with soda. “We'd go a couple days without seeing him when he was in a groove. He'd finally come out, looking like shit, dehydrated and practically starved to death.” He shook his head. “But he'd have good stuff for us.”

  “I get the sense it was his band,” I said.

  He didn't say anything for a couple of minutes, focusing on the burrito.

  “More or less,” Ricky finally said. “Not because he was a dick about it or anything. He was just...kinda the leader. He played guitar, he sang, and he wrote the songs. Default, man. And I think we were all happy to let him take that role. It wasn't something any of us fought for.”

  I nodded and watched the traffic pass by on the street, thinking about what Ricky had just told me about the band. They didn't seem bogged down by some of the dynamics that had ways of tearing bands up. Patrick was their clear leader and they'd been content to follow. The egos had fallen in the right spots.

  Ricky finished the burrito and wadded up the wrapper. “That's why we didn't know...he was out there.” There was an audible swallow. “We left him alone when he went out there to write. We had no clue.”

  I nodded. “Makes sense. But here's a tough question. Was he using again?”

  Ricky’s hand froze on the paper cup filled with soda. “You know about that?”

  “Both his uncle and his mother filled me in,” I said. “I know he had a history.”

  He looked away. I knew he was unsure what to say. I was prying and he still wasn't sure whether to trust me or not. And I assumed he felt like maybe he was revealing a friend's secrets, a friend who could no longer defend himself.

  “I don't really know,” Ricky said. I couldn’t tell if he was being truthful or evasive. “He hid it pretty well.”

  “Any of you guys use?” I asked.

  He pushed the tray away, keeping his eyes off me.

  “I don't care for any other reason than I'm just trying to get a picture of what was going on in his life,” I said. “That's it.”

  Ricky sighed. “Weed,” he finally said. “We all smoked a little. But nothing else. We weren't into that stuff. That was all Patrick.” He frowned. “I think he had a Cobain thing going, man. I think sometimes he thought it was part of his job to have an addiction. It made him more rockstar-like. Like how I was saying he had it all figured out? I think sometimes he thought he had to create part of the image.”

  I thought about this. Patrick’s mother had offered a different take, that her son had come to heroin via prescription painkillers. Considering she probably knew his history better than his band, there was probably more truth to her version, but I didn’t discount the idea that Patrick might have embraced heroin for other reasons.

  “So you think he was using again?” I asked.

  “No clue,” Ricky said. “He really did hide it. Only when it got super bad and he bottomed out did we find out.”

  “Was he depressed?” I asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “If we weren't getting gigs or he was having trouble with a song, yeah. He could get down.” He paused, trying to remember something, his face scrunched together. “Was maybe a year ago? He couldn’t figure out the chorus on this one song. We all thought it was fine, but he just wouldn't let it go. And, like, every day, he got angrier and angrier and would not chill on it. He finally got it right, but it took him maybe two weeks to snap out of the funk.” He smiled. “And it was better. It really was better after that.”

  He was smiling a lot and laughing, and seemed pretty coherent.

  It bothered me.

  “I don't want this to sound rude,” I said. “But I found the lead singer of your band dead last night. Someone who sounds like was a friend. And you don't seem too busted up over it, or shocked, really. You seemed more worried about getting out of the house.”

  Ricky leaned forward, those thick shoulders leading the way. “Hey. Fuck you, alright?” His eyes blazed. “Patrick could be a serious pain in the ass, but he was my friend, and you don't know shit about that. And I don't need you to tell me I'm not upset. We got fucking grilled all night by the cops and our asshole landlord told us to get the fuck out.” He paused and seemed ready to fight. “I've had about five years of shit thrown at us in 24 hours so excuse me if I'm in a little bit of shock right now. But it fucking sucks that Patrick is dead and I cried for a couple of hours while you were home sleeping last night.”

  I watched the cars drive by for a few minutes.

  “Okay, I'm sorry,” I finally said. “I was out of line.”

  “Yeah,” Ricky muttered. “You were.”

  “Back to the band,” I said. “I asked if you guys were doing okay and I got a weird vibe. What was going on?”

  “We were fine,” Ricky said, staring down at the rest of his food.

  “Really?” I asked. “Because I'm not getting that sense.”

  He coughed and reached for his soda. He took a long drink and then set it down. He grabbed a napkin and wiped his mouth. “Yeah. We were fine.”

  I'd clearly hit a roadblock with Ricky. I didn't believe him, but I didn't think I was going to get any further with him, either.

  “Can you give me contact info for David and Ruben?” I asked.

  “That wasn't part of our deal,” he said.

  “Neither was you ordering so much food.”

  He smirked, then shrugged. “Sure.”

  He pulled out his phone, recited their numbers, and I entered them into mine.

  “Do me a favor?” I asked.

  “Haven't I already?”

  “Sure. But let them know I'm gonna be calling,” I said. “Encourage them to talk to me.”

  He didn't say anything.

  “Come on,” I said. “I'm not writing a book here. And I don't know what your feelings are about his mom, but she's pretty shaken up, as you'd imagine. If nothing else, we're just trying to provide a little clarity for her.”

  He made a face and stood up. He started to say something, then stopped himself. I waited, but all he did was pick up his tray, step over the bench, and deposit the trash in the bin. He laid the tray on top of the can and then pulled his keys from his pocket.

  “Thanks for the help and for lunch,” Ricky said. “I'll tell them you'll be calling.”

  THIRTEEN

  I waited twenty minutes before I called Ruben Stafford. True to his word, though, Ricky had given him a heads up and Ruben knew who I was. He agreed to meet me at a coffee shop ten minutes from the taco shop.

  I found him stretched out in a chair by the door, a tall cardboard tumbler already on the table in front of him. He had dark, wavy hair that hung nearly to his shoulders and a beard that was maybe three days old. He was in jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt and flip-flops. His chin was tucked to his chest and his hands were shoved inside the front pocket of his sweatshirt.

  He looked up when I approached the table. “Are you...sorry, I don't remember your name.”

  “Joe Tyler,” I said, offering my hand. “And you're Ruben, I take it?”

  He shook my hand. “Yeah. How'd you know?”

  I looked around the empty shop, save for the employees. “Lucky guess.”

  He looked around, then nodded sheepishly. “Yeah. Duh.”

  “Okay if I sit?”

  He nodded.

  I sat down across from him. “Ricky tell you what I'm doing?”

  He reached for the coffee and pushed the hair out of his face with the other. “Yeah, think so. You found Patrick?”

  I told him that I had and ran through the same stuff I'd gone over with Ricky. I aske
d him some of the basics about the band and they lined up with what Ricky told me. Patrick was the leader. They were all cool with that. Music was everything to Patrick.

  Ruben leaned forward on his elbows. “I can't believe he's dead. It's just so...I don't know.”

  “I'm sorry,” I said.

  “Me, too,” he said, staring at his coffee.

  “Was he having trouble? In any way? Anything that was off with him that you saw?” I asked. Maybe he would be more forthcoming than Ricky.

  He reached for the coffee and took off the lid. “I honestly hadn't seen him that much lately. He was writing like crazy.”

  “So he was out in the garage studio?”

  He nodded and blew across the top of the coffee. “Yeah. We left him alone out there. He'd come in sometimes to ask us about a line or maybe grab some food or something. But other than that, he was out there working. We hadn't even rehearsed in forever.”

  “Was that normal? For him to just disappear like that?”

  He sipped at the coffee. “Yeah. It wasn't normal for us not to rehearse, though. We liked to play for a bunch of reasons. So even when he was working on new stuff, we'd still play.” He paused. “But we hadn't played in a couple of weeks and that was weird.”

  “Did you guys talk to him about that?”

  He shook his head. “No. Patrick was a pretty chill guy most of the time, but when he was in one of his writing grooves, we left him alone. We didn't try to talk to him or do anything that might interrupt whatever he was working on.”

  That wasn't by any means abnormal. There were plenty of artists who needed uninterrupted time to work on their projects. The fact that Patrick was like that spoke to his dedication, I thought.

  “When was the last time you spoke to him?” I asked.

  Ruben thought for a moment. “Maybe three days ago? Can't remember exactly. Did Ricky tell you about our landlord?”