The Friday Edition (A Samantha Church Mystery)

by Ferrendelli, Betta

  “It means there’s a shitload of the drug to go around with tentacles that don’t seem to stop. The drugs that come here end up going all over God’s creation.”

  He paused. “The interstates and small airports aren’t the only way drugs are smuggled. There’s the bus terminal and DIA. Did you know that DIA, according to our latest stats, is one of the top ten busiest airports in the country?”

  “No, I didn’t,” she responded.

  She watched as Jonathan rose from his chair and walked to a filing cabinet. He continued to speak as he walked.

  “Here’s an example. About four, maybe five years ago we stopped having to drive to hell and back to find meth. It’s here in our backyards.”

  “What makes it so popular?”

  Jonathan had reached the filing cabinet and thought before he answered her.

  “For one thing users like it because, like crack and cocaine, it gives them a lift.”

  “I read somewhere that meth gives users more ‘bang for the buck.’”

  Jonathan chuckled and said, “You’re right. Used to be that meth users mostly shot the stuff into a vein. It’s a lot different today. The new breed prefers to smoke or snort it. Doing a line of coke or a rock of crack you get a high that lasts maybe thirty minutes. With meth, the high goes on for hours. Plus it’s relatively cheap.”

  “Some bang,” she said rolling her eyes.

  Jonathan nodded. His thoughts were occupied by his search in the file cabinet. They were silent as he looked for a document.

  “Here it is,” he said and pulled a file from the drawer and returned to his chair.

  She watched as he opened the manila folder and spread the contents on the desk. He unfolded a chart.

  “Look here,” he said looking from the chart to Sam. “Here’s why Denver is such a boom for drug dealers and a real shitty problem for those who use it.”

  She leaned forward in her chair and rested her elbows on the table to examine the chart. Numbers across the top covered a six-year timeline. At the left, under the word, “Substance,” a vertical column listed various drugs of choice. Heroin. Other opiates. Methamphetamine. Cocaine. Marijuana. Barbiturates. Sedatives. Tranquilizers. Hallucinogens. PCP.

  “Interesting,” she said, still scanning the chart in black and white and shades of gray.

  After further examination, she saw that heroin, cocaine and marijuana garnered the highest percentage of drug use. Each never fluctuated more than two or three percentage points in a given year. And though methamphetamine didn’t have nearly the same percentage of users as heroin and cocaine, its numbers had increased steadily over the six-year period.

  “You can see here,” Jonathan said pointing to the heroin and cocaine categories, “that heroin use remains strong and cocaine continues to be a major drug problem in the state more than a decade after crack first appeared. Cocaine use has declined slightly over the past six years, but crack still remains the dominant drug in Denver.”

  “What’s this report based on?” she asked.

  “A number of things,” he said. “Hospital emergency room cases, admission to drug rehab programs, interviews with drug users and drug arrests.”

  Jonathan stopped to study the chart with Sam. “You can see here that although heroin has actually declined in use from the past six years, it’s still a major concern for us.”

  “Why?” Sam asked.

  Jonathan leaned back in his chair, folded his hands and rested them on top of his head.

  “We’re seeing a lot more black-tar type heroin these days smuggled from Mexico. It’s much more powerful than the heroin that was popular in 1960s.”

  “Are you seeing more overdoses?” she asked.

  He nodded. “The Mexican stuff is more pure than Colombia’s.”

  He gave her more time to study the chart, then took it and began to refold it.

  “Anything else you’d like to know?” he asked returning the chart to the manila folder.

  “Nothing, I guess,” she said and rested against her chair and sighed heavily. “Thanks for the info.” Sam had no intention of bringing up the article she had found in Robin’s desk drawer regarding the money trail. That question would come with time.

  He smiled slightly, and returned the folder to the filing cabinet. He turned to face her.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To work.”

  “There’s something I want to show you before you leave,” Jonathan said.

  Sam noticed that his voice changed pitch. She was surprised he touched her shoulder when he passed her on the way to his desk.

  “Actually you beat me to the punch,” he said.

  She looked at him, her brow furrowed.

  “I was coming to see you this afternoon.”

  “Me? How come?”

  “I have something I want to show you. It’s important for you to see this. Maybe you’ll realize something, accept it and then start to get on with your life.”

  “Realize what?” she asked.

  Her eyes widened and she felt her heart pick up pace. Sam watched as Jonathan returned to his desk and removed a single 8-x-12 sheet of white paper from a center desk drawer.

  “It’s addressed to you,” he said.

  Sam knew what it was.

  “Judie said you would show it to me. It’s not something I’m really ready to read yet, Jonathan.”

  He slid the paper across the desk in her direction.

  “You’ll have to at some point,” he said.

  She picked up the paper slowly, reading as she brought it closer to her.

  Dear Sammie,

  I never wanted to become a burden. Since you're reading this now, a burden is exactly what I've become. I am sorry.

  Please don't be too angry with me for having done this, for I feel this is as far in life as I have the strength to go. I so wish I could explain to you what it is I've been going through, but I can't seem to find the words to put on paper. I am no longer thinking clearly enough to explain how I feel.

  You're a writer and I know you probably can't understand what that means, but what was it Thoreau said?

  "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

  What else do I know but that I am there among them.

  It is all I know. Forgive me for leaving you in such a cruel, selfish way. It is so heartless for someone who has always, always been there for me.

  That was it.

  There was no signature – none of the usual and familiar ‘Ciao, Sis’ at the bottom. Sam read the note several times before Jonathan spoke.

  “You heard about the autopsy?”

  “From Judie. Last night,” Sam said, not bothering to keep the irritation from her voice. “She’s on vacation, but she made a point to call me.”

  Jonathan knew the source of her anger.

  “Sorry, Sam, I should’ve called. Robin died because of the fall,” he said slowly. “But it was inconclusive if she had jumped or was pushed.”

  Sam nodded mutely. For her it was conclusive. Robin had been pushed.

  “Now maybe you’ll believe me and stop your foolish thinking that someone killed her,” he said.

  “That’s bullshit. This note is, too,” Sam said and before she could stop herself, she wadded the piece of paper into a tiny ball and threw it at Jonathan. The paper sailed easily over his shoulder, hit the blinds and fell to the floor.

  “How do you know she wrote it?” Sam asked.

  He tried to stifle a small laugh. “Sam, you sound so foolish.”

  She ignored him. “You didn’t say how you found the note.”

  “I didn’t find it,” he returned. “The detectives who searched her place found it. The laptop shut itself off, but when they turned it back on, the note was there on the screen. They printed a copy off her printer.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came. She looked vaguely from the letter to him. Suddenly she felt as weary as if her head weighed a thousand pounds.
Her vision seemed cloudy and it was hard to focus. She rested her forehead in her palms.

  “Will you accept it now? Please,” Jonathan said and his voice had yielded to a lower, softer pitch. “Robin killed herself. For whatever reason, she decided she couldn’t go on. She was tired of life. There wasn’t anyone else in her place when she went out on the balcony, Sam. And there wasn’t anyone else there when she wrote the note. She was alone when she died.”

  Sam didn’t move, she didn’t respond.

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah,” she said and looked up quickly.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said but knew she wasn’t.

  “You’re right,” Sam said as she got up to leave. “I wanted to believe Robin had been murdered. But I was wrong. Maybe she was as fed up with life as I am.”

  Sam walked to the door.

  “Sam, wait.”

  She turned to look at him. He was looking at her. Robin’s suicide note still lay crumpled on the floor beside him. She was sorry she had thrown it and didn’t think to keep it.

  “You said Robin would never take her life on Christmas. Why haven’t you ever told me that?”

  She quietly weighed his question.

  “The bathroom door was unlocked when I tried the handle,” Sam started by saying.

  “The bathroom door?” Jonathan asked, confused. It took him a moment to realize what she was saying. Then his face went smooth in recognition.

  “Robin had been waiting outside the bathroom door because mom was taking a bath. I walked by several times before I finally asked Robin what she was doing just standing there. She said she was waiting to open Christmas presents.”

  Sam felt her emotions from that fateful day shift into neutral.

  “I called to mother twice outside the bathroom door,” Sam went on. “But she didn’t answer. I knew Robin had been standing there for a long time, but she didn’t. What does a five-year-old know about the concept of time? What did she know about hours, minutes and seconds and what it meant to put it all together?”

  Their mother had said she would be in the bathroom “a while.” Robin and Samantha knew when their mother said “a while,” it meant she did not want to be disturbed.

  “I was happy to oblige. The less I had to talk to her, the better,” Sam said to Jonathan.

  Robin, however, wanted things to be different, at least on that day. It was, after all, Christmas. Robin wanted to open presents when her mother finished in the bathroom. She never liked dolls much. But there had been one in particular she often saw on television this holiday season. It had caught her attention immediately. Each time she saw the commercial, she wanted the doll more. The one and only time Robin sat on Santa’s lap, she had asked for that doll.

  Robin was excited for Christmas to come because Santa Claus had promised her that she would get her doll. This was also the first Christmas the sisters had put up a real Christmas tree. Robin remembered her mother saying at other times that there wasn’t much money. But this year, much to Robin’s delight, things were different. There were presents beneath a tree.

  “Robin had waited at the bathroom door long enough, but I didn’t want her to get in trouble for disturbing mom,” Sam said to Jonathan. “So I put my hand on the knob and turned it. The door popped open.”

  First Robin, then Sam called to their mother. No answer.

  The sisters hesitated before stepping into the bathroom. They knew their mother’s temper and didn’t want to make her angry, at least not on Christmas morning. All Robin could think about was the package with her name on it, waiting under the tree. It was big and pretty, with a large white bow centered neatly on bright red paper.

  They stayed at the door, thinking her mother had not heard them. Sam called again. They waited, but heard nothing. Robin poked her head inside the bathroom, her blue eyes darting from side to side, surveying the small room. It did not seem hot and steamy the way it always did when mommy took a shower. Sam looked in over her shoulder.

  From their angle at the door they saw their mother’s foot, dangling slightly over the edge of the bathtub. It was one of those old fashioned bathtubs that stood so high off the floor that little Robin couldn’t see all her mother’s body. Except her foot.

  “Mommy?” Robin called. Her eyes were riveted on her mother’s foot, which hung as still as a mannequin. Robin started to enter the bathroom, but Sam stopped her.

  “You wait here,” Sam said and she mustered the courage to walk into the bathroom.

  Robin ignored her sister’s command and followed her. They hedged toward the tub. The stocking feet of Robin’s black and white polka-dot pajamas felt sticky. She lifted her right foot from the floor and saw that the sole had turned a different color.

  Robin had seen that color only once before. She had cut her finger badly on the rim of a coffee can that summer. She remembered watching as the blood oozed from her middle finger and dripped on her shorts. There was a lot of blood. She cried and screamed when her parents took her to the emergency room, and even more when the man at the hospital put stitches in her hand.

  Their mother had scolded Robin for bleeding on the carpet. Then she scolded Sam for not watching her sister. Robin had been grateful her mother hadn’t slapped her. She didn’t want a beating to go along with the terror of cutting her finger.

  But summer was all gone now. Robin tugged on her sister’s nightshirt.

  “Look,” she said to Sam, pointing to her stocking foot. Sam’s attention dropped to the bathroom floor and followed the trail of blood with her eyes until it came to a stop at the bathtub. Robin saw it too.

  Their mother’s left hand dangled over the rim, dripping blood – as red as Sam remembered it the day Robin cut her finger. Drip. Drip. Drip. Slowly, steadily, one drop after another formed at the tip of her mother’s finger and fell to the floor.

  Robin stood in the middle of the bathroom floor behind her sister. The sisters tried to measure what they were seeing. But it was too much for such young, fresh minds to see, much less to comprehend.

  “Stay here,” Sam said to Robin in a firm voice that she knew to obey.

  Sam placed her hands on the bathtub rim. It was cold to the touch and the stark feel of it made her shiver. Her mother’s body was nude. There was as much blood in the tub as on the floor. Sam looked at her mother. She had a funny fixed stare on her face, but wasn’t looking at anything in particular. Her mouth was relaxed and open, as were her eyes. Sam thought it was strange that her mother would sleep with her eyes open. Then it came to her. Quickly she pulled Robin from the bathroom.

  The sisters didn’t remember much about the rest of that Christmas Day, only that a lot of men and women, some in police uniforms, others in dark suits and ties, stayed in their mother’s bathroom a long time. They would both remember one sentence.

  “The mother bled out in the tub.”

  But they would never know who said those words, only that it belonged to one of the men in the dark suits, with faces they couldn’t see. They stood over the girls like redwoods. Sam would remember the feel of her sister’s hand in hers. They stood at the top of the stairs and watched as the men took their mother’s body out of the bathroom and away, covered in a dark bag.

  Sam looked at Jonathan.

  “Robin had one last memory from that Christmas Day,” she told him. “The present. The doll she wanted. It remained beneath the Christmas tree, unopened.”

  There was a long silence between them.

  “Now you know,” Sam said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She ignored his comment. “Thanks for the info on the drugs. It helped.”

  “What about the article?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said with a reply that was distant and empty of conviction.

  She opened the door and left the office.

  Outside the police station, a raw, stiff wind greeted her, cold enough to make her shiver.
The near-gale force pushed her back against the building. On the way toward her car, she thought of the information she found searching Robin’s office.

  As Sam drove from the Grandview Police Station, she could see the digital number in Robin’s pager in her mind’s eye. She was angry with herself for being too scared and too nervous last night to dial the number.

  What was the matter with me?

  Sam visualized the pager still clipped to the waistband of her sweatpants, which she took off the moment she had arrived home. She pictured it lying in a heap of clothing on the floor in front of her bedroom dresser.

  She drove past her office and headed for the apartment. She would not let her fear consume her any longer. She would do nothing until she called that number.

  But the pager wasn’t the only thing on her mind. She couldn’t help thinking of Robin’s suicide note.

  Something about it just didn’t make sense.

  Henry David Thoreau for one thing. Robin wouldn’t quote Thoreau. Shakespeare maybe. She liked him, especially his sonnets. But nothing Thoreau had written impressed her. And the writing wasn’t Robin’s style.

  Maybe she was forced to write the note.

  Maybe someone held a gun to her head and made her write the note.

  The thoughts pounded against her head like a sledgehammer.

  She drove on, trying to concentrate on the road. But she couldn’t keep from thinking of the lines in Robin’s note that stood out from all the rest ...

  “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What else do I know but that I am there among them.”

  Twelve

  Sam went to her bedroom and sifted through the pile of clothing that lay in front of the dresser. Her sweats weren’t there. She frowned as she sifted through another pile of clothes in front of her bed, shaking her head in disgust at the way she kept house.

  She found the pager and was oddly happy as if she had reached into the darkness and pulled out a treasure.

  Sam found her cordless phone stuffed between two pillows on the couch. She felt nervous as she forced herself to dial the number. Calling from her home phone didn’t present the best option. The weight in the center of her chest making it hard to breathe told her what she was doing could be dangerous, but she dialed anyway. It wasn’t as if she had a wealth of options from which to chose. She tried to swallow the lump that had formed in her throat as the phone rang once, then twice before connecting.