City Problems

by Steve Goble

  Shelly took a deep breath. “And then?”

  “Josh whacked her.”

  “He whacked her?” I said it between clenched teeth, and wished they were clenched on Jeff’s throat.

  The boy nodded. “Grabbed a wrench and whacked her. Jesus! He didn’t mean to kill her, you know? He was just pissed! It was an accident!”

  “A wrench?” Shelly remained Buddha calm.

  “Yeah. A monkey wrench.”

  “Where did he get a monkey wrench?” Shelly’s professionalism astounded me. I wanted to choke Jeff and track down his goddamned buddies so I could choke them, too.

  “It was a truck, right?” Jeff spoke through tears. “Tools laying around. He got pissed, he found a wrench, I think he just wanted to scare her, you know? He held it up, stared at her, said ‘shut up bitch’ … and …”

  “And what?”

  “And she said ‘fuck you asshole’. That set him off.”

  “And then?”

  “And he whacked her. Hard. I did not think he would. I didn’t! But she was just in his face, right? Triggered little snowflake bitch! And she pissed him off and he was drunk and … and …”

  “Where did he strike her?” We already knew the girl had been hit in the head multiple times, of course, but Shelly’s question was aimed at tying everything together, and determining Jeff’s veracity. She was great, professional, thorough.

  I was not. I was glaring at the little fucker, hoping he would lunge, or spit, or do anything provocative. In my mind, my fist had already broken his teeth, reached down his throat, grabbed a handful of lung, pulled it back out, twisted it. I regretted not killing him when I had the chance.

  The boy, sobbing, touched the back of his own head. “Here. He hit her here. She saw it coming, tried to duck. Got hit in the back of the head.”

  I stood. Shelly stared at me. “I need coffee,” I said.

  I left the hospital room, walked down the hall, found a vending alcove, and punched a big-ass dent into a candy bar machine. I could hear Linda in my head, and my therapist, too, telling me to calm down, regain control, behave rationally. I could also hear myself telling them to go fuck themselves, that nothing mattered, that teenagers killing each other over the equivalent of a goddamned Facebook argument was proof that there was no God, no sense, no point. Fuck no, Nancy, I do not want to go to church.

  I kept seeing that moment, the precise point in time when Jeff Cotton turned toward me with a gun that could instantly fire dozens of high-powered bullets that could smash my organs, shower the woods with my blood, cut me in half. The moment when I could have killed him, could have erased him from the universe without any questions.

  I had wanted to. According to the rules, I could have.

  But I didn’t.

  Jesus. I shook my head. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

  “Hey, Ed, you OK?”

  It was the reporter, Farkas.

  “Good God, man,” I said. “Can’t you wait for my report? How did you even find me?”

  “I followed you from the S.O. to the hospital,” he said. “It wasn’t that hard. I already have a story online, by the way, about the arrest and the search on Breakneck Hill and all that. Damn, what a thing. The arrest was a big loud thing, Ed, not really a state secret. Readers have questions, and it is my job to try and answer them. But first, are you OK? Is the officer from Columbus OK?”

  “Yeah, we’re both OK. She got grazed in the leg. I didn’t get hit at all.” I slid a couple of quarters into the coffee machine. “And I know you have a job to do.”

  “Is this all connected to the body found in Black Powder Creek? No one so far will confirm that.”

  I thought about saying no comment. I don’t really like being quoted in the paper. But I pictured Jenna at the market in Jodyville, and my landlords in their farmhouse, and I tried to imagine how scared shitless they and everyone else around there must be. I am sure they heard the gunfire in town and saw the chopper and all the cop vehicles.

  “Well,” I said. “It is potentially related to the body discovered in Black Powder Creek. Potentially. You can print this, too. The incident is over, and there is no reason for the public to be alarmed.”

  “No other suspects at this time?”

  I thought about that for a moment. “We do not anticipate any other dangerous activities.”

  “OK, great.” Farkas tapped furiously at his phone. “OK, news is tweeted. Can you tell me—”

  “No,” I said. “Further details will not be released until we have finished talking to witnesses, blah blah blah.”

  “C’mon, Ed.”

  “Sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Any idea when you will have a report?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “A lot of balls in the air here, you know?”

  “Yeah. Just … look.” He peered at me, eyebrows up, in an imploring manner. “Radio Joe is still chasing this. I have already beaten the competition, thanks to you just now, in connecting some dots, and I want to keep beating the competition. I also want to let a lot of worried people know whether they need to be worried or scared. So, any chance you can let me know about your report before you send it to all media?”

  He was grinning like an idiot, and I could not recollect owing him a goddamned thing. But I disliked Radio Joe Wills more than I disliked Farkas, because Radio Joe had misquoted me way more times than Farkas had.

  “OK,” I said. “I will give you a ten-minute heads-up before I send the press release, but I have to send it to all at once. I have to be fair.”

  “I understand that, but if I know when it is coming, I can be ready to pounce.”

  “OK.”

  Farkas smiled. “Thanks, Ed. I owe you a beer.”

  “Two beers.”

  “Deal.”

  Farkas left, tapping on his phone.

  I thought about walking back into the interrogation and choking Jeff Cotton. It would be a public service. To hell with courts. But Linda stayed in my head, reminded me to breathe, guided me through the quick meditation. Just breathe. Just breathe. Just breathe.

  I picked up my coffee from the machine. I took a sip. I closed my eyes, did the slow breath thing again.

  Moments later, I walked back into the hospital room. I just sat down and tried to pretend I was a normal person.

  “For the record, Detective Runyon has rejoined the session,” Shelly said. “OK, so you realized the blow from Josh did not kill her.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What then?”

  Jeff was talking very softly now, in a monotone. “She screamed a lot, fought us, kicked us. I tried to calm everything down, you know. Josh wanted to kill her. Said we had to, said she’d talk to cops and we’d all be done. No more football, no playing in the Shoe, no shot at the NFL.”

  Shelly drew a deep breath and closed her eyes a moment. I think she might have shaken her head a little, but the motion was almost undetectable. When the eyes opened again, she was all business. “What then?”

  “Josh grabbed her phone. Said fuck they can track this shit, and he threw it out the back of the truck.”

  “Where was this?”

  “I have no goddamned idea.”

  “In Columbus?”

  “Somewhere north of Columbus, on the way back home.”

  That fit with where the mower had found it.

  Shelly continued. “What then?”

  “We went to my dad’s barn.”

  “The one on Breakneck Hill.”

  “Yeah, trying to decide what to do. We dragged her in there. And she is yelling at us. I’m like, look, calm down, it was an accident, OK! He just got mad; he didn’t want to kill you. It was the booze, you know? No need to … no need to … ruin everything.”

  “And then?”

  “She spat at me. And I am like, we have dreams, you know? Football. Ohio State, they came to see me play. Me! And I told her, you have dreams, too, right? She had said some shit about law school—she wanted to be a lawyer so she could
defend gay people or some such rainbow shit. She would not back down. She was not willing to listen to reason at all.”

  My fist hit the wall, without any conscious guidance from me. It left a hole.

  I turned away so I wouldn’t have to see this degenerate asshole anymore. Shelly glared at me, but said nothing.

  “Let’s all calm down,” Jeff said. “That’s what I told her, told the guys. Let’s think this through. Don’t fuck up the future.”

  He paused. He was breathing hard, like he’d just run wind sprints.

  I gazed at the ceiling, counted to ten in my mind, then turned back toward him. I could feel Shelly’s eyes on me. I leaned toward Jeff, keeping my hands back, fighting the impulse to claw his throat. “What happened next, Jeff ?”

  “Josh laughed.”

  “He laughed.”

  “Yeah. And he threw her down, started ripping her clothes off, said we should burn that shit. Evidence, he said. And she kicked.”

  “She what?”

  “She kicked Josh, in the mouth. Hard. Really hard.”

  I remembered the quarterback’s busted lip at practice. He hadn’t earned that on the field.

  Jeff continued. “He smacked her again, in the face. She said ‘fuck you, I am not keeping quiet, goddamn you fucking sons of bitches you are going to jail.’”

  He was almost inaudible now.

  Shelly whispered. “And then?”

  “So Lee gagged her.”

  “How did he gag her?”

  “One of my dad’s rags. Barn is like a workshop, tools and oil and rags and shit.”

  “What kind of rag?”

  “Um, old.” Jeff looked confused. “From one on my dad’s old flags, I think. What difference does it make?”

  It made a lot of difference. His dad’s flags matched the fibers in Megan’s mouth.

  “What next?”

  “She’s fighting and shit, and I’m trying to calm shit down, but she’s fighting, and Josh is yelling she’s gonna get us in prison and shit, so we tied her up. Lots of rope and cords in there. But she’s fighting the whole time, and I am like no, let’s just tie her up, guys, and quit fighting and all calm down, we can talk this out, it wasn’t supposed to be like all this.” He was crying hard now.

  “What next?”

  “We took her to the tunnels.”

  Shelly’s eyebrows raised. “The what?”

  “The tunnels. Dad and his friends, they are ready for anything. There’s tunnels under the barn, run all the way to the creek south and Dry Run to the north.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  “Fortified good, bunkers, food, all kinds of shit. When the libtards start the war, Dad is ready.”

  “Jesus,” I said, glad we had not stormed the place.

  “So we took her down there, left her tied up, but we fed her and gave her water. We took care of her, really. And tried to make her see reason.”

  “Reason?” Shelly was close to losing her cool, but somehow didn’t.

  “Yeah. Reason. Like, no reason to ruin our careers over a party that got a little out of hand, right?”

  Shelly sighed. “Did she get away at some point? Break free?” Shelly was thinking of Ally Phelps.

  “No. No way.”

  “How long was she your captive?”

  “A few days.”

  “When did you kill her?” I think I hit him with spittle when I growled that.

  “I didn’t. Josh did.”

  Shelly leaned toward him. “When did he kill her?”

  “Wednesday night,” Jeff said. “We were feeding her. Talking to her. She got a hand free and slapped Josh.”

  “And?”

  “And he said damn it, and he grabbed a lawn mower blade off a bench.”

  “A lawn mower blade?”

  “Yeah,” Jeff said. “It was dull. Dad was gonna grind it, put an edge on it, turn it into a weapon. Tunnels are full of shit like that, weapons, food, water, medicine.”

  I could see it all in my head. “What did Josh do with the lawn mower blade?”

  “He clubbed her.”

  “He killed her.” That was Shelly, calm and professional.

  “Yeah. That time, no doubt. We thought he killed her before, but … that time, yeah. He killed her.”

  Sob.

  “He killed her.”

  Sob.

  “He killed her.”

  “He murdered her, while she was partially bound.” I have no idea how Shelly maintained that Zen-like calm. I had no idea why I wasn’t strangling this puke.

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “And then?”

  “And we burned her clothes, and we took off the ropes and gag and we drove her over to the creek.”

  She showed him another photo, of the spot where we’d found the body. “Here, Black Powder Creek.”

  He shook his head. “Not there, up by the bridge. We drove her to the bridge.”

  Shelly showed him another photo. “This bridge?”

  “Yes.”

  “For the record, the subject has identified a bridge just upstream from where the body of Megan Beemer was found.”

  Jeff Cotton was staring at the wall, seeing a future that really did not include him doing much of anything but staring at walls. I did not feel one goddamned bit sorry for him.

  “I would like more time with my client,” Pearson said, very quietly.

  “Of course,” Shelly said. She rattled off the end-of-interview mantra, then shut off the recorder.

  Outside, I stared at Shelly. “This might be the most goddamned senseless crime I have ever worked on. How the hell could you be so calm and steady in there? Jesus.”

  “You should give it a try,” she said pointedly. “Do you think you overplayed the good cop, bad cop thing just a little too goddamned much? The way you glared at him, I thought you were going to choke him to death.”

  I stared at her. “Sorry. He’s a puke.”

  “I know he’s a puke,” she said. “But you have to maintain, right? Be a pro. It helps me put the bad guys away, Ed. I will drink, a lot, later, and I will feel all the anger, later. I advise you to do the same. Shove the anger aside. Feel it later. For now, do the work. Do the job. Calm down. Do you really want this guy to walk because we fucked up?”

  I pointed to her wounded leg.

  “That thing really OK?”

  “Yes. Paramedics did fine. It is really just a scratch. Hurts when I move, and I kinda loved those jeans, you know? But I am OK. Really. Don’t change the subject. You need to calm down.”

  We stared at each other a while. Every cop knows bullets happen. No cop likes to think of it, and no cop knows how he or she will react until that day comes.

  “OK, good,” I said.

  “You alright, Ed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s get back to the S.O.,” she said. “I’m going to get some warrants and calmly round up the rest of these bastards. You go listen to whatsizname, Kristofferson. The poet.”

  Back at the sheriff’s office, we parted ways. She went to put together arrest teams with the sheriff. I waved down Irwin Trumpower in the parking lot. “My truck is impounded as evidence,” I told him. “Can you give me a lift?”

  “Sure, I am finally going off duty. Home or Tuck’s?”

  “Neither. Take me to Josh Webb’s place, out past Hollis High.”

  “What for?”

  “I have to go on leave, because of the shooting. So I figure I’ll stop by and catch up on the football. Big Green won. Josh had a hell of a game, I hear.”

  “Defense is fucked without Jeff.”

  “Yeah. Give me a ride out there?”

  “OK.”

  To hell with warrants and red tape and spinning wheels.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Saturday, 10:12 p.m.

  THE WEBB PLACE was a boring ranch out on Pickle Run, within sight of the high school. It would take us ten or fifteen minutes to get there from the hospital. I’d hoped to beat
the arresting officers there, but that was not going to happen.

  We were only two miles away when dispatch radioed Irwin to tell him to rendezvous with Shelly near Hollis High. He was not going to be off, after all. He was going to be on the arrest team, because we had three guys to pick up and not near enough bodies on duty. In the course of the conversation, Irwin learned how Josh Webb was involved in Jeff Cotton’s arrest.

  He glanced at me. “Detective Runyon is with me,” he said.

  “Detective Runyon is on leave, per policy,” the dispatcher said.

  Irwin acknowledged, put away the mic, and looked at me. “You weren’t going over there to have the star quarterback sign an autograph, were you?”

  “I just want to see this case through, Irwin.”

  “You are supposed to be on leave, Ed.”

  I stared at him a while. He mostly watched the road, but shot me a glance now and then. “You have been off-kilter lately,” he said after a while.

  “I just need to see this kid go to jail. No shenanigans. I promise.”

  “No,” he said. “You didn’t tell me Webb was in on what happened to that girl. Damn tragedy. Hate to see that happen to anyone. I understand your anger. I feel it, too. But—”

  “But hell, Irwin. I’ve been working this case. Let me see it done. At least let me watch the arrest. I need that.”

  “No,” he answered, pulling the squad car over near the store in Jodyville. He slapped it into park. “Go eat a fry pie, Ed. Play your guitar. Relax. But you are supposed to be on the sidelines, and I need this job too goddamned much to help you go cause trouble.”

  I looked at him for a long while, but he never flinched.

  I got out of the squad car. Deputy Irwin Trumpower went to arrest Megan Beemer’s killer.

  I couldn’t buy a fry pie, because the market was closed. I couldn’t go pick my guitar, because I’d busted it up in a goddamned moment of rage. But I could clear up a loose end. I punched at my phone screen.

  A woman answered. “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Phelps?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Detective Ed Runyon, Mifflin County Sheriff’s Office. I know it is late, but I need to talk with Ally.”

  “This is about that dead girl?”

  “Yes. Ally is not in trouble, but I need to talk to her.”

  “I am putting this on speaker,” she said. “Ally? Detective Runyon wants to talk to you again.”