by Mark Gimenez
He had slept in Grace’s room the first two nights; Elizabeth had thrown him out of their bedroom last night and the remote control at him. The rage. Now she was scared and alone and her child was presumed dead—God, her blood in his truck—and she needed someone to hold her, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask her husband, not after what she had done to him. What the rage had done to him.
If she asked, he would come and hold her. He would say he loved her. He would forgive her. He always forgave her. If she could ever let go of the past—Let go? If she could ever escape the past—perhaps she could love John as he loved her. He wanted her love, and she often found herself wanting to love him. There was something inside John R. Brice, something beneath the brainy geek façade. Something worth loving. But she could not love him as long as she hated herself. Her past wouldn’t allow it.
John stopped at the door, turned back, and said. “She was my daughter, too. I loved her just as much as you did.” He walked out and shut the door behind him.
11:11 P.M.
Ben stood at the door to the command post. Agent Devereaux was gone, as were most of the agents. The young female FBI agent he had met—Jorgenson, he thought—sat at one computer station, telephone headset on, talking and typing. But the intensity level of the command post had noticeably decreased, as if the battle were over.
Ben laid the lead sheet on Devereaux’s desk, sighting number 3,317, Idaho Falls, Idaho, and wrote in the margin: Spoke to this Clayton Lee Tucker. Said he saw a blonde girl with two men, one with a tattoo, muscular, wearing a black tee shirt, at his gas station Sunday evening. If that was Gracie, you’ve got the wrong man in jail.
The wrong man was in jail and Gracie was in Idaho, where it was cold and where the trees stood tall and where snow covered the ground—a white blanket of snow. Not that the FBI would release Jennings on the basis of Ben’s dream. But once Clayton Tucker positively identified the men or the tattoo or Gracie from the FBI’s photos, they would. And if not then, surely after Jennings got a lawyer and passed a polygraph.
Ben Brice had spent six months in a POW camp; he figured one night in the town jail wouldn’t kill the boy.
“Jesus, boy, she sure kicked your ass!”
Jim Bob Basham, the night-shift jail guard, looked in through the steel bars at the sicko pervert. He was slumped on his cot in his cell, his head was buried in his hands, and he was crying. The mother’s attack on Jennings had made the rounds at town hall.
“How’s your nuts? Don’t that make you wanna just puke your guts up, getting kneed in the nuts? Shit, makes me wanna puke just thinking about it.”
No response from the pervert. Jim Bob figured, fuck being nice to him.
“Jennings, if I was you, I’d be praying they give me the death penalty, that’s a fact.”
The pervert raised his head.
“Yeah, see, that way they put you on death row, segregate you from the general population. You get life, you’re in with the rest of the inmates—the gangbangers, the Aryans, the Latinos, the brothers. Nothing they’d like more than to wear your ass out, and I don’t mean what the mother did to you.”
A confused expression from Jennings; the dumb ass didn’t understand what Jim Bob was saying. Jim Bob figured he’d put it in plain English, maybe the pervert could understand that.
“Those dudes gonna butt-fuck you five times a day, girlfriend. Time they get through with you, your asshole’s gonna be the size of a water main.”
Jim Bob cackled as he walked down the empty cell corridor. Water main, that was a good one.
“Yep,” he shouted back to the pervert, “they just love child molesters.”
Minutes later, Gary Jennings was alone, standing in the jail cell, in near darkness, only a dim red glow from the emergency exit lights.
It had taken him eight years, his father’s death, moving to another city, marrying Debbie, and getting a job to get over that college incident. Or so he had thought. He now knew he would never get over it. And he would never get over this.
In the morning he would be marched into the courthouse through a gauntlet of cameras to be formally charged with abducting, raping, and killing Gracie Ann Brice. His face would be on national TV again: Gary Jennings, child molester, sexual predator, murderer. And Debbie—poor, sweet Debbie, she didn’t deserve this. But they’d stick the cameras in her face just the same and identify her as the wife of the child molester, sexual predator, and murderer, pregnant with their child who would forever be identified as the daughter of the child molester, sexual predator, and murderer. She’d be like Lee Harvey Oswald’s daughter.
He had never told Debbie about his college conviction—what was she thinking of her wonderful husband now? And what would his daughter think of her father when she learned all this? There would be no education trust for her. No vested stock options worth a million dollars. No house for Debbie. No company of his own. No future. He would be forever shamed. As Debbie would be. More like devastated. They would have to move to yet another city—if Debbie believed him. If he was acquitted.
But how would he be? Gracie’s blood in his truck. Child pornography and her jersey. Calls from his cell phone. The coach pointing at him in court. Overwhelming evidence, the lawyer had said. Who would believe Gary Jennings, Fuckup?
Gary’s only prior experience with the law eight years ago had taught him that the American criminal justice system was about everything but truth and justice. Which was why he had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge and receive probation, on his lawyer’s recommendation.
“Gary,” his lawyer had told him, “if you’re willing to put your life in the hands of twelve citizens who ain’t even smart enough to get out of jury duty in the first place and who’d rather be catching the Early Bird specials at the Wal-Mart instead of sitting in that jury box deciding your fate in the second place, then we need to change your plea to not guilty by reason of insanity because you’re fucking nuts!”
Gary Jennings would surely be convicted. Then what? Death row, waiting a decade to die by lethal injection? Or life without parole, waiting for the next inmate to enter his cell and rape him, eventually contracting AIDS and dying a long, slow, painful death? Debbie would divorce him and his daughter would never know him or want to. His parents were dead, he had no siblings, he soon would have no one. He was destined to die a lonely fuckup.
Darkness enveloped his mind as hot tears ran down his face. He felt so alone, so empty, so without faith, hope, or a future. His life was over. That he was still breathing was just a technicality. He looked up. There was only one thing to do.
Gary Jennings unzipped his white jail pants.
DAY SIX
6:02 A.M.
Lying awake last night, Chief of Police Paul Ryan had begun having doubts about the prime suspect. Had Gary Jennings really abducted and murdered Gracie Ann Brice? All the evidence said yes: the jersey, the porn, the phone calls, the prior offense, the coach’s ID, and now her blood, but still … it just didn’t seem to fit. It was too pat. All the evidence pointed at Jennings when it shouldn’t. An educated employee at a computer company stalking the boss’s daughter? Calling from his own cell phone at work, no attempt to cover his tracks? Leaving her jersey in his truck? Child porn under the floor mat? Was Jennings really that stupid? And if that dumb-ass Eddie had found Jennings’s truck unlocked, who else might have?
A thorough search of his truck by the FBI’s finest turned up nothing but a thin blood smear, not another piece of evidence that put Gracie in his truck, not her hair or fingerprints or fibers from her clothes or grass from the soccer field or leaves from the woods. And the coach’s ID wasn’t all that positive, even though Jennings fit the suspect’s general description.
Of course, Jennings’s photo and residence address were on the state’s sex offender website; anyone who wanted to find a blond, blue-eyed convicted sex offender living in the county could easily do so. But one who worked for the victim’s father? What were the odds of that? And w
hy would anyone want to? To frame a sex offender? It made no sense. He weighed in his mind the upside and downside of looking deeper and quickly decided there was no upside, at least not for Paul Ryan.
Fifty-two years old, there were no other police jobs out there for him. This was the end of the line. Seventy-five thousand a year plus benefits. Eight more years, he would earn his pension. Enough to retire to a little house in Sun City, him and the wife. A good life, or at least good enough. Was he willing to throw it all away for Jennings? For that little frat-boy fuckup? Hell, maybe his big-time lawyer can prove the boy is innocent. Not likely in an emotionally charged high-profile child abduction case—death by lethal injection, that was this boy’s future. But that wasn’t Ryan’s fault; that was the law! Why should Paul Ryan risk his financial security for this boy? On the off chance that Jennings might not be the abductor? Even a step in that direction would cost Ryan his job—the mayor would not be pleased—and where would that leave him? Unemployed and unemployable. No health care. No pension. Working at the Wal-Mart. He could not think of one good reason to look deeper.
Except that it was the right thing to do.
And there was the baby. The baby named Sarah was lying in the neonatal unit in critical condition, born almost two months’ premature. Was the baby on Paul Ryan’s tab? Damnit, he didn’t put the victim’s blood and jersey in Jennings’s truck! He didn’t make nine phone calls to the victim! He didn’t haul Jennings’s pregnant wife into the station!
But he did show her the porn.
Because he needed a confession to keep his job, a baby might die. So Paul Ryan felt guilty—a guilt that kept him awake through the night and pacing the house until a sense of shame had overwhelmed him: Baby Sarah.
By 4:00 A.M., whether born of a need for personal redemption or simply sleep deprivation, Paul Ryan had made a life-altering decision: he would do the right thing.
By 6:00 A.M., Jennings had done it for him.
Ryan was standing outside Gary Jennings’s cell, looking in at his lifeless form hanging there, one leg of his white jail pants tied around his neck, the other tied around the pipes of the new sprinkler system the town had installed last month to meet code.
Innocent suspects don’t commit suicide.
6:30 A.M.
It was Wednesday morning and Coach Wally was whistling as he walked up to the entrance to the Post Oak Town Hall. Unlike most visitors who would arrive today to pay traffic tickets, Wally Fagan was a happy man. Happy and a bit proud of himself—heck, he felt so downright patriotic he wanted to salute his reflection in the glass doors.
He was here to free an innocent man.
At the entrance, Wally paused and checked himself over and adjusted the clip-on tie he had added to his short-sleeve shirt just in case cameras were present. Shoot, he might even make the national news, maybe even get interviewed by Katie Couric. They might even call him a hero.
He pulled open the door and entered the building. Just inside the door was a security checkpoint with metal detectors, like at the airport, manned by a uniformed cop. Wally began emptying his pockets into a small plastic container but looked up when another cop hurried over; he was grinning like he had just won a lifetime supply of donuts.
“Sonofabitch offed himself!”
The other cop’s mouth fell open. “No shit?”
“Yep.” The grinning cop grabbed his neck, stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth, and made a gagging sound. “Hung himself in his cell last night. Course, he might’ve been playing some kind of perverted sex game with himself.”
The two cops laughed merrily, but a sick feeling crept over Wally. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to know.
“Who?”
The grinning cop turned his way and said, “Jennings. Guy that abducted Gracie.”
“He’s … dead?”
“As a doornail. Did the world a favor. No trial, no appeals, no execution. Case is closed.”
At that moment, the double doors behind Wally flew open and excited reporters and cameramen rushed inside and pushed past Wally.
“Is it true?” they shouted. “Jennings committed suicide?”
“Yep,” the first cop said, waving them through the checkpoint without checking. “Give himself the death penalty.”
In a split-second, Wally Fagan’s mind played out two alternate paths in life for him to choose from, as clearly as if he were watching a movie of his life, a choice he knew would determine the future course of his life. The first path was to continue inside, straight to the chief’s office, which would be crowded with the media, stand in front of the microphones and bright lights and cameras and tell the world what he knew, what he had remembered last night at work: the blond man in the black cap and plaid shirt who had asked about Gracie after the game was missing his right index finger. Gary Jennings was not. He had all of his fingers. Jennings was not the abductor. He was innocent. But now he was dead. And it was Wally’s fault. That’s what they would say—the chief, the press, the FBI, Jennings’s pregnant wife, the world. Wally Fagan would make the national news all right, but they wouldn’t call him a hero. They would blame him for the death of an innocent man.
Someone is always blamed.
Wally chose the second path. He retrieved his personal items from the small plastic container, stuffed them into his pockets, and exited the building, vowing to take his secret to the grave.
7:00 A.M.
At seven in the morning Texas time, being eight on the floor of the NASDAQ exchange in New York City, only ninety minutes prior to the opening trade in the BriceWare.com IPO—that is, on the day all of his dreams were supposed to come true—the company founder, president and CEO, chairman of the board, and creative genius, John R. Brice, who boasted a Ph.D. in algorithms from MIT and a 190 IQ, lay crashed on the couch in his home office. He was curled up under a Boston Red Sox souvenir blanket. His boyish face was buried in the thick folds of soft leather where the couch back met the seat. He was wondering why his wife did not love him.
And he was sure she did not love him.
They had had sex exactly two hundred forty-nine times—twice a month for the ten years and four months they had been married plus once before marriage. Which sounded like a lot of sex when you said it out loud, way more than he had ever hoped for at MIT, once every fifteen days. But then, major league pitchers take the mound every fifth day. FYA (For Your Amusement), during the same period, Roger Clemens had pitched three hundred two games!
He didn’t think Elizabeth enjoyed sex with him, much less had orgasms. But he was too afraid to ask. Little Johnny Brice had asked his only other sex partner, a sixteen-year-old Army brat who had done every soldier’s son before him at Fort Bragg, if she had had an orgasm; she had laughed in his face and said, “It takes me longer than five seconds, stud.”
Sex was not plug and play.
For him, sex was plug and pray, female orgasms being so highly nontrivial and all, what with hardware that had to be booted and software that had to be tweaked for optimal performance. No point-and-click on the female architecture. No Help button. No Progasm Wizard to guide him through the procedure. So he had searched for technical solutions, even buying a user’s manual—The Female Orgasm—and learned to his dismay that writing twenty-five thousand lines of code was cake compared to bringing a full-grown female to orgasm. But John R. Brice, Ph.D., was nothing if not determined; he had devoted his considerable intelligence to learning the deep magic of orgasms, because he knew, as well as he knew the back of his computer, that if he could take Elizabeth Brice to orgasm just once—just freaking once!—her indifferent attitude toward him would instantly morph into extreme love.
Geeks need love, too.
He had studied the manual’s recommended troubleshooting techniques as if studying for a final exam at MIT, applying a new one every two weeks until he had tried them all; he even did algorithms in his head during sex to prevent premature cache burst. In the hacker world, that was known as the brute-fo
rce method, trying every conceivable solution to a problem until you found one that worked. He had employed that method on numerous occasions at work and with great success. But not with Elizabeth. He had no doubt that pilot error was to blame, that he simply wasn’t up to the manly task of driving a beautiful and complex woman like Elizabeth to brain-banging orgasms—as they say in the tech support department when the customer doesn’t have a clue, PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair). John R. Brice didn’t have a clue.
And the few times he had thought the techniques might be enabling her, when he had felt her body responding to his hardware, just at the moment when he thought she might experience a power surge, she seemed to freeze up, as if he had performed an illegal operation and her control panel shut down her program. He had downloaded his content and uninserted his floppy; she had gotten out of bed, gone into the bathroom, and left him alone to wallow in unexplained failure. Why didn’t women come with a freaking Error Message box?
He had never forgotten her birthday, their anniversary, Valentine’s Day, or Mother’s Day, always sending flowers and gifts to her office. He had even signed up with the company’s personal trainer and worked out daily. But his efforts had had no discernible romantic effect. He should have taken Gracie’s advice, upgraded his graphics, dressed in cool clothes, gotten a stylish haircut, and ditched the glasses for laser eye surgery. She had said he’d be totally studly then. Which had sounded like a good thing.
If only being totally studly would have brought him Elizabeth’s love.
But he had lived for ten years without her love and without regret, from the moment he had first laid eyes on Gracie in the hospital nursery. It didn’t matter if he loved Elizabeth more than she loved him because Gracie’s love more than made up the difference. Now Gracie’s love was gone. And for the first time in ten years, he felt the difference, an emptiness inside him that no IPO could fill.