Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  It took more than ten minutes to find another strip mall. He drove back to the rear service entrances and saw the large dumpster, then scanned the one-story building’s cinder block wall, checking for security cameras, and saw none. He stayed inside the car and quickly took off the coat, sweatshirt, knit hat, and sweaters and wadded them up and stuffed them into the black garbage bag that contained his loafers, then tied a knot at the top to keep it closed. He stepped out of the car wearing only his shirt and jeans and kept his gloves on as he opened the dumpster’s heavy door. The dumpster was nearly full and the smell of the garbage inside made him gag as he leaned inside. There were several cardboard cartons on top. He took time to shift them around so they would cover the bag, and then tossed the glasses farther back. He pulled the heavy door down and flinched at the crashing sound of metal on metal as it shut.

  He slipped into his barn coat and pulled on a new pair of gloves and drove as quickly as he could manage across the icy parking lot to get away. An hour later he reached the parking lot of the shopping center where he had stopped for the dinner ingredients the night before. There were just a handful of stores—the food market, a drycleaner, an art gallery, and two vacant spaces with For Lease signs in the windows. Tall old oaks and a low fieldstone fence that had been designed to give the center a rural ambiance also shielded it from easy view of the adjacent boulevard.

  He pulled in. The lot was lit by replicas of Victorian lampposts, set in concrete bases. There were no visible cameras on the lampposts or on the building, and he was relieved at the absence of cars in the parking lot. Chances were good that in just a few hours a cop would be standing right here, checking his story, and it would be only natural to talk to the shopkeepers in search of any recollections that worked against it.

  For now the storefronts were still dark, and he could only hope that he wasn’t being watched as he backed up to within inches of one of the concrete bases that held a lamppost, realizing how inexact his measurements were going to be. He then set out to create the fender-bender exactly as it might have happened, visualizing himself driving across the already-slippery surface of the lot for his last-minute shopping, turning the wheel and backing up without gauging how close he was to the lamppost, tapping the brakes, sliding on the ice…and hitting the gas.

  He barely heard the impact against the concrete, but looked anxiously back toward the storefronts, half-expecting to see someone at a window. After several seconds of silence he stepped out and checked the damage.

  The dent was now twice as large, and it was impossible at a glance to tell which damage might have been caused by the impact against the boy’s body and the impact with the concrete.

  He heard the sound of a bus approaching from the distance. Traffic on the adjacent boulevard was picking up. Saturday mornings were busy in the surrounding neighborhoods—a catch-up time for errands that couldn’t be completed during the week. Traffic wasn’t heavy yet, but there would be plenty of other vehicles, driven by other potential witnesses, on the road home.

  He was nearly overcome by fatigue as he slipped back into the driver’s seat, the exhaustion weighing on his eyelids and numbing his mind. He briskly rubbed his cheeks as he restarted the engine and headed out of the lot. He drove with extreme caution at the edge of the speed limit, anxious to avoid suspicion with so much of the evidence against him right there in the car.

  His neighborhood was a still life when he arrived; the wide streets empty of traffic and the houses buried up to the first floor windowsills in fresh white snow. He stopped looking in the rearview mirror as he approached his own street, focused only on what he needed to do now.

  Pull in the garage. Close the door. Replace the taillight cover and stash the old one in a trash bag.

  He tapped the brakes and drove carefully into the garage and pushed the button on the visor to close the automatic door. The squeal of the damaged motor made him wince as the door started down, and descended no more than two feet before coming to a stop.

  He stepped out of the car and pushed the button on the visor again. Instead of continuing down the door went back up.

  “Come on.” His teeth were clenched as he hit the button once more. There was another sharp squeal and a slow grinding of gears as the door started down and then stopped again. This time when he pushed the button there was no reaction; nothing but the slight smell of burning oil in the air.

  Groaning, fighting another wave of fatigue, he hit the door with his fist. It had stopped six inches above the rear bumper, leaving the broken taillight cover exposed to the street.

  He heard the crunch of tires on the snow, and without thinking squatted down.

  Headlights flashed into his eyes as a Frederick County Sheriff’s car pulled into the driveway, with John Caruso behind the wheel.

  Caruso spotted Stephen Porter’s car as he turned onto the street, but he was a block away when Porter turned into his driveway. Even so he was certain that he saw damage to the side panel near the vehicle’s rear end an instant before the garage door came down.

  For a long moment he stood in the cold air and tried to imagine what Stephen was doing inside the garage. And then he sensed movement at one of the second floor windows, and looked up to see Sara Porter looking down at him.

  Caruso had met the Porter kids twice—first at Lori Porter’s funeral, where he had simply said hello, and then during an official visit to the Porter house, where, in the presence of their father, he had asked a handful of questions about their mother and what she had been doing on the day that she had died.

  This morning he caught only a glimpse of Sara before the curtain fluttered shut. And then the front door opened and Stephen Porter looked out, appearing gaunt and exhausted, as if he’d been up all night.

  Stephen was trembling uncontrollably as he went from the garage to the family room and then to the foyer, where he opened the door and watched John Caruso step up to the front porch.

  “Hello Stephen.”

  Caruso’s voice was quiet, with a reluctant tone.

  “John—hi.”

  The detective’s first name was a stark reminder of the rapport during the interviews after Lori’s death, when he had been the innocent widower, and Caruso had been the supportive cop.

  “I’d like to talk with you,” Caruso said.

  He shifted his weight, so that his body took up more of the open doorway; then looked down at his watch and noticed that his hands were still shaking. “It’s seven in the morning.”

  “I know that,” Caruso widened his stance, as if to send the message that he wasn’t budging.

  Stephen nodded, knowing he had to acquiesce, and stepped aside. Caruso carefully wiped his snow-covered hiking boots on the mat before coming in. He was wearing jeans and a ski jacket and there were dark circles under his brown eyes. His posture and bearing made the visit feel official but when their eyes met again Stephen saw no sense of aggression.

  Caruso looked past him, toward the stairs, and then nodded toward the first floor study. “Can we step in here? I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Questions about what?”

  Caruso went in without answering. Stephen followed, and shut the door.

  “I called you about an hour ago,” Caruso said. “Aren’t you curious about why?”

  Stephen turned and tried to meet his eyes; tried to look confused as he absently reached into his coat pocket and grasped the phone. “I didn’t know that. I must have the ringer off.”

  Caruso looked as if he was waiting for him to say something more.

  “So why were you calling?” he asked.

  “At 12:39 this morning you called 911 and reported that your daughter was at an address on Short Mountain. You wanted the police to respond. I need to know what happened next.”

  Stephen cleared his throat, and answered the question as he had planned.

  “That
’s right. Sara called me and said she was stranded at a friend’s house and wanted to come home. I was worried. She sounded like she was in trouble and I wasn’t sure I could make it through the snow. So I asked for help. But I wasn’t sure if the police could get to her so I went out to pick her up myself.”

  Caruso nodded. “What happened then?”

  “Nothing.”

  The response came out too quickly. He took another breath, his mouth as dry as cotton. “I went to the house where she called me from. I picked her up and brought her home.”

  Caruso continued staring at him.

  “Her Jeep wouldn’t start, so we left it there. I went out this morning to try and find a store where I could get salt for the driveway. I didn’t find anything open this early, so I came back home.”

  “What about the damage to your car?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “It’s a simple question. What happened?”

  He frowned, doing his best to look confused. “I’m not sure what’s going on, John. My daughter’s home. She’s okay. Why are you here?”

  “Your daughter was at the home of a teacher from Langford Secondary last night. Kieran O’Shea. Has she ever discussed him with you?”

  A teacher? “No, she hasn’t.”

  “What time did you pick Sara up?”

  Stephen paused. “I don’t…remember exactly. It was the middle of the night. I had to drive through a blizzard to get up there. I wasn’t paying much attention to the time.”

  “I need to know exactly what happened on the way there and the way back.”

  He thought again of the heavy snow on the mountain, the absence of traffic and witnesses, and the steps he had taken since arriving home, and allowed himself a small measure of hope that Caruso was putting on a bluff; that he wasn’t already trapped—

  “I told you, nothing happened. I picked Sara up and brought her home. She’s still asleep upstairs. Everything is fine.”

  Caruso said nothing, but with the slight shake of his head and the sagging of his shoulders he made it clear that the story wasn’t holding up.

  “John…” His voice was a strangled whisper. “What’s going on here?”

  “Kieran O’Shea has a younger brother, who was a student at Langford,” Caruso said. “His name was Aidan. A few hours ago he was hit by a car. The driver of the car left the scene. Aidan’s dead.”

  He exhaled, feeling suddenly lightheaded. He had known it was coming but Caruso’s declaration hit him like a punch to the gut. He stood as still as a statue, still grappling with how to respond as the study door opened.

  Sara stood at the threshold, her eyes filling with tears.

  She’s been standing at the door, he realized. She heard all of this—

  “Oh my God…Dad!”

  “Sara—” He stepped toward her, and pulled her into an embrace.

  “I need to take a look at your car,” Caruso said.

  He held her tighter, as if she could save him from the walk into the garage, where Caruso would immediately see the damaged bumper, the broken tail light cover, and the replacement, still in its new packaging—

  And realized in an instant how to stop it from happening.

  “John, my daughter is very upset. This is a shock. Please, can you come back later?”

  “No,” Caruso said. “I’m sorry Stephen. I need to see your car now.”

  He shook his head. “No, I need to take care of my daughter now.”

  “I’m not stopping you from taking care of your daughter.” Caruso sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ll come back with a warrant if I have to.”

  He willed his voice to be steady. “All right, if that’s what you have to do.”

  Caruso looked gravely disappointed. “I could have seized your car already based on what I know. But I wanted to have this conversation—to give you a chance to tell me what happened first. I’m asking you now to please cooperate with me. You’re only going to make it harder on yourself if you don’t.”

  He continued holding Sara; fearful that she would break the embrace and leave him alone, with no excuse to push Caruso out. He also knew that telling Caruso he would have to have a warrant to inspect the car was the worst possible move; an acknowledgment that he had something to hide and would use his legal rights to do so.

  But you can’t let him in there.

  He tightened the embrace, and stared down at the floor.

  Have to get him out of the house.

  “I’m sorry John, but you need to leave. We need to be alone.”

  Caruso’s posture stiffened. There was no longer any sense of friendship in his eyes.

  “All right Stephen, but you know I’ll be back. Soon.”

  Sara looked up at him, her mouth moving soundlessly, as if any second she would blurt out something to doom him completely.

  Stephen stared back at her, silently imploring her to remain silent.

  After several seconds the moment seemed to pass. Sara turned around to face Caruso. For an instant Stephen thought that she might openly defend him, but she said nothing as the tears rolled down her face.

  Caruso backed reluctantly into the foyer, and left the front door wide open as he stepped outside. The frigid air swept into the study as Sara turned and walked silently back to her room.

  Caruso went back to his patrol car and did what he had to do. It took ten minutes with his laptop to finish typing up the request for a warrant to seize Stephen Porter’s Ford Explorer, but less than two minutes to get a Frederick County Sheriff’s Deputy to the scene. Caruso stayed in Porter’s driveway as he instructed the deputy to park in front of the Porter house until the warrant came through, and to follow Porter if he left the house and report back if he saw visual damage to the vehicle.

  And then he sat for several more minutes, massaging his temples, running back through the conversation inside the house and trying to imagine how Stephen Porter could have struck a teenaged boy and left him at the side of the road; his thoughts bringing him back once again to the same conclusion.

  He knew Aidan was dead, and panicked.

  And then he went to rescue his daughter—

  From Kieran O’Shea.

  Who might have been involved in the death of his wife.

  He sat back, remembering O’Shea’s dilated pupils and delayed, slurred speech at the accident scene. Instincts and circumstances told him that Kieran had seen it happen. But Kieran had claimed otherwise—and said he had simply discovered Aidan lying beside the road. So instead of being able to tell Porter there was a witness, he had merely been able to refer to the circumstances that had put Porter there—and hope that he fell apart under the pressure of their suspicion.

  Which might have happened, Caruso thought, if Sara Porter hadn’t broken his rhythm.

  He thought about the 911 recording that he had listened to several times before heading out to Porter’s house. He had heard the desperation in Stephen’s voice, and understood Stephen’s obvious belief that he had no choice but to drive out into the storm to rescue her.

  Because you would have too, he thought, knowing it for certain as he thought of his own son. As often happened when he was exhausted from the job, his thoughts went immediately back to the days when the illness was first revealed: Elliott’s fainting spells at preschool; the pale skin that began to bruise at the slightest touch; the all-too-frequent complaint—”I’m ti-werd daddy,” in Elliott’s hoarse little-boy voice.

  Caruso had just turned twenty-three when the diagnosis was made, an age of transition from college graduation to induction as a Frederick County Sheriff’s Deputy. He had purposefully developed a mindset that reflected the stoic, disciplined bearing that deputies were expected to project. Life was all about the conveyance of law and order on the job; the can-do spirit at the scenes of traffic accidents an
d natural disasters; the ideals of public service. It was a mindset that carried over into his reactions to the diagnosis—the commitment to be emotionally impenetrable.

  Looking back, he recognized the self-protective value of that mindset during the nine months of searching for new and better treatments for Elliot’s condition, insisting all the while to Cassie and everyone else that their son would “beat this” even though he knew it wasn’t true; telling no one but God that he would have driven a knife into the center of his own heart if it would have saved Elliott’s life.

  So, yes, Stephen, I understand, he thought.

  You did what you had to do for your daughter.

  He looked at the closed garage door again, a temporary protection of the evidence that was bound to put Stephen Porter away.

  But it won’t stop me from doing what I have to do now.

  He sighed, feeling sadly aware of Stephen’s plight, a sense of weakness making him question his true ability to maintain the law-and-order responsibility of the job.

  And then he felt the vibration of his phone in his pocket, conveying a text from Niles, who had been sent up to the mountain to be there as the techs processed the scene:

  All kinds of problems here.

  Will wait for you to come back up.

  Kieran drove the pickup down the mountain with the speakers blaring, the windows vibrating with the crash and bang of heavy metal; the screaming lyrics fueling thoughts of retribution as a cacophony of voices—like hundreds of people shouting in a crowded, cavernous room—filled his mind.

  He leaned forward, clenching his jaw until the voices faded away, then reached into his pocket and pulled out Sara’s phone, which he had found beneath the cushions of his couch where she had been sitting during Aidan’s reading lesson. He thought about calling her. Telling her what he had not told Detective John Caruso. Telling her what her father had done.