by Henry Hack
Some things just never change.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Although I managed to attend the wrap-up session the morning after the death of Frankie Chandler, I then took the next few days off to allow my wounds to heal – and I don’t just mean the broken nose and split head. I mean the psychological wounds, some of which were self-inflicted, that I sustained over the course of the investigation. Allison Hayes had certainly titled her series appropriately, with tragedy being the key word. Tragedy heaped upon tragedy in this whole lousy case from the moment Frankie was born, to his death at our hands, and right through to Ellen Weston’s suicide.
My wife, Tara, was a great help during this time helping me assuage my guilt, showing me the futility of second-guessing myself about my actions during the case and, of course, being there and loving me. Occasionally, I would go into our garage and remove the tarp from Frankie’s bike and stare at it awhile, or oil it or wipe it down. It was still in pristine condition – after all, it hadn’t had much use, had it? I figured I’d give it away to a charity for some needy kid – but just not now.
A week later I was back in the office and told the boss I was ready to get back in the action and catch cases again. I called Allison and she answered her cell phone informing me she was down in D.C. “Are you with Superman,” I asked.
“You bet,” she said. “We were in Los Angeles a few days to wrap things up and get a few interviews for my series.”
“It’s great so far,” I said. “I hope it gets you the Big Prize.”
“Thanks, Danny, and how are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess. I’m back to work, but it’s going to be a long time before I get over Frankie Chandler.”
“I know. It was a real tough one.”
“At least one good thing came out of this though - you and Superman. I hope things really last with you two.”
“Thank you, Danny. I do, too.”
“Well, say hello to Mike Havlek for me.”
“Sure, I’ll be seeing him later.”
“Tell him, despite being a lousy Fed, he’s a good investigator and a good guy.”
Allison laughed and said, “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that, Danny Boy. Good-bye.”
Two weeks later my physical wounds were all nicely healed up and I was relaxing in the office waiting for a good case to come my way. The phone rang on Spider’s desk, and after a few seconds of conversation, I heard him say, “Who are you again?”
Spider had raised his voice a bit which caused me to look across at him. His eyes were wide and he said, “Hold on, I think he’s still in the office.” He then put the call on hold and looked at me shaking his head.
“What’s up, partner?” I asked.
“Guy on the phone wants to talk to you, but I’m not sure you want to talk to him.”
“Why not? Who is he?”
“Says his name is Patrick. Patrick Boyland. Says he’s your son.”
I was stunned, to say the least. I took a deep breath and punched the blinking light on my phone. “Detective Boyland here,” I said.
“Dad?”
“Patrick?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“I guess you can understand I’m really surprised hearing your voice,” I said.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Is something wrong, Pat? Can I help you with something – anything?”
“Something’s very wrong, but I don’t think you can help. Mom’s dying. She has cancer.”
“Oh, my God. Is it very bad?”
“What they call Stage Four. It’s her pancreas. I figured it was the right thing to let you know.”
“Thanks, Pat. I gather you’re doing this on your own?”
“Yeah, Mom didn’t want you to know. I overheard her discuss it with Grandma and Grandpa and they agreed.”
“I understand,” I said. “I guess you all still hate me for what I did, but I appreciate the call.”
“Uh, Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to see you. I want to talk with you. No one else has to know.”
“Sure, Pat. When can I come down there?”
“How about this weekend?”
“I’ll drive down Friday afternoon and meet you Saturday morning. You pick the place and send me an e-mail with directions, okay?”
“Okay, let me have your address.”
I gave Pat my e-mail address and we hung up. I said, “Goodbye, I love you.” He said, “So long.”
What a turn of events! I had a lot to think about in the next few days.
When I had last attempted to visit Patrick and Kelly they were both under ten years old and refused to go with me when I got there. Their mother had successfully turned them against me. I guess I couldn’t blame her, but then again I was their father.
Although Jean cashed my support and alimony checks she “returned to sender” all my correspondence to Patrick and Kelly. On their birthdays and for Christmas I sent them a card with a check in it. I wrote that I loved them and to buy whatever they wanted. But of course they never got them, and I’m sure Jean never told them of their arrival before she sent them back to me. So to say I was surprised – shocked was a better word – when Patrick called me was the understatement of the century.
When Patrick sent me the directions to a park near his home where we would meet, I decided to press him on why he wanted to see me. I detected something in his tone of voice when we had spoken on the phone, something troubling him other than just his mother’s illness. “Okay, Pat,” I typed. “I’ll be there. Is there anything you’d like to know, or ask, before I get there?”
He responded right away and he was obviously more comfortable with a keyboard than with a telephone. He said, “I have a situation in my life that your past experience with Niki Wells may help me understand. Oh, by the way, I read the whole series about your case with Frankie Chandler. It was in the main Roanoke newspaper which we get delivered. Very sad.”
I responded, tapping away with two fingers. “Yes, it was a sad and tragic case. Pat, I kept a lengthy journal about the Niki Wells affair. How about I send it to you and you can read it before I get there? It may help with your situation. Or will someone intercept it to prevent you from getting it?”
“School’s out. I’ll be home when it comes. Grandma and grandpa are here with us most of the time and they wouldn’t take anything – I hope – that was addressed to me. Not like Mom did.”
So he knew what Jean had done! I told Pat I would send the journal out this afternoon with guaranteed over-night delivery. He responded, “Thanks, Dad. See you Saturday.”
I had talked this whole thing over with Tara. She agreed that she not accompany me to Virginia. “It’s best you keep this first meeting with him strictly one on one.”
“My kids have to find out sooner or later I married again,” I said.
“Patrick already knows. He probably told Kelly, too.”
“Huh?”
“You said Patrick read Allison’s series, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She mentioned in there somewhere, maybe the fourth installment, that Detective Boyland was married to Detective Brown.”
“You’re right! I remember that.”
“How old is Patrick now?” she asked.
“Fourteen, close to fifteen.”
“When you drive down, take the Highlander and put Frankie’s bike in the back. It would make a great gift for your son.”
I suspected Tara had another motive for getting rid of that bike, but I wisely kept my mouth shut saying only, “Great idea. Thanks.”
Patrick and I met as scheduled at ten o’clock Saturday in a small park smelling of new-mown grass on a warm late spring morning. I noticed he had my journal tucked under his arm, and as he approached closer, I was struck by how tall he had grown and how much he resembled me. “Hello, Pat,” I said extending my hand.
He did not hesitate to reach out and take it giving me a firm grip and saying,
“Hi, Dad.”
We sat on a bench in the shade with about three feet between us. I said, “How’s your mom doing?”
“Not good,” he said. “Maybe only a few weeks left.”
“I truly feel bad for her, and you and Kelly, too. Unfortunately, sometimes life is not fair.”
He just nodded and then said, “I read your journal. It was some story and it helped me understand you much better, and why you did what you did.”
“Did it also help with your, uh… situation?”
“Yes, because I did an awful thing, too. And now I’m paying for it just like you.”
“Pat, what awful thing could you have done that was as bad as my actions?”
“I had a great girlfriend, Jamie Cunningham was her name. She had long, dark brown hair, deep blue eyes, and a great smile. Dad, we were in love ever since the fifth grade and then this year, sophomore year, I ruined everything.”
I saw a tear form in Patrick’s left eye and start down his cheek. I said nothing and waited for him to gain his composure. He wiped the tear away and said, “One day in the hallway I locked eyes with a girl I had never seen before. She was beautiful – a tall redhead with green eyes. It was like I was hit with a hammer. I was instantly in love with her and nothing else mattered until I could get her to love me.”
“Oh, boy,” I said.
“Yeah, Barbara Corwin became my Niki Wells. I dumped Jamie and pursued Barbara until I caught her. We went out for most of this semester and then, three weeks ago, right before the big Sophomore Smash end-of-year dance, she dumped me for some junior jock on the football team. I was devastated. Still am.”
I moved closer to Pat and tentatively put my arm around his shoulder. I said, “Maybe you got a bad gene from me. If so, I am truly sorry.”
“That’s about what Mom and Grandpa and Grandma said when they found out what I had done to Jamie, who has not spoken a word to me since. Mom said, ‘You’re turning out just like your lousy father. You disgust me.’ What made it worse was that we were on the way to the hospital when she said it.”
I hugged him tighter and said, “Patrick, what you did was a bad thing, but certainly not uncommon in high school love affairs. Unlike me, you didn’t break any marriage vows or destroy a family. You have to try to put your broken heart, and Jamie’s broken heart, into that perspective.”
“I understand, Dad, but I don’t know if I will ever get over this.”
“Time will tell, but I believe in the future you will look back on this period with sadness, but not with tragedy.”
“Thanks, Dad,” he said. “I hope you’re right. What I did was not as bad as what you did…”
He stopped speaking obviously realizing what he had just said. “Ouch,” I said with a smile. “The truth still hurts.”
“Dad, I didn’t mean…”
I stopped him and said, “I don’t think we have to talk about this anymore. I think we both understand our situations very well now.”
“Right,” he said. “Can you tell me some more about Frankie Chandler?”
“Sure,” I said, and when I finished the story it was approaching lunch time. “Hungry?” I asked.
“Starved,” he said as do most growing teenagers.
As we walked to my car I said, “Do you ride a bike?”
“Yeah, but it’s in bad shape. It needs a new tire and the brakes are shot. That’s why I had to walk here.”
I popped the lift gate and motioned for Pat to look inside. “Would you like to have this one? It’s in great shape.”
“Is that the one in the story in the papers – Frankie Chandler’s bike?”
“That it is.”
“I’d love to have it, Dad. Thanks.”
“What do you think your grandparents will say when they find out I was here and gave you that bike?”
“Oh, boy,” he said. “They won’t be happy with this. They’re still piss…uh, upset over the girl thing.”
“Maybe it’s about time your grandparents and I had a talk about a few things. Are they home?”
“Uh, yeah. Are you sure about this?”
“Yes.”
Patrick shook his head and said, “They can be grumpy and mean, you know. I hope you brought your gun. You may need it.”
After devouring our cheeseburgers at the diner, plus two slices of pepperoni pizza for Patrick, I drove him home. When we pulled up I noticed a blond-haired girl on a swing in the side yard. And just as Patrick resembled me, Kelly was the image of her mother. So much so, that my heart skipped a beat in remembrance of the youthful beauty of my ex-wife.
When we got out of the car she came over to us and said, “Dad?”
“Hi, Kelly,” I said kneeling down to her level. “How are you?”
“Not good. Mom is very sick.”
“I know, Pat told me. Can you tell your grandma and grandpa that I’m here, and would like to speak with them?”
“Sure,” she said and skipped up the porch steps and into the front door.
Patrick and I went up onto the porch and waited. A minute later my former father-in-law, Bill Schneider, appeared on his side of the screen door. He glared at me and said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Good afternoon to you, too, Bill,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you and Doris.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” he said. “And you’re not welcome inside this house – my daughter’s house.”
“I’d like to talk about the future of my children.”
“As I said, there’s nothing to discuss. You aren’t getting them when Jean passes. We already discussed it with our lawyer, and we decided we will fight you in court if it takes every cent we have.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” I said. “I agree it would be best for the children to remain here, with you and Doris, and with their friends, in their home and neighborhood for as long as they want.”
“You do?” he said seeming to soften just a bit.
“Yes, can we talk some more?”
He considered this request for a few moments and then said, “Meet me and Doris in the backyard. Pat and Kelly, you stay in the house while we talk. It won’t be long.”
The kids went into the house. I walked through the side yard into the back and joined Bill and Doris sitting around a patio table. “Okay, say your piece,” Bill said.
“Hello, Doris,” I said. She just nodded and I did say my piece re-stating the fact that I agreed the kids would be better off remaining with them, but that I would visit more often and expected no resistance to my visits. I concluded by saying, “When Jean passes I’m coming down to pay my respects to you, and to be there for my children.”
“We don’t want you there,” Bill said. “Jean wouldn’t want you there. You ruined all our lives, you know.”
“I know, and I’ve apologized over and over for my actions. That won’t change things, but regardless I’m coming down, so get used to seeing me.”
“I guess we’re finished then,” Bill said, getting up from the table.
“Please send Patrick and Kelly out front so I can say good-bye to them,” I said.
I got the bike out of the back of the Highlander and handed it over to Pat. “I didn’t have a chance to buy something for you, Kelly, so please take this,” I said handing her three crisp twenty-dollar bills. “Buy something nice for yourself.”
“Oh, thank you, Daddy,” she said throwing her arms around me.
The three of us hugged and kissed and when I drove away from the curb I saw Patrick jump on his new bike and take off down the street with a huge smile on his face. For one brief moment he looked like a young Frankie Chandler pedaling his brand new blue bike toward happiness.
And for the first time in a long time, I smiled, too.
Thanks once more to my readers, family, friends and supporters for their continued encouragement in this sometimes discouraging adventure.
Many thanks to Vicki Rutkowsky, publisher of the Countr
y Pointe Newsletter, and to Stephanie Bracco, President of the Country Pointe Book Club, and to all the members of the Club, for their reading time and helpful comments on my two previous Danny Boyland novels.
A special thanks to my daughter, Allison Arend, who did a magnificent job deciphering my longhand scratching and turning it into a beautifully typed manuscript, while also pointing out defects in the storyline which had escaped my scrutiny.
And to my wife, Lorraine, my final reader, nonsense detector and copy editor, all my thanks and love for continuing to believe in my work – you made me a believer, too.