by Rich Foster
“I hate goddamn lawyers! Did you know that?” He took another hit from the bottle. “I’d offer you a drink, counselor, but it might dull your senses.” Robert put the tip of his cigarette so close to Parks’s face that Travis felt the heat. “Did I mention just how much I hate you god-damn, son-of-a-bitch lawyers?”
Parks shook his head slowly, bumped the cigarette and his head involuntarily snapped the other way. Goodman seemed drunk. He hoped that humoring the man might help. Identify with your captor, he thought.
“I hate lawyers like this!” Goodman said, as he slammed his fist into Parks’s belly. “They make me sick to my stomach.”
Travis almost lost his dinner. His head was pounding and now nausea wracked his body.
“There’s money in the safe. Take it, take my car!”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Robert said airily.
Travis spoke the combination for the upstairs floor safe so quickly that he had to repeat it three times before Robert got it right.
Goodman disappeared upstairs. He was gone for a long time. The wine cellar insulated Travis from any noise in the house but he had hopes that the man was gone. Minutes ticked by. Travis heard the tick, tick, tick, of his wristwatch.
His hopes were destroyed when the wine room door reopened. Goodman held a sheaf of money in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other.
“Pretty good bread, you got here.”
He seemed both calmer and drunker.
“Take the money and my car why don’t you? They have got to be looking for you. You should get going if you have any hope of getting away.”
“Hope? Now counselor hope is a funny word. Just because you are ready to part with something you don’t need and you think I want it, well suddenly you got hope! What if I take something you don’t want to give up?”
Goodman poked Travis’s cheek with the broken neck of the wine bottle. A small drop of red formed, grew and then dribbled down on the cheek.
Travis trembled, suddenly wondering if he was going to die, just because he beat some crazy bastard in court? It wasn’t fair. There was nothing in the rules about dying. Win or lose it was all just a game for God’s sake!
As if hearing his own thoughts voiced aloud, he heard Goodman say, “It’s all just a game. So, let’s see how much you can suffer before I get bored? This fancy wine cellar’s got to be well insulated. I bet no one will hear you scream.”
Travis felt his skin crawling. Involuntarily he tried to inch up off the table. He had never taken the thought of dying seriously.
A towel dropped onto his face. Travis tried to shake it off but Goodman clenched his hair firmly in one hand. It was hard to breathe through the fabric.
“I really should be doing this to that little weasel from the Department of Motor vehicles. It was a mistake to let him off with only a bullet hole in his hand. Guess I let myself be distracted.”
Goodman poured wine onto the towel. Parks flopped and beat his head against the stone table trying to shake off the sodden cloth. He struggled violently against the cords that held him. They bit into his flesh. His heart hammered in his chest. There was a roaring in his ears. Then his struggle seemed strangely remote. It was as though he were outside of himself, watching. He passed out.
The blackness fade. His world spun. He gasped sucking in great breaths of air. Goodman leered over him. He was drunker than before.
“Life ain’t fair, is it counselor? If I had gone north in the fire I might be doing this to that crappy lawyer I had. Stein got lucky, you didn’t.”
Parks couldn’t believe he was going to die like this. He always assumed he would live a long and happy life. Not once did he seriously think it might be otherwise. He wasn’t ready to die. The cloth was back on his face. It was soaked again. He fought violently.
Again he awoke, again the towel, again he choked for air. His body fought to hold onto life. Sometime during the night, Travis suddenly feared not only dying, but also oblivion.
He awoke. If there was life after death this could not be it. He tried to move and then he recalled where he was. A drunker Goodman reviled him.
“Cops ain’t the enemy, they’re just doing their job. Good guys and bad guys. They try to catch us and we try to get away. It’s a game. But you lawyers are scum. Win or lose you take our money and you don’t give a shit! I think that maybe when I am done with you, I just might go back for that prick, Stein.”
Parks world reeled. Goodman continued talking.
“You’re going to die tonight. I want you to know that.” He hissed the words in Parks’s ears. “No on can save you. One of these times I’m not moving the towel. I’m sending you as a greeting party to hell.”
The cloth fell on his face again.
For Travis, existence became an endless terror. Suffocate and die. Wake up and suffocate again. Each time Goodman was drunker. Strangely the booze mellowed the alcoholic’s rage. When he spoke his words were slurred but they expressed empathy for how Parks and he were both screwed.
“We’re all going to die, little buddy. There ain’t shit we can do about it. You and me, were both gonna die!”
Parks was so exhausted and emotionally spent, that death seemed a welcome relief.
Chapter Twenty-Two
About three A.M., the winds picked-up on the fire lines. Again, pine trees exploded in flames. The wind carried showers of sparks forward, spreading them into the brush. On Rim Road, one foolishly owner fought to defend his earthly possessions with the feeble stream from his garden hose. A fire crew warned him of the danger he was in. He ignored them.
By four AM that house and six other houses were ablaze, creating an artificial dawn to the surrounding area. The homeowner was in an ambulance on his way to the hospital suffering from smoke inhalation and second degree burns.
By five o’clock, lightening pulsed within the storm clouds that moved in above the pallor of smoke. Thunder shook the valley. Children awoke and cried. Frightened by the storm, they hurried to be comforted by parents who hid their own fears of the fire.
Dawn came weakly. Shortly before six hail fell. Hard gusts of cold wind blasted across the lake, carrying sheets of rain with them. After the hot, sweat filled night people walked out of their houses, still in their pajamas. They stood looking to the sky, letting themselves be soaked by the cool, saving rains.
In the dim light of dawn, Grace hurried outside in her rain slicker. She gathered the sheets covering her roses, permitting the bushes to be bathed by the storm. She dropped the wet sheets in a heap on the patio and went in to make coffee.
Next door, Lucas was having his morning devotional. He said a word of thanks to God, certain that the rain was an answer to prayers.
At the Haskell house, Calley awoke with a start. A clap of thunder having entered her dreams as a gun shot. Her first thought was of Robert Goodman. She wished him dead. Her next thought was how she was shaking and needed something to calm her nerves. She rummaged through her nightstand, the bathroom vanity, and her dresser. She was almost in tears when she saw the yellow pill on the floor by the bed. When she put it to her tongue, her relief was akin to the sense of release she experienced, when taking communion.
Over the mountains, in Beaumont, the rain fell in more lightly but steadily. Traffic built. It slowed as people went to work and children to school.
Around nine o’clock an older sedan stopped in front of the Parks’s residence. A gray haired woman stepped out. After opening her umbrella, she hurried through the rain up the drive. She let herself in by the back door of the house.
“Mr. Parks it’s me, Elsie,” the housekeeper called.
No one answered. This was not unusual, her employer often went to work early or slept in late. She put her umbrella in the corner and hung her jacket on the peg, replacing it with an apron. In the kitchen she started coffee before going to the front door. The morning paper lay on the porch. So Mr. Parks was still in bed, she thought.
Elsie returned to the mudroom for a mo
p. The basement lights were on. She went down. Perhaps Mister Parks had fallen asleep on the sofa? But all was well. She was about to return upstairs when she realized that the red switch light for the wine room lights was on. Expecting nothing out of the ordinary she swung open the door.
*
Rain fell. Police cars lined the street. An ambulance waited at the curb but the attendants had nothing to do. Police hurried back and forth between the house and the Crime Scene Van parked in the drive.
Inside, down in the game room, Detective Ray Maddox took Elise Johnson’s statement. She was a tough old bird. Most people would be stammering trying to describe what she had found.
“Well Officer, I opened the door and the room was full of smoke. At first I thought there was a fire but then I realized that it was cigarette smoke. The room smelled horrible, sort of like a locker room, a bathroom and an old bar.
Then I saw the bodies. Mister Parks was on the table and the other was on the floor. I was afraid to go in. When I saw the red blood on the table, I was sure he was dead. But then he moved! Sakes alive, if he didn’t almost give me a heart attack! Now I was afraid of the man on the floor. I closed the door and locked the latch. Then I went upstairs to get Mister Parks’s gun from the study. That’s where I called the police from.”
“Then what did you do?”
“I waited for you to arrive. And I must say officer it seemed to take ever so long for you to respond.
“We do our best ma’am.”
“Who was the man on the floor?”
“He’s a killer who escaped during yesterday’s fire. He had a grudge against your boss.”
When the police arrived they had found Robert Goodman passed out beside two empty bourbon bottles. He was dancing close to the edge of death due to alcohol poisoning. The police carted him away cuffed and manacled to a gurney.
Parks was freed from the table, stinking of wine. He declined to be treated, insisting instead, upon going upstairs for a shower. Physically he was unhurt save for a small cut and a burn on his cheek, but what damage occurred within the man, the police had no way of knowing.
For Travis, who had always treated life as a game, the night was a conversion experience. On the wine table he lost his illusions of inevitable longevity. Afterward he lived with a metaphorical gun to his head, always certain of his own mortality. He lived more seriously and perhaps more fully.
He stopped taking clients he believed were guilty. Sensing few were innocent, he decided not long afterward to run for District Attorney. He narrowly won. In years to come, Travis became known for his zealous prosecution of offenders. In the courthouse, he was informally referred to as “No plea bargain, Parks.”
*
The rain fell unabated on Red Lake. Dirt and ash washed down the roads, streets, and culverts. From there it cascaded into the lake, muddying the water. The storm clouds dropped in minutes what would have taken fire bombers weeks to accomplish. By mid-morning the fire was beaten down and dying out.
The range above the town was denuded. It lay in ruins like the aftermath of a great war. The stunted trunks of blackened trees poked at the sky. The partial frames of despoiled houses or lone chimneys marked the ruins of people’s homes. Strange oases of green survived. Islands of earth that the fire skipped and left untouched.
Sheriff Gaines eyes swept the hillside. He had two escapees to track down. In all likelihood they were dead. The deputy who sheltered under the bridge reported they felt the air being sucked up by the fire. The prisoners were literally left holding their breath as the fire roared passed. Firefighters told him the road break caused the flames to leap, which probably saved the prisoners in the creek.
Gaines’s call sign came across the radio. He was informed of Goodman’s capture by the Beaumont police. It was incredible that Goodman got out. He found the news both a relief and disquieting. Though he was glad to have the killer back in custody, it worried him that he was able to escape the firestorm. If Goodman was alive, then where might Clarence Whitmore be?
*
Moses’ bar did a steady business. Between road closures and evacuations much of the regular crowd found the fire a ready excuse for ditching work. They drank beer and ordered fried food. The fire induced a mood of conviviality. They watched the news, while giving unheard and unheeded advice to the fire crews.
When Tanya Talbot announced the capture of Robert Goodman a wave of indignation swept the room.
“They should have shot the son of a bitch!” someone yelled from near the pool table.
“He should have burned in the fire!”
“Hell, he probably walked right through it. The guy’s a son of the devil himself.”
And so it went with people who did little and were unthreatened by the flames. They were filled with bravado and advice, confident that if it were up to them, “things” would be different.
*
Throughout the afternoon, evacuee’s returned home. Some found smoldering ruins of their life’s dreams. Others were spared. Across the hillside, neighbors hugged and wept in each others arms from loss or for joy. Some found God’s blessing in being spared, while others felt they were cursed. It was a rare person who looked at the devastation and said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Disaster brought an incubus of doubt.
Mid-afternoon the Lawton family returned to Sundance Lane. Their house was gone. The driveway ended at a pit of charred beams. Looking into what was their basement a few items were recognizable; one of them was a human leg.
The police came, as did the county coroner. Fire fighters worked through the debris to reach the victim. The man was laying face down his hands tucked under his face. Carefully, the Coroner’s men rolled the remains unto a stretcher board. The body was stiff. The arms remained tucked in a fetal position. When he was moved, they found a scorched pair of handcuffs joining his wrists.
It was soon apparent the community would no longer need to fear the escapees. Goodman was captured. Clarence Whitmore would never hurt anyone again.
Relieved by this news, Gaines went home to sleep. He could barely keep his eyes open. His wife greeted him at the door with a hug and a kiss; always glad when her man returned home safely. He said she fussed and worried too much but secretly he took pleasure in this familiar greeting.
Out of habit, he showered and shaved even though it was mid-afternoon. He slid in between the cool sheets and felt himself sink into the soft bed. His body ached. He could feel his years. How many more was he good for, he wondered? His wife Jane, came in and caressed his head, smoothing down the disheveled gray hair.
“You okay?”
“Uh huh,” he murmured.
“I heard you got your second man.”
“Yea, I did. And, you know, I’m glad he’s dead. There are people in this world that justice can’t seem to deal with. Whitmore was bent in such a way that I don’t think he could be straightened. Sort of a defect from birth.”
“What about Goodman?”
“I think he was bent by life. He might have been saved before he went off the deep end if we knew what we were doing. Unfortunately, we don’t see the signs until it’s too late.” Gaines paused before adding, “Injustice, breeds more injustice.”
His wife thought he was about to say something else, but his words trailed off into easy breathing. Her man was already asleep.
Grace heard a car pull into her driveway. Looking from her front door she saw Calley Haskell at the wheel of the car. Even at a distance she looked spent. When she stepped out, Grace was stunned by Calley’s weight loss. Jacob and Caleb piled out behind her and began splashing in puddles. Sarah remained seated reading in the front seat.
“Hi Grace. My sitter quit. Could you watch my kids for an hour? They canceled school today so I had to call in sick. I have a doctor’s appointment at four.”
Grace knew the kids from church, yet was hesitant to say yes. She was uncertain of her patience for children. It was over thirty years since she last babysat.
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“Please”, Calley pleaded.
“All right,” she agreed with some reluctance.
The boys played in the puddles. Sara came inside and quietly resumed reading.
Calley hurried off. She was eager to keep the appointment with her physician. By now she almost believed her story was true, that her children spilled the open pill container into the toilet.
An hour-and-a-half later Lucas stopped round. He was surprised to hear the sound of children in the house. Grace answered his knock, a smile on her face.
“I didn’t think I would enjoy children so much!”
Lucas could hear a sword fight in the other room as voices yelled, take that! And that! Ohhh... you got me.
“Whose are they?”
“The Haskell kids. Calley had a doctor’s appointment, but I think she simply needed a break. She’s lost her sitter. I guess Mrs. Deitz was rather emphatic about it. I don’t think she is coping very well, Lucas. Isn’t there something we can do?”
Lucas had asked himself that same question numerous times, ever since the Sheriff brought her to his house under the influence. He wondered if he was aiding and abetting what appeared to be drug abuse, by paying her mortgage. Tough love, the experts said. But what did experts know about living with your back to the wall or the needs of a woman who saw her daughter executed?
Grace interrupted his thoughts. “Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
Lucas realized a child was caterwauling in the living room. Moments later Grace returned with Caleb in her arms. The three year old held a hand to his head where he had caught an errant blow.
“What about Calley?” she asked.
“I think she’s slip-sliding away.”
“She’s been through hell.”
“You’re right. But, she’s on her way down. I’m at a loss as how to stop her. Hatred for Goodman is poisoning her whole life.”