The Case

by Lee Cunningham

  Kate had drifted almost off to sleep, but struggled, just a little, to answer Shane through the fog of her consciousness. She said in a soft, sleepy voice, “My dad used to say that the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. Try that, honey.” And then she was asleep.

  Shane drifted off to sleep a short while later, thinking how lucky he was to have Kate. She was smart, beautiful, kind, caring and skilled…so very skilled in many different things. He vowed he would never let her go. He also promised himself to do everything he could to be the best for her, to make her happy.

  Just before sleep took over completely, he saw his beautiful Kate, talking to her father about a problem. Her dad was saying, “The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. Try that, honey.”

  11

  “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

  (Edmund Burke)

  Heath woke up early, as usual, unable to get a good night’s sleep. He stayed in his motel bed thinking, wondering if he should pull the sheets up over his head, like he had done as a child. Maybe the bad dreams would stop then, and maybe then, he could really sleep, really rest. He couldn’t recall having a good night’s sleep since he had become addicted to meth, many years ago.

  Meth had started out as his friend, it seemed. But over the years, he depended on meth more and more, first to party, then to feel higher, faster, and stronger. Then, suddenly, it seemed he needed the meth to feel something, then to avoid feeling pain, and finally…he just needed the habit. He never knew why. It teased, manipulated, and deserted him, laughing at his weakness, destroying his life. And meth continued to laugh, while his real life slipped away, out of his grasp forever.

  Meth had snuck up on him, ambushing him from behind at first, and finally taunting and tormenting him head on, every day. How had it come to this, he had wondered so many times? It all started as a seemingly harmless social outlet, a way to meet people and party. The young girls he thought he wanted to know seemed obsessed with drugs in those days…and obsessed with sex, which was even more important back then than the meth.

  The meth made the sex better, he had believed. But that too turned out to be a lie. He wondered, trying to remember when he knew that the high was a lie, too. But he couldn’t recall much now.

  Heath had struggled, over the last few years, trying to remember all that had really happened during those years. But as hard as he tried, he just couldn’t seem to clearly focus well enough to see his past life. True, the meth had become his reason for living a long time ago…so long ago, but when? Had it really happened as slowly as it now seemed, the meth becoming his reason for living?

  Over time, meth had taken the first and foremost position of priority in his life, even over his children and his wife. Shit! It had become his life...before it totally replaced his wife, his children, and his career.

  Heath had met his real wife at a party, and they had done meth on their first “date.” But he was partying hard by then, and she was not. She eventually wanted a home and a family. She stopped using, and wanted him alone, without the meth. She wanted a clean, sober him...a real partner in life.

  He had been sure he could do both, so he lied to her. He loved her, he thought. And then the kids came along. They were married after the birth…twin girls. His wife wanted things that cost money, but he made a lot of money, so it was all good...for a while.

  But the partying cost too much money. He had friends he supplied with meth, but they wouldn’t come around when he was out, so he couldn’t be out. They were his friends. He needed friends to fill the hole in his soul that seemed to be insatiable. He couldn’t remember why he had been so miserable. He was so happy before the meth took him, mind, body, and soul.

  Heath had his landscape business for show, but eventually he had to make ends meet by selling meth. There was so much more money in selling meth, than cutting grass and designing landscapes, even running five crews in his own business. And he needed more money, always more money, to keep it all going. There was never enough. Everyone always wanted more from him…always more.

  At first, he only sold to friends, his closest friends. But in the end, he sold to his friend’s closest friends, and their friends, and their acquaintances, and strangers. They all looked up to him. He had more friends, finally, than he knew what to do with. He couldn’t even remember all their names. But he thought he had needed them, and he liked all the attention he got.

  And then, there were the young women. Gorgeous young women, with magnificent bodies, all craving their first taste of meth, and partying with him anytime he wanted them. He wanted them a lot at first, but not so much, later. But they all wanted him all the time. He had the meth. He was the man, the big shot. He had helped them out, he thought. It seemed in the end, he worked all the time to keep it going…the partying, the sex, the good times.

  But finally, he sold to a friend of a friend, who quickly accelerated the frequency of his purchases, and increased the weight. This guy wanted heavier weight, and more often…always more. Everyone wanted more, and more often. He tried to slow the guy down by jacking up the price, but this guy didn’t care.

  Heath was making great money, he thought, phenomenally more than in the landscape business. In the end, he decided he didn’t even really need the landscape business. It was slowing him down anyway. He let it slip away. His wife wasn’t happy about his decision, but he knew best. He paid all the bills, after all. She just took care of the kids.

  Then there were the kids. Doctors, and soccer, and dancing, and gymnastics, and homework, and projects, and scouting, and a new SUV to drive them around in…it was all overwhelming. Heath’s wife and kids were dragging him down, interfering with his real life, he had thought. He was the man. His friends needed him to keep it all going…and he had needed his friends.

  He couldn’t even remember when he had taken time to go to a school play, or one of the kid’s games. He had thought, they were getting older anyway, and wanted to be with their own friends, on overnight stays. His kids had their mom and their friends now. And his wife had her gym, and her friends she went with to yoga, and shopping, where she spent even more money. Heath recalled that one day, his wife told him she was singing in a church choir. Now, his wife had her kids, her church, and her God.

  Heath didn’t even go to church. Why would he, he had wondered? What could God offer him that he didn’t already have? He didn’t need more friends, or another girl on the side, or a faster car, or more money. What was left that he really, really needed?

  But then came the knock on the door, and the guns and the police…with a SWAT team. And he was arrested, in front of his wife and kids, for sales of methamphetamine, on multiple felony counts, they said. The guy he had sold heavier weight to more often, had been arrested and turned informant. Heath remembered being pissed off at the guy. He was trying to do this guy a favor to meet his needs, and the guy turned out to be a rat, he had thought.

  But, Heath found a good lawyer who said he could get him off. He needed to pay the attorney 50 large. He could handle that. He needed to sell more meth, but he couldn’t. His attorney said they would be watching him. He needed to stop selling, but he knew he couldn’t stop using. And he needed money for the attorney, and money for his meth.

  Pete was there, and Pete had helped him so many times. He’d call Pete, and Pete would drive him home, when Heath was too drunk or drugged out to drive. Pete had sobered him up and made promises to Heath’s wife to help him straighten up for good. And Pete’s wife, Claire, had always been there for him, too. They would loan him the money he needed, he thought. And they did loan him money, at first. A lot of money.

  Heath tried to remember it all now, through the fog in his mind. He had gone to Pete and Claire repeatedly, so many times. He needed more money for the attorney, his wife and kids, the bills and the meth he was using…still using. He couldn’t stop using. The meth was insa
tiable…it wouldn’t leave him alone. It demanded more.

  Pete finally said he wouldn’t help him anymore. They had fought about it, too many times. They had said ugly words to each other...words that hurt all the way down to the bone. Some things Heath had said, he knew even now, he could never take back. He and Pete were done. He thought Pete was the loser in the deal. After all, it was Heath that was the real man.

  And Heath still had friends, lots of them. They would help him out now, when he was down, he had thought. He called them all…one at a time, until he ran out of phone numbers. Not one of them said they could help him. None of the girls could do anything for him. They all said the same thing, one by one. They were all done with him. He couldn’t offer them anything they wanted, now.

  “Those bitches,” he recalled thinking. He had done everything for them. The weed, the booze, the parties, the hotel rooms, the food, and, most of all, the meth he had wasted on those ungrateful bitches and their friends. Now, they wouldn’t even return his calls. They wouldn’t even share what little meth they had, after all he had given them!

  But Claire had a soft spot for Heath, ever since his parents had been killed in the car crash. She had wanted children. He and Shane had become her kids. Shane didn’t need Claire now that he was off playing cop, but Heath did need her. And Claire needed to feel needed, like a mom. Claire started giving Heath money…money Pete didn’t even know about it. When that wasn’t enough, she gave him her old jewelry to sell. But that soon ran out, too. The meth demanded more, always more.

  When Claire was too sick to realize what he was doing, he just took her jewelry. She probably would have let him have it anyway, he told himself. But then, after a few months, she was sicker, and the jewelry wasn’t enough. He had already stolen everything she had…even her wedding set she couldn’t wear…her fingers too thin now, from the cancer. She didn’t have any good jewelry left for him to steal.

  Heath stole other things from her and Pete, too. There was the art work, and a silver service her grandmother had given her. But she didn’t need those things anymore. She probably wasn’t going to survive the cancer anyway, he thought. He didn’t think what he was doing was so bad, and if it was, he didn’t really care. Somebody owed him something! After all, he had been the man, and he had given so much away to so many people!

  As her cancer progressed, Claire needed more pain meds, and one day, he found her OxyContin. Heath knew he could trade “oxy” for meth. “Oh, happy days!” he remembered thinking. Heath knew he needed the meth more than she needed the oxy. She was old, and she was stronger than he was anyway, he rationalized. But soon, the oxy she had just wasn’t enough.

  But then, there were Clair’s other drugs. One of Heath’s suppliers was an illegal alien. The wetback’s mom had cancer, too, and needed the same drugs Claire was taking. This guy said he would trade him big amounts of meth for those drugs, to keep his mom alive.

  This guy’s mom was having a hard time getting the drugs from Mexico, and she wasn’t strong enough to leave the house anymore. They wanted to avoid the cops and immigration. This guy’s whole family was illegal, and Heath leveraged them. He thought Claire wouldn’t miss a few pills. But soon, he was taking them all, all for the meth. Everything, by then, was always for the meth. Claire knew it was happening, and yet, she never said a word.

  As Heath lay in bed thinking, trying to recall, he remembered one of the last days he had seen Claire. She had called him and asked that he come over and see her. She kissed him goodbye and said she wouldn’t be taking anymore pills. She was crying. She said she didn’t have any more jewelry. She said there was nothing left for Heath to take. And she said Pete had finally discovered what had been happening. She told him Pete was furious. She begged Heath to stop the meth…one more time she pleaded. It was to be her last time.

  Heath remembered how he had yelled at her, telling her she was selfish “bitch.” It was bad timing for him! Didn’t she realize that? He tried to guilt her into giving him more…more of anything. But she just cried and cried. She said she didn’t have any more of anything to give him now. He had taken all she had to give. And now she was dying. He left, thinking that even her dying was selfish. She had let herself off the hook with him. She must not even care about him, he had thought.

  And then, before he knew it, he was being sentenced to prison, just a week after he had left her crying alone in her bed. He had been found guilty. It had turned out that even his lawyer was a scammer, and just wanted more from him. Now Heath remembered all that money he had wasted on his attorney. The attorney was just like everyone else. Everyone wanted all that he had to give. All, because of the meth. The meth had made him weak, powerless, defenseless.

  And then, abruptly, it was all gone. He lost the cars and the house…and now even his wife was going to leave him. She said he wouldn’t be seeing his kids. He couldn’t even recall the last time he had seen them. They had lost their place in his life to the meth, like everyone and everything else.

  Now he remembered that both his wife and Claire had cried, as he had walked away, distancing himself from them and their pathetic sobbing. They were useless to him. He didn’t need them and their feelings. He had needed the meth…only the meth…or so he had thought.

  Heath recalled how, back then, he felt totally abandoned by everyone, even Shane, who was always gone working some new case. And when Shane was around, he wanted them to go hiking and camping, or spend a day at the beach, or have dinner and go to a movie. Heath was pissed at the world back then. He hadn’t needed a fucking movie with his brother. He had only needed the METH!

  But he went to prison…and all at once, no more meth came to relieve the pain. He went through withdrawals that made him cramp and sweat, and ache all over, like he had the worst case of flu imaginable. Then it got worse, while his cold, sterile cell offered him no comfort.

  He had tremors and shook with alternating chills and fever. He vomited, and when he wasn’t vomiting, he was so nauseous he couldn’t eat. His heart pounded almost out of this chest, and he couldn’t breathe normally. He thought he was going to die.

  And then, when he felt the worst, he had to leave the little security his cell provided, to walk outside into the general population, and interact with guards and inmates. He didn’t know any of them. And none of them seemed to care about Heath in the least.

  But through it all, the only thing he could really think about was the craving…the incessant craving for the METH! He prayed the pain and craving would stop…but it held on tight to his mind, his body, and his soul.

  In prison, the guards didn’t care about his whining. No one cared. He was all alone. He didn’t fit in with the tweakers, or the bikers, or the black gangs, or the Mexican gangs, or the white supremacists. He was all alone and being alone wasn’t good in prison. Heath remembered learning that you had to be connected in the joint, just to survive.

  But he didn’t want to survive, until the withdrawals diminished, and Shane came to see him for the first time. Shane promised to help him once he was released. Heath remembered sitting in prison and wishing he had listened to Shane’s pleading for him to stop abusing drugs, long before all the trouble began. Over time he began to hope for a future, away from the pain the drugs had brought to his pathetic life.

  He eventually wished he could do it all over. He wanted his old life back. His wife and kids meant the world to him, now that he didn’t have them. He could even make it up to Claire and Pete when he got out. He could pay them back. He had thought, “I will pay them back, if it takes the rest of my life,” he had committed to himself. He would show the world he had changed, and he vowed to be good, responsible and happy, once more. And most of all, he would be at peace, focusing only on the people in the world who were important…his family and true friends, if he had any left that still wanted him.

  And then Shane came to see him in prison, to tell him the news about Claire. She had died a horrible and painful death. Pete was devastated, and Sha
ne said he didn’t know what he could do to help Pete. Shane had cried, reminiscing about all Claire and Pete had meant to him and Heath, and how Claire had taken the place of a mother in their lives. She had been a saint to the boys, and now she was gone.

  Shane had asked Heath to call Pete and tell him how sorry he was that Claire had died. But Heath knew that Shane didn’t understand why Claire had died so soon, and why she had been in so much pain. Claire hadn’t taken the medicine she had needed for months. Heath understood, even as he had tried to forget.

  He couldn’t forget, though, and sat in prison day after day, for years, thinking about his failures, his life, the troubles and pain he had caused his family. He knew he had killed Claire. He never called Pete. He just couldn’t. And Shane didn’t understand why he couldn’t call, or why Pete refused to talk about Heath.

  Heath remembered the final realization he had while sitting in prison one day, alone in his cell. He knew then he could never make anything up to Pete and Claire. His time had come and gone for that. There were no more chances, not for him. That ship had sailed. There was no hope for him to be a part of his family again.

  Even Heath’s wife had remarried, and Heath had allowed the new “dad” to adopt his kids, at her urging. He had also given up visitation, and any future custodial rights. It had seemed the right thing to do, when he had last seen his wife, on a prison visitation. She didn’t even want to look at Heath, or have their children see him, especially in prison.

  The new guy she spoke of was someone she had met in church, of all places. The kids would be better off without Heath after all, he had thought. At least this new guy was normal, a stock broker, he had heard. Heath’s beautiful twin daughters would forget him. And maybe someday, he, too, could forget…he hoped.

  Heath desperately wanted to forget the pain he had caused, and the hole that was left in his soul, by all that meth had taken from him. He wondered if he could ever find some semblance, or at least, some hope of peace.