by Becky Durfee
“There’s no way,” he muttered. “I feel like shit.”
And now he’s hung over, Jenny thought as a sigh of frustration escaped her, and he will be just as useless as he was last night when he wasn’t home.
He continued to speak in a pathetic mumble, “Can you get me a glass of water and something for this headache?”
Jenny closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She had been wrong before—this was going to be worse than him not being home. Now, not only was he failing to help her with the baby, but apparently she would have to take care of him as well. Considering he’d done this to himself, however, her sympathy was minimal. “I don’t know. I’ll see. The baby is fussy, so you may have to wait.”
“I think I’m dying.”
She merely shook her head and walked out of the room, whispering to herself, “I’m sorry if your night of fun was too much for you to handle.”
Steve’s cries became more insistent as she approached the living room, where he’d been sleeping in his bassinet. Her eyes traveled back and forth between the baby and the unfinished picture, which she really wanted to complete before the image of the girl left her mind. At that moment, she remembered a gift she had gotten from her sister-in-law—a mother of two who presumably knew what she was doing. Heading into the guest bedroom, she pulled out a baby carrier that enabled her to strap the baby to her stomach and still keep her hands free. Perhaps this was the solution she was looking for.
After a little bit of manipulation, she was able to get the baby situated, and he seemed content. She felt a little bit of resentment melt away as she picked up her pencil and continued to sketch. For a moment, she deliberated bringing Zack some medicine, but she decided against it. She had bigger and better things to worry about.
In walked the dog. “Hey, Baxter,” Jenny said casually, without taking her eyes from the drawing, responding only to the clacking of his nails on the hardwood floor. Her pencil stayed on the canvas until a clumsy nudge from the dog’s nose forced her to remove it. She scratched Baxter’s head quickly. “I’m trying to work here, buddy.” After resuming her drawing for only a second, the dog prodded her again, this time with a little more urgency.
She sat back in her chair, releasing a big sigh. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “I already fed you and gave you water, and you have a dog door. What could you possibly want from me?” Looking down, she was met with big, harmless brown eyes, and her resolve softened a bit. “I’m sorry, Bax. I’m just busy right now. Go jump on daddy. He told me he wants you to jump on him.”
The dog didn’t look amused.
“You want a bully stick? Let’s get you a bully stick.” After a quick trip to the pantry, the dog ventured off to the corner of the room to chew until his heart was content, and Jenny sat down once more to continue her picture. “I swear to God,” she muttered, “one more interruption is going to put me over the edge.”
As if on cue, the baby started to fuss in the carrier.
The smell of steak and cheese subs filled the car, causing Jenny’s stomach to rumble as she approached her destination. She parked a little closer this time, lessening the distance she’d have to walk with the mountains of stuff she’d brought with her.
As she loaded up the bottom of the stroller with groceries, the sentiments of Timothy Reynolds’ children echoed in her head. Was she enabling Mick by bringing him this food? Or was she giving a much-needed hand to a deserving man who was down on his luck?
If only life came with a manual.
Either way, she knew she was only bringing a man a fish. She would have much rather been teaching him to fish, but the way to make that happen wasn’t immediately clear to her yet. In the meantime, a simple fish delivery would have to do.
She pushed the stroller containing as much as she could fit and a bundled-up baby toward the bridge, where she did see Mick sitting there, just as he said he would be. He stood up and waved to her she approached, taking a few steps in her direction when she got closer. “Hello,” Jenny eventually said, “how are you today?”
“Can’t complain,” Mick replied.
Can’t complain. That’s all Jenny seemed to be doing lately, and she had a lot more working in her favor than Mick did.
“Something smells good,” he added.
“It’s the lunch I promised you. I hope you like steak and cheese.”
“Steak and cheese,” he muttered with an air of disbelief. “I haven’t had one of those in ages.”
“Well, you’re about to now.” The stroller came to a stop, where Jenny applied the brake. The baby had fallen asleep and was snuggly warm with blankets, so she let him be.
She pulled two sandwiches and two sodas out of the bag on her shoulder, handing Mick’s over to him.
“I wish I had better accommodations to offer,” he said with a touch of shame in his voice.
“No worries,” Jenny replied, gently positioning herself on the ground. The concrete beneath her felt cold against her bottom, but an inexplicable warmth began to fill her veins. She couldn’t help but feel that Rodriguez was there dining with them. “So…I know it’s a long shot, but were you able to find out any information about who killed the man in the park?”
He took a large bite of his sandwich, followed by a grunt of approval. Tucking the food into his cheek, he replied, “I found out some stuff, but I don’t know how useful it is.”
“Try me.”
“There’s a guy who comes around here from time to time selling weed. He’s small time, not like some of the other guys who deal the hard core stuff. He said he remembered the night of the attack…that he was supposed to meet someone for a buy that night, but when he showed up, there were cops everywhere, so he turned around and left.”
Jenny mulled that over. “Weed…would that make you hallucinate and hear voices?”
Mick shook his head, making a sound that indicated the answer was no.
She furrowed her brow as she thought some more. “The cops were already there when the dealer showed up?”
“Apparently. He said he saw the flashing lights from a ways away…tons of them…and turned right around. He was curious about what had happened, but he also had a hefty-jail-sentence-worth of weed on him, so he didn’t bother to stick around and ask. It wasn’t until the next day that he learned about the guy getting killed.”
“Was the victim the person who was supposed to buy from him?”
Mick shook his head once again. “He didn’t know that guy.”
“Maybe our killer was his customer, then. Did this dealer know of anyone else who would be at the park that night?”
“He didn’t mention any…but then again, if he suspected that one of his customers—or one of the other drug dealers—was responsible for this, he wouldn’t have said anything anyway. Snitching is the number one no-no around here. People have been killed for a lot less.”
Panic suddenly filled Jenny’s heart. “I didn’t put you in any danger by asking you to snoop around for me, did I?”
Mick shrugged nonchalantly. “I was careful. I didn’t ask any of the hard core dealers, and I brought it up like it was casual conversation to the guys I did speak to.”
“Well, I appreciate it.” Words filled Jenny’s ears. Glancing around to make sure no one else was there, she added, “I think I may have just gotten another contact from Rodriguez.”
Mick’s bright blue eyes looked at her intently, but he didn’t speak.
“I’m not sure what it means, and I don’t think I’ll even be able to say it correctly, but the message is…” She mustered up her best Australian accent. “G’day, mate.”
He stared incredulously for what seemed like an eternity before letting out a weak laugh, looking down at the ground with an involuntary smile.
“Care to tell me what this is about?”
“Seriously, who told you about this?” Mick asked.
“Seriously, Rodriguez,” she replied in a similar tone. “I promise you, I’m a psychic. I have no
ulterior motive, and this is not a prank. Honestly, I don’t know how else I would have been able to figure out who you are, let alone who you used to know. I’m not that resourceful. Besides, these days I’m so damn tired I can’t even remember why I went into the kitchen half the time; there’s no way I would just come up with this for something to do.”
Mick said nothing.
Jenny took a sip from her caffeine-free soda and then asked, “So, do I get to hear the story or not?”
The smile returned, and Mick ran his hand over his long, messy hair. “We were stationed in Pennington, North Carolina at the time. We’d gone out one night, a bunch of us, and Rodriguez met this girl. She was a cute little thing, and she had an Australian accent. She said she was from Sydney. He was totally psyched about it, but halfway through the night I noticed some slips in her accent. I guess as she got drunker, she wasn’t able to keep it up.”
“Slips? You mean she was faking the accent?”
“Yup. I could tell she was, so I started pressing her, asking her questions about what Sydney was like. You could tell she was getting frazzled. Rodriguez just kept punching me in the arm because he thought I was going to ruin it for him. It turns out I didn’t ruin anything; he ended up hooking up with her in our buddy’s car out in the parking lot that night.”
Jenny curled her nose. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Sure does. But it doesn’t end there. He got her phone number and took her out a few nights later.”
“Did she fake the accent again?”
“In a way—this time she pretended to be from New York City.”
“What?”
“I know. It turns out she was crazy. I mean, completely psycho. He didn’t call her again after that, but she had his number, and she kept calling him…like, ten times a day. She wouldn’t let it go. He was actually starting to get a little frightened. He wasn’t sure what she was capable of.”
“How did it end?”
The joy left Mick’s face. “We got deployed.”
Jenny felt the levity around her deflate. “Was that the fateful deployment?”
A slow nod indicated she had been correct.
She cleared her throat as an awkward silence fell over them. This appeared to be as good of a time as any to address the obvious. “So, is it safe for me to assume that your deployment has something to do with how you came to be living out here?” she asked softly. “Did you have a tough time adjusting when you came back?”
He nodded again, with a quiet, emotion-filled, “Yup.”
“Care to tell me about it?”
“Not much to tell,” he said, shrugging. “I saw some horrible shit over there. I mean horrible shit. And when I came home, I couldn’t turn it off. It’s like I was still there. Every time I closed my eyes to try to go to sleep at night, I was right back there again, living in hell.
“I discovered the only way I could get any sleep at all was to drink myself into oblivion,” he continued. “I would pass out, essentially…make it so my body physically couldn’t stand to be awake any longer. But then, when I’d wake up, I would feel like ass.” He sucked in a deep, regretful breath. “A lot of days I’d be so hung over I couldn’t even get out of bed. I lost my first few jobs that way. There’s only so many times you can call in sick—or not call, in some cases—before your boss reaches his limit.”
Jenny nodded with understanding before speaking softly. “You can get help with that, you know…the nightmares and stuff.”
“I know,” Mick replied without resentment, “but none of it seemed fast enough. Talk therapy, maybe some meds that would take several weeks to kick in…I wanted relief now. I needed relief now. Do you know how horrible it is to see death and destruction every time you close your eyes?”
She let out a laugh that she knew was inappropriate, but she explained, “Yes, actually, I do.”
“Are you a vet?”
“No…but I am a psychic, and this latest contact I’ve been dealing with—not Rodriguez, but the other one—has killed at least three people. Luckily for me,” she added sarcastically, “he’s letting me see these killings through his own eyes. Every time I’m about to drift off to sleep, it seems, he’s depicting another scene in my head—a scene where I strangle someone or bludgeon them with rocks. It’s absolutely horrific, and I can’t stop it. So, yes, I do know what it’s like to be haunted by graphic images every time you try to sleep.”
“How long has this been going on for you?”
“Not long,” Jenny replied, “a few days. But I can see where it would make me crazy after a while. I can’t even imagine if I thought this was going to be permanent.” She looked down at the ground. “I honestly don’t blame you for drinking, if it made you feel better at the time.”
“It didn’t make me feel better; it made me feel numb, but that was the best I could do. The problems is, I drank too much—for too long. I started to reach a point where I didn’t feel right unless I had a few drinks in me. Being sober actually hurt.”
“Forgive me for asking this, but didn’t you have any family that could have helped you?”
“I did, and they tried. My parents took me in for a while, but that didn’t help, really. All it did was give me a roof over my head while I kept getting fired over and over again. In their defense, they truly did everything they could to get me to stop screwing up my life, but I was too far gone. Eventually, they kicked me out, thinking that if I had to actually support myself, I’d have no choice but to straighten out and fly right. Obviously, that didn’t work, either. But I don’t blame them for kicking me out. I probably would have done it a lot sooner, to tell you the truth. I mean, really…how long are you supposed to support your jobless, alcoholic, free-loading, piece-of-shit adult son?”
Jenny closed her eyes in a long blink before saying, “I wouldn’t call you a free-loading piece of shit. You had a hard time adjusting after the war, that’s all.”
He didn’t reply.
“So, is that when you came to live out here?”
“Well, there were some stops in between. A few friends took me in, mostly my former Marine buddies. You know, Semper Fi, Oorah.”
Jenny’s stomach did a flip. There was something undeniably attractive about that oorah, especially when it came from somebody who had earned the right to say it.
Mick continued without missing a beat. “It didn’t take long before each of my buddies found an excuse for me to move back out, though. And, again, I can’t say I blame them. Even then I didn’t. I eventually came to terms with the fact that I was going to be a burden to anyone who agreed to house me, and I didn’t want to do that to anybody. So, ta da! Here I am. Home sweet home.”
“Again, forgive me for saying this, but you don’t seem like you still have that drinking problem.”
“I don’t; I use all of my panhandling money to buy food, not alcohol.”
Jenny glanced back to her stroller full of groceries and immediately questioned her decision. She didn’t have time to dwell on that notion, however, because she began to feel a tug in the pit of her stomach. “Shit,” she whispered as she looked at the stroller, and then at Mick, and then back at the stroller. Goddamn Zack. He was supposed to be there with her at times like this. She didn’t know where she was going to be led, and she certainly didn’t want to go there alone with the baby. What if it was somewhere unsafe? But she couldn’t leave the baby with Mick.
Friggin Zack and his Goddamn hangover.
“Come on,” she said to Mick with a gesture of the hand.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Just come on.”
Releasing the brake of the stroller, she began to push it toward Hammond Park, with a very confused Mick trailing a few steps behind. Soon, she found herself at the location where Timothy Reynolds had been killed. The bright, midday sun disappeared, replaced by the dim illumination from a few weak overhead lights barely penetrating the nighttime sky. Timothy’s mutilated body lay in front
of her as she looked around in a panic. Nobody near the playground. Nobody on the fields. Nothing but a familiar pick-up truck in the parking lot. Apparently, she had been unseen.
But she had done it again. Dammit. The anxiety that had filled her body before the murder was completely gone, replaced by an agonizing feeling of regret. She had killed somebody again. Pounding her fists into her head, she walked briskly toward the truck. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”
From the parking lot, she looked back at the lifeless body of a man who, just minutes ago, was sleeping peacefully. She noted the bench meant for young soccer players just behind him; kids could not see this. This mess needed to be cleaned up as soon as possible. Before the sun came up. She reached into her pocket as she got into the truck, dialing the number she’d seen plastered on signs all over the place. The woman on the other end answered quickly. “Crime stoppers.”
The vision faded, and Jenny was left looking at Mick’s bewildered face. He apparently noticed the change in her demeanor, because he asked, “What was that about?”
Jenny flashed him a smile. “I may not know who the killer is, but at least now I know what he drove.”
Chapter 7
“It was a dark pick-up truck, although I can’t say for sure what color,” Jenny said to Kyle over the phone, nursing her baby in the comfort of her recliner.
“Do you know what make and model?”
“You’re lucky I know that type of truck is called a pick-up.”
Kyle let out a chuckle. “Okay, was it big or small?”
Jenny sighed as she recalled the image. “Medium?”
“Did it look like it had a back row of seats?”
“Maybe a small one. It didn’t look big enough for a full set of seats. It also had one of those silver tool boxes across the back, right behind the passenger compartment.”
“That’s helpful,” Kyle replied, “in more ways than one.”
Jenny understood the implications; this was a working-man’s truck. “I’ve also got the picture of the latest victim just about complete. I started to do a little bit of a search on my own, trying to figure out who she is, but I haven’t gotten very far. The baby has other designs for my time.”