The One Way (Changes Book 1)

by Ted Persinger

  “Danny, you can’t keep blaming yourself,” he began.

  “Scott…too soon…” Jim reproached, eyes scolding. “Let him...” and his head nod said the rest.

  “Sorry.” He paused for a second, but felt he needed to say, “I’m here for you, Danny. You know that.”

  Danny could only nod his head. He was covering Scott’s shoulder with tears and sweat and saliva and snot. He had done that before once, when blackout drunk, and Scott had always teased him about it. He had saved the shirt to show him the next day. He knew Scott wouldn’t do so this time.

  As his vision cleared, he looked around. Most of the guests were leaving. Only a few lingered. He was relieved to see Meghan leaving, walking with Melissa’s mother…a hunched, older woman, with too many cares to stand upright. Several of their family surrounded them, including a few he didn’t recognize. Thankfully, Meghan didn’t look back at him or the grave. He knew he didn’t have the strength to face her. He also knew it was cowardly to hide as he was, but he was good at that lately. She deserved to have her say to him. He had robbed her of her sister, and it was only appropriate that she be allowed to yell at him…to curse him…to spit on him…to tell him the truth about himself. But he knew he couldn't face it now, so he was happy to see her go. What kind of man am I? he thought. That’s her family. Am I so wretched that I can’t face her mother and sister and give them the peace they deserve? He knew the answer, and sadly accepted it. Hiding was all he had.

  It was Jim who saw them begin to remove the lowering frame. Two men in overalls had appeared from nowhere. He knew that soon they would begin to toss dirt on the coffin of his brother’s wife. Danny wouldn’t have the strength for this.

  “Let’s get out of here. Everybody’s gone already,” he lied. “Let’s get you back to my place. We can talk there.”

  Without protest, Danny let Scott and Jim walk him to the car. In the passenger seat, he leaned his head against the window. Too weak for a final look. Too frail to think of anything at all. He simply sat and let himself be driven. Eyes unfocused. Mind whirling with images of ashes. The ride home was a blur. He was awake, but his mind wasn’t recording. The car hummed out of East Lawn Cemetery. They moved down Folsom Boulevard, past the small residential streets, where small box stuccos gave way to large old brick homes. Danny’s thoughts drifted back over the last few days.

  II

  Scott and Jim were with him that night. Just four days before. In the police station, they had held him, supported him. Spoke soft words to him. He could not stand. The path before him was both long and narrow…that path was pain and torment, with destruction and ruin waiting in the woods on either side.

  It was a path he knew he must walk alone. He knew things would never be the same. They both looked at him with sad eyes, knowing the same. They could see the vacant eyes and they knew. Like looking at the empty windows of a burned-out house, they knew all was scorched and charred detritus inside. His life from before was filth and ashes and emptiness. His new road was a valley of charred, smoking remains.

  They all understood this clearly.

  As Danny spoke to the police officers, his brother and best friend stayed by his side. They were there, shoulders to lean on. They heard him tell the story, between sobs and wails of despair. They looked down, faces pale. Danny was twitching. Jerking. Legs. Hands. He was unable to be still. Sipping water from a Styrofoam cup took concentration. He recounted the events. How he had pulled over in the hot afternoon, coming home early from work, when he had seen their car on the side of the road, hood up, steam venting. Two men waved to him. As he got out to help, the older, larger man had pulled a gun and shot at him, but missed and hit his wife. The younger man jumped into the driver’s seat, and they sped off in his wife’s Accord. “How was I to know their car was stolen? How was I to know who these men were and what they had done?” he asked plaintively, to anybody who could hear him. They had no answers, though. No words of wisdom. Just forms to sign. The police officer did take on the same expression of Scott and Jim. Looking down. Avoiding eye contact, yet still working vigorously on his forms. But he had no comforting words. Nobody had the words. Nobody could offer Danny anything. Coffee. They offered him coffee.

  He expected someone to know what to say. He would look at them expectantly. Pleading eyes. Expecting some logic in this madness. He would wait for words that would help him. The dark uniforms. Neckties. Patches and guns. Shouldn’t they have the words? Couldn’t they make sense of it all for him?

  But the police officer was there for paperwork. He was there to do his job and earn his paycheck. They filled out forms together. The officer wrote his statement out for him, along with a stack of forms. Danny signed them dutifully, though his twitching hands made his writing illegible. The paperwork had to get done. That was their mission, after all…write a narrative of blood and death, and then add it to their collection. How many similar stories of death and despair had they written? How many men had cried for their murdered wives? How many women told stories of rape or abuse? How many dead children? How many tears? Oceans of tears.

  When it was time, he was taken to the county coroner, located near the DMV where Danny had taken his driver’s test as a teenager. It was nearly midnight. At the coroner’s, there was a wall of dark silence, pierced by the clank of keys and unlocking of safety doors, the buzz of entry, the grind of metal latches, the slam of steel doors. The officer that took him had a clipboard, and it was thick with forms. It’s all about forms and documentation, isn’t it? Nobody can die without paperwork. Danny was bracketed by Scott and Jim. Not a word was spoken. He was led down several hallways, to the cold metal door to the cold metal room with the cold metal table. He saw her form. She was waiting for him, covered with a white sheet.

  Danny stopped dead, eyes riveted on her.

  Scott and Jim stood soldierly at his side. As the white-coated man walked to the other side of the table, Danny’s heart raced. He knew it was coming. A silent scream rang in his mind. She’s there…I’m going to see her. God no! But it happened too quickly for him to pull away. The white-coated man grabbed the sheet at the top, then pulled it down to her breasts.

  And there she was. No more terror on her face. Blank stare to the ceiling. Eyes empty. Mouth slightly ajar. They had cleaned her. The blood that had covered her face and chest was gone. Her hair was damp, darker. Not sandy, but brown. Not curly, but combed straight. Like she had just stepped out of the shower. He could see the entry wound, now devoid of blood. An empty hole, centerpoint. Two inches below her collarbone. Entry wound the size of a dime. He could see white sternum bone and pink tissue inside that hole. Her skin was gray. No blood filled her flesh. She was a dry, empty husk on that cold metal table in the cold metal room.

  He expected to break when he saw her, but he had nothing left. He was as empty as the hole in her chest. No tears for his wife. No emotion. Weakness was all he had left. He was as white as Melissa. His knees began to shake, and nearly gave out. He put his right hand on the cold metal table to catch himself, and his hand touched her forearm. Cold as ice.

  “Mister Shields, is this your wife, Melissa Ann Shields?” The voice was practiced. Demanding, yet respectful. As devoid of life as her body before him.

  He tried to say yes, but nothing came out. He nodded his head.

  “Thank you. Please take a seat outside. I have some forms we need to complete.” The sheet was pulled back over her face. He would only see her face once more.

  They led him from the metal room. In the outer room, two more corpses, covered in sheets, were on gurneys. He knew who they were without being told. They were men, and he recognized their sizes and shapes, even though nothing of them showed. One larger, heavyset. One small and lean. He knew others tonight would walk into the cold metal room just as he had done. They would feel broken as he did now. He wanted to feel hate for them, but couldn’t at this moment. He knew the tears others would shed, no matter the circumstances of their demise. His loss info
rmed his understanding of their loss.

  He was struck by the immense waste of it all. Three lives, gone in a few hours. Three funerals to plan. On this hot May day. For what? A car?

  A technician approached with more forms and a large yellow envelope.

  “Mister Shields, I have your wife’s personal effects. I need to account for them with you, and have you sign for them.” Danny said nothing, but stood ready. The man pulled the red drawstring, then shook the items out. They clanged on the metal desk. He looked at these items and knew them all. “Two gold stud earrings. A Timex watch. A wedding band with solitaire diamond. A gold bracelet, engraved.” He saw the word ‘Melissa’ on her bracelet. She had worn it nearly every day he knew her. It was scarred and pitted. It had been a gift from her father when she turned eighteen. Her father died a year later.

  That was part of her history, a history that ended today.

  He felt himself losing balance again, but Jim and Scott helped him with pressure on his arm. He signed where the technician pointed. Jim and Scott put the items back in the envelope. They left the room. Down the hall, to a break room with small tables and plastic chairs. The room hummed with fluorescent lights and snack machines. Harsh, flickering light.

  As they sat there in silence, they saw Melissa’s cousin, Sarah Bozeman, arrive in the nearby corridor. He saw her from a distance but instantly knew who she was. He saw her being led into the rooms they had just vacated. He did not see her leave. He was already afraid of her family. Afraid of what he would have to tell them. Afraid of the questions that would reveal him.

  Jim tried to speak. “Danny, if you want to talk about…anything…”

  “No words, Jim,” Danny cut him off, staring off into the distance, his voice just above a squeak. “No words.”

  And none were said.

  III

  He didn’t read the papers. He didn’t watch the news. He heard the stories from whispers around him. He plucked the full story out of the ether, overhearing what he didn’t want to know. He couldn’t close his mind to any of it. Nobody came to him. Nobody said, “You need to know what happened.” He was left...too delicate to touch, like a cracked crystal near shattering. He heard though…his mind processed it. In his own mental echoes he tossed back the events of that day. Heard the shot. Smelled the blood and feces and urine and gunpowder and car exhaust and police uniforms and formaldehyde and road tar. He could feel the heat of the May day pulsing in his brain, and each painful beat brought new views of that day. Like slowly exposing Polaroid film, the image became clearer over the days. Details he had missed before now became clear.

  Jim and Scott and Kim and Linda all took turns staying with Danny and watching him. Babysitting. Everybody worked hard to keep the focus on other things. A baseball game. Daytime talk shows. Maury Povich and Jerry Springer reruns. I Love Lucy. When the news came on, they would change channels. Despite their best efforts, little snippets sneaked in. Local network updates would sometimes interrupt a show. Kim talked on the phone too much while she was there. Jim would be in the next room starting a load of laundry when the lunchtime news began.

  And the news came to him. “New information regarding the carjacking that left a twenty-seven-year-old Sacramento woman dead…” “The families of the two men killed after leading police on a high-speed chase on Highway 80 are speaking out publicly…” He didn’t want to know. He wanted to not know any of it. But the images and the filtered news all crept in. Built a frame. Filled in walls. Added windows. And the news judged him also. “…that left a local woman dead, though her husband was unharmed.” They all knew too.

  And he remembered.

  The ‘70 Barracuda, pale green, with sharply sloping back window and long front hood, open, stolen that morning. Two men who had just robbed Ernie’s Liquors on Kiefer Road, trying to put distance between themselves and their crime. Stolen car overheated in the blazing heat. Narrow street, just off the highway. Danny and Melissa’s route home from work. The .357, black barrel, hammer back. The dark eyes and thick build of Stephen Boroski. The slight build and bald head of Zachary Byrnes. The sharp crack, popping his ears. Quick movements to get in Melissa’s Accord. The sound of the wheels peeling out. He could smell the hot tar in the asphalt. Feel the small rocks digging into his hands. He could smell the dust on the sidewalk. See the gum spots. He saw her black arterial blood flowing into the gutter. He could smell that blood’s mineral stink. He heard his own wailing cries for help. Sirens in the distance.

  He could hear their voices. Rasping, commanding. On the Nightly News everybody heard that they had called themselves “The Killer B’s.” They had served time together in Folsom Prison. They had both been released in the last year. They were suspects in several carjackings. Later victim identifications placed them at five. They fed stolen cars to local chop shops. They were also ID’d in several armed robberies, mostly of convenience and liquor stores. Byrnes’ DNA matched a rape case in Humboldt County. Danny’s path home brought them into the path of two desperate men, who followed different rules than Danny and Melissa. Two men who recognized no authority. Two men who were armed and needed to keep moving. Two men who feared prison more than death, and knew why they did.

  He knew them. In the half-minute they were together, they took root in him. Grew inside him. Danny smelled their sweat. Danny tasted their stench in everything he ate and drank. He heard every word they had said. Never in order, just thrown about like toys on a living room carpet. “C’mon, man!” “Gimme your fuckin’ keys, man.” “Let’s get the fuck out of here!” “Hey you, man!” “What the fuck, man?” “Yeah, thank you.” “Did you see him?” “The keys are in here!” He could hear that shot, and he heard it often. It changed in tone and volume and pitch, but it was always the same shot. Every shot he would ever hear would always be that shot. Every gun he would ever see would be that gun.

  He remembered the spray of blood as the bullet exited between her shoulder blades. He was covered in that blood. He remembered her hitting the asphalt as the bullet severed her spine. Her arms swinging wildly. Clawing. Her legs folded under her, now lifeless. And her eyes.

  He could see the police uniforms, and smell their stale coffee. He could hear the click of keyboards and the pens scratching on paper. Black, creased uniforms. Sullen faces, aged from the death they saw routinely. The creak of their leather gunbelts. The old metal desks at the station. He also knew…

  He knew that the police never gave these two men a chance to surrender. They were all too happy to fire more than forty rounds into the red Accord, even though both of the “B’s” had thrown their weapons out the window and Boroski’s hands were out the passenger side. They were surrounded by black and whites, trapped against the guardrail on Highway 80, not even in Dixon yet. Danny knew that when the shooting started they made sure both men were dead.

  Boroski’s gun still had spent shell casings in the cylinder. No doubt the police felt they were doing the world a favor. These were murderers. They had killed a young woman on her way home from work. She and her husband were taxpayers. College graduates. After a high-speed chase, what did they expect?

  An internal investigation would be launched. There was always an internal investigation. All the police would report the same thing…that the driver had flashed something at them they thought was a gun. Others would say their vision was obscured. After people had forgotten, a report would be issued clearing the police of any wrongdoing. They always did. People would be glad that these two monsters were off the street. Danny was glad too…glad those two men were dead. But not for the same reason. Not for vengeance. Not out of spite.

  He never had to face them. Never had to let the world know what really happened. His secret was buried with Boroski and Byrnes. He would never need to answer questions. Never have his story second-guessed. Never have to testify in court. Recount every motion, every action. Be cross-examined by defense attorneys fighting to keep their clients off death row. Now, all was filed and closed. His
story was added to the archives in the Sacramento PD annals, a library of agony.

  The knowledge that he was grateful for the death of her killers only because it kept others from knowing what happened was a grain of sand in his eye…he could not blink it out, nor could his tears wash it away. It was a stain on his soul. A mark of Ishmael. A sore that would blister and bleed, and never heal.

  But most of all he remembered her. Her initial rapid pants. The panic in her face. Her gray eyes bulging, seeking and then locked on his. Hands flailing for him. Grabbing his hand with terrified strength. The gurgling in her throat and lungs. Her panting began to spray blood, out her mouth, down her cheeks, into her ears. Her eyes looked into his, even as the life flickered out of her. He heard the final, bubbling breath leave her. He smelled her death. Her mouth went slack. He could even hear her body evacuate. Gurgling, liquid sounds. More stench. Then he saw her on a slab, freshly washed and drained of fluids.

  But all of that wasn’t the fault of the coroner. Or Boroski. Or Byrnes. Or the police officer typing. Or Scott and Jim. That was his fault. And it always would be. No fixing it. No bringing her back. No do-overs. No mulligans. He would carry this cross with him his entire life. That cross would break his skin and gouge rude slivers into his torn and weary shoulders. He would drag it wherever he went, and others would see it on him. It was wide and heavy. It would leave marks on the ground. Everybody would see his hunched and twisted form and know he carried it.