A Bustle in the Hedgerow (CASMIRC Book 1)

by Ben Miller

  36

  Randall put on his turn signal as he approached the stop sign. He hated people who did not use their turn signals. How much effort does it take to use a fucking turn signal? It conveys vital information to the other drivers on the road. For Randall, lack of using turn-signals was one of the many harbingers of the downfall of mankind. He stopped his car, looked both ways, and then proceeded to the right, just as he had signaled.

  Luckily for Randall, driving in this neighborhood had become a mindless task, as he had been here so many times. His thoughts therefore wandered, as they often do, to his Work. He had a very productive day and felt proud of his accomplishments. He had had to improvise, not one of his strengths, admittedly, but today he did so with aplomb. He had also done some reconnaissance work on his next sacrifice, which would come much sooner than expected due to his new accelerated schedule.

  The White Stripes still echoed in his head, running over the lyrics from “Seven Nation Army” in a seemingly endless loop. Randall nearly slammed on the brakes, struck by an epiphany. Fortunately no car followed close behind him at the time. I should go to Wichita! he decided. A sacrifice there would baffle them all. Take my Work across the country!

  His excitement burned out quickly, as he consciously restrained himself. He had already improvised enough. This was, after all, his carefully planned Work; it did not just fall together haphazardly. A great conductor does not change the symphony half-way through the performance, but rather he artfully lets the orchestration continue to play itself out.

  His thoughts had wandered sufficiently that he almost missed his destination. He put on his turn signal and pulled into the driveway, obscured from the front of the house by a row of small pines. He coasted to the end of the driveway and parked the car in front of the large closed doors of the detached garage. He took a deep breath and looked at himself in the rearview mirror, preparing himself for what came next. Throughout recent days, getting out of his car to begin this routine seemed one of his most difficult tasks.

  He closed the car door quietly behind him. This was a calm, peaceful neighborhood, in which something as seemingly hackneyed as the slamming of a car door might catch attention. He walked to the rear door of the house, which allowed entrance by way of a mud room off the back of the kitchen.

  The door knob turned without resistance. Unlocked, as Randall knew it would be.

  He stepped inside the house. The kitchen was mostly dark, but light from the living room in the front of the house projected in to provide some illumination. He slipped off his shoes as he closed the door behind him. He proceeded into the kitchen, his socks making no sound on the tile floor.

  Carpet covered the staircase going to the second floor, ascending from the far end of the hall near the front door of the house. Despite the plush surface on the stairs, Randall could still hear footsteps rapidly descending. He turned to face the hallway, just as the young girl landed at the bottom of the stairs, having jumped down the last two steps. She turned toward the kitchen. Obviously not expecting to see Randall standing there, she startled, putting her hand over her heart like some Hollywood ingénue from an old black-and-white movie.

  “Hello,” Randall said flatly.

  She squinted into the poorly lit kitchen as her hands dropped from her chest to hang back down by her sides. “Hey, Dad,” she returned, equally flatly.

  They stood there looking at each other for several seconds. More and more, Randall found himself unsure of exactly what to say to his seven-year-old daughter. He felt disconnected. Not that it bothered him all that much.

  The exuberance that his daughter had demonstrated by leaping off the stairs vanished, snuffed out like a candle. She looked down to the floor, turned around and walked into the living room.

  “What’s for dinner?” he called after her.

  She shrugged. Without turning around, head still angled toward the carpet, she suggested, “Ask mom.”

  Randall nodded his head and followed her down the hallway. As he approached the room, he could hear the din of the TV. He recognized the show from the voices: a Friends rerun. As Randall entered the room, on the TV screen in the opposite wall of the room he saw Matt LeBlanc’s Joey, sitting on Monica and Chandler’s couch, raising his hand in the air. “Ken Adams!” Joey exclaims. The episode with the backpacking-through-Western-Europe story. Classic.

  Randall’s wife sat slumped in the couch along the near wall. She stared straight ahead into the unlit fireplace, ignoring the hilarity on the TV. Randall stood and examined her. In addition to his daughter, he also seemed to have lost the ability—and the desire, quite frankly— to communicate with his wife in recent months. His wife turned her head in his direction without actually looking at him, as if merely a gesture to acknowledge his presence. She paused a second or two before she looked back to the cold hearth.

  “Any dinner plans, Dear?” Randall asked with only a hint of facetiousness.

  His wife shrugged. “Not really.”

  One fucking job, he thought. She has one fucking job! I only ask for one goddamned thing a day and she can’t even get that right!

  “OK,” he replied, feigning nonchalance. “I’ll warm up some chili, then, and take it out back.”

  She lifted her head slightly, seemingly the closest thing to a nod she can muster.

  “You want some?” he asked, hoping for a negative reply.

  She shook her head once back-and-forth, barely more demonstratively than her nod. “Nah,” she uttered.

  Randall raised his gaze across the room to his daughter, who had sunk into a bean bag in the corner of the room, playing on her PSP hand-held gaming device. “How ‘bout you, Peggy Sue?” Randall asked her.

  His daughter—whose name was Mary Beth— rolled her eyes, displaying wordless sarcasm well beyond her years. “What?” she asked in return.

  “You want some chili?”

  The young girl looked up at the ceiling, trying to imagine the taste of Sheila’s two-day-old chili in her mouth. “No.”

  Eight months ago Randall would have replied with a “No, what?” attempting to teach his daughters some manners. But he had given up on parenting. It didn’t seem to matter anymore. “Okey-doke. Suit yourself.” Randall turned back down the hall toward the kitchen.

  From a large Tupperware container in the refrigerator, he ladled some chili into a bowl, then sprinkled shredded cheddar on top before placing it in the microwave. He studied the bowl intently, watching the cheese slowly melt on top. He held a Bachelor’s degree in engineering, so he understood how microwaves worked. Plus he had used microwaves countless times in his life. Yet the technology never ceased to amaze him. Randall felt pity for people who lost their appreciation for things once they understood them. Once the quite dim-witted Dorothy—an allegorical character for the average middle-American— saw the frightened little man hiding behind the curtain, she lost sight of the fact that The Great and Powerful Oz still accomplished some pretty amazing things. To the contrary, Randall reveled in his ability to still feel awestruck by those things that he could comprehend on an intellectual level.

  Randall knew someday people—many people, thousands, maybe millions—would try to understand his Work. He just hoped that—even if they somehow could mentally absorb it— this wouldn’t make them lose their awe for it.

  The microwave beeped, he grabbed his piping-hot chili, dunked a spoon it in, and went outside through the back door. He walked across the back end of the driveway to the garage. He opened up the unlocked door on the side of the garage and climbed the wooden staircase to his immediate right. Once at the top of the stairs, he pulled out his set of keys from his pocket. He first unlocked the deadbolt, then, switching to different key, the knob itself. He opened the door.

  His sanctuary. His Work space. He immediately felt a sense of calm, of relief. He spent the better part of his days wishing he could be here, dedicating himself wholly to his Work.

  He set his chili down on the desk to his right,
turned to close and lock the door behind him. He leaned over the desk to scoop some chili into his mouth, realizing too late that it was still too hot from the microwave. He scuffled double-time over to the mini-fridge, grabbed a bottled water, unscrewed the cap, and guzzled a mouthful. He swallowed the watered-down chili, then took in some more water.

  He turned to the small table to the left of his desk and reached out to one of the bins that housed his record collection. He turned his face upward and closed his eyes as his fingers crawled across the top of the bin, flipping through the numerous cardboard album covers. This was how he “randomly” selected an album to listen to, but the process was hardly random. He had his albums alphabetized, of course, and he knew the collection by heart. Even if he consciously focused on not counting as his fingers scrolled through the library, he couldn’t help knowing how far he had gotten through the collection when he “randomly” stopped.

  He rubbed his tongue across the roof of his mouth, expecting to feel that sandpaper sensation indicative of a burned tongue. No such texture, though, so he considered himself lucky.

  He removed the album, knowing without opening his eyes that he had likely selected something from Jethro Tull. Possibly Jefferson Airplane, but he felt pretty confident that he had passed through that section. He removed the vinyl from its sleeve, placed it on the turntable, flicked the switch, and lowered the needle, clenching his eyes shut all the while. He turned away before opening his eyes.

  Within the first few picks of the guitar strings, he turned his head to the ceiling and let out a sigh. Thick as a Brick. He had not heard this album in several months, maybe a year. The brilliant concept album—intended as a satire of concept albums of the late 1960s— had been one of his favorites since his childhood. The copy now spinning on the table behind him had actually belonged to his father. Due to his and Randall’s meticulous care over the years, it still did not bear a scratch.

  He sat down at his computer as he grabbed the bowl of chili. He gave the next spoonful a blow before putting it into his mouth. It tasted a little bland, which reminded Randall that he had forgotten to add a little hot sauce. Oh, well, still edible.

  He started up his computer and entered his password when prompted. He opened up the folder entitled “Work” while he waited for Explorer to open up a browser.

  He had told his wife that he was working on an autobiographical novel. It served as a form of therapy, he had told her. A catharsis, of sorts.

  He also had told her that he continued to take his Zyprexa daily, and she believed that too.

  He clicked through a few folders until he found the Word file he wanted. He opened it up and stared at the screen. The document had only one sentence, yet gazing at it filled Randall with a sense of pride. He clicked on the printer icon on the toolbar.

  After shoveling a little more chili into his mouth, he opened the top drawer of his desk to don his gloves. He never touched any of his printer paper without wearing the gloves. He had no intention of getting caught by the authorities on some stupid slip-up like leaving fingerprints on something. That would degrade his Work, and he refused to let that happen.

  The printer hummed as it spit the top sheet back out at Randall. He held it up in wonderment, a chill of excitement shooting through his spine. He could not wait for the next lucky person to see this message.

  37

  Jack closed the lid of his trunk on the cardboard box containing his desk belongings. As he rounded the car to the driver’s door, he remembered the missed call and subsequent voice mail from Melissa Hollows. He had never actually forgotten it; he had simply continued to put it to the back of his mind every time it came up, which turned out to be approximately every ninety seconds. Finally he reasoned that he had found an appropriate time to listen to it.

  After he sat down in the car, he dialed up the voice mail. It began with a brief silence, and then he heard Melissa. Her effusive and seemingly uncontrollable sobbing muffled her voice, but he could make out the words. “We were made for each other, Jack. You and me.” She sobbed louder before adding, “Me and you, me and you!” Quickly the recording stopped, and the delightful woman from his menu reminded him, “To delete this message, press seven…”

  Jack, confused, stared at his phone, as if it might offer some explanation for the odd message. Instead, only the time of the phone call ticked away on the digital display. He pressed 4 to repeat the message, listening more intently this time.

  The first several milliseconds did not actually contain silence; he could recognize Melissa’s sobs and a brief sniffle. She had been crying for sufficient time to cause her nose to run. She said the first phrase very deliberately, almost robotically, through her crying. “We were made for each other, Jack. You and me.” The tone changed for the next repeated phrase. It felt more hurried, as if she found something vile in those words and she tried to spit them out before they damaged her mouth. “Me and you, me and you!” Then silence.

  Through his professional life, and even in his personal life, Jack had witnessed the gamut of emotions: utter helplessness and desperation from parents of a missing child; distraught and disbelief from the spouse of a convicted child pornographer; ruthlessness and icy cunning of a murderer confessing to a crime as if reciting a cookie recipe. Jack immediately recognized the emotion from the other end

  of that voice mail.

  Fear.

  It wasn’t hopelessness, or despair, or the wistfulness of the forlorn. Jack knew in his heart that, at that moment earlier in the day, Melissa Hollows felt afraid, perhaps even terrified.

  He hung up his voice mail and searched his recent call log to find the recent incoming call from Melissa. He hit send. The line rang only once before going to voice mail. Having no idea what to say, Jack hung up rather than leave a message.

  He put the phone down and thought for a moment. Images of Melissa raced through his mind. He searched at blinding speed through his memories of her—from when they first met until he heard this voice mail— for any tidbit that could explain the message, as it seemed so foreign to her personality. He hadn’t spoken to her for nearly eight months. What had happened to her in that time?

  He knew he would not be able to let this go. He put the car in gear, backed out of his parking spot, and sped off to Melissa’s townhouse.

  38

  “You want a piece of gum?”

  It seemed like such an innocuous question, without hidden meaning or ulterior underpinnings. Little did Jackson Byrne know at the time that it would change the course of his life.

  About five weeks after the discovery of Lamaya Hollows’ body, Melissa Hollows moved out of their spacious mansion in Potomac, Maryland into a townhouse in Georgetown. She told Jack that “life with Lamond had grown unlivable.” Unfortunately, Jack had seen this too many times before: a marriage crumbling due to the unimaginable stress of losing a child. Melissa would later tell Jack that every time she looked at Lamond, and he at her, their hearts and minds overflowed with emotions: the crushing heartbreak of the death of their Lamaya, the accusation that the other one could have done something to prevent it, the guilt that they had not prevented it themselves, and countless others. They had come to the conclusion that a trial separation would be the only way they could survive, literally.

  Almost two weeks later, Jack spent over two hours at Melissa’s townhouse conducting a prolonged interview that included looking through dozens of photographs of registered sex offenders, none of whom Melissa recognized. When it became apparent that this line of investigation—searching through lists of known sexual criminals—would likely prove fruitless, Melissa began to cry. She mumbled through nearly unintelligible words about Lamaya and Lamond and the horrible, sick people in the world and little terrorized children. And her Lamaya, again and again her Lamaya. Jack, a veteran of witnessing meltdowns like this, usually felt uncomfortable during such an episode. Here, however, he felt at ease.

  That night was the first time they slept together. It cer
tainly had not been planned by either one of them. Melissa spontaneously initiated the first kiss, through a face full of tears, and Jack resisted at first. She backed away sheepishly, hiding her face and crying even harder. Jack felt guilty and even a little embarrassed, though he never really understood why. After a moment’s pause, he went to her to hug her, to try to comfort her. She reciprocated the embrace, grabbing him tightly. Her hand moved up to the back of Jack’s head, massaging his neck. She looked up to meet his eyes, and their second kiss was borne of mutual desire.

  Later, in the aftermath, they lay side by side on the floor of Melissa’s living room. After a few minutes of silently catching their breath, they discussed the initial mutual attraction upon meeting each other, that subconscious, uncontrollable feeling of desire for another person. But neither ever had any intentions of acting on it. In fact, the sentiment quickly dissipated for each of them as they worked together over the course of subsequent weeks to solve Lamaya’s murder. Apparently the emotional charge of the night—and perhaps the cumulative emotional impact of the preceding several weeks—took over, and each participant succumbed to it.

  Of course, this rationalization served to comfort both of their consciences. It seemed much easier to think of oneself as “succumbing to an uncontrollable desire” than as an adulterer. After they had fallen quiet, as Jack looked up at the swirled patterns in the plaster of the living room ceiling, he began to think about guilt. He had never cheated on Vicki before. He had cheated on other girlfriends in his youthful past, but never on his wife, never on the mother of his child. He knew that he should feel guilty, yet he didn’t. He knew what he had done was wrong, but it remained an intellectual concept rather than an emotional response. He thought, If Vicki doesn’t find out about this, then no harm done.