by Todd Morgan
I waited.
“Is there, Beason? A war brewing?”
My stomach roiled. “Beats me.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
April 30,
The jerk called today. He just can’t let go. Actually, I don’t think that’s his problem. His problem is that I let go of him. He can’t imagine a woman breaking it off with him. He knew we were a short time thing. He must have seen A sneaking in the other day because he threatened to go to B about my “new man.” He made a lot of other threats, too. Threats I can’t do anything about. If B found out, I’d be lucky to live long enough to see divorce court. I threatened him right back, but it didn’t seem to bother him. He knows I have more to lose. Maybe I could throw him a quickie and give him the opportunity to dump me. Only I’m afraid he would string me along, keep me on a line and pull on it whenever he got the urge. He always got off on the power. If I gave it to him…
A is growing attached. I’m going to have to be careful with him. I explained until I’m blue in the face. He is not hearing it. I never thought how hard it would be to carry on with my husband’s partner. The first couple of times I got that deep down dirty feeling. I was so wet and it had nothing to do with A. Of course, he didn’t know that. It’s not like we can fool around while B is at work. They work at the same time! Lunches are okay, but sometimes B calls on his lunch and what will I do if he decides to come home for a sandwich? And it’s not like we can go to A’s. Working late doesn’t always cut it either because if I play that card and something comes up with B and A’s job, I can only put that card back in the deck so many times.
What’s a girl to do?
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Hello.”
“What are you doing?”
“Uh…watching TV.”
“You got another woman there?”
“Two. Upstairs in bed.”
“Your niece back?”
“Tomorrow. Blondie won’t leave Sarah’s side.”
“The dog?”
“Yeah. Why? Are you in my driveway?”
“Hmm. Sounds enticing, but I’ve got this work thing.”
“I’ve heard of that.”
“And the last time turned out so good.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining.”
“Not until I put my clothes back on. I heard the fuzz came by today.”
“The fuzz?”
“Are they on to us?”
“It’s all good.”
“Right. Wiretaps. I got you.”
“Huh?”
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Maybe a little.”
“So…tell me a secret, Beason.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“We’re good?”
“You’re way better than good.”
“That’s no secret.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I sat in the pew, not listening to the sermon—which is what happened when I went to church as a child. Sarah had gone with the other kids for whatever it was they did during the message. I knew snacks and crafts would be involved. You can’t have a group of kids for any amount of time and not have snack—or glue sticks. I just hoped they went glitter free.
I felt out of place, even more than I had the last time I sat in this pew with my brother and his family. I was an imposter and everyone could see right through me, pretending they couldn’t, that I was no worse than they were. I knew the truth. They may have lied to their spouse or coveted their neighbor’s wife, smoked and told dirty jokes, spread malicious lies about their coworkers. I had blood on my hands. I had taken human lives. Three of them.
I had believed I had dealt with that Friday night, drinking myself into oblivion and moving on. I was wrong. It was the first time I had taken a life without the cover of a uniform. Not a soldier inflicting casualties on the enemy, a man killing another for his own reason. They were valid reasons and I would do it again, but…still. Man is made in God’s image and I had destroyed three of His images. What would have happened to Quentell Harris, LaMichael Axel and Montarious Moss if I had not killed them? They probably would have come to the same violent end sooner or later, or gone to prison, causing heartache and carnage along the way. Probably. Now, though, they would have no opportunity to turn around their lives, to become assets to society, to be husbands and fathers and raise families. If the preacher was correct, they were burning in hell at this very moment with no shot at redemption. And I had put them there.
In our last days together, my wife had been facing sexual blackmail and I didn’t have a clue. I wish I had never come across that journal. I couldn’t understand why she would even keep something that incriminating. Unless part of her self-destructive nature wanted me to find it. Why not take it with her? Did she really want to hurt me that badly? I couldn’t say for certain. Stella had always done exactly what she wanted, and any pain inflicted was only a byproduct, not her goal. I reasoned she kept the journal because she had to tell somebody what she was doing, how much other men wanted her, how attractive she was to the other sex. Aside from her mother, I couldn’t think of anyone she could trust with that and so had put it on paper for herself to enjoy.
I was a half-step behind as everyone stood for that altar call. Something deep inside pushed against my soul, urging me forward, to fall prostrate and plead the blood of Jesus to forgive me for what I had done. I didn’t move.
“You okay?”
I looked into Gus’s earnest eyes. A good husband, father, and brother. All I could never be. “I’m fine.” Add lying in church to the list.
He nodded, letting it go. “You coming for lunch?”
I shook my head. “I’ve got something I need to do.”
***
The gate was open, as it had been for decades, the rusted chain cut and hanging in two pieces. As it had been for decades. The track was soft from the rain, the deeper ruts filled with gravel and the Jeep easily made its way up the hill in two wheel drive. The early afternoon sun was bright, the blue sky so brilliant it could have been alive. I parked in our spot and killed the engine.
I was going to lose the house. I was three months behind on the mortgage and there was no way I was coming up with the money. I had hung on as long as I could and had at least a few more months as the foreclosure process dragged out. The legal system is set up for lawyers and judges and all their apparatuses and they made their money by taking their time. Billable hours. If it wasn’t for Sarah, I wouldn’t have lost a minute’s sleep. I wanted her to have stability and that meant giving her a home. I realized now that was a mistake. A building did not provide stability. Walls and brick and a backyard. My daughter’s stability came from me (God help her) and Erin and Gus and my dad. We would be there long after another family moved into the house. I had spent years living in barracks and tents, sleeping on the ground in a foreign land, an apartment wouldn’t be so bad. Sarah would adjust. That was something I’d heard a lot since Stella left: children are much stronger than we give them credit for.
Camp Investigations was a failure. No shame in it. Plenty of better run companies were closing their doors in this economy. Maybe in a different time it could have been successful, but that didn’t matter. This was the time I was in. I had become a private eye because it was the only thing I could think of and needed flexibility to rear an infant. Set my own hours. It had served its purpose. I could get a job in a factory and pay the rent. We wouldn’t starve to death. Of course, ten percent of the population was already looking for that job.
Dad’s idea was intriguing, but I knew it wouldn’t work. There was no way I could get financing for a karate school—not in this time. I didn’t really see a future in it. Not many parents wanted their children learning how to take out their teachers with a math book and that was what martial arts boiled down to—using whatever you have as a weapon.
I got out of the Jeep and closed the door without locking it. The wind was gone. Sarah was spending the day with her grandparents,
Orrin and Felicia. Mom and dad had the boardwalk. Melvin and Cynthia had King Ralph. Stella and I had this.
I walked to the edge, looking down at the crater. The gravel pit had been abandoned for as long as I could remember. A road circled the giant hole, circling lower and lower so the dump trucks could haul out the rock. At some point, they had hit an underground spring, the hole quickly filling with cold, clear water. The digging operation died and a swimming hole was born.
The chain link fence proved to be no impediment to teenagers. Generations of kids had proved their bravery diving from the road into the deep, calm, water. About every ten years or so, some poor bastard would drown and the outcry would come to shut it down. New fences. New signs. New chain. It never kept them out for long. At night, when the swimming was over, kids would come and drink and build bonfires and do what kids do.
This was our spot. Stella’s and mine. The first time we made love, in the back of my father’s Crown Vic. We would come back many times over the years, no longer young, looking for that old spark. A remembrance of easier times. My wife was gone and she wasn’t coming back. Even if she did, I wouldn’t have her. I wish I could say my daughter needed her, but she had made it this far and we would continue to get by. With or without her.
The water was calm as always and so clear you could almost see the bottom. Light winked at me from the depths.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“It could have been anything.”
“It could have been,” I said. “But it wasn’t. It was the reflection from a windshield.”
The detective shook his head, stomping his feet. We stood at the lip of the crater, watching the Indianola Sherriff’s dive team work. I knew most of those guys and knew they didn’t mind. They loved diving and loved the opportunity to search for something. The time and a half didn’t hurt. Randall Rodgers, however, was not in agreement.
“You already fucked up my weekend. I shouldn’t be surprised you couldn’t let me have my Sunday.”
“What did I do?”
“I spent all night Friday and most of Saturday looking for Trey, Q, and M and M.”
“I don’t understand what the big hurry was,” I said. “Three boys out of touch for a while.”
He shot me a look. A nasty look. “M and M had a son, a six year old little boy. I bet you didn’t know that.”
“No.”
“Every Friday, for six years, he picked up his child and spent the evening with him. They would go to the park or to the movies or McDonald’s or just hang out and play video games. For six years, he never missed it.”
A coldness spread deep inside me.
“Until last Friday. Then we found his car abandoned in the Bottoms—keys in the ignition. And Jajuan’s dead dog. It’s obvious something bad is going down.”
I remained silent.
“You wouldn’t know anything about that, though.” His face was hard, arms crossed. “Right?”
It was something they taught us in the Army, dehumanizing the enemy. They weren’t sons and fathers, brothers and uncles. They were “combatants” intent on killing us. It allowed us to sight them down the barrel of a rifle and shoot them in the back—before they could shoot us. Or our friends. It fell apart, though, when we went into “rebuilding” Iraq and Afghanistan, walking into villages and meeting the widows and orphans. Mothers and fathers with no sons. They were people a lot more like us than we wanted to admit. Their own dreams and people they loved and loved them. I shouldn’t have been shocked to learn gangbangers were no different.
A diver broke the surface of the water, his face obscured by the mask. Randall called down to him.
“You find a car?”
“No.”
“Shit,” he said to me, then yelled, “wrap it up and—“
“We found two.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“I need you to get Sarah. She’s at Felicia’s.”
“Felicia’s? What the—“
“I don’t have time right now. Just go get her. Take her to my house or yours or Gus’s. Erin should be back soon. Send me a text and let me know where she is. I won’t be able to answer my phone for a while.”
“What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m not a hundred percent sure what it is, but it’s serious. Just get Sarah.”
“I’m on it. Where are you?”
“Sherriff’s office.”
***
I was in the interview room. There must have been a government blueprint for interview rooms. Metal desk, two chairs on one side, one on the other for the subject. The subject’s chair had the front legs sawed off a couple of inches so he would invariably lean forward. One way glass on the wall. Psychological games. I knew all about the games. The Army had trained me on interrogation techniques, both as questioner and detainee. They had even gone so far as to put me under water boarding. Though I was sure some in this building would object, I doubted I would be undergoing that again. The sun had long ago set.
Larry Coleman came into the room, happy to see me in that chair, unhappy it was a Sunday. I guessed he had been at home watching the playoffs. He chewed on a stick of gum, but I still caught a whiff of beer as he and Randall took the seats across from me.
“Who’s car did you find?”
Larry, ever the diplomat: “We’ll ask the questions here, if you don’t mind?”
Randall: “What were you doing at the quarry?”
“I went there to think.”
Randy: “To the rock pit?”
“Yes.”
Randy: “You do that much?”
“No.” Always answer a yes/no question with a yes or a no.
Larry: “Why there?”
I had gone through the likely questions for the hour they left me to stew. I didn’t have a reason to lie. They might not like my answers, but I had was beyond caring what these people thought. “It was Stella and mine’s spot.”
Larry: “Your spot?”
“Yes.”
Randall: “You care to explain?”
“It was the place we shared—our place.”
Larry: “Why?”
“It was the first place we made love.”
Randall leaned back in his chair, crossing his fingers over his stomach.
Larry: “How about you and Amber? Was that your spot, too?”
“No.”
Randy: “You mind telling us about the last time you were with Amber?”
“No.”
A long pause. If it was supposed to make me uncomfortable, it wasn’t working.
Larry: “Well, go ahead.”
“As soon as you tell me what you found in the lake.”
Randall: “We’ll get to that.”
“If you want an answer, you better get to it in a hurry.”
They exchanged a look.
Randall: “It was Amber’s car.”
I had figured as much. It was why I was here. “She in it?”
Randall: “Yes. In the trunk.”
I shook my head. That little voice had been telling me for some time that she was dead. Still, when you heard the words, it hurt. “What about the other car?”
Randall: “We’re not sure, yet. Amber’s car was on part of the underwater road. The other is in deeper, it’s taking some time to get it out.”
I nodded.
Larry: “You’re not surprised we found your lover in the trunk of her car.”
“I guess not. I had come to the conclusion something bad had happened to her.”
Randy: “Why?”
“She disappeared off the face of the earth.”
Larry: “The last time you saw her?”
“I left her at the hotel around midnight.”
Larry: “After the two of you had sex.”
“Yes.”
Randall: “Where did you go?”
“Ho
me.”
Larry: “Straight home?”
“No. I drove around a while.”
Randy: “Why?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I had some thinking to do.”
Larry: “For someone as stupid as you, you sure do a lot of thinking.”
I didn’t hear a question, so I didn’t answer.
Randall: “Can anybody verify what time you got home?”
“Yes.”
Randall raised his eyebrows.
“Steven Noble.”
Larry: “Your lover’s husband?”
“Yes.”
Randall: “Would he back you up?”
“I don’t see why he wouldn’t. Actually, he already has.”
Larry: “How’s that?”
“When he reported her missing, didn’t he admit to taking a swing at me?”
No answer.
Randy: “What’s your financial situation, Mr. Camp?”
Mister. We were on tape, probably video.
“Not good.”
Larry: “Maybe you can define not good for us.”
“The bank account is dry. Credit cards are maxed out. And I’m behind on the mortgage.”
Larry: “Yeah, that sounds not good.”
No question.
Randall: “Your wife have a life insurance policy?”
“Yes.” The question would have thrown me if I had not known they were trying to trip me up, to throw me. Stella, though?
Larry: “How much?”
“Beats me.”
Randall: “You don’t know?”
“No. You’ll have to talk to her brother. He is in insurance and sold us the policy. It doesn’t matter, though.”
Larry: “Why not?”
“I haven’t paid the premium since she left.”
There was a knock on the door and lieutenant pushed it open. He gave me a dirty look and crooked a finger at his two detectives. They left.