“S-s-Sandy,” Todd said.
“Y’all got it on yet?” he asked.
“Th-that’s…n-none of your…” Todd stammered.
“Thought not,” DeWayne grinned. “So where’s she live?” DeWayne said. There was no answer. He looked up. Todd was staring at him with an expression of horror. DeWayne raised the gun again. “Answer the question, Todd,” he said.
Todd shook his head. “No,” he said. “No way. You’ll hurt her.”
“I ain’t never hurt a woman before in my life that didn’t deserve it,” DeWayne said. “But I tell you my plan. When the cops get here, you tell ‘em a pair of wild-ass screamin’ niggers in a pick up truck come in here with bandanas on and robbed you.” He gestured towards the parking lot with his head. “I got a police scanner in my vehicle yonder. I hear anything different, like a good description of me or my car, I pay Miss Sandy here a visit right quick. If I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in the joint waitin’ to die, I figger I’m gonna need one last bit of pussy to tide me over, know what I mean? But if you do like I say, she’ll be okay and save that nice cherry just for you. Or,” he said, raising the gun again, “I could just kill you and not worry about it. So what’s it gonna be, Todd?” He pulled back the hammer.
“Seventy-one-oh-three Black Oak Church Road!” Todd screamed. “Oh, GOD please don’t...” DeWayne stood up. He scooped up the beer and cigarettes and walked towards the door.
“Mister?” the kid said. DeWayne stopped and turned back. The clerk gestured towards the ceiling. DeWayne looked up. A small video camera was mounted on the wall behind him, pointed at the sales counter. “There’s a videotape of you in here,” the kid said. “It won’t matter what I say.”
“I hope you know how to get the tape out,” DeWayne said. The kid nodded and reached under the counter. DeWayne raised the gun again in case the kid wanted to try anything. He tensed when he saw the black object in the kid’s hand until he saw it was a small videotape.
“Thanks, bubba,” he said as he walked over and took the tape. "I knew you was a smart one. Now you and that pretty little thing have a nice life together, y’hear?” He walked out.
“Shit,” Angela said as she hung up the phone. She stared at the North Carolina map on the wall of her office for a few moments, gnawing at a fingernail. She was seated behind the desk in her office.
“Anything?” Keller said. He came in and sat in one of the wooden chairs in front of the desk.
Angela shook her head. “Internal Affairs has the whole thing locked down tight. My usual contacts either don’t know anything or won’t tell me.”
“Told you. It’s a whitewash. They’re trying to cover up for Wesson. And Jones is the sacrificial lamb.”
Angela shrugged. “Sorry, Keller. Not much more I can do. You able to get in touch with Jones?”
He shook his head. “She’s either not home or screening her calls. I left a couple of messages, but…”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Keller nodded. “Probably. She’s caught enough flak by being associated with me. But I’m the only witness. I need to let her know that I can help her out.”
“Keller,” Angela said. “Maybe she wants to take the fall, you ever think of that?”
Keller shook his head stubbornly. “No way. I don’t buy it.” He got up and walked to the office door. He leaned against the jamb. The firm’s tiny waiting room had a plate glass window that fronted the street. Keller stared for a few moments through the large gilt letters that read “H & H BAIL BONDS”. Finally, he said, “Wesson’s funeral is this afternoon. She’ll probably be there.”
“No,” Angela said. “No way. Keller, those guys will probably shoot you on sight.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
Angela threw up her hands. “Jesus. You never give up, do you?”
“It’s why you hired me.”
CHAPTER SIX
Eddie Wesson was buried on a hot, humid summer afternoon, surrounded by fellow officers in dress uniforms complete with gold braid and white gloves. Keller could see the crowd through the bars of the cemetery’s heavy wrought-iron fence. He sat in his rental car across the street from the gates of the cemetery. A line of cars and pickup trucks stretched along the curbside, dominated by a long black limousine directly in front of the gates. A TV van idled nearby, its antenna raised and pointed towards the station feeding the hunger of the newsroom for more news, faster. A trim young brunette in an expensive-looking blouse stood by the van, holding a microphone down by her side. A cameraman and sound technician lounged against the van with the loose-limbed slouch of soldiers after a long patrol. The woman jumped as shots cracked out, muffled in the heavy, humid air. It looked like they were giving Wesson the full treatment, complete with salute. The technicians knew the signal and hoisted their gear into action positions as the reporter adjusted her earpiece. Keller drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and waited.
People began filing out the front gate, most in dress uniforms. An gray-haired cop with more braid than most was immediately taken aside by the reporter, who stuck her microphone in his face. The older man’s reply was brief. Keller picked out the widow by her black dress and the folded flag she carried across her chest with one hand. She held the hand of a bewildered looking little girl with the other. An older couple stood to either side of her, ready to offer support. The rest of the cops broke up into smaller groups and milled around on the pavement talking to each other. They didn’t actually ignore the widow, but no one made a direct attempt to talk to her as she and the child got into a long black limousine. Their only connection to her had just been put into the ground. She was no part of their world any more. The camera lens tracked them into the darkness of the vehicle’s interior. Then Keller saw Marie.
She was dressed like the rest of them, in her formal blues. She was again wearing her dark glasses. She walked up to a small knot of officers who were chatting about something, as nonchalantly as if the funeral had never happened. All conversation, however, ceased as Marie walked up. They stood in their circle, not looking at her or at each other. Finally she turned and walked away, her shoulders slumped. Keller swore under his breath and started the car. The brunette reporter detached herself and her team from the crowd and trotted after her. Marie made a go-away gesture with her hand without looking around and walked faster. The reporter persisted, following behind her at a trot and holding the microphone in front of her like a baton being passed to a runner. Finally Marie whirled, and said something short and brutal that caused the reporter to reel backwards, the technicians crashing into her from behind. The reporter turned to shove the sound guy away, cursing. The cameraman was laughing. He continued to film the collision and its aftermath until the reporter made a savage slashing motion across her throat. Marie continued her march down the street alone. Keller pulled out and followed.
Her car was parked at the end of the street near the corner. Keller pulled over and rolled down his window. “Marie,” he called to her.
She turned around. Her face hardened. “Shit,” she said. “It’s you.”
“I need to talk to you,” Keller said.
She opened the car door. “You’re not helping me, you know,” she said savagely.
“I can,” he insisted. “I’m the only one besides you who knows what really happened. I’m the one who can prove Wesson’s death isn’t your fault.”
“Oh, great,” she said, tossing her cap onto the front seat. “That’ll make me REAL popular.”
“Like you are now?” Keller said.
She sat down in the car, but left her feet on the pavement and her legs outside. “I can make it back from this,” she insisted. “It’ll blow over. But not if I keep getting seen with you.”
“It’s not going to blow over, Marie,” Keller said. “I’ve seen this shit before. You’re getting shafted.” He took a deep breath, hating what he had to say. “You’re gone, Marie. It’s over. But you don’t have to
go quietly.”
Marie looked up the street. Cars were beginning to pull away from the curb. She swung her legs into her car and closed the door. “C’mon,” she said. “I can’t be seen with you. Follow me.”
“Where are we going?” Keller said.
“My place,” she replied. He backed up slightly to allow her to get out, then followed.
Marie Jones lived in a small one-story house with a two-car garage in a development full of nearly identical one-story houses with attached two-car garages. The houses were clustered around cul-de-sacs off a central street, in an attempt to make neighbors out of the strangers who moved in, stayed a few years until the next transfer, then moved out. Each house had a concrete-slab driveway where the cars were actually parked. The garages had no room for actual vehicles; they were full of lawnmowers, bikes, tool benches, and boxes of things that the families in the houses never actually got unpacked because they were of little use, but never discarded because they were too valuable. Keller parked behind Marie’s car in the driveway after she got out and moved a plastic Big Wheel from the center of the drive. He followed her inside.
Inside, the house was small and neatly kept. The front door opened up into a small living room with a couch, a recliner, a TV/VCR combination sitting on an old footlocker, and a pair of low plastic bookshelves. A few plush toys were scattered here and there.
“Wait here,” Marie said. “I need to change out of these blues before I drop over from heatstroke.” She went off down the hallway, leaving Keller alone.
Keller sat down on the couch. After a few moments, he got up and walked slowly around the living room while he waited. He stopped to look at the pictures that completely filled one wall. In one of the photographs, an obviously much younger Marie was standing, holding a rifle confidently on her hip. She was standing next to a smiling gray-haired man. Another photo showed her cradling a soccer ball in one hand, standing next to the same man. In this picture, the man was in a police uniform. They were both smiling. In another photo, obviously a professional portrait, she was dressed in an Army Class-A uniform, looking serious against a cloudy silver background. A series of smaller pictures in a collage frame showed her in a variety of situations with a young child: a hospital bed holding an infant, holding a baby in her arms in front of a Christmas tree, bending over to push a laughing toddler in a swing. There was no sign of the father.
Keller heard Marie reenter the room. He continued looking at the pictures. “This your dad?” he said over his shoulder, pointing at the picture of her with the gray-haired man.
“Yeah,” she said around a hair clip held in her teeth as she pinned her hair up.
“He was a cop, too.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Thirty years. He’s retired now.”
Keller turned around. Marie had changed into a baggy sweatshirt and a pair of running shorts. Her face was drawn and pale and there were dark circles under her eyes.
“Where you from?” he asked.
“Portland, Oregon,” she said.
“Miss it?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes.”
Keller gestured back at the picture. “Bet your dad loved the idea of his little girl joining the force.”
“I’m not a little..” she began, then caught herself and grinned. “Sorry. Conditioned reflex. But yeah, he nearly had a stroke. He got over it.”
He looked again at the picture of Marie in her class-A’s. He noticed another, smaller frame hanging next to it. Instead of a photograph, the frame held a small badge. It was a wreath surrounding an iron cross with a target in the center of it.
“Expert rifleman,” he said. “Impressive.”
“Thanks,” she said. “Dad always wanted a boy to take hunting with him, but he only got daughters. So he taught me to shoot.” She grimaced. “For all the good it did me. I ended up in the MP’s. Germany.” she walked back over to the easy chair and sat down. Keller tried not to stare at her legs. “You were in Saudi, I hear.”
“Yeah. And points north.”
She smiled a little sadly. “Closest I ever got to a war was directing traffic at Oktoberfest.”
“You were lucky,” he said. She looked strangely at him and he realized that he had spoken with a bit more heat than he had intended. He looked back at the wall. “Cute kid.”
“Thanks,” she said. “He’s with his grandparents for the weekend.”
“Not with your ex?”
Her lips tightened. “You didn’t come here to talk about my kid.”
“Right.” Keller sat down on the couch.
“You said I didn’t have to go quietly,” she said. “What did you mean?” she said.
“Has anyone come to you and actually said, 'keep your mouth shut, let it blow over, and we’ll take care of you'?’”
She shook her head and looked at the floor. “No.”
“They need someone to blame for Wesson getting killed. Good cops don’t let punks like DeWayne Puryear gun them down.”
Her voice was bitter. “Good cops don’t let punks take their guns away, either.”
“You didn’t want to get close to him. You tried to argue Wesson out of it. He pulled rank. He did it to show me he was the boss and if I said black, he could say white and that was that. If he hadn’t let that blind him, you wouldn’t have gotten near enough to Puryear for him to have been able to get your gun.”
She shrugged. “So?”
“So right now, Wesson’s being treated like a goddamn hero and a good cop can’t even get the time of day from the people who are supposed to be her backup. I don’t like it. I bet you don’t either.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“Like I said. I’ve been there. I’ve had the people I trusted to be watching my back turn on me.”
She stood up suddenly. “I need a drink,” she said. “You want one?”
“Yeah, okay,” Keller said. “Whatever you’ve got.”
She went into the kitchen and came back with a pair of rock glasses half-filled with ice and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She set the glasses on the coffee table in front of Keller and poured each one half-full. Keller noticed that her hand shook slightly as she poured. She sat back down in the recliner and drained off half of her glass before Keller had gotten his to his lips. He took a sip. Marie raised the glass again and he heard the edge of it rattle against her teeth as her hand shook again. He set his glass down.
“It’s not going to help,” he said.
She looked at him. He could see the whites all around her eyes. “What?” she said.
“The booze. It helps blot out what happened, but the only way to get to that place is to get too plastered to think. And it doesn’t last. You sober up eventually. And you’ll still have the dreams.”
“You don’t know me. You don’t know shit about my dreams." Her voice shook.
“I think I do,” he replied. “You’re back there on that roadside. Staring down the barrel of that gun. And you’re not just afraid you’re going to die. You know it. You’ve just seen someone you know, someone you’ve lived and worked with, cut down. And you’re next. You know you are. There’s no way you’re going to survive. Am I right so far?” She was looking at him with an expression of pure panic on her face. Her breath was coming in short gasps. He couldn’t stop himself from going on. “You push it down, pretend it doesn’t bother you because that’s what it takes to do your job, but it keeps coming back at you. Whenever you stop for a minute, whenever you let down your guard, whenever you lie down at night, you’re back there again. On that roadside.”
Marie’s face went slack. Keller snatched the glass from her limp hand, catching her as she slipped off the chair towards the floor. He guided her down to the carpet. Her body shook feverishly.
“G-g-god,” she whispered against his neck. “I was s-s-so scared!” He wrapped his arms around her. She clutched him back with the hysterical strength of the drowning. She sobbed into his chest like a child, her whole bod
y convulsed with grief. He pulled himself up to a sitting position against the recliner and rocked her gently, stroking her hair with one hand. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I know. I know how it feels. It’s okay.” He held her like that for a long time as she cried herself out.
Gradually, as she ran out of tears, she quieted. Keller became uncomfortably aware of her body pressed against him. Her breasts pressed into his chest. He became even more aware of how her hands had stopped clutching at him and had become gentler, almost caressing. She turned her tear-streaked face up to him. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyes were glazed. Her hand dropped lower, finding unerring proof of the effect she was having on him. She moaned. The edge of hysteria in her voice made it almost into a whimper.
Keller swore to himself. He had experienced this himself in the aftermath of combat, a surge of pure sexual heat that was the body’s response to nearly being snuffed out. It was as if the genes within the body, realizing their fragility, desperately tried to take one last chance to reproduce. He knew that what she was feeling had nothing to do with him. He could have been any warm male body. It was wrong to take advantage of her in the aftermath of her emotional catharsis, he knew that. But her lips under his were warm and yielding, tasting slightly of the whiskey. Her hand stroking him was gentle but insistent. He reached down and pulled her hand away. She made a petulant sound and tried to grab him again. He pinned her hand and gently kissed her on the forehead. She looked at him for a moment as if he had lost his mind. Then she leaned her head against his chest and her body relaxed. She fell asleep as quickly as if she had been blackjacked. Keller sighed. He shifted her body slightly to try to get his arms under her. He stood up, with difficulty, cradling her in his arms. He carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed. He found a blanket in the closet and threw it over her. She grumbled a bit in her sleep, but pulled the blanket tighter around her. He stood by the bed for few moments, watching her breathe. He thought about Angela’s words to him.
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