Lot’s return to Sodom

by Sandra Brannan

  “A dream, huh? Interesting choice of words.”

  Roy jerked his head around and snapped, “Your word, not mine.”

  “Easy, Roy,” I said, holding my hands up in surrender, tipping my chair back on its hind legs as I did. Roy had responded exactly as I would have expected, given how Jens described him. There was definitely something more to Roy’s relationship with Michelle than he cared for me to know. “Tell me about the last time you saw Michelle Freeburg.”

  Roy let out a ragged breath, turning his chair to face me. “Sunday night, 8:11 pm.”

  Amazing. The guy actually remembered to the minute the last time Michelle Freeburg had walked out of this store.

  “During the rally, I’m always short-handed and Michelle was always willing to fill in for people. She liked having the money to pay off her student loans. I needed her to work the six-to-two shift the next day and she said she would come in. But she didn’t. By six fifteen, I tried calling her cell. She didn’t answer. I called her parents’ house. Her mom told me she wasn’t there and told me to try Jens’s house.” The condescension as he spoke Jens’s name was clear. “Jens Bergen’s her boyfriend. No answer there either. By nine, I was worried. One of the girls said she thought she saw Michelle’s car in the parking lot. I went out to check, and sure enough, it was parked out there. But not in her usual parking spot.”

  Again he turned in his chair to stare out the office window to the aisles below, probably imagining Michelle walking among the rows and rows of food and staples.

  “I tried to get her to stay that night, but she wouldn’t. Said she had other plans, which I assumed meant she was going somewhere with her boyfriend.”

  The corners of his mouth turned down at every mention of Jens. Contempt, disgust.

  He rose from his chair, and stood by the window. Roy placed his long, bony fingers on his thin hips.

  “I sense you’re not a fan.”

  “He was mean to her.”

  I forced the anger down, knowing my brother wouldn’t hurt a fly, the nicest, most cooperative and compatible man I knew. Seeing now that the contempt might really be jealousy, I braced myself for what I believed would be Roy spinning a yarn, but I encouraged it anyway, telling myself to appear neutral and unfazed. “Mean? Like as in he beat her or something?”

  “No, nothing like that. I saw how they were together. In the store. At the mall. In restaurants. At the park. He didn’t treat her or love her the way he should. The way she deserved.”

  “What did he do specifically?” I asked, trying to understand more fully Roy’s sense of reason.

  “He would tease her and hurt her feelings,” Roy countered, screwing up his face.

  “He hurt her feelings? How so?” Oh, this was going to be good.

  “Well, like one time, he made her carry their lunch all the way to a picnic table in the park while he stayed in the car on his cell phone,” he mumbled. “And another time, he ordered for her at a restaurant while she was in the restroom, treating her like she was his possession or something.”

  Seemed like fairly normal dating behaviors in my book. I just wasn’t getting where the real envy or contempt was coming from with Roy.

  I said, “But she loved him.”

  “I suppose,” he said. “One day she said something about loving him, which I just didn’t understand.”

  “All wrong for her, I suppose?”

  “Definitely,” Roy said, not seeing the trap I’d carefully laid for him. “He was a jerk. Didn’t know anything about Michelle or what she was all about.”

  “But you did?”

  “Well, yeah,” he said without hesitation. “She was warm and funny, smart and self-confident. She had everything going for her.”

  “Sounds like a special person,” I coaxed.

  “That’s an understatement. She was incredible. She was the kind of girl …” Roy dropped his chin to his chest, hanging his head low and shaking it from side to side. He had no idea that I knew he had told Michelle on Sunday night that he loved her, starting the argument between him and Michelle, between him and Jens. He turned toward me, leaning his back against the window, and proclaimed, “I loved her.”

  “But she didn’t love you back,” I added. A strong motive for murder, I thought. Rejected by a woman he’d loved for more than a decade.

  Roy stood staring at the movements of the shoppers and employees below.

  “She loved Jens Bergen, didn’t she?” I taunted, hoping to find him slipping me more information out of anger than this practiced calm.

  “She thought she did,” he said evenly, turning back to the window.

  “What do you think happened to Michelle Sunday night, Roy?” I moved to my feet so I would be level with him when he turned back toward me again, which he would.

  “I think Jens Bergen killed her,” he said coldly.

  My stomach flipped. Those words were just too hard for me to hear. I dropped back into my chair. I started to speak but the words lodged in my throat.

  Before I could respond, he added, “She was fine until the end of the day when he showed up. Then she seemed a little edgy.”

  I recovered enough to counter, “Don’t you think that might have had something to do with the biker gang showing up?”

  Roy shook his head. “That’s what those other agents said. But if I had to guess, I’d say you should question that pretty boy, Jens. He said some ugly things to Michelle that night. She was shook up about that.”

  “Such as?”

  “Ask him,” Roy said, collapsing into his chair and turning to face me.

  “I have, and he told me he said some ugly things to you, not Michelle.”

  His face crumpled. “He said I’d better not piss him off or I’d regret it the rest of my life.”

  “Right after you told Michelle not to piss you off or she’d regret it the rest of her life,” I countered. “And did she? Regret it for the rest of her short life, Roy?”

  His eyes drifted, his shoulders and face sagged. He pushed the expensive frames up the bridge of his nose.

  “It wasn’t like that. She called me crazy. I was just telling her to knock it off and that big bruiser boyfriend of hers got all huffy.”

  “And did you tell that part of the story to the other agents? How you threatened Michelle first before her boyfriend threatened you? Or did you just tell them the part about the big bruiser boyfriend threatening you?”

  He shook his head. “I told them he threatened me.”

  “Well, that might end up problematic for you, don’t you think?” I said in my best authoritative cop-like voice. “You neglect to tell the other agents that you got a little hot under the collar, hot enough to threaten that you’d make Michelle have regrets for the rest of her life and then she shows up dead the next day.”

  His eyes widened. “It wasn’t like that. I swear.”

  “What bothers you so much about the word ‘crazy’?” I asked bluntly, seeing how the muscles twitched around the corners of his mouth every time the word came up. He stared at his hands, pushed his glasses up again even though they hadn’t slipped from seconds earlier, then flipped around in his chair to face the desk, and for a moment, I thought he was going to whip out a pistol from a drawer he opened and shoot me. Instead, he grabbed a piece of paper, spun around in his chair, and shoved the strip of paper toward me.

  “Here,” he said, “take it to them.”

  “To whom?” I looked at the strip of paper in my hand and realized it was a cash register receipt dated Sunday. The few things listed on it didn’t make any sense to me: Housewares—Needles (1), Housewares—Thread (1), Outdoors—Fishing wire (1), Outdoors—Matches (1), and Pharmacy—Rubbing Alcohol (4).

  “Your friends. The other agents. They asked me to find out from the clerk that night if she remembered what they bought. That’s it, the list. We found it on the computer and printed a duplicate.”

  It had looked like a scavenger hunt list, but now that I knew Mully and h
is gang had bought the items on it, I guessed that one of them was sporting a new tattoo and wanted to ward off any infections with the rubbing alcohol. I stuffed the list in my pocket and suddenly realized that because of my decision to impersonate a federal agent, the investigation was compromised; the agents would never see this list. I felt horrible, both for interfering with Agent Blysdorf and for bullying Roy Barker.

  I stood up and walked over to the right of his desk by the window, staring down at the customers at the checkout registers as Roy had done off and on during our interview. I had to either come clean with Roy or continue to do the best I could harvesting as many details as I could about Michelle Freeburg’s last night on this earth.

  “When did you leave the store Sunday night, Roy?”

  “I don’t remember exactly,” he replied, shaken. His pale eyes were flat and lifeless.

  “Did you work all night?”

  “Of course not,” he said, understanding the sarcasm I had intended. “The other supervisor came in around ten.”

  “But you stayed at least until ten, right?” He nodded. “It seems odd that you remember such an exact time for Michelle’s departure from the store, Roy—8:11 pm—but you don’t have a clue when you left the store.”

  “It was about ten fifteen,” Roy said, eyes to the floor.

  “And was Michelle’s car in the parking lot at ten fifteen?”

  “No.”

  “Was it there when you came to work the next day?”

  “It was dark. I really don’t know. It wasn’t parked where she normally parks.”

  I believed him. But I wasn’t convinced he was innocent.

  “But it could have been in the parking lot when you got there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you follow Michelle into the parking lot when she left at eight eleven?”

  Roy said nothing, folding his hands and raising them to his pursed lips.

  “Did you ask her out again? Reconsider your proclamation of love? Take advantage of the opportunity when she made Jens leave? Maybe Char saw the whole thing, and now she’s gone too?”

  The muscles in Roy’s jawbone flexed and bulged. He repositioned the tips of his fingers to slide the designer frames into place then rested them back against his lips.

  “Did she reject you for the last time, Roy?”

  I was trying to hit a nerve and finally did.

  Slamming his hands against the edge of his desk, Roy barked, “I loved Michelle!”

  After a long moment, listening to the echo from his words fade and the muffled sound of voices on the intercom requesting price checks, I said, “Interesting.” I noted he didn’t proclaim he hadn’t killed her, just that he loved her. To death? I speculated there was more to this story than he was willing to share. “You went over to the Freeburg house to see if she was there, didn’t you? When you didn’t see her car, you went over to Jens Bergen’s house. Am I right?”

  His worried eyes studied me. He wiped the tears from his cheeks.

  “And then what, Roy?”

  “Nothing, I swear!” he shouted, spittle flying again from his mouth. He wiped his face with his sleeve and glared at me. “Michelle was with Jens. I could see them in the living room. I wanted to talk with her about what I’d said, to explain. So I waited outside for half an hour, thinking she’d go home soon. She had to work at six the next morning, and it was about a quarter to eleven by this time.”

  He sniffled and sighed.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “But when she walked over to Bergen and gave him a hug and a long kiss, him rubbing her back, I just snapped.”

  I held my breath, waiting to learn what “snapped” entailed.

  He leveled his gaze at me and said, “I drove home and told myself to forget about Michelle Freeburg. She didn’t belong to me. She belonged to Bergen.”

  Well, that was a letdown. And hard to believe. “Do you have an alibi as to your whereabouts from ten forty-five until you reported to work yesterday morning?”

  “I live alone,” he said, not discomfited in the least by my implication. “But to answer your question, I was on my computer from about eleven until two. I couldn’t sleep after that. I was playing X-Box Live, so I’m sure there are records to prove what I was doing, players who could verify I was there. I was home while Jens was off somewhere killing Michelle. Check his alibi.”

  “I have,” I said. Then, something Jens told me came to mind; something about Michelle possibly quitting her job earlier than the target date she’d mentioned when she gave her four-week notice. “Did Michelle come back here, Roy? Sunday night?”

  Something in Roy’s face changed. He shook his head, a little too quickly. “No. Like I said. She left at 8:11 pm and didn’t show up for her shift the next morning.”

  “Did she call in?”

  “No, I filed the missing persons report, remember?”

  “Did she quit?”

  Roy winced. He turned back to the glass and stared off for a long moment. Finally he said, “Well, of course she had. Michelle turned in her notice at the beginning of the month. She told me that August 30 would be her last day.”

  “But did she quit on Sunday night, after you two argued?”

  “No,” he practically shouted, “but I thought she would.”

  If Michelle had told Roy she was quitting immediately, there was no doubt in my mind that he might have “snapped” at the news. But I didn’t see him having the ability to hastily concoct a viable plan that would lead the FBI to a Lucifer’s Lot member.

  Unless he simply got lucky.

  “You’re not telling me something,” I said.

  His mouth opened and closed like a guppy’s.

  “Are you going to tell me or do I have to beat it out of you?”

  He stared for a long moment, weighing his options. Something behind his eyes hardened and he said, “I’ve told you everything.”

  “Tell me about the secret.”

  He furrowed his eyebrows. “What secret?”

  “You told her you knew about her secret from high school,” I explained, noting how his face collapsed along with the brows. “What was Michelle’s secret?”

  He sagged in his chair, removed his glasses, and buried his face in his oversized hands.

  I waited.

  “She was going to be a doctor. She could have been anything she wanted.” He wasn’t crying, but his words were sloppy. “She was wasting her talent. I told her that. I told her again and again.”

  “How was she wasting her talent?”

  “Here! She was wasting her talent working here,” he mumbled. “She wouldn’t leave.”

  “Because she couldn’t afford it?”

  “She could have gotten a scholarship anywhere she wanted to go and finished her undergraduate in four years. She could have been doing her internship by now, rather than just starting off into medical school. She was wasting her talent because of Charlene.”

  “The secret?” I pressed.

  I watched as he lowered one hand, smoothing his face and hair with the other, replaced his glasses, and straightened his back. He sat still for a long moment, his back to the desk and windows, staring longingly at the yawning office door, as if he was about to bolt and run.

  Eventually he said, “She was pregnant. As a freshman. No one knew. No one.”

  “Except you?”

  His eyes landed on mine. “She hid it well. First with baggy jeans and shirts, then with sweats. She started wearing her brothers’ clothes. Then, just before Thanksgiving, she contracted ‘mononucleosis.’”His fingers made air quotes when he spoke of the illness. “Took all her tests that semester from home. Didn’t come in until the end of February. She was smart. Kept up with studies at home and never missed a beat. Teachers liked her, helped her.”

  “How did you know she was pregnant?”

  His face reddened.

  “You’re a peeper, aren’t you, Roy?”

  His embarrassment morphed into i
ndignation. “I am not a Peeping Tom. I loved her.”

  “Let me rephrase the question, then. You loved her enough to keep an eye on her at night when she undressed, bathed, and slept and to follow her movements by day?”

  “Well, no. I mean, I cared for her, so yes, I kept an eye on her. At first, it was because I liked her, but then I realized she was in trouble, being forced against her will to have sex,” he said, flustered by the ancient thoughts, his fingers flying to his face to adjust the position of his eyeglasses.

  “And why didn’t you do anything about it?”

  “I tried,” he said, red blooming on his cheeks again. “But I couldn’t.”

  “Because you were too scared?”

  “I was just a boy, then,” he argued. “The guy looked like a man, not a boy. But I couldn’t be sure. Anyway, he was big, strong.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled, staring down at his shoes. “I only saw him with her twice, and both times he surprised her when she was walking home. He holed up in a house that was being constructed. Always hiding.”

  I thought about the horror Michelle must have felt at age thirteen, leery of every shadow.

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, ringing his hands. “He always wore a hoodie that covered his head. Like I said, he tended to ambush her so fast and pull her into the construction before I really knew what was happening. I tried to peep the second time, but I could never get close enough without getting caught. After the second time, Michelle walked home from so many different directions, I could never keep up. I kind of lost track of her.”

  “So you started peeping in her windows instead?” He cradled his head in his hands. “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  He shrugged, his eyes cast to the floor. “My father said if I was ever caught peeping again, I’d never get to work at the store again.”

  “So let me get this straight. You know the woman you claim to love was enduring rape repeatedly and you did nothing to help because you were afraid the police would realize you learned all this by peeping, a crime you’d been caught committing in the past? You threw her under the bus for a job?”