The engine rumbled with a power he could feel in the chassis, coming up through the floorboard and into the wheel. It was everything he’d dreamed of as a boy, and he surrendered himself to it. It was the happiest he’d been in years.
Much like when he drove the Honda to the house, not realizing at first where he was headed, when he got the Horch on the road it seemed to point itself south. He drove until he reached the interstate, and as he took the curve of the on-ramp he realized where he was going.
Janet could keep the house, the car, their mutual friends, the shared history of their life together, but she would not get his dog.
He pressed down on the accelerator and felt the engine respond.
Chapter 26
When he pulled up to the house both he and the car were running on fumes. He was tired enough that he’d driven the last hour with the top down, and while it was warmer in Tennessee than it was in New York, a nighttime chill was a nighttime chill.
The Jaguar was in the driveway and he parked the Horch behind it. If she was inside, she undoubtedly knew he was here.
He knocked at the side door, and it concerned him that Thor wasn’t on the other side barking at him. He waited awhile, but Janet didn’t come to the door. He knocked again, then rang the doorbell. When neither brought the desired result, he repeated the procedure, a duplicate of the scene at the house on Lyndale. And as with that episode he grew angry—because he knew she was inside, and she had his dog. Unlike last night, though, he resolved to keep his anger in check. This was a precarious position into which he’d placed himself, with the potential domestic violence charge and a warrant hanging over his head. It wouldn’t do to force Janet to call the police on him. But as he knocked again, it seemed he wasn’t going to be given the chance to earn such ignominy; the house on the other side of the door remained quiet.
He thought of knocking again, but then realized the futility of doing so. Instead he left the side door and walked around to the front of the house. He had no plans to break in this time. He only wanted to look at the window, to see it whole again. She had indeed fixed it, and it looked like she’d had the sill and framing painted.
Before returning to the car, he took out his phone and dialed her number. There was no message when it kicked over to voice mail, just a tone.
A year ago there’d have been no doubt about what kind of message he would have left. It would have been angry and caustic— anything to get at her, to hurt her for what she had done. And he was close to starting down that path again, especially since he didn’t know where she’d taken his dog. Yet for some reason his heart wasn’t in it.
Rather than get back into the Horch, he sat on the sideboard, facing the house—his house. He didn’t know what to say into the phone, so instead of saying anything, he hung up. He sat on the sideboard as the minutes ticked by, the sun warming him as it hadn’t once during his sojourn in New York. When after a while he dialed her number again, he knew he could talk without saying anything he’d regret.
“Hey, Janet,” he said—an admittedly weak beginning. He took a deep breath, and when he let it go, a few words came with it. “Look, I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am for the way everything’s turned out.” He shifted position on the sideboard and looked up into the sky, searching for the right thing to say. “I know that this is mostly my fault, and I know it’s probably too late to do anything about it, but . . .” As he lapsed into silence he could hear the ticking of the 853’s engine. He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “I’ll sign whatever papers you want me to sign. And I hope everything works out for you. . . .”
He was surprised to find that he meant that, regardless of what she’d done to him. It felt good to let it go, and it was with a smile that he said goodbye, stood and slipped the phone into his pocket, then reached for the door handle. When, an instant later, a squad car swung in behind his car, that smile turned into something else.
“Down on the ground. Now!” one of the two officers shouted, exiting the vehicle and leading with his gun. CJ, whose hand was still on the 853’s door handle, and whose brain was running slow from lack of sleep, apparently didn’t comply with the officer’s order quickly enough because the man repeated the command with, if possible, more menace in his voice. By this time the other officer had stepped from the squad car and he held something that looked like a large electric shaver.
Knowing it was unlikely that the one with the gun would shoot him, but having doubts about the officer with the Taser, CJ went to his knees, and then continued on to his belly.
The Taser officer closed the distance while the one with the gun watched. Once he was close enough, the cop put a knee in CJ’s back, which hurt more than he would have thought, and proceeded to pull CJ’s hands behind his back until he could snap the handcuffs in place.
That was when the cop with the gun holstered his weapon and helped his buddy pull CJ to his feet, which again hurt more than CJ thought it should have. He was marched to the squad car, and as the officer put his hand on the top of CJ’s head and guided him in, CJ thought he saw a curtain in the front window move.
CJ sat in a holding cell at the Williamson County jail, pondering synchronicity. Just yesterday he’d visited the courthouse in the town of his birth for the first time, despite a youth spent in less than angelic fashion. Now he was visiting another venue of criminal justice in the town he’d called home for more than a decade.
He was one of four men in the cell, and in his short incarceration he’d made friends with Lemon (the jury was still out about that being the man’s given name), who was the only one of his cellmates who wasn’t passed out.
“I’m telling you,” Lemon said, his foot twitching. It hadn’t stopped twitching the entire time CJ had been in the cell. “There are some women you just can’t please, no matter how hard you try.”
CJ pondered this bit of jailhouse wisdom, then said, “I don’t know, Lemon. While I’m inclined to agree with you, I’m not sure any woman wants to come home and find her name burned into the lawn.”
Lemon’s foot began twitching faster now. “Show’s how much you know. It’s poetic—Shakespearean, really. Like . . . What’s that dude’s name? The dude who held the boom box up in the rain for his girl?”
“John Cusack.”
“Yeah, that dude. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh,” CJ said, nodding. “Still, I don’t think it’s the same thing.”
“Ah, what do you know?” Lemon said.
CJ thought that was a great question. What did he know? He knew enough to leave a girl he never should have left; he knew enough to marry someone he shouldn’t have; and he knew enough to get himself arrested while making an effort to set things right. If one compared his track record with women against Lemon’s, he wasn’t certain his cellmate’s approach was all bad.
“You may have a point,” he conceded.
“Of course I do. But some women, see, they don’t have their heads screwed on right. Can’t see the forest for the trees and all that. See?”
“I’m not sure. There’s a tree in the way.”
Lemon grinned at him. “You’re a sharp one, aren’t you?”
“I’m not sure about that. I’m in here with you, aren’t I?”
“A minor setback for us both, I have no doubt,” Lemon said. “See, I figure she can’t stay mad forever, right? I’ll think of something. Got to climb back up on that horse.”
“That’s the spirit,” CJ said. “But maybe you can try it without the fire next time.”
Lemon seemed to give that some thought. “Yeah, maybe you’re on to something. Fire may not be the way to go.”
“Good man.”
“Baxter,” the guard called, approaching their cell. “You have a visitor.”
CJ nodded at Lemon, and let the guard direct him to another room. He recognized his agent before he’d gone two steps, which was simple because he was the only person in the room, seated at a
small table next to a line of vending machines.
“Good morning, Elliott,” CJ said as he sat down across from the man. Elliott had been his agent for a decade—long enough to have seen CJ through the bad times, and to have profited from the good period. A dark-haired man with chiseled features and impeccable fashion sense, Elliott looked bred to carry a briefcase and to conduct remote meetings via cell phone.
The guard who’d escorted him stood close by but far enough away to allow for a modicum of privacy.
His agent gave him a clinical once-over. “You look terrible,” he said.
“I’ve had a rough night. Are you here to bail me out?”
“What do I look like? Your lawyer?”
“Now that you mention it, you both take a lot of my money and I don’t see much in the way of results.”
“I’ve called your lawyer, and he’s working on getting you out of here,” Elliott said, ignoring CJ’s jab. “But I came to see you because you won’t return my calls.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I’ve been on vacation.”
“Whatever,” Elliott said, waving him off. He leaned in close. “If you’d picked up your phone, I could have told you the good news and not had to bother driving over here, relinquishing everything in my pockets and enduring a pat down that’s going to give me nightmares for weeks.”
That made CJ smile. He was about to grant Elliott an apology when something his agent had said hit him.
“What good news?”
It was Elliott’s turn to smile. The man leaned back in his chair and looked as if he would withhold whatever the good news was from his best client. Considering the circumstances, and taking into account the fact that CJ had essentially ignored his agent for more than two weeks, he couldn’t fault him. He sat there and waited for Elliott to break, knowing he could wait him out.
Elliott knew it too so he gave up the charade. “As of 5:00 p.m. yesterday, The Buffalo Hunter became your bestselling book of all time.”
The look of shock on CJ’s face must have been what Elliott was hoping for because he grinned at his favorite client.
“That little stunt you pulled in Albany?” he said. “Best publicity you could have come up with. The second you hit the evening news the book started flying off the shelves.” He laughed and slapped the table, and CJ saw the guard flinch. “Come to think of it,” Elliott went on, “now that you’ve actually been arrested, you might break a sales record.”
As CJ watched his agent enjoy the moment, he himself was torn by the news. He was happy for the sales, but it was difficult to enjoy it while stuck in jail.
“Wonderful news,” CJ said, with a vocal inflection that said otherwise. “You must be so proud.”
“What? You’re not happy about it?” Elliott asked.
“You do realize I’m in jail, right?”
“A temporary setback,” his agent said, unknowingly parodying CJ’s new friend Lemon.
“Time’s up,” the guard said. He approached the table as CJ stood.
“Get me out of here,” CJ said to Elliott. “Then we’ll celebrate the book.”
Two hours later, CJ was alone in the holding cell. When the guard brought him back from his meeting with Elliott, Lemon was gone, which had disappointed him. He didn’t have anything against solitude. In fact, he functioned best when alone, which was probably why his marriage hadn’t worked out. But in here he had nothing with which to occupy his time. It left him alone with nothing but his thoughts, and as this was something of a dark period in his life, his thoughts were not the best companions.
So rather than brood over the myriad unpleasant things that occupied his world, he chose to focus on something pleasant, and it didn’t surprise him that it wasn’t his recent book sales. He thought about the house he and Dennis were fixing up. He hadn’t stopped to consider, during the work itself, how much he’d been enjoying himself, how cathartic a project like that could be. He was thinking about the work they still had to do when a guard—a different one this time—appeared at the cell door.
“Mr. Baxter, you’re being released.”
While that didn’t shock him as much as had Elliott’s pronouncement, it was a close second.
“I am?”
“You are.” The guard unlocked the door and stepped aside.
“Why?” CJ asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” his jailer-turned-liberator said. “I just know the sooner you get up and get out of here, the sooner I can get back to my coffee.”
He didn’t have to tell CJ a third time. CJ followed the guard the same way he’d gone to see his agent, only this time they went through that room and out into an adjoining area, then to a window, which was where the guard left him.
Before CJ could say a word, a woman on the other side of the window slid a box through a slot at the bottom.
“Please make sure all your things are here and sign that piece of paper.”
CJ did as he was told. His wallet, watch, and car keys were accounted for, as was the key to the Horch. He signed the paper that itemized each of these things and slid it back through the slot.
“Where can I get my car?” he asked the clerk.
She looked at the paper work and said, “We don’t have your car. Were you notified that it had been impounded?”
“No.”
“Then it’s probably right where you left it.”
CJ grimaced. “That’s no good. I left it at my soon-to-be ex-wife’s house, and if I go over there I’ll probably wind up right back here.”
“Not my problem,” she answered with a shrug.
CJ decided that it would be useless to ask if she knew why he was now a free man. He gathered up his things and proceeded down the sterile hallway until he came to a door that, when opened, deposited him in the lobby, where he saw what was at least a partial answer to his question.
“For what I pay you, couldn’t you have got me out of there sooner?” CJ asked with a half smile.
His lawyer shook his head.
“I hate to say this, since no lawyer ever wants to admit they didn’t earn their keep, but I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Come again?”
CJ shook hands with the man who had taken more of his money over the last few years than anyone else.
“It’s true,” Al said. “I just got in this morning from Atlanta.
And by the time I made it in to see the prosecutor, he’d already sprung you.”
Before CJ could ask the question, Al said, “Your wife dropped the charges.”
Out of all the surprising things CJ had heard so far today, that might have been the most unexpected.
“Why in the world would she do that?”
“Don’t ask me,” his lawyer said. “But if I were you, I’d get out of here before she changes her mind.”
The two men walked out into the Franklin sun.
“You mind giving me a ride?” CJ asked.
“For what you pay me, and because I didn’t do anything to spring you? Sure.”
CJ got into the lawyer’s new-smelling Lexus. “My hard-earned money at work,” he said.
“Consider it a high-class taxi.”
As they drove to CJ’s house, and since he assumed this would come back to him as billable time, he and Al talked a bit about the upcoming divorce, but without having seen anything from Janet’s lawyer yet, there wasn’t much they could do.
“Oh, I almost forgot to tell you,” Al said. “The counsel for our favorite book critic made us a settlement offer.”
“How much?”
“Thirty thousand.”
CJ whistled.
“It’s a good offer. If they take you to court with the wrong jury, you’re liable to lose a whole lot more than that.”
“Still . . .”
“You have the number-one seller in America right now, from what I hear. You can afford it.”
“Is that your sage advice?” CJ asked. “That I can afford it?”
“A whole lot easier than you could afford four times that amount.”
“If I lose.”
“Trust me, you’ll lose,” Al said with an emphatic nod.
“Tell me why I pay you again.”
“Because I provide curb-to-curb service,” Al said as he pulled up to the house.
The Horch was still there and CJ breathed a sigh of relief.
“Nice car,” Al said. “Is that yours?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes.” CJ left his lawyer to ponder that as he exited the Lexus and fished for the key in his pocket.
When he reached the car he hesitated before getting in. He stood there, his hand on the door handle, and looked at the house, realizing that it wasn’t his anymore. It didn’t matter whose name graced the mortgage; it was Janet’s house. He had no idea why she dropped the charges and he was curious enough to want to walk up, knock on the door, and ask her. And he still wanted Thor. But he knew better than to press his luck. He’d let Al fight it out. Maybe if CJ sent him to court with the dog as the only nonnegotiable point . . .
He opened the car door and got in and was about to slip the key into the ignition when he saw Janet open the front door and step out onto the porch. Then a tan blur zipped by her legs, heading straight toward the Horch. Thor didn’t wait for CJ to get out of the car before he jumped on him. CJ went to a knee so the dog wouldn’t knock him over.
As he roughhoused with Thor, he looked past the dog to where Janet stood watching. After a minute or so, once he’d calmed Thor, he stood but stayed close to the car.
“Thanks.” It was the only thing that seemed appropriate.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
CJ watched the dog head for the front of the house, sniffing as he went. When he lost sight of the dog he looked back at Janet. “Why are you giving him back?”
“Because he’s your dog. Now don’t ask stupid questions.” It was the kind of thing she often said, but this was the first time in a long while that he didn’t hear any malice in the words.
Don Hoesel Page 25