Adrift

by Trimboli, TJ

  He bowed once more then took his leave.

  They treated her as if she was GOD herself.

  Kendra rose from her seat returning the bible to its spot on the shelf. “What can I do for you my children?”

  Bobbi went to snap but refrained. I will not let her goad me into petty remarks. I’m in charge here. “Take a seat.”

  “Uh-oh. I take it this does not mean you have come to give yourselves to the lord,” Kendra quipped as she sat back down.

  Bobbi took the seat across from her while Richard stood in the background. “What did he ever give to me that I should be so ecstatic to return the favor?” Bobbi replied.

  “He gave you life, my dear.”

  “Pretty sure it was my parents that did that.”

  “Each one of us is descendant from those that came before us, traced all the way back to He himself.”

  Careful. Do not let yourself get caught in a spiritual battle with this loon. “Fitting, you taking the library and all, considering how wise and beyond your years you seem to be for such a young age. Tell me, what did you do before this cruise?”

  Kendra looked back at Richard momentarily. “Is this a formal interrogation Sheriff?”

  “Just two people talking.”

  “Do you mind if I pour myself a drink? Talking makes me mighty thirsty.”

  “By all means.”

  “Would you like a glass yourself? I didn’t receive much during the night riot but my brothers and sisters have brought forth many offerings, my personal favorite being the blood of Christ.” As she spoke, she walked towards a cabinet in the back of the room. She opened it revealing two bottles of wine, a red and a white.

  I wonder which one she’ll grab. Wait a minute. The blood of Christ is the wine offering from priests. Is she goading me about the murder? “The blood of Christ? What’s that?” She wondered aloud.

  “My dear, the blood of Christ is the sacramental blood present in the Eucharist. We consider it to be of the same blood Christ shed on the cross.”

  “So in laymen’s terms, it’s the wine drank during a prayer session or whatever you call it,” Bobbi surmised.

  “Mass,” Richard chimed in.

  “Thank you.” She turned back to Kendra. “During the mass?”

  Kendra poured three glasses. “I believe we can find a more respectful wording but yes dear, in laymen’s terms.” She handed both Richard and Bobbi their glasses. She sat back down softly sipping at the wine.

  Bobbi attempted to mask her delight but a small grin protruded through. “That’s interesting, because as I’m sure you heard, Father McNamara was murdered last night.”

  “I had heard that. Terrible news, we need as many of the Lord’s vessels as possible. I shudder to think the Lord’s reasoning behind taking one of his own.”

  “The place was also ransacked. Bibles torn apart, chairs broken, cross desecrated. Oh, and someone stole the wine and the wafers.” She turned to Richard. “It is wafers correct?”

  “Yes, communion wafers, or the body of Christ as they like to call it.”

  “Ah yes, the body of Christ which I don’t suppose is that bowl I see sticking out the corner of the cabinet, is it?”

  Kendra refused to turn around. She simply stared at Bobbi. “Careful now, Sheriff. This is a dangerous road you walk. Accusing a member of GOD’s—”

  “You are not a member of anything but the bullshit committee Kendra. You had no ties to religion before the shit hit the fan but here we are, the priest is dead, and you sit atop the mountain with the trinkets. Open and shut case, as far as I see it.” “You don’t see nearly as far as you think you do, Sheriff.” “Richard,” Bobbi said.

  Richard wasted no time walking over to the cabinet pulling out the wine and bowl of communion wafers. He paused.

  “What is it?” Bobbi asked.

  “The proof is in the pudding.” Richard pulled out the priest’s vestment. He unfurled it revealing the clerical collar and cassock. It was caked in dried blood.

  “Quite the summer attire you’ve got there.”

  Kendra’s face had turned red. “I get a lawyer. You don’t have the right to do this Bobbi. You came in here without a warrant, all of this is inadmissible.”

  Bobbi laughed. “For all your talk of the new world, you sure are relying on old world tricks to save your ass. You want a lawyer? Better brush up on your reading, because we don’t have one on this ship. As for a warrant, you invited us in, everything here is admissible. So let’s talk. As far as I’m able to determine, and stop me if I’m wrong at any point, you came on this ship a nobody just like the rest of us. When shit hit the fan, whoever you had by your side, if you had anyone to begin with, died leaving you all by yourself. At some point in time, I figure during the night riot, you found religion and concocted a dangerous little thought in your head, what if I became the Lord? There wasn’t anyone to stop you from preaching and who knows, just maybe, in this crazy new world full of scared, impressionable people, I may finally be able to find a friend. How am I doing so far?”

  Kendra said nothing. She sipped her wine, listening to every word.

  For a second, it threw Bobbi off her game. She seems way too calm during all of this. “So amass some friends you did but there was an obstacle. Another voice of GOD right under our noses preaching religion as it ought to be spoken, not with barbs, threats, and manipulation but with love, and understanding, and you couldn’t have that. What if all your new found friends discovered the liar you are and left you? You’d be nothing all over again, left alone to rot in some unknown corner of the ship until you withered and died with not a soul to mourn your passing.”

  Kendra finished her wine. “You have quite the imagination, Sheriff. If the world had turned out differently, you would have had a promising career in literature but that was never your path was it? You don’t strike me as a studious one. D student, maybe C? Not high enough to go to any college of worth but just enough that you could do the only thing loser’s from your town can do, join the police force. How am I doing so far?”

  Bobbi said nothing, she was too taken aback.

  Kendra reached across grabbing Bobbi’s glass of wine for herself. “I take your silence as an answer. How many years on the force? It couldn’t have been many, you still look relatively young. You may have bags under your eyes and your skin has started to wrinkle but that strikes me more as a recent development of stress rather than age. So let’s say five years which seems a rather short time for you to gain such an extended break to travel on this luxury cruise liner so it had to be something important to let you sneak away. Did you quit? Run away scared? No, you may feel fear, same as the rest of us but somehow, that doesn’t seem quite right to me. Nobody runs away to a beautiful destination, they slink away to the dark corners of the globe. No, this seems more of a happy occurrence. Honeymoon perhaps?”

  Bobbi flinched at the word. It brought back all the pain. She did her best to hold it in.

  However, Kendra had already seen. “Yes, that’s it. This is your honeymoon, I remember but where’s your ring? Is there trouble in paradise?” “That’s enough,” Richard said.

  Kendra paid him no mind. “So your estranged husband sits in a cell, guilty of murdering men and women alike and here you stand so desperate for his love back, that you’ll cast accusations, and spew poisonous lies in hopes of finding anyone weak enough to cave and spare his life. Do you think that will get him back Bobbi? That he’ll race out from the cell, so happy and full of vigor to still be alive that he’ll throw himself into your arms, showering you with kisses, promising to never be so stupid again? I hate to burst your bubble Sheriff, but your husband is a murderer and he will pay the price and die a murderer and for the rest of eternity, the earth and sea alike will howl his name in blasphemy and he will forever be condemned a vicious, psychopathic killer—”

  Kendra barely got the word out before Bobbi pounced. She glided over the table tackling her to the ground. Kendra did her best t
o shield herself but Bobbi latched on to a clump of her hair slamming the back of her head against the floor.

  Richard threw his arms around Bobbi pulling her off.

  Kendra backed up against the bookshelf. “Nothing you do to me will ever change facts, Bobbi. If I wanted, I could have you right there in that cell with him. Maybe that’s what you deserve. Husband and wife, animal and savage, together again. There’s no room in this world for those with no humanity left.”

  Bobbi tried to break free from Richard but he held her tight. “Get a hold of yourself. You’re doing exactly what she wants,” he told her.

  Bobbi steadied her breathing, settling down.

  Richard turned to Kendra. “No such thing will happen Kendra and let me tell you why. It’s your word against ours to the council and we both sit on it. Who do you think they will believe when we show them the wine, and the wafers? No one saw Bobbi attack you but us, and I have a feeling our memories will become a little hazy if you try to bring that to court. Face it, you slipped up and now, your life hangs in our hands. All the evidence points to you. So I ask this once and only once, tell us whose been murdering these people. If you don’t, then you are as good as guilty but I don’t think you are. At least not guilty of the murders themselves but if you refuse to give up a name, we’ll gladly string you up in their stead. You’re a smart girl though, you have five seconds to decide.”

  Kendra sat staring at them, her hair ruffled resting in blotches over her face.

  Bobbi couldn’t see her eyes, couldn’t see what she was thinking.

  “One…Two…Three…” Richard counted.

  Bobbi took that time to grab the evidence from Kendra’s cabinet.

  “Four…Five.”

  Kendra remained silent.

  Bobbi hovered over her. “Suit yourself.” They made their exit.

  They got as far as the door when Kendra stopped them.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TRENT

  Trent laid upon the cold steel bench leering at the ceiling. He’d spent the better part of the day in this cell, yet his eyes never adjusted to the pitch black darkness that surrounded him, not that it made a difference. He enjoyed the absence of light. It made it easier to separate himself from his environment. There was no fouled cruise ship, no stacks of dead bodies, no pain, no suffering, just blackness, and unfortunately—her. He couldn’t see her but that didn’t mean she hadn’t made her presence felt.

  Since waking from her nap, she yelled, screamed, shook the bars, anything she could to force the guards to acknowledge them. They never did. Thankfully, at the moment, she’d given up any shot of a break out and accepted her plight. She sat somewhere in the cell.

  Frankly, he did not care where. His mind lay elsewhere. He wondered about Bobbi and how she was handling proving his innocence. There weren’t many things he could count on in his life but Bobbi was one of them. She was mighty thickheaded and when she got an idea or a goal in her head, he knew she wouldn’t stop until she saw it through. At least, that was the Bobbi he fell in love with, the one that came to visit him this morning. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw that determination in her eyes.

  Not since before Kevin.

  He hadn’t heard that name in a long time. In fact, it had been ages since he last thought about the poor boy. Kevin O’Leary was the Chief of Police’s son at the eighty second precinct. Trent was a Detective Lieutenant at the time and it was there he met Bobbi. She’d been transferred over from the twenty third precinct to help with the training of their rookie cops. She was a force to be reckoned with, capable of doing the work of two police officers. Her arrest record was near flawless and not one officer from her previous precinct had a bad mark against her. He could still remember the first time he saw her like it was yesterday.

  He sat at his desk eating a Boston crème donut, his weakness. In fact, the only thing with the word Boston in it he’d ever praised, when she walked in. He never found women in uniform very attractive, as he preferred to be able to see all of a woman as she walked by, but Bobbi was different. She didn’t just wear the uniform—she owned it. Tight against the body but not so tight that she couldn’t chase down a crook, she was in peak physical condition. Her hair hung down in a swoop like Rachel from Friends did in the early seasons. She commanded attention everywhere she walked.

  He’d been instantly attracted to her and as time went on, his lust turned to true affection and his courting began. Within four months, they were dating. They kept their relationship a secret in the beginning, just long enough until they could be sure that Bobbi would become a permanent fixture in their department…Then, they met Kevin.

  GONG!

  The sound of the bars being struck rung out throughout the tiny compartment.

  Trent grabbed his ears, wrested away from his thoughts. He rubbed his fingertips to feel for blood. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he shouted. His voice sounded muffled to him like he was listening to people talk from underwater.

  She does that again, I’m certain to go deaf.

  GONG!

  “Open up you sons of bitches! You can’t keep me in here like this!” the woman shouted.

  He still had no idea what her name was but if he did, he would curse the day she was given it. He felt around until he could feel her against the bars. She was using the porcelain top of the toilet. He grabbed it away from her.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Give me that back!” She lunged at him.

  He pushed her away setting the piece down, the ringing in his ears ceasing, sound coming back to him. “You’re just going to tire yourself out and give me a side splitting headache. If you listen, you can hear them on the other side of that door. If they haven’t come inside yet from your prattling, then it’s likely they aren’t going to come in at all. At least not until they decide what to do with us. So please, for the love of god, just sit down and shut up!” He bellowed. He couldn’t see her face but she made no more lunges at him to retrieve the blunt instrument. All he could hear was her breathing. He laid back down against the cot, hoping to drift back to days when his life made sense.

  “How do you know they won’t come in?” she asked.

  Christ, she’s not going to let up, is she?

  “I used to be a cop.”

  “Used to?”

  “Well, technically, I am still one.”

  There was silence for a moment. Trent waited hoping it was to be for good.

  “If you’re a cop then how come you aren’t on the council then? Why were you slumming it, fishing with me?”

  “I’m not cut out for it anymore.”

  “That woman who visited before, the sheriff. Is she your wife?”

  “Yes, or was. We’re still married but more estranged at the moment.”

  “Those technicalities again.”

  “I thought you were sleeping then.”

  “Seemed more polite than you guys having to fight it out in front of me…Plus, she scares me and she knew about us sleeping together, so I thought it be best if we didn’t communicate.”

  Trent chuckled. The first in a long time. “Smart move.” He waited for the woman to continue but she never did. It grew uncomfortably silent now for him and he tried desperately to come up with something to say but nothing came. Before long, he heard the pitter patter of water hitting the floor. He never even realized that she had started to cry. He slowly made his way over to her scooping her into his arms. He felt his shirt dampen as she sobbed into his chest. “It’s okay. I’ve been in worse situations than this.” “Oh—yeah? When?” she asked.

  Trent struggled to recall a time. He attempted to make up a tale but by the time he thought of one decent enough, she could tell he was grasping at straws. “Okay, maybe this is the worst situation I’ve ever been in but that doesn’t mean we can’t get out of it. I’ve been in plenty of firefights where I thought this was it, I’m a goner, but here I am.”

  “You don’t honestly believe that.”
/>   “Sure I do.”

  “Then why did you try drinking yourself to death?” Trent paused. How did she know that?

  She seemed to pick up on his thoughts because she answered before he could, “You told me you were going to do it one day while we were fishing. You were drunk, I don’t suspect you’d remember.”

  “It’s…It’s complicated.”

  “Complicated, I can handle. It’s the simple things that give me grief.”

  “I’ve been a cop for over twelve years. I know that doesn’t seem like a long time compared to most but the things you see out on patrol age you faster than you could ever imagine. With the amount of death, rape, and warfare I’ve seen, I feel more like a hundred than I do thirty. There comes a time in everyone’s life when they reach that moment of no return. When one cataclysmic event strips away whatever fight they have left and all your left with are the ghosts of those you’ve lost and those you’ve killed. Mine happened during the night riot…after that, I no longer wanted to be the hero.”

  He waited for her response but none came. They laid there in silence so long, Trent lost track of the minutes that went by. He drifted in and out of sleep until he was awoken by the woman in his arms.

  Her cries had softened and her pulse had steadied. “Did it hurt? Drinking all that much?”

  “Not that I recall. I don’t remember much of anything, just waking up to see that it hadn’t worked.”

  “I’ve often thought about it, you know. Killing myself, but I’m too afraid to drown, terrified to slice my wrists, and I can’t even begin to think about hanging myself. Any way you slice it, there’s no good way to die.”

  “I suppose there isn’t. Drinking was the best solution I could come up with. By the time it happens, you’re too far gone to remember or feel much of anything. You just sort of black out, and that’s that.”

  She fell silent for a moment.

  Trent could tell where the conversation was leading. He could feel her summoning up the courage to utter the words.