The Secrets on Forest Bend

by Susan C. Muller

  “I thought that was werewolves.”

  “No, they need silver bullets. That was last night.”

  “What about vampires?”

  “I don’t know. Ask me tomorrow. I’d kill for a ball game.” The small desk Ruben used in high school was covered with papers, but they were in organized stacks. A spreadsheet was in the center. Ruben lowered himself gently into the rickety chair.

  “The number of items turned into the front desk held steady in the beginning of the time period you gave me. It varied some from month to month, but it averaged out to a certain amount of weapons, drugs, and valuables each month for two years. Even dividing the weapons into handguns, long guns, knives, and miscellaneous, the count was close.”

  Adam sat on the edge of the bed, like a little kid looking up at the teacher. “What happened then?”

  “About eighteen months ago, the count began falling. At first, only antique type handguns stopped appearing. Then it was regular handguns. For the last four months, the only handguns turned in were so old and rusted they would be a danger to anyone using them. The one exception was turned in on a Saturday while a rookie was on the desk.”

  “What about other things? Did the count change on them as well?”

  “Funny you should ask. Long guns haven’t changed. The number is exactly the same as it was two years ago. Of course, it would be difficult to stroll out with a shotgun under your arm. Switchblades, brass knuckles, those types of things apparently aren’t being turned in anymore.”

  “Any drugs show up?” Adam took the spreadsheet from Ruben’s hands and studied it.

  “They were the last thing to start disappearing. About six months ago, narcotics fell off the grid. Other types of drugs, heart meds, diabetics, anything someone might find in a deceased relative’s house and not know what to do with, still come in regularly.”

  “I don’t suppose we’ve seen any valuables lately.”

  “In the last year, only two empty purses and one old beat-up billfold with three one-dollar bills have been found on the streets of Houston. Not one ring left on a wash basin, not one bracelet with a broken clasp, unless it was worth less than ten dollars.”

  Adam rubbed his hand over his face. “So what are we going to do about this?”

  “There’s no ‘we.’ I’m on sick leave. And I want it cleared up before I go back to work. Something like this could ruin a career. If you report it, you’re in the shit. If you don’t report it, you’re in the shit. Hard Luck isn’t even going to want to know it happened. Marshall’s a well-liked guy. He brings donuts.”

  “I guess it’s okay to commit any type of crime if you bring donuts.”

  “Well, murder usually requires bear claws.”

  He and Ruben discussed the problem for another twenty minutes without coming up with a solution. When Mamacita announced dinner, they started down the stairs. “Not a word,” Ruben said, nodding toward his mother.

  “How’s your friend Jillian?” Mamacita asked.

  “She’s doing well. Thank you for having her over that night. I think it really helped her.”

  “I know. She called me the next day. Someone taught her good manners.” She glared at him. “She’s a nice girl, and I like her, but she has problems. A shadow follows her, a dark cloud.”

  Adam stopped eating. “Everyone she’s ever cared about has died young and violently——her mother, her sister, her father, and now her good friend. I imagine she does get down occasionally, but she seems to handle it well.”

  “I’m not talking about grief. She carries that in a small place in her heart, and it goes everywhere with her. This is something else. I don’t know what it is, but it wouldn’t come into this house.” She made a sign of the cross. “She’s going to need your help to get away from it, Adam, and I hope you’re up to the task.”

  He and Ruben looked at each other and rolled their eyes. When he got ready to leave, Ruben walked him to the door and stepped onto the porch.

  “I don’t know what Mamacita’s talking about with the shadow following her bit.” Ruben made quotation marks with his fingers and a spooky, horror movie sound. “But she does know people, and if she says there’s something off about Jillian, then you should think twice.”

  “Jillian’s different, I’ll give you that. But maybe that’s a good thing. I haven’t done so well with the ones I’ve tried in the past. Maybe a change is what I need. Anyway, when has Mamacita approved of any woman you or I have ever dated?”

  “That’s true. And she’s been right every time. Maybe this once you should use your big brain, instead of the little one.”

  Adam drove home in a blue funk. He wanted to be angry at Ruben, but couldn’t manage it. It was one thing to make a joke about something, or have a friend kid about it. It was something else when three or four friends told him the same thing.

  His marriage should have taught him that much.

  He’d met his wife when she was working as a waitress at a diner. It had to be love because she kept his coffee cup filled and made sure his eggs were just the way he liked them.

  She never met a rule she wouldn’t break with a smile and a wink. “Rules are for suckers. I’m sure they don’t mean us. If we get in trouble, just flash your badge.”

  They had plenty of fun in those early days. She seemed to enjoy sex games, usually ones involving his uniform and equipment, especially the handcuffs. She sometimes wore his hat and nothing else as she danced around the room.

  Shortly after they married, the games stopped. She claimed to have only then realized what the handcuffs were normally used for.

  “I could catch something,” she said. “Maybe AIDS, or TB.” He wasn’t sure what she expected to catch from the hat.

  She immediately quit work and began her new hobby—spending money. It didn’t seem to matter if it was Jimmy Choo shoes or a bag of crap from the dollar store, she couldn’t get through a day without buying something. If she ran out of money, she began to shoplift.

  “You’re stingy and selfish,” she screamed as she tore the house apart looking for the credit cards he’d hidden.

  He suggested she see someone about her compulsion, but instead of keeping the appointment he made for her, she moved out. Within a week, he was served with divorce papers. Three months later, she was married to one of the most eligible lawyers in the city of Houston.

  When he started to date Mai, a beautiful Vietnamese woman from the Records Department, several of his friends warned him she was crazy.

  That’s what every man says about a woman that gets away, he told himself.

  She was cute and sweet, and hung on his every word. She was an expensive date——she liked to go to fancy restaurants and clubs——but it was worth the price because she enjoyed it so. Even though clubbing wasn’t his thing, he relished the look of envy on other men’s faces, and knew they were wondering what he had that they didn’t to attract such an exotic woman. When he had to be at work early the next morning and wanted to skip the clubs, she pouted, and he gave in. Coffee and Red Bull replaced actual sleep.

  Her desire to have sex in inappropriate places was exciting at first, but her constant need to be reassured she was more important to him than his job began to take a toll.

  More and more of her things began to appear in his closet, and he suspected she was moving in with him, one pair of shoes at a time.

  His hours were unpredictable. As a civilian employee, she should have known that. Perhaps she did, but she didn’t like it. Now when he came in late, she didn’t greet him with a hug and a kiss, but with tears and accusations. If he stopped for a beer with his friends on the way home, it meant an hour of recriminations.

  Ruben was his partner by then, and they went to dinner at Mamacita’s house several times. Mamacita was always polite, but it was obvious she didn’t like Mai.

  “That old lady has it in for me,” Mai said every time they left. “She keeps giving me the evil eye. I think she’s trying to poison me with th
at spicy food.” This from a woman who covered her food with Wasabi sauce like it was chocolate syrup.

  Eventually, Adam began to suspect she was using him to troll for a bigger, better catch. Finally, her jealousy and temper tantrums were too much for him, and he suggested they take a break from each other. That was when he found out what crazy meant.

  She called constantly, alternating between crying and screaming. His answering machine would be full when he got home in the evening. Her command of English curse words was impressive, but she still augmented them with Vietnamese. She tried to spread rumors about him at work. He wasn’t the first she made claims about, so it didn’t go very far.

  He came home once to find her naked in his bed. She threatened to lie to the police and say he raped her, but he’d seen her car when he drove up and had asked a neighbor to come inside with him so she left without any trouble. After that, he changed his locks and installed an alarm system.

  She never again did anything outright to harass him, but almost a year later, any report he needed from the Records Department was delayed or lost. Asking Ruben or another detective to get them for him didn’t always work. Avoiding her was getting old.

  Now he’d met Jillian, and both Ruben and Mamacita were suggesting there was something off about her. He could see through a lying witness or suspect from across a room, but was he blind about his personal life?

  “Fuck you, Ruben,” he called out. “Your idea of a long-term relationship is staying for breakfast.” And Mamacita, what did she know about dating? She got married at sixteen to the guy who lived next door. As for the guys in his squad: Nelson’s sole requirement in a woman was that she be shorter than he was, and Steinberg had children with two ex-wives and a former girlfriend. They were hardly experts.

  If he wanted to smooth things over with Jillian, and he did, he needed to get his butt over to her place and start groveling.

  Adam hurried home to feed Rover and give him his shot. After a quick shower, he changed into casual clothes. He hated to take the time, but his visit to the dry-cleaning plant had left even his hair reeking of chemicals. He placed his service weapon in the gun safe. After a minute’s hesitation, he added his back-up weapon, a snub-nosed .38 he wore in an ankle holster, before locking the safe. It was a breach of protocol to go unarmed, but he had a lot to make up for.

  He had parked the Taurus and planned to take his personal car, a four year old BMW, so there could be no question he was off the clock, but when he turned the key, nothing happened. Surprised, he tried again.

  The battery was less than a year old, and he had driven the car on Sunday, so it shouldn’t be down. He counted to ten, slowly, to give the car time to heal itself. His third try offered no better results. With enough time, he could have fixed it, but he didn’t have any to spare so, cursing under his breath, he went back into the house and got the keys to the Taurus.

  While driving to Jillian’s, he chewed on his lip. He hated to admit it, but Ruben had a point. He often thought with his dick. For some reason, unstable women seemed to seek him out. Lydia Cox sprang to mind, and the realization he would have gone out with her if he hadn’t met Jillian first made him shudder.

  Did he wear a sign that said: I’ll put up with anything for a little nookie? He’d wasted years rebelling against his father’s rules. Was he still doing it? This time he’d try to keep his eyes open. If Jillian showed any sign of becoming datezilla, he’d cut and run before things escalated. After Mai, he’d made a solemn vow to never again get involved with a crazy woman.

  He was ten minutes late when he parked behind Jillian’s. He took the stairs two at a time, rushing to her back door. She was sitting on the sofa with her legs tucked under her, eating a bowl of ice cream, when he knocked on the sliding glass door. He had on a grin that even he knew was idiotic.

  When she stood and started for the door, she wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frowning either, and that was good enough for Adam. She nodded toward his piece-of-crap Taurus. “Am I under arrest?”

  He twisted his head toward the car. “No, no. Of course not. I had to bring the cruiser. Mine wouldn’t start.”

  “Then why exactly are you here?” She held up the empty bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other. “If it’s for ice cream, you’re out of luck. It’s all gone. If it’s for anything else,”— she tilted her head toward the bedroom—“you’re still out of luck.”

  “That’s not why I’m here. I wasn’t planning on that.” Not planning on it maybe, but he definitely had hopes. “I didn’t like the way we left things the other day, and I wanted to come over and apologize.”

  “It’s a long drive for something you could have done over the phone.”

  “You’re worth the drive.” Was that a slight thaw?

  A mosquito landed on her arm. “You better come in and shut the door before the house fills up with bugs.”

  He suspected he was only a half-step above the bugs in her opinion, but that was a half-step better that he was before. He’d learned early that it’s a lot harder to send someone away when they’re already in your house than when they’re still outside.

  “You know it wasn’t personal. I never suspected you of anything, but I had to prove it before I could close the case on someone else.”

  “Not personal? Wait until you have to prove yourself to a homicide detective, then tell me it wasn’t personal. It sure felt that way, especially after what we’d been doing two nights before.”

  “I know. But I couldn’t ask you when I came by on Friday. Not after seeing how upset you were.” He knew immediately he’d made a big mistake. She didn’t like being reminded how vulnerable she’d been. “And on Sunday... Well, I couldn’t ask you on Sunday. That was too special. I tried to make it a separate trip. An official one, not personal.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but you should have devised a way, and you should have done it before we slept together. That made me feel...used.”

  “You’re right, and I apologize. I bungled it completely. Now that we’ve established I’m an idiot, can we move on? I’m not familiar with this part of town, but there must be someplace to get a drink, listen to some music. Would you let me take you out somewhere?”

  “There’s no need, I have beer.” When she pulled two Shiner Bocks from the fridge, an enormous weight lifted from his shoulders. If she had bothered to buy his favorite beer, he still had a chance.

  “So, other than pissing me off royally, how was your week?”

  “It should have been a good one, but somehow it wasn’t. I met several interesting people and closed two cases. I even got to tell a mother I found the man who murdered her daughter. That’s supposed to make me feel better, but this time it didn’t. After all, it’s the only payoff we get in this department. We don’t search for missing persons or return stolen property, but we can let relatives know their loved ones have been avenged. She might not have been a good mother, but she did love her daughter, and knowing who killed her doesn’t bring her back.”

  “It does help, though, maybe not today, but in time.” Jillian put her hand on his, and the knot in his stomach began to relax. “I had reports from some of the people you met. Snake-Eye wasn’t too impressed, but Lydia Cox is a big fan.”

  Adam laughed and shook his head. “Not even if she promised her husband would have full custody of those kids. Now, the bakery lady might be another story.”

  “Give me a break. She has to be ten years older than you. Probably fifteen.”

  “Yeah, but when I was eating those brownie cookies, my eyes misted over.” How long had it been since he’d met someone he could tease and laugh with? “Snake-Eye, on the other hand, made my eyes mist over for other reasons entirely.”

  “He’s a unique individual. Did you know he has an MBA from the University of Houston? He once worked in a big brokerage firm downtown. When they caught him smoking pot in the john, they kicked his ass to the curb. They didn’t call the cops on him, though. That would ha
ve been bad for business.”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me.”

  She put her hand over her heart. “I shit you not. He may have psychological problems, but he’s a certified genius.”

  “He is certifiable, I’ll give you that.”

  “I’m never sure how much of what you see with him is an act. He came in here once and told me to buy some stock I never heard of. I didn’t do it, of course, but I kept an eye on it sometimes and it kept going up. A few months later, he told me to sell it. When I looked the next time, it had gone down. If he ever tells me again, I’m buying it. Anyway, he and his friends may be weird, but they don’t hurt anybody.”

  “Except those poor trees. He’s hell on flora and fauna.”

  “That’s true, but they’re his trees, so I guess there’s no law against it.”

  He settled back on the sofa and smiled. Only a few minutes and he was already comfortable and relaxed. “How’s your new lady working out? Cara, was it?”

  “She’s doing great. I think she’s going to be just fine. I still miss Billy, but I hadn’t realized what a strain it was keeping an eye on him.” She twisted on the sofa to face him. “Saturday’s coming. What do you like to do on the weekends?”

  “Ruben has a small cabin on Lake Livingston, and he keeps a boat there. We used to take it out at least once a month. It might be a while before he’s ready to go out again.”

  “Fishing or water-skiing?”

  “Fishing.”

  “Good. I can’t stand all those boats zipping around, making so much noise. Who cooks the fish?”

  Great, she wasn’t a water-skier, and she didn’t seem to worry about public opinion or appearances. Things were getting better and better.

  She had her arm on the back of the sofa, and he put his hand on top of hers, playing with her fingers. “Well, the cabin’s pretty rustic. Ruben and I built a two-burner propane cooker, and he fries the fish outside then usually dumps in some french-fries. Sometimes we put on a pot of water and boil a few ears of corn. Nothing fancy, but it tastes good with a cold beer.”