Rusty Logic

by Robin Alexander

  Tom tried to smile. “This is a misunderstanding,” he said as he kept his hands up and tilted his head toward Rusty. “She stole my phone, and I was only trying to get it back.”

  “No, you want the pictures I have on my phone, you liar,” Rusty spat out angrily.

  “We know exactly what’s going on here,” Mona said firmly. “You’re a sick man.”

  Tires screeched as two patrol cars turned onto the road and lit the night sky up with flashing lights. Tom took advantage of the distraction and ran into an empty lot. Stella fired the flare gun into the air above him and yelled, “I lit him up, go get him!”

  Bryan and Mitch took off after Tom, except for Kirsten, who rushed over to Rusty and clasped her face with both hands. “What’re you doing?” she asked wild-eyed.

  “I got him. I got him on my phone,” Rusty rasped.

  “Honey, you might want to get on your radio and call the fire department. Stella set the field on fire,” Mona said calmly.

  Kirsten alerted dispatch and glared at Stella. “You can’t be satisfied unless you set something ablaze, can you?”

  “Be glad it wasn’t on purpose this time,” Stella said casually.

  *******

  Tom demanded a lawyer the whole time Bryan was reading him his rights. Then he started whining about his mother, that she couldn’t be left alone, and he needed to be released immediately to care for her. Kirsten sent Terry and Clint to Tom’s house to check on her, and Bryan and Mitch took Tom to the station. On the way, she called an ambulance despite Rusty’s ardent protests, and the paramedics met them at the station, which had become a circus.

  Rusty relented and let the medics check her over when everyone ganged up on her, but she was giving Kirsten the stink eye when she climbed into the back of the ambulance. Kirsten wanted to go with her, but Stella was flapping around like a chicken yelling, “Call the paper, get a reporter out here. We have the real peeper, and everyone needs to know.”

  Mona was in Kirsten’s face pleading her case. “I would’ve never put Rusty in that position if I’d ever dreamed that Stella was right. I wanted to call you early on, but Stella wouldn’t let me.”

  “Because we didn’t have the evidence we needed, I told you that,” Stella retorted hotly.

  Kirsten had never been happier to see her dad than when he drove into the lot. “Please, do something with Mom,” she said as soon as Tal got out of his car.

  Mitch walked into the melee and said, “Chief, Terry and Clint can hear Mrs. Portman yelling for help. She says she’s locked in her bedroom, and the window is nailed shut. I’ve got the fire department on the way over there. They’re gonna bust through the front door. Tom’s not saying anything, he’s not gonna talk until his lawyer gets here. You want me to go over to his house?”

  Kirsten nodded. “Please.”

  No sooner had Mitch walked away, one of the paramedics was in Kirsten’s face. “Normal sinus rhythm on the heart monitor, blood pressure, pulse, and respirations are a bit higher than normal, but she’s good and pissed right now. She’s adamant that she doesn’t need to go to the hospital and signed a patient refusal, so legally, I can’t make her go.”

  Kirsten nodded. “I appreciate you taking a look at her.”

  Allie drove into the parking lot in her personal vehicle and got out with a smile. “Well, that was quick,” she said as she walked up to Kirsten. “I didn’t even get a chance to hang my ass out the window.”

  Kirsten opened her mouth to speak but turned when she heard Rusty’s voice. “I can do it myself,” she said as the back of the ambulance door flew open, and she climbed out shirtless with electrode pads sticking out of and around her sports bra.

  “Where’re your clothes?” Kirsten asked when Rusty walked over to where she stood with Allie.

  “I don’t know where my shirt is. I was lucky to get my bra back. Now that I’ve suffered this unnecessary indignity and I’m fine, are you happy?” Rusty ground out.

  “I don’t know what I am right now,” Kirsten retorted.

  Allie patted Kirsten on the shoulder. “Hey, babe, I’m gonna get out of your way, but I’ll be around if you need me.”

  “Babe?” Rusty said as she watched Allie walk away. “Tell me who that is, babe.”

  Kirsten rubbed the back of her neck and expelled a breath. “A detective. I need to take a formal statement from you, Mom, and Stella, one at a time. I need to take Stella’s first because I think she’s on the phone with a reporter.”

  “All right,” Rusty said with an emphatic nod. “Then you’re going to answer my questions about babe over there.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The sun rose, and Kirsten still didn’t have everything sorted out, but the pieces were coming together. Poor Vanessa Portman had become a prisoner in her own home. She was not bed bound as Tom led people to believe; she could get around with the aid of a walker. Tom nailed her bedroom window shut and the one in the adjoining bathroom. He’d also padlocked her room door from the outside. He’d taken her phone too, and Vanessa said she only saw him when he brought in her meals and medicine. She said Tom had told her it was for her own good because she had regular “delusional bouts,” and he was afraid she would wander away.

  Vanessa didn’t appear to be suffering any mental disability during the brief interview with Kirsten before she was taken to the hospital to be checked out. Vanessa had clutched Kirsten’s hand and asked, “Why did my son do this to me? What’s wrong with him?”

  “We’re trying to find out,” Kirsten said as reassuringly as she could.

  Terry, Clint, and Mitch did a thorough search of the Portman house and found wigs, makeup, and bags of plastic ties. The most incriminating evidence was a journal Mitch found stuffed into a pocket of a coat hanging in Tom’s closet. It contained information Tom had gathered on his nightly wanderings. Each woman he surveilled had a page of her own—whether or not she lived alone, when her husband left for work, and her personal habits such as when she went to bed and left for work. The journal also revealed that he’d been to the town of Rodney.

  When Tom was taken to the parish lockup for processing, Kirsten left the station for Rusty’s house and found Stella there. “Don’t you yell at her,” Stella said when she let Kirsten in. “This was all my idea. She went along because she wanted to help you.”

  “Oh, I know. This shit has Stella McGinnis stamped all over it. Did it ever cross your mind for even a second what could’ve happened if Tom would’ve caught her?”

  “Actually he did catch her. She slowed down when we pulled up. Otherwise, she would’ve left him in the dust. If a cheetah would’ve been running down that street wide open, Achmed would’ve passed it. I’ve never seen a human move that fast. She probably broke some kind of sprint record.”

  “And all you had was a flare gun, Stella!”

  “Only because my shotgun wouldn’t fit in the pocket of my coat. I got the job done, you should pat my back.”

  “I want to choke you right now. Please, go home before I do it,” Kirsten said wide-eyed.

  Stella shook a finger at Kirsten. “I told you it was Tom, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  Kirsten heard the water shut off in the bathroom and said, “Go home now. I’ll talk to you later when the compulsion to wring your neck goes away.”

  Stella threw open the front door. “Ben gave an interview right after I did and was praising the task force he was personally overseeing to catch the peeper. I told a different story, you can thank me for that later. You need to teach your mom how to drive in hot pursuit, she ran over the Welbournes’ mailbox.”

  Kirsten locked the door after Stella left and turned to find Rusty with wet hair and wrapped in her robe. “Are you going to yell at me again?” Rusty asked.

  “When I gave you that uniform shirt to wear, you kinda lost your mind. You had no right to order Allie out of the station, and demanding to be put in the holding cell with Tom and a Taser was out of line.”

  Rusty sh
rugged. “I would’ve shocked the answers right out of his balls.”

  Kirsten closed the distance between them, took Rusty into her arms, and held her tight. “When Mom called me and told me what y’all were doing and said they’d lost contact with you, I had chest pains. Please, don’t go on any more missions with Stella.”

  “That’s going to be a hard promise to keep now that I’m a member of the DOD. We haven’t had the bloodletting ceremony yet, but I do intend to put my thumb on the oath. Your mom said it was no big deal.”

  Kirsten pulled back so she could meet Rusty’s eye. “You’re gonna cause me cardiac issues making me worry about you.”

  “You think I’ll worry about you any less? You’re a cop.”

  “I just want to take a shower and curl up in bed with you and sleep. Can we do that?” Kirsten asked tiredly. “Then we’ll talk about all this later.”

  “We can, but there’s one matter we have to clear up. You weren’t on any auto parts sting, you lied to me. You were out in the woods with the imported babe bitch.”

  Kirsten smiled and said, “So this is jealous Rusty.”

  “This is ‘get a Taser and run her out of town’ Rusty. Don’t smile at me,” she said as Kirsten gently backed her toward the bathroom. “You two seem to be really friendly. How do you know her?”

  “We went to college together.” Kirsten grinned. “I introduced her to her first husband. She came here as a favor to me, so she could pose as the bait. She’ll go back home tomorrow, and I probably won’t see her again for another twenty or so years.”

  “I’ll be around then too.” Rusty narrowed her eyes. “You better tell her to watch her back, and you—oh, that’s Neil, I gotta get it,” she said as she darted into the bedroom to retrieve her ringing phone.

  Kirsten began undressing and smiled when she heard the one-sided conversation. “Neil, I caught a peeping Tom…No, she was in the woods with another woman…I joined a group called the Daughters of Darkness, and we were on a mission…no, I haven’t been drinking. Listen, I had to tail him for hours on foot in the dark…stop it, I’m not drunk.”

  *******

  Kirsten awoke when Rusty suddenly kicked and sat up. “What’s wrong—bad dream?” she asked as she rubbed Rusty’s back.

  “I can’t get in. It’s the house, it’s finished, and I can’t get in.” Rusty flopped back down and pinched the skin of her brow. “You’re inside, so is Neil and Stella, and y’all are telling me to come in, but my feet won’t move. I’m stuck outside with my mother.”

  “Maybe you have something that’s unresolved. What happened this week with you feeling unneeded at the office is a big deal for you, I’m sure.”

  “I…yeah, I’m still grappling with that. As happy as I am to be here with you, that still troubles me.”

  “It makes you feel what?” Kirsten asked as she snuggled up to Rusty.

  “Not in control,” Rusty admitted with a sigh. “Neil’s right, though, we don’t have to be involved in the daily operation for the company to run successfully. But it’s also like being told you can’t drive a car after doing it for a lifetime, at least that’s how it feels to me. I’ve never had a life outside of work. I have to adjust to that.”

  Kirsten kissed Rusty’s shoulder. “I’ll do whatever I can to help make it fulfilling.”

  “I think I want to be a cop.”

  Kirsten rose up on one elbow and shook her head. “Okay, no.”

  “What’s wrong with that idea?” Rusty asked with a laugh. “Are you afraid I’ll get us both fired?”

  “Uh-huh. You’re good at organizing things, why don’t you help Mitch get his campaign off the ground?”

  Rusty’s eyes flashed wide. “Yes! That’s an excellent idea.” She threw off the covers and jumped out of bed. “I’m going to draw up a proposal right now.”

  Kirsten stared at Rusty’s naked butt as it streaked out of the bedroom. “Do you want to put on clothes first?”

  “No!”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  A few days passed, and Ancelet Bay went back to being a quiet town again. The sheriff’s office took over the Portman investigation since Tom’s activities took place in Rodney too. Kirsten turned over all the evidence, on one hand hoping that they would find something to put Tom away for a long time. On the other, that would mean Tom did more than just peep in on someone, and that made her stomach turn.

  Vanessa Portman was making plans to move from Ancelet Bay to Lafayette into an assisted living facility. She was emotionally distraught over what Tom had done to her and his other activities. Stella and Mona teamed up with a few ladies of the community and committed to helping Vanessa as much as they could.

  Life was almost back to normal until Saturday afternoon when Mona showed up at Rusty’s house looking for Kirsten. “There’s something wrong with your daddy,” she said with concern as she took a seat on the couch. “He won’t talk to me, and he’s been spending all his time in his shop. I think it has something to do with all that’s gone on lately. I want you to see if he’ll open up to you.”

  “What do you want me to say to him?” Kirsten asked.

  Mona’s expression was blank when she said, “I don’t know, but somebody has to find out what’s wrong with him. Both of your brothers called, and he wouldn’t even talk to them. He’s just mully grubbing around, and he bites my head off if I say a word.”

  Kirsten sighed with resignation. “You stay here, I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “No, I’m going with you,” Mona said as she jumped to her feet.

  “He’s gonna feel ganged up on. Let me go by myself. Keep Rusty out of her own shop. We just debated her using her new table saw before you got here. Tell her how your brother cut off his thumb.” Kirsten grabbed her keys off a hook by the door. “I’ll be back soon.”

  *******

  “So…your brother did this with a table saw?” Rusty asked as she settled into the chair.

  “Actually, it was his knee, he cut into it with a chainsaw. He lost the tip of his thumb while slicing a watermelon.” Mona winced. “My brother isn’t very smart.”

  “She is so adamant about me not using that saw.”

  “You should get used to her protective nature, it means she cares. Do you feel the same about her?”

  Rusty met Mona’s gaze. “I do.”

  “I figured as much,” Mona said with a smile.

  Stella pounded on the door, and Rusty got up to let her in. “Hey, the gang’s all here, should I put on some coffee?” Rusty asked with a grin.

  “Yeah, but listen to this first.” Stella set an old cassette recorder on the coffee table and said, “I’m recording my notes for the book I’m gonna write. Listen to what I have so far.” She pressed a button, and her voice filled the room.

  “It was the best of nights and the worst of nights when I stepped out onto the street in my coat and hat. Sam wasn’t around to play it for me. I was all alone on the mean streets of Ancelet Bay. I’d rubbed my hips with Bengay, and if there was action, I was ready to play…”

  Stella pressed the stop button and looked at them excitedly. “Whaddya think?”

  Rusty pursed her lips and said, “I’m going to make that coffee.”

  *******

  Kirsten stepped into Tal’s shop, and he gazed at her with resignation. “Your mother called you over here, didn’t she?”

  “Yep. What’s going on? She says you won’t talk to her.”

  Tal leaned against his workbench. “Well, you were right. How does it feel?”

  “Good and bad,” Kirsten said with a shrug.

  “Congratulations, you more than likely headed a rapist off at the pass. I’m glad you took such an interest in a peeping Tom. I wouldn’t have.”

  Kirsten wasn’t sure how to take what he had said. “Are you saying because I’m a woman that I pursued him because I’m oversensitive?”

  “No, I say that because you did your job. In larger cities, they wouldn’t have had the
time to look into this the way you did. Some, myself included, wouldn’t have given the case a second glance until he attacked someone. You did it all on a hunch. You followed your gut instinct, which told you he’d escalate. From what I heard they found in his house, he was planning to do just that.”

  “Why don’t you sound happy for me?” Kirsten asked.

  “I am,” Tal said sincerely. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Then why do you look so miserable?”

  Tal shook his head. “I’m not proud of myself. It’s a sad day when my kid teaches me lessons I should’ve been teaching her. I got tired and lazy. Ben was elected to office, and when he started in on me about turning a blind eye to what his buddies did, I just laid down. We tend to justify things we know are wrong on the path of least resistance. All the things Ben was doing in town to make it beautiful and up to date made it easy for me to think he had everyone’s best interests at heart, when I knew better. I just became a yes man and spent my time on the golf course with him, playing cards and not paying much mind to the job I should’ve been doing. I tried to get you to do the same, so I wouldn’t feel as disgusted with myself. I watched you stand up and be the chief I should’ve been and lost every ounce of self-respect that I had. And yeah, this has had more of an impact on me because you’re my daughter. I’m old school, the man is the protector in my mind, and you assumed that role and stood taller than I did.”

  Kirsten nodded, and silence hung in the air between them for a minute or two before she said, “You used to tell me it’s not the mistakes we make, it’s what we do after we screw up that reveals our character. What’re you gonna do?”

  “There’s nothing I can do to redeem my record. I can support you while you keep your respectable record. Ben is a control freak, he wants to know he has you right under his thumb. He’s gonna continue to come after you, but it won’t be through me this time, he knows that now.” Tal pounded the workbench softly with his fist. “Tell your mom I’m fine, and I need some time alone to sort out what’s in my head.”