Monument Road

by Michael Wiley

  ‘Were you their friends?’ I asked. The ages seemed about right.

  The man with the gun said to Cynthia, ‘Do you know who you’re sleeping with? Do you know what he’s done? Do you know what that makes you?’

  She surprised me. ‘If he did it, that might make me a lot of things,’ she said. ‘I’ve thought about it, yeah. But that’s if he did it. I don’t think he did. I know what you’re doing, though. And you know it too. What does that make you?’

  He stared at her scarred legs. ‘Figures,’ he said. Then he said to the man in boots, ‘Let’s do it.’

  He came to me, cautious, as if I might be hiding another key. But then he got brave and shoved me toward the door.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ I asked.

  ‘Where you can’t hurt anyone else,’ he said.

  I looked out the door. A gray van stood in the closest parking spot. If I got into it, I might never come back.

  My legs locked. I’d promised myself after my first night off death row that I would never again beg. ‘The court threw out the conviction,’ I said.

  ‘Technically,’ said the man who’d handcuffed me.

  The man in boots shoved me again.

  The one with the gun stepped outside on to the walkway.

  Then my neighbor Jimmy stepped into the light from behind the wall outside my door. He also held a pistol, and he pressed it against the other man’s head. He took that man’s gun, shoved him back into my room, and came in after him. He looked at Cynthia, naked on the bed. He looked at me, naked and handcuffed. He pointed his pistol at the man in boots. ‘What the fuck?’ he said.

  ‘This is none of your business,’ the man said.

  ‘No,’ Jimmy said, ‘I mean really, what the fuck? You can’t come around kicking down doors. People live here. This is our home.’ He aimed his gun at the other two men before pointing it at the man in boots again. ‘If you don’t respect our home, what do we have left?’ He glanced at the others and said, ‘Uncuff him.’

  Neither of them moved.

  ‘Do I look patient?’ he said.

  The man who’d locked my wrists came and freed me.

  Jimmy said, ‘If you have a problem, take care of it somewhere else. Don’t come here.’ He looked from one man to the next, as if he expected an answer.

  None of them said anything.

  Jimmy said, ‘Get your asses out.’

  The men left, climbing into the van and spitting gravel from the tires as they drove from the parking lot.

  Jimmy watched through the broken doorway.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. I was sweating, cold.

  He shrugged. ‘Hopper asked me to keep an eye on you, take care of you when he was out of the front office – be neighborly and all. Neighborhood Watch, right?’ He offered me the other man’s gun.

  My head buzzed as I reached for it.

  But he pulled it away. ‘Nah, you’re still a sick-ass freak.’ He went back out into the night.

  I stood naked in the doorway. Now and then a car or truck passed on the highway. The air stank like the exhaust of the day. At one end of the parking lot, a streetlight hummed.

  Cynthia came up behind me. She had put back on her dress. ‘Take me home,’ she said – tired, sad, scared.

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  She turned away as I sat on the bed and pulled on my pants and shirt.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘I need to think about all this,’ she said.

  ‘I know.’

  The broken door would invite thieves. So, as she watched, I loaded my clothes and belongings into the car trunk.

  Then, without speaking, we drove out past the Regency. As we went up the long stretch of highway that passed over the Intracoastal Waterway, I fought an impulse to jerk the steering wheel and send us over the railing into black air. The quiet between us pounded in my ears.

  ‘Here,’ she said, when we came to Penman Road. I turned. ‘Here,’ she said again, when we came to Coral Way. We drove past houses on sandy lots with brown lawns until we came to a yellow two-story house with a short, narrow driveway. ‘Here,’ she said.

  A lamp burned by the front window, a beacon of some kind. I pulled into the driveway, turned off the car, and looked at her.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said.

  ‘Whose is it?’ I asked.

  She got out.

  After she went inside and turned off the lamp, I eased the car out of the driveway, drove a half block down the street, and stopped again.

  I saw no reason not to drive to an all-night Walgreens and buy a box cutter. I saw no reason not to drive to the house where I grew up and push through the backyard bramble into the woods. I saw no reason not to break past the pine and loblolly branches until I found a clearing. I saw no reason not to strip off my clothes and lie on the ground. I saw no reason not to thumb the blade from the box cutter until it extended a half inch. I saw no reason not to cut a line from my forehead, over my nose and lips, down my neck and chest, across the top of my belly, and down, splitting my balls. I saw no reason. I could imagine none.

  Then fingers tapped on my window. I turned, wondering whose mask death would wear tonight.

  But Cynthia – ghostly in the glass – looked back at me.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  She motioned for me to roll down the window.

  I did.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Those men scared me.’

  ‘Yeah. Me too.’

  She touched her fingers to my face. I wished she would dig them into my skin the way Kim Jenkins’s husband dug into her shoulder at their house in Callahan.

  ‘Where are you going to stay tonight?’ she asked.

  I have a date with a box cutter, I thought. ‘I’ll drive around for a while,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t come into my house. My parents would freak out. But you can sleep in your car in the driveway.’

  I took her fingers from my cheek and kissed them.

  Then she leaned into the window and kissed me on the lips. ‘I get off at eight tomorrow,’ she said then. ‘Will you pick me up?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, and I rolled up the window and started the car. I didn’t really know what I would do. But as I drove back toward the city and came to the Walgreens, I accelerated past.

  Instead, I drove straight to the house where I grew up. When I’d lived there, the house had been white, with black shutters, but the people who lived there now had painted it a color that looked olive green under the headlights and had stripped the shutters from the walls. A boy’s bicycle lay on its side by the front steps. I wondered if the parents of the boy knew that I once lived there too – and if they gave him the bedroom of a convicted rapist and murderer. Dr Patel had told me to revisit the house and other places that gave me pleasure before my arrest. At four in the morning, the house seemed to squeeze its eyes shut, refusing to see me. If I knocked on the door, would the people who lived there call the cops, and would the cops fly with sirens screaming to rescue them from a man who also once had claims on this place?

  Next, I drove to the development where Jared owned his house, pulled into his driveway, and cut the engine. The lights in the house were off. I could kick through his door as the man in boots had kicked through mine. By the time Jared padded down his carpeted stairs, I could be lying on his living room couch. I could refuse to leave. I could demand a brother’s shelter.

  I leaned the front seat back as far as it would go and stared through the windshield at the dark upstairs windows. I closed my eyes. Best to sleep where I was.

  But I couldn’t sleep. I sat in the car and stared at Jared’s windows, waiting for him to wake. But when the sun rose, his lights remained off. So I started the car, pulled from the driveway, and left him to live his life.

  At seven in the morning, I got coffee and a bagel from a Dunkin’ Donuts. Then I drove back to Philips Highway and pulled into the C
ardinal Motel parking lot. Bill Hopper was hanging a new door to my room as I got out of the car. I thought he would kick me off the property, but he looked happy to see me.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘you’re alive.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He nodded into my room. ‘There’s blood on the carpet.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Glad it’s not yours,’ he said. ‘Bad all around when a guest gets hurt.’

  ‘Right.’

  He eyed me closely. ‘We get a lot of break-ins like this. They scare most of the guests away. Why didn’t you call the cops?’

  I saw no reason to correct his mistake. ‘What good would the cops do?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘They just hassle me. You know, they’ve tried to shut me down. Thanks for keeping it in-house. I like loyalty.’ He tapped in a hinge pin with a hammer. ‘You know I take care of the lost.’ He tapped in the second pin. ‘I’ll always keep a place for you. You know, you could have pounded on my door.’

  ‘Why wake you in the middle of the night?’

  ‘I like how you handled this,’ he said. I watched as he tapped in the third hinge pin. He eased the door closed, opened it again, and closed it. It fit. He took a key from a key ring and handed it to me. ‘I hope you’ll stick around.’

  ‘Where else would I go?’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said.

  When I climbed the stairs to the JNI office an hour later, Hank drew in his breath sharply and said, ‘You’re looking bad, Franky.’

  ‘Tired,’ Jane said.

  ‘I had a hard night,’ I said.

  They stared as if they expected me to explain, but I went to Thelma’s desk and sat at the computer. My neighbor Jimmy had warned the men to stay away, but I needed to give them a personal message.

  If I was right that they’d been Steven and Duane Bronson’s friends, I knew where to start. During my trial, the Bronson boys’ mother had testified, and I searched for her now. The pictures that popped up on Facebook made her look about twenty years older than during the trial. According to her postings, she took in rescue dogs and nursed injured ones back to health. Anything to fill the hole. She mentioned no family members, no love life. Her Facebook friends mostly seemed to share her interest in dogs.

  Three months ago, another woman, who owned a German shepherd with a broken leg, asked for help, and Felicia Bronson posted her address.

  I turned off the computer and headed for the stairs.

  ‘We need to make that video for Thomas LaFlora,’ Jane said. ‘We want the judge to have it before the hearing.’

  ‘Later,’ I said.

  ‘The hearing is in three days,’ Hank said.

  ‘I’ll be back this afternoon.’

  ‘We also need to see Kim Jenkins again,’ he said.

  ‘This afternoon.’

  Jane said, ‘We need to be able to count on you.’

  I stopped on the top stair. ‘I can’t even count on myself.’

  Felicia Bronson lived on Prospect Creek Drive, south of the airport, in a blue stucco house in a strip of other blue stucco houses. The front yards had little palms or no trees at all.

  When I knocked, a half-dozen dogs erupted inside. Felicia Bronson opened the door, glancing behind me as if she expected me to bring another dog to the party.

  I said, ‘My name is—’ I stopped, thinking she would recognize me, especially since my face had appeared so often in the news since my release. But she didn’t seem to know who I was. I said, ‘Last night, some men came to where I’m living. I think they were friends of—’ Again, I stopped. Her eyes were flat. I could almost believe I’d come to the wrong house. ‘I think they were friends of your sons,’ I said.

  Just then, a black standard poodle and a terrier mix escaped around her. She grabbed the terrier’s collar with a nervous laugh. I caught the poodle and shoved it back into the house. ‘My babies,’ she said. She meant the dogs, not Steven and Duane.

  ‘The men broke down my door last night,’ I said. ‘They were going to—’

  The woman held back the other animals. ‘Please, come in.’

  I stepped inside.

  Although the day was already hot, she used no air conditioner. The windows were closed, and, with the raw animal scent, the house smelled like a filthy kennel.

  ‘Come,’ she said, and she led me through a hall to the kitchen. ‘Please sit.’ She cleared a space at a kitchen table. ‘Now, what is this about?’ she asked.

  ‘These men think I killed your boys, Ms Bronson.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  I looked around the kitchen. Pictures of dogs hung on the cabinets. A giant bag of dog food lay on the counter. A dog crate stood by the door to the backyard. Magnets held feeding schedules and reminders of vet appointments to the refrigerator. Old photographs of Steven and Duane peeked from behind the papers.

  ‘Steven and Duane’s friends broke into my room last night,’ I said. ‘I need to get in touch with them. I didn’t do what they think I did.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’ She seemed perplexed.

  ‘My name is Franky Dast,’ I said. ‘Franklin Dast. But I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill your sons.’

  She looked dazed. ‘I know that.’

  She seemed to have lost her mind, but a wave of relief rolled through my chest anyway. ‘You do?’

  ‘I’ve always known.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘He threatened them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Duane and Steve often found trouble.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘And they made trouble when they couldn’t find it.’

  ‘I still don’t understand.’

  ‘Sometimes, at night, they snuck out and went driving,’ she said. ‘Sometimes they broke into houses. They would steal money and watches while people were sleeping. Liquor from the cabinets. They did it for the excitement after their dad moved away. When Duane was fourteen, the police arrested him after he sold the watches to a pawnshop. The pawnshop gave him twenty-three dollars. For that, he got a record and—’

  ‘What does this have to do—’

  ‘I learned about the man during your trial. Duane had a girlfriend. He told her about him, and later she told me. She said Duane and Steve broke into his house. I don’t know what they took, and I don’t know how the man figured out it was them. I don’t know how he tracked them down once he knew. He wanted whatever they’d stolen. Duane told his girlfriend the man said he would hurt them if they didn’t give it to him.’

  I looked at Felicia Bronson’s blank eyes. I wondered if she’d made up this story to help her sleep when she learned about my release from prison. ‘Why didn’t the girlfriend tell you this earlier?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t she tell the police?’

  ‘She was scared. And sometimes Duane told lies or exaggerated. She might’ve convinced herself this was one of those times, until the man came into the courtroom and sat by her during the trial. He knew who she was. He asked if Duane gave her a present before he died. He told her he wanted it. He told her that if she refused to give it to him, he would hurt her the way he’d hurt my boys.’

  ‘What was it?’

  She laughed again. ‘I don’t have any idea.’

  I thought about what she’d just said. ‘So, you know I didn’t kill your sons. And you knew it eight years ago, before I went to prison.’

  ‘I thought at first you might be with that man. But I couldn’t see how or why.’

  ‘Did you …’ I fought to get my thoughts straight. ‘You could have talked to the police. You could have testified. Eight years ago, you could have—’

  ‘Could I? What makes you think I would have escaped him if I’d talked?’

  ‘I went to prison—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, but she seemed to be beyond regret.

  Then, across the house, the front door opened, and footsteps approached through the hallway.

  ‘Who was Duane�
��s girlfriend?’ I asked.

  She smiled again. ‘She’s married now and has two babies of her own.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Lynn Melsyn,’ she said. ‘She was a pretty girl.’

  A man, carrying grocery bags, appeared in the doorway. He stopped hard when he saw me. I knew him – he had locked my wrists in handcuffs last night.

  He glanced from me to Felicia Bronson and back to me. Then he dropped the grocery bags and ran.

  I took off after him. I caught him outside on the driveway as he reached for the door to his van. I slammed him against a side panel. He fell to the pavement and raised his hands.

  I kicked him in the ribs. Last night, I would have kicked him again and again until I heard bone breaking. I would have gouged him with the car key.

  Now, I just felt sick. ‘Why?’ I said.

  He gazed at me, scared, in pain.

  I said, ‘Their mother says someone else did it. She—’

  ‘She’s messed up,’ he said. ‘She knows nothing. Most of the time, she can’t tell if it’s morning or night.’

  I stared at him. ‘Give me your wallet.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Give me your goddamned wallet.’

  He pulled it from his pocket. I took out the driver’s license and read it. His name was Cory Nussbaum. He lived a block away, on Mission Creek Drive. I put the license back and threw the wallet at him.

  ‘OK, Cory, what are your friends’ names?’

  He stared up at me.

  ‘I don’t want to kick you again. And the last thing I want to do is knock down your door the way you knocked down mine. But you’re begging for a kick, and now I know where you live.’

  ‘Phil Middleton and Darrell Nesbit,’ he said.

  ‘Which one is which?’

  ‘Darrell wore the black T-shirt and boots. He was Duane’s friend.’

  ‘And Phil Middleton?’

  ‘We knew Steve,’ he said.

  ‘And now you do their mother’s grocery shopping?’

  ‘I’ve helped out ever since you killed Steve.’

  ‘I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘I’ve cut her lawn. I’ve painted her house. Every couple weeks, when the inside gets bad, I clean out the garbage. They put you in jail for killing Steve and Duane, but you killed her too. You saw what’s left.’