Monument Road

by Michael Wiley

  ‘And to you?’ I asked.

  ‘If you allow us to be part of your world, yes.’

  I thought about that. ‘Then I want a desk and computer for myself.’

  Hank said, ‘We’re working on a tight budget.’

  ‘Am I part of that work?’

  He glanced at Jane.

  ‘Of course, you are,’ she said.

  Then, as if to tell me what part I played, she handed me a stack of papers and folders to sort and put into the file cabinets. I spent an hour thumbing through unsuccessful appeals arguing that, as prosecutor, Eric Skooner reduced or dismissed criminal charges against the three witnesses in the LaFlora case and that he suppressed evidence placing LaFlora at his mother’s house when the shooting happened. The judges ruled, one after another, that, while troubling, none of the new information should overturn the initial verdict and sentence. They cited statutes, precedents, and common sense, but in their language I sensed the fear of being wrong – the fear of cracks in the paint that, once acknowledged, would spread and deepen until whole buildings crumbled.

  By the time I finished filing the records, Hank had left for a meeting, Jane was talking on the phone, and Thelma was typing madly on her keyboard. So I opened the drawer marked A–D, which had just two sets of files – a thin one for a man named Manford Dewey and a thick one for me. I removed my papers. I’d either written or helped write many of the pleas and petitions, and I’d given information and sometimes sworn testimony that appeared in many of the other documents. I’d at least glanced at most of the rest.

  I looked through the transcript from the first trial, searching for any hint that a man had threatened Steven and Duane Bronson before they died – or any reason to think that such a man might have killed them at the Shell station after I left them there during a midnight rainstorm. I remembered the car that slowed for the boys before speeding off in front of me. I remembered another car – or the same – that was parked on the shoulder, its hazard lights flashing, after the Shell station. But I had no idea if the boys’ killer was driving so close to me on Monument Road that night.

  I saw again now that, as part of a bungled defense, Lance Stoddard mentioned the boys’ burglary arrests, insinuating that they were responsible for their own deaths, but the judge said the arrests were irrelevant. If Lance had planned to name any of the burglary victims, the judge cut him off before he could do it. Mostly, the prosecutor laid out a damning case, and Lance hemmed and apologized and all but agreed that I’d killed the boys.

  Then I read the transcripts of the sentencing hearing. Steven and Duane’s family and friends spoke about how much their deaths hurt them, and my dad, Jared, and my old running coach tried to defend me against the indefensible. I read the words of Felicia Bronson and Duane’s girlfriend, Lynn Melsyn, closely. If they felt any fear of a man who’d appeared at the trial to threaten them with violence, their tears washed the fear away before they stepped into the witness box.

  I reread Coach Kagen’s testimony. He bumbled through a couple of minutes of clichés, calling me a great kid, a great runner, a good-looking boy. I had great potential but was maybe too clever for my own good. It was all a great, great shame.

  I closed the file and then used Hank’s computer to look up the phone number of the office of the Clerk of the Circuit and County Courts.

  I called and asked, ‘If I want to see old juvenile trial records, how do I do that?’

  ‘Is the juvenile eighteen or older now?’ said the woman on the other end.

  ‘Two juveniles,’ I said, ‘and they’re dead.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘But they would have been in their early twenties now.’

  ‘We destroy most records on the day that children turn eighteen. In the cases in which we keep records, you would need a court order.’

  ‘Could you check if you still have anything for a Steven or a Duane Bronson?’

  She put me on hold. When she came back, she said the records system erased Duane Bronson’s file five years ago and Steven’s two years after that.

  I hung up and typed Lance Stoddard’s name into Google. His name popped up now on a site for his criminal defense and personal injury law firm and on a bunch of consumer advocacy sites. The client reviews on Lawyer.com gave most of the other lawyers four or five stars out of five. They gave Lance two. The reviews said he failed to return phone calls. They accused him of settling for whatever the prosecutors and insurance companies offered instead of fighting for clients. They called him a scam artist.

  His own website offered Free Consultations and Thorough Investigations. I called the number.

  I’d last talked with Lance shortly after the end of the trial. Then I’d started writing letters to others, pointing out the mistakes he’d made.

  Now, a secretary put me straight through without asking who was calling, and the sound of his voice made me sweat.

  He caught his breath at my name, but said, ‘Hey, hey, Franky – how’ve you been?’ as if we’d last seen each other at a football game or a bar.

  ‘Bad, Lance. Real bad. But I’m out now – so, better.’

  ‘Right – I saw you on TV,’ he said. ‘I knew we would get you out, sooner or later.’

  ‘We didn’t get me out, Lance. You had nothing to do with it. You got me in.’

  He had the balls to laugh.

  I added, ‘And now you owe me.’

  ‘I was young,’ he said. ‘Still learning the game.’

  ‘But now you’ve learned it?’

  ‘I’m the best in town,’ he said, and – without pause – ‘Are you in trouble again?’

  ‘I need to know something about my trial.’

  ‘It was a long time ago—’

  ‘At one point, you tried to introduce the Bronson boys’ arrest record, but the judge shut you down.’

  He said, ‘I remember that – the bastard.’

  ‘Do you remember the details?’ I asked. ‘The names of the people the boys burglarized? Addresses? Anything unusual in the burglary cases?’

  ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘I’d forgotten that the arrests were for burglary. I thought they were shoplifting or reefer.’

  ‘How about your notes? Can you check them?’ I said. ‘Or anything that you got from the State Attorney?’

  ‘I never work from notes,’ he said. ‘It looks bad to a jury. The prosecutor’s office sent me a shitload of papers. It always does. But I chucked all of that a long time ago.’

  ‘You didn’t put it in storage?’

  Again he laughed. ‘You know how much that costs?’

  ‘OK, look,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard that some guy – maybe someone the boys burglarized – was threatening them. He was hanging around before and after they died, even during my trial.’

  ‘What’s this about, Franky? You’re out now, right? What’s it matter to you?’

  ‘Do you or don’t you know anything about him?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I might remember the girlfriend saying something like that.’

  ‘Did you look into it?’

  ‘I’m only one man,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do everything.’

  I felt sour in my own sweat. ‘You’ve got nothing for me?’ I said.

  ‘It was a long time ago. We’ve moved on, right?’

  ‘You failed me, Lance. You get that, don’t you?’

  ‘I understand that perspective,’ he said. ‘And I respect it. But—’

  I hung up on him and stared at Hank’s desk until Jane said, ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘No worse than I was an hour ago,’ I said.

  Then I typed the name of Duane Bronson’s girlfriend into Google. Aside from the court records, Lynn Melsyn brought up exactly zero links. So she’d gotten married and changed her name. Or she’d changed her name before she got married and left no electronic trace of the girl she’d once been.

  Just two Melsyns lived in the city – a man named Rick, who posted pictures of himself surfing and drinking with frien
ds and who looked young enough to have a sister the age of Lynn Melsyn, and a sixty-three-year-old woman named Jean-Ann without online pictures. After a short search, I found addresses for both of them – Rick in an apartment building at the Beach, Jean-Ann in a development off of Pecan Park Road, near the airport.

  I had a one o’clock appointment with Dr Patel. Afterward, maybe I would drive out to the Beach.

  In the meantime, in Thomas LaFlora’s case, Kim Jenkins’s husband, Randall Haussen, interested me. I Googled his name and started reading. After his arrests in his early twenties and then his seven years in jail for shooting a drug dealer, he seemed to have lived clean. As far as I could tell from online business records, he’d owned a car repair shop called AJ’s in Callahan and then sold it and opened an auto parts franchise a half mile from AJ’s. For a while in his first years out of jail, he’d also worked at a drug and alcohol addiction hotline. I found only three pictures of him, all recent, all on a motorboat with friends – shirtless, muscled, tanned. His friends held cans of beer, toasting the camera. He held a can of Diet Pepsi. Property records showed that he owned the house where he and Kim Jenkins lived. Her name wasn’t on the deed.

  I made search after search until lunch, and then I left the JNI office. Twenty minutes later, I was sitting across from Dr Patel in his office.

  ‘Bear with me,’ he was saying. ‘You say you and your brother lost all faith in your dad. You say he stopped believing in you too.’ The afternoon sun came through his office window and caressed the carpet, the overstuffed chairs, his desk. ‘You say you would have stayed home on the night the Bronson brothers died if you all had believed in each other. Instead of seeing the strike of lightning that hit you for the chance event that it was – instead of seeing an arbitrariness that could never happen again – you see everything as cause-and-effect. Just deserts. Karma. Your dad was a failure and you were a failure, and therefore you were on Monument Road at three in the morning, and therefore you went to jail for killing the boys. But your thinking is faulty. Being a father is itself an act of incredible faith. After your mother’s death, for him to come home to you and Jared – drunk or sober – must have meant he believed in you deeply. He must have had faith in who you already were and who you would become. After that, the rest of your logic falls apart.’

  ‘Sorry, but that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.’

  He said, ‘We need to work on understanding the boundaries between reality and perception.’

  ‘You’re the one who said I should ignore them if they’re arbitrary.’

  ‘Who says that this one is arbitrary?’

  I considered that, then said, ‘I went back to see Bill Higby yesterday.’

  He sucked on his bottom lip. ‘I’m concerned about your impulse control.’

  ‘I’ve had sex with Cynthia four times in the last three nights.’

  He sighed.

  ‘I’m feeling pretty good. Overall. I asked Jane and Hank for a desk and computer. Demanded, really.’

  ‘Don’t get your hopes too high.’

  ‘They gave me a phone.’

  ‘You’re in danger of crashing,’ he said. ‘You don’t see it yet. You don’t feel it. But the sparks are flying.’

  Screw that, I thought.

  After my appointment, I drove out to the Beach and parked on the street outside the Sun Reach Apartments, where Rick Melsyn lived. Someone had propped open the lobby door, and so I ignored the intercom box, went to the elevator, and rode to the seventh floor.

  Dubstep music played loud in Apartment 706. I knocked and, when no one came, pounded. The music turned off, but still no one came. I knocked again.

  Then the man I’d seen online while searching for relatives of Duane Bronson’s girlfriend opened the door. He was short and wore faded shorts and a faded red sleeveless T-shirt. Marijuana smoke wafted into the hall from behind him.

  ‘Yeah?’ he said.

  ‘Are you Lynn Melsyn’s brother?’ I said.

  His eyes went wide for only a moment. ‘Who?’

  ‘Liar.’ I stepped past him into the apartment.

  He lived on the cheap side of the building, facing away from the ocean. Double doors to a little balcony stood open, and two surfboards leaned against the railing.

  Rick Melsyn didn’t seem to know whether to run or fight. He yelled at a closed door at the other end of the apartment – ‘Darrell!’ – and then moved so that a couch stood between us. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘You’re the only one in town who hasn’t seen me on the news?’

  He yelled at the door again. ‘Darrell – get out here.’

  ‘Where’s your sister, Rick?’ I asked.

  ‘Darrell!’

  The door opened, and one of the men who’d broken into my room at the Cardinal Motel came out. Then, he’d worn black boots. Now, he wore green boxers and nothing else. A thin line of hair grew down the middle of his skinny chest. His legs were pale. When he saw me, he said, ‘Oh, shit,’ and ran for the kitchen.

  I said to Rick Melsyn, ‘I just want to ask your sister some questions. I don’t want to hurt her – or you.’

  His roommate came back, holding a steak knife, watching for an angle.

  I said to him, ‘Where I lived for the last eight years, in situations like this, you would want to be sure of yourself. I’ve seen men lose an eye – or all of their teeth – and keep fighting. So if you decide to do this, you better go all the way because I’ve been here before, and if you start it, I’ll finish it.’

  For a moment more, he looked ready to fight. Then he lowered the knife and, as if the handle suddenly got oily, dropped it. But he told his roommate, ‘He killed Duane and Steve.’

  Melsyn said, ‘She won’t talk to you. Someone threatened to hurt her. Bad. She won’t talk to anyone.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘The man who came to her during my trial?’

  ‘She won’t talk.’

  ‘What name does she use now?’

  Still, he shook his head.

  ‘Tell her I need to see her,’ I said. ‘Tell her it’s for Duane and Steven. Tell her we all got hurt.’

  He shook his head.

  I went to the door to the hallway and opened it. Then I said to the roommate, Darrell, ‘And you. Think it through. If I did what you think I did, would I come here? Would I be that crazy?’ He followed me into the hall and watched while I waited for the elevator. We both jumped a little when the bell rang. ‘Think it through,’ I said again, and got in.

  EIGHTEEN

  I once had faith. I ran through the night-time woods, fleshy leaves licking my face, my arms, my legs – tonguing my neck. A stick or branch jabbed me in the mouth, drawing blood. But still I ran. Like a child of faith.

  Or of fear.

  Fear is the F of Faith.

  I also ran on a sunny beach. Barefoot. Skimming the wave-slicked sand. Floating almost. This world was my world once. Moments like this told me so – I could run for miles. And miles. If I could have run forever, the wet sand kicking up on my sweating back, the world could have been mine still. Trouble came only when my calf muscles cramped and the salt air raked my lungs. Trouble came when I stopped – my knees bending, my body lowering to the earth.

  And, for one season, I ran on a track. The shock of the starter pistol stunning the air. The flesh of eight runners. The stinging sweat. Never sure whether we ran away from the pistol or toward the finish line. The pistol shot, a blank. The finish line, a blank too.

  Then running in place. In my cell. In knotting loops around the prison yard. A caged cat – pacing for hours. And hours. And getting nowhere. Neither from nor to. Already and forever in the blank space where life is already and forever death. The muscles remembered, but what? A false memory? A memory of running in the woods, on a beach, around a track – none of which really existed, not from the perspective of a prison where starter pistol caps turned into live rounds in rifles in high guard towers.

  Rifles
sighted on the rabbitman who ran knotted loops around the prison yard. They aimed at the spot between my shoulder blades, where a bullet could make a heartbeat sound like silence – and at other men lifting weights at a bench press, as if they would ever use their muscle strength to do more than defend against other men like themselves. And at my friend Stuart who – short of breath, sugar spiking in his diabetic veins, sweating from every pore, helpless in his own enormity – collapsed one afternoon on the dirt in the yard. As if he could escape the prison walls only underground.

  Did he call for help?

  No one admitted to hearing him if he did.

  I saw him from across the yard.

  The guards aimed their rifles at him. Any strange act between these walls might lead to a riot, and, God knows, dropping to the dirt under an August sun – all three hundred pounds of a man – broke some rule somehow. Better to put a bullet through him if he twitched than to see him rise and roar and rage.

  But Stuart never twitched. He was only sick. Heart and kidney. Lungs. Whatever shouldn’t crawl through a stomach but does.

  I ran across the yard, and the other men left their weights and basketballs and circled him as if he was a dying dog – enough to pity but dangerous and likely to bite, as all dying dogs of a certain breed are – and the guards let their fingers slide from the triggers and turned away.

  Stuart gripped my hand and whispered something. I got in close to hear. He said, ‘I pissed myself.’ A dark, sad laugh rumbled in his chest. ‘Like a goddamned child. I’d whip myself if I could.’

  I yelled at the closest tower. ‘Get the nurse.’

  The guard looked at his wristwatch, as if considering whether he could wait it out and go off duty.

  ‘Call the goddamned nurse,’ I yelled.

  He looked down at me. I knew that each of my eyes looked like a concentric target to him – pupil, iris, white. Then he reached for the radio on his belt.

  The ambling, shambling nurse – carrying his bag of magic tools across the prison yard – saved Stuart that time. He seemed to resent the duty. As he stared down at Stuart, his eyes said, Such a waste of my medicine. Such a waste of my magic. When he looked up at me, they asked, Who am I saving this man for? Will you carry his weight through the world?