by Mark Stone
“And what’s to stop someone from coming around and messing with evidence before then?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Because I put a kid in a squad car out there. This isn’t my first rodeo.” Boomer said as he walked closer to me. Placing a hand on my shoulder. “I get that you’re mad, brother. I’m mad as hell myself, but you can’t turn on me right now. Someone is screwing with you, and I swear to the God we love, I will not let them get away with it. You’ve just got to trust me though, trust that I know what I’m doing.” He pulled his hand away. “Same way I trust you.”
I looked at my friend for a long minute after that. Of course, he was right. My head was spinning. Anger was burning a hole in my gut and, my grandfather being alright aside, I had just lost the house I grew up in as well as anything that ever belonged to my mother. This was a bad night, the worst I’d had in a long time. Still, I couldn’t take it out on Boomer, and I couldn’t turn on him now. He was smart, which begged the question, why hadn’t he come to the same conclusion I had about all of this?
“We know who did this, Boom,” I said, keeping my voice steady. “Again with this, Dil?” Turning to Charlotte, Boomer said, “Could you give us a minute, Charlie? I’d really appreciate it.”
“She doesn’t have to leave,” I said flatly. “I trust Charlotte. Whatever you’ve got to say to me, she can hear it.”
“Yeah. I’m not so sure about that,” Boomer said, looking from me to her.
Curiosity rose inside of me. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
“It’s okay,” Charlotte said. “I need to make a call anyway. I need to check on some things at home.”
She nodded at the both of us and walked out of the room.
As soon as Boomer saw she was gone, he looked at me. “You’re talking about the Storms?”
“Of course I’m talking about the Storms, Boom,” I said, my jaw tightening. “Who the hell else would be responsible for this. My grandfather is a good man, and everyone loves him. What kind of enemies could he have anyway? This was about me,” I said, thinking back to my number on the dead lawyer’s cell phone. “Somehow, all of this is about me.”
“You might have a point,” Boomer admitted. “But it doesn’t change anything.”
“It changes everything,” I said, a shock of anger running through me. “Someone just tried to kill me, almost killed my grandfather. “
“Someone being the operative word there, Dil,” Boomer answered. “We don’t have any evidence, and I sure as hell don’t think we’re going to find any direct evidence back at your house.” He shook his head. “Not in the condition it’s in anyhow.”
“I know that,” I answered, sighing so heavily that I practically deflated. Finally, I took a minute to actually let myself calm down, to look at Boomer and see the friend he was trying to be as opposed to the police chief who would be in charge of getting to the bottom of this. “I’m just frustrated, Boom. “Everything that’s good about me came from that house, and now it’s gone. It’s all gone.”
I thought about my old room, about the way Charlotte used to sneak in after we were sure everyone else was asleep. I thought about the dining room, where my grandfather and mother used to force feed me vegetables and stories about what the world used to be like and would never be again. I thought about the foot of my bed, where that old man taught me to pray and the room where my mother took her last breath. I thought about all of that and how it was all gone now. And it took all I could do not to cry.
“That’s not true,” Boomer said, his mouth thinning into a hard, straight line. “You’ve got your grandfather, and you’ve got me. This ought to go without saying, but I’ll lay it out there anyway. Neither one of you will ever go without a place to stay so long as I’m still breathing.”
I nodded firmly, stuffing my hands into my pockets and casting my eyes to the floor.
I cleared my throat and began to speak. “My brother—”
“Unless you’re talking about me, you don’t have a brother, Dil,” Boomer answered quickly. “Make no mistake, just because I’m not willing to go charging into Peter Storm’s house and drag him out by his two-hundred-dollar haircut doesn’t mean I don’t think he might be responsible for it.” Boomer’s eyes hardened. “This happening just as you got back into town isn’t a coincidence. Your number being on Lionel Sheet’s phone isn’t a coincidence, and Peter Storm showing up at the crime scene wasn’t a coincidence either.” A smile crept across Boomer’s face. “He walked right in. Did you notice that? Right up that elevator. Right up to the Surfside Suite, and strolled right in. Wonder how he did that.”
Curiosity pricked at the back of my mind. “What are you getting at?”
“We couldn’t have done that, Dil. Not without—”
“The key,” I answered.
“I instructed the front desk clerks not to issue anymore keys after I arrived. That means Little Storm had one beforehand.”
“Which would explain why there was no sign of forced entry or even much of a struggle,” I said, smiling myself.
Boomer nodded. “I talked to Ethan Sands, the new district attorney. He told me it wasn’t enough to make an arrest on, but it’s a hell of a start.”
“Which means that I need to get us a hell of a finish,” I answered. “Funeral’s tomorrow.”
“Make sure you’re there with bells on,” Boomer said. “You know, in a respectable fashion.”
“Of course,” I answered.
“And, Dil,” Boomer said, shuffling uncomfortably. “Maybe make sure to go by yourself.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, reading his apprehension every bit as clearly as his words. What he didn’t say said just as much as what he did.
“What’s this about, Boomer?” I asked, walking to the door of the waiting room and making sure it was closed. “Does this have something to do with why you insisted Charlotte leave?”
Boomer looked to the floor, sighing loudly. “This isn’t my business, Dil,” he said definitively.
“Doesn’t seem to stop you from inserting yourself into it,” I answered, walking back from the door and settling in front of my best friend. I folded my chest with my arms to let him know I meant business. “So why don’t you cut the bull and stop beating around the bush. We don’t keep secrets from each other, Boom. At least, I didn’t think we did.”
“Oh course we don’t, Dil. You know better than that,” he answered, obviously hurt by the indication.
“Then tell me what you’re obviously dying to tell me,” I demanded.
“Can’t do it, Dil,” he answered, shaking his head firmly. “I might not keep secrets from you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go around blabbing about someone else’s past.” He threw his hand out in front of him, as if to close the subject. “What’s not my business isn’t my business.” He blinked hard. “Still, I’d have hoped she might have brought up a couple things to you when you talked. That’s why I left you with her.”
The way Boomer spoke, the tone of his voice and the manner in which he danced around something he obviously wanted to say, set my teeth on edge.
What could it have been about Charlotte’s past that my best friend figured I needed to know about so badly? What had happened in the twelve years since I’d been gone? I wanted to ask again, but it would have been punching a brick wall and expecting the damned thing to fall. Once Boomer had made up his mind about something, nothing short of the Good Lord could change it. While I might have been impressive, I was not divine.
“I’ll make sure to talk with her,” I said, nodding.
“Good,” was all Boomer said in reply. “Now I hate to cut and run because I’d like to talk with your grandfather about things, but it’s late and he’s been through a hell of a night. Tell him I’ll be here in the morning. As for you, get your ass to that funeral and get me something to go on.”
I thought about my grandfather lying in that hospital bed, and I thought about how much worse tonight could have gone. Ang
er spiked up in me every bit as wild and high as a wave on the gulf. Messing with me was one thing, but if Peter Storm was involved in this, he was about to find out that screwing with the people I loved was a different thing altogether. I was about to show him what I was made of. I was about to show him what a real Storm looked like.
“You bet I will, Boomer,” I answered, my jaw clenched in anger. “You bet I will.”
9
I left before my grandfather woke up the next morning. I had hoped to see the man, to talk to him about what he might have seen or heard about the night before. Going into this funeral with a little bit of direction would have been a good thing. I might have known what to look for.
He was sleeping so peacefully though, and the likelihood of him having actually seen anything useful was so low I figured I was better off to let him rest. Still, I headed up to the nurses’ desk to get a rundown and let them know that Boomer would be by later to speak to him. Given the fact that he was the chief of police for Collier County, I doubted he’d meet much resistance trying to get in, but you can never be too careful. Besides, it did my mind some good to hear the nurse tell me that the old man was going to be fine one more time and that he’d probably be released a little later today.
Thanking her for her time and the extra Jell-O she promised to sneak to my grandfather, I walked out, trying to push through bubbling memories of the last time I’d been in this hospital, and devastating news I’d gotten while I was there. This wouldn’t end up like that though. Mom had had cancer. There’d be no doctors coming in this time talking about “getting your affairs in order”. There’d be no tearful hugs or mournful crying. I wouldn’t end up staring at a wall, wondering how I was going to go on after this. It was different. I was different.
So why did I feel exactly the same?
^
The sun peaked up over the Gulf waters as I made my way to St. Agnes Catholic Church. I had borrowed one of Boomer’s suits, seeing as how everything I brought with me had been reduced to a pile of ash along with my house and my grandfather’s shed. It was big; a little wide in the waist, a little loose in the chest. But we were roughly the same height, and it was black. More than fitting for the funeral of a man who hadn’t bothered to speak to me when he was alive.
As I drove through the main part of town, passing the large buildings and gaudy apartments that always seemed so out of reach to me growing up, I found my hand moving to the glove compartment of my rental car.
Opening it, I looked at the letter that brought me here. It was folded into a tiny square and the blue ink of the handwritten thing was visible even though it was turned to the other side. I thought about pulling it back out, about reading it once I’d parked. Maybe it would help me stay the course. Maybe it’s contents would remind me what I was doing here and was hoping to gain.
Reconsidering, I slammed the compartment shut and turned my attention back to the sun soaked roads. I didn’t need to read that damned thing again. I knew those words by heart.
^
The parking for St.Agnes had spilled out across the four lane and into the industrial lot for Deacon Medical Supply. Usually, that lot was for employees only. Parking was scarce this close to the beach and companies had to safeguard their spaces and enforce strict towing policies for anyone who dared to disobey the signs. Seeing them disregard those policies today didn’t surprise me for a second. My father was a Storm, after all, and when storms came, you made way for them. Especially when those Storms were the richest people in the county.
Pulling into the lot, I found that I had to go to nearly the back of the damned place before I could even find a spot. My heart hurt thinking of my own mother’s funeral, of the half full church and the sparsely populated graveyard service after that. She had been a saint; a charitable woman who knew nothing beyond hard work and family values.
This had been the man who’d hurt her, the man who made promises to her and broke those promises at the first sign of two pink lines on a pee stick. He didn’t deserve so much, not when she’d left this earth with so little.
When she fell for him, my mother thought the sky had opened up and delivered her an angel. I had been young enough to understand that kind of unbridled optimism when she told me the story. He was charming, he was loving, and more driven than the other silver-spoon rich kids around town.
When she told him I was coming, he was happy at first. That soured quickly as soon as his parents found out who my mother’s parents were and where she came from.
Still, he told her he’d be there. So, when I was born, she wrote his last name on my birth certificate and waited for him to arrive.
That was the last time she ever spoke to him.
Pushing those thoughts into the box in the back of my mind where they always seemed to simmer, I threw my car in park and took a deep breath.
I should have been going in. I had already wasted too much time with the nurses’ station and picking up this suit. The service was going to start in minutes if it hadn’t started already. Still, there was something inside holding me back. It wasn’t what Peter had said. I didn’t give a damn about his request for me not to show up. If anything, the look on his face when I strolled in would be an added bonus. I just didn’t like the thought of adding to this show, of being surrounded by the sort of people I grew up hating and having even one of them think I belonged there.
What could I do though? I was here for a reason. I needed to gather information, to get enough for Boomer to bring it to the DA. And I needed to prove I was right—to validate this gut feeling I had that the Storms had something to do with this.
As I was about to exit though, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A man was walking in the opposite direction of the funeral, shaking his head and screaming something in Spanish. He had close cropped black hair and a scar running through his right eyebrow, dividing the hair into two separate pieces.
Before I could react, I saw Peter following after him, shouting something in Spanish himself. My muscles tensed as I slid further down into my seat. There was no one in the parking lot this close to the start of the ceremony. Everyone coming was already in, which begged the question what Peter was doing heading in the opposite direction. If this guy could pull him away from his own father’s funeral, then whatever they were talking about must have been important.
I silently cursed myself for not taking Ms. Hernandez seriously in 11th grade when she told me learning Spanish would come in handy someday. Still, there were more than a few people in the Collier Country Sheriff’s Department who didn’t have my shortcomings.
Still riding low in my front seat, I pulled the cell phone out of my front pocket. Typing in the security code to rid myself of the lock screen, I pulled up the camera. By the time I did that though, I heard a scuffle. The man with the scarred eyebrow pushed Peter hard. My half brother hit an adjacent parked car hard. His eyes went wide and instantly my hand went to the door handle. It wasn’t that I particularly cared if this guy turned my brother inside out. He was a son of a bitch, and I was sure he deserved whatever was coming to him. I had taken an oath to serve and protect though and, as much as it might kill me sometimes, that oath didn’t stop mattering when the person I needed to protect had the last name “Storm”.
The man with the scarred eyebrow said something too low for me to understand. I didn’t need to hear the content of his words to get the idea though. The fact that this was a threat was plain and clear on his face.
The man opened the door of a sky blue car and got inside. Cranking it up, he threw the car into reverse and Peter watched as he drove away. This stayed my hand. There was no need in making myself known if Peter wasn’t in immediate danger. I was sure what I’d just witnessed was important in one form or another. The last thing I needed was alerting my brother to the fact that I knew it had gone on.
Still, I realized I hadn’t recorded any evidence. So, as the man in the sky blue car pulled passed me, I snapped a couple pictures of his
face and then of his license plate.
With a couple taps of my finger, I sent the pictures to Boomer along with a message telling him to run the plates.
10
The funeral turned out to be much bigger than I thought it would be as I made my way closer to St. Agnes. My mind should have been racing as I neared the one-hundred-year old stone church. After all, I’d just witnessed what might be a clue in figuring out, not only who set my house on fire and almost killed my grandfather, but who murdered Lionel Sheets, a man who had my number on his phone when he was bludgeoned to death.
It wasn’t though. My mind was curiously still, almost serene. Maybe it was because I had sent what information I could off to Boomer, and I trusted that man with my life. Maybe it was the smell of the water in the air or the sounds of the waves as they gently rolled against the shore. Maybe it was the crispness of a Florida Sunday morning, and the fact I hadn’t experienced one of those in a dozen years. Or maybe, just maybe, it was that my father was dead, and I was about to face the undeniable proof of it.
I shook my head almost unconsciously. I hated that last possibility. I didn’t want to empathize with this man, not even in death. He had never given me anything in life. So why shouldn’t I repay him in kind now? I thought about the letter in my dashboard, the one that came to me a few days ago up in Chicago. I thought about my mother, and what she used to tell me whenever people would call her things like “whore” and “ruined” for having a kid with a man who obviously didn’t want her afterwards.
“We can’t change who they are, Dilly,” she used to say. “But they can change who we are, and we have to do everything we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Maybe that was the real reason I was here today. Sure, I wanted evidence, and I’d get it too, but maybe what I really needed was to prove to myself that the Storms hadn’t changed me. Maybe I needed to let my mother know somehow that I was still the boy who did what she asked, even if she wasn’t here to ask it anymore.