Last Chances Die Softly

by James Bee

  “They’re clean.”

  The older policeman nodded. “Right then, in you two go. This the last of them?” he asked, turning around.

  “Yes. That’s the last two.” Kenneth appeared from behind one of the police cars. He looked grimmer than normal, his face abnormally pale.

  “What’s going on?” Hank asked.

  “Go inside. Now,” Kenneth said, ignoring the question. Hank shrugged before walking toward the open doors of the halfway house. From the front, Oakview didn’t look like a building that anyone would want to live in. It was tall, grey, massive, full of sharp angles. The windows were all boarded up and barred and there was only two doors, one at the front and one at the back. When he’d first arrived, Jason had asked around to find out what the building had been before the government bought it. He’d gotten a grab bag of different answers. Research facility, mental ward, warehouse, no one seemed sure exactly what it had been built for. Whatever the purpose, it had been designed to be secure. It was an ideal location to house dangerous criminals. With the metal bars around the windows it could pass for a prison.

  Jason followed Hank through the squat doorway, noting with no small amount of displeasure that the police officers had followed them in. Once inside, Kenneth ushered them into a side room, one that might have been used as a meeting room or cafeteria. The rest of the population of Oakview was waiting inside, sitting around various tables. Another half dozen cops were watching them. Jason made eye contact with Robbie, who gave a half shrug in response. He and Junior were sitting together, as far away from Mac as possible. Jason hadn’t seen the man since his disastrous victim-offender meeting. He looks like hell. Mac’s eyes were sunk far into his skull, and a fine sheen of sweat glistened on his brow. He was staring intently at the table, seemingly unwilling to make eye contact with anyone else.

  “Sit down,” Kenneth said. Jason obliged, pulling up a chair beside another ex-con, Billy. Billy also looked rough, as though he hadn’t been sleeping. Must be on the sauce again. Jason recognized the signs; he’d seen them in the mirror enough times. A puffy red face with yellowing skin. Billy’s eyes were darting around the room, reminding Jason of a cornered animal.

  More police walked into the room, followed closely by the rest of Oakview’s staff, Kenneth, Stu, and Chad. No Mia. Jason looked over at Hank and saw that his friend had noticed the absence as well. He looked as worried as Jason felt.

  The gray-haired policeman cleared his throat, effortlessly pulling the attention of everyone in the room. “I’m Sergeant Pullwell. We’re here because of member of this staff has been reported missing. Mia Powers has not been seen in two days. She did not show up for work this morning, and no one has heard from her in some time.” Sergeant Pullwell methodically scanned the room as he spoke, looking at each man in turn. Jason had a pretty good idea of what was going through his head. A room full of criminals, each with a long list of crimes to their name. All of us dangerous. Me, Hank, and Mac have all killed. He looks at us and sees killers. In his eyes our guilt is already decided. Can’t blame him much.

  “Now, has anyone seen her since then?” Pullwell continued.

  Silence.

  “No one has had any sort of contact, heard anything?”

  Silence. No one so much as shifted.

  “I don’t need to tell you gentleman this, but I’ll say it anyway. As of right now you are all suspects in her disappearance. If you are innocent, then you have nothing to fear, nothing at all. However … if you are not innocent, if you have done something to Miss Powers, you have my word that we will find out about it. We will find out. It would be better for you if you came clean now. So I will ask this once, and only once. Does anyone have anything that they would like to tell me?”

  For a third time, silence took the room.

  Pullwell sighed. “Very well. As there is no proof yet of any wrongdoing, we will leave you in peace. However, until such a time as we find out what happened, you all are on lockdown. Anyone caught leaving will face severe consequences. Two officers will be here tonight, searching the building. Please show them every possible assistance.” Pullwell turned to leave.

  “Sir.” Hank spoke up, arresting the policeman’s movement. Jason looked over at his friend in shock. Did he have something to confess? It was unthinkable. Mia helped no one more than Hank.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s not a man here that Mia hasn’t worked with, hasn’t helped. I can speak for myself when I say that she helped me turn my life around. If one of us hurt her, they’ll get no assistance from us. In fact, you might not have much to drag away to jail once we’re through with ’em.” Hank wasn’t staring at Pullwell as he said the words. His gaze was locked on Mac, who still hadn’t lifted his eyes from the table.

  “Let us dispense the justice,” Pullwell said before stalking out the room, the other officers following close behind. Then it was just the usual occupants of Oakview left with each other, staff on one side of the room, inmates on the other. Standing near the door, Kenneth was breathing heavily, staring hard at each of them. Beside him, Chad didn’t look any less suspicious, his already heavy brow weighed down with it. Stu just looked worried. The cook had likely once been in a similar situation to this.

  “Well then. You heard the man. Lockdown. All of you. No one in, no one out. Got that?” Kenneth spat out.

  “Mia is a good person. If any of you hurt her…” Chad scowled at them in a manner that he probably thought was intimidating.

  “What’s the point of this fucking charade?” Robbie burst out. “Mac was the last one to see her. Don’t have to be much of a detective to figure out who we should be looking at. Not like his hands haven’t been bloody before.” Every pair of eyes in the room looked over to where Mac was sitting.

  Mac looked up at them. Jason stiffened in his chair. Jesus Christ. There was something in Mac’s face that scared him. Scared him worse than he’d been scared in a long time.

  “I didn’t do nothing to her. Last time I saw her she was leaving the conference room. Damn near ran out of it. Figured she just kept on going till she got out of this place and left it far behind.” Mac’s voice was raw, hoarse almost.

  “Why did she leave? What did you tell her, Mac?” Hank asked. Jason could hear the violence that his friend was holding in check. There was a demon inside of Hank, the same as him. Hank’s had been kept in a cage for a long time, but that didn’t mean that he’d forgotten how to let it loose. If Hank found out that Mac had hurt Mia … Jason wouldn’t want to be the man standing between them.

  “I told her what she wanted to know.”

  “What did she want to know?” This time it was Kenneth who asked.

  A strange smile played across Mac’s lips. “The truth.”

  7

  Chapter 7

  “You think she’s alive?” Juni asked, shuffling the deck.

  “Mia? I hope so,” Jason replied. Truth be told, he didn’t think so. The look on Mac’s face had pretty much told him all he needed to know.

  “She better be. If Mac hurt her…” Hank’s mood had been foul since the last night, and this morning was doing little to lift it.

  “Why would he, though? She helped him, just like she helped everyone else. Hell, they spent a shitload of time together getting ready for that damn meeting. Doesn’t make any sense to me,” Robbie said.

  “From what I heard, the meeting didn’t go so well. Lots of screaming, all of it directed at Mac. He’s not a man to take that too kindly. Maybe he blamed Mia for it. Or maybe he just decided to take it out on her. He’s not like us. What he did… It’s not the same. It just isn’t,” Hank said.

  “What did he do? No one wants to tell me,” Juni asked, leaning forward eagerly.

  “Just shut up and deal, Juni,” Hank growled. Juni’s lips puckered, but he obliged, sliding the cards across the table at all of them. The game was a normal activity for them, but today there was no pleasure in it.

  “Bad luck, though, for this
to happen now. You two would likely be gone and free in a couple months,” Robbie said, gesturing at Jason and Hank.

  “Still will be. Neither of us did anything wrong. Can’t send us back just because Mac is a turd,” Hank said. Jason nodded, though he didn’t share his friend’s confidence. If Mia was actually hurt or dead at one of their hands, it would make headline news. Public opinion had already been against Oakview and its residents since day one. It wouldn’t take much for people to be up in arms and screaming for the program to close its doors.

  “Still, you didn’t answer the my question. Do you think she’s still alive?” Juni pressed. He hadn’t even touched his cards.

  “If Mac went for her, then no, I don’t think she’s still alive,” Hank answered, flipping down a card. The rest of them automatically followed suit, each lost in his own thoughts. Jason found an uncomfortable one was clawing its way to the surface of his brain. I don’t want to go back to jail. He’d spent the greater part of his life behind some set of bars or another. He’d walk out the doors, buy as much booze as he could get his hands on, and before long be walking right back again. It didn’t feel like home, but it was where he felt he belonged. Where he knew the rules, had a routine, had friends.

  Now everything had changed. He’d seen what could be, what he could do. His forced sobriety had lifted the veil from his eyes. Mia’s words had wormed into his brain, infecting his thoughts. She’d shown him Hank and Stu, her two shining examples, and given him a roadmap, something to aspire to. Jason hadn’t even realized the change had happened until it was over. He’s been converted, bit by bit, hour by hour. He was no longer a criminal. He was an ex-con. No more. No more drinking, no more fighting.

  “What do you think about it, Jase?” Hank asked.

  “’Bout what?” He hadn’t been listening.

  “Oakview. Think they’ll shut it down?”

  “I think that there are a lot more people like Kenneth than there are like Mia. Most people look at us and see our rap sheet and figure that’s it. That’s the end of the story right there. It won’t take much for them to think that they were right about us all along. That we’re all like Mac.”

  “Fine by me,” Juni said. “I don’t need anyone to believe in me. I did the things that I done. I did them, and I ain’t ashamed like you two are.” Robbie opened his mouth, but Hank cut him off with a quick gesture.

  “What exactly is it that you’ve done, babyface? ’Cause I heard some tell about it. Robbed an old couple. Broke into their house and started threatening ’em. Got more than you bargained for, though, eh? Old man wasn’t gonna take that lying down. Saw it all on the news, you know. Weren’t much else to do in the joint. Old man was a vet, fought in some war or another. Can’t imagine you scared him much. Skinny kid waving a gun in his face.” Juni’s face grew redder and redder as Hank spoke. Robbie had a wide grin on his face, the kind that grandfathers all around the country would classify as “shit-eating.”

  “What happened next then?” Robbie asked. “You got your gun, old boy is giving you some trouble. Why don’t you waste the son of a bitch? Pull the trigger? Show you’re the hard man?”

  Juni’s pockmarked face was scarlet by the time he answered. “Didn’t have no bullets. Not even a clip.” Hank and Robbie laughed, long and loud.

  “Did he know?” Jason asked. He didn’t laugh. He was too busy thinking about how lucky Juni had been. How he could have fucked up his whole life if only he’d been able to get his hands on some bullets.

  “Did he know what?” Juni asked sullenly.

  “That you didn’t have any rounds. Did he know, or was he just a brave old bastard?”

  Juni sucked his teeth, clearly not wanting to answer the question. “He was blind.” This time even Jason couldn’t control the laughter rolling up from his belly.

  “A. Fucking. Blind. Man,” Robbie gasped.

  “You truly are one hard motherfucker. Juni Babyface, scourge of the visually impaired!” Hank said.

  “Fuck you guys. Like you never had some shit go wrong on you when you were younger,” Juni answered. The four of them were still playing the game, though no one was paying much attention. Their hands moved by themselves, sliding cards on top of each other.

  “It all went wrong, bud. All of it. Why do you think we’re here? The skilled criminals don’t end up in a fuckin’ halfway house for long-term offenders. We’ve all goofed it, more times that you can imagine. Tell him the story about that time you got busted for rolling over a gas station, Jase. Come on, it’ll make Juni feel better about getting roughed up by a blind old man,” Hank said, smirking at him.

  “He didn’t rough me up! I broke his nose and stole his walking stick!” Juni protested to deaf ears.

  “You got busted for taking a gas station? How?” Robbie asked. Jason slowly shook his head. Used to be that any man who asked him about this story would end up eating some of their teeth. Times had changed, though, and now he could see the humor in it.

  “Used to have a partner. Did small crimes, breaking and entering, stealing cars, stuff like that. We were living in Alberta at the time before we came to B.C. There was this gas station, way out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing around it for kilometers. Nothing. Figured it would be an easy job. We didn’t have a car, plan was to steal one when we arrived. Well, the day comes and the bus drops us off—”

  “You took a bus to a robbery,” Juni said incredulously.

  “Kids these days don’t know how hard they have it. Didn’t have any ride-sharing apps back then. Couldn’t just press a button on your phone and get someone to drive you to your crimes,” Hank said.

  “Yes. A bus. Anyways, we get off and we see that there’s only one car in the lot. The clerk’s car. Figure that it’s our lucky day. We take his car, bust up the phone, and we’ll be far away in a different car before the police know anything. So we go in, do what we do. Take the money, take the cigs, take his keys, and smash the phone. Don’t even bother tying the clerk up or nothing. What’s the point? Get to the car and we jump in, laughing to ourselves about how easy it was.”

  “What went wrong? Seems like an easy job,” Robbie asked.

  “The car was a standard. Neither of us drove stick.” Now it was Jason’s turn to endure the laughter. “We took off on foot. What else could we do? Nearest town was twenty clicks down the road. Clerk caught us halfway, with the police.”

  “How? Did someone come along or something?” Juni leaned in, a rare smile on his face.

  Jason shook his head. “Partner forgot to take the keys from the car when we ran.” The table erupted, and Jason joined in with the mirth.

  “See, lad. You don’t want to stick with the life of crime, like we did. All you end up with is a bunch of scars and a bunch of stories,” Hank said after they’d settled down.

  “Maybe I just learn from you old-timers and do things different. Mia always said to learn from my mistakes. Maybe I just learn from yours, and then I don’t have to go about making my own,” Juni said.

  “Smart lad,” Hank said. “What do you think, Robbie? Maybe you can help the kid see the error of his ways?”

  Robbie scratched the beard and took a pull of the always present flask in his pocket before answering. “Not fully sure that I’ve seen the end of my own errors. Life of crime ain’t an easy one, but it does have its rewards. I’m my own man, don’t have to work for no one else. I’ve done that, and it wasn’t for me. You two might be done with the life, but I don’t quite think it’s done with me yet.”

  “It doesn’t lead anywhere good. There’s no pot of gold at the end. You can still get out. You’re young. You haven’t stolen the life from anyone. Both of you still have a chance, no matter what happens here.” Hank leaned forward, his eyes intense. “Don’t end up like me and Jase. Don’t do what we done. It doesn’t go away. It just doesn’t. I see his face every night. The man I put in the ground. Ask Jason, he’ll tell you the same thing. I see his face when I put my head on the pillow, and I
see it when the sun opens my eyes. Coming on damn near thirty years, and I can’t get him out of my head. Turn away while you can. Before it’s too late. Before you do something that you can’t get away from. That you can’t forgive yourself for.”

  An awkward silence followed the speech. Jason could feel that he should say something, that he should echo Hank’s words. He certainly agreed with them enough. Though he couldn’t remember his own victim’s face. The booze had stolen most of the memory from him. What he did remember was the sound. The sound of a head hitting concrete. It sometimes rang in his ears. He couldn’t forget it. He shouldn’t forget it.

  “Hank is right. You two don’t have to follow us. You can get out now, before things get real bad. This life, it’ll pull all the good out of you until you’re empty. Until all you have left is the bottle or the drugs. It’s not too late,” Jason said, staring hard down at the table.

  “You two are fuckin’ buzzkills, you know that,” Juni said. He stood up abruptly and flipped his cards down on the table. Without another word he left the room, but not before Jason saw his face. Normally Juni had the hard, blank face of a person who’d spent far too long in jail. The face that gave nothing away and promised trouble to anyone who was interested in finding some. Yet as the young man fled the room, the mask had cracked. Underneath it lay uncertainty and fear. As there should be. In him and Hank, Juni saw his future, and it wasn’t pretty.

  8

  Chapter 8

  Fifteen. Jason pushed himself away from the carpet-covered floor of his room. Sixteen. Only a few more pushups and he would be done his circuit. Four sets of twenty pushups, sit-ups, squats, and jumping jacks. He’d been doing it for so long that it provided little challenge. Yet he still did it, though the urge to improve had long since gone. It was important to stay fit, after all. Especially as he grew older, and he was growing older. Climbing out of bed every day reminded him of that. The years of heavy drinking and brawling had not set him up for a graceful descent into aging. His joints hurt, especially in his hands. Both had been broken so many times that Hank often joked he had to be careful when giving handshakes lest they shatter again.