by John A. Daly
Sean didn’t respond, still standing there in an almost hypnotic trance.
“Well, thanks either way,” said Katelyn. “I hope you get it sorted out.”
Sean wasn’t sure when it was that they had walked away, but the next time he glanced up, both of them were halfway to the parked cars above. Most everyone else had also left, leaving him by himself in the field. The wind began to pick up.
A sudden gust whipped against his face, leaving behind a stinging sensation that felt as though he’d just been slapped with an open hand.
In Sean’s view, that was exactly what had just happened.
Chapter 10
From his snug, grimy jeans pocket, the man pried out a well-worn, diamond-shaped keychain. A single key dangled from it. At the center of the diamond’s face was a piece of masking tape yellowed with age. The number three was written on it in black Magic Marker.
It was nighttime. The temperature had dropped rapidly and he could see his own labored breath.
He slid the key into the womb of the brass doorknob where he twisted it until he heard a click and felt the door give. When it swung open, dry, rusted hinges cried as if they were pleading for help. The light from a flickering neon-blue motel sign just a dozen yards away lit up the foot of a queen-sized bed covered in a thin bedspread that had probably once been white.
The small room inside was musty and warm, a climate brought on by the old baseboard heater beneath the lone window facing the parking lot. The heater emitted a continuous tapping noise, just as it had the night before when it kept him up late tossing and turning.
The cryptic scent of an artificial air freshener lingered inside. Its placement beside the heater was likely intended to conceal a fouler odor.
He tossed a heavy, graphite-colored, canvas backpack onto the bed. He stuck his head through the doorway and cautiously skimmed the outside parking lot for notable activity. He found none. He pulled his head inside the room and kicked the door closed behind him.
The uncovered overhead light sprung to life with the flick of a switch. It brought little clarity, however, with only one working bulb. An amateurish painting of an old abandoned sawmill in front of a mountain landscape decorated the wall above the headboard. It hung crooked.
The man sat down along the foot of the bed, the mattress springs groaning from his weight. He brushed some dust from his pants and then leaned forward, placing his elbows on his thighs and running his fingers along his scalp as he faced the floor.
After a moment, his eyes rose to meet his own reflection in the mirror on the wall in front of him. It hung above a sturdy dresser made of dark, polished wood.
Through dimness, he recognized the hate and vengeance that burned in his own eyes. He greeted it with a fiendish grin that nearly eclipsed the entirety of his face. The smile dissipated after he tugged at a rubber band that he wore around his opposite wrist, stretching it to its fullest extent and then releasing it into a painful snap.
He rose to his feet and methodically removed all of his clothes, folding each garment neatly before placing them in a tidy stack on top of the nightstand. He stepped inside the small adjoining bathroom whose pale walls seemed to be critiquing him once the lamp above exposed their dispassionate glare.
He lifted his eyes to the lamp and answered, “It has to be done.”
Steam rose from the shower, which doubled as a bathtub. His feet were planted on the vinyl textured mat suctioned in place. The back of his head bumped against the steel showerhead each time he brought it up straight after soaping himself down. What sounded like the eerie whimpering of a hungry dog caught his ear. He didn’t recognize that it was coming from his own mouth until it erupted into inconsolable sobbing that nearly knocked him down to his knees.
When the water shut off with a squeak, he stepped out of the shower and headed back to the main room, ignoring the rack of fresh folded towels on his way out. He plopped his sopping wet body down across the foot of the bed and leaned forward, twisting the knob of the medium-sized television that sat on top of the dresser. Snow across the screen lit up his face, casting his large, eerie shadow along the wall behind him.
He dug his hand under the flap of his backpack and pulled from it a black, unlabeled video cassette. He quickly fed it into the mouth of a VCR that rested on top of the television. He watched the digital clock on its display flash “12:00 am” for a few seconds before a picture came on and his wide eyes fell to the screen.
The picture—the top quarter of it tilted at a forty-five-degree angle—revealed some chaotic camera work among a large group of reporters. They shouted questions about the Alvar Montoya shootout over each other as their shoulders grinded together. Some of them impatiently shoved their way in front of others.
“Chief Lumbergh! Chief Lumbergh!” a female voice sounded out above the rest. “Can you tell us when you’ll be returning to duty?”
When the camera-shot stabilized, the blurry face of Gary Lumbergh quickly came into focus. It nearly filled the entire screen before the camera zoomed back out and revealed the chief ’s arm wrapped around his wife. He was wearing a navy-blue polo shirt with a dark-green jacket draped over his opposite shoulder. The jacket only partially covered the sling and the cast that kept his arm elevated.
Lumbergh seemed to be in good spirits, chuckling at the question while Diana wore a broad, prideful smile.
“Oh, I’ll be back soon enough,” he spoke into the cluster of microphones that were held out in front of him. “Right now, I’m just ready to get back home and relax some more. The hospital food here at St. John’s is better than everyone says, but I miss my wife’s chicken parmesan.”
Sporadic laughter belched out from some of the reporters. The man sitting naked on the bed parodied it with his own unhinged-sounding snicker. He then leaned forward and pressed the fast-forward button, speeding through the scene until the picture cut to another.
This time Lumbergh was standing in front of his house in Winston, again talking to a group of reporters, though not as many as before. Seemingly enjoying the camera’s attention, a wide grin lined the police chief ’s face.
“I have another surgery scheduled for next week,” said Lumbergh. “Afterwards the doctors will have a better idea as to whether I’ll need more.”
A few more taps of the fast-forward button showed the smile suddenly disappear from Lumbergh’s face in response to the question. The man rewound the tape a few seconds to hear what was asked.
“Chief Lumbergh, there was news this morning through an anonymous source in the county sheriff ’s office saying that there are, quote, ‘notable discrepancies’ between your account of the shooting and the coroner’s autopsy report on Alvar Montoya. How do you respond to that allegation?”
The sobriety in Lumbergh’s eyes looked just for a moment like a mix of fear and anger.
His face turned deadpan.
“This is the first I’ve heard of this allegation,” he replied. “I’m certainly willing to discuss this topic with the county sheriff if there are any facts that need to be ironed out.”
A slew of other questions erupted from the small reporter pool, but Lumbergh raised his hand in departure, offered the cameras an uneasy smirk, and told them that
he was done answering questions for the day.
Just as the chief turned his back to the reporters, the man rewound the tape again back to when the question was posed. He watched the expression on Lumbergh’s face transform, and then did so over and over again at the touch of a button.
With each viewing, he felt the hostility further descend into his soul. That deep sense of betrayal tortured his body, as if he were strung to a wooden post and lashed repeatedly with a bullwhip. His arms and head trembled, nostrils flaring with each anguished breath.
He lunged forward and clenched his hands around the VCR, violently yanking it from the television. Sparks flew out of the outlet as its cord was stripped from the wall. The television screen turned back to snow. He hurled the VCR across the room. It crashed into a small table lamp sitting in the corner. Shrapnel from its base exploded in several directions.
“Mentiroso!” he screamed with all of his might, clenching his fists as air jetted out through his nose.
The broad shadow cast on the wall from his quivering body looked as if it was on fire.
His neck slowly twisted in the direction of the bed and his eyes transfixed on the large, heavy backpack that lay there.
He repeated again, “It has to be done.”
Is it getting lighter? Still so dark in the room, but I think it’s getting lighter. How long was I asleep this time? Could it be morning? I’m weaker, just like they said I’d be . . . The drugs. I’m too weak to lift my head from the bed and look at the clock. It’s better not to move anyway. When I hold totally still, it’s like the rest of it’s not real; just a bad dream. It’s when I move that the nightmare comes to life. The tubes tighten around my face and neck. My stomach turns sick. The pain starts again.
I’ve forgotten how it used to be. I’ve forgotten what it’s like to feel warm. To feel free.
The clicking of the clock seems louder than before . . . louder than I’ve ever heard it. Is it telling me my time’s almost up?
Sometimes, I’ll open my eyes and find her standing over me. Her eyes are so sad, but she makes herself smile. She does it for me. I love her smile. I’m going to miss her smile.
Chapter 11
Sean sat there for what seemed like hours, upright in his recliner and staring into the dancing flames inside the opened cast iron stove across his living room. He didn’t remember turning his television on, yet there it was, alive in the corner of the room with its volume turned down all the way. He paid it little attention. Though his body was idle, blood raced quickly through his veins and muddled thoughts bounced off the inside of his head like numbered balls in a lottery machine.
He had stopped back at GSL on his way back to town, but Jessica had already left for the night. He’d asked the receptionist for Jessica’s phone number, and then her home address, but both were met with authoritative lectures about the company’s privacy policy. All he could get was a last name, and that was only because the shift manager let it slip when he walked over with his chest puffed out and asked Sean to leave.
Landry. Jessica Landry.
Sean had then gone to a gas station two blocks away from GSL. He asked politely to use their phone book. Once he got it, he quickly thumbed through the white pages, but found no listing in the area for anyone with the last name of Landry or close spellings. He’d spent the next thirty minutes sitting in his car in front of a liquor store with his hands clenched tightly to the steering wheel. His old instincts urged him inside, but his body kept him glued to the driver’s seat.
Why would she lie to me? he pondered as the devil at the center of the stove breathed fire before him.
The question punished his soul. It made no sense. Jessica had to know Andrew Carson. The tears Sean had watched streaming down her cheeks in the back room at the plasma bank were real. He was certain of that.
He racked his mind, searching for an alternate explanation. Could the two have been romantically involved? She and Andrew Carson? It was little more than a stray thought at first, but as he further examined the notion, he realized that the premise could explain some things. It would justify Jessica’s emotional reaction to Carson’s disappearance and why she felt compelled to assist in the search. It would explain why Katelyn didn’t know her. Maybe Andrew wanted to keep the relationship a secret, possibly being uncomfortable with the idea of having a love interest that was much closer in age to his daughter than to him.
But if that theory were true, why would she have lied to him about being Katelyn’s cousin? What possible motivation would there have been to do so?
He leaned back in his chair, ignoring the recliner’s mechanical plea. He closed his eyes and did his best to recall the details of his conversation with Jessica in the parking lot earlier that day. It was he who had drawn the family connection between Jessica and Carson—not she. However, she had absolutely corroborated it, and there had to be an explanation for that.
“You know about my uncle?” He remembered her exact words. She played up Sean’s assertion. She didn’t refute it.
The phone rang, waking him up from the contemplative spell he’d trapped himself in. When he picked up the receiver of the old rotary phone from his uncle’s desk, he heard the voice of Diana. There was a sense of distress in her tone that quickly commanded his full attention.
“Sean, Gary asked me not to call you, but I’m getting really worried.”
“What are you talking about?” he replied, eyes narrowing.
“There’s something wrong. Something that’s got him scared and he won’t talk to me about it. He sent us out of town late last night. . .”
“Wait, wait, wait . . . You and Mom aren’t in Winston?”
“No. We’re staying with. . .” Diana hesitated for a moment. “Well, I’m not supposed to tell anyone.”
“Bullshit,” he said, wincing at the notion. “Where are you?”
She paused again, seemingly weighing the decision to answer, before explaining that they were staying with an old high school friend of hers whose name was familiar to him. She lived in Silverthorne, about twenty-five miles away.
“He seemed worried about our safety, Sean,” she continued. “I’ve never seen him like this. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
He shook his head. “No. I saw him this morning and thought he was dealing with a break-in at the office. You’re right. He wasn’t himself. There must be more to it.”
A brisk knock suddenly echoed off the front door of his shop. His head spun toward a window at the side of the house. When the phone’s intrusive spiral cord slapped against his face, he held the receiver to his opposite ear.
Through a pulled blind he could see that an outside light had been triggered on by a motion sensor he’d helped his uncle install a couple of years ago. Sean had unexpected company.
“Diana, someone’s here. Can I call you back?”
She relayed the phone number of where she was staying. He wrote it down on the small sheet of a notepad before saying goodbye and hanging up.
He glanced at a nearby wall clock. It was nearly ten thirty at night. Few people ever came to visit Sean, and even fewer showed up unannounced, especially so late at night. He made his way throug
h the dark, narrow hallway until he stood at the small entrance of the building.
“Who is it?” he asked through the windowless door in a loud, agitated voice.
Moments crawled by before he received an answer. “Sean? It’s Jessica from the plasma bank. Can I speak to you?”
His chest tightened. What in the hell is she doing there?
The night was pitch black, the temperature below freezing, and yet there she was, waiting on an unfamiliar doorstep outside a remote town she had likely never before passed through.
Had he not driven to Greeley that day and discovered what he had, butterflies likely would have been fluttering through his stomach. He’d assuredly be experiencing a desperate urge to quickly clean up his place and evaluate his personal appearance before letting her in.
Things, however, had changed dramatically since that afternoon. What would have been certain exuberance was replaced with suspicion—profound suspicion that stewed hostility in his gut.
A grunt escaped his lips before he unlocked the door and pulled it open.
The porch light poured down across Jessica’s mane of scarlet hair in a way that immediately made her presence look warm and unaffected by the frigid weather. Her hair was down, freed from the restrictive ponytail that Sean had often seen it in. It flowed down the sides of her face and was longer than he would have guessed.
When their eyes met, a broad smile formed on her red lips, causing his heart to skip a beat. It was the first time he had ever seen her smile. Its brilliance lit her entire face.
She looked different in other ways, too. Her lips were painted and moist. Her eyelids dark. She was wearing makeup, and a burgundy-colored leather jacket and black denim pants that tightly hugged her legs, ending in black mid-calf boots.
As attractive as she looked, the stark change in her appearance and demeanor sent warning signals jolting up and down Sean’s spine. There was an eerie awkwardness lingering in the cold night air—artificial in presence and cryptic in meaning. His mind struggled to predict what she was going to say, weary that whatever was about to leave her mouth would likely be less than sincere.