As Long As We Both Shall Live (Dangerous Women & Desperate Men)
Page 2
A. I see it every day as part of my job.
Q. But you are skilled yourself in meat cutting, freezing, storage, isn’t that correct, Mrs. Dalton?
A. It’s part of my job qualifications.
Q. As District Manager of deli items for North-World Imperial Consolidated Food Group?
A. Yes.
Q. As District Manager do you have access to North-World training facility at Sooback River?
A. I’m not sure. I may.
Q. We have records indicating that you have been provided keys and security codes that give you full access to the facility and the equipment.
A. As I said, it is my job. May I have more water please?
Q. Mrs. Dalton this is a copy of the report on a Forensic analysis of the Sooback River meat cutting facility. You will see that microscopic traces of human blood B+ were located in the facility.
A. Inaudible.
Q. DNA analysis identifies the blood and tissue as belonging to Spencer Dalton. Can you explain how this has come to be Mrs. Dalton?
A. No response.
Q. Mrs. Dalton is there anything you would like to tell us?
A. No response.
Q. Where is your husband, Mrs. Dalton?
A. Inaudible.
Q. Extensive searches of the Sooback River facility have not located him. The river’s been dragged, grid searches have been conducted, vapor probes have been employed, cadaver dogs have searched the entire site. All in vain.
Q. Mr. Upshaw, may my client have a brief moment?
Q. No, Ms. White. We will continue. As I stated at the outset, new information we’ve obtained is of an urgent nature and we’re seeking your client’s assistance. Now, Mrs. Dalton I’m going to show you a photocopy of a personal check dated April 6, 2007, on your account in the amount of one thousand dollars to Matt Barrow Investigations. It was cashed April 21, 2007. Do you acknowledge your signature on the check?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you acknowledge having business dealings with Matt Barrow, a private investigator.
A. Inaudible. - have a tissue.
Q. Mrs. Dalton?
A. Yes. I hired him.
Q. For what purpose?
A. No response.
Q. Mrs. Dalton, please answer.
A. Thirty-five years – inaudible.
Q. Excuse me?
A. Inaudible.
Q. Mrs. Dalton why did you contract the services of Matt Barrow?
A. To find her.
Q. To find who?
A. His whore.
Q. Are you referring to Melinda Cain?
A. No response.
Q. Did Matt Barrow locate Melinda Cain for you?
A. You know the answer to that.
Q. He provided you with her address?
A. That’s right, 4446 Cold Creek Path, Denver, Colorado. I am sure you have a copy of that too.
Q. Why are you smiling, Mrs. Dalton?
A. Inaudible.
Q. Mrs. Dalton is Melinda Cain in any danger?
DETECTIVE SAMANTHA VINE’S CELL PHONE RINGS
Q. I’m sorry, Mr. Upshaw. Excuse me, we have to take this from Denver PD. Earlier this morning we requested them to dispatch a car to check on the welfare of Ms. Cain.
A. Of course. Take the call. We’ll break.
AFTER RECESS:
Q. We’re back on the record. According to Detective Vine, Denver PD confirms the well-being of Ms. Cain at her residence. She is awaiting delivery of a gift before planning to depart to visit family in Boulder. Mrs. Dalton, why do you continue smiling?
A. It shouldn’t take long.
Q. What shouldn’t take long?
A. Do you know Mr. Upshaw, that as a naturalized citizen of Brazil that when I am on Brazilian soil, I cannot be extradited to the United States from Brazil?
Q. Yes, we’re aware, Mrs. Dalton. We’ve been in touch with the State Department.
A. I purchased my ticket once I learned – well – I thought I had time.
Q. Mrs. Dalton we still have many questions and much to do –
A. Thirty-five years.
DETECTIVE SAMANTHA VINE’S CELL PHONE RINGS
Q. Excuse me, I’ll take this call in the corner –
QUESTIONING OF WITNESS CONTINUES
Q. – take the call detective. Now, Mrs. Dalton with respect to Ms. Cain –
A. I found their letters Mr. Upshaw. He hid them in his workshop.
DETECTIVE VINE: – (into the phone) – the responding unit? Found what?
A. Spencer carried my books in high school. He told me I was the only girl in the world he would ever love –
Q.(into the phone) – A courier? What’s – what?!
A. Spencer vowed he would always love me. Thirty-five years. Then he tells HER in his letter that she – SHE would always have his heart.
Q. (into the phone) My God!
A. I gift wrapped it for her.
Author’s Note
As Long As We Both Shall Live, first appeared in Blood on the Holly, an anthology of Christmas mysteries edited by Caro Soles and published in 2007 by Baskerville Books.
The inspiration for As Long As We Both Shall Live came to me during my bus commute to my day job. Almost every day I had observed a stranger, a middle-aged woman, who seemed so sad yet somehow serene. I began to imagine a life for her, a life where everything she held as absolute and unconditional, collapsed around her.
But I endeavored to tell her story in a form that was different for me; that of a sworn transcript. In my days as a journalist I had covered many court proceedings and had read many transcripts submitted as evidence. Though usually dry, transcripts told compelling stories if you read them carefully. That is what I wanted to present with As Long As We Both Shall Live – a drama that reads like a court transcript.
I was very pleased that the story was selected by The Crime Writers of Canada as a finalist for the 2008 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story.
As Long As We Both Shall Live, is also included in Dangerous Women & Desperate Men, my small four-story anthology available only as an E-book. The three other stories in the collection are: “Lightning Rider,” “Three Bullets To Queensland,” and, “Blood Red Rings” I hope you will consider adding Dangerous Women & Desperate Men to your E-library. You can also obtain the stories individually online. Each story has its own spectacular cover and additional content about my work.
If this is your introduction to my writing, you might want to consider longer works of mine that are available in E-format. Some samples are presented in the following pages.
I hope you enjoy the ride and invite you to drop me a line.
Thank you,
Rick Mofina
rmofina@gmail.com
-Click to Buy Dangerous Women & Desperate Men at Amazon Kindle-
Added Reading Features
Read samples of Rick Mofina’s longer works and features that tell the stories behind those stories.
Copyright © 2009 by Rick Mofina
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the creation of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Six Seconds (Excerpt)
Chapter One
Blue Rose Creek, California
Maggie Conlin left her house believing a lie.
She believed life was normal again. She believed that the trouble preying on her family had passed; that Logan, her nine-year-old son, had come to terms with toll Iraq had taken on them.
But the truth niggled at Maggie as she drove to work.
Their scars – the invisible ones – had not healed.
This morning, when she’d gotten Logan off to school, he was uneasy.
“You love dad right, mom?”
“Absolutely. With all my heart.”
Logan looked at the ground and kicked a pebble.
“What i
s it?” she asked.
“I worry that something bad is going to happen. Like you might get a divorce.”
Maggie clasped his shoulders
"No one's getting divorced. It's okay to be confused. It hasn’t been easy these last few months since daddy got home. But the worst is over now, right?”
Logan nodded.
"Daddy and I will always be right here, together in this house. Always. Okay?"
"Okay."
“Remember, I’m picking you up after school today for your swim class. So don’t get on the bus.”
"Okay. Love you, mom."
Logan hugged her so hard it hurt. Then he ran to his bus, waved and smiled from the window before he vanished.
Maggie reflected on his worries as she drove through Blue Rose Creek, a city of a hundred thousand near Riverside County, to the Liberty Valley Promenade Mall. She parked her Ford Focus and clocked in at Stobel and Chadwick, where she was a senior associate bookseller.
Her morning went fast as she called customers telling them orders had arrived; helped others find titles; suggested gift books and re-stocked bestsellers. As busy as she was, Maggie could not escape the truth. Her family had been fractured by events no one could control.
Her husband, Jake, was a trucker.
In recent years, his rig kept breaking down, bills piled up. It was bad. To help, he took a contract job driving in Iraq. High paying but dangerous. Maggie didn’t want him to go. But they needed the money.
When he came home a few months ago, he was a changed man. He fell into long, dark moods, grew mistrustful, paranoid, and had a few outbursts. Something happened to him in Iraq but he refused to talk about it, refused to get help.
Now, it was all behind them.
Their debts were cleared, they’d put money in the bank. Jake had good long-haul driving jobs and seemed to have settled down, leaving Maggie to believe that maybe, just maybe, the worst was over.
“Call for you, Maggie.” She took it at the kiosk near the art history books.
“Maggie Conlin, may I help you?”
“It’s me.”
“Jake? Where are you?”
“Baltimore. Are you working all day today?”
“Yes. When do you expect to get home?”
“I’ll be back in California by the weekend. How’s Logan?”
“He misses you.”
“I miss him too. Big time. I’ll take care of things when I get home.”
“I miss you too, Jake.”
“Listen, I’ve got to go.”
“I love you.”
He didn’t respond and in the long-distance silence Maggie knew that Jake still clung to the untruth that she’d cheated on him while he was in Iraq. Standing there at the kiosk of a suburban bookstore, she ached for the man she fell in love with to return to her. Ached to have their lives back. “I love you and I miss you, Jake.”
“I’ve got to go.”
Twice that afternoon, Maggie stole away to the store’s restroom where she sat in a stall, pressing tissue to her eyes.
After work, Maggie made good time with the traffic to Blue Rose Creek and Logan’s school. The last buses were lumbering off when she’d arrived.
Maggie signed in at the main office then went to the classroom designated for pick-ups. Eloise Pearce, the teacher in charge, had two boys and two girls waiting with her. Logan was not among them. Maybe he was in the washroom?
“Mrs. Conlin?” Eloise smiled. “Goodness, why are you here? Logan’s gone.”
“He’s gone? What do you mean, he’s gone?”
“He got picked up earlier today.”
“No, that’s wrong!”
Eloise said Logan’s sign out was done that morning at the main office. Maggie hurried back there and smacked the counter bell loud enough for a secretary and Terry Martens, the vice-principal, to emerge.
“Where is my son? Where is Logan Conlin?”
“Mrs. Conlin,” the vice principal slid the day’s sign out book to Maggie, “Mr. Conlin picked up Logan this morning.”
“But Jake’s in Baltimore. I spoke to him on the phone a few hours ago.”
Terry Martens and the secretary traded glances.
“Jake was here this morning, Maggie,” the vice-principal said. “He said something unexpected had come up and you couldn’t make it to the school.”
“What?”
“Is everything all right?”
Maggie’s breathing quickened as she called Jake’s cell phone while hurrying to her car. She got several static-filled rings before his voice-mail.
“Jake, please call me and tell me what’s going on! Please!”
Each red light took forever as Maggie drove through traffic. She called her home number, got her machine and left another message for Jake. Wheeling into her neighborhood, Maggie considered calling 911.
And what would I say?
Better to get home. Figure this out. Was Jake actually in Blue Rose Creek? Why would he tell her he was in Baltimore? Why would he lie?
Turning onto her street, Maggie expected to see Jake’s rig parked in its place next to their bungalow.
It wasn’t there.
The brakes on her Ford screeched as she roared into her driveway, trotted to the door, jammed her key in the lock.
“Logan!”
No sign of Logan’s pack at the door. Maggie went to his room. No sign of Logan or his pack there. She hurried room to room, searching in vain.
“Jake! Logan!”
She called Jake’s cell again.
And she kept calling.
Then she called Logan’s teacher, then Logan’s friends. No one knew, or had heard anything. She ran next door to Mr. Miller’s house, but the retired plumber said he hadn’t been home all day. She called Logan’s swim coach. She called the yard where Jake got his rig serviced.
No one had heard anything.
Was she crazy? You can’t drive from Baltimore to California in half a day. Jake said he was in Baltimore.
She rifled through Jake’s desk not knowing what she was looking for. She called the cell phone company to see if billing could confirm where Jake was when he made the call. It took some choice words before they checked, only to tell her that there was no record of calls being placed on Jake’s cell phone for the last two days.
By early evening she phoned police.
The dispatcher tried to calm Maggie, “Ma’am, we’ll put out a description of the truck and plate. We’ll check for any traffic accidents. That’s all we can do for now.”
As night fell, Maggie had lost track of time and the calls she’d made. Clutching her cordless phone, she jumped to her window each time a vehicle passed her house as Logan’s words haunted the darkness that swallowed her.
“ . . . .something bad is going to happen . . .”
Chapter Two
Five months later
Faust’s Fork, near Banff, Alberta, Canada
Haruki Ito was alone, hiking along the river when he stopped dead.
He raised his Nikon to his face, rolled his long lens until the bear in the distance filled his view finder. A grizzly sow, stalking trout on the bank of the wild Faust River in the Rocky Mountains.
Photographing the grizzly was a dream come true for Ito, vacationing from his job as a news photographer with The Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Tokyo’s largest newspapers. As he took a picture then refocused for another, something blurred in his periphery.
He focused and shot it.
A small hand rising from the rushing current.
Ito hurried along the bank to help, struggling to keep up, steering himself through dense forests and over the mist-slicked rocks while glimpsing the hand, then an arm, then a head in the water before the river released its victim into an eddy nearby.