She stroked his thumbs as he held her hands. “You remember more than I thought you would.”
Jake’s lips pressed together. “It’s taken me a long time to figure things out. Too long. The world I’ve been living in is a dark place full of pain and miserable people. It’s a place I helped create when I was young, and I’ve lived there because it’s all I know. It’s like ghosts are chasing me.”
Maggie moved closer and rested her hand on his shoulder.
“A place you helped create? You act like you brought this on yourself,” she said. “It’s not your fault. You may have continued the cycle but it was taught to you…taught on you.”
“I know,” he said. Empty words.
She lifted his chin. “Look at me, Jake, because you’re not hearing me. It’s not your fault.”
“I know,” he repeated.
“No, you don’t. Coming back home has stirred a lot of memories and you don’t just remember them now, you’re feeling them. You have the knowledge, the facts of what happened with Stony that night. But it doesn’t mean you understand it.”
He shrugged. “What the hell difference does that make?”
“Until you understand it,” she said, “until you understand him, you’ll never escape those ghosts you’re talking about. Until you understand it, you won’t be able to forgive.”
Forgive? Stony? “What in the hell makes you think I want to do that?”
“I think that’s exactly what you came home for.” She climbed to her feet and extended a hand. “Come help me make some coffee. I don’t want to collapse in exhaustion while we’re looking for Halle.”
Jake took her hand and followed her to the kitchen. She handed him the coffee pot and faced the refrigerator. On the door, pictures covered every open space. Maggie and Halle together, cheek to cheek. Halle bounding the track in her Warsaw uniform, hair flying behind her. Halle with a group of girlfriends, arms binding each other together with blazing smiles of untapped futures. Then, in the corner, a picture of Maggie, Bear and Jake in front of Warsaw High School in their graduation gowns, Bear and Maggie beaming for the brave new world. Jake also wore a weighted smile in the picture, like his bleak future pulled at the corners of his mouth.
He filled the coffee pot at the sink. Just being in this place with her took him back sixteen years as he savored the breathtaking burst of pink erupting from the Ozark tree tops out the back window.
“After our last night, why did you go?”
“I don’t know, Mags,” he said.
“I don’t know doesn’t work. Make something up if you have to, but I need to know. You have your ghosts, I have mine. Mine is the image of you walking down the hill to your house all those years ago. I’ve seen your face in countless strangers, stopped in my tracks when someone’s voice sounded like yours. I need to know.”
He set the coffee pot on the counter and turned to face her, but couldn’t bring his eyes past her bare feet. He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jeans. An immense and crushing weariness settled in his bones, the guilty feelings squeezing him, shrinking him.
“I’ve waited sixteen years to be able to ask this question,” she continued. “It’s haunted me because I loved you more than life itself back then. With you standing here in front of me now, it all seems so obvious. I never found anyone new. I always found a reason, some flaw with my boyfriends. I convinced myself it was because of Halle, but it was something else. It was you, Jake. I never stopped loving you. I have to know.”
“There was more going on than I knew what to do with,” he said. “Love for you, feeling responsible for Janey and Nicky, anger at Stony and this…this utter hopelessness at my dreams of getting out on the magic football carpet ride going up in flames. If I didn’t leave then and there, I never would. I’d end up like Stony. Things didn’t end up the way I planned.”
“So you had a plan?”
“As good a plan as a stupid eighteen year old who doesn’t know shit about shit can have,” he said. He moved his gaze from her feet to her hurt eyes. “I was a coward. A selfish coward who only thought of himself. I figured I’d run away, and all that Warsaw held over me would fade in the distance. Once I recognized it wasn’t going away, I didn’t think I could come back empty handed. Figured I’d settle in somewhere, earn some cash and come get you.”
“But you never did.”
“No. Once you start running, it’s hard to stop. I’d settle in somewhere new and it would be fine for a while. Then, I’d think of you and Janey and Nicky and Bear and Stony and the guilt would push me off to some other place. I figured I could outrun the ghosts.”
She grasped him by the arms. “But we’re not ghosts. The only past you’re running from is lying in a death bed in Sedalia. You don’t have to run anymore because there’s nothing left to run from.”
She pulled him to the refrigerator and pointed to the pictures of Halle. “Look at the good in the world,” she continued, her thumb tracking the outline of Halle’s face. “Just look at it.”
“You did good, Mags.”
She steeled herself. “No, Jake. We did good.”
Jake’s eyebrows furrowed together. He took a half step back and examined the pictures again.
“We did good,” she repeated.
“We? You mean…”
“Yeah. Halle is yours.”
The bombshell dropped. His mind was blank, too stunned to conjure up a cohesive thought. He gazed at the picture and the longer he stared, the more he saw. His daughter. Their daughter. He could almost hear Maggie’s pulse racing with anticipation for his response. After an open-mouthed minute of contemplation, he leaned in and kissed her on the forehead, letting his lips rest there, absorbing the moment. Maggie wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed him tight. The rising sun cast cheerful rays across the kitchen floor, silhouetting their united shape on the linoleum. He pulled back, cupping her face in his hands.
“Let’s go find our daughter,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A little after seven, Jake went out to meet Bear on the drive. His friend lumbered out of the cab of his truck, his uniform wrinkled with a dried coffee stain on one thigh. His eyes were narrow and hollow, and he needed a shave. Maggie flew down the front steps.
“Damn, Bear,” Jake said. “You look like shit.”
“Bears like their sleep and I haven’t gotten much since you rolled into town. I take it no word from Halle?” Maggie’s mouth turned low. “I spread the word among my guys to keep their eyes peeled and I got a crew heading over to the cook house. They’re gonna scour the place and the surrounding woods and see if we can turn up something useful. Maggie, I’m going to steal Jake. I’ve got an idea his particular skill sets could help with.”
What skill sets might those be? Those he was trying to get away from? Whatever it took to get Halle back. Everything had changed with Maggie’s revelation in the kitchen. It was no longer about just finding her daughter, but finding his daughter too. Should he tell Bear about it?
“What about me?” Maggie asked.
“I need you to stay here,” Bear said. “In case Halle or anybody else gets in contact with you.”
“But they’d call my cell.” Her eyes cast wide and pleading. “I can’t sit here and do nothing. I’ll go crazy.”
“Please, Maggie. Just stay here. Somebody could come by or call with information, or Halle herself may come strolling up the lane. You won’t be doing nothing. When was the last time you were in her room?”
“Yesterday, dropping some clean clothes on her dresser.”
“You toss the place?”
Maggie stepped back. “No, she’s a good girl. I don’t have to loot through her stuff to know what’s going on with my daughter.”
“I know she’s a good girl, but right now we’re runnin’ in the dark. I need you to go through every nook and cranny. See if there’s any letters, notes, receipts, pictures. Anything out of the ordinary or anything that trips your pretty brai
n to give us another direction to look at. Look between the mattress and box springs, under loose floorboards, underneath jewelry boxes, every square inch of that room. Can you do it?”
Maggie started to say something, but instead nodded.
“Good,” Bear said. “I’ll call you in an hour or sooner if we find something. Jake, come with me, big guy.”
“Where we going?”
“To the jailhouse. I got a problem a man with your unique talents could help with.”
Jake grabbed Maggie’s car keys and promised to get the vehicle for her.
“What’s going on?” Jake asked when they turned on to Poor Boy Road and headed west toward Old 65 Highway and town.
“Remember the shithead I told you I got sitting in jail?”
“The one with the red rock and the lawyer?”
“Yup,” Bear said. He reached Highway 65 and let an orange Challenger whip by. “The lawyer left with strict instructions to Howie Bennett not to say anything to any of us. I tried talking to Howie in between searches for Halle, but he’s wedged in tight. That’s my problem.”
“And I’m the solution?”
“I want to dump you in a room with Howie. I wasn’t too worried when I originally talked to him, but now with the red meth and Halle’s iPod at the scene, I think he can lead us somewhere.”
“New rock you’ve never seen before,” Jake said. “Recent cooking activity at a drug house and a mysteriously appearing lawyer.”
“See? You would’ve made a good cop.”
“What can I do?”
“He won’t talk to a cop, but he might talk to you. You can look pretty mean when you try.”
“What about his constitutional rights?”
“He has the constitutional right that I don’t beat his ass. Beyond that, I don’t give a shit at this point.”
“You think this guy’s gonna spill his guts to me? Sounds pretty fucking thin, Bear.”
“It is thin,” Bear said. “But we don’t have much to go on other than rousting every kid in town, which we’re pretty much going to do anyway, but maybe Howie gives us a direction. You lean on his ass until he gives us something useful. I’ve been chasing Shane Langston for a long time now. This is the best chance I’ve had to nail his ass so I’m pulling out the stops.”
“What if the lawyer barks about police brutality?”
“You ain’t a cop. I have some measure of plausible deniability.”
“Doesn’t sound very plausible.”
“You want to help me or not, asshole?” Bear said.
Jake said nothing, letting his grin speak for itself. Giving Bear flack like the old days brought some normalcy to the world.
They exited the highway and rolled across the bridge toward town, the corner gas station busy with locals filling up for the day and getting their morning coffee. He wanted to break the Halle news to Bear, but said nothing as they arrived downtown. The shop owners angle-parked in front of their stores and were rolling out the sidewalks, preparing for the day’s business. Bear pulled in front of the sheriff’s office and shut off the car.
“There any cameras in the room?” Jake asked.
“One, but it will mysteriously stop working when we get there. Damn technology.”
“Sure the lawyer won’t come after me?”
“His lawyer won’t even know you were here. We’ll deny anyone has seen Howie since the bloodsucker left the night before.”
Though he had reservations, Howie might lead them to Shane Langston and solve the problem both he and Bear suffered from. What could possibly go wrong? Well, a million different things, but if it took care of Langston and they found Halle, Jake didn’t care.
“Okay,” Jake said, opening the car door. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Howie Skaggs lay awake on an impossibly thin mattress that did nothing to mask the cold, hard metal of the bunk it rested on. He’d managed to doze for a bit, drifting in and out in between bleak bouts of imagined scenarios, most of which ended with his horribly painful death at the hands of Shane.
The lawyer spent his brief time with Howie grilling him on what he’d told the cops during his interrogation. Luckily, Howie didn’t have to lie since the lawyer arrived before he had a chance to spill his guts in exchange for immunity and relocation somewhere out of Shane Langston’s clutches. The lawyer promised to work on getting bail for Howie in the morning, and the man’s demeanor left the impression on Howie’s dim brain that he might potentially get out of this jam alive. At the same time, the dim brain told him the lawyer could care less whether Howie got out or not, and to keep his guard up.
A tall, thin man slept in the cell next to him. They must’ve brought him in during the night. The man’s gaunt, bearded jaw hung open in a silent snore and a thin line of drool rolled down his cheek. His body odor and stale beer cologne wafted across the cell, mixing unpleasantly with the harsh smell of disinfectant from the jail. Two cells over, Crazy Wayne Kirtley, the town loon clutched the bars to his cell door and mumbled something to nobody. Wonder what he did this time?
The door to the bay clanked open, followed by the rhythmic thunk of a rolling cart with a bad wheel. Howie swung his legs off the bunk and set his shoeless feet on the cold, stone floor.
A uniformed cop stopped in front of his neighbor’s cell and yelled at the man inside, calling him “Williams.” Williams stirred and cracked his eyes. He sat up and wiped the drool from his cheek. The cop held a paper plate covered with a napkin through the slot in the bars. The inmate took it and returned to the cot seemingly oblivious to Howie’s existence. The cop pushed the cart a few feet more and stopped in front of Howie’s cell.
“Breakfast,” the cop said.
Howie climbed to his feet and shuffled over to the door. He hadn’t eaten for a day. Even the hard biscuit and two paper-thin slices of precooked bacon looked like heaven.
“When am I getting out of here?” he asked the cop.
“Beats the hell out of me. Ask the day shift when they get here.”
“I want to talk to my lawyer.”
“Tell someone who gives a shit because it ain’t me.”
The cop shuffled back the way he came. Howie poked at the food. The bacon was cold, but the biscuit was hot and tasted decent. Williams gnawed at his breakfast in the next cell.
“Whatcha in for?” Howie asked.
“Why?”
“Just making conversation.”
Williams eyed him for a moment, his jaw working slowly on the biscuit.
“Possession of a controlled substance,” Williams said.
“Small world. You from around here? I don’t recognize you.”
The man stuffed the rest of his biscuit in his mouth. He chewed for a minute, face working like he tried to figure out a complex math problem in his head.
“Kansas City,” Williams said at last. “Was supposed to pick something up and got busted speeding. You want my bacon? I can’t eat this crap.”
Williams walked over with his plate in hand and Howie moved to meet him. Williams stuck the two pieces through the cell and Howie took them, popping them into his mouth.
“Thanks,” Howie mumbled.
The man reached through the bars. “Hey, I’m Gus Williams.”
“Howie Skaggs.” He shook the man’s hand. Williams' grip clamped from friendly to vise, surprising Howie with its power. He pulled Howie violently forward, slamming his face into the cold metal bars. Williams dropped the plate and produced a long, metal shaft of steel, filed to a sharp point.
“Shane says to have a nice day.” Williams jabbed his hand through the bars and rammed the steel through Howie’s eye, wide with surprise and terror. Just a millisecond of searing pain before the steel bit into his brain and cancelled any worries about what Shane was going to do to him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“What in the holy hell!” Bear bellowed from in front of the cell. Jake rushed across the yellowed linoleum to Bear who whi
te-knuckled the closed bars.
Holy shit. The man inside the cell lay on his back, a steel shaft protruding from a hole that used to house his left eye. Blood pooled around the man’s cropped brown hair, jaw hanging open in a silent scream, and trickled to the drain in the center of the cell, a copper smell hanging in the air.
“Jake, meet Howie. Johnston!” Bear slammed his fist into the wall as a rail-thin cop with a crisp uniform darted through the door and across the cell row.
He staggered back at the sight on the floor. “Jesus.”
“Open the door,” Bear whispered. “And call an ambulance.”
Johnston fumbled with the keys before finding the right one and opened the cell. Bear trod carefully around the puddle of blood and knelt next to Howie. He touched his neck, checking for a pulse before shaking his head.
“Who was the last one in here?” Bear demanded.
“Inside the cell? Beats me,” Johnston said. “I just got here. Howell came out with the breakfast trolley a few minutes ago, but he don’t have keys to the cells and sure as hell didn’t say anything about this guy being dead.”
“Go get him. Now.” Bear followed Johnston out of the cell and walked past Jake to the next cell. The man inside lay on his bunk with his hands folded behind his head.
“What’s your name?”
“Williams,” the man said, sprawled out like he lounged at the beach.
“I suppose you didn’t see a thing,” Bear said.
“Oh, I saw everything, Sheriff,” Williams said, flashing yellowed teeth and waving a bloody hand in their direction.
In the next cell, Wayne Kirtley backed up against the wall, as far away as he could get. His eyes wide and wary.
“Man,” Bear said. “This is gonna be a long fucking day.”
#
Halle trembled on the bed in the locked room of the blue house, feeling cold and empty as Shane perched too close to her, like a vulture in waiting. He had yet to touch her, but the threat loomed, his knife twirling deftly in his hands as he spoke. He’d spent the last thirty minutes asking about her, making small talk with little probing questions about her knowledge of the drug trade in Warsaw and Willie’s crew in particular.
Poor Boy Road (Jake Caldwell #1) Page 16