by Ben Rehder
As Rick picked his way through the trees, he considered the implications of what he figured was about to happen and whether he should put himself in harm’s way to try to stop it. A man that the state of Mississippi was keen on convicting of, and probably executing for, solicitation of murder, was hunting down the man he had hired to kill two people. The victims, both extortionists, weren’t exactly innocents, but neither, in Rick’s opinion, were they deserving of the deaths they had suffered. If Clay killed DeWayne and then himself, Rick thought, a fair sum of the taxpayers’ money would be saved, and, in a great many respects, justice would be served. True, it would be at the expense of issues like due process and innocent-until-proven-guilty, but, as had been pointed out many times by many people, life wasn’t fair and justice was blind, or at least she sometimes looked the other way. Besides, in addition to the evidence he had gathered in service of establishing guilt, Rick felt that Clay’s present behavior spoke for itself and certainly didn’t go very far in arguing his innocence. The only reason he could conjure for intervening was the possibility that Clay’s and DeWayne’s demise might lead to problems in convicting Bernie Dribbling, the man ultimately behind all the deaths.
Rick’s meditation on the fitting consequences for capital offenses was interrupted by the sound of voices. He stopped to listen. He could hear Clay and DeWayne but he couldn’t tell how far away they were. He started to move ahead carefully, following their voices until he saw a light shining in the distance, moving back and forth across the trees. Rick knew it couldn’t be Traci, given the direction she’d set off in, so it had to be Clay.
Rick imagined that after Clay had lost control and put his car in the ditch, DeWayne had jumped out, fueled by terror and adrenaline, and run into the woods. Clay, stoked on alcohol and dread, must have climbed out and gone to the trunk, where he had a flashlight and that Remington 870 Wingmaster shotgun.
Looking ahead, Rick saw that the light had stopped moving. It was trained on the wide trunk of an old pine. He could hear Clay speaking. “Might as well step out and face it, DeWayne,” he said. “I’m this close and you know I ain’t gonna letcha just walk away. So what’s the point?”
Following the voices and the flashlight beam, and trying to move only when they spoke, Rick slipped from one tree to the next until he was only about fifteen feet behind Clay.
“You ain’t gotta kill me,” DeWayne said. “I can just go away. I won’t testify to nothin’ and that’s the stomped down truth. I swear! They’ll never even find me.”
“No good,” Clay said.
Rick watched Clay move to his right to get an angle on DeWayne, but DeWayne just circled the other direction, keeping the tree between them.
“How ‘bout this,” DeWayne proposed. “How ‘bout we make it look like we was all just set up on this thing? You said that Chief Dinkins could help if things got sticky. Well, things is sure sticky now.”
“DeWayne, quit suckin’ eggs on this and be a man,” Clay said. “I’m damn sure sorry it’s gotta end this way but. . . that’s the way it is. We up against a stump.”
For a moment no one spoke. The only sound was the buzzing of cicadas and crickets for miles around. Then, from the darkness of the woods to Rick’s left, Traci called out, “Hey!”
It startled Clay so that he just turned and fired a shot in the direction of her voice. As the report echoed through the woods, Rick heard DeWayne turn and run and he figured Clay would take off after him. Rick knew he had to make his move now or start the chase all over so he charged out from behind his tree with his tire iron poised. He planned to bring it down on Clay’s forearm and break it clean, disarming him and leaving him in enough pain that Rick could grab the shotgun and end things without any more death.
And he might have been able to do just that had he not tripped on this big pine branch he didn’t see. He landed face down at Clay’s feet.
Clay didn’t know what to do or think. He wanted to go after DeWayne but he seemed frozen, startled, wondering who had just yelled from the woods and what the hell Rick was doing out here. As Clay turned and looked down, his posture brought the shotgun to an angle pointing straight at Rick’s head.
Rick rolled over and looked up. He could see the last wisps of smoke coming from the end of the barrel. And, even though he wasn’t in much of a position to talk this way, he said, “Give it up, Clay.”
“The hell’re you doin’?” was all Clay could come up with. He was looking down at Rick as if he’d fallen from the sky.
“I found the tape,” Rick said. “I know everything that happened and so do the police.” “You did this?” Clay looked off in the direction he had fired the shot. “Who’s out there?”
“It’s Traci. And I’ve got a camera,” she called out. “Whatever you do is gonna be on video. So you might as well just surrender. Sheriff’s on the way.”
Clay looked back down at Rick and mumbled, “Goddamn tapes.” Rick started to get up but Clay pressed the shotgun to his neck and pushed him back down. “I told you not to nose around in my business.” He looked over in the direction of Traci’s voice and yelled, “I’ll take his head off, you don’t come out.”
Rick yelled, “Don’t do it!”
Clay waited a moment to see if she would come out. When she didn’t, he shrugged in defeat and leaned down toward Rick. “All right, Mr. DJ,” he said. “Got any last requests? Tch.”
Rick closed his eyes momentarily then looked up at Clay. “I really hate to say this but . . . how about Stairway to Heaven?” Rick flashed an impish grin.
Clay couldn’t help himself. As dumb and drunk and frightened as he was, he still got the joke and his head threw back in one final laugh. That’s when Rick swung the tire iron with all his might, catching Clay’s tibia in just the right spot to snap it in half. As the bone broke through the skin, the shotgun fired and Traci screamed, “Nooooooo!”
82.
The crickets and cicadas eventually resumed their undulated buzzing. Traci was sitting on the forest floor, leaning against a tree in the dark. She looked vaguely stunned. Rick’s head was in her lap, his eyes closed. Her hands were bloody from where she had been applying pressure to his neck.
Clay lay unconscious nearby, the pain and shock of his compound fracture having proved too much for him.
In the distance, Traci could hear sirens approaching. After a moment, Rick’s eyes opened and he looked up at Traci. “I hope those are for us,” he said.
“Yeah.” Traci looked down with a numbed expression. “How you doin’?”
“I’m okay,” Rick said. “A little woozy, maybe.”
“You’ll be all right.” Traci rubbed his arm absently as she gazed out into the darkness.
“I’ve just been lying here thinking about that PD job down in Vicksburg,” Rick said.
It took a moment for Traci to understand his words. She said, “I thought you were getting out of radio.”
“I said I was thinking about it.”
Traci nodded slightly. “You make a decision?”
“I thought I might take the gig while we work on the PI thing.”
“We?”
“I’m going to need a partner. You said so yourself.”
Traci looked around the woods and said, “Yeah, well, that was before all this happened.” She had the sort of doubt in her voice that comes after being shot at for the second time in two days.
But Rick couldn’t hear it, his ears were still ringing from their proximity to the shotgun blast. He had rolled to one side as he swung the tire iron and the tight pattern of buckshot at such close range had just caught the side his neck. The experience had an interesting effect on him. Giddy at having cheated death, and with a huge dose of adrenaline coursing through his system Rick became animated and optimistic. “I was also thinking that as the program director, I’d get to hire my on-air staff.”
“Yeah, I suspect you will.”
“So, naturally, I thought of you.”
“Thought wh
at about me?”
“You said you wanted to work on the air, and I believe you also expressed some interest in moving to a place where you could pick the best parts of your past to tell people or where you could just make up something completely new,” Rick said. “You can just leave behind whatever you want. It’s your past.”
But Traci was thinking about the future now. And she was thinking about it in a whole new light as she felt the blood coagulating on her hands. Tempting as it might be to rewrite her past, there was something she couldn’t leave behind. But she hadn’t told Rick about that and she didn’t think now was the time to spring it on him. She could tell him later. He’d understand.
After a few minutes Traci heard the dogs barking. She glanced in their direction and saw what looked like fairy lights in the distance, dodging and blinking in the trees. “I think they found us,” she said.
Now Rick could hear the dazed blankness in her voice. He couldn’t tell if she was hearing his words, let alone putting meaning to them. He figured it was a temporary response to the night’s events. She’ll be fine, he thought. “Of course you don’t have to answer now,” he said. “Just think about it. Let me know when you decide.”
Absently stroking Rick’s hair, Traci said, “Yeah, I will.”
83.
They caught DeWayne later that night. The dogs treed him like a possum. DeWayne testified against Clay. Clay testified against Bernie. And Bernie said it was all a pack of lies. He was the Booster Club Man of the Year! All three were convicted in the deaths of Jack Carter and Holly Creel and were put in the care of the Mississippi State Department of Corrections.
Once he’d settled in at Parchman Farm, Bernie decided he’d try to make the best of the situation. He formed a ‘finance company’ that arranged loans for the Aryan Brotherhood and other white supremacist prison gangs. He hired DeWayne as his vice president of collections and protection and they did all right for themselves, all things considered.
Clay was initially welcomed to the institution where he was held in high regard as a prison yard raconteur. A couple of months later, however, after having told the story about the woman who invited him back to the motel for a golden shower one time too many, he was raped and killed. Guards found his urine-soaked body behind housing unit 25.
Lori Stubblefield’s name was dragged through the mud on radio, television, and in the newspaper. She divorced Clay and moved with the kids to Dallas where she earned more press by marrying the alcoholic chief financial officer of an energy trading company who was later indicted for cooking the books. He fled the country, without Lori, and was convicted in absentia. After that, Lori got her name in the paper one last time when she was arrested for shoplifting a pair of Jimmy Choo pointed-toe slingbacks, in the petrol blue.
Autumn received an A for her term paper on the station’s format change. It was titled: Grabbing the Gray: Impact of Format Change on P-1 Listeners in the 35 to 64 Demographic (Average Quarter Hour and Cume). Two weeks later her professor discovered that she had plagiarized large portions of the paper. Autumn was “asked to leave” CMU without benefit of a degree. This, however, didn’t prevent her from indicating on her resumé that she graduated cum laude. Autumn moved to Jackson and became the assistant communications director for a democratic state representative.
After graduating from McRae High School, Rob enrolled in CMU’s Radio, TV, and Film program. Informed by his experience at WAOL, he opted for an emphasis in film. Two years later he dropped out and moved to Los Angeles to look for work in the film industry. Within a year, he was one of the top grossing waiters in Hollywood.
Despite Rick’s glowing letter of recommendation, J.C. couldn’t find another radio gig. He started collecting unemployment while being paid under the table as a local nightclub DJ. He was fired eight months later and subsequently answered a want ad for a position as a nourishment transfer engineer. He delivered pizza and chicken wings to the residents of greater McRae for six months before moving up to management.
The owner of B-Side Vinyl sold Piper at the Gates of Dawn on-line for sixty-five dollars. He then took all the albums that Rick gave to J. J. Maguire and sold them for a total of six hundred thirty dollars so J.J. could pay his way into an alcohol rehabilitation program. He then became an instructor at the Paul B. Allen School of Broadcasting in Omaha, Nebraska. He’s been sober ever since. He still has the Beatles 45.
A few weeks after Clay was arrested, the ratings book came out. It showed a one point gain in average quarter hour listeners over the previous ratings period. A month later Clean Signal Radio Corporation announced that it had bought the station. They fired everyone and began simulcasting the syndicated talk format on the AM and the FM sides.
No one knows what happened to Uncle Victor.
84.
The story of Rick’s investigation got front page play throughout the state. Even though his wound was nearly healed, Rick kept the bandage on his neck as long as the reporters and photographers were coming by for interviews. They would come out to the trailer and he’d take them out to the woods and show them where he’d found the bodies. He talked about his new radio job in Vicksburg and how he was going to open a private investigation service. He said he was toying with names like Rockin’ Vestigations, but he hadn’t settled on anything. Rick figured all the press would put him in good graces with his new station, nothing like having someone of semi-celebrity status coming on board. And he knew it would get his name out there for potential PI clients.
Still, as busy as Rick was with all the media requests, he wasn’t too busy to notice the shift in Traci’s mood since their night in the woods. He had the sense there was something she wasn’t telling him. It was the same feeling he’d had that night at Kitty’s when she seemed on the verge of explaining about her ex-boyfriend, but had held back. When he asked her about it, she changed the subject. She was fine, she said. Don’t worry about it. She made vague statements about joining him in Vicksburg, but Rick didn’t hear her heart in it. He had started to lower his expectations.
On the day of the move, Rick hitched his pickup to the back of the big U-Haul he had rented. After adding Captain Jack’s record collection, his Barcalounger, and the Griswold number five skillet to his own belongings, there wasn’t any other way to do it. Besides, the new station was paying for the move. Rick glanced in the mirror for one last look at the trailer, then he pulled out onto the road.
As he drove across town to Traci’s apartment, Rick entertained the fragile hope that she would be waiting on the sidewalk with her suitcases. Upon closer examination, he realized it was more of a fantasy than a realistic hope. He stopped in front of her place around noon but there weren’t any suitcases out front when he got there. No Traci either. He climbed out of the truck and went to her door.
Traci met him there with a sheepish grin. “Hi,” she said. “All packed?”
“Yeah,” Rick said. “What about you?”
Traci smiled but shook her head.
Rick responded with a disappointed nod.
A little girl appeared by Traci’s side, looking up at Rick. “Hello,” she said.
Rick looked down. “Hi.”
Traci said, “Oh, hey, you two’ve never met, have you?” She put her hand on the girl’s head. “Rick, this is my. . . this is Kaitlin.”
“Your niece?”
“My daughter.”
Rick tried not to look too surprised. He said, “Oh.” Like he understood.
Traci seemed a little embarrassed and said, “I was going to–”
Rick shook his head. “Don’t worry about it.” He squatted down and held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Rick. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Kaitlin smiled but hid behind her mom’s leg. “She’s kinda shy,” Traci said.
Rick stood up and thought about asking why she hadn’t told him, but he let it go. He could imagine a lot of reasons but knowing them wouldn’t change anything. “She’s got your smile,” he said.
; Traci sent Kaitlin back to her room to play. After she was gone, Traci looked at Rick and said, “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you and I was going to, but the timing never seemed right. At first it was. . .well, it doesn’t matter. I hope you understand. But that night. . .and the blood? I just kept thinking about her and what would happen if I . . . didn’t come home.”
“Sure,” Rick said. “I understand.” He figured this might be the last time he saw Traci and he didn’t want the end too gloomy, so he tried to lighten the mood. “Now keep in mind that the radio gig I’m offering is a lot less dangerous. So if you think you might want to. . .” He smiled and gave a little gesture to finish his thought.
“Yeah,” Traci said with her own sad smile. “I thought I’d let you go ahead and get started anyway, and maybe we could come along later.” She turned and looked toward the back of her apartment. “Depending how you feel about it. . .” She looked back at Rick. “Well, you know. We could come visit.”
“Sure. That’d be great,” Rick said. “We’ll take her to the Civil War park and let her play around on the cannons. And the job’ll be waitin’ for you if you want it.”
“Thanks.” Traci walked Rick out to the truck and kissed him good bye.
Rick held her face in his hands and took one last look at the swoop of her eyebrows. Then he kissed her forehead and climbed into the truck.
“Good luck,” she said.
Rick looked down, smiling, and said, “Thanks.” Then he put the truck in gear and drove away. He saw Traci in his mirror, waving, as he made the turn off her street.
As he drove out of town, Rick tried telling himself it was all for the best, that whatever happens is supposed to happen. That there’s a reason things turn out the way they do. He tried all the things people tell themselves when they don’t like the outcome of the game and have no way of changing it. Rick figured people believed these things because they found it more comforting to blame fate than to accept the arbitrary nature of life. Blaming fate while simultaneously embracing a vague implication that something better would spring from it; like Rick’s cynicism, it was a philosophy of consolation. In pop Christian terms they would say, When God closes a door he opens a window. Rick had heard it more than once and, despite there being no apparent basis for the claim, he understood how and why it comforted so many. In fact, Rick sometimes wished he was among them.