by Meg Jackson
“And what’s your role in all this?” she asked, realizing he’d never laid claim to any of the businesses himself. “Or do you just get to sit back and take the ride?”
He laughed, as though it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
“I’m rom baro,” he said. “Leader. Kind of like…I don’t know, President, or something. I kind of look after it all. Make sure everyone’s happy. Make the big decisions about the kumpania.”
She nodded. Somehow, it made sense. When you looked into Kennick Volanis’ eyes, you got the feeling he knew what you should be doing better than you knew it yourself. He just had that way about him; a way that made you hungry to trust him. Follow him.
“And I guess most people, well, you all work there together, I guess, right? Like, all the people who live here work at one place or another?”
Kennick nodded.
“We find it doesn’t pay to outsource our labor, most of the time,” he said. “There’s about thirty people in our kumpania. A lot are too young or too old to work. The ones who can work, work their butts off, and we more or less share the money between ourselves. We’ll hire a few locals, though. Kids to help in the grocery, any local talent for the tattoo parlor and nail salon.”
The unspoken idea that “local talent” might also include women for the gentleman’s club passed between them.
“I never really thought of…well, you’re very industrious,” she said, quickly trying to save herself from saying something terribly presumptuous. But it was true; the typical person’s idea of a gypsy probably didn’t peg them as being particularly upstanding citizens of the business community.
“And rich as shit,” Kennick said, catching onto her near-miss and smiling to let her know it wasn’t going to be taken personally. “My people have become Americans, same as Asians or Hispanics or anything else. We offer some very particular services, and some general services, we’re smart with our money – most of the time. We live in trailers so we can move around…and afford parties. Nothing like a Rom party. Bet we can spend a month of your rent on a one-night kegger.”
Kim shifted in her seat. She wanted to ask the real question that had been plaguing her since she’d realized the connection that the Volanis family already had to Kingdom. Her fingers plucked at her nails, an old habit that was dying a slow hard, death. When Kennick looked down at her busy fingers, she forced them to stop.
“Kennick,” she said, looking down now. “I think…well, you just have no idea how much Kingdom needs this all. We’re really…we’re not doing so well. I’ve been worried what would happen to the town if something didn’t change. I think that all these new businesses will be just fantastic. But I have to ask…”
“Why did we come back?” Kennick asked, anticipating her question. Her eyes rose to meet his, shyly. She nodded. His smile waned and he seemed to be looking for something in her face. Perhaps some sign that she could be trusted, that she wasn’t like the man she worked for. Perhaps something else.
He sighed.
“My father, Pieter Volanis, died, a little less than a month ago,” he said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said softly. He waved his hand in front of his face again.
“He was too young, but that was just his luck,” he said, the smile returning to his face again, though sadder this time. “The Volanis have never been known for their great luck. My father was a good man. He was a good father, a good gypsy.”
Kim flinched at the word gypsy. She wasn’t sure if it was a slur or not, but the way some people said it made it sound like a slur for sure.
“Gypsy’s not a bad word,” Kennick said, picking up on her discomfort. “Unless it’s preceded by dirty, fucking, worthless, no good….you get the picture.”
Kim nodded. She couldn’t overlook the way her body had warmed up a degree when he’d said the word fucking. Like a pre-teen testing out curse words in a secret hiding place, watching his mouth form the word, hearing it come out in his low, honeyed voice, was exciting. He rose slowly, going to the fridge and pulling out two beers, handing her one before taking his seat. She sipped when he did.
“My father was a good gypsy,” he continued on his earlier track. “One of the best. And the only thing that ever tarnished him, ever, was what happened here in Kingdom. He loved Rhonda Teek more than he’d ever loved any woman before. Maybe more than he loved any woman that came after, including my mother. He never killed her. But he was run out of town by a damn lynch mob. I’m here to clear his name.”
9
Kim studied him across the table. He was here to clear his father's name. Alright. End of conversation. But her mouth had different ideas.
“But he was already, you know, exonerated or whatever,” Kim said, reading the steely look in his eyes. She hadn’t been that surprised by his statement; she’d assumed something of the sort, and in the little bit of research she’d done on the thirty-year-old case, she knew that there had been no legal action taken against Pieter Volanis.
“Maybe legally,” he said. “But in terms of reputation…well, people in a town like this, they like to write their own history. And they’ve decided Pieter killed her. And he didn’t.”
“Well, what do you really think will happen if you do clear his name? I mean, will anyone even care? It was so long ago…her parents are gone, I mean people still talk about it sometimes but…”
“Listen,” Kennick said, now crossing his arms across his chest. “I don’t actually give a fuck what happens after. But my clan doesn’t like taking credit for shit we didn’t do. It’s a matter of honor, a matter of legacy. The last thing Dad asked of us was to clear his name, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
His eyes flashed as he spoke of honor and legacy. Kim tried to understand, and could only draw up thoughts of her hometown, the way she wanted to save it. She loathed the idea of Kingdom going down the road it was headed; sooner or later, if things didn’t improve, it would be just another poster town for poverty, meth, and crime. Kennick had his family. Kim had her town.
“Okay,” she finally said. “I get it. But do you really have enough evidence to prove that Pieter didn’t do it? I mean, it’s been thirty years. Can’t exactly exhume the body for DNA testing or fingerprints. And all that stuff on the case – ballistics, all that – I mean, do you really think it hasn’t been gone over and over and over already? It’s not like you’re the first person to try and crack the case, or whatever.”
She felt a little silly using the old cliché of “crack the case”. She felt a little silly about the whole conversation. Was she seriously getting herself pulled into some true crime novel, some Grisham paperback? She was an assistant in the Mayor’s office, she had no business getting involved in a thirty-year old murder.
Who says you have to get involved, she thought suddenly. You can walk away right now. Deal with Kennick and his people’s business in town without having to muddy your boots with his ulterior motives.
Well, the answer to that riddle was simple. Embarrassingly simple. She wanted any excuse she could get to spend more time in this tall, dark, handsome gypsy’s company. She couldn’t deny the way her body flushed whenever she saw him, the way her heart beat just a hint faster. Even now, as they talked about this direly serious subject, her eyes never stilled, constantly moving across his body, focusing on this or that tattoo, ogling those wide, weathered hands, taking in the thick vein that ran down his muscled forearm.
“What do you know about the case?” Kennick asked, bringing his beer to his lips and gulping smoothly, She watched his Adam’s apple, small but clearly visible, bob slightly. She wondered what it would feel like to be that cold beer, slipping down his throat…
“Not much,” she said, corralling her thoughts back to the matter at hand. She spoke truthfully; she’d been born after most of the hubbub had died down. She’d read up on it a bit after Ricky had left the day before. Mostly, she could remember the occasional report in the newspaper – usually tucked
in the middle, never on the front page – when a journalist caught wind of some new lead the detectives were following. All those leads, inevitably, went nowhere. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen such an article; not since she was a teenager, at least.
“Do you know exactly why Pieter Volanis was cleared of charges?”
Again, Kim shrugged. She didn’t.
“I figured it was just, you know, not enough concrete evidence against him,” she said. Kennick rolled his tongue across his mouth, from cheek to cheek, thoughtfully. Fuck, that tongue, Kim thought, distracted once more. Every move this man made seemed designed to turn her on more and more. She really needed to get her shit together before she left a puddle on the bench.
“Something like that,” he said finally. “But what really did it was the fact that the DA couldn’t go to trial. There was a page missing from the case file.”
She cocked her head. Finally, something interesting enough to get her mind off Kennick’s omnipresent sex appeal.
“Back then, you know, they didn’t have computers to back shit up. So when the page went missing, it was gone for good. And any lawyer worth his salt – even a shitty public defender – would have cried mistrial, and won.”
“I didn’t know that,” Kim said. “But, I mean…why did they even keep pursuing the case, then, if it would have been a mistrial no matter what? I mean, couldn’t anyone else they have brought in said the same thing?”
Kennick shook his head.
“The page went missing, but it was easy enough to figure out what was on that page. It was the page that detailed the footprints left at the scene. Wouldn’t normally make or break a case. Wouldn’t have to, anyway. If you had enough other physical evidence, or motive, or whatever, I guess, you could still build a case.”
“But…they did have all that on your Dad, didn’t they?” Kim asked. Even as she did, she felt warm with regret; the way she’d asked it certainly made it sound like she wasn’t buying what Kennick was selling. But she knew enough to know that the evidence against Pieter had been compelling. Compelling enough to convince people, obviously. His semen was inside her, his baby was inside her, he went AWOL when they found the body, didn’t report it even though it was clear he’d been the last to see her. Motive. Hard evidence. Sketchy behavior.
And above it all the looming specter of who he was. A traveler. A vagabond. A troublemaker, con man, born of bad blood and worse morals. A gypsy.
“Sure did,” Kennick said stonily. “Heaps of it. Enough to make it clear he couldn’t stay in town without getting lynched.”
Kim winced. Here she sat, trying to remain impartial, though her body and heart yearned to believe whatever Kennick said. Didn’t make it easy, though, when her whole life she’d heard how clear it was his father had done it.
“That page,” Kennick continued. “Like I said, it contained the evidence of the footprints found at the scene. There must have been good ones; they found Dad’s tire tracks easy enough. It had been a wet summer.”
Kim nodded, now peeling the label of her own beer with increasingly anxious fingers.
“What that page would have showed would have cleared Dad. I know it would have,” Kennick said, leaning forward now, eyes glinting, boring into Kim’s own. Oh shit, Kim thought, wilting under his stare, imagining those eyes coming to her on some cold, dark night, seeking her out in a dim bedroom, the hands that they were attached to closing around her ankles and yanking her body towards him, towards his…
“Why’s that,” Kim asked, willing the stutter out of her voice.
“Because Dad had a limp,” Kennick said, eyes narrowing. “There would have been a third set of tracks. A set that didn’t limp. And that would have been enough.”
10
Kim exhaled. That was it? That was his whole case? It was all built on the fact that a missing page from a thirty-year-old file could potentially have cast “reasonable doubt” on the case? Maybe he wasn’t as smart as those intense eyes seemed to show.
“Um,” Kim said, wondering if she should voice this argument or keep it to herself and be on her way. She’d already thought of a way she could, possibly, help, if he’d been able to convince her. Now, she knew that option was null and void. There was no way she’d…
“There’s more,” Kennick said, and Kim’s mouth twitched. If his next argument was as weak as his first, she’d only have herself to blame for getting her hopes up. “There’s this.”
Rising from his seat, he went to a far corner of the trailer, where a small cupboard held various knickknacks and papers files. Rummaging slightly, he found a thick manilla envelope and brought it back to the table. His wolf-like grace as he moved wasn’t lost on Kim. Nothing he did was lost on Kim.
“I keep this in Beebi's trailer because she's less likely to spill beer all over it than my brothers,” he said with a fond smile. “And my sister? She'd lose it the second I handed it to her.”
Dumping the contents onto the table, he began to separate the various papers. Kim saw glimpses of newspaper clippings, weathered photographs, handwritten notes, yellowed pages of neat type. One by one, he began to slide pieces of paper across the table for her to examine.
The first one appeared to be a receipt. For a ring. Dated in 1981. She looked up at Kennick.
“He bought that ring two days before Rhonda was murdered,” he said. “He kept that ring his whole life. He was going to propose.”
He slipped a second piece of paper across the table.
“Application for a marriage license,” he said. “Dad started filling it out the same day he bought a ring. Got so damn excited he wanted to get started before he even asked. Only stopped because it got to parts he needed her to fill out.”
The sheet was clearly an old form; I wondered if there was any way to cross-reference it with other marriage licenses from the time, or if Town Hall even kept records of their old, outdated forms.
“Two tickets to a show in Dover for the week after she died. Lou Reed. Rhonda’s favorite,” Kennick said.
Kim thought that was a pretty weak piece of evidence, but she nodded. The next paper slipped across the counter was a letter written in elegant, feminine script. Kim picked it up and squinted; the print was small and cramped, but some words stood out. Stalker. Afraid. Protect me?
“A letter she wrote to my father the month before. They were together all the time, but he still had a box full of letters she’d written him on nights they couldn’t stay together. All the ones from that July and August mentioned this guy who’d been scaring the shit out of her. She didn’t say who, only referred to him as ‘the guy’. I don’t know if she knew who he was or not, but she clearly knew someone was following her. Even coming into her house at night. Leaving threats on her pillow and shit. Wanted her to leave Dad.”
Now this was interesting. It clearly put a third party in the mix, someone who wasn’t Pieter who had already threatened Rhonda, already made it clear that she wasn’t safe.
“How did this not make it into the papers or anything?” Kim asked, looking up from the letter. Something like this would have thrown some major doubt on the case built up against Kennick’s father. Kennick’s jaw set hard as he stared at her.
“This is a small town, Kim,” he said. “Small and cruel. Dad showed all this to the police. They took some of the letters, and Dad never heard another damn thing about it. Like it just got tucked away into some file cabinet. It was just a lot easier to blame him. He said one detective even accused him of being the stalker, setting it up so that he could kill her and throw the blame on someone else.”
“Rhonda didn’t go to the police about it herself?” Kim asked.
“Apparently not,” Kennick said. “Dad told her to, but she was afraid. Whoever it was, he had her scared so shitless that she was afraid to tell anyone but Dad.”
“But didn’t they search her room? There would have been some evidence of…”
Kennick shook his head.
“I
don’t fucking know what they did. All fingers were pointed at Dad. They thought they had the case locked up. By the time they got around to exploring other options, Rhonda’s parents had trashed her room in a fit of grief. Maybe they did search her room, before all her shit wound up in a landfill – but they never found anything, or at least never found anything that went public. I imagine she might have thrown it all away, too. Would you keep a knife someone had stabbed into your favorite teddy bear?”
A shiver ran through Kim. This time, it wasn’t from looking at Kennick, or imagining what it would be like to be underneath him. It was the cold reality starting to form around their conversation. This really wasn’t some suspense novel. This was real. Thirty years ago, a pregnant girl had been shot dead in cold blood. Time was starting to seem irrelevant to the hard emotion at the heart of that fact.
“Jesus,” Kim breathed. “This is actually…this is, like, really strong. Evidence, I mean. I just can’t believe it was kept hidden for so long…”
“Can’t you?” Kennick asked, eyes flashing. “You’ve lived in this town your whole life. And you’ve seen how rarely people change their minds.”
“That’s not true,” Kim said, defensive now that she felt her town attacked.
“Isn't it?” Kennick said, shaking his head with a pitying smile on his face. “I'll make you a wager. They'll let us live here, let us start our businesses, let us pay our taxes and funnel cash into Main Street. But they'll still look at me and mine like we’re lepers. They want us here because they know we’ll save their asses from total desolation. But they sure as hell don’t want to rub elbows with us in the store, or see one of their precious daughters slurping milkshakes with a gypsy at the Tastee Freeze.”
Kim bit her lip, not wanting to admit to this double-sided nature of the people she’d known all her life. Good people. People who hosted potlucks and didn’t complain when a family was too poor to contribute anything. People who showed up at the soup kitchen on Thanksgiving. People who bought the fireman’s charity calendar every year. People who adopted dogs from the shelter instead of buying them from a pet store. People who smiled and said hello on the street and asked how you were doing, who brought casseroles during hard times and bought rounds during good times. Her people.