Defiled

by Mike Nemeth

  That little slut! “You’re not going to fall for that, are you? Carrie hid the jewelry while she was trapped belowdecks. Just like she hid my gun. To frame me. You see that, don’t you?”

  “The engine room hatch was padlocked while she was down there, Mr. Marks.”

  He let me think about that, and I realized that she hadn’t broken into the boat to look for her things; she had staged the break-in so she could hide her jewelry. That is one street-smart little brat. Since the cops didn’t find the jewelry during their first search of the boat—the cops couldn’t find their ass with two hands and a flashlight—she came to the boat to retrieve the jewelry, but I had padlocked the engine room hatch.

  “She broke into my boat and hid the jewelry the day before you searched my boat. She wanted you to find it then.”

  “You didn’t report a boat break-in, Mr. Marks, and you didn’t mention it when we searched your boat.”

  Had Jamie been there, she’d have said, “I told you so, Dad.” All I could think to say was, “I don’t have a key to her house.”

  Lieutenant Frumpy waved a hand like he was clearing the air after someone passed gas. “Yeah, you were right about your wife changing the locks. We canvassed the local locksmiths and found the one your wife used after you moved out. That’s why we took the security company to your house to check out the alarm system to see if there was something wrong with it. And that’s how we learned that it’s in the ceiling, above the garage. You can pull the plug on the system up there and disconnect the phone line too. You didn’t need a key to get into the house, just a garage door opener.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t have a garage door opener either. I gave mine to Carrie.”

  “You mean the one that doesn’t work? I figure you kept a good one.”

  I gritted my teeth and said, “I didn’t steal the damned jewelry, lieutenant.”

  “You musta forgot to unscrew the case and disconnect the battery backup, so it recorded the break-in even though it couldn’t make the call. It was on silent, so you didn’t know you had tripped the alarm.”

  Think, Randle, think. “Larry Pardeaux had a garage door opener.”

  Callahan looked at me as though I were a man on the way to the gallows. “We found the pet store where you bought that toy rabbit. The product number was on the tag, you see, so it was just a matter of puttin’ in the time to track down every sale of that bunny in the states of Georgia and Florida. You stopped off in Macon on the way to Florida that Saturday and paid cash, but you’re on the surveillance video.”

  “I did not steal her jewelry!” I sounded like a common criminal in denial.

  Callahan shook his head. “Your neighbor lady, not the one half a mile down the street, the one directly behind your house through the trees, heard the dog and walked over to see what the commotion was about. She had been feeding it for your wife. She saw you leaving but didn’t know you weren’t supposed to be there. That’s why it took us so long to find her.”

  I didn’t know there was a house back there. I thought it was a farmer’s field. How did Carrie know that woman? I felt as though I were in the electric chair with repetitive pulses of current searing my nerve endings. I jerked. I thrashed. I flopped around like a gut-hooked fish.

  “Listen, lieutenant, I admit that I violated the protective order, but her jewelry wasn’t even there. This is a setup.”

  “Last thing I’m gonna mention, Mr. Marks: Your friend Mr. Louks admitted that his niece went to the Braves game for you.”

  “If you’re waiting for me to confess to something I didn’t do, you’ll be here all night.”

  “No need for that, Mr. Marks. The party’s over.” Callahan waved Black Suit over and said, “This is Detective Sam Brownell of the Fulton County Sherriff’s Office. He’s gonna do the honors ’cause I’m pretty far outta my jurisdiction.”

  As Officer Brownell approached me, he lifted a set of handcuffs out of his jacket pocket and said, “Stand for me, please, and turn around.”

  Holy crap! They’re not going to listen. I struggled to my feet and yelled, “Glenda!”

  Then I remembered that she had gone out to the drugstore.

  Brownell said, “You’re under arrest for grand larceny. You’ll be held in the Fulton County Jail until you can be extradited to the State of Florida.” He clamped the cuffs roughly on my wrists. Then he read me my rights.

  A discreet electronic bell sounded as the security system alerted us to the opening of the front door. We all went silent, waiting, staring at the space where she would appear. When Glenda came around the corner and saw our cops-and-robbers tableau, she stopped dead and dropped her plastic shopping bag. Something broke. Shock and fear contorted the features of her freckled face. Carrie’s platinum necklace draped her neck and its huge yellow-diamond pendant rested on her chest. The matching stones dangled from her ears.

  Callahan smiled at her and said, “Ah, there they are. Mind if I take those?”

  As Glenda removed the jewelry, Detective Brownell said, “Ma’am, if you know where the other things are, please get them for us. It will make this much easier.”

  Glenda didn’t say anything as she scurried away, head down, eyes averted, arms clamped to her sides, like a rat startled by headlights during its nocturnal foraging.

  Callahan tapped his breast pocket. “We’ve got a search warrant, but we don’t need to tear your place up again. All we need is the sex tape.”

  I stood unsteadily, in a daze, unable to form rational thoughts. Glenda soon returned, holding the “Unabomber” package in front of her as though it might explode at any moment. She handed it to Callahan.

  Callahan smiled again and thanked her. He tore open one end, leaving the package mostly wrapped, and saw what he wanted. He nodded to Brownell, and we all moved toward the door.

  Over my shoulder, I said, “Bail me out, Glenda.”

  Brownell pulled me roughly along as he said, “There’s no bail for extradition cases. You won’t be arraigned until you get back to Florida.”

  Callahan said, “Yeah, that’s the way it works.” Indicating Ichabod, he added, “Mr. Dunkel will file the extradition order this afternoon, and you’ll be outta here in no time.”

  So they all had their roles to play, and I never saw it coming. I looked back over my shoulder, a clichéd pose from the end of many crime movies, and caught one last glimpse of Glenda, crying and pulling her sweater tightly around her as though she were chilly.

  Through her sniffles she paraphrased a line from Casablanca: “We’ll always have Atlanta.”

  Epilogue

  MID-STATE CORRECTIONAL UNIT

  It’s not as bad here as you might think. Unlike most “normal” people, I don’t find the solitude uncomfortable. While others chafe at the regimentation, I welcome the routine. I’m something of a celebrity—tales of my break-ins and gunfights are whispered from cell to cell and the younger convicts, mostly nonviolent offenders, stare at my wounds in the shower. My leg looks like a neglected country road dotted with angry red potholes and bisected by zipperlike incision scars. Cosmetic surgery has been deferred until I am a free man with medical insurance.

  My job now is to teach math in the GED program, and my course is very popular. Teaching leaves me plenty of time to work on my book. My publisher has imposed strict deadlines on drafts and edits, more structure comforting to a scientist. The schedule is tight as we plan the book launch to coincide with my release from prison. In an ungraceful transition from one form of celebrity to another, I will immediately embark upon a book signing tour. That’s my life now—teaching and writing—and I’m already adjusted to it.

  When I was arraigned in Cortes County, I was charged with second-degree grand theft for stealing property with a value between twenty thousand and a hundred thousand dollars. It’s a felony carrying a sentence of up to fifteen years in prison. I didn’t have the money to hire a good lawyer, so I was represented at trial by a public defender who was overworked and undermotiv
ated.

  We argued that Carrie had framed me, but the freezer bag of jewelry had my fingerprints all over it. Literally. Carrie had reused a bag in which I had stored fish I had caught. Of course, the yellow diamonds and the rape tape were impossible to explain. When Carrie testified, she dressed conservatively and wore no makeup or jewelry. She couldn’t color her hair while she was in custody, so it was her dull natural brown, and she brushed it like a boy’s.

  Her voice never faltered as she swore to the jury that she had not planted the bag of jewelry on the boat. She described her unlawful restraint as a harrowing experience for an innocent country girl. The prosecutor played an edited version of the sex tape, showing only the scenes in which I tied Carrie to the bed and clamped a hand over her mouth as I worked above her. “Juries convict people they don’t like. It’s that simple,” Tony had said.

  The jury took less than thirty minutes to find me guilty, and the judge gave me the minimum sentence of twenty-one months, which means I’ll serve fourteen or fifteen months, which means I’ll be released in about a year. Had I been convicted only of stealing the yellow diamonds—third-degree grand theft—I’d have gotten probation.

  Glenda watched the trial from the spectators’ gallery. She visits regularly and has petitioned the warden for a conjugal visit. She says we need the practice. Her divorce from Wesley is final, and she spends her time running her odd little store and caring for her clairvoyant mother. She assures me this is our destiny, just as her mother predicted.

  Jamie refuses to visit. She says it’s embarrassing for an officer of the law to have a convicted felon for a father, but Glenda says Jamie will come around after we’ve remarried. That would make me very happy. After years of wandering in the desert of failed relationships, it will be gratifying to get our old lives back.

  I wrote Tony an apology for deceiving him, but he hasn’t responded. According to those who deal with him, he’s reverted to being a panfish. The last thing he did for me was get Matthews-Bryant to issue a final divorce decree. The judge didn’t waste any judicial wisdom on the settlement; I don’t think she liked either of us. She decreed that we each pay our own counsel, that there would be no life insurance policy safety net, and that I would retain all royalties. However, she dumped all the debt on me, including both liens against the house and the outstanding debt on the Jaguar; gave Carrie all our household furnishings, but gave the mortgage collateral—the house—to me. In effect, the judge made our creditors whole, an industrial-judicial conspiracy to be sure. Jane Whitehead dumped the house on speculators, and I broke even.

  With all the finesse of Solomon dividing the baby, the judge split the options down the middle, and for a day or so Carrie and I thought we would each get $1.5 million. Quick to react, Bob Platt invoked the morals clause in my employment contract, fired me, and revoked my options, so neither of us got a penny. I didn’t care about the money; I granted free, perpetual patent licenses to a pair of major research universities. When Platt heard about that, he offered to reinstate my job and my options if I would curtail the license grants. I declined his offer, as Carrie would have received a windfall of options. Instead, I extended my philanthropy to four more universities and two research institutes, and the commercial marketplace collapsed. Without exclusivity, and without a talented scientist to build new models, it appears AMA will fail.

  Five of the six universities have invited me to guest lecture, and both institutes have asked me to consult on their research projects. No one is going to take my book to the beach or read it on an airplane for entertainment, but it should sell a few copies to academics. More importantly, it will add credibility to my lectures. We won’t be rich, but lecture and consulting fees will keep food on our table.

  Adding a poison pill to the divorce decree, the judge awarded Carrie three years of alimony at eighty thousand per year, contingent upon an acquittal in her criminal case. She wasn’t acquitted, but her sentence of three years of probation got her released, along with her fistful of prescriptions, to mingle with the unsuspecting masses. I don’t know if the shrinks ever looked at those house pictures, but they declined to reconsider their diagnosis. The cops returned Carrie’s diary directly to her, so the shrinks never knew it existed.

  When Carrie was released, de Castro petitioned the court to reinstate Carrie’s alimony and the court approved the request. Since the State wouldn’t provide my wife with three squares and a cot, I was ordered to do it! As a favor, my buddy Fred, the private investigator, tracked her down and found her living in a Treasure Island condo with Richard Puralto, MD. Once his kids left for college, he had divorced his wife to be with my ex-wife.

  Believing that the statutes on the books are too punitive, an assistant prosecutor reduced the charges against Carrie’s evil twin, Connie Mae, from a third-degree felony to a first-degree misdemeanor. Connie was sentenced to one year in prison, suspended, and was fined five thousand dollars for tapping my email. Fred says she’s moved Chance Dickson into her home, and she’s caring for him.

  Lieutenant Callahan is the big “winner,” of course. He milked a simple divorce case for three convictions and two plea deals. Probably get a commendation, maybe a promotion, although Callahan wouldn’t have caught anyone if we hadn’t screwed up and handed him evidence. As it was, no one was punished for their most egregious transgression, but everyone was punished for something. That’s the way it works.

  And that’s the way I thought the story had ended until Callahan came to see me today, sheepishly apologetic and anxious to deliver good news. Glenda had formed a motherly bond with Officer Brittany Williams, and the two of them hounded Callahan until he agreed to pay for the testing of the four bloody glass shards. The Dolphin Beach PD couldn’t justify the testing since the missing property—my gun—had been recovered, but Callahan reopened the investigation into the incident on the boat and ordered the testing in support of that case. No surprise to me, the DNA matched Carrie’s yardman, Larry Pardeaux, a paroled felon on the lamb from the State of Louisiana. Faced with ten years in prison, Pardeaux confessed that my wife promised him sexual favors if he would break into the beach house to steal my gun and break into my boat to hide her jewelry. He says she never paid up. Yesterday, Callahan arrested Carrie for home invasion burglary, a second-degree felony punishable by up to fifteen years in prison. Carrie thought she could simply hide my gun on the boat and evade justice, but she didn’t know we had the thief’s DNA.

  Carrie’s probation has been revoked, and along with it, her alimony award. She’s now eating mystery meat and watery mashed potatoes at the county jail, awaiting trial on the burglary charge. When she gets released, we’ll be waiting for her. Glenda has been practicing with the Beretta, and she reports she can hit a moving target at twenty-five paces. In that case, I’ll let her do the shooting.

  We’ve sold the Atlanta condo, and we did alright. Florida is where we belong, so we asked Jane Whitehead to contact the speculators who own my beach bungalow. They are willing to sell it back to me, at a profit for them, of course.

  My wrongful conviction for the jewelry theft troubles Callahan, but it doesn’t bother me. By the time the judicial system grants a new trial, at which I’d be convicted of a lesser charge, I’ll have served my sentence. Nonetheless, Callahan is considering perjury charges for Carrie’s testimony in my case.

  I feel sorry for Dr. Puralto. For a second time, he’s abandoned his family for Carrie only to spend the rest of his life visiting his paramour in prison.

  On the other hand, I do not feel sorry for myself. It cost one damaged leg, one shot-to-pieces boat, one point five million dollars, and fifteen months behind bars, but the resolution is satisfying—Carrie received no windfall of ill-gotten gains, and she is not free to ruin our lives. Fred would call it Karma. I call it justice. The apportionment of blame is fair.

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on Archive.