1 Twisted Perception

by Bob Avey

“How about fingerprints?”

  Johnson shook his head. “Just Johnnie’s and Marcia’s.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Other than the knife on the floorboard and the gun in Johnnie’s hand, no. The ground was dry and hard, so there were no footprints and no additional tire tracks. Johnnie had Marcia’s blood all over him.”

  Elliot thought for a moment. “Which hand was Johnnie holding the gun in?”

  A curious look crossed Johnson’s face. “His right one, why?”

  “Johnnie was left-handed.”

  Johnson rubbed his chin. “Of course that occurred to me, but what other conclusion was I to draw from the facts?”

  Elliot retrieved the photograph of Michelle Baker, the one that showed the blood writing on the wall, and handed it to Johnson.

  As Charlie examined the photo, the color drained from his face. When he looked back at Elliot, he was pale and gray. “For God’s sake, Kenny, don’t do this. Just leave it alone.”

  “I can’t do that,” Elliot said. “It’s my job.”

  Charlie shook his head. “How long have you been a cop?”

  “About five years.”

  “Are you any good?”

  “Some people seem to think so.”

  Charlie nodded. “Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but I need to get going.”

  They walked outside, stopping on the porch, and Elliot waited while Charlie locked the doors. When he’d finished, Charlie turned to Elliot, grabbing his shoulder with his hand. “Some things are better off left alone, son. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.” He shook his head. “You almost got arrested for those murders and now you’re investigating them? The world does go around. You know plenty of folks around here thought you were guilty, most of them banking on the trouble you’d already caused. I was under a lot of pressure to put you away.”

  “I got off to a rocky start, but I was turning things around.”

  “Yeah,” Johnson said. “Football did wonders for you…that and Carmen Garcia. She did you a favor, coming forward like that.”

  “I know.”

  “Then don’t cause her efforts to be in vain, son. You start digging, you might not like what you find.”

  “You’re trying to make a point. Why don’t you just come out with it?”

  Charlie’s face softened. He looked apologetic and spoke softly, “There’s nothing left in Porter for you, Kenny. It’d be best for all of us if you went on back to Tulsa where you belong and left us out of your investigation.”

  Charlie’s insinuations angered Elliot, but they also hurt. Part of him, the part he’d been running away from all those years, felt Charlie was right. Walking out of Charlie’s yard, he said, “I’ll leave when I’ve found what I came for.”

  “And what might that be?” Charlie asked.

  Answers, Elliot thought, but said nothing. As he walked back to the municipal building, a car driving along the road slowed to a near stop, and when Elliot turned, he saw that the driver was Carmen Garcia. She had a child, a young boy with her. She raised her hand—almost a mechanical movement—and slowly waved, but the look on her face was one of shock. Elliot returned the gesture but kept on walking. He didn’t know what else to do.

  Elliot didn’t stop at the municipal building. He kept going, following the narrow blacktop road along an old but familiar path. He wasn’t sure what was going through his mind as he stepped off the road and into the waist-high weeds, walking toward the remnants of the house on Dixieland Avenue where he once lived, and where his mother spent the final years of her life. Obscured by weeds and tree branches, the home site, with its sagging roof and rotting lumber, looked like something out of a twisted Norman Rockwell collection. Not the wholesome vignettes we all know and love, but the others, the ones he kept hidden beneath his bed, inspired by nightmares and knowledge of a world that was not so right.

  Elliot kept moving forward, and when he pushed open the door and stepped inside he had to brace himself as his knees grew weak. Placing his hand against the wall, he dealt as best he could with the menagerie of memories that flooded his senses. He loved and missed her, but he had to tell himself over and over that it was the drugs and not his mother that locked him inside that room, letting him go hungry all those nights while he buried his head beneath his pillow to muffle the sounds of her satisfied customers.

  It was then that he recalled Maggie, someone who’d befriended his mother and him, stopping by now and then, bringing food and an occasional comic book for Elliot to read. He hadn’t known it at the time, but later he came to realize that Maggie wasn’t in full command of her faculties, which was probably why she was the only one, other than Charlie Johnson, who dared visit them. Elliot turned and left the dank, depressing atmosphere, stepping outside and going back to Main Street where he got in his car and headed for Tulsa.

  About four miles up the highway, though, Elliot spotted a sign marking the turnoff for Alexander’s Orchard, and it dawned on him that he was doing exactly what he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do. He turned off the highway and started down the old road, pulling to the side and parking when he recognized the area. Alexander’s property appeared to be unmolested by progress, but not by time. Because of the distance and the lay of the land, he couldn’t see the house, but part of the old orchard was still there, overgrown and unattended. He crossed the road and crawled through the fence to enter the property. The orchard seemed permeated with a sense of hopelessness, and the aroma of fermenting fruit tainted the air like the smell of cheap wine as he walked among the peach trees, stumbling occasionally on the soggy ground. Finding the tree he was looking for, he paused, breathing in the sweetened air as the moment took him back.

  “I don’t like it here, Kenny. Let’s go.”

  “This is one of my favorite places,” he said, showing her the tree.

  Marcia had smiled at the fresh carvings of affection he’d put there. “But what if he comes?”

  “Who?” Elliot asked.

  “Old Man Alexander. I don’t like him. He scares me.”

  “He’s not so bad,” Elliot said, “Just a little weird.”

  She had pulled him close, whispering in Elliot’s ear. “Sometimes at night, I see someone walking along the road by my house. I think he watches me through my window.”

  A metallic click brought Elliot back to the present and he turned to find himself looking down the barrel of a shotgun.

  19

  “You got no right coming around here, boy.”

  Elliot stared into the face of the man holding the gun. It was Marshall Alexander, owner of the property. As Mr. Alexander’s quivering finger embraced the trigger, Elliot couldn’t decide if he shook more from age, or from anger. The barrel of the shotgun looped back and forth, tracing out a rough figure eight in the air.

  “Mr. Alexander,” he said. “It’s me, Kenny.”

  Keeping his eye on Elliot, he turned his head and spat tobacco juice onto the ground. “You think I don’t know that? I ain’t likely to forget the one that killed my Johnnie.”

  Elliot shook his head. “It wasn’t me, Mr. Alexander. You have to believe that.”

  Marshall Alexander jammed the barrel of the shotgun into Elliot’s head. “You’re lying. I tried to tell Johnnie not to hang around with the likes of you. You, the football stud, and that little blonde-headed tramp. But he wouldn’t listen.”

  Elliot took a step back, thinking about the driver of the vehicle that had tried to run him down in Tulsa. Speaking in his mechanical voice, the assailant had said pretty much the same thing just before he torched the place. Elliot tried to imagine Marshall Alexander doing those things, but he could not. “Why don’t you put down the gun before you do something we’ll both regret?”

  The old man’s gaze held Elliot’s like a steel trap. He spat again then repositioned the shotgun. Speaking with a raspy conviction he said, “Now you’re going to pay for what you did.”

  Elliot’s heart pounded in his chest. The
n he heard a car coming to a stop along the roadway, and as he turned to see what had made the commotion, he saw someone walking toward them. It was Chief Johnson.

  “Don’t do it, Marshall,” Johnson said.

  Marshall Alexander didn’t even blink. “Stay out of this, Charlie. I’m warning you.”

  Charlie stepped closer. Pulling his .38 he said, “Don’t make me use force, Marshall. Ain’t neither of us wants that. Now you get on back to the house. I’ll take care of this.”

  Finally the old man lowered the shotgun. “Yeah, I just bet you will. Just like you always do; sweep it under the carpet and hope it all goes away.”

  “Don’t push your luck, Marshall. You get on back to the house like I told you. Don’t make me run you in.”

  Marshall Alexander’s eyes widened, and his face flushed. He opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind and turned and walked away.

  Charlie holstered his weapon. As he was leaving he said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Kenny. People around here got long memories.”

  Elliot watched Johnson drive away. In the eerie quiet that followed, it seemed he had never been there at all. Elliot crawled back through the fence and went to his car. His business in Porter wasn’t finished, not by a long shot. He drove back to town and parked in front of Brazleton’s garage.

  Nick Brazleton’s father had worked on cars for a living when that occupation wasn’t known for its pay scale. Elliot guessed that was why he and Nick hit it off, growing up in the same low-rent fashion in the same part of town. He would always stop by Elliot’s house and they’d walk to school together, coming home the same way. He was a friend, and one of the few people who had stood behind Elliot when everyone else had written him off.

  The old white building that reminded Elliot of a train depot hadn’t changed much. Above the front door, the same hand-painted sign read: BRAZLETON’S AUTO SHOP. A couple of elderly gentlemen sat on a park bench in front of the shop beside a soft drink vending machine. Elliot nodded to them as he walked through the open doorway leading to the office. What he saw there ran a chill through him. Missing from the office walls were the foldout pictures of pinup girls, and faded calendars with caricatures of dogs playing card games. Instead, tacked to the office walls where grease-smeared pink and yellow business receipts should have been, was a curious collection of items, meandering across the wall like yellowed newsprint ivy. There were clippings and photographs, but mostly it was the assortment of memorabilia from their childhood that sent Elliot’s senses reeling. It was a shrine dedicated to a past that already wouldn’t die.

  Surrounding Elliot was every Porter football accomplishment he’d ever made. There was even a crayon sign from a tree house they’d built and the pellet gun with a handmade stock he had given to Nick. Memories shot through Elliot, both in and out of sequence, like a kaleidoscope of rapidly firing flashbulbs. He sat down in an old swivel chair behind the desk, putting his hand over his eyes. But between the cracks of his fingers, the writing on a worn piece of notebook paper burned through. Pinned to the wall and standing out from the neighboring clutter was Marcia’s poem. She’d shown it to Elliot the day she and Johnnie took their last ride.

  Do you know the Sandman?

  He lives.

  Like the mannequin,

  in the window,

  in the emptiness it grows.

  A town without life,

  deals in death.

  Elliot had thought the poem was just Marcia’s rambling, but it made a little more sense to him now. Marcia, the mannequin in the window, had suspected someone was watching her a little more intently than she was comfortable with. The question was this: who was the Sandman?

  A noise startled Elliot and he turned to see someone coming into the office.

  “Something I can help you with?”

  The man standing in front of Elliot didn’t look the part, but he knew it was Nick Brazleton. From beneath a dirty baseball cap, his hair hung to his shoulders. Aged grease stained the overalls he wore, and a two- or three-day growth of beard, like that of the derelicts on skid row, covered his face. As soon as Elliot stood, Nick recognized him. His face lit up. “Hey, old buddy.” He threw his arms around Elliot in a bear hug then released him and took a step back. “Yeah,” he said, flashing a white-toothed grin. “It’s you all right. About time, don’t you think?”

  Elliot didn’t know what to say.

  Nick raised his cap and scratched his head then motioned for Elliot to follow him into the garage area.

  Inside the bay, Elliot thought of Nick’s father, his head always stuck under the hood of some car, looking like the dinner of the metal beast with his legs dangling from its mouth. Elliot couldn’t remember him being any other way, except when he’d take a break to yell at his son.

  Nick walked over to an old refrigerator sitting in the corner of the garage and jerked open the door, reaching inside. “Here,” he said, hurling a missile at Elliot.

  Reflexively, Elliot snatched the soft drink can from the air then popped it open with a spray.

  Nick laughed. “Still got those great hands.”

  Elliot was quite fond of Nick, but for reasons he’d never understood, he was always worried by him. Marcia had said he was like a storm cloud, waiting to unleash its fury. But she was always saying stuff like that.

  Nick pushed aside some tools and climbed onto a workbench to sit down, his legs hanging over the edge like those of a child sitting on a large sofa. “Man, it’s good to see you again, Kenny. We had some times, didn’t we? We were some team, too, except you and Johnnie deserved all the credit.”

  “That’s not true,” Elliot said. “You did your part.”

  He didn’t seem to hear but kept on talking. “Want to know something else? Coach Sims told me it was you that made Johnnie look so good.”

  Again Elliot protested, but Nick raised his hand for silence. “Honest-to-God truth, man. That’s what he said.”

  Elliot took a drink of his soda. Eric Sims had come to Porter when Elliot was in the ninth grade. He was a good coach, but more than that, he’d been a father figure and a positive role model for mixed up kids like Nick and Elliot. His guidance earned Elliot a scholarship. “How is Coach Sims?”

  Nick shook his head. “He moved back to Florida a couple of years ago. Said he had kin there.” He paused before continuing. “We had some moments though, didn’t we? Remember the Hulbert game? Two minutes on the clock and fourth down. Of course, you and Johnnie were fighting again. But I convinced him to give you the ball anyway, because I could tell by look in your eyes they weren’t stopping you. You meant to score. And you did, too, using me like a bridge over troubled water. Never did tell you how much that hurt, did I? Still got the scar on my back. But hey, we won, didn’t we?”

  “Won a lot of games that year,” Elliot said. “We had a good team.”

  “Yeah. They didn’t call you Bulldog for nothing.”

  “Cut it out, Nick.”

  “Hey, don’t get me wrong. For a low-rent kid like me, you were a good friend to have. Half the kids in school were scared to death of you, and those that weren’t thought twice about crossing you.”

  “It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “I’m not trying to criticize you,” Nick said. “You had good reason. If anyone understands that, I do. You know how my dad was.”

  “At least you had a father.”

  Nick smiled. “So do you, somewhere out there.”

  “I guess so. I asked Mom about him once.”

  “No kidding?”

  Elliot nodded. “She told me he was nothing more than just another John. And she’d be damned if she could remember which one.”

  “Jeez, Kenny. That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. Guess that’s why we got along so well. Nobody ever cared much about either of us.” He paused, his expression darkening. “Except you always had Carmen.”

  “Yeah. I blew the hell out of that one, didn’t I?”

  “Y
ou worked at it, buddy, worked real hard.” Then Nick said, “That girl loves you, Kenny. She always thought you’d come back, waited a long time.”

  Elliot studied Nick’s face, remembering something Nick had told him long ago. It seemed to conflict with what he was hearing now. “Do you think I should go and see her?”

  “It might be a little late for that.”

  “Is she married?”

  “You got it.”

  Changing the subject, Nick gestured around the garage. “I always said I’d never end up like this, doing what my father did. I guess down deep, though, I always knew I would.” He smiled. “It doesn’t look like you’ve done much better. I take it you never made it to law school?”

  Elliot shook his head, and after a brief silence they both laughed. Nick climbed down from the workbench then came over and hugged Elliot again. This time Elliot returned the embrace.

  “I’ve missed you, Kenny. I miss Johnnie, too, and the things we did.”

  “Yeah,” Elliot said. “I know.”

  “It was Marcia. Everything changed after she showed up. Like you and Johnnie didn’t have enough to fight about. And you were both too stubborn to sit down and talk about it.” He turned away, fishing through a toolbox behind him, and when he turned back he held not a wrench or screwdriver, but a large black-handled knife.

  Elliot watched nervously as Nick examined the weapon, testing the sharpness with his thumb. “You know,” he said, pushing the bill of his cap up with the blade, “if the truth be known, your world was the most shattered. At least that’s what I think. Always figured it’d be you and Carmen all the way to wedding bells. On second thought, maybe you ought to go and see her.”

  “I thought you said she was married?”

  “I did, but it’s kind of like temperature, it should be the same but it isn’t, not always.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know, like when you set your thermostat to seventy-two degrees. Well, when it’s a hundred and two outside that setting feels pretty good, maybe even a little warm, but in the middle of January that same seventy-two feels cold, might even put on a sweater. I even put a couple of thermometers in different rooms once just to check it out. Sure enough, seventy-two was seventy-two. But if you’re cold, you’re cold, and you just have to go with what you feel. Know what I mean?”