Ben awoke the next morning at nine o’clock, sleeping later than he had in years. Civilian life was already making him soft. After doing some chores around the house, since he would place his childhood home on the market when he returned to the service given he had no plans to return to Easton, Ben pointed his car toward Shelby. He recalled Gina’s wish and stopped to pick up a bottle of wine on the way.
He was greeted by the friendly smile of the receptionist when he arrived at SMHI. The cute girl gave him a knowing look.
“You didn’t tell me you were Ms. Porter’s son,” Helen said as he walked up to the front desk with his backpack slung over his shoulder containing the contraband.
“Well, I didn’t know I was until a few days ago myself,” Ben responded with a grin. “I didn’t want to freak everyone out here with some long-lost son story.”
“She was very excited,” Helen revealed. “She’s told everyone that will listen that her son came for a visit.”
Helen’s revelation gave Ben a warm feeling inside, knowing he had lifted the spirits of his birth mother.
“Excited doesn’t always mean it’s a good thing,” came Agnes’ voice as she emerged from her office. “Whether you realize it or not, your mother is a very disturbed woman.”
“We spoke last night,” Ben replied. “She seemed fine.”
“She certainly isn’t fine,” Agnes countered. “She has life-long mental issues, many which center on you.”
Agnes had just sucked all the happy out of the room, replacing it with her gloomy diagnosis.
“With that said, your sudden appearance in her life could be really good or really bad,” Agnes continued. “We just have no way to know yet. I just hope it is positive because, if it is, that could help lead to her improvement.”
“Maybe even her recovery?” Ben asked in a hopeful tone. “Is there any chance she might be able to live on the outside some day?”
“I’m afraid she will never completely recover,” Agnes replied. “The scars are too deep. All I ask is that you watch her closely during your visits and let me know about any changes you see.”
Assuring Agnes he would do what was best for her, Ben gave them a wave as he strolled down the hall to Gina’s room. She sat scribbling on her pad when he walked in. However, instead of continuing her work as she had on his first visit, she quickly put away her pad, placing it underneath where she was sitting.
“I told you I’d be back,” Ben announced.
“And so you did,” Gina replied with a broad smile.
“And guess what I brought?” Ben announced in a quiet voice so no one would overhear as he pulled out the bottle of wine. “Was 2012 a good year?”
“It sucked for me,” Gina retorted. “But I’ll drink to it anyway.”
Laying the bottle on the table, Ben, who was straight-edge having rarely ever taken a drink, discovered wine bottles contained corks.
“Houston, we have a problem,” Ben said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to get that out.”
Gina gave him a disappointed look.
“Tell you what, I’ll go down to the desk and sweet talk the receptionist and maybe she will give me something to open it with,” Ben said as he started out the door.
“Ben,” she began. “I just want you to know that I love you.”
Ben didn’t know how to respond to her statement. It caught him out of left field. He wasn't a touchy-feely kind of person so such words of endearment were strange to him.
“I’ll be back in just a minute.” Ben responded.
Feeling almost guilty that he didn't return her declaration of endearment, Ben strolled back down the hall. He was greeted by the smile of the receptionist when he approached the front desk.
“Back so soon are we?” Helen asked.
“Yeah, she was busy doing something so I thought I’d come down and chat with you for a second,” Ben said.
He was covering the true purpose for his visit to the front desk since he figured it was against the rules to drink alcohol in the rooms.
“Well I’m honored,” Helen responded. “So what should we chat about?”
On second thought, perhaps Ben would kill two birds with one stone. Helen was a good looking girl and he hadn’t been on a real date since high school. The military had been his steady date for over three years.
“Well, we could talk about going out and getting some dinner tonight,” Ben suggested.
“Are you asking me out?” Helen clarified, her eyes already telling Ben the answer to his question would be resounding yes.
“Well I suppose I am,” he responded with a smile. “Maybe dinner and a movie? You do like movies don’t you?”
“Yeah, scary ones are my favorite,” Helen said with a grin still on her face.
“It’s a date then. Tonight around seven?” Ben asked.
“That sounds great,” Helen replied.
“Hey, while I’m at it, and I know it’s kind of against the rules here, but would you have anything that a person could get a cork out of a bottle with?” Ben asked.
“Well it’s against the rules for a reason and not what you think,” Helen responded. “It’s not the alcohol but the glass.”
“What?” Ben asked as a sick feeling suddenly settled in the pit of his stomach.
“Your mother, well I don’t know if you know this, she’s classified as a high suicide risk,” Helen revealed. “She’s attempted suicide on several different occasions since she’s been here. That’s why she’s in a special pod away from anything she could use to harm herself.”
The color left Ben’s face. Helen immediately realized something was wrong.
“You didn’t leave the bottle in the room with her did you?” Helen asked in panicked tone.
Ben didn’t bother answering as he bolted down the hall. Helen banged on Agnes’ door before she followed.
Ben ran faster than he had ever run but it wasn’t fast enough. Arriving at the door he found it blocked, an obstruction preventing him from opening it. A look inside confirmed his worst fears. On the floor lay his mother amid an expanding pool of blood. The broken wine bottle was beside her. She had used the jagged glass to slash her own throat.
“Mom! Mom!” Ben screamed as Agnes and Helen joined him, all three throwing their combined weight against the door, finally getting the chair that blocked it to give way.
Their arrival was too late. He would again stand over his mother’s casket and cast a white rose into an open grave. He had lost two mothers in less than a week. This time he was truly alone.
He left SMHI following the funeral carrying only a single box to represent Gina’s entire life. While it came as no surprise that much of her belongings were sketches and drawings since that was her hobby, the subject of her art did surprise him – they were drawings of him at various times of his life. She had kept up with him, perhaps through letters or even e-mails from Elizabeth. Despite giving him up at birth, she had never forgotten about him. She had been watching his life from afar, afraid to get involved lest her secret be revealed.
Unknown to the Red Dog conspirators, the ending of Gina Foster’s life also meant the end of their lives. Ben resolved to memorialize his birth mother the best way he knew how – with revenge.
“I love you too mom. I love you too,” Ben whispered to himself, refusing to shed a tear, knowing he had waited too late to say the words.
SINS UNFORGIVEN
The revelation that Gina Porter had a son changed the game for Sheriff Delaney. The mysterious offspring automatically climbed to the top of his suspect list. Actually, he was the only one on the list since the lawman had no one he could call a suspect when he arrived at SMHI a few hours ago. His next move would be to locate Gina’s son so he could either eliminate him as a suspect or perhaps link him to the crimes.
“So what was your impression of their relationship?” Sam inquired of the facility administrator. “I mean, were they friendly or was it a stormy thing between them?”
/> Agnes straightened the folders in the box as she digested the sheriff's question.
“Frankly, I don’t think they even knew what their relationship was,” Agnes replied. “From what we understand, Ben didn’t even know his mother was alive until a few days before he showed up here.”
“Who raised him then? I mean if his mother didn’t, he had to be raised by somebody,” Sam wondered aloud.
Agnes began rifling through the box of records, finally finding what she was looking for a minute later. She thumbed through the pages before handing the folder to the sheriff.
“From her records it would appear a friend raised him,” Agnes noted. “She never revealed the identity of who adopted him but from what the record says, whoever it was lived in Easton since that’s where he was raised.”
“He did tell me he was staying in Easton,” Helen interjected “He didn’t say where though. We never got that far before his mother's death. He seemed so nice.”
Helen dropped her head as she recalled that fateful day. She darted her eyes up at Agnes to see if she had overstepped her bounds.
“He was here when she killed herself,” Agnes explained. “Actually, he brought in a bottle of wine, which is against regulations here for safety reasons since she was a suicide risk. She broke the bottle and used it to cut her own throat. I think he felt responsible.”
Agnes sat down at the desk as she continued to look over Gina’s records, dedicating her time to the pages where Gina referred to her child. In the meantime Sam continued speaking with Helen only to find her knowledge of Ben was limited to the short conversations they had during his pair of visits nearly three months ago.
“I can tell you the person who raised him was a friend that was with her the night she was molested at that bar,” Agnes said as she scanned Gina's clinical records. “But once again, there’s no name.”
Sam thanked the women for their help. Their information had at least provided him something to go on. He had spent more time than anticipated at the institution and, glancing at his watch, realized he needed to get back to Castle County. It would already be after sundown by the time he made it back and if history was any indicator, someone would die tonight unless he could prevent it.
The snow had continued during his time at SMHI. The roads were already beginning to frost over again despite the salt road crews had caked on the blacktop. It would take the full two hours to get home but in the meantime the sheriff would let his cellphone do some work for him. His first call, however, got him information he didn’t want to hear.
“Bart has disappeared,” Bo declared “He must have taken one of the cars on the lot this afternoon.”
That meant Bart was on his own. That might not be a bad thing since their attempt to protect the mayor the night before had failed miserably. After all, Bart had avoided the killer this long, whether it was by luck or design.
His next call was a long shot but he had to try.
“Cliff, I need you to do some research for me,” Sam told the old reporter as the sheriff was leaving the institution’s parking lot in Shelby. “I need you to go up to your paper archives and look up the story around the time of the Red Dog fire.”
“Are you on to something, sheriff?” Cliff asked.
“I may be,” Sam admitted. “I need to know exactly how long ago the Red Dog burned down plus, if you can, and I would owe you big, I need to find out the name of the girl who was with Gina Foster that night.”
“So you do have a suspect?” Cliff queried.
“If you can come up with that name, I may just have one,” the sheriff confirmed. “This is top priority. I need you to do it right now and call me back. I’m driving in from Shelby.”
Cliff assured him he would diligently research his question but couldn’t guarantee he would be able to recall the girl’s name.
“You get the exclusive when I break this,” Sam assured the reporter as he hung up.
The light was already getting dim behind the light gray snow clouds. Darkness would soon fall on Castle County.
Bart found the car in which Ben concealed the remains of his security force. Both men had their necks turned backwards. The macabre scene reminded him of an owl’s neck. Just as Ben had said, both of his body guards had their necks snapped. Ben was a real expert. He was able to stalk and kill two cut-throats with relative ease. They were two of the toughest thugs Bart knew. He had hand-selected them for their ruthlessness.
The one thing they lacked, however, was intelligence. That was Bart’s strong suit. He was always the leader. Most importantly, he was smart enough to have others do his dirty work. But, when others would shy away, Bart wasn’t timid about getting his hands dirty. He had done his own wet work that night at the Red Dog. He had also killed with his own hands when he slipped the zip tie around Glenn’s neck the night before.
Bart was no fool. He knew it was either him or Glenn. He realized Glenn would do anything to protect his reputation and, with the rest of the old gang gone, he could ensure the secret was buried forever if Bart was no longer around. In Bart’s book, he had simply beaten the honorable mayor to the punch.
While he would never know it for sure, Bart’s reckoning was right. Glenn had ulterior motives for accepting Bart’s generous offer for refuge the night before. Concealed in his back waistband was a thirty-eight caliber pistol, a gun police found when they moved his body from his car after his murder. Glenn had planned to eliminate his old friend in his sleep with a double tap to the back of the head. He would then leave for holiday as planned, the dark man blamed for the murder. It was a perfect plan except for the fact Bart beat him to the punch. He had used the distraction caused by the dark man to surprise his old friend. He had choked the life out of him before he could get his hand on his gun.
Bart believed if he could outsmart the veteran politician, who was every bit as crooked and calculating as he was, he could outsmart the dark man. Sure, the mysterious killer could have easily cut his throat the night before, but he didn't. That would be his biggest mistake. Bart vowed the dark man would rue the day he declared war on him. Furthermore, the killer had showed his hand, arranging their clandestine meeting allowing Bart to scheme how he would turn the tables on the killer and be the sole survivor.
Bart stuck to the back roads despite the continued snow. He didn’t want to risk picking up a tail from law enforcement if he were to return to the main roads. He realized he was being watched, again. He wanted it to be just him and the dark man - no one else. The meeting, of course, would not be on equal footing if Bart had his way. The crafty reprobate was already formulating a foolproof plan to eliminate his antagonist.
The sun had long since set. Bart roamed the side roads without passing a single car in almost an hour. It was about time to head toward his appointment. His attention, however, was grabbed by a light up ahead shining through the blowing snow. It was a church with a single car parked outside. He recognized it to be that of Father Dan O’Brien, priest of the only Catholic church in Baptist-dominated Castle County. He recognized the low-mileage, good-as-new, lightly-traveled dark blue four-door sedan that was parked outside. Bart had sold it to him just months before.
In a move that surprised even himself, Bart guided his car into the church parking lot. Aside from rare visits on Easter and Christmas, Bart rarely darkened a church door, figuring he may be struck down by lightning by merely taking a seat on one of the hardwood pews. But, given the mission before him, he could use all the help he could get. Plus, for the first time in his life, Bart realized his own mortality. A voice somewhere deep inside was asking what happens after life ends. Bart had been able to keep that voice muted until now.
“Maybe he isn’t here,” Bart mumbled to himself as he timidly mounted the church steps and pushed open the door.
“Anybody here?” Bart asked.
He walked between the pews and nervously eyed the large crucifix that sat behind the choir loft. He was ready to turn around and walk out.
“Someone here for confession on a night like this?” came the voice Bart immediately recognized as that of Father O’Brien. “You must have done something really bad.”
The smiley face of the priest appeared from behind the choir loft where he had been placing song books for mass the following day.
“Ah, Bart. You're a sight for sore eyes,” the father said in a faint Irish accent followed with a hint of a chuckle. “Tell me you haven’t come to confess to selling me a lemon because I don’t know if there’s forgiveness for that.”
Bart didn’t know what to say since the father was right on both matters. First he had done something really bad and second, the car he sold him was in fact a lemon.
“I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop in and maybe make sure things are right between me and the man upstairs,” Bart said coolly.
“Ah, confession is good for the soul, my friend,” the priest said. “Let me get on my confession-hearing stuff and I’ll meet you in the confessional. It’s right over there.”
Glancing at his watch as he plopped down in the confessional chair, Bart realized he would have to make a quick confession of his long list of sins since time was flying and he had an appointment to keep. Maybe he could get blanket forgiveness on the whole lot of them. The priest joined him moments later, taking a seat on the other side of the curtain.
“So how do we do this?” Bart asked.
“Well, my son, you tell your sins and ask for forgiveness,” the priest explained. “Then I tell you what to do and if there is penance required.”
“Does what I say here, stay here?” Bart asked. “I mean there could be stuff that is pretty bad ... just saying.”
The priest laughed on the other side of the curtain.
“This isn’t Vegas, but yes, it stays here. And by the way, I’ve heard it all,” the father replied. “There’s nothing that would surprise me.”
Red Dog Saloon Page 24