Show Me (Thomas Prescott 4)

by Nick Pirog

  By the time I pushed through the crowd, May had her teeth clamped down on a man’s pant cuff and was playfully trying to rip them off his body. The man was gently trying to pull her off but Harold was taking great offense to this and squealing at him loudly.

  My cheeks rosy with embarrassment—not to mention the hundred-yard sprint—I leaned down and attempted to pry May off the man’s pants.

  “I’m so sorry,” I muttered over and over again.

  Finally, after what seemed like two eternities, May released her death grip on the man’s pants, and I picked her up.

  I turned to look for Harold and saw a woman holding him.

  Wheeler.

  She was wearing a black skirt and a gray blouse. Her hair was pinned up, and she had a dash more makeup on than usual. Had I not been in the midst of the third most embarrassing moment of my life, I would have told her how beautiful she looked. Shaking her head lightly, she asked, “Did you really bring your piglets to a funeral?”

  “They were supposed to stay in the car,” I stammered. “Randall let them out.”

  Speaking of Randall, he was leisurely making his way toward the group, in no apparent hurry to bask in my humiliation.

  I turned back to the man whose pants May ruined and told him how sorry I was. It took a moment to register he was the same guy who I sat next to at Dina’s Dine-In my first day in town. The farmer with the Carhartt jacket, the thick mustache, and the callused hands.

  He waved me off with a smile. “You think that’s the first time I’ve had a piglet chomping at my pants? Hell, happened to me just last week.” Everyone within earshot laughed. He gave me a soft pat on the shoulder, then gave May a pet on the head. “You got a strong bite there, princess.”

  She oinked.

  Then he turned to Harold in Wheeler’s arms and said, “And you, way to stick up for your sister. I’d go into battle with you any day, buddy.” He gave Harold an affectionate rub on the snout.

  My cheeks slowly returned to their natural color. The blossoming crowd was still gazing at us, and I noted some familiar faces: Chief Eccleston, Matt Miller, and the other deputies dressed in their blue uniforms; Annie from Kim’s Home Goods; and Victoria Page.

  Officer Miller sneered in my direction. It was the first time I’d seen him since he kicked the shit out of me. If I’d seen him in any other situation, I would have given him the Ice Man chomp, but the piglets and I already caused enough of a scene, not to mention that ever since he kicked me, my practice chomps were making a weird clicking noise.

  “Alrighty, folks,” the reverend said from behind the lectern, “let’s get things back on track here.”

  Slowly people turned their attention back to him.

  Wheeler and I moved to the outskirts of the group where Randall was just approaching.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said to Randall.

  “Not my pigs,” is all he said in reply.

  Touché.

  Randall gave Wheeler a quick side hug. Wheeler smiled and said, “Nice suit.”

  He winked at me and said, “See.”

  I pondered taking the pigs back to the car, but they both seemed exhausted from their prison break and were comfortable being held.

  The reverend was speaking, and I tuned in. Most likely, he was a reverend at one of the churches, and he spoke of life and death. I’d been to enough funerals in my short life that I could have paraphrased the various psalms, scriptures, and epithets he relayed.

  This made me think about Harold’s funeral. I wasn’t sure if I felt guilty for missing it or not. Knowing Harold, he would have been tickled pink that I skipped it, driving to the farm instead. Still, missing it nagged at me.

  I shook the thought away and tracked my eyes over the crowd. Chief Eccleston was near the lectern facing me. I assumed he would be next to speak. As if sensing my gaze, his eyes moved to mine.

  I took one of May’s little hooves and waved it at him.

  He didn’t respond.

  Next to him was a woman I’d never seen in person, but whom I recognized from the newspaper and the many campaign signs littered throughout town. Tarrin Mayor, Paula Van Dixon.

  She was wearing a black pantsuit. Her face was extreme and angled, as were the gold spectacles riding low on her nose. She reminded me of Meryl Streep, and I put her in the same age bracket.

  On the other side of the gathering, clad in a low-cut black dress, was Caroline. I’m not sure what the acceptable amount of cleavage is at a funeral, but whatever it was, Caroline exceeded it by two handfuls.

  Unlike Chief Eccleston, Caroline was already glancing in my direction when I looked her way. She gave a soft wave with one of her hands. I gave a light nod in return, then looked away. Though to be perfectly honest, I would have stared a few seconds longer had Wheeler not grimaced in my peripheral.

  The reverend wrapped things up, then he introduced Chief Eccleston.

  Eccleston waddled behind the podium and cleared his throat. The sun glistened off his blistering scalp. He spent the next few minutes talking about what a senseless crime Mike’s murder was, that it was a petty robbery gone wrong, and that they were working tirelessly to find and apprehend the perpetrator. It was more press conference than eulogy.

  He then told a couple stories about how great a fisherman Mike was, how he caught the biggest trout the Chief had ever seen. Then he said, “Mike never married, never had any children—the citizens of Tarrin were his children, his family. He felt a need to protect them, from themselves and from others. As most of us are well aware, Mike suffered from mental illness in the last several years. A combination of PTSD—possibly brought on by his military service in the Gulf War—and bouts of paranoid schizophrenia. But we shouldn’t let the last few pages of a man’s life undo a lifetime of good. He was a great man and he will be greatly missed.”

  Eccleston stepped down, and the reverend asked if anyone else wanted to speak.

  No one did.

  The reverend began speaking again, and without thinking, I handed May to Randall and started toward the front. I made my way up to the lectern and gently pushed the reverend aside.

  It was like when Kanye stole the microphone from Taylor Swift at the Grammy’s, but judging by Wheeler’s gaping mouth, much, much worse.

  “I’d like to say a few words,” I said.

  The many faces staring back at me were a combination of amusement, curiosity, and bewilderment. I overheard one woman near the front whisper, “Is that the same guy who brought the pigs?”

  Yes, ma’am, I am.

  I hadn’t anticipated speaking, but I felt it was my duty to make sure people knew that Mike might have had some degree of mental illness, but he wasn’t a liar.

  “Most of you don’t know me. My name is Thomas Prescott. I recently moved into the Humphries Farm.” I paused for a breath, then said, “I only met Mike once. We only chatted for about an hour. Mostly we talked about the Save-More murders.”

  There was a collective shift in the crowd. Everyone seeming to rock back on their heels simultaneously. Even Randall, as sturdy as humans came, seemed unsteady on his feet.

  I had intended on telling everyone that Mike Zernan’s mental illness diagnosis was coaxed out of a psychologist by Chief Eccleston because Mike wouldn’t let the Save-More investigation go. That Mike had every reason to be paranoid. And that contrary to what the Chief said, it wasn’t a robbery gone wrong. That Mike’s death was connected to the Save-More murders. That the man who just spoke so lovingly about their fishing trips together was hiding something from all of them.

  But as I looked out on the faces, I could see these people didn’t care. The Save-More memories were too painful. There was nothing I could say that could possibly justify bringing those memories to the surface.

  It wasn’t the somber look on Victoria Page’s face at my mention of the Save-More murders, or even the nearly audible gulp by the farmer whose pant leg May attacked. It was Sarah Wheeler Lanningham. From even thirty feet aw
ay, I could see her bottom lip trembling.

  Who was I to come into these people’s town and throw around wild unsubstantiated theories and accusations? There might be a time when these people would have to come to terms with the unresolved past, and I might very well be the conduit, but now wasn’t the time.

  I glanced at the Chief. His eyes were narrowed. I could sense him daring me to continue, almost threatening that if I thought I was an outsider now, I would find myself on the other side of an invisible dome if I uttered the word Save-More one more time.

  I broke my gaze with the Chief, then said, “Anyhow, Mike said he’d never seen a town come together like your town did after that horrific crime. He said that although it was the worst time in Tarrin’s history, he’d never been prouder to call himself one of you.” I forced a smile, then said, “I just thought he’d want everyone to know that.”

  Then I stepped down.

  Chapter Seventeen

  It took Randall and me three weeks to cut down the 250 acres of brush. It was late June and the backbreaking labor combined with the warm Missouri afternoons—not to mention a half-hour workout with the dumbbells each night—and I’d shed ten pounds.

  As for Harold and May, for every pound I lost, they each gained two. They had both tripled in size—Harold and May were now eating a diet of corn meal plus some fruits and veggies—turning into little porkers and taking up more of the bed’s real estate each night.

  Randall and I decided to take a couple days off before we started tilling the soil, a task that hopefully would only take us a week. And presently, I was enjoying a long run and listening to a playlist Lacy sent me.

  In the time since Mike Zernan’s funeral, I had limited interaction with the community of Tarrin. When I did go into town, to grocery shop or buy feed, I could feel the looks, sense the whispers: that’s the guy from Mike Zernan’s funeral who was talking about the Save-More murders…and whose pigs desecrated a mound of dirt.

  As for the investigation into Mike’s murder, according to the last article I read on the Tarrin Weekly website, they were still looking into a number of different leads. If I was one of those leads, they were keeping me in the dark. I kept waiting to be pulled back into the station for another round of questioning, but it never happened.

  Which meant the Chief never really thought I had anything to do with Mike’s death. Or they were just biding their time and the entire Tarrin gestapo was going to crash through my front door in the middle of night.

  Time would tell.

  As for my actions the past few weeks, I’d flipped through the copied pages of Will Dennel’s notebook a half dozen times, but found no anomalies. Other than that, I’d done little in the way of investigating. After the funeral, Chief Eccleston had taken me aside and threatened to arrest me if I so much as sniffed in the direction of Mike Zernan’s murder investigation, and I didn’t doubt his sincerity.

  With that said, the threat of arrest had never stopped me before. Why was it stopping me now?

  I sighed.

  Who was I kidding?

  I knew exactly why I didn’t want to look into the murders.

  Wheeler.

  The look on her face when I brought up the murders at the funeral.

  I didn’t want to hurt her, to make her relive any more of that pain.

  There was a loud chirp in my ear, and I stopped. It took me a moment to realize it was the sound of an incoming text message. As I pulled the phone from my pocket, I felt myself hoping the message was from Wheeler.

  It wasn’t.

  It was from Will’s sister, Bree.

  Her text was four words long. Four words that would change the entire course of my investigation.

  The notebook isn’t Will’s.

  “What do you mean the notebook isn’t Will’s?”

  She didn’t answer. She was too busy playing with Harold and May. She’d gone bonkers when she first saw them and leapt from her car.

  “Bree!” I shouted.

  She stopped petting them and looked up. She was wearing nearly the same outfit as before, yoga pants and a halter top, but today with a tan military jacket.

  “The notebook, Bree. The notebook.”

  “Oh, right.” She reached into her car and grabbed the notebook off the passenger seat. She tossed it to me and said, “It’s not his.”

  “How do you know?”

  She hefted May up with a grunt, holding her like the gigantic baby she was, then said, “Because, dillhole, I know what my brother’s handwriting looks like, and that’s not his.”

  I flipped the book open.

  She added, “It’s almost exact, even down to the columns and everything. It’s just not his handwriting. He didn’t write in block lettering. And it’s too neat.”

  “And,” Bree said, using May’s front hoof to wave at me, “that book isn’t four years old.”

  I closed the book and gave it a long survey. The cover was tattered, the pages starting to yellow, the large coffee stain permeating nearly half the book. It looked aged, beaten.

  But Bree was right, the book wasn’t old. It was made to look old.

  I said, “Why are you just telling me now?”

  “I didn’t really look at it after you gave it to me. I mean, it was a nice thought, you giving me my brother’s notebook and all. But, I mean, I have a bunch of his other stuff that means a lot more.”

  “But you cried when I gave it to you.”

  She squished her face together, squinted, and sniffed.

  “You were faking?”

  “You totally thought you were giving me something priceless. I didn’t want to take that away from you.”

  In a weird way, this was really sweet, and I was again reminded of how much she was like Lacy.

  I let out a long exhale, then asked, “You want to stay for dinner?”

  “Can’t. Got a date with Billy the checker.” She smiled, then added, “Well, not exactly a date with Billy. He’s got a date with his girlfriend—at least according to his girlfriend’s Snapchat—and I’m gonna listen in.”

  “You need therapy.”

  “Probably.”

  “How are you gonna listen in?”

  “I have my ways.”

  “Okay, call me when you get arrested.”

  “Will do.”

  She kissed both the piglets on the snouts, told them she loved them and that they were both very special, then hopped in her little car and peeled away.

  I sat down at the dining room table and stared at the notebook, taking a moment to process everything I just learned: 1) the notebook wasn’t Will’s, and 2) it was made to look like it was older than it actually was.

  “Why did you send me this, Mike?” I said out loud.

  Then it hit me.

  It hadn’t taken Mike three days to find what he was looking for, it had taken him three days to create it.

  Mike must have spent three days creating a replica of Will Dennel’s notebook. He filled over one hundred and twenty pages with entries. It must have taken him thirty hours. Then he went through the trouble of making it look as though it was four years old. Beat it up. Put it in the dryer. Spilled coffee on it. Probably dragged it behind his friggin’ truck. Then he popped it in the mail with an Arizona return address.

  But why? Why not just send the real notebook?

  For the entries to look exactly how Will did them, Mike must have had access to the real notebook.

  What was he trying to tell me?

  I’d spent countless hours poring over each page of the notebook looking for hidden messages in the margins or even within the bets themselves, but I hadn’t noticed anything.

  I flipped open the book and gazed at the top entry:

  Josh / Pacers / -3 ½ / $50.

  Then the next three:

  Phil S. / Celtics / +4 / $25.

  Jenny / Bruins / +130 / $25.

  Morris / Stanford BB / -12 / $100.

  I continued going through pages. Two hours later
, I’d found nothing.

  Zip.

  I thought back to the padded mailer the Moleskine had come in. I’d only given it a cursory glance, much more concerned with the contents it held.

  I dug the orange-gold mailer out of the trash and surveyed it. The return address was written in block lettering, an address in Phoenix. Then there were ten stamps, all US Flag Forever Stamps, in the top right corner. It was postmarked June 7th from the post office in Mexico.

  I considered this for a moment. I’d first gone to visit Mike on Saturday, June 4th. I’m guessing it had taken Mike two days to copy the notebook and make it appear worn and aged, then on Monday night he drove the thirty minutes to Mexico and dropped it off at the post office self-drop. Later that night he was killed. Then the package was picked up on Tuesday, postmarked, then made its way to my doorstep the next day, Wednesday, June 8th.

  The timeline fit.

  But it didn’t tell me much, other than the fact that Mike Zernan was being extremely cautious.

  I glanced down at the mailing address: Humphries Farm, Tarrin, MO 64607.

  Like the return address, everything was written in block lettering.

  On closer examination, there was something slightly odd about the word TARrIN. The second “R” in the word was only about two-thirds the height of the first “R.”

  It was only noticeable because the rest of the letters were so uniform.

  Almost too uniform.

  I thought back to what Bree had said about the handwriting.

  It’s too neat.

  I bit the inside of my cheek and made my way back to the table and the Moleksine. I opened it up and slowly, moving my finger over each number, letter, and symbol, I looked for any discrepancies in height.

  It was painfully slow.

  One page.

  Five pages.

  Seven pages.

  Twelve pages.

  Nothing.

  Not a single anomaly.

  Ten more pages.

  Nothing.

  I was on the twenty-seventh page of the notebook and I was dangerously close to throwing in the towel. I traced my finger over the third-to-last entry on the page.