Let the Guilty Pay

by Rick Treon

  “Like rust?”

  “Kind of. Only it’s a lot quicker, and a lot hotter. The point is, it’s a chemical reaction, not heating up the metal and melting it like this guy said.” Jorge nodded his head toward me, and they laughed at my expense.

  I was a little pissed at Jorge as he handed back my glasses. Why hadn’t he explained it like that when I’d asked? Was he trying to impress her, or did he really think she would put that in her story? I might put it in something I wrote one day, or did he think I would never get published again? Though I wasn’t planning on it, it hurt to think he’d given up on my writing career, too.

  “But here, why don’t we show you what we mean,” Jorge said. “Beck, you and Ronnie go get the band and crawler. And make sure it’s for twenty-six-inch pipe this time.”

  I motioned again for Veronica to follow me. She was still walking slowly, so I waited a minute for her to catch up, then we trudged to the equipment trailer, which looked suspiciously like a U-Haul that had been painted white.

  “You said Jorge didn’t go to college with you,” she said.

  “He didn’t. He went to technical school for two years. It was in the same city, though.”

  “They must teach a lot of science there.”

  “Yeah, these guys aren’t dumb. They earn their money.”

  She stopped walking. “I never said they were dumb.”

  “But you thought it.” I knew she had, because that was the same misconception I’d brought to the job. Aside from the chemistry, welders also use algebra and geometry regularly—math I’d retained exactly long enough to get through high school, followed by a brief primer before testing out of math for college.

  Though Zak walked around with a packet of schematics that detailed every measurement needed for each piece we welded, the previous job site was not nearly as organized. Oftentimes, a weld boss would merely give an overall length to the welders—say, a pig launcher that needs to be forty feet long total, including the ninety-degree fitting at the end—and leave it up to the welders to figure out how to fit the pieces together. That includes finding the measurement to the middle of the angle. Or perhaps the weld boss had done the math and figured out they needed a sixty-five degree turn at the end of the pipe. That required modification of a ninety-degree fitting by cutting one end.

  She didn’t respond to my barb, choosing instead to ask another question. “So, how much money do the welders make?”

  “It varies by job, but generally between forty and forty-five an hour—”

  “Holy shit—”

  “For their arm,” I finished. “That is, that’s what Jorge makes. He also gets sixteen an hour for his rig.”

  “Wait, what?”

  I nodded toward the trailer and we started walking again. “The company technically rents his truck and welding machine for sixteen dollars an hour. And he gets the hundred dollars a day per diem like us.”

  I could tell she was doing the math in her head, but I had it memorized. “Three thousand, seven hundred eighty dollars a week, before taxes. And on this job, they’re providing the diesel for his truck and the gas for his machine.”

  Veronica shook her head. “Where did I go wrong in my life?”

  “Well, you also aren’t going to lose your eyesight at sixty and have lung problems from breathing in that chemical smoke for decades. That’s why a lot of welders and helpers eventually become inspectors, or bosses like Zak.”

  “Still,” she said as we reached the trailer. “So, he said we’re looking for a band and crawler. What on earth are those?”

  I pointed at a thin circle of stainless steel about a foot wide, 26” written on its side in yellow paint. “That’s the band. Go ahead and throw that over your shoulder.”

  She did, and I looked around for the corresponding crawler, a giant silver scorpion with a fifteen-foot-long black tail. The stinger at the end of its tail was a gearbox that resembled a fishing reel. When its user began reeling, the scorpion would crawl around the pipe on its band.

  The band and crawler were supposed to be stored together, but they rarely were. My eyes stopped when I noticed what looked like a small car battery with jumper cables attached to the terminals. But the loose ends of the cables were stripped, the bare wire ends loose on the floor. Not only did it seem out of place, it was probably a fire hazard. I’d ask someone about it later.

  I found the crawler and we shouldered the items to the pipe, where Jorge and Paul combined them and attached a bronze torch to the scorpion’s head and aimed it at the pipe. Veronica seemed mesmerized as the blue flame cut into the steel at a thirty-five-degree angle, creating half of the V-shaped bevel into which they would weld.

  She looked at Jorge when he and Paul were done. “So, you can only cut through metal with that, right?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it would burn someone if they put their hand under the flame, but it wouldn’t cut them like one of those… how do you say… shit. Beck, what’s that sword they use in those space movies.”

  “Lightsaber,” I said.

  “Yeah. It wouldn’t work like one of those. Why?”

  “I was trying to think of why someone would hit a woman over the head to kill her instead of using one of those torches.”

  It appeared the novelty of the job was already wearing off. Veronica was going to start digging into the murder. That made me nervous, though I was also curious to see what she would uncover.

  “So, they told you about Jillian?” Paul asked.

  “Well, I asked them why there was an opening after the job had already started,” Veronica said. “And you know Mr. True Crime Writer over here, he described all the gory details to me.”

  “Yeah, he does that sometimes,” Paul said.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how’d Jillian end up being your helper out here? Was she your friend like these two?” Veronica pointed at Jorge and me.

  “No,” Paul said. “A friend recommended her to me. Well, I say a friend. Another welder I’d met a while back gave her my number. She started texting me, asking if she could come with me to the next job. When my last helper quit, I had her come test with me. She did okay, so I let her stick around.”

  I realized I’d lied to Walker and Agent Orange, though I swore Paul had told us he found Jillian—I had to consciously not refer to her by her real name, Sylvia, when she was brought up—on a website.

  Veronica had her own question. “What’s a test?”

  “We don’t do job interviews like you’ve probably had to,” Paul said. “Out here, when a company wants to hire new welders, they have them do a couple of test cuts and welds. There’s usually like five or ten welders at a time. If you pass, you’re hired. The welders don’t always bring helpers, but I like to when I can because it sucks testing by yourself.”

  “What happens if too many welders pass?”

  Jorge and Paul laughed. “Out of ten, usually only three or four do,” Jorge said. “It’s not that the welders aren’t good. But sometimes you have a bad day, or the inspector doing the test doesn’t like you. And sometimes there are a couple of welders trying to break out, and they’ve never tested before.”

  Veronica nodded, taking mental notes. “So, you’d never met her in person before testing for this job?”

  “Nope.”

  “Was she staying with you?”

  Paul’s eyes widened. “Oh no. I’ve got a girl back home, and she’d shoot me dead if she found out I was staying with a woman, especially one who looked like Jillian. I mean, I don’t know what Beck told you, but she was a good-looking girl. Not that you’re not good looking. I mean—”

  Veronica held up her right hand. “It’s okay, I get what you’re saying. So, if Jillian wasn’t staying with you, where was she staying?”

  “I’m not sure. I think she said something about a motel. It might’ve been the same place as Jameson, but I’m not sure.”

  Veronica shot me a look. I couldn’t interpret it, so I turned around and started walk
ing toward Jorge, who was leaning on his truck after starting it and turning on the air conditioner before lunch. She caught up with me and leaned in. “Don’t make plans for tonight. We’ve got work to do.”

  I was about to ask her what she meant when I felt a meaty hand on my right shoulder. I turned, only to realize Jordan Washington was leaning in over my left.

  “I get you with that every time,” he said. “It’s lunchtime. Not that y’all need a break.”

  “Shit, we’re working harder than you,” Veronica said.

  “Damn, she got you good, bro,” Jorge said, still standing about twenty feet away from us.

  “Whatever,” Jordan said, even quieter than usual. “I’m going to go eat some of my girl’s homemade tamales. I was gonna share, but not anymore.”

  Veronica started asking Jordan questions. Though I wanted to listen in, I took the opportunity to walk over and ask Jorge about the battery in the equipment trailer.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “You’re sure it wasn’t just a spare battery for one of our trucks?”

  “No, it was too small.” I made a box with my hands to indicate the size, a rectangle about a foot wide and maybe eight inches across.

  “And you said there was exposed wire?”

  I nodded. Jorge got a thousand-yard stare as he thought. I knew he’d figured something out when he shut his eyes and mumbled to himself. “That fucking bitch.”

  I looked over at Veronica.

  “No, not her,” Jorge said. “Jillian. She was using that battery and wire to make fake arc marks on the pipe.”

  If leaving a grind mark on a pipe is a helper’s worst sin—one Jillian was committing in secret when I caught her the week before—the equivalent for welders is leaving an arc mark.

  The act of welding is essentially completing an electrical circuit. Connected to one end of a piece of pipe is a ground clamp, which is attached to a negative electrical lead that feeds into the welding machine. On the end of a positive lead is the welder’s stinger. The circuit is complete when the stinger and welding rod touch that piece of pipe, voltage created by the machine flows through the leads and melts the rod.

  If the rod touches the pipe outside the bevel, it leaves evidence—evidence that can be faked by completing an electrical circuit with a battery and exposed wire.

  “Holy shit,” I said, wondering how I’d allowed myself to be so completely fooled by her. We all keep secrets. But she’d been living a double life.

  Finding out why might be my key to staying out of prison.

  20

  Veronica rushed through the door to our hotel room, though her feet had to feel like a bundle of exposed nerves.

  She started grabbing clothes, then sat down on her bed and started unbuttoning her shirt. “Hurry up. We’ve got a date.”

  I watched her until she reached the last button and her eyes rose to meet mine. I turned around in embarrassment. “Who’s we?”

  “We’re going to Jameson’s motel room to drink with some of the guys.” Veronica groaned as she flipped off her boots.

  “To get more information about Jilli… Sylvia?”

  The bed squeaked as Veronica stood, and I heard her step gingerly toward the bathroom. “Yep.”

  I slowly turned my head to make sure she wasn’t visible, then sat on my own bed and unlaced my boots. “And this concerns me how?”

  “I need you to drive because I’ll be drinking. I also need someone there I know. Going into a strange guy’s room, where I know people will be getting drunk, is not something I want to do alone. Plus, I told him you were coming.”

  I started changing into a shirt and non-FR jeans. “Fine. But we’re not staying all night. We’ve got work tomorrow.”

  “I don’t care. You know that this—what we’re doing tonight—is why I’m here, right?”

  “I do. Believe me, I want to find out what happened as much as you.” I made sure to sound more relaxed than I felt. Though I knew they wouldn’t find any physical evidence linking me to the murder, those Texas Rangers might’ve had enough to arrest me.

  I pulled up my jeans and turned around to find the maroon T-shirt on my bed. Veronica had left the bathroom and was already standing behind me.

  “Hurry up, we’re supposed to be there in ten minutes and his motel is back in Fritch.”

  “When did you set all of this up?”

  She opened the hotel room door. “During the morning break.”

  “But you were in the truck with us.”

  “I was texting Jameson. He gave me his phone number the first day I was on the job. He likes to think of himself as a ladies’ man.”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s married.”

  Veronica shrugged. “I didn’t say I was going to sleep with him. I’m just going to get him drinking and talking.”

  Willie Nelson and smoke from his favorite flower billowed out of Jameson’s motel room when he opened the door. “Come on in, y’all.”

  “Hey, Jamie,” Veronica said. “Thanks for having us.”

  “I only let my momma call me Jamie.”

  “If you get to call me Ronnie, I get to call you Jamie.”

  The flirting was nauseating, but watching it was better than sitting in our room worrying about her.

  Jameson’s tiny room was difficult to navigate because of the people and the thirty-packs of beer on the floor. All the light domestics were represented, but nothing Veronica would like.

  “What’s the lady having?” Jameson asked.

  “Oh, whatever you’re drinking will be fine.”

  He grinned and pulled a blue can from the nearest box. He handed her the beer then looked at me. “Grab whatever you want. But if you start coming over here every weekend, you’ll have to start buying.”

  I nodded and reached for a beer. Jameson led Veronica to an old loveseat. They sat next to Chris and Redbeard. Jordan sat at a tiny desk, while a couple of laborers sat awkwardly on one of the twin beds. As I meandered deeper into the room, I realized the side door was open, connecting it to the next room, where a few other familiar faces were milling around drinking.

  I leaned on the far wall and stared off into space, wondering how I was going to pass the time while Veronica worked her source. I reached into my pocket to grab my phone when I saw Paul emerge from the bathroom.

  “Hey Beck, I didn’t expect to see you here. Where’s Jorge?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t come with him. Ronnie wanted to come hang out and I said I’d drive her.”

  Paul smiled knowingly. “She needed a break from the bedroom, huh? But why aren’t you sitting with her?”

  “You know me—I’m not sleeping with her. I’m just her designated driver.”

  “You’ve got to stop being such a nice guy. Chicks don’t like it when we’re too nice. They say they do, but they don’t.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for a girl I’m actually trying to get with.”

  Paul was right. I was too nice.

  I had worked hard my entire adult life to be nice. It led to a sense of personal satisfaction. It also led to hearing everyone’s problems all the time. Women opened up to me because I was nice. They told me things I had no business knowing. I then had to enter into the societal agreement that states I will never use those vulnerabilities to my advantage. There is a subculture of men who do not stick to this contract, a horrifyingly large group to which I did not belong.

  Being too nice also led to keeping secrets. As it applied to me, it meant not putting certain things into my books.

  True crime writing is often dry. But in my last two rejections, editors had said they couldn’t get through my manuscripts because there was not enough “color,” the implication being I didn’t have enough of the gory details. But after spending months getting to know families of victims, how could I write about the worst moments of their late loved ones’ lives? I was too nice to do that to a grieving family.

  But what about fiction? I ha
d a hundred anecdotes from friends of both genders that would make tragic stories for characters to overcome. But, even after changing some facts and obscuring identities, I couldn’t do it. Acquiring editors said my story “didn’t have enough tension and conflict,” and that I hadn’t “put my characters through enough to make their transformation matter.” I could easily fix those problems, but how could I betray the confidence of my friends and live with myself? I was too nice to do that. And proud of it.

  So, there I stood, a failed writer, waiting for a woman to get done flirting with another man so I could drive her back to our shared bedroom.

  “You know, I almost believe it when you say you’re not trying to get with her,” Paul said. “But I don’t.”

  I turned and looked at Veronica, cozied up against Jameson, laughing at something Jordan had said. I allowed myself to wish I could switch places with Jameson. Would I prefer that? Absolutely. To deny it would be as believable as denying the earth was round. Some people did, but the rest of us knew they were either full of shit or had a loose grip on reality.

  I needed to change the subject. “How’s your dad? Last I read he was running an energy committee out in Washington.”

  “Energy and commerce. Funny how our government connects those two.” He finished his beer and crushed the can. “It’s like, if nobody’s making money, they don’t care about it.”

  “When did you get so philosophical?” I remembered Paul being the perfect stereotypical jock in high school. If his thoughts had ever transcended football, girls, and beer, I never knew it.

  “I’ve seen some shit. I mean, my dad’s a congressman, and I’m drinking cheap beer in a cheaper hotel instead of partying on a beach somewhere.”

  He brought up a good point. I wanted to ask more, but I’d learned a while ago how impolite it was to inquire about some pipeliners’ pasts. Though I’d never had to do it myself, most good-paying jobs required extensive rounds of interviews and background checks. None of that was required in this world. We all had to pass drug tests, and sometimes prove we could handle ourselves physically, but that’s where it stopped. I’d met more felons in the past few months than the rest of my life combined—and I used to talk to criminals for a living.