Joe studied the van. The windows were slightly tinted, but the silhouette of a man could be seen in the driver seat. Arden had worked alongside the police long enough to pick up on their signatures. It was a classic stakeout vehicle.
“Another night,” Arden whispered.
“All I need is two minutes,” he replied.
Arden turned his face to hers. “Another night, Joe.”
A heavy frown sunk his face. He watched Jessica end her call and put her son in the booster seat. She sank down next to him. Rubbing her forehead, she started on her homework. Even from across the street, her stress could be seen across her face and in her hunched posture.
Breaking a little bit on the inside, Joe stepped back into the shadows. Arden followed after him. The farther they got from the house, the soberer Joe’s expression became. They decided to hightail it to Arden’s home, expecting similar results. Nevertheless, Arden wanted to collect her stuff and savings.
Arden imagined that the police would have eyes on the bus stop outside her place, so they got off the bus two stops away from the Six Shooter Motel. They walked the rest of the way, avoiding street lights and people. Being a P.I. for so many years, Arden had gotten used to shadows. In some way, they were best friends.
In the distance, Arden saw the neon cowboy symbol of her resident motel. As per usual, there were only a handful of cars parked outside. It was one of the few cheap motels Arden found that wasn’t infested with bed bugs, crackheads, and prostitutes. She slinked around the back, making her way alongside the pool until she was below her second-story room. She craned her head up the balcony. After thinking for a moment, she climbed on top of an L-shaped wall forming around the apartment below hers.
As a kid, she ran across the interior rafters or snuck out of her orphanage to enjoy a night on the town. Those antics went away in her twenties, but she never gave up pursuing fitness.
She leapt and grabbed ahold of the gutter pipe. Feeling the burn in her shoulders and biceps, she climbed her way up to the porch and rolled across the top railing.
Staying low, Arden tried to steal a peek through her closed vertical blinds. No luck. It would’ve been reasonable to open up the sliding door, but she had a bar sealing it from the inside. Her next best bet was the bedroom window. Arden climbed back onto the railing of her balcony and jumped over, and took hold of the windowsill with her fingers. She held on with one hand and pushed open the window with the other. It was unlocked, just like she left it. Feeling a strain on the right hand that held her up, she pulled herself inside. Setting her feet on solid ground, she rubbed her hands together in a feeble attempt to soften the pain. Her eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness.
She turned on the cheap flashlight Mrs. Keller had bought her and shined it over the obliterated room. The dresser rested on its side. Wrinkled clothes spilled out from the scattered drawers. A large gash split the mattress.
Arden stepped over clumps of pillow fuzz. The items on her computer desk had been swept away. Her computer was missing, but the keyboard remained.
Arden scanned her room, getting comfortably numb with the amount of chaos this case had brought. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and collected herself. She never put much stock in material wealth, but seeing the utter desolation of her few possessions irked her. She sought for peace in the Lord and felt a blanket of calmness fall upon her shoulders.
She lifted the safety bar from the sliding doors and let Joe inside.
He gawked at the destruction. His countenance flickered between rage and sympathy. “Oh, Arden.”
She didn’t find any words.
“Police?” Joe asked, returning to his natural objective behavior.
“Hard to say,” Arden replied dryly.
“They were looking for something.”
Arden’s flashlight found the tilted corkboard mounted to the wall. The articles, notes, and pictures that it once displayed were shredded at Arden’s feet. She knelt down and picked up the image of her sister. The rip split down Patricia’s face, severing her smile in two. Memories of her cadaver blasted through Arden’s thoughts. The killers remained unidentified. Retracing the last few years of Patricia’s life led Arden to move to Atlanta. Even now, she wondered if her motivation for finding her sister’s killer was fueled by vengeance, a need for closure, or an idea planted in her mind by the Lord.
She stood by the shredded remains of years of research and had to believe that something good would come out of this mess.
After pocketing the photo, she opened the bedroom door. A gagging stench assaulted her nose. She scrunched her face and proceeded forward.
The refrigerator had been left open. The light inside had burnt out. Mold and rot bruises blemished the food. The milk carton rested sideways on the floor. A puddle of hardened milk stained the floor. With nothing to be gained from exploring the living room, she turned to her closet and noticed the absence of her small safe. It had five hundred dollars cash, a box of 9mm ammo, and some sentimental items from her childhood. It was gone.
Arden turned away from her apartment and headed to the balcony. She let the breeze whisper over her as she looked out into the moon-lit city. Her hands rested on the wooden balcony railing. Joe stood beside her. He didn’t say anything, but that was okay. His presence was enough.
After packing a small suitcase full of Arden’s clothes and grabbing a small sleeping bag, they left the studio behind and started their long march down the street. They stopped by a local gas station and grabbed some processed beef jerky and sodas. Joe kept track of the funds. They had forty-four bucks and change that Keller had given them. Taking their unhealthy meal for the road, they found a small underpass on a less traveled road. They hiked up the slant in the concrete and nestled in the gap beneath the underpass. Arden unrolled her sleeping bag and crawled inside. Joe covered himself with a small blanket. Every twenty minutes or so, a vehicle drove on the bridge above them. Arden kept her pistol nearby. Correction, it was the pistol she’d taken from the dead officers.
Joe locked his fingers behind his head and stared up the overpass above. “Nice view.”
Arden smirked at his little joke. “How does this compare to your time overseas?”
“We stayed in tents mostly, but the heat was killer. 115 on some days.”
“Sheesh.”
“We got through it,” Joe said. “I was hoping that side of my life was over.”
“You don’t talk about it much,” Arden said.
Joe’s expression darkened.
Arden regretted saying anything.
A car passed overhead.
Arden asked, “You sure you don’t want to sleep in the woods?”
“Sorry,” Joe replied stoically.
Arden rested on her elbow and looked over at him. “For what?”
“Not talking,” Joe said. “I’m not good at talking about that stuff. I never have been.”
“I’m not pressuring you,” Arden said honestly.
Joe fidgeted. It was hard to tell if it was from the miserably hard concrete or the conversation. “It’s not that I don’t want to, but…” Joe shook his head.
“Joe,” Arden’s tone was curt. “I’m serious. You don’t need to explain yourself. We all have a past. I’ve done plenty of things over the years, I hope I’d never have to tell anyone. Ever. If you had known me in my twenties...” Arden shuddered.
Joe frowned. “We’re strangers in many ways.”
“I don’t feel that way,” Arden admitted.
Joe didn’t buy her response. “You’ve never met my family apart from Jessica. Outside of work, we hardly talk about anything.”
“What do you want me to know?” Arden asked.
Joe shrugged.
Arden thought of a better question. “Where would you like to start?”
“Childhood, maybe,” Joe said. He collected his thoughts for a moment and said, “My dad was out of the picture my whole life. My mom didn’t talk too much about him. All I
knew is he was some kind of war hero. I wanted to live up to that so the moment I was old enough, I signed up with a recruiter.”
Arden thought back to their first conversation three years ago. “I remember you telling me you met your wife before you left.”
“Sherry.” Joe said her name before becoming reclusive again. He fought his way out of it. “Long story short, she stuck by me after I joined the Marines. Most of my time in Iraq was spent waiting for orders. One night we were dispatched to a small village to find and capture a few insurgents. I remember getting so excited. I was ready to see some action.
“We moved in at nightfall. When we got into the village, everything was still and quiet, like the calm before the storm. The next moment, we were getting shot at from all directions. Somehow, the insurgents were tipped off to our arrival. They were split up across a number of houses and blindly shooting into the streets.
“My buddy and I busted into a nearby house. The moment he got inside, he was riddled with bullets from a shooter hidden behind a curtain inside the building we were inside. Acting reflexively, I opened fire. I heard the bodies drop, and I moved in to confirm the kill. I pulled aside the curtain… There was a woman and her son. The kid must’ve been five or six. My burst fire killed them both instantly. I heard this… wheezy sound. Their husband, the one who shot my friend, was still alive. He was hiding behind them, using his own family like a shield.”
Arden felt sick.
Joe continued, “He was begging me for mercy. He had been shot in the torso. It would’ve been a slow death. I trained my sights on him as he cried and put two bullets in his head. When I turned back to the fight outside, enemy reinforcements were arriving. I saw our guys retreating. I looked for a way out of the house, but there was nowhere I could go without being surrounded. I hid. It didn’t take long for them to come inside. I dropped two of them before they had me flanked.”
Arden’s jaw hung open.
Joe kept looking at the bottom of the overpass. “They beat on me a little bit, and then dragged me off into a nearby cave. I spent three weeks in there until I was extracted by my allies.”
“What did they do to you?” Arden asked.
“Nothing good,” Joe said. “They didn't feed me. Didn’t clothe me, either. They kept me up all hours of the night. They had me look at the bodies of my fallen comrades and watch their beheading films on their cheap cameras. I eventually grew numb to it all. When a small team of Marines extracted me, they asked if I wanted to take some time off for paid leave. I was more interested in vengeance. The moment I recovered from my injuries, I was back out there again. That meant a lot of waiting broken up by a few brief firefights. Throughout my two years there, I saw a few of my friends get blown apart by IEDs, interrogated a half dozen insurgents, and watched the deaths of more than twenty pedestrians. My superiors saw my talents and kept putting me back on the front lines.”
“Joe, I had no idea…” Arden said. “Did you ever get any counselling?”
“That won’t change what I saw and did,” Joe said. “The moment I got home, I married Sherry and tried to move on with my life.”
Another car drove over head, interrupting the brief interlude of silence.
Arden spoke softly. “Thank you for sharing with me. I mean it.”
Joe frowned. “Yeah, now you get to feel like crap too.”
“This is not a burden to me,” Arden said.
Joe didn’t believe her.
“We’re in this together, Joe,” Arden said. “Heck, we’re all we’ve got until things are straightened out.”
Joe rolled over on his side.
Arden continued, “And you’re not accountable for those deaths. There’s no way you could’ve known about that kid.”
“I don’t think you understand. I don’t feel anything. Nothing. How screwed up is that?”
Arden didn’t know how to reply.
Joe continued. “I hadn’t felt anything until I had Jessica.”
“We’ll find a way for you to speak with her. I promise.”
“Yeah,” Joe said frustratedly.
The two of them lay next to each other until daybreak. Arden couldn’t tell if she’d gotten any sleep or not. Her back ached and she had a horrible crick in the neck. As morning traffic picked up, Arden rolled up her sleeping bag while Joe shook out the blanket and packed it away.
They headed towards the YMCA but avoided sidewalks and main roads.
They got inside and moved directly to the showers. On their way out, they found a newspaper. Scarlet Gales’ pretty face was plastered on the front page. There were two smaller images of Arden and Joe. They were painted as lead suspects in her abduction, along with the homicide of two cops. Reading further into the article, they learned that Scarlet’s parents blamed Arden and Joe as well. They claimed Arden and Joe blackmailed them in some elaborate scheme to “rescue” the lost girl.
The betrayal was a knife to the chest. The Gales had hired them in the first place. Also, the night Scarlet went missing, Arden and Joe were scouting out a different child predator.
Joe seethed. “Liars.”
“They’re probably just confused,” Arden tried to find the upside.
It seemed like overnight, Arden and Joe had lost all their friends and allies.
There was still one Arden hoped would believe her story.
Wearing hats and sunglasses, they boarded another bus and headed to a stop near the police station.
Tucked in an alley, they waited Derrick to get off work. Thankfully, Derrick lived a pretty routine life. Every afternoon, around 3 pm, he’d take a walk around the block, mainly to keep him from falling asleep. It would be during that time Arden would try to reach him.
Hunkered in the alley, they watched the station. It was a stupid idea to meet Derrick here, but there was no telling if the cops would be stalking him out at his house. After all, a handful of local police knew about Arden and Derrick’s soft vigilante methods. If that rumor traveled to the higher ups, both of them would be in big trouble.
Sure enough, three o’clock rolled around and Derrick strolled down the sidewalk. Arden and Joe stayed in the shadows. When he passed by, Arden called his name.
Derrick looked around, searching for the source of the noise. He was a skinny African-American man with long limbs and a chiseled face. He wore rectangular glasses and had a bald head. His white button-up tucked into slacks. A red tie was loose around his collar. When he saw Arden, he didn’t recognize her. “Sorry, I don’t have any cash.”
“Derrick. It’s me.”
His eyes went wide. “Ar--”
“Don’t say it,” Arden replied. “Come here. We’ll talk.”
Derrick glanced around nervously.
He didn’t trust her, Arden realized.
“Please,” Arden pleaded.
Sheepishly, Derrick walked into the alley. Joe stood out of sight and eavesdropped. Derrick kept his hands buried in his pockets. “Arden, what are you doing here?”
“I’ve been set up,” Arden explained quickly. “I had Scarlet Gales and was about to get away when a pair of corrupt cops came after me--”
Derrick shook his head. “I can’t be hearing this.”
“Derrick, please,” Arden pleaded. “They tried to kill me. They had me dig my own grave because of the things I saw.”
“So you did…” He looked scared asking the question. “Did you kill them?”
Arden opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“Oh my,” Derrick ran both hands up his bald head.
Arden tried to give him a reassuring touch on the arm, but he pulled away quickly. “If you were there, you would’ve done the same.”
Derrick clenched his eyes shut. “Do you have any idea how much trouble I’ll be in for talking to you? There’s nothing cops hate more than cop killers. They’ll make sure you rot in prison if they catch you.”
“I’m aware,” Arden replied, growing frustrated. “But we have bigger issues.”
Derrick let out a desperate chuckle. “Oh no no no. I don’t think so. I got eyes everywhere watching me like a hawk. I can hardly take a crap without someone looking over my shoulder.”
“That’s why I’m here and not at your house,” Arden explained.
“That doesn’t make this okay,” Derrick said. “A lot of cops know about our past agreement, how I give you tips and you stop criminals. But now you have the Gales and the entire Jamesville police force testifying against you. It's hard to say you’re the good guy in this whole thing.”
Arden put a hand on her hip. “Well, what do you think? You think I’m a glorified cop killer?”
“You just admitted to killing them!” Derrick exclaimed. He quickly hushed himself and glanced back out on the road. “If I’m not back soon, they’re going to ask questions.”
“You still have ten minutes,” Arden replied. “Relax.”
Derrick spoke with frustrated sarcasm. “Okay. I will. Thank you. Everything is better now that you said that.”
Arden glared at him.
Derrick sheepishly looked away.
Arden spoke slowly. “This is so much bigger than anything you could imagine. I’m talking about big names in the police and the movie industry engaged in some of the vilest acts you can ever imagine. I’m their scapegoat, but they don’t know me like you know me. I’m not backing down until the truth comes out. I’ll die before that happens.”
“You’ll die a lot sooner if you keep this up,” Derrick said. His eyes were watering and wide. “You need to run, Arden. I mean it. Leave solving this up to the police and go.”
A flash of anger came over Arden. “Where can I run?”
“How should I know? But we can’t be talking. If you’re caught, it's over. This is real life, Arden. You’re not a superhero. You can’t always save the day. Sometimes the bad guys win, and that’s alright. Every dog has their day.”
“It’s not alright, it’s never alright.” Arden replied with growing passion. “I can’t force you to help, Derrick, but that won’t keep me from telling you what I need.”
“And what’s that?”
Secrets Boxset: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery Collection Page 24