Wayward

by Gregory Ashe

  “I didn’t see her after that,” Josh said.

  “That’s easy to say,” Dulac said. “You didn’t go for a drive? You didn’t decide you were still pretty tuned up about that argument, maybe you wanted to get the last word in? Or maybe Donna May showed up at your place, and you couldn’t stand her bitching at you any longer? I bet it was an accident. You just pushed her too hard, right?”

  “Fuck you. Fuck both of you. I didn’t—I was home! All night. You can ask my parents. They were pissed that I hadn’t come straight home from jail; they’d waited up to ream me out, ok? My dad, he’s such a fucking hard ass.” Josh shifted, absently touching his side. “We were up all night, fighting, screaming. They can tell you. The last time I was with Donna May, she was alive. I didn’t put a finger on her—Melissa can tell you. And then I was up all night with my parents. I slept in until the afternoon, and when I called over to the Vegas, Donna May was gone. She’d left town, the way she always did.”

  “So your alibis,” Dulac said, “are your therapist, who you’re fucking behind your girlfriend’s back, or your parents, who love you for some reason even though you’re a human garbage sack? Great. Solid alibis.”

  Josh opened his mouth for another fight, but Somers got a word in first. “You want to tell us about things with Melissa?”

  Leaning back in the seat, Josh tugged the brim of his hat. His body language shifted: legs spread, shoulders back, chest puffed up. A little bantam rooster. “Melissa’s the best thing in my life, man.”

  “Not Donna May?” Dulac said. “Not your daughter?”

  Somers waved him to silence, but Josh cocked his head at the questions and answered them. “I love Dolly, but, I don’t know. I never wanted kids. And this whole custody thing has been a nightmare. My parents, God, they’re so fucking annoying. First, I’m this huge disappointment for getting Donna May pregnant. Ok, whatever. Big fucking deal. I was a big fucking disappointment when I wasn’t any good at sports, like Dad couldn’t believe it. I was a big fucking disappointment when I flunked out of Mizzou. Whatever. I’m used to it, you know. But then, a couple of years later, I’m a big fucking disappointment because my mom wants a grandkid—all her gal pals have grandkids. So now I’m supposed to be over there, playing with Dolly, taking her to the park. I’m supposed to bring her around the house. And one day, boom, they decide I need to have Dolly living with me. I don’t want Dolly living with me. I just—fuck, I just want to live my life, man.”

  Somers didn’t need to look over his shoulder to see the look of disgust on Dulac’s face; Somers was even willing to bet that Dulac wasn’t faking this one.

  “I know this thing with Melissa is complicated,” Josh said, speaking into the silence. “But she’s had a rough life too, ok? People don’t know that about therapists, but most of them, they have something bad in their pasts too. She needs me. And I need her.” A little-boy smile, almost unbearably innocent, lit up Josh’s face for a moment. “You know why I kept trying to make things work with Donna May? You know why Melissa and I keep going, even though she’s putting her career on the line for me? It’s really simple. They’re the only two people who have ever seen me for who I am, really seen me, and still loved me.” Wiping his nose, Josh added, “Pretty pathetic, huh?”

  “But you couldn’t just have one of them,” Dulac said. “You had to have both.”

  “Yeah,” Josh finally said, shrugging. “I know that makes me a jerk. But things were so complicated with both of them, I kind of figured it would finally just resolve itself.” Dulac didn’t say it. Somers didn’t say it. But Josh must have heard the unspoken response because he shifted and said, “Crap, I didn’t mean like this.”

  They ran through a few more questions, tracing Josh’s movements over the days following Donna May’s disappearance, but he couldn’t give them anything specific. Somers left the interview room, ducked into the relative darkness of the observation room, and found Hazard studying the scene through the one-way mirror.

  “Well?” Somers said.

  “He’s a whiny bitch.”

  “Anything else you want to ask him?”

  “No. Let’s follow up with the parents. And with the jail records, see when he actually posted and got out.”

  “Then I’m cutting him loose. We’ll bring in Melissa.”

  Somers was almost at the door when Hazard spoke. “I guess I’m still being punished. Stay here, nose in the corner, that kind of thing.”

  “Ree. That’s not how it is.”

  “Right, sorry. I forgot. We’re still playing hide-the-faggot.”

  “Why are you doing this? Why are you making this so much harder than it has to be?”

  Hazard stared into the one-way mirror, his whole body rigid, joints locked. Somers honestly thought that if he touched Hazard, the man might fall apart. All that fucking armor, for whatever the fuck good it did him.

  When he answered, his voice was that painfully neutral tone he took when he was using both hands to keep the world at bay. “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this was hard for you. Guess it’s kind of hard to tell, the way you’re having the fucking time of your life, everybody in this city eating out of your fucking hand again.”

  Somers juggled responses, trying to decide what would hurt most. And then he heard his own thoughts, heard himself wanting to hurt the man he thought he loved most in the whole world, and he pushed out of the observation room and went to find Melissa Hall.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MARCH 28

  THURSDAY

  5:04 PM

  IN THE INTERVIEW ROOM, Dulac still slouched against the wall, and Gensler was still tapping on her phone. Maybe she was writing a novel, Somers thought. Maybe she could find something in this shitstorm and spin it into a story.

  Melissa Hall wore a long sweater over leggings. She looked like a woman in a commercial who tucked her legs up under her and spent the day sipping coffee and leafing through books. Unlike Josh, she seemed perfectly comfortable in the interview room, although Somers was willing to guess that a lot of that had to do with her training as a counselor. You’ve got to have some kind of poker face when people pay you to listen to their lives falling apart.

  “Ms. Hall,” Somers said, “thank you for coming down to meet us.”

  “With a lawyer,” Dulac added.

  “Of course,” Melissa said, her eyes locked on Somers.

  “The same lawyer Josh Dobbs has hired,” Dulac said.

  “I’m happy to do whatever I can to help the police,” Melissa said, still pretending Dulac didn’t exist.

  Somers repeated his explanation that she was not a suspect, if that changed, she would be read her rights, and then said, “We have a few questions for you about the last night anyone saw Donna May Plenge alive.”

  Melissa seemed to hold it together for a moment; she touched the corner of her eye, and then she nodded. “I had already heard that she was . . . she was the one you found, but I couldn’t believe it. She was so full of life.”

  “Could you tell us a little about Donna May?”

  “I’m sorry; she was a client, and our conversations were privileged.”

  “Even after death?”

  “Yes. That’s a recent policy change.”

  “Pretty fucking convenient,” Dulac said.

  This time, color came into Melissa’s cheeks, but she addressed Somers. “It’s actually very logical. Even after death, things that have been shared in session could be very damaging to a person’s reputation, or to the people around them. If a client has shared experiences with abuse, for example, that could negatively affect someone else, even if there was no way to confirm the experience.”

  Somers nodded. “I understand. We may have to subpoena those records, though. Do you keep recordings?”

  “Primarily notes. I don’t believe I have any recordings of sessions with Donna May.”

  “Very fucking convenient,” Dulac said.


  “Detective,” Gensler said, her dark eyes coming up from the phone.

  “The notes, then,” Somers said with a smile.

  “Of course. I’ll be happy to cooperate with a court order.”

  “What about your interactions with Donna May outside of work? Those aren’t privileged, of course, so I’m sure you’ll be able to share your thoughts about her from that standpoint.”

  “I’m afraid my interactions with Donna May outside of a session were very limited.”

  “Really?”

  Melissa smiled and nodded.

  “That’s strange,” Somers said, unfolding the photograph Hazard had given him and displaying it. “This doesn’t look like a very limited interaction.”

  “That,” Dulac said, “looks like best friends. Fuck, the three of you could be sisters. And, since you’re all fucking the same guy, I guess that’s more like sister-wives.”

  “Will you stop it?” Melissa snapped, her eyes cutting to Dulac before some sort of gravity dragged them back to the photograph. She reached for it, and Somers drew it back a little. “Well, I can see how—yes, we did occasionally—”

  “No,” Somers said quietly. “It’s time to tell all of it.”

  Melissa chafed her arms through the sweater. “It’s . . . not easy. You understand that I’ve had to keep certain elements of my relationship private. For professional reasons.”

  “Because Josh Dobbs is a client, and you could lose your license if it came out that you were having a sexual relationship with him.”

  Melissa looked up at Somers. “You’re very much like your fiancé, you know. Ex-fiancé. Not on the surface. You’re quite different. But underneath. So much pain. You just handle it differently.”

  “Ms. Hall, I’d like you to talk about your relationship with Donna May Plenge. And then we’ll talk about your relationship with Mr. Dobbs.”

  “You feel guilty, obviously, because your relationship with Mr. Hazard cost him his position on the police force. And, of course, that guilt is manifesting as a secondary emotion. In this case, anger. You’re angry with me because you’re displacing your guilt onto me.”

  “I think that part of our conversation is at an end,” Somers said. “Let’s talk about Donna May.”

  “And that guilt must be so much worse now that you’ve separated. You took everything from him. And then you left him. Abandoned him, really. No skin off your nose; you’re the town darling. People will forget, rather quickly I believe, that you enjoyed a cock stuffed up your ass. But not him.” She cocked her head. “How does that make you feel?”

  Gensler’s head came up. Her fingers had stopped on the phone.

  Out in the bullpen, the fax machine was screeching. Andrea Ehlers shouted something, her voice distorted by the walls and the distance. A pitchy sound, kind of like static, hissed in Somers’s ears.

  “You fucking bitch,” Dulac said.

  Gensler still hadn’t moved.

  “I think we need to—” Somers had to stop to work moisture into his throat. “I think we need to stay on topic.”

  Another long moment held, and then Melissa shrugged, and Gensler seemed to deflate as she looked back down at her phone.

  “Donna May,” Melissa said, smoothing a fold in her sweater. “As a friend, she was very fun. Lots of energy. Wild. Always wanting to try the next thing. And no judgment; if she loved you, she loved you for who you were. In spite of the photograph that you have, I really didn’t spend much time socializing with her. Running into her at the Maniacs bar, that was an accident. A rather bad one, I think. You heard about the fight?”

  “I’d like to hear your version,” Somers said.

  So she told it, and it matched up closely with what the others had said: Melissa had touched Josh too many times, an argument had broken out, and as the argument escalated, the revelations that everyone had been sleeping around came out.

  “When Josh and Daniel started swinging at each other, I left. I knew it was only going to get worse.”

  “And after that?”

  “I went home. Josh came over, after he’d been bailed out. We had sex. Or we began to. Donna May showed up and saw us through the window. We argued. She and Josh left. I poured myself a bottle of wine and had a very unpleasant night.”

  “Let me guess,” Dulac said. “Nobody can verify that.”

  Melissa shrugged. “I’m sorry. It was weeks ago; I only remember where I was because of the fight. I don’t think anyone else will remember.”

  Somers considered this and said, “And you didn’t see Donna May after she left? She didn’t contact you in any way?”

  “No, Detective. I didn’t see her again. She didn’t call or email or text. No contact of any form.”

  “Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt her?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, I can. Daniel Minor had been threatening Donna May for several weeks. In fact, I’d say he’d been terrorizing her.”

  Somers took in that statement; it didn’t sound anything like how Hazard had described his encounter with Daniel.

  “I understand they had a sexual encounter.”

  “No, Detective. They had frequent sexual encounters. Daniel pressured Donna May into having sex with him. Did you know that Donna May had a history of bad encounters with the police?”

  “She claimed that officers sexually assaulted her.”

  “Yes,” Melissa said. “Daniel found that . . . titillating. He would handcuff her, which would trigger panic episodes, and then he would rape her while her panic escalated. I suppose he wouldn’t acknowledge that it was rape, but that’s what it was. He made videos of these events. Donna May had finally reached a point in her self-healing where she was ready to put a stop to it. She was going to take everything to the sheriff and have Daniel fired and, most likely, arrested.”

  “I thought you couldn’t share privileged information,” Dulac said. “How do you know all this if she didn’t tell you in a therapy session?”

  Melissa’s smile was ice. “I’ve seen the videos.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  MARCH 28

  THURSDAY

  5:51 PM

  HAZARD TURNED OVER THE CASE in his mind while Somers drove them toward The Oaks at Emerald Point; it was time for a conversation with Daniel. The videos that Melissa had shown them, uploaded to a revenge-porn website, had been what Melissa described: Donna May handcuffed while a muscular man in a bulldog mask teased her and, ultimately, had sex with her. The man never spoke. The man never showed his face. The quality of the video made it impossible to spot any markings or distinctive traits on his body that might identify him. But what held Hazard’s attention were the screams.

  “Dude,” Dulac said from the front seat. “Those were porn screams.”

  Hazard clamped down on the wave of irritation at hearing Dulac echo his thoughts. “She was obviously distressed,” he said. “She was trying to get out of the cuffs.”

  “I don’t know,” Dulac said. “I mean, she wiggled around a lot. And she sure had a set of lungs. But I’m telling you, bro: porn screams.”

  “So, what? She was just putting on a show?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I guess you know all about what women sound like when they’re having sex.”

  “Uh.” Dulac glanced at Somers and then back at Hazard. “I mean, I’m not the expert in the car, but I probably know more than you do.”

  “Ok,” Somers said. “Let’s drop it.”

  “No, this is fantastic,” Hazard said. “I forgot we’ve got a resident expert. What did you think, John?”

  “I said drop it.”

  “Well, I obviously can’t have an opinion because I’m the town’s registered faggot, so—”

  Somers hit the brakes hard; the car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street, and a horn blared behind them. A whiff of burnt rubber infiltrated the vehicle. Bent over the steering wheel, Somers looke
d like he was locked into place. Where Hazard could see part of his hand, the knuckles were white.

  “Stop saying things like that.”

  Hazard grunted and flopped back in the seat.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Will you fucking drive? You’re causing so much fucking traffic we’re going to be front page fucking news. Not that that will bother you, I guess. Maybe they can run it in double columns, right next to the story about you suddenly learning you don’t like dick.”

  Hazard heard himself, heard how he sounded, how he’d lost control of himself in the last few days: repetitive, idiotic, brainless. The same stupid jabs. The same vulgar words. All of it playing on a loop. He heard it, but he couldn’t seem to turn it off. It was like pressing on a bruise. Or inching out on ice, waiting for the first crack, the sound running through his soles like a gunshot.

  Somers said, “Did you hear me?”

  “I heard you.”

  After another moment, the car eased forward, and Dulac let out an explosive breath. Then the younger detective said, “I do watch a lot of porn, and sometimes it has ladies in it.”

  Nobody spoke after that.

  When they reached The Oaks, they passed the Vegas’ trailer and turned on the street where Daniel lived. The old Ford was still on the cement parking pad, and Somers double parked behind it, blocking it in.

  “Who’s taking the lead?” Hazard said, undoing his seatbelt.

  Somers and Dulac exchanged a look.

  “Flip for it?” Somers said.

  “No, dude. You need this.”

  Somers got out of the car without answering. They moved up to the deck, a loose triangle with Hazard at the back, but the door opened before Somers could knock. Daniel stood there, his face shiny like he’d washed it too many times, his eyes red. The reek of alcohol came off him like a bulldozer.

  “Is it—” Daniel swayed, clutched the jamb, and swallowed. “Is it true?”

  “Mr. Minor, we’d like to come inside and talk.”

  “Oh God,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. He moved backward, more falling than stepping, and slammed up against the resin paneling. It cracked under his weight, but Daniel didn’t seem to notice. He righted himself and staggered down the hall.