by K. J. Emrick
None of them talked about Penny and Franky being accused of the murder. They had all made their apologies, and made them again, and by now they felt they were all talked out about it. Looking forward, they weren’t going to dwell on it. All was forgiven. It was time to move on.
After another twenty minutes of walking, or so, the trees fell away, and the fence line got bigger and thicker and snaked away from the trail to encompass a wide grassy area that went right up to a ridge overlooking the gorge itself.
It was an impressive sight. This was its widest point, half a mile across from side to side. If the signs Cookie had read were to be believed, then there were some parts of this crack in the Earth that were two miles deep. Cookie wasn’t going to test that out. Besides, the same signs had also pointed out that dropping anything into the gorge, even rocks, was strictly forbidden.
The walls of the gorge were colored in bands of browns and yellows and reds. Cookie remembered reading about all the different types of rocks that could be found in the ground here, but she could only remember a few of them. The names weren’t important. The amazing view was.
Birds swooped down low, into the gorge, and then back up into the sky above. For them, it was probably all sky. They called out cheerfully to each other as they rode the air currents in a life that was simple and free.
The gorge continued in both directions for a total of four and a half miles. At the bottom were cave systems that visitors could pay a fee to explore with a guide, but that seemed a little too adventurous for Cookie. She would stick to solving mysteries where her life was only sometimes put in danger. Being married to Jerry Stansted was all the excitement she needed.
It took her a moment to get used to the height and the view and the wonder of what she was seeing, and when she did she recognized someone in the crowd, off to their right. The old man was just standing there, leaning on a metal quad cane, looking out over the expanse of the gorge like everyone else was. At first, she was sure she must be mistaken. After everything that had happened, he couldn’t just show up here.
Then she was sure it was him, and she excused herself from Jerry for a moment.
He turned his head ever so slightly as she got closer, the frown on his face never changing. Humphrey Middlestead really was a grumpus.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said as pleasantly as she could. She came up beside him, standing right next to him, facing the gorge like he was.
“Why wouldn’t I be here?” he complained. “I’m taking this trip just like the rest of you. Might as well see the sights. Especially since I got arrested and accused of something terrible. I lost my good walking stick and had to change to this cheap drugstore aluminum thing, too. But besides all that this has been a great trip. Just wonderful.”
She was starting to suspect that his meanspirited attitude was just as much a mask as Stacia’s friendly face had been. He wore it like armor, trying to keep himself insulated from everyone else. Well, she had tried to be friendly. If he didn’t want to make friends that was all right with her. She had plenty of her own.
“I’m sorry,” she said just to him the same. “You didn’t do what we accused you of. I’m very sorry you had to go through that.”
She turned to walk away, but stopped when he cleared his throat.
“I understand that I have you and that husband of yours to thank for being set free again. You convinced them it was someone else who killed that man. Well. I’m not used to owing people nothing.”
“You don’t owe us anything,” she assured him. “We were only looking for the truth.”
“Yeah, well, the truth don’t always set you free. Do you know why I come on this trip every year? Hmm?”
She waited patiently for him to say more. This was his way of repaying his debt to her. He was giving her a little bit of himself. Something he probably hadn’t told anyone in a long, long time.
He took a deep, slow breath. “I was married, once. Had a son who was just the greatest boy a dad could hope to have. He was mine, and I would have done anything for him. He always asked me if we could come see this place someday.” He chuckled sadly. “I remember asking him, why not the Grand Canyon? Why here? Well, he would say, there wasn’t much money to go around, and he knew we couldn’t afford to go all the way to the really big canyon. This one would do, as long as we went together.”
For a moment, he was silent. The words came harder after that. “My son, he was always like that. He cared about everyone else first, and himself last of all. He was our pride and joy. Then… things changed. He got cancer. The doctors couldn’t do a thing for him. Oh, they tried. They tried, and they tried, and they tried, but nothing worked. My little boy passed away never having seen this place.”
He looked out over the gorge now, as if he was seeing it through his son’s eyes. “It really is kind of amazing. Being this high up and knowing that there’s always going to be something bigger than you. Yeah. This was all he wanted. He just wanted to be here, with me and his mom, and just be a family together. I missed out, because there was never enough time, and there was never enough money, and suddenly now I’ve got all the time in the world and enough money that I can do things like take trips. So I come here. Every year, I come here, and I see it for him. For my son.”
Cookie felt a lump forming in her throat. It was such a sad tale, a memory that Humphrey carried with him every day. Here he was, trying to make things right for the son he had loved so very much, and letting the painful memories eat at his soul until he had nothing left but hate. No wonder he was so standoffish. He was trying to shake a pain that just wouldn’t go away.
Impulsively, Cookie gave him a hug. He didn’t respond to it, didn’t give her one in return, but he didn’t pull away either.
“Mister Middlestead,” she said to him, “I think your son just wanted to be with his father, no matter what you did together. Our children remember us for being there. They may not remember everything we do for them, but they remember our love. You loved your son. That’s all he wanted.”
With another long breath, Humphrey swallowed back tears, and pushed himself away from her. “You just leave me be now, you hear? I’ve got… I’ve got something in my eyes.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder before turning to go. For just a second, she would have sworn she saw him smile.
When she came back to Jerry, she put her hand firmly in his. He didn’t ask what had just happened with Humphrey. He just stood there with her, and with Cream running around in circles on his leash trying to entice Pax into a game of tag. They were together on this wonderful, beautiful, amazing day.
She might not remember the exact colors of the gorge walls in days to come, but she would never forget the feeling that Jerry gave her deep inside, warming her heart.
“I love you, Cookie,” he told her softly. “How do you feel?”
“Young,” she told him. “You make me feel young, Jerry Stansted. After all, old is just a state of mind. I love you, too.”
EPILOGUE
O n a sunny morning in the town of Widow’s Rest, Patrick Flanagan tried calling his chief’s cellphone one more time.
He’d already made four calls to Jerry Stansted in the last two hours and texted him half a dozen times on top of that. He wasn’t answering. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be such a big deal. Jerry had left him in charge, after all, and he was supposed to be able to make the big decisions on his own.
Except this one was a little bigger than most.
“He’s on vacation,” Patrick reminded himself. “His honeymoon. Wherever he is right now, he probably left the phone behind.”
Sitting in the chief’s office felt… odd to him. Like he was out of place. This desk was supposed to be for the top man at the department. Not the guy who had only made lieutenant a few months ago. Anything he did while Jerry was away, he was going to have to answer for when Jerry returned.
He stroked a finger along the waxed perfection of his handlebar mustache. He
needed to think.
Sleep was something else he needed, but that wasn’t going to be possible anytime soon.
A knock on the door interrupted his worrying. He liked to keep the door closed when he was in here. He didn’t like to be in here, was the thing, and having the other officers see him in here made him feel like they were judging him. Weighing him and measuring him and having him come up short on the leadership skills needed to guide a police department. Even one as small as the Widow’s Rest PD.
Another knock reminded him that even though the door was closed, people knew he was in here. He couldn’t just hide and hope they went away.
“Come in,” he said, quickly straightening out papers on the desk even though they were already laid out in neat order. That was the way he liked things.
The door opened, and Officer Loretta Hill stepped in. She was a younger officer, but sharp as a tack, with a fresh look on policing that had been given to her at the academy. She was more brain than brawn, a new kind of cop for a new era of policing.
“What is it?” Patrick asked her. He almost added that he was busy, but she knew that. Everyone at the department was busy, currently, and if she was coming in to see him now then it must be important.
“He’s here,” she said, and there was no reason to explain who ‘he’ was.
Patrick rolled his eyes. Why not? As if this case wasn’t complicated enough.
“Tell him…” Patrick wasn’t sure what to tell him, actually. He’d like to tell the man to get out of the station and not stop driving until he hit the state line. He’d like to tell him that the FBI only had jurisdiction in a limited set of circumstances. He’d like to tell him to come back when Chief Jerry Stansted was back from vacation.
Instead, he said, “Tell him to wait for me in the interview room. I’ll be right there. And get him a cup of coffee, for the love of God.”
Loretta nodded, the light reflecting in her eyes showing the doubts she felt at making an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation wait.
Well, that was just the kind of day Patrick was having. Might as well spread the wealth around.
“Wait, Loretta,” he called to her as she was about to shut the door. “Listen, do we have a phone number for Karen Williams lying around somewhere?”
Loretta stared back at him blankly. “A phone number… for who?”
“Karen Williams. Although, I guess she goes by Stansted now that she’s married to the chief. And most people don’t call her by her given name. Most people call her Cookie.”
“Oh! A number for Cookie. Now I know who you mean. Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”
Patrick felt a headache starting at the top of his skull, right under where his bald spot was starting to grow bigger. “Yes. Cookie. Do we have a number for Cookie? I’ve tried the chief several times and he’s not answering. I figured since they’re travelling together that I could call Karen… Cookie, I mean, and get ahold of the chief that way.”
“Sure,” she said, uncertainly. “I think we’ve got a number for her in the emergency list of contacts.”
“Okay. That’s up at the dispatch desk, isn’t it?”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’ve seen it like, three times since I started working here.”
Patrick waited, but she didn’t move from the doorway. Finally, he stood up. “Would you mind checking for me to see if it’s there?”
“Oh,” Loretta grinned. “Oh, sure. No problem.”
When she was gone, Patrick counted to ten, and then slipped out of the chief’s office and down the hallway toward the holding cells. There were questions he needed to ask before seeing the nice man from the FBI.
THE HOLDING CELLS of the Widow’s Rest PD were your typical holding area. Metal bars, cinderblock walls, metal benches to sit on and a half wall hiding a toilet, so you could do your business in private. Not that Patrick had spent a lot of time in other jails to compare them, but these seemed fairly standard. It wasn’t like there was a lot of interior decorating options for something like this.
Jason was the officer assigned to watch the department’s only prisoner at the moment. Patrick asked him to step away, so he could have a private conversation with their guest, although ‘private’ might not be the right word. There was an ever-vigilant security camera up in the corner. They weren’t going to be alone, since everything they did and said would be recorded, but they shouldn’t be disturbed either.
Standing at the bars of the holding cell, Patrick cleared his throat to get the attention of the man inside.
Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world and not a care how he spent it, Jonathon Graham rolled over on his side, and then sat up. He wasn’t a very big man, maybe all of five-foot-ten and built more like a construction site worker than a linebacker, but still. There was something about him that made you know you had to watch your step around him. Some dangerous aura that emanated from him unseen, but felt just the same.
He fixed eyes on Patrick that were the color of coal, black pupil within black iris. They were stark against the surrounding whites, and they were darker than the color of his skin by only a few degrees. Wavy dark hair fell across his forehead and over the tips of his ears.
“Come to release me?” he asked with a cheerful smile. “Well, don’t be too hard on yourself, Patrick. I told you I had friends in high places. Even if I haven’t spoken to them in a few years, they remember me.”
“Yes,” Patrick said, “they definitely remembered you. In fact, they sent an FBI agent here to collect you out of my custody.”
That had been what the whole morning had been about for Patrick. Phone calls from several low-level government officials, including Mayor Fieldberg, and a senator who Patrick had never heard of before this. None of them had given him any direction on what to do with Mister Jonathon Graham, but each of them had made it implicitly clear that he was not to let Graham go until he spoke with the FBI.
That was when Patrick had started making frantic phone calls to Jerry, hoping that his chief would have some more great advice. The last bit of advice he’d gotten from Jerry had allowed him to catch Jonathon in the first place. It was only fair that he help figure out what to do with him, now that they had him.
Graham’s jaw fell open at the mention of the FBI. He stepped forward to put a hand firmly around one of the cell bars. Even though there was no chance he could escape just by standing there, Patrick felt the need to take a step back anyway. There was just something about this man. Maybe the best thing he could do was turn him over to the feds, after all.
“You can’t turn me over to them,” Graham said. “No. I need to stay right here, in your custody.”
“Really? Because not that long ago you made a phone call to someone trying to get yourself released. Then that person made a phone call to our mayor, and that’s what started this whole ball rolling. You telling me you don’t want to get out of my jail anymore?”
Graham’s smile showed off perfect white teeth. “I was just exercising my rights as a citizen. I didn’t do anything wrong, so I didn’t feel the need to be held in jail.”
Patrick crossed his arms over his uniform shirt. “Let’s not forget that we caught you sneaking into people’s houses and staying the night without permission.”
“That was simply a matter of necessity,” Graham tried to argue. “I had no place to stay, and no one was staying in those houses at the moment. I may have taken some food while I was in those houses, sure. I’ll gladly pay for what I took.”
“And what you damaged? You broke into more than one of those places.”
“Sure, sure. I’ll pay for all of that. Picking locks isn’t as easy as they make it seem on television, you know. Sometimes you just have to give it the boot.”
Patrick regarded him for a long moment, letting the wheels in his mind turn. Jerry had always been the quick thinker in the department. He really, really wished he could have gotten ahold of him on this one. But Jerry wasn’t her
e, and he was, and that was how it went. He was going to have to come up with a solution on his own.
With a sudden insight, he thought he had one.
“All right,” he said. “You’re offering to pay up, so I’ll just have one of my guys go back to all the places where you stayed the night without asking, and we’ll tell them about your offer. If all of the homeowners say they’re satisfied with having you pay for whatever you took or whatever you damaged, then there won’t be any charges pressed.”
“Good. See? I knew you could be reasonable, Patrick.”
“Right. Which will mean you’re free to go.”
Graham’s smile slipped off his face. “Now, listen. Let’s not be too hasty. If you let me go, then that FBI agent out there is going to scoop me up and take me away, and me and the federal government don’t exactly have the best relationship.”
“I see.” Although truthfully, Patrick didn’t see at all. There was something going on here way above his paygrade. “Do you maybe want to tell me about this relationship you have with the feds?”
“No, I don’t. Well, it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t. There’s several confidentiality agreements and more than one federal statute I’d be breaking if I say anything at all. Nothing personal.”
“Sure. You just don’t want to go to federal prison.”
Graham snapped his fingers. “Now you’re catching on.”
“Which is why,” Patrick added, “you would rather stay in my jail than get turned over to the nice FBI agent out there.”
“Trust me,” Graham said, “if he’s here for me, then he’s anything but nice.”
“Well, here’s the thing.” Taking a step forward again, Patrick locked gazes with the man in his holding cell. “If you want me to keep you here, and ignore the request of a federal agency, then you need to give me something to work with. Tell me why you don’t want to go with this man. Is it dangerous for you? Does it violate some law? What?”
Pursing his lips, Graham gestured helplessly with one hand. “I can’t tell you that.”