by R.M. Haig
September 15th, 2016. 12:00PM
Garthby, Indiana
Jake had several hours to waste after he left Nikki's before he was due to visit Chucky at the Elsmere County PD and jailhouse. He used a portion of that time checking up on Rusty Parker again with a quick drive-by and a few minutes worth of surveillance. As before, he found nothing out of the ordinary. The hospice organization came for one of their visits, and then left without incident shortly after their arrival. The mail also came and was delivered to Rusty's curbside box, which was of some interest to Jake given his past discoveries.
Ever the opportunist, he waited for the postal vehicle to be well out of sight before he pulled up to the box and opened it to check the contents. There was a clothing catalog and three letters, each of which was sent standard post and looked to be an advertisement for local services. None of them was of interest, so he deposited them back in the box as though nothing had ever happened and simply drove away.
His route took him passed Butcher's Lane, so he slowed and parked on the shoulder for a few moments to see if Daryl was up to anything strange or mysterious just for good measure. He wasn't, so a brief period of watching quickly gave way to more driving towards Garthby, towards his final scheduled destination for the day.
Along the way he passed the ruins of Super Socket Fasteners again, not slowing his travel in the least because the place was clearly useless in its broken down and abandoned condition. There were no answers for him there this time, so he drove on without a second thought.
As he traveled, that familiar sensation that he was being followed popped up from time to time, but he just didn't care anymore. If there was a wrecked out Buick LeSabre on his tail, so what? If that vehicle was operated by The Butcher Of Burlwood, so be it. It was clear the driver wasn't going to give himself up easily. If Jake started getting too close to the answer, the man would take further steps to intervene. When that happened, Jake would pounce... when that happened, he would have his answers right in the palm of his hand. Checking the mirrors like a good detective, he didn't see the vehicle if it was there. That meant he was heading away from what mattered to the driver, and that was fine because his mission was something entirely different on this afternoon.
After a half-hour on the road, he was in Garthby. He passed the Ice House and it brought a smile to his face, leaving him to wonder within himself whether it was the memories of old that drew his grin or those conjured more recently on what could perhaps be called his first date with young Miss Spencer. Whichever it was, his grin was full and complete... something he hadn't experienced much as of late given the circumstances of his life.
Pulling into the jailhouse lot brought no such expression of joy or happiness. If anything, the spartan look of the building soured his mood and brought him back down to the low state of being that had become his norm. The place looked ragged and run down, not at all what he would've expected from the crown jewel of Ron Boudreaux's legal empire. It was institutional and it was cold, and the thought of Chucky's being held captive there tugged at his heart. His old friend was the antithesis of this place in his soul, and now he was a prisoner to the negativity and the depravity of the rest of the world at large.
Parking in one of the spots marked visitors only, he withdrew his Beretta and placed it in the glovebox for safekeeping. Stepping out of the Malibu and locking it up tight, he sighed at what he would see when he walked through the main entrance of the place. In all his days, he'd never visited a prisoner of the state and been subjected to the sort of screening that he knew was in store for him. He imagined it would be something on the level of a TSA pat-down kicked up to eleven, and he wasn't looking forward to enduring it in the least.
In the end, it wasn't nearly as terrible as he imagined it would be. A quick pass through a metal detector followed by a scan with the wand after his belt-buckle set the large machine off, and then he was good to go. The officers on duty directed him to the visiting area, and he expected he would run into the big bad Sheriff in charge at every turn the corridors leading up to it took. Surely, King Ron didn't intend to let him visit his friend without some further intereference... without some nasty words of warning or promise of ill things to come if he continued with his investigation.
Apparently, harassment was not on the man's agenda, as he didn't appear -- even for a moment -- before Jake was seated in his chair in the visiting area. The place looked much as Jake expected it to, much as places like it are depicted in movies and on television as being. There was a chair before a small counter, which was interrupted by a pane of safety glass beyond which the counter continued before falling off and giving way to a chair on the opposite side. There was a corded phone mounted to a rise in the counter on either side, presumably the means by which he would communicate with Chucky. The only difference between this particular area and those in the movies was that there was only one space for communication, and he had generally seen several booths in a line represented in fiction. He chalked this up to Elsmere being a small county and settled into the chair, waiting for his captive friend to be brought in.
The gravity of the entire situation struck him as he waited, something that he thought he'd experienced in full back at the courthouse but realized now he'd barely scratched the surface of. In mere moments, his innocent and naive friend of old would be brought into the room in chains and shackles, a man marked for death in a case where the cards were heavily stacked against him. Try as he might, he hadn't found any cracks in that case that might set him free and clear his name. The suspects of old were old and seemed unlikely to be the culprits in this latest crime, leaving few directions in which to point an accusatory finger that would hold an ounce of water in a court of law.
FGSI was clearly a criminal organization, but there was absolutely nothing linking it to the death of poor little Billy Marsh. Rusty Parker looked good as the Butcher of old, but he was in no condition to carry out such a heinous act today given his physical frailty. Evander Hughes was half way to moon mentally, he certainly couldn't have played a part in the boy's death because he barely knew what planet he was on. Daryl Lane was an emotional wreck with no real motive or opportunity to carry out the acts that were evidently perpetrated on a young boy who suspiciously befriended and then rejected one Charles Edward Murphy on account of his parent's objection. All of those things pointed the hand of justice away from the suspects of old -- and directly at a man who was by all account incapable of doing something so terrible.
His head swimming with what if's and maybe's, he tried to shake all of the issues he was encountering in his investigation off and to clear his mind so that he could be what Chucky needed him to be; an optimistic and supportive friend.
What would he tell the man, though?
That he had nothing?
That, so far as any jury would be concerned, he hadn't discovered anything that might cast doubt on Chucky's guilt?
How could he express that in a way that his simple-minded friend would fully understand? How could he sugar-coat it enough to keep it from tearing his sweet heart right out of his chest? How could he be both honest and supportive all at once when there was nothing to build hope on?
Before he had a chance to fully vet potential answers to these questions, a door opened in the room beyond the safety glass and Chucky appeared. He wasn't handcuffed, he wasn't shackled, and he looked very much like a normal person. Beyond the bright orange jumpsuit that he wore to show his status and standing within normal civilization, that is. His hair was as disheveled as it had been in court, and it looked as though his face hadn't seen a razor at least since then. Jake could almost smell him through the glass, and it wasn't a pleasant odor to behold even when it was simply in his mind. It was that familiar body odor topped with countless missed showers, and it seemed likely to be nauseating if not for the fact that they were technically in two different and separate rooms.
Chucky's shaggy face broke into a wide s
mile when its eyes saw Jake beyond the glass, and the mustached mouth mimed the words Hi Darkwing in what was probably a shout that was muffled by the soundproofed nature of their surroundings. Jake returned the smile, though his was far less genuine, and he picked up the phone on his side of the chamber to speak with his old buddy.
Chucky took his seat, looking at Jake with confusion in his eyes as he searched his side for the phone that was plainly obvious to his right. Jake pointed it out to him, pressing his finger on the glass, and Chucky mouthed oh before finally picking it up to begin the conversation.
"Hi Darkwing!" He repeated, the words audible to Jake this time through his receiver.
"Hey there, Chucky," he returned as excitedly as he could manage to muster in his funk.
"How's it going, pal?"
Jake balked at the question, sitting back in his chair and shifting his weight on his behind. "It's going okay," he fibbed.
"Did you figure out who The Butcher is yet?" Chucky wondered with wide eyes.
"Well," he began, hesitating, "I think I'm close."
"It's Rusty, right?" The man suggested, blasting Jake into a confusion regarding how he would possibly have come to such a conclusion.
"It might be," Jake returned after a pause of consideration, "but why would you think that?"
"I dunno," Chucky claimed, looking as though he felt he'd done something wrong in suggesting him as a suspect. "He's just the only other one with keys to the van."
"Tell me about that," Jake said in reply. "Tell me about Rusty and the van. I know he has keys, but has he used it lately?"
Chucky's face dropped further, until he was looking at the surface of the counter he was seated at, and he looked guilty now in what he'd said. "Not lately," he admitted, "but he used to use it all the time!"
"I know that, Chuck," Jake returned the volley, "but you know that the van is a big part of this thing with Billy, right?"
"Yes," Chucky said, nodding his still lowered head.
"So why would you mention Rusty and the van if he hasn't driven it lately? Have you talked to Rusty lately? Have you seen him? Do you have reason to believe that he had anything to do with what happened to Billy Marsh?"
"No," Chucky replied to several questions with one answer, shaking his head this time while still staring straight down.
Jake was unwilling to let this branch of the conversation die, it was too strange that Chucky went straight to Rusty with his accusation for it to be just a simple slip of the tongue. "Chuck, if I'm gonna help you here, you need to be completely up front with me!"
"I am!" The prisoner responded to the scolding.
"Then tell me why you went straight to Rusty! I didn't say a word, and you asked if I'd looked at him! There has to be a reason you would point a finger at him!"
Chucky paused, taking a few deep breaths and sighing each one out before he answered. "I just think he used to be The Butcher, that's all."
"Why?" Jake pressed. "Why him, of everybody?"
"Just because!" Chucky answered, slowly raising his eyes.
"That's not good enough!" Jake admonished, harshening his tone a but. "Do you have reason to believe that he was The Butcher? Do you have any clue about it that you can share with me? Chucky, if you have evidence that Rusty killed any of the kids from before, then I need --"
"I don't wanna talk about it!" Chuck shouted in return, his voice overloading the handset speaker and making it crackle. This was a stunning change of tone, and it set Jake reeling for a moment. There seemed no reason on the surface for the suspect in the murder of Billy Marsh to get so excited over the mention of another potential target of the investigation.
Why should be be so agitated?
What was he hiding?
"You don't want to talk about it?" Jake asked incredulously. "Well Great!" he yelled, cranking up the tension. "Then this just got really easy! I can wrap up my investigation! All you have to do is sit in here and wait a few years, then they'll kill you and you'll never have to talk about it again! Is that what you want?"
"No!" Chucky cried, obviously conflicted somehow.
"Then talk to me, Chuck!" Jake begged. "I hate to tell you this, pal, but so far I've come up with a whole lot of nothing that says you didn't kill Billy Marsh! I have no idea what Boudreaux has that says you did, but apparently it's enough that he thinks he can get a jury to put you to death! If that's not what you want, then I need to know everything that you know, and it's pretty obvious you're holding back! Now, let's think about what's happened so far; we walked in, we sat down, and the very first thing you said is it's Rusty! That's a mouth-full, man! Especially since I didn't say a word to you about it even possibly being Rusty! I know Rambo didn't tell you it was Rusty, and I'm positive that Boudreaux didn't tell you that it could be! So that means you must know something -- and if you do, then you need to tell me!"
"I don't know anything," Chuck answered, congested and tearful after being yelled at by a man he once knew as his friend. A man who, as a boy, would've jumped all over anyone who dared raise his or her voice at his best and treasured friend. Jake's face looked much the same as it had, but Chucky started to realize that he didn't recognize the person sitting in the opposite room at all. He may as well have been a complete stranger visiting with him, there was no trace of Darkwing to be seen in his words or actions. Darkwing would never have pressed him this way if he didn't want to do something.
"You must, Chucky, you defaulted to a prime suspect in the original investigation!" Jake snapped again, making a revelation to the man. "There's no way you just jumped to that conclusion without any information!"
There was a long and emotional pause before the man promptly blurted out "he killed Timmy!" The message was delivered directly through his sobbing, bringing the conversation to a sudden and grinding halt.
Jake's mouth fell agape, his shock coming complete with a thousand questions that swirled through his mind.
Was this for real?
Was this another dream?
Would Canon start playing in the ether again?
Could he possibly have heard what he thought he heard from his old friend's lips?
Could his friend possibly have information to back up his claim?
Did Chucky know something, something specific, that brought this revelation to the surface? Or was this no more than a simple mind grasping for straws and delivering what it felt would bring an end to the torment of harsh questioning?
Was there evidence that this was true?
"Chucky..." Jake started slowly, maintaining the gravity of the moment as it pulled at every inch of his flesh. "That's a very serious accusation. Do you have proof of that? How can you know th--"
"Do you remember that Thanksgiving?" Chucky interrupted, snorting snot back up his nose. "Right after Timmy went missing?"
Thinking back, Jake did remember it. It was the year that his mother nearly overdosed on ice, the year that changed the rest of his life when he went to live with The Swetes for her extended absence.
"Yes, I do," he assured with absolute certainty.
"Do you remember I was outside crying? When you were going to Tracy's house?"
Swirling, swirling and "yes. Yes, I remember that you didn't want to go deliver the food because Rusty was being mean to you."
"We didn't just deliver food!" Chucky stated matter-of-factly. "That's when Rusty got rid of Timmy's parts! I saw them in the cooler the day before, and I didn't want to deliver the food because I knew he was going to get rid of Timmy's parts too!"
Again, Jake froze. If this was true, if this was real, then Chucky had been sitting on incriminating information for nearly twenty years. He'd held the key to the case of The Butcher Of Burlwood and done nothing with the knowledge he had. He'd been living with the images of little Timmy Lane all dismembered and piled up in the Our Mother Of Sorrows cooler for two decades. He'd been protecting a murderer for the better part of his life.<
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"Chucky, if you're serious," Jake said one syllable at a time.
"I AM serious!" Chucky shouted again, sobbing uncontrollably now in a fit of tears.
"Why didn't you say something?" Jake asked, still in shock. "Why did you wait all this time?"
"I was scared, Darkwing!" Was the sobbing answer. "I wasn't supposed to see it, and when I did he told me he'd hurt me if I said anything!"
Not sure what to say in return, Jake considered everything related to Timmy's death. He thought about Rambo and his insistence that he had eyes on Rusty during the time when Timmy was kidnapped. He thought about the cooler at Our Mother, and the cook, Jeremy Mosian, that Father Lovett mentioned worked there alone with Rusty and Chucky.
How could Rusty kill Timmy if he was being watched when the boy disappeared? How could the remains of a little boy go unnoticed by a man working full time in the kitchen and all of the surrounding areas of the church? How could any of what Chucky was saying be possible?
"Chuck, what you're saying is going to require a lot of explanation." He began.
"See?" Chucky whined. "That's why I never told anybody! Because they wouldn't believe me, and then Rusty would kill me too because nobody would do anything!"
As the prisoner melted to the counter in a fit, like a small child, Jake continued processing what Chucky had proposed. Further thought led him down new paths, opened new doors and concepts that could make it all fit together. He didn't have enough control of his thoughts to know if he was stretching and twisting pieces to fit or whether they really snapped together cleanly, so it was an abstract puzzle to his mind.
If Jeremy Mosian had been behind the wheel of a particular blue Cadillac Brougham on September 24th, 1992, would that crack the case? If he had taken Timmy to Rusty after Rambo was called away and before the federal agent arrived, could that be the answer? If the two of them had killed and dismembered the boy, if they'd plotted to store him at the church until some of the heat was off... could that be the answer to the riddle?
Well, that could just be what happened...
That could just be how it went...
But Jeremy Mosian was dead now, Father Lovett had said so when his name came up. There would be no further investigation of him as relates to Billy Marsh, he was as out of the picture as Jack Morris was when it came to the death of the latest victim.
"Do you know how Rusty was able to kill Timmy?" Jake asked plainly, simply. "Rambo was watching him, how did he manage to take him and then kill him?"
"Somebody helped him," Chucky whinnied.
"Who helped him?" Jake asked desperately, deferring to the obvious. "Was it Jeremy Mosian?"
"I don't know!" Chucky answered, frustrating his friend.
"But Mosian must've at least known, right?" Jake insisted. "I mean, if the body was in the cooler, he must've seen it!"
"I don't know! I don't think so! Mister M was nice!" Chucky claimed.
"Was it Boudreaux?" Jake hoped, waiting on the edge of his seat for an affirmative so he could sink his teeth into the bastard.
"I don't know!" Chucky repeated, tears falling from his eyes like rain.
"I don't know doesn't do shit for us, Chucky!" Jake shouted. "I don't know puts you on death row! You have to know, you have to remember! Whoever helped him then could've helped him now, and that's the only way that I can even suggest that Rusty killed Billy Marsh! There's no way in hell the man did it by himself with the condition he's in, that much is quite obvious! I need to know who his partner was, and I need it to be someone still alive, do you understand that Chuck?"
After the yelling, Jake took a breath of his own and tried to steady himself. Hearing the words he'd just spoken aloud, he admonished himself internally for essentially leading the witness. He'd given Chucky a set of guidelines, a cookie-cutter that he needed to squeeze his answer into. Knowing the limitations of the man, he realized that he'd made a terrible mistake in setting things up the way he had.
Thankfully, Chucky was also taking a moment to pull himself together, so perhaps the details he'd been fed would fade from his mind. He cleared the tears from his eyes and the snot from his nose, blowing it on his sleeve and staining his jumpsuit with unpleasantness. He looked up to see a perplexed, dismayed and irrritated Darkwing, which wasn't something he had ever liked to see. As much as his friend emphasized his needs, as clear as he made them, Chucky had no answers to give him regarding who Rusty's accomplice was. He truly didn't know, and therefore he couldn't tell. It was this realization that calmed him, this understanding that restored his self control and lifted him out of his blubbering. He only knew what he knew, so there was no sense in crying about what he couldn't control.
"I don't know, Darkwing," he said calmly. "I just don't know."
Jake sighed, feeling somewhat guilty for having grilled his less than fully functional friend so harshly. Surely, he would've spilled the information by now if it was in his possession. Surely he wasn't protecting anyone at this point, when his own life was on the line against a more direct threat than Rusty could've ever made towards him.
"Okay," he said to comfort the man. "Okay, Chucky, I guess I just have to dig into it."
Even as he said it, he wasn't sure what it meant. Who could he possibly look into at this point that he hadn't already had eyes on? Who associated with Rusty Parker at this stage of his life? No one that he had seen, save for the hospice workers. He was a man out of time. His friends were dead, his potential cohorts were dead, and soon enough he would be dead himself. Nature would take from him what the law never managed to snag, if Chucky's allegations were true.
Still, there was the FGSI connection. Jake wasn't sure what or who FGSI was, but he knew that Rusty and Boudreaux were both involved, so that meant the old man wasn't entirely isolated in his old age. He would have to continue looking in that direction. He would have to shove a probe way up FGSI's ass and see who came tumbling out of the woodwork in response to the intrusion.
It wasn't much, but it was something to go on. If Chucky was telling the truth, which he believed he was, then Russell Parker was the original Butcher Of Burlwood. Based on the similarities of Billy Marsh's murder to those of the past, the original Butcher had to be the prime suspect no matter how long the odds. If that was Rusty, Jake just had to find a way to make him wear it.
"But you believe me?" Chucky asked, looking desperate for an answer in the affirmative.
"Yes," Jake replied, "I believe you."
Chucky nodded, sniffling back a few new tears and wiping his eyes to the point that they were a deeper red than they started as.
"Can we talk about something else?" He asked. "Before you have to go, can we talk about different things?"
"What kind of things?" Jake wondered, his mind still racing about everything that Chucky's revelation meant.
"Normal things," Chucky replied.
"Like what?" Jake asked, trying to focus on the moment.
"Is anybody taking care of my trailer?" Chucky said.
"Yeah, Chuck, I am." Jake replied. "I'm living there while I investigate, I hope you don't mind."
"No, I don't mind!" Chucky said excitedly through a smile. "Sorry about the mess."
"Oh, you have no idea," Jake Chuckled, remembering the wreckage caused by officers serving the search warrant.
"Is it just like old times? You living back in Burlwood?"
"I don't know if I'd go that far," Jake returned. "I didn't exactly leave Burlwood on good terms, I'm still not too sure how I feel about being back."
"Do you still know Tracy?" Chucky asked, likely remembering the close relationship the two maintained when their love was new.
This took Jake's eyes down to the table, though tears were not in store for him. "Yeah, I still know her." He explained less than enthusiastically.
"Is she staying at my place too?"
"No, Chuck," Jake said. "It's not really like that anymore."
"Yeah, I did," Jake recalled.
"Like friends living together?"
"No, we were married not long after we left Burlwood, so she was my wife."
"Married?" Chucky marveled. "Does that mean that you --" he hesitated with a look of childlike wonder, "did it with her?"
"Did what?" Jake asked as naively as his friend might've at a similar question.
"You know," Chucky said, a laugh on the tip of his tounge, "it!"
"Are you asking if we had sex?" Jake inquired, shaking his head in uncertainty.
Chucky's outburst of manic laughter answered his question, that's exactly what he was asking.
"Well, yeah," Jake chuckled in response. "We were married for a long time, Chucky, we've got a kid together."
"Wow!" Chucky exclaimed. "So you're a daddy?"
"Yeah, I'm a daddy," Jake realized for the first time in quite a while. "I'm a daddy to a boy named Garrett."
"Like your dad! And like your middle name!"
"You got it, Chuck," Jake replied.
"That's so cool!"
"Yeah," Jake looked to the floor now, further down than the counter as his mood fell in concert. "It's pretty cool."
"So, what's it like?" Chucky asked, his eyes wide and curious.
"What?" Jake asked. "Being a father?"
Chucky shook his head.
"Then what?" Jake wondered. "Sex?"
Again, the look of marvel on his friend's face as he nodded answered in the affirmative.
"Well, I dunno Chucky," Jake chuckled, turning his hands up to illustrate the point. "I mean, how am I supposed to explain that? It's -- it's -- it's wonderful," he finally managed to say. "It's the most wonderful thing you can imagine. Being so close to a person that you love, it's incredible. I don't know how else to explain it, man, it is what it is."
Chucky looked sheepish as he listened to the explanation, then like a sad old dog when Jake's description came to an end.
"I've never done it," he explained, looking sad. "I tried it once, but I was too nervous. It didn't work."
"Oh, that happens!" Jake laughed. "Shit, it happened to me the first time Tracy and I tried! Embarrassing, isn't it?"
Chucky nodded, not laughing in concert with his friend this time. "I'll probably never have a chance to try it again," he said, perhaps realizing the pinch that he was in and the odds that he was facing, or perhaps just realizing his limitations and social ability.
The idea of that tugged at Jake's heart again, and he wanted to scoop his sidekick up in a comforting hug to tell him everything was going to be okay. Of course, the glass between them prevented any physical contact. That broke his heart, but there was nothing to be done about it. There was no string he could pull to save his pal this time, there was no magic button that would make all of this go away. Chucky was in for the long haul, perhaps for the rest of his life -- or as long as the State saw fit for him to live. It was going to take something big to free him of that fate. It was going to take a miracle.
"Look, Chucky," Jake said resolutely, "I'm gonna find out who did this."
Chucky nodded his head again, the tears threatening to return as Darkwing spoke words of hope, words that could ring hollow if he didn't catch a break. Determined to do what he could, Jake repeated the sentence -- perhaps to convince himself that such a thing was possible.
"When I find him, we'll get you out of here. I just need you to stay strong for a little longer, okay Chuck?" He asked.
This time there were more tears. Then more slobber and snot that any grown man should ever produce. In an effort to lend his strength, what little there was of it anymore, Jake pressed his palm against the safety glass and waited for Chucky to do the same. They couldn't feel anything of each other through the barrier, but the sentiment was exactly what Chucky needed in the moment.
"Are we still blood brothers?" Chucky asked in sobs.
"Of course we are!" Jake answered. "We'll always be!"
While they sat making as much contact as was possible, the door behind Chucky opened wide to reveal a corrections officer in full uniform.
"That's time," he said kindly, something Jake didn't expect from an employee of Sheriff Ron Boudreaux. "Come on, sir. Back to your cell block."
Jake kept his hand pressed against the window, projecting his manufactured confidence as long as he possibly could as Chucky stood up without breaking their contact. When he turned to face the officer, he finally had to withdraw his hand and return to whatever hell awaited him through that door alone.
Jake had learned a lot during this visit, he just wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with the new information. Clearly, Rusty had a partner in crime back when The Butcher ruled over the streets of Burlwood. The problem was, most of the likely suspects were either dead or close enough to it that they couldn't possibly have participated in the murder of Billy Marsh.
Finding the person who did was going to take a whole new level of effort... a level he wasn't sure he had within him to spare.
FIFTY-TWO