by R.M. Haig
September 17th, 2016. 3:45AM
Blackmoor, Indiana
Once Jake was clear of Safe & Secure Self Storage, where a collection of high-ranking police brass had just finished stripping the Sheriff of Elsmere County and his trusted deputy of their privileges, he drove directly across the county to the Blackmoor post office. According to the letter he'd stolen from Rusty's house, which he still had with him in the Malibu to support Ron Boudreaux's case of mail theft against him, FGSI Services claimed PO Box 65 within this facility as their mailing address.
Having arrived when the building was open to the general public, Jake walked in as though he sought to send a letter or package and casually wandered over into the PO box area like he had business to do over there. This being a relatively small post office, there was only one wall of three by eight inch boxes, each of which consisted of a metal door with an engraved number on it and a slot where a key would have to be inserted to gain access to the contents.
Finding number sixty-five, Jake noted that there was a window directly behind him that gave a view of the parking lot and several empty parking spaces. If here were to park there, he'd be able to see the entirety of the wall as clear as day. With surveillance in mind, he looked around for anything that would allow him to physically alter the box in which he was interested so that it would be obvious from a position outside of the building. Scanning the countertops containing pens, shipping labels and applications for passports, his eyes happened upon a fine-tipped Sharpie that a previous customer must've unintentionally left behind. Taking the marker in hand, Jake moved back to the boxes and drew an innocuous looking line on the door that would allow him to distinguish the box from the others while hopefully not drawing any suspicion from whomever might come to retrieve the mail.
Satisfied that he would be able to see the mark, he left the building and moved the Malibu into one of the parking spaces he'd seen from inside. The mark of the Sharpie was difficult to detect from a distance, but it was detectable. Knowing that it could be a long, long time before anyone showed up to make a withdrawal from the box, he settled into his seat and leaned it back just enough for him to reflect on everything that had happened.
Like a shard of broken hope driven deep into his heart, every moment of that reflection stung and tore at his soul. He'd told himself all of this time that he didn't really care about Nikki. He'd allowed himself to believe that he had no real attachment to her, that they were no more than strangers drawn together by the forces of pheromones and attraction. That what they had was nothing, that they were just enjoying each other's company in the hours that they spent together, often half or completely undressed.
That illusion was shattered when he heard what he presumed to be the truth from former Elsmere County Sheriff Ron Boudreaux. The idea that she was an addict, that she was a prostitute, that sweet little thing... that hurt him, and the pain was persistent. Feeling all of it and fighting through it, he wondered if the root cause of his torment was the death of an affection that he felt for her as result of her deception, or if it was a sympathy for the suffering she must constantly endure as a symptom of having done such terrible things that she probably felt forced to do by circumstance.
Whichever it was, the knowledge of her deeds changed everything he thought about her, altered everything he now realized he felt for her. In the place of warmth and that deceased affection was loathing and empathy all at once. Try as he might, he couldn't figure out how she could walk with her head high knowing what she'd done before, what she possibly still did when he wasn't around. How could she pretend to be something different, something greater than a series of charges like those he'd heard uttered by his old friend Louie Rambo in the cold confines of an alley at Safe & Secure Self Storage?
In the shadow of the disappointment he felt in her, in the wake of such opinion changing prejudice, he thought of his wife, Tracy. With no more than an accusation thrown at Nikki, he felt disgusting for having done the things he'd done with her. He felt damaged by his interactions with her, poisoned by tainted merchandise that he handled unknowingly.
Is that how Tracy felt about him in the face of the things that he'd done? The long nights out, the mysterious voyages into the city that sent him home smelling of liquor and cheap perfume. Were those things as traumatic to Tracy as what Nikki had done were to him in this moment?
As a result of his physical appearance, he'd been presented with hundreds of opportunities to stray from his wife, been hit on by dozens of fast and loose women that would've given him anything and everything if it was what he desired in the moment. Of course, he'd turned them all away -- but how was Tracy to know that? How was she able to lay down with him when she had no idea where he might've been or what he might've done while he was away?
She'd been so patient with him and his descent into ruin, and he realized now that he just couldn't understand why. Here he was, having given up on Nikki in light of the things she'd done, and Tracy had stood by him for so long while he dragged her and his son down to the depths of his potential miscreance and deviance. She never batted an eye, never asked a single question about what terrible things he could've done while he was away. Without knowing, seemingly without wondering, she still took him into her arms when he came home and treated him as a wife treats a husband... until he really lost control, and then what choice did she have?
In learning of the way Nikki Spencer lived her life and feeling the destructive power of secrets and lies, Jake longed to take Tracy in his arms and cry for all of the injustices he'd done to her in his alcohol and ignorance fueled rampages. He'd placed Tracy under duress with his behavior as of late, but she'd handled herself with class and full composure for so long. She'd ridden the horse all the way up until it was simply unbearable to continue, until the steed bucked so hard that there was simply no holding on to be managed. Until the horse had gone lame and fell to its side, when she no option but to dismount as the stallion writhed and struggled to stand once more.
To him, not having such class or such composure within himself, her actions seemed heroic now instead of villainous and vile, as they had before. He'd done such rotten things to her, he'd pushed her against the wall of losing everything and even went so far as to raise his hand to her, and she took the high road. She made moves and took actions to do what was right by her and her son.
Only when hope seemed lost did she choose to distance herself from him... to remove his negative influence from her life, to become something greater by freeing herself of the cross that he represented on her back. To move on and move away from the darkness that became of him.
That was tremendous... That was respectable... fuck, that was noble.
And yet, he felt so badly towards her for doing it...
And yet, he felt she was so foul in ejecting him from her life... as he intended to eject Nikki from his after learning of a string of slip-ups no worse in the scheme of things than those he'd suffered himself in days gone by.
How could he have been such a fool?
How could he have been so blind to what he was doing, where he was going?
Nikki slips, and he casts her aside...
He slips, and Tracy holds on... she holds on.
Oh, Tracy... our love... holds on... holds on... you should've been gone, and it holds on... holds on... you are gone, and still it holds on... holds on.
While he sat and lingered on the edge of a breakdown, the business inside the post office wound down and eventually the facility closed. Of course, there was twenty-four hour access to the PO boxes, so Jake wouldn't be going anywhere soon. He would sit there in the Malibu and stay up all night long, and then into the next day if need be. If no one came in the night to empty box sixty-five, he would watch for them by the light of day. If no one came still, he would watch into the next night... and the next day... and the next night... and the next day... he didn't care how long he would sit there, he would sit there until he had his answers... he
would sit there until someone came with a key to the narrow metal box marked with the black line and revealed the identity of FGSI Services to him. If no one came until the very end of time, Jake would be waiting there with his long white beard and shaggy white hair. As no more than a well dressed skeleton, he would wait and watch for the action he needed to see. With no eyes in his decaying boney sockets, he would observe. With no beating in his heart, he would stake this place out.
When it was almost midnight and he was in the throes of his churning mind, his cellphone rang through the speakers of the Malibu. Looking up to his radio display to identify the caller before he answered, he saw the name of Clyde Rambo and decided to pause his suffering to see what his friend and liberator had to say. It turned out that he, along with Dickinson and Gomez, had gone to eighty forty-one Iris Lane and found someone other than Miss Ferguson living in the property. It was a middle-aged man who answered for them, and he readily gave them permission to search the house and the barn behind it. In the barn, of course, were horses. Any sign that there had ever been a warehouse, that there had ever been false paperwork, that there had ever been any meth was long, long gone. There was, though, a nine millimeter slug in one of the rafters that the young man couldn't explain, but there was nothing else that proved anything beyond the fact that Garthby was a good place to raise race horses.
This was no surprise to anyone involved, Jake included. Of course Boudreaux would've cleaned up after himself once prying eyes saw his ass, just as he had cleaned up the SSF factory so long ago. The call ended not long after it had begun, and Jake was left with himself and the silence of the night to keep him company.
The silence was loud, and it was brutal to him in telling its story of love and hate and no forgiveness for those who perpetrate deeds in the name of dark necessities. Hearing it clearly, wishing that it would shut up and stop with its accusations, he waited and waited for any sign of action in the building or the surrounding lot and road. For what seemed like eternity, there was nothing. Then, like a blessing out of the night, came the lights of a vehicle with a smashed up and poorly repaired front end. It barely looked legal for driving on public roadways, but there was no sheriff on duty to stop the driver even if he was in violation of every law regarding vehicle condition on the books.
Watching it struggle to maintain a straight trajectory down the road, Jake eventually realized that it was, in fact, going to pull into the parking lot of the post office with him. Sinking into his seat, doing everything he could possibly do to make his vehicle seem abandoned for the evening, Jake waited while the car parked and a middle aged hispanic man stepped out.
He marched with purpose and intent into the post office, his movement triggering a motion sensor that turned on a light in the otherwise blackened PO box area. With the light, Jake was able to clearly make out the box with the black line he'd drawn on it, and he watched in high suspense to see whether or not this man would open that particular box. The sudden illumination also allowed him to get a good look at the man inside, finding him to be a chubby character wearing no more than a dirty and stained white tank top and age-distressed denim jeans that barely seemed to be holding on in their fight to stay in one piece around his rotund waist. Whomever this man was, he was not the heir to fortunes like those Jake had seen spelled out on the profit and loss statement of FGSI Services.
No, this was a grunt, if he was the FGSI man at all...
Watching him move to the wall, watching him readying his key to open the box he came for, Jake locked his eyes on the small black line the Sharpie he found had made. There, before his eyes, the man slid his key into what Jake was positive was box sixty-five and withdrew a small stack of letters in envelopes. Once he'd retrieved them, he closed and locked the box again while Jake's heart was pounding like a snare in his ears.
With just as much purpose as he'd entered, the man exited the office and climbed back into the wreckage that was his car. Not wanting to spook him in any way, Jake watched which direction he turned out of the lot and let him build some distance before he started the Malibu and set off behind him. Maintaining a good distance, he followed as the man took a series of back roads on which Jake was sure he would realize he was being tailed. Apparently he didn't, as he simply kept driving until they crossed out of Blackmoor and into the town of West Pine.
Having never been to this side of town, Jake had no idea where they were going as they sped through the black of the night into what seemed to be a wealthy neighborhood. Just like on Confederate Way, the houses along the road were large and well landscaped, each of them with Jaguars, Cadillacs, Mercedes and BMW's resting in the driveways. This was the sort of place an owner of FGSI Services would live.
Once they were deep into the town, the raggedy car containing the fat hispanic man pulled up in the crowded driveway of a particularly large abode on the left side of a quiet side street. As Jake pulled over several houses down, he noted that the reason the junker was left hanging out into the street a bit was the fact that there was a silver Cadillac Escalade parked behind a large, older looking white van that took the majority of the available space. On the rear of the vehicle were large blue letters, not spelling out Our Mother Of Sorrows, but FGSI Services... letters that were just as damning and inflammatory as the prior.
From his vantage point, it was hard to tell whether or not the vehicle was Dodge Ram, but it wasn't out of the question. Focused so intently on trying to tell, Jake nearly missed it when the man in the wrecked out car walked casually up to porch and deposited the letters he'd taken from the Blackmoor PO box into a mail slot on the front door of the house. Once they were clearly into the home, the man walked back out to his vehicle and left the scene -- minus his tail.
Jake didn't give a shit who the courier was... he wanted to know the identity of the recipient.
He would wait until daylight. He would see whether or not someone would come out to report for work or go off on some business of this less than wholesome company. If they did, he would follow them and see where he ended up. If they didn't, he would invite himself to breakfast and ask some very pressing questions about what FGSI was and what they had to do with the death of Billy Marsh.
FIFTY-NINE