Past Imperfect

by Remington Kane

  Ballou drove northwest. If he could make it to a big city like Chicago or Detroit it would be easier for him to get lost in a crowd.

  His ploy of spray painting the satanic symbols in the home didn’t jibe with the forensic evidence at the scene. That all pointed to one person being responsible, not a group of Satanists. After one of his hairs was retrieved from the trap in the shower drain, it was later found to be a DNA match for blood recovered at one of his robberies of an armored car. The scene where he had killed a police officer. The manhunt revved up again and with two more murders to add to the list. Ballou found that even Chicago wasn’t a big enough place to hide.

  By the time he’d made it to Lee Kirkpatrick’s farm he had been recognized by an off-duty cop and come close to being captured. He’d also run out of money and had no idea what he was going to do next. Despair had him in its grip and he feared he would either spend the rest of his days behind bars or wind up dying in a shootout with the police.

  And then he saw her face for the first time in more than twenty years and he was once again that lovesick sixteen-year-old boy he had been.

  The news was on and showing a teacher who had won some award. Ballou looked up at the screen and recognized a woman who was standing in the background. He leapt up from his seat on the sofa and moved closer to get a better look. Yes, it was her. She was older, a grown woman, but there was no mistaking that beautiful face. It was Nicole Harrison.

  A commercial came on and Ballou realized that Kirkpatrick and his brothers were staring at him. Jimmy Kirkpatrick made the comment that he must have a thing for the teacher who’d been interviewed. Ballou let him go on thinking that and told him that they had grown up together.

  Before the commercial had come on, Ballou had been able to make out that Nicole had been having a conversation with one of the other teachers. There were educators from all fifty states there for the ceremony and they were easily identified by the small replica state flags they wore. Most of the flags couldn’t be recognized from a distance of more than twelve feet, but Ballou didn’t need Kirkpatrick’s giant 4K television to recognize the state flag of Alabama. It was a simple design, a big red X on a field of white. Alabama became Ballou’s next destination.

  Ballou reached Alabama by sleeping days and traveling at night. The car he drove was stolen. He’d exchanged the license plates with those taken from a car in a strip mall. The small amount of money Kirkpatrick had given him was enough to buy gas and food. To make the money last, he ate only twice a day and consumed whatever was on the dollar menu of the fast-food restaurants he pulled into. He had shaved his head while he was staying with Lee Kirkpatrick. Between the shaved head and the beard, he hoped to be unrecognizable to any cops who saw him.

  By using his phone to search the internet, he’d learned that the Teacher of the Year from Alabama was a young woman named Ann Campbell. Campbell taught eighth graders. Ballou had twenty-two dollars left when he located the school she taught at. He used most of it to buy a pair of cheap binoculars that weren’t much more than a toy. He needed them to get a look at the people coming and going from the parking lot of the school. If he had walked over to stand close enough to see into the cars, he would have drawn too much attention to himself and looked suspicious. The last thing he wanted was for someone to call a cop to come and ask him questions.

  The cut-rate binoculars were good enough to bring faces into focus from over a hundred feet away. He recognized Ann Campbell from her photos. She had driven into the parking lot in a green Camry. Ballou would follow her at the end of the school day and find out where she lived.

  The next morning, after Ann Campbell left home to head to school, Ballou entered her apartment once he had broken through a window at the rear. Campbell lived in a four-unit apartment house. Her neighbors, who were also young women, had all left the building around the same time as Campbell, to head to their own jobs.

  Ballou was hoping to find something that connected Campbell to Nicole. In the brief exchange he witnessed between them on television, Ballou had seen Nicole pat the teacher gently on the arm with affection. That seemed to indicate that they were friendly.

  He found several pictures that had Nicole in them as he looked through a photo album. In most of the photos, Nicole was standing beside a man who was about fifteen years older than her. Ann Campbell was in three of the photos. She was a teen in one and wearing the cap and gown of a college graduate in another. The third picture was more recent. The older man was absent, and Ann Campbell looked as she did now. There was an inscription written on the back of one of the photos that had the man in them. Ballou guessed that it had been written by Campbell.

  Me and Uncle James and Aunt Nicole at their house in Meadow Creek.

  Aunt and Uncle. That meant that they were man and wife. Jealousy flared up in Ballou and he knew it was ridiculous. He and Nicole had a teenage love affair decades earlier. What did he expect? That she had remained chaste and faithful to him all these years?

  So she had married, and married well judging by the grand home shown in the background of the photo. Good for her.

  Ballou located an old address book in a filing cabinet and went through it. He searched under H for Harrison then realized that Nicole might not have kept her maiden name. Looking instead for the first name Nicole, Ballou found her listed under the surname of Price. James and Nicole Price were listed as living at Number 1 Mammon Lane in Meadow Creek, Alabama.

  Mammon? Ballou thought. It was a word he’d only heard in a bible quote: One cannot serve God and Mammon.

  Maybe James Price had made his choice and chosen the cash. From the look of the house he and Nicole lived in, Price certainly had made a few bucks in his time.

  Ballou left Ann Campbell’s apartment with her laptop, camera, and an envelope containing five hundred dollars. The envelope had been taped to the underside of a desk drawer. When she came home and found the broken window and missing items, she would call the police and report the crime. There should be no reason for the cops to tie the robbery to him.

  He headed toward Meadow Creek to find Nicole. He had no idea what he would say to her if they met and realized that what he was doing was crazy. He was a fugitive from justice who was wanted for multiple murders, and instead of finding somewhere to hide, he was traveling about on a quest to see a woman who might not even remember him.

  No. She’ll remember me. We were kids, yeah, but what we had was real.

  As Ballou drove, his mind drifted back to recall his days with Nicole.

  Chapter 12

  FLORIDA 1997

  Nicole Harrison was an air force brat whose pilot father had been stationed at a base located in a town that bordered the one Kent Ballou grew up in.

  Ballou and the other boys noticed the pretty dark-haired teen the moment she entered their regional high school. The other boys thought she was hot; Ballou had fallen in love.

  Nicole had trouble keeping her eyes off the quiet boy who sat in the last row of her history class. Like Ballou, she’d felt an instant attraction.

  Ballou answered Nicole’s smile with a foolish grin as he joined her at her locker at the end of the school day. A short time later, they were at the local fast-food joint and telling each other about their lives. Nicole should have climbed on the school bus that would take her back to the air force base. She blew it off and told Ballou that she would call her mother later and ask her to come get her.

  Because of her father’s career as a pilot, Nicole had lived in eight different places, including Japan and Germany. Consequently, Nicole spoke German and Japanese, although she admitted that she was much better with German. She also spoke Italian, because her mother was from Italy.

  Ballou was impressed by her. Not only was she beautiful, but she was smart as well. In comparison, he had been nowhere and knew nothing. However, he did have a hobby. A result of that hobby had been discussed in school that day, although no one knew that he was the one responsible. Risking exposure, he told Ni
cole about it.

  She lowered her voice to respond. “You’re the one who vandalized the police cars?”

  Ballou nodded.

  Nicole laughed. “The bus from the base passed by the police station on the way here. I saw the cars. You spray-painted the word ‘assholes’ on them in red paint.”

  Ballou shrugged. “The cops ride around in those cars like they own the damn town. I was with my mom last week when she got a ticket for doing thirty miles an hour. The speed limit was only twenty-five, and I’ll bet you that the cop did over forty to catch up to us. They are assholes.”

  Nicole leaned closer and Ballou thought she might kiss him. Instead, she had a request.

  “Take me with you the next time you do something like that.”

  “Are you sure? We’ll be in a lot of trouble if we get caught.”

  She smiled. “I like taking risks. Being good is boring.”

  Ballou surprised himself by kissing her on the lips. When he opened his eyes, Nicole was smiling at him.

  “I was wondering how long it would take you to do that.”

  Nicole was with Ballou the next time he committed vandalism on police property. The two of them flattened the tires of the police department’s emergency response vehicle and smashed the tail and headlights with a rock. The emergency response vehicle was a glorified van with a radio antenna on top.

  As they were walking away on land that bordered a swamp, Nicole revealed that she had a hobby of her own.

  “You burn down buildings?” Ballou asked, surprise and shock evident in his voice.

  “Not houses or anything… not yet. But I like to watch fire.”

  “Yeah. Fire is cool. I set a garbage can on fire once when I was six, but my dad busted me doing it and spanked my ass.”

  Nicole laughed. “Imagine if he knew what you were doing to the police cars.”

  “I’m not six anymore. No one is going to catch me.”

  “You know the town. What is there around here that I can burn?”

  Ballou gave that some thought, then smiled. “I know just the thing.”

  The town had recently built a new pier at the lake. The old pier was left to rot until they came up with the funds to safely remove it. Nicole saved them the trouble. She always carried a can of lighter fluid and matches in her purse. She used them both to set the old pier ablaze.

  Ballou took her by the hand afterwards and led her to a spot where they could watch the fire without being observed. The old pier had been burning for twenty minutes by the time the fire department arrived. Their efforts weren’t really needed, by then, the pier had collapsed, and the lake water was extinguishing the blaze.

  Ballou and Nicole had walked to the pier. On the way back, they stopped at an isolated beach that was just a strip of sand located between groupings of palm trees. The teens began kissing, and it turned into Kent Ballou’s first sexual experience. He loved Nicole, and he told her so that day. She confessed that she loved him too, and for Ballou, life had never been better.

  It lasted all of five weeks.

  Nicole’s father received orders that he was to report to Guam. Nicole and her parents were on the move once again. Ballou cried on the day Nicole left. What followed were phone calls that always ended with the teens declaring their love for each other and the vow that they would someday get together again. After not hearing from Nicole for nearly a month, Ballou called the base in Guam and was told that Nicole’s father had been transferred yet again. The voice on the phone would not inform Ballou of the air force pilot’s new station.

  Nicole never called him again, and Ballou had no way to reach her. It was around that time when Ballou quit being a vandal and became a burglar. He had never stopped thinking of Nicole and stared whenever he spotted a woman who reminded him of her.

  The drive from Ann Campbell’s apartment took Ballou just under two hours.

  The house at Number 1 Mammon Lane in Meadow Creek was the only property around for miles. It sat at the top of a hill and had a view of Cheaha Mountain. A black wrought-iron fence surrounded the house and grounds and could be reached by traveling down a long and winding private road that acted as a driveway. Ballou saw that there was also a large outer building that housed servants. That structure was positioned three hundred yards from the house. Nicole was more than well off—she had gotten stinking rich.

  Good for her, Ballou thought, while feeling an ache deep down. If not for the damn dentist who had identified him by his teeth, he could have reunited with Nicole while having a fortune of his own. Instead, he looked like a bum and was wanted by the law.

  Ballou was watching the home from the trees that bordered it on its right side. He had tossed away the cheap binoculars he had and replaced them with a decent pair.

  There was a stone guard shack at the entrance that was about the size of the cell Ballou had while in prison. The man sitting in the shack was loaded with muscle and had a gun on his hip. It seemed like a lot of security for a private home out in the middle of nowhere. Ballou wondered if Nicole’s husband was someone important enough to warrant it.

  He moved closer to the house. He wanted to get a good look at Nicole, and he couldn’t do that without getting closer to the fence. Maybe once he laid eyes upon her, he would be satisfied and move on. His obsession with his first love could land him back in prison if he wasn’t careful.

  Ballou reached the fence and knelt down behind a tree. Now that he was closer, he could see that there were exterior cameras. A man appeared from around a corner of the house. He was as large as the man in the guard shack and had a rifle hanging across his back from a strap. He appeared to be walking the grounds while on guard duty.

  Why all the security? Ballou thought.

  Another man came into view. He was armed with a rifle like the first perimeter guard but also had a dog on a leash. The hound was a huge German shepherd. When Ballou saw the dog stop walking and sniff at the air, he decided that he’d best be going before the beast zeroed in on his scent.

  Ballou was turning while rising from his crouch when he heard a sound behind him. As his head swiveled around, he saw a rifle butt speeding toward his face. After that, there was a flash of pain, followed by darkness.

  Ballou came to a short time later. He’d been stripped down to his boxer shorts and socks and was secured to the seat with chains and manacles that were bolted to the chair. The left side of his head hurt, and he felt dizzy.

  He looked around to see where he was. It was a small, bare room with a concrete floor and unfinished walls. The ceiling was only about eight feet in height and there was a glass block window high up in one wall.

  I’m in a basement, Ballou thought. Nicole’s basement?

  On his right he noticed a table sitting a few feet away. It was the type that could be folded up when not in use. Arranged on top of the table was a pair of pliers, a hammer, shears, a set of knives, and a portable blowtorch. Along with the tools on the table, there was also a stack of clear plastic drop cloths and duct tape. Seeing that blowtorch made Ballou nervous.

  He heard footsteps approaching from somewhere behind him. It sounded like more than one person. A door opened, and bound to the chair as he was, he could only turn his head to look at them. When he did so, the pain in his skull increased.

  There were three men dressed in long, gray rain slickers that had hoods. The hoods were down, and Ballou recognized one of them as the first guard he had seen walking patrol around the house. That man moved to the table and grabbed up several of the packages of drop cloths.

  The other two men Ballou hadn’t seen before. They were all big men, but one of them, a black man, was taller and wider than the other two. He had a handsome face and wore a thin mustache. The way he stared at Ballou reminded him of the glares he used to get from prison guards. He looked away first. There was no sense in antagonizing the man and Ballou understood that he would only walk away from whatever he had stumbled into if they decided to let him go.

  T
he black man gave an order to the other two men in a rich deep voice. “Wrap up the area.”

  The men began unfolding the drop cloths. They used the tape to hang the sheets up over the walls, then secured two of the sheets to the ceiling. They were tall enough not to need a step stool or a ladder.

  “What’s going on?” Ballou asked. He was ignored.

  One of the men told the other one to lift Ballou up so that he could put plastic down on the floor. The guy stepped behind the chair, squatted down, then grunted as he picked up the metal chair with Ballou in it. Even though Ballou had recently lost weight, his body, along with the heavy chair and its manacles and chains had to weigh over two hundred pounds. The guy holding him was forced to set his burden down a moment later.

  “He’s too heavy. Give me a hand.”

  “I’ve got it,” the black man said. He stepped behind Ballou as the other man had done and lifted the chair. Unlike the first man who had jerked the chair upwards only to set it down while huffing, the black man held Ballou’s weight with ease. He took several steps to the side, allowing the others to spread plastic down. When they had finished, the chair was lowered slowly and settled gently. When the black man stepped back to where Ballou could see him, he noticed that the guy wasn’t showing any signs of exertion. It made him wonder just how strong the man was.

  Ballou knew what the plastic was for. It was there to keep his blood from staining the floor, walls, and ceiling.

  When they were done, the black man walked over to stand before Ballou. He opened one of his huge hands to reveal the Arkansas driver’s license Ballou had been carrying. The name on it was Steve Bosworth. One of the illegal activities Lee Kirkpatrick and his brothers engaged in had been the supplying of phony IDs to underage teens. The forgery might be good enough to get a sixteen-year-old past the doorman of a nightclub, but it would never pass inspection by a cop. It hadn’t fooled the black man either.