Wicked Winters

by Melanie Karsak et al.

  He greeted her at the front door with a finger held up for quiet. “Deputy,” he said, his voice just above a whisper. “Please come on in. Allie’s taking a nap, but we can talk in the living room.” He waved her in, and Maggie entered quietly.

  Inside, the foyer was dimly lit, but Jake had the overheads and a lamp switched on in the living room. The place was neatly enough appointed, with a matching couch and loveseat that looked newish, but a recliner and a coffee table that betrayed some years of rugged use. The decor gave the feeling that someone had given a half-hearted try, and indeed, if Maggie understood the arc of Lucinda’s life, it made perfect sense. She had spent her early twenties partying, racking up bad decisions and worse habits. At some point, she had gotten clean, or mostly clean, though she had taken more than one swing through rehab before it would stick. Though Lucinda had finally managed to get herself on the straight and narrow, her home still managed to put off a sense of disarray.

  Jake motioned to the couch. “Please,” he said, “have a seat, deputy. Neal said you’d be by. Could I get you something? Coffee? Tea?”

  Maggie took a seat. “No, thank you, Mr. Harriman, I—”

  “Jake,” he replied quickly. “Just Jake.”

  “Jake,” Maggie agreed. “I just had lunch, and I don’t want to keep you any longer than I have to.”

  Jake nodded. “Suit yourself.” He settled down on the love seat opposite the couch. “Don’t mind telling you, deputy: I wasn’t expecting to see any officers come by today. Neal told me the coroner and the county attorney made up their minds. Thought it was all down to Family Services now.”

  Maggie nodded slowly, trying to gauge Jake’s frame of mind before she spoke, but she couldn’t get a bead on him. He certainly didn’t look cheerful, but that was to be expected. Nevertheless, there was a strange blankness to his expression, a mix of exhaustion and resignation that could almost be taken for disinterest. “I… Neal hasn’t filled me in on all the details, Jake,” Maggie said finally, “but we’re still working—”

  “Yeah,” Jake said robotically. “Working on it. That’s what Neal’s been telling me, what, the last three days now?” Jake closed his eyes and rubbed them with one hand, pinching the bridge of his nose in the fashion of someone staving off a tension headache. There was something casual about the gesture, almost dismissive, as though he found Maggie’s presence a bit annoying, but when he opened his eyes, Maggie saw that they were red and teary. He took a deep breath, and when he had tamped his emotions down, he continued. “I appreciate your effort, Deputy Dell. I really do. But you’ve got to forgive me if I don’t seem too enthusiastic about your chances at this point.”

  “I can only imagine, Jake.”

  “Yeah,” Jake replied, his voice flat and toneless. “Caseworker from Family Service was by last night once she’d heard from the county attorney’s office. Swear I thought she was going to take Allie out of here then and there, but Allie still wants to be here, so she’s giving us through Christmas. Awful damned charitable.” Jake shook his head and took a deep breath, then gestured to the coffee table between him and Maggie where a pile of picture albums sat. “Neal said you wanted to take a look at this stuff. Photos, keepsakes and whatnot. Said it was for the case.” Jake laughed humorlessly. “And here I was thinking the case was closed.”

  Maggie wanted to reply, but there was nothing she could say. Instead, she picked up the top photo album and opened it up.

  The photos inside were a mix of family pictures and shots of landscapes and other nature photos. Jake must have read the curiosity on Maggie’s face. “Lucy, she had kind of an artistic flare. Even back when she was a teenager.” Jake laughed. “For Christmas, back when she was a little kid, she’d make a big list of presents she wanted out of the Sears catalog. When she was fourteen, she asked for just one thing--a fancy camera of some sort. Damned if I remember the brand. All I remember is laying down $125 at a department store in Coalton and thinking my little girl wasn’t a baby anymore.”

  Maggie flipped through a few pages. “This is good work,” Maggie said.

  “She had talent,” Jake replied, “but, hey, who could be a more impartial judge than the artist’s father, right?”

  As Maggie flipped through more pictures, Jake picked up the album she had finished and started looking it over. For a few minutes, the two sat in silence, each lost in their own searches. Maggie could only guess that Jake’s search was for some kind of momentary peace, or maybe a connection to his lost daughter. Hers was simpler: she needed some kind of talisman. After a few minutes, Jake cleared his throat quietly, still mindful of his sleeping granddaughter, and he said, “Deputy, I hope this isn’t too familiar of me, but I wanted to tell you: I knew your husband. Jerry. Knew him many years.”

  A jolt of surprise ran through Maggie, but she didn’t let it show. She nodded politely. “Is that so?”

  “From the time he was a boy,” Jake affirmed, his gaze still turned down to his daughter’s pictures. “I worked a few years with his daddy, Jimmy Dell. Buster. That’s what we called him at work.”

  “I’d heard that was his nickname.” Maggie said. “Jimmy was a good man. We lost him too young. Just fifty-five. Wasn’t a year after Jerry and I were married.”

  “Buster was a heck of a fellow,” Jake concurred. “I couldn’t bring myself to approach you at Jerry’s funeral. Didn’t think you needed to hear from another stranger what a godforsaken shame it was that you lost that good man so young. But now that you’re sitting here, I’ll tell you—it was a hell of a shame.”

  “I… I appreciate that, Jake,” Maggie said. She continued to turn through the pages just to keep her emotions on an even keel.

  Jerry took a long moment to consider his words. “It ain’t just a sorrow, deputy,” Jerry said. “There’s some guilt, too.”

  Maggie looked up now. She couldn’t help herself. “Guilt? Jake, whatever—”

  “Taggart Jeffers, Maggie,” Jake said. The name stopped the breath in Maggie’s lungs. It was a name she rarely let herself remember. “The son of a bitch who hit Jerry. I knew Taggart, Maggie.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said simply, forcing herself to breathe again.

  “Not going to say we were friends,” Jake said. “Acquaintances, I suppose. When we were younger, I guess I got along fine with him, but….” Jake’s voice trailed off.

  “Jake, Taggart lived his whole life here in Briarwood County,” Maggie said. “I’ve met many folks who knew him at some point. I can’t blame them—”

  “Hear me out,” Jake said. “See, when I was a younger fella, Maggie, I used to take the occasional drink.” Jake shrugged. “Sometimes those occasions were a bit more frequent than I hope to be reminded of when I stand before my maker. Those were the years I knew Taggart. He was just another guy getting liquored up at the old pool hall. It’s not like we were buddies. He was just another face around the bar.”

  Jake sighed. “As I got older, I outgrew sitting around the bar. Became a family man. So did Taggart, mind you, but far as I could see, he never let that slow him down. I’d see him around town every now and again, and it was always the same old thing with him. Any time he wasn’t at work, he was at least half in the bag. Then, from what I heard, he got worse, and he’d be half in the bag at work. Eventually, there wasn’t any work anymore. Just the bottle. Just the drink.”

  A heavy quiet hung in the room as Jake took a moment to gather his thoughts. Maggie wished she could break the silence, even if just to tell Jake to stop, that she didn’t want to hear anymore, but she couldn’t bring herself to utter a word.

  Finally, Jake spoke. “His last few years, Maggie, I knew all about Taggart’s drinking. Hell, all the old guys did. And we knew his dumb ass didn’t have any friends left to chauffeur him around, yet still he’d show up all around town, drunk as a skunk.” Jake swallowed hard. “I remember seeing him filling up his gas tank at the Quick Stop one night, and I figured that if he wasn’t three sheets to the wind yet, he w
ould be sooner than later, and the thought occurred to me: Dammit, that sorry son of a bitch is gonna kill somebody one of these days.”

  Jake’s gaze fell to the book in his hands. Maggie could read a terrible shame on his face. “The night I heard about your husband, Maggie—that was a Saturday, I remember. Lonnie Sedgwick told me about it at the counter of that same Quick Stop.” Jake swallowed. His throat clicked dryly. “I laid awake a long spell that night, Maggie, thinking of Jerry. Of when he was a kid. Buster had this picture of him on his desk at work. Jerry must have been ten or eleven, wearing his Boy Scout uniform. I laid awake thinking of Buster’s kid dead out on Highway 63, and all because neither I nor anyone else had the guts to deal with that stupid bastard Taggart Jeffers.”

  After a moment’s consideration, Jake shook his head. “Deal with him. That’s a nice phrase isn’t it?” Jake turned his gaze up at Maggie, and now tears stood clearly in his eyes. “Maggie, that night I heard about Jerry, all I could think was that if I’d known how it was going to shake out with Jeffers, I’d have happily put a slug in his brain.”

  For a long moment, neither of the two could speak, and so they sat in silence and stared at each other. Maggie wanted to say something, but what was there to say? Jake again rubbed his eyes as though to stave off a headache, but this time, the tears slid down his cheeks. He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, deputy. This must be a hell of a thing to hear out of a stranger. But I’ve thought about Jerry so many times over the years, and of you, and of that young boy of yours, and when I think of what I should have done… hell. It’s one thing to feel you’ve failed a loved one, deputy. A friend. Even an acquaintance. But any time I think about what happened to Jerry, I think of how I failed him. And you. I’ve never been one to think too much on things of this nature, but ain’t it a hell of a thing? On one hand, two people can be total strangers, and on the other… on the other, then can be linked together close as kin. Just takes the right circumstances.” He paused thoughtfully. “The right circumstances,” Jake repeated. He laughed as though he’d accidentally told a joke. “Well, I guess the right circumstances are what we call ‘fate,’ aren’t they?”

  For a moment, there was quiet between the two of them. Then the silence was broken by a cry from down the hall. “Oh, jeez,” Jake said, “Allie. She’s been having bad dreams, deputy. Give me a sec.” With that, he arose and hurried out of the room.

  Maggie sat alone, her head swimming with what she had just heard. A strange feeling welled up in her, and she realized with some surprise that it was anger. Jerry was gone. Her husband, her love, had been wiped off the planet by a drunk driver. Of course people had known Taggart had been a danger. Jake was the first who had ever admitted it to her that way, but who else had known? Maggie knew even back then that the Jeffers family had attended First Street Baptist, her own church. Had Pastor Johnson known about Taggart’s drinking, and the risks he took? What about the other old boys at the pool hall? Neal knew Jake from the old days. Had he known Taggart? Had Neal known of his late-night drives?

  The thought twisted in her gut, and for a moment, she thought she might scream. Instead, she turned her attention to the photo album in her lap, needing something else to focus on. Anything at all.

  That’s when she spied the object affixed under the plastic film covering the page full of baby photos. It was thick enough to cause a lump on the plastic that caught the overhead light at the perfect angle to cause a glare, so Maggie had to hold it up close to her face to be sure of what she was seeing.

  It was a lock of hair.

  The lock was blond and bundled together with a rubber band. It was a tiny clump of hair, and short, which made Maggie wonder when it had been taken. When Allie was three months? Two? Next to the lock was a baby picture. It was Allie, still with her wristband from the delivery room, and with a shock of hair so blond it was almost white. It was baby fine, but there was more of it than Maggie had ever seen on a newborn.

  Maggie had it. She had her talisman.

  The discovery had shocked her enough that she didn’t think twice about peeling back the film to examine the lock. She had it in her hand when Jake quietly came back from the bedroom.

  “Oh,” Jake said. “I thought you were looking for pictures.”

  Maggie felt a sudden twinge of guilt. “Well, I was, but this—”

  “Yeah,” Jake said thoughtfully. “You know, Lucinda cut that not more than a week or two after she brought Allie home.” Jake chuckled at the memory. “Wow, she had a head of hair on her like a two-year-old, Deputy!”

  “I see that,” Maggie replied.

  “Yeah, she… well, hell, like I said. I thought were talking about pictures here. That lock is… wait, is this one of those DNA things?”

  “Uh, not exactly,” Maggie admitted.

  Jake nodded, mulled it over. “But you think it can help make a case?”

  Maggie considered her reply. “I think it can help.”

  Jake thought it over. “That lock of hair… you know, that was for Lucinda, so she’d have it to look back on someday.” Jake shook his head. “Now there ain’t gonna be any someday for my Lucy. And me… hell, deputy. Someday’s coming right up, more than likely. So other than that, what? I’m gonna save it for that… that son of a bitch Kindler?”

  Maggie opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out.

  Jake fixed his gaze on Maggie. “Look, Deputy. About what I was saying a minute ago.”

  “Jake, I—”

  “No, just…losing Jerry the way you did. That was more than enough tragedy for one lifetime. So, when Neal calls and tells me you’re coming by, and that you’re still working on my Lucinda’s case, I…I know you know what it is to have someone taken from you.”

  Maggie nodded. “That I do.”

  Jake was quiet for a long moment. He squared his shoulders as though he were bracing himself to bear up under what he was about to say. “I don’t know how to prove it, but I know my Lucinda. She and Kindler, they might have just been ‘separated’ in the eyes of the law, but she had come around in her mind on that son of a bitch. She was almost out from under him.”

  Maggie had seen some bad relationships. She’d seen people consumed by them, and she’d seen others who had come through them. “I believe you, Jake,” she said. And she did.

  “I said it before: I don’t know how to prove it, but….” Jake’s voice cracked. Tears welled in his eyes. “A few weeks back, Lucinda told me she was pretty sure Kindler was done with her, and that all he wanted anymore was custody of Allie. Well, he’s gonna get it now, isn’t he, Deputy?” Jake wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “He killed my baby. I don’t know how he did it, but Shawn Kindler killed my Lucinda as sure as I’m standing here in front of you.”

  Maggie nodded, but there was nothing to say.

  “You go on,” Jake said. “Take that lock. Take whatever you need. Just promise me you’ll try. If there’s any way to get him… you promise you’ll do everything you can.”

  Maggie looked down at the photo album in her lap, and the others on the table before her. She took a moment to compose herself. Then, she took a plastic evidence bag from her pocket and dropped the lock inside. “I promise, Jake,” she said.

  Jake just nodded. For a moment, he looked to be at a loss, and why shouldn’t he be? A cop was standing in his living room. A stranger. Jake didn’t seem to be the kind of guy given to a lot of emotional displays. This had surely been a larger one than he’d been expecting this afternoon.

  So Maggie made the first move. She rose from the couch and offered her hand. Jake shook it with a look of gratitude on his face. Maggie nodded. “We’ll be in touch, Jake. Thank you for this.”

  “Thank you, Deputy Dell.”

  Maggie headed to the front door with Jake right behind her. He opened it up, and Maggie stepped out into the cold and headed for her cruiser.

  As she pulled away, Maggie shivered in her parka. The afternoon was colder than the morning h
ad been. Maggie dreaded the night that awaited her.

  Maggie spent most of her afternoon trying to track down Neal, but between phone calls with case workers, lawyers and cops, Neal was a hard man to wrangle. Maggie finally managed to catch him for just a moment at the office before he took off for a dinner meeting. In the stark glow of the hallway fluorescents, Neal looked beaten down with work and worry. “Deputy,” he told her, “I hope you’ve got better news for me than anyone else has produced today.”

  “That bad?”

  “That bad. I figured the case worker at CHFS would be a no-go for now, but I was really hoping I could talk a little sense into Hennyson.” Neal sighed. “You and I know this thing stinks to high heaven, and I’m pretty sure Hennyson does, too, but he wants enough evidence that we could get the charges to stick in court tomorrow.” Neal shrugged. “No evidence, no charges. Meanwhile, that son of a bitch Kindler has Allie by the day after Christmas.” Neal shook his head in disgust. “I’ve got to go meet with Desilva, work on a Hail Mary pitch for the county attorney tomorrow. What’ve you got?”

  Maggie glanced down the hall to make sure they were alone. Then, she produced the evidence bag containing the lock of blond hair. Neal’s eyes went wide, and his mouth opened seemingly of its own accord. “Oh,” he said.