by S Doyle
If she was running that fast, I probably wouldn’t even catch up to her before she made it to the house.
“We were watching a movie.” I shrugged. “Maybe it was a little too scary for her.”
George shook his head. “Spare me from dickhead teenagers. Did you have your fun? Were you happy to hurt her like that?”
“I wasn’t trying to hurt her!” I said defensively. “I was trying to make a point!”
He shook his head. “You’re never trying to hurt her, but you always are.”
“I just was trying to show her we’re different. That’s all.”
He snorted. “You think you’re so clever, Marc. But one day you’re going to realize, you’re going to push her too far and she’ll be gone. Really gone.”
Eleven weeks after the wedding
Marc
“Marc? Come on back.” I blinked, and the male nurse with the intense brown eyes was standing above me again. This time his surgical mask was down around his neck. “You looked like you were fading again, and I need you to be alert so we can transfer you to recovery. Do you know where you are?”
I gave the briefest of nods. Yes, I knew exactly where I was.
I was back in the world. The world where Ash was gone.
Really gone.
Fort Dix
Three months, three weeks, three days until release
Marc
I watched as Benfield made his way through the tables filled with prisoners and their loved ones. There was a certain look of snobbery on his face. As if he was concerned brushing up against them accidentally might contaminate him.
Finally, he made it to my table and sat across from me. He looked me up and down, but said nothing. I don’t know if I had changed in appearance, having been inside now for over a year, but I didn’t care.
My hands still looked a little fucked up. After the surgery to fix them, I’d needed weeks of therapy to get full use of them again. Most of the fingers had healed okay, but the index finger on my right hand was still a little crooked, and the knuckles on my left hand swelled any time the weather changed, which it had today.
“Campbell,” he finally said. “How are you?”
“In prison. How the fuck do you think I am?”
“You could have been out in twelve months.”
He knew about the fight. Some new asshole trying to establish a reputation he was a badass. We didn’t do badass in minimum security. We did keep our heads down, shut our mouths and serve our time. Given the anger that was always simmering in my gut, I had no problem teaching the asshole this lesson with my messed-up fists.
That landed me a second stint in SHU, another doctor visit, and more therapy for my hands. It also meant I had to serve my full sentence. But it didn’t matter. Three months, three weeks, three more days. I could do it. Once I was free, I knew exactly what I was going to do.
“Why are you here?” I asked him.
“I wanted you to hear it from me. Arthur Landen killed himself last night. Shot himself in the head.”
I sucked in my breath. Just hearing his name made that simmering anger boil and writhe, until, finally, it registered what Benfield had said.
“He’s dead?”
He couldn’t be dead. How the hell did I get revenge on a dead man? How did I destroy his world, take every last penny he had, leave him rotting in his own sick stench?
These were the plans I had for both Arthur Landen and Evan Sanderson when I got out. This was the only motivation I had in my life to move forward. To work to contain the anger. To work to ignore the grief.
“You need me like air.”
Her words floated through my brain, and she wasn’t wrong. I had needed her more than I ever understood. More than I had ever admitted to her. Which meant her loss left this cavernous hole inside my soul. A hole I filled with plans of revenge.
“Guess he thought drinking himself to death was taking too long. His clients never did buy the excuses he made about the missing twenty million dollars. They all cashed out, and to make them whole he lost most of his personal wealth. What remained, he left to your uncle. I’m sure your uncle will tell you the next time he visits. But I came here today to let you know your debt to me is paid.”
I shook my head slowly. “I’m not finished.”
“Landen is dead. So I’m finished.”
“Evan Sanderson pulled his strings. Whatever Landen was doing, it was at his bidding.”
Benfield leaned back in his chair.
“You want some advice, Marc?”
I clenched my jaw. “Not particularly.”
“Let it go. Sanderson is a grieving widower running for the U.S. Senate. You’re not going to be able to touch him. Even if you could, it’s not going to bring her back.”
“Evan Sanderson killed his wife and he’s going to pay for it.”
“Evan Sanderson was at an event in New York the night she died. Thousands of witnesses put him there.”
“He paid someone. There’s a money trail. I’ll find it.”
“Why?” Benfield asked. “Why marry the girl only to kill her?”
“You’re not asking the right question,” I told him. “The why is easy. She knew something. Something he didn’t want her to know.”
“What question should I be asking?”
“Why did he do it like that? So the body wouldn’t be found? Ash…” I had to stop myself. It was the first time in months since I’d said her name. When George visited, I’d told him we couldn’t talk about her. I wouldn’t talk about her. It hurt too much. Now her name sounded rusty in my throat and I didn’t like that. Didn’t like that she’d been relegated to the past. It felt like losing her all over again.
I swallowed. “She had asthma. He once told me how convenient that was for him if he ever needed to get rid of her. So why take her out the way he did? Why hide the body?”
“You’re never going to get those answers. Even if they’re out there to find. You have no money, no resources, no connections to his world that might help you. You’ve got a brain and an excellent work ethic. Use those tools to start your life over again. Leave the past behind you.”
I looked him in the eye so he could see everything I felt. “I can’t.”
His expression was grim. “I’m afraid for you, Marc. I also regret I’m responsible for putting you on this path. I wanted to expose Landen for the fraud he was. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”
“You’re not responsible for what Sanderson did to Ash. That’s on Landen. He’s gone now, so I can’t destroy him. Fine. I’ll stick to the man who killed her.”
“You’ll be out soon enough. Do you need—”
“Nothing,” I cut him off. “I don’t need anything.”
Benfield stood then, and offered his hand. I stood, and shook it. “Good luck with your life, Marc.”
I nodded.
My life. It sounded so fucking long. Maybe when all this was over, I would do what Landen did. End it. Embrace the oblivion. The absence of pain might be worth it. But there was work to be done first.
Tasks that needed to be completed.
Fort Dix
Release Day
Marc
I walked out of prison in the jeans and thermal I’d worn the day I’d turned myself in. The shirt was a little tighter around my chest and arms. Given that reading and lifting weights were my only activities while inside, it made sense.
George was waiting for me in a big, black Buick. New and shiny. He got out and came toward me, and I had no choice but to embrace him as his arms came around me. His hair was now fully gray, and there were more lines around his eyes. It was like the day he’d acknowledged her death, he visibly got older.
For fifteen months, he’d visited me as often as he could, even when I told him not to. Even when seeing him brought so much pain. George had never wavered.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.
I nodded.
It felt strange. Like I did
n’t know quite how to handle being on the outside. Like there were these invisible strings around me, still attached, but I couldn’t see (them) to cut them loose.
“New car,” I said, as I slid onto the passenger seat. Our plan was to drive to George’s place in North Carolina. I wanted out of the state. As far away from New Jersey as I could get, while I started to come up with a plan. There were no restrictions placed on me. No parole I had to satisfy. I’d completed my sentence, and, now, I was free.
Or as free as an ex-con could be.
“Yeah, they settled Landen’s estate. Most of it went to the investors he’d defrauded, but it left me with a couple hundred thousand dollars. My first thought was to take it out in cash and dump it in the fucking ocean. I didn’t want anything to do with him or his money. Instead, I figured I could find some charities that needed it. Women’s shelters and stuff like that. The car…having my own car that he’d paid for, just my way of saying, fuck you, Arthur Landen. Rot in hell.”
I laughed as George started the car and we drove off. George got on 95 South and we stopped only for food breaks and to swap out who was driving. Eight hours later, we reached Jackson. A small town near the coast, with gently rolling hills and freshwater inlets that made for great fishing.
George informed me, as we pulled up to his cabin situated down a long dirt road, that my presence pushed the town population over the five-hundred mark. It was clear he loved the place. The quiet, the balmy weather year-round.
“I’ve been asking around town about work,” he said, as we got out of the car. “There’s some construction going on in Surf City, right on the coast. Fancy beach houses. They’re looking for labor.”
I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll need some cash before I can get started.”
“I’ve got the money from your car. Sorry, it didn’t sell for much.”
I smirked at that. “Hell, I didn’t buy it for much.”
“Packed up any clothes you had. It’s all inside waiting for you, although you look like you’ve put on muscle.”
“Some,” I said, looking at the cabin.
“Might need bigger sizes,” George noted, as he made his way to the cabin.
The place was a decent size. One floor. Not too dissimilar to the carriage house I’d basically grown up in. Big fireplace in the center. Not a bad spot to retire. It settled something inside me.
George would be fine here without me. Fishing, shooting the shit with the locals. My guess, there was a town bar where everyone congregated to talk about the size of their catches. No, he wouldn’t miss me at all when I left.
“Nice place,” I noted, looking around. Then I saw it. On a table near his sofa.
A picture from years ago. I remembered the event. Christmas Day. Ash had spent it with us. She’d gotten a smart phone from her father the night before, and was taking endless amounts of pictures with it. This was one of those selfies, George was in the background, smiling as he held up a pair of socks I’d given him, and she and I up close with my cheek pressed against hers. I was frowning, of course. No doubt annoyed she was making me take the stupid picture in the first place.
I’d been fourteen. Sullen and grumpy as always, and, as always, her smile just pushed through all of it. Clear evidence her happiness was never ruined by my mood. It had been a great day. Food. Togetherness. Presents.
Why hadn’t I appreciated what I had then? Why had I always made her work so hard for my smile?
“I miss her,” George said. “Every day.”
I couldn’t say anything. I never could when it came to my grief. Instead, I put the picture down and turned my back on it.
“You know I’m not staying here permanently,” I told George, even as I shoved my hands into my pockets.
He sighed. We’d had this conversation too many times when he’d visited me in prison. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to accomplish, but you’re a grown man. It’s not like I could stop you.”
I nodded. Pleased he was resigned to my decisions.
“I’m not going after him right away. Like I said, I need some cash first. And then I thought…”
I still wasn’t sure it made sense, but the idea had gotten stuck in my head and I couldn’t shake it loose.
“What?” George pressed.
“I thought about trying to find Mom.”
“Maybe if you found her, talked to her, you could put the past behind you and really move on.”
At the time, I’d rejected the idea out of hand. There was no point in finding Marie Campbell. She was an addict who loved her drugs more than she did her son. But the idea of having some closure with her, had started to take root when all I had was time to think.
There was never going to be any closure when it came to Ash. Just her last goodbye, the bruise on her cheek. The fact that I didn’t tell her I loved her. And her just being gone.
No body, no criminal brought to justice. Just gone.
So if I looked for, and found Marie, either dead or alive, then at least I could put a fucking pin in that. At least I would know definitively where things stood, and having that had suddenly seemed necessary.
“Son, I don’t know how it would be possible. You know the likelihood is she overdosed at some point. If she was homeless, buried as a Jane Doe—”
“I know,” I said, not letting him go down the endless road of possibilities. “Finding her might be as impossible as finding proof Sanderson killed Ash, but I’m going to do both things. We know when she left us the last time, she headed to Florida. You tried then to track her down. How far did you get?”
“Tampa Bay.”
I nodded. It was a place to start, and I had nothing but time.
4
Tampa Bay
Three months later
Marc
There were ten Marie Campbells alive in Tampa Bay. I’d tracked down four of them who were not my mother. I’d tracked down six of eleven of them who had died in the past twelve years. They were also not my mother.
There was nothing to suggest she would have stayed in Tampa all this time. No reason she might not have moved on to another town or city, but I wasn’t yet at the point of looking outside the scope of my investigation.
That’s how I had viewed it. As just another investigation. I’d taken the construction job George had told me about, but, in addition, I’d located several private investigators in the surrounding areas and asked if they would take me on as an unpaid intern.
Two of them told me to get the hell out of their office. One had told me to go get him coffee.
For three months I worked with Mel on my down time. Most of it sitting in a car with him while he did surveillance on adulterous husbands and wives. But he’d taught me how to get started. How to ask questions of folks in a non-threatening way that would get them to open up. How to use the internet to suck up as much known information on a person as you could get legally.
Then he’d shown me a few things that weren’t legal.
Learning from him was a place to start. A way to pull threads together until they made a complete picture. I’d had to learn to smile more so people didn’t always see me as threatening. I’d had to learn patience, when questions I asked led to no answers.
Last month, after earning a couple thousand dollars working construction, and gaining a general template of how to track down a person, I drove my truck—a shiny, new Ford F150, George’s second fuck you to Arthur Landen—to Florida.
Mel knew another investigator in Tampa who was actually looking for help. With a letter of recommendation from Mel, Stan agreed to meet me and take me on part time.
I lived in a crappy motel room. I picked up work from Stan when I could. And I searched for Marie Campbell.
Four weeks later, and all I had to show for it were the ten women I’d been able to cross off my list.
Today, I was sitting in a park watching a strip mall across the street. Within the strip mall was a bakery called Sweet and Sassy. A Marie Campbell owned t
he shop. I’d been able to track her down through the health department’s licensing process. It was highly unlikely this was my mother, but what had caught my attention was how off-the- grid this Marie Campbell was.
There was no picture of her anywhere I could find. Her bakery had a Facebook page, but there wasn’t much activity on it. Again, no picture of her anywhere on the site. Just cakes, cupcakes and other baked goods.
My trick to get into the DMV’s website didn’t work, so I had no concept of her age. Just this one blip in the system when I’d gone through all available Hillsborough County records.
I glanced at my watch again. It was close to seven in the morning. While I knew there were people already inside the shop, baking, I imagined, the store didn’t officially open until seven. Two minutes after seven, I abandoned my seat on the park bench and crossed the street.
A bell dinged overhead as I opened the door, and the smell of sugar and warm dough overwhelmed me. I considered the last time I’d had something as frivolous as a piece of cake or a doughnut.
The money I’d earned working construction had to last, so I spent the bare minimum. Only the basics for food, and rent at the motel. The pick-up work I did for Stan helped with that, but I knew I was in this for the long haul. First, finding my mother, then going after Sanderson.
I needed more. More skills. More money. More connections. I would get there. Because I had patience and all the time in the world. What I didn’t do was waste my money on something with no nutritional value that would likely leave me craving more.
However, I had a feeling I was going to break that rule today.
A young, pretty brunette came through a door behind the counter. She had a round face and a sweet smile. “Good morning. What can I get for you today?”
I studied the counter in front of me. “I don’t see them out, but I could swear I smell cinnamon rolls.”
The brunette smiled. “Oh, you do. They’re coming out of the oven now. If you’ll just give us a second to ice them, I’ll have one right up for you.”
