Storm Gathering

by Rene Gutteridge

  “Look, mister . . . what’s your name again?”

  Mick grinned, using the pause to come up with something quick. “Chaplain Goode.”

  “Okay. What I was saying is that I feel so desperate. I can’t imagine what I’m gonna do if they find her body. I just can’t imagine.”

  Mick nodded, a thousand thoughts and questions spiking in his mind. “I understand.” He tried to sound very pastorlike. He blinked slowly and tilted his head ever so slightly.

  “I been feeling so much guilt,” she said through watery eyes.

  “Guilt? What for?”

  The woman used cusswords like adjectives, but she finally got around to saying that she and Taylor had not spoken in a year because of her breakup with a boyfriend.

  “What is the boyfriend’s name?”

  “Sammy Earle,” she said. “I told all this to the detective, but I could see the judgment in his eyes. Like I was a horrible monster for trying to tell the girl she didn’t know what she had. She had so much! More than I could’ve ever dreamed about.”

  “And that’s why you two don’t speak?”

  “I got knocked around a few times myself before the husband died. You live with it. You figure, what am I gonna do by myself? Starve to death! And the man bought her lots of things. Clothes, jewelry. She was living a good life.”

  “So Sammy Earle hit her?”

  “Just said that, didn’t I?” she snapped.

  Mick nodded, backing off his intense need to find out more.

  “I done the wrong thing. I don’t doubt that now. But I was just trying to help her. And now look. She probably got killed by some psychopath anyway.”

  “Do you believe she’s dead, Mrs. Franks?”

  “What kinda question is that?”

  Mick tried not to flinch. “I only want to know if you’re prepared for whatever kind of news you might get.”

  “Don’t think I can be prepared.” Mrs. Franks sighed. “I don’t feel like she’s dead. Surely a mother would know that kinda thing. Feel it here.” She pounded her chest. “Surely I’d know if her soul flew off to heaven.”

  “Tell me a little more about your daughter,” Mick said. “Sometimes it helps people to just talk about their loved ones.”

  Mrs. Franks eyed him and then gazed out into her small backyard. “Well, what can I say? Taylor was the kind of girl who was always into trouble. Not bad trouble. She was just a little wily. Okay, a lot wily. She had this thing about her since she was a young’un. Don’t know if it was ’cause her daddy was on the bottle or what. But it was like she had this instinct to want to survive on her own.”

  “How so?” Perspiration trickled down Mick’s nose, and he had to keep pushing his glasses up his face.

  “Always staying out late, like she had to show me she could do it. And she got picked up for shoplifting a good time or two. They never pressed charges. Saw what kind of life she came from; guess they felt sorry for her. I dunno. She managed to get into trouble at every turn.”

  “But it seems from all accounts that she’s a regular, productive citizen.”

  “Guess you could say that, yeah. She grew out of it, from what I could tell. Got herself a job when she was sixteen. Liked making that money. Thought she’d go to college, but then she went to work for the airline and done real well there.”

  “What kind of person is Mr. Earle?”

  She waved her hand at him. “Don’t know him really. Never met him. Didn’t want him to see where she came from.”

  Mick felt sad for the woman. In her own desperate way, she was trying to do a good thing for her daughter. But hearing this about Taylor was hardly believable. He would have never guessed she was from a poor family with an alcoholic father. Yet there was a mystery about her that he never could put his finger on in the short time he’d known her.

  “You think God’ll forgive me?”

  “What? I’m sorry?” Mick blinked away his own thoughts.

  “God. Will He forgive me?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “I mean, I made some bad choices in my life. I guess I’m here because of those choices. Been a bad mother. Probably should’ve left the drunk and taken my daughter, though I don’t know what we’d have done.”

  Mick scratched his head. Aaron’s words about forgiveness flooded his mind. He smiled at Mrs. Franks, who was looking at him curiously. “Yes, He will.”

  “Are you sure? Because you took an awfully long time answering that.” She frowned.

  “It’s sometimes hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  “I have a hard time with it myself.”

  “You?” She laughed. “My goodness, the sins of a chaplain. You didn’t share your bologna sandwich with a street bum or something?”

  Mick laughed a little.

  “I been prayin’. I said I ain’t religious, and I ain’t. But you know when you get to those desperate times in your life that there’s nothing else to do than fall on your old, worn-out knees and pray something.”

  Mick nodded. “What did you pray?”

  Mrs. Franks stared at the plastic grass beneath her house shoes. “I prayed . . .” She choked on her words. And then she whispered, “I prayed God would have mercy on me and my family. If there was a God and there was such a thing as mercy.”

  Mick looked into her despondent eyes. “Don’t you believe there is a God?”

  “I guess it’s harder not to believe it. I been a bitter woman. I been mad at a lot of things. So I said I didn’t believe in God. But I never really could say it and mean it. Because somewhere inside me I know it ain’t true.”

  “Hope is all we have sometimes. Hope. And the truth.”

  She looked up at him. “You think God hears the prayers of sinners?”

  Mick nodded. So my brother says.

  In the spare bedroom of his house, Aaron lifted dumbbells, trying to work out all the nervous energy that had taken his appetite and replaced it with an intense headache.

  The doorbell rang, and Aaron wiped the sweat from his face as he walked to the front door and opened it. Shep Crawford and Detective Prescott were standing on his porch. He wrapped the towel around his neck and grasped the ends of it with his hands.

  Crawford’s intensely wild eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “Can we come in?”

  Aaron opened the door farther and led the two into his living room, gesturing for them to sit wherever they wanted. Aaron sat on the brick hearth in front of the fireplace. He was still breathing hard.

  “You heard from him?” Crawford asked, sitting on the edge of the couch, his hands clasped together, his forearms propped on his knees.

  “Nope.”

  “Any idea where he might go, Aaron?”

  He didn’t like the way Crawford used his first name. It was deliberate and patronizing. “I have no idea,” Aaron said firmly. “He could be in Texas, Mexico, or three houses down. I don’t know why he ran. I know he was concerned about Taylor, felt guilty for not being able to help her that night.” He blinked tiredly. He didn’t mean to, but he was beyond exhaustion. The words were hard to drag out of his mouth.

  “Okay if we look around?”

  “Fine. He’s not here, Crawford. Give me a break. You’ve had a car out there night and day. He wouldn’t be stupid enough to come here anyway.”

  “Mind if we check your truck out there?”

  Aaron hung his head. This was impossible. “Whatever. It’s unlocked. Go ahead.”

  Crawford nodded toward Prescott, who rose and went outside.

  “Should lock your truck, you know,” Crawford mumbled.

  Aaron stood, his legs restless with anxiety.

  Crawford stood as well, glancing out the front window toward Prescott before he said, “I don’t think he did it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What else? Your brother. I’ve looked over all the evidence from the crime scene. I think there are things pointing to the fact that your brothe
r didn’t do it. Like leaving his phone number.”

  “Nobody else is seeing it that way.”

  “It’s because he’s an easy target. He was there, and he’s had problems in the past.”

  Aaron watched Prescott rummage through his pickup. He looked at Crawford. “What’s going on here?”

  Crawford sighed, scratching at his messy hair. “Look, Kline, the best thing your brother could do is turn himself in so I can use my manpower to figure out what really happened. Instead, I’ve got everybody looking for him. And as you’re well aware, we never had this conversation.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “If he contacts you, urge him to turn himself in.”

  “He won’t contact me.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  Aaron looked away from Crawford’s concentrated stare. “We don’t see eye to eye on things. We don’t speak much anymore.”

  “Is that so?” Crawford’s fidgety mannerisms were making Aaron nervous. He’d never seen a man with more tics.

  “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing here,” Aaron said, “but I don’t like it.”

  “You think this is a game?” Crawford stared at Aaron in the most uncanny way.

  Aaron forced himself to stare back.

  “I am trying to help you out here.” Crawford was nearly shouting. “I am trying to tell you that I may be the only one who can help your brother!”

  “Nobody is helping my brother! You issued an arrest warrant! What is he supposed to think about that? Why didn’t you sit on this a little longer, investigate Earle more?”

  At Earle’s name, Crawford’s entire expression changed. The intensity froze on his face. His fire-flashing eyes turned ice-cold. And then in a rare self-conscious manner, Crawford swallowed and glanced at Aaron. “That man . . .”

  Aaron waited for more, studying Crawford’s telling eyes.

  “. . . beat Taylor Franks, played emotional mind games with her. Used her.” He rattled off these facts quietly.

  “So why aren’t they arresting him? He seems a much better suspect.”

  “He wasn’t there,” Crawford said. “Your brother was.”

  “What about the flowers?”

  “Not enough.”

  “Not enough? They show Earle had her on his mind the day before she was kidnapped!”

  Crawford took a step closer to Aaron, sticking his neck out in a socially awkward manner that nearly invaded Aaron’s space. Aaron didn’t budge. “But you’ve been snooping around, haven’t you, Kline? And you know that there are some discrepancies about who actually sent those flowers. You traced it up to Maine, just like we did.”

  Aaron wordlessly acknowledged it with a long blink.

  Crawford’s eyes shifted again, but this time impassively scanning the room.

  Aaron shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead, trying to get ahold of the situation . . . and what Crawford’s intentions were.

  Crawford was back to acknowledging Aaron. “My superiors bought into Fiscall’s idea that justice for the people was more important than justice for the victim.”

  “The town wanted an arrest so he gave them one.”

  Crawford said, “I’ve got a hard enough job solving a murder case without all this other mess. I’m telling you that the more you get in the way, the worse off your brother is going to be. The whole town and every law-enforcement officer this city’s got think he’s at the very least a kidnapper.”

  “There’s always hope. And truth.”

  “Truth.” Crawford carved out a laugh from the disdain in his voice. “Yeah. Truth. I hope your brother makes a smart decision and turns himself in. And I hope you figure out that the more you interfere, the better chance your brother has of spending the rest of his life in jail. That’s simply if the body doesn’t turn up. If it does, he’s looking at the death penalty. But, of course, you already know all of this.”

  Prescott walked in, hands on his hips in an authoritative manner. He was about to say something when Aaron asked, “You find him hiding out in my cab?”

  Prescott smirked, noticed Crawford, and dropped the grin.

  A mix of mustered cordialness and intense scrutiny read like a warning sign on Crawford’s face.

  Aaron held his own expression steady until the detectives left.

  It amazed him how freely he could move. For two hours, completely unnoticed, Mick had been at the library, going through archives, trying to find as much information on Sammy Earle as he could, resisting the urge to repeatedly rub his bald head.

  Earle was in the headlines frequently, and Mick sorted through the various cases and suspects he’d defended. By all appearances, he was a smooth-talking, sharp-dressing Southerner, whose thick accent was mentioned in the press nearly as much as his victories.

  Prosecutors referred to him in media-acceptable derogatory language, citing his promiscuous tendencies toward cheating in the courtroom. Once, in a rape case against a well-known area CFO, Earle had leaked the victim’s name by an “accidental” slip of the tongue.

  His tactics were shady, but his success rate was high. And rumor had it that the Kellan Johannsen case had brought him at least a two-million-dollar paycheck.

  Mick had even found several society-page pictures in which Taylor was on his arm, looking charmingly rich but decidedly out of place.

  What interested Mick the most was a small article in which Earle’s name appeared concerning local Vietnam veterans. It showed Earle looking particularly uncomfortable among the three other vets who were being photographed, his crooked, insincere smile offered to the camera lens.

  The local vets met for coffee on Monday nights at seven at an old-timer café between Irving and Fort Worth. Mick wondered if Sammy still attended. To get an up-close look at him might be worth something.

  Inside the library bathroom, Mick splashed his face and took wet paper towels, bathing his torso with them inside one of the stalls. It was a little before five. He knew his destination for this evening, at least partly. But the question was where he would sleep. If he could sleep.

  A man who had come in the bathroom finished washing his hands and left. Mick opened the stall door, listening for signs of another person. The bathroom was quiet, so Mick went to the mirror again, gazing at his new appearance. With the shaved hair, he really did look amazingly different. Dark eyebrows still framed his eyes, and there was no getting around his distinct blue eyes, but most people hardly looked you in the eye anymore.

  Mick folded the notes he’d taken about the vets’ meeting and shoved them in his duffel bag. He opened the door and stepped out before he saw the two police officers. Mick retreated into the bathroom, cracking the door enough so he could watch them. They were at the front desk talking to a librarian. She was pointing in the direction he’d been sitting earlier.

  And now a man was walking toward the bathroom. Mick swung the door open and acted like he was walking out, allowing for the man to come in. Mick grabbed the pay phone next to the bathroom and pretended to dial a number, his back turned to the officers.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he watched the two cops smile and joke with one another while the librarian disappeared momentarily. When she returned with a book in her hand, Mick relaxed. He hung up the phone as the officers left the library.

  He waited five minutes, then left as well.

  Now he would have to figure out how to get all the way across Irving on a dirt bike.

  The diner was nostalgic, a modern restaurant with a fifties theme. Elvis bellowed through a state-of-the-art jukebox that flipped CDs rather than records. The waitresses wore wireless mics, communicating through them to the kitchen.

  Relieved to find the Seat Yourself sign greeting him, Mick took a corner booth. He was about ten minutes early. His stomach grumbled, but he ordered only a basket of fries for three dollars. And a water.

  He was beginning to feel the fatigue of sleeping only two hours and most of that lightly. He sat in the bo
oth, his body hunched over his water, keeping an eye on the customer activity while fighting menacing thoughts. Without much to do other than wait for his French fries, his mind drifted to Taylor, and soon her voice uttered words in his mind.

  “I guess nobody is really who they seem to be, when you come down to it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “A beautiful woman. You have a kind spirit. You’re bold and I sense a toughness about you.”

  “Like a boxer?”

  “Not enough muscles.”

  “A lot of cowards look tough. But they’ll always be cowards. And eventually somebody will find out.”

  “You’re not a coward.”

  “I’ve known a few. Who are you?”

  “Football coach, former part-time accountant, lover of storms.”

  “Storms?”

  “Don’t you love them?”

  “I don’t think about them too much.”

  “I think about them all the time. A perfect mix of power and beauty. Like you.”

  “I’m not powerful.”

  “You got my attention, didn’t you?”

  “Hmm. I’m only surviving.”

  “Surviving what?”

  “Life. It’s all about survival.”

  “Don’t you think there’s more?”

  “No. I want there to be more, but in the end, there isn’t anything more.”

  “How can you believe that?”

  “You’re telling me you believe there’s more?”

  “I believe we all have a special identity, something we’re supposed to fulfill, some reason we were created.”

  “Created. Sounds like the alcohol talking. I didn’t realize you were religious.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Sounds like it to me.”

  “I guess I believe there are no accidents.”

  “Right. No accidents. Only purpose in everything.”

  “You think it’s all arbitrary?”

  “I think it’s what you make it to be.”

  Her voice faded, her eyes diminishing in his mind. He noticed three men walking in together, each dressed casually, looking between fifty and sixty years old. They waved at a nearby waitress and crowded two tables together. Two more men arrived, jovial and chatty. And then a sixth straggled in. There were places for three more people, but ten minutes went by without anyone else joining them.