The Good Listener

by B. M. Hardin

  “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

  “Tell you what? I’ve told you everything. I’ve apologized a hundred times. I’ve told you why. I’ve told you how and I’ve even told you when. But I didn’t do anything to her. I didn’t kill her. Did you?”

  “No.”

  He looked at me as though he was trying to figure out if I was telling the truth, but I had a feeling that he was just playing a part.

  He walked away and for the next few hours, I just sat there.

  Thinking.

  Plotting.

  It was every man for themselves, and I hadn't been given the gift of mind probing and manipulating for nothing.

  And it was time to use it to my advantage.

  ~***~

  After meeting Blake at the park, I followed him from a distance.

  I’d driven Joel’s car that day, and I made sure that I was already at the park, an hour before I’d told Blake that I would meet him, so he didn’t see what car that I had driven.

  I’d left my car at home, with Joel, but I doubted that he would bother to drive it.

  I wanted to know where it was that Blake was going.

  What it was that he was doing.

  He drove for a little while, and then he got out at a convenience store.

  I sat far enough so that he wouldn’t spot me and I watched him as he came out with a case of beer and what looked like some kind of beef jerky.

  I replayed our conversations.

  I remembered telling him that I’d picked up the nasty habit of smoking, and he told that it was unattractive.

  He then proceeded to tell me that he didn’t smoke and that he had decided to stop drinking.

  But there he was, clear as day, with a case of beer in his hand, getting into his car.

  People and papers lie.

  And that was lie number one.

  I followed him for another few minutes, and he entered a hotel parking lot.

  Of course, it was a nice, upscale one.

  He had to be spending a fortune if he was living there for months at a time.

  I waited across the street, far enough to remain unseen, but close enough to see his car.

  I sat out there for hours and sometime or another I must have fallen asleep.

  When I woke up, it was dark and Blake’s car was gone.

  Damn it.

  I checked the time, it was one o’clock in the morning.

  Where could he have gone this late?

  I had more than enough missed calls from Joel, but I didn’t bother to call him back.

  Unsure of how long Blake had been gone, I didn’t have a choice but to head home.

  But first, I had to make a stop.

  Since I was in Joel’s car, I headed to Summer’s house.

  I parked across the street, a house or two up and then I walked towards the house.

  Checking around me, I went under the black and yellow tape and headed to the back side of the house.

  We were friends once upon a time, so I still had a key.

  Just like she’d had mine, I had one to hers just in case of an emergency since she lived alone.

  Using my key, I went inside.

  I flipped the back light, but it didn’t come on, so I assumed the power was off.

  I pressed a key on my phone to give just a small amount of light as I walked around.

  From what I could see, nothing looked out of place.

  I could see things that the police had left behind.

  I opened her kitchen drawers with the bottom of my shirt and started to look around.

  I looked through bills, and other things but nothing stuck out.

  Her purse was still on the kitchen table, along with her keys and they both had a number card beside them.

  If she didn’t take her purse, she definitely didn’t go far.

  It looked as though she had been making a pot of coffee and then suddenly, everything just came to a pause.

  There were two cups still on the counter, which said that she had company.

  But who was the question?

  And what had gone wrong?

  I turned the phone towards the floor, but I didn’t see any blood, so I headed towards the living room.

  There were still a few spots of blood on the floor, but other than the blood, everything else was still in place.

  How did she go from the kitchen to the living room, without trailing blood?

  I tried to think of possibilities that would actually make sense.

  Maybe she was making the coffee, and whoever was there called her to the living room and something happened.

  It didn’t look like a fight had broken out or anything, so she wasn’t taken by a stranger.

  Whatever happened to her was done by someone that she knew.

  With my mind trying to piece everything together, I headed back out the back door, locking it with my shirt behind me.

  I somewhat jogged from the back of the house and across the street to Joel’s car.

  I reached for the door handle.

  “You know what they say; the guilty party always returns to the scene of the crime.”

  I turned around to face the voice.

  Officer Parks.

  “I was looking for clues.”

  “I thought you were a psychologist. Not a private investigator.”

  “Well, my name is on the line.”

  “I got some results back today. The phone that we found in your backyard was Summer’s…and the bloody fingerprints found on it were hers too. And you want to know what else we found on the phone? Another set of fingerprints. And they belonged to you.”

  “What no. That’s impossible. That’s a mistake.”

  “The calls that were made to your phone hit off of the same tower as the last few calls that you made to hers. So, it’s safe to say that the phone calls were made inside of or around your house. You called yourself didn’t you?”

  “No. I swear. I swear.”

  “What did you do to her?”

  I shook my head.

  No matter what I said, he wasn’t going to believe me.

  “Hannah Lewis, you are under arrest for the suspected murder of Summer Waters. You have the right to remain silent. Anything that you say can and will be…”

  ********************************************

  Chapter NINE

  “They can’t charge me with murder! They don’t even know if she’s dead. They don’t even have a body. They don’t even have a murder weapon.”

  “They can charge you if they have enough evidence. Forensic or DNA evidence. Circumstantial. Your finger prints on the bloody phone really gave them something to go on. You’re looking at maximum twenty years if they can get the jury to convict you. But they agreed that if you give them the body, they will do a plea, aggravated assault, manslaughter, and you’ll only do three to five years.”

  “I don’t have a body because I didn’t kill anyone!”

  I hung up in Calvin’s, my lawyer’s face.

  “He’s only trying to help you,” Joel said as we drove away from the courthouse after he’d posted my bond.

  “I will not admit to something that I didn’t do. I didn’t kill her.”

  “I believe you, Hannah. So what’s the plan? What do we do? How do we prove that you are innocent?”

  That’s just it.

  I don’t know.

  “How did your fingerprints get on her phone?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know Joel. I wish I knew, but I don’t know.”

  “Why would you even go to her house?”

  “I was looking for something. Anything to try to get them off of my back. I’m innocent. And I know for a fact that she didn’t skip town.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Her purse is there. She can’t go anywhere without her purse. Something happened to her, and they are going to blame me for it. But I didn’t do this Joel. I didn’t do anything.”
>
  My phone started to ring, and I saw that it was Blake.

  “Hello?”

  “Are we meeting at the park today?”

  “No. I just got out of jail.”

  “I know.”

  Well of course he did.

  He knew everything, which is why there was no doubt in my mind that he knew the truth.

  If he didn’t do something to Summer, then he knew who had.

  There was no doubt about it.

  “You followed me to the hotel yesterday. I drove over to the car to approach you on my way out, but I found you were sleeping. So I parked behind you. To watch to see what you were going to do when you woke up and realized that I wasn’t parked anymore. You pulled off, and I followed you to Summer’s. I didn’t know what you were doing, so I watched from afar. You missed the undercover cop car, but I spotted it as soon as we pulled up.

  As soon as you went around back, he got out and waited for you outside of the house. You ran right past him. From there, I watched him take you to jail.”

  “So you knew that I was following you?”

  “I’m not stupid Hannah. And besides, I was at the park even before the hour early that you arrived. You just didn’t see me.”

  He was so smart and so clever that it was almost unreal.

  “Why didn’t you warn me that the cop was there?”

  “It was too late. He’d already spotted you as soon as you got out of the car. It was no point. I didn’t know that you would be arrested, though.”

  I shook my head as Joel asked questions.

  But I ignored him.

  “Blake, please, if you know who did something to her, please tell me. I’m begging you.”

  “Meet me at the park.”

  He hung up.

  I was so overwhelmed that I started to cry and scream all at the same time.

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing.”

  Joel drove us home, and he sat there and just looked at me.

  “This can’t really be happening right? They can’t be about to charge you with murder. They don’t even know if she’s dead.”

  “Calvin says that it is possible to be convicted of murder without a body if they have enough other evidence.”

  I started to cry.

  “It’s going to be okay Hannah. Trust me. It is going to be okay.”

  “No. It isn’t Joel.”

  I just sat there.

  I couldn’t believe it either, but it really was.

  “I’ll do it.”

  I looked at him.

  “I’ll take the blame. I’ll confess to whatever I need to confess to. All of this is my fault. You were right. If I hadn't slept with her, you wouldn’t be in this situation. But I can’t let you go to prison. I just can’t let that happen to you. I love you.”

  Joel looked at me with eyes full of sympathy.

  And now yet again I was even more confused.

  Did he really mean that?

  Or was he playing a role?

  I didn’t know what to think anymore.

  Surely with all of the evidence pointing towards me, I wasn’t going to get off that easy whether he or Blake tried to take the blame.

  It was going to take more than just saying it.

  Her body was going to have to surface too.

  “You would do that for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just keep praying that she will show up.”

  “I can’t lose you, Hannah. I can’t sit back and let this happen to you. I have to do something. There has to be something that we can do.”

  I shook my head.

  I got out of his car and got into mine and drove away.

  He called a few times, but once he realized that I wasn’t going to answer, he stopped.

  I tried to think it all through.

  Joel hadn't been there when I’d gotten the phone calls from Summer phone.

  Where was he?

  He’d said that he had gone to the store, but had he really?

  He could have been parked the next street over, called me, and then come back home.

  He could have seen that I was gone and then stashed the phone in the bushes.

  But why would he want to frame me?

  I hadn't done anything to him.

  If anything I would have thought that he would have wanted to kill her to make sure she was out of the way so that he could focus on getting me to take him back.

  It just didn’t make sense.

  I was just so confused.

  And with Blake.

  He could definitely get rid of a body without so much as leaving a trace or breaking a sweat.

  He’d done it five times before.

  But what would be his reasoning?

  Especially with everything that he’d said about the why that he found his victims.

  Why was I going to see Blake was an even bigger question?

  I couldn’t help him anymore.

  I could barely help myself, and if he wasn’t going to give me something that I could use, he was just going to have to do whatever he was going to do.

  I hated to feel that way, but my life was now on the line, and I could no longer worry about someone else’s.

  As soon as I was close enough to him, I started to cry.

  Maybe through all of his layers of crazy, somewhere he had a heart.

  “They wouldn’t believe me even if I gave you a recorded confession without a body.”

  “I know. Not now. Not with the evidence.”

  “They must have something major on you,” he said.

  I didn’t know if he was pretending or not.

  For all, I knew he could have stashed the phone too.

  “They think that they do. But I didn’t do anything. Someone is trying to frame me.”

  “But why Hannah? With the number of people that you have helped, you don’t seem to have any enemies. Framing you wouldn’t make sense.”

  He was right.

  It wouldn’t.

  But he’d also taught me that everyone is not the same. Maybe I accidentally did something to someone.

  Maybe it was someone in Mrs. Whiteside’s family who blamed me for her death or maybe it was one of my patients that I had to let go off because I needed to focus on Blake.

  What if it was the patient that had been there that day of the argument with Summer at work and then left?

  She never came back or called to reschedule after then, and she’d heard me confront Summer for sleeping with my husband.

  But what would be her reasoning?

  For all, I knew it could have been one of my colleagues.

  Jealousy was dangerous and secretly one of them could have envied my success and wanted me out of the way.

  I had so many thoughts and possibilities in my head that my mind was on overload when the truth was it could be none of the above.

  Though since she didn’t take her purse, even I could conclude that she didn’t walk out of her house on her own free will and probably not alive; but how did I get involved?

  Why was all of the evidence pointing towards me?

  “Blake do you know who did it? I’m going to go to jail if someone doesn’t speak up.”

  “No. But there has to be something that you are missing? Something you aren’t seeing. Something that you aren’t listening to.”

  Today was not the day for his bullshit!

  “This is the last time I will see you. I can’t help you. I can barely help myself.”

  “I was waiting for you to say that. Actually, I thought you would say it as soon as things with the case started to lean towards you. So after all of this time, all of your hard work and efforts with trying to save me, now, you are willing to let some innocent person die, because of your own affairs? I’m not judging you, I’m just clarifying.”

  “Don’t say it like that. When you say it like that, it sounds horrible and selfish.”

  “You don’t think that it is?”

/>   “No. I have been helping you and counseling you for months. It is because of me that she or he is probably still alive. But now I’m fighting for my own life. I can’t save someone else’s and I can’t save my own.”

  He just stood there.

  “I understand.”

  “So are you going to kill them?”

  “Yes.”

  I dropped my head.

  “I have given you everything that you needed to help me. All of the answers to your hundreds of questions. All of the pain, secrets, and emotions, but in the end, you couldn’t fix me either. It just wasn’t meant to be. I was meant to be this way.”

  “No. No, you can be better.”

  “Maybe one day. And who knows, maybe this will be my last time killing anyone. Talking to you did release built up hurt and anger that’d I’d never told a soul. This is the last time.”

  “Nobody has to die. Don’t kill them.”

  “You should worry about trying to help yourself.”

  “I tried. I have tried.”

  “Not hard enough. You don’t try hard enough.”

  “What do you want me to do? I am about to go to prison for something that I didn’t do. You’re telling me that I didn’t try enough, but I have tried everything. Even with you, I tried everything. I can’t help myself, and I couldn’t help you.”

  “Okay, Hannah. But I believe that you could. You didn’t believe it so you failed.”

  He was right, but I was losing it.

  I was losing my mind.

  “I just can’t do it.”

  Blake looked at me.

  “Thank you. Thank you for all of your help. Consider this as a thank you for nothing bonus,” he said laying an envelope beside me full of money.

  He started to walk away.

  I told myself just to let him keep walking.

  I had enough problems on my own.

  I just didn’t have room for his.

  But I knew that if I didn’t do something, if I gave up, someone was going to die.

  “No. Blake, wait.”

  He looked back at me.

  “I set out to help you, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll still help you and listen to you until that ship me off to prison.”

  Strangely he smiled.

  “You have a good heart, Hannah. But no thanks. Your time is up.”

  And with that, he was gone.

  ~***~

  Blake hadn't been at the hotel in days, and his phone had been disconnected.