Ride Away Home

by William Wells

  Pete surely knows I was fired from Hartfield, Miller, but is diplomatic enough not to mention it. He can probably guess where I’m heading. That’s his job and he’s good at it.

  “I’m not paying you to watch me,” I say, a bit annoyed.

  “I always like to know what’s going on with my clients,” Pete answers. “That is what you pay me for.”

  “Okay. I always wanted a motorcycle. So I bought one. I’m just taking a little ride to break it in.”

  “A motorcycle. What kind?”

  “A Harley-Davidson Road King.”

  “You should have asked me,” Pete says. “I’ve been riding cycles since I was a kid. I would have told you that Japanese is the way to go. I’ve got a Kawasaki KX100 that I ride off-road up in the north woods. Motorcycle mechanics fix Harleys and drive rice burners.”

  “I just liked the look of the Road King,” I say, a bit defensively.

  “Well, it doesn’t have to last forever, does it? Just for this one trip.”

  “What?”

  “We’ve talked about this, Jack,” Pete says. “About you not doing something stupid, especially after all this time. I think you’re riding a goddamned Hog to Key West, to do exactly what when you get there? If you get there.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this,” I tell him. Private investigators are required to report to the police any criminal activity on the part of their clients, or any knowledge that a crime may be committed. I don’t know if I’m actually planning a crime, but I don’t want to put Pete in an awkward position with the law. Or to be prevented from reaching my destination.

  “Look, Jack, go home and let me go to Key West, if that’s where you’re headed,” he says. “What’ll you do, hit the kid with your briefcase? Turn him in to the IRS for not reporting tips at his bar? I can go there, talk to him, maybe tell him I’ve uncovered some evidence of his involvement in Hope’s disappearance that the police don’t know about. Hope’s family just wants to know for certain what happened to her, I’ll tell him. Wants to know more than they want you prosecuted.”

  That’s not a bad plan. In fact, it’s a very good plan. But I’m convinced that I must face Slater Babcock myself, or I’ll never find any peace of mind, if peace of mind is even a possibility for me now. I don’t just need to find out about what happened to my daughter, I need to be the one finding out. So, after grieving for the past year, and inwardly raging, and being paralyzed by indecision like Hamlet, and helplessly watching Jenna consumed by sorrow, I’m finally taking action, the action being attempting to navigate an eighteen-thousand-dollar motorcycle from my home in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, to Key West, Florida, the southernmost tip of the continental United States: Land’s End, where you either hit the brakes or get wet. Finally, I felt that I had to confront Slater Babcock. I simply cannot ignore the possibility that he might have been involved, or at least know more than he was admitting to the police. I’m convinced that I have to at least try to find out what he did or what he knows, or I’ll be in residence at The Sanctuary, too.

  Packing for the trip, I found the Browning .380 semiautomatic pistol in my dresser drawer at home, which I bought years ago for home security and have never fired. I considered taking it with me but decided that learning how to operate one mechanical device was enough.

  “I’ll check in with you later,” I tell Pete. “I’m in Madison meeting an old friend for dinner.”

  “That would be Vernon Douglas,” Pete says. “Don’t tell him where you’re going. He won’t like it any more than I do.”

  “Roger that,” I say, using military lingo I picked up from him.

  “Stay safe,” Pete says. “Check in with me whenever you want to.” And we end the call.

  Ever since Hope disappeared and I decided that her boyfriend was responsible, I’ve had all the thoughts I suppose any father would have about what to do under such circumstances: kill Slater Babcock myself, or hire a hit man, or hire someone to torture him until he confesses … But law-abiding citizens like me, like most of us I think, only imagine such actions.

  I remembered the case of Natalee Holloway, who disappeared on her high school graduation trip to Aruba, never to be found. Circumstantial evidence pointed to a young man named Joran van der Sloot, but he was never arrested; five years later he pleaded guilty in Peru to the murder of a Peruvian woman on the fifth anniversary of Natalee’s disappearance and was given a twenty-eight-year prison sentence. I recall thinking back then that, if I were Natalee’s father, I would extract vigilante justice. But now it’s my daughter who has disappeared, and I haven’t done any of the things I imagined any father would.

  My neighbor, Hank Whitby, owns an insurance agency. He is in his fifties, balding and somewhat overweight. He does not look like the warrior he was in his youth and, it turns out, still is. He served as an army platoon leader in Vietnam. When a burglar made the mistake of entering the Whitby home at three in the morning six years ago, Hank came downstairs in his boxer shorts and put three rounds from his service revolver into the burglar’s chest, killing him.

  The deceased perp turned out to be a career criminal with no history of violent acts, unarmed except for a Swiss Army knife. Nevertheless, the Edina police detective investigating the incident, a Vietnam vet himself, found the shooting to be a justifiable homicide, and no charges were filed. The Minneapolis Star Tribune noted that Minnesota is one of the states with a “castle law,” which gives a person wide latitude in defending his home from an intruder. All letters to the editor that the paper printed after the shooting agreed that the burglar had it coming. An editorial stopped short of saying that, but did strongly support the state’s castle law and the Second Amendment.

  So what would Hank Whitby do if his daughter were harmed, and he knew, or thought he knew, who did it? I believe that Hank would relentlessly track down the suspect and, if convinced of his guilt, serve as judge, jury, and executioner. Or at least find a way to determine for certain that the suspect was not involved.

  So finally, having lost everything that matters to me, I’m on my way to Key West, hoping that the journey will somehow be transformative. I can no longer tolerate being the kind of man who trusts the law, or fate, to deal with the evil in the world when it appears on his own doorstep. I must somehow lose my civility, and become more like Hank, or as close to him as a guy with my résumé gets, when I arrive. If this doesn’t work, then I’m lost, and Jenna along with me.

  A fool’s errand? Maybe. I’ll find out when I run out of road.

  7

  At seven P.M. I walk into the Timber Lodge Steakhouse, located on Highway M on the northwest shore of Lake Mendota. Vernon Douglas and I have dined here before. I find him sitting beneath a stuffed moose head, in a booth near the back of the dining room.

  “I suppose I should salute you now,” I say as I hang my leather jacket on a hook and slide into the booth.

  Vernon shrugs as he half rises to shake my hand, saying, “Oh, yeah. The chief thing.”

  “That’s very nice for you, Vernon. You’ve certainly earned it.”

  “Yes,” he replies as he takes a sip from his mug of beer. “I do believe I have.”

  Vernon has been with the Madison PD for eighteen years and is its first African American chief. He was a detective with the Chicago Police Department before that. Early on, I asked Pete Dye to check out Vernon’s background. Pete’s assessment: Vernon Douglas is a good man and a first-rate cop.

  The waitress arrives to take my drink order. I tell her I’ll have a martini with three blue-cheese olives. Usually, I’d order a beer, or maybe the house red. But this is the new Jack Tanner—or at least a man in search of the new me. So I order what Hank Whitby always gets when we’ve been to dinner together. Maybe it’s some sort of manly elixir.

  Over drinks and steaks, Vernon says he likes the pay and other perks of the chief’s job, but gets bogged down by the heavy administrative duties that keep him from doing what he loves, which is mak
ing bad guys wish they’d never come to Madison.

  I say that I’m taking some vacation time, not mentioning that it is a permanent vacation.

  “I’ve decided to recharge my batteries by riding a motorcycle to Virginia to see Jenna, who’s visiting her sister there,” I explain. “Then we’ll ride back to Minnesota together.”

  Liars, in an attempt to seem convincing, always provide too much detail, a fact that Vernon Douglas knows as well as anyone on the planet. But he lets it slide. We chat about the Badgers and Packers, about the harsh winter, and other such mundane subjects. Then I clearly startle him—and myself—by asking, with an attempt at nonchalance, “I was wondering, Vernon, if you’ve ever had to shoot someone.”

  He sighs as he cuts a piece of steak.

  “I’m not going to ask why you want to know that,” he says. “Most cops never fire their weapons, other than on the range.”

  He pauses while he chews the piece of steak and downs the last of his beer, then continues.

  “As a rookie cop in Chicago, I responded to a report of shots fired in Cabrini Green, the housing project that’s been torn down. Everyone rolling responds to a call like that, but I was a block away and got there first. I saw someone lying on the sidewalk and a young man standing over him, holding a pistol. As I roared up, lights and siren, the guy turned toward me and fired at my cruiser, shattering the windshield. I rolled out the door onto the ground and ordered the guy to surrender. You know, they never seem to follow that order during a gun battle. He fired again. I returned fire and hit him with three rounds center mass, killing him.”

  He shakes his head, a look of sadness on his face.

  “He was only fifteen years old. But there was nothing else I could do.”

  Then Vernon gives me a look that manages to be hard and sad at the same time.

  “Still, you don’t forget something like that, ever. Unless you’re one of those psychopath flatliners with fucked-up brain chemistry.”

  He looks up at the moose head on the wall.

  “I wouldn’t even want to shoot that fellow, if I didn’t have to. Although, obviously, someone felt differently.”

  I check my watch. It’s nine o’clock.

  “I need to get some sleep, Vernon. I want to get on the road early, out ahead of rush hour.”

  I insist on picking up the check, in honor of his promotion. We walk out to the parking lot, where he admires the Harley.

  “I guess this’ll get you wherever it is you’re going,” he says.

  “As I said, Vernon, I’m going to visit Jenna in Virginia.”

  “Uh huh, sure you are.” He grabs my arm, so hard it hurts. “Listen, you’re a good guy and you don’t deserve what happened to your family.” He lets go and shakes his head. “What’s it like to shoot someone? Jesus, Jack. What’d you do, track that kid down and now you’ve suddenly grown the cojones for some vigilante justice? Don’t go there. Don’t go anywhere near there. Look, I hate it that the perp, whoever he is, Slater Babcock or someone else, is out there somewhere, but …”

  I mount the saddle and say, “What would you do if someone killed your daughter and got away with it?”

  “Probably hunt down the scumbag, shoot him in the kneecap just to get his attention, and then do some really bad things to him.”

  I start the Harley.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  I ease the cycle off its stand, rev the engine, and pull away, gravel crunching under the tires. I can see in the rearview mirror that Madison Police Chief Vernon Douglas is saying something, but I can’t hear him above the growl of the engine.

  8

  After eight hours, I’ve ridden as far as my aching body will allow today, and then some. I now have a greater appreciation for the comfort of the luxurious cockpit of my BMW. I check the digital clock below the cycle’s speedometer: seven P.M. I’m on I-70 heading east, approaching Columbus, Ohio. I need gas, a meal, and a hotel. I motor down the highway for fifteen more minutes, then lean onto the exit ramp for Grand-view Heights, a Columbus suburb. Ohio State University is in Columbus. That was one of the schools Hope considered. If only she’d chosen Ohio State, or anywhere but the University of Wisconsin.

  I roll into a Citgo station. As I fill the tank, I think about that crisp October afternoon, the leaves in full fall color, reds, oranges and browns, when Hope and I drove twelve and a half hours from Edina for a campus visit, on the same route I’ve just taken. Hope insisted on sharing the driving, saying, “You’re no spring chicken anymore, daddy,” and this phrase became a running joke in our family.

  OSU is one of those lovely Midwestern state universities, its imposing campus exuding a mix of wholesomeness and high purpose, students and faculty strolling across the quad as they discuss the nineteenth-century Lake Poets, or string theory, where to get the best pizza, or the football team’s prospects for the new season.

  Hope noticed that everyone she met insisted on calling the place The Ohio State University, which she found a bit pretentious. “I don’t know if I can do that all my life,” she said. “Maybe I should go someplace else.” When I didn’t immediately respond, she added, “Just kidding, dad.”

  Hope was admitted to the University of Wisconsin, Ohio State, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Michigan. Everywhere she applied. She was very methodical in her criteria: stay in the Midwest, strong academics, not too long a drive from home, big campus with lots of activities in a nice university town.

  She picked Wisconsin because it fit all her criteria perfectly. Anywhere was fine with Jenna and me, as long as Hope was happy with her choice. But if she’d happened to choose Michigan, my alma mater, well, I was a big college football fan and Hope could have gotten student game tickets whenever we visited Ann Arbor during the season. I didn’t mention this perk while she was making her decision or afterward.

  At Edina High School, Hope was an excellent student. She played lacrosse, edited the student newspaper, and was Queen of the Junior Prom. She was friendly, charming, and lovely, with blue eyes and blonde hair like Jenna, and always had a boyfriend. They were all nice young men, as far as I could tell; Jenna and I knew their parents. I don’t know if any of them were serious relationships. In my high school days, we seemed to have brightly and briefly burning love affairs with no sex. Kids today—is any sentence that begins with “kids today” of any value?—appear to have casual relationships, with sex.

  Jenna and I never asked Hope about any of that. We trusted our daughter, and she knew it. During her freshman year at Madison, she did seem to get serious about a senior boy, which made Jenna and me somewhat uneasy because of the age difference. He was the football team’s backup quarterback. The boy graduated and joined the marines. He and Hope exchanged letters for a while during her summer vacation. She didn’t seem upset when that ended.

  Sometime during her sophomore year, she met Slater Babcock.

  THE GAS pump’s auto shutoff clicks at just under fifteen dollars. The Harley gets fifty-three miles a gallon on the highway. At that rate I’ll get to Key West for less than 200 bucks. I turn out of the Citgo and ride toward a Cracker Barrel down at the end of the strip. As I approach the restaurant’s crowded parking lot, I notice a roadside sign advertising the “Historic Arcadia Bed & Breakfast” two and a half miles down the road. On an impulse, I decide to check it out.

  Jenna always liked to stay in B&Bs on our road trips. I found them to be musty and frilly and overly precious. The proprietors always seemed to be a couple, one or both of whom had dropped out of one kind of rat race or another in favor of the bucolic life running an inn in a converted Victorian house. I don’t particularly care for Victorian architecture, antique furniture, lace curtains or shaving in dry sinks. Despite this, all my B&B memories are good ones because pleasing Jenna pleases me.

  Exactly two and a half miles down the two-lane black-top, I come upon the Arcadia, a three-story white Victorian (of course) with purple and green gingerbread trim set in
among giant live oak and willow trees, with a back lawn sloping down to a small lake. I guide the cycle along the gravel driveway and stop in front.

  There is a porch running along the front of the house. A man is sitting on a bench swing, the rusty chains creaking as he glides back and forth. He appears to be about my age, with a full beard, wearing a red plaid flannel shirt and jeans against the cooling night air. Probably a refugee from the Chicago commodities pits. A golden retriever with a grey muzzle sleeps at his feet. The man nods in greeting as I lean the cycle onto its kickstand, get off, and walk up the porch steps.

  “I was wondering about a room for one night,” I say as the man rises and offers his hand.

  “Garrett Kirkland,” he says. “No need to wonder. We’ve got one available. Got eight rooms here, as a matter of fact, with just three occupied.”

  He eyes the Harley.

  “I’ve always thought about getting one of those bad boys, but my wife always exercises her veto. Says if I’m having a midlife crisis, I should take up woodworking, or something else that won’t kill me. No offense.”

  “None taken. Can’t say she’s wrong.”

  As Garrett takes an imprint of my credit card at an oak rolltop desk in the living room, he explains that he formerly owned a Chicago advertising agency, Kirkland Associates. His wife Marissa was sous chef at Les Nomades.

  “Maybe you’ve eaten there,” he says.

  “Yes, my wife and I have, many times. It’s a favorite of ours.”

  The charming brick row house on East Ontario Street is in fact one of Jenna and my go-to restaurants when in Chicago. Will we ever dine there again? Do anything together again?

  “Maybe you’re wondering why two people give up good jobs in an exciting city to own a B&B out here in the boonies,” Garrett says.

  I nod. It’s true.

  “Well, when I got an unsolicited offer from a big French advertising conglomerate for a helluva lot more than I thought my shop was worth, I decided to sell. There are no hard assets with an ad agency. The inventory goes down the elevator every night, and your biggest client can call at any time and fire your ass, as happened to me more than once. So, after the wire transfer hit my bank account, I retired. Got bored after a week. We saw a for-sale ad for this place in Gourmet magazine. Turned out my wife liked the idea of taking a break from working in someone else’s kitchen. That was three years ago.”