The Broken Promise Land

by Marcia Muller

  Once he’d seen that I wasn’t going to cry all the way across town, Sergeant Boyd had begun to enjoy our mission.

  I clung to the dashboard of his unmarked car as it weaved from lane to lane on the straight, flat streets, the pulsar light he’d clapped onto its roof flashing off the surrounding vehicles. My stomach was queasy and my skin tingled. In spite of the late-lingering heat I felt very cold.

  “How much farther?” I asked.

  “You see that wall? That’s the fairgrounds.”

  God, I felt cold…

  11:45 P.M.

  I felt cold and focused as we laid our plans.

  “I’ll take this side of the stage,” I told Hy. “You circle around to the other.”

  “Okay. Ricky’s more likely to respond to you than to me, so you pull him off of there. But you’re also gonna have to cover O’Dell and Jackson.”

  “I can handle it. You’ll cover Curtin and Sherman.”

  “Where’re the others? Rats?”

  “Front row of the seats, section three, taking notes on the performance.”

  “Girdwood?”

  “I haven’t seen him or Amory since I ran them off earlier, but that doesn’t mean they’re not in the arena.”

  “Jesus.” Hy shook his head grimly. “Okay, take away the ones we can locate, and who’s left to watch out for?”

  “Anybody.”

  He picked up a duffel bag that sat under a table in the room reserved for security personnel. Took out a .38 and placed it in my hand. Took out a .44 for himself.

  “Luck,” he said, squeezing my shoulder.

  “Luck.”

  RAE’S DIARY:

  11:50 P.M.

  “Luck—we’re in it tonight,” I said to Boyd. “The concert’s still going on, and nothing’s happened yet. Pull in here.”

  He turned left and stopped the car at the coliseum entrance that I knew—from the diagrams that Hy and Rats had gone over with Ricky when we were in San Diego—was closest to the dressing rooms and security station. I jumped out and ran toward it.

  “Hey!” Boyd called.

  I flashed my I.D. at the guard on the door. She must’ve been told to look out for me, because she said, “Ms. Kelleher! Go on.”

  I left Boyd to fend for himself and rushed inside, drawn by the sound of Ricky’s voice.

  11:51 P.M.

  Ricky’s voice filled my ears, but it didn’t drown out Rae’s when she called from behind us, “Get him off that stage, for God’s sake!”

  I turned around. She was out of breath, sweaty, and quite plainly terrified. She recoiled when she saw my gun.

  No time for questions; I let her go on.

  “The next song he’s supposed to sing is ‘The Empty Place,’ followed by ‘Midnight Train’ on the stroke of twelve. We’ve got to stop him.”

  “We’ll get him off of there. But the song—what about it?”

  “Terriss killed herself at her stepfather’s house here in Albuquerque three years ago. She left a suicide note—the cops let me see its text. Some of the lyrics of ‘The Empty Place’ are a dead steal from the note—probably planted in Ricky’s mind by her stepfather.”

  “Who?”

  She pointed toward the arena and said his name.

  RAE’S DIARY:

  11:54 P.M.

  His name had surprised Shar, but she recovered right away and drew me into the plan. Now thunderous applause filled the arena as I started moving as inconspicuously as I could along its left-hand wall. Shar was already halfway to the stage. Hy was circling along the opposite wall, alerting the guards with his walkie-talkie to what was going on. We’d left Sergeant Boyd at the security station, calling for backup; he’d agreed to let the three of us get Ricky offstage before taking over.

  The applause died down. Ricky picked out the opening chords of “The Empty Place.”

  My pulse went crazy and I felt cold all over again. I picked up the pace.

  He stopped playing, looked over the stands for a long moment, and said, “This one’s for Red, wherever she is tonight.”

  Oh, God! Totally wrong thing to do! But how could he know that?

  Shar and Hy were in place now.

  My smile hides the empty place

  That lives inside of me

  It turns away with all good grace

  The prying inquiry…

  Faster, Rae. Any one of those words could set the guy off!

  My laughter covers up the fears

  That lie within so deep

  It turns aside the healing tears

  That then would give release…

  The guards had stepped back into the stairwells so I could pass, but dead ahead one still stood at his post. When I tried to slip around him, he grabbed my arm.

  “Let go of me, you idiot!”

  His walkie-talkie crackled and Hy’s voice said, “This is Ripinsky. Let her through.”

  The man gave me a puzzled look and took his hand away.

  Ricky was deep into his song—our song—now. I moved faster.

  You stand before me offering hope

  So fresh, so wild, so free

  But I’m captive to my sadness

  And the empty place in me…

  I stood directly opposite him now. Shar and Hy were moving onto the rear of the stage.

  Your smile hides the empty place

  That lives inside you too

  It turns away with all good grace

  What I might ask of you…

  Shar motioned for me to walk forward.

  Your laughter covers up the fears

  That lie in you so deep

  It turns aside the healing tears

  That then would give release…

  Nobody in the audience was paying attention to me—their eyes were riveted on the performers. Nobody on stage noticed me—their eyes were blinded by the lights.

  Between us we have come to terms

  With who and what we are

  But now and then one of us yearns

  To take it much too far…

  I walked straight toward the man I loved, praying that I’d get to him in time.

  You lie beside me offering love

  So fresh, so wild, so free

  And I slip the chains of sadness

  And the empty place in me…

  I reached the stage’s edge just as he sang the final words. The guitar strains hung in the air, drifted off into silence. Then the crowd was on its feet, just like in L.A. the night before—clapping, yelling, whistling, stomping.

  Ricky seemed stunned by the extreme reaction. He removed his guitar, set it aside. Turned back to the audience, dropped his arms, bowed his head.

  And saw me.

  I held out my hands, urging him to come forward.

  His lips formed the word “Red” and he took a step toward me.

  Over the crowd sounds a microphone squealed violently, and Patricia Terriss’s stepfather began to shout.

  11:58 P.M.

  Norm O’Dell shouted, “The song’s right on, but the dedication’s wrong!”

  I’d been crouched on the stage and ready to go for him when he grabbed the microphone. Now I motioned for Hy, covering on the other side, to move in closer. Ricky had taken a step toward Rae. Now he stopped.

  Abruptly the crowd grew silent. Then a confused murmur rose.

  Everything seemed to slow down, as it had at the San Diego house in the aftermath of the sniping. I saw it all so clearly: O’Dell ingratiating himself with Ricky’s lead guitarist Dan, one of the men who had accelerated his step-daughter’s downward spiral into self-destruction; O’Dell engineering the motorcycle accident on the coast highway; O’Dell using the false friendship he’d fostered to get on with the band; O’Dell perpetrating his other crimes and mounting his campaign of harassment.

  O’Dell stepping up that campaign when he learned that the second concert on the Midnight tour had been booked for Albuquerque, on the anniversary of Patricia’s suicide at his former h
ome in that city.

  It was all so clear in this one slow moment.

  I eased forward, gun held low and shielded by my body, so as not to panic the audience.

  O’Dell said, “The dedication should’ve been to my stepdaughter, Patricia Terriss. She wrote most of those words. And she died here in Albuquerque three years ago tonight.”

  The crowd’s murmuring stopped. Ricky turned toward him, bewildered and disbelieving. Rae scrambled onto the stage.

  O’Dell looked Ricky straight in the eye. “Yeah, she’s dead, you bastard. And you killed her.”

  Ricky took a step toward him. “Norm…” he began.

  “You know what you did!”

  O’Dell reached under his Midnight Train tee and yanked a short-barreled revolver from his waistband.

  Shocked cries and gasps rose from the crowd.

  Hy or I would have shot O’Dell then. I almost did, as Ricky stood frozen, his eyes on the gun. But it wasn’t necessary.

  It wasn’t necessary because, in that second, O’Dell said, “Live with it, asshole,” and did what he must have been planning all along.

  He jammed the revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

  RAE’S DIARY:

  11:59 P.M.

  As the shot boomed off the arena’s dome I leaped forward, grabbed Ricky around the waist, and dragged him over the stage’s edge. We landed hard in a tangle on the floor. Then people were screaming and footsteps thundered and Hy shouted something about crowd control. Shar’s voice called down, “Are you two okay?”

  “Yeah.” Ricky moved off me and looked up. Flinched and rolled back as though he was trying to shield me. His breath came short and hard, and he whispered, “Oh, Jesus!” into my hair.

  Panicked, I tried to sit up, but he pushed me flat. He looked into my eyes with a wealth of misery in his and said, “You don’t want to see.”

  “He really did it, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he did it, poor bastard.”

  It felt like something tore in my chest. I pulled him close and shut my eyes. Tears leaked from their corners and slid across my temples and into my hair.

  I said, “I hate to cry, except when I want to get my own way.”

  Ricky touched my cheek. I opened my eyes, saw his were wet.

  “That’s okay, Red,” he told me. “You go ahead and cry.”

  PART FOUR

  July 29–August 25, 1995

  Los Angeles Times, July 29, 1995:

  SAVAGE GUITARIST LEFT SUICIDE NOTE ALBUQUERQUE, NM—A spokeswoman for the Albuquerque Police Department revealed today that country star Ricky Savage’s lead guitarist, who shot himself in front of a sellout crowd of 9,775 at Tingley Coliseum Thursday night, left a suicide note in the possession of a woman friend.

  The note written by Norman O’Dell, 47, was surrendered to the authorities by his longtime companion, Gina Robinson, 39, after she learned of his death on Friday morning. Robinson stated that O’Dell left the note in her possession with instructions to mail copies of it to the media on Friday. She denied knowledge of O’Dell’s intentions, but admitted to making a phone call to the camp of one of Savage’s children and transmitting threatening fax messages to the singer at O’Dell’s request earlier in the week.

  The contents of the note were undisclosed, but sources close to the investigation indicated that O’Dell blamed Savage and two of his former band members, both deceased, for the suicide of his stepdaughter, Patricia Terriss, in Albuquerque, three years prior to the date of the concert.

  Savage, who has so far canceled four stops on his promotional tour for his forthcoming Midnight Train to Nowhere album, could not be reached for comment. His publicist, Linda Toole, stated that a press conference will be scheduled for early next week.

  Letter from Patricia Terriss to Tod Dodson, July 27, 1992:

  Dear Tod:

  I’m sorry. Sorry I stole all your cash and dope. Sorry about the fish. Those were horrible things to do. I was just so out of control. I’m better now, though. Quite clear on everything. I’m at my stepfather’s house in Albuquerque. We’ve made up. I’ve forgiven him for being such a control freak after Mom died, and he’s forgiven me for disappearing on him. I was even able to tell him about Ricky—all of it, even the stuff with Dan and Benjy. He said I should forget it, get on with my life. And I am, in a way. I even went to see Veronica at the nursing home, to say good-bye.

  Yes, good-bye. Because, Tod, I can’t take it anymore. All my life I’ve known that there’s this empty place in me. My smile hides it, my laughter covers it up, but I’m chained by it and it sets me apart from everybody. For a while I thought Ricky was offering me hope and maybe I could slip those chains, but like all the others, he didn’t love me. And every day now I lose more of my control.

  Hey, that’s good stuff. I’ve been looking for a way to explain to Daddy why I did what I’m going to do. Maybe telling him about the empty place will make him understand.

  I don’t blame Ricky, not really. He never made any promises—I lied about that. And there’s a lot else you don’t know, about things I did to him. No, I don’t blame anybody, just this damn empty place. Sorry, Tod, I’m stoned and tired, and I’ve got one more letter to write—to Daddy. And then, finally, I’m going to get some rest.

  Love,

  P.

  Twenty-nine

  We were back in Los Angeles and gathered in the conference room at Zenith Records. It was Saturday night. Ricky, Kurt Girdwood, Ethan Amory, Virgil Rattray, Linda Toole, Pete Sherman, and Jerry Jackson were there. Wil Willis, the fourth partner in the label, was in Nashville on business, and they had him on the speaker phone. Hy was there because Zenith had made the decision to hire RKI on a permanent basis for corporate security. Rae was there because it was unlikely she and Ricky would ever again be more than a phone call apart.

  And I was there because Brother Ricky—he would always be my brother, in spite of the impending divorce—had promised me satisfying closure to my investigation.

  “So,” Willis’s voice said through the speaker, “what’s the damage?”

  Toole replied, “Hard to tell yet. We’ve scheduled a press conference for Monday, and I’m already at work on Rick’s statement.”

  “Forget it,” Ricky said. “I’ll write it myself.”

  “Are you sure that’s—”

  “A good idea? Yes.” He glanced at Rae, who sat beside him, and nodded emphatically. They both looked better than they had at any time since Thursday night, but the dark smudges that underscored her eyes told me she was still waking from nightmares, and his face was set in lines of strain that might be permanent.

  Girdwood looked skeptical about Ricky’s pronouncement but only said, “We canceled Dallas, Austin, New Orleans, and Miami. The rest of the dates’re still up in the air.”

  Willis asked, “What about replacing O’Dell?”

  Girdwood motioned to Ricky.

  “It’s gonna take time to find somebody of his caliber,” he said. “And I fired Forrest this afternoon, so we’ll need a new bass player as well.”

  Amory had been standing by the window behind the conference table, contemplating the view, but now he turned. “You what? He has a contract, you know.”

  “Screw the contract; it’s up in the fall and I’m buying out the remainder. I’m sick and tired of watching him get coked to his eyebrows before every performance.”

  Toole said, “But the tour, Rick. We can’t carry it off with two replacement players.”

  “I know. I’m canceling.”

  Toole sucked in air so hard that she started to cough. As the others muttered protests, Ricky took Rae’s hand and twined his fingers through hers; supportive energy seemed to flow between them, and he repeated, “I’m canceling.”

  “Not smart, Rick,” Girdwood said. “Not smart.”

  “Maybe not, but that’s how it’s gonna be.”

  “Think about the money we’ll lose.”

  “I don’t care about the
money.”

  “Think, then, about what this could do to the album sales. Both ‘Midnight Train’ and ‘The Empty Place’ are getting enormous airplay. We could have a monster hit on our hands.”

  “My canceling the tour isn’t going to stop that. And, frankly, I wouldn’t care if it did.”

  Girdwood’s eyes narrowed and he glared at Rae. “She tell you to cancel?”

  Rae’s fingertips went white against Ricky’s.

  “No,” he said, “but she agrees that it’s the only decent thing to do.”

  Girdwood snorted. “Decent!”

  “You ever hear of paying respect to the dead, Kurt?”

  “Respect! The asshole would’ve killed you—”

  “The police said his note made it clear he never intended to do that.”

  “So he took a different kind of revenge. You can’t tell me it’s going to be easy to live with what happened.”

  “No, but maybe that’s what I deserve. Anyway, when I said respect to the dead, I was talking about others, too—Dan, Benjy… and Patricia.”

  Amory was frowning thoughtfully. He stepped away from the window and came over to the conference table. “I think we’re missing a promotional gold mine here.”

  Girdwood, Toole, and the remaining band members turned to him with interest. Wil Willis asked, “What, Ethan?” Rats rolled his eyes and stared up at the ceiling.

  Ricky, Rae, Hy, and I exchanged glances that said, What now?

  “Okay,” Amory said, “I’ll run the game plan by all of you. And, Rick, once you hear it, I think you’ll agree to go on with the remainder of the tour. Norm said ‘Empty Place’ should’ve been dedicated to his stepdaughter, right? Because a lot of the lyrics were suggested to you by him, right? And he lifted them from her suicide note, right?”

  Ricky nodded, regarding the attorney intently.

  “So what you do in concert is dedicate it to her memory.”

  Rats’s lip curled. Jerry Jackson made a disgusted sound. Rae glanced nervously at Ricky.

  Amory paused for a few beats, then added, “Better yet, you dedicate it to both their memories.”