Misery Loves Company

by Rene Gutteridge

  He’d fed her dinner: roasted chicken with mashed potatoes. Now they sat quietly together as they both finished decaffeinated coffee. Her brain was mush. She’d gathered from the information that he intended to write a book centered around boats or boat theft.

  Jason had been gunned down by thugs after he’d received a call about a boat being stolen. That’s what Chris Downey had told her. She couldn’t make out what Patrick Reagan was trying to do, though. There was nothing specifically about Jason in all the paperwork she’d gone through.

  “Tomorrow you will continue reading what I’ve written on The Living End.”

  “Okay.” Under any other circumstance, the prospect of reading his unpublished work would be beyond thrilling. Tonight it was just one more thing to try to unravel.

  There was another stretch of silence. She liked that Patrick was comfortable with it, as though it was essential to his routine. She’d feared silence ever since Jason died. If she wasn’t working on her computer, she had the TV on. Its drone made her feel less lonely. Jason used to hum softly—usually something he’d been listening to in the car—sometimes for well over an hour. It would kind of get on her nerves then, especially if she was trying to concentrate, but now she would give anything to hear it again.

  Patrick set his coffee cup down and laced his fingers together. “When did you throw away his toothbrush?”

  “What?” Jules blinked back into the moment.

  “Jason’s toothbrush. When did you throw it away?”

  Jules couldn’t answer.

  “I haven’t thrown Amelia’s away,” he said, staring blankly into the center of the room. “I don’t know when you’re supposed to do that. How many months? How many years?”

  Jules didn’t look at him. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  More silence. Jules wanted desperately to go to her room, to sleep. She wasn’t sleepy, though.

  “She asked me to kill her, you know.”

  Jules’s weary gaze snapped sideways toward him. “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t want to suffer through the living decay.”

  “So she asked you to assist in her suicide?”

  “No. She didn’t believe in suicide. That was the point.”

  Jules processed his words.

  “Murder is too strong a word. Ending someone’s suffering isn’t like taking a hacksaw to the streets and slaughtering every person in sight,” he said. “It seems inhumane that we should decay before we die, doesn’t it? Jason was lucky in that way. His decay came after death.”

  Jules didn’t bother wiping the tears that welled in her eyes. She was starting to really hate this man. Once again, he’d broken her.

  Her tone was terse. “Jason wasn’t lucky in any sense of the word.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “So you killed your wife. Is that what you’re saying?”

  Patrick’s expression turned cautious. “You can’t judge me. You’ve no idea.”

  “Did you kill her to end her suffering or yours?” Jules threw her hands up when Patrick’s eyes turned angry. “I’m sorry. Am I offending you? Maybe I’m mistaken, but I believe it was you who wanted me to drown in deep thoughts, so I’m jumping in feetfirst here. Toothpicking my way straight to the heart of the matter.” Jules leaned forward, engaging his eyes. “Because you and I both know, Patrick, that the dead one gets all the peace.”

  His demeanor began to change. He stiffened. He stopped blinking. His sights were set on her. “Did Jason suffer?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. I can’t imagine what kind of sick mind would want to know that. What am I? Some bizarre research project for your book? Is that it?”

  “I believed,” he said quietly, “we could understand each other.”

  “How can I understand this?” Jules said, gesturing wildly at random points in the room. “How does any of this make sense?”

  He stood, walked to the table where the documents were piled. “If you work hard enough, Juliet, you will find some answers.”

  “Maybe I don’t want answers.” She swiped at her tears. “Maybe I just want to be left alone, to live my life however I want.”

  “You’re too wonderful to be left alone.”

  The room spun when Jules tried to stand. Her ears burned as her blood pressure shot up. She stared him down as she walked to the door that led out the front of the house, the opposite of the deck. She grabbed the knob, turned it, wondered if it would be locked. But it wasn’t. The door came open.

  “What are you doing?” His eyes narrowed.

  “I’m leaving you.”

  “It’s nighttime. Where do you think you’ll go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s below freezing. It’s been snowing.” Patrick stepped forward, and she backed up, one step out the door. “You’ll die out there.”

  “Then I’ll be the lucky one too.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Juliet.”

  “Don’t you get it?” she said, taking another step onto the small porch. “I’m unfixable. I’m broken, and the piece I need to be fixed is permanently gone.”

  “Get back in here.” His voice boomed the demand.

  With one swift pull, she slammed the door, turned, and ran. Her feet, shod only with thin leather shoes, plunged into the snow, the cold jabbing into her ankles like spikes. With each step, it felt like shards of glass were cutting into the tops of her feet.

  No moon or stars were out. A whisper-thin blanket of clouds seemed to hold the darkness captive against the mountain. She stumbled, tripping over rocks, then small trees. But she ran frantically, sure she heard him close behind, running after her.

  Suddenly her bare hands plunged into the snow. She fell hard, and her face also hit the earth, the snow folding around her cheek, then up her nose. She coughed and wheezed, trying to scramble to her feet. But they slipped underneath her, unable to gain traction.

  She stopped and listened. Footsteps? Or the wind? Rising to all fours, she was able to stand slowly. Her wrist had scraped against a piece of wood, and the blood gushed down her arm, pooling and sticky at her elbow and against her sleeve.

  Run. He’s going to kill you.

  She took off, straight into a dense population of trees.

  Her lungs resisted the cold air. And the altitude didn’t make it easier. Before long, Jules was out of breath, slumped against a tree, shivering uncontrollably. She fell to her knees, tucked her hands under her arms. She wanted to cry, but she shook so violently that it was like all her emotions were being jackknifed out of her.

  She knelt there for a while, so cold she couldn’t move. Her feet were numb, except for the occasional slicing pain at her ankles.

  Her eyes began to adjust better. The forest around her became clearer. She could see the bark. The twigs. A haunting, whistling sound was distant as if the wind were playing with ghosts in the valley below.

  Jules slumped to a sitting position, leaning against the tree behind her. Every part of her body was numbingly cold. But thoughts, as haunting as the wind, drove her attention inward.

  Had he really killed his wife?

  What was this man capable of?

  It didn’t matter anymore. She closed her eyes and begged for death to come quickly. She prayed to Jesus because that was what Jason would’ve wanted her to do. She believed in heaven, more for Jason than she did for herself. But sometimes that made it harder, knowing he was alive but unreachable. That his life continued on without her, and that he hadn’t managed to send even a single message back that he loved her. He was just gone, into a life somewhere else.

  Jesus, take me to him.

  Jules no longer felt her feet or her hands. The sharp pain was gone. A moment of alarm blew through her. Maybe she should try to run back to the cabin. But she knew she was unable to walk. She’d sealed her fate the moment she ran out the door. Her mind whisked through thoughts and feelings even as her body froze. Her hand tingled with warmth as she saw Patrick
reach for it in the cabin. Jason’s lips brushed against hers as she saw their wedding day. She tasted the sweet buttercream frosting of the cake. The bubbly champagne burned her throat.

  A sense of regret shook the delight away as she remembered having to tell her daddy he wasn’t invited to the wedding. He would come drunk, she knew, and embarrass her and everyone there. It was as if he knew. He didn’t resist, but she’d never seen sadder eyes in her whole life.

  She walked herself down the aisle. It wasn’t as hard as she thought because she knew she was walking into the arms of the man who would take care of her for the rest of her life.

  Jesus, take me.

  She waited for death to come.

  Instead, her eyes slowly opened. Far above her, tree limbs cracked and swayed in a cold wind that she was not shielded from. She heard an owl. The clouds parted, and a shimmering moon peeked through, bathing her in cold light.

  Maybe Jesus was coming to get her, parting the sky, reaching down. Jesus. She repeated His name over and over, hoping to be taken, hoping to really believe.

  Her teeth chattered and her eyes closed against her will.

  Time had passed, she knew, when she opened them again. The moonlight was gone and the forest was inky black. She couldn’t move and everything was blurry. Her jaw seemed cemented shut.

  Then she heard hasty footsteps and her name being called.

  “Jason!” Her voice was unmanageable. Hoarse. “Jason, I’m here!” She knew her mouth moved, but whether she was saying anything audible, she wasn’t sure.

  Her eyelids were becoming heavy again. The shadows all around her swelled in size, like she was viewing them through the glass of a marble. But out of the swells of darkness he appeared, running toward her, swiping at the limbs that got in his way.

  “Jason . . .”

  “I’m right here,” he said, stooping. His strong arms lifted her. Her head fell back. She couldn’t hold it upright anymore.

  But she smiled, feeling as if she were floating. “It was nice of Jesus to send you to take me to heaven. What’s it like? I bet it’s like snow, but warm. Warm snow.” She giggled, sounding like herself at nine years old. “How long does it take to get to heaven?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. She was with him again, and that was all that mattered anymore.

  “You get it, right? I mean, this number was the last call he received before he was killed.” Chris jumped up and smacked the table. Addy sat with him, sipping coffee, glowering at the time.

  “It’s also going to be the same number tomorrow at, say, 8 a.m. But what’s important about the number? Who made the call?”

  “I don’t know. It was a burner phone—a phone that is untraceable, unregistered.”

  “So what does it tell you?”

  “It tells me that whoever this Roy guy is, he knows something.” Chris scratched his head, his eyes heavy with the burden of sleepiness. The adrenaline was fading. “They missed it.”

  “Missed what? Who?”

  “In the police report. There is nothing about this number in the police report. It could’ve easily been found if they’d pulled his phone records.” Chris sighed. “But with the theory we were all going on, nobody probably thought to pull them.” He glanced at his sister. “Addy, go to bed. Please.”

  “I can’t leave you here by yourself. You’re too wound up. And bad things happen when you’re wound up. Remember the time you jumped off the roof at Mom and Dad’s, onto the trampoline?”

  He sat down at the table.

  It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something. “So a guy named Roy called Jason right before he was killed.”

  Addy nodded, trying to understand. “On an untraceable phone. That’s got to suggest some illegal activity, right?”

  “What are you saying? Jason was into something illegal?” Chris shook his head. “There is no way.”

  “I know you love Jason,” Addy said, “but to be objective, don’t you at least have to consider the possibility?”

  “There’s no way. The guy was a saint. He didn’t even cuss. He never drank. He wouldn’t gossip about the most gossip-worthy cops at the precinct.”

  “Sounds a little too good to be true.”

  Chris sighed and finally looked at her. “It’s just not possible.”

  “Chris, he was ‘randomly’ gunned down. But you’re a cop. You know that there is hardly a random act of violence. Right? Most often there’s a reason behind a crime.”

  “And this guy knows the answer,” Chris said, waving the little piece of paper in the air.

  “That’s not much to go on.”

  Chris looked at the papers on the table. “No. But it’s all pointing toward the idea that Jason was concerned about something. He has part of a boat hull in his garage. He has police reports on stolen boats from other counties and towns. There’s something to this.”

  “I agree,” Addy said. “But how do you find out who Roy is? Look up every person with the first name of Roy in Maine?”

  Chris sat back, still absentmindedly waving the scrap of paper. Narrow it down to Wissberry. The county. Maybe the next counties over.

  He looked at Addy, who was deep in thought with the rim of her coffee mug hovering at her lips. Maybe he could look to see who’d been incarcerated in the last couple of years. It wouldn’t hurt. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jason Belleno was above reproach. And it felt like a betrayal to think otherwise. But he also knew this Roy had answers, and he was going to do everything in his power to track this man down.

  HEAVEN WAS A COCOON. Every part of her was wrapped in warmth. She felt herself sleeping, which was an odd sensation and aggravating, too. She didn’t want to sleep. She wanted to see heaven. She wanted to see Jason.

  Wake up, she told herself over and over. But the warmth that enveloped her made it difficult to leave her present state. Once, she barely opened her eyes. Just a crack. She saw nothing but glowing light.

  She smiled and returned to sleep. Jason had told her that heaven was full of light, that there was no darkness, no tears.

  Later—she didn’t know how much later, as there was no sense of time in heaven—she began to feel herself awaken. At first she felt perfectly comfortable. But that comfort seeped out of her like hot steam. Then she felt pain, like she was being pricked. The sensation that ants were crawling over her hands and feet caused her to breathe heavily.

  She wasn’t supposed to feel pain in heaven.

  Her eyes flew open. “Jason!”

  “Shhh. Shhh,” she heard.

  “Jason?”

  “Just rest.”

  “Why am I in pain?”

  There was no answer. And her eyes wouldn’t focus. She saw light and dark and a shadow that looked like a man’s nearby.

  Jules felt her head being lifted and water brought to her lips. Water. Yes. That was life-giving. Warm. That should be in heaven. But soon the pain returned, gnawing, agonizing.

  Then it left. Floated away like a butterfly ascending onto the wind. If her eyes were open, she believed she would’ve seen it go.

  She tried to rest, but something kept her from the perfect peace she’d known just a while before. It was the strangest sensation, like her soul was moving inside her body.

  Maybe she wasn’t in heaven yet. Maybe she was still traveling there.

  Then why was it so black?

  So empty?

  Jules wanted to scream, but instead she floated again, until she remembered nothing.

  Before lineup, Chris asked Captain Perry for a moment in his office.

  The captain shut his door, looking as weary as Chris felt. He cocked an eyebrow as he sat down behind the desk and gestured for Chris to take a seat. “You okay, son? You don’t look too good.”

  Chris had only gotten three hours of sleep—and hadn’t slept much at all since Jules had disappeared. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  The captain smirked. “Cream for those bags? You’ll have
to talk to my wife.”

  Chris smiled, trying to appreciate the captain for his sense of humor even though his own had seemed to disappear overnight.

  “Sorry,” the captain said with a shrug. “You’re probably not here to listen to my bad jokes.”

  “No, it’s not that. I just . . .” Chris stared at the ground. “I think I need to take some time off.”

  “Time off?”

  “Jules’s disappearance is hitting me hard.”

  The captain leaned back in his chair. “That’s understandable. You know we’re doing what we can. I’ve got Walker on this, and he’s the best I have.”

  “I know.”

  The captain leaned forward, putting his elbows on his desk. “Chris, time off is fine. I get that you need it. But I don’t want you mavericking around, investigating this thing on your own. Jeff’s a great detective. We’ve got to follow protocol. If it turns out that we’ve got a criminal case going, but things get hinky with our investigation, we could blow the whole thing. You get what I’m saying?”

  Chris nodded.

  “We’ll alert you if anything at all pops up.” He smiled as he relaxed a bit, sat back in his chair. “You gonna get out of town? I wish I could get outta town right now.”

  “Yeah. I think I will, actually.” Chris stood. “I really thought it’d be hard to get time off. I know we’re shorthanded right now since the city cut some of our funding.”

  The captain nodded. “We are. But I want my officers in good mental health. That’s important. You’ve been a great officer for me ever since you came to work here, Chris. We take care of our own. So no worries. How much time do you want?”

  Chris shrugged. “A few days.”

  “Done.”

  Chris shook his hand. “Thanks, Captain. I owe you. I’ll see you soon.”

  If he had a job to come back to.

  Chris headed up Highway 95 while listening to Maecoat chatter on the other end of the phone.