[Benny James 01.0] Birdsongs

by Jason Deas

  With curiosity he waited until the man was back to the other shore. When he disappeared, Benny waited another five minutes until he drove the boat over to search the island. It took him nearly fifteen minutes to find what the man had hidden and upon finding it Benny filled with more curiosity and confusion. He found a hole, filled with canned goods and a six-pack of beer.

  Chapter 56

  Peter downloaded the pictures and video from his camera to his laptop as he sat in the Baker Building parking garage. He dreaded Bobby’s forthcoming disappointment that had nothing to do with his brother’s plight. It was all about the golden calf, which was his campaign. Bobby had already banked on the fact this revelation would provide a priceless boost to his popularity. Peter walked as if he was a death row inmate to the chair in front of Bobby’s desk.

  Bobby was in a fantastic mood. He was high as a kite tasting power that was not yet his. Peter fired up his laptop again as Bobby poured himself a drink. Already celebrating, imagining the front-page news stories that would tell of his overwhelming victory, he had not read the outcome in Peter’s eyes. When Bobby sat down at his desk, he took a long drink and looked Peter in the eyes for the first time since he had entered the room.

  “You’re not going to like this boss,” Peter confessed.

  “What? Is he a homo, a burnout loser, a convict? What?”

  “I think he’s retarded or something. He’s not right.” Peter shook his head, still confused by Red.

  “Did you get video?” Bobby drained his drink with exasperation.

  “Yeah, watch this.” Peter played the file.

  Bobby watched. His eyes had never been so wide. “Holy fucking shit. He’s a deaf retard. He is, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know, boss. In person, he is even stranger than he seems on the video. Talking to him is like talking to a drunk three year old.”

  “This really bites my ass.” Bobby opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a healthy stack of bills. He laid them on the table in front of Peter. “This should more than cover the price for your silence.”

  “Yes sir, it certainly does,” Peter swallowed his pride as he pocketed the money.

  “Send them the standard letter we send everyone saying the test produced negative results.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bobby poured another drink as Peter hurried away. He had a shark to visit.

  Chapter 57

  Rachael decided to have lunch at the diner where Michelle previously worked part-time. Jerry Lee was just sitting down as she entered.

  Making eye contact with Rachael he said, “Well, golly!” Rachael thought of Gomer Pyle. “If you’re not going to be busy working while you wait on your food and eat, you are more than welcome to join me Ms. Martin.”

  “Well, thank you,” Rachael said smiling. She sat her notebooks down on the seat across from Jerry Lee and pushed them in as she slid beside them.

  “I imagine we’re here for the same reason,” Jerry whispered secretively.

  Rachael knew what he meant, but joked with him saying, “You’re hungry too!”

  “Ms. Martin!” Jerry spit a dribble of coffee on his shirt. Wiping clumsily at the new forming stain, he laughed. “I’ll be a monkey’s kitty cat,” he said continuing to laugh at himself. More Gomer Pyle flew through Rachael’s mind.

  “I knew what you meant,” she winked at him. “Yeah, I had to get a feel for this place. I would die, excuse the expression, to go into her home or the Hair Palace but those are now sealed with yellow tape.”

  “Yep. I snuck my way into the first crime scene but that won’t happen again.”

  “Once again I must ask you to excuse the expression, but you’ve got the balls of a big city reporter Jerry Lee.”

  “Not really,” he finished his unsuccessful cleanup job of the coffee incident. “You can only pretend to not know protocol once. I used up my once.”

  “Hey—at least you used it and didn’t let it go to waste. What did you know about Michelle?” Rachael asked abruptly.

  “Well…” Jerry Lee hesitated as if he were about to give away a family secret. “She slept around.”

  “With who?”

  “Chief Neighbors.”

  “I could have guessed that one, who else?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute—let me first tell you a little bit about her so you’ll understand.”

  “All right,” Rachael said, trying to follow his logic.

  “Michelle was a sweetheart. Look up sweetheart in the dictionary—there’s a picture of Michelle. She’s had bad luck trying to get serious with someone. It seems that she attracts the running around type. She’s always getting cheated on. In some warped psychological way she gets back at those that done her wrong with her loose ways. I guess in her own way it shows them that she don’t care and she can do it too.”

  “Wow. OK. Now who else did she sleep with?”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “What?” Rachael said catching on.

  “Yep. Benny too.”

  Chapter 58

  Benny decided to check the two motels in town for strangers. His first stop was the Lakeside Motor Inn. He and Carlton Davis were friends and Benny knew he would know who was staying in what room and what kind of person they probably were. Benny discovered media types inhabited a majority of the Inn. Carlton reported his knowledge of newspapers, radio stations, television crews, and a blogger. Carlton gave Benny the blogger’s room number, as she was the only one he felt might be shifty.

  Benny knocked on room twelve’s door, the room next to Rachael’s, and saw a young woman spring from the bed like a deer. The drapes were open as she kept an eye out for any commotion in the parking lot. Hurried movements meant something new happened in the case.

  She swung the door open and said, “Damn!” She paused. “Benny James.”

  “I guess you watch a lot of TV,” Benny said.

  “Well, I guess I do.”

  “Since I don’t have to introduce myself, why don’t you?”

  “Lola.”

  “Is that like Madonna or something, no last name?”

  “I guess, if that’s how you want to think about it.”

  “What brings you to town?”

  “You,” Lola said coolly.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. I write a blog about you.”

  “Isn’t that some sort of Internet diary slash chat room?”

  “I guess if that’s how you want to think about it.”

  “Why me?”

  “Come in,” Lola said and walked into the room. Benny took a seat in a chair by the window and Lola sprung back onto the bed. “When I was in middle school, you were working the case where the college dean was killed in his office.”

  “Oh God,” Benny mumbled.

  “You were the media’s darling. I felt the same. Then you met Lizzy Clark and fell from grace. I’ve followed your career ever since.”

  “I really screwed up on that one, didn’t I?” Benny said lightheartedly.

  “Hell, who would have thought that his daughter did it? How old was she anyway?”

  “Too young for me.”

  “You like them that way, don’t you?”

  “I do have a history.” Benny gazed out the window and turned back to Lola. “So you think you know a lot about me?”

  Lola reeled off a collection of information, imparting only a fraction of what she knew about him. Benny stopped her.

  “Whoa!” The flattery of a stranger knowing so much about him ignited a spark that flared his modesty. “You know enough to write a book about me,” Benny joked.

  “I am.”

  “Are you messing with me?” Benny asked, standing up.

  Lola continued reeling. Benny stopped her.

  Lola grinned confidently. "I wouldn't do that, Benny."

  He noticed her informality.

  "Your story has just begun,” she said. “The other stuff that’s happened in your
life is your preface. You're getting to the meat now."

  "The meat?" Benny was perplexed with Lola.

  "Yes, the meat—of you. Get this," she said, "man rises to hero, and hero falls from grace and rises again from the ashes, like a phoenix."

  Benny noted the bird reference and somehow cordially ended the interrogation telling her it was too cliché. He was not sure who interrogated whom. As he dazedly opened his car door, Carlton emerged from the office.

  "Did she tell you that she is writing a book about you?" he called.

  "Yeah," Benny shook his head. Yelling back across the parking lot he said, “Why didn't you tell me?"

  "I figured she’d tell you. It was her news, not mine." Carlton walked back into the office.

  Chapter 59

  R.C. stumbled through the door of his room at the Tuck ‘Em Inn and tossed his motorcycle helmet on the bed. Exhausted from the road, he fell next to the helmet and closed his eyes. Involuntarily, R.C. fell asleep. He dreamt of his bride to be who never was, Myra. After returning home from Vietnam, he chased a dream. He met Myra at a gas station in Alabama. As she checked her oil, R.C. offered his help. Offended by his assumption that a woman did not know how to put oil in a car, she coarsely told him thanks, but no thanks. R.C. for some reason liked women to scold him, as he did not have a mother to do that for him as a child. Myra liked to yell; they hit it off and made the perfect couple.

  R.C. and Myra had been living together for three weeks when Miles found him. Miles’s uncle was a palm-pushing lobbyist who knew important people and had a lot of money. It was easy springing Miles from the brig. R.C. had told everybody he knew that once back in the United States of America, he would find work on a shrimp boat. Growing up in the Nevada desert made him curious about what it would be like to live by water.

  Miles was a host of people. He was howl at the moon crazy, or calm to the point of anesthetized. He kept everybody guessing with his ability to play any role. With an Oscar worthy performance, he casually strolled onto R.C. and Myra’s porch one evening as they swung, enjoying their homemade happy hour. Miles did not mention the gun incident and neither did R.C. Having the gift of conversation and bullshit, he had an immediate in with Myra.

  “Hey, soldier boy,” Miles said, as he slunk up the three stairs on the porch.

  R.C. tried his best for cool, saying, “Miles, oh my God. How are you? This is Myra, my girl.”

  Myra came to love her verbal battles with Miles; R.C. rarely talked back. Growing weary of R.C.’s emotional wall that only grew after Mile’s appearance, Myra’s heart wandered. She wanted to leave R.C. for Miles, but Miles convinced her to stay. Miles concocted stories that led Myra to believe he stole a previous girlfriend from R.C. and repeating the act might destroy him. Forty days after Miles arrived in town, Myra was murdered.

  R.C. came home one evening to find Miles sitting on his porch swing. R.C. thought something was awry as Miles had never, to his knowledge been to the house when he was not home to solely visit Myra. In his next thought, he wondered about her whereabouts. R.C. next noticed, by his appearance alone that Miles was a different person. His personalities had once again altered. On the porch, R.C. stood before him silently, waiting for the new character to emerge.

  “You ever heard a jail bird sing?” Miles asked.

  “No.”

  “You’re about to,” Miles chuckled.

  “What does that mean?”

  “You’re about to sing a birdsong,” he said rotating the toothpick in his mouth a hundred and eighty degrees.

  “I’m not following you.”

  “I’ve made it all possible.” Miles flipped the toothpick in his mouth again and rose from the swing. “Sing pretty birdsongs,” he said patting R.C. on the shoulder as he walked past him and off the porch.

  R.C. watched him walk down the road and out of sight. It was the last time he would see him for thirty years. R.C. replayed the conversation again in his mind.

  His first step in the house landed his boot on a bloodied dress. Looking up he saw “Birdsongs” written on the wall in blood. There was a crudely drawn bird and a musical note as well. R.C. ran to the bedroom to find nothing amiss or astray. The bathroom was the same. The kitchen was a den of havoc.

  In the midst of broken dishes, shards of glass, and the contents of emptied cabinets and drawers, Myra laid face up, dead, with a note stabbed into her heart. R.C. entered a frame of mind he later thought of as the twilight zone stage of shock. Shaking uncontrollably, he held both hands to his head to steady it in order to read the note. Written and signed by Miles, it read:

  Myra,

  I got your note. I’m sorry he found out about us. Please don’t be scared of him. I don’t think he would do anything crazy. Make it one more day and I will be back in town tomorrow with money and we can leave this town forever. Think of the bird that comes to my window and sings when we are in bed. Remember the birdsong.

  I love you,

  Miles

  R.C. opened his eyes and noticed that light no longer peeked around the drapery. He wondered what time it was and how long he slept. His eyes, contaminated with the goop of sleep and the dust and dirt from the road, needed cleansing. He took two steps toward the sink and noticed it immediately. On the bathroom counter laid a single bird feather.

  Miles knew that R.C. was in town. Little did R.C. know, Miles basically knew when he crossed into the city limits. Miles had planned this for years. Game on.

  Chapter 60

  It was Benny’s habit to attend the funerals of the victims in his cases. The obituary Ms. Hill prepared was printed in the Tilley Bee the preceding morning, complete with prose expressing love, farewell, and the underlying message of, until we meet again. The obituary also stated the funeral arrangements. Benny placed a call to Ms. Hill, inquiring if she had a family member who would be able to accompany her during the proceedings. She said she did not. Benny offered his hand and shoulder and Ms. Hill accepted.

  Wearing his only black suit bought for these exact occasions, Benny picked her up an hour and a half before the funeral began. He suggested they get coffee and chat before the observance. Benny found it helped grieving parties ease their emotions if they were allowed the chance to reminisce and talk without interruption to a willful and interested ear before the ceremony. Over cups of black coffee, Ms. Hill created for Benny vivid pictures of Danny’s childhood. Some of her tales were funny while others were somber stories, revealing the shy boy whose spirit fermented and settled into reclusiveness.

  Before leaving, Ms. Hill warned Benny they would probably be the only people in attendance. Danny didn’t have any friends. She relayed to Benny she was prepared for this and it would not offend or further sadden her. She also warned him that it was not going to be an ordinary funeral.

  “Danny and I were sitting at the kitchen table one night after his father’s death,” Ms. Hill said, as she paused to think of the timetable involved. “I think it was about two weeks after my husband’s funeral on a night when neither of us could sleep. We were both coming around mentally and we got to talking and laughing—however strange that sounds—about how the service was so stuffy and quite honestly dreadful. We both decided that neither of us wanted that kind of funeral for ourselves or for those who might attend. Maybe it was too late that night and we were punch-drunk from our weariness but we made a pact that whoever survived the other would carry out the desired memorial services of the other party. We spelled out our wishes to each other. Does this sound pretty weird to you, Benny?”

  “Not at all. I think it actually sounds like a great idea. So what were Danny’s wishes?”

  “Well,” she began, with a smile. “I’m going to tell his favorite childhood story. One I haven’t told you yet. I’ve been saving it. Next, I’m going to read the lyrics from a song he wrote, and finally I will play the song In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida over the church’s sound system. It’s seventeen minutes long. When the song is over, I’m supposed to walk out of the roo
m, without speaking, waving my hand as I exit, signaling all others to follow. Danny said he wanted me to get in my car, drive home, and get on with my life. I’m sure when he was saying all this he never imagined he would actually die before me though.”

  “I hope you will follow through with all of his wishes,” Benny looked directly into her eyes.

  “I will.”

  “Did Danny tell you the story behind the song he chose?”

  “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, he did not,” Ms. Hill looked interested.

  “There are a couple versions of this story, neither of which anyone seems to know if they are true or not. One version, and my favorite, spins the yarn that the lead singer of the band was so drunk that he slurred the original title, In the Garden of Eden into this new concoction of sounds.”

  “Wow! I can’t believe he never told me that—well, yes I can. He was such a cryptic boy. Thank you, Benny. That made my day. We better get over to the church and hear that song.”

  “Did you find a recording of it in Danny’s room?” Benny asked, the detective in him emerging.

  “He didn’t have it,” Ms. Hill answered. “I bought it yesterday from some guy named Larry at that tiny music store in town.”

  Chapter 61

  Miles knew he was a target. He liked it. Miles decided to let R.C. be the hunter and he would play the role of the hunted. Eyes to the back peeked constantly over his shoulder with a prepared counter-attack.

  During R.C.’s incarceration, Miles was a student of parole board policy and procedure. He compiled a portfolio of R.C.’s state data, complete with anything he could get his hands on. Miles made fake phone calls, composed phony letters, and posed as a host of personalities. Miles surmised he probably knew before R.C. the exact date of his release.