[Benny James 01.0] Birdsongs

by Jason Deas

  “Come in,” he invited.

  Lola strutted in and accidentally slammed the door behind her with a confidence that stemmed from an undisclosed well of aspirations hiding behind her shirt. Chief Neighbors’s eyes lit up.

  “How can I help you, honey?” he sucked in his stomach and straightened up.

  “I’m looking for the man in charge,” Lola purred.

  “Look no further.” Chuckie dusted off his desk.

  Chapter 81

  Rachael called Benny to tell him the bad and good news. Benny was angry but not surprised Chief Neighbors tried to be the hero. Benny thanked her for securing the remainder of the ten days Chief Asshole originally promised. Remembering the man he saw rowing to the island, and the food he found hidden there, Benny was fairly certain he knew R.C.’s whereabouts. He decided he would pay him a middle of the night visit.

  Instead of borrowing Donny’s speedboat, this time Benny borrowed a canoe from the marina so he could dock the little boat on the other side of the small island and approach R.C. in stealth mode. Something about a surprise attack always affected the way information was divulged. A suspect’s vulnerability, Benny thought, always seemed to give him the upper hand.

  Since leaving the FBI, Benny was not in the habit of carrying a gun, but thought it would be wise to saddle up with his holster and 9mm Glock for the impromptu meeting with R.C. Knowing little about the man, Benny had no idea how he might react to a midnight awakening. If he was sleeping with a gun under his pillow, Benny didn’t want him sticking it in his face without having one to point back, returning the favor. In the least, it would make a good prop, adding another ingredient to his recipe for a flavorful interrogation.

  After pushing off from the Sleepy Cove Marina, it took Benny a shade over an hour to paddle to the island. The absence of a breeze, matched with the infamous Georgia humidity, was stifling. Benny’s sweat soaked through his shirt within the first one hundred yards. The moon was in hiding. Benny’s eyes and ears searched for other boats, as they would not be able to see him without the running lights required for operating a boat at night. Guiding the boat in horizontal to the water’s edge, Benny momentarily laid the paddle on the sandy beach. Performing a balancing act, he stepped out of the canoe, picked up the bow and dragged it onto the shoreline, trying to keep the noise to a minimum. Benny picked up the paddle. If a situation arose in which he had to use a weapon, his first choice and line of defense would be the paddle.

  Benny crept into the dense interior of the island created by the towering pines and brush. After ten steps, feeling the ground for sticks with his toes before transferring his weight, Benny stopped and kneeled. He listened for movement and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. With his vision fine-tuned and hearing not a single movement, Benny sniffed the air knowing from visiting R.C.’s motel room that he was a smoker. There was not a hint of cigarette smoke in the air. Benny skulked ahead, hoping he was asleep.

  Thinking the safest, most concealed location on an island would be its center Benny’s target was its heart. His assumption was confirmed as he saw the silhouette of a domed tent against a backdrop of clothing strung in between two trees. Inching closer, Benny heard deep breathing, the sound of sleep. With another few steps around a cluster of pines, Benny viewed R.C. asleep on the ground, outside the tent. The Georgia heat, driving R.C. from the sultry interior of the tent, had provided Benny a great favor.

  Benny silently set the paddle on the ground and removed his gun from its holster. Squatting, toes flexed and prepared to dig in for leverage, Benny readied for his surprise awakening. R.C. was asleep on his stomach. Benny held the gun a few inches away from the base of his neck. His other hand hovered above his back, ready to plant the base of his palm forcefully above R.C.’s buttocks with a painful suggestion to discourage any movement.

  Thinking his wildly beating heart would stir him from his slumber Benny took a deep breath and stuck the barrel of his gun against the back of R.C.’s neck. The contact startled him and his body involuntarily began an attempt to roll over to see who was at his back.

  “Don’t move,” Benny commanded, pushing the barrel of the pistol deeper as he increased the pressure and jammed his palm into R.C.’s lower back, knowing it would send pain shooting up his spine. “Do you have any weapons?”

  “No.” R.C. lay still.

  Benny patted him down. Assured he was telling the truth, Benny instructed him to turn over and sit on his hands. He considered bringing handcuffs, but thought cuffing him might further the negative feelings R.C. would already be experiencing and cause him to clam up. Benny wanted to set him on edge but not push him over. In his haste to confront R.C., Benny had not foreseen his need for a better light once in control. He questioned R.C. about a flashlight and as he continued to sit on his hands he bobbed his head in the direction of the tent telling Benny he had a battery-operated lantern just outside of the tent’s door. Benny positioned the lantern in between them and flipped the switch. He was impressed with the amount of light the unit emitted as he could clearly see R.C., the tent, and the surrounding area for a short distance.

  “I didn’t do it,” R.C. said, feeling like he had uttered these same words a thousand times in the past thirty years.

  Benny felt compelled to be sympathetic but knew he needed to begin with a hard-nosed approach. “You didn’t do what?” he asked emphasizing the what. “You didn’t kill Myra? Or Danny? Or Ryan? Or Michelle? Please be a little more specific with what you didn’t do.”

  “I didn’t kill any of those people,” R.C. pleaded.

  “Give me one reason why I should believe you.”

  “I can’t. You probably shouldn’t. And you obviously don’t.”

  “You can stop sitting on your hands,” Benny said. R.C. pulled his hands out and thanked Benny. He shook the blood back into them and rubbed each one in silence as Benny contemplated his next statement.

  “I’ve been in this business a long time R.C. and my judgment has only failed me once. Got me fired. She was pretty and made me think of everything but business. You’re a far cry from pretty, so I trust my instincts, which tell me you are telling the truth. Now, for the million dollar questions,” Benny said looking dead into his eyes. “What are you doing in Tilley, Georgia? And what is the deal with birds and songs?”

  “Well, to answer your first question,” R.C. said with a wry smile. “I’m here to kill your killer. I have spent thirty years of my life in prison because of him and I’m going to spend the rest of whatever is left back in prison after I even the score. As for the birdsong shit, I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ve got my theories though and a letter your killer sent me thirty years ago that I don’t think I’ll ever decipher.” R.C. relayed to Benny again a further detailed account of Miles. He told him more about Vietnam, the card game, and the bullet that grazed his arm included with a showing of the scar. He told Benny about the guns, the deal, his betrayal, and Miles’s appearance in Pascagoula, Mississippi.

  Benny listened to all R.C. had to say. He swished the information around in his brain for a moment and asked, “Do you still have the letter he sent you?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “It’s in the tent inside a book.”

  “Get it.”

  As R.C. crawled into the tent, Benny reached to the ground where he previously placed his gun. He fingered the trigger in the off-hand chance R.C. emerged from the tent with a gun of his own. As he exited with only a ratty piece of paper, Benny once again laid the gun to rest. R.C. unfolded the paper and handed it to Benny. It read:

  Birds singing outside my window

  Whistling in my head

  All the daylong

  Is it me?

  You ask if birds sing at night?

  I bet you will…

  Get ready to sing bird

  Hear it in your head

  Sing a song that nobody is going to believe.

  Betrayal is a bird’s song


  So simple

  Yet so misunderstood

  Goodbye birdsong

  Waiting for the encore.

  “What the does that mean?” Benny asked.

  “I’ve been wondering that for thirty years,” R.C. responded.

  Benny picked up his gun, looked at it intently, looked R.C. in the eyes, and holstered the weapon.

  Chapter 82

  The canoe Benny was commandeering back to the Sleepy Cove Marina flitted astray. Eyes closed, he had been paddling off course when his cell phone rang. Stopping to answer he noticed the lights from shore and realized his indirection. It was Vernon.

  Benny had called Vernon earlier in the day with the name Miles Davenport and told him of his intentions of making a midnight visit to the island where he believed R.C. was hiding out. Vernon informed Benny of his search throughout all of the avenues in the department’s arsenal for the name Miles Davenport. Vernon reported he found a speeding ticket, given to a Miles Davenport, two counties over, and two months earlier.

  “Does the ticket have any information we can use?” Benny asked, all of a sudden wide awake.

  “The description of the car is there, a brown Ford F-150. But it looks as though when the officer gave him the ticket to sign, without the officer noticing, he struck a few lines through the address.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Benny commented. “What about the tag number? Was that legible?”

  “Yeah. I ran it and it leads to a little shack at the end of Burke’s Mill Road. Someone had cut down a pine tree that was lying across the dirt road to discourage anyone from continuing to the end. I left the car and walked the rest of the way down to the end. The place is unlivable. Roof falling in, no electricity or water but it definitely belongs to our killer.”

  “Why, what’s there?” Benny questioned trying to paddle and simultaneously hold the cell phone to his ear.

  “I found Michelle’s scissors he took from the Hair Palace. It was dark, and the wood floor is full of dark spots and rot, but I think some of the darker spots are blood. I also found a picture, stabbed into the floor with one of the pairs of scissors.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before, but I would bet it’s his next victim.”

  “Did you find pictures of Danny, Ryan, or Michelle?”

  “No but there was a fire pit out back. It appears that it was used recently. If he took photos of them, maybe he burned them. He must have more than twenty bird feeders out there too. All recently filled with seed. There are bags of birdseed inside the shack covered with plastic sheets, so they won’t get wet.”

  “Did you tell Chief Asshole?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t. We’ll meet there at sun-up and go over the place again in the light.”

  “Oh, there was one other weird thing about the ticket.”

  “What?”

  “He didn’t sign the ticket with his name. He signed it Myra Gale.”

  Chapter 83

  After tying the canoe to the dock, Benny checked his messages on the houseboat and changed. All the while, he kept repeating the name Myra Gale over and over again in his head, wondering why Miles Davenport would sign the speeding ticket this way. Benny decided he could not wait until the morning to begin searching for the answer.

  Ned was a night owl. Benny knew his habit of working on his odd projects into the early hours of the morning. From their conversations, Ned related to Benny he usually cooked and ate dinner somewhere around 3:00 a.m. After dinner, he watched an hour of television, the Discovery or History channel, and slept until eleven or twelve the next day. Ned stated his muse awakened when the rest of the world slept. Benny hated to interrupt his special time with his muse but placed the call anyway.

  Ned switched the knob on the oven as the phone rang. Before looking at the caller identification display, he was fairly certain he knew who it was. His assumption was correct and he answered saying, “Don’t apologize, I’m still awake making supper.”

  “I’m sorry, Ned.”

  “I said don’t be. I know you’re pressed for time and things are starting to roll with the case. If you’re hungry, I just put a pizza in the oven—homemade dough recipe and I grew the mushrooms myself in an aquarium.”

  Benny declined, his hunger turning to nausea with the thought of Ned’s homegrown mushrooms. Benny apologized again and professed his need to purchase a computer of his own. He gave Ned the two new names, Miles Davenport and Myra Gale, asking him to start with the latter. Ned declared he would start looking while the pizza cooked.

  As Benny drove down the driveway he was cognitive of the fact it was the third time he had done so in the past twenty-four hours. For the first time in the history of their friendship, Ned met Benny at the door. His eyes were about to bust out of his head with amazement.

  “Remember when I said the stuff I found before was wild?”

  “Yeah, you actually said it was wild-ass shit.”

  “Well, this is actually where the wild starts,” Ned gushed. “I decided to do a Google search for Myra Gale. Turns out it’s a famous name. She was a famous musician’s thirteen-year-old wife.”

  “I don’t remember who that was.” Benny tried to think what the name meant and drew a blank.

  “Jerry Lee Lewis.”

  “Jerry Lee?” Benny asked as Ned nodded.

  “Get this,” Ned said rubbing his hands together. “Jerry Lee Lewis had a nickname.”

  “What was it?” Benny asked hesitantly.

  “The Killer.”

  Chapter 84

  Jerry Lee, known to a few now as Miles, did not have daddy issues or mommy issues to blame for the beginnings of his derangement. Nor would the tracing of his personal history back to childhood reveal a troubling era of unhappiness. His derailing began in his middle to late teenage years with the first occurrence of many in a destructive history of betrayals. A classmate and best friend’s disloyalty began his downward spiral. Before Miles had time for his emotional and mental health to recover, he lost the love his heart desired due to what he perceived to be another betrayal. The second event increased the tailspin’s rotational velocity to the point of him being out of control. His soul was screaming. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.

  Miles grew up on a commune in a coastal California town. Unlike the hippy, free love and psychedelic drug using communes of the 1960’s and 1970’s, the particular commune where he and his family lived was rather tame. Its founder, Paul Brown, who changed his name to Apostle Paul, created the Brothers and Sisters of the Sun commune in 1949. Miles’s family sold their possessions and joined the growing membership during its fourth year when he was five years old in 1953.

  Frustrated with materialism and the lack of spirituality in society his parents retreated to the sanctum of Apostle Paul’s world, which he described in recruitment brochures as heaven on earth. Communes exist in many different forms and the operating details concerning spirituality, relationships among members, jobs, and leadership differ with each commune. Some communes have a group of decision makers. Apostle Paul was the sole decision maker of the Brothers and Sisters of the Sun. He dictated what was right and wrong. He crafted their belief system and there was no room for personal interpretation. He handed down all jobs and responsibilities through his minions.

  Those who entered the commune before marriage were assigned partners when they reached the age of seventeen. He allowed no input in his decision making process. His verdicts, decided by a jury of one, he said were for the betterment of the entire community, not to please individual hearts. Apostle Paul was the only member allowed to have multiple partners. He had many, many children, including a daughter who Miles loved dearly.

  At the age of thirteen, Miles was assigned to work with the construction crew because of his size and strength. During times in which nothing was built or repaired he worked the farm. While working the farm, he became close friends with a boy about his age named Randall. Randal
l’s family was of the original membership and Randall was born within the commune walls.

  In Randall he found a kindred spirit. Both boys were curious about the outside world, enjoyed writing, and kept secret diaries. The pages of Randall’s diary were filled with imaginings of life beyond the commune’s walls. Miles’s journal entries were filled with thoughts and poems about Lily, Apostle Paul’s daughter. As their relationship matured and they trusted one another to protect one another’s secret thoughts, they exchanged diaries. Apostle Paul did not like secrets and the prospect of being caught with such an item would surely result in corporal punishment. Miles was shocked to read Randall’s pages. Miles was curious about life outside but the act of leaving had never crossed his mind, mainly because of Lily. It was obvious to Miles that Randall planned on leaving before his arranged marriage, and he did a few years later.

  When Miles and Randall returned each other’s diaries, Miles immediately noticed that Randall had numbered the pages. When Miles questioned Randall about the numbering he advised Miles to give Lily certain pages. The page numbers were retained in his memory. Upon questioning his judgment, Randall confessed a conversation he had with Lily revealing Miles’s affection for her. He said she was blushing with flattery. Randall thought the poems would woo and win her heart, motivating her to persuade her father, Apostle Paul, that Miles was the one who she wanted to be paired with when the time came for her marriage. Miles did as he was advised, tearing the pages directly from the book and a distant and careful love affair saw its beginnings.

  When the time came for Randall to leave, he did not say goodbye to his parents, brothers and sisters, or Miles. He left his diary on his pillow as a slap in the face to Apostle Paul. Although Miles anticipated him leaving, he also expected a goodbye. Without closure and left with the feeling that Randall didn’t trust him enough to divulge his secret plans, Miles was crushed. He felt empty and lost without his friend, the only intimate relationship he had ever known in his life outside of his immediate family. The only thing that kept him going was the thought of his seventeenth birthday and a life with Lily.