by Robin Yocum
I knew when I went home after searching the house that Deputy Fairbanks would disobey my direct order and leave his post. He just couldn’t help himself. Toots had told me that he had been hanging around the diner where his second ex-wife, Thelma—a hefty bleached blonde who wore thick orange makeup and whose perfume overwhelmed the odor of the diner’s grease pit—worked the graveyard shift. Toots had gotten a highly reliable report that Fairbanks was taking his lunches at the diner and on slow nights servicing Thelma in the kitchen. As the sheriff, you get to know your people. Although the mental image of Fairbanks mounting Thelma on the prep table made me want to avoid eating in the diner, I knew I could rely on him to do that, at least, without screwing up. I was hiding in the weeds. The minute Fairbanks’s cruiser left the driveway, I moved in.
Chief Fair is a bozo. He couldn’t find the source of a fire if it left smoke rings around his ass. That’s why I wanted him in charge. I studied arson at the academy. It would take an expert arson investigator to figure out how I set Daubner’s house on fire.
So I wasn’t really worried about getting caught. Okay, I was, but I figured the odds were in my favor. My big concern right then was my dad. I think he had found out that Daubner was blackmailing me and had killed him for it. This was really bad. The FBI was snooping around, and Vincenzio would have loved a very public and embarrassing trial, in part to humiliate me and ruin my political aspirations, but also to get back at Allison. Things were so bad, in fact, that I was considering arresting Smoochie on a trumped-up murder charge.
I walked over to Toots’s office. “We need to talk to Smoochie.”
Toots called information for the phone number at Dago Sam’s, then pecked it out. “Sammy, Toots Majowski here. Don’t give me away. Is Smoochie Xenakis over at your place? Uh-huh, okay. Thanks, Sammy.” He hung up the phone. “He’s over there making two-dollar bets and acting like a high roller.”
We drove over and parked across the street. From our vantage point, we could see Smoochie through the grimy front window of Dago Sam’s. When he came out, twirling a toothpick between his tongue and upper teeth, I pulled the car up in front of the shop, blocking him in, and Toots stepped out. “We need to talk some more, Mr. Xenakis,” Toots said.
Smoochie pinched the toothpick and flicked it into the street. “You boys know the drill,” he said in his wannabe-mafioso voice. “You want to talk to me, you need to contact my—”
Toots clamped one of his huge paws on Smoochie’s trapezoid muscle and the man wilted, squealing as Toots threw him into the backseat.
“What are you doing? You’re not allowed to do this. My lawyer’s going to hear about this.”
“No, he’s not,” Toots calmly said as he slid in next to Smoochie.
“Under advisement of counsel, I must—”
“Say it,” I told him. “Say you must regretfully decline to answer the question one more time, and I’m going to have Toots hit you square in the face.”
Toots, I knew, would enjoy such a directive. I drove out to Route 22 and pointed the sedan west. No one spoke. I got off Route 22 near Bloomingdale and pulled onto a dirt road near an old strip mine. We got out of the car and marched Smoochie through a thicket of briars toward the banks of a bass pond in the bowels of the scarred earth.
“These jaggerbushes are ruining my suit,” he said.
“Shut up,” I said. “I don’t care about your damn suit.” I was puffing for breath when I got to the pond. “Goddammit, Smoochie, I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but you’re about to become the prime target of the FBI, which also is investigating Daubner’s death.”
“I’m not afraid of—”
“Punch him, Toots.”
“No!” Smoochie squealed, throwing both hands over his face and backing up to the water’s edge. “Okay, I’ll stop,” he said through his hands.
“That’s your last warning,” I said. “You see, Smoochie, the boys from the FBI don’t know that you’re a harmless social worker pretending to be a ruthless killer. They don’t know that this is all an act. They think you’re a very sinister man who shot up one of their informants.” I paused a moment to let the words sink in. “Do I need to tell you how much the Federal Bureau of Investigation might frown on that?”
“No.”
“People in Steubenville love to talk. Those FBI agents are going to find out that Daubner beat you up, and that he and Dena Marie were having an affair. When that happens, they’ve got motive.”
“But he doesn’t have any evidence, because I didn’t do it,” he said in the panicked voice of the old Smoochie. “They don’t have anything on me.”
“They don’t need anything, you dumbass. They’ll squeeze your balls so tight that you’ll confess and believe you did kill him. Or they’ll simply phony something up.”
“The FBI would never do that.”
“That would be a very bad assumption on your part. Let me explain something to you, Smoochie, and I’ll deny to my dying day that I ever said this. The lead FBI agent on this case is a guy named Alfred Vincenzio. He doesn’t like me. In fact, he hates my guts. There is nothing in the world he would like better than to embarrass me by solving a homicide in my backyard. And if you think for one minute that it would bother him to hang you out to dry to achieve that, you’re sadly mistaken. In fact, this guy will go out of his way to make me look bad. If you happen to be the poor sap who pays the price to make that happen, so be it.”
“How so? How could that make you look bad?”
“They’ll get me up on the witness stand and try to make me look stupid—incompetent. He wants to ruin me politically.”
Smoochie nodded, then swallowed hard. “Do you think he might ask you if the rumors about you sleeping with my wife are true?”
I could feel my face go flush. “He might.”
“They’re just rumors, though, aren’t they, Sheriff?”
I struggled to swallow. “That’s right, Smoochie. Rumors. Vicious rumors. You know how this town is. People talk.”
“Yeah, people talk. What do you want me to do when the FBI agents want to ask me questions?”
“Tell them the same thing you told us. Tell them to call your attorney. Don’t say anything they can twist around. If you want Dena Marie and the rest of the Ohio Valley to think you killed Rayce Daubner, that’s fine. I’ll even tell her how dangerous I think you are, but stay the hell away from the FBI.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
VINCENT XENAKIS
A green sedan with federal-government license plates was parked in front of my house. I had been putting on a pretty good show around town, but at that moment you couldn’t have pulled a needle out of my ass with a bulldozer. I worked up a little spit in my mouth, slammed my car door, and walked toward the house. In the living room, I found Dena Marie sitting on the ottoman, facing the two FBI agents who were seated on the couch. She looked startled to see me and said, “Oh, Vincent, these gentlemen are here to talk to you. They’re from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” She said it as though it might be an honor for me to speak to two such distinguished men.
The younger of the two, the white guy, stood to shake my hand. As I pulled off my suit jacket I said, “I know who they are.” I walked across the room and stood behind Dena Marie. “Whatta ya want?”
“We’re investigating the death of Rayce Daubner,” the white guy began.
I cut him off. “That’s what you’re doing. I asked you what you want.”
The white guy’s jaw tightened. The black guy said, “You’ve got a smart mouth on you, junior.”
“Who pulled your chain?” I asked. It was exhilarating. I was no longer afraid. I was enjoying taunting the agents. The black agent chewed at his lower lip, and his nostrils flared.
“We need to ask you a few questions,” the white agent said.
“You know, Agent . . .”
“Vincenzio.”
“Uh-huh. Agent Vincenzio, you know, isn’t this heat a motherfuck
er?”
“The heat?”
“Yeah, this heat and humidity. It gives me an ungodly rash on my balls.”
Dena Marie turned, her mouth agape.
“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Vincenzio asked.
“Nothin’. I just figured you might like to talk about the weather, ’cause I’m not talkin’ about Rayce Daubner. I’d like to help you, but I’m under pretty strict orders by my attorney not to talk to you gentlemen. All I’m allowed to talk about is the weather, which, as I said, is giving me a rash on my balls.” I reached for my wallet and pulled out Daniel Sabatino’s business card. I held it toward Agent Vincenzio, who made no move to take it. I released the card, and it helicoptered to the carpet. “You can call him if you like. But do it from the pay phone down the street.”
“You are making a huge mistake, my friend,” the black agent said.
“Take your threats, your partner, and your fat black ass out of my house, or I’ll have to call the sheriff and have him do it.”
The two agents looked at each other for a moment. As the black agent pushed himself off the couch, he looked at Dena Marie and said, “Mrs. Xenakis, you’ve been a big help. Thank you so much.”
Dena Marie gave the slightest of nods. I followed the two men to the door and locked it behind them. I turned and walked across the hardwood floor to the living room. My steps were slow, methodical, intentionally allowing my heels to click on the floorboards. Dena Marie was still sitting on the ottoman, her knees tucked under her chin, looking like the honor student who had been caught cheating on a math test. “What did he mean by that, Dena Marie?” I asked. “‘You’ve been a big help?’ What did he mean by that?”
She lifted her brows and gave the faintest of shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? That’s interesting. You were here, weren’t you?” She kept her eyes focused on the carpet. The power I felt over her aroused me. Never once in our relationship had I been in such complete command. “I would hate to think that you were telling the FBI that you think I killed Rayce Daubner. I would really hate that. You wouldn’t do that to your husband, would you, Dena Marie?” I moved in front of her so the growing bulge in my pants was evident. I cupped her chin in my right hand and lifted her face upward. “I’ll ask you again. You wouldn’t do that, would you?”
“No, of course not.”
“Good. Where are the kids?”
“At my mom’s.”
“Excellent. Come with me.” I slipped my hand under her arm and gently tugged upward. She followed, and we walked to the bedroom. There was no tenderness involved. I clawed at her clothes and she responded, plunging her hand into my pants. Inside of sixty seconds we had torn off each other’s pants and I was inside her.
It terrified me . . . a little. Never in my life had I dreamed of taking a woman the way I was taking Dena Marie. For the first time in my life, I was in charge. I wasn’t begging. I was taking what I wanted from my wife. My brain would not quit racing. My brother had been right. Dena Marie believed I killed Rayce. My boss believed it. They were all afraid, and Jesus help me, I was loving it.
Sex lasted longer than usual. I was so consumed with my power that I hadn’t really been focused on the act. After I came, I quietly got out of bed and began getting dressed. Dena Marie lay silent, flushed and spent. Her breasts heaved with short breaths. “Where are you going?” she asked.
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Out. Out is out. I have some people I need to see.”
“Who?”
I looked briefly at Dena Marie, then headed for the door. “I’ll be late. Don’t wait up.”
In reality, I had no one to see or any place to go. I went out and drove around Jefferson County for three hours, thinking and smiling. As my brother had said, sometimes the world can be a beautiful place.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SHERIFF FRANCIS ROBERSON
Clarence Schnitke had given me the bottle of Scotch whisky as a gift for not arresting his sixteen-year-old son, who I found drunk in the back of the family minivan at Friendship Park near Smithfield. He was incoherent, and vomit covered his T-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. I should have charged him with underage consumption of alcohol, and would have, except he smelled so bad that I didn’t want him in my cruiser. Besides, Clarence could be meaner than hell, and I imagined the punishment he meted out would be far greater than anything the boy would have received in juvenile court. I had the dispatcher call Clarence, and he came out in blue jeans and bedroom slippers to pick up his son. A week later, he dropped off the Scotch as a gesture of thanks, and I’m certain that he didn’t see the irony in the gift.
I’m not a Scotch man. I like beer and an occasional merlot. But I really needed a drink, and it was the only thing I had in my office. I filled my coffee mug half full and took two hard swallows. It smelled like pine sap and didn’t taste much better, but it had a bite, and that’s what I wanted.
Across the street, the big goon—General Something-or-other—who wanted to start his country with Johnny’s money leaned against the passenger side of his car, legs crossed at the ankles, his massive arms folded across his chest. The little preacher sat on the fender, his face purple from the beating Johnny had given him through the bars of the jail cell. The general’s face was devoid of emotion as he peered at my office window.
On my desk was a sheet of paper. It was an order signed by Judge Lester T. Pappas releasing Johnny on his own recognizance. The only stipulation was that Johnny not leave Jefferson County. The judge knew exactly what he was doing. He had talked to “the general” and knew the behemoth would be waiting for Johnny. It was the perfect way for the judge to exact revenge on Johnny for his courtroom outburst while keeping his hands clean. He was adroitly shoving the antelope into the cage with the lion.
The lobby door skidded open, and a moment later Toots walked in with Johnny. Two cups sat on the corner of my desk. I poured Scotch in both, making no attempt to stop pouring as I went from one cup to the other. “Have a drink, boys.” I set the bottle on the desk and leaned back in my chair, my elbows digging into the wobbly armrests. “Do you ever think about the decisions you’ve made in life? You know, decisions that you later regretted.”
Johnny snorted. “You’re asking me that question?”
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I’ve been thinking about the events that occurred and the decisions I made that put me in this chair at this moment. I just wonder how things could have been different if Beaumont T. Bonecutter hadn’t screwed up and I’d never gotten the call to come back to Jefferson County. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be sitting here with a knot in my stomach the size of a softball.”
Johnny blinked and took a hit of the Scotch. “You’re the sheriff, for God’s sake. You’ve got the position you always wanted, the launching pad for your political future. I just spent seven years in the federal penitentiary. If you’re looking for sympathy, you’re looking in the wrong place.”
I could feel myself fighting a grin. “One day, I’m this up-and-coming FBI agent—the star of the Minneapolis field office. The next thing I know, I’ve got an unsolved murder and arson on my hands. My former FBI brethren are in town attempting to link me to the murder. My wife is pissed because I dragged her to Steubenville and then rewarded her by straying off the reservation with the crazy lady down at the grocery who, in spite of everything, still gives me a boner every time she walks in here. My political aspirations are about to be flushed down the toilet.” I held out my cup to Johnny and Toots in a mock toast. “Yes sir, things are going well.” I shoved the release form across the desk to Johnny. “Things are about to get worse for you, too, my friend. I’ve got to cut you loose, and the Aryan Welcome Wagon is waiting for you across the street.”
Johnny looked at the paper, then walked over to the window and peeked out. “Crap. I knew this was coming. Can you ignore the order?”
“Hardly
,” I said. “It’s a court order. I couldn’t hold you if I wanted to. You’re free to go.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“You can’t stay here.”
Johnny turned and took two steps toward me. I put my hand on my holstered pistol. “Don’t even think about it,” I said. “You hit me in the nose again and I swear to Jesus I’ll shoot you dead.”
He stopped and frowned. “That wouldn’t do much for your political aspirations.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. There are a lot of people out there who might consider shooting you a public service. I’d probably pick up a few votes.”
“Come on, Fran, you can’t send me out there. I’ll be toast.”
I took my hand off the holster and sipped from my Scotch. “Let me think about this for a minute.” When I pinched the bridge of my nose and immediately remembered why it was so sore, I lifted my head and said, “I’ve got nothing. How about you?”
“You’re supposed to be the smart one, for Christ’s sake.”
Toots stood up and said, “I’ll get him out of here.”
“What about those two?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of them later.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
JOHNNY EARL
Deputy Majowski led me through the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the county building until we surfaced in the bullpen, a fenced-in area next to the underground garage where prisoners are kept until they’re processed and taken to a cell. I followed Majowski across the parking garage. The clicking of the heels of his cowboy boots echoed off the walls. He didn’t say a word until we got to what I assumed was his personal car. He opened the back door and pointed to the floor. “Get on the floor and stay down. I’ll tell you when it’s safe to get up.”
We pulled out of the garage, and the rear end scraped on the concrete as it crested the ramp and turned left on Fourth Street. “Are they following us?” I asked after a few seconds.
