by Terry Shames
“Let’s get back,” Lyndall yells. “This air could be toxic.” We turn and hightail it back the way we came and around the front of the house. The dogs are hollering and run around like the explosion has disoriented them. Lyndall sends them back under the porch.
From a distance, I hear one of the Borlands crying out in pain. I start to go back to help, but Lyndall grabs my arm. “You can’t go back there. No telling what kind of chemicals are spewing out of that cloud.”
He’s right. I don’t know what kind of residue there might be from such an explosion, but the air is filled with acrid smoke.
I hear sirens off in the distance. Whichever Borland is hurt is still yelling, but Lyndall and I stay put. When the firefighters arrive, they’ll have the right equipment to deal with the blaze and the injuries. I walk to the end of the house and peer around into the vacant lot. The trees beyond the lot have caught fire, and burning branches are falling into the weeds. One of the Borlands is trying to drag the other one to safety.
Lyndall sees them, too.
“We’ve got to help,” I say.
“Well, hell,” Lyndall says, “You’re right.” We take off our shirts and wrap them around our heads, covering our noses, and run toward the two men. Scott is dragging his unconscious son, whose hair and clothing are badly singed. Scott is hurt too, burned patches blistering on his arms and back.
“Get on up to the house,” I yell to him. “We’ll take care of Jett.” The fire is hot, and the trees crackle and pop as they burn. Lyndall and I grab Jett’s arms and drag him.
When we get to the front of the house, we lay Jett down and I hurry out to the street to flag down the fire trucks. They come barreling into the yard, men leaping out before the trucks are fully stopped. The dogs seem to be thoroughly cowed and stay under the porch, whimpering.
“What happened?” a firefighter says.
“Meth lab,” Lyndall says.
“Ah, shit!” He runs to the back of the truck and starts hauling out gas masks. Another one runs out to the street, looking in both directions. He comes running back. “I don’t see any fireplugs,” he says. “We’ll have to get up close and use what’s in the tanks.” He jumps back into the truck, and the others step up onto the side of it and hold on as he steers behind the house and starts across the vacant lot. The other truck follows. They get as close as they dare before they stop and get to work.
One of the men has stayed behind to tend to Jett Borland. He’s conscious now and is moaning. A few seconds later an EMS truck arrives, and two men take over working on Jett. The firefighter runs to join his crew.
“Any way I can help?” I call out as he sprints away.
“Yeah! Stay out of the way,” he calls back.
And that’s when I realize that Scott Borland is not with us. “What the hell? Where’s Borland?” I start up the two wooden steps to the front door of the house, but I know Borland has used all the commotion to make his getaway. Sure enough, the place is empty and Borland is nowhere to be found. Lyndall and I look at each other. “Fatherly concern,” I say.
Jett Borland gets loaded into the EMS vehicle and is hauled off to the hospital. Fire trucks from a neighboring county arrive ten minutes later. Because the day is so still, the four units manage to get the fire under control quickly. Lyndall calls headquarters to tell the sheriff what happened, including that we lost Scott Borland in the shuffle. He snickers at something the sheriff says. When he gets off he says, “He’s pretty sure that Borland is not smart enough to figure out a way to escape for good. We’ll find him.”
“Besides, he’s hurt,” I say. “He’s going to need some attention. In fact, I have a feeling I know exactly where he’ll head.”
We go straight to Donna Mae Borland’s place and stop down the street from it. I walk to her trailer and knock on the door. She answers it wearing the same dressing gown she was in the other day. “Now what do you want?” she says.
I tell her what happened and that we’re looking for Scott.
“He’s not here, and I haven’t heard from him.”
“If you see him, ask him why he ran out on Jett. He got hurt during the explosion. He’s over at the hospital.”
She snaps to attention and grabs the front of her dressing gown and holds it together. “Why didn’t you tell me?” She slams the door in my face, and I go back and get into the car with Lyndall. Five minutes later Donna Mae comes tearing out the door, jumps into her old Pontiac, and roars away. We settle back to wait for Borland. In the distance I hear the roar of bulldozers going about the business of tearing down Bobtail Ridge subdivision.
After forty-five minutes we decide Borland probably isn’t going to show. The smoky smell of our clothes and the sour smell that adrenaline left on us drive us out of there, and I head on home to clean up.
CHAPTER 31
“You really think I’m going to be afraid of Scott Borland?” Jenny and I are standing in her kitchen. The bottle of Jack Daniels, or another like it, is sitting open on the counter. Jenny has been drinking, although she isn’t as drunk as she has been the last couple of times I’ve seen her. But tonight the drinking has made her belligerent.
“Jenny, I’m worried that after what happened this afternoon, he’ll come after you because he’s pissed off.” I’d worry that he’ll come after her horses, too, but Truly Bennett is back on the job with Alvin Carter, and they’re on guard.
“Let him come,” she says. “I’m sick of people thinking they can bully me.” She has her hands on her hips and is glaring at me.
“At least lock your doors,” I say.
“All right, all right. Is that it?” She hasn’t invited me into the living room to sit down. I always come to her back door, but we rarely stop in the kitchen. It’s not a place she spends much time in, not liking to cook.
I probably ought to let her alone, but I’m too frustrated to back down now. “There’s something else I need to talk to you about,” I say. “Do you know who Estelle Cruz is?”
She frowns. “Name is familiar.”
“Your mamma may have mentioned her a long time ago.”
She has a moment of realization and storms over to pour herself another drink. “How can I convince you to leave me the hell alone about my brother?”
“You knew he was married to this woman?”
Her expression is so angry that I can hardly look at her. “When are you going to get that I try not to think about him, ever. I knew he was married because Mamma told me. She also told me the woman ran out on him. Big surprise.”
Disappeared, like her daddy. It could be coincidence that both these people disappeared from Eddie’s life. But I’m beginning to doubt it. And only by pushing Jenny to find out more am I likely to get to the bottom of it.
“When your mamma told me she thought you were in danger, do you think she meant from your brother?”
Jenny opens her mouth and then closes it again, staring at me. Finally she says, “It’s possible.”
“Why?”
She’s breathing heavily, and for a bare second I think she might haul off and hit me. Her eyes are wild, and she’s gripping the glass of whiskey so hard her fingers are white. “You’re bringing it all back. Eddie and his goddam friends. Pack of animals. I wish to hell you’d leave it alone.”
There’s only one thing I can think of that would put Jenny in such a state after so long a time. “Did your brother assault you?” There, I’ve said it.
“You’re not going to give up, are you?” She pours another shot of whiskey and downs it. “No, he didn’t assault me exactly. Not personally, at least.”
She looks at me for a long time. I feel sized up in every way. I can tell that she wants to confide in me, but she has lived with the past for a long time. The thought of bringing it into the open after all this time is eating her up.
“You don’t have to tell me the details,” I say. “It’s clear that whatever happened set you back badly.”
She walks over to the cabi
net, sets her glass down, and leans onto the cabinet with her back to me. Her head hangs down. She stays that way for several seconds. Then she gets a second glass out of the cabinet and pours a lot of whiskey into both glasses. She hands one to me. “Here. You’re going to need it.”
I follow her into the living room. She turns on one dim light and sinks into the sofa.
I sit down in the easy chair I always sit in, but I don’t sink back in comfort. I lean forward, cupping the glass of whiskey.
“You told me you found out that Eddie was a big deal in high school. He had everything—looks, athletic talent, charm, and he was smart enough. But what no one paid much attention to was that he always wanted more—he wanted to be not just the best, but the only. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Like somebody with a billion dollars, and two billion still wouldn’t satisfy him?”
“That’s it. I, on the other hand, was . . .” she stops, shaking her head. “A lunk. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was smart, but not in the way a young girl is supposed to be smart about boys and clothes.” She sighs. “There was this guy on the football team. A year older than me. Mike Tolleson. He was a shy boy, sweet-natured. Studious. Football wasn’t really in him—he played to please his daddy. I had a big crush on him, and I think he liked me, too. I thought so at the time, anyway.”
Her eyes are squeezed closed. When she opens them, she looks panicky. “I’ve never told anybody but Mamma about this, and I don’t know whether I’ll get through it.”
“You don’t have to, you know.”
It’s like she hasn’t heard me. “Mike was popular in a funny way. People trusted him. They looked up to him. People would say, ‘Ask Mike—he’ll know what to do.’” Her eyes get a faraway look, full of pain and regret.
Then she snaps out of it. “Anyway, the football team voted him captain when he was a junior. Eddie was a senior and thought he was going to be captain. When he found out Mike had won the vote, he came home and tore his room to pieces. Like I said, he had everything— but he was furious over somebody else getting one little thing.” She looks at me finally. “That’s not normal. I know that now, but at the time I thought that’s the way men behaved.”
“Your daddy?”
She shakes her head. “He never lost his temper. But he always stuck up for Eddie. He said Eddie was going through a phase and he’d get his temper under control when he got older. He told me Eddie had a bit of an inferiority complex and was jealous of Mike, and that Eddie would get over being upset before too long.”
“And did he?”
“I thought he’d gotten over it, but it turned out he was just biding his time.”
“What did he do?” I take a sip of the whiskey. It hits my throat and stomach like bile.
“I don’t want to tell you what happened. Makes me sick to remember it.” She slouches back on the sofa. Her mouth is a grim line.
“I may not be the right person to tell.”
“I know that. But now that I’ve started, you’re in for it.” She looks up at the ceiling. “I wish I smoked. Seems like the right time for a cigarette.” She actually manages a smile, but it fades quickly. “Somehow Eddie got wind of the fact that Mike and I liked each other. Eddie started buddying up to Mike. Way down deep I knew that was a bad thing, but I tried to tell myself Eddie was trying to be nice because he knew Mike liked me. Not that Mike and I went out or anything. It was mostly studying together and being moon-eyed.” She laughs—it’s a wistful sound. “I wish I could go back to being that naive. Anyway Eddie kept it up for the rest of the school year. One big happy family. I wish I’d had more sense.
“We’ve all been in that situation, especially when we were kids.”
“Maybe. But not everybody has been in my situation. One night our folks were gone. Who knows where? They hardly ever went out. Next thing I know, Eddie’s telling me he has a couple of his friends coming over. I told him he wasn’t supposed to have kids over when Mamma and Daddy were gone, but I couldn’t tell him anything. He was a senior and it was all him, all the time. He’d just found out he was getting a scholarship to SMU, which fed his ego to the busting point. Anyway, I heard the boys cutting up in the living room. And after a while Eddie came to my room and said I ought to come talk to them. I said what about? He said they wanted to ask me how to treat their dates on graduation night. I was flattered.” She takes a long pull of the whiskey. Her voice is strangled. “How could I have been so goddam stupid?”
I don’t like the way the story is going, but Jenny seems calmer now, although she’s talking fast, in a monotone.
“Anyway, I went into the living room and they had all this beer and some whiskey. They asked me if I wanted something to drink and I told them I didn’t drink. One of them said he knew how to make a whiskey sour and he knew I’d like it. And he was right.” She picks up her glass and brandishes it like it’s proof of something. “I drank one and then another one. And after that I may have had another. I don’t remember. When they got me drunk enough, his two buddies raped me.”
“Oh, shit.”
She doesn’t seem to notice my exclamation. “Rape. Is that the right word? Is that what you call it when a girl is so flattered that she’ll go along with anything? I was too tall, too gangly, and afraid to look anybody in the eye. They sweet-talked me, told me I was really getting to be cute, or sexy, or who the hell knows what. It was a like a dream come true. Is it rape when you are thrilled . . . until the last minute, when you see the look on their faces and know they didn’t mean a word of it? Is it rape when you call out to your brother and you think he’s left the room?” I wish Jenny were crying, but she’s completely dry-eyed and her voice is dead.
“Sons of bitches,” I mutter. I want to comfort her somehow, but I think she’d break to pieces if I did.
She heaves a few breaths. Her face has gone white. “You think that was the worst of it? Think again. Eddie had videotaped the whole thing. He filmed it! And he gave the video to Mike.”
I can’t even begin to imagine something like that. But I remember what the assistant coach said, that Eddie had a cruel streak. “What did your brother stand to gain by that? It’s not like he could go back in time and get the position as captain of the football team.”
“I wish I knew. You remember when you met him the other day he said I held a grudge against him? He was talking about himself. He could hold a grudge like you’ve never seen. When we were little, if I did anything that Eddie didn’t like, he’d wait until there was something I really wanted, and then he’d strike. I got a doll for Christmas one year. I loved that stupid doll. One day it went missing. It broke my heart. Eddie told me I had been careless with it and that’s what I got for not taking better care of it. Couple of years later—years, mind you—he asked me to bring something from his closet. I found the doll there broken to pieces.” She leans forward, her eyes narrowed. “Here’s the thing. He could have simply thrown it out. But I went into that closet because he asked me to get something for him. He put those pieces there for me to find.”
The person she’s describing is twisted. Is that what I responded to in Eddie that made me uncomfortable with him? “Were you ever afraid of him?”
“Not physically. I mean, he’d pinch me or shove me sometimes, but nothing serious.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know how to describe it. Sort of a psychological fear. Like I had a feeling he was capable of terrible things, even if he never really did anything. Does that make sense?”
It makes total sense because both of Eddie’s wives said something similar. And then I remember the nurse saying that Vera seemed trapped when she was with her son. “Sure it does,” I say.
I’m a small-town police chief, and I don’t deal with deeply disturbed criminals. The criminals I deal with are people who’ve gone off the rails because they made a mistake, or because they were scared or greedy. What Jenny has described is a different kind of person. If what she says is true, he’s got somethin
g wrong with him. And the damage he inflicted on Jenny has lasted for a long time.
“You told your mamma . . . did your daddy know?”
Jenny’s lips are trembling. She puts a hand to her mouth to stop it. “I had to tell Mamma. She was a teacher and I was terrified that everyone in school would hear about it. At first I didn’t want her to know Eddie was involved, but she pushed and prodded until I admitted his part in it. I begged her not to tell Daddy. I was afraid he’d hate me.”
“What did your mamma do?”
Jenny gets up and leaves the room and comes back with a box of tissues. She blows her nose and sits looking off into the distance for several seconds.
“That woman was so smart. She didn’t waste time fussing over me. I think she knew that would have sent me over the edge. She just went into action. It was finals week and she arranged for me to take all my finals in a couple of days. And the minute the last one was over, she had me on the bus out to my aunt and uncle in Lubbock. She told everybody her sister was sick and needed some help. My aunt worked at Texas Tech and she found me a part-time job in the law school for the summer. Best thing that could have happened. I buried myself in work.”
“Did kids at the high school find out what happened?”
“Besides Mike?” She shakes her head. “I don’t think they did, but I don’t know why. I guess it was too close to the end of school and the boys who did it were graduating, and maybe they didn’t think there’d be any percentage in telling what they’d done if I wasn’t around for them to torment. Honestly, I think if anybody had ever acted like they knew, I would have killed myself.”
“So your mamma didn’t do anything to see to it that they were punished?”
Jenny thinks for a minute. “You mean go to the law? She wouldn’t have done that to my brother. And my guess is she thought if she didn’t do anything about him, she couldn’t very well accuse his friends. I was gone the whole summer and as far as I can tell all she wanted was to avoid any fuss. Plus, just before I got home my daddy walked out. That was hard on her and distracted all of us for a time.”
