by Dave Conifer
“Debate preview,” she said. “Both parties are having one this week. For your Pubs it’s the only one left.”
He stared at the picture on the cover of the newspaper, trying to make out who was who. Half of them he didn’t recognize, but that was understandable. It was the picture of the Democrats, her party of choice. Ever since college he’d been an unabashed Republican, despite the protestations of half the congregation and nearly everybody he called family.
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?” Arria asked, snapping him out of his own thoughts. “He’s got you tied in knots over this. Why?”
“The debates are tomorrow? You can tell me about it when I get home,” he said. He put his arm around her and pecked her on the cheek after making sure there weren’t any curious students lurking. “I better get back in there before the devil beats me to it, don’t you think?”
~~~
Fargo took a ride to a nearby mall late in the afternoon to buy some new clothes. The money he’d carried out of the prison was holding up so far, since he didn’t have many expenses, but it wasn’t going to last forever. Hoping he might get to stay with Joanie longer than anybody expected, he kept his eyes out for help wanted signs as he drove, now in a white Dodge Stratus that Bismarck had exchanged for the Monte Carlo. He came home with a few pairs of jeans, some clean shirts, a pile of underwear and even a sweater, but no job prospects. That would require another trip.
~~~
It felt good to Fargo when he pulled on some new pants and a sweater the next morning, the first new clothing he’d worn in longer than he remembered. Just after he’d finished throwing the old ones in the kitchen trash he heard the cell phone going off where he’d left it on the table next to his bed. When that one rings it’s usually important, he told himself as he hustled toward the sound.
“Billy? This is Joanie. Were you up?”
“Yeah,” he said, happy to hear her voice and happier that it wasn’t somebody from the parole board. “Sure, I’ve been up for a while. I just showered.”
“How are the new duds?”
“Better than you can imagine. How’d you get this number?”
She laughed. “I had to call my uncle for it. Listen, Ricky and Mark are both in, so I showed them everything you gave me on your case. They disappeared into Mark’s office for a while but they’re back now. That trooper’s had an interesting career.” He heard somebody talking in the background. “Ricky says to tell you he must know somebody high up, because he’s definitely on the fast track.”
“Ask them if that’s good or bad. Because it seems really bad to me.”
He heard the voice in the background again. “Ricky says to say he’s—wait a second.” A few seconds of muffled conversation followed. “Do you want to come and talk to these guys?” Joanie asked. “That might be easier.”
“Hell yeah, if that’s okay for them. Just tell me how to get there.”
It turned out that Willmar and Karlstad Bail Bonds was in North Philadelphia, just up Broad Street from Temple University. It was a quick ride from the northern suburbs, right into the teeth of the hard part of the city. He was there in twenty-five minutes. Joanie met him on the sidewalk outside the office door after he found a parking spot on the street half a block away.
A huge, burly man with long blond hair tied back in a pony tail rushed out from the back of the office to greet him as soon as he and Joanie were inside. Fargo felt instantly comfortable with this man that he’d never met before, if only because he reminded him of the people he’d spent the last decade with. Standing well over six feet, he wore pressed suit pants but in place of a shirt and tie was a ribbed, wifebeater tank top. Both of his muscular arms were plastered with indistinct tattoos from wrist to shoulder, and there were more spilling out from under the shirt.
“Ricky Willmar,” the man said, reaching out for a palm-to-palm soul grab instead of a conventional handshake. “Mark couldn’t stay, something popped up. He’s not here very much, actually.”
“Billy Fargo. I guess you already know that.”
“Come on back,” Willmar said, waving him to follow him towards an office door. “Joanie, you want to sit in on this?”
“Somebody’s got to mind the store,” she said. “You can fill me in later.”
The two men walked into the office. Willmar circled behind the desk and settled into a high-backed chair, while Fargo sat in one of two plain seats just inside the doorway. “She just wants to go out front for a smoke,” Willmar chuckled. “Good girl. She runs this place, pretty much. You known her long?”
“I’m tight with her uncle. I lived on the same street with her. Guess it was more than ten years ago. Had to be.”
“Are you from around here, Billy?”
“Yup, but the other side of the river in Jersey. I never lived anyplace else. How about you?”
“I’m from Ohio. Been here about six or seven years. Met a college girl and followed her back here. She’s long gone now,” he said with a shrug, “but it looks like I’m here to stay.”
“I just got back. I’m hoping to stay too, this time,” Fargo told him.
“Yeah, I heard you did some time. But you were innocent, right?” he said with a grin. “Don’t mind me,” he said a second later. “I’m a real wiseass. Joanie told me everything.”
“Were you ever on the inside?” Fargo asked.
“Me? No, somehow I stayed out. I’m no saint, believe me, but somehow I stayed out of trouble. Got lucky, I guess.”
“Opposite of me,” Fargo told him. “I’m one unlucky bastard. I didn’t rape nobody and I didn’t kill nobody, but don’t try to tell the law that.”
“Speaking of the law,” Willmar said, “How about that Trooper Colfax? Talk about skyrocketing up the org chart. Do you know about this already?”
“I don’t know jack about him. But he was first one to show up in the rape case that got me put away. He spotted the body. Now it frickin’ turns out he was also there at the murder that just about everybody blames on me. Something stinks here.”
“Indeed it does. We should talk about that. But listen to this. He joins the force in 1995, right?” Fargo nodded. He didn’t have any idea when Colfax joined up, but it sounded like Willmar did. Willmar reached over to a printer on the edge of his desk and grabbed a thin stack of documents. “Signs on as a trooper slash detective. They all pretty much start there. Within a year, the bars are popping up on this guy’s sleeves like nobody’s business.” He squinted at the paper. “1997, he makes Trooper I - Detective I. 1998, three years after coming on board, the dude’s a sergeant. That’s unheard of, man.”
“1998, huh? That’s the year he showed up in my life.”
“It didn’t stop there. Sergeant First Class, Lieutenant, Captain, bing, bang bong, within a few more years. All the other troopers must have been pissed as hell. There are guys who stay there twenty years and don’t get that high. The officers that hired him were taking orders from him five years later. This guy knows somebody high up, I’ll tell you that right now, my friend. That’s the only way something like this can happen. Nobody’s that good a cop.”
“Is he still there? He’d be a damn fool to leave.”
“He’s still on the force,” Willmar told him as he threw the pages onto the doodle-covered blotter on the desk in front of him. “In fact, he still wears the uniform. But he’s also got another gig now, too. He’s a commissioner at the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security. A straight line report to the director. Dude’s not even forty yet and he’s landing these kind of jobs? Somebody punched this guy’s ticket.”
“Glad to see it’s going good for him,” Fargo said. “But why’s he screwing me? Twice?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll say this. It’s an amazing coincidence that he was first on scene both times. Astounding. A little too astounding, if you ask me. Did you ever find anything out about it?”
“I didn’t even know it myself until a few days ago. I never thought to lo
ok at that,” Fargo said.
Willmar looked at his watch, an LCD digital that looked like something from the seventies. “Oops, I gotta’ run,” he said. “Let’s keep in touch, okay? We can do it through Joanie. I want to dig into this, seeing as how you’re Joanie’s friend. I’ll take the case just for kicks.” He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a rumpled blue shirt and a clip-on tie. “Got to look good for this one,” he said, winking at his guest. “Keep me posted, all right? I’ll do the same for you.”
~~~
Kevin Morris was already waiting outside the drugstore later that afternoon when Fargo pulled up. The look on his face said it all. He wanted this over with, and it didn’t look like he was interested in walking over to McDonald’s this time. Instead, Fargo plopped himself onto the bench next to him. “Hey, man. Thanks for doin’ this.”
“You’ve really settled down in the last few days,” Morris observed. “I thought you were about to jump across the table and choke me last time.”
“Give me a break, man. I just got out of prison that day. That was the first time I cut my own food in eleven years.”
“What did you want to talk about?”
“Everything you know about what happened that night when Gail’s girls died. Whatever you remember. If you tell me everything I won’t bother you no more. Just pretend you don’t think I was there and tell me everything.”
Morris exhaled a huge breath before looking over at Fargo. “I don’t think you were there. I changed my mind.”
“Serious biz? Cool. Thanks, that means a lot,” Fargo told him. ”So I’ve been digging around. Get this. The cop that was first on the scene? He was the same guy that found the girl’s body later that night. The one they said I raped. Do you believe that? Because it’s a fact. The same cop! What the hell is that about? Do you remember him?”
Morris frowned as he thought this over. “No question about it? The same guy?”
“No question about it. Do you remember him?” Fargo asked again.
“Not at all. That was in Trenton, right?”
“Yeah, that’s where he found the body. Right under the bridge on the Pennsylvania side. That’s fucked up, too.”
“Ewing isn’t that far from Trenton,” Morris pointed out. “It could be legit.”
“Could be, but it ain’t,” Fargo said. “I can feel it. Something was going down that night.”
“If you say so.”
“What was the very first thing that happened that night?”
“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he said. “Who wouldn’t? We’re inside. Gail’s putting the girls to bed, so she’s not around. I hear some thumps outside, so I stand still and listen for it again. You know how you do that? So next I hear somebody cursing up a storm right through the wall. Talked kind of like you. No offense. I can tell it’s somebody right up near the outside of the house. So I walk back, check on the girls, and then head out the back door.”
“Why the back?”
“I’m not sure,” Morris admitted. “Either it sounded like it came from the back, or just because that’s where I was. Anyway, I go out back, I don’t see anything so—“
“But it’s dark out. Of course you can’t see nothin’ outside.”
“No, it wasn’t all the way dark yet. There was just nothing there to see. So I circle around the side where the noise was. Nobody there.”
“Did you see anything at all?”
“You mean did I see a bomb?” Morris asked. “Nope. But when I got out front, somebody was driving past in a white van. Real slow, not trying to hide himself at all. The driver’s got a ski mask on. He leans out and he’s got a gun, and he starts firing it at the house. I don’t even think he saw me. I threw myself onto the ground. He kept shooting. I didn’t hear anything getting hit, but I wasn’t really thinking about that.”
“White guy shooting?” Fargo asked.
“His hand was,” Morris said with a shrug. “That’s all I could see of him.”
“Then the house went up?”
“Yeah.”
“The whole thing, completely blasted to smithereens?”
“The front of the place didn’t burn. Just the back. Unfortunately, that’s where the girls were.” Morris shook his head. “You’re convincing, man, you really are. Even if I didn’t believe you, I’d believe you.”
”What else?”
“I told the cops this. There was a tiny space of quiet between the shots and the explosion. It makes sense. The bullets didn’t cause it, the bomb did. I think it went off all by itself. I hardly knew what was happening. Then this wave of heat came off the house, almost before I saw the flames. I must have passed out. When I woke up there were cops and ambulances all over the place. They said Gail was already gone. I wasn’t exactly sure what they meant. The firemen were spraying the place with water. I wasn’t hurt, but they strapped me down and took me away, too.”
“Did they mention the girls?”
“No. And I didn’t ask.”
“Wait, you didn’t talk to the cops or anybody there?”
“They tracked me down at the hospital and interviewed me there,” Morris explained. “I told them exactly what I just told you.”
“State troopers?”
“No, they were Ewing cops.”
They sat in silence for almost a minute watching customers passing by, clutching prescriptions and dragging small children behind them. “That’s the first time I ever heard any of that, Kevin,” Fargo finally said. “So it’s weird. I feel like it just happened today. You know what I mean?”
“Not really,” Morris answered. “Are we done? I’ve got to get inside.”
“Wait a minute,” Fargo said suddenly. “If you passed out, you never even saw the first cop on the scene.”
“That’s right. Does it matter? It’s in the reports, right?”
“I don’t know what matters yet. Oh yeah, one more thing. Where’s Gail now? I mean, what’s she up to? Ever hear from her?”
“Last I heard she was out near the shore. Not all the way on the beach or anything. I think she’s in Freehold.”
Fargo paused. For some reason he didn’t want Morris to know that he’d had any contact with Gail since the fire. He wasn’t sure why. “That’s what I heard, too. Do you think she’d let me come see her?”
“No way! Are you crazy? She thinks you killed her daughters!”
“Maybe you could tell her I didn’t,” Fargo suggested.
“I’d rather stay out of it. She was pretty messed up. I think I’d just make things worse.”
“But you don’t think I did it. Right?”
Morris reached for the armrest of the iron bench and pulled himself to his feet. “I think you’re innocent. For what it’s worth.” He turned and headed for the door. “I’ll talk to you,” he said, without turning around. Then he was gone.
~~~
After the meeting with Morris, there was nothing left to do but go back to Joanie’s place. He wasn’t ready to call it home. That didn’t feel right. But one thing he admitted to himself as he navigated across the Delaware River was that he was looking forward to getting there and seeing Joanie. A lot.
The front door was partly open behind the storm door, so he pushed his way inside after one cursory knock to announce his presence. “Joanie?” he called out. No answer. A cat appeared out of nowhere and rubbed up against his leg until he kicked it away. She wasn’t in the living room and her bedroom was dark. He finally found her in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a magazine and a cigarette. A plate, empty except for some smears of gravy and a few stray peas, was off to the side next to an ash tray and a glass of water.
“Hi,” she said when he walked in, before returning to the magazine.
“Hi,” he answered. “You didn’t hear me? Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure. I wasn’t sure what you were doing, so I went ahead and made myself some dinner.” She flipped the magazine closed and pushed the chair back to stand after s
tubbing out the cigarette. “Help yourself if you’re hungry,” she told him as she carried her dishes over and placed them into the sink. Without another word she brushed past, leaving him with nothing but a whiff of menthol.
He stared at the empty doorway. What happened? Did I screw up? I guess I’ll never be normal again. He walked to the refrigerator but instead of yanking it open he leaned into it, pressing his forehead into a jagged magnet. Who could ever fit back in, he was coming to understand, after having the entire middle years of his fucking life scooped away? Eleven years of keeping lowlifes out of my pants and dealing with guards who don’t give a shit. It did something to me. I’m fucked up. And I’ll always be fucked up.
The TV came on in the other room. He wasn’t hungry anyway, so he filled a cup with tap water and gulped it down while trying to guess which cheesy sitcom she was sitting down to. It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet, but there was nothing left that he wanted to do, so he slipped back to his room, kicked off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. When he heard Joanie calling his name from the doorway a few minutes later he didn’t know what to do, so he closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep.
-- Chapter 7 --
The next day began abruptly for Fargo when the borrowed cell phone rang out from across the room where it was plugged into the charger. There was enough sunlight that he knew Joanie must have left for work a long time ago. By then she was probably parked in a soft chair in a grubby office on North Broad, or maybe hanging around on the sidewalk having a smoke. There weren’t many people who had his cell number. He hoped it was Joanie, but after pushing the right button he heard the sweet but unwelcome voice of Liz Faribault. Good morning, Miss Parole Officer.
“Yeah,” he growled, “this is Fargo.” Barely able to understand his own words, he cleared his throat and tried again.
