by Fay Robinson
“Are you sure of your identification?”
“Reasonably sure. He cut some trees for me a few years ago, and I’ve run into him a few times since. Yesterday afternoon he crossed the street in front of me and waved. I noticed his shirt—pink flamingos and palm trees on a yellow background. Your victim over there has on the same shirt. I can’t imagine there’d be more than one of them around.”
She told him how he might get in touch with his daughter, an old school friend of her sister Shannon’s. Lucky thought his wife was dead, but she wasn’t certain.
“Jack, I…” She hesitated, hating to bring this up, but feeling as if it had to be repeated. “I promise I don’t intentionally get in the middle of things. Deaton said you were on another call. Did you leave it because of me?”
“Not entirely, but yes, I wanted to make sure you were okay. Besides, we haven’t found anything on the other call. They can handle it without me.”
“What was it?”
“A bomb threat at the box factory. Probably called in by some joker who didn’t have anything better to do this morning. Chief’s out there leading the search, so he can reach me if I’m needed.”
“Does he know I reported this?”
He nodded. “Yeah, he asked me what it felt like to be married to the ‘Body Magnet.’ That’s what people are starting to call you.”
She slumped, her misery increasing. “I know.”
“People at work kid me at least once a day that you’re part bloodhound. The sheriff’s department has a pool on when you’ll find the next body in their jurisdiction. I’m told it’s up to six-hundred dollars.”
“I heard.”
“I don’t get it. Why does this happen to you? When there’s trouble, you always seem to be part of it.”
“I’m out taking photos every day, and I cover the whole county. My chances of being involved in any given incident are a hundred times, maybe a thousand times, greater than the average person’s. It’s perfectly understandable.”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is.”
The argument was an old one. They’d had it many times. The irony was that the thing that had brought them together was now one of the things that kept them apart.
Last year she and her oldest sister, Leigh, had gone to Pittsburgh to be bridesmaids in their cousin’s wedding, and Lucky had found body number fifteen in the bathroom off the lounge of the Holiday Inn. Jack Cahill was the investigator on the case.
The attraction had been instant, the courtship wild and brief. Phone calls nearly every night. A couple of weekend trips to see each other. He’d come down to meet her family and visit Potock’s police department.
When the local chief, Rolly Akers, inquired if Jack was interested in relocating permanently and heading the revamped detective division, the offer had seemed like a gift from God. They’d married nine days later in the office of the probate judge.
And she’d never been happier in her life.
Until her new husband discovered she was a tiny bit eccentric. Her odd propensity to attract things that were no longer living wasn’t an asset, either.
“If you hadn’t rushed out mad last night,” she told him, “you might’ve been the one to pass through here first thing this morning and find the body.”
“Forgive me if I have a major problem with snakes in my bathtub.”
“They weren’t poisonous.”
“And you think that matters?”
Yes, it mattered, and she told him so. She’d caught the water snakes to photograph, had built an enclosure by the pier where she’d planned to put them at first light. She’d needed a way to keep them wet and contained until morning, and the bathtub had been the logical choice.
“This isn’t the place to talk about our personal problems,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.”
“So do I.”
“I want your film. I need the photographs you took before my unit got here.”
“I didn’t take any.”
He held out his hand. “Come on, Lucky. I don’t have time for games. You shot at least a roll before you called it in. I know you. You recorded every gory detail.”
“I did not!”
She tried to act indignant, but he saw right through it. He snapped his fingers with impatience. “Give it to me. No screwing around anymore. This isn’t funny.”
“No! It’s newspaper property. Leigh would skin my hide. You’ll get me in trouble.”
“I’ll make you prints and bring them over.”
“No, I’ll make you prints and bring them over.”
“I need them for evidence.”
“And I need them for the Sunday paper.”
He pinched his forehead. “Do you have to argue with me about everything? You’re too damn much work.”
His words wounded her gravely, and he had to know it. She teetered between anger and despair, settling on despair.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said immediately.
“Yes, you did.” Her voice quavered.
“No, not the way it came out.”
“Yes, you did, and that’s the root of the real problem between us. You married me thinking everything would be easy, that I’d be easy. You created this fantasy about the perfect life. House. Kids. Job. Extended family. A wife you could control. But then you found out you’d married a woman who refuses to fit your fantasy.”
“That’s oversimplifying it.”
“Maybe, but it’s still accurate.”
“I don’t want to control you, Lucky, only protect you.”
“No, you want to change me, because deep down you don’t really like who I am.” She walked to the back of the Blazer and reached into her bag. “Here.” She slapped the film into his hand. She pushed up the tailgate and closed the hatch. When she walked to the driver’s door, Jack tried to stop her, but she ignored him and got in.
“Sweetheart, wait,” he said through the open window.
“The sad part is I’m stupid enough to still love you.”
“I love you, too. That’s never been the issue.”
She wouldn’t even dignify his comment with a response. If he loved her, he would never have left her. He’d accept her for who she was. She cranked the engine and put the vehicle into gear. “Move if you don’t want to get run over.”
He didn’t budge.
“Move or I’ll show you in front of your officers what a hissy fit really looks like.”
He took a step back and raised his hands in surrender. She drove off, spewing dust and gravel behind her.
By the time she got the hundred yards to the barricade and went around it, she was weeping. Hiding her sobs from the uniformed cop was impossible, so she didn’t try.
The clock in the dash said it wasn’t even nine, and already it had been a horrible day. She blotted her tears on the sleeve of her shirt and tried to control herself, fumbling in her purse for sunglasses.
If she went into the office with red eyes, she’d have to answer a million questions, and she couldn’t handle that now. What she’d rather do was go home, sit on the pier for the rest of the day and feel sorry for herself. Unfortunately she had too much work and a noon deadline.
Worse than that, she’d have to face Jack again in a little while. It would take him about two hours to get that film over to the police lab and have it developed—and discover she’d given him photos of a twelve-pound squash.
THE BUILDING THAT HOUSED the Register had begun its life before 1870 as a pickle factory. Some days Lucky could still smell the brine that had once saturated the hardwood floor.
She loved every square inch of the place, from the elegant antique doors at the front to the ink-stained concrete in the pressroom.
She particularly loved the second floor, her own private domain. Storage took up most of it, but she had a fair-size darkroom, a bathroom and a “parlor” that overlooked the street. The natural light in the front room, filtered by the beveled glass in the windows, was excepti
onal.
The office was already bustling when she arrived. The newspaper published twice weekly, on Sundays and Wednesdays, so the composing room did computer pasteup for those editions on Monday and Friday mornings.
She’d called Leigh on her cell phone earlier to tell her about the train accident and the bomb threat. Pushing through the doors, Lucky headed straight for the stairs with only a wave to the office and advertising staff and down the hall past the framed copies of front pages with historic headlines:
Local Man Commands Shuttle
Plant To Bring 300 Jobs
Her favorite page was at the end. The banner headline of this special edition, from July 5, 1973, said:
Lucky Child Found Alive
She’d read the story so many times she knew it from memory. The reporter had written:
A three-year-old, who fell from a boat last night and spent more than five hours floating in the Black Warrior River, sustained only a slight case of hypothermia and no serious injuries, doctors at Riverside Community Hospital said this morning.
Erin Renee Mathison, youngest daughter of newspaper publisher Matt Mathison and his wife, Ruth, of 103 Brighton Street, was pulled from the river at 3:45 a.m. near the Gorgas steam plant on the Mulberry fork, some two miles from where she fell overboard.
The girl tumbled from her family’s pontoon boat at about 10 p.m. Monday while watching the Independence Day fireworks display with her parents, grandparents and three older siblings.
Sgt. Albert Cummings of the Walker County rescue squad said the child was wearing a life vest and had learned to swim as an infant. “But it’s a miracle she didn’t drown or get run over by the flotilla,” Cummings said, referring to the annual lighted parade of boats. “She’s one lucky kid.”
As she went by the frame, Lucky rapped lightly on the glass, something she’d done every workday as long as she could remember. Over the years she’d discovered that luck came in both good and bad varieties, and while her superstitious ritual might not help, it sure didn’t hurt.
Leigh’s office was next to the stairs, and she called out as Lucky passed. Lucky stopped, turned and stuck her head around the door frame. “What?”
“I’ve rearranged the front page for you. I need three or four shots.”
“Give me an hour and you can clip the negatives you want me to print.”
“What do you know about this? I need to put together a quick story.”
Lucky came in and gave her a rundown of the facts while Leigh typed them into her computer. They usually couldn’t cover breaking news with any success or compete with the big papers out of Jasper, Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. Aside from Leigh, they had only one other full-time reporter. Correspondents, called “stringers,” sent in news from outlying communities.
The Register carried in-depth features, follow-ups of events and local stories the dailies had no interest in pursuing. But often, like today, they had exclusive photos.
While other small newspapers were being swallowed up by chains or going bankrupt, theirs flourished because they gave readers news they couldn’t get easily anywhere else—names of hometown people serving in the military, the lunch menus for the schools, profiles of new people in the area. That meant residents subscribed to both a daily paper and the Register.
Their dad had been a good editor and publisher, but Leigh had a better instinct for what readers wanted. With input from Cal, who’d completed his master’s degree in marketing last year, Leigh had dramatically increased readership and profits.
Unlike the two of them or Shannon, Lucky hadn’t gone to college, but her photos helped keep them in the black, and she was proud of her contribution.
“That’s all I know,” Lucky told Leigh, finishing. “I wouldn’t print a name until you get it officially. I might be wrong. And I don’t know how long it’ll take them to notify family.”
“I’ll call before we go to press and see if we can release the name.” Leigh kept typing as she talked, reworking the information into a story. “If you get in a bind processing, get Cal to give you a hand. You can hold the rolls Eddie and I left. They’re for Wednesday. And the stuff you took for the food page.”
“Okay.”
“Whose case is the train accident? The Yankee with the fast feet?”
Jack, she meant. Leigh was the only one in the family who believed Lucky had made a mistake marrying someone she’d known for just a few months. Their parents, grandmother, Cal and Shannon were all crazy about him.
Leigh’s opinion about marriage was tainted by a rough divorce four years ago and lack of child support from her ex-husband. She didn’t even know his whereabouts. Most men were beasts, in her eyes, not only Jack, so Lucky didn’t take offense at her barbs.
“You can try Jack and see if he’ll give you what you’re missing,” she told Leigh, “but I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
“I’ll call the coroner. Jack still living in town?” she asked casually.
“For the time being. We’re working things out.”
“Uh-huh.” She stopped typing and turned in her chair. “If that’s true, how come you’ve been crying again this morning and look like death warmed over?”
Lucky took off her dark glasses, dropped her camera bag on the floor and sat down in a chair across from the desk. Nearly eight years separated her and Leigh, but despite that, they were very close. Lucky had never been able to hide much from her, not like with Shannon or Cal.
“I’m scared Jack and I are trying to repair something that can’t be repaired,” she told her, “and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Things aren’t going well, I take it.”
Lucky told her about the argument and her swap of the film, making Leigh roar with laughter. “It’s not funny,” Lucky said. “My marriage is going down the drain.”
“I’m sorry, kiddo, but I’d give anything to see his face when he finds out what you’ve done.”
“I’m sure you’ll get a chance. No doubt he’ll be in here later to raise hell.”
Cal walked through the door carrying doughnuts. “Who’ll be raising hell?” He extended the open box across the desk.
“Jack,” Leigh said, taking her usual lemon-filled.
“Big Guy? What for?”
“Lucky pulled a fast one on him.” She related the story. “You can run interference when he shows up, since you two are so chummy.”
Cal shook his head. “Oh, no, you’re not putting me in the middle of this.” He offered Lucky a doughnut, but she got a whiff of the sweet smell and declined, unable to hide her grimace. “Your stomach still bothering you?” he asked. “You look pretty green this morning.”
Lucky shook her head, stood quickly and grabbed her bag.
“Stomach?” Leigh asked. “I didn’t know you were really sick.”
“I’m fine. A little two-day virus or something.”
“Two days!” Cal said with a snort, opening his stupid mouth again. “You’ve been pukin’ for a week. You splattered all over one of my best shirts.”
“That was your fault, goofball. You shouldn’t eat tacos for lunch and then breathe on people.”
“Ha, ha. Seriously…you need to go to the doctor and find out what’s wrong. You’re hunched over the trash can or running to the bathroom nearly every time I see you.”
Leigh’s eyes widened and an unspoken question passed between the sisters. Rather than answer, Lucky looked away.
“Go have a checkup,” Cal added. “I’m worried about you.”
Lucky gave him a soft punch in the arm. “You’re sweet to worry, but I’m feeling much better now. Whatever I had is going away.” She backed toward the door. “I’d love to stay and gab all morning, but I’ve got a ton of film waiting for me, so I’d better get to it. See you two later.” She turned and hurried out the door and up the stairs before Leigh could question her.
In the darkroom she put on an apron and a new pair of long rubber gloves. She made sure her skin was covered and th
e vent open, then mixed the chemicals. She’d only gotten as far as getting the developer in the film tank before Leigh banged on the locked door.
“Let me in, you rascal. I want to talk to you.”
“I’m busy. Go away.”
“Not on your life. Now open the door.”
Lucky ignored her.
“Okay,” Leigh said after a few seconds, “you’re forcing me to call Jack and ask him what’s up.”
Damn her. “Hold on a second. I’m coming.”
She switched off the lights, loaded the film and screwed on the lid, tapping the tank on the counter to remove air bubbles. She set the timer and agitated the tank. “Okay, come in,” she said, flipping the light back on and unlocking the door.
“Are you pregnant?” Leigh asked without preamble.
“If I said no, would you believe me?”
“No.”
“Then yes, I’m pregnant.”
Leigh sat down hard on the stool, obviously stunned. “When did you find out?”
“Three weeks ago—or I suppose it’s four now.”
Leigh went wild. “A month! You’ve known for a month and haven’t said anything to me?”
“I wanted to tell Jack first.”
“Oh, God, Lucky, how far along are you?”
“About eight weeks. Nearly nine. I figure it was the basketball.”
“The what?”
She waved away the question with her hand. “Nothing. A…game between me and Jack. It’s not important.”
“Does he still not know?”
“Not yet. I’ve tried to tell him several times, but talking calmly about anything isn’t one of our strengths.”
Plus, the news had hit her like a bomb. She’d been too overwhelmed to think logically about how to handle it. She wanted a child, but not now. She hadn’t been married a year yet, and a third of that, she and Jack had spent apart.
“Cal didn’t suspect, did he?” she asked. “If he lets something slip…”
“He’s concerned you’re sick, but clueless about the reason. Nothing’s wrong, is there? He’s right, you do look green.”
