Don't Ever Tell

by Brandon Massey

  Bates had swept all of their wedding photographs off the walls and smashed them. He’d knocked over the Christmas tree by the fireplace, crushed all of the multicolored ornaments. They lay scattered across the carpet like broken eggs.

  Why had he ransacked the house? Had he been looking for the money he claimed Rachel had stolen from him? One point seven million?

  It was so unbelievable it was almost certainly true.

  Joshua reached the staircase. In his pain-wracked condition, climbing the fifteen steps seemed as daunting a task as scaling the summit of a mountain.

  Bates was stalking across the family room. Blood poured from his nose, which was probably broken, but he seemed oblivious to the pain.

  Joshua grabbed the railing and started ascending the steps. He used his long legs to take them three at a time, risking a nasty fall if he lost his balance, but he didn’t slow, and, miraculously, didn’t fall.

  He made it to the second floor. Bates had wrought destruction up here, too. Smashed photos and artwork covered the hallway carpet, and black smears and deep dents marred the walls.

  Bates was halfway up the staircase. Coming fast. Knife gleaming.

  Joshua ran into the master bedroom, slammed the door, and locked it. He braced his back against it.

  He expected Bates to attempt to kick the door down, as he had done in the laundry room, but after a few seconds, nothing had happened.

  Warily, Joshua moved away from the door.

  50

  The bedroom was trashed, too.

  Shards of glass from the busted dresser mirror covered the dresser and floor. The drawers had been pulled out, and clothes thrown everywhere. The mattress was torn and gouged, stuffing leaking out. The television tube had been smashed, and the DVD and cable box were dented.

  Bates had also hammered the nightstand lamp bulbs to smithereens, upended the nightstands themselves and dumped their contents on the floor.

  Joshua found the gun case on the carpet, underneath a pile of socks and T-shirts. The lid was badly dented, but it was still locked.

  Bates clearly hadn’t known what was inside, and hadn’t thought it contained anything of use to him.

  He knelt to retrieve the box, wincing at the pain that fanned through his body.

  He heard a soft whimper from underneath the bed. He looked, squinting.

  It was Coco. She cowered far under the bed, large eyes glimmering in the shadows. She looked fine, just scared.

  “You stay under there, okay?” he said softly. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  He found his backup pair of glasses in a case beside one of the dumped drawers. The lenses were intact.

  He slid them on. The world came back into vivid view.

  He opened the gun safe and loaded the revolver. It was a challenge: his broken finger hampered him, and his hands were shaking.

  Somehow, he managed to plug all of the rounds into the chambers without dropping any of them. In the heat of battle, he’d discovered a dexterity that he hadn’t known he possessed.

  He disengaged the trigger lock and rose into a shooter’s stance, holding the gun firmly in his good hand.

  Bates hadn’t tried to force his way into the bedroom, but that meant nothing. He wasn’t going to leave the house.

  Carefully, Joshua opened the door, quick-stepped backward.

  The hallway was full of shadows. And empty.

  He didn’t hear Bates, either. He heard only the plinking rain, water gurgling through gutters.

  He crept down the hallway. Finger poised on the trigger. Muscles tensed for the slightest noise.

  He moved to the guest bedroom, on the right. A glance showed no one inside. Just more chaos—a futon ripped to shreds and an upended TV.

  He moved into the jack-and-jill bathroom, checked behind the door and shower curtain. The vanity mirror was smashed and the cabinet hung open, rolls of toilet tissue and cleaning supplies spilling out.

  Next, Rachel’s study. Bates had destroyed the laptop and printer, swept the photos and figurines off the bookshelves

  DON’T EVER TELL 269

  and crushed them, and yanked out the file cabinet drawers and torn through the paperwork.

  Joshua edged back into the hallway.

  He heard a whispery inhalation of air behind him.

  He whirled to see Bates coming at him with the knife. There was blood on his lips. Hatred in his cold eyes. He must have circled through the rooms via the shared bathroom and flanked Joshua. He was leading with the switchblade, thrusting the knife at Joshua, intending to deliver a fatal wound, and he would have succeeded, would have gored Joshua right there in the hallway, if Joshua’s reflexes had not been faster than his.

  Joshua squeezed off three shots at point blank range. The first round slashed through Bates’ shoulder. The next two hit him squarely in the chest.

  Bates’s eyes widened in apparent surprise. He staggered, lost his balance, and tumbled end over end down the staircase.

  He lay at the bottom of the steps, immobile.

  Joshua’s ears were ringing. His wrists burned from the gun’s recoil.

  Rain pinged on the roof. A burst of wind blew around the house.

  Realizing that he had been holding his breath, he let out a loud exhalation.

  He aimed the muzzle downward, and descended the steps on watery knees.

  Bates lay on the floor, eyes closed, legs sprawled, one arm contorted behind his back. Dark blood soaked his shoulder, and ghostly ribbons of sour smoke rose from the bullet ruptures in his jacket.

  His chest rose and fell almost imperceptibly. He was not dead, but nearly so.

  Joshua felt his gorge rising. He clapped his hand over his mouth, but he couldn’t stop the rising column of nausea. He hurried into the kitchen and vomited in the sink.

  He turned on the faucet and ran cold water to wash his face and clean out his mouth.

  He returned to Bates with a wad of paper towels. Covering his fingers with the towels to keep the blood from getting on them, he dug into Bates’s jacket pocket and fished out his wedding band.

  “I’ll be taking this back,” he said.

  He washed off the ring in the sink. He couldn’t put the ring on his broken finger, so he slid it onto a finger of his right hand.

  Then he went to get his cell phone, to call the police.

  Joshua had left his cell in the laundry room. Keeping hold of the gun, he plucked the phone off the dryer.

  He dialed 911—he didn’t get a “Network Busy” message this time—and calmly reported that he had shot an intruder in his home, and that he had been injured during the attack. He ended the call without answering any further questions.

  When he came back into the kitchen, the patio door was swinging open, rain pattering inside. A trail of blood droplets led from the doorway, across the family room, and to the bottom of the stairs.

  Bates was gone.

  Less than ten minutes later, the police and an ambulance arrived.

  Feeling lightheaded, Joshua explained to the cops what had happened. He gave them Bates’s name and showed them his inmate record. The officers noted his bruises and wounds, and the destruction wrought in his home, and told him that he was lucky to be alive.

  He knew how fortunate he was, but the enormity of his battle with Bates hadn’t completely sunk in. He guessed that he was suffering a mild case of post-traumatic shock.

  The paramedics treated his injuries, applying a splint and a bandage to his broken finger, an ice pack to his swollen face, and a bandage to his slashed calf. They encouraged him to seek X-rays and additional medical care from his physician.

  Broken finger or not, he had no intention of wasting time in a doctor’s office until this was over. To dull the edge of the pain, he swallowed a handful of Advil.

  Although he had shot Bates in self-defense, the police

  274 Brandon Massey

  forced him to ride with them to the local station. There, he gave an official account of
what had transpired.

  The cops wanted to know where Rachel had gone, of course. He told them he didn’t know—but that he did know Bates had escaped prison and was wanted for a murder in Illinois.

  They said they would issue an APB on Bates, and would notify area hospitals to be on the lookout for anyone matching his description seeking treatment for gunshot wounds. With these action steps in place, the police felt assured of collaring Bates soon.

  Joshua wasn’t so confident. As long as Bates was alive and mobile, he was a threat.

  When he asked the cops how Bates could have gotten away after sustaining three gunshots, two of them directly to the chest, they stated it was possible he had been wearing body armor. A former cop, they said, had likely taken such a precaution, and the blood Joshua had seen might have come only from a minor flesh wound on his shoulder.

  It was all the more reason he was convinced that Bates was nowhere near done. He remembered the savage, determined glint in the man’s eyes.

  One point seven million. She stole it from me, and don’t tell me you don’t know all about it.

  He didn’t mention Bates’s comments about the money to the police. What could he have said? He knew nothing whatsoever about any money, and bringing up the subject would have only led to another frustrating series of questions and possibly shifted suspicion to him.

  The only one who could tell them about the money was Rachel—and she was going to have to tell him first.

  Could the money explain how she’d been able to open the salon? She’d told him that she and Tanisha had gotten a bank loan, but he wasn’t sure what to believe any more.

  DON’T EVER TELL 275

  In spite of everything that had happened, he’d wanted to maintain hope in Rachel. He could understand her fear of Bates, and why she had run and apparently started her life anew. He even could imagine how her anxiety about her past had made her feel as if she needed to lie, though her deceit deeply angered him.

  But the revelation about the money was too much. Bates had no reason to lie. Although he couldn’t fathom how a narcotics cop had come to possess close to two million dollars, Bates had been fanatically determined to turn their house inside out to find it, and he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who chased false leads.

  Rachel either had the man’s money, or had information about where it might be. And she had told him nothing whatsoever about it.

  His loss of trust in her depressed him. If he managed to find her, he didn’t know what kind of marriage they’d have left. Or if he’d even want one at all.

  Unfortunately, the police confiscated his revolver. In spite of his claims that Rachel probably had a license for it, since he couldn’t produce the permit, they took the gun.

  He decided that he would purchase his own firearm as soon as possible. He wasn’t going to be caught defenseless again.

  53

  It was midafternoon when the police released him. He called a taxi to pick him up from the station.

  The rain had abated, and the clouds had cleared. The storm that had pummeled the city only a short while ago was only a bad memory, like everything else that had happened.

  As the taxi approached his house, he spotted a car parked in the driveway beside his Explorer: a smoke-gray Cadillac sedan with a bumper sticker that read, I’M SAVED.

  ARE U?

  “Oh, no,” Joshua said.

  It was his mother. She had dropped in for one of her unannounced “inspections.” He had been avoiding her lately, but she would not be ignored.

  This had to be the worst possible time for him to see her. He almost told the cabbie to turn around and drop him off at Eddie’s. Eddie’s house was twenty minutes away, but he’d rather pay a thirty-dollar cab fare than face his mom.

  The taxi parked in front of the driveway. He paid the fare and slowly climbed out of the car.

  As the cab sped away, the Cadillac’s passenger door opened. He saw his father’s small head behind the wheel, but his father wouldn’t get out of the car and participate in this conversation. During his mother’s inspections, Dad served as little more than her chauffeur.

  With much effort, Mom rose out of the vehicle. She wore a long, black woolen jacket, a scarf, gloves, and a dark hat with a floppy brim. A gigantic purse dangled from her shoulder. Although the rain had passed, she gripped an umbrella like a walking stick.

  “Where you been?” she asked. “We been waitin’ out here in the cold for half an hour!”

  When he had been a bachelor, Mom never waited outside his apartment. She’d had a key to his place and would enter at her leisure and make herself at home.

  Rachel had refused to give anyone a key to their house, and though it had enraged his mother—it was one more reason Mom despised Rachel—he was thankful that his wife had refused to bend.

  “I’ve been taking care of some business, Mom.” He went to the mailbox and removed the day’s mail, which appeared to consist of the usual bills and junk.

  Mom slid on her bifocals and shuffled down the driveway. Shock brightened her eyes.

  “What the hell happened to you, boy? Your face is all swoll and purple, you got that bandage on your finger—”

  “I got in a fight. I really don’t want to talk about it. I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine. You look like somebody beat the hell outta you! Who was it?” Her eyes gleamed with curiosity. “It was that heifer’s boyfriend, wasn’t it? I knew it! That low-down, triflin’ bitch!”

  He sighed. “Mom, please, this isn’t the time.”

  She hooked her hand around his arm, her fingers like talons. Her voice was soft, lulling. “Come on home with us, baby. Let mama take care of everything.”

  “Thanks, but I can take care of myself.” He paused, and then added, “I’m a grown man, you know.”

  Her gaze was muddy, uncertain—but only for a moment. Her eyes quickly sharpened like darts, and her lips drew into a stern line. “Get in the car, Joshua Earl, right this minute. Don’t make me tell you again.”

  She tugged at his arm. He stood firm.

  “I’m not going home with you, Mom,” he said. “I’ve got business to handle here.”

  “The only business you been handlin’ is gettin’ your ass beat! Now get in the damn car!”

  Immobile, he shook his head.

  “You a damn fool, boy.” Blinking quickly, she rooted frantically in her huge purse. She soon found what she was looking for: a handkerchief. She had started to cry.

  He folded his arms across his chest as she dabbed at her eyes. He recognized the tears for what they really were—another weapon in her arsenal of manipulative tricks.

  For his entire life, she had manipulated him into doing whatever she wanted. Sometimes she used syrupy kindness, sometimes cruel remarks, sometimes tears. That he’d eventually figured out how she was manipulating him had never stopped him from doing what she wished. He’d always been the obedient son and, by extension, the soft-hearted boyfriend, the pushover husband, always avoiding confrontations, always going with the flow, always giving in whenever someone turned up the heat.

  No more. He had battled a coldblooded killer and survived. Surely, he could handle his mother.

  His mother’s tears succeeded in summoning his father. Dad got out of the car, looked at Mom and then at Joshua. “What you say to your mama, boy?”

  “I told her that I’m staying home, Dad. I appreciate your stopping by, but I’m in the middle of something here.”

  “That bitch is gonna get him killed!” Mom said, fat tears streaming down her face. She honked into her handkerchief. “Look at our baby, Earl. Look at him! Some man his wife’s been keepin’ up with done did this to him!”

  Dad scrutinized Joshua as if seeing him for the first time. He grunted. “Gotta say, you do look like you done took a lickin’, son.”

  “It’s not like that at all, Dad,” Joshua said. He turned to his mother. “And please do me a favor, Mom. Don’t call my wife a bitch again.
Or a heifer, or a jezebel. She’s the woman I married, and whether you like her or not, you need to respect her as my wife.”

  Blotting her eyes, Mom scowled. “Respect her? Hmmph.”

  “Enough,” Joshua said. “Please.”

  Mouth turned up scornfully, muttering under her breath, Mom stuffed her handkerchief back into her purse. Her tears had ceased as quickly as if they had been produced by a water faucet that you could turn on or off at will.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” Joshua said. “But I have to go inside and work on some important things. I can’t have any company right now.”

  “You ain’t even gonna let us in?” Mom looked toward the front door. He could see her desire to pick apart whatever she found in the house gleaming like hunger in her eyes.

  “Not today,” he said.

  “Our door’s always been open to you, baby,” she said. “You gonna turn us away like we strangers?”

  “Mom, give it a rest, all right? I’ll call you when things settle down again.”

  She glared at him, jaws set like stone.

  He matched her angry stare without blinking.

  Finally, she shrugged.

  “Fine. Whatever you say, Mr. Man. Earl, let’s go, since we ain’t been invited.”

  Dad grunted. “All right, Bernice.”

  He helped Mom get into the car, and shut her door. He approached Joshua.

  Surprisingly, he shook his hand. “I’m proud of you, boy. You done needed to stand up to your Mama a long time ago.”

  “I know.”

  “Be careful out there, son, whatever you doin’. Call me if you need somethin’.”

  “Actually,” Joshua said, “I was wondering if you still have that handgun you used to keep in the house?”

  “That .357? ’Course I do. Man gotta have his guns. Wanted to teach you all about that, but your mama . . .” Dad cast a look toward the car. “Well, you know how she is.”

  “Can I borrow it? I wanted to pick up a piece myself, but I doubt a gun shop would sell me anything if I walked in looking like this.”

  “Stop by the garage later tonight. ’Round ten. She’ll be sleep.”

  Joshua smiled, though it hurt his bruised face to do so. “I’ll be there.”