An Absence of Principal

by Jimmy Patterson

  Doggett’s attempt at chattiness did not lessen the tension. In fact the young man was rather rude, Doggett thought, and so he decided to change his mood.

  “Watch your mouth, kid. Not here to be friends,” Doggett scrambled to be a hard ass. “Forty-eight hours from now, I’m back. You’re back. I want it all. Tell me again what we agreed on, boy?”

  “Sixty. That’s what you told me.”

  “Sixty thousand, yeah. Not a dime less, you got it?”

  “Back off, old man. Ain’t my first time. I’ll be here.”

  Doggett handed Cootie the two kilos, which filled an old box that had held 16 pints of Jim Beam in its first incarnation.

  “Damn straight you’ll be here, boy. Seven Saturday night. Come with it all. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

  Cootie was apparently tired of the lecture and tugged at his waistband to remind Doggett the man with the gun is always the man in charge.

  “Hey old man, I seen you somewhere before. Where I seen you?”

  “You crazy, boy,” Doggett said.

  “Nah, man, I never forget a face — “

  Before Cootie could finish, Doggett had climbed into his car, slammed the door and sped away, leaving the red-eyed, low-life in his rear view mirror.

  Two corners away, Tony Nail sat in his car, a silver Honda, a few year’s older than Doggett’s but similar in body style. The headlights didn’t work half the time, the tires were bald and he had to manually turn his blinker off. Oh, and a taillight was frequently out because of a short. But Tony never placed any added emphasis on having an extravagant and elegant ride. If it got him to where his ministry was needed, he was good with that. And on this night, as he figured his checkbook after filling up with gas, he glanced up to see what looked like Principal Doggett’s silver Honda screaming toward him just off Front Street near downtown.

  Nail leaned across the passenger seat hoping he would be able to shield himself if there was an impact. Seconds later he heard the car zoom by.

  Nail hurried off Front Street behind the Royal Delite. He first saw a group of boys in their early 20s congregated outside the building. They were all talking about the crazed old man that had just sped away.

  “What up, boys?” Nail asked, hoping for any sort of info they could tell him.

  “Some crazy dude just here. Old man. Looked familiar. Somebody I knew, maybe when I was a kid,” one of them said. “You see that guy? We thought it was you first because his car and yours look just alike.”

  There was little else any of them offered about what had just happened. One of the boys said Cootie left just after the old man did. Nail knew Cootie was one of the town’s most brazen dealers. He did the math. It sure seemed to him like his principal had begun a second job. One maybe more lucrative than public education administration.

  Friday was the one day a year when teachers and staff returned just long enough to box up the school year and file it and their personal and professional belongings away for another summer. It was a short day but it always served as a way for the staff to say their goodbyes for three months.

  Doggett was the first to arrive that morning. He sat in his office and ran the numbers in his head. In two days he would wrap his arms around sixty-thousand dollars. With that he could pay his gambling debt, set a few thousand back for the kids’ education and for Angela’s cruise, and he could still pay back his man in Odessa. He’d give Cootie five hundred and pocket a few hundred for a rainy day. Life was grand. So good in fact that Ben thought he’d earned himself a quick, celebratory online wager.

  WAGER: $500.00

  Dealer: Hit or hold?

  Ben41: Hit me.

  Dealer: 5 of clubs. 18 showing. Hit or hold?

  Ben41: Hold.

  Dealer: 6 of Diamonds. House busts. Hand over. You win. Play again?

  Ben 41: Yes.

  Dealer: What’s your wager, Ben41?

  Ben41: One thousand.

  Dealer: Confirming one-thousand?

  Ben41: Yes

  Dealer: Showing 15. Hit or Hold?

  Ben41: Hit me.

  Dealer: Two of clubs, 17 showing. Hit or hold?

  Ben41: Hit.

  Dealer: Confirming hit.

  Ben41: Hit.

  Dealer. Six of hearts. House wins.

  Administrator: Before continuing please insert credit card information and submit payment for $1,000.

  Doggett was mystified why he couldn’t master the art of online gambling. For every $500 he won he seemed to lose $5,000, and he couldn’t quite figure out why. He was addicted to the thrill of it all, win or lose. In some sick way the losing was almost as much of a rush as the winning. Doggett knew he’d lose it all eventually anyway. It wasn’t like he was going to get rich, stop and use the money for a retirement nest egg one day. Maybe in his more rational days. He had turned into something he was unfamiliar with. A man who made rash decisions and couldn’t turn away from the car wreck that had become his life. Despite the thrill he often felt when on the brink of losing a big wad of cash, that feeling was almost immediately followed by a quick fall back to reality and the guilt and remorse that always came with it.

  It was at that point, moments after he’d lost his latest bundle, when Doggett wheeled around at his desk to find Tony Nail standing in his doorway.

  “You OK, Mr. Doggett?” Nail asked.

  “Of course I’m OK. What is it?” Doggett barked.

  “I was going to grab a bite for breakfast. Thought I’d see if you wanted me to pick something up for you.”

  “No, thank you, Tony. I’m good.”

  Nail started to say something but held his tongue. He’d seen too many people hide the truth when something was really going on. Tony didn’t feel like being lied to. He knew that’s what he’d get. His principal didn’t look as crazy-eyed as he thought he had seen him the night before, but it was obvious something wasn’t right and it was only getting worse. He knew all he could do for him at this point was to pray for him.

  A week later, a few minutes before seven o’clock again, Tony was almost to Odessa when he noticed what looked to be Doggett’s silver Honda just ahead of him. The principal, if it was the principal, hadn’t seen the custodian’s car behind him, but to Tony, it looked like a return trip for his boss to the uglier part of one of West Texas’s tougher cities. Ministering can wait, Tony thought to himself. All that was on his mind at this moment was following the man in the silver Honda, whoever it was, to see what it was that brought him to Odessa.

  Nail followed the car to an old abandoned gas station near the Kermit Highway and FM 1960, one of the city’s most notorious areas. One that teemed with small town dopers and dealers.

  Tony parked across the street in a 7-11 parking lot to see what would happen next. He wondered what could have possibly occurred in a professional man’s life to send him down this road.

  Darkness fell and Tony could barely see anything from where he sat. In the last several minutes, a fog, unusual for West Texas in the late spring, or any time for that matter, had developed that only made it more difficult to see. Fifteen minutes must have passed before he watched the man in the silver Honda get out of his car and walk into a small wooded area next to the gas station. He could see nothing and didn’t know if the man in the silver car was in the woods alone or if he was with someone.

  A moment later, Tony saw a flash and heard a loud pop. He squinted and wiped the moisture off his car window and saw a fuzzy figure, what looked like a tall black man. Or maybe just a tall man, he could’ve been white, or Latino, Tony thought. He couldn’t say who exactly he saw run out of the bushes and get back into the silver car. Whoever it was carried what appeared to be two large shoe boxes. The car sped off, north up the Kermit Highway. The direction the car was headed made it appear as if whoever
was driving wasn’t headed back to Midland. The driver was just trying to get as far away as fast as he could.

  Tony pulled onto the Kermit Highway and headed the same direction as the speeding Honda. He had hoped to catch up, but there was no way. After trailing the car for three or four miles Nail turned and headed back to Midland. There would be no preaching tonight. Not after what he had just seen. Or thought he had seen.

  Two minutes after the pop and the flash, the phone rang at Fire House 8 on the west side of Odessa.

  “There’s a dead man in the brush behind the abandoned gas station at 1960 and the Kermit Highway,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

  Click.

  Before the dispatcher could even say hello, much less ask for more information, the call dropped. The firehouse dispatcher checked enhanced 911 records and showed the call had come from a cell phone somewhere in Ector County. Untraceable.

  Odessa police responded to the location and quickly confirmed the caller was precise in explaining where the dead man would be. There he was: Black. Mid-30s. Single bullet wound to the head. Execution style. Two days later the medical examiner’s report would note two things of interest: the man had cocaine residue on all ten of his fingers. Not terribly surprising. The ME would also find that despite the proximity of the weapon to the fatal entry wound – less than 12 inches – the bullet had entered at an angle. That usually only meant one thing, the examiner thought to himself.

  Garrison Trask, who ran his own one-man law office in Midland, opened the Odessa American Saturday morning to read the news of the death of Junior Walker, a 35-year-old unemployed auto mechanic with a history of drug arrests. Garrison thought little of it. There was likely more than a handful of these kinds of stories in newspapers across the country on this same morning. Another vagrant trying to make a life by dealing dope meets an untimely and unfortunate demise. Nothing terribly compelling about that, sad to say.

  Garrison was alone in the office as he was every Saturday, the one day of the week when he could put aside jail visits, interviews with clients, courtroom appearances and all the other details that often interrupted his detective work, his favorite part of the week. As much as he liked investigations, he knew having to bring on someone who specialized in that area was the only way his practice could stay afloat if he hoped to keep up his nearly spotless won-loss record in trials. He had even placed an advertisement in the Texas Legal Journal, which went to anyone and everyone associated with the profession. It was the farthest he had ever gone in seeking outside help in the office, and he wasn’t sure he was completely comfortable with the notion of working with anyone else. Trask had included in the ad the salary he was paying: $42,000 for a qualified candidate.

  Trask worked in such a faraway outpost, where unless you were in the oil business few people relocated to voluntarily. He knew it would be a challenge to find someone who had the right qualities for the position. In fact, he had not taken a single phone call since he had placed the ad three weeks earlier.

  Garrison’s casework had increased steadily since he left McClatchy-Court, the famed Midland firm, more than a decade earlier. He lost a lot of sleep over the decision, but it was one that was proving even more fruitful than he could have imagined. As his second pot of coffee brewed he thought about all the years he had spent as a solo practitioner. It had been four years since he had gone out on his own. He was tight with his money but he paid a girl $36,000 a year to run the office. Filing, phones, running to the courthouse, the kind of work most anyone could do. He gave the young woman weekends off. Saturday was his alone day. Garrison knew Lucy Hannah, his wife of almost 20 years, didn’t like him being away six out of every seven days, but such hard work was necessary if he hoped to retain his standing in the local legal community. Plus, Lucy knew the long hours kept her in some of the finery and baubles that wouldn’t have been possible had her husband not worked quite so hard.

  As he walked back to his office he heard the tinkling of the bells at the front door. Garrison rarely had Saturday visitors unless it was by appointment, and he had made none this morning. He walked to his outer office. Standing there was a strikingly beautiful woman. Long, red hair, green eyes, impeccably manicured and modestly, professionally dressed.

  She took a step toward him and extended her hand.

  “May I help you?” Trask said.

  “My name is Alex. Alex Wallace. You have an opening listed in the Law Journal for an investigator.”

  If Garrison had learned anything from his mother and Lucy Hannah, it was to not pre-judge people. That didn’t stop Garrison from thinking this woman looked nothing like a private attorney’s investigator. He decided, wisely, to keep that thought, and many others, to himself.

  Garrison invited her into his office and the two chatted for a moment. He took her portfolio and her card and they talked for several minutes, mostly small talk. Trask told her he’d be in touch and she let herself out. He was skeptical. Why would a beautiful woman want such a small town, small potatoes job as a private investigator for a one-man law firm? Garrison was good and he knew it, but there was little prestige in working for a sole practitioner. Just the fact that she came in made him leery and suspicious enough to wonder what her angle was.

  He pulled out her resume. Four pages.

  Alex Wallace. 38. Born and raised in Sapulpa, Oklahoma. Graduated Oklahoma University. Bachelors in Criminal Justice. Masters in social work. Graduated FBI Training Academy.

  Not bad, he thought.

  Her schooling was followed by three pages of special assignments for lawyers and police departments across the country. Then, in 1999, a break, unexplained in the biographical narrative that accompanied the resume. In ‘02, Alex noted that she had been hired by the Drug Enforcement Administration-International Operations, an assignment that looked like it lasted six months. And since then, nothing.

  He was intrigued. But even more, he was impressed. He would call her first thing Monday.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was all Ben Doggett could do to keep his composure during the weekend at home with his family. His hands shook, his stomach lurched and turned, and the dryness in his mouth wouldn’t stop.

  “Ben, you sure you’re feeling all right?” Angela asked, putting a hand to his forehead. “You look awful. You need a doctor?”

  “I’ll be fine, sweetheart. Bad Mexican food, probably. Besides we’ve got a busy day today. How can I miss my kids’ birthday, even if they are seventeen?”

  Doggett noticed a definite change in Angela’s tone toward him. She had gone from loving and warm to distant and unfeeling. When she asked how he was feeling, it seemed obligatory, like she didn’t really care. He supposed his recent behavior — leaving the house so often, inattention, failing to pay the phone bill (not to mention the gambling and affair she knew nothing about — yet) brought on the change he noticed.

  But back to thinking about himself. Doggett really didn’t have time just now to worry about his wife’s change of attitude. Despite his desperate actions from the night before, he tried to convince himself everything would be OK, just as he had tried to do on all those other occasions when he’d had extramarital relations with his secretary, or when he dropped a boatload of college money at an online casino.

  He convinced himself that by taking the action he took the day before and by pocketing all but a thousand dollars that Cootie had given him for the sale of the cocaine instead of paying that worthless low life in Odessa — he would be completely debt free with some serious large to spare. And Doggett felt for sure that once he had the ability to set aside his financial woes, everything else in his life would look up. Even though he felt he had made the right decision, he did not count on the overwhelming feeling of guilt that greeted him with the sunrise that morning.

  He looked at his watch.

  “I’ve gotta run out,” Doggett to
ld Angela again.

  “Oh, dear Jesus,” Angela said, her patience wearing thin again.

  “Just a quick errand down to the church. I’ll be back inside of thirty minutes.”

  Doggett knew she had heard that line far more times than any wife should.

  “When you’re out, stop by and get you some pills or something to make all these trips of yours go away,” she said. Doggett could tell by her comment that she had grown especially tired of him. In the months and years past, Angela would never dream of letting him go out while he was feeling so bad. Today, she just told him to get his own medicine. They had already become distant toward one another and she hadn’t even found out about his really big lies yet. She didn’t even know about Ben’s loss of self-respect and decency and everything that came with it, a character trait that had developed almost entirely in the three months since he had been honored by his peers, which seemed like such a long time ago.

  Doggett made his way to Our Lady of Hope, the Catholic Church he and Angela had been a part of for over twenty years, since first moving to Midland.

  It was eleven o’clock. Ben Doggett had never actually been to confession unless it was during Lent or Advent, but he had memorized the church’s confession times when he sat in Mass staring at his bulletin while pretending to listen to one of father’s boring homilies. Ben found them all to be drab, even though most everyone else was crazy about Father Marcus and the lessons he imparted. He was unfailingly polite and attentive to the needs of his parishioners at Our Lady of Hope. Some Sundays Ben memorized multiple bulletin pages when there was time, when father’s longer and more boring sermons permitted. As a result of his repeated study, he knew confessions were at eleven on Saturday mornings.

  “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned,” Ben began as he stepped into the confessional.

  “How long since your last confession, my friend?” Fr. Marcus asked.