An Absence of Principal

by Jimmy Patterson

  There was a long pause. Nothing from Ben.

  “Has it been awhile?” Father Marcus asked.

  “Three or four years, I guess. Back when I used to believe it all meant something,” Ben said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just … I don’t know, father. I’ve lost faith. Not just lost the faith, lost my faith, I guess. My faith in God, in mankind, in myself. In most anything and everything that matters. Too many bad choices on my part.”

  “Such as?” Fr. Marcus asked.

  “I’ve cheated on my wife with my secretary. I’ve gambled away a lot of my family’s savings. I’m an inattentive father and husband. And last night I think I hurt — .”

  “Go on …” Fr. Marcus asked.

  He remained silent.

  Ben remembered he hadn’t intended on spilling it all at this particular confession. In fact, he had hoped to keep his sins largely hidden, but soon enough, just like when he was a boy, he started singing like a mockingbird. His tongue flapped in the wind, and his mouth was uncontrollable when his conscience was involved. He could thank his mother and her unfailing honesty for that. After almost revealing too much, Ben caught himself. He stammered for a moment trying to find the right words to reclaim his control.

  “I hurt my mother. Snapped at her on the phone. She was … she was getting onto me for one of those things mothers get onto you about, y’know, and I got tired of her bickering, and I told her to stop, that I was a man and I could take care of myself. She started crying. Made me feel horrible. Still feel horrible. It’s what brought me here today. Only time I ever made my mama cry.”

  So it had come to this: Ben lying to a priest in confession. On top of everything else he had done wrong in the last few days and weeks, Doggett had become, almost overnight, an expert liar. And he was highly believable even when he was lying through his teeth.

  “I’m sorry, too, father, for not listening in Mass as well as I should sometimes.”

  “No worries, my son. I get that one a lot. Just do your best and I’ll do mine,” Fr. Marcus said.

  The priest doled out Doggett’s penance, made the sign of the cross through the screen that divided them and absolved him of all that he had done wrong. Doggett slithered out of the confessional wondering why the Catholic Church bothered with partitioning in confessionals. There’s no way he doesn’t know who I am, Doggett thought to himself.

  Father shook his head as Doggett exited the church. He unfurled the morning newspaper: “Man found shot execution style in Odessa; drug deal gone bad apparent motive,” the headline read.

  At almost precisely the same time that Fr. Marcus was opening his Reporter-Telegram, Tony Nail was across town reading the same story. Unlike Fr. Marcus, Tony found himself scouring over the facts. He picked up the phone and called Ben.

  “Mr. Doggett? There’s a problem down here at the school. Got a little water leak I need your input on. Can you drop by for a few minutes?” Nail asked.

  “On the way,” Doggett said. He picked up the phone and explained to Angela the problem at the school and said he would be home a little later than he had thought. Five minutes later he pulled up and met Nail in the parking lot at Stephen F. Austin.

  “What’s the problem, Tony?” Doggett asked.

  “You tell me,” Nail said.

  “Excuse me?” Doggett said.

  “You seen today’s paper, man?” Nail asked, tossing it down on the hood of Doggett’s car.

  The headline jumped off the page at Doggett, who had, in fact, not seen the morning paper. He studied it for several moments before saying anything.

  “Tragic. They’ve had a bunch of killings in Odessa lately, all drug-related they say. What’s the world comin’ to?” Doggett said. He looked up at Tony. “What’s this got to do with me, Toe?”

  “Suppose you tell me?” Nail challenged his boss.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, man?”

  Nail held out his hand and showed Doggett a picture of a silver Honda parked at the gas station where the shooting occurred. He had taken it on his smart phone the night before. It could have been taken on any night, so the photo could never be admitted into evidence, but Doggett’s reaction did nothing to ease Nail’s mind of his boss’s involvement.

  “Son of a —” Doggett said, holding himself back.

  “So, what’s the story Mr. Doggett? You kill this man, Junior Walker? I saw a car that looked a heckuva lot like yours drive up to that abandoned gas station. Next thing I know, I hear a shot, see a flash. Then I see somebody get back in the car and speed off. I followed whoever it was for awhile but they were driving too fast. I lost ’em real quick.

  “You crazy, man.” It was all Doggett could think of to say. “Why would I wanna go and kill some low-life dope dealer?”

  “Cuz you’re dealing, too, maybe?”

  “That’s some crazy talk there, boy,” Doggett said.

  Doggett quickly got into his car and sped off. It reminded Nail of the same way he had pulled off the last time he had seen his boss angry and in a hurry.

  June 2 would prove to be the mother of all Mondays. Tony would never forget the date or what happened. His car sputtered to a stop a mile east of Odessa. He wondered what was wrong with it for just a moment, and then he heard a car door shut behind him.

  “Tony Nail?”

  “Yes, officer?” Tony said.

  “Step away from the car,” the tall, thin policeman said.

  “Car broke down, sir. I was about to call someone for help,” Nail said.

  “Turn around. Hands on the car.”

  “What’s the problem, sir?” Nail asked.

  “Tony Nail, you’re under arrest for the murder of Junior Walker. Anything you say will be held against you in a court of law.”

  Nail tried to say something, to form words in his mouth, but nothing came out.

  CHAPTER 4

  It was just before eight o’clock Monday morning when Alex Wallace walked into Trask’s law office. It was June 3. Garrison had created his own daily calendar about his faith. Today’s reading said, “We know we have a Christian God because He sent his only Son to save us from ourselves.” Garrison had created 365 sayings about God and faith to make the calendar. He was serious about his spiritual life. Alex learned this early.

  She had also learned twice from her college professors: “If you’re early you’re on time. If you’re on time, you’re late.” And that invariably added up to about three days of her life spent waiting for people who were on time.

  “Good morning, Ms. Wallace.”

  Garrison was again taken aback by the woman’s beauty. Over the next few weeks, he would be equally captivated by her intellect, not to mention her life story.

  That Monday morning proved a turning point for both Garrison and his new investigator. It didn’t take long for him to pull the trigger on the deal that would make Ms. Wallace his new lead detective. Make that his only detective. Trask thought with a woman like her, with her intelligence and the commitment he would soon find in her, it would be almost like having two, maybe three investigators.

  “I can only pay you forty-two grand a year,” Trask admitted.

  “I’m not worried about the money, Mr. Trask.”

  “Please, it’s Garrison,” he said, a hint of a smile on his face.

  In the course of the last hour, Alex began telling her story and why she had developed such a desire to scale down to a smaller town. Trask found part of what she was saying a little hard to believe, but he decided to withhold judgment. She had seemed to have taken it upon herself to try to singlehandedly bring an end to drug trafficking into the U.S. from South America and Mexico. Doing so had almost gotten her killed more than once. Garrison didn’t yet know with absolute certainty what had brought her to Midlan
d, but he figured before long she would offer that up as well. What he did learn after that first morning was shocking enough itself. Her courage alone was enough to take a risk and hire her on the spot.

  Just after Alex Wallace walked out of Garrison’s office late Tuesday afternoon, the phone rang. It had become unusually busy for a Saturday morning.

  “Garrison Trask?” he answered.

  “Garrison? Tony Nail,” he said.

  “Tony, how are you?” Garrison said. “You OK?”

  “You got a few?” Tony asked.

  “For you, Tony, absolutely,” Trask said.

  “I was arrested last night,” Tony said, knowing that his attorney friend had always been a get-to-the-point kind of guy. Garrison was floored by this news. Civil disobedience just wasn’t in Tony’s makeup.

  “Talk to me,” Trask asked.

  “That’s it, I can’t. I don’t know why I am being blamed for this,” Nail said. “I don’t know what this is even about.”

  “What are the charges against you?” Trask asked him, trying to get something, anything out of his longtime friend.

  “Suspicion of murder. They say I’m a suspect in the killing of that guy in West Odessa last night in a bad drug deal. You probably saw it in the papers this morning. Garrison, I never so much as stole a piece of gum when I was a kid,” Nail said.

  “Why would they think you were involved?” Trask asked.

  “I was in the area to preach like always. I’m there most every night. The guy who was killed, I’ve talked to him several times about the Lord, but I never saw him last night, honest,” Tony said.

  “But you were in West Odessa that night?”

  “Yessir, to do my ministry, just like always,” Tony said.

  “Did you see anybody else there?” Trask asked. He listened carefully to see if there was any delay in Nail’s response or any sign he might be protecting someone or hiding something. He had no reason to suspect Tony for anything, but an initial Q&A was just part of being on the safe side.

  “Just the usuals,” Tony lied. “Nothing and no one out of the ordinary.”

  Garrison had known Tony since they were kids growing up in Midland in the Seventies. They lived in the same part of town. Tony’s father was a school principal and the Nails had a good life. Trask would grow up to be a lawyer and Tony would be a school custodian and not a professional like his father.

  “You’re a good man, Tony; everybody who knows you knows that,” Garrison said. “If you’re asking me to be your attorney, I’d like to help you, my friend.”

  “I don’t have the money to pay you, Garrison,” Tony said.

  “Don’t worry about the money right now,” Garrison said. “Sometimes we no-good lawyers know when something’s worth fighting for, money or no money. You’re worth fighting for, Tony. I’d like to find a way to help you get out of this. I know you, Tony. Heck, we’ve known each other our whole lives. You call and tell me you have been arrested for suspicion of murder, my first thought is that somebody somewhere in the system has screwed up big time.”

  The friendship between the two had been dormant for several years but the mutual admiration remained. Trask remembered there had been a falling off the straight and narrow by Tony just after high school, when his friend became mixed up in booze and drugs and hanging with the wrong crowd. Garrison had made the conscious choice to go the other way — and was already on his way thanks to a mother insistent that her son grow up and make something of himself. The resultant split led to where the two of them were today: Garrison on the back side of a two thousand dollar oaken desk. Tony sitting in the county jail desperately trying to understand.

  Garrison knew Tony had never really taken the opportunity to finish his education. As respected and honored as he was, Tony’s father had died without a will, and there was no money left to pay for Tony’s college. So Tony toiled in school hallways doing all he could to bring a little ray of sunshine to the students. Garrison had seen his friend in action during a visit to a career day a couple of years earlier and was impressed with how he cared about the young kids. It was the last time he had seen Tony until today.

  During those early years he spent cleaning school hallways and bathrooms, Tony told Garrison, he had stayed clean and out of jail.

  “I promised my father before he passed that I’d never end up in jail, and I’ve tried to make good on that,” Tony said as he and Garrison walked toward the front door.

  All that worried Garrison was that even though Tony had managed to keep mostly straight, there was one extended period several years earlier. It would be all a prosecutor would need to target and turn it around to his benefit.

  “I went on a bad run for awhile,” Trask remembered Tony telling him one night several years earlier. “Booze and cocaine all night, all day, from a Friday till sometime after midnight Sunday. I’d just lost my job. I remember I got in a fight, and I finally passed out in a field next to the garage where I had worked until they fired me for coming in too drunk one too many times. It was a blur then and still is now,” Tony said. “But it was just the one time.”

  Garrison remembered the week Tony came in to fess up to him and apologize for any wrong he had done him. He couldn’t understand why Tony had come to him at that time since he hadn’t seen him in so long, until he realized it was one of the Twelve Steps. He was coming to apologize, even though he hadn’t directly hurt Garrison.

  Tony had landed in plenty of trouble without jail during that time. He spent probably three good years of his life messed up on cocaine and whiskey, although he proved to be a high-functioning addict. After another weekend-long coke and booze binge he woke up in a gutter in West Odessa and was staring at a man who pulled him up, brushed him off and told him about the healing and saving power of God. Tony never strayed again. For hundreds of thousands of people messed up on the sauce and the dope, it can take a lifetime for that message to click. For Tony, he only had to hear it once. That weekend would be his last visit to rock bottom.

  “When I woke up I was looking at a man I didn’t know. He told me God loved me and wanted me to take charge of my life. And since that day I have. I haven’t strayed since, not once. That was eighteen years ago. I may still be a little unsure about how I got so bad that weekend but I do know for sure I have walked straight ever since. To think anyone would believe I killed someone, I’m sick about it.”

  Garrison had seen dope take down the strongest people. He remembered seeing a colleague, a healthy 50-year-old man, shaking uncontrollably one Saturday afternoon sitting in his BMW while his 10-year-old daughter played soccer 100 feet away. Garrison remembered the man, an engineer he went to church with, blamed his tremors on a flu vaccine. Three months later, the man was dead, hanging in his closet, unable to overcome his addiction.

  He remembered a good friend’s son, a student at Texas Tech who carried a 4.95 grade point average in grad school. The kid had gone out one night, drank a six pack of cheap beer and followed it with a couple of hits of cocaine – the first time he had ever touched either – and drove his car at 80 mph into a cement embankment. The kid lost his way home and ended up in the middle of the South Plains of West Texas. The cops say he never even knew the embankment was there, probably passed out at the wheel while going at a high rate of speed. He was dead instantly.

  And then he remembered his best friend’s 13-year-old daughter walking to the grocery store in Big Spring one afternoon, a walk she made every day at two o’clock during the summer break to get herself an ice cream sandwich. She had her iPod on, listening to Jody Nix. She never heard the pickup truck. When it hit her, it threw her forty yards before she landed. Every bone in her body was shattered. Dead at the scene. The driver of the truck was arrested for driving under the influence. He was a regular resident of the Howard County Jail and the state pen in Colorado City. Multiple offenses for
cocaine possession, DWI and intent to deliver. And seven DWIs.

  Now he watched as his lifelong friend sat next to him and told him he had successfully kicked what so many people are never able to. And Trask believed him. He remembered when the two were younger and both were on the debate team at Alamo Junior High School. Trask remembered the tone and conviction in his friend’s voice when he argued a case. That same steadfastness was in his voice today.

  “I know you made a few mistakes,” Garrison said. “But you don’t have it in you to kill a man. We’ll work on this together. I’ll bring in my new investigator, we’ll get you off. And we’ll find the person who has pointed the finger at you, and if he’s responsible, we’ll prove that up, too.”

  Tony was emotional as he said goodbye.

  “Have confidence in me, Tony. Forget everything you’re feeling about being accused. You know you didn’t do it. All we have to do is convince a jury,” Trask said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Although by no means a proud man, Garrison liked to frequent the Derrick Club. He did like for his workers and clients to see he was known and respected by the big shots, and the Derrick was Midland’s most exclusive spot for the rich and famous.

  “You look a little uncomfortable,” Trask said to Alex. He didn’t know if it was nerves or something else; not everyone felt at home at the Derrick. He felt certain Alex would, being as beautiful as she was. She might have felt out of place, but it was obvious the men there didn’t have a problem with her invading their inner sanctum. Not at all.

  Garrison spent several minutes explaining to her the lay of the land, both in his office, in the Midland County Courthouse and in and around West Texas.

  “People are different out here,” Garrison told her. “They’re good people. Driven. Gentlemen and ladies, all. People want you to be successful here. If you come to Midland and get to work and show that you are a good person, you’ve got as good a chance here as anywhere. Probably better.”