An Absence of Principal

by Jimmy Patterson

  “Why’d you lie, Mr. Goodley?”

  “Got a little nervous, I guess,” he said. He would be strung up for that. In his street culture, you never sweat. And if you do, you never admit it. And if you do admit it, things will never be the same, especially if a return trip to prison is in the works.

  “It’s unfortunate you would choose to fabricate an answer, Mr. Goodley. Very unfortunate,” Trask said.

  “Mr. Trask, if you don’t mind,” Halfmann nudged in, “I’ll do this part. Mr. Trask is right, Mr. Goodley. You open yourself up for all kinds of additional perjury charges if you are caught in an untruth.”

  “I’m sorry, your honor.”

  “See that it doesn’t happen again,” Halfmann concluded.

  It wouldn’t. Happen again, that is. The government was done with Mr. Goodley. They would no longer need — or want — him. At least not now.

  Trask may in fact recall him if he could build on the hunch that Mr. Goodley was not without blame. For now, Goodley wasn’t good for anyone, and he shuffled out of the courtroom as if nothing had ever happened.

  CHAPTER 15

  It had become clear to Garrison Trask that the trial for Tony Nail could not proceed much longer without the help of Ben Doggett. It was unclear what exactly his involvement in the murder of Junior Walker was, despite Nail’s information that his boss was in the area the night of the crime.

  Trask opened his phone and called Alex.

  “You to Mrs. Doggett’s house yet?” Trask asked.

  “On the way,” Alex said.

  “We have to have Angela’s help in finding Doggett,” Trask said. Appeal to her humanitarian side. Tell her we need him for the trial. If anyone can get through to him, she may be the only one.”

  Alex was one step ahead of him.

  “Done. Stopped by Angela Doggett’s house yesterday before I left. Talked to Ben’s twin children, Tawny and Britton. They’re angry at their father for what he has done to the family, but they are worried about him, too,” Alex said.

  “Typical response of jilted kids,” Trask said.

  “That kind of emotion can have some dividends,” Alex added. “They told me Angela left home looking for Ben a couple of days ago. Supposedly she’s here in Tulsa. If I don’t meet her, Tawny gave me her mom’s Skype address. Says she uses it all the time.”

  Alex gave Trask the Skype handle for Angela Doggett. He made the hook-up immediately. To his surprise, Angela picked up, not sure who she was talking to.

  “Mrs. Doggett?” Trask began.

  “Yes, who is this?”

  “I’m Garrison Trask, an attorney representing Tony Nail. My client has been falsely accused in the murder of Junior Walker in Odessa in May.”

  “I’ve read about it. I know Tony. I don’t see how he could possibly do something like that,” Angela said.

  “Well, I agree, Mrs. Doggett. I’ve known Tony since we were both young boys. I feel completely confident in his innocence.”

  “So, why are you calling me?”

  “My investigator is on her way to Ben’s mom’s house. Ben’s mother believes he may know something about the crime and who committed it. I believe that may be the case, too.”

  “Ben?”

  “I believe that’s why he may be on the run. I know you and Ben have had plenty of problems, but we’ve done some checking, Mrs. Doggett, and there were a lot of things working in Ben’s life that caused a massive meltdown in his character.”

  “You think Ben is involved in this murder?”

  “I’m not saying he killed Junior Walker, no,” Trask said, “but I do think he knows something that could help Tony.”

  Angela looked away from the camera for a minute and appeared to be talking to someone.

  “I’m at Ben’s mom’s house now, Mr. Trask,” Angela said. “I think your investigator just got here.”

  Before she hung up, Angela added one more thing she thought might be helpful.

  “Mr. Trask,” Angela started, “Ben’s mama found a gun in Ben’s old bedroom. She said Ben was by here a couple days ago. She and Ben have been the only two to go in the room in the last five years. She says she doesn’t know how the gun got there.”

  It was a potential gold mine for Trask. More than he had hoped for and as close to an admission of guilt in this murder case as he might get.

  “I guess I need to hang up and discuss this with your investigator, Mr. Trask.”

  “Before you go, Angela, what can you tell us that would help us locate Ben? For Tony’s benefit. It’s just wrong for this man to be on trial for these or any other charges for that matter.”

  Angela was silent, staring at the laptop screen for several seconds, wiping back a tear at the thought of what her relationship with Ben had become.

  “I’m not sure, Mr. Trask. But we celebrated our first anniversary at a little bed and breakfast in Fredericksburg. He said a long time ago he hoped we could retire there one day. We’ve been back probably twenty times since that first anniversary. He’s in love with the place. It’s where I would go if I was in a mess like this.”

  The connection on the Skype screen began to buffer and freeze until it was lost completely.

  Alex came in and sat down in Velma Doggett’s living room. Together they discussed the gun that had appeared in the dresser, and Ben’s visit from several days earlier.

  “How did he seem to you?” Alex asked Velma.

  “Off,” she said. “He was definitely off. Something was bothering him, but more so than normal. I didn’t know at the time that he and Angela were going through such an ordeal, but he even seemed to me like there was something more going on with him. I never would have dreamed he would have owned a gun, much less use it. Do you think he used it? You don’t think he hurt somebody with it, do you?”

  Neither Velma nor Angela Doggett knew the details surrounding the Junior Walker murder. Angela knew only that the school’s custodian, Tony, had been charged.

  “We’re still piecing this all together, you understand, so we are not sure exactly what happened. But we are convinced that our client, Tony Nail, is an innocent man.”

  “Sure, but all lawyers profess their client’s innocence, especially during the trial, right?” Angela said.

  “Tony believes Ben told police he, Tony, was responsible for the murder. For what reason we don’t know. But none of it adds up. Tony withheld his suspicions that Ben was involved for quite some time. He didn’t want to unnecessarily judge your husband. But there’s the gun, the disappearance, the affair he was having with his secretary. Sorry, Mrs. Doggett. And we can’t forget the electronic trail he left on his computer at work.”

  “And what trail would that be?” Angela asked, skeptically.

  “MISD’s information technology director pinpointed repeated visits to online gaming sites that originated in Ben’s office. They have since determined that credit card transactions in the five-figure range had been made to three online gambling houses in the last six months.

  What Angela was hearing was taking a toll. She could only stare in disbelief. But it all made sense now. Her tears began to flow. Alex felt a touch of sympathy for her, but wasn’t sure how to console someone going through such a difficult time. She’d had no training in dealing with someone using compassion.

  “I guess it was sometime in May this year when Ben started acting strange,” Angela began. “He started becoming distant and would leave the house at strange times for weird things like toothpaste and antacid. Stuff that we already had. Sometimes he would be gone an hour, other times two or three. And he never offered up a good explanation.”

  “The tech guy at the school district, though, said all the gaming charges were during school hours. What do you think he was doing after hours?” Alex said.

  Angela
shrugged but said nothing.

  “Garrison and I think he might have some involvement at some level in the murder of Junior Walker,” Alex said. “That’s not to say he is responsible for pulling the trigger. But his behavior … if what you tell us is true, that he began acting strangely in May, that would seem to indicate to me he might somehow have become involved in drugs. Selling, delivery, maybe even using by now.”

  “Mrs. Doggett, when your son was here, you said he was ‘off,’ ” Alex said. “Do you know how to recognize drug use in a person?”

  “I’m no expert,” Velma said. “He seemed lucid, sober, just different than the Ben I know and raised. There was something clearly not right. He was definitely off.”

  The three women walked into Ben’s boyhood bedroom. There were no clues as to what might have caused his shift in behavior. The dresser that had contained the gun held no other evidence as to why Doggett suddenly took such a bad turn. Doggett had had a normal upbringing. He was well loved, an honor student, football player, class president his senior year. As far as Alex was concerned, this was an isolated incident confined to the last six months. What would make a man change so dramatically in such a short time? One day on top of the education world in his adopted hometown? The next, a man with crumbling morals who made few good decisions.

  “Do either of you have any idea why Ben might have taken such a huge fall like this?” Alex said.

  “I love my Ben and I know he loves me,” Velma started. “But that boy hasn’t shared anything with me since he was in Cub Scouts. He got all quiet on the family. He just didn’t talk much. I never took it as a sign he was doing anything wrong. He was just always private as a teenager. He’d always let us know what he was doing and where he was, but as far as a look into his life, he gave us nothing.”

  “Listen, Mama, I have a few things I need to do, so if you’ll excuse me, I think I might go and talk to a few of Ben’s friends from when he was young and see what I can come up with,” Angela said.

  Alex studied her again and could see her shift her eyes when she spoke. She noticed Angela seemed anxious to get away. The investigator stood up and reached in her pocket to give a business card to each woman.

  “If anything comes up that you need to tell us, or if you come across Ben’s whereabouts, I think it would be critical not only for Tony Nail, but also to Ben, if we were able to locate him. Ben is not wanted for anything. He is absolutely having some difficulties in life, like we all do, and it would only be to his benefit if we can find him and get him the help he needs.”

  “Thank you, I’ll be in touch, Ms. Wallace,” Angela said, though she had no intention of being in touch. She embraced Ben’s mother before turning and leaving.

  Alex hurried toward the door, hoping not to lose Angela’s trail.

  Angela was quick to pull away from the Doggett house, unaware of Alex’s interest in following her. She pulled away, headed south on Atlanta Street, toward Interstate 44. Two hours later she would be south of Oklahoma City, and eight hours from at least being in the same town where she felt strongly Ben might have disappeared to: Fredericksburg.

  Alex caught sight of Angela’s car as it sped away from the stop sign at the end of Velma’s block. She raced to her SUV and threw it into drive, heading in the same direction as Angela. As she pulled away from the stop sign at the end of the block she caught a quick glimpse of something in her rear view mirror. It startled her at first. She looked again. She broke into an immediate sweat but said nothing and showed no indication she knew she was not alone. There was a man sitting in the back seat of her SUV. Despite the brightness of the Tulsa afternoon sun, she couldn’t make out who the man was. His face was fully covered by a black ski mask.

  Angela tried to determine what her next move in life would be. The revelation of her husband’s ill-thought choices showed a tendency toward self-destruction, though. He had shown no signs of temptation prior to his sudden bad turn. His departure from socially acceptable behavior, Angela felt sure, was sufficient explanation for why she herself had done virtually nothing except sit on the couch and waste the days away in front of mindless television. She would have to go out and get a job before long, she knew, but how she would fund her children’s futures was a mystery, even with a job. That she had let the weeks pile up with no income herself only made her life that much bleaker and her future even more difficult.

  She had loved her husband with a passion. And sometimes even now it felt like she still did, despite everything that had happened. She had a sudden and fond memory of the day they met on the campus of Texas Tech, she on her way to an English class that was giving her fits, he on his way across University Blvd. for a burger, his worst vice in those days. He had turned and looked away from what was ahead as he walked at a brisk pace. Angela had come out of nowhere and there was no way he had seen her move into his field of vision. When they collided it was a coming together that would last clearly a lot longer than most accidental mishaps. Ben looked at her as she lay sprawled on the commons grass near a statue of Will Rogers astride a black horse. She was about to lay into him with a zinger that would make him think twice about such carelessness, when he reached down and picked her up off the ground.

  “I, um, I, um …” Ben stammered, taken aback by her beauty as much as by being startled at the collision the two had.

  “Spit it out,” she said to him.

  “I am so sorry, I wasn’t …”

  “Watching where you were going? Well it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out,” Angela barked back, her self-confidence never in short supply from the moment they met.

  “I’m Ben Doggett. And I’m so sorry.”

  “I’m Angela, and you need to be more careful, Mr. Ben Doggett,” she responded.

  Ben apologized three more times, picked up her freshman composition spiral and her Dante’s Inferno book before stumbling again toward the Burger Shack.

  Three days later, following a series of successful inquiries done so well he felt he could be a detective if the education gig didn’t work, Ben stepped onto Angela Worthington’s doorstep at a student housing complex across campus. He came with a lump in his throat, sweat on his palms and dozen yellow roses, items that could not have been more perfect when attempting to make up for laying someone flat on their back in front of ten-thousand other students. Or so it seemed.

  It might have been the flowers, or it could have also been the candies, but Angela Worthington fell head over heels in love with Ben Doggett from that day on, a state in which she remained until the unraveling began.

  Angela called the kids on her way to Fredericksburg to check in with them. The next morning she rose from a restless night in a cheap hotel bed, halfway to the town that had held such good memories for her. She texted the twins back home and headed for Central Texas. Part of her wanted to find him and get him home. She wanted to tear up the divorce papers and start over. However the other Angela that left that morning wanted to find him and hurt him for what he had done to what they’d had.

  In the days since his disappearance, only a handful of people seemed to care where he was. She was one of those few, although she would never admit as much. The anger felt by the twins had not subsided, and they were far from ready to welcome their father home yet. He had been fired from his job as principal for too many reasons to count. His ex-lover Shanna had moved on and found someone else to curl up to. The U.S. attorney’s office had never seriously considered Ben Doggett to be a suspect in the murder of Junior Walker, and as a result, Doggett was not on their radar. The only ones who cared about Ben’s whereabouts were Angela and Velma. And Garrison Trask, of course.

  One thing, though, was for sure: If anyone ever really needed to find Ben, there was only one person who felt completely confident as to his whereabouts. Angela Doggett knew precisely where he was.

  It was well after midnight when Angela
pulled into Fredericksburg, a town that despite its popularity with tourists, boarded itself up every night at nine, except for Ruby’s Café and the local package store, both of which managed to stay open until 10. The slow pace was part of the town’s charm and most people who visited came from the hustle and bustle of the larger cities in Texas.

  On the edge of the quaint little town was a bed and breakfast named the Stein Way, a cozy three-bedroom home that specialized in serving a unique German beer, and provided music played on a grand piano by Bill Stein, the proprietor and a Julliard-trained classical pianist.

  The bells atop the door sang when Angela walked in. Bill Stein, owner and pianist extraordinaire, up late reading, looked up to find Angela. He remembered her as if he had just seen her yesterday.

  “My lands, if it’s not Angela Doggett. What brings you here? Where’s Ben? He come with you?” Stein asked.

  The story she would relate to him would put an end to his reading for the night, and Bill Stein listened closely to her every word.

  Thirty minutes later, he showed Angela to the only room he had left. She wept quietly as her old friend led her down the hallway to the same room that she and Ben had shared on their first anniversary.

  “Tomorrow will be a better day, Angela,” Stein said. “Marge and I, we’ll help you find Ben.”

  Angela gave the man a hug which seemed to rejuvenate her as she retired for the evening. It was after two in the morning.

  Bill Stein walked back to his room where he found his wife propped up in bed, her bedside light on.

  “Was that Angela’s Doggett’s voice?” Marge asked.

  He nodded.

  “You remember I told you last week I thought I saw a man that looked like Ben in town, only with a beard?”

  Marge did.

  “I think it was him,” Stein said. “Angela filed for divorce on Ben two months ago. He’s been having an affair with his secretary and apparently had become addicted to online gambling. He’s started drinking and she thinks he may even be involved in drugs.”