An Absence of Principal

by Jimmy Patterson

  Nail shifted in his seat looking for the right words.

  “Of course we’re a little nervous, but I am confident that whatever happens is all in God’s plan. I’m older. Wiser. I don’t have any enemies I know of. People seem to like me. And I have a good relationship with God. When it’s my time, it’s my time. I’ll be ready. This is all just temporary down here any way, Mr. Midkiff. I’m not scared of death. My prayer would be that it wouldn’t come in a violent way, but I have no control over that, unless I make myself an enemy along the way, which I don’t plan on doing. For the sake of anyone who would do me harm, I pray they would think twice so they would not ruin their lives in prison.”

  His words were eloquent. His response well thought out. Along with the reasoning behind his gun ownership, there seemed to be an ever so slight shift in the jury’s opinion. The shadow of a doubt may have just become a little darker. Tony Nail did not act like a murderer, that was for sure.

  CHAPTER 17

  Doggett didn’t wait for the rest of the lecture.

  He threw his car into reverse and sped off. Ascot stood on the caliche parking lot and watched Doggett hurry off, shaking his head. Ascot was a good man, and had hoped by letting Doggett go it would lead him to get the help he needed. His plan usually worked, but it didn’t this time. Doggett returned to his motel and threw his clothes and belongings in his bags, ready to leave. Where he planned to run this time he didn’t know yet. He just wanted to be somewhere else.

  He was as low as he had ever been. He had begun to run short on cash — already — he had no job, no income, no family. Nothing. Yet all he wanted at this point in his life was his next drunk, his next highest high. Ben didn’t know what he had done to get to this place. It all came apart so quickly. Until nine months ago, he had never veered off the straight and narrow, much less get mixed up in what he was mixed up with now. Adultery? Never. Gambling addiction? Not a chance. Booze? Wouldn’t have thought about it. Cocaine? Never even on his radar. What had happened?

  The dismissal was abrupt and Ben was surprised how quickly it came. There were no second chances for a failed drug test in the oil field. He wasn’t even given a chance for a hearing, a meeting or even a simple rebuttal. It was over before he knew it, which only led to a further plunging of his self-confidence and self-esteem, not that either of them had much more downward wiggle room.

  Doggett limped his car back to the hotel. He had neglected every aspect of his life. It seemed like so many months had passed since it all began to come tumbling down. His car barely made it across Fredericksburg.

  Doggett stumbled into his hotel room, still feeling the sluggish effects of a lingering hangover. He wiped the crust from his eyes hoping that feeling of unrelenting tiredness would go away, too. But it didn’t. It was nine in the morning. He looked at the bathroom vanity in his hotel room. On the countertop was the mirror with an undisturbed line of cocaine from the night before. He had remained strong last night.

  He opened a can of beer, drained it as quickly as possible and immediately reached for another one. He had become hopelessly addicted to alcohol. Drinking at nine in the morning will do that to a person.

  Doggett no longer had reason to walk away from his addictions. Two months ago, he was substance free and would have never dreamed of taking this path.

  He finished off another beer. That made two in five minutes. He stumbled to the bathroom, put his nose to the mirror, and sniffed up the white line with the same addictive urgency as he had downed the beers. The effects of the drug took only moments. When it hit him, he could only lay prone on the bed and let his body take it in. The beer, the coke. He had never felt this in his life. But he guaranteed himself he would feel it again. This, he thought during his high, was as good as it could possibly get.

  Doggett struggled to his feet again, floated to his tiny refrigerator and drained another beer. The added effect of more alcohol only heightened what he was feeling. He threw himself onto his bed. The loss of everything in his life — his wife and kids, his money, his jobs, his self-respect — all that was blocked by what he was feeling.

  Moments later as Ben sat on the edge of his cheap hotel mattress enjoying his expensive high, he thought about his life through the haze of the cocaine and beer. At first he had no thoughts about his past. Then he did. Back and forth he went. Round and round he fought with his inner self. One minute he had a vague sense of regret, the next, a vague sense of purpose.

  He was sorry about the mistakes of his past — which now included being fired thirty minutes earlier from a manual labor job — but he liked his chances. He thought his future looked bright all of a sudden. He would wake up in the morning, straighten up, take a hot shower, iron a shirt and start anew. He was Ben Doggett, and he would show the whole world.

  He lost his footing on his way back from getting another beer and tumbled onto the bed, spilling three or four valuable swigs on the way down. He wiped away the liquid from his shirt and off his pants and was suddenly overcome by an intense feeling of hatred for himself and his awkwardness. This would never have happened if you’d have stayed straight, he heard himself think. He buried his head in his hands and felt a sudden urge to cry, but it went away as quickly as it came. His head was spinning and he felt both on top of the world and trampled underfoot.

  Doggett fell back on his bed and let himself feel the feeling. It was indescribable. It took him away to a place he had never been before as he drank it all in, dancing on the edges of sanity. Somewhere in the distance he thought he heard or maybe felt a bump. At first he couldn’t quite make it out and it seemed to grow louder. He felt it more than heard it and he remained unable to determine its origin.

  The sounds that accompanied the bump were foreign, too and he could only guess what they might be. They continued and did not let up. The bumping grew louder. The other sounds began to become clearer. Voices. The other sounds were voices. And they were yelling at someone. Man, those people are mad, he thought. Yelling like that. First a man, then a woman, then a man again. Back and forth they went. On and on the bumping noise continued. It was more than he could handle. It was too confusing to try to figure out. He covered his head with a cheap hotel pillow. It did little to block out the strange racket. The people, how rude they are, he thought.

  He drifted off, passed out for what could have been no longer than four or five seconds. The bumping noise returned, louder this time.

  “Ben!?”

  “Ben, open the door!”

  His name.

  Someone was calling his name.

  He pushed himself up off the bed, stumbled to the door and opened it. He began yelling back at the people yelling at him. He was clearly out of his mind stoned and the man and woman on the other side could see that. He didn’t recognize either of them, and the strength in his body was only enough to get him the three steps back to his bed before he crumpled in a heap, unconscious.

  Angela and Bill Stein made several attempts to revive Ben, but he was too far into the depths of his mixture of alcohol and drugs. He would lay on the bed for the next ten hours, unmoving, as his body repaired itself from the effects of the volatile chemical poison running through his bloodstream.

  It was eight that same night when Doggett began to stir. Angela sat all day at the cheap pressed-wood table, taking turns Facebooking and messaging her children with the latest information about their father.

  He opened his eyes and looked around, unable to determine where he was or what had happened to him. He was unaware of Angela’s presence in the room.

  Garrison scurried across Texas Avenue from his office to the Midland County Courthouse hoping he would make the courtroom before the judge gaveled in the day’s session. He mumbled something under his breath as Alex’s phone rang for the 15th time. He wondered why she hadn’t picked up for two days and he figured he would give her another few hours before al
erting authorities in Oklahoma about her absence. He closed his phone as he walked into the fourth-floor attorney’s room, outside Judge Halfmann’s courtroom. He fired up his laptop and Skyped Angela Doggett, who had slept restlessly the night before, following the discovery of her husband.

  “Have you been able to find Ben?” Trask asked anxiously.

  “Oh, I found him, all right,” she said.

  “Great news. Any idea if he’s open to the idea of coming back with you and testifying?” Trask asked.

  “I think maybe Ben will be unable to go anywhere for awhile. With any luck I might be able to talk some sense into him in a couple of days, but don’t hold your breath, Mr. Trask.”

  “Can I ask where you are, Angela?” Trask asked.

  “Some cheap motel on the outskirts of Fredericksburg. Ben and I used to come here when we were young and in love. It’s one of his feel-good places. He used to like to come here to get away from it all. And I guess he still does.”

  Angela spent the next few minutes explaining what she found when she and Bill Stein had come into his room. Trask was disappointed with the news.

  It wasn’t until after Trask’s Skype session with Angela that Ben became cohesive enough to talk and listen. He was coming off a seriously dangerous high and found himself aching all over. By the time he came around, Angela had been joined in the room by Stein. Together, they were trying to talk sense into a man that had taken as big a fall as possible.

  “Ben, we’ve known each other 15 years. I knew you when you were young, I knew you when you were on top of your game as a man, and I know you now. I love you, man, but we got some work to do to make things right with you,” Stein told him.

  Angela sat back with tears in her eyes, in disbelief about what her husband had become. Why was she even here? What kind of explanation could there be for a woman trying to make something out of a life that was in such a self-destructive mode? It was simple, really. She still believed in the ability to fix a broken human spirit and a damaged marriage. Angela knew Ben’s spirit had been hurt by something, but he was not beyond hope. They were not without hope. She would hold on to that.

  “Ben, we gotta get you better,” Angela said through the tears. “We need to bring you back to where you are you, fully and wholly. Can you do that? Can we do that? How can I help?”

  Angela’s selflessness made Ben feel even more unworthy. How could she even think about caring through all he had done to her? He’d yet to say anything to either of them. The touch of anger that had been visible when he realized this was an intervention, gave way to a shame that spread over him like wildfire. He could not lift his head.

  “Ben!” Angela said. “Listen to me. You’ve got to come back to us. This is not who you are. This is not the man I married. The person I am looking at lying there is not the man I came to this town with when we were young and happy and in love. But he can be again. You can be again, Ben. I’ll help you. You are worth bringing back.”

  “How are the kids?” Ben said abruptly, breaking the silence. “I hurt the kids so bad they probably don’t even want me for a father anymore.”

  Angela paused to gain her composure.

  “They miss the same man I miss, Ben,” she said. “They want you back. They want the father who raised them back. Back in time for the birth of his grandbaby. Back in time for their graduation. They just want things the way they used to be.”

  “I don’t know how that can happen,” Ben said. “I’ve done horrible things. I can’t face my children with them knowing what I am capable of; what I’ve done.”

  Ben skirted around the one issue that made Angela wonder if he wasn’t right: there was a dead man in Odessa. Was the person she was trying to redeem a murderer? Could her gut instinct be wrong? Or was the broken man who sat across from her the man she knew him to be: capable of redemption and able to love and be loved again?

  “We’ll work through those things,” she said.

  “I’ve hurt more than you and the kids, though. They might not let me come back,” Doggett said.

  “Do you want to make things better?” she asked.

  He shook his head, sobbing.

  “Ben, I need you to come back to Midland with me. We have to work this out and we can work it out. I believe in you.”

  He kept shaking his head, unable to speak for fear his emotions would make him unable to talk.

  “We need you. The kids need you. And Tony Nail needs you,” she said.

  He looked at her, startled back into the reality that he seemed to have forgotten about until now. A sudden fear seemed to suddenly come over him.

  He began to shake. He looked away.

  “I’ll be right back. Need to get a bottle of water out in the car,” he mumbled.

  Angela and Stein looked at each other.

  “I’m worried about him, Angela,” their old friend said. “I’m afraid he’s not strong enough right now to bounce back from this. He doesn’t need to be alone. He’s too fragile.”

  She agreed with Stein. The two jumped up and headed to the door at the sound of spinning tires. Ben was gone. And neither of them knew where he was headed or if he would be back.

  Midkiff sat back down at the prosecution table and scribbled on a yellow legal pad, taking so much time that he paused to ask for the court’s indulgence while he caught up on a few of his thoughts.

  “Now, Mr. Nail, it’s interesting that your gun would turn up stolen before Mr. Walker’s murder,” he finally said. “And it’s interesting that you have suddenly become comfortable without the presence of a gun because of your faith in God, which is admirable, don’t get me wrong,” Midkiff began.

  “Mr. Nail, were you aware that ballistics reports have shown the bullet that killed Mr. Walker was fired from a Remington .44-caliber handgun just like yours?”

  Nail looked at Trask.

  “I did know that, yes.”

  “And did you know that the gun also contains fingerprints on it that belong to you?”

  “I did know that, yes.”

  “So, you want us to believe that the gun was stolen and subsequently used by someone unknown to you to kill a man that you knew?” Midkiff asked. “And of course you want us to believe that the fingerprints that are on the gun were there prior to it being stolen? And, of course, you maintain you had nothing to do with the murder of Junior Walker simply because you say your gun was stolen?”

  “Objection, your honor. Mr. Midkiff is insinuating that my client has been untruthful and seems to be calling him a murderer,” Trask said. “It has been established by the police department that the gun used to kill Mr. Walker was in fact stolen. Can the court please ask Mr. Midkiff to allow my client to answer some of these questions instead of wasting our time by making us sit here and listen to Mr. Midkiff both ask and answer his questions?”

  “And you did say that was an objection, Mr. Trask?” Judge Halfmann asked. “I’m sorry, I forgot. It was a ways back in your rather lengthy statement.”

  “Objection to Mr. Midkiff’s line of questioning, yes, your honor,” Trask said.

  “Mr. Midkiff, let’s move on, shall we? It’s been established that MPD reported the gun stolen. I’m good with that. Jury is asked to disregard the prosecutor’s last remarks.”

  Nail sat patiently while the lawyers argued back and forth, and the judge ruled. His air of confidence was apparent and the jury could not help but notice, if they even bothered to look at him.

  “I’m done with this witness,” Midkiff said.

  “May I redirect?” Trask asked Judge Halfmann.

  “Tony, you said earlier that you had shot a gun numerous times in your lifetime and felt comfortable doing so, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” Nail said.

  “Is it possible for you to say how many times you have f
ired a handgun, Tony?”

  “Probably not,” he said, smiling faintly. “After my mother’s attack, my daddy would take me and my brother and sister to the firing range every weekend. He did that for about a year, until he was confident that we were all well-versed in how a gun worked, and that we knew how to use it to the best of our ability and with a complete absence of error in our handling of the weapon.”

  “That’s some pretty exact language there, Tony,” Trask noted.

  “If you heard your dad repeat the same thing every week for a year, how he used to say, ‘We’re going to do this until I am confident that you are well-versed in how guns work and, until I am confident you can use them to the best of your ability and with a complete absence of errors, you’d probably remember it, too, Mr. Trask.”

  “I suppose I would, yes,” he said.

  “Let me ask you one or two more questions, Tony. How many practice rounds would you get off every weekend at the firing range during that year?” Trask asked.

  “Sometimes fifty. Sometimes a hundred. Depended on the kind of time and money Daddy had that week,” Nail said.

  “So based on a minimum of fifty rounds every week for fifty-two weeks, at minimum you fired off twenty-five hundred to three-thousand rounds?”

  “Easy,” Nail said.

  “You remember what your mean score was in terms of hitting the target?”

  “Sure, I’ll never forget that,” Nail said. “After I became comfortable with how a gun worked and how it felt, about two months into the practice sessions we had, I scored 90 percent at or inside the inner target ring.”

  “The inner ring being the white ring that surrounds the red bullseye?”

  “Yes, sir,” Nail said.

  “Pretty steady hand, sounds like,” Trask said.

  “My instructor said he had never seen that percentage from a newcomer before,” Nail said.