by Erik Carter
“We go,” Brett said.
“To the press conference?”
Brett nodded.
Jonah hesitated. “Okay.”
Great. Just great. Gonna go to the press conference where everyone would recognize him and where he would be persona non grata, at least in the eyes of those supporting the man throwing the conference.
“Carlton will double down on his narrative—that Amber is out there somewhere, off the grid, finding herself after the couples therapy finally revealed to her what a loser her new husband is, what a huge mistake she made. But I’m gonna keep fighting him. More private searches in the swamp. We need to find her. I need to find her. I’ve already made my peace, but I need … closure.”
Brett raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, closure. I know she’s dead. I just feel it. If I don’t seem as depressed as you would have thought, that’s why. I’ve already been mourning for two months. My wife’s dead. Have you ever known someone so deeply, been so connected that you can just … feel it?”
Brett didn’t reply, but Jonah could tell he’d struck a chord. The man’s expression lost a tiny bit of its neutrality, cheeks sinking, eyes expanding a fraction.
“She’s dead. Another victim of District C11. She’d been working on something this past year, some sort of research project, she called it. Wouldn’t tell me what it was. She began shortly after I told her about the cheating. She wasn’t a vindictive type, not in the slightest, but she said I had no right to pry into her business after the secret I had kept from her. She said she’d tell me about it eventually, after she was finished.
“I think she was investigating C11. See, she worked as a police dispatcher, trying to win Carlton’s respect, one of the few ways a person with palsy could work for the police. I think she started looking into things at the dispatch center, what resources she had available to her there, and something sparked, put her on this quest. It might have been some wish fulfillment too. Her childhood dream was to be a detective.
“So when she moved all her stuff in a couple months ago, our plan was to run out the lease here while we search for a house. She took over the second bedroom, transferred the office from her old apartment, had the place covered with sticky notes, made me promise to not look at anything, that her investigation was important and she’d share everything with me when it was over. When the cops came, they took all her stuff, but I found this. It had slid between the baseboard and the wall.”
He handed Brett a pink sticky note that said:
Weasel
407-555-2822
“Weasel?” Brett said.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Brett pointed at the number. “Called?”
“Yeah, I called. Got a disconnect notice.”
Brett regarded the note. A long moment. Then he placed it on his thigh.
Jonah hadn’t meant for Brett to keep it.
Brett looked away, thinking. And his eyes brightened fractionally.
“TCB,” he said.
“Huh?”
Brett pointed.
Ah. The poster.
A black-and-white advertisement for BTO’s second album, 1973 album, Bachman-Turner Overdrive II. It featured an image of the LP, a gearshift thrusting out of its center, and emblazoned at the top was, “BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE IS PULLING AWAY.”
The album featured BTO’s hit song, “Takin’ Care of Business,” sometimes shortened to TCB, as Brett had called it.
Jonah grinned. “‘Takin’ Care of Business,’ yeah. Gotta love the classics.”
There was the tiniest lifting at the corners of Brett’s mouth.
He was human, after all.
“There’s also this,” Jonah said and reached to the lower of the two tiers of the coffee table, grabbed the VHS tape which bore another sticky note, a classic yellow one, with his name written in Amber’s handwriting—JONAH.
“When we went to the couples therapy, the doctor had us record new vows. Do-over vows. We gave the tapes to each other, but we weren’t to watch them until the other person said we could. Amber hadn’t told me I could watch it yet. Like I said, I know in my heart that she’s passed, but I still can’t bring myself to watch it. Here.” He handed the tape to Brett along with the remote he’d been fiddling with. He grabbed the other remote, the one for the VCR, and handed it to him as well. “Probably just personal stuff, but there might be something relevant for us. You never know. I’ll go to the other room for a few.”
After ten minutes of afternoon television—a smutty talk show featuring a disturbed family from Ohio screaming at each other while the host tried to maintain a semblance of control—Jonah muted the twenty-inch TV on the nightstand. He stepped to the closed door, put his ear to it, listened hesitantly. Had Brett watched the tape yet? He couldn’t hear Amber’s voice, and he didn’t want to.
No sounds from the other side of the apartment.
He did smell something, though, coming not from the hallway but from the room he was in. Stale, earthy, musty. The odor of seldom-washed sheets and a pile of dirty clothes in the corner by the vertical blinds covering the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony. The odor of arrested development. The bedroom had that smell for two years. Amber moved in for two weeks, and it vanished. And for two months since, the smell had returned.
He stood from his seated position at the foot of the bed, went to the closed door and listened again. A voice. But not Amber’s. A deep, crackling voice. With pauses. Brett was on the phone.
Jonah went down the hall, found Brett using a cellular, sitting where he’d left him, the television behind him showing the VCR’s bright blue standby screen. Brett was hunched over the coffee table, writing on a small notebook.
For a moment, it looked to Jonah like Brett was drawing something, which was perplexing. Then Jonah saw that he wasn’t drawing but making small circles. He was mind mapping, a technique Jonah had learned in college—a means of visually organizing information.
“Yes, sir,” Brett said and collapsed the phone, put it in his pocket.
Jonah pointed to the TV. “Well?”
Brett shook his head. “But there’s this.”
Brett flipped back a page on his notebook, picked it up, held it out for Jonah.
On an otherwise blank page, Brett had written, Morrison Mission, 399 Roland Street. Stuck on the page beneath Brett’s notation was Amber’s pink sticky note.
“Old number,” Brett said and put his finger to the phone number Amber had written. “Homeless shelter.”
“How did you figure that out?”
Brett traced his finger up from the sticky note to the address he’d written. “Let’s go.” He snapped the notebook shut, stood, and headed for the door.
Jonah remained where he was for a moment, then chased after him.
Well, okay then.
Chapter Five
A Fiero.
Silence hadn’t been in one of these for a while. A bit of a modern automotive classic, an icon of the previous decade. Did anything say 1980s more than a Pontiac Fiero?
Jonah hadn’t destroyed the car—the thick, sticky shine of Armor All on the dash proved he did spruce it up from time to time—but the stained seats, littered floor, and mildew smell said that the machine’s future didn’t lie in a car museum.
Silence was riding shotgun. He would let the local do the driving, leave his rental car at the apartment complex. He’d long ago abandoned petty pissing-match competitions of choosing who got to be behind the wheel. Now he based the decision on expedience. It was efficient. C.C. had always told him to work smart, not hard.
Jonah fired up the engine, which came to life with a belch and a stench. He then peered up, through the windshield, at the sky. In typical Florida fashion, the weather had done a quick change, the sunlight now replaced by a swirling gray sky, ready to spit rain at any moment.
Jonah grabbed the shift knob and began to release the clutch, but before they could move, Silence spoke. There wa
s something he needed to know, and he needed to know now, before they made another move.
“Contention?” he said.
Jonah turned. “Huh?”
Silence motioned toward the apartment. “You said, ‘contention.’” He swallowed, lubricating his throat for a few more words. “With Amber. Reason for couples therapy.”
Jonah’s fingers twitched on the shift knob, which was smeared with black goo—more excess Armor All, dirtied by hand grime. A long inhale whistled through his teeth, a hesitant breath that would surely precede resistance.
Silence countered with preemptive insistence. “Must know.” And when Jonah still hesitated, he added, “You must be open.”
Jonah looked down at his fingers on the shift knob. Bit his lip. Then he put the car in neutral and pulled up the parking brake, on the left side of the driver’s seat, by the door.
His forearms went to the top of the steering wheel, which he’d wrapped with perforated vinyl, secured by a thin, matching vinyl cord, one of those cheap kits you pick up at a discount store. He put his chin on his arm, looking up into the gray sky again.
“When I first told Amber I cheated on her, I said it had happened within the first few months. She came to grips with it; we got married. Then the guilt got to me a couple weeks later. I had to tell her the real truth.” He bit his lip, and his eyes searched higher into the sky as they filled with tears. “I didn’t cheat on her within the first few months. I lied about that part. It happened years after we’d started dating. It was … Oh, shit, man. It was only eight months ago.”
Silence didn’t reply.
Jonah exhaled. A patch of vapor bloomed and quickly vanished on the windshield. The Fiero’s engine idled. It had a slight knock.
A long moment passed, then Jonah suddenly jolted off the wheel, turned to Silence, a look of retaliation.
“Once, man. Just once. Stupidest goddamn mistake I’ve ever made. I’m sure you’ve pulled some bonehead goofs, right? We got a liquor license at Roast and Relax about a year and a half ago, started with wine, craft beer, mimosas on Sunday mornings. But eventually the nighttime turned into more of a bar vibe. I was working, my shift ended early, about eight. I’d served this girl a few glasses of Moscato. She’d been flirty, wanted to buy me a drink when my shift was over. I let it go too far. I had a few beers…”
He stopped, took a breath.
“I was pretty drunk. But not that drunk. Not drunk enough for what I did. Took a taxi to her place. Banged the shit out of her. I wish I could say that I was horribly drunk, that Amber and I had been fighting. No. I was perfectly within my capacities, and Amber and I hardly ever fought. She was goddamn perfect! So of course I had to tell her what I did. Who wouldn’t tell someone like her? She was a pure soul. I just didn’t have the balls to tell her the whole truth.”
He blinked faster, leaned his head back farther. A few deep breaths.
“But it gets worse, if you can believe that. A lot worse. Horrendous.” Another deep breath. “After I cheated on her, I rationalized it. I actually had the gall to tell myself it was okay because … Oh, shit.”
Another pause to recompose. His breathing had gone supersonic, damn near hyperventilating.
“Because Amber couldn’t do everything, you know? Physically. Due to her condition.”
A sick feeling came to Silence’s stomach.
“Told her that too?” Silence said.
This made Jonah gasp. One of the tears that he’d been fighting to contain fell down his cheek. He wiped it away.
“Yes, goddamn it. I told her that too. I … I shouldn’t have. Shouldn’t have told her that part. Don’t know why I did. I didn’t say it angrily. I didn’t say it when I was defending myself. I just … said it.”
Jonah’s chin dropped. He nodded. Then shook his head. Then nodded again. The inward tangling of disgust displaying itself in binary.
Silence looked away, downward, between his shoes, at the dark stain on the floor mat.
Shit.
Maybe this investigation was a whole hell of a lot less complicated than Falcon and the Watchers’ fact-finders had anticipated. Maybe the fact that the police called off the search abruptly had nothing to do with dirty politics among crooked cops.
Because if Silence were a betting man, he’d say that a seemingly amazing woman had a coming-to-her-senses moment after the man she’d just married admitted to being a goddamn liar who, only months prior, “banged the shit out of” another woman because of Amber’s physical handicap.
Silence would place a bet that Amber had run off to do some soul-searching.
Just like her father had said.
And if—
“Hey,” Jonah said.
Silence turned, found Jonah scowling at him.
“Now you believe him, don’t you?” Jonah said. “You believe Carlton. You think he’s right, that Amber left the loser, cheating, lying husband behind to go find herself.”
Silence didn’t reply.
“You do. I can see it in your eyes. Shit, man, I thought you were here to help.”
Jonah’s nostrils flared, the lines of his forehead oscillating between anger and pain. When Silence said nothing in response, Jonah’s facial mutations slowed, halting at pain.
His arms returned to the steering wheel, and his gaze returned to the gray sky. “It was a choice. A horrible freaking choice. And now I’m paying for it. Forever. This is my life now. Ya know, there are always going to be things that come along in life, blindside you, but those only count for so much before responsibility comes roaring back in. At the end of the day, we design our own lives through the choices we make.”
Silence couldn’t agree more. And as with most words of poignancy, Jonah’s musings brought forth a connection in Silence’s mind to the event.
C.C.’s murder had come out of nowhere. It had “blindsided” him, as Jonah had put it.
But then choices were made, and the responsibility that Jonah mentioned became apparent.
Silence’s former self had made the choice to seek bloody revenge.
He remembered the horrible, sickening fog that had enveloped him. The way he’d stumbled about in a constant state of lightheadedness, nausea, headache, tears.
One could easily blame that fog for what happened. “Temporary insanity,” a lawyer might call it.
But Silence took full responsibility for the choices.
The choice he’d made to stalk them down.
The choice to snap necks.
The choice to look into pleading, weeping eyes and place a bullet between them, warm blood splattering his arms, his face, squinting his eyes.
And, as Jonah said, those choices had designed his life. Along with a little more of that blindside fate, his choices had cost him his voice, his prior face, his prior identity, and his freedom.
He’d have it no other way.
The revenge had been worth it.
It had been his choice.
Jonah took a deep breath and leaned back in the driver’s seat, faced Silence again.
“Should I watch it?” he said and reached into the large front pocket of his Baja jacket—blue-and-gray-striped, nice and clean and cozy, not a genuine hemp “drug rug” but something purchased at a shopping mall—and brought forth the VHS tape bearing a sticky note with his name written in his wife’s hand.
Silence hadn’t noticed that he’d brought the tape with him. It was such an odd thing to do, carrying it with him in his jacket, that it made Silence wonder if Jonah brought it with him everywhere.
As a reply, Silence only gave a shrug.
This wasn’t Silence’s area of expertise, consoling a brand-new acquaintance. Jonah’s decision of whether or not to watch Amber’s do-over vows was entirely his own.
His choice.
Silence’s mind flashed to what Jonah had told him, that he’d cheated on Amber because she “couldn’t do everything” in the bedroom.
He was looking at Silence. Waiting. Hopefully.
&
nbsp; Silence wanted to break his nose.
Abhorrent piece of shit.
Silence had no qualms about leaving him hanging.
Silence pointed to the steering wheel. “Drive.”
Jonah exhaled. He squared up to the wheel again, lowered the brake, put the stick into first, and they took off.
Chapter Six
A realization came to Jonah, and it almost made him laugh out loud: the stink of filthy people reminded him of Amber.
There was a long line of homeless individuals outside the Morrison Mission—a drab, two-story brick building, a repurposed factory—and their combined sour stench was overpowering, a reaction that almost made Jonah feel guilty. Handwritten signs on neon green tagboard proclaimed today to be the mission’s celebrated “Meals on Monday.” The local homeless were not missing out on the opportunity.
This was just the sort of thing that Amber would have been keen on. She got as excited about giving back as other people did about their weekly sitcoms. But the fact that these incredibly smelly people outside the Morrison Mission—who were almost entirely men—reminded Jonah of his sweet wife nearly made him chuckle. It would be the first time he’d laughed in weeks.
And since this charitable place was so perfectly Amber, he was growing more and more frustrated that Brett insisted on investigating it. What was the point of investigating something so obvious?
Jonah followed behind Brett’s tall frame to his latest quarry, a white guy in a brown field jacket and a blue toboggan hat with a red pompom and large tear in the side.
“Weasel. You know him?” Brett said.
The man shook his head, the pompom flopping from side to side. He gave Brett a wary look.
Brett moved forward, continuing their path next to the line of people shuffling into the mission. Jonah followed. This had been the technique—ask that abrupt question with his intense stare and stone-troll voice, receive a negative response, assume the question was heard by the nearby people in the line, move forward four places or so, and ask the next man. Repeat.
