by Vivian Barz
Ed sighed. “That’s about what I figured.”
“What’s going on? Who’s Marta?” Susan peered at Ed’s face and didn’t like what she saw. Suddenly, she felt an inexplicable concern for her safety. “Why did you shoot an unarmed man, Chief? Why?”
Ed answered with a whip of his pistol.
CHAPTER 34
A charley horse brought Susan back to consciousness.
She opened her eyes and winced. Her temple was throbbing, her shoulder on fire. She struggled to sit up and realized she was on her back with her left arm pulled over her head, her wrist handcuffed to a thick loop of metal sticking out from the backhoe. She yanked at the cuff, and not surprisingly, it held. The machine weighed at least a half ton, so she was going nowhere, not unless she chewed her arm off at the wrist like a coyote.
Ed was on his knees a few feet away from her, peering down into the hatch through the slats. Milton’s corpse lay in the same spot, bits of skull fanned out around him like a macabre headdress.
Susan considered closing her eyes and pretending to still be passed out, but she couldn’t see the point. This was not going to be one of those situations where Ed would forget all about her if she only stayed quiet.
Might as well get on with it.
Ed jumped when she spoke. “You pistol-whipped me,” she said and then spat a gob of saliva in the dirt. The pain at her temple was making her nauseous.
When Ed turned to face her, his eyes were sad. “I want you to know, Susan, that I didn’t enjoy hurting you.”
“So then why did you?” she snapped, startled by her biting indignation. Of course, she had the right to be furious. The man had belted her noggin. And cuffed her to farming equipment while she was unconscious.
“I thought of you like a daughter, kid. I really did.”
He’s speaking about me in the past tense , Susan thought. Not a good sign.
“Your talents as an officer are a double-edged sword. You’re persistent and curious. Smart. I have no doubt you would have made it all the way to the top.”
There goes that past tense again.
“But,” Ed said, “you should have listened to me on this one. Did I or did I not tell you to stop snooping around in the Gerald Nichol case? I practically begged you to let the FBI do their thing. But like a little hen, you pecked-pecked-pecked . . .”
“Ed, if you’d only tell me what this is about,” Susan said, though she was beginning to suspect she already knew. “This Marta business. You’re a good cop, and everyone at the station respects you. So if you got caught up in something, I’m sure—”
“No,” Ed said, shaking his head. “Not this time. This is something popularity won’t fix.”
Susan’s outrage was quickly being replaced by fright. Ed was resigned; she’d worked with him long enough to recognize when he was. His mind had already been made up over whatever he was planning to do, and no amount of fast-talking on her part would sway him.
Still, she had to try.
“If you let me go—”
“Let me guess,” Ed said with an eerie little smile playing on his lips. “If I let you go, you won’t say a word. Is that it?”
Susan frowned. Yeah, that was it. She’d had the line used on herself before, and variations of it, by the countless men and women she’d arrested. If you let me off with a warning, Officer, I won’t say a word. Promise.
Ed shook his head. “I know you. You’d never let this go, just like you didn’t back off the FBI’s case when I asked—ordered —you to.”
Susan began to speak and then thought better of it. She probably wouldn’t have managed to get the words out anyhow. Her throat was constricting with terror, and there was a mad, panicky sensation effervescing in her abdomen, like she was on the brink of breaking into hysterical shrieks. If she started now, she doubted she’d be able to stop. Ed might kill her just to shut her up.
Is that what he’s planning on doing? Killing me?
Ed scooted an empty metal bucket toward her—close, but not close enough for her to strike out at him (he did know her well)—and flipped it over, using its bottom as a seat. “I suppose I owe you an explanation,” he said, clasping his hands on his lap. “It’s the least I can do.”
Susan found her voice, shaky as it was. “Did you help Milton kidnap those kids?”
Ed gaped at her, perturbed, as if deeply insulted that she could even entertain that he could do something so terrible. He who had shot an unarmed man in the back of the head, pistol-whipped a fellow law enforcement agent, and then handcuffed her to a machine. Yes, how dare she. “No, of course not.”
“Then I can’t see what’s so bad—”
“I’ll have to start from the beginning,” Ed butted in. “It will go faster if you don’t interrupt.”
Do I want it to go faster?
Ed said, “Milton and I went to the same high school—did you know that? We were even in the same year. We weren’t friends, though, not really. We ran in completely different circles. I was something of a jock back then—was varsity quarterback when I met Milton, if you can believe it—and like most jocks, I only associated with the popular kids, the other football players and cheerleaders. Milton was the complete opposite, a loner. In all four years of high school, I don’t think he made a single friend.
“One day, I was heading to the cafeteria when I saw a couple bullies picking on him. Milton was skinny even back then, and these two fatsoes were hassling him for his lunch money, kind of bouncing him between their guts and pulling at his pockets. Milton was poor—most kids at our school came from families who were, but Milton was really poor—so I knew that losing even a penny would have hurt him in a bad way.” Ed sat back on the bucket, paused.
“But that’s not why I ended up doing what I did. A few minutes earlier, I’d gotten into an argument with my girlfriend, who thought I was fooling around with another cheerleader, which, frankly, I probably was. I guess I was just spoiling for a fight.” Ed shook his head and chuckled softly at the memory.
How long would Ed keep talking? Susan was worried, not just for herself but also for Eric and the kids in the hole, who’d fallen silent. Were they still breathing? And what was Ed’s plan for them ?
“Anyway, I asked what was going on, and one of the fatsoes got mouthy with me. I was in no mood to be messed with, so I popped him one. Gave him a big shiner too. The other one took off running, but before he got away, I told them both that I’d punch their lights out if I ever saw them hassling Milton again.” Ed shrugged. “To me, it was nothing. In all honesty, I forgot what they looked like almost as soon as they’d run off, so even if they had hassled Milton again, I wouldn’t have known and probably wouldn’t have cared. But Milton, well, he acted like me sticking up for him was the best thing anyone had ever done for him in his entire life. I told him to just forget it, but he said that he owed me one, and a time would come when he’d repay me.”
And now you’ve put a bullet in his brain , Susan thought.
“I went away to college on a football scholarship after graduation, and then I started training at the academy when I realized that I wasn’t destined for the NFL—my back saw to that. I hadn’t thought much about Milton after that day outside the cafeteria. Actually, I hadn’t thought about him at all. Then I ran into him at a bar one night when I was back home visiting my folks. I’d had a few by the time we got to talking, so my lips were pretty loose.”
Ed sat back on the bucket and scratched his neck. He studied the trapdoor with a frown, and for a moment Susan feared he might go over to it, but then he carried on with his story.
“I was having girl troubles again, but this time they were a lot bigger than just some cheerleader accusing me of cheating.” Ed swallowed. “I’d had a fling with a girl named Marta the summer after I finished high school . . .”
Marta , Susan thought with a shiver. This story is not going to have a happy ending.
Though she suspected hers might not either.
�
�To both of us,” Ed said, “it was only supposed to be a fling. Our spark burned hot for a couple months and then extinguished just as quickly when we parted ways. I went off to college, like I said, and Marta went away too. Her parents were migrant field workers from Mexico, so I figured she’d gone to work with them or had maybe returned home. To tell you the truth—and I will, since there’s no point in me lying at this point—I didn’t really care where she’d gone. I could hardly remember her last name.
“A couple days before I ran into Milton at the bar, Marta had paid me a visit at my parents’ house. Completely out of the blue. She said she’d been wanting to talk to me for some years but hadn’t known where to look for me and didn’t trust anyone to pass along her message. She’d heard that I was back in town, so . . .”
Ed paused. He seemed to be formulating how he was going to continue. Eventually, he said, “Granted, I was something of a cad when Marta and I had our fling, but by then I had changed—my priorities had changed. Even though I was still a kid by today’s standards, back then I was a man . I wasn’t out getting drunk and chasing girls the way I used to. No, I’d just gotten engaged to Shirley and had a nice job lined up on the force once I finished the academy.”
Susan felt sick, and not only because of her head injury. Ed had done something to Marta. Even if he ended his story there, she’d still know it. His tactical defensiveness was a dead giveaway. He was justifying his actions before he’d even finished laying them out.
“Marta told me that she’d gotten pregnant when we’d had our fling and that she’d given birth to a son named Martín, who was almost five. She’d refused to tell anyone, even her parents, who the father was. But now her situation had changed, she said. Both her parents had fallen ill, and she was suddenly on her own taking care of a young boy. She felt it was time for her son to meet his father.” Ed shook his head, as if it were all so ridiculous.
“Of course,” he continued, “I tried to deny that it was mine. But the dates added up. And after she’d shown me photos, I knew. The kid was my spitting image.”
Was. More past tense.
From down in the hole came a shuffling sound. Ed went over and peered through the slats. “Looks like your man is coming around,” he said, holstering his flashlight as he returned.
“What are you going to do to them?” Susan demanded. “They’re innocent, Ed! There’s children down there! They need help .”
“You’ve got to believe me, Susan,” Ed said, his voice sharpening. “My entire life would have been over if I’d taken in Marta and her son. Shirley would have left me for sure, and I would’ve had to quit the academy. Then what—take some menial job that I’d spend the rest of my life hating? I told Marta as much, and she got angry. She threatened me, said she’d tell my parents and Shirley. She said I could accept Martín as my son willingly, or she’d make me do it.” Ed scowled. “She gave me a couple days to think it over.”
Susan was deeply regretting her assurances to Ed that she’d kept quiet about her Milton suspicions. She thought about how she’d promised him that nobody in the station would know about their trip to interview him, that it would be their little secret. She thought that if this were some shitty cop drama on TV, the FBI would still make a clever discovery despite her secrecy, come crashing into the barn to save her ass.
But this wasn’t television.
No help would come.
Her eyes drifted to the hatch. I —we—are not going out like this. She clenched her jaw, her righteous anger returning. I refuse to let us die.
“Then I ran into Milton at the bar,” Ed prattled on. “As you know, I’m not the type to go airing my dirty laundry to strangers, but as I mentioned, I was very drunk. And Milton was just impartial enough to be the perfect ear to bend—he knew my history, but he wasn’t a part of my life, understand? It was after I finished telling Milton about my Marta quandary that he made a promise to help me. When I asked him why he’d want to get involved, he reminded me about the time I’d helped him out in high school. He said it would be his way of finally paying me back—that we’d be even. He told me to bring Marta and Martín to his house the next day for lunch and that he’d take care of the rest.”
Susan closed her eyes for a moment. I don’t think I want to hear the rest of this.
Ed was on a roll. “The next day I brought Marta and her son here to the house.”
He was your son, too, you shit.
“Now, don’t go looking at me like that, Susan,” Ed said, as if reading her mind. “I wasn’t planning on hurting them, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“What was your plan, then?” Susan asked, her tone venomous. She couldn’t help it. Handcuff a girl to a backhoe, and she gets a little cranky.
Ed shrugged. “Honestly? I didn’t have one. I thought Milton was going to offer Marta work. He was single and, I assumed, lonely, and Marta was extremely beautiful. I thought he was thinking maybe he could woo her if she moved in and worked on the farm with him. And why not? Milton had a nice house, and he seemed like an okay enough fellow—”
Except for that part about him being a complete psychopath.
“—and Marta needed money and a father figure for her son.”
Disgusted, Susan said, “So you were basically pimping out your ex. Hoping she’d fall for Milton and stop being your problem.”
“Now, Susan, I was doing no such thing!” Ed shouted. “I thought it would be in everyone’s best interest.”
I think you mean your best interest.
“Marta was penniless, with a child, and her parents were on their deathbeds. And she did, in fact, have experience working with agriculture.”
“But Milton didn’t offer her work, did he?”
“No.” Ed slowly shook his head. “He didn’t.”
Susan kept her mouth shut. She could imagine what was coming next.
“So the four of us had lunch at Milton’s. Afterward, we all went out front to that big weeping willow so that her son could play on the swing. Milton still hadn’t made any kind of offer to Marta.” Ed paused. “I knew it wasn’t right, but I began to suspect that what Milton really was going to do was intimidate Marta somehow. I don’t know how he would have done it—threatened her parents or maybe scared the boy . . .”
“Jesus, Ed.” Susan couldn’t believe this was the same man she’d shared many laughs with down at the station. Her mentor. The man she thought of like a father.
“Milton asked Martín if he wanted an ice cream. He did, and so Marta and I went to the house to get it for him and grabbed beers for the adults.” Ed swallowed hard. “When we came back, Milton was standing behind Martín. There was something wrong; we saw it right away. Their movements were . . . jerky. Martín dropped just as we reached them. When Milton turned around, I saw that he was holding plastic sheeting of some type, which . . .” Ed broke off and rubbed his eyes, wet with tears.
At least he feels some remorse , Susan thought. Then, bitterly: Though that probably doesn’t mean much to poor Martín .
“I’ve never told this story to another living soul. Not once in my entire life.”
“So why tell it to me now?” Susan asked, but he didn’t need to answer. He could purge all his deepest, darkest secrets because he wasn’t planning on letting her live. She thought about Eric and the kids, who were also listening. No, he wasn’t planning on letting them live either.
Ed took in a ragged breath and continued. “Marta went crazy when she realized that Milton had smothered her son. She ran to his body and hugged it, screaming. It was the worst sound I have ever heard in all my life. I still hear it in nightmares.”
Susan wasn’t all too surprised that Ed didn’t seem bothered that his son had been murdered, almost as if it hadn’t even dawned on him. But in his mind, he’d never been the father.
“Marta would just not stop screaming. And she was so loud . She jumped up and started hitting Milton, pounding on his chest, calling him a murderer. She said she was going to
‘get him’ for what he’d done. Make sure he paid. I begged her to calm down, to be quiet . We’re in the middle of nowhere out here, but she was so loud .”
Maybe I should scream, then. But what after? If by some off chance someone did hear her, minutes could still pass before they’d arrive. And that was best case. She could have subdued Ed in a fair fight, but with one hand cuffed above her head, not a chance.
“Marta turned on me when I tried to pull her off Milton. She went wild, like an animal, clawing at my face.” He leaned forward so that he was directly under the light, frowning as Susan recoiled. He tapped his brow. “See this scar right here? That’s from her.”
For a brief instant, Susan considered lashing out. Ed was close enough now that she might land a solid kick to his face. Give him another scar to show off.
He moved back before Susan could react. “I turned away from her and took cover, but she was relentless. And she was screaming. I . . . it all happened within seconds. She pushed me down, and I picked up a rock and hit her with it. I only did it once, just to make her stop. But I guess once was enough, because she went down.”
You’re lying. If Susan didn’t know as much, she could see it in Ed’s eyes. Some small, dark part of him had enjoyed the act, the relief of ridding himself of what could have been a major problem. That’s why you turned on Marta instead of Milton. You wanted to make them go away. A shockwave coursed through her body as she recalled her earlier conversation with Sal, when he’d stated that Marta had been bashed on the head not once but multiple times .
Which meant that Ed was capable of some very nasty rage.
“Milton remained calm. I was a wreck, of course, and he told me to go on home. He said he’d take care of the bodies. I was just so shocked that I did what he asked and left.”
“How convenient,” Susan said sourly. If he was going to hurt her, she might as well get a few digs in, petty as they were.
Ed ignored her. “I came to suspect that Milton had planned the whole thing. He knew that we’d come back and find him smothering Martín, just like he knew Marta would fight me. I think he was trying to entrap me, make me his partner, or obligate me to him.”
