Serpents Rising

by David A. Poulsen

  I nodded. “Yeah, I would care to do that. A lot.”

  We drank coffee and I people-watched for a couple of minutes.

  “Can I ask you something?” I asked.

  Cobb sipped more coffee. “Sure.”

  “Do you think I’m nuts for still wanting to find the son of a bitch who set fire to my house and killed my wife? Because I’m having a hell of a time letting it go. Even in the middle of all of this I … can’t let it go. Last night we were a few seconds from being dead and I was thinking I’d never be able to …” My voice wouldn’t let me finish the thought.

  Cobb’s voice was softer than usual. “If somebody hurt one of my family I’d feel exactly the same way.”

  I waited a few seconds before I said, “Thing is, I don’t know what to do.”

  Cobb nodded.

  I ran my fingers along the rim of my coffee cup. “When I found out Appleton had sexually abused those girls … Donna … I was sure there had to be a connection between that and the fire.”

  “And now?”

  I shook my head. “I just don’t know. It’s killing me that I can’t find out who murdered my wife but I don’t know what to do next.”

  “Look, Adam, I’m sorry I haven’t been much help to you. I’ve been kind of tied up with this.”

  “Hey, no need to —”

  He held up a hand. “How about we see Zoe, and I take a couple of days to be a husband and a dad. Then we sit down and look at it all again. Okay?”

  “I’m happy to pay you.”

  “Hell, Adam, you think I’m going to take money? First of all, you’ve helped me a lot more than you know with this Blevins thing. And you paid me before and didn’t get your money’s worth. No, that’s not right, I gave everything I had like I do on every case. What you didn’t get was resolution. So how about we see what we can do about that.”

  “Sure.”

  “Just promise me that you’re not going to go off on your own.”

  “Damn, I was just starting to enjoy all this John Wayne stuff.”

  He smiled. “Give me a few days and then we’ll see if we can’t raise a little hell.”

  I grinned at him.

  “What?”

  “My Canadian music collection is having its effect on you.”

  “Yeah, how’s that?”

  “‘Raise a Little Hell.’ Trooper song. Big hit back in the —”

  “What, do you think I just fell off the turnip truck? I know who performed ‘Raise a Little Hell.’”

  He gave me a pretty decent cover of the iconic opening lines, beating out a rhythm on the table top to accompany his singing. Only a few diners turned to look at us.

  Zoe was sitting on the front step of the house in Tuxedo wearing a light blue down-filled jacket, sweat pants, and fuzzy pink slippers. The weather guy on the car radio had said it was minus four. Tough kid.

  She was drinking something steaming from a Starbucks mug that celebrated Vancouver and reading a beat up paperback. She looked up from it to watch us come up the walk.

  I think she was trying to gauge from our faces and the way we were walking if the news was going to be good or bad. She stood up as we got closer. I could see the cover of the book — Tomorrow, When the War Began.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi Zoe.”

  Cobb nodded and smiled.

  “Did you find him?”

  We stopped a couple of paces from the steps. I figured Cobb should do the talking.

  “We did,” he said.

  “Is he … alive?”

  “He’s alive.”

  “And?”

  “He’s okay.”

  Zoe tossed the book in the air and leaped at Cobb like he’d just scored the winning goal in overtime, throwing her arms around his neck and screaming. Cobb spun once with her clinging to him and set her down.

  She was only slightly less enthusiastic with the hug she gave me. She left out the scream and I left out the spin. She stepped back and looked at us and the grin faded.

  “You guys don’t look the way people are supposed to look when something is really good. Is there something about this that isn’t really good?”

  “Like I said, he’s fine and it looks like the danger he was in … that’s been taken care of.”

  “Did you kill the bastard that murdered Owen?”

  “No. Someone else did.”

  “And the creeps aren’t after Jay anymore?”

  “No. Or you either.”

  “So why don’t you look happier? Where is Jay?”

  “He’s at a shelter.”

  “Which one?”

  “Let the Sunshine Inn.”

  “I know the place. Let’s go.”

  Cobb looked at me. Great, I get the bad news.

  “Well, Zoe, it might be a good idea to let him have a couple of days to get himself sorted out … uh …”

  “What’s to sort out? I want to see him and if you won’t take me there, I’ll figure out another way.”

  “The thing is … it’s just that Jay … might not want to see you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He told us he didn’t think you two should be a couple anymore. That he’d just mess you up and keep you from staying clean.”

  She thought about that. “Is he using?”

  I nodded. “Until eight, no, make that nine days ago. He’s been clean since then. At least that’s what he told us.”

  “That old joke about how can you tell if an addict’s lying?”

  I provided the punchline. “His lips are moving. Yeah, I can’t say for sure but I would say he’s clean. I can’t swear to the nine days part. But maybe.”

  “I want to see him.”

  I looked at Cobb who gave me a blank face. My call. “Okay. Why don’t you go change and we’ll wait for you here.”

  “You want to come in and wait?”

  “Thanks, we’re good out here,” Cobb said.

  “I’ll be quick.” She turned and raced back into the house.

  Cobb and I walked back to the Jeep, climbed inside, and turned the heater on high.

  “She was sitting outside reading and here we are huddled in our vehicle with the heat cranked. What does that make us?”

  “I became a wimp when I turned forty,” Cobb said.

  I leaned forward and put my hands by the heat outlet.

  “I didn’t wait that long,” I said.

  The Let the Sunshine Inn was a happening place. One couple, a woman with a son who looked to be about nine or ten and a family of four, two of them bored teenagers, were in the food bank with Jill moving efficiently between them and the food stocks, filling bags and boxes and chatting idly with the nine-year-old. I heard her call him Tim. Tim looked happier than either of the teenagers, who I guessed were brother and sister. Both looked like they hated life. Maybe they had good reason or maybe they were just being teenagers.

  A girl about Zoe’s age was sitting at the desk opposite Celia, filling out the same series of forms Jay had the night before. The girl looked like she’d be pretty if she smiled but that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. Green appeared to be her colour of choice. Green jacket with a lighter green collar, green sweat pants, green sneakers, and green streaks in her hair. Maybe a Saskatchewan Roughriders fan.

  Jay was behind Jill sorting food bank donations as I had done my first time in the place. He was wearing a Montreal Canadiens sweatshirt, clean jeans, and a ball cap that said only Q. He looked cleaner and maybe even marginally better than the night before, but his movements were robotic — jerky. This was a guy who was feeling the ill effects of being off the juice.

  He was sideways to us, stacking canned goods, and didn’t see us at first. Zoe moved closer and was standing opposite him, a table between them, when he turned and saw her. He looked at her, started to smile, thought better of it, looked at his shoes for a few seconds, then back at her.

  “Hi.” She didn’t try to get closer to him, stayed on her
side of the table.

  “Hi.”

  “You doing okay?” Zoe sounded nervous, a bit of a tremor in her voice.

  “Sure … yeah, okay. How ’bout you?”

  The family of four was moving toward the front door, their arms full of provisions. The older of the two teenagers, a boy maybe fifteen, wearing jeans that looked like they’d lost a fight with a cougar, and a jacket with a crest that said, “I’m nucking futs,” shook his head as he went by me, letting me know he wasn’t happy.

  “Yeah, that free food is a bitch, ain’t it, kid?” I said.

  He scowled and kept on going, shuffling his feet every step. I wasn’t envying his parents or his sister the ride home.

  The woman with the nine-year-old was getting ready to leave and I stepped forward. “I can give you a hand with those if you like.”

  She glanced at me, then looked at Jill.

  Jill said, “It’s fine, Monica. He’s a friend of mine.”

  Monica smiled at me and nodded. I stepped forward and picked up the biggest of the cardboard boxes. Tim took the smaller box and Monica scooped up a large shopping bag in one arm and a king size box of detergent in the other. Cobb held the door for us, earning him a bigger smile than the one I got, which I thought was unfair.

  “Have a great week, Monica. Bye, Tim.” Jill called.

  Monica turned and said, “Thanks again,” and Tim yelled “See ya” loud enough to be heard several blocks away.

  I followed them out onto the street where the warmest day we’d had in a month was melting some of the snow that was piled up in parking lots, playgrounds, schoolyards, and driveways. Monica led us to a van that looked a lot like the one I had in high school. And my van had been ten years old then.

  Rust flecked the fenders and quarter panels like blotchy skin. The van had two side doors that opened out — I remembered that from mine — and Monica looked for a place to put the detergent while she opened the doors.

  I bent so she could set it on top of the box I was carrying.

  “It’s heavy,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” I told her and she set the soap atop the box. I winked at Tim and said “Us guys are Supermen” in my best superhero voice.

  Jill got the doors open and we set everything inside. Tim high-fived me and said, “See ya, Superman.”

  “See ya, Super Superman,” I said.

  Monica and I exchanged waves and I stomped off my boots on my way back inside. Celia and the girl in green had completed the paperwork and were headed upstairs. Jill and Cobb were talking in hushed voices and Zoe and Jay hadn’t moved. Jay was pushing two cans of SpaghettiOs back and forth on the table and working hard at not looking at Zoe, who gave every indication she was prepared to wait him out.

  “It’s been crazy here all morning,” Jill said. “I need a coffee.”

  She had decided that whatever was going to happen was going to happen without us. I nodded and Cobb looked as eager as we were to get out of there and give Jay and Zoe some space.

  Jill grabbed her coat off one of the nails of the makeshift coat rack and started toward the front door. Cobb got the door again. Jill turned back. “You two want anything?”

  Zoe shook her head and Jay mumbled something that I took for a no.

  “We’ll be back in twenty minutes,” Jill said and we headed out onto the street.

  We pretty much had the Starbucks to ourselves and it became even less crowded when Cobb told us he needed to get something across the street and could we get him a “tall coffee something or other with room for milk.”

  He was out the door before we could point out how pathetic his attempts to give us time alone actually were. I shook my head and Jill laughed softly.

  “It’s a good thing he’s a detective because as a poker player he’d go broke in a week.”

  I ordered the coffee including a “tall something or other with room for milk.” That seemed to baffle the barista so I modified the order to a tall Caffé Verona after reading the description as “Rich, soulful, and sweet, this coffee wafts romance.”

  “I’m not sure about rich, soulful, or sweet,” I told Jill, “but I guarantee you Cobb wafts romance.”

  “Yes, he does.” She laughed the laugh I liked.

  As the barista worked on our coffees, I turned to look at Jill. “How’s your week shaping up for a free evening?”

  “The week not so good, but the weekend, much better. But I have a thought — you know, just in case you can’t wait six days to see me.” She laughed at what she’d said.

  “Actually that’s a pretty darn solid supposition.”

  “I’m glad. Anyway, Kyla has a part in a school play. It runs Wednesday and Thursday and it’s called Bridging the Generation Gap. It’s all hush-hush so I know almost nothing except that Kyla has a fairly significant part.”

  “The generation gap. Will seeing it make me feel old?”

  “I can almost guarantee it.”

  “When you put it like that how do I say no?”

  Cobb returned and I handed him his drink.

  We sat for five minutes and drank our coffee, all of us working hard, it seemed to me, to avoid the topic of Jay and Zoe.

  “Think twenty minutes is enough?” I asked as we made our way back to the Let the Sunshine Inn at the same brisk pace we had employed earlier.

  “Twenty years might not be enough time to get Jay’s life back,” Jill said. “But twenty minutes might be enough to make a start.”

  Inside, Jay and Zoe were sitting at the table. Zoe was leaning forward and both seemed to be talking intently.

  I looked at Cobb, who answered my look with a shrug. I approached the table; Jill moved alongside me. Jay and Zoe looked up at us.

  I spoke to Zoe. “You want us to hang around … wait for you?”

  She looked at Jay. I couldn’t see any response but there must have been one. She looked up at Jill.

  “We were hoping maybe I could stay here for a couple of days,” she said.

  Jill didn’t answer right away.

  “We have only one room for couples and it’s taken right now,” she said.

  “We could stay in the room I was in last night,” Jay said. “It’s big enough.”

  I glanced at Cobb. He wasn’t showing anything but I felt good that Jay seemed to be thinking of Zoe, however short term and however superficially.

  Jill frowned for a moment, then said. “Two nights. I’ll bend the rules for two nights. Then, unless Lon and Jenna are gone from the couple’s room, I’m afraid you’ll have to make other arrangements. There are three or four places that have couple’s rooms. I’ll even make some calls for you. But two nights is it. And that’s based on total abstinence from drugs. Use once and you’re gone.”

  She was looking at Jay as she spoke and I watched him take it in. Looked like he received the message, but with addicts — even ones who have been clean for a week or two — it’s foolish to take them at their word.

  Still, the atmosphere in the place felt positive and I figured I’d let that be my guide. For now.

  Cobb said, “We’ll stay in touch.”

  I wasn’t sure if the remark was directed at Zoe and Jay or at Jill and it didn’t really matter.

  I smiled at Jill and mouthed the word thanks at her.

  Then Cobb and I left.

  Twenty

  I chose the Wednesday performance in case I wanted to book tickets to see the show again the next night. It was interesting watching Jill being totally relaxed right up until the moment Kyla first appeared on stage.

  At that point Jill grabbed my hand, not out of some romantic sentiment the darkened auditorium engendered, but so she would have something to squeeze, twist, bend, and occasionally pound on as she watched her daughter perform. Fortunately for my hand, Kyla was flawless on stage. Had the kid blown a line, missed an entrance, or tripped over one of the set pieces I would likely have required major reconstructive surgery.

  After the show, parents, relatives
, and friends gathered backstage to congratulate the performers and exchange relieved smiles with other parents, relatives, and friends.

  Eventually I was relatively alone with Jill and Kyla. We were sipping drinks in paper cups. The drinks came from a large drink dispenser and tasted like last year’s Kool-Aid. Orange, maybe.

  I said, “It would be my honour to take you two out for a post-performance dinner.”

  “Awesome.” Kyla grinned.

  “You don’t have to do that.” Jill looked at me.

  “Not a case of have to. I’d love to take you ladies out on the town. That’s what theatre people do,” I said.

  Kyla nodded sagely. Jill nodded doubtfully.

  I looked at Kyla. “So where are we going? I think the evening’s brightest star should pick the place.”

  Jill whispered, “Big mistake.”

  Kyla beamed at me. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Alright, Chuck E. Cheese’s, here we come!”

  “Big mistake,” I heard again.

  “Hey.” I smiled at Jill. “Might not have been Audrey Hepburn’s first choice, but I’m all about … what did you say the name was?”

  “Chuck E. Cheese’s.”

  I snapped my fingers. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  Kyla moved off to tell her cast mates about her good fortune.

  Jill shook her head but she was smiling. “I tried to warn you.”

  “I wonder what the E stands for.”

  “Eech,” she said.

  The motto at Chuck E. Cheese’s is “Where a Kid Can Be a Kid.” Apparently being a kid entails beating the crap out of adults at every game Chuck E. could think of. Kyla had a “mega-blast” and once Jill realized that I was having a pretty good time myself, she relaxed and laughed as hard as Kyla at my pathetic attempts to bowl, toss, shoot, hit, and drive.

  The highlight of my night came when I managed to beat Jill at a game that was, as near as I could tell, a cross between a Frisbee toss and slow motion dodge ball. My second-place finish earned me a fist bump from Kyla and a kiss on the cheek from Jill.

  On the way out, with Kyla twenty yards ahead of us, Jill hugged me. “You were amazing in there. That was really fun.”