Random Road

by Thomas Kies

  “So when did Jim decide to drive to Matthews Hill?” I asked again.

  Aaron shook his head. “I don’t know. After we talked and we prayed and we argued and prayed some more, Jim said he was going to that house to talk to Lynette, and he was going to do it whether I liked it or not. Miss Chase, I couldn’t let my brother go alone. I was genuinely concerned about what he might do.”

  “He’s a violent man, isn’t he?”

  The attorney interrupted, “Don’t answer that!”

  Aaron responded with a pained, awkward silence.

  “What time did you get to the club?”

  “I’m not sure, sometime around eleven?”

  Just before they open the “rooms.”

  “So what happened?” I prodded.

  “I drove Jim to that…place. We found Lynette’s SUV in the parking lot around back. I was supposed to wait in the car while Jim found a way in to talk to her.”

  I decided to momentarily switch gears. “Aaron, did either one of you have anything to drink after Jim woke up?”

  Aaron looked down at his feet and was silent for a long moment. When he looked back up at me, his face reflected a profound expression of personal sadness. “Both of us. When I’d tried to make him drink the coffee, he opened another bottle of Jack. We argued. Then in a fit of my own stupidity and rage I told him that if he was going to ruin his life again, I would too.” He remembered that night. “He just dared me. He thought I was bluffing.”

  “So you had something to drink too.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much did you have?”

  “Any alcohol for either of us is too much.”

  I thought about this for a moment. I know just how stupid you can be when you drink. And once you start, you can’t stop. “What was he hoping to accomplish, confronting Lynette at that house?”

  Aaron shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she’d see how much he still loved her. Maybe he could talk her out of debasing herself with those other men. Maybe he needed to see her. Whatever the reason, I watched as he went through a side entrance. I waited in the car and it felt like an eternity but, really, I think I was only out there for about ten or fifteen minutes. I got worried and I went in to look for him.”

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “The doorway I went through opened up into a kitchen. No one was there but I heard music, Motown, and walked through another door. It was a big room with high ceilings. It was kind of dark. The only light was from some colorful lamps hanging from the ceiling. There were couples dancing, there was a DJ. It all seemed normal. I was very relieved to see that everyone still had their clothes on.”

  If they’d gone in a half hour later, all bets on that would be off.

  “Then I saw the bar in the middle of the room and spotted Jim. He was sitting on a barstool, hunched over the counter,” Aaron sighed, shaking his head. “Jim was watching a small group of people standing maybe about fifteen feet from him. Lynette was one of them.”

  Aaron continued, “I stood there keeping my eye on Jim and then I saw a guy come up behind Lynette and put his arms around her. That’s when Jim got up.”

  I held my hand up to stop Aaron for a moment. I asked him, “The guy who put his arms around Lynette. Was it John Singewald?”

  Aaron Brenner shifted in his chair and bent his head from side to side, as if trying to relieve a stiff neck. Finally, he said, “No, Miss Chase. It wasn’t John Singewald. But I recognized Singewald right away, even in that dark room, standing with those folks, right next to Lynette. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about him while I was in prison. Imagine my surprise when I saw that he was there that night, a member of that immoral party. Another reason he’ll spend everlasting eternity in hell.”

  “Let me just be absolutely clear here,” I said. “This is the same John Singewald who helped put you in prison?”

  He took a breath. “Yes, Miss Chase.”

  I took a moment before I asked my next question. “So, Jim sees a man put his arm around Lynette. What happened next?”

  I already knew who had put his arm around Lynette. It was Ted, the source who’d called me and blew the whistle on Jim Brenner.

  “Jim gets up in this guy’s face and starts saying something that I can’t hear, but I know that Jim’s been drinking and I know that this isn’t going to end well. Anyway, I see this guy step back and Lynette’s husband, George, puts himself between Jim and Lynette. I start to walk over now and I can hear Jim saying words like ‘whore’ and ‘adulterer’ and then I see Jim push George really hard so that he falls against Lynette and the guy who had his arm around her.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “By the time I got there, a couple of other guys, I don’t know, bouncers maybe, were right beside me. We all grabbed Jim by the arms and escorted him out of the house.”

  Now we reach the most important part of the interview.

  I leaned forward. “What happened after that?”

  Aaron sat in his chair in silence.

  “Aaron?”

  He remained silent, staring into his lap.

  “Aaron?” I insisted. “Did you go out to Connor’s Landing?”

  His piercing blue eyes looked up into my own and he shook his head. “No.” His voice barely a whisper. “We went down to Riley’s. It’s a bar just up the street from Jim’s house.”

  I shook my head. “You and Jim went to a bar?”

  He nodded, almost imperceptibly. “We were there until closing time and got blind, stinking drunk. The bartender will remember us. I know there’s a video camera behind the bar. And I paid by credit card. Check with them, the credit card receipt will show we couldn’t have been out on Connor’s Landing.”

  At almost the second that Aaron Brenner was finishing his story, the door to the interrogation room flew open. Mike Dillon stood in the doorway and from the dark expression on his face, he was really pissed.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about Riley’s?” Mike demanded.

  Aaron looked up at the cop with incredible sadness in his expression. “It’s not something that Jim and I are proud of. There’s nothing about last Wednesday night that we’re proud of.”

  Mike couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’d rather we arrest you for murder?”

  Aaron looked down into his lap, silent.

  Mike continued his tirade, “You mean to tell me that you had nothing to do with what happened on Connor’s Landing?

  Brenner slowly shook his head.

  “You’re telling me that Jim’s ex-wife and the same guy who sent you to prison both died out on Connor’s Landing and it’s all a big coincidence?” Mike shouted.

  Aaron looked up at Mike. “Yes.”

  The cop had one more question. “In Jim’s closet, we found shoes with traces of blood on them. We also found blood on a knife in his boat. Whose blood is it?”

  The prisoner stared at me when he answered. “Nobody’s blood.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Nobody’s blood.”

  “It’s not human. Jim likes to fish. He hooked into a school of blues last week and never cleaned up the mess.”

  I heard Mike behind me say, “Jesus H. Christ.”

  As Mike walked out and Paula Ramos followed him, she insisted, “I want my clients released immediately.”

  Mike responded, “Don’t hold your breath.”

  The guard remained silent behind me. Aaron sat without a word across the table. I wondered what my next question should be.

  Finally, I asked, “Aaron?”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s the real reason you didn’t tell the police you had an alibi?”

  He smiled slightly. “Off the record?”

  “Sure, why not.” I turned off my recorder.

  “I wanted to see thi
s in the paper.” His voice low. “I wanted the world to know the sins taking place at that house.”

  “Did you want to embarrass the cops too?”

  He grinned. “Yeah, maybe a little.”

  “Well, you did that. Do you think that those people out on Connor’s Landing died for a reason?”

  He leaned slowly back in his chair before he answered. “Everything happens for a reason.”

  “Do you think they died because they were sinners?”

  “In Romans 6:23, the Bible says that the wages of sin is death.”

  “So you’re saying that God wanted those people dead?”

  His brow furrowed. “I can’t pretend to know what God is thinking, Miss Chase. But I hear Albert Einstein said something that I’ll always remember.”

  “What’s that Aaron?”

  “God doesn’t play dice with the universe.”

  Could be true. All I knew was that if the Brenners are innocent, my days of being out front on this story had just ended.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  It took me about an hour to knock out the story about the arrest and release, pending confirmation of their alibi, of the Brenner brothers. Unfortunately, this meant publicly outing Temptation House since it was now an integral part of the story. This was the first time the “swingers” aspect of the murder would appear in print. It would most likely put the club out of business.

  I felt a twinge of regret about that. The owners seemed like really nice people and the people who visited the club weren’t hurting anyone.

  Laura Ostrowski paced up and down the newsroom while I pounded away at my keyboard. When I finished, I hit the button sending the story to her computer. I nodded to her, signaling that it was done.

  She nearly broke into a sprint to get back to her office. Laura smelled the hot, mouth-watering scent of the salacious, six-column, front page lead on tomorrow morning’s paper.

  At that point, what I really wanted to do was to walk in with the warning letter that she and Casper had forced me sign last night and tell her to bend over so that I could stick it up her dowdy posterior.

  But instead I punched up Kevin’s number on my office phone while watching Laura devour my story with her eyes about the Brenner boys and the sex club.

  “Hello?” Caroline answered.

  “Hey, sweetie.” I spoke as brightly as I could. I still didn’t know for sure how much she knew about Kevin. “I was thinking about taking your dad out to lunch. Is he around?”

  “Aunt Ruth drove him to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. He’s not supposed to be back until around two-thirty.”

  Suddenly I was very, very jealous of Aunt Ruth. If anyone was going to save Kevin’s life, I wanted it to be me.

  How petty can I be? What’s more important? Curing Kevin or beating Ruth?

  Well, the answer was both. Kevin came first, of course.

  But beating Ruth was a really close second.

  As I talked with Caroline, I pulled the cell phone out of my bag and looked for messages. Sure enough, Dr. Durham had returned my call.

  Damn it. It was probably while I was interviewing Aaron Brenner. I’d had my phone turned off.

  “Genie?” Caroline snapped my attention back to the landline.

  “Yeah, hon?”

  “I’d really like it if we could talk. Just you and me.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was nearly a quarter to one. “Tell you what. I am starving. How about if I buy you lunch?” It would give me a chance to talk with Caroline and check her out myself to see if she was, actually, suffering from some sort of eating disorder.

  “Cool,” she bubbled.

  “I’ll pick you up in about fifteen minutes.”

  As I walked by Laura Ostrowski’s office, I could almost see her forming the words with her lips as she read my story.

  Damn, I’m good.

  ***

  On the drive over to Random Road, I called Dr. Durham.

  It was his private line and he answered on the second ring. “Durham,” he announced, brusquely, the important physician.

  “Paul, its Geneva Chase.”

  “Genie.” His voice took on an audible smile. “What a nice surprise it was to get your message. Are you taking me up on my offer for dinner?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I wish I was calling you under different circumstances. I have a very dear friend who was just diagnosed with liver disease…they’re telling him that it’s terminal.”

  I felt the words catch in my throat. Saying it out loud makes it more real.

  He held a brief silence before he said, “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “But there’re ways to treat it?”

  “Well, I’d have to have a look at him.

  “We can beat this thing.”

  “Has he consulted anyone about a transplant?”

  “He’s not a candidate. What are our options?”

  I heard him sigh. “Well, there are certainly protocols.”

  Protocols? What the hell did that mean?

  He continued, “Look, Genie, why don’t you bring your friend in here so that we can assess his situation. We’re working on some cutting edge treatments that have exhibited some very promising results. It’s very possible he could be a good candidate for one of them.”

  My brain heard Paul’s words and translated them. He was saying that Kevin didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell so let’s make him a guinea pig and try out something really experimental. Hell, why not? He’s got nothing to lose.

  But my heart heard something completely different. That they were working with something brand new. Hopeful treatments that might actually keep Kevin alive. Bring him in. He’s got everything to gain.

  I wanted to believe my heart. “How soon can you see him?”

  “You can bring him in Friday afternoon, say about three. This friend of yours? He’s special to you?”

  “He’s special, Paul. You don’t know how special.”

  ***

  I picked up Caroline and drove us both to a small place on the water called Sound Bites. It’s a hamburger shack with little to offer in the way of a menu, but once you ordered your food, you can eat outside on a deck that overlooks a marina right on the shoreline of Long Island Sound. The food’s little more than commercial grill and grease pit but the view is fabulous.

  We sat on either side of a weatherbeaten, wooden picnic table. The hard pine, stained with years of condiments, displayed a litany of names that had been cut into its surface. A plastic garbage can near the corner of the building, almost filled to the brim with dirty paper plates, napkins, and soda cups, attracted about a dozen bees.

  With the sun playing hide and seek behind a growing bank of clouds, the air was temperate and the breeze from the sound was exhilarating. The boats in the marina floated and bobbed on the water with a regal insouciance.

  All in all, it was a pleasant afternoon to be outside. Too bad Sound Bites didn’t have a liquor license.

  Before I took a big bite out of a greasy cheeseburger, I asked, “So how’re you doin’?”

  Caroline swatted away a bee and looked out over the water. “I’m okay,” but then quickly cut to the chase. “I need for you to tell me the truth.”

  I chewed slowly. This really wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. With my mouth still half-filled with food, I asked, “What do you want to know?”

  She looked me right in the eye. “Is Daddy dying?”

  Her bluntness nearly took my breath away. “What’s your dad told you?”

  “Just that he might be sick.”

  “Well,” I answered inconclusively and shrugged.

  “Is he?” She pushed for an answer.

  I thought, this is a discussion Kevin should be having with his daughter.

  Before I h
ad a chance to answer, Caroline told me, “Aunt Ruth says that Dad’s extremely ill, that he might not live.”

  What?

  That bitch! That heartless, cold-hearted, stone-faced bitch.

  Trying hard to hold my temper, I gritted my teeth. “What else did Aunt Ruth say?”

  Caroline’s hands formed tight fists resting in front of her on the rough, wooden surface of the picnic table. “She said that she was taking him to see doctors in New York. If they can’t help him, nobody can.”

  I reached over and put my hands over hers. “Let’s see what those guys at Mount Sinai say, honey. But just so you know, I talked with a doctor from Yale this morning who wants to see us on Friday. He’s the absolute best in the business. If I have anything to say about it, your dad’s going to be okay.”

  She looked down at her lap. “Aunt Ruth said that if anything happens to Daddy, she wants me live with her.”

  Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Ruth wants to hook up with her dead sister’s husband? And then when it looks like he might die, she goes after the daughter? What is she, a vampire that feeds on grief?

  Caroline continued to look down. “If something happens, I don’t want to live with Aunt Ruth.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Can I live with you?” She started biting her lower lip.

  That took me by surprise. I tried to wrap my mind around what I’d just heard from her.

  It’s not like I never wanted kids. I think that if you catch them on a good day, they can be kind of cute, like puppies. But I can barely take care of myself, how could I even think about taking care of someone else?

  I must have waited a little too long to answer because Caroline cast her gaze out over the water again and quietly mumbled, “I was just kidding.”