Close to the Broken Hearted

by Michael Hiebert

“Nothin’. I think it would be better to go in on my back.”

  He went at it again, on his back this time. It did seem to give him more leverage with his feet. Soon he was out of sight. Leah squatted down and watched through the doors, but all she could make out was the occasional sweep of his flashlight. Then, from beneath the house came a loud, “Eww!”

  “What is it?” Leah called out, a little worried.

  “Found the cat puke!”

  More time passed while his light went from one side of the house to the next. After about fifteen minutes, he finally yelled, “I found something!”

  “What?”

  “Looks like . . . bags of coffee. Twelve of ’em. All stuffed around in a circle. The middle of the circle is empty, but it looks like it used to have somethin’ in it. I’m guessing that’s where the coke was. There’s a white powder sprinkled all around the outside of the ring of coffee bags.”

  “Is it coke?”

  A pause and then, “No. I think it’s brodifacoum. Orwin was probably worried about rats getting into his drugs. It was a good thing to be worried ’bout too, on account of it looks like they got into at least two of the sacks of coffee. There’s fruit flies everywhere.”

  “Well, that explains why they’re under your house,” Leah said to Sylvie.

  “I think that’s it,” Chris said. “There ain’t nothing else under here.”

  “Okay,” Leah said, “You may as well come out then.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sylvie said. “Why is there sacks of coffee in my cellar?”

  “Because your ex-boyfriend is a dumb shit,” said Chris, pulling himself through the crawl space doors. Standing up, he brushed dirt off his uniform. He turned and let Leah get the dirt off the back. Most of it cleared away, but there was some that would stay until his uniform was properly washed. “Sometimes drug traffickers pack cocaine in coffee to throw drug dogs off the scent in airports.”

  “Does that work?”

  “Hell if I know. But I have no idea why he thought using coffee under your house was a good idea. I guess he suspected we might come round with some airport drug dogs and send them into your cellar lookin’ for coke. Unfortunately, the closest thing to that happening was your cat goin’ in when that door was left open and eatin’ some of that brodifacoum.”

  Sylvie looked about ready to cry. “That bastard killed my cat. He killed my goddamn cat.”

  Leah came up and gave her a hug. “Hey, at least you don’t have to worry ’bout him comin’ round here no more. He’ll be gettin’ outta Dodge as quick as a cat with its tail on fire. If he even suspects we’re onto him, he won’t hang round Alvin a minute longer than he has to, and I got a hunch Orwin’s a pretty suspicious guy. When we made all them arrests last year, he was gone before the sun came up.” She looked Sylvie straight in the eyes. “You’re safe now. This is the last place he’ll turn up again.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “If he’s smart, he’ll stay as far away from Alvin as he can possibly get.” He thought for a moment, and then turned to Leah. “Which reminds me. I better call the DEA in Arkansas and give them a heads-up on what’s goin’ on. He probably won’t be stupid enough to keep the stuff at his house, but I bet they’ll put him under surveillance and, sooner or later, catch him tryin’ to push it.”

  “What ’bout the guys you arrested?” Leah asked. “Can’t you get one of them to swear to selling it to him? Might be enough to take him in on. Then I’ve got Jolayne’s financial records . . .”

  “Maybe. They’d want a deal, though. I’d have to talk to the DA. Right now, we need all the states between here and Arkansas to issue an APB on the plates to Sylvie’s Skylark he’s driving.”

  “I’ll get that done,” Leah said. “Although, he took the stuff out of here. He’s gone. No question ’bout it.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Leah decided to take the kids out for supper at Vera’s Old West Grill at the west end of Main Street. It had been a while since they’d been out together as a family. Two days ago, all the stress of the Orwin Thomas case she’d been working on had come to a rather unsatisfying end. Sure, the law would probably eventually catch up to Orwin Thomas, but Leah wanted it to happen here and she wanted to be part of it. She wanted to show Sylvie that the bad guys don’t always get away. She thought it might help with the girl’s paranoia. At any rate, Leah thought the next best thing was to spend some quality family time and just get out of the house for a nice meal and unwind a bit.

  The weather was horrible. Rain washed through the town, and black clouds hung so low and heavy in the sky they seemed like they might almost touch the tops of some buildings.

  At dinner, the kids appeared to enjoy themselves. At least they weren’t arguing—not really arguing, anyway—which was a welcome change. They did banter back and forth a lot, but that was something they always did, whether they were happy or not.

  Abe had ordered a hamburger and fries, and Caroline had gotten barbecued ribs with coleslaw and white bread. Leah ordered a sirloin steak, medium well.

  “So are you kids enjoyin’ your summer?”

  “I was,” Abe said.

  “Not anymore?” Leah asked.

  “Not so much. I ain’t got my sword.”

  “That’s cuz you broke it,” Caroline said. She had barbecue sauce all around her lips. Her fingers were covered in it, too.

  “How do you know I broke it?” Abe asked her.

  “Dewey told me. He was outside in our backyard having a sword fight by himself and I asked him where the heck you were, and he said he didn’t know and that it didn’t matter anyway on account of you broke your sword over your knee cuz you threw a little fit.”

  “It wasn’t a fit.”

  “What was it then? Dewey said it was a fit. He called you a girl.”

  I was surprised my sister didn’t consider that a sexist remark. “Dewey says lotsa stuff that ain’t true. You know, he thinks he’s a genius.” Abe took such a big bite of his burger, Leah was worried he might choke on it.

  “Maybe he is,” Caroline said. “Ever thought of that?”

  Abe laughed. “You’ve met Dewey, right? He tried to get satellite TV by using up all our aluminum foil.”

  “At least he tries stuff. He’s smart for tryin’. Don’t you think so, Mother?” Caroline put a rib in her mouth and pulled out a clean bone and set it upon her plate.

  “Leave me out of this.”

  “Mom don’t like Dewey,” Abe said. “She thinks he’s weird.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You have too. Lotsa times.”

  Leah cut off a piece of steak and had it ready on her fork to go into her mouth. “Well, he’s a bit different at times,” she said. “But I’ve never said I don’t like him.” She put the steak in her mouth.

  “Well, I like Dewey,” Caroline said. “I find him quite interestin’ and entertainin’.”

  “I like Dewey well enough,” Abe said. “If I didn’t, why would I hang round with him?”

  “On account of you only have one friend?” Caroline laughed.

  “That’s not true.”

  “It’s not? Name two more.”

  “I can name lots more. I just don’t wanna.”

  “You’re so full of shit your eyes are brown.”

  “Hey!” Leah snapped. “Language.”

  “ ’Sides,” Abe said, “my eyes are blue. Just like my pa’s were, ain’t that right, Mom?” He took another bite of burger. He was definitely starting to grow up. There was a time not so long ago when Leah could remember Abe not being able to get through half a Vera’s Texas Burger. Now tonight it looked like he might finish this one entirely.

  “That’s right,” Leah said.

  Caroline studied Leah as if her hair had turned into rattlesnakes. “You’re talking ’bout Pa now?”

  Leah smiled. “We’re testin’ the waters.”

  “Huh,” Caroline said. “That’s new. It’s a nice change. I miss him sometimes.”
/>   “I do too, honey,” Leah said sadly.

  “I wish I could,” Abe said. “You guys are lucky to have known him good enough to miss him.”

  Leah’s heart almost broke then. “I’m sorry.”

  On that note, they all went back to finishing up their food.

  The rain was coming down like marbles being poured out of a bucket from somewhere in heaven when they walked outside of the restaurant. Luckily, they weren’t parked far away, or they’d all have been soaked by the time Leah quickly unlocked the car doors and everyone piled inside. As usual, Caroline got the front seat and Abe got in the back.

  “Boy, am I full,” he said, lying across the cushions as if the entire backseat were a sofa.

  But Leah shushed him. As soon as she opened her door, she immediately heard Chris on her radio trying to reach her. Quickly, she picked it up and answered it. “Chris. It’s me. What’s up?”

  “Leah! I’ve been trying to reach you for half an hour.”

  “Sorry, I was out for dinner with the kids. What’s up?”

  “Well, it was one thing, then it became two things, and now it’s three things.”

  “Uh-oh. Sounds like a disaster. Go ahead.” Leah didn’t start the car, she just sat there, parked, talking on the radio. The rain continued pelting the windshield. It made a ruckus, splattering on the roof of the car.

  “First, we got a credit card transaction flag for Orwin Thomas for a purchase he made yesterday.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ask me where he made it.”

  “Where?”

  “Fast Gas. In Alvin.”

  “In Alvin? Why the hell is he still here?”

  “Well, we don’t know if he’s still here. It looks like he filled his tank, so he may have been heading back to Pine Bluff. But he was here yesterday.”

  “Why would he have hung round all this time? He got them drugs days ago.”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  Leah’s mind raced. It made no sense. He should have left town immediately upon getting what he came for. It was the only logical thing to do. And people always do the most logical thing, unless there are other variables at play you don’t know about. Now that was the detective in her thinking.

  “What’s the second thing?”

  “About fifteen or twenty minutes ago Miss Sylvie called.”

  “What did she want?” This is new, Leah thought. Chris calling her Miss Sylvie.

  “She said she reckoned she saw the shadow of someone outside her house lookin’ in her window.”

  “Was she panicky?”

  “She sounded a little upset.”

  “Did you go check it out?”

  “Er—” Chris stumbled. “No.”

  “Did Ethan go?”

  “No.”

  “Why didn’t anyone go? If you can’t get hold of me, it’s your responsibility to go.”

  “I just, um, figured since you’ve always gone before that you’d want to be the one to go this time.” He sounded fumbly and embarrassed and Leah was glad. He deserved to be embarrassed.

  “Okay, I’ll stop in there on my way home. Now, what’s the third thing? Your things are gettin’ me progressively more and more irked, by the way.”

  “Not my intention.”

  “I know.”

  “Third thing is you got another fax. This one is the medical records for Jolayne Thomas in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.”

  “Do you mind givin’ me the highlights? Go from most recent events first and head backward please.”

  “That’s easy. This year there’s only two things of note, really, an’ they’re both the same thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She had two visits to some place in Little Rock called Forever Fertility. The last one was just shy of two months ago and the time before that was around four months ago.”

  “Sounds like a fertility clinic. That explains the two fifteen-thousand-dollar withdrawals from her account. So Miss Jolayne’s tryin’ to have herself a baby.”

  “Yeah, but by the looks of this, it don’t seem like she’s havin’ much success.” Chris laughed.

  A thought suddenly struck Leah like a brick bein’ dropped on her from a fourth-story window. “Oh dear God,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “Chris, I gotta go. I’ll radio back when I can.”

  “Um . . . okay.”

  Cutting off their conversation, Leah clipped the radio back into its holder and started the car. “Buckle up, kids.”

  “Aw,” Abe complained from the backseat. “But I’m so full.”

  Reaching down beneath her console, Leah pulled out her blue-and-red light and plunked it on the dash. It lit up the street around them. The falling rain reflected the light like colored sheets. She hit the siren. “I don’t care,” she told Abe. “This might be a bumpy ride.”

  “You ain’t takin’ us to a crime scene, are you?” Caroline asked from beside her, quickly clipping her seat belt on while Leah peeled out off the curb and did a U-turn right in the middle of the street.

  “I dunno yet,” Leah said. “I just might be.”

  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

  “Oh, trust me,” Abe said. “After a while, you get used to it.”

  Leah picked up the big telephone that sat in the console of her vehicle and dialed Sylvie Carson’s home number. “Please don’t let me be too late,” she said under her breath as she heard it ring on the other end. “Please, God, don’t let me be too late.”

  Leah had realized during her talk with Chris that Orwin had indeed come back for his drugs, but he’d also come back for something else. There was a reason he’d been trying to make Sylvie look insane. He’d been trying to make her look like an unfit mother, but it hadn’t happened fast enough for him. He’d tried pushing her over the edge, but what he hadn’t realized was that Sylvie was already so far over the edge there wasn’t much farther for her to go. She was used to living over the edge, if that was even possible. So used to it, Orwin Thomas had failed to make her any crazier.

  But now, Leah knew, with a full tank of gas, Orwin was ready to finish the job he’d come down from Arkansas for and then truly get out of town. And the real job hadn’t just been to get his drugs. That had been half of it. The other half was to get something else. Something much more precious than seventy-five-thousand-dollars’ worth of cocaine. Something Joylane wanted for her very own but couldn’t have, and so Orwin Thomas was going to provide her with one.

  And that thing was Sylvie’s three-month-old baby girl.

  CHAPTER 33

  Thank the Lord Jesus Sylvie Carson not only had a telephone in her bedroom, but she answered it. As soon as she did, Leah heard more panic in the girl’s voice than she ever had before. Sylvie was scared practically to the brink of her last breath of life.

  “Sylvie, it’s Leah. Listen to me, now. I think you and the baby are in danger.” Leah was driving as fast as she could. Her siren wailed and her red and blue lights danced in the darkness. Still, it was a treacherous night to be driving fast and she had to be careful. The last thing she needed was to get into a crash. That would only guarantee she didn’t make it to Sylvie’s on time. Plus she had her kids in the car with her.

  “Leah!” Sylvie said, nearly screaming into the phone. Her voice was quivering. The baby wailed in the background. “I—I’ve been trying to call the station, but I—I left the phone number in the kitchen . . . I—I’m locked in my bedroom. It’s . . . it’s Preacher Eli! He’s at the door! He’s—” Her words cut off. She was too panicked to talk.

  Goddamn it, Leah was too late.

  “What’s goin’ on, Sylvie?” Leah asked. “Talk to me. Slow down.”

  “He’s tryin’ to get in! He’s comin’ at it with an ax or somethin’!” Sylvie yelled. “The door. My goddamn front door!”

  Shit. Leah had seen that door enough times. That door ain’t gonna stand up to an ax very long.

  “Listen to
me, Sylvie. I might not get there in time. It’s not Eli. It’s Orwin. He’s come for your baby.” Rain pounded the windshield of Leah’s car, making it hard to see and forcing her to drive more slowly than she wanted to. Everything outside was awash in rain and went by in streaks.

  “Orwin? He’s come back?” Suddenly, Sylvie’s entire demeanor changed. This wasn’t good. Leah needed her to stay scared.

  “Yes,” Leah said. “But he’s come back to hurt you and take your baby. Sylvie! Listen to me. You say you’re in your bedroom?”

  “Y—yes.” Good. At least the panic was back.

  “With the door locked?”

  “Of . . . of course.”

  “You have the baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “And . . . Sylvie?” Leah asked. “Do you have your shotgun?”

  A hesitation. Then, “Yes. Do you think Orwin has a gun?”

  “I don’t know,” Leah said. She was about to say that if Orwin had a gun he’d probably have already used it to shoot the lock out of the door, but she decided not to. Thank God Sylvie had had her locks changed.

  Leah passed a road marker, her dashboard flasher lighting it up blue and red on this horrible night. She remembered the kids in the car and cursed under her breath. She still had near on two miles to go. She wasn’t going to make it in time at this rate. But it was going to be close.

  Leah decided she had to tell Sylvie something important, just in case. Something she actually couldn’t believe she was about to say. “Listen to me carefully, Sylvie,” Leah said. “I may not make it there in time. Do you understand?”

  “Oh God . . . ,” Sylvie said.

  “Sylvie, listen. If I don’t get there, it’s up to you. You’ve got to protect that baby, understand? You have to save your child, and her mother. At whatever cost it takes.”

  “I don’t know if I can.” Sylvie’s voice cracked in a loud whisper. “My hands are shaking something fierce. I can hear him pounding on the outside door. It ain’t gonna stand up much longer.”

  Damn it.

  “You have to,” Leah said. In the darkness, trees whipped past both sides of the car. The heavy dark clouds made everything nearly impossible to see on this dark rain-soaked night; all Leah made out was just what reflected back in red and blue. Occasionally, a streetlamp roared by, its light blurred because of the rainwater on the car’s windows. There wasn’t a lot of other traffic on the roads. For that, Leah was thankful.