“Thanks,” I said. “Now, cover your ears.”
I rolled down the window, and, with my left hand on the wheel, reached out with my right and squeezed off two rounds.
Both missed.
“How many rounds you got?” I asked.
“Not many,” she said.
“Uh oh.”
“Don’t miss and it won’t be an issue.”
“Oh, okay,” I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster at the moment.
I fired two more rounds. Both of them missed again.
“This is embarrassing,” she said with a laugh.
“Yeah,” I said, “laugh it up. It’s all fun and games until they kill us.”
This was a different Susan-witty, charming, cool under pressure. Not to mention, she carried a gun-how cool was that?
“I’ve got an idea,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt and turning around in the seat. She reached back and slid open the center panel of glass. “I’ll steer and you shoot through there.”
“Couldn’t get less results,” I said.
When I turned toward the van, I thought I noticed something about the plates, but it was too dark to be sure. So before I fired again, I reached under the passenger seat and pulled out a Q-beam spot light, plugged it into the cigarette lighter, and shined it on the van.
The van started slowing immediately, but I fired the last two rounds anyway. One ricocheted off the bumper, the other missed completely.
“It’s another couple of miles to East Point,” Susan said, “Why’d they stop?”
“They didn’t want me to see their bumper,” I said.
“What?” she asked in surprise. “Why?”
“Because,” I said, “it held a Louisiana license plate.”
When we reached the Driftwood, she asked me up to her room, and I politely declined.
“I just don’t want this night to end,” she said. “Not yet.… Take your wife for a walk on the beach. Please, John.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” I said. “It’s that I want to too much.”
“Remember what you were saying earlier,” she said. “About the law being unable to create desire?”
I nodded.
“Well, if you have the desire,” she said, “the law is on your side. I’m still Mrs. John Jordan.”
CHAPTER 37
I knew sleeping with my ex-wife was a mistake before our clothes hit the floor.
We had just come up to her room to change clothes before taking a moonlit stroll along the beach, but she looked and smelled and felt so familiar, and over a year without physical intimacy had been an eternity too long.
Her eyebrows arched into a question that meant only one thing. It was how she had initiated sex during our marriage-never verbally, not once, just an expression that I couldn’t resist.
I would never again underestimate the power of shared history, like the connection that binds you to school friends for life, though you have nothing but school in common. Susan and I had shared a life together, and that shared experience wrapped itself around us like elastic bands that allowed for only so much separation before they snapped us back together again. I hadn’t thought about her in nearly a year. Now as beauty, softness, and a sweet scent filled my senses, my mind could think of little else, and my body couldn’t quit wanting her.
We lunged at each other, kissing so hard and long that I was sure we had drawn blood, as we unceremoniously ripped each other’s clothes off. My mouth found her breasts as my fingers danced around her wet and waiting body. I knew what she liked.
“Oh, God, John,” she said breathlessly.
She was still beautiful, her brown hair lighter and shorter, her eyes still the color of brandy-windows of the deep decanter of her soul. If her body had changed at all, it was firmer and fitter, the muscles in her arms and abs hard and tight. But she was still soft in all the right places. Her bottom and breasts were still full and not too firm and her secret place was still as soft and as wet as a kiss in the rain.
She grabbed me hard with her hand, grabbed the throbbing anger, guilt, discipline, denial, and frustration and it took all I could do to hold back the flood threatening the dam of my determination.
On many occasions, Susan and I had made love. We had become lost in each other’s souls even as we entered each other’s bodies. We had been enraptured. This was not one of those times.
On other occasions, Susan and I had just had sex. We had searched each other’s bodies for what was missing in our souls. This was one of those times-a time after the end of the innocence. This was not about love. This was about sex. About desire. It was also about anger and regret.
I was reminded of my sex life with Susan-how she had run hot and cold. How she had found the safety and security of monogamy in a loving and committed relationship monotonous and restricting, longing instead for forbidden fruit; passion without permission.
For Susan, I thought, stolen bread is sweeter, and I wondered if she had lied to me in the truck about not having been with anyone else while we had been apart. Actually, she had avoided the question.
I should stop.
But I couldn’t.
As my body went limp, collapsing onto hers, a wave of guilt and regret swept over me, tugging me down, the force of its undertow too much for me to resist.
What have I done? I wondered.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“For what?” she asked in shock. “That was great. So intense.”
We were lying side by side on the floor between the two double beds, never having made it to either of them.
I felt empty, the void in my heart matching the absence in the room.
What was it? I wondered. What was missing?
And then it blew me back like the vacuous whirlwind of Job. Love was missing. God was missing.
“Wasn’t it? God, it was good.”
I nodded.
“But it always felt good,” she said. “And we had it good there for a while, too, didn’t we? I mean in every way. We were good together.”
Susan was always chatty after sex, which was all right with me, because I was always mellow and reflective. I used to love to listen to her, to the stuff that came pouring out of her with the wash of hormones orgasm produced.
She was quiet for a moment, then said, “God, that was good.”
Suddenly, I was overcome by an oppressive and overwhelming sense of loss for what might have been. We had been in love, we had dreams, we had-
“Hey,” she said, leaning up on her elbow, “did I ever tell you I was sorry?”
I nodded.
“Well, let me tell you again. I really am,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m so sorry for… for what happened… for all that I’ve done.”
My hard heart melted and I had to blink back stinging tears of my own.
“I’m sorry, too, Susan,” I said.
She smiled at me, tears at the corners of her eyes. “I still love you,” she said. “I’ve tried to stop, tried to convince myself that I don’t anymore, but I do.”
She waited, but I couldn’t say the same thing back to her exactly. Not yet. An awkward silence crept into the room like a fog, and I could feel the distance between us increasing.
“I want to make love to you,” I said.
“Whatta you call what we just did?”
“Sex,” I said. “But I’d like to love you body and soul.”
“Take me down to the beach,” she said.
I did.
We walked down the beach, holding hands as we followed the twisting and turning path of the tide as if mirroring the path of our lives.
After a while she stopped and turned toward me. When she looked up at me, I took her face in my hands and kissed her gently.
With tears in her eyes, she whispered, “Make love to me.”
I did.
And this time love, as well as the God who is love, was present.
No anger, no hate, no blame, and no shame.
Just love and appreciation for the love we once had, for the people we once had been.
Our love-making on the beach beneath the warm glow of the full moon was tender and sweet, our bodies quickly finding familiar rhythms, seeming to nurture each other with a desire to warm and heal. She felt like home in my hands, and I experienced a rush of emotions similar to our first times together before the cops, before the booze, before the Stone Cold Killer.
Her climax, though quiet and sweet, was as intense as it had ever been, and she cried softly afterwards.
Tears of grace.
CHAPTER 38
The morning after.
Looking at myself in the bathroom mirror of my small, dilapidated trailer, dark circles beneath bloodshot eyes-the only color on an otherwise pale face, I strained for recognition. Who was this stranger staring back at me?
I looked bad. I felt worse.
I’d had a lot of mornings after in my life, and this one was like all the rest, filled with guilt and regret. I had made love to a woman I wasn’t sure I could ever love again, and the fact that she was still my wife couldn’t justify that. The pain inflicted, though not yet felt, hung over me like a dark cloud.
Like the stranger in the mirror, my surroundings seemed foreign to me. Dangling hollow door, paper-thin paneling, curling linoleum-covered creaky floor, rust-spotted lime-green sink beneath a leaky faucet, and cabinet doors that no longer fastened shut-it was bad. I deserved worse.
I needed to talk to someone, to share the dark thoughts slamming into the walls of my mind, to release the conflicting feelings swirling inside my chest cavity, but who? Who could hear my confession, who could offer compassion, comfort, and wise counsel?
A moment later my phone rang.
“Hey,” Susan said, her voice sultry and sleepy.
“Hey,” I said. “I was just thinking about you.… about us.”
“I figure you’ve got a lot of that to do,” she said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m going back to Atlanta today,” she said.
“Why?” I asked.
“To let you think,” she said. “I’m a different person, John. If you think there’s any possibility we can be together again, we’ll have to start over-get to know the people we’ve become. I’m in no hurry. I won’t rush you.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I don’t regret last night,” she said. “No matter what happens. So please don’t feel guilty about it. I’m a big girl and not nearly as fragile as I used to be. Don’t worry about me.… But think about me.”
“I will,” I said, and I felt an enormous weight begin to lift, as if the newness of the morning might bring hope rather than regret. “Thank you.”
“I know you,” she said. “You’re predictable in such a good way. I loved who you were.… I love more who you’ve become.”
“I love who you’ve become, too,” I said.
“Becoming,” she said. “Becoming.”
“Of course.”
“Good-bye,” she said.
“Good-bye.”
“No regrets.”
“None.”
“The investigation’s over,” Fortner said.
He had been standing in the parking lot waiting for me, and had quickly walked over to my truck as soon as I pulled in.
“What?” I asked in shock as I got out of my truck and closed the door.
“At least for us,” he said, and we began walking toward the admin building. “Tom Daniels showed up this morning and took over. Didn’t you take his daughter out last night?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Isn’t he your ex-father-in-law or something?”
“Or something, as it turns out,” I said. “We’re still married.”
He shook his head in disbelief and smiled. “I’m not even assisting him this time,” he said, his face growing angry. “He’s got a team from FDLE. Evidently, Bobby Earl called the governor.”
I shook my head wearily.
Across the street, near the employees’ softball field and next to the training building, several news trucks were setting up, as reporters, mics in hand, were checking makeup and hair as camera men were making final adjustments to tripods and video cameras.
Following my gaze, Pete said, “Oh, I saw you on Larry King. Did you talk to Bobby Earl?”
“We were in different states,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Hey,” he added, stopping suddenly, “what the hell happened to your truck?”
I told him.
“Van was from Louisiana?” he asked. “You sure?”
I nodded.
“But it couldn’t’ve been Bobby Earl,” he said. “He was with Larry King at the time.”
“Which was very smart,” I said.
Further down the road, past the training building and obstacle course, members of the pistol team were practicing on the firing range, preparing for a tournament this coming weekend. From this distance, the.38 rounds sounded like the small pops of firecrackers.
“Did you see who it was?”
“Who was what?”
“In the van?”
“Just a glimpse,” I said, “but it looked like DeAndré Stone.”
“Oh shit,” he said. “He came into the institution last night.”
“For what?”
“Evidently his uncle has given him a volunteer badge and made it clear to the control room sergeant that he can come and go as he likes as a representative of Bobby Earl Caldwell Ministries.”
“But what did he do?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I just saw his name on the control room log. But guess who’s back in the infirmary?”
“Cedric Porter?”
He nodded.
“Is he okay?”
“No, but he’s gonna live.”
“We need to-”
“Assign security to him? Already done.”
“Great,” I said. “Good work.”
“Thanks.”
Correctional officers, most of them in mud-covered trucks with tall CB antennas bobbing up and down in the wind, and employees began to trickle down the long road that leads to the prison, each of them straining to look at the news vans and reporters. Soon the empty parking lot was filling up, doors slamming, alarms twerping, the last bites of breakfast being eaten, and Pete and I, suddenly in a crowd, had to lower our voices.
“This has got to stop,” I said. “Dad’s still working with NOPD on the Caldwells, but I’m gonna try to work it out so I can interview them in the next day or so.”
“Speaking of which,” he said, “your dad’s off the case, too.”
I nodded.
“Stone wants to see us in his office,” he said. “Says if we continue to investigate, he’s going to send us home and file criminal charges.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Are you going to stop?”
“Of course,” I said. “I always do what I’m told.”
Tom Daniels was waiting for me in Stone’s outer office with his best glare. I tried not to quake. The door to Stone’s office was ajar, and I could hear that he was on the phone.
I walked over to Daniels, and in a low voice that Stone’s secretary couldn’t hear, said, “Dad.”
“Son…” he whispered back, “… of a bitch.”
Tom Daniels’ puffy face was lined with tiny broken blood vessels and looked far older than its fifty-seven years. His gin-soaked eyes were bloodshot and gray like his hair, which was in disarray.
“You’ve always had a way with words,” I said. “And always been way too sentimental when it comes to family.”
“We’re not family,” he said.
“Oh, but we are,” I said. “My wife, your daughter, never filed our divorce papers. We discussed the whole thing over dinner last night. We’re thinking of getting back together and moving in with you and Mom.”
He was speechless, his anger seething beneath the fiery surface of his skin.
CHAPTER 39
When we were all seated inside Stone’s office, he said, “I’ll make this brief. Inspector, Chaplain, you are no longer to investigate the murder of Nicole Caldwell.”
“We can’t just stop,” Fortner said. “We’re too far in. Getting too close to finding the killer.”
“That’s my job,” Daniels said. “I appreciate what you’ve done, Pete, and I’ll use it, but you can’t work on this one anymore.”
Fortner started to continue his protest, but Stone stopped him by raising his hand. “I didn’t call you in here to discuss it,” he said. “Merely to inform you. Do you understand?”
I nodded, but Fortner shook his head. “Do y’all want the killer to get away for some reason? Is he a family member, something like that?”
The sudden rage from Stone was palpable, but he spoke very calmly. “If it matters,” he said, “this was not my decision. I’m confident in your abilities. Both of you.”
“But-” Fortner began again.
“The media attention changes everything. This is coming from the top,” Daniels said. “And not just of the department. Your warden’s dangerously close to losing his job. If you want to join him, then persist in your insubordination. If not, back off and stay the hell out of my way. Both of you.”
Fortner nodded and Daniels looked over at me. “Understand?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I’m not playing here,” he said. “Don’t nod your head in here and then go out there and fuck up my investigation. I’ve been empowered to fire and or file criminal charges against anybody who gets in my way on this thing. So don’t fuck with me.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” I said with a smile, and Fortner laughed out loud.
“I mean it,” Daniels said angrily.
“Me, too,” I said.
When no one else said anything, I looked over at Stone. “Are you doing this to protect DeAndré?”
He looked genuinely perplexed. “If it turns out that Bobby Earl is guilty-and I seriously doubt it will-DeAndré can find another job.”
You’re either a very good liar or your love makes you clueless, I thought, wondering which was more likely.
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