Death Benefits

by Jennifer Becton

  As I walked across the parking lot to the convenience store, I adjusted my jacket, making sure that my gun and badge were covered, and I paused at the glass door to check my reflection. With my DOI paraphernalia out of sight, I looked pretty much like any other Southern businesswoman, except my hair was a little less sculpted and I wasn’t wearing nearly as much makeup. Although I didn’t go so far as to break my mother’s hard-and-fast rule about never leaving the house without “putting my face on,” I’d given up on trying to be a cop and attain true Southern belle style long ago. I kept things simple, and that’s how I planned to play this little con on Chad the faker.

  I spotted Chad—or the man I assumed was Chad based on the fact that he was the only employee in sight—sitting behind the counter on a stool and watching a game show on a small black-and-white TV. He looked like the kind of guy who’d gotten distracted by booze, cigarettes, and perhaps drugs in his early years. His face wasn’t sad exactly, but his unfocused gaze hinted that he liked to float through life without much direction or ambition.

  Sadly, I was familiar with that look.

  But that was neither here nor there. My job was to motivate him properly.

  I glanced around, assessing, and smiled when I saw a large display of bottled water. Shrink-wrapped cases were stacked in the back corner of the store, and with twenty-four bottles per case, they looked heavy.

  Plus, they were on sale.

  Deception and a deal. Couldn’t beat it.

  I walked to the display, leaned down, and hefted one case, making a great pretense of struggling to the counter under its supposed weight. Actually, it wasn’t a complete act. My wounded arm was still gaining strength after the shooting, and putting too much strain on it didn’t feel so great.

  I dropped the first case in front of the register and leaned over it, making sure to give a little sigh of distress.

  Chad turned away from the TV, and his expression transformed from annoyance to amusement as he looked from the case of water to me.

  I definitely had his attention.

  “Whew!” I said with a giggle. “That’s heavy.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Chad said. “Water weighs more than you think.”

  “Mind if I leave it here while I get a few more?”

  “No, ma’am. You leave anything here you’d like,” he said to my chest.

  I smiled and batted my eyelashes brainlessly and then managed to make two more similar trips. Chad watched me all the way.

  “That all?” he asked me over the stack of three cases of water as he rang up my selections.

  “Yeah,” I said, pouting as I handed him my credit card. “I don’t know how I’m going to get all this in my SUV, though. That wore me out!”

  “Aw,” he said, leaning over the counter toward me and winking. “I can give you a hand…with anything you’d like.”

  I squelched a grimace as Chad came around the counter, hefted all three cases of water at once, and followed me out the door.

  “Which way?” he asked over the water.

  “Over here,” I said as I led him to my SUV and hit the door locks.

  I didn’t open the lift gate for him, hoping he’d give it a try. That would make an excellent photo op.

  Without a single wince of pain, Chad the faker balanced the water in his right arm and yanked the door latch with great aplomb.

  Seriously, it was just too easy.

  This guy was perfectly capable of returning to work, I thought, as he dropped the cases of water in the cargo area, slammed the lift gate, and leaned against it.

  “You havin’ a party or something?”

  “Nope,” I said, stepping around him to the driver’s seat and rubbing away the pain in my left arm. “I’m just helping out a friend.”

  “Your friend must be really thirsty,” Chad said.

  “Nah,” I said and then added cryptically, “she just really wanted to go home.”

  I shut my door and cranked the engine, leaving Chad the faker shrugging behind me.

  Vincent was waiting where I’d left him, and when I pulled beside him and opened the window, he smiled as I leaned over to talk to him.

  “Looks like Janice got what she needed,” Vincent said, gesturing to the empty spot where her Corolla had been parked. “You probably saved her a couple days of surveillance.”

  I grinned at Vincent as I popped the locks on the SUV. “If only all insurance investigations could be wrapped up that easily….”

  Five

  “Want to head to Cranford County?” I asked as Vincent opened the passenger door. “That will give us a good look both at the incident itself and at the insurance repercussions it caused.”

  He slid onto the leather seat and slammed the door behind him, and just watching him made me conscious of the throbbing in my arm. With the water-bottle scam and the hours of driving, I’d probably pushed my injury too hard today, and I wasn’t done yet. Before pulling out of the lot, I groped in the back seat for my bag. I was totally game for hitting the fire scene, but there was no need for me to be in pain.

  I popped two pills of ibuprofen and realized I probably should have been subtler. Vincent was studying me with a wrinkle of concern between his eyes.

  “What?” I asked, hating my defensive tone.

  “You’re hurting,” he said. “Admit it.”

  I considered lying, but I figured it was useless. He’d caught me fair and square. There was no point in pretending. “Well, I was shot. I’ll be fine as soon as these kick in.” I jiggled the pill bottle at him before dropping it back into my bag.

  “Yeah,” Vincent said, his voice laced with a healthy dose of skepticism. He checked his watch. “It’s after five already. You’d tell me if you needed a break, right?”

  No, I thought.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Humph,” Vincent said as if he didn’t believe me, and I felt a twinge of guilt. “Look. I can read you pretty clearly. Your jaw is clenched, and there’s tension in your shoulders. If we’re going to be partners, we’ve got to be honest with each other. At least about stuff like this.”

  “Humph,” I echoed.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured me. “I don’t expect to hear all your dirty little secrets.” Then he winked and added, “But I wouldn’t stop you if you have anything to confess.”

  Vincent was leaning toward me with a mixture of concern and amusement on his face, and I smiled at him despite myself. He had a point. We were partners, and we were supposed to be watching each other’s backs. We were supposed to protect each other, and that was more difficult if one of us was impaired.

  But I was not impaired. I was sore.

  I told him so and added, “I’m fine to walk the fire scene if you are.”

  “Fine by me,” he said, still looking skeptical.

  To put an end to the discussion, I threw the SUV into gear and left the parking lot. Once I was back on the road, I decided to change the subject and ask for some honesty of my own. And I wasn’t going to mince words. “So on the topic of confessions: what made you request a transfer to Mercer?”

  I could feel him looking at me, possibly searching for something in my expression, but I kept my eyes on the road.

  “Justin,” Vincent said. “He spent a lot of time at the lake with me, decided he liked it, and now he’s taking up space in the guest room permanently.”

  I looked at him now and gave him a wide smile. I didn’t have all the details, but I knew he was trying desperately to form a relationship with his son. “That’s great, Mark,” I said, meaning it. “I’m really happy for you both.”

  Vincent’s blank expression seemed to falter a bit when I used his first name. I’d said it without thinking, but now it felt a bit like I’d seen him in his underwear. And no matter how appealing that image might be, it seemed too intimate for partners who most often used each other’s last names.

  I looked back at the road.

  Before either of us could say another word,
my phone trilled and I grabbed it from the cup holder, eager for a distraction from the conversation.

  My mother.

  Not the distraction I’d hoped for, but I’d take it.

  Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe she was calling to find out how I was feeling after my first day back at work. I had been shot in the arm, after all. Checking up on me would be a nice, normal, motherly thing to do, but the days of my mother being nice and normal were long since over, and I had no such luck.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said in a fake cheery voice as I shrugged an apology to Vincent.

  “Oh my God,” my mother said, clearly panicked, “you’ve got to get downtown now. Your sister’s had an accident.”

  “Had an accident?” I repeated, not comprehending what she meant. I clicked the volume button on my phone up a few notches. “She was in a car accident?”

  “Yes, an accident, but not in her car….” My mother’s voice trailed off into silence, and I knew she was crying. My chest tightened as I listened, and I could feel Vincent looking at me, curious. “She fell. She’s at the Mercer Med Center. They say she needs emergency surgery right away!”

  “Fell?” I repeated, not sure how a simple fall could result in such a serious injury. “Emergency surgery?”

  “Yes, fell,” my mother explained. “Down some stairs at that bar downtown. You know the one where the musicians used to hang out in the seventies.”

  I knew the one. And it was on the tip of my tongue to ask what in the world my sister had been doing in a bar before the end of a workday, but the sad truth was that I already knew.

  My sister was an alcoholic, and no matter what I did, I could never manage to disentangle myself from her chaotic life. I tried not to be an enabler, but that was easier said than done. I managed to stop sending her money, I didn’t give her a comfy place to live, and I tried not to get my hopes up every time she had a good day. But I had vowed to do one thing for Tricia, and that was to bring her rapist—the man who had begun her downward spiral—to justice.

  Beyond that, I saw her at our family dinner each Sunday—well, family dinner minus my father—and generally tried to keep myself from getting sucked into her drama.

  But I knew I couldn’t stay away. Tricia was hurt and needed surgery. I had to go to her. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said into the phone and then disconnected.

  With a quick glance at Vincent, I explained what had happened. “I’ve got to get to the hospital. Find out what’s going on. Let’s skip Cranford until tomorrow when we’ve got our meeting with Eva.”

  Vincent nodded and seemed to be waiting for me to say something else, explain what was going on, but I didn’t.

  My mind was already playing over the possible reasons my sister required surgery. She could have hit her head, broken a leg, or sustained internal injuries. The jitters took a firm hold of me by the time I dropped Vincent at the DOI and arrived at Mercer Med. I rushed into the emergency room, convinced that Tricia was at death’s door, and went straight to the front desk.

  “Tricia Jackson,” I said between gulping breaths.

  The woman seated there, a middle-aged Latina wearing muted green scrubs and an impassive expression, turned her unconcerned eyes on me and said, “Let me check the computer.” She tapped deliberately at the keys with long, manicured nails. “She’s in surgery,” she informed me with her eyes still on the screen.

  Exasperated, I plunked both elbows on the tall counter in front of me. “Okay,” I said, drawing out the word. “What’s being operated on exactly? What injuries did she sustain? What’s her prognosis?”

  The woman looked at me from under her brows, and I could tell by her expression that she was about to tell me to calm down—or stick it—when I heard my mother’s voice behind me. “Baby girl, over here.”

  I turned and found my mother leaning out of a waiting area. She looked as she always did—perfectly dressed in a boxy suit from the 1990s and poufy sandy blond bangs—but as usual, her pulled-together—if out-of-date—clothing was an illusion. Her wide, watery eyes told the true story.

  I walked up, trying to appear calm and composed, and gave my mom a big hug. She clung to me for a long time, and I let her, even though she was crushing my injured arm and I really wanted to hear what was going on.

  “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here,” my mother said as she let go of me.

  “I am too, Mom,” I said, even though I wished with every fiber of my being that this weren’t happening right now. Or ever.

  My mother led me to a vacant corner of the sterile, beige waiting area, and I watched as she wiped the tears from her eyes with her fingertips.

  “Mom,” I said gently, trying to keep her in a serene frame of mind while simultaneously extracting information from her. “Can you tell me what is going on? Why does Tricia need surgery?”

  “She fell down some stairs at that bar, and her ankle….” She paused to wipe her eyes again. “Her ankle was all messed up.”

  I looked at her. “All messed up? What does that mean? What did the doctor say?”

  “It’s broken. It looks horrible, all swollen and blue. They said the fracture was cutting off a blood vessel, and if she hadn’t come in right away like she did, she could have lost her foot—” My mother’s voice broke in a pitiful strangled sound that was somehow echoed by the strangled feeling around my heart.

  We gathered ourselves for a moment, and then my mother continued. “They sent me out here to wait. The surgery should be starting any minute now.”

  I let out a big breath and tried to think logically about Tricia’s injury. No head wounds or broken back. No fractured vertebra. No brain swelling.

  It was just an ankle, and the doctors said she’d come to the hospital in time to save her foot.

  Relieved, I decided it was time to get a few more details about the situation. “When did all this happen?”

  “Late this afternoon. Tricia called me around five from the emergency room, and she was crying and in awful pain.”

  And she was already drunk by 5 PM.

  “She spent the whole afternoon at the bar?” I asked. I hadn’t meant to sound so disappointed, but that’s how it came out.

  My mother brushed her bangs out of her narrowed eyes. “So she was at a bar today,” she said with a huff. She dropped her voice and added, “Do we have to talk about this now?”

  “Was she drunk?” I asked, ignoring her wish to leave it alone. I couldn’t skip the fact that my sister, who was supposedly working at a salon with the intention of doing hair for a living in the future, was drinking in the middle of a workday.

  “No!” my mother whispered. “She was just a bit tipsy.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes, but I knew that my mother, bless her, wanted to help Tricia, and she seemed to think the best way to do that was to put a happy face on the problem. No matter how often my sister ended up sloshed and pulled over for DWI, my mother always believed it was a gross injustice. Her daughter was a good girl. A Southern lady doesn’t get drunk.

  She was just like any other mother, I guessed. She wanted to see the good in her children, and she didn’t want to see them hurting.

  Too bad it never seemed to pan out for her.

  By eight o’clock, the late-summer sky was nearly dark, and Tricia was still in surgery. My mother and I had heard nothing from the doctors yet, and even though we tried to distract ourselves with hospital cafeteria food, it did no good.

  We just sat there together, making me even more aware of the one who was missing from the picture: my father. I knew my mother wouldn’t like it, but I had to ask. “Have you called Dad?”

  My mother looked away, giving me a good view of the back of her head. “No.”

  I studied her hair as if it might reveal her thoughts. I understood why she hadn’t called. After Tricia’s rape, my father had left. It was as simple as that.

  Neither my mother nor my father handled Tricia’s rape well at all. My father turned angry and quiet, while my mo
ther became an empty socialite intent on staying in the before time. The before-rape time. She clung to the past, while my father shook it off with a surprising vehemence.

  He filed for divorce, got a house about half an hour south of Mercer, and kept mostly to himself. He’d show up now and again when we needed his help, but that was it. He had come to visit me after the shooting, and he took care of removing all traces of that awful night from my house, but that was the first time he’d come for me and not my sister.

  I wished it weren’t that way. Like my mom, I wished we could go back to the past and have a full family Sunday meal. Have a normal family life.

  That would never happen again, but it still wasn’t right for my mother to keep important information from him. My father deserved to know his daughter was in the hospital.

  I stood up. “I’ll call him.”

  My mother looked as if she wanted to protest, but she remained silent and only nodded.

  I stepped into the hallway to make the call, and my father answered on the third ring.

  “Hey, girl,” he said by way of greeting. That was as affectionate as my dad’s nicknames ever got, but I didn’t mind. I knew that somewhere in there he cared about me.

  “Hey, Dad.” I paused, trying to figure out how best to break the news of Tricia’s accident, and decided to be blunt. That was my father’s usual MO, so he’d probably appreciate it. “Mom and I are at the Mercer Med Center with Tricia. She broke her ankle and is in surgery.”

  For a moment, he didn’t speak, and I could imagine how his face had gone impassive and hard like it always did in a crisis. “What happened?”

  I filled him in on the details, omitting the part about the drinking and the bar, and then told him all I knew about the surgery.

  When I finished, there was a long silence on the line. “How is this being paid for?”

  I leaned against the hallway wall. I hadn’t even considered money. My sister had no health insurance. My mother couldn’t afford to pay a premium for her, or she definitely would have. My father, on the other hand, staunchly refused Tricia any sort of financial help, which he considered enabling. And probably rightly so. As for me, I was conflicted. I certainly couldn’t afford to pay for her health insurance on my salary, but I often wondered what I would do if I could.