by Dave Daren
“For some reason, I don’t think that would work,” I said with another shake of my head.
I looked back at the clock in the box that rested in my passenger seat and heaved another sigh. I knew it was better than nothing that I found the clock for Jackson, but I couldn’t help but feel guilty that it had been destroyed before I could get my hands on it.
“I’m just going to bring Jackson his clock back and work through my thoughts,” I assured her with a slight smile. “Pinky promise.”
Evelyn gave a little huff that seemed to be in acquiescence before she stepped away from the car and gave the door a gentle shove. She didn’t say another word before she turned on her heels and started to head back toward the front door of Landon Legal.
I waited until she’d slipped back inside the building before I pulled my car away from the curb.
The box in the passenger seat gave an alarming shift, and I listened as the parts of the damaged clock rattled around, but there wasn’t anything I could do to fix the damage now.
The drive back to Greenview Apartments passed by too quickly, and I still hadn’t come up with a good way to explain to Jackson what had happened as I pulled into the lot.
I pulled up outside the building in the exact same space Brody had occupied the day before. Aside from the lack of children playing hopscotch outside, everything looked identical.
It was only then that I realized Jackson might not even be home, and that I might have driven the fifteen minutes from my office to his building for no good reason.
I shifted in my seat to pull my phone out of my pocket and quickly pulled up the contact information he’d given me the day before. I tapped his number once I’d found it and pulled up the box to send a new text message.
Hey, Jackson! This is Archer. Are you home? I’m outside, and it will only take a few minutes.
I read over the text message once, and then once more for good measure before I clicked the SEND button and watched the message whoosh off. The little text box turned green to indicate it had been sent successfully, so I leaned back in my seat while I waited for a response.
The place was quiet, and I assumed that was because most people were at work or school, but it was also unnerving. With no real distractions at hand, I turned up the dial on the radio to drown out the looming silence in my car while I let my thoughts drift back to the auction and the way that Sheriff Thompson had behaved.
He didn’t act like a guilty man, but he didn’t act innocent, either. I’d seen plenty of guilty men in court, and when I tried to mentally compare their actions to what I’d observed from Thompson, I kept coming up empty.
I realized that the thing Thompson was missing that the men I’d seen in court had in spades was fear. Sure, they all might have been guilty as sin, but those men had been confronted and might have had to actually face the repercussions of their actions.
Thompson acted like he was some sheriff from an old western movie, like he was the law that no one dared go against. I couldn’t be sure if the attitude had come about because of Abraham Knox’s financial backing and support, or if he’d just been born cocky, but it rubbed me the wrong way.
But it wasn’t just the fact that he was cocky that set the alarm bells off in my mind, and it wasn’t even the fact that he’d been hostile by my appearance at the auction, either. What really caught my attention were all the items up for auction that hadn’t been listed anywhere.
Jackson’s clock hadn’t been marked online as an item for sale which made me wonder if the rest of the items for sale that hadn’t been marked were also from wrongfully enacted raids.
I knew that Thomspon would never speak with me if I showed up at the sheriff’s department, that much was obvious. He’d either kick me out on my ass before I could step more than a foot past the door, or he’d find some way to lock me up in a bureaucratic nightmare straight from hell.
In fact, that was why I was trying to get a meeting time set up with a judge to issue an injunction for Natalie without having to get involved directly with the sheriff’s department at all. There was simply no way I could recover Natalie’s possessions if I had to deal with the sheriff directly.
But at some point, I would still have to talk to Thompson and there had to be a way to do that.
Before I could dwell on that thought any longer, a text popped up on my screen from the contactless number that belonged to Jackson.
I’m home. Is everything ok?
I gave a small sigh of relief that Jackson was actually home, and that I hadn’t driven out here for nothing. It wasn’t that long of a drive, but I still hated wasting any time if it wasn’t necessary.
I quickly typed up another message and sent it to him to let him know that I’d be coming up in a few minutes and reassuring him that nothing was wrong at all.
I made sure the message managed to send before I unbuckled my seatbelt and slid out of my seat and onto the sidewalk. I was once again glad that I’d dressed down for the day, because as warm as I felt in a t-shirt and jeans under the unforgiving sun, I knew it would have been a thousand times worse in a suit.
The wind had picked up the scent of freshly mowed grass from the apartment complex just down the block, and I inhaled deeply while I leaned back into my car to grab the box for Jackson.
After I had a firm grasp on the box, I nudged the driver’s side door shut with my hip and started up the sidewalk toward the entrance to the apartment building. I held the box level at my waist and tried to keep my pace steady to keep the pieces of the clock from rattling around and causing more damage to the already damaged heirloom.
I used my shoulder to push open the door to the lobby of Greenview Apartments and offered a small smile and nod to the young woman that fiddled with her key in the mailbox.
She didn’t smile in return, but she did give me a small nod of acknowledgement and then went back to loudly speaking into the microphone attached to the pair of white, thin headphones that dangled from her ear.
It couldn’t quite make out what she was discussing as I made my way to the door of the stairwell, but it sounded like her friend Addison definitely needed a new boyfriend.
No one had bothered to oil the hinges yet, so I had to slam my shoulder into the heavy door to get it to unstick from the frame enough to swing open. It hit the wall with a loud thud that reverberated up the stairwell before it started to fall closed behind me.
I shifted the box onto my hip, stepped around the door before it could close, and then started up the stairs. I took them two at a time all the way up to the third floor where Jackson’s apartment was.
With each step, the box at my hip rattled in protest, and the sound echoed around the stairwell like some horrible percussion instrument. I tried not to imagine what damage was being done, but every ding and crunch made me wince.
At least the door at the top of the stairs opened easier this time, and I stepped out into the ill-lit hallway without having to bruise my shoulder in the process. I shifted the box in my arms once again and walked slowly toward the apartment at the end. This time, the music that accompanied me was classic rock that seeped through the paper-thin walls.
I counted down the doors all the way toward Jackson’s and slowed to a halt in his doorway. The apartment next door was silent and all I could hear was the sound of Brian Johnson singing about a woman that shook him all night long.
Before I could shift the box from both of my arms to knock on Jackson’s door, I heard the metal chain lock slide in its track, and the door swung open.
I blinked in surprise but quickly schooled my features into an easy smile as Jackson looked at me with a deep furrow between both of his eyebrows.
He wore a deep-red t-shirt that looked like it had seen better days and a pair of basketball shorts that sagged low at his hips. The out-of-fashion sneakers on his feet were untied and the laces dragged along the ground as he took a step back from the doorway as if to give me the option of walking inside.
“Is e
verything alright?” he asked again, even though I’d already assured him that nothing was wrong in our text messages.
“Everything’s fine,” I chuckled and then gave him a small nod. “I just got back from the police auction you mentioned.”
For the first time, Jackson seemed to notice the box I held in my arms. I watched as his eyes skimmed and darted across what little of the contents he could see, and he looked back up at me with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“Is that my grandma’s clock?” he asked, and his voice sounded startlingly at odds with the bravado he carried himself with.
I extended the box toward him with a nod to give him the go-ahead to take it from me.
“Is it?” I asked. “I wasn’t sure, but I took a guess when I saw it up for auction. If it’s not your clock, then, well, I guess I just spent a lot of money on someone else’s keepsake.”
I continued to smile in his direction as he lifted the box from my hands with a shockingly gentle touch.
Jackson shifted the box in his grip to hold it steady against the doorframe with one hand and his thigh to hold it propped in place as he used his free hand to gingerly move around the clock and what remained of it in the box.
A small frown turned down the corners of his lips, and I felt yet another surge of guilt roil up in my stomach. I cleared my throat and scratched at the back of my mildly sun-reddened neck.
“I don’t know what happened to it,” I admitted with a small sigh as I dropped my hand back down to my side. “I won the auction, and it looked like everything was perfectly intact then. But after I waited in line to pay off my bid, they gave me back a broken clock.”
Jackson’s frown was gone as soon as it had appeared, however, as he straightened back up in the doorway and gripped the box with both hands.
“Nah, don’t apologize,” he said and metaphorically waved off my concern. “I’ve got super glue. It never really ticked right anyway.”
I wasn’t sure if he was just trying to make me feel better or telling me the God’s honest truth, but it made me feel less anxious, and some of the tension in my shoulders relaxed. I smiled and gave a small sigh of relief.
“How much did you end up betting on it?” Jackson asked with a curious tilt of his head and once again he reminded me of a pitbull. “Like, thirty? Forty?”
I cleared my throat and focused my attention on a spot on the hallway wall behind his head. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I didn’t want him to feel guilty about how much I’d paid, either.
Eventually, after a few seconds of wavering, I just decided to bite the bullet and tell him the truth.
“Four-hundred-and-fifty-five dollars,” I admitted without quite focussing on him.
Jackson’s eyes blew wide, and he nearly dropped the box in his hands as he took a disbelieving step backward in the doorway.
“I’m sorry, you paid how much?” he sputtered out the question before he looked back down at the clock again, as if he had somehow missed that it was completely plated in gold or maybe filled with diamonds.
I gave a sheepish laugh and forced myself to look at him as I slid my hands into my pockets to give them something to do. “Four and a half hundred,” I repeated with a deep sigh. “Let’s just say I’m not the local sheriff department’s favorite person.”
That felt like the world’s largest understatement.
Jackson turned slightly to set the box down on the sparse, rickety shoe rack in the hallway, and I thought that he must have gotten it rather recently because I didn’t recognize it from yesterday. He turned his attention back to me and pushed his hands up over his shaved head as he seemed to process the amount of money I’d spent for him.
“I’m not sure I’ve got that kind of money to drop to pay you back,” he admitted, and I could see just how much it pained him to say something like that.
I waved my hand as if I could physically brush off his concern.
“I didn’t do it because I thought you’d pay me back,” I said with an easy rise and fall of my shoulders. “I just knew I needed to help you however I could, no matter the cost.”
Jackson still had a look of shock on his face. He moved both hands to grip the back of his neck with his elbows pointed out akimbo as he seemed to try and come to terms with what I’d done for him.
“Shit, man,” he said the words with a breathless edge. “I dunno what to say.”
Usually when people said they were speechless, they were simply being hyperbolic, but Jackson looked like he couldn’t think of a single thing to add and that level of gratitude made the hassle Evelyn and I had been through that morning more than worth it in my eyes.
“Just think of it as payment for the information you gave us about the auction,” I suggested. “It really helped us out, and this was the least I could do. I know what it’s like to have something important to you like that.”
Jackson fixed me with a look that seemed to say ‘not bidding was the least you could do’, but I ignored it in favor of smiling at him again.
“Seriously, don’t worry about it, alright?” I said. “Just let me know if you think of anything else that could potentially help us out, and we’ll call it square.”
Jackson dropped both of his arms down to his sides and reached out with one hand to shake mine.
I gripped his hand and gave it a firm shake while I smiled.
“You’re a good dude, Archer,” he said once we released our grip on one another. “Maybe I don’t hate lawyers after all.”
He grinned just wide enough I could tell it was meant as a joke. I gave a genuine laugh and an understanding nod before I took a small step back from his doorway.
“I’ll try not to take that too personally,” I said. “I’ll let you get back to your day now.”
I tipped my head in his direction like Brody would have tipped his hat, and before Jackson could try and pay me again, I started back down the hallway. I heard the door latch shut behind me again with a metallic click.
I didn’t recognize the song that Jackson’s neighbor blared now, but it had the same heavy guitar and rock n’ roll feel of every other album AC/DC had ever put out, so I assumed it was a continuation of the same tracklist.
When I was a kid, my parents had listened to a lot of country music, a lot of Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash, so my knowledge of classic rock was a little lacking, but I’d tried to make up for the gaps in my education in college. Despite that effort, there were still plenty of songs I couldn’t identify even today.
I shouldered open the stairwell door as I caught the faint whiff of something that smelled suspiciously like earth and skunk. I couldn’t say I was surprised, but I was glad I’d decided against bringing Evelyn with me to Greenview.
I took the steps back down to the lobby two at a time, just like I’d done on the way up, and moments later, I stepped into the lobby.
The girl at the mailboxes had disappeared and was replaced by an older woman with two small children clinging to her legs. They both had mops of tousled blonde hair and looked joined at the hip.
The woman smiled in my direction as she pulled her key from the mailbox, and I offered her a small wave of acknowledgement as I made my way out the front doors of Greenview and back into the sunshine.
While the Greenview Apartment building wasn’t the sort of place I could imagine myself making my home, it seemed like it worked for plenty of people, despite the thin walls and the… interesting scents that wafted down the hallways.
It was then that the thought struck me.
If I wanted to talk to Thompson without being stonewalled or given the runaround, the best place to do it would be at his house.
I didn’t have his address at the ready, but I’d been able to find Jackson in the Whitepages easily enough. I was certain that I’d be able to find Sheriff Thompson just as quickly, especially given that he was a public figure in town.
I walked over to my car, settled back into the driver’s seat, and turned the key in the ignition to blas
t my air conditioning before I pulled my phone from my pocket to call Brody’s work line.
“What’s up?” he asked in lieu of a standard greeting.
I held the phone securely between my shoulder and my ear as I started to back out of my parking spot along the edge of the curb.
“Did Evelyn catch you up to speed?” I asked instead of actually answering his question directly.
Once I’d cleared out of the parking space, I shifted to hold my phone to my ear with one hand and kept the other on the steering wheel. Luckily for me, the traffic in front of Greenview was practically non-existent at this time of day, and I didn’t have to wait to pull onto the road.
I could hear the sound of Brody’s fingers as they punched down on his keyboard across the line and then heard the familiar squeak of his chair as I assumed he leaned back. I could imagine his exact pose in my mind with his chair angled so far back I was afraid it might break, and one hand on his chin while the other drummed against the desk as he held his work phone to his ear with his shoulder.
“She told me about the auction and the clock,” he said. “Did you really spend five-hundred dollars on a damn broken clock?”
I could practically see the incredulous look on his face from his tone. I sighed and slowed to a stop at the red light in front of me. While I had my foot on the brakes, I reached forward to turn off the radio so that I could hear Brody a little better. When the light switched to green, I resumed holding the wheel with one hand and my phone with the other.
“It wasn’t broken when I’d agreed to pay five-hundred dollars,” I argued, even though I knew it was a moot point.
Brody gave a loud laugh at my expense, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.
“You’re telling me you wouldn’t have done the same thing?” I asked and listened to the buzz of static across the line as Brody went silent.
He heaved a sigh that seemed to echo in my car.
“Just because you’re right doesn’t make it any less funny,” he said, and I couldn’t argue the point. It was, objectively, a little funny.
