“I don’t know,” the woman said. “It is so late.”
“Yes, Mrs. Login, it is,” Sarah’s voice became sharp. “And I can think of many places I would rather be. So, can you please open the door so we can get this over with?”
“Well, okay,” the woman said. “If you think it’s okay.”
“It’s fine,” Sarah said.
Sarah could hear the locks clicking as the woman turned the levers. The knob twisted and the door opened just enough to let a sliver of light through. An eye appeared in the thin opening.
“Let me have the papers,” the woman said.
Sarah looked at the eye looking at her. She had no papers to pass the woman. Sarah was losing patience with her and decided it was time to take control of the situation. With all of her weight behind her, she slammed her hand into the door. There was a cry of pain from behind the door and the eye vanished. Sarah pushed the door open and found the woman sitting on the floor holding her face with both hands.
“Why didn’t you just open the door like I asked?” Sarah snapped.
The woman sobbed as she looked up at her attacker. Sarah rolled her eyes. The woman reminded her of Allan. Always so weak. Always crying. She turned away from the woman and shut the door. She turned back to the woman and stepped toward her. Ms. Login pushed her way down a hallway with her feet, in a half crawl.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Login,” Sarah said, gently, “but you possess knowledge. Something that if you tell others . . . Well, let’s just say you could get me into a lot of trouble.”
Ms. Login shook her head. “I don’t know anything. I don’t even know who you are. Please. You must be mistaken.”
“Are you saying I’m wrong, Mrs. Login?” Sarah asked. “I don’t like people telling me I’m wrong. Is that what you’re doing?”
“I just . . . ,” Mrs. Login started. “I don’t know anything.”
The woman was sobbing again. “Will you stop that?”
“Don’t hurt me,” Mrs. Login begged.
“Hurt you?” Sarah laughed. “Is that what you think? I don’t want to hurt you. If you would have opened the door, I wouldn’t have hit you.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I want you to leave town,” Sarah said. “A week or two should be long enough. Of course, you can never mention me to anyone. And if you come back too soon I will have to pay you another visit. Or have someone else stop in to see you. But if you leave town, and I mean first thing in the morning, you won’t be harmed. Don’t you have some family who can put you up for a while?”
The woman nodded.
“That’s the spirit,” Sarah said. “It’ll be good for you to go visit family. You’ll be thanking me when this is all over.”
Mrs. Login sat on the floor looking up at Sarah with fear in her face. Sarah felt a rush of power, the kind of rush she got from tying a man up and played with him, tortured him. It made her grin.
“Now let’s get you packed,” Sarah said, offering a hand to the woman.
Ms. Login hesitated before taking Sarah’s hand, her own small bony hand dwarfed in the glove Sarah wore. Sarah pulled and lifted the woman off the floor. She was almost to her feet when it happened. The glove, too loose for Sarah’s dainty hand, slipped off. Mrs. Login, still clutching the leather, lost her balance. She reached out to Sarah with her other hand grabbing the sleeve of Sarah’s sweater. Sarah could hear the seam in the sweater’s shoulder tear as the woman fell away from her.
It was not a long fall. At Mrs. Login’s age, Sarah was concerned about the woman’s hip. She knew a break would put the woman in the hospital, not on a bus. Sarah knelt down and asked the woman if she was in any pain. There was no response. Sarah looked at the woman in wonder, noticing a trickle of blood on the floor under her head. Sarah raised the woman’s head and looked beneath. There on the floor next to the wall was a cast iron frog stained red with blood.
A short time later Sarah emerged from the house clutching her glove in a clenched fist. She stepped out into the night and shut the door behind her. It was late. Or was it early? She wasn’t sure. She walked into the night with images of the woman’s face looking back at her burned into her mind.
She had never killed anyone before. She had asked Jimmy to finish Mike off. And Jimmy’s and Ray’s deaths were her fault when you took into account they died doing what she asked them to do. But she had never physically caused the death of another human being. As she walked into the night, it occurred to her; she liked the feeling of power and strength that was pulsating through her.
Chapter 50
(The Report)
“Mr. Rivers,” Stephanie’s voice called to Gary through the open door between their offices. “Carl is on line one.”
“Carl?”
“Carl Nicks,” she said. “You hired him to check out the Tuttle woman.”
Gary reached for the phone, pressing line one and said, “Carl. I was just thinking about you. How are things going in . . . uh . . . in . . .?”
“Just pay my bill, Rivers,” Carl said. “You don’t have to remember anything else as long as you pay the bill.”
“Okay,” Gary said. “How are things going?”
“Interesting actually,” Carl said. “I thought this was going to be a boring case. As it turns out, there’s been some excitement.”
“What kind of excitement?” Gary asked. He didn’t want to hear anything exciting. He was looking forward to a nice boring report about a widowed woman. “Am I going to have problems?”
“Well, first of all,” Carl said, settling into his story telling mode. “While I’m out here trying to prove this woman’s husband is dead, there’s another guy trying to prove he isn’t. Says his client is a lawyer for the guy who claims to be Mr. Tuttle.”
“Oh my Lord,” Gary said. “This I don’t need.”
“There’s more,” Carl said. “I followed Mrs. Tuttle one night and she stops to have dinner with some guy. I’m thinking maybe he’s a boyfriend. You know, maybe even Mr. Tuttle’s killer. So, I check him out. Pass his photo around. Ask some questions.”
“Who is he?” Gary coaxed.
“He’s one of the detectives on her husband’s case.” Carl said.
“He’s who?”
“You heard right,” Carl said. “He is one of the lead detectives investigating her husband’s murder, meeting her late at night to have dinner.”
“You’re kidding?”
“I don’t kid, Mr. Rivers,” Carl said.
“What about the guy who claims to be her husband?” Gary asked. “Does he have a case?”
“I was just getting to him,” Carl said. “Turns out he was arrested for Allan Tuttle’s murder.”
“So, he isn’t her husband?”
“The police don’t think he is,” Carl said. “They’re holding him. And he isn’t booked as Tuttle.”
“That’s good,” Gary said. “So, we can move forward.”
“Looks like it,” Carl confirmed. “Although there are some things that still need to be checked out. I mean, there is definitely something odd about the whole thing.”
“Yea, yea,” Gary said. “The guy was arrested, right?”
“He was arrested,” Carl said. “I don’t know the charges yet, but he is in jail.”
“Good. Good,” Gary said. “Thank you, Carl. You keep me informed. And good work.”
“Whatever you say,” Carl said. He knew the agent was not hearing anything more than what he wanted to hear. He wanted a go-ahead to make a deal for the manuscript in his possession. It was, after all, about the money. Gary Rivers was all about money. Carl provided proof Gary’s wife was cheating on him and it wasn’t the fact the woman was screwing around on him that bothered him. Oh, he was upset by her betrayal. What devastated the literary agent though, was finding out she was renting hotel rooms at a couple hundred bucks a pop to rendezvous with her lover. Every conversation Carl had with the man while about the case, Gary brought up the cost of the rooms,
the dinners, the wine. It was all about the money.
Gary hung up the phone and smiled. He was free to do what he wanted with the manuscript. The man claiming to be Allan Tuttle was bogus. He was in jail and that was enough for Gary. He was ready to finish the deal for the book. If there was no Allan Tuttle, there was no one to sue him or a potential publisher for selling a book his wife stole from him. It could very well be the woman was telling the truth about being the real author. He wanted to believe it was true.
“Get me Jason Bernard on the phone,” Gary called to his secretary. “Tell him I’m ready to talk about the Sarah Tuttle novel.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Rivers.”
Gary spun in his chair and looked out the window at the city beyond. He could feel his heart racing. The excitement was too much for him. He would be glad to get this all over with so he could settle back to the day to day business of reading submissions and sending reject letters to the writers or writing proposals to publishers. He blamed everything on his ex-wife. He never had this problem before she ruined his life.
“Bernard is on line two,” Stephanie called out.
Gary picked up the phone, pressed line two and leaned back into the leather of his chair. With the friendliest salesman voice he had, he said, “Jason. So good of you to take my call.”
Chapter 51
(Jail)
Allan sat on a bench in the corner of a large holding cell that smelled like the restroom at a sports bar. He was convinced each of the dozen or so other men in the cell were watching him. Some of them appeared to be everyday citizens and Allan wondered why they were there with him. Others personified Allan’s vision of the drunken and disorderly type. A few, standing in another corner made Allan think of career criminals; thugs, thieves, drug dealers or worse. Allan watched from his corner with a mix of fear and curiosity. The writer in him wanted to observe and learn. Here in front of him was a wealth in characteristics for future antagonists in his novels. The Allan Tuttle in him wanted to cower in the corner and pray no one hurt him.
Just a few weeks ago, he would never have imagined being behind bars. The idea that he would ever have done anything that would get him arrested was preposterous. Now, sitting on a metal bench bolted to the floor and wall, he was beginning to realize there may be a possibility that his current situation could become permanent.
Allan sat staring at the wall beyond the bars wondering, not for the first time, what he had done to Sarah to make her turn on him the way she had. He was the one who had the right to be angry, after finding her with that man. He should have been the one to throw Sarah out and demand a divorce. Instead she had locked him out. She had told the police he was dead. He could only assume Sarah had identified the man Allan had struck in the head as her husband. Who was he? Wouldn’t his family want to know where he was? Wouldn’t someone miss him? Sarah was taking from them almost as much as she was taking from Allan. If he couldn’t prove that he was Allan, the man’s family may never know what happened to him.
“I hate these places,” a voice to his right startled Allan. He turned to see a man in a wrinkled suit and a couple days growth of beard. The man was looking at Allan with interest.
“Pardon me?” Allan said, his voice shaking.
“I hate jail cells,” the man said, his own voice gravelly. “Don’t you?”
“I guess,” Allan said.
“You a first timer?” the man asked. He could have been anywhere from forty to sixty. The disheveled look of him made it difficult for Allan to be sure.
“Yes,” Allan said. “You’re not?”
“Oh, no,” the man smiled as if he found humor in the question. “I spend a lot of time inside.”
“What’d you do?” Allan asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer.
“Who knows,” the man shrugged. “I go into a bar. I wake up here. Same story every time.”
“You don’t know what you did?” Allan was amazed.
“Never do until the hearing,” the man said. “Or just before, if I get to talk to the lawyer.”
“Aren’t you afraid?” Allan said. “You could have done something, you know, really bad.”
“I doubt it,” the man said. “I usually can’t do much of anything once I start drinking. I become a blubbering idiot. No control. Most likely I passed out in the street or got caught pissing on the sidewalk. What about you?”
“Me?” Allan looked at the man. “I was arrested for murder.”
The man’s eyes grew wide. He started to slide away on the seat.
“I didn’t do it,” Allan insisted. “I couldn’t have.”
“No one’s ever guilty,” the man said. “Look around you. Most of these men say they’re innocent. Especially the guilty ones.”
In a moment the man was huddled up on the far end of the cell keeping one eye on Allan and the other on everyone else. Allan was shocked at the response he provoked in the man. Yet, at the same time he knew how easily it could have been him, backing away and running to hide from a man arrested for murder. He scanned the faces in the cell and wondered why they were there and how many of them might, like him, actually be innocent. From the looks of them he decided most where there for bad reasons and very few, if any, were innocent. He shrank deeper into the corner and hoped no one else would try to make conversation.
“Jack Bolder,” a guard called out. Allan just sat there looking at the uniformed man through the bars. It took a minute for him to realize the man was calling for him. He stood and walked to the door to the cell.
“I’m Jack Bolder,” he said. The words sounded strange on his tongue.
“You have a visitor,” the guard said. He turned to another guard sitting behind a desk. “Unlock three.”
There was an audible clang of the metal latch disengaged and the guard pulled the door open. There were a number of pleas from other prisoners asking to be let out while Allan stepped through the opening.
“Stand there,” the guard pointed. Allan stepped to the spot and stopped. The guard closed the door and said, “Lock three.”
There was another clang as the lock engaged. The guard took Allan’s arm in a firm grip and led him to another locked door. They approached the door the sound of metal on metal echoed down the hall. The guard pushed it open telling Allan to step through. A second guard took Allan nodding to the first. As they turned away the door closed and locked. There were a series of four more doors and three more guards as he was passed through the corridors of the jail system like a baton until he was in a small room about three feet square. There was a phone on the wall and a chair facing a pane of glass. Through the glass Allan saw Henry Cutter sitting in a similar room. Allan waved, dropping his hand quickly at the absurdity of it.
Henry lifted the phone in his small room and gestured for Allan to do the same. Allan sat in the chair and followed the other’s lead.
“How you holding up?” Henry said into the phone.
“Not so well,” Allan said. “I’m scared, Henry.”
“We’re trying to get you out,” Henry said. “Ben thinks we can have you home by the end of the day. Hopefully right after the preliminary hearing.”
“Hearing?” Allan seemed surprised.
“There has to be a hearing,” Henry said. “To determine if there’s enough to take it to trial or not.”
“Trial?” Allan said. “Oh, my God. This is really happening, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you worry, son,” Henry said. “We’ll fight this every step of the way. As long as you’re innocent we’ll win this. You are, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Innocent.”
“Of course I am,” Allan said. “Don’t you believe me?”
“I do,” Henry said. “But I had to ask.”
Allan nodded. He knew it was his word against the words of Sarah, the police and anyone else who was saying he was a murderer. And the fact was, although he did not kill Allan Tuttle, he had hit a man in the head with a bookend. Was it possible
he was actually guilty of killing a man? Just because they had the name wrong didn’t make him innocent. Allan didn't know what to think. The police said the victim was strangled. He was sure he hadn’t strangled anyone.
“Mrs. Cutter and I will be at the hearing,” Henry said. “We’re going to support you all the way through this.”
“I appreciate it,” Allan said. “The two of you have been wonderful. You will never know how much that has meant to me.”
“You’re a good kid,” the rancher said. “Is there anything we can get you?”
“No,” Allan shook his head. “I’m in a cell with several other men. I don’t think it would be a good idea to have anything one of them might want.”
“You’re probably right,” Henry nodded.. “You watch yourself in there. Some men are born bad and won’t hesitate to hurt you.”
“I know,” Allan said. “Some of them act like they’re afraid of me.”
“Afraid of you?”
“Well, they think I killed someone,” Allan said. “That seems to bother them.”
“I guess it would,” Henry grinned.
“It’s amazing to think these men fear me for something I didn’t do,” Allan mused. “Can you believe fearing something that isn’t even true?”
“Are you kidding?” Henry said. “The greatest fear there is, is the fear a man creates in his own mind.”
Allan stared at the man through the glass and thought about his own life. He spent the greater part of his adulthood locked away in his house, afraid of his own shadow and the threat the world posed to him. In the end nothing he feared ever came to reality. Instead, he was in jail for a crime he did not commit, something he never dreamed of, never feared.
“You are a very wise man, Henry,” Allan said into the phone.
“Who? Me?” Henry smiled. “I’m not wise. I get all my information from Mrs. Cutter. Talk about wisdom. That woman knows way too much.”
The two of them laughed and talked for a few more minutes until Allan’s time was up. A guard came for Allan and he was guided back through the series of locked doors until he was again in the cell. Locked inside, he sat on a bench with his back to the wall watching the men incarcerated with him. He looked at the drunkard who had spoken to him earlier. With a heavy sigh, he leaned his head back to rest against the wall and closed his eyes, something only an hour ago he would never have dreamed of doing.
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