Ruckman Road: An Alex Penfield Novel

by Robert W. Stephens

  Finally, I met a man who claimed to be friends with Talbot, but he didn’t know if Talbot was married or single, where he worked, or when he had even moved to the fort. He was convinced Talbot had committed suicide, even though the man never seemed depressed to him. It seemed that inaccurate information was everywhere, but no actual facts where to be found.

  A few weeks passed, and I went out of town for business, one of those Army trips where I travel to the middle of nowhere and eat bad food for a week. During one of our nightly phone calls, my wife told me she had seen several police cars outside the home of our neighbor who had died or at least had been presumed to have died. She had taken the dog on a walk and found herself inside the fort. The police cars lined the entire road from the small wooden church all the way to the main gate entrance.

  Strangely, there was nothing mentioned in the news about it the next day. When I got home, I asked a few neighbors if they had seen what happened. Everyone saw the police cars, but no one knew why they were there. The story broke a few days later. Someone had indeed died at the house inside the moat, but the circumstances were unclear, and no answers were offered.

  More time went by, perhaps a few months, and I read in the news that a Detective Alex Penfield had resigned from the Hampton Police Department under pressure of an internal review. The article had a photo of him, and I recognized him as the detective who interviewed me months before. He had given me his business card after our brief interview at the Chamberlin. I retrieved the card from my home office desk and compared the names. It was definitely the same man. I read the article again. There were vague references to the investigation of my missing neighbor. Apparently, the body of Joseph Talbot had never been recovered from the bay, and there was no proof that he had died. He was still officially listed as missing and presumed dead. There were numerous follow-up articles, but none of them seemed to have any answers as to what had actually happened on Ruckman Road inside the moat.

  Chapter 4

  The Interview - Part 1

  Fort Monroe, Virginia. 2016.

  Several months after Joseph Talbot went missing, my wife and I moved from the Chamberlin apartment to a house on Bernard Road, which is located inside the fort walls. We regularly walked by the house where Talbot lived. It was impossible not to think about what happened or at least speculate on what might have happened.

  I’ve been sitting on this story for a while now, not out of a lack of interest in telling it, but rather from the main player’s reluctance to be involved. When I first contacted Detective Penfield in early 2012 about my desire to create a book or documentary on the mysterious disappearance of Joseph Talbot, he grew angry with me, perhaps even furious. I knew that might have been his reaction, but I thought it was worth asking anyway. He made it clear he would not be willing to participate in any way, so it was quite surprising when he called me four years later and asked if I was still interested in telling the story. His one condition was that he had final editorial control. This was something I wasn’t willing to grant. He told me, however, that he wasn’t interested in dictating how I wrote the potential book. Rather, he only wanted to be sure that I told the truth and hadn’t twisted his words. I agreed to those terms.

  We decided to meet at a local restaurant outside of Fort Monroe. I’d become friends with the owner since she also lived at the fort. She told me the restaurant was closed on Mondays, but someone was usually there anyway, doing things like inventory. She was fine with us using the place for my initial interview with Penfield. I arrived at the restaurant early, only to find the detective already waiting for me. Penfield is a tall man, a little taller than me, maybe six foot three. I’d guess his weight at around two hundred pounds. He wore a long-sleeve shirt, but I could tell he was muscular as his arms and chest stretched the shirt. His hair was closely cut to the point that his head almost appeared shaved. He had stubble on his face from what appeared to be a few days’ worth of growth.

  The back door to the restaurant was unlocked. We entered and said hello to the bartender. He was doing inventory on the various bottles of liquor and beer, as the owner said he would. He gave us two glasses of water at our request, and we selected a booth in the back corner of the restaurant. I placed my digital recorder on the table between us. Penfield agreed to let me record the interview during our previous phone conversation, but I was a bit concerned he’d change his mind by the time we got to the restaurant. He looked at the recorder but said nothing.

  I’d struggled with how to start the interview. I’d interviewed thousands of people for various videos over the years, but this felt different. It was different. Someone had died under unknown circumstances, at least unknown to me at that time, and I admit that I wasn’t sure the best way to cover the story.

  Penfield stayed seated in the booth, but his eyes scanned the restaurant. I wasn’t sure if he was taking in the atmosphere or if it was something else. Maybe he was nervous as well.

  I pulled out a notebook from my leather bag. Even though I was recording the interview, I still wanted to take notes. I placed the notebook in front of me, then hit the record button on the digital audio recorder.

  “I’m curious, why did you change your mind?” I asked.

  “About you interviewing me?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know if you’d read about this. It’s been a while now, but did you see in the papers that I’d resigned from the force?”

  “I did see that.”

  “I want to make sure the true story gets out there. Maybe your book will help. Maybe not. Who knows about anything these days?”

  “What changed? I wanted to tell the true story a few years ago,” I said.

  Penfield hesitated then said, “I guess I wasn’t ready. A lot had happened. It didn’t make sense then. Maybe even less now, but I’ve had time to think about it. A lot of time. I need to get out what happened, even if people don’t believe me. Maybe you won’t believe me, either, but it happened. Everything I’m about to tell you is true.”

  “How did the case start off?” I asked.

  “It was my fortieth birthday. It was also my first day back to work.”

  “Had you gone on vacation or something?” I asked.

  “No, I’d been shot.”

  I paused, not really knowing what to say after a revelation like that. He’d said it so matter-of-factly, as if it was something that happened every day. I looked at Penfield, and he seemed lost in thought. He stared past me in the direction of the front door. I turned, expecting to see someone like the owner about to walk through, but there was no one. I turned back to Penfield. He still looked past me. Then he shifted his gaze back to me after several long seconds.

  “The apartment complex was called The Lakes, which made no sense since there was no lake nearby. There wasn’t even so much as a drainage ditch,” he said.

  “This is where you were shot?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  “Torres and I had interviewed this woman named Patricia Porter. She was the ex-girlfriend of a local drug dealer. He was actually the right-hand-man of the dealer. The guy’s name was Dominic Stewart. We were pretty sure he was responsible for the murder of two other guys. They were members of a rival gang that we’d heard was making moves on the territory.”

  “You thought Patricia Porter might know something about the murders?” I asked.

  “She’d made a call to the police after Dominic Stewart had beaten her up. It happened a few months before the murders. We weren’t the ones who had her case, but we saw the photographs later. It was bad. He really did a number on her. Her left eye was completely swollen shut, and her jaw was broken.”

  “Did he get arrested?”

  “He did, but Porter recanted her story. She said Dominic had nothing to do with the beating, and of course, he had an alibi. It didn’t make a difference that everyone knew it was bullshit.”

  “Why did you think you could change her mind then?” I asked.

  “I
t was a long shot, but it’s all we had. We promised to relocate her, but she said no.”

  Penfield paused. I took a sip of water and waited for him to continue.

  “She called Torres in the middle of the night. She was terrified. She said Dominic had found out about her meeting with us. She said he’d threatened to kill her. Torres called me, and we drove to her apartment. When we got to her place, she didn’t answer the door. Torres called her again. We heard her cell phone ringing inside. We’d called the manager on the way over there, and she’d met us outside their leasing office. She gave us a master key, so we let ourselves in.”

  Penfield paused again.

  “The door opened up to the living room. She was on a black plastic tarp, on her back. Blood was all over it. You could immediately see her neck had been sliced open. I bent down to take her pulse, but then I saw it was a waste of time. I nodded to Torres, and we started a search of the apartment. It made sense that he was still there. The tarp was there to catch the blood, so he wouldn’t leave without wrapping the body up and hauling it away. It was just a two-bedroom apartment, so it took very little time to get through it. I took Patricia’s bedroom. The bed was unmade. Clothes were all over it. There was also a large duffle bag on it. She had probably started packing after her phone call with Torres. Torres took the other room. It was her kid’s bedroom. She said she saw a baby in a crib. She took a quick glance at the kid, and the baby looked asleep. Later we found out the child had been smothered.”

  Penfield looked past me again. I couldn’t help but picture the baby in my mind. I didn’t know what kind of bastard could smother a baby. Then I remembered Dominic Stewart had been the woman’s boyfriend at one point, and I wondered if he’d killed his own child to get back at her for her presumed betrayal.

  “We went back into the living room,” Penfield continued. “I kneeled down again to examine Patricia more closely, and Torres called in the report. I thought I heard a noise in the hallway, so I looked up. Dominic was right there. He aimed his gun at Torres and fired. I jumped toward her and caught one in the side. I heard more gunfire but wasn’t sure what had happened. Torres told me at the hospital that she’d exchanged fire with Dominic and killed him.”

  “Where was Dominic before? Was he under the bed or something?” I asked.

  “No, we checked that. The police later found a hidden compartment in the closest in the baby’s room. He’d been using that as one of the gang’s locations to hide the drugs. We guessed he’d heard us coming up the stairs toward the apartment. It was on the third floor and too high for him to jump off the balcony, so he probably hid in the compartment. He knew we’d eventually find him if he stayed in there, so he waited for us to do a preliminary search of the bedroom and then tried to get the drop on us. It almost worked.”

  “How long were you out?”

  “I had surgery that morning and was in the hospital for weeks. The bullet had torn a hole in my intestines, which also caused me to get an infection. They didn’t think I was going to make it. No one actually said that, but I could tell, especially with Torres. I could see the look in her eyes, even though she denied it. I eventually got out, and then I was on home rest for another month. Torres told me I should have taken it easy even longer, but I was going stir crazy and needed to get out.”

  “And your first day back was your birthday?”

  “The big forty. It’s weird. I was dreading hitting forty and then, all of a sudden, I was praying I’d have the chance to get to that age. You just never know.”

  I’d hit the mark myself a few years before Penfield did. It changes your perspective, but I guess the start of each new decade of life does that. I couldn’t imagine, though, what he and others in the department went through, never knowing if your day at work could be your last.

  “I had just gotten out of the shower when Torres called. I thought she was calling to wish me an early ‘Happy Birthday.’ Someone had spotted a body floating in the bay right there at Fort Monroe, though. We were next on the list, so we picked up the case.”

  My interview with Penfield continued for several more hours, and we agreed to meet the following day to continue. He was right when he said his story was hard to believe, but he told it with incredible conviction. He seemed honest to me, and I could tell he was very emotional about what had happened. He offered to show me his evidence, which consisted of both audio and video recordings that were uncovered during the brief investigation. I eventually did see this evidence, and it all backed up his case.

  This is the story he told me. I won’t try to convince you of its veracity. It’s up to you to make that decision.

  Chapter 5

  The House on Ruckman Road

  Alex Penfield took a long gulp of water and then put the empty glass in the kitchen sink. He looked out the window but didn’t see his partner’s car yet. He looked at his watch. She would be here any minute. He exited the kitchen and walked down a short hallway to the foyer. Penfield grabbed a jacket off a wooden peg screwed into the wall by the front door. He slipped the jacket on and then pulled a black wool hat out of one of the pockets. He put the hat over his shaved head and left the house.

  His house was a red brick ranch-style structure typical of the 1970s. He walked down the four brick steps that would take him to the sidewalk that led to the driveway. Something unexpected happened, though, when his foot hit the bottom step. He felt a sharp pain in his side where he’d been shot a few months before. The pain raced through his abdomen and down his legs to his feet. His body instantly became extremely hot, and thick beads of sweat began to form on his forehead despite the cold air outside. He grabbed the post at the bottom of the steps to keep himself from falling over. A wave of dizziness hit him and, for a second, he thought he might actually vomit. Penfield looked up to see if Torres had arrived yet. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her help, or if he actually hoped she hadn’t seen what had just happened to him.

  He sat on the porch steps. He could feel the back of his pants grow wet from the morning dew on the bricks, but it was better than fainting and potentially cracking his head on the sidewalk.

  “My God,” he thought, “why’s this happening now?”

  He didn’t know whether to call her and tell her he couldn’t make it after all, or if the pain was just a freak occurrence, and it would disappear within moments. The pain seemed to last forever, though. It came in waves, and the sweat continued to pour down his forehead and run into his eyes. He took his hat off to feel the cold air on his skin. It did little to cool him down, though.

  Torres arrived several minutes later, which was a relief to Penfield. It gave him time to get past the dizziness and nausea. He used his hat to wipe the sweat off his forehead as she pulled her unmarked police sedan onto his driveway. Penfield put his hat back on and slowly stood. He hoped the pain would not increase and flood back through his weak body. He felt a small twinge in his side, but it was nothing like before. He did his best to casually touch the back of his pants as he made his way down the sidewalk to the car. They were drenched by this point. He hoped Torres wouldn’t notice.

  Penfield opened the car door and slid onto the passenger seat. The car was blazing hot inside, as it always was when Torres controlled the vehicle’s temperature. He pulled his hat off and slipped it into his coat pocket as Torres turned down the radio. She almost always had dance music blasting from the speakers. She knew he hated it, and he was convinced that’s why she played it so often and so loud. He was tempted to roll down the window to cool down, but he knew she’d protest, and he’d have to explain why he was so hot.

  “Happy Birthday,” she said, smiling.

  “Thanks.”

  “You feeling okay?” she asked.

  Her expression turned to one of concern.

  “Yeah, why do you ask?”

  Penfield tried to make his question seem as casual as possible, but he assumed he was doing a bad job of hiding the pain. Torres had told him he was coming back to work to
o soon, but he was tired of feeling weak and vulnerable. He had to get back to work. He would be fine if he could just get past this morning’s episode.

  “It seems like a natural question. Doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” Penfield said.

  “Okay, let’s get to it then.”

  Torres put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway, but not before she turned the radio’s volume back up and tried to suppress her laughter.

  It took about twenty minutes to get to Fort Monroe from Penfield’s house. The traffic was heavy that time of morning. Penfield spent the time listening to Torres giving him a hard time for not having a party. He had cheated death, she reminded him, and that was reason enough to celebrate, not to mention turning forty was an important milestone. She also told him that she would not hold the fact that he had blown off her latest birthday celebration against him. She still playfully gave him a hard time for not giving her a card or gift to mark the occasion, despite Penfield having been in the hospital at the time. Penfield hoped she was just joking about the potential party for him. He preferred to be alone most of the time. A birthday party was the last thing he wanted. He began to suspect Torres had something in store for him, and he wondered how he would get himself out of it.

  There were a few police cars parked near the bridge on Mellen Street by the time they arrived. Torres parked beside one of the police cars. They exited the car and quickly found the responding officer. They nodded to each other as the officer pointed to a couple standing by one of the other cars.

  “That’s the lady who called it in,” he said.

  “Who’s the guy with her?” Penfield asked.

  “Her husband, but he didn’t see anything. The wife said she spotted the body this morning while she was jogging. She ran home to call 911.”

  “Where did she see it?” Torres asked.

  “Right up there on the rocks.”