Jail Coach

by Hillary Bell Locke

  Blood rushed to my brain. A kill thrill that you only know if you’ve been in combat raced through me. This ends NOW!

  Except it didn’t. His head snapped up from the floor and caught the bridge of my nose. For an instant I felt like I’d gone blind. My freshly-broken nose sent pain geysering through my brain. Blood clouded both eyes from the inside. In the instant it took for the blood to clear, Plankinton had his torso out from under me and was scrambling for the knife.

  With the last ounce of strength I had I wrapped my legs around his waist. I squeezed for everything I was worth, but right now that wasn’t much. His left hand grabbed the knife hilt. Another loud ripppp! as Rachel scrambled away, leaving half her skirt behind.

  “Get out!” A desperate savagery contorted my face as I screamed that at her. “Get out, goddammit! Run!”

  It was over now. I knew that. In three seconds he’d have that knife buried hilt deep in my top leg. Then he’d twist it. No way I could stand that. With a little thok the knife came out of the floor.

  Suddenly a blur sailed through the air. A Jewish Ukrainian-American blur. Arms still tied behind her, Rachel leaped at Plankinton like some pissed-off dropout from the corps de ballet. She must have gotten a good three feet off the floor. Ten toes pressed together and aiming straight down landed en pointe on Plankinton’s throat. I don’t know whether it was a demi-plié or a double axel or something else, but it did the job. I felt a spasm in the flesh pinned between my legs. The knife dropped to the floor. I heard a dry rattle from what was left of Plankinton’s throat.

  Right after that everything got very chilly and very blurry and then very dark.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  “…not filing charges.” Male voice. Sounded far off. “Source told me this morning. Technically under investigation for the rest of the week, but on Friday afternoon they’ll formally close the case without charges.”

  I knew I was lying down. Knew my torso was propped up at maybe a thirty degree angle. As I rolled my head toward the voice, the back of my scalp rubbed on what felt like a thin, plastic-coated pillow. Turning my head didn’t hurt but it felt like it should’ve. Like this bolt of pain was trying its damnedest to get through, but couldn’t quite manage it.

  My right eye found Rachel. Left eye wasn’t finding anything. She was sitting. She looked like hell: skin swollen, yellow and purple bruises around her right eye, upper lip puffy and specked with scabs. Next to her sat an African American guy, smooth skin, short hair, wearing a tan, three-piece suit as sharp as anything I’d seen in a long time. For some reason I particularly noticed his brown wing-tips, polished to a gloss that would have stood inspection in my last outfit for sure. He had an old-fashioned black leather briefcase on his lap.

  I figured I might as well say something. I specifically ordered my mouth to open and words to come out, but at first nothing happened. When I finally heard my own voice, it sounded as far away as the guy’s had.

  “Charges for what?”

  “For Marcus Plankinton’s murder.” He switched his gaze from Rachel to me.

  “Murder?” Suddenly my voice didn’t sound so far away. “The bastard was going after us! He had a knife.”

  “He did. Only his prints on it, too. That was a helpful fact. Also, he’d wounded the missus with that knife. Plus, he’d conked you with a blackjack. Not to mention the piece he had under his shirt. Sig Sauer nine millimeter. And then there were the details that you were handcuffed and the lady had her hands tied behind her back, and you’d both gotten the crap beaten out of you.”

  All at once Rachel and the black guy began to rotate clockwise, going round and round in lazy circles. I closed my unbandaged eye.

  “So…Murder?”

  “Some bright spark in the DA’s office had this theory about a bondage-SM scene gone way, way wrong. Black guy dead, two white people alive, no sign of forced entry. You can’t be jumping to conclusions in that situation these days, after that thing in Florida. And then, of course, there was the confession.”

  I re-opened my eye. Rachel and the guy had stopped rotating. Nice of them.

  “Whose confession?”

  “Mine.” Rachel’s voice was dull, listless.

  “The lady was in deep shock when the cops got there. Just kept saying, ‘I murdered him, I murdered him.’”

  “That’s ridiculous! They can’t—”

  “Calm down, tiger. You get yourself worked up, Nurse Ratchet is gonna come in here and slap me around. Like it’s my fault.”

  “Sorry.” I lay back on the pillow.

  “The forensics all came out one way, though.” He had a way of widening his eyes and O-ing his mouth when he talked, and making this uplift gesture with his right hand. “I don’t know how it would’ve gone down otherwise, but that’s a moot point now. Bad news for me. Probably would’ve been a pretty easy win. I don’t get all that many innocent clients. But good news for you and the lady.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Anyway, don’t tell anyone. Not a soul. Including your priest in confession.”

  “No danger of that.”

  “Just keep your heads down and your mouths shut for three more days.”

  I did some mental math. Friday minus three.

  “You mean this is Tuesday?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ve been out for four days?”

  “You haven’t been out, exactly, as I understand it. More like so drugged up you could’ve passed for a Grateful Dead fan at an Occupy Wall Street rally. You came in here with a concussion, and you’ve been through two operations.”

  “Broken wrist and what else?”

  “Eyeball socket filled with what looked like the Nile River during the plagues of Egypt. You were a hurtin’ puppy for sure.”

  Did they save the eye? I choked that question back. Wouldn’t be fair to make him answer it.

  “Well, thanks for trucking down here to bring me the news.”

  “Actually, I trucked down here to bring your lady the news. Ever since they got through with her at the cop shop on Saturday, this has been the only place I could find her. Had no idea you were gonna wake up on us.”

  He stood up, hefting the briefcase with his left hand and giving the crease in his pants a quick check with his right.

  “Later, folks. Gotta date with a guy the Commonwealth Attorney thinks is a drug dealer, for some damn reason. Keep it real.”

  Rachel half rose to shake his hand. Five seconds later he was gone and we had the room to ourselves. I looked at her, as best I could.

  “Thanks for staying with me all this time.”

  She nodded.

  “Also for jumping on the SOB’s throat and killing him. I appreciate that.”

  She nodded and, this time, she smiled a little in an almost embarrassed way, as if I’d complimented her on an old hat or something.

  “Do you know if they saved my eye?”

  “The doctor thinks they probably did. It was responding to light after the operation. But I guess they won’t know for sure until you’re awake enough for them to take the bandages off.”

  I tried to smile at her, but I’m not sure my mouth did what I wanted it to.

  “I’m assuming he grabbed you on your way home from work.”

  “Right. He was waiting in my car in the parking ramp. Hiding on the back seat floor.”

  “That had to be terrible, Rache. Sorry I brought this on you. This is on me.”

  She shook her head emphatically.

  “No. The only terrible part was that after he tied me up I wet my pants. Awful. I killed him deliberately, you know. I knew exactly what I was doing. It felt so good to kill him. So right.”

  “Some kills are like that.” I didn’t tell her that it might not feel so hot after awhile. She’d learn th
at without any help from me.

  We looked at each other. The obvious question was why she’d been screaming I murdered him when the cops got there. The obvious answer was that she’d been in shock. She’d never been beaten up like that before, never had her life in danger before, never killed anyone before.

  Then, all at once, I saw tears running down her cheeks and I noticed her body almost imperceptibly shaking, just like in the Houston hotel room what seemed like a lifetime before. She jumped up from her chair, took two urgent steps toward the bed and flung the top of her body across mine, barely avoiding the cast on my left wrist. I felt rather than heard the wracking sobs that throbbed through her body.

  “I killed our son, Jay.” Rachel choked the words out.

  “What are you talking about, Rache?”

  She lifted her head to look at me, our faces maybe three inches apart.

  “After they sent you to Iraq, I found out I was pregnant. It was our baby. I’d never cheated on you up to then. Please believe that.”

  “I do.”

  “I panicked. I was absolutely certain you wouldn’t come back. Or if you did you’d have a leg blown off or something. I was furious with you for going.”

  “I didn’t exactly volunteer.”

  “I know, I know. I just…I don’t know, I just blamed you for it. I thought there must be some hustle you could have come up with to get out of it. I felt so alone, with this wretched little invader trespassing in my belly. It wasn’t that I’d be supporting both of us and getting up at five o’clock in the morning to take a kid to day care and you to some Veterans Hospital for rehab and then working all day and half the night. It wasn’t that. I just had to get control of my own life.”

  “So you got an abortion.”

  “Yes.” She stood up, her face suddenly defiant as if she were daring me to judge her. “It ate at me for your whole tour. I knew I should tell you, but I was terrified about what you’d do.”

  “So that was what made you crazy?”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Now. But I repressed it. I am so good at repression. If they ever make repression an Olympic event, I’ll make the American team. ”

  “Shrink-speak?”

  “Self-diagnosis. I told one of them about it. She said I should think of the abortion like getting my navel pierced. Just a personal choice about my own body. Not your business or anybody else’s.”

  “Sounds like a pretty standard view.”

  “Yes. What everyone says, except she used longer words.”

  Rachel folded her arms across her chest. Her lower lip was trembling as she struggled to speak.

  “I could sell it to anyone but myself. In the depths of my soul I knew it was bullshit. When I looked at you I knew it was bullshit. I dealt with that by pushing you out and fucking other men. Then, in the hotel, I heard about that little girl.”

  “Luci.”

  “Yes. You had described her so vividly I could see her, as if she were skipping rope in the driveway or playing in the front lawn. She was so real. Which meant she was real when her mother tried to have her aborted. And that meant that the baby I’d killed was just as real. Our baby. Our son. I murdered him.”

  Three or four pat answers reached my lips. I choked them all back. Good thing. Mostly chicks don’t want answers. They don’t want to hear your brilliant solution to their problem. They just want you to wallow in the problem with them for awhile, like it’s a mud pit. Anyway, I didn’t need to say a word. She wasn’t anything like through talking yet.

  “I suppose when I was having my tawdry little flings and rubbing your nose in them, something in my subconscious was hoping that you’d get mad enough to storm in and slap me around. Punish me. But you punished me far more harshly by accepting it. I wept more bitterly over that than I would have over split lips and black eyes.”

  That sounded like typical chick shit, and I started to tell her so. You might want to check with someone who’s actually gotten split lips and black eyes from someone she loves. But I stopped myself. Even with one eye I noticed the bruises and the scabs again in time.

  “I guess you’ve earned the right to say that.”

  “Yes. Like you, I didn’t exactly volunteer. But I don’t think that matters. I’ve been punished now. One hell of an atonement. It wasn’t justice. Justice would have been a life for a life. Maybe my life goes on so the atonement can continue.”

  “Does that mean you want me back?” That just slipped out.

  She looked at me for a second like I’d just said something in Swahili. Mouth slightly open, eyes big and round, arms drooping at her side. Then she started giggling. She brought her right hand up to cover her mouth, like an embarrassed schoolgirl, but the giggles turned to laughter. Her cheeks turned scarlet as her body shook with mirth. Borderline hysterical. She finally stumbled toward me, as if she were walking in a dream. Bending over the bed she hugged me, not like a lover but like you hug a little kid who’s just said something adorable. Her cheek brushing mine, she whispered something so softly that I had to strain to make it out.

  “You are such a goddamned idiot.”

  Chapter Forty

  “By the way, there’s someone waiting to see you.” A doctor who’d just told me I still had two eyes threw that out as he headed for the door. “I’ll tell the nurse that it’s okay for her to come in.”

  Exit doctor. Enter Proxy. I blinked.

  “This is a surprise.”

  “You have some friends back in Hartford. Quindel didn’t want to pay for a lawyer to handle the criminal investigation. Said you were off on some frolic unrelated to the course of your employment and we should distance ourselves from it. The V-P who shared the plane down to D.C. with you called Quindel into his office. The only part I heard was ‘we don’t leave our soldiers lying on the beach, goddammit.’ Basically everyone in Hartford heard that.”

  “Thanks, but you didn’t fly all the way down here to tell me that.”

  “Right. I thought I should update you on the Prescott Trail project. We’ve hit a bit of a speed bump.”

  “Test audiences stopped loving the mud-wrestling scene?”

  “No, they’re eating it up. That’s the problem. Little too much t-and-a in the thing, apparently. MPAA wants to bump the rating up to R. That would mean that if anyone under seventeen wanted to see the thing they’d have to bring their mom, which would turn the marketing plan into lunchmeat. So they’re negotiating.”

  “How is Trowbridge handling that?”

  Proxy set her computer bag on the floor and leaned forward to rest her forearms on her knees. This was Proxy being Earnest.

  “According to Wells, he wants to talk to you.”

  “Can do.” I tried to look gung ho.

  “I think he wants to talk you into getting Thompson back to him. His trial isn’t all that far off, and jail is looming over him. He’s putting up a good front, but Wells says he’s hanging on by his fingernails.”

  “‘The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little time.’ That was one of Sergeant Rutledge’s pet lines. I’ll talk to our boy, and I’ll do my best.”

  “There’s a final item on my agenda, Davidovich.”

  “Namely?”

  “Two things you can’t stand: Guys who beat up your wife, and the people who pay them.”

  “You’re on to something.”

  “You can’t kill Stan Chaladian. I know you want to. I don’t blame you. But no matter how many friends you have in Hartford, you can’t pull Trans/Oxana into the middle of a murder investigation. Trans/Oxana shows up in the Business section of the New York Times, not on the front page. If Trowbridge goes off the deep end, we write a check. But we don’t kill the bad guy—or look like we have because one of our cowboys greased him for another reason.”

  The
smart way to answer her would have been to fake amusement or indignation. Unfortunately, as actors go I’m a hell of an engineer. Besides, she’d played straight with me and she had a right to have me play straight with her.

  “Okay, Proxy. Word of honor. As long as I’m employed by Trans/Oxana Insurance Company, I won’t kill Chaladian.”

  “Thanks, Davidovich. I know how hard it is for you to make that promise.”

  “You have no idea how hard it is.”

  Chapter Forty-one

  On Friday at 1:47 p.m. Katrina Thompson accepted my Friend request for her Facebook page. The only other person who’d ever done that was Rachel, because she was the only other person I’d ever asked. The only reason I even had a Facebook page was that Rachel had set one up for me.

  Okay, what should I write to Thompson? I glanced around Rachel’s dining room—now our dining room again—where we’d set up my computer after moving the stuff from my apartment back over here.

  “Love to talk. Doable?” I hit POST.

  The closest thing I had to a plan was to reach out to Thompson every way I could think of and see if one of them clicked. I’d called the roommate who’d trucked stuff out to Tucson, and asked her to get word to Thompson that I’d like to talk. She’d said something about seeing what she could do, but she’d sounded like your basic brick wall. A sweet, polite brick wall, but a brick wall. I’d tried a tweet and an email to the addresses I had for Thompson, and they’d both come back undeliverable. A snarky little robot informed me that Thompson’s mobile phone number was “no longer in service.” All I could do was keep trying.

  Rachel got home that afternoon a little after five. She had two plastic grocery bags with her.

  “You’re early. Pleasant surprise.”

  “I left the office at four so I could pick up our stuff from the police. The Commonwealth Attorney officially closed the file today. No charges.”

  “Good for us.”

  “Good for me, mostly.” Rachel emptied the sacks on the dining room table. “I was the one they were thinking about indicting. I murdered him was my line.”