She opted for being compassionate, yet truthful, by saying, “You’re my friend, too, Roy, but I don’t make it my business to know every move you make every minute of your day. It’s creepy, like I’m being watched or something. Do you understand?”
She had avoided the word “stalker” so as not to further anger him, but it was definitely the word for him.
“Creepy? That’s harsh, Michelle. I want only the best for you. I know how hard you’ve worked to get where you are.”
“You don’t know the half. Sorry, Roy, but I really have to go now. Oh! Nightmare in Pink.”
“What?”
“Nightmare in Pink,” she repeated, holding up the paperback and offering him a conciliatory smile. “That’s the book I’m reading.”
He stared at her and she recognized the gratitude in his expression.
Casually, she added, “And yes, it’s a John D. McDonald. D as in dog, not B as in boy. And it’s not a new one. It first came out in the sixties, I think; this is a new reprint.”
“I’ll have to read it, then.” Roy’s smile was unsettling. “Again.”
“Again?” she said, taking a step back toward him.
“I’ve read everything you’ve read. Everything. I watch everything you do. Know everything about you.”
“Roy, stop, please.” She stepped backward toward the door, relieved to know Jens was nearby. But Roy’s mood had changed.
“I even know your dirty little secret.”
Michelle stopped dead still.
“What … secret?”
“What really happened in high school,” he hissed, slowly snaking toward her. “Your three months’ absence just after Thanksgiving. Everything about you coming down with ‘mono.’” He had made air quotes around the last word then leaned in closer to repeat, “Everything!”
Michelle was stunned. Only her parents and Dr. Morgan knew about that. How in the world could Roy know?
He leaned toward her ear and said, “Was it someone filthy like that Lucifer’s Lot stud? Is that why you’re so attracted to him?”
Michelle was still deep in thought about her freshman year in high school, wondering how she’d slipped up and how many others might know.
“Doesn’t matter,” Roy said quietly, pressing his lips against her ear and placing his hands on her hips. “I still love you.”
“What?” Michelle asked, snapping out of her reverie, aghast by what she thought she heard him say.
“I … I love you,” he repeated with less confidence, his hands dropping limply to his sides. “I thought you knew.”
“Are you crazy?” Michelle gaped, taking a step back from him.
She wondered what had possessed her to take pity on him just now. Her decision to show him a little kindness only inspired him to go deeper into his fantasy about her. She had made a terrible mistake.
“No, I didn’t know. I have never given you any reason to believe we were anything more than friends, Roy. At least, we used to be friends until you started obsessing over every little thing I do, stalking me wherever I went this summer. Don’t you understand? I’m in love with Jens. Not you. You know that. You’ve always known that. You are crazy, Roy. Crazy!”
Roy’s sad smile faded. The anger rose to his cheeks, an anger that touched his eyes in a way she had never seen before. She was used to his childish tantrums, but she’d never seen Roy like this.
His voice was nearly unrecognizable when he demanded, “Don’t ever call me that.”
“Roy, this isn’t—”
“You listen to me,” he interrupted, closing the distance between them instantly, gripping her arms and shaking her. “Never say that word again. Ever. Or you will pay for it. Do you hear me, Michelle Freeburg? You will regret it for the rest of your life.”
His grip was painful. A shiver ran down Michelle’s spine and she forced a whimper back down her throat and a smile to her face. “Roy, calm down. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
The door swung open and Jens was filling the space with his six-foot four-inch, two-hundred-twenty-pound frame. He had overheard Roy and she was glad of it.
“You want to step outside and pick on someone your own size?” he said, nostrils flaring.
Roy froze.
Michelle shook free from Roy’s grip and clung to Jens’s arm. “Jens, listen to me. This isn’t worth it.”
Roy and Jens squared off in the small space, and Michelle was finding it harder and harder to breathe with every passing second of mounting tension. She had never seen Roy so angry before, and she had never seen Jens angry at all. And to top it all off, Charlene was waiting in the parking lot for her, pissed about some life-shattering tragedy that only a fourteen-year-old mind could make out of trivial matters, her dinner date with Jens ruined.
This was turning into a disastrous night.
“Jens, please,” she pleaded, pulling on his muscular arm, trying to make him follow her out the door and away from the store.
Through clenched teeth, he issued Roy a warning. “Stay away from Michelle, Roy Barker, or you will be the one who regrets it for the rest of your life.”
AS WE DROVE, MY mind was a bit too fuzzy to take in all the strange things I was seeing on the streets of Sturgis.
The Brain Pain Killers—aptly named and unfortunately for all of us, my sister Agatha’s drink of choice—we had just shared with Dad and two of our sisters at Gunners Lounge had affected me far more than they had my brother, probably because he is at least six inches taller and eighty pounds heavier. Plus, I hadn’t had a drink in over a month. Plus he opted to chase it with a cup of coffee rather than to sneak Barbara’s drink and quaff it for her as I had. My head spun from the double shot of vodka and tequila. I leaned back against the headrest and questioned my flawed logic, wondering if this was a lingering symptom of the alcohol I’d just pounded or the continuing saga of bad choices I seemed to be making lately, not the least of which was my decision a month ago to pursue the De Milo murderer. I had questioned my logic a hundred times while I lay recovering in a hospital bed and in physical therapy, wondering what it was that compelled me to impose myself in the investigation of my employee’s murder when it was in the capable hands of the FBI. Illogical decisions weren’t something I was accustomed to.
How did I let Agatha and Barbara talk me into rolling out of bed, skipping breakfast, and schlepping into a bar in Sturgis on one of the busiest days of the year? The answer was simple. It wasn’t flawed logic. It was because I loved my family. I was here at Dad’s request, just as Agatha and Barbara informed me at the crack of ten this morning when they dragged me out of my deep sleep.
I had a big problem with “Honor Thy Father and Mother,” drilled into my head by the nuns in grade school. My parents raised me to be independent, maybe a bit too much so for my own good, but I struggled with that fine definitional line of honor. I had clearly allowed myself creative license.
So it would be no surprise to anyone who knew me, Liv Bergen, that at my mom’s insistence and despite being nearly thirty years old, I had come home for my last week of physical therapy before heading back to work in Colorado. I admit she was right, considering the sound night of sleep I had in my childhood home last night. It sure beat the noises and unavoidable interruptions at Poudre Hospital, and there’s no comparison when it comes to home cookin’. Most of all, it was that elixir of my mother’s healing hug at the airport that made me straighten up and hasten my steps down the walkway. Home again in Rapid City, South Dakota, in the Black Hills.
But since I fell asleep before Dad got home last night, I was only too eager to get a much-needed hug from him, too, even if it meant having to be kidnapped by my sisters, escorted in Agatha’s death trap of a truck twenty miles north to Sturgis, and imbibe in alcohol before noon.
“How awesome was that?” said Jens cheerily. “Dad inviting us to accompany him on his annual trek to Gunners to toast the official first day of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.”
For better
than fifty years, Dad has always made the pilgrimage to Gunners on the first day of the rally just to have one beer. But I’ve never asked him if it was in celebration of the tourism dollars the throngs of bikers brought to the area every year or if it was more like remembering the Alamo, holding down the fort and showing solidarity with the locals as the horde of total strangers invaded their town. Either way, he never missed it, even with raising nine kids, running his mining company, and winning the election to the sole U.S. Congress seat for South Dakota eighteen years ago.
“I bet his buddies aren’t real pleased he chose a few of his kids over them this year,” I mused.
Jens shot me a look. “Not many of those friends are left, Boots.”
Boots. Only my siblings call me that. I ferociously rejected that nickname and became Liv when I discovered boys, along about puberty, but I’ve always loved the steel-toed boots that I first associated, with childish awe, with my father’s. They still get my tender toes around a quarry. And I’ve noticed that the boys don’t seem to mind them at all.
My brother added, “You knew Joe Pike died last month, didn’t you? Nate Fischer has dementia. And Harold Bolter has prostrate cancer.”
“That doesn’t leave many of the old gang, does it?”
“He still has all his constituents who love him.”
“All seven hundred thousand of them,” I said, grinning.
“I doubt if everyone in the state of South Dakota loves Congressman Bergen.”
“Oh, yeah. There are the two in Oneida who didn’t vote for him. I couldn’t believe how many people recognized him at Gunners.”
“Life with Dad in public,” Jens said, powering down the windows of the truck as we maneuvered around streams of bikers.
With the rumble of Harleys filling my ears, I inhaled. The blended aroma of exhaust, human flesh, and a plethora of steaming foods cooked along the streets by eager vendors that encircled my nose was a bad omen. The redhead in the black leather thong and chaps lifted her skimpy tank top for a passing biker, who laughed in appreciation as he feasted his hungry eyes. The young cop in the gray T-shirt and dark shades several paces behind moved quickly to issue the woman what I imagined was probably an indecent exposure citation, but he couldn’t conceal the smile on his own face.
When I looked down Main Street, in all its chrome-and-leather glory, mostly what I saw were overage, overweight, under-toned men and women scantily dressed in black clothing, frantically shopping for more of the scantier and shockingly revealing black clothing. Anything to uphold the Sturgis rally credo of “I shock, therefore I am.”
Jens jabbed me in the ribs and pointed to a woman the size of a small car whose pendulous breasts would have outweighed two adult dachshunds. She was standing on the opposite corner wearing nothing but a smile and a black string bikini, which was difficult to discern for sure considering the strings were all but lost in the gross folds of fat.
“Yikes,” was all I could manage.
Tonight there would be standing room only in the bars, people would be crushed elbow to elbow on the sidewalks, and there would be no parking for any bikes, let alone a huge truck the size of Jens’s.
The smells and sounds and heat outside were blending miserably with the vodka and tequila and whatever else my tongue couldn’t identify that was in that Brain Pain Killer. My experience told me that I’d consumed on an empty stomach a concoction that would only lead to vomiting.
I cranked up the A/C and rested my head against the dashboard, squeezing my eyes closed.
Jens laughed. “Want me to stop?”
“No, just give me a minute.”
At times like this, when I struggle with keeping everything together, I escape to happy memories and I never know quite where my mind will lead me. My youngest sister, Ida, is a serious soprano, even studied in Italy, teaches voice in Rapid City now when she’s not traversing the country on a modeling gig. She gave us all a treasure of melodies (with complete orchestral backup) to carry around in our heads. It’s a reserve of beauty and passion that I can call on whenever I need a distraction from whatever is in front of me, like the rumble of motorcycles, the revolting smells, the heat, the vulgarity triumphant, that we were mired in at that moment. Click! I’m raising a glass with Violetta while everybody belts out the Drinking Song from Verdi’s La Traviata. I’m a hoop-skirted vision with decorous décolletage, carefree in this happy paradise. Libiamo, Liv!
Within a few minutes, we were on the west side of Main Street and had pulled off the main drag back into the industrial block near the railroad tracks, free at last of everything assaulting my senses. I felt good again, leaning back and enjoying the view.
“You okay?”
I nodded.
Jens pulled his truck off of Sherman Street onto our industrial lot, and drove me around the ready mix concrete plant, pointing through the windshield of his truck. “See how they enclosed the plant? They installed a new boiler and heating system for winter pours.”
“No way. I bet your guys love that,” I said, feeling the familiar joy of work returning to my gut.
“They will this winter.”
“What’s that?” I pointed to concrete blocks that looked like ginormous Legos.
“That’s Build-a-Block, our newest product that Matt and Travis are making. They use the returns and pour it in the mold.”
Jens’s smile warmed my heart. “So cool, Jens. No waste concrete to get rid of.”
“No waste ever again. Just product we can sell. They’re mostly used for retaining walls.”
“Amazing!”
As he was pulling out of the lot to head back up the street, he saw it before I did. Face red with frustration, Travis was bolting from the small office beside the batch room and heading for a pickup.
Jens crossed the single-lane traffic, pulled the pickup alongside the curb on the left, the wrong way on the two-lane Sherman Street, jerked the stick into park, and said, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
As he jumped out of the truck, I stared after him and shouted out his driver’s window, “No problem.”
With long strides, he hurried past the cement silo, walked across the ready mix yard, and reached Travis’s pickup before he pulled away from the office. I saw Travis motion for Jens to get in, and Jens rounded the truck, shrugging his shoulders at me and pointing to his watch. I could see him mouth that he’d be right back. I waved him off like it was no big deal to wait for him.
And it wasn’t.
I sat in Jens’s truck, facing the oncoming lane of traffic, like I was at a drive-in movie. I couldn’t see the batch room on my left from this position because of the cement silo that blocked my view of it and thought about crawling over to the driver’s side so I could ease Jens’s truck forward to see the entire plant. But instead, I sat back and enjoyed watching the periodic arrival of ready mix trucks round the street corner ahead, coming in and out of the yard with fresh concrete being batched for every load. It felt good to be here, to watch everyone working so hard, knowing how difficult it must be to maneuver huge concrete trucks around all those bikes on the streets and highways throughout town.
Seeing this plant up close put me in mind of the quarry north of Fort Collins, in Livermore, Colorado, that I managed. Although my angst was subsiding, I nonetheless appreciated my older brother Ole’s willingness to let me take another week of R&R here at our parents’ home before returning to work. But my real fear, a secret I hadn’t shared with anyone yet, was of entering my own home again. The fear of being alone in the house where my friend and FBI agent Lisa Henry had been killed. I would have to figure out how to get through that by myself, somehow.
But for now, I was enjoying the downtime in Sturgis.
A month of therapy had put me back together again, but I still relished the comfort and safety that I found, metaphorically now, as I once had for real, in that cozy sliver of bed between my Norwegian bear of a father and my Irish leprechaun of a mother. Remembering that safety zone an
d filling it with glorious music had brought me through flashbacks and nightmares to something near normalcy. They were the only drug I needed—although I supposed a heroin-induced stupor might be useful over ten days of a biker rally. I chuckled to myself as something in the side mirror caught the corner of my eye.
The familiar rumble echoed in my ears as six motorcycle gang members pulled to a stop by the abandoned grain silos near the railroad tracks behind me and across the street from where Jens had parked. The colors they were flying looked familiar to me, but they weren’t the notorious Inferno Force. They had come from the narrow alleyway to the west of our plant that barely saved Sherman Street from a dead-end designation. Most people who used this street accessed it from the east, where I had been watching the ready mix trucks come and go. Instinct and the fact that they snuck up from behind using the alleyway told me to resist the urge to twist in my seat to get a better view of what these guys were up to. Instead, I studied the motley crew in the side mirror, trying to judge the degree of distortion that existed in the warning “Objects Are Closer Than They Appear” so I could calculate the actual distance from me to them.
My guess was that they were within about ten yards of the truck’s back bumper.
The rumble stopped and all the bikers dismounted, including a woman wearing one of the bikers’ leather jackets. She looked awkward in her black leather boots with spike heels, reminding me again of how my sisters looked in our mom’s evening gowns and shoes playing dress-up.
“You wanted to pull a train, baby? Well, here we are at the railroad tracks. Whoo-whoo!” the old, bearded biker without his jacket bellowed.
The railroad track that he was referring to was actually a siding for the grain silo, which hadn’t been used in years. And the house across the street from them, directly behind me on my left, had a “For Sale” sign in the yard and looked deserted. People in the houses down the block in front of me both on the left and right wouldn’t have seen these guys unless they stepped out into their front yards. I glanced out of the driver’s side window to see if anyone from our plant could see or hear these guys and realized that the cement silo obstructed the view.
Lot’s return to Sodom Page 2
