Dead Poor

by M. K. Coker

  Zoe scuffed her toe in the gravel. “Like I told you, I saw Mr. Bunting’s SUV parked on the road across from Mr. Peterson’s trailer. Thick as thieves, those two, Gran says. ’Cause that’s just what they were.”

  Marek rose to his feet, bagged swabs in hand. “Was Mr. Peterson’s trailer lit up?”

  “Oh, yeah. I was... well, I was gonna see if I could hear anything. Like find out who else they were planning to kick out so I could warn ’em. So I start tiptoeing over to the open window, and I can hear somebody talking real low, and I see Mr. Peterson’s sitting like this...” She put her head in her hands. “But then I tripped over... Bunting.” Her excitement drained, leaving her face as faded and pocked as Eda County’s backcountry roads. “I split after that. Told Gran. She said not to tell anybody.”

  In Doris Harkness’s own words, she’d told her granddaughter to keep her flapping trap shut tighter than Fort Knox. Staying off a cop’s radar was an understandable, if frustrating, defense mechanism for those in precarious circumstances.

  Almost to herself, Zoe continued, “Well, I told Bobby, but he wouldn’t tell. But I—”

  “Bobby?” Karen asked, more sharply than she’d intended. “Who is he?”

  Zoe’s chin lifted. “Just a boy I know. He’s nice. He doesn’t call me Zero Zoe like the other boys.”

  Karen felt that like a sucker punch to the gut, so she imagined how much worse it must feel for this girl who would never win even a point in the beauty sweepstakes. Puberty hadn’t, and wouldn’t, rescue her, but a good diet might clear the acne, at least.

  “Don’t listen to them, Zoe,” Marek said in his gentle way, with such a wealth of understanding that the girl teared up. Karen forgot sometimes that her half-uncle had been taunted mercilessly on the playgrounds of Reunion. Dumb Polack. Hell, she herself had thought he was slow—and when he’d first appeared again in Reunion as her sight-unseen part-time detective, she’d wanted to let him go because she couldn’t imagine he would be any good at it or be able to deal with the endless paperwork required. How wrong she’d been—at least about the job. The paperwork was, thankfully, Josephine’s problem.

  Dashing her tears away, Zoe looked up at them with a fierceness that brooked no comment. “I’ve only got eighth grade to get through, then I can drop out. Gran says I have to go to high school, but I know the law. I don’t have to. She can’t make me. Not like she went, and she still had a job ’til she got sick. People like us, we work until we can’t. That’s just how it is.”

  How different this child, with her cynical adult eyes, was from Mary Hannah, with her innocent child’s eyes. Only a year older than Zoe, the latter was already an adult by Brethren standards. The Brethren had made an exception in Mary Hannah’s case, to let her go beyond the eighth grade, and she’d jumped at the chance. Though objectively poor in material things, Mary Hannah wasn’t poor in any other way that mattered.

  Karen scrambled for a way to change Zoe’s mind. A high school diploma might be the girl’s only ticket out. She stuck her thumbs in her belt. “Dropping out means they win, Zoe. Don’t give their puny egos the satisfaction. Get your diploma and prove them all wrong.”

  The girl tilted her head, as if trying to wrap her head around that reversion of the usual power structure, with her at the bottom. Winning wasn’t likely something she’d experienced often, if ever, in her short life. Hoping she’d given the girl something to think about, at least, Karen asked, “What’s your friend Bobby’s last name?”

  Zoe’s eyes dropped to the gravel. “Just Bobby.”

  That was another thing about kids, Karen recalled. They ran in packs and could be fiercely loyal. But Bobby’s welfare concerned Karen. Perhaps if she pressed a bit, played the concern card—

  A car door slammed shut, breaking the moment. Karen turned to see Alan Digges saunter up the gravel road. The war of sneer versus gloat on his face was as fierce as it had been on Zoe’s, but Karen much preferred the teenager’s. Zoe had reason—and was a child. What was his excuse?

  “My lockout crew tells me you finally showed up and did your job. Looks like I won’t have to call in the cavalry. Yet. They’re still waiting to clean out the last two. What’s the holdup?”

  Karen turned her back on Marek as he quietly took the grass and blood samples to the Sub. She didn’t want to let the cat out of the bag just yet. She wanted Mr. Peterson—and who else could it be, still twitching away at the curtains—under wraps first. “Doris Harkness’s eviction is on hold.”

  Startled, Zoe looked at her sideways, but she didn’t look pleased—or displeased, for that matter. Just held a breathless stillness, like cornered prey. Would death come swiftly, or did the predator want to play first?

  “What do you mean ‘on hold’?” The gloat, at least, had melted off his face. “Judge Rudibaugh signed off on it. It’s all legal.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Allegations have been made.”

  “Allegations? From people being evicted?” He snorted. “These people couldn’t find their way out of their own ass. Are you stupid?”

  Karen wasn’t, but he was. Too stupid to see the crew behind him, while ostensibly working for him, were rolling up shirtsleeves, no doubt to kick his very white ass. Though she’d love to see it, she had a scene—and a girl—to protect. So she named names, just to see his spin. “According to Doris Harkness, she had the money right on time like always, but you wouldn’t take the check.”

  A helicoptering brown leaf caught in his hair. He picked it off with distaste. “And you believed that overweight piece of white trash?”

  “Don’t you call my Gran names,” Zoe said, fists balling. “She’s not trash. You are.”

  For the first time, Digges deigned to acknowledge Zoe. “Trailer trash, white trash, you’ve heard it all before, I’ll bet. And worse.” As the hit went home, he sniffed. “Maybe if you stop stuffing your face and start using the legs God gave you—instead of spreading them for any—”

  Marek’s hand came down hard on Digges’ shoulder from behind, making the man let out a squeal, which delighted Zoe—and Karen. What planet had this man come from, that he thought speaking like that to a child was fair game?

  As Marek held Digges in place, Karen got in his face. “If you ever, ever speak to a child like that again in my hearing, or if I hear of it, I will arrest you for child endangerment. Do you understand me?”

  His wide-eyed look of panic lasted about three unsatisfying seconds. “Don’t tell me you didn’t think the same. Though, now that I recall from the election chatter, I heard you spread your own—”

  “What do they call you?” Karen interrupted, barely keeping her fisted hands at her sides. “Let’s see... the Boy Toy of the Bayton Babe?”

  At the snickers at his back, Digges shook off Marek’s relaxed hand, straightened his tie, and stalked back to his car with stiff legs that probably wouldn’t have held him otherwise. Once he was safely in his luxurious cage, he rolled down the window. “You’ll hear about this from our lawyers. When they’re done with you, you’ll be cleaning crap out of prison drains.”

  The car spit gravel as it sped away.

  “What a zero,” Zoe said into the silence. And her audience raised a cheer.

  CHAPTER 25

  Marek took no pleasure in having one of his past tormentors on the hot seat. With the air conditioning off for the season, the still, stifling air of the filing-cum-interview room in the Sheriff’s Office seemed to suck all the life out of their suspect. Taylor Peterson sat, balding head in his hands, at the scarred table.

  After they’d brought him in from the trailer park, he’d requested privacy for his one phone call, which they’d given him, after a recitation of his rights. Though with the undoubted lawyer soon to arrive, they would be lucky to get anything out of him.

  Peterson had never been the ringleader of the playground taunts, even though he’d been almost as big as Marek and could pack a wallop when so directed by those up higher in the pecking order. But Peterso
n seemed to have no fight left in him. When they’d taken him in, he’d kept his eyes downcast, his cheekbones high with color, the rest of his face gray with stubble.

  Truth be told, Marek had never felt that Peterson’s heart was in the playground taunting. As they’d moved from elementary into middle school, Peterson had saved his wallopings for the gridiron, where he’d enjoyed a storied career as a defensive lineman at Reunion High. Vaguely, Marek recalled talk in the locker room in Valeska that Peterson had taken a scholarship to play football at South Dakota State University in Brookings.

  What had happened from there, Marek had no clue, but he’d never have guessed the son of Reunion’s most well-respected building contractor would end up in a poorly built trailer at Ted’s.

  At Karen’s nod, Marek hit the record key on the cassette recorder that, by all rights, should be in a museum, even if it was only a few years old. Progress came slowly to Eda County. They had, however, recently acquired a makeshift video feed as a somewhat glitchy backup for the recorder.

  “Mr. Peterson,” Karen began.

  “Taylor,” he mumbled. “Not like we don’t know each other.”

  Marek had taken longer to recognize the man who’d hunched through the trailer door than Karen had. Her jaw had dropped, and they’d all stood there with their bated-breath audience, waiting for Peterson’s response. In the end, it had been anticlimactic, as he’d just shuffled down into the Sub like a carnival bear into his cage, away from the scary humans who jeered him.

  Karen let out a breath. “Taylor, then, will you tell us what happened on Friday night at your trailer?”

  He didn’t look up. “I... had a visitor.”

  “Bunting,” Karen said.

  The balding spot reddened. “No, a... a woman. Doesn’t matter. She left.”

  When silence fell, Marek picked up the thread. “You were in bed with Bunting.”

  Peterson’s head shot up.

  “Figuratively,” Marek clarified. “Not literally.”

  After he held Marek’s gaze for a long moment, Taylor nodded. “I deserved that dig and more. You were always the better man, Marek Okerlund. You took whatever we shelled out on the playground. Didn’t run crying to the teachers, didn’t taunt us back, just took it, picked yourself up, and tried harder at school than anyone I’ve ever seen before or since. It made me... ashamed. And I feel just like that now.”

  Taylor slid his hands down his face then braced his shoulders. “Yeah, I helped Bunting do his dirty work, until he stabbed me in the back.” Determined to tell his story to Marek, he didn’t notice Karen flinch at the wording. “I’m not proud of it, but you do what you have to. I lost everything in the divorce last year even though I didn’t want it in the first place. Supporting Maggie and the kids on what I make with new construction way down, with our mortgage on the house that she got in the split, and just trying to keep my head above water. Ted gave me a reduced rate for doing handyman work around the place. He knew I was good, reliable, getting back on my feet as best I could. I thought of you, y’know, Marek. Just pick yourself up like that halfwit Okerlund kid. If he could, I could. Go about my business, and eventually things’ll look up.”

  That Taylor Peterson had given the boy Marek had been another thought after all this time floored him. Marek figured it was just the normal bullying of that era—and likely still went on. Plenty of it went on in boardrooms and on golf courses, for that matter. Case in point: Alan Digges.

  “Just what did you do for Bunting?” Marek asked.

  Peterson sighed. “You know all those evictions? If Digges played by the rules, by the ones Ted did with letting the tenants know they could contest the eviction in court with a hearing, it would’ve taken months, but Digges didn’t want months. And he didn’t want to pay for my time, either. Said the trailer park could fall to pieces for all he cared, because no one else would care—and the poor would still come knocking, with their vouchers, their charity-paid deposits. He could get what little work he needed just from lowering rents—or not raising them. Or...lie for him. So the deal was, if I backed up Bunting, swearing that rents weren’t paid, that tenants broke the rules of the lease, I’d get to stay. Should’ve known not to get in bed with a two-faced liar. Told myself, ‘Just hold on, and somebody’s gonna take them both down.’ Should’ve been me, because I have some connections in Eda County, but I was... too ashamed... and afraid I’d lose what contracts I still had.”

  He slid his hands down his face again. “Y’know, we used to look after each other at the trailer park, fixing stuff, bartering, loaning a floater, whatever it took. Then Digges set us against each other... and I fell right in line. I should’ve come to you guys right away. I knew it was wrong, pushing hardworking people out of their homes, but I just felt... helpless. You always wonder what you’d do if you were in something like the Holocaust. You got a choice either to live or to die at one of those camps—but to live, you gotta betray your own.”

  A tic spasmed in his stubbled cheek, but he didn’t look away. “Well, now I know. I’m one of the cowards. And I can’t ever take back what I did. But I want to be a man my son can be proud of. So I told Bunting I wasn’t going to be his lackey anymore... and next thing I know, I’m on his shit list, with a notice to vacate. Last night... I’d had enough.”

  Marek barely breathed as the tape recorder whirred in the silence. Thankfully, Peterson was too deep in his story to hear it.

  “When I went out to see my... visitor ... off, I felt like I’d taken my first deep breath since the divorce.” The tic smoothed as he smiled. “Moon was out, you know? Stars galore. When was the last time I looked up at the stars? You forget they’re even there.” His smile dimmed. “So I walked around the trailer toward the woods, away from all the lights, and...”

  Marek waited. Karen twitched beside him, probably pacing madly in her mind, like Gunny twitching in his sleep, chasing rabbits.

  “And there he was. Just lying there.”

  Marek’s shoulders slumped from a height he hadn’t known they’d risen to. “Who?”

  Peterson blinked then frowned at him, as if once again reassessing Marek’s mental capacity. “Bunting, of course. Who else?”

  Karen got to her feet then leaned back against the closed door. “Alive?”

  “No, dead. Near as I could figure, anyway. He wasn’t breathing.”

  Marek pushed back in his chair. “What about Bunting’s SUV?”

  “Ah... it was parked there, across the road. And... I’m not proud of it, but I panicked. We were on the outs, you know? Everybody knew I’d been booted. And I got thinking, even being dead, he was giving me shit. All I could think was, here I’d decided to start over, to get my life back on track somehow, and there he was—just tripping me up again. I figured I had to move him somewhere that I wouldn’t be looked at as a suspect. Found the keys on him and took his body up to the overlook. Almost gave up my plan when I saw an RV parked there, but it was all dark. I’d cut the headlights of the SUV from the get-go, drove by the light of the moon. Bunting was one hell of a load to get into the toilet, but I’ve been trying to work off some of my mad, after getting dumped for no reason, so I managed. Seemed appropriate.”

  “No reason for the divorce? What about your lady friend?” Karen pushed back from the door. “Just who was this mystery woman you keep alluding to?”

  He reddened to a beet color.

  A hard knock had them all jumping. Turning, Karen jerked open the door, and Marek pitied whoever walked through—even a lawyer.

  And his jaw unhinged. Check that. Not a lawyer.

  Of all the women in all the world, Marek would have bet good money that this particular one wouldn’t have diddled with their suspect. Or any man, for that matter, given what she’d gone through in the last few years, losing all of her family on a freakish snowy night. She’d lost some weight, of the poundage variety if not the grief, but she still had about two decades on Peterson.

  Pastor Tricia Cantor rushed over
to Peterson and put her hand on his shoulder. “I got here as soon as I could, Taylor. Are you all right?”

  Hearing genuine worry, genuine caring, Marek decided that age had no boundaries when it came to love, but still, he admitted that even though few things shocked him anymore, this did. The Chicago psychiatrist turned Congregationalist preacher had become an informal profiler and a friend of sorts.

  Karen, on the other hand, hadn’t felt the same connection, though even she had a hard time coming up with a response—a testament to her shock. “Ms. Cantor, were you with Mr. Peterson last night?”

  “Why, yes, didn’t he tell you already?”

  Marek cleared his throat. “He was... reticent... about your relationship.”

  “Ashamed, more like,” Karen muttered.

  After squeezing Peterson’s shoulder, Tricia sank down in Karen’s vacated chair. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Taylor. I told you that.”

  Tricia seemed to be taking his obvious embarrassment rather well. Although as a fairly new pastor in town, even if a widow, she’d probably wanted the romance under wraps, as well. Ashamed, no. Secretive, yes.

  “Your... relationship... has gone on how long?” Marek asked.

  “Oh, well, quite some time,” Tricia answered serenely. “Taylor and Maggie hosted me for lunch during my first month here. What a red-letter day that was.” She dimpled, looking over at Taylor. “Just too delicious to resist. I came back for more.”

  Karen made at T with her hands. “Wait. Time out. You cheated on Taylor’s wife, starting that far back?”