Dead Poor

by M. K. Coker

  Both stared at Karen, then at each other, and both descended into hysterical laughter.

  “Oh, my. Oh, my.” Tricia slipped off her glasses to wipe away tears. “Goodness, Karen, I could be his mother. You really thought...” She laughed again, more ruefully. “I think somewhere in there was a compliment to me, but hardly to Taylor.”

  “You’re... a wonderful woman...” her parishioner stammered. “But...”

  “But I’m his pastor, not his lover,” she finished. “Really, Marek, I thought you had a better handle on human dynamics than that.”

  “I didn’t want to think it,” he mumbled, sure his own cheeks were red now. “He kept avoiding our questions about you, about what you were doing at his place at that hour.”

  “Ah, I see.” Tricia slipped her glasses back on. “Well, it was pretty serious. He called me just before one in the morning, said that he needed to talk to someone or he thought he might finish it.”

  “Finish what?” Karen demanded.

  Marek finally got it. “Finish himself.”

  The balding head fell back into the big scarred hands. Tricia reached over to pat his back. “You did exactly right, Taylor, calling me. Losing a bit of sleep is nothing compared to losing you. Suicide isn’t the answer. Life isn’t over, not for me, not for you. Don’t forget everything I told you, just because all this”—she looked around the interview room—“happened ahead of schedule.”

  Marek slumped in his chair. Their slam dunk had just turned into a clunker. Bunting had been killed after one o’clock, after Taylor had called her. And Tricia Cantor was golden as a witness. Her presence in the trailer dovetailed with what Zoe had told them.

  “Ahead of schedule?” Marek asked, trying to salvage something from the interview.

  “Yes, tomorrow morning, first thing, I was going to come in with Taylor to talk to you and Karen about cutting him a deal to testify against Alan Digges. About what he did to get the others kicked out of their trailers. That’s what we hammered out last night: a way out of the mess.”

  Karen swept a stray blond bang back up to her hairline. “So you’re his alibi.”

  “What do you mean ‘his alibi’?” Tricia looked betrayed, but not by her parishioner. “Marek? What’s going on here?”

  Marek simply nodded toward Taylor, who mumbled out what he’d done. With Bunting’s body. After. He did deny leaving the fecal dental implant in Bunting’s mouth, though, which wasn’t surprising, given his audience.

  “Well. That wasn’t the wisest thing to do, but it doesn’t change the fact that Taylor isn’t your killer.” Tricia swept her hands into her hair. “I got there about one-twenty, after I threw on some clothes. I didn’t stop to do anything else, not with a life on the line.”

  If Taylor wasn’t the killer, then who was? Had the killer come from the encampment, the trailer park, or from elsewhere? Marek rubbed his temples. “Did you see anything on the grass beyond Taylor’s trailer? Or anything parked by the road there?”

  “Other than Taylor’s truck? Nothing. And I was looking because I thought it was really creepy how the road just ended right there. Taylor said that it was the end of the road. For the trailer. For him. We talked for over an hour until I left around two-thirty.”

  “Did you hear anything? A vehicle? A thud?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. My entire focus was on Taylor.” She leaned forward, a plea on her face. “Taylor has kids, a job, and just needs to get his feet under him again. I’d think, even with this new information, that his testimony would be worth something. Going to jail wouldn’t help anyone.”

  “He’s already told us about Bunting and Digges’s eviction game,” Karen began. “So—”

  “Not everything,” Taylor interrupted. “Though I can’t hand you a killer on a silver platter, because I honestly don’t know who killed Bunting. But I need a deal. Not for me. Please. My kids don’t deserve to be ragged on for having a dad in prison...” His gaze lit on Marek. No doubt he was thinking of the taunts flung at Marek for being the grandson of a murderer. He sighed. “We were cruel little shits. Do you believe in karma, Marek? I’ve just handed you my head.”

  Marek glanced over at Karen, who raised her eyebrows at him. So she was letting him decide Taylor Peterson’s fate. All he felt was the heavy weight of it. Finally, he said, “I don’t eat my kills.” Though Taylor’s shoulders slumped in relief, Tricia looked befuddled. “Hunter’s lingo,” Marek told her. “Yes, we’ll work with the state’s attorney to get him a deal, as long as he follows through and testifies against Digges and gives us everything he has.”

  “Which is pretty much nothing, at this point,” Taylor said morosely. “Materially, that is. They’ll have cleaned out my trailer by now. Truck’ll be repossessed and—”

  Tricia laid a hand over her parishioner’s. “I told you, Taylor, we’ll work all that out. We’ve got a fund set up at the bank that all the ministers in town can draw on, for just this kind of situation. So take the deal and start over. The right way.”

  Peterson nodded, and for the first time, he sat up straight, his hands rubbing up and down his worn jeans, leaving dark stains. “Okay. I’ve got one more thing for you. And I hope like hell... sorry, Pastor Tricia... I hope like all get out that it leads you straight to Digges. Ted wasn’t even cold before Digges was in Judge Rudy’s chambers, laying claim to the estate. Now that’s cold.”

  “But not illegal,” Marek pointed out, disappointed he’d given the man a get-out-of-jail pass for so little. They’d just have to hope that Judge Rudibaugh would see things their way on the allegations of a man who had everything to gain by making a deal.

  “Not illegal if Ted died without naming an heir. But Bunting told me that Ted wrote a will only a few days before he had the stroke. Digges knew it. He found it in the trailer after Ted was hospitalized in Sioux Falls.”

  As Marek let out a soundless whistle, Tricia smiled fully for the first time and folded her hands. “Alan Digges wasn’t named. At all.”

  CHAPTER 26

  The twin porchlights of her old Arts and Crafts bungalow drew Karen homeward.

  For all her life, she’d taken that home, and her welcome in it, for granted. Rock solid, with a foundation of Sioux quartzite, the bungalow had stood for generations of Okerlunds. It had never occurred to her, growing up, that she could lose it to the quicksand of economic catastrophe.

  She’d grown up delighting in the crabapple trees that bloomed in spring, cursing their bitter fruit that splatted all over the concrete walk and driveway in summer, and raking their leaves from browning grass in the fall. Her father had put up the basketball hoop on the garage after she’d outgrown the little play hoop that her Uncle Sig had given her, forging her path on the basketball court to a national championship game, which she’d lost on her last shot.

  That was her first real loss, a harbinger of many to follow.

  But at every step, at every loss, this place had still been there for her.

  The lights meant someone was home, because she hadn’t left them on when she’d left that morning. But as she didn’t see Eyre’s little import, that must be Mary Hannah, back to face another gauntlet.

  That reminded her she needed to talk to the principal tomorrow. In loco parentis. Loco. Didn’t that mean crazy in Spanish? Marek would know. For the first time, she really appreciated how difficult it was for him to juggle his jobs and his daughter’s schedule. She’d just about fired him on their first homicide for leaving an incident meeting without a word, to pick Becca up at school, which she hadn’t considered a valid excuse at the time.

  The only wonder was that Marek hadn’t kicked Karen to the curb long ago.

  She pulled to her own curb, noted the hiccup of the engine with resignation, knowing that sooner or later, the Sub would die on her. Again. And be resurrected. Again.

  Karen turned off the ignition, and wrapping her arms around the steering wheel, she let the emotions of the day catch up with her. Never in her life had sh
e felt so much like a traitor to her badge. She’d dearly, dearly love to arrest Alan Digges for the misery he’d caused—and for making her inflict it on his behalf. Was she really any different from Peterson? Or even Bunting?

  With nothing but hearsay about the purported will, Karen had decided that the matter of Alan Digges could wait until morning. She needed to talk to Judge Rudibaugh and the state’s attorney about the litany of allegations. Unfortunately, Bunting hadn’t told Peterson who inherited the trailer park, only that Digges hadn’t, and that was all she—or Ted—wrote.

  Karen also needed to talk to Not-Johnson about those allegations. If nothing else, to let him know that the flood of evictions would likely be stemmed until the courts sorted out the wronged from the wrong. Maybe some of them would be able to return to their trailers.

  With that upbeat thought, Karen went inside.

  And found, not Mary Hannah, but her father. He’d taken his recliner with him to the house down the road that he shared with his new wife, Clara. So he sat uncomfortably straight on a kitchen chair, a huge wrapped present on the table where Karen had eaten, been lectured, and done homework until deemed old enough and self-disciplined enough to do it on her own.

  Karen blinked at him. It wasn’t her birthday. It was... oh, crap. Eyre’s. October ninth, her daughter’s true birthday, not October fourth, Karen’s own birthday and the one that Eyre’s biological father had inked in on the so-called “original” birth certificate, in an attempt to deflect possible repercussions to his coaching career.

  “You forgot.”

  So much for the warm fuzzies. Fortunately, she hadn’t forgotten—earlier. “I’ve got Eyre’s present upstairs.” Not wrapped, still in her duffel bag, but bought. “Where is she?”

  “With the woman who adopted her. In Vermillion.”

  Another not-so-veiled accusation. Her father would never forgive Karen for depriving him of the opportunity to raise his granddaughter.

  Because he’d taught her not to back down, no matter the opposition, Karen held his gaze.

  To her surprise, he looked away first. “Any progress on Bunting?”

  Well. That was a gigantic olive branch from a man like Arne Okerlund. She sank down into a chair across from him. She missed being able to talk to him about her cases. “Yes and no.” And it all came out. He didn’t blink, didn’t speak, until she was done.

  “Shouldn’t have given Taylor Peterson a pass,” he told her.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Marek did, then,” he said with grim satisfaction. Arne considered his half-brother to be too soft for the job, just like their father, Leif. But Marek wasn’t soft, not really. He hadn’t stopped her, not once, during the evictions. He’d just gotten more and more—not there.

  But Karen refused to throw Marek under the bus, even to score points with her father. “Give him a break. Especially after all the evictions we served today. That was brutal. I don’t like being the hammer for an asshole’s greed. I just wish I’d run into Doris Harkness in the first trailer, not next to the last, or I’d have stopped it all right there. Dad, did you have a lot? I mean, all at once? It just about killed me.”

  He extended one long forefinger and poked the present on the table, neatly and expertly wrapped with bow and streamers, which showed Clara’s handiwork. After her mother had died, Karen had still gotten presents, but they’d rarely been wrapped. And when they were, the Sunday cartoon section of the Argus Leader served as the wrapping. “Not like what you did today. Pretty rare all around to have more than a few a year. Worst were family farms back in the 90s. People I grew up with, respected.”

  She thought of Mindy Hansen Bullard. “What happened?”

  “Big banks in the Twin Cities did the foreclosing after buying up the local ones. Didn’t understand agricultural loans at all. Most people around here were upset, did what they could to help out, let them move in on their property as hired hands, whatever it took. Some moved away for jobs, and a few others I lost up...” He must have seen her quick frown. Like Marek’s dyslexia, her father’s stroke-induced brain farts came on when emotions were high. “Locked up or buried. But... the trailer park? Hands down, with Ted, they got what they earned—or didn’t. Choices. Bad ones.”

  Karen’s glance fell to the present. “And the kids?”

  She didn’t need to look up to see the spittle fly. “People that bad off shouldn’t have kids, shouldn’t have ’em outta wedlock. Bad for them. Bad for the kids. Bad, period. Better choices, better life.”

  That rant came courtesy, she had no doubt, of his soft spot. Kids.

  Karen heard a car pull into the drive. That would be her daughter. “So you’re saying that I made the right decision giving up Eyre? Or that I shouldn’t have had her at all?”

  That got a typical Dakotan and Okerlund answer: silence.

  She’d made poor choices. And she’d been very lucky that it hadn’t all blown up in her face. “It’s easy to armchair quarterback the lives of strangers.” Karen got to her feet to go get Eyre’s present. “Hits harder when it’s your own. I’m not perfect. You’ve let me know that, loud and clear.”

  “Made better choices... after,” he said gruffly, fingers playing with the streamers.

  On the steps up to her attic room, Karen turned back, some of her pent-up emotion bursting out. “You don’t know who’s going to turn it around, or when. I don’t blame the people in Grove Park for banding together to make it their home. It hurt like hell to oust them, because if I didn’t have you, didn’t have Mom, didn’t have this base, this home, I might’ve been right there with them. I admire their resilience.”

  She heard the front door open below as she reached her attic room then her father’s gruff “Happy Birthday” and Eyre’s wavery “You shouldn’t have.” A chair scraped back, and she imagined they were sharing an awkward hug. Then she heard a gasp that said, from what she could gather, her father—or Clara—had hit it big.

  Though it had been twenty-two years later than it should have been, Karen had at least given her father what he’d always wanted: another Okerlund at 22 Okerlund Road. That Karen wasn’t part of that picture? Her choice. Bad? Good? It didn’t matter. It just was.

  She opened the duffel she’d thrown on the floor. Had she really been in Albuquerque less than forty-eight hours ago? After rummaging around, she pulled out the bright-silver necklace with a pale-blue stone the color of Okerlund eyes that her father, her daughter, and Marek all shared. She didn’t. The necklace had been made not by family but family of family. Becca’s great-aunt’s son.

  As Karen debated whether to wait for another time rather than adding an awkward third wheel to the reunion downstairs, her father’s voice rose up from the vents from below, just as it had many times in the past, “Get down here, girl! We’ve got a birthday to celebrate!”

  CHAPTER 27

  Karen’s radio blared, waking her only hours after she’d finished off the last of the double-chocolate cake that Clara had brought over, along with a batter-smeared Joey. Becca and Marek had shown up from across the street, as well, with more gifts. Minutes later, Mary Hannah had arrived in the Brethren’s rented limo with a hamper full of intricate pastries and a huge pot roast, hauled in by her personal chauffeur, Mr. Hahn of the denim overalls and gruff manner.

  That always struck her as the oddest coupling of cultures: the buggy-driving Brethren didn’t own or drive cars, but when one was needed, they hired a local farmer with his luxury SUV.

  All in all, the impromptu party was a success, even if Eyre had seemed a little overwhelmed. Once Karen had told her that the proper Okerlund response to a surprise birthday party was a lot of grumbling, which got a knowing laugh from Clara and a mock glare from Arne, that seemed to have settled Eyre’s nerves.

  Karen rolled over in bed, cracked her jaw on a huge yawn, and took the call. Getting woken up in the wee hours for two nights running, with a deficit of sleep to start with, was a definite downside to her job. “Go ahead, Jordan
. Sheriff Mehaffey here.”

  Her night dispatcher-jailer, Jordan Fike, spoke over the airwaves with an uncharacteristic detachment, though he’d never been as chatty as the day dispatcher. “Incident at Grove Park. Possible assault. See the deputy at the scene.”

  Karen blinked. He must’ve been reading one of her old dispatching manuals during a long, boring night. Or watching old Adam-12 reruns. Though she’d been initially annoyed at the much laxer conversational tone of her county dispatchers versus the unit she’d run in Sioux Falls, she’d come to prefer it. She had to dredge up her own mental manual. “Copy that. ETA fifteen minutes. Mehaffey out.”

  The call had actually come at a good time, as her overworked brain had started mashing together a real Frankenstein of a nightmare. It involved a screaming baby—Bunting with his noughts and crosses—thrown out with the bathwater by Digges and rescued, strangely enough, by Zoe Harkness while Kaylee Early cheered her on with pompoms.

  Wherever that’d been leading, it wasn’t good.

  Deciding to wait on calling in Marek, Karen drove the dark road alone, cupping yawns in one hand, driving with the other. After texting Adam at the park entrance, she was directed to the Connor Creek parking lot above Not-Johnson’s former encampment.

  Had they been stupid enough to return, despite her warning that the area was going to be patrolled? Because despite her misgivings about removing them, she would side with Biester in a hurry if callouts to the park continued.

  As Karen turned in, the alternating red and blue lights of Adam’s squad seemed strangely alien, even inappropriate, in the park, like disco strobe lights in a Victorian ballroom. The lights flashed over an old beater of a sedan at the trailhead. When she got out of the Sub, Karen saw Biester and Donahue standing near the squad, hands in pockets, looking helpless—or as though they would’ve liked to find someone to mash up.

  “Sheriff.” Adam popped out of the squad where Karen could see the outline of a smaller person, probably female, in the passenger seat—not in the cage. “We’ve got a possible attempted sexual assault.”