Hometown Favorite: A Novel

by BILL BARTON

  He knelt beside Cherie's body and touched her. He felt no warmth. There was no reflexive response. He whispered her name, raising the volume level each time he spoke it, but there was no reply. He laid two fingers on her moist, cool neck and whispered her name again. There was no sign of life. He stood and studied the room. He wanted to be sure he could remember to tell Dewayne exactly the way he found it and exactly the way he had found his mother, as if she had decided to take a nap on the floor and never woke up. He knelt back down to wait, to pray, to regret, to ponder, to plan, and as all these thoughts tumbled through his mind, he heard the sirens in the distance.

  John Hathaway refused to appear with the district attorney, the police chief, and their entourage at the press conference. It was not his style, especially when he believed there was a rush to judgment. Before the press conference had begun, Hathaway went several rounds with the DA, disputing his haste to call this an open-and-shut case.

  "There is still the boyfriend;" he argued, though he had to admit the evidence was weak.

  Tyler's name had come up when Rosella provided Hathaway with all the names of close family and friends. Hathaway called in an LA detective to track him down. The detective found him looking haggard and drawn in the control room at a recording studio, evaluating the latest cut from a local hip-hop artist. He had been in the studio 24/7, he said, and had not seen or heard any news from the outside world. When the detective apologized for having to pass on such distressing news, he noted Tyler's distraught reaction at hearing of the death of his girlfriend, along with the fact that the dates on the plane ticket checked out-he had yet to use the return portion of the ticket and probably would not, given the terrible circumstances. Through his tears, Tyler said, "Why return to Houston now? Why even live?" The corroboration from multiple associates who swore Tyler had been a workaholic for the last several days worked in his favor to persuade the LA detective that Tyler had a convincing alibi.

  The police chief, a former partner of Hathaway's, was sympathetic to John, but sided with the DA. It was an election year. The DA was running for the U.S. Senate, the police chief for mayor of Houston. The national focus this case had sparked would continue to hold the country's attention and keep them in the spotlight for a long time. The free media hype was too tempting, and Hathaway lost the argument to delay a public declaration of the results in the preliminary investigation and the state's judicial intentions.

  All the evidence pointed to Dewayne Jobe as the killer-he had certainly been tried by the public, the majority of Americans believing him guilty and worthy of the death penalty, which was sweet news for the DA. But Hathaway had a gut feeling on this one. It felt too hygienic, too sanitized for a crime of spontaneous passion, and his gut reaction had kept him going back to the scene and to the lab, searching for clues, looking for the missed fingerprint, any carelessness a murderer might leave behind. Yes, Rosella had told him Tyler had been in their home many times over the last few months so, of course, there would be physical evidence of his presence, evidence that would be hard to attach a date and time to, but still there was his gut feeling.

  Hathaway's final plea was that he had not yet submitted a full report, they were still recovering and analyzing records from the computer, but the DA countered with the tide of public opinion being all that mattered and he should hurry up with his report.

  "I won't have another O.J. travesty on my watch;' the DA said, which ended the conversation, and Hathaway left for his favorite watering hole. If he was going to watch a press conference, he might as well do it with his drink of choice in his hand.

  The bar patrons reflected national opinion ... the judicial system could not try and execute Dewayne Jobe fast enough. Prior to the press conference, the network interviewed the owner of the Stars, and he did agree that based on the startling revelations so far by the press and the statements leaked from the DA's office, the circumstances did not look good for his star player. Yet his steadfast position was, unless and until they proved the man guilty, he would remain innocent. This statement brought a chorus of boos and profane comments from the horde.

  The DA outlined the working theory that would make his job a cakewalk, citing the alleged improper relationship between Dewayne and Sabrina as the catalyst setting all the circumstances in motion. Sabrina's note to her aunt was at the top of the list as evidence of Dewayne's guilt.

  "They had even recently been seen in public," the DA exclaimed, barely concealing his confidence of the open-and-shut quality of this case.

  The undeniable evidence of purchased one-way plane tickets and passports substantiated the DA's conclusions. In addition, the girl's fingerprints on the computer's keyboard and the depletion of funds from private accounts were added support to the hypothesis. The unfortunate deaths of the child and nephew were accidents of an apparent struggle between Sabrina and Dewayne, which ended in the death of the young woman, and once he realized that the horror of the aftermath he had created was all too real, he tried to commit suicide. Yes, the state was confident that with all the documented evidence, they could expedite this case swiftly, no, the state had no other suspects, and yes, Mr. Jobe remained on a suicide watch.

  In a final tragic twist to the story, the reporter turned to the camera at the end of the press conference and announced that Dewayne Jobe's mother had died of a heart attack in her home, apparently the result of hearing the news that her son was the primary suspect in the multiple homicides of his own family.

  Just as the reporter was signing off, Hathaway got a call on his cell phone from the lab informing him Sabrina had not been pregnant at all. The test must have been ... what? What must it have been? Hathaway wondered. Rosella had told him she was not pregnant, but had she thought she was and taken the test? He had not thought to ask her that question. Then had Sabrina thought she was pregnant and confronted the father with inaccurate information? Whoever had taken the test with its ensuing result, look at what madness this false positive may have wrought. When Hathaway considered all the possibilities swirling in his head about the old and new circumstances of this case, he killed his drink, tapped his empty glass on the Formica top, and ordered a bottle.

  Rosella was isolated from herself. She felt an infinite distance from God, an infinite distance from light and all goodness, an infinite distance from any traces of human consciousness. She was a raw wound of complete loneliness. It was impossible to speak, impossible to pray, impossible almost to move or think, impossible to summon a memory. The loss was so palpable that to force a memory to the surface of her conscious, any memory of any of these people who were once her family, was a task beyond her capabilities. Were it not for her parents who had come the second they heard the news, Rosella would have been incapacitated. The limo had picked up Franklin and Joella on the tarmac outside a private hangar of the jet service they used to get to Houston and whisked them away to where their daughter was in hiding. In the past few days, she had been able to reach a point of lucidness only to make two decisions: she would bury the children in Los Angeles, and she would see her husband before she departed.

  The officer came to the door of the holding area and indicated to Rosella that it was time to see Dewayne. Her parents warned her against such a move, but she refused to heed their advice. It made no sense to face him at this point, but face him she would, just to prove to herself that she was capable of standing opposite an evil she had never dreamed would demolish her life. The officer led her down a hall and took her into another square chamber where another uniformed officer sat at a desk.

  When she entered the room with her escort, the officer at the desk pushed a button, triggering the automatic lock on the door that would lead her to Dewayne. She hesitated, the tiny level of confidence to face her husband now draining out of her. The officer at the desk reinforced her doubt by informing her she did not have to go through with this, but Rosella's momentary vacillation passed and she signaled she would continue. The first officer pulled open the door, instruc
ted her to take a seat at the third booth, and said that her husband would be coming any minute. When her time was up, he would return to get her. If she wanted to leave sooner than the allotted time, she need only wave in his direction. She sat in the chair and took the phone in her hand.

  The first thing Rosella noticed was that Dewayne seemed to have shrunk in size. The shackles on his arms and legs reduced this erect human tower of strength and superiority into a docile, shuffling creature, one who lived on the streets and slept in shelters. Her last image of him was in another weakened state, supine on a hospital bed, weeping into the oxygen mask as she beat him with her fists. His face and neck still bore the marks of her assault. His uniformed guide secured him in his chair by connecting his manacles to a lock beneath the table of his booth. These once long arms, the wingspan of a condor, which had caught impossible passes and had wrapped their length in a warm embrace around the inviting body of his wife, were appendages of the deformed.

  The officer lifted the phone from its receptacle and placed it into Dewayne's hand.

  They breathed into their phones and stared into each other's swollen eyes. What personal and moral injustice had brought them to this place? What had either of them done to deserve the insanity visited upon them? What reasonable explanation would either of them have to offer that might hold a clue to what had happened? Could they speak any solace to each other? For a time, looking at each other through the opaque glass shield and listening to the raspy breaths of struggling life through the earpiece of the receiver seemed to be the only choice. Dewayne did not appear desperate to declare his innocence.

  Rosella did not feel the wrath of days before. Her heart was shut inside a barren, caged booth with no image or memory to provide an ameliorating buffer that might soothe the open wounds. She glanced over at the officer who had escorted her, and when he thought she might summon him, she held up her hand to stop him. This simple distraction loosened her tongue: her parents had come to take her back to Los Angeles where she intended to bury their son, unable to bear the thought of leaving him in Houston with his murderous father, and they would return the bodies of her niece and nephew to their mother.

  "Rosella, I am innocent," Dewayne said, but she would not allow him to interrupt her, to divert her with false claims.

  "Your mother is dead," Rosella said. She let the news travel the length of the telephone cord and register in Dewayne's brain, and when he asked how and why, she gave him the information with a dulled sense of pleasure that this news would make him suffer. Why shouldn't he suffer? His suffering would never measure up to the ocean of her desolation. Add the death of your mother to the list of your murders, she thought, and Dewayne bowed his head, sobbing in anguish. She told him Jake Hopper had made all the funeral arrangements, but there was no compassion in the telling.

  "I am innocent" He choked out the words as he wept, tears dripping off his chin and spotting his orange jumpsuit. "God is with me"

  "Like he was with my baby," Rosella blurted, unable to restrain her fury. "Like he was with Sabrina and Bruce. Like he was with your mama. Well, it's good he's with you, because there's no one left in this family he can be with"

  "Don't say that, Rosella, please don't," he said. "I need you to pray for me"

  She slammed down her phone. She could not bear to have the receiver pressed against her ear and hear the sound of his voice any longer. She laid her hands flat on the table and bowed her head. Was this a pious gesture? Was she going to respect his request? Would she, in fact, pray for the murderer of her family? The sparkle of her wedding rings caught her attention, and she resolved at that precise moment she would shed no more tears for her husband. She would spend all remaining grief on her blood family.

  Rosella raised her hands in front of the glass as if she were about to direct a vehicle into a parking space. She looked into Dewayne's bloated face, and with her right hand, she removed the diamond ring, followed by the wedding band from the ring finger on her left hand. She shook them in her hand as if they were cheap dice as she kicked her seat against the wall behind her. Rosella inhaled a deep breath and hurled the tangible symbols of her vows against the glass.

  Dewayne reacted as if the glass would not protect him, and he jerked back, releasing the phone in his hand. The phone crashed onto the table, and then slid off, the receiver swinging from side to side like the victim of a hanging. He had enough slack in his chains to allow him to lay his forehead on the table in the booth, unable to bear any more of his wife's severe denunciation.

  Rosella did not wait for the officer. She yanked the chair out of her path and ran toward the exit, leaving Dewayne howling her name with the deepest cries of animal torment.

  The officer who escorted Dewayne from his cell returned to the booth and the man slumped over in his chair. He pulled him back so he could unlock the chain that had connected him to the booth, and then helped him rise to his feet. Dewayne's body started to tremble during the long walk back to his cell, and the guard requested assistance to help him hold up this broken colossus. Once the cell was unlocked and the shackles unwrapped from Dewayne's body, the lack of weight seemed to release the tremors. The guard tried to help him to his bed, but Dewayne went into full-blown convulsions and fell to the floor, his body writhing in his soul's hemorrhaging sorrow.

  Salvador Alverez stepped out of his beachside bungalow in Quepos, Costa Rica, just ten miles north of Dominical, and stretched his limbs. His eyes squinted from the glare off the crystal blue sea of the late afternoon sun. The only thing he wore was his new Rolex, the one indulgence he had allowed himself just before he left the United States. The markup on stolen goods was always 100 percent profit, but the deal a member of his gang offered was too good to ignore. The five hundred he had given for the watch was in and of itself a steal since its value would be in the mid four figures. Salvador was anxious to begin his new life, and this was the first evidence of transformation.

  He leaned back inside the front door and told his female companion still lying in bed, it was time for her to go; he had business to take care of. She had five minutes. Then he sat down in the lounge chair and stretched his legs over the railing of his front porch.

  Everything had fallen into place for Salvador. There had been no glitches in his plan. The most important lesson he had learned in life was to be patient. Patience was a virtue, and by practicing it, he had seen that patience was profitable. By being patient, he had gained knowledge. By being patient, he had become a wealthy man. By being patient, he had transformed himself into a man of power, someone with whom the world would soon reckon.

  In the brief time since his arrival, he had been establishing himself as a citizen in this new land, exchanging currency, creating accounts in local banks, making inquiries about property with some local Realtors, and letting it be known that the music business in America had been good to him. He had not been flamboyant, throwing around cash like trinkets tossed by a Mardi Gras king. That was not his style, and besides, the serious money had not yet arrived that would inaugurate his kingdom, a kingdom that would have no end. The money would arrive soon, and he would be patient, but these initial steps were laying the foundation of his credibility among the locals, a valuable commodity in his conversion process.

  Salvador had had several conversion experiences in his short life, but this new one would be his final revision. It took a person several tries to get life right, and he was pleased he had found a version that would fit for a long time. He had not come to this new world solely to spend the fresh wealth he had acquired. His vision for the future was far too grand than to become sluggish with self-indulgences, something his prosperity could provide him for years to come. He was much too ambitious. He had come for the investment opportunities, seeking ways to expand his kingdom, ways that would bring the world to him, ways that would demand respect from equals and inspire fear from those beneath him. And ways that would relieve him of the memories of his years on the street, his time in jail, his brief
con as a model Christian, his foray into the darkness of murder.

  Tyler Rogan, born again as Salvador Alverez, had vision, he had connections, he had venture capital to back his inspirations, and he had a plan he had begun to conceive as he rode in the car from Houston to Los Angeles while his associates slept. Tyler was always making plans, a skill he developed whiling away the long hours of incarceration.

  His companions for the long drive had been his business associates in Houston, the crew Sabrina had happened upon the day she informed Tyler he was the father of their child. When Tyler had walked out of detention in LA after serving his time for beating Bruce with the baseball bat, he had no commitment to rehabilitation, no interest in anything other than a return to the old life, and his time behind bars had been a real motivation to move up the ranks among the members of his gang.

  Imprisonment had been time well spent. Tyler had taken a couple of online business classes and had learned to build websites; he was not about to waste the hard-earned taxpayer investment into his rehabilitation by watching hours of television and pumping iron in the yard each day.

  Two things helped him gain independence and veneration when he returned to civilian life: jail time enhanced his status with the gang's rank and file, which, in turn, had developed a deeper level of trust for him within the leadership, and he had come back with a solid plan to expand the power, influence, and assets of the gang. They needed a legitimate business to shield their profits, the first chapter out of any organized crime handbook, and so they purchased the recording studio. He would then use his skill as a website designer to attract prospective recording artists. With this legitimacy as cover, Tyler would be the liaison for the drugs sold on any street corner in any city in America.