Black's Creek

by Sam Millar

  ‘You been behaving?’ She was looking at me as if I’d been doing something suspicious.

  ‘Of course!’ I tried sounding indignant, but the glare she returned told me it was a pathetic attempt. I quickly packed away the last of the groceries, but by the time I got finished, Mom had made her way upstairs, and was standing outside the hub.

  I walked up towards my room, trying to look cool and relaxed. I could feel Mom’s eyes burning into my head.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ I asked, trying to sound casual despite the knotting in my stomach.

  ‘Chicken and potatoes. You’re sure you weren’t in your father’s office?’ Mom’s interrogative eyes drilled right into my head. She should have been a cop. She was worse than Dad, once she suspected wrongdoing.

  ‘Are you roasting the potatoes?’ I said, quickly heading into my room.

  ‘Some roasting will be getting done …’ she said, not specifying whether she meant the potatoes, the chicken or me.

  Inside my room, I leaned against the door, letting my breath out gently, suspecting Mom listening at the door, suspecting me.

  Chapter Five

  Meeting Mean Man Maxwell

  … there was about him a suggestion of lurking ferocity, as though the Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.

  Jack London, White Fang

  Almost four days had gone by since our campfire meeting, and there was still no word from Brent. I knew it, he was full of shit, just like his beefed-up vocabulary stolen from Dad’s crime mags.

  I was resting on my bed, reading a copy of Green Lantern. Through the open window, a warm, early evening breeze ventured in, carrying a tribe of everyday fragrances on its tail: melted tar cooling; stirred paint just out of the can; and the quintessential summertime smell of newly mown grass. The sky was everywhere outside the window, blue and perfect as only dusk on a late August day knows how to be.

  I took it all in, closing my eyelids and feeling drowsy with intoxication. It was a wonderful, legal high, provided by nature and life. Who the hell needed marijuana when they could have this for free? Just as I thought of drugs, the sound of Dad arriving home from work broke my trance.

  I heard the front door opening, then closing, and a few seconds later the doorbell rang.

  Ascending footsteps sounded on the stairs, moving in my direction. The doorbell rang again.

  ‘Tommy?’ Dad said, poking his head into my room. ‘I’m going for a shower. See who’s at the door.’

  ‘But the Green Lantern is just about to use his power ring …’

  ‘Clear?’

  ‘Yes …’ I said, reluctantly pushing myself off the bed and heading downstairs. When Dad used the word ‘clear’, it was a command, but when he emphasised it, it became law.

  Opening the front door, I was startled to see Theodore Maxwell, Joey’s father, filling the frame of the door with his own massive frame.

  Theodore Maxwell was a six-foot-three brick-building of a man. His entire body was constructed from blocks of muscle, with little wastage in between to interfere with what those blocks were specifically built for: intimidating the dangerous prisoners he guarded in the notorious Sing Sing Correctional Facility, the maximum-security prison five miles from where we lived. Sing Sing was arguably the most infamous prison in the world, where prisoners were baptised in the fire of broken bones, and strap-your-balls-on gladiatorial fights for survival.

  Dad had once said that someone was making a sick joke when they named it Sing Sing, as there was little to sing about in that god-awful place. On 19 June 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted at the prison for espionage. Despite the passing of time, their deaths continued to be discussed in bars and diners as if it were yesterday. Over the years, I had learned that our small town would grab any slice of pie to munch over, regardless of its morbid contents.

  ‘I’m looking to speak to the Sheriff. Is he home?’ Theodore Maxwell said, inching closer to me.

  Theodore Maxwell’s cropped, Marine-short hair was shaped like a smoothing iron, accentuating an unforgiving face as welcoming as a kicked-in door. A five o’clock shadow was crawling over that mean face, coating his ghastly pockmark-pitted skin. The pockmarks had not been caused by some childhood affliction, but by a shotgun blast, many years ago, dealt by an escaping convict named Jeff Fields. Despite being badly wounded, Theodore Maxwell had managed to disarm Fields and hold him until other guards came to help. Shortly after his recapture, Fields spent three weeks in the prison hospital, after ‘falling down steps’, according to the official report. Less than a week after his release from the prison hospital, Fields was mysteriously and very violently killed in his cell.

  Horseshoe said he once overheard his father say of Theodore Maxwell: ‘There are wannabe tough guys, and then there’s Theodore Maxwell – the genuine essence of tough guy personified. Better to mess with the devil than with Theodore Maxwell. He neither forgives nor forgets.’

  ‘Well, boy? Is the Sheriff home or not?’ he said, looking at me rather sternly.

  I quickly nodded. ‘Yes … yes, sir. He’s … he’s home.’

  Theodore Maxwell’s mean eyes sparked with revelation. ‘You’re Tommy, aren’t you?’

  My tongue was a plank of wood. I couldn’t speak. The question sounded like an accusation. A trap. He was in uniform, and a pair of menacing handcuffs dangled from his belt. The handcuffs made me think immediately of Joey. For one heart-stopping second, I thought Theodore Maxwell was here to take me to Sing Sing. My stomach began percolating with nervous acid. I instantly tightened my butt cheeks, in case I would shit my pants.

  ‘Yes, sir …’ I said, feeling like one of his convicts. ‘I’m … I’m Tommy.’

  ‘I never did get the chance to thank you for trying to save Joey. It was very brave of you, Tommy.’

  I almost fainted with relief. ‘I … I just jumped in … it was nothing. Really …’ I mumbled, leaving out the fact that I had been one of the cowards encouraging Joey to go deeper into the water, to his doom. I wondered what Theodore Maxwell would do to me if he ever discovered that terrible truth? I shuddered inside.

  ‘I was hoping to find you at home. I want to give you this, as a thank-you.’ From the inside pocket of his dark jacket, he removed an envelope, then held it out towards me.

  ‘What … what is it?’ I asked, not reaching for it, as if it were a miniature bear-trap.

  ‘There’s a hundred dollars in twenties inside.’

  ‘A hundred dollars …?’ A hundred dollars was a fortune. I’d never seen that amount of money in my life, but there was something not right in accepting it. ‘I … I can’t take it, sir, but thank you all the same.’

  ‘Can’t take it?’ Theodore Maxwell looked puzzled. ‘Don’t be foolish. I want you to have it.’

  He thrust the envelope towards me, but I edged away, afraid to be contaminated by the touch of blood money and a dead boy. The envelope looked like a piece of Joey’s pale skin.

  ‘Tommy?’ Mom’s concerned voice came from directly behind me. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Joey’s dad,’ I said, relieved at her emergence.

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Maxwell. I was so sorry to hear of your son’s tragic accident. Terrible.’

  Mister Maxwell simply nodded. ‘I wanted to give your son some money, as a way of thanking him for trying to save Joey, but he refuses to take it.’

  Mom looked evenly at me for a few seconds. She could clearly see how troubled I looked.

  ‘Well, that’s his prerogative, Mister Maxwell,’ she finally said, taking her eyes off me. ‘But he thanks you all the same for the offer. Isn’t that right, Tommy?’

  I nodded, but didn’t say a word. A migraine began drilling into the area just above my left eyebrow.

  ‘Okay,’ Mister Maxwell said, returning the envelope to his inside pocket. ‘I can respect that. You have a great young man there, Mrs Henderson. A pity the town hasn’t more like him.’

  I felt my face redden.r />
  ‘How can I help you, Mister Maxwell?’ Mom said nonchalantly, not sounding too convinced about me being a great young man.

  ‘I’m really sorry for disturbing you so late in the evening, Mrs Henderson, but it wasn’t just your son I came to see. If possible, could I speak to your husband? I’ve just finished my shift at the prison, and when I called into his office in town, they said I’d just missed him.’

  It wasn’t unusual for people to come to our home, to speak to Dad. It was a small town, and informality was the norm. To the good people of our town, it didn’t matter if you were the mayor or sheriff, people believed they had a right of access to you twenty-four-seven, to voice their concerns, or query you about something they didn’t like – even if you were taking a shit when they were talking to you. Mom would do her best to let Dad get some peace when he had just finished work, and was pretty skilled at separating the wheat from the chaff at our front door.

  ‘Well … he’s just got in, but you can wait upstairs in his office. Tommy’ll show you the way. Can I get you some coffee?’

  ‘If it’s no bother? Thank you. Black. No sugar.’

  Dark and sour. Just like him, I thought.

  Showing Mister Maxwell into the hub, I was about to make a hasty retreat, when he asked, ‘How well did you know my son Joey?’

  The burly guard’s question caught me off-guard. I didn’t want to be here, with this imposing adult asking me tricky questions. I wanted to run.

  ‘Know? Well …’ For a moment, my brain seemed to have shut completely down. ‘I … Joey was … funny. He … always wanted to make people laugh. Everyone liked him. Everyone …’

  Theodore Maxwell showed no emotion at my words. I wondered, had I let him down with this characterisation of his dead son? Should I have added something else, something more telling and wonderful? Thankfully, Mom arrived with the coffee, and I sneaked away unnoticed back to the Green Lantern, as he battled the evil Doctor Polaris.

  But my curiosity wouldn’t let me be for more than a couple of minutes, as I heard the muffled voices coming from the hub. Slipping silently off the bed, I leaned against the wall, my right ear tight against it, and listened. The conversation between Dad and Theodore Maxwell was becoming heated.

  ‘I’ve read in the papers that law enforcement have a suspect, Sheriff, but for some strange reason you refuse to arrest and charge him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe everything you read, Mr Maxwell. Newspapers say a lot of things simply to boost circulation. I’m working every minute I can spare on this case. Believe me, if I had the evidence, someone would be answering to it.’

  ‘But you’ve got more than evidence. Haven’t you?’

  I pictured Theodore Maxwell’s alligator stare, drilling into Dad’s equally hard stare.

  ‘What do you mean by more, Mr Maxwell?’

  ‘You’ve got something more than evidence – something not learned from a book; something that takes a long time to develop. It’s called good police intuition, Sheriff. That’s what I mean. Gut feeling. That knotting of the gut when you know something just isn’t right.’

  I could hear Dad hesitate before answering.

  ‘I never go by gut feelings when it could mean a person going to prison for a very long time, or when –’

  ‘You’ve had the perpetrator in the interrogation room. You’ve looked into the abyss of his eyes when you asked him certain questions. You know he’s the perpetrator; you can feel it in the fibres of your body. The instinct you’ve fine-tuned over the years as sheriff. The same feeling that’s never let you down when push comes to shove. Aren’t I right?’

  Once again, Dad hesitated before replying. ‘I never build a case on feelings, Mr Maxwell. The district attorney would laugh me straight out of his office.’

  ‘Flynn? He’s a joke, but I ain’t laughing. He’s a disgrace.’

  ‘The town elected him. He’s what we have, like it or not.’

  ‘We both work for the same purpose, you and I. Wouldn’t your agree?’

  ‘What purpose would that be?’

  ‘The purpose of justice, Sheriff. You catch the bad guys, and I lock them up, keep them from harming good people – especially young people. It’s simple, black-and-white.’

  There was a two-second pause before Dad answered. ‘I think you know it’s not that simple, Mister Maxwell. There’s an awful lot of gray in between the black-and-white called justice. An awful lot. Of all the colours that occupy my time in the pursuit of justice, gray leads the pack.’

  ‘Sometimes justice isn’t served, Sheriff. You’ve seen the fancy-mouthed lawyers getting criminals off, even though you know they’re guilty as sin. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘I agree the system isn’t infallible. Like all systems, it has its flaws. But again, it’s what we have – until something else comes along to replace it.’

  Theodore Maxwell’s voice went harsh. ‘The system didn’t serve my son. Joey was sexually molested, and so far the perpetrator’s not been brought to justice. Joey committed suicide because of the animal that raped him, and took away his innocence. Now you can only stand there and tell me it’s all we have? There’s nothing can be done?’

  ‘I understand how you must be –’

  ‘You understand nothing.’ Theodore Maxwell’s voice sizzled with suppressed anger. ‘Until something of this terrible magnitude happens to your child, you’ll never understand.’

  Theodore Maxwell’s words chilled me. I felt for Dad – he had to stand there and just take it. He couldn’t defend himself, because he probably agreed with everything Theodore Maxwell was saying.

  ‘I can’t disclose anything that could jeopardise or compromise any future leads, Mr Maxwell, as this is an ongoing investigation. It’s top of my agenda to arrest the person responsible for the attack on your son. I can assure you that I’ll –’

  ‘You can’t assure me of anything, Sheriff – that’s the only thing I feel assured of since this conversation began. I only hope for your sake that when this monster strikes again – and he will – that you won’t look the parents of that child in the eyes and sell them the same brand of bullshit you’ve just tried to sell me.’

  ‘It’s not bullshit. I can only work within the –’

  ‘When you see your son, Tommy, sleeping soundly in bed tonight, you think of my Joey, and pray this endless nightmare is never visited upon you or your family – or any other family. Good evening, Sheriff.’

  I heard the door to the hub slam, then a minute later Mom’s concerned voice.

  ‘Frank? You okay?’

  Dad sighed. ‘Okay? I’m not the one who just lost a son, Helen, so I suppose I’m fine.’

  ‘I wish people would stop using you as a punchbag, Frank. You’re doing the best you can. Everyone in town knows that.’

  ‘Do they? I just spoke to one good citizen of this town who’d strongly disagree with you. He lost his wife three years ago to a drunk driver, and now his only son is gone. Can you imagine the hell and torment in Theodore Maxwell’s head?’

  Everything went quiet. I could picture Mom reaching over, trying to reassure Dad with a touch. A minute later, I heard her softly exit the room, leaving Dad to his own brand of tormented thoughts. I re-ran the words from Dad’s diary in my head, of poor Joey and his father. Theodore Maxwell had paraphrased the diary’s contents, chillingly, almost verbatim, as if he had read the telltale book.

  There was little doubt in my head that Dad was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Chapter Six

  The Bloody Plan

  All concerns of men go wrong when they wish to cure evil with evil.

  Sophocles, The Sons of Aleus

  It took Brent over a week, but he eventually came up with a plan, hatched no doubt from one of the murder stories in Dad’s crime mags. That Wednesday evening, the three of us sat on a small rocky outcrop deep inside Black’s Wood. Our faces looked deadly serious, no longer young.

  ‘Every Thursday, after the Strand
shuts for the night, Not Normal always takes porn movies home to watch in that run-down trailer of his,’ Brent said in a low voice, his face animated by the flames from our campfire.

  ‘How d’you know that?’ Horseshoe asked.

  ‘Everyone knows that,’ Brent said, glaring back accusingly.

  From the look on Horseshoe’s face, he obviously wasn’t everyone. I guess I wasn’t everyone either, because I imagine I had the same look on my face.

  ‘You’ll play a key role in this, Horseshoe. Very important,’ Brent continued. ‘You’re gonna be the bait.’

  ‘Bait?’ Horseshoe said, frowning. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Something to lure the perv to where we can catch him off-guard.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Why …?’ Brent said, hesitating.

  I knew the answer, even if naïve Horseshoe didn’t. With his blond hair and handsome face, Horseshoe was almost angelic in appearance. If anything could lure Armstrong to his doom, it would be this deadly combination.

  ‘Would you rather pull the trigger instead?’ Brent challenged, an Elvis snarl curling his lip. ‘I’ll gladly swap places with you.’

  ‘No! No … I don’t want to pull any triggers … Okay, I’ll be the bait.’

  ‘Good. That’s settled. Tommy? You’ll need to come up with some gasoline, so we can destroy all the evidence afterwards. You can siphon some from one of your dad’s squad cars. You’ll keep a look out behind the trailer as well. If you see anything suspicious, you’ll give a squirrel whistle. Okay?’

  I nodded, refusing to commit myself with words. I wanted to go home, watch some TV. ‘Hawaii Five-O’ would be starting shortly. It was one of my favourite shows, and I never tired of Detective Steve McGarrett’s catchphrase, telling his right-hand man Danny Williams, ‘Book em, Danno!’

  ‘What about the cops, afterwards?’ Horseshoe said, looking even more nervous. ‘What if Tommy’s dad starts questioning us?’